The Prophet of Yonwood (17 page)

There was no hat of any kind today. Mrs. Beesons hair was fluffed out in a cloud around her head, and she wore a red dress with her round blue Tower button pinned to the front. She stood looking out at them in silence for a long time, her eyes flitting from one face to another. At last she spoke. There was a wave of creaks and rustles as everyone leaned forward to hear.

Well, friends, she said, were in a dark time.

There was a murmur of agreement from the crowd.

Our Prophet has seen a dreadful disaster in the worlds future. It could be the war that might be coming. It could have to do with the terrorist in our woods.

The crowd murmured again.

But shes also tried to tell us how to be safe from this disaster. I call that a miracle. Its like being taken under Gods wing.

Mrs. Beeson smiled, and Nickie could tell that the people in the room were feeling that smiles warm glow.

And so most of us, Mrs. Beeson went on, have done our best to do what our Prophet tells us to do. Its not always easy to know what that is. Sometimes the Prophet says things that even I cant interpret. She says No words, for example. Unless she means swearwords, which we dont say anyhow, I must admit Im mystified. And theres something else she says that until now Ive thought I must be hearing wrongly. But as danger comes closer, Im forced to believe she means exactly what she says.

Mrs. Beeson paused. She stood still, her blue eyes scanning the crowd. She looked like a queen, Nickie thought, in her ruby red dress, with the light from the candles gilding her hair. The people in the church seemed to hold their breath.

Finally, Mrs. Beeson squared her shoulders and spoke. What I am about to say is for the good of us all, she said. We must be obedient, whether we understand or not. Gods ways are beyond our knowing. She paused again, for a long time. Tension twisted in Nickies stomach. People sat so still that the whole room was utterly silent.

When Mrs. Beeson spoke next, her voice was hardly above a whisper, but it was so fierce that you could hear every word. Althea has said it over and over, but I havent wanted to hear it. No dogs, she says. No dogs. Its quite clear. Somehow, our dogs are standing in the way.

What?! cried a woman a few rows up, but someone else shushed her.

Mrs. Beesons voice rose. Yes, she said. I see it now. I see it in myself, in my own feelings for my little Sausage. She leaned forward, gripping the pulpit with both hands. Why should we give an animal love that should go to our families? Why should we give an animal love that should go to God? We have to act, my dear friends. I know its hard, but the dogsall of themmust go.

Nickies heart started rapid-fire beating. Dogs must go? What was she saying?

A clamor arose from the people in the church. Voices cried, What? and No! but Mrs. Beeson spread her arms out and stood like an angel about to rise. Listen! she cried.

Everyone grew silent again.

Its painful, I know, she said. But terrible times demand extraordinary sacrifices. Seems to me what the Prophet is saying to us is this: the more we say no to the things of the world, all those things were too attached to, the more we can say yes to God. Its what Ive told you before: when you have faith that youre rightyouknow it from the bottom of your soulyoure willing to do anything for it. Anything.

At that, the people grew silent again. A few stood up and left the churchone man shouted Shes wrong! as he went out the doorbut all the rest stayed. Nickie saw some of them look at each other with stern, brave looks and nod. Then they looked back at her again, waiting for instructions.

It will be like this, she said. The day after tomorrow, I will send a bus to all dog-owning households. You will put your dog aboard the bus, and the driver will take the dogs to a wild place many miles from here, where the dogs will be free to go back into nature, where they belong. No animal will be harmed, and we here in Yonwood will have followed our instructions to the letter. We will be free to love God with all our hearts.

Nickie felt as if shed been set on fire. They wont take Otis, she thought. Never.

But she realized after a moment that she didnt have to worry about Otis. No one knew that Greenhaven was a dog-owning household. The only people besides herself who knew about Otis were Amanda and Grover, and they wouldnt hurt him. She would keep him safeshed be extra super careful when she took him out to peeand when the house was sold, shed take him away with her, back to the city.

Because she knew now that she would fail at her Goal #1, which was to live at Greenhaven with her parents. She still loved Greenhaven, and Yonwood, too, but she no longer wanted to live in a place where Mrs. Beeson and her Prophet delivered instructions from God.

CHAPTER 24 ______________

The Bracelet

On Friday morning, as Grover was on his way to school, two men had jumped him as he passed the car-repair garage. Theyd been standing behind a gate that led into an alley beside the building, and when Grover came past they simply stepped out into his path and blocked his way. Before he realized what was happening, each of them grabbed one of his arms. One of them whipped the bracelet out of his pocket, snapped it around Grovers right wrist, clicked a button on a remote control, and the bracelet was activated. It started up its noise:MMMM-mmmm-MMMMM-mmmmm.

He wrenched free and ran, but by then, of course, it was too late. The noise screamed from his wrist. He shook his arm as if the thing were a scorpion biting him, as if it were a cloud of bees attacking, but there was no stopping it. Get away, get away, was all he could think. He ran around the far side of his house and down Woodfield Road, where there were fewer people, though the few he passed stared at him in horror. He didnt look at them. Get away, get away. He ran past the school, staying far out at the edge of the playing fields, past the end of Main Street, where the windows of the Cozy Corner Cafere still dark, and then, all the time with the noise streaming out behind him like a kite tail, he ran up the path into the woods.

When hed run uphill for ten minutes or so, he stopped. The whine of the braceletMMMM-mmmm- MMMMM-mmmmmzinged around his head like a monster mosquito. He had to do something about it. Though the morning was cold, he was warm from running. So he took off his jacket and the sweatshirt he was wearing underneath it. He put his jacket back on, and he wrapped the sweatshirt around his wrist, tying it as tightly as he could by the sleeves. It made his arm into a sort of club, with a great lump at the end. The sound was deadened, but not silenced. He could still hear it, and of course anyone walking in the woodshuman or animalwould be able to hear it, too. So he unwound the sweatshirt. He took off his jacket and his T-shirt, put his jacket back on (because he wouldnt be able to once hed made his hand into a club), and wrapped the T-shirt around the bracelet as a first layer. Then he wrapped the sweatshirt around that. This made a wad as big as a soccer ball. His arm looked like a giant lollipop. It might make a good weapon, he thought. Too bad Teddy Crane and Bill Willard werent around for him to clobber.

The double wrapping muted the noise of the bracelet down to a faint hum. It was good enough. Grover strode on.

What he was going to do he didnt know. He had no plan, other than to escape the town and all the pitying, tut-tutting faces that would be trained on himpeople on the street, his teachers, the other kids at school. No. He would figure out a way to get the thing off. He wouldnt go home until he had.

He climbed fast, fueled by rage. After half an hour or so, he came to the place hed been a few days before, where the path led down to the stream. This was a good spot to stop for a moment, he thought. He was thirsty. Hed have a drink.

As he knelt by the stream and splashed water into his mouth with his left hand, he remembered the person hed seen moving through the woods when he was last herethe pale patch off in the distance. For a second, with water dripping down his chin, he stopped moving and listened for footsteps. But as soon as he wasnt making the noise of footsteps himself, crunching over twigs, rustling in the leaves, all he could hear was the thin whine of the bracelet, sounding through its wrappings:MMMM-mmmm-MMMMM-mmmmm, like a faraway siren.

So he wiped his wet hand on his pants and walked on. He thought of singing really loud to cover up the noise. But if therewas some evil person lurking up here, singing would just attract his attention. He tried to tune his ears to the tweeting of the birds instead.

The path wound up the mountainside. Every now and then he came to a place where the trees thinned out and he had a view over the town below. School would have started by now. Theyd notice he wasnt there. Would Bill and Teddy have gone to his house after theyd clapped the bracelet on him and told his parents? Would anyone come looking for him?

By midday, he was close to the top of the ridge, and he was starting to feel hungry. He happened to have a couple of stale crackers in his jacket pocket, so he ate those. But it wasnt much of a lunch. At this season of the year, he wouldnt be able to find much in the woods that he could eat. The berries would be gone, and although there were lots of mushrooms, he didnt know enough about them to tell the edible ones from the poisonous. Hed just have to be hungry for a while, thats all. Good thing hed had a big breakfast.

When he came to a small open field, he decided to stop for a while and attack the bracelet. There was a shelf of rock at the edge of the field, large and low. Here he sat down. He unwrapped the sweatshirt from around his wrist, and then the T-shirt. The hideous noise wailed out into the air. Grover winced. It was like having skewers poked in his ears.

The bracelet was a flat metal band about a quarter of an inch thick, a dull silver color. There was a small hinge at one point on it, and a couple of grooves that went all the way around. The sound came from inside, but Grover couldnt see any way of getting at itno switch or slot or sliding panel.

Maybe he could just slip the thing off. He curled his hand into a tube shape and tried to work the bracelet over his knucklesbut it wouldnt go. He slipped the fingers of his left hand under it and pulled as hard as he could, hoping to break the hinge, but all he accomplished was to make the edge of the bracelet dig into his skin. In furious frustration, he banged the bracelet against the rock, but the silver surface of it was barely even scratched. The noise went on without a pause,MMMM-mmmm-MMMMM-mmmmm, making him want to scream.

One more try. He found a rock about the size of a baseball and, placing his wrist on the bigger rock, smashed at the bracelet over and over. After five minutes of pounding, hed made a tiny dent in the bracelets surface and a sizable scrape on his hand. With a yell, he flung the rock away and gave up. He put the wrappings back on his wrist. Failure.

He lay back on the warm rock and stared at the sky, where a hawk was circling far, far above. What had he done wrong? Nothing. Who was he hurting? No one. So why was he being tortured? He didnt know. Had Althea Tower muttered something about snakes? Was there a law against snakes in some holy book? He didnt know. And he didnt know what he could do about any of it.

Stymied, he closed his eyes. The sun shone on him, and he grew sleepy and dozed off.

When he woke up, he could see that it was late afternoon. The shadows of the trees crept across the field, and the air had grown chillier. Grover felt bleak. What was he going to do when night came? What would he do tomorrow? He was hungry, and he was cold, too, because with his T-shirt and his sweatshirt wrapping up his wrist, all he had on was a flannel shirt and his jacket. Which was better, to be warm and have that noise screaming at him, or be cold and without the noise? He decided to be cold, at least for the moment.

For the first time, he realized that he was going to spend the night up here. He hadnt really thought about it before, when all he wanted was to get away. But he saw that he would have to. Darkness would fall before he could get down the trailand he didnt want to be back in town anyway.

So hed better use the daylight that was left to get ready. Hed make himself some sort of den to sleep in, and hed look as hard as he could for some nuts or shriveled-up berries to eat.

First the den. He wanted to be in among the trees, not out in the open. So he crossed to the west side of the field and made his way into the thicket of undergrowth, stamping down brush and breaking off twigs that got in his way. It was like burrowing through barbed wire, he thought, so many stickers and scratchers. Underfoot, the ground was leaf-littered and rocky and uneven. And damp. It wasnt a great place for a campout.

But after creeping around for a while, he found a sort of scooped-out place in the ground surrounded by a group of pines. The pine needles were thick on the ground, and he mounded them up to make a mattress. This wouldnt be too bad, he thought. Now for food.

A few rays of sunlight still fell across the top of the mountain and lit up the trees on the other side of the field. Grover started to make his way out of the woods, back through the brush the way hed come. But just as he got to the edge of the clearing, he saw, within the trees on the opposite side, something white moving.

He stood still. The trees would hide him, he thought, if he didnt move. If only he had binoculars! His heart began a quick, steady thudding. Could the terrorist hear the faint hum of the bracelet?

The white patch moved slowly. It seemed to be coming toward the clearing. Grover held his breath. He squinted, trying to see more clearly in the failing light. The white patch moved, stood still, moved again, and at last came out from the shelter of the trees and into the field.

And Grovers heart gave a great lurch. This terrorist was not human. And it was not a terrorist, either. It was a bear. A white bearsomething Grover had never seen nor heard of.

The bear came out into the field. It walked with a lopsided motion, as if maybe one of its feet hurt. Its nose was down; its head swung slightly from side to side. Its coat, Grover could see, was not pure white at all. It was a dirty cream color, smudged with gray.