“TOAD!” I HOLLER, BANGING ON THE SECURITY GATE. I SHOULD HAVE let him know I was coming but I have to assume I’m being watched, so I didn’t whistle three long and three short, or raise the flag.
When Toad opens the gate it’s all I can do not to sprint straight to the fish tank. Circling it slowly, I look for any sign of a message, or digging, or a freshly replaced board. A hiding place of any sort.
Toad follows and watches me.
“Puzzlement, Ford Falcon?”
“Let’s feed the pigs, Toad.” He looks even more puzzled now, but if we’re going to read that note we need to be out of sight. In the pig shed I pull out the note, unfold it, and show it to Toad. Naturally his eyes light up, because what we have here is a word puzzle.
“Fo gish!” he blurts. The man can’t help himself.
“Yes, Toad,” I say patiently, “already got that. Didn’t really take me anywhere. No, I think the message was much more straightforward. Is there space beneath the tank, Toad? Space enough for a man to hide? Or leave a message?”
“Yes!” he says. “Down there amongst the plumbing and whatnot!”
“Isn’t it time we give the fish tank a very careful inspection?” I ask, and give him a wink.
We walk to the base of the tank, and Toad pulls open a small hatch. We peer inside. Nothing. I crawl in and shine a jacklight over every surface. Still nothing.
In the shelter of the crawl space, I look at the paper again.
Do it like Dookie.
“Last thing I wanna do, really,” I say, “is do anything like Dookie.”
Right on cue, Dookie comes whooping past, grabs the water-telescope from its hook, and climbs the ladder.
“Toad! That’s it!” I speak urgently but quietly. “The water-telescope! Dad left some sort of message under the water!”
I clamber up beside Dookie. He’s already hanging over, swirling the water-telescope through the water, jabbering and pointing at fish I can’t see. It takes awhile, but finally I convince him to let me have a look. I scan every inch of that tank, sides and bottom. I see nothing but tilapia.
Back down at the foot of the ladder, Toad and I rack our brains.
Finally, Toad speaks.
“Y’know, there are a lot of fish in the barrel, and a lot of barrels full of fish.”
“Yyyesss . . . ?” I say.
“Taller than Toby,” says Toad.
I just look at him.
“Friend or foe, Daddy-O!” says Toad.
I look at him again. He raises his eyebrows and nods his head to the north. And suddenly I think of all those times we drove over to pick up Toby, and when we’d see his big bulk waiting alongside the road Toad would say, “Friend or foe?” and then Toby’s dad would emerge to stand beside his son, and tall as Toby was, Tilapia Tom was taller.
“Daddy-O!” I exclaim, finally getting Toad’s hint. With the water-telescope still in my hand I spin on my heel and speed walk toward the gate, trying hard not to run.
“Ford!” Toad stops me in my tracks with a harsh whisper. “Do you think anyone who might this very instant be watching us would be curious about why you were hiking down the road to Tilapia Tom’s with a water-telescope in your hand?”
I hang my head. Toad is right.
“I believe it’s time we helped Tilapia Tom inspect his fish for signs of scale mange,” says Toad, and off we go to hook Frank to the oxcart.
There is no such thing as scale mange, of course, but it’s doubtful any Bubble Authorities goon would know that. We meet Toby and Tilapia Tom in their fish-cleaning shack and lay out our plan.
“We think Dad left a message in your fish tanks.”
Tilapia Tom nods. He talks about as much as Toby.
“Have you seen him?”
Tilapia Tom shakes his head.
Armed with a fishnet and a bucket, we head for the tanks and go through them one by one. As I peek through the water-telescope Toad talks loudly about the grave dangers of scale mange. Now and then Tilapia Tom nets a fish and he and Toby make a show of studying it. Now and then they toss one in the bucket.
Tank after tank, we find nothing but fish.
And then, on the bottom of the last tank, the one closest to the woods where Dad likely made his escape, I spy it: a rock, wrapped in plastic and twine.
Looking through the water-telescope, I guide Tilapia Tom as he nets the rock, which he swiftly dumps into the fish bucket. Trying not to run or hurry, we make our way to the fish-cleaning shack. Once inside, I tear at the plastic, and within is another note.
Dear Ford Falcon (if you’re reading this you’ve truly earned the name):
I knew you could do it.
Visit the Earl for dos upside sunrises. Then upgrade your oculators. When you hit bottom, consider cooking cauldron-style.
When it is time, I will be ready. Just invite me to an upside-down dinner for lunch.
Love,
Dad
I am flooded with relief. Relief because Dad seems to be following through on a well-thought-out plan, which means he really is trying to reunite us. He isn’t planning to run off and freak out with the GreyDevils.
But my relief doesn’t last long. Now I have another riddle to figure out. What if I can’t solve it? What if it takes me so long his URCorn runs out? I know what happened last time. And what if the GreyDevils catch the scent of his URCorn and come after him like they came after that cornvoy spill? Or what if the Bubble Authorities find Dad before I do? Lettuce Face said they weren’t really going to try, but I don’t believe that for a minute.
Another thing: surely the Bubble Authorities are watching me. What if they grab me and grab the note? But Dad seems to be thinking of that, too. They can’t possibly know what it means. There are too many personal clues. And none of these clues seem to give away anything about where Dad might be hiding. Even I can’t figure that out. It’s not a perfect trick, but it’s a pretty good one: they’re forced to follow along and figure it out on the fly, just like me.
Still, the first thing I do is sit right down and memorize that note.
53
I FIGURED OUT PRETTY QUICKLY THAT “VISIT THE EARL FOR DOS upside sunrises” was Dad’s way of saying I should relax and do some reading on Skullduggery Ridge (the upside) for two days. Of course it was crazy to think I could relax, but also of course I knew he wanted me to do this for a reason. He didn’t want me to go straight from reading that note to upgrading my oculators, whatever in the world that meant. He wanted me to move slowly, so as not to lead the bad guys straight to whatever he had planted for me.
But boy, oh boy, it is tough. I spend a lot of time under the Shelter Tree and on the hood of the Falcon with Emily on my lap, but the only way I keep from going nuts is to keep busy doing other things. I do some cleaning up. I make a few repairs. I unroll that solar bear hide and scrape it again and resalt it so it won’t rot before I have a chance to tan it.
If I ever have a chance to tan it.
All the while I’m working, I’m trying to figure out the riddle: “Then upgrade your oculators. When you hit bottom, consider cooking cauldron-style.”
Oculators. That one sounds Toad-ish. Then I remember: The goggles he built for Frank and Spank. He called them “oculator protectorators.” Which I assume means “eye protectors” to the rest of us. So how am I supposed to upgrade my eyes? Am I supposed to get goggles?
I let it go for a while.
The two days crawl by. As I struggle with the riddles, I begin to have doubts. That day in the pig shed when I told Dad he was just a card in my game, I was sure this was the right thing to do. Now I can’t escape the idea that not only am I hunting my own father, I am hunting him with his help so I can turn him over to the enemy. Even though I want my mother back, even though I am still angry when I think of Dad drinking PartsWash while the fake GreyDevils tore up our home, beat Dookie, and took Ma, even though Dad himself has said I have to turn him in, the fact is I’ll be sacrificing one parent for the other and I’m not sur
e I can do that.
It’s not a decision anyone should have to make. But then, as Toad often tells me, “Fife is lot nair!” That’s a three-letter forward flip—for experts only.
When the sun rises on the third day I have made no more progress on Dad’s riddle. I spend half the day puzzling on it, then at noon I walk up to the flagpole and sit down where I can see out over Hoot Holler. I want to sit. Sit and think. I lean my back against the hutch where we store the old binoculars.
Binoculars! What upgrades your eyes more than a pair of binoculars? Hands trembling, I open the hutch and pull out the binoculars. I turn them over, looking for any sign of a note or some sort of message. Maybe I’m supposed to spot something with them! Maybe Dad will send me a sign! I put them to my eyes and scan the valley below. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. I zoom in on Hoot Holler. There is smoke coming from the chimney. Toad and Arlinda are probably just now sitting down to lunch with Dookie. I’d be lost if they weren’t able to take care of him. I hope he’s behaving. I hope he’s eating well and not causing any trouble.
“Eat your carrots, Dookie,” I murmur, remembering what Dad always told him. “They’re good for your eyeballs.”
And blammo, it hits me. Dad’s clue isn’t about binoculars. It’s about improving my eyesight by eating carrots! And where are the carrots? In the root cellar! And “When you hit bottom . . .” That must mean he wants me to dig down through the carrot sand. Oh, how badly I want to jump up and run right down there, but I think about who may be watching and instead walk very slowly back down to the Falcon, where I fetch my jacklight. “. . . consider cooking cauldron-style.” Of course. If I’m going to go into the root cellar under the watchful eye of some spook, I need a reason to be down there, and what better reason than making soup? I light a cooking fire in the flat-rock stove and remove the slate top so the flames can heat the cauldron. I pour in some water, and then, just as nonchalantly as you please, I walk to the root cellar and let myself in. Closing the door behind me, I follow my jacklight all the way down to the sand pit, where I caught Dad digging that night.
I kneel and dig with my bare hands. At first I find only one spindly, droopy carrot. Then another. With all that has happened, we never got our garden planted up here, so these are the last of the carrots I harvested with Ma.
I brush one off and take a bite. Although it’s droopy, it’s not rotten and tastes just fine. Unlike my brother, I like carrots. Plus it’s nice to think of this carrot as something Ma planted and tended.
I dig deeper in the sand, using my fingers like rakes. Nothing, not even another carrot. I sweep all the sand away. Still nothing.
When you hit bottom, consider cooking cauldron-style.
Well, I’ve certainly hit bottom. And I’m already cooking cauldron-style. What am I missing?
This is not the first time I came down here looking for something other than a carrot and came up empty. Dad was stashing URCorn down here, and yet I couldn’t find it. What did he say when we talked about it in the pig shed?
Maybe you stopped looking too soon.
I lift the jacklight and bend down closer to the cellar floor, sweeping away a few more grains of sand. The slate is smooth against my palm. No wonder it makes such a good stove top.
Yes, Ford Falcon, I think to myself, as my face lights up, a stove top you can remove when you want to cook cauldron-style!
I put my cheek nearly to the ground, and sure enough, there it is . . . a crack in the slate. I almost break a fingernail clawing at it, then I pull out my knife and—Toad would chew me out if he knew I was doing this—use the blade to pry one side of the flat rock up.
I lift it away and set it aside, and there, in a hollowed-out space, are four small objects. They are long and narrow, like pencil boxes. I pick one of them up. I undo the small clasp on the side, press a button, and the case springs open to reveal a slender glass tube corked with a rubber stopper. The tube is cradled in soft padding, and inside the tube I can see coils of what looks like . . . hair.
I snap the small case shut. There is a glass jar in the hole, with a folded piece of paper inside it. Unscrewing the lid, I remove the paper and unfold it. It’s Dad’s writing again.
Dear Ford Falcon:
I knew this day might come, and planted these items some time ago. If you’re here, then I guess there has been trouble. But if you are here, that also means that against all odds, this plan is working.
I can’t take any chances with this one, so it’s mostly riddle free. It’s terribly important that it not fall into the wrong hands. Memorize it as soon as you can, then destroy it.
Leave the tubes in their cases. The cases are waterproof and very strong.
Leave one case right here.
Regarding the rest, here is the plan:
I read the directions. They’re written in plain English, but they’re still pretty complicated. At the end, Dad wrote:
When everything is in place, invite the Authorities to visit. The Fat One and the Skinny One. Settle for no one else.
Love,
Dad
Possibly my life could get weirder.
But I’m not sure how.
I remove three of the cases and hide them—one in my shirt, one in my sock, and one in my ratty hair. The fourth I leave in the hole. I can’t stay down here long enough to memorize the note without raising suspicion, so I fold the paper and sheath it with my knife. I replace the slate and heap sand on it. Then I take the last of the carrots and grab a limp parsnip. If someone is watching, I need them to believe I went down here to get vegetables for the soup.
Good thing, too. Because as I step out of the root cellar, I catch a glimpse of two very yellow eyes watching from the brush beside the trail. I take a big crunch from the carrot and hold the other one out in front of me.
“Hey, you fake!” I say, talking with my mouth full. “Want a carrot?”
Silence.
“Might help those sick yellow eyes of yours.”
They blink, and disappear.
Just in case someone is still watching, I finish making the soup. It’s pretty awful.
And then I prepare for the busiest week of my life.
And after the year so far, that’s saying something.
54
IT TAKES ME A WEEK TO DO IT ALL. FIRST I MEMORIZE THE NOTE and burn it. Then I have to convince Toad to load up the Scary Pruner and go to Nobbern.
“Now?” he says. “But yer pater . . .”
“This is about pater,” I say quietly.
Next I have to convince him to let me take his cross-eyed muskrat to town with us.
“But . . .”
“Pater,” I say. Then, in the most respectful tone I can, I say, “Toad, in order for the plan to work, many of the details can be known only by me.”
He never asks another question.
Two days later we make the trip. Among the scrap iron we deliver to the blacksmith shop is a short length of pipe. It is crimped at both ends, and hidden within—unbeknownst to anyone on earth but me—is one of the test tube cases. “Oh-ho-ho, I’m afraid that little hunka pipe’s not worth the ink it would take to write up the BarterBucks slip,” says Al. I just smile at him and follow Freda into the shop. With Al out of earshot I speak quietly. “Freda, this is an odd thing, but you are always honest in your dealings with us, so I am putting my trust in you.” I hold out the pipe. “Put this high in the rafters in the darkest corner of your blacksmith shop. Someplace Al will never go. If a man arrives one day and says he is looking for a corn cob pipe, give it to him. Tell no one. Especially Al.” Freda smiles and nods, like this sort of thing happens all the time in the blacksmithing business.
At Magical Mercantile I ask Toad to wait outside with Toby while I go in with the cross-eyed muskrat. Magic Mike takes one look at it and through gales of laughter says, “I can sell a lot of things, but I’ll never be able to sell that.”
I reach out and grab him by his polka-dotted bow tie. The laughter
stops and his eyes go wide.
“Listen to me very carefully, Magic Mike.” My face is about half an inch from his, and I can hear him gulp.
“I recently visited a Bubble City. I guess you could say it was a business trip, because it certainly wasn’t pleasure. While I was there I got reunited with a pig. Porky Pig.”
Magic Mike’s face is now the color of his green eyeshade.
“Y’know, if word got out that a fellow like you, in a business like this—where you deal with some powerful and mysterious clients—couldn’t be trusted, couldn’t be relied upon to protect the sources of his most unusual merchandise, boy, now that could be real hard on business.”
“I . . .”
“You’re right about one thing, Magic Mike. You’re not gonna sell this muskrat. You’re gonna stock it, but even if someone is crazy enough to buy it, you’re not gonna sell it. Unless—and this is very important, so stop swallowing your tongue and listen carefully—unless that person says he or she is looking for a cross-eyed corny gift.
“Those exact words, Magic Mike. Cross-eyed corny gift. Now put it on the shelf.”
Just before I step out the door, I look back, and Magic Mike is already climbing down the rolling ladder. The muskrat is on a topmost shelf. And within his cotton-stuffed belly is a small case containing a test tube.
When we finally stop to see Banker Berniece, I again ask Toad to wait outside. When I explain my situation, her face remains as expressionless as the bun at the back of her head. It takes us awhile to sort everything out, and it is a highly unusual transaction, but from beginning to end her voice never changes from its usual flat tone, even when I thank her and she bids me good-bye.
We fight a few GreyDevils on the way home, but my heart really isn’t in it. We still have to defend ourselves, and I will, but ever since I found out about Dad, I’ve wondered just who might be behind those tortured yellow eyes.
The Scavengers Page 19
