Just as Edgar hoped, Chris raised his fist to strike, and as he reared back, Edgar grabbed both the flaps on his father’s raincoat and thrust them open wide, revealing a terrible sight: there, dangling from his shoulders and all across his chest, was stick upon stick of red, interwoven dynamite, all roped together by long strands of black electrical tape.
Weedy shrieked and yanked his hand away from the wired-up Edgar.
“Are you . . . crazy?!?!” he squealed. “What is the matter with you?” Backing away from Edgar, he half-tripped across a tree root and almost lost his footing.
It was hilarious.
“Yes, I believe I am,” admitted Edgar, limping past him towards the cabin door. Standing in the glow of the room, he turned and said to Weedy, “Now get out of here. For your own good.”
Edgar watched hopefully as the bully glanced down the trail—even taking a step towards town. But, then, his heart sank. Chris Weedy turned around and had turned, seemingly seduced by second thoughts. His brow had suddenly ruffled. He massaged his chin and studied Edgar, just like he’d done back in Van Rossum’s class when Edgar had told him his dad was dead.
Suddenly a look came over Weedy, an all too familiar one. There was that scowl on his face, his eyes churning, his brow wrinkled in contortions of rage. A scowl reverberated from his whole being. The kid scratched his curly blonde hair, and he smiled.
“Oh wow,” Weedy said thoughtfully. “I almost forgot about you!”
“What did you forget?” asked Edgar, breathlessly, his heart beginning to pound again. And suddenly, Weedy was moving dangerously towards him again.
“You almost had me fooled!” the bully cackled. “But then I remembered: you’re the biggest liar I’ve ever known.”
Edgar stood in the doorway and thought about just turning to the hole and jumping in, escaping this idiocy, but he couldn’t. He needed time to pack all his stuff for the trip, so he had to stay and see this through.
He opened his raincoat flaps again and waved them. He warned Weedy. “I’m telling you,” he shouted. “If you attack me, you’ll blow us both up. And at this point, I really don’t care.”
Undeterred, Weedy continued to step toward Edgar.
“Don’t you remember?” Weedy said thoughtfully, moving slowly towards the cabin door, as if entranced. “All your lies? Well, I do. Like when you said your dad was ‘dead.’ Or when you faked your death and stole my phone. Well, that was another lie.”
Edgar stiffened and readied himself as the boy approached. He wouldn’t just let Weedy wail on him.
“And now,” Chris continued triumphantly, “you expect me to believe that that is real dynamite? C’mon man! Ha ha!”
Face to face now, with Weedy’s breath on Edgar’s nose, the two glared at each other.
“This dynamite is armed,” Edgar hissed. “If you knock me down, it will detonate. You can believe me or not.”
“Blah blah blah,” growled Chris. “What a truck load of shit.”
Suddenly he lunged for Edgar, and Edgar deftly jerked backwards and fumbled at the dynamite, trying to unstrap it so he could fight. However, it was far too heavy and far too tightly wrapped wound around his body, and it was much too late. He was basically tied down, over-encumbered, and was suddenly at the mercy of the wild Chris Weedy. The tape—stuck to his skin and to the red dynamite—was also sticking to the inside of the yellow raincoat. He was like a stuck fly on flypaper.
As Weedy rebounded and stepped to the threshold, snarling, looming with a raised fist, Edgar covered his head and braced for the brutal punch, but then, the most wonderful thing happened.
The punch never came.
Just as Weedy’s fist came hurtling across the night, a wide open blur like a speeding train came out of nowhere and lifted Weedy off his feet, thudding him into the ground with the force of a jackhammer. Weedy was crushed by the weight of one hundred and twenty pounds of charging Anthony Artese and was driven to the forest floor like a big sack of rocks. With a satisfying squeal, he crashed to the dirt and rocks and rolled over in pain, clutching his gut.
Flounder! Flounder had been watching, and waiting, and miraculously, he’d saved Edgar’s butt.
Then, with all the weight on his knees that pinned the awful Chris Weedy to the ground, Flounder hovered over the bully’s limp frame like the grim reaper. Just as Weedy began to regain his breath—since it had been clearly knocked out of him—Flounder balled his fist and raised it over Weedy’s face.
“Had enough?” shouted Flounder into Chris’s contorted face, grabbing a hold of Chris’s shirt and lifting him up. “I said, do you still want to fight?”
Coughing, Chris murmured, “No. Truce.”
When it was clear that Weedy was finished, Flounder rose and stood over him and smiled, nodding at Edgar and pumping his bloody fist. Edgar, relieved, allowed himself to enjoy the moment. Behind him, Weedy rolled over and groaned in the pine straw, clutching his stomach and face.
Good for you, Flounder, he thought.
Instantly he turned back to the cabin. Now that that’s out of the way, I must get down to business. He walked to the hole and gazed down into it, peering into the bitter darkness. Then he bent and yanked the hook-end of the rope from the floor—the one tied to all his supplies in the net—and slung it over his shoulder, readying himself.
“Hey!” called Flounder, who happily jogged to the doorway. “What are you doing, Edgar? Hey! Who whacked Weedy, remember? Don’t leave me hanging, right?”
“Anthony did,” said Edgar glumly, turning. He tried trying to manage a victorious smile.
“What are you doing?” asked Flounder, his voice softening, the realization coming to him. “Why are you running away? Don’t go down there.”
“I have to go,” said Edgar.
“But . . . why?”
“Because, Flounder. I have to save my dad.”
A puzzled look emerged on Flounder’s face. “By going down there?”
“Yeah, listen,” said Edgar, “I really don’t have time to explain. Just . . . get him out of here, OK? It’s really important. Y’all can’t be here much longer.” Edgar nodded at Weedy who was now whimpering audibly on the forest floor. “One more thing. Whatever you do, don’t come back here tonight, OK? Promise that.”
Then Edgar turned back to the hole. “I’ll see you again when the fire is out,” he said, over his shoulder.
Then shoving the big ball over the edge of the hole, Edgar held up a hand and saluted his friend.
“Thank you for saving my ass!” he said, then leapt down into the darkness after his ball of supplies. Flounder watched helplessly as the rope uncoiled, and just like that, Edgar was gone, off into the Earth.
As Edgar fell, tears rose, which squirted out and lifted in freefall.
They continued all the way down to the core.
Twenty-four
Edgar tried to savor the fall, knowing that if everything worked as planned, he would never fall down the hole again.
Releasing the end of the rope attached to his supplies, he allowed the bundle to fall weightlessly beside him and then, twisting his body, he closed his eyes.
There, in the warm, salty air, he began to flip and pirouette and twist like an acrobat, letting the wind do the work, just like he had done so many times before.
I’m so going to miss this, he thought, the falling. There was nothing else like it in the world. This was the most beautiful thing he’d ever done. He would savor it to the very end.
As the other side neared, he stabilized himself and located the falling hook with a keychain flashlight. There, hovering slightly above him, he took the hook in his hands and turned his body, readying himself for arrival. He would need to snap the hook to the top of the hole like a grapple, then pray the hook would hold his netted supplies and prevented them from falling back down into the Earth. H
e would only have one shot to do this.
As the hole arrived, he did just that: he artfully thrusted the wrought iron hook to the side wall and held his breath as the other end dropped back down the hole, snapping secure and saving the items.
In one violent jerk, his supplies—dangling on a stretch of rope below his feet—swung safely about ten yards down, just beyond the edge of the light.
Edgar emerged from the hole, beholding a beautiful, sunny day on the island. There were calm waters and blue skies stretching broadly across the world, like a painting. Turning grimly back to the hole, he sat on the fine sand with his legs spread slightly, then, using the upraised bricks of the hole’s edge as leverage, he took hold of the rope and yanked.
Pulling on the rope as hard as he could, the rope and supplies did not budge.
Why am I not surprised? he thought. The supplies probably weighed about three hundred pounds or so.
Why hadn’t he worked out more in PE?
Warding off a sinking feeling, he knew that if he didn’t get the supplies out of the hole, then nobody else would. And then who would save his father?
His injured leg trembling beneath the strain, he ignored it and pulled even harder, finally feeling the bundle begin to give way and inch upward, braid by braid.
“AARRRGGGGHHHH!!!” he screamed, hefting with all that he had, when suddenly the big pile of supplies made it to the top and toppled over, spilling from the hole, rolling onto the sand.
With his supplies finally safe and sound, he lay back and massaged his fiery leg and freshly burning hands, and took a rest.
Finally, he stood and walked down to the sea, dipping his hands into the cool water. Blisters had already begun to swell on the palms of his hands.
He spread out the items across the seashore, taking inventory. Yes, everything was accounted for. All his precious supplies had made it safely to the island, all in one piece.
First was the large inflatable raft he’d bought at Walmart for three hundred bucks: the most expensive raft they had. He unboxed it, then spread it out across the shore. He glanced at the instructions: This raft is impervious to sunlight, salt water, and gasoline. It can also carry four adults, or eight hundred pounds.
Awesome, he thought. It was plenty strong enough to tote Edgar and his oversized load.
There was a small post script on the bottom of the page, that made his heart sink: This raft is made only for ponds, lakes, rivers, and swimming pools.
It didn’t say anything about deep, vast, impossible oceans, with waves the size of office buildings.
Ah, well. What can I do now? This raft will have to do.
Tossing the instructions aside, he fished out an air pump from the box and connected the hose to the nipple of the raft, and within minutes, his big lifeboat was fully inflated and ready to go. He lay down in it and shifted his weight all around—violently—pushing against the side walls as hard as he could and even standing and stomping with his good leg, bouncing the floor of the raft until his shoe hit the ground through the rubber, hard.
Then, after that, he stilled and listened for leaks, but he heard nothing.
Thank God.
Next, he pushed the raft into the water and loaded all his supplies onto it. When finished, half the floor space of the raft was crammed with a massive, unorganized mound of stuff: food, medicine, a waterproof sleeping bag, a small bag of clothes, a battery powered radio, books, a Gameboy, a compass, a dismantled fishing pole, his father’s awesome tackle box, two oars, a life vest, a life ring, binoculars, his dad’s neatly folded raincoat, and one big group of gallon water bottles.
All the weight made the back of the raft dip dramatically toward the ocean, which made him curse.
“Why is everything working against me?” he grumbled.
The front end had begun to scrape the sand of the shore as the high tide began to roll in, which worried him immensely, but there was nothing he could do now.
Hastily, he tied a rope to an end of the raft and anchored it to a grounded spike on shore, even though the supplies did a pretty good job of anchoring it themselves. He just couldn’t risk a wave carrying it all out to sea.
Then, with the boat packed, he turned and readied himself to wire up the island.
Separating the dynamite sticks one by one, he armed them with blasting caps by plunging a silvery tube into the top of each stick—like pushing shish kabob skewers through tender hunks of sirloin.
With his heart soundly in his throat, he then carried the armed dynamite as gingerly as possible—like fine china—around the island, tenderly wedging the sticks into any tiny cracks he could find on its rocky surface.
Anywhere there was an opening, he plugged it with a dynamite stick, then back to the pile for more sticks, then wedging more dynamite into cracks.
Finally, with all but four sticks scattered across the island, making it look like a warzone, he made for the island’s center and placed the remaining four sticks into the cracks between the island and the hole’s edge.
It pained him to do this, as good as the hole was to him.
But since there was only one chance for this to work, he was meticulous about where he placed the dynamite sticks. No use half-blowing the hole, stranding himself here, and failing to reach the goal that he intended. He could feel his father’s deep grasp of engineering surging through him as he studied the cracks, despite the painkillers still dulling his thoughts, still fuzzying up his mind.
“Slow that swing down,” his dad often said when they’d go golfing. Edgar always hated it when he did this—trying to teach him fundamentals in the middle of a game, and especially in the middle of a swing. All he wanted to do was hit the dang ball.
“Huff all you want to,” his dad would say, “but if you’ll listen to me, I’ll teach you how to hit the ball straight and long. Don’t you want to hit it straight and long?”
“Yeah,” surrendered Edgar begrudgingly, aloud on the island this time, lost in his thoughts all of a sudden as his dad stood right in front of him.
“OK then,” said his father. “Swinging harder doesn’t always matter. Most of the time, it makes you lose control more than anything else. Forget about power. Concentrate on hitting the ball in the right place, Edgar. I’m telling you, son, it’s all about where you make contact, not how you make contact.”
He looked across the sands and saw the ghost of his father pointing to a spot on the back of a ghost of a ball. “Just take a smooth, easy swing, boy. Nothing too hard. Just make steady contact with it. It’s all about where you disperse the force. It’s all about where you disperse the force.”
“And now,” concluded his father, smiling down at him, “you know exactly where to place the dynamite.”
“Distribute it evenly,” whispered Edgar, still staring at the imaginary golf ball. Then, shaking the vision away, he bent down and stuffed the last dynamite stick into a small, crooked crevice, then stood and looked down the big hole beyond it.
All around him, the island was a warzone—red sticks and wire were scattered everywhere, like a Pacific beach in World War II, but down in the hole he knew there was a dark peace.
He could fall back home and abandon all this craziness if he wanted to—just choose to live and not strand himself, or starve himself or drown himself—if he would only just topple over.
He could join his Mom at the fire line the next day, and they could take their chances with the wildfire.
Or, he could put the wildfire out.
Solemnly, he unfastened his Pathfinder wristwatch and caressed it gently, tapping the buttons on the side and dialing up the tides and moons and the compass, as well as the fish indicator (which currently flashed Three Out Of Five Fishes. Not bad for that time of day). Checking the indicator, he looked out over the waters and noticed the Ambercod swarming.
“Great watch,” he said, his h
eart returning home, not necessarily to Bon Secour and not necessarily to Mount Lanier, but to wherever his parents were. In the oncoming dusk he mashed the glow button. It lit his face alien green.
It was dusk now, and nearly dawn back in Mount Lanier.
Giving it one last, final squeeze, he tossed it down into the hole and watched it go. The green of the glow function streaked through the blackness like a falling star, and, turning from it, just before it could vanish, he hobbled a half-circle and then faced the great blue ocean once again.
“It’s time to make rain,” he said, mustering his courage one last time, initializing a final check of the dynamite as he made his way to shore.
The sun was half-dipping below the dark blue horizon now.
“Goodbye,” he said to the island—and to his home back in America.
Down at the shore, he untied the rope fastened to the raft, then flopped himself clumsily onto the big orange thing and gave his swollen, throbbing leg a rub.
“I hope you stay afloat better than I think you will, you big piece of crap,” he muttered to it, bouncing up on the sudden choppy waves that had begun to splash all around him.
High tide, he noticed, had definitely arrived.
Quickly, he crawled to the center of the boat and took the two oars in his blistered hands, then shoved them into the sands below and pushed off to sea.
The Secret Island of Edgar Dewitt Page 20
