AbrakaPOW

by Isaiah Campbell

  “Now,” he said.

  There was no arguing with an escaped prisoner pining away for a long-lost love a thousand miles away. Max wasn’t sure if that was a life lesson or not, so she held on to it just in case.

  “Okay, fine. Now,” she said. “I just have to get everybody out of the house.”

  “Such a task should be no problem for THE AMAZING MAX,” he said.

  “It’ll be easier for just Plain-Old Max, actually.”

  He chuckled. “Make certain you tell my sweet Josephine that I wrote her many letters but received none in return and feared it meant our love had gone south.”

  She found it amusing that he would use such a casual phrase. “Okay, you got it.”

  “What will you tell her?” he asked.

  “That you wrote her lots of letters.”

  “Many letters.”

  “Okay, you wrote her many letters but received none in return and feared it meant your love,” she snickered, “had gone south.”

  “Precisely.”

  She shook her head and hurried inside the house. She fetched Houdini out of her room. She needed an assistant for her next trick.

  She and Houdini went into the kitchen, where her mother was rolling out dough. “Mom, can I call Grandma Schauder?”

  Mrs. Larousse paused her baking to look at her daughter, who was nuzzling her little ferret as she had oh so many days after the major first went away. Perhaps because of this memory, she decided to not calculate the expense that would be incurred by a long-distance call all the way to New York. “Of course, dear.” She pointed at the phone.

  “Um,” Max said and hid her eyes in Houdini’s fur. “Can I maybe talk to her alone?”

  Mrs. Larousse hesitated, then wiped her hands off on her apron and proceeded to exit.

  “Can you take Houdini?”

  “Max, you know I—”

  “Please?”

  Her mother sighed and took the ferret from her daughter’s arms. This was particularly exciting for Houdini, as Mrs. Larousse was the human least comfortable with ferrets he’d ever encountered, and thus she typically maintained a steady stream of tender morsels to keep him occupied. Sure enough, Mrs. Larousse dug out two plates of leftover chicken and carried it and him off to the living room.

  “By the way,” Mrs. Larousse said, “if she asks, we’ve been going to temple every week since we got here.”

  “But we haven’t, and she always knows when I’m lying.”

  “Okay, just, if she asks, don’t tell her we haven’t. Okay?”

  Max almost protested again, but then remembered that she actually had no intention of calling Grandma Schauder at all, so it was quite the definition of a moot point. “Okay, Mom. Can I call her now?”

  “Sure, who’s stopping you?” Mrs. Larousse asked and headed as far out of earshot as she could.

  Max grabbed the phone and connected to the operator. Felix had given her an old phone number for Josephine. “Hello, Operator?”

  “Yes?” the voice on the line answered.

  “Can you connect me to New York please?”

  “Will you hold?”

  “Of course.”

  Several minutes passed with many clicks and hisses on the line and then a voice with a pleasantly familiar accent answered. “New York, what number?”

  “Hi New York!” Max said.

  “Hello. What number?”

  Max waited a moment to savor the beautiful speed and vowels of the New York accent before she responded. “I need Baldwin three-two-three-three-six.”

  “One moment,” the voice said. There was another click, a louder hiss, and then the voice spoke again. “Hello?”

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.

  “I have Abilene, Texas on the line for you.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Abilene, Texas. Do you accept the call?”

  “Josephine?” Max yelled into the phone.

  The voice on the other end was quiet. “I don’t know anyone—”

  “So you don’t accept the call?” the operator asked.

  “Josephine!” Max yelled again. “I’m calling for Felix.”

  There was still more silence.

  “Do you accept the call or don’t you?”

  “I— I—” the woman stammered. “No, I do not accept the call.”

  “No, Josephine, please, wait!”

  “Okay, thank you. Sorry, sweetie.”

  The phone went dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  If one were judging by the tempers flaring between Lola and Max that evening, when they most certainly should have been asleep in Max’s bedroom, one would think that the attempt at recapturing the Nazis that night had failed. On the contrary, it had been an enormous success, which was most likely the source of the conflict between the two friends.

  “That was so dangerous,” Lola said. “More than I even could have imagined. That was so incredibly dangerous. We need to stop.”

  “You’re crazy,” Max said. “It was all under control. There was only the illusion of danger. Just like a great magic show.”

  As is usually the case when two parties are fighting vehemently for their side of an argument, they were both correct.

  It was dangerous. More dangerous than the first time. First of all, Max had actually met face-to-face with the two escapees. Felix had given them the instructions that they were to lay low near Winters until Max arrived to lead them to a location where they could easily hop the rails and ride to El Paso, where they could then cross into Mexico. At one point, while they were walking through the woods, Max very nearly gave away the plan when one asked how much longer they would be walking. She had tried to be rather cute and said, “Walking, not much longer. They’ll put you in a wagon in a bit.”

  She recovered nicely, though, and led them to the ditch with ease. Once they were in the ditch, walking along the road, the actual danger was nearly completely eradicated and the illusion of danger was heightened. This was thanks first to the fog generated by a great deal of dry ice onto which Eric was pouring boiling water several yards away from view. The fog crawled down the ditch and Max proceeded to “panic.”

  Then Carl and Shoji, using cotton balls soaked in kerosene, proceeded to—

  Actually, it would probably be best to not reveal all the aspects of this non-dangerous plan, as it was in reality rather dangerous and might not be safe to be replicated in anyone’s home or school. Let it suffice to say that, in the midst of the rising fog, fireballs flew over the prisoners’ heads, Max’s pigtails “caught on fire,” and the men ran as fast as they could for nearly two miles, right across the path of a ranch hand who had been informed by his old buddy Carl that one of his calves was stuck in the ditch.

  It only took three seconds for the ranch hand to hop off his horse and drag the two men to the ground. He then tied them up and brought them back to the big house, where the police were called, the FBI came instead, and Major Larousse was given an even greater sense of relief.

  Meanwhile, it had been Lola’s job to put out all the fire that was left over from the elaborate trick.

  It was really rather understandable that she, of all of them, had a true sense of the danger of their plan.

  But there was no convincing Max of this fact. Nor was there any dissuading Lola, and so the first slumber party of Lola’s entire life dissolved into two people falling asleep in anger and dreaming of winning the argument.

  So sweet was the dream, and also Max’s sense of satisfaction, that she slept long past the normal rise of humans the next morning, and thus missed both Major and Mrs. Larousse exiting the house.

  She went into the kitchen to find some morsel to fill her rumbling tummy and stumbled on Lola, hanging up the phone.

  “Calling your grandma?” Max asked. “She doesn’t suspect anything, does she?”

  “No,” Lola said and then walked out of the room.

  Max was not proficient at social scenarios, and thus
decided to wait for the storm to blow over so they could somehow resume this odd interaction called “friendship.” She made herself a sandwich and then, because she presumably had the house very nearly to herself, picked up the phone and clicked for the operator.

  “Operator.”

  “Hi. I need New York, please.”

  “Didn’t you try this yesterday?”

  Max was not used to telephone operators being so chatty. “Uh, yes?”

  “There isn’t any lesson in the second kick of a mule, sweetie.”

  “Noted. Now can you please connect me to New York?”

  The operator huffed but obliged. Once connected, Max again gave the number and, after a few clicks and a loud hiss, heard the same woman’s voice on the line.

  “Hello, I have Abilene, Texas here. Will you accept the call?”

  “Again?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, please,” Max said. “Just for a minute.”

  The woman hesitated as before, but this time finally said, “I accept the call.”

  “Okay, here’s your party.”

  “Josephine?” Max asked.

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “Wow,” Max said and lost all of her words. From what Felix had told her, Max felt a little as though she were talking to an angel, or perhaps God Himself.

  “You know Felix?” Josephine asked, timidly.

  “Yeah,” Max said. “I met him a few weeks ago. He’s told me a lot about you.”

  There was a long silence.

  “He has?”

  “Oh, man, has he ever,” Max said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody so in love with somebody else.”

  There was the distinct sound of a muffled sob.

  “Where is he?” Josephine finally asked.

  “Here in Abilene. At Camp Barkeley.” Max suddenly hoped she wouldn’t have to say the word “prisoner.”

  “He . . . enlisted?” Josephine asked.

  Max gulped. How important was the truth in this situation? She would have greatly appreciated having Lola around to inquire the moral absolute, but sadly she was nowhere to be found.

  “Yeah, he’s in the army,” Max blurted out. It wasn’t technically a lie.

  “Has he been overseas?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And he’s . . . He’s seen a great deal of fighting?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Josephine paused and must have weighed the next question in her mind, unsure if she wanted the answer. “Why hasn’t he called me himself? Is he injured?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Max said. “Did you receive any of his letters?”

  There was another stutter in Josephine’s breath. “He—He sent me letters?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Max said, then tried to remember what Felix had told her. “He sent you many letters but received none in return and feared that your love had gone south.”

  Josephine gasped. “He . . . He said that?”

  “Yeah, and let me tell you, sister—” Max started, then stopped. A Jeep had just pulled into the driveway, and the driver, a very frantic Major Larousse, leaped out. Instead of entering the house, he marched straight around it toward the backyard.

  “I’m sorry,” Max said. “I have to go.” She hung up the phone before Josephine could say another word. She ran out the door just in time to see Major Larousse start down the stairs of the storm cellar.

  “Dad!” Max yelled. “Don’t go down there.”

  He either didn’t hear her or didn’t choose to listen, for he disappeared into the opening.

  Max froze. No amount of magical training or exercises in trickery had prepared her for this moment, when the single most dangerous secret she had ever kept was about to explode in her face.

  Then she heard Major Larousse shout and the sound of a struggle, followed by the sound of two dozen newly repaired Hummel figurines plummeting to their second death, then the sound of fisticuffs. All of it was followed again by the major’s voice:

  “Max! Get down here.”

  She tried to convince herself that the major was too good a man to see his daughter rot in prison as she made her way down the stairs.

  At the bottom, the major knelt on top of Felix, his knee in the middle of the prisoner’s back and their arms locked together. All around them were the shattered remains of Grandma Schauder’s gifts—evidence that Major Larousse had tackled Felix and dragged him across the room and to the ground, just as any soldier charged with recapturing an escaped prisoner would do. The fact that the major looked to have received no blows or any ill effects from the struggle seemed to indicate that Felix had put up no fight, against the norm for any escaped prisoner seeking permanent freedom.

  Over against the wall stood Lola, attempting to disappear, just as any person who had just betrayed a friend’s trust would.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Major Larousse rarely lectured. He was much more well-versed in scolding. He was also a fine purveyor of rebukes. In addition, his skills at the sarcastic quip had been noted among many a subordinate.

  Lecturing, however, was not in his usual bag of tricks.

  And yet, here, with his body weight pinning Felix to the floor, Major Larousse had delved into lecturing, and he was beginning to get good at it.

  He was, of course, the only person in the room who had that opinion.

  “I can’t believe it. My own daughter. My own daughter. Harboring an escapee in our storm cellar. Under my nose, almost literally.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “And to have to find out about it not from that daughter, but from her friend. To get a phone call in my office, interrupting a meeting with the agents from the FBI regarding the remaining prisoners. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is?”

  “I’m sorry I’m an embarrassment to you,” Max said.

  “No, don’t do that,” he barked back. “Don’t try to make me feel guilty about this. This isn’t just a mistake. This is a violation. This is treason.”

  Max nodded.

  “And here we’re trying to keep the momentum going, keep catching these jokers, and you’re helping one escape.”

  Max said nothing to that.

  Felix did instead.

  “How many prisoners have you captured?”

  “Not enough,” Major Larousse said. “We’ve captured five so far. No, six, counting you.”

  “You have captured five,” Felix said. “If your daughter had not committed treason, you would have captured none.”

  Major Larousse glanced at Max and then leaned closer to Felix’s head. “What the—” he glanced back up at the girls and redirected his tongue to avoid profanities, “—Elmer Fudd is that supposed to mean?”

  “Felix had a plan,” Max said. “And he needed me to make it work.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that this piece of—uh—Sylvester Shyster had a plan.”

  “Not the kind of plan you’re thinking of,” Max said. “A plan to capture the Nazis.” She proceeded, with a few interjections from Felix, to tell the major exactly what had happened, and also what was intended to happen. And all the while, the major maintained a death glare at Felix’s head. It was as if the entire war was happening in the five square feet they occupied in that storm cellar.

  Finally, once all explanations had been made, he stood and released Felix. “That’s all well and good,” he said. “But it’s over now. You’re going back to the camp.”

  Felix stood and stretched his back. He momentarily scanned over the poor remains of the now irreparable Hummel figurines and sighed. “Then you will not find the rest of your Nazis, Major. This is your choice.”

  “You underestimate us,” Major Larousse said.

  “Do I indeed?” Felix asked. “How many have you caught of your own accord? And how many have been handed to you by a little girl and her friends?”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “That is the point,” Felix said. “But not the only point.�
��

  Major Larousse stepped closer to him. “I’m getting real sick of your double-talk.”

  “Then perhaps we can speak privately?”

  The major, after a moment of thought, snapped his fingers at Max and Lola and motioned for them to head up the stairs. Max almost protested, then remembered that she was on ice so thin that even a spider would fall through, and headed up after Lola.

  Once at the top, Lola turned to her. “I’m sorry.”

  “No you’re not,” Max said.

  Lola thought about it. “Okay, you’re right, I’m not. But I’m sorry I’m not.”

  Max shook her head. “I can’t believe you betrayed me. Do I get to rip your pinkie off now?”

  “We didn’t make a pinkie bargain,” Lola said. Max was not amused.

  “I don’t really care. You’re supposed to be the one out of all of us that doesn’t do underhanded things like this.”

  Lola’s jaw dropped. “Underhanded? What the heck? I did this because I was doing the right thing. Which is exactly what the conscience of the group does.”

  “Will you stop?” Max yelled at her. “Stop with all of this ‘conscience of the group’ nonsense. You’re supposed to be a friend. And a friend doesn’t hurt another friend. A friend doesn’t get another friend in trouble. A friend is loyal, even when it hurts.”

  “You stop,” Lola yelled back. “You don’t have any idea what it means to be a friend. It means putting the needs of the other person above your own.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “No, it’s not,” Lola said. “Being a friend means doing the right thing, even if it might mean that you’re going to lose your friend in the process. When you see your friend in danger, you rescue them, even if they don’t want to be rescued.”

  Max felt as though she was correct, which was a horrible feeling. “I didn’t need to be rescued.”

  “That’s exactly how I knew you did, because you were in over your head and had no idea you were six seconds from drowning.”

  Max closed her eyes and counted, slowly.

  “Max!” Major Larousse yelled when she reached six. She cursed her wretched friend under her breath and made her way back down the stairs. At the fifth step, she felt Lola’s hand grab her own.