The Calder Game

by Blue Balliett

  Calder noticed that the plants were divided into families. He passed the ivies, then found himself admiring a clump of delicate, red lanterns, labeled Physalis alkekengi. Suddenly, he was in front of a dark, scrubby plant called Ruscaceae, or butcher’s broom. A broom to sweep away meat, or maybe blood? Calder’s eyebrows went up, and he looked further — this was getting interesting. Next was Papaver somniferum, or the opium poppy. Small letters said, SOURCE OF MORPHINE AND CODEINE. Wow — Calder glanced around. This was toxic stuff, and no one was looking to see if you picked any.

  He wandered on, feeling guilty for having a thought like that. Maybe people in England were just more trustworthy. And look at this! Calder knelt down, wanting to be sure he was reading correctly: belladonna! Wasn’t that a deadly poison? The leaves were a gentle, lettucey green, and Calder found himself thinking it would be easy, if you wanted to murder someone, to mix a few in with a salad. Wouldn’t Tommy be thrilled if he brought a leaf back! But suddenly Calder pictured a scene at the airport in which he and his dad were arrested and thrown in prison on smuggling charges or worse, and his mom was saying through the bars, What on Earth were you thinking?

  Next he passed a sign for stonecrops and houseleeks, then bleeding hearts, which he knew from the gardens at home. Now came pinks and soapworts. And a greenhouse filled with cacti of all kinds, some so tiny that there were magnifying glasses left around for interested lookers.

  Again, in the greenhouses, Calder saw no guards or officials of any kind. What an honest place. He was beginning to really like England. And what was this? A small green sign said, PLANT PROBLEMS SOLVED: MAN EATER. Calder resisted the temptation to try a finger in front of one of the blossoms. Instead, he stirred his pentominoes happily as he walked on. This place was awesome.

  Outside the greenhouses, he wandered to the edge of a small river that had flat-bottomed, rectangular boats pushed off to one side. Calder had noticed that the English streets and sidewalks were rarely in straight lines, unlike the ones in Chicago, and yet here was a boat in the shape of a regular polygon, a boat with hardly a curve anywhere. The English certainly had some unusual ideas.

  The river looked like something from a picture that Petra had glued to the back of her notebook, and suddenly Calder wished with all his heart that his two friends could be there with him. Petra would be writing on a bench, Tommy would no doubt be looking for treasure, and the three would be talking about things like Miss Knowsley’s cat and the strangely dangerous garden. Calder sighed.

  His dad had given him a map of Oxford and had showed him where to go for lunch and how to get to Christ Church, where Lewis Carroll had worked and lived. Calder had never been a big fan of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, even though he knew Lewis Carroll was a terrific mathematician and had loved playing with numbers. Maybe it was just that Alice was always bursting into tears. When his parents had read the book aloud to him, Calder had fidgeted and wondered about all the crying. Maybe Alice would have stayed calmer if she’d had a set of pentominoes in her pocket; she’d clearly needed something to focus on.

  The Oxford campus looked a little like an older version of the University of Chicago, which was right in his neighborhood in Hyde Park. His dad had told him that the name Hyde Park was really borrowed from a park in London, and now he could see that lots of the campus architecture at home had been borrowed, too. There were carvings and gargoyles along the tops of buildings and around doorways, but the stone in Oxford was a brighter color, something between popcorn and mustard. Corners of the English buildings were worn round in places, and the stone was chipped and scarred.

  Calder’s dad had said that Oxford was the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It had been started close to a thousand years earlier. He ran his hand along an especially beat-up wall and thought about how new everything was in the United States. He was standing on a street that people had walked over for century after century. What had this wall seen? Had anyone been killed on this street? Or right on this spot? It made his scalp tingle, thinking about all the people, good and bad, who had come and gone over so many years, and all the ideas that had gotten them excited or mad or worried.

  Bells seemed to ring every ten minutes. He got lost three times on the way to Christ Church, and then found the building was closed for renovation. Back on the sidewalk outside the botanic garden, a chaotic combination of students, faculty, and tourists streamed in all directions. Calder realized he was starving, and ducked into a sandwich shop. There was a long line, and when he got to the front and tried to order a hamburger and fries with ketchup, the person behind the counter said, “Sorry? Was that a beef burger in a bap with chips?”

  Calder had no idea, and he felt his neck getting hot with embarrassment. What on earth was a “bap”? And what about the fries? He stirred the pentominoes in his pocket so vigorously that one fell underfoot. Diving down to retrieve it, he cracked his head on the counter. As people huffed impatiently behind him, he pointed miserably to a cucumber sandwich and some lemonade.

  He hoped this would be the last awkward moment of the trip, but a dark, jumpy feeling inside told him it wasn’t going to be.

  “Keep wishing,” he whispered to himself, then frowned. The words had an oddly nasty sound.

  Even after lunch, the main streets were choked with buses and trucks and cars and bicycles. It was hectic in comparison to Woodstock and to his neighborhood at home. Calder went back into the botanic garden to wait for his dad. He lay down under a tree and pulled out his pentominoes. Just the sight of them was soothing. Resting his head on his arm, he closed his eyes for a moment. Chicago was six hours earlier and four time zones away; if he were home, he wouldn’t even be awake yet. Soon his mind filled with colorful dreams about cutting belladonna leaves into the shape of pentominoes and making a twelve-piece rectangle that Pummy wanted to eat.

  “NO, Pummy! Poison!” he remembered saying. By the time he’d lured Pummy to another part of the garden with a snack, careful to stay out of range, his belladonna masterpiece had blown away. Then, in the dream, Calder decided to count and sort all the rectangles he could remember, beginning with the gardens and the odd boats and going on to the cucumber sandwiches, and —

  “Calder? How was your day?” His father was crouching next to him in the garden. As they walked back to the bus station that afternoon, he told his dad about the dream.

  “Sounds like an Alice event,” Walter Pillay said with a smile. “Maybe it’s Lewis Carroll’s ghost getting into your brain. Not that you’re anything like Alice.”

  “I hope not,” Calder said.

  “What did you do to your head?”

  “A little accident at lunchtime,” Calder said.

  “Ah.” His dad looked at him, waiting for more. Calder was quiet. “But you managed,” his dad offered.

  Calder nodded, realizing suddenly that this might be the first day he had spent by himself and in an unfamiliar place. Ever. Of course he’d felt a bit strange! He stood up straighter.

  The quiet stone houses in Woodstock were a relief. As Calder and his dad headed back to the bed-and-breakfast, an old man in suspenders and slippers shuffled across the street with an even older dog. Neither looked for cars. Wind rattled a loose window. Dry leaves rustled underfoot. Calder thought of one of his elderly neighbors in Hyde Park.

  “Mrs. Sharpe would love it here,” he remarked. As far as he could tell, Louise Coffin Sharpe liked everything old — houses, furniture, and books. Even ideas.

  “Mmm, she’d fit right in,” his dad agreed.

  “Think I’ll stay here tomorrow, Dad.”

  Walter Pillay looked at his son. “Good plan. It’s a bit like Hyde Park, isn’t it? But a much more mysterious Hyde Park — one that has seen kings and queens and countless dramas. We’ll bring the map and that Woodstock guide book with us to dinner and see what we can find out.”

  “It’s partly the high walls that make it so mysterious,” Calder added.

  As if to illustrate
his point, they heard the sudden scritch-clink sounds of someone digging in pebbly dirt with a metal tool, someone on the other side of a wall that rose above their heads.

  “A late gardener getting his bulbs in,” Calder’s dad suggested.

  “Or maybe someone digging up treasure,” Calder said, thinking of Tommy.

  As they approached Alehouse Lane, both peered around a parked truck toward the sculpture, which still felt shocking; it looked so wild and bright in a setting that seemed to celebrate the worn and the private.

  At that moment, a young girl dressed in black pants and a sweatshirt also peered out, from the far side of the town square. After a quick look in all directions, she flew toward the sculpture. She had long, pipe-thin legs like a shorebird, a dusting of sandy hair, and a delicate nose like a beak. Calder and his dad froze, somehow knowing that they’d intrude if they stepped into view. Circling the Calder sculpture at top speed, the girl held up a small camera and snapped at least ten pictures. She then popped the camera back in her pocket and pulled out a measuring tape.

  A pub door down the street opened with a heavy thump, and a roar of rumbly laughter drifted out. Calder and his dad heard someone shout, “I’m not DAFT! Ripstapore mumfidumble RIP!”

  The door swung shut, cutting off the rest of the bellow.

  The girl froze for a moment, one arm extended, then whipped the tape hurriedly into a pocket and sat down on a bench. She pulled out a pen and paper and began to draw on one knee, her head bent over her lap.

  Calder and Walter Pillay heard heavy footsteps and stepped out from behind the truck. A giant man was striding from the pub toward the girl.

  “What did I tell you?” he growled. It was the same voice. “You’re not to be near here! Not now, not EVER!”

  The girl shrugged and kept drawing, as if she’d been sitting there for ages.

  Suddenly, the man lunged forward, grabbed the piece of paper, scrunched it in one massive fist, and tossed it under the bench.

  The girl froze for a second time, holding the pencil as if she were still using it.

  “No daughter of mine will turn a deaf ear!” he shouted.

  Without a word, the girl stood. She turned and walked stiffly away from the square, disappearing down a narrow lane.

  The man, still breathing heavily, looked at the darkening blue overhead and hunched his shoulders as if it were cold. Then he shrugged and strode after the girl, a low burble of angry words drifting behind him like the wake behind a boat. He vanished down the same lane.

  “Not the nicest of dads,” Calder said.

  “No, but he was worried,” Walter Pillay mused. “I wonder why?”

  “This atmosphere of secrets kind of pulls you in,” Calder added.

  Walter Pillay nodded. “Harmless, though. That is, until someone gets murdered …”

  “Dad!”

  “Just kidding.”

  While Calder struggled to open Miss Knowsley’s door with her giant key, his father looked up at the rooftops and sky and sighed. “Amazing spot,” he murmured.

  As father and son stepped inside, a face shaped like an ax peered out from behind a curtain across the street. Dark eyes blinked, and the fabric fell back in place.

  After saying good-bye to his dad at the bus the next morning, Calder shoved both hands deep in his pockets and set off across town.

  He’d decided on the Start Small, Move to Large approach that his Grandma Ranjana had taught him. It seemed to work with almost everything in life. After all, you couldn’t leap to making twelve-piece pentomino rectangles when you’d never made a five-piece one.

  “Very mature of you,” his father had agreed, when Calder told him that he wanted to get to know the town today and save the maze and Blenheim for tomorrow.

  Although it only dated back to 1991, the maze pictured history: It symbolized the Duke of Marlborough’s famous eighteenth-century victory in Blenheim, Bavaria, an important battle won for the Queen of England. Some said the maze was the largest puzzle of its kind in the world. Calder knew the design included trumpets, banners, cannonballs, and even a cannon. He wasn’t sure how you get lost in a bunch of symbols made from bushes, but he’d find out. He stirred his pentominoes eagerly at the thought of it.

  When he passed a diagram of the maze in a shop window, he was careful to look away. He didn’t want any clues. Besides, he had some good pentomino maze ideas going, puzzles he’d been working on during the flight, and he wanted to get them straight before walking into the Marlborough maze. Better not to get the two confused.

  Although Calder had planned to explore on his own, actually doing it felt a little weird. Compared to Oxford, there weren’t many people, and everyone here was amazingly pale, as if they hadn’t been in the sun in years. Most glanced at Calder and then looked away. Were they hiding something? Or did he look funny? Calder surreptitiously checked the zipper on his pants.

  He wandered down one twisty street after another. Hadn’t he just been down this lane? But no, here were stores he’d never passed before, each window jammed with interesting stuff. One held the dangly parts of old chandeliers and a row of glass doorknobs; another candlesticks with curly handles; now pajama-striped gardening gloves, eggcups made from the heads of kings, and a shelf of teapots plastered with intricate flower patterns. A blackboard propped against a building advertised a “brace of dressed pheasant” and “dressed” wild duck, partridge, guinea fowl, quail, and pigeon. There was also “oven ready” wild rabbit and wild hare. Did dressed really mean naked here? And what was a brace? He peeked in the butcher’s window at a row of birds hanging by their necks, and also identified a small pink foot with no fur. He shuddered, glad that meat at home was rarely recognizable.

  Hey! What was this? He’d found some old wooden stocks. Stocks for humiliating people who broke the law. How nasty! There was a narrow bench to sit on, and a place where your ankles got clamped between two heavy pieces of wood. There you sat, imprisoned for all to see. It must have felt terrible. He counted five ankle-holes. Was that for two thieves with two legs and one with only one? If Tommy were going to school here, the Button would probably have him in the stocks all the time.

  Passing the stocks, Calder walked into the Oxfordshire Museum. Miss Knowsley had insisted that it was “Just the place to start, so much for a boy to see!” The building was yet another old stone house. He’d be able to walk through quickly if it was all glass cases filled with dishes and jewelry.

  But it wasn’t. The first room he stopped in was filled with stuffed animals and skeletons. These creatures had all lived here at one time — suddenly Calder pictured them running through the streets. He looked at the woolly mammoth jaws, and at the tusks and bones and teeth of ancient elephants, bison, bears, and even a lion. Apparently some 200,000 years ago, the climate had been warmer. Then there were the more recent wild mammals: a fox, a hare, a hedgehog, a weasel, stoats, voles, moles, a stag, squirrels, field mice and rats, even some unidentified human skulls. And the birds: Calder read crazy names like pied wagtail, jack snipe, greenshank, and great crested grebe. Hundreds of glassy eyes peered out at him. A sign told him that this part of England was known as the Cotswolds and had been densely wooded for many centuries. Clearly, it was still home to countless creatures. Calder pictured a stuffed Pummy, fur bristling, his one eye gleaming. He’d fit right in.

  Poachers and Gamekeepers was the next exhibit. Calder knew that poachers stole and gamekeepers were hired to protect. A few years ago, he’d read Roald Dahl’s book, Danny the Champion of the World. Set in a small English village, it made clear that poaching pheasants was a time-honored art and also a rather scary game. Now this was interesting: Here were some very old guns, a giant bow and arrow, and a bunch of wicked traps that were meant to catch the poachers. One, labeled MAN TRAP, was made of iron and used from around 1750 to 1827, when it was outlawed as being too cruel. It could break a man’s leg, arm, or worse — and it was usually hidden in bushes. Calder read more, this from 1809:
<
br />   “The vicinity is filled with poachers, deer stealers, thieves, and pilferers of every kind; offenses of almost every description abound so much that the offenders are a terror to all quiet and well-disposed persons. Oxford gaol would be uninhabited were it not for this fertile source of crime.”

  Somehow, Calder remembered that gaol was the English word for jail. Hmm, so at one time there were lots of desperate and daring people hiding in this neighborhood, and lots of animals to hunt if you were needy enough to risk your life, or at least one of your hands or feet. The punishments were probably vicious if you got caught unharmed. Calder imagined there were even nastier ones than the ones mentioned in the exhibit. Clearly, the poachers and the wealthy landowners were two different kinds of people, and neither felt much pity for the other. This was a darker side to English life than he had seen yesterday in the botanic garden.

  Calder thought suddenly of the unseen shovel digging away on the other side of an ancient wall, of the Angry Dad, and of his gruff voice. It had sounded like a voice that could make or break its own rules. Would Angry Dad have been a poacher or a gamekeeper?

  This was one game Calder did not want to play.

  Once outside the museum, Calder decided he’d had enough of the past, at least for the moment. He spotted a small card shop that was also a post office. He’d buy three stamps and send postcards to his mom, Petra, and Tommy. He crossed the street, stepping on each of several huge, yellow leaves that had blown here and there across the cobbles — Petra would say they looked like stars, and Tommy would then roll his eyes. Smiling at the thought, Calder ducked inside the door of the shop and looked around.

  A group of adults stood in a cluster by the newspapers and cards. Calder saw a counter with a small window labeled ROYAL MAIL in the corner. A man sat on a stool behind the window, waiting for customers. It was by far the smallest post office Calder had ever seen.