Rescue at Lake Wild

by Terry Lynn Johnson

  It all feels hopeless. Did I ever really think we could make a difference?

  “Have you found Xena?” Aaron asks, which reopens the fissure inside me.

  Both boys see my face and don’t ask any more questions.

  A cold ache settles around my heart. I search for something good to focus on or I’m going to bawl. “Dad’s coming home tonight. We’re getting a blueberry pie.”

  As we make our way to the house, Cal’s truck pulls up. Without Cal. The driver hops out wearing a straw hat and plaid shirt. He looks like a slightly older version of Cal.

  Marley meets us from the side door.

  The driver asks her, “You ready? I’m in a hurry.”

  “ ’Sup, Dan.” She gestures toward us. “This is my sister, Madi, and her friends, Jack and Aaron.”

  I stare at her, trying to recall the last time she’d referred to my friends by their actual names.

  “This is Cal’s brother, Dan,” she says, giving me a pointed look. Then she turns to Dan. “I’m ready to go. You got a smoke?”

  Dan looks as confused as the rest of us, but he automatically reaches into his shirt pocket. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  Marley shrugs, tucks the cigarette behind her ear, and jumps into the truck.

  As Dan steps round to the driver’s door, my thoughts race. Did my sister just set it up for us to meet Dan? Did she help us?

  Jack is faster. He points. “I knew it! It’s your ax! You shot the beavers!”

  Dan pauses, looking startled. “What the—what? Who told you that?”

  Jack’s eyes go round, as though he can’t believe Dan just confessed. Can’t believe he was actually right. But he pulls it together in the next breath. “My detector dog tracked you. He found your shotgun shells and cigarette butts with your DNA all over them. The authorities are going to thank me.”

  Dan’s starting to twitch. “I don’t know what you kids think you saw, but nobody in this town’s going to care about dead beavers.” He wrenches the truck door open.

  “Mr. Kang’s going to care about his trees being cut,” Jack says.

  Dan’s mouth hangs open as he stares.

  “Were you trying to frame Mr. Kang for shooting the beavers?” Aaron steps out from behind Jack long enough to ask. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  It bugs Jack when he can’t figure something out.

  Dan produces a series of snorts. He drops his keys, fumbles on the ground for them, hits his head on the side mirror coming up, then hustles into the seat, slamming the door.

  “Beavers cut down Mr. Kang’s trees!” he yells, as he peels away.

  Dust from Dan’s truck is still hanging in the air while the three of us stare at each other.

  Jack pumps his fist and roars. “We got him! Lid, did you hear that? You did it!”

  Lid wags his tail lazily and gives us a knowing, wide-mouthed grin. Then pauses when a yellow butterfly lands on his head.

  “My first solved murder case,” Jack says, smugly. “Come on, Madi. Let’s go back to the Township office.”

  I’m starting to feel a fire grow in my belly. Something Dan just said is sinking in. Nobody in this town’s going to care about dead beavers.

  He’s right. The whole town’s gone beaver crazy. As long as the flooding keeps happening, everyone will keep hating beavers.

  I think of the bridge experiment. Grounded or not, I have to get over there. Someone needs to show the Township how to stop the flooding.

  28

  I stash the ATV in the usual spot in the bushes, and we make our way to the Birch Street bridge.

  Anxiously I recall when the road was blocked because it was underwater. I know the boys have seen our pole setup, but maybe they were mistaken? It’s hard to believe the beavers did what I hoped. Did I truly get them to stop damming the culvert?

  As we hurry along the forest trail, sunbeams shoot straight through the trees glowing in brilliant lines. They illuminate the pollen in the air, something you wouldn’t know was there unless you were looking for it.

  When we pop out onto the road, I see it is indeed still dry. Lid jogs ahead and we follow him down the embankment. I stop short. My breath escapes in a small “oh” as I take in the sight. It’s magnificent.

  The experiment worked.

  Jack claps me on the shoulder. “They dammed our stakes instead of the culvert.”

  “Madi.” Aaron prods me. “You can control wild beavers!”

  We grin at each other. “I can control where beavers build,” I repeat, cautiously.

  I stare again at the muddy wall of sticks that’s been built all along the stake line we’d placed so carefully. It’s exactly what I hoped the beavers would do. It’s exactly where Aaron had figured a dam could go without flooding the road. They left the culvert alone.

  “Now can we go tell the Township?” Aaron asks.

  “About the poacher, too!” Jack says.

  I nod. “We’re ready.”

  The Township office is five blocks away. We pound along the sidewalk, Lid loping beside us. Exhaust fumes from an old car rattling past make me wheeze. The heat from the pavement blasts us in waves. Even my knees are sweating. The boys whoop and shove each other, laughing as we run.

  By the time we get there, we’re buzzing with excitement. Bursting into the office, sweaty and babbling loudly about the dam, we see at once there’s a different secretary today.

  “Where’s Carrie?” I ask.

  “Vacation.” The new lady looks as though she’s caught a whiff of Lid after he eats hot dogs. But we left him outside this time.

  She surveys us. “Can I help you?” Then she smiles with her mouth but frowns with her eyes, and everyone knows you can’t trust a person who does that.

  I try anyway. “You need to get an inspector to the bridge to take a look at what we’ve done.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” The lady adjusts the glasses on her nose. She turns back to her computer.

  I draw on my renewed courage and insist. “Seriously, I think we fixed the beaver problem.”

  “We don’t have a beaver problem.” She peers at us over her glasses. “Where’re your parents?”

  “We need to see your supervisor!” Aaron yells, slapping the counter. His unruly hair shudders as if in shock. Jack and I join the secretary in staring at him.

  “I beg your pardon, young man!”

  “You have to believe us,” I say, trying to reel in the situation. “We directed the beavers to build a dam.”

  The way she flattens her lips makes my stomach sink. “So, you’re saying you made the beavers make a dam?”

  “She controls them!” Aaron explains pointing at me.

  “Very funny. Now go outside to play. Go on.” She points to the door, and then promptly ignores us as though we aren’t still standing there.

  “We’re not finished,” Jack says, flustered. “I solved the poaching problem, too. I have evidence—”

  “We do not have a poaching problem!” The secretary uses a tone that stops Jack from finishing his big reveal.

  “But . . .” Aaron trails off under the secretary’s withering glare.

  This is getting us nowhere. The three of us share a look. With long faces and shoulders sagging, we slink out to join Lid.

  Wandering over to a bench, we sit in the shade of a tree to regroup. Aaron pulls his feet up and hugs his knobby knees. “Should’ve seen that coming. Adults are never going to listen to a bunch of kids trying to explain that we know who’s been shooting beavers. That we made them not dam the culvert.”

  “This isn’t fair!” Jack says. “She didn’t even want to hear about the evidence.”

  A man walks by wearing the same kind of clothes the school janitor wears. “Hey, Jack,” he says. Then he walks into the Township office.

  Aaron and I both look at Jack. He jumps up, not meeting our eyes.

  “Who’s that?” Aaron asks.

  “What? Oh, him. Just Mom’s new friend. It’s not i
mportant.” There’s a pause as Jack hurls rocks at a tree.

  I see Aaron thinking. “Boyfriend?”

  “No!” Alarmingly, Jack looks like he might cry.

  I search for something to say to get past the weirdness that’s descended on us. The last thing we need to deal with right now is Jack’s family drama.

  “Does he work for the Township?” Aaron presses.

  Jack shrugs. “I guess.”

  “So, is he your confidential informant?” Aaron sounds pleased to have figured it out. Though, as usual, he’s somehow oblivious to Jack’s feelings.

  “I don’t actually talk to him. I just heard stuff he said to my mom. It doesn’t matter anyway, since no one even cares that I’ve solved the case.” Jack hurls another rock, which bounces off the tree and nails me in the shoulder.

  “Ow!”

  Instead of apologizing, Jack barks out a laugh, even though I can tell by the tightness in his face that he feels sorry. At least it makes him stop pelting the tree and come over to slump on the bench.

  “We need a plan,” I say, rubbing my shoulder. On either side of me, Jack and Aaron stay silent.

  Lid’s the only one who looks happy. He’s found some used gum stuck under the bench. He sits beside us, chewing thoughtfully.

  A determination has replaced my earlier hopelessness. We’ve come so far. I risked everything for this—it has to be worth it. We are not going to be stopped by a cranky secretary.

  We need evidence, like Jack said. I need to take pictures of the poles we placed as proof. And we need to talk with someone who does care. Someone who was interested in me being an animal whisperer. But we can’t wait till she gets back from vacation.

  “Jack. Your mom’s friend would know Carrie since he works with her. Maybe he knows where we can find her?”

  I wait quietly while emotions play across Jack’s features. His eyes narrow in anger, and then his lips press with stubbornness. His face pales with something like grief.

  As I watch Jack, I realize that being an animal whisperer and studying the body language of animals has sort of helped me listen to people better too.

  Jack sighs. “Fine. I’ll talk to him. Wait here.”

  29

  Carrie studies the river uncertainly. “So what am I looking at?”

  It hadn’t been hard to find her once Jack got the address for us. And just as I’d hoped, the pictures we showed her on my phone made her curious enough to come to the culvert.

  It takes a while, but we tell her all of it. About the day we’d discovered the adult beavers shot in the channel. Jack proudly explains how he’d trained Lid to track and how he’d found the evidence.

  We tell her about the way the kits reacted to the sound of running water at home and how we set up the iPod experiment in their pool. And then we show her how we did the experiment in the river. We explain how Aaron figured out how to imitate the same sound out here.

  “Okay, so you can . . . what? You direct the beavers where to build? You’re saying you control them?”

  “I just understand them,” I say. “The point is not to control them, but to stop the beavers from damming in the wrong places where it wrecks people’s property. Or when they flood roads. If we can stop them from making people angry, no one can say we need to get rid of them.”

  It’s satisfying to share these thoughts with someone who listens.

  Carrie taps her chin in thought. “Could you do it again?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  “Well, let’s find out.”

  We pile back into Carrie’s truck and drive to the Township office to find the inspectors and road engineers—all two of them. The other secretary peers over her glasses with disapproval. Lid grins at her.

  Next, we go back to the Birch Street culvert and explain it again to them. After that, things start to happen.

  They take us to Catkin Street, where they’ve been fighting with beavers blocking that culvert all season. They have us repeat the experiment there. Setting it up this time is easier because they’ve got stake drivers that help pound the poles into the river. Aaron explains how he’d used the natural flow of water around the stakes to set up the sounds. They shake their heads, having a hard time believing how we know this stuff.

  Later, when the inspectors see that once again the beavers made dams overnight and left the culvert alone, even more people get involved.

  Pretty soon, we’re standing in front of the whole town council explaining how we did it. Someone mentions it’s a low-water year, so that might explain the beavers’ actions. City plans and drawings are brought out and they argue among themselves about adding drain pipes, controlling water levels, and bottom lines, which Jack thinks is pretty funny until he realizes they’re talking about budgets, not butts.

  The next several days are a whirlwind. The Township makes plans to build a series of dams on top of drains. The drains are long tubes with plugs on the end that they can unscrew and open when needed. They direct the beavers where to build. Then, once the beavers make the dams, there’s a way to control water levels and avoid flooding just by unplugging the drains. It’s like releasing water out of a bathtub.

  A few days later, my family and I get ready to watch the local evening news. It’d been such a crazy week, I barely had time to mourn the fact that I’d missed the whole Jane Goodall gala. Though every day I think about poor Xena. I want to make her short life mean something.

  “It’s on!” yells Marley.

  Dad’s crashing around searching for his phone to video the segment. He rushes into the den and we all settle down to watch.

  I gape at the image on the screen. There we all are. Aaron, his orange hair crazy in the wind, his freckles being slowly devoured by the red creeping up his face. Jack, his gaze flighty and unfocused, picking at a scab on his meaty elbow. And me just looking weird in my ANIMALS ARE PEOPLE TOO T-shirt and my eyes the size of feed pans.

  Lid’s completely himself, not realizing he’s on TV. He starts retching, his whole body convulsing till he pukes up something slimy. Then he gives a wide, happy smile.

  “What do you like about beavers?” The announcer holds the microphone in front of me.

  “Beavers are amazing,” I say nervously. “They talk a lot and they love their families.”

  Next to me, Jack and Aaron have frozen smiles as they stare at the camera.

  “They’re the only animals that can change the area where they live so much.” Once I start talking about beavers, I appear to relax. “They can make ponds from a tiny stream, which is important because it makes a habitat for a ton of other animals to live. If there’s no rain, they keep a place from drying up. All the animals depend on them! They’re the world’s best engineers. They’re definitely not the smelliest!”

  I cringe, watching myself on screen. “Is that how my voice sounds?”

  “Every day,” Dad says. He tweaks my nose.

  I swat his hand, then focus back to the news.

  “They have these fingers,” TV-me continues. “They’re just like our hands. They can do so many things. And they’re so smart—they can look at a problem and come up with three ways to solve that problem.”

  I see myself take a breath and get ready. “I know all this because I’ve been looking after beaver kits that were orphaned.” I go on to relate the story about how Cooler helped me at the wire fence that day.

  “You see, they’re loyal to their family, and watch out for and protect each other. And they need us to protect them.”

  “Oh, honey, well done,” Mom says.

  I start to grin, then freeze when I hear the announcer.

  “This twelve-year-old girl, the mastermind of the new project, is now on call as a consultant for the Township. They’re calling her the Beaver Whisperer. She may have solved the town’s problems and helped a whole community of beavers live in harmony with humans. Willow Grove News. Back to you, Jeff.”

  As I take in the reality of what just happened, I realize
I’ve been training for this moment my whole life—this chance to talk for the animals and teach people about how we can help them.

  I wish Nana were here to see it. Maybe I’ll just email Jane Goodall and tell her about it all.

  “Madison Lewis, Beaver Whisperer.” Dad pulls me in for a hug.

  “Mastermind?” Marley snorts. “Master pain in my butt is more like it.” But the shine in her eyes gives her away.

  30

  After several hours in the car, Dad and I are almost there.

  He said he’d been wishing for a road trip since our Stratton plans were canceled.

  Mom knew more than I thought about animal rehabbers. She didn’t just hand Phrag and Cooler over to the Township, but arranged for them to go to a licensed wildlife rehabilitation facility called the Wilder Center.

  I’m nearly jumping out of my seat in anticipation of seeing the kits again, and seeing the place where they’re living. For the millionth time I peek inside the plastic tub to make sure the aquatic sedges we’re bringing them are still fresh. Mr. Kang had dropped them off, along with a bone for “that hero dog.”

  He’d said that thanks to us kids getting the culprit charged, he had the restitution money to plant more trees. When he explained that he’d been the loudest opposition to the town council’s plan for a beaver bounty, it all made sense.

  Dan had been trying to change his mind. He wanted Mr. Kang to agree that beavers were a nuisance by making him think they’d ruined his landscaping. Good thing Mr. Kang was smarter than Dan. Though, I suspect most people are smarter than Dan.

  As we pull off the highway and follow a long driveway, I see a large fenced field on one side and an enclosure with a pond on the other.

  “There’s Mr. Lee,” Dad says, parking the car.

  A short, balding man is there to greet us. “Hello, you must be Madison.” He gives me a kind smile, then turns to Dad. “The rehabber community sadly misses your mother, Mr. Lewis.”

  “Thank you. So do we all,” Dad says, squeezing my hand.

  I feel a little unsure suddenly, wondering what Mr. Lee will think of me being just a kid. Until he says, “The philosophy we try to promote here is responsible stewardship.”