The Secret of Ferrell Savage

by J. Duddy Gill

  “No.” She lifted her face from her hands. “But, still, I looked like an idiot in front of you.”

  “You’ve looked like an idiot in front of me before. Tons of times. So don’t worry,” I reassured her. “And I’ll never tell anyone you thought the little dude had a thing for you.” I felt my chest tighten around the marble and was almost too afraid to ask this important question. “What about you? Do you have a thing for him?”

  She squeezed up her face the same way she did the time I accidentally made her lemonade with salt instead of sugar.

  Phew.

  We sat quietly for a minute, and finally Mary looked at the clock on the wall and sighed. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “And my mom should be home by now. She catered a big lunch party at the inn, and she probably has chicken cordon bleu in boxes for our dinners.” She picked up her backpack, and dragged it to the front door. “If you find anything on the Internet, call me. If not, I’ll just see you tomorrow. I think I’m going to go to bed early.”

  “I’m sure whatever it is, it’s nothing. I’m not worried,” I said.

  “Do you ever worry about anything?” she asked.

  I thought for a minute. “I’m down to just the root beer barrels and Big League Chew in my Halloween stash, and it’s only January.”

  “Must be nice,” she said sleepily, and closed the door behind her.

  Chapter Eleven

  THAT EVENING MOM AND DAD went to the neighbors’ house for cocktails. I sat at the kitchen table and opened the laptop. Google is always a good place to start. I typed the only clues I had: “Polly Pry” and “Alferd.”

  I clicked on the first Google entry, which brought me to the Hinsdale County Museum website. The article was long, and my eyes couldn’t even focus on all those words that seemed to walk around the page, like scatterbrained black ants. My brain tried to make them walk a straight line, but it was hard. I backtracked to the Google list and tried a few other sites until I found one with a short blurb about Polly Pry: “Polly Pry was the reporter for the Denver Post who is best remembered for her investigative reporting in the case of Alferd Packer.”

  Alferd Packer! So, that was the guy’s name. When Littledood had asked me if I was a Packer, he hadn’t meant Green Bay, he’d meant Alferd Packer.

  I went back to the Google page and typed in “Alferd Packer,” scrolled through until I found the shortest article, and read. My eyes darted around the page, catching words. Born in Pennsylvania . . . Served in the Civil War . . . San Juan Mountains . . . Met Chief Ouray in Montrose, Colorado . . . Snowbound in the Rocky Mountains . . .

  “Argh!” I shouted into the empty house. “Get on with it! Tell me what taboo thing my great-great-great-uncle did!” Reading tortures me more than anything!

  This kind of work called for my secret weapon of concentration. Skittles. I kept an emergency bag stashed behind some books on the shelf. I grabbed them and shoved a handful into my mouth.

  My head felt a little clearer, and I continued reading.

  “It is said Alfred Packer became known as Alferd when a tattoo artist misspelled his name on his arm.”

  Useless information.

  I scrolled down to the end of the page and read in the same pattern as I read a lot of homework assignments: beginning with the last sentence and ending with the first.

  “He was buried at Littleton Cemetery near Denver.”

  I scrolled up, skipping around the paragraphs.

  “He was sentenced to be hanged, but later the charge was reduced to manslaughter, and he was given forty years to be served at the prison in Cañon City.”

  Manslaughter! That was it! I was definitely onto something. My eyes got caught on the photo of a guy with a bushy mustache and beard. I stared into his wild, scary eyes and wondered if I was seeing something familiar. Did I look like him?

  Just then there was a loud thump in the living room, and I almost screamed. It was just Buddy, who had jumped off the couch.

  “Quiet, Budster. You nearly scared the Skittles out of me.” He trotted to my chair. “Now I lost my place.”

  I scratched Buddy’s chin with one hand and put the index finger of my other hand on the word on the screen, making sure I was reading it right. “ ‘Manslaughter.’ Yep.” I shivered. “My great-great-great-uncle killed people.” Before scrolling down, I rubbed my hands together. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more. But I couldn’t stand not knowing, either. Maybe he’d killed bad guys, like the kind who robbed and murdered people on trains.

  I took a deep breath and read on.

  “Blah, blah, blah.” My eyes skimmed around the page, hoping key words would jump out at me. “Oh, here . . . ‘Alferd Packer became known as the infamous Colorado Cannonball and may be the only cannonball to be tried in the US court system.’ Huh.”

  I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest. A cannonball. There was a picture of Alferd Packer standing next to a bunch of other guys with bushy beards, but there was no picture of a cannon and no further explanation of what was meant by “Colorado Cannonball,” at least none that jumped out at me. I could have gone to another website, but reading had exhausted me. How do people get through entire books this way? I once made it to the top of the climbing wall at the rec center, and I wasn’t nearly as tired then as I was now.

  Before I could go on, I needed food—something more substantial than Skittles. I slid away from the table and headed to the kitchen to heat up some leftover pasta and Tastes Just Like Chicken strips. As I loaded up my plate, I thought about the information I’d gathered and came to this conclusion: Alferd Packer was a human cannonball who was charged for manslaughter, probably because after he was shot out of a cannon, he hit some people and killed them. He’d used his body as a weapon. But, still, he couldn’t have fired the cannon if he was inside it. Shouldn’t the person who fired it have been the one charged for murder? It’s not a cannonball’s fault when it hits people and kills them. In my opinion, this did not make Mom’s great-great-uncle a “beast.”

  But, wait, Mom’s maiden name was Parker, not Packer. Close but . . . still not the same. Maybe another tattoo artist mistake?

  I took my pasta to the couch and flipped on the TV. I always do my best thinking in front of the TV.

  I wondered what the big deal was. Granted, I hadn’t read the whole article as carefully as Mary would’ve, but I’d definitely gotten the gist of it. And, frankly, what did my great-great-great-uncle’s being a manslaughtering human cannonball have to do with me? I hadn’t killed anybody! I would never! Besides, from what I’d read, it sounded like Great-Great-Great-Uncle Alferd had been treated unfairly. Polly Pry had obviously believed he was innocent. I had no secret to be ashamed of, and Littledood could tell the world.

  After my plate was scraped clean, I leaned my head back into the sofa and was just dozing off when I heard Mom scream from the dining room.

  “What’s wrong?” I yelled. I flew off the couch and ran in to see.

  Mom stood at the table, staring at the screen and holding her hand over her mouth. Dad leaned over her, reading from behind her shoulder and rubbing her back to calm her.

  “How did you find this? How did you know?” she asked.

  “Ferrell was bound to find out someday, Katherine. Now’s a good time to talk about it,” Dad said. He pulled out a chair for her to sit, and she did. I ran to the sink and brought her a cup of water. She drank it and seemed to feel better. I sat in the chair across from her.

  “So now you know. All right,” she said to me. “I’m sure you have some questions about what this means to you. Yes, this horrible, disgusting, foul excuse for a human being is related to us. Thank goodness my grandfather changed my family’s name from Packer to Parker, so no one makes the connection. As for you and me, Ferrell—and anyone else who has the Packer blood—well, all we can do is live our lives as honestly and cleanly as possible.”

  “All righty,” I said. Honest and clean. I could do that. “I’m confused,
though. Was Great-Great-Great-Uncle Alferd in a circus or what?”

  Mom tilted her head. “Well, the story goes that he was offered a job as a sideshow freak in a circus, but he didn’t take the job,” she said.

  “But what about the other times he was a cannonball? Was that his job?” I asked.

  Mom and Dad both stared at me, blank-faced. There was silence as they each blinked about three or four times.

  Finally, Mom spoke. “No, sweetheart. He wasn’t a cannonball. He was a cannibal. Your great-great-great-uncle Alferd Packer killed people and then ate them.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I AM RELATED TO A MONSTER. Mom and I have monster blood running through our systems. I had always sensed that there was something wrong with me. That if I just tasted real meat, I wouldn’t be able to stop eating it. I even went through a biting phase when I was little. Mary remembers a time when I bit her arm and gave her a bruise. Now I understand. I was trying to eat her. I tossed and turned all night thinking about it, and when I gave up on sleeping, I decided to get the laptop and read the whole article more carefully, even if it took me until morning to do so. Which it did.

  After learning more about him, I had some heart for the guy. I mean, I had a better understanding of how his situation had called for drastic measures.

  I zoomed in on his photograph and made it bigger on the screen. Most of his face was covered by his big, bushy beard, so my eyes focused on his eyes. He didn’t look hateful or mean. He looked confused. Bewildered. Maybe a little bit sad under his wide-brimmed hat.

  When Mary came over on Saturday, I tried to explain it casually, as if cannibalism were a common family secret.

  “Here’s the dealio,” I began. “My great-great-great-uncle was Alferd Packer, and he ate people.” I blurted out the words. “See, he was trekking over the Rocky Mountains to look for gold with some other guys, and they got lost in a blizzard, and they didn’t have any more food, so, naturally he was hungry, and, well, he ate the other five guys.” Mary’s eyes bulged. “He was about to die of starvation, and he was desperate. What else could he do?” Mary didn’t answer. “Hey, like Dad says, it’s history. Littledood can tell the world for all I care. Okay,” I rambled on, “I guess it’s better if no one knows—I mean, can you imagine when Eilio gets ahold of this? He’ll never let me live it down. But, still, it’s not worth another sled ride down any hill, and certainly not down Specter Slope.”

  Mary was pale. She sat down on the couch, leaned forward, and put her face in her hands. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “This is awful.” Her voice was muffled, and she shook her head.

  “Well, I think I’ve got it under control, though. I’m pretty sure that if I stay away from meat and other animal stuff, I won’t have a problem.” I tried to sound firm about it, even though I wasn’t at all certain. “After all, I’ve never eaten anyone.” I almost added “yet,” but I stopped myself.

  “I’m not worried about you,” Mary said, her face still covered. “What are people going to think if they find out?”

  “I know it’s gross and all, but it was a long time ago, and who cares now? Nobody’s even heard of Alferd Packer,” I said.

  Mary stood up and paced around the room. “Everyone in Colorado knows who Alferd Packer is!”

  “Maybe smart people like you, and people who listen in history class. But not regular people like me.”

  Mary sighed and held up her hands in disgust. “I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she said.

  “But this is my problem,” I said. “It has nothing to do with you.”

  Mary’s voice trembled as she spoke. “There’s something I never told you before. I’ve never told anyone.” She sat back on the couch, and I sat next to her. “My great-great-grandfather was Shannon Wilson Bell.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. Now it was starting to make sense. “He was one of the guys Alferd ate.”

  Mary nodded.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, Mary. I always knew there was something weird about me. I guess it goes back a long way. Wow, I’m really sorry.” What else could I say? What does any guy say to the girl he’s crushing on when he finds out his family ate hers for dinner? This could be a real relationship buster.

  “So, you come from a long line of weirdos. At least your family shows some strength and gumption. I’m related to someone who was stupid enough to be eaten by a cannibal.”

  “Maybe it’s not because he was stupid. Maybe he was a slow runner,” I pointed out.

  “What kind of idiot goes up to the mountains and gets himself eaten by another person? Couldn’t he have outsmarted Packer instead? No, because obviously he was a loser.”

  “But that’s him, not you,” I protested.

  “It’s a pattern. Don’t you see? My great-great-grandfather was on his way to finding gold, but he got eaten instead. Then my great-grandfather made a fortune, lost all his money in the stock market, and jumped out the window.”

  “Ooh.” I cringed.

  “My father’s great-aunt was a genius who invented a carpet cleaner that contained toxic ingredients and who went to jail when hundreds of cats and dogs got sick. And my grandfather? Well, he wrote a book that turned out to be made up of words he stole from other writers. See? Everyone from my dad’s side of the family is a loser!”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of bad luck,” I said. “What about your dad?”

  “My dad was fine until he invested everything in a company that went bankrupt right when Mom found out she was pregnant with me. He lost all the money. That’s when he left her.”

  “What’s he doing now?” I asked.

  “He’s a telemarketer. He calls people’s homes while they’re eating dinner and asks them if they want to switch their cable provider.” She stood up like she was about to leave, but didn’t. “That’s what my future looks like.”

  In all the years I’d known Mary, I’d never seen her look so small, like a mouse in a dark corner. She stood there, fidgeting with the tie of her hoodie and looking down at the floor.

  “You’re not like them,” I repeated. I got up from my chair and took a step closer to her. I was surprised she didn’t back up. “You’re not stupid. And I don’t know about your dad, but I do know he’d have to be stupid to leave you and your mom.”

  Then Mary did the weirdest thing I’ve ever known her to do. She stepped toward me and wrapped her arms around me for half a split second, maybe less. Then she pushed herself away, and I was flung in the opposite direction. And as I was being flung away, I realized what had just happened.

  Mary had hugged me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  BEFORE DINNER MOM SENT MARY and me down to Spinelli’s for a bag of red lentils. It had snowed an inch or two the previous night, and our feet crunched as we walked. I felt a little awkward after the hug and couldn’t think of anything to say. Mary was quiet too.

  The way I saw it was like this: Mary’s and my friendship was like my old Converse shoes. I had outgrown them in the fall, and as much as I knew I needed and wanted a new pair, I wasn’t quite ready to make the move. I had worn them—with the holes in the big toe knuckles and the red paint from Mary’s and my summer camp mural—for almost a year and a half. Then one day the shoes felt tight and squeezey, making all my toes aware of one another. For weeks I tried loosening the laces, wearing the shoes without socks, wearing them in the shower so they’d stretch out when they dried on my feet. But nothing worked. It was beyond my control. My feet had grown, and it was time for a new pair of shoes.

  Mary’s and my friendship had become squeezey, and it was time for something new.

  We sat at the deli counter, drinking root beer; Mr. Spinelli’s treat. “Anything for you, Miracle Survivor Boy,” he had said.

  I sat high on my stool and stretched my arms over my head. “Ah,” I said, “I feel like the weight of last night’s dark hours has been lifted off my shoulders.”

  “Way to mix the metaphors,” she said.

  “Metaph
or, schmetaphor. Who cares?” I leaned forward and put my elbows on the counter.

  “Now I see why the little conniver looked right at me when he talked about family trees,” Mary said. “He knows I’m related to Shannon Bell.”

  “Yep. The kid knows his stuff all right.” I took a long swig of root beer.

  “I simply cannot resign myself to the fact that I’m related to such a long line of defeatists.”

  “Tell me about it. How do you think I felt when I found out I was related to a cannibal? But, you know, I think everything’s going to be okay. I’m glad I don’t have to race Littledood again.” I slid to the edge of my seat, closer to Mary. “And I think it’s cool . . . our little moment back at the house. You know . . . our sort-of hug thing.”

  “Ferrell Savage, you most certainly are going to race against Bruce Littledood, and you’re going to tell him so first thing Monday morning, because I will not have people standing around, looking at me, just waiting for me to fail the same way my ancestors did. And as for a hug, well, you’re just plain crazy, thinking I’d embrace someone who devours my relatives, because that was no hug. I was looking at an ad on your computer screen, and you got in the way, so I simply moved you, is all.”

  I was speechless. What had just happened?

  “I’m impaled,” I finally said.

  “You mean ‘appalled,’ ” she shot back with a snarl.

  No, I meant “impaled.” I felt a sharp pain right in that spot between my heart and my stomach, right where that stupid marble lived. I was pretty sure the kissy face had grown pointy teeth and had just chomped me from the inside out. I hoped to never experience that kind of impalement again for as long as I lived.

  Chapter Fourteen

  PEOPLE THOUGHT I WAS THE next best thing to Superman, just because I’d survived the fall down the hill. But they were wrong. All I had done was throw together a weak contraption and then be dumb enough to enter a race with it. And dumber than that, I’d done it all for Mary. I was not proud.