Scumble

by Ingrid Law

  “Hey, Ledge! You doing okay?” Rocket asked, his voice vibrating as he held tight to the shuddering steering wheel. Winona dragged down on my T-shirt.

  “What’re you trying to do, Ledge? Get your head taken off?”

  “Stop!” I bellowed, reaching for the door handle. “You’ve got to let me out! You two take the bike to Spearfish without me. You have to get it there before it’s too late. I’ve got to stay here—there’s something I have to do.”

  “Whoa, Ledge, slow down!” Rocket pulled the truck over as quick as he could to keep me from jumping out while it was still moving—and to stop my distress from undoing all our work on the bike in one cataclysmic savvy blow.

  “Just get the bike to Spearfish!” I said, leaping from the truck. “Get it there so it can win that money. You can’t let Mr. Cabot have the salvage yard!”

  The Cabots’ housekeeper was outside when I got there, sweeping a single spot on the front porch over and over as she stood engrossed in the colorful supermarket tabloid she held up in front of her broom.

  Even from across the street, I could hear Sarah Jane throwing a pitching, screaming fit inside. She wasn’t just crying. She wasn’t just yelling. Sarah Jane was breaking things. It sounded like she was hurling objects—large and small—against the locked door of her room.

  Hedda the Horrible didn’t even flinch.

  Something bad was happening. Something really bad. There was no outward sign that Mr. Cabot might be home: no Lincoln parked in front of the house, no CAD Co. truck either.

  Ignoring SJ’s tantrum, Hedda turned a page of her tabloid. I watched her carefully from where I lurked in the bushes, impatient for an opportunity to slip by her. The ladder I’d built was gone. All the fence posts hauled away. Getting to SJ would require that direct approach I’d thought of the last time I was here—through the door, up the stairs, blast the lock!

  I was no longer worrying about telling SJ who she really was. All I wanted now was to know what was wrong with my friend.

  The telephone rang inside the house and Hedda moved swiftly through the screen door to answer. I crossed the street in four strides, the stump-filled yard in three, pausing just long enough to kick off my sneakers at the door.

  Ignoring the smell of my socks, I was through the door and up the creaking, groaning stairs in seconds.

  An old-fashioned keyhole lock . . . WHAM!

  A brass knob . . . BAM!

  A heavy-hinged door . . . SLAM!

  That was what I could’ve done. It was what I had done at the CAD Co. building. Only, that hadn’t felt so great.

  Instead, thinking fast, I scrabbled in my pocket, yanking the wire spiral out of SJ’s notebook, as well as the corkscrewed wheel spoke from the Knucklehead. It took a few tries: a twist here, a bend there, a hook, a crook, a prayer . . . then CLICK!

  I’d made a fretwork-and-filigree skeleton key and fitted it to the lock.

  I opened the door and ducked fast, dodging the alarm clock Sarah Jane had just sent flying. Glancing at the scattered gears and bells and cogs, I grinned.

  “Hey! You’ve got your own mad skills. Stop copying mine!”

  “Ledge! It’s you!” She was across the room and hugging me before I knew what hit me, squeezing me to death in the doorway to her disaster of a room. SJ had pulled apart her bed, her desk, and her bookshelves too. Broken stuff lay everywhere. Though, the two Captain Marvel comics I’d given her rested in mint condition on her nightstand. At least she hadn’t torn The Big Red Cheese to shreds.

  “I’m sorry, Ledge! It’s monstrous! Totally catastrophic!”

  “It was just an alarm clock, SJ—”

  “No! You don’t understand!” SJ pushed away from me, leaving a damp stain of tears on my shoulder. “Daddy had security cameras in his office!” Her voice dropped quieter and quieter as she spoke. “He saw us there, Ledge. He saw you there! He knows we were the ones who broke in. He knows everything! And he is mad . . .” Her last word came out a whisper.

  There wasn’t enough thin Wyoming air in the room. I couldn’t breathe. My fingertips were tingling. My lips felt numb.

  Somehow I managed to say: “How mad, SJ?”

  Her eyes rolled wildly and she shook her head. “Try exploding-sun, comets-hitting-earth, end-of-life-as-we-know-it mad! He’s gone, Ledge. He’s taken all his workmen and all his wreckers. He’s gone to your uncle’s ranch—he’s going to tear everything down!”

  “But . . . he can’t do that! At least, not yet, right? Autry still has time. He’s in Cheyenne. He’s getting the money to—” I stopped. Looking at SJ’s face, I could see none of these things meant anything. Mr. Cabot was on a rampage.

  I turned from the room, ready to fly to the ranch as fast as my feet would carry me. But Sarah Jane grabbed my shirt.

  “Ledge! There’s no way to stop him. It’s too—it’s too . . .” SJ sniffed and stammered, unable to finish. What had she been about to say? That it was too late? Too dangerous? It didn’t matter.

  “You don’t understand!” I said, pulling away. “There’s no one there, SJ. No one who can do anything.” Not even the twins would be there to protect their home from Cabot, not if they’d struck out far, hunting for Eva Mae’s tall-tale treasure in the outer edges of the Flying Cattleheart. Sure, invisible Samson might be able to tie Noble Cabot’s shoelaces together, or try to scare the workman with his shadow. But what good would those things do against bulldozers?

  “I have to go,” I said, knowing the fate of the ranch would be left to a three-legged dog if I didn’t. Beneath my skin, the ants were seething. I wanted to take Noble Cabot’s entire house down then and there. I could do to Sarah Jane’s dad what he was about to do to my uncle. What he’d already done to the T-shirt shop in town. What he was planning to do to the five-and-dime, and the salvage yard too.

  And I didn’t need a bulldozer or a wrecking ball to do it.

  “Ledge, no.” Sarah Jane whispered my name like she knew what I was thinking, her voice pulling me back from the brink, back from a dangerous ledge I hadn’t even seen myself nearing. I knew I could make the choice to be like Mr. Cabot. Or I could choose another way.

  The Ledger Kale way.

  “I have to go,” I said again.

  “He’s my dad, Ledge.”

  “So?”

  “So—I’m coming with you!” Sarah Jane wiped her eyes and shoved her feet into her shoes. I stood in my socks, itching to go as I waited for SJ to lace up her green Converse low-tops—the same ones that had tangled with my running shoes on my very first day in Sundance. The day all this started.

  “Fine,” I said. “But if you can’t keep up, you’ll have to catch up.” Turning, I shot through the bedroom door, then stopped—or would have, if my sock-feet hadn’t sent me sliding right into Hedda the Horrible, who stood at the top of the stairs. Hedda held her broom in one hand and her rolled-up tabloid in the other, and she glared at me as if I were a bug she’d like to flatten.

  A headline spiraling round her paper caught my eye, one worthy of The Sundance Scuttlebutt:MARS NEEDS HOUSEKEEPERS

  Apparently, Hedda was looking for a new job . . . on another planet.

  I couldn’t push past her—I didn’t want to knock the woman down the stairs—and I didn’t have time to talk my way around her either. Backing up, I slipped on one of SJ’s pencils. With a sudden inspiration, I bent to pick it up.

  I shoved the pencil at Sarah Jane, then fished one of the loose notebook papers from my pocket and pushed that at her as well.

  “What do you want me to do? Take notes?”

  I grabbed SJ’s arm and pulled her close, whispering in her ear exactly what I wanted her to write. She looked at me like she thought I’d cracked my last marble, but didn’t waste time asking questions. Sarah Jane wrote quickly, pressing the paper against my back. Then she handed me what she’d written, watching as I moved toward Hedda, holding out the piece of paper. Careful not to look at it myself.

  “Have you read today’s
headline?”

  Hedda’s brow furrowed as she glanced at the words:THE MOTHER SHIP IS HERE FOR YOU

  Eyes round, Hedda dropped her newspaper and broom. Her hands flew to her heart and fluttered there nervously. Then she lit down the stairs, collected her purse, and left through the front door.

  “Where is she going?” SJ asked, bewildered.

  “She’s either leaving town, or looking for the landing site,” I answered with a shrug. Sarah Jane stood up taller, eyes dancing.

  “That’s the power of the press!”

  “No, that’s the power of Sarah Jane Cabot,” I replied. But I didn’t have time to explain more. Not right now.

  I pulled Sarah Jane down the stairs and out the door, nodding to the tall birch tree beside the house as I crammed my feet back in my sneakers. For what it was worth, I’d kept my promise to Uncle Autry: I hadn’t put one shoe inside the Cabot house.

  Chapter 34

  SPEEDING FROM THE CABOT HOUSE, I wasn’t supersonic, but I was close. I’d never run so fast in my entire life. If I’d been running against Ryan, I would’ve beat him easy. But there was more at stake now than a half marathon, a time to beat, or a trophy. This race had to count—really count—and I was glad I’d trained so hard for it. If only Dad could see me now!

  Sarah Jane matched me stride for stride, as if she and I had been running in sync together all summer rather than constantly tripping each other up. We passed the Welcome to Sundance sign still swinging from one bolt in the wind. With a snap! and a backward glance, I repaired the sign—no problem. If only I could snap my fingers and do the same for Willie’s, the salvage yard, and the Flying Cattleheart. But I knew there were some things I couldn’t fix—and I was reminded of it again when we reached the ranch’s towering steel gate.

  The gravel road cresting the ridge was brutally gouged and furrowed. A parade of heavy equipment had left thick tire treads in the red soil, flattening the tall grass and wildflowers, squashing grasshoppers, butterflies, and tiger beetles in its path. Warm wind mixed diesel fumes with the smell of crushed sage, creating a pungent mix that made my stomach churn.

  Suddenly, the ground rumbled, quaking hard enough to make me and SJ stagger and clasp hands as we tried to keep our balance.

  “Ledge! Is it an earthquake?” SJ was breathless. I couldn’t answer—I didn’t know. On the other side of the ridge, thick billows of dirt and dust rose up in grubby clouds. The tremor only lasted seconds, but it shook me to my core.

  I’m here too late, I thought. The demolition’s started.

  Up and over the ridge we went, panting as we reached the slope on the other side. Sarah Jane clutched a stitch in her side but didn’t ask to stop. Dust hung thick over the basin of the ranch. I couldn’t see what was happening below until we drew closer. Then details of the scene came into sharp focus.

  At first even I had trouble reconciling what I saw with what I remembered the ranch to be. For Sarah Jane, the disconnect between the old landscape and this new one was even harder to fathom.

  “Ledge! When did your uncle get the moat?”

  I was having trouble with that one too. Between the time I’d left the Flying Cattleheart and now, the path of the river had altered. Now, instead of burbling around the far side of the Bug House, the cascading waters rushed rapidly through a deep gully that wound around the O’Connells’ log house. The “moat” trenched through Rocket’s garden, then doubled back to snake in front of the conservatory, resuming its course on the far side of Cam Beacham’s lucky-glove cottonwood.

  The last person to move the banks of that river—the only person—was Grandpa Bomba. But these days Grandpa Bomba couldn’t move his own chair. Still, there was no other explanation. Somehow, Grandpa must have found the strength . . . or borrowed a lion’s share.

  The resounding bark of a dog yanked my attention away from the wayward waterway. Following the sound west, I saw Mr. Cabot climbing down out of his truck on the other side of the current, silhouetted against a settling haze of dust. Leaning on his cane, his shape was unmistakable, and his yellow CAD Co. hard hat glinted in the sun like a hazard beacon.

  Mr. Cabot moved to stand in front of the Bug House, quickly joined by a company of slack-jawed workmen and a sloth of heavy equipment as every engine went quiet, one after the next. Mr. Cabot appeared to be waiting for a barrier to be removed, or some high-noon face-off to end.

  “Daddy! Stop!” SJ cried as she and I changed course, leaving the gravel road and cutting across the field toward the conservatory—toward Mr. Cabot, two bulldozers, three trucks, an excavator, and a backhoe. There was a spot where Grandpa had made the banks of the gully too narrow, the water flowing mostly underground. It was a small breach in the defenses, but one that had allowed the wreckers, and now us, to cross over.

  Hearing his daughter’s cry, Cabot turned. I could see Bitsy, all three feet planted like a not-so-misfit guard dog in front of the glass-roofed barn. Hackles raised. Teeth bared. The dog that I’d seen licking crayfish and teaming up with tarantulas looked ready to chomp the seat right out of Noble Cabot’s pants.

  But Bitsy wasn’t alone in her fight. Two other figures had inserted themselves between Cabot and the conservatory, standing their ground against seemingly impossible odds. Just behind Bitsy, Grandpa Bomba stood in Cabot’s way, looking stronger than I’d ever seen him. His old muscles were as withered and wrinkled as ever, but he no longer looked like a man knock-knock-knocking on the door of heaven.

  The third figure was Samson—flesh and bone and fully visible.

  Half kneeling next to Grandpa Bomba, Samson’s whip-thin frame was tense as he held fast to Bitsy, the late-afternoon wind lashing his long hair into his eyes. Samson looked just as he had in my earlier there-and-gone visions, only now there was no trace of transparency on him. He’d shown up completely—stepped up completely—making Grandpa and Bitsy stronger.

  Down on one knee, Samson held Bitsy back with one hand as she barked and lunged at Cabot and his men, showing them what kind of dog she could be, stalwart as ever, even if she was down one leg. With his other hand, Samson held fast to Grandpa’s arm in a way that made me wonder if it was Samson supporting Grandpa Bomba, or the other way around. My cousin’s face was gaunt and focused. Giving his strength to Grandpa was taking everything out of him—not just his invisibility. The bugs inside the conservatory had a rag-tag team of unlikely champions.

  The Goliath beetles, stick insects, and butterflies had no way of knowing that their safely controlled and protected environment was about to come crashing down, sending them out into a world they weren’t prepared for, or one that might not be prepared for them.

  I knew exactly how that felt. I also knew what it meant to have people standing up for me.

  “Daddy, stop!” Sarah Jane cried again, grabbing her father’s hand as she reached him, still struggling to catch her breath.

  “Sarah Jane! You shouldn’t be here!” Cabot’s face twisted as he pulled his hand free. He looked at me and his face turned purple. I thought his head might be about to explode. Then shouts rose from behind us, and the girls appeared at the top of the north ridge. The twins must have spotted the cloud of dust and felt the earth rumble too. Now Marisol and Mesquite were headed toward the Bug House as well, their backpacks bumping heavily behind them. Fedora ran out ahead—her own Kale-family speed genes kicking in. Despite everything, I smiled. Wait until Dad saw that! Fe’s feet were a Road Runner blur!

  “Daddy, this is crazy!” Sarah Jane clung to her father. “There are amazing things here. Wonderful things. What you’re doing will make the worst, most wrong sort of headline!”

  Cabot dropped his chin to his chest, his shoulders heaving. I stood back, waiting to see what he’d do. Close by, Grandpa and Samson watched and waited too. Bitsy stopped barking. Cabot’s workmen shuffled their feet and tipped their hard hats back. All eyes were on Noble Cabot.

  Mr. Cabot stood still for so long, I thought the Bug House might be saved. I waited for
him to toss up his hands and turn to go. Instead he raised his cane and brought it down again in one swift slicing motion.

  He’d given his men the signal to proceed.

  The workmen adjusted their hard hats and fired up their equipment. The deafening rattle of tracks, drive trains, and hydraulic cylinders hammered my eardrums. The demolition crew moved toward the conservatory, grim-faced, the noise of their machinery drowning out the shouts of the twins as they drew nearer, and muffling SJ’s cries to stop.

  Maybe Sarah Jane could stop her father the same way we’d deflected Hedda. I dug into my pocket, pulling out SJ’s loose notebook papers, only to have the wind scatter them from my hand. I realized quickly that it didn’t matter. We didn’t have a pencil.

  As the bulldozers and excavators lurched slowly toward the bug house, Grandpa used the last of his strength—the last of Samson’s strength—to shift earth and rock one last time, churning half a dozen monumental boulders up from deep in the earth to try to block the wreckers.

  Bitsy barked again. But in the noise ringing and grinding from the bulldozers as they began the new task of pushing Grandpa’s boulders out of the way, her woofs and howls went mute.

  Moments later, Grandpa Bomba crumpled like an empty burlap sack.

  Barely catching Grandpa as he caved in, Samson let go of Bitsy. The big black dog lunged straight for Mr. Cabot. Sarah Jane’s dad was doing what he could to push her into one of the trucks, trying to remove her from what was about to become a dangerous mess of fallen wood and steel and glass and flying bugs. As Bitsy nabbed Cabot’s pant leg, I ran to help Samson pull Grandpa out of the path of an oncoming bulldozer.