This just sits there for a moment. Both of us in silence.
Henry bites the inside of his lip.
“Eva? . . . Thank you,” he utters.
The rain is pouring down now, pounding the top of the golf cart in buckets.
Henry stays silent.
“Don’t do that!” I yell.
“What?”
“That!”
“That what?” he asks.
“That silent treatment!” I burst.
“I’m merely trying to facilitate a successful journey,” he comments.
And he’s right. There’s no reason to be having this heated interaction right now, but somehow I can’t stop myself. It would take an act of God to change my train of thought, but luckily, or unluckily, an act of God is exactly what happens.
12
IT’S A FLASH of light. A flash of light followed by a thunderous CRACK so loud it shakes the ground. At first, I don’t know what it is. I’m not used to lightning. It’s not like this is Tornado Alley or Santa Fe or any of those other places where the jet stream comes down from the arctic and gusts into the warm air from the gulf, creating fantastic weather systems, lightning storms and twisters you can see breaking out over the plains.
This is California. Lightning is an event. A precious offering. A gift. And, in this case, maybe a curse.
Why is it a curse? Because when said lightning struck, not thirty feet away from little ol’ us in our tiny white golf cart, I might possibly have hydroplaned off the road and slid this little white golf cart about twenty feet through the mud. . . .
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!” Henry screams that way.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” I scream this way.
. . . over the brambles . . .
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”
. . . over this bump . . .
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”
. . . and that bump . . .
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”
. . . and, thankfully, by-the-grace-of-God-ingly, up just a tad at the very bitter end where the base of an enormous craggy oak tree forms a kind of gentle slope, thereby permitting us to . . . not die.
Even though this whole process takes about fifty seconds it feels like fifty hours slowed down, every detail, every bramble, every bump, every piece of mud flying. Even the look between Henry and me in the midst of it. Each of our faces containing the same expression, “Are we gonna die right now?” That split-second look, that hydroplane moment, all of it seeming to take the time of an entire movie.
And I will never forget it.
The engine whines to a stop. Henry and I sit there, stunned. Neither of us says anything as neither of us, I’m pretty sure, can actually believe we made it out of that one alive. Inside my chest, my heart is lurching to get out. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump.
And then.
“Eva, are we alive?” Henry asks.
I look around, trying to get my bearings.
“I think so.” I exhale.
“Prove it,” he says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Pinch me?” He looks at me.
I shrug. Then pinch him.
“Ow!” He winces. “Definitely not the afterlife.”
But we’re not mad at each other. Oh, no. Not now. Not after we just almost met our maker in the mud off a Central Coast mountain.
“Come to think of it, it’s not the worst place to die,” Henry muses.
“What?”
“I mean. Hearst Castle. In a car chase . . . It’s kind of glamourous. Plus, I suppose we’d get to spend time with all those other famous ghosts. A kind of macabre festival . . .” He rolls it over in his mind.
“There’s nothing glamourous about dying, Henry!” I unfasten my seat belt. “I just thank God I had the good sense to insist we wear our seat belts!”
Henry rolls his eyes.
The two of us are trying to get out of what feels like a giant mud pit. It’s more complicated than it would seem.
Henry looks up the road.
“I doubt if we’ll catch up with them now,” he admits.
I follow his gaze. At this point, I don’t even see any headlights.
“I don’t get it. How could they get over the mountain? Or through the mountain? There’s no road there,” I ponder.
Henry thinks. “Do you think it’s possible they simply stopped? Perhaps waiting?”
“Waiting for what?”
“Perhaps they are waiting for . . . the Midwestern Mastermind. Perhaps he told his tweedle-guards to take Binky and Zeb away until he’s completed his diabolical heist.”
“So, you think they might just be up there, like . . . chillaxing?’” I ask.
He blinks. “Yes. It’s a possibility. That they are up there. Chillaxing.”
“Well, if that’s the case . . . what if we . . . I don’t know . . . tried to sneak up on them?”
“They have one guard as I recall,” Henry says. “Is that what you recall?”
“Yes, Henry. That’s what I recall.”
“I think it advisable we formulate a plan before we make any attempt to make contact,” he decides.
“Yes. Definitely. Wonder powers . . . formulate.”
Henry leans up against the side of the crashed golf cart, smeared with mud, and closes his eyes in thought.
“Eva?” He opens one eye.
“Yeah?”
“I feel the need to tell you that you are irreplaceable. No one. Not Zeb. Not anyone, can replace you. I’m . . . I’m saddened you would think that.”
He looks at me.
“It’s just . . . it all happened so fast. And he’s so perfect. And fun. And interesting. And mellow. And he thinks you’re sooooo cooooooool.” My stomach twists.
“Yes. But he’s not a sister replacement.”
“A sister replacement?”
“Yes. You have to order them. They ship from Tokyo. Yours is coming in three years. The Sister 3000. It lights up,” he teases.
“Oh, Henry.” I walk over to him, wading through the mud.
I hug him. He hugs me back.
“Eva?”
“Yeah?”
“You know that we’re basically mud people right now.”
“Yes. Yes we are.”
The hum of the truck interrupts our moment.
From this little mud pit/golf cart crash site, we can see down the hill to the two distinct towers of Hearst Castle, looking a bit like two beige honeycombs spiraling up into the night. Down below, more difficult to see through the rain, the row of trucks winds down the hill toward the ocean.
I notice that the lights of some of the trucks are on. That’s not a good sign. They were all off, at a standstill, before. I peer farther, trying to make out the very first truck, at the bottom of the hill. It’s impossible to see at first but then it slowly comes into focus. The first truck. And the truck behind it. And the other trucks, too.
“Henry?”
“Yes, Sister 3000?”
“They’re moving.”
He looks at me, blank.
“The trucks back at the castle.” I gesture down the hill. “The trucks are moving.”
13
DO WE GET the art or do we get the Zeb?
“Henry, what do we do?” I’m so confused.
“Well, it really depends. Do we value thousands of years of precious art and artifacts? Or do we value the priceless nature of friendship . . . of humanity? And if we do value material things more, then what does that make us? What have we allowed ourselves to—?”
“Henry!” I roll my eyes.
“Okay, let’s go get Zeb,” he acquiesces.
As if to jolt us back to life a light strikes me across the face.
“Wait. What?”
I turn toward the light and see it’s coming in a beam through the trees.
“Henry! Look. Headlights!” I point.
&
nbsp; He peers into the headlights, coming from the distance down the hill toward us.
“They’re turned around! They’re coming back!” he gasps.
“Do you think it’s them? Binky and Zeb?” I ask.
“I hope it’s them,” he exclaims. “Here. Help me. Hurry!”
I follow him up toward the road, the scene of our fateful golf cart crash.
“Grab as many rocks and branches as you can. Here! Grab that one.” Henry is already in action, grabbing everything he can lift from the brambles and hurling it toward the road. “We have to create a de facto blockade!”
The headlights of the SUV swing this way and that through the chaparral, making it impossible to tell exactly how close they are or how much time we have.
“That! Yes, that branch there. That’s perfect.” He chucks it on the road. It lands with a thud.
“What if it crashes and it hurts Zeb? Or Binky? Or even the guard for that matter, I mean, I don’t want to be violent,” I say, considering.
“Eva. This is all we have. This is it.” And then he looks up, making fun of me. “It’s the only game in town.”
I roll my eyes.
“You’re never gonna let that go, are you?”
“Probably not.” He continues grabbing and hurling.
“Well, you know, not everybody can be cool all the time. I mean, sometimes you just say something.” Grab. Hurl. Grab. Hurl.
The lights seem to be brighter now, then gone, then brighter, then gone, as the SUV winds its way down the road.
“We need more rocks. Eva, rocks!”
“Wait, did you just say that Eva rocks?” I smile.
He sighs. “Fine. Eva rocks! Now give me some rocks!” he barks.
“Here.” I hurl a rock at the road. “And here. And here.”
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The roadway has not the best blockade across it, but a sizable one. There’s possibly enough debris to put a wrench in their works.
“I hope this works,” I whisper.
“I don’t understand,” he whispers back.
“What?”
“I don’t understand why they would be coming back.”
“Maybe . . .” I think. “Maybe the Midwestern Mastermind gave them the signal. Like ‘We’re leaving now, it’s all clear. Let’s complete this heist.’”
“But why wouldn’t they just wait back at the castle? It doesn’t make sense,” he ponders.
“Maybe there was something up there. Like a hidden treasure. Or a key. Or maybe even a secret code,” I offer.
The lights are brighter now and the sound of the engine gets louder as it makes its way down toward us, twisting and turning on the switchbacks.
“I can’t take it.”
“Take what?” Henry asks.
“The suspense. It’s killing me.”
Henry gives me a look.
“No, seriously. Like is the SUV going to crash? How good is the driver? These tweedle-guards don’t really seem to know what they’re doing, quite frankly. I mean, maybe Zeb like convinced the guard to seek the right path or whatever, like he did the Redondo guy.”
“‘Seek the right path or whatever,’” Henry quotes me.
“You know what I mean. Zeb has like magic powers or something.”
Now the engine is getting louder, louder. Now the SUV is getting closer, closer, closer . . .
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEECH.
THUD.
Henry and I look at each other.
That sounded bad.
14
I BET THE trees around here are wondering what all these car accidents are all about. I bet they’re talking to one another right now through their underground networks of roots and fungi, saying things like, “Um, did you guys notice there have been two screeching vehicle crashes aboveground in the past hour?”
The oaks and the paloverde and the sycamores all nodding in agreement. “Yes, indeed. Tough night.” The cacti doing a face-palm. The quivering aspens shuddering.
It’s hard to tell what just happened exactly. First there was a screech, then there was a scritch, then there was a loud, prolonged klaaklacklacklack thumpthumthump followed by the final aforementioned pronounced THUD.
In the brambles about twenty feet down the road, the SUV has crashed. Our plan “worked . . . ?” The SUV tilts slightly to the side, headlights still on, with one of the rear wheels spinning, futile, in the open air.
Henry and I watch in stunned silence as the driver’s side door opens up. Then a hand reaches out, pushing the door again, and lugging its body behind it. Neither the hand nor the body belong to Zeb. Or Binky.
In fact, both the hand and the body belong to one of the tweedle-guards. He tweedles around to the back and opens that door, which appears to be a bit stuck, thereby letting out Binky with a grunt. His grunt. Not her grunt. She just looks dazed and confused.
Henry and I share a look. Where is Zeb?
But that question is immediately answered when we see him climb out of the slanted driver’s side as well, looking the opposite of dazed and confused, and actually thrilled.
“Okay, that was awesome.” Zeb checks to make sure all his limbs are working. “Not a scratch!”
Henry and I look at each other. You can’t help smiling. There could be a category-five hurricane overhead and Zeb would say, “Wow, look at that eye! What a miracle!”
Binky is looking around, beginning to get her bearings.
“Where are we?” she asks, rubbing her neck.
“Shh. Keep quiet,” the tweedle-guard barks, making his way around the SUV, assessing the damage.
“We caught air!” Zeb says, proud.
“I said quiet. Stay here.” The tweedle-guard grumbles his way over to the road. “Darn it.”
I guess he’s not happy about this little wrench in the works.
Henry tries to get Zeb’s attention with a bird sound.
“Kaw-KAW!”
I look at him. That was such a bad bird sound.
“KeKAW KeKAW!” My bird sound is impeccable.
Zeb looks up. Thinks. Starts looking around.
“It’s working,” I whisper. “KeKAW KeKAW!”
And now Henry, “Kaw KAW! Kaw KAW!”
“Sh. They’re going to think there’s too many birds,” I whisper- yell.
“There’s just the right amount of birds. There’s not a single bird too many.” And then, in defiance, “Kaw KAW Kaw KAW!”
Not to be outdone, I correct him. “KeKAW KeKAW!”
“Kaw KAW! Kaw KAW!”
“KeKAW KeKAW!”
Zeb’s head pokes in through the brambles. “What the heck are you guys doing? You sound like a den of mutant frog-chickens!”
“Zeb, oh my God. Are you okay?” I gasp.
“Under the circumstances?” He thinks. “Pretty good, actually.”
“How’s Binky?” Henry asks.
Zeb contemplates. “Honestly, I think she’s kind of in a state of shock.”
“What do we do about the guard?” I ask. “Is he nice like the other guy, that Redondo one?”
“Nope,” Zeb replies. “I’d say he’s more in the I-might’ve-spent-time-in-prison, I-might-not-care-if-I-go-back kind of mode.”
“A career criminal.” Henry’s take.
“Yeah. Also not the brightest bulb on the dashboard,” Zeb informs us.
“Hmm.”
“Like now, for instance. He’s just looking at the road.” The three of us take a look at the tweedle-guard. He’s walking around the sight of the crash, scratching his head.
“I think this might call for a good old-fashioned outsmarting, Henry,” I suggest.
“Hmm. I suppose. Let’s see.” Henry starts pondering. You can practically see the workers in his brain leafing through the catalogue. That? No. This? No. Maybe that? Possibly.
Then the voice of the tweedle-guard.
“Hey, where’d that kid go?” he grunts out,
staccato.
“I’m sorry. What?” Binky is really in her own little world.
“The blue hair kid. Where is he?” Another grunt.
“I’m . . .” Binky looks around. “I’m not sure . . .”
“Ugh!” he snaps. “I hate this job!”
The tweedle-guard stomps into the bushes.
It’s hard to make out his shape through the brambles, but the sound of his grunts does seem to be getting louder.
Henry, Zeb, and I stare at one another, a trio of frozen mud statues.
15
WE WHISPER TO one another, mud statues in the brush.
“We have to do something!” I suggest.
“Yes. I know,” Henry whispers.
“Maybe like soon,” Zeb suggests.
“Yes, I get it,” Henry replies.
“Maybe like . . .” Zeb looks up. “Right now.”
The three of us look up. The tweedle-guard is just round the paloverde tree. Our only camouflage.
“Henry?” I whisper.
But it’s too late. The guard steps beyond the paloverde and the three of us look up in the headlights like three blind mice. Caught.
“Um. Hi!” That is my brilliant reply.
“What are you kids doing here?!” he grumbles. “Never mind. Forget it. Come with me.”
The three of us hesitate.
“Come on. Trust me. You don’t want to try my patience right now. Lord.”
He has a point here. He is a big guy. And he seems to be missing a neck. Also, his arms are as big as my legs. And he definitely seems like he’s at the end of his rope.
Henry makes an attempt. “If I may be so bold, I would like to point out that potentially the fastest way down the mountain—”
“Shut up, kid.” He cuts him off. “I’m tryin’ to help—”
Clang!
This tweedle is on the floor. And standing over him, tire iron in hand, is—
Henry & Eva and the Famous People Ghosts Page 13
