by Doug Cornett
I waved goodbye.
Byron motioned for us to come closer. We crossed the storage shed, passing several Junior Firefighters who were following Janice with cones in their arms. Byron stood in front of an open locker that held a random assortment of things: a whistle, a deflated rubber ball, a pair of mud-caked shoes, a Frisbee. Taped to the inside of the door was a photograph of a little boy wearing a plastic firefighter’s helmet, sitting on a woman’s lap. I recognized the woman as Mrs. Willis, the chief of the fire department, which meant that the little boy was Byron himself.
“I guess you’ve always wanted to be a firefighter,” I said, pointing to the picture.
Byron closed the locker and grinned down at us, his face crinkling with concentration, as if he was trying to remember where he knew us from.
“Byron Willis,” he said, extending a huge hand to shake. “So you want to join the Junior Firefighters?”
“Shanks,” Shanks announced herself and allowed her little hand to be engulfed by Byron’s. “This is Peephole, and this is Paul.”
Byron looked at me. “Just Paul?”
I sighed. “Paul’s enough.”
“I thought this was supposed to be the police storage shed, not the fire department’s,” Shanks said, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“It’s both, actually,” Byron said, looking around as if noticing where he was for the first time. “We share pretty much everything—this shed, some of the vehicles. We even share the station, though there’s a hallway separating us.”
The One and Onlys nodded and surveyed the space. It was a dusty room, one side of which was half filled with unmarked boxes, ladders, and coiled hoses. I guessed that was the fire department’s stash of equipment. On the other side was a pile of random stuff: smashed mailboxes, bent road signs, a porta-potty that looked like it had been dragged behind a car for a mile or two.
“Police evidence,” Byron explained, following our eyes. “Mostly broken or vandalized property—things that people don’t really want to get back. Hey, I know you guys from somewhere, don’t I?”
Peephole extended a hand. “We saw you yesterday at Babbage’s house. You know, the ducks.”
“Oh, yeah.” Byron shook Peephole’s hand. “So is Peephole your real name?”
“No, it’s Alexander. See, I had this teacher—Mr. Pocus—and he used to call me Beanpole and—”
“I had Mr. Pocus, too,” Byron said in a sympathetic voice. “He called me Carrot-Top.”
“He did? Because you liked to eat carrots?”
“Peephole!” Shanks said. “Because of his red hair!”
“Oh, yeah,” Peephole said. “Anyway, being in that guy’s class was like torture, except worse. You can always cry ‘uncle’ if you want the torture to stop. But fourth grade lasted forever.”
“You’re telling me.”
Peephole sighed. “Did you hear the rumor about Antarctica Boy?”
Byron drew his lower lip under his front teeth. Finally, he said, “Yeah, but it’s not true. I didn’t move to Antarctica.”
“You?” I interjected.
Byron turned to look at me. “Fourth grade was tough for me. I hated getting up every morning and going to school. I didn’t move to Antarctica, but I did stay home for two weeks, and started seeing a counselor.”
“Pocus is such a jerk,” Peephole said, and then a sly grin bloomed on his face. “Want to hear something funny?” He leaned in closer to Byron. “Somebody tore up his prized tomato plants. We’re pretty sure it was Mr. Babbage.”
Byron’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and then he slipped into a smirk. “Well, I’m not one for revenge,” he said, “but that is pretty funny. Seeing his sneering mug yesterday brought back some memories, and not good ones. I almost mistook him for one of those mean little garden gnomes he has in his backyard.”
Peephole ruptured into a giggle, but his joy was interrupted by a booming noise outside. WOCK WOCK WOCK. The walls of the shed started to tremble with the sound of a helicopter directly overhead. We ran outside in time to see a long red-and-yellow helicopter touching down in the field behind the station. The pilot cut the engine, and the blades slowed to a stop.
“That’s one of the choppers we’re using to fight the fires outside of town,” explained Byron, who’d followed us outside. “We fly over the flames and dump water on them. It’s pretty cool.” He spoke with obvious pride.
“So you’ve been out to the fire?” I asked.
“Well,” he hesitated, “not yet. I’m still training in the chopper, but I have dumped some practice loads out in the open land below town.”
“Moo-Landia,” Peephole said.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said quickly, suddenly embarrassed by our childish nickname for the land below Highway 43. “That’s still pretty awesome, even if you haven’t actually been to the fire.”
From behind us came a series of angry grunts that reminded me of the noises Ronald made when he dreamed about chasing squirrels. We whirled around in time to see Portnoy huffing and puffing toward us with a full head of steam.
“You!” he barked, a finger extended in our direction.
“Officer Portnoy,” I started, hands up, “we can explain.”
But as he stomped closer, it was clear his finger was pointing at Byron. “What do you think you’re doing, letting civilians trample my crime scene?”
Byron took a step back, clearly caught off guard by Portnoy’s anger. “Crime scene? I—I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Portnoy made a point of looking around the shed before saying, “Somebody broke in here last night and removed evidence! And I haven’t even had a chance to investigate yet!”
“I swear I had no idea,” Byron said, and I felt bad for him. His face was a shade or two darker than his hair, and his eyes were wide with fear.
“And you kids,” Portnoy said, finally turning his fury to us. “I thought I told you to leave the detective work to the professionals.”
“We are!” I said. “We were here talking with Byron about joining the Junior Firefighters! We promise!”
Portnoy shot Byron a fierce look.
“It’s true,” he said. “I was telling them about how we’re fighting the forest fires.”
“We’re not trying to get involved in the investigation,” Shanks said, shaking her head. “But since you brought it up, I’ll tell you one thing: it looks like you’re dealing with a pretty awful driver.”
“Now you listen here,” Portnoy began, but then he fell silent and his brow furrowed. “What do you mean by that?”
“Look,” Shanks said, showing him the zigzag of the tire tracks, the paint on the pole, the glass from the broken taillight.
“Huh,” Portnoy grunted. He stroked his mustache, rolling his eyes from Shanks to the ground and back to Shanks again. “You might be right about that awful driver, Chunk.”
“Shanks,” she corrected.
“You’re welcome,” Portnoy said.
“And there’s the smashed lock.” I pointed to the twisted metal lock on the ground. “Somebody really let this thing have it.”
“Somebody broke into the shed?” Byron sounded astonished. “What would anyone want with all those duckies?”
“That’s what we’re going to figure out!” I said. Portnoy shot me a look. “I mean, that’s what he’s going to figure out.”
“And look!” Peephole added excitedly. “There’s another set of tracks.”
He was right. We all bent down and peered at the dirt.
“These are smaller, from a different vehicle,” Shanks said. “Could there be an accomplice?”
Portnoy shook his head. “Those tracks match the tires on the department’s van. They must be from when I drove up yesterday morning to unload the ducks. See
how the other tracks go over them? That means whoever it was was here after me.”
“Good detective work, chief!” Shanks said.
It was her turn to get a sideways look from Portnoy.
“Well, I’ve got some training exercises to lead,” Byron said. “Good luck with the investigation, Officer Portnoy.” He turned to us. “Are you guys coming? We’re about to do some long-distance running to improve our lung capacity.”
“As a matter of fact,” Peephole replied, visibly uncomfortable at the mention of exercise. “I’ve got to get home. My mom’s pregnant, so there’s probably some chore that she wants me to do.”
“Me too,” Shanks said. “Not about the pregnant mom, but about the chores. There are always chores.”
Byron looked down at me.
“Chores,” I echoed lamely. “But thanks for talking to us. We’ll seriously consider joining the team.”
Byron flashed a thumbs-up, then turned and loped off toward the field, his big hands and feet seeming too heavy for his wiry frame. When he got close to the crowd of Junior Firefighters, he barked orders that we couldn’t hear, and they fell in line behind him. We watched as they jogged around the field in a weaving pattern, in and out of cones, like a long red-and-yellow snake.
“I’ll admit it, kids,” Portnoy said, and we all turned to look at him. “This ducky business is all a bit”—he spread his hands out—“mysterious. But there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the whole thing. You see, Bellwood is a normal little town, and things like this”—he pointed to the shed—“don’t usually happen here. Don’t worry. I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“If you need our help, you know where to find us,” Shanks said. “We’d be honored to join the Bellwood Police Junior Detective Force.”
“Well, that doesn’t exist,” Portnoy grumbled. “And anyway, I think I’ll be okay.” He tapped his forehead with a stubby finger and winked. “You see, Chunk, I’ve got a mind like a steel trap. Nothing gets in.”
“Um…don’t you mean ‘out’?” I asked.
“That’s what I said, Macaroni. Nothing gets out.”
I couldn’t sleep. The past two days had been astronomically odd, and my mind was racing with too many questions for me to be able to relax. I knew Portnoy was wrong about one thing: Bellwood was not a normal town. Normal towns didn’t have lawns that sprouted rubber duckies out of thin air. In normal towns, being the bratwurst champion did not make you a target. Even if the One and Onlys were the only people that recognized it, Bellwood was a far cry from normal.
I threw my covers off, tiptoed to my window so as not to wake my parents, and gently raised it. With a crouch and a squirm, I was sitting on the roof, looking out over Munchaus Avenue. My block, and probably all of Bellwood, was dark and deathly quiet. A single window in a house three doors down flickered with blue TV light, and the faint smell of smoke from the forest fires wafted in the breeze. A ragged red-orange moon hung in the sky, glowing dimly through the haze. It was probably because of the smoke, but it felt like the whole night was an old photograph that somebody had smudged.
There was something in the air that made me feel restless. Just like I had the night before, I thought of the duckies in Babbage’s yard, but now there was a new wrinkle in their mystery. They had disappeared from the police storage shed as strangely as they had arrived in Babbage’s yard. I remembered the smashed lock on the ground outside the shed. Somebody in Bellwood was responsible for those duckies showing up and for them disappearing. But who? And what did it all mean? Again I was smacked with the feeling that things were happening in Bellwood that I didn’t understand. Were they good or bad? Maybe Portnoy said it best. They were…mysterious.
And then, just like the night before, there was movement across the street. The door on the side of the Wagners’ garage slowly creaked open, and Janice appeared, wheeling her electric scooter into the driveway. On her back was an enormous mass, and at first, through the film of the smoky night, it looked like she’d sprouted a grotesque hunchback. With a swift push, she propelled her scooter down the driveway and then curved left, toward the overgrown forest road that led into the Bell Woods.
I willed myself invisible, knowing that it would take only a quick glance up in my direction for her to see me. Something about the way she kept flicking her head back toward her house gave me the distinct impression that what she was doing was supposed to be a secret. Her scooter let out a low mechanical whirr as she passed by my house, and I squinted and saw that it wasn’t a hunchback at all but a big black carrying case. It’s her tuba, I thought, remembering that she’d had it on her back when I saw her at Babbage’s.
But where would she be going with her tuba at this hour? Into the Bell Woods, apparently. The scooter let out a little rattle and groan as she drove it from the pavement of Munchaus Avenue up onto the overgrown grass of the old forest road. A tiny flick rang out in the night, and the scooter’s headlight popped on, casting a thin shaft of pale light into the darkness of the forest. And then, with its whirr and rattling becoming fainter to my ear, the scooter carried Janice and her tuba into the woods.
My uncertainty lasted only a moment. During that second or two, I had the fleeting wish that Shanks and Peephole were there so that we could all follow Janice into the unknown darkness. But before I realized what I was doing, I grabbed my phone and found myself tiptoeing across my bedroom, down the stairs, and past a snoring Ronald. I stuffed my feet into my sneakers and threw a hoodie over my shoulder before slipping out the front door into the night. Pausing at the edge of my lawn, I considered going back to get my bike. It would be faster, of course, but its squeak would be too loud. It would give me away in a second. I put my head down and ran faster and headed into the tall grass of the forest service road. Janice had a head start, and she was on an electric scooter, but that also meant that she’d be easier to track. Sure enough, up ahead in the cleared-out alley between the trees, I could see her headlight bumping up and down on the uneven road.
I huffed and puffed to keep up with her. After a minute or two my lungs ached from breathing in the thick, smoky air. I fought back a cough, knowing that any noise might give me away. All around me the black outline of the woods seemed to grow taller and taller, and I could have sworn that I heard sighing coming from the tree line. Once again, I silently wished that Peephole and Shanks were there with me. Shanks wouldn’t have been afraid at all, which would have made me feel better, and Peephole would have been way more scared than me, which also would have made me feel better. But my curiosity was stronger than my fear, and I pressed on after Janice. Where was she leading me? How deep into the Bell Woods were we going to plunge? Luckily, I didn’t have to wonder much longer. The scooter’s headlight veered off from the forest road to the left and came to an abrupt stop.
I slowed to a trot and tried to make my footfalls as soft as possible as I approached. Soon I was close enough to see that Janice had stopped in a clearing off the forest road. She’d flipped the kickstand down and was standing a few feet in front of the scooter, her big tuba case illuminated by the single headlight. Keeping my eyes fixed on the case, I crept forward, carefully measuring every stride. A curious sinking feeling accompanied each step, and I realized with surprise that the hard dirt and grass of the forest road had given way to a spongy forest floor. My sneakers were sinking into the ground, every footfall taking me deeper into a muddy patch.
Great, I thought. We’re in the middle of a drought, but Janice has led me to the only swamp in Bellwood.
If I could get a little closer, I figured I might be able to tell what she was up to. I tried to control my heavy breathing, but the run had taken a toll on me. A single bead of sweat rolled from my forehead onto the tip of my nose, and I reached up to wipe it away. Now I was close enough to see tiny particles of ash floating in the beam of the scooter’s headlight.
I took another step and my
foot sank into the mud, suddenly throwing me off balance. My hand jutted out for support and found a thin branch poking out from the trunk of a nearby tree.
Snap. The sound of the branch breaking in my hand echoed through the silent woods. I froze and held my breath. What would happen if Janice saw me? What kind of excuse could I possibly have for being in the woods? I swallowed that fear, remembering that Janice was the one who had led me here. If anybody needed to explain herself, it was Janice.
But if she heard the snap, she didn’t react. In fact, she’d remained as still as a statue since the moment I had her in view. I watched her and counted to five, but she didn’t move so much as a finger in that time. It was as if she’d seen something that had turned her into stone. Leaning to the right, I craned my neck to get a glimpse of what she might have been looking at, but a low snarl of tree limbs blocked my view. With intense concentration, I noiselessly shuffled a few feet to my left to get a better look.
And there they were…looking every bit as strange and out of place in the electric blue of the scooter light as they had in Babbage’s yard, their round little heads and swooping tails bubbling up like some alien growth from the mud of the swamp. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d found the duckies. But what on earth were they doing here? In a random patch of mud in the Bell Woods?
Or, rather, Janice had found the duckies. And judging by the way she still hadn’t budged, I wondered whether she had been expecting the odd little visitors to be here or was as surprised to find them as I was. The two of us stayed very still for what seemed like a long time, staring warily at the unexplainable pile of duckies, as if they might pop to life and start waddling toward us under the smoke-soaked red moon.
Finally, Janice turned, reached up, and lowered her tuba case to the ground. With careful and precise motions, as if she were a heart surgeon going in for the first incision, she kneeled down and unzipped the case, the sound of the zipper amplified by the silence of the woods. With equal care, she grasped her tuba, whose golden brassiness glinted in the scooter’s headlight, and lifted it to playing position.
