by Betsy Byars
Batty circled the plant. “But where’s the pod?” he asked.
“Probably ruined.”
“Yes, ruined, but where are the ruins? There has to be something left.”
“Maybe it’s so smashed …”
“I’m not leaving here until I see it—smashed or not,” Batty said.
The Empty Birthday Present
MOZIE AND BATTY SEPARATED and began crisscrossing the damaged area. Mozie felt he had entered a place not of this earth. Once he thought he heard the faint hum of an airplane engine and he looked up, but the sky was clear.
The boys stepped over fallen girders, slid on the smashed vegetables, picked up huge wilted leaves to look underneath.
Batty slipped and went down on one knee. He said, “This makes me sick,” as he got up. “That’s got to be squash,” he said, pointing to his pants. “I can’t stand the stuff. And isn’t this smell getting to you?”
“Yes, I’m ready to go home,” Mozie said tiredly. “I didn’t sleep at all, Batty. I was in the Hunters’ guest room.”
“I hate them things,” Batty said. “But I am not leaving until I see the pod.”
Mozie sighed. “What am I going to tell the professor?”
“Don’t tell him anything. Save the newspapers, and when he gets home …” Batty broke off. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” He began walking faster over the broken glass.
“What?”
“Wait a minute!”
“What?” Mozie began to follow.
At the edge of the woods, Batty paused. “There it is! I knew that was it! There—it—is!”
The pod lay just at the edge of the forest, out of the destruction. It had not been damaged by hail or glass—its surface was unmarked except for the tree that lay across it, crushing it and pinning it to the ground.
Mozie and Batty stood side by side, shoulders touching. Neither of them moved.
Batty had not moved out of respect for the dead—something he had learned from TV cop shows. Mozie had not moved because he felt terrible.
“It almost—almost got away,” Batty said. “If that tree hadn’t …”
“What do you mean—got away?”
“I don’t know what I mean. It just looked like it was almost into the forest, where there was protection from the hail. We got to get this tree out of the way so we can operate.”
The tree was not a large one, but it lay across the middle of the pod. Lightning had splintered its trunk into pieces, and Batty began pulling at the loose wood.”
“This could take a month,” he said. He put his hands on the pod and pressed.
“What are you doing?”
“If we could press it down, we could slip it out from under the tree. But this thing is hard, and it’s as big as a mattress.”
Batty took the stem of the pod and pulled. It did not come loose. “We are never going to get inside this thing.”
“I know.”
“We got to have a knife,” Batty said. “Go get the biggest knife—”
“My mom doesn’t let me play with knives,” Mozie said.
“This isn’t play. This is the opposite of play. This is the hardest work we’re ever going to do in our lives.”
Mozie started reluctantly back to the house. His mother was at her sewing machine—that was good. He entered the kitchen, opened the knife drawer, and took out the butcher knife.
His mother always had a special sense about the opening of the knife drawer. “No knives,” she called.
“Batty and I have to cut something. A tree fell on something and we’ve got to cut it.”
“No knives! I don’t like you playing with my knives.”
Mozie hesitated a moment and then he ran upstairs. He took the box from his closet—the box containing his father’s belongings. He lifted the lid, not pausing now to be comforted by the scent.
He reached into the box and brought up his father’s Swiss Army knife. Without bothering to close the box, he rushed down the stairs and out the door.
He ran through the forest and to the clearing where the ruined greenhouse lay.
Batty was kneeling on the pod, peering through a crack. “I’m trying to tear it open,” he said, “but this stuff is like leather or rubber or something that won’t tear and won’t chip. I sure hope it cuts. Give me the knife.”
Mozie took his father’s knife from his pocket. “Give it here,” Batty said.
“It’s my knife. I get to use it.”
“Well, use it then.”
Mozie knelt beside the pod. He pulled out a blade that turned out to be the little scissors. He put it back. He pulled out the toothpick. He put it back.
Batty snorted with impatience.
This time Mozie brought out the sharpest blade. He bent over the pod. “Right over the heart,” Batty suggested.
Mozie nodded. He swallowed and he pressed the blade into the thick green covering. It resisted. He lifted the blade and stabbed lightly at the pod.
“Hard!” Batty said. He was at Mozie’s side, giving stabbing movements of his own.
“I don’t want to hurt it.”
“It’s dead! Give me the knife.”
“I’ll do it!”
Mozie lifted the knife high and brought it down on the pod. It entered with a wet noise, and liquid oozed out around the blade.
“That’s more like it,” Batty said.
Now Mozie began to cut an opening in the pod. It was slow going—like opening a can with a knife—and several times he paused. At each pause, Batty would say, “Want me to have a turn?” Mozie would shake his head and continue.
A half hour passed, and Mozie was at last completing his circle. He cut the last inch and paused as if he had expected the circle to fall into the pod.
“Lift it out,” Batty said.
Mozie tried to pull it out with his fingertips.
“No, with the knife, give me the knife.”
At last he surrendered the knife to Batty. “Like this,” Batty said. He stabbed the center of the circle lightly and withdrew the circle.
It flopped over onto the pod and then slid to the ground with a wet plop.
Batty and Mozie leaned forward together to peer through the small circle. “Me first,” Mozie said. He had waited a long time for this. He put one hand on either side of the hole, claiming it for himself.
Batty shrugged and pulled back. Mozie bent his face to the circle. There was a smell so heady Mozie thought he would faint.
He looked and pulled back.
“What is it? What? Let me look, will you?”
Mozie gestured to the hole and stepped back. “At last,” Batty said. He leaned forward, one hand braced on either side of the pod. He gasped.
“It’s empty. We’ve been robbed!”
Mozie nodded.
Batty took another, longer look. “Empty!” he said. “Hello! Anybody in there?” Batty rapped on the pod. “Knock knock. Who’s there? No. No who? No body.” He laughed at his own joke. He glanced back at Mozie. “I wonder if this is the way doctors act in the operating room when they cut a hole in somebody’s chest.”
“I hope not.”
Batty rested his weight against the pod. “Do you know what this means?” he asked thoughtfully.
Mozie couldn’t answer.
“This means that whatever was inside the pod got out.”
Mozie couldn’t answer.
“And if it got out, it can move.”
Mozie couldn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he would ever speak again.
“And if it can move, it’s alive.” Batty glanced over his shoulder at Mozie. “Let’s look for it, want to? Footprints! Look for footprints! We’ll track it down. Like Bigfoot.” Batty began circling the ruined pod. “Footprints. There have to be footprints … unless …” Batty’s shoulders sagged.
“Unless what, Bat?”
“Unless it was empty all the time.”
“I don’t think it was.”
“You
know what this reminds me of? One time Benny Rogers—”
“I don’t think it was.”
“Let me finish. One time Benny Rogers came to my birthday party and I opened his present and the box was empty. Empty! Do you know what it feels like to open an empty birthday present?
“Later Benny’s mom explained that Benny’s little brother had taken my gift out to play with it and Benny’s mom didn’t know this and she wrapped up the box and sent Benny to the party. But can you imagine what it feels like to open an empty birthday present?”
He stretched out his arms to take in the pod.
“It feels exactly like this!”
Missing McMummy
THIS TIME WHEN MOZIE’S mother awakened him in the middle of the night, Mozie knew what had happened.
“The professor,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to talk to him, Mom. He’ll yell at me about the greenhouse being destroyed.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but—”
“You want me to tell him?”
He hesitated and sighed. “No, I’ll do it.”
He got up tiredly and padded barefooted to his mother’s bedroom. He picked up the phone.
“Hello,” he said.
“Howard Mozer?” It was the operator.
“Yes.”
“Go ahead, Professor Orloff, your party is on the line.”
“Allo! Allo! Are you there?”
“Yes,” said Mozie, “but something terrible’s happened.”
“No, iss not terrible, iss goot. The congress has accepted my proposal. Dey are prowiding me vith a huge greenhouse—huge, Hovard. I will grow wegetables for the vorld!”
“But your wegetables here …” Mozie began. He started over. “Professor, there was a storm—a killer storm, the newspapers are calling it.”
“Ya?”
“And McMummy is missing.”
“Vat? Vat iss missing?”
“The mummy pod. The pod! Remember I told you that there was a huge pod on one of the plants?”
“Ya?”
“Well, that pod is missing. I mean, the pod’s not missing, but what was inside it is missing.”
“Somevun stole the beans?”
“If that was what was inside.”
“Vat vas inside novun knows.” He paused. “But dey haff a goot meal, ya?”
The professor’s laughter boomed into the telephone at his joke. Mozie grimaced.
His mother said, “Find out when he’s coming back, Mozie.”
“Professor, when are you coming back?”
“I am not returning. De greenhouse is yours. Do vit it vat you—”
“I don’t want the greenhouse. It’s ruined. It’s—”
“It served its purpose. I am hanging up now. I meet my challenge. I prowide the vorld vith wegetables! Goot-bye! Goot-bye!”
The phone went dead, and Mozie stood for a moment as if in shock. He looked up at his mother. “He isn’t coming back.”
“At least he paid you in advance,” his mother said, trying to smile.
Mozie nodded. He started for his room and paused in the doorway with his back to his mother.
“Did you hear what I said about the pod being empty?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Professor Orloff made a joke of it. He said someone stole the beans. But, Mom—please don’t laugh when I tell you this. I can’t stand it if you laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“Batty and I found the pod this afternoon. It was crushed by a tree, but it was whole.”
“Go on,” his mother said when he paused.
“So we were going to cut it open—that’s why I wanted the butcher knife. I got Dad’s army knife and we cut a circle and looked inside and it was empty.”
“And?”
“And Batty thinks it was empty all along, but I don’t. Later I went back and I put my hand inside, and I could feel—well, ridges like, here and here.”
He pointed to the space between his arms and chest. “And I reached up and there was a narrowing, like for a neck, and then it widened as if for a head.”
He was still facing into the hallway.
“And I took my knife and I went around the whole upper half and I lifted it up—it was like lifting up the half-lid of a coffin. And in the case was—what it had felt like—the shape of a person.”
“Mozie.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to go back to that greenhouse.”
“I might have to.”
“You don’t have to do anything. I wish now I’d never let you go in the first place. Look at me, Mozie.”
He turned.
“I don’t know if I can explain this, but a person can get so caught up in things—and I do this myself—so caught up in things that—”
She broke off. He could see she was having trouble expressing herself. That was a trait that they shared.
“Like last year I was in the mall,” she continued, but she was still struggling with what she had to say, “and there was a lot of noise, but over all that noise, as clear as I hear my own voice right now, I heard your father’s voice call, ‘Lily!’
“And I turned around and I expected to see him and when I didn’t see him, I was almost physically sick with disappointment. I could hardly drive home. Mozie, the imagination is a powerful, powerful force.”
He felt almost sick himself, but he said stubbornly, “I’m not imagining.”
She straightened. “Then that is all the more reason to stay away from the greenhouse.”
They watched each other for a moment. His mother was looking into his eyes as hard as if she were trying to see what was going on behind them.
She turned her eyes to the ceiling. She seemed to be reaching for some other argument. But when she looked back, she sighed. “Well, let’s go to bed. We can hash this out in the morning. Good night, Mozie.”
“Good night.”
Hummmmm
“I’VE COME FOR MY dress,” Valvoline said. She spun into Crumb Castle.
Mrs. Mozer said, “I guess you’ll want to try it on.”
“Yes! I can’t wait to see myself in it.”
Mozie said quickly, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Mozie’s mother brought out the dress on a hanger. Mozie went through the kitchen and onto the back steps. He sat down. Pine Cone came out of the bushes and rubbed against his legs. Pine Cone had been very friendly since the storm.
“Ah, Pine,” he said. He put his hand on the cat’s side and felt the comfortable purr.
Inside his mother said, “Now, aren’t you glad you didn’t have me take it in? It fits perfectly.”
“Hold the mirror so I can see the back.” There was a pause, then an explosion of pleasure. “I love it. I love it. I want to show Mozie. Mozie, where are you?”
“I’m here,” he said, getting to his feet.
Valvoline swirled onto the back porch, creating a small eddy of sweet-scented air. Mozie’s head snapped up and his mouth opened.
Valvoline was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was radiant.
“Am I going to win or am I going to win?”
“Oh, you’ll win, all right.”
“I wish you were one of the judges.” She started back into the house, then turned. “Are you coming? Please—to cheer for me.”
Mozie hesitated.
“Your mom promised she’d come.”
“Oh, all right.”
“I’d hug you if I didn’t have on this beautiful, exhilarating, fascinating, pageant-winning dress!”
She disappeared into the house. Pine Cone came back for the last half of his neck rub. Mozie put his hand on Pine Cone’s side. He felt the deep humming, the purring.
Valvoline’s perfume hung in the still summer air.
Pine Cone’s purr grew louder. “Wow, you really are happy,” Mozie said, and then he realized the faint hum was not coming just f
rom the cat.
He shook his head to clear it. This humming had been recurring in his mind since that moment when he had stood in the scented bower and first heard it. He imagined this was because that was the moment he became aware of things beyond his understanding, things alien to all he knew, a world where anything could happen.
Valvoline went out the front door and called, “See you at the pageant,” to Mozie. Mozie walked slowly around the house to watch her back out of the drive.
The hum was stronger now. It seemed to be coming from the woods.
Mozie stood without moving. Pine Cone came to join him and then stopped. The hair rose on Pine Cone’s back. Pine Cone let out a low yowling sound.
Mozie bent to pat him. “What’s wrong, Pine Cone? I’m not leaving. I’m just …”
Eyes wide, Pine Cone turned and ran for the house. Mozie could hear him scratching on the screen, begging to be let in.
Mozie didn’t have time for the cat. Already the sound was fading. He started toward the woods.
Mozie located the direction of the humming sound and quickened his pace. He broke into a run. He crossed the yard. At the edge of the forest, he paused. He listened.
Overhead a plane droned in the pattern for runway 28, blocking out the sound.
Mozie moved into the forest, slowly, stepping around the remnants of the storm. As he came to a fallen tree, he paused again.
The plane had landed, its engine no longer interfering with the hum. Mozie listened. A bird called somewhere in the forest. A woodpecker worked on a limb. But the humming sound was gone.
As Mozie turned to go back to the house, he glanced down and stopped. He saw something that did not quite fit. He had almost missed it. He would have if the sunlight hadn’t been shining on it. Slowly he dropped to his knees.
There, against the protruding limb of the fallen tree, was a scrap of green. In the sunlight that filtered through the trees it seemed to shimmer with a light of its own.
Mozie reached out and took the scrap of green in his hand. It lay on his palm, as delicate as a butterfly wing, thin as tissue paper. Drops of moisture, tiny beads, came from the torn end of the scrap.
Mozie drew in his breath. He had the feeling that he was the first person in the world to see this. He got to his feet, tense with excitement, and began to run deeper into the woods, heading for the ruined greenhouse.
