Bobby gestured for Wade to follow him into his bedroom, then nearly closed the door on his younger sister, who whined and protested for a few minutes.
“Look what my cousin sent me,” Bobby said quietly. He looked around the room and out the window, then double-checked to make sure his sister was gone before spreading some pages out on his desk. On them were rough drawings of what looked like a large bomb.
“What are these?” Wade asked.
“Top secret,” Bobby said.
“Top secret?”
Bobby’s voice fell to a whisper. “This is from my cousin Lee in New Mexico.”
“So?”
“So! New Mexico is where they’ve been working on the atomic bomb.”
Wade looked from Bobby’s face to the pages, then back to Bobby’s face again. “You mean . . . ?”
“My cousin Lee’s dad—my uncle Walter—is a scientist who’s been working on the atomic bomb. Lee made these drawings from some papers and photos he’d seen in his dad’s briefcase.”
Wade’s heart lurched. “Are you crazy?” he asked breathlessly. “There are spies out there who would kill to get their hands on stuff like this.”
“Yeah, I know,” Bobby said. “Why do you think I’m being so careful?”
Wade pointed to the next page. “What’s all this stuff?”
“I think it’s how they make them. See?”
Wade glanced over the list: “Uranium 235 . . . Uranium 238 . . . plutonium . . . nuclear fission . . . isotopes . . . altimeter . . . air pressure detonator . . . detonating head . . . urea nitrate . . . lead shield . . .”
“Lee said he scribbled down everything he could,” Bobby explained.
Wade’s mouth was hanging open now. He read about how the various components interacted to cause an explosion. He also saw a page about the effects of radiation on human subjects after the bombs exploded. Many were burned, and some got sick and died. It also warned of radiation getting into water systems and sources of food. “We shouldn’t be seeing this,” he said finally.
“I know,” Bobby said, smiling. “That’s why I showed it to you.”
“We have to get rid of it.”
“I figured I’d throw it in the furnace as soon as we looked it over,” Bobby agreed. “Uncle Walt would put Lee on restriction for the rest of his life if he knew Lee had mailed this to me.”
Suddenly a voice at the door said, “Bobby?” It was his mother. The door handle turned. Acting quickly, Bobby grabbed and folded the sheets of paper and shoved them under Wade’s untucked shirt. “What’s going on in here?” Bobby’s mother asked.
“Nothing,” Bobby answered with a voice that said just the opposite.
His mother eyed him suspiciously, then looked at Wade. “Good heavens! What happened to you?” she said. “Is that a black eye?”
Wade stammered incoherently.
“He fell down on the way home from school,” Bobby lied.
“Looks more like you were in a fight,” his mother said. “I think you should go home right away.”
“But—” Bobby started to protest.
“No ‘buts’ about it.” She put a hand on Wade’s shoulder and guided him out of the room. “You go home and get that eye looked at,” she instructed him.
Bobby’s mother stayed with Wade all the way down the stairs to the front door. He tried to think of a way to get the papers back to Bobby, but Bobby’s mother was in the way the entire time. She handed him his jacket and books. Bobby shrugged helplessly at Wade as Wade walked through the door and it closed between them.
On the front porch, Wade zipped up his jacket and pressed his books to his chest. He could feel the papers under his shirt. He looked around nervously. What if there were spies watching him? What if the government found out that Lee had sent the drawings to Bobby and secret agents were coming to arrest them even now? Wade swallowed hard and walked quickly down the steps of the front porch and out onto the street. His walk soon became a run as he took off for home.
Every casual glance from people he passed took on sinister meaning. They know about the papers, he kept thinking. A large black sedan drove past, then suddenly pulled up next to him. It’s them! It’s the agents! Wade thought. The door opened, and Wade cried out—then blushed with embarrassment as an older woman got out of the car to put a letter in the curbside mailbox.
He ducked down some back alleys and zigzagged through his neighborhood, just to make sure he wasn’t being followed. When he finally reached his own home, he burst through the front door and raced up the stairs to his room.
“Wade?” his mother called from the kitchen.
Wade dropped the books on his bed, pulled out the papers, and shoved them under his mattress. It was the only place he could think to hide them on the spur of the moment.
His mother called for him from the bottom of the stairs. Forgetting about his black eye, he went back to the top and smiled down at her. “Hi,” he said innocently.
“What in the world are you doing?” she asked.
“Putting my books away.”
“Why the rush? Didn’t you hear me call you from the kitchen?” She wiped her hands on her apron.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What’s that on your face?”
“My face?”
“Come down here,” she ordered. Wade went down the stairs to her. She gasped. “Your eye! You’ve got a black eye!”
“I—”
“Who was it this time, Richard King or Jim McClendon?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Wade said, shuffling uncomfortably as she ran her fingers gently around his eye.
“Oh, Wade!” she said. “Into the kitchen right now. We’re putting an ice pack on it.”
Wade groaned.
“And don’t make a fuss.”
As he walked down the hall toward the kitchen, he suddenly sneezed. It made his eye throb. Then, in the kitchen, he sneezed again.
“Are you coming down with a cold?” his mother asked.
Only then was Wade aware that his nose was running.
It was an illness. And in spite of Wade’s protests, his mother insisted that he have a bath after putting an ice pack on his eye and then spend the rest of the evening in bed. As the night progressed, he began to feel worse. By bedtime, he had a full-fledged flu of some sort. His mother made him stay home from school the next day. And the day after. What made Wade feel worst of all, though, was knowing Steve and his gang would think Wade had missed school because of his black eye. When he returned to class, they would call him a sissy and a baby, and the teasing would be far more difficult to take than if they’d gotten into another fight.
In his illness, Wade dreamed of evil-looking men trying to sneak into his bedroom to steal the drawings of the atomic bomb. He dreamed of being arrested by government agents who accused him of being a spy. He saw his name in horrible accusatory headlines on the cover of every newspaper in the country. “Spy!” they said. “Hang him!” the editorials demanded. His mother would live in shame, and his father would never be allowed to come home from wherever he was.
A scraping sound echoed distantly in the heat duct near the door. The sound penetrated his deep sleep. He knew instantly what it was: His mother was in the basement, trying to throw some life into their old coal furnace. From the sounds of it, she wasn’t having much success.
Wade swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed his feet into his slippers. The cool air of the room made him realize his pajamas were slightly damp. His fever had broken, he knew. He stood up, expecting to feel light-headed. To his surprise, he felt normal—good, in fact. His eye didn’t hurt as much, either. A glance in the mirror showed him that the swelling was nearly gone and the color wasn’t as bad as it had been. He grabbed his robe from the back of the door and suddenly had an idea: Now would be the time to burn the papers about the atomic bomb. He slipped them out from under the mattress, tucked them inside his pajama top, then wrapped his robe snug around him.
“Mom,” Wade said when he rounded the furnace in the basement.
Wade’s mother looked at him. Her face was smudged with coal. Black streaks also covered her hands, the sleeves of her blouse, and her apron. His mother had never learned the knack of working the furnace, and she got tearfully upset with it. More than once, she’d said that she could endure nearly everything about the war except that furnace. “When your father gets home, we’re going to tear it out and get a new one,” she’d say. “Do you hear?”
Wade always nodded and agreed.
“What are you doing out of bed?” she asked now, her face flushed.
“I came down to help you.”
Mrs. Mullens jabbed a shovel at the inside of the furnace. “I don’t need your help,” she said. “You should be in bed.”
“I’m feeling much better,” he replied. He reached up and put his hand on her arm to take the shovel. She frowned, then surrendered the shovel to him. Wade smiled.
“You’re the expert, aren’t you?” she said as she stroked his blond hair—hair just like hers. “Planes, bombs, and furnaces. Your father is going to be very proud to see how you’ve grown up.”
Wade poked at the fire. “We need more coal.”
“He’ll be home soon, you know,” she said.
Wade turned to her with an expression of understanding. “I know.”
But the truth was, he didn’t know. Neither of them did. The chaos of the war against the Japanese in the Pacific—the many soldiers who had fought on the tiny islands around the Philippines—caused a lot of confusion about who was where. No one was sure what had become of Henry Mullens as the war came to a close. He may simply have been one of many soldiers who’d been separated from his unit. Or he might have been captured, wounded, or killed.
“I would like some tea, please,” he said to his mother as he went to the coal cellar in the back corner of the basement. “I’ll fix the furnace and then come right up.”
She pondered him, then turned to go upstairs. “I hate this furnace,” she said as she walked away. “When your father comes home, we’re going to—”
“Tear it out and get a new one,” Wade called out.
“Brat!” she said with a smile in her voice. He heard her footsteps going up the basement stairs.
Wade wrenched open the door to the coal cellar. Black soot swirled up and around him. He flipped the switch for the single light that hung by a bare wire from the ceiling. It didn’t turn on. “Bulb’s out,” he said.
Enough light shone in from the furnace room for him to get a bucket of coal, however, so he stepped inside to do just that. Retrieving the empty bucket from where it hung by a peg on the wall, he went to the edge of the pile of coal and started shoveling. Now that his mother was gone, he would throw the papers about the atomic bomb into the furnace with this coal.
He was glad he felt well again. He hated being sick; he missed his talks at lunch, during recess, and after school with Bobby Adams. For the two of them, fascination with the war had taken the place of their fascination with sports. They spoke of the various armed services the way other boys spoke about baseball teams.
He even missed being in his classes, annoying his teachers with his obsession about the war and his extensive knowledge of the weapons and machines that had brought the war to a conclusion. He wondered what they would think if they knew he had top secret drawings of the atomic bomb.
The doorbell rang upstairs, and Wade heard his mother’s footsteps go across the floor. I wonder who’s here? he thought, and then he suddenly realized, It may be government agents! They’ve come to arrest me for having these papers!
Wade spun around to rush back to the furnace. He could burn them quickly, and no one would ever know. But just then the cellar door blew closed.
“Oh, brother,” he said in the sudden deep darkness. He made his way carefully to the door and pushed at it. Nothing happened. He pushed again, but it wouldn’t budge. He fiddled with the latch, which lifted easily enough, but still the door wouldn’t open. He pounded on it and called out, “Mom? Mom!”
He listened, but she didn’t reply.
“Mom!” he called out as loudly as he could. Then he pounded some more with the back of the shovel. “Mom!”
He heard heavy footsteps outside the door and relaxed. He was sure that between the two of them, they could get the door unstuck.
The effort wasn’t necessary, however. The door suddenly swung open without any problems.
“Thank you,” Wade said.
“You’re welcome,” an old man he’d never seen before replied.
The old man carried a lantern and held it high for a closer look at Wade. His eyes narrowed beneath thick gray eyebrows. “Heaven help me!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” Wade asked indignantly.
The old man’s eyes widened. Wade noticed that they were two different colors, one blue and the other green. “Why, I’m about to feed Bethel,” he said.
“Feed Bethel? In my basement?” Wade challenged the stranger. His father had always said that the best way to put off an intruder was by being forceful. Never show fear, he’d said. Wade raised the shovel like a weapon. “Where’s my mother?” he demanded to know.
“Your—? I have no idea. Come out of there before you’re bitten.”
“Bitten?”
“Bethel doesn’t take kindly to strangers.” The old man gestured to the corner behind Wade. A horse stood there, gazing at Wade with disdain.
Wade stepped back, mouth agape. The coal was gone. Straw and hay covered the floor. Where the bucket had been sitting a moment ago, now sat a trough. The cement wall that had enclosed the coal cellar was also changed; it was now made of wooden slats. “What happened?” Wade stammered.
“Come out now,” the old man said patiently. “You’ve been caught. You may as well confess.”
“Confess?”
“You’re one of those vandals from town, aren’t you? Come to do me mischief.”
“No! This is my house!”
“This place may be a lot of different things, but it’s certainly not your house.” The old man beckoned to Wade. “Come out and explain yourself.”
Wade, still staring at what used to be his coal cellar, slowly walked out. His basement was gone, too—no furnace, no workbench, no boxes of keepsakes or the furniture his father had intended to donate to charity. Instead, Wade now looked at what seemed to be a large barn—a very large barn, the biggest he’d ever seen. It must have been as long as a football field, maybe even as wide. Along the sides were compartments of stalls, pens, and cages. Pipes stretched the length of the ceiling, some of them feeding down into the various compartments. Lanterns dotted the walls, casting a bright, ethereal yellow over the expanse. Wade blinked, sure that he was dreaming. I must be dreaming, he thought. Why else would I be hearing a lion roar, a pig snort, and a monkey chatter?
The old man closed the door to Bethel’s stall. “Stay put,” he said to the horse. “I’ll be back.”
Wade turned to the old man. He was tall and thin, with a slender, clean-shaved face and a mop of white hair. He wore a long tunic that was belted in the middle. “Something’s wrong,” Wade said.
“Obviously.” The old man reached out and tugged at Wade’s sleeve. “What do you call this outfit? The latest city fashion?”
Wade looked down and realized he was still in his robe, pajamas, and slippers. “I’m dreaming,” he said.
“Maybe so. Or maybe I’m the one who’s dreaming. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He quickly caught hold of Wade’s hair.
“Ouch!” Wade cried out. “What are you doing?”
“I wanted to see if it’s real.” Satisfied, the old man let go.
“It’s real. What did you think, I was wearing a wig?”
The old man smiled. “I don’t know where you’d ever find a wig that color. Now tell me what you’re doing in Bethel’s stall.
”
“I wasn’t in Bethel’s stall. I mean, I wasn’t before. I was getting coal for our furnace, and the door closed behind me and I couldn’t get out.” Wade spoke as much to himself as to the old man, trying to retrace what had happened.
“I heard you pounding on the door,” the old man said, as if confirming that part of Wade’s story was true. “But there’s no coal or furnace. Just Bethel.”
“I must be hallucinating. My fever. That’s it. I’m in a feverish delirium.” Wade felt his forehead. “But I feel fine. I feel great. This is very strange.”
“Listen to the way you talk. ‘Delirium.’ What kind of boy uses such a word?”
“My teachers say I’m precocious,” Wade replied simply.
“Where are you from?”
“America.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Wade felt a cold rush go through his body. Never heard of America? He had to think. Either the man was crazy or he was. “Then . . . where do you think I am?” he asked.
The old man chuckled. “It’s not where I think you are. It’s where you are. You’re standing in my shelter.”
“Shelter.”
“Yes, my shelter. How you got in here is a mystery to me, I have to say. We’ve only got two doors, one that’s always locked, except when we’re bringing the animals or supplies in. We have to keep a close eye on things, what with the vandals and troublemakers.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, but that’s the way of things. Let’s start with the basics. My name is Arin.”
“I’m Wade Mullens.”
“Glad to meet you, Wade Mullens, providing you aren’t some kind of spy,” Arin said, half-bowing to the boy. The word spy stopped Wade for a second. He wondered if this strange situation was because of the papers tucked under his pajama top.
“I’m not a spy,” Wade insisted.
“And this had better not be some sort of trick,” Arin warned.
“If it’s a trick, it’s being played on me.”
The old man put a firm hand on Wade’s shoulder and directed him onward. “Well, there’s no point in standing here asking a lot of confusing questions. We’ll get to the truth when you say what you’ve got to say. Let’s go up to the house.”
The Marus Manuscripts Page 17
