On my way back into Kidsboro, I saw Pete and Nelson pounding a post into the ground at the site of the morning’s snowball battle. I got a closer look and saw that the post had the day’s date, then “The Battle of Snowy Creek,” and Mark’s name as the lone casualty.
“What is this?” I asked
“Something to help us remember,” Pete said. “We might need this for motivation later.” It seemed that everyone on both sides of the creek was preparing for the inevitable.
Nelson was hyperventilating when he got to my office in the early afternoon.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I can’t find my plans.”
“What plans?”
He took a deep breath. “The catapult. You know that device I’m building to hurl things at the wall?”
“Right.”
“Eugene and I drew a sketch before we started it. It had all the measurements, diagrams of every element. The sketch showed where everything would go. I even calculated angles, trajectory … Now it’s all gone.”
“Did you take it home with you?”
He shook his head. “It never left my clubhouse.”
“You think somebody stole it.”
He nodded.
I spent the rest of the day in my office, listening. I don’t know what I was expecting to hear—another snowball fight, maybe an attack from the Maxites, or some sort of weapons testing from across the creek—but I was continually raising my eyebrows at any foreign sound. Being on edge like that was tiring. I usually stayed in Kidsboro until dinnertime, but on this day, I was worn out from worry. I headed home early.
When I went through my back door, I noticed that my mom had already decorated the Christmas tree. I had always helped her with that before, but with everything that was happening in Kidsboro, I hadn’t had time. I felt bad, knowing that I had broken tradition. I’d barely even remembered that Christmas was coming up.
The phone rang. My mom wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“Mom?” I called. I heard the shower running upstairs, so I picked up the phone.
“Hello.”
“Jim?” the voice on the other end of the line said.
It was my father.
“Jim, is that you?”
My instinct told me to hang up immediately. Talking to the man we had been hiding from for years was a dangerous thing to do. But for some reason, I stayed on the line.
“Jim, this is your dad. Don’t hang up. I promise I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Why are you calling us?” I asked, a quiver in my voice.
“I just wanted to talk to you. My, you sound like a man. I miss you.” He paused, as if he wanted me to return the sentiment. I didn’t.
“Listen, I just wanted to tell you that I understand why you left. And … I don’t know if you’re gonna believe this or not, but I’ve changed. I’m not the man you knew when you were eight. And I don’t expect your forgiveness, but I did want to let you know that I’m sorry.”
The “I’m sorry” speech. I’d heard it many times as a child. He usually said those words as he surveyed the broken windows and lamps that he had destroyed the night before. I couldn’t listen any more. It hurt too much to hear those words again. It brought back too many bad memories. I hung up the phone.
My hand remained on the receiver, as though holding it down tightly would prevent him from calling back.
Mom came downstairs in a sweatshirt and jeans, drying her hair with a towel. “What’s the matter? Are you calling somebody?”
I shook out of my trance and noticed my hand still on the phone. “It was Dad.”
The towel dropped to the floor. Her mouth fell open; she was unable to speak for a full minute.
“What did he say to you?”
“He said he was sorry, and that he’s changed.”
“He knows where we are,” she said under her breath.
“I guess I should’ve hung up.”
“That’s okay,” she said. Her eyes darted around, then lit on me. “Why didn’t you?”
“Hang up?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.” This was true, though there was a voice inside that was telling me I enjoyed hearing his voice for some reason. Maybe I missed him.
My mom shook out of her own trance and got on the phone. She called Mr. Henson. He said he’d be right over.
Mr. Henson asked me more questions than I could answer. He peppered me with: “Did your father sound aggravated?” “Did it sound like long distance?” “Did you pick up any background sounds?” Seeing as how I was in total shock during the entire phone conversation, I couldn’t imagine how he could think that I would pay attention to background sounds.
During this interrogation, my mom was sitting balled up on the couch, holding a pillow tightly to her chest. The phone rang, and everyone jumped. Mr. Henson ran to get on the extension upstairs and told my mom to answer it. As it turned out, It was just my mom’s friend Margaret, wanting to know if Mom wanted to join her in a garage sale. Mr. Henson came back downstairs, quite agitated with Margaret.
Mr. Henson then called us together in the living room and gave us our options.
“You can move away if you want to,” he said. “We’ll protect you. We’ll change your names again and move you somewhere in the Southeast, I think. Or you could stay here under our supervision, and if he comes back and provokes you in any way, we’ll have him arrested on the spot. The fact that he knows your phone number doesn’t mean he knows your where abouts. We gave you a special number that gives callers no indication of your location. It’s up to you.”
Mr. Henson gave us a few more instructions on how to keep ourselves safe, and then headed for the door. He turned around momentarily. “It’s a good sign that he called. If he were going to hurt you, he probably would’ve just shown up and done it. He knows that by calling, you have a chance to leave. So maybe he’s being truthful. People do change sometimes.”
We knew This was true. We had changed a lot over the course of the last few years. But my dad? I wasn’t sure he was capable of it.
We stayed in a friend’s basement that night. Still, I lay a wake until three o’clock, worrying that the locked doors wouldn’t be enough to stop a man motivated to hurt someone. I’m sure my mom stayed a wake too.
7
BASIC TRAINING
ODDLY ENOUGH, THE NEXT morning I found solace in Kidsboro, even though we were on the brink of war. Maybe I felt that this was something I could control, or at least try to. In fact, I was in my office working on a proposal that would give me more control over the situation.
I was proposing an amendment to the city charter on how we would conduct war. Obviously, there was nothing in the original city charter about it, since there was no one around to have a war with when it was written. But an amendment was needed now. I would present this before the city council.
In the American government, the Congress has the responsibility to declare war. This is smart, making it a law that a lot of people have to agree on a decision as important as this one. So I figured it needed to be an overwhelming vote in the city council for Kidsboro to declare war. My proposal stated that 80 percent of the city council had to vote yes, which meant that four out of five of us had to vote in favor of war. Of course, with Scott being on the other side now, that meant it had to be unanimous. If the question were to come up right now, I would vote no. War could only end in disaster. But if we were forced to fight …
While I was scribbling away, the door opened and a person walked in with his or her jacket pulled over their head. I didn’t think it was quite cold enough to be bundling up this much, so I immediately asked, “Who is it? What are you doing?”
The person took a quick peek outside to see if anyone was watching, then shut the door and lowered the coat. It was Marcy Watson, one of Jill’s friends. Marcy had lived in Kidsboro almost from its beginning and had eventually become our banker. But she seemed to have grown bored with her j
ob and was reeled in by Max’s multimedia presentation. She was now a citizen of Bettertown and seemed to like it there. Jill was disappointed that she had moved away, but she understood Marcy’s point of view. This was a mature way of handling it, of course, unlike my feelings toward Scott. Me? I had driven him away with my accusations that he was a traitor.
Marcy’s eyes darted around the office until she found two tacks, and then she pounded her jacket into the wall, covering the window. This made it quite dark in my clubhouse. She definitely had my attention.
“What are you doing, Marcy?”
“I have to tell you something,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry for abandoning Kidsboro, but that’s over and done with now, and I have to deal with it. But I don’t like what they’re doing, so I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“Because I don’t want any of you guys to get hurt, I’m betraying my own city to lend you some important information.”
“Okay.”
“They’re building an arsenal.”
“Max?”
“Everyone. Max has got people working around the clock making snowballs. They’ve got a big pile four feet high. It’s over by the school, blocked off by bed sheets so you can’t see it. Plus, they have a weapon.”
“Weapon?”
“A big catapult thing.” The case of the missing catapult plans was solved. “It can heave big blocks of snow, about 10 pounds worth. It’ll bury you.”
“When do they plan on using it?”
“I don’t know. Max has his own plans, and he’s not telling anyone about them.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat.
“I don’t like what Max is doing, so I had to tell you this. Not that I think there’s any way for you to stop him.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I better get outta here,” Marcy said, pulling her jacket off the window and draping it back over her head. She opened the door slowly and slithered out.
I had to call a city council meeting.
“We have to start an army,” Alice said, pounding the table with her palm.
“She’s right,” Nelson said.
“We can’t let these bozos push us around,” Alice said. These two sentences equaled the most words she had ever spoken in a city council meeting. In war, she finally saw an opportunity to really inflict pain on someone without being accused of police brutality, which happened about every other week in Kidsboro.
I spoke up. “I don’t want war.”
“We have no choice,” Jill said. “They’re coming. You heard what Marcy said. Why would they be building up their arsenal if they weren’t going to attack?”
“We have to prepare to defend ourselves,” Nelson said. This made sense. There was no reason why we should just let them run over us.
“I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
“That’s what an army is for,” Nelson said. “Listen, Ryan. An army is not there just to attack other people. An army is there to show other people that they can’t attack you. At least, not without a fight.”
I got up and paced around the room. The others were looking at me, silently pleading that This was the only solution.
“Okay, what do we do?” I asked.
“We recruit soldiers,” Nelson said.
“We won’t get enough people that way,” Jill said. “If you haven’t noticed, our city is made up of wimps. With the exception of Alice, we have a bunch of future figure skaters. They won’t wanna fight. We need to have a draft.”
A draft is when the government makes a law that every able man must serve in the army. It’s only done during times of war.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want anyone in our army whose heart isn’t in it. I’d feel guilty if something happened. We’ll just have to depend on the patriotism of our people.”
Jill didn’t agree, but she nodded.
“Alice, I think you should be in charge of the army,” I said. She straightened up and stood at attention. Nelson and Jill seconded this idea. “But,” I pointed to Alice, “you will not train this army to attack. We’re not going to be on the offensive here. You’re only training them to defend them selves and their property.” Alice’s face turned down. For a split second she had probably envisioned storming the bridge. Her vision of greatness had just been erased.
“Nelson, I’d like you to build some kind of anti-missile device. We’ll need to have something in case they use the catapult.”
“Got it.”
“Jill, you and I need to start recruiting.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s go!”
Nelson advised us to get groups of people together and then start asking them to join our army, because no one would want to wimp out in front of his friends. This plan worked, and we recruited almost everyone in town. Jill and I also joined up and reported to boot camp just hours after we’d concocted this idea.
Alice, or “General Funderburk” as we were told to call her, was in top form that day. She lined us all up, and we stood at attention. She walked back and forth in front of us, inspecting whether or not we were standing up straight enough.
“You people are the sorriest looking soldiers I’ve ever seen,” she said, shaking her head. She had seen dozens of army movies, and This was a scene that was in just about all of them. However, in this case It was probably true. I couldn’t imagine a group of soldiers looking any sorrier. I peered down the line at our troops, and I didn’t see much military promise.
There was Corey, the Kidsboro garbageman, who, when picking up the garbage, had to make twice the trips as most people because he had, as he put it, “a lifting problem.”
There was James, the town doctor, who probably thought he was there to provide medical attention to injured troops. But we would all prefer to live with serious injury rather than let him treat us.
There was Roberto, who was born in the Dominican Republic and was not used to these cold temperatures. He Was dressed in about eight layers of clothing, and this restricted his movement to the point where he really couldn’t bend down to even form a snowball.
There Was Pete, who held the record in our school for the most consecutive hours in front of a television—an amazing 23 hours. It was a weekend “Charlie Blue: Bird Lawyer” marathon.
There Was Mark, who had no business being out after his traumatic creek accident but didn’t want to be left out of the big war. His face was pale, and his lips were quivering.
There was Valerie, who didn’t really want to be there, but had developed a crush on one of the boys in Bettertown and wanted to impress him with her military experience. Of course, Valerie was more of a liability than an asset because she would distract our entire company, as practically every male in it had a crush on her. Also, if the temperature ever dipped below 20 degrees, she wouldn’t risk possibly cracking her skin.
The others in line weren’t much better. We weren’t much of a fighting machine, but I was confident that Alice would get the best she could out of us.
Alice marched us to an area deeper in the woods, where Maxite spies couldn’t watch us prepare. Then she had us run around with weights tied to our ankles.
“Come on, people! Move! This will prepare you for running through deep snow.”
Then she had us crawl in groups of three. We had to fall to our knees in the snow, crawl a hundred feet to a tree, and then head back. My turn came, and I fell to the ground. A hundred feet suddenly looked like a mile. By the time I had neared the tree, my gloves were soaked through. My hands froze up on the turn. By the end of the course, I had to watch my hands carefully because I couldn’t feel where I was putting them. I stood up and went back to the end of the line. I looked at Jill as if to say, “When are we ever going to need to crawl through the snow?”
By the time Pete had finished his round, his face was caked with snow. He acted as if he didn’t notice. The entire company had collapsed by the end of the exercise.<
br />
Next, we did snowball-throwing exercises. Alice had placed five targets on trees. Each soldier had to make snow balls, throw them, and hit all five targets in 25 seconds. Those who didn’t make it would be pelted mercilessly by the rest of the company.
“Roberto! You’re first!” Alice yelled. Roberto stepped forward reluctantly. The rest of us bent down and retrieved handfuls of snow. He watched us all very closely and cleared his throat.
So far, the exercises had been much harder for Roberto because of his eight layers of clothing. For him, crawling through the snow meant pretty much rolling through the snow. He dropped to his knees with a heavy plop and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his soggy glove. He looked down at the snow and waited for the signal.
“Go!” Alice yelled. Roberto frantically grabbed a handful of snow and began packing it with his already numb hands. He packed it four times and created a loose ball. He turned, ready to throw his ammunition, but he got in too big a hurry. His follow-through was awkward because he couldn’t lift his arm over his head, and he missed the target by four feet.
“Miss!” Alice shouted.
Time to panic.
He rolled over on his knees to make a new snowball and pounded it between his hands.
“The enemy’s coming! Hurry up!” Alice yelled.
Roberto threw a desperation shot from his knees.
“Miss!”
No time to pack now. Roberto frantically clutched some snow in between his hands and threw it loose toward the target. The wind blew it back in his face.
“That’s not gonna hurt anyone, come on!”
He lunged at the ground.
“They’re coming at you with a catapult!”
He packed with reckless abandon.
“They’re gonna bury you!”
He threw.
“Five seconds!”
Hit.
“They’re on top of you!”
Too late.
The Fight for Kidsboro Page 22
