The Madre de Aguas of Cuba

by Adam Gidwitz

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Schmoke employees had just passed Uchenna and the professor, on their way back to the street where they’d left their truck.

  “Hey,” Uchenna whispered to the professor. “Where’s Elliot?”

  Professor Fauna’s eyes widened.

  And then, unnaturally loudly, the professor said, “Um, don’t you want your barrel?”

  The Schmokers turned and looked over their shoulders. “You keep it,” said the woman.

  “Ah,” answered Professor Fauna, “you must not know that littering is illegal in Cuba! I may have to report you to the authorities. The penalties for law-breaking are very harsh.”

  The Schmokers turned and stared at Professor Fauna like he had just done something very, very stupid. “Are you threatening us?” the man asked. He cracked his knuckles again, and the woman reached for her crowbar.

  “Um, no!” said Professor Fauna. “I would not threaten you! Under the circumstances, that would be, uh . . . unwise!”

  “It sounded like you were threatening us,” said the woman.

  “It did sound like you were threatening them,” Uchenna agreed.

  Professor Fauna looked at Uchenna in disbelief.

  The Schmokers advanced on them.

  “Why would you throw me under the omnibus like that?” Professor Fauna hissed at Uchenna.

  The Schmokers came closer.

  “Well, I just think you were being rude to these nice, but very littery, tourists,” Uchenna replied.

  The man cracked his knuckles.

  “I do not understand what you are trying to do here,” Professor Fauna said, exasperated.

  Closer.

  “Get me beat up?” he went on.

  The woman hit her palm with the crowbar.

  “Of course not!” Uchenna replied.

  Closer.

  “I just—”

  RRRRUMBLE!

  The Schmokers spun around. “Is that our truck?” the man asked.

  Uchenna said, “It sounds like your truck.”

  RRRRUMBLE! RRRRUMBLE! RRRRUMBLE! HONNNNNNK!

  “Where’s it going?” the man demanded.

  “I don’t know!” cried the woman.

  Suddenly, the Schmokers were sprinting out of the alley, away from Uchenna and Professor Fauna.

  “What on earth were you doing just now?!” Professor Fauna demanded of Uchenna. “You were putting me in very grave danger!”

  “I was improvising! And . . . I hadn’t quite figured out how it would end. Sorry. But . . . is Elliot in their truck?”

  Professor Fauna wrinkled his forehead. Then his eyebrows shot up. “¡Vaca gigante! I had not thought of that! After them!”

  Uchenna and the professor ran to the end of the alley. When they arrived at the corner, they saw the Schmokers chasing their truck down the narrow street.

  Uchenna exclaimed, “Did Elliot steal their truck?!?”

  “Of course not,” said a voice behind them.

  Uchenna and Professor Fauna turned around. Elliot was standing there, a clipboard in his hands.

  “I would never steal their truck.” Then he grinned. “I don’t have a driver’s license. But I may have wedged a hard hat between the accelerator and the bottom of the steering column. Also, I swiped these papers.” He waved the clipboard. “Which seem to contain a lot of information.” Elliot beamed.

  But Uchenna said, “Are you telling us that no one is driving that truck?”

  CRASH!

  The truck slammed into the wall of a building.

  “Right,” said Elliot. The magnitude of his actions was beginning to dawn on him. Plaster fell from the building’s wall all over the hood of the truck. A half dozen barrels toppled out of the truck and into the street. “We should probably get out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Elliot was beginning to come to terms with what he had done.

  “I’m a criminal, I’m a criminal, I’m a criminal,” he muttered to himself as Professor Fauna knocked on Rosa’s door.

  “You stole from the bad guys,” Uchenna reassured him. “They’re poisoning Havana’s water.” And then she added, “For some reason.”

  “Yes,” said Elliot, “but everyone knows that two wrongs don’t make a right. They poison. I steal.” Elliot threw his head back and raised his hands to the overcast skies. “How does that make anything better?!”

  “You’re being very dramatic.”

  The door swung open. It was Yoenis. “¡Muchachos! You have been gone a long time. We were beginning to worry! Come in!”

  They entered the shaded walkway beside the garden. Jersey immediately leapt into Elliot’s arms. He nuzzled Elliot’s chin with his soft, furry head and happily plucked Elliot’s sweater with his claws.

  “I might as well just throw this sweater away,” Elliot grumbled. But he rubbed Jersey’s soft back, and that made him feel a little better about his new career as a criminal.

  They walked through the garden, and into the bright kitchen, where Rosa had put out a grand spread of pastries. She handed Professor Fauna a mug. “Café con leche,” she said.

  “Careful,” said Yoenis. “My mom makes it very strong and very sweet.”

  Professor Fauna took a swig. Instantly, he looked like he’d received an electric shock. He began to suck the café con leche from the mug.

  Rosa spread her hand out over the pastries. “Pastelitos. Here,” she said and picked up a flaky one that oozed with sticky red jam and handed it to Uchenna. “Guayaba. Buenísimo.”

  “So,” said Yoenis, “did you learn anything? About unicorns? Or, more urgently, about our friend the Madre de aguas?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes!” Professor Fauna said, thrusting one arm into the air. He tried to take another swig of the café con leche, but the mug was already empty. He shook it a few times. He looked at Rosa. “¿Un poquito más, por favor?”

  Rosa and Yoenis exchanged a glance. But she poured him some more.

  “The unicorn story can wait! We have an urgent matter on our hands! ¡Vengan, vengan, vengan!” Professor Fauna waved them over to the table. He took out the papers that Elliot had taken from the Schmoke truck.

  “Oh!” Elliot moaned. “The fruit of a forbidden tree!”

  Uchenna rolled her eyes. “He’s just feeling guilty that he took these.” And she told Rosa and Yoenis the story.

  Rosa tut-tutted. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” she told Elliot. “And have a pastelito de guayaba.” She turned to take one from the plate—and gasped. “Jersey!” Jersey was sitting on the pastelito platter, devouring them.

  Rosa shooed him off and gave Elliot a slightly mangled pastelito. Then she cleaned off the table so they could examine the papers more closely.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “This is just a random list of addresses and dates,” said Yoenis, studying the papers.

  At the top of the sheet ran the words, SCHMOKE SURE-TO-CHOKE INSECTICIDE DISTRIBUTION SCHEDULE.

  Then, beneath that, were the addresses and dates:

  98 CALZADA DE MÁXIMO GÓMEZ, CIENFUEGOS: APRIL 1

  10 CALLE DE LA TORRE, SANTA CLARA: APRIL 1

  53 CALLE MARTÍ, CAMAJUANÍ: APRIL 2

  1895 CALZADA DE OÑO, SAGUA LA GRANDE: APRIL 4

  Flipping to the last pages, Yoenis said, “These here are in Havana. The first ones were all far away.”

  Every address was marked off except for the last few on the very last page.

  Rosa, Yoenis, Uchenna, and Professor Fauna stared at the pages. Jersey was licking pastelito crumbs off the floor. Elliot was at the sink, his back to them, washing the sticky guayaba off his hands.

  “I can’t make sense of it,” said Yoenis.

  Uchenna glanced nervously at Elliot. Then she whispered to Yoenis, “Did Elli
ot commit his first crime for nothing?”

  “Technically,” whispered Professor Fauna, who was now shaking from the caffeine and sugar of the cafés con leche, “this was not his first crime. We have committed many crimes together. Breaking and entering. Truancy. Breaking and entering again. Fraud.” Uchenna could not believe what she was hearing. The professor went on. “Underage piloting of an unlicensed airplane. Illegal trafficking of an animal across international borders.” He turned to Rosa, and whispering with fierce urgency for no apparent reason, said, “May I have another cup of your delicious café con leche?” Uchenna looked positively frightened of him now.

  “Better not, Mito,” Rosa said, and patted his quivering hand.

  Elliot had come up behind the group and was studying the addresses and dates over Uchenna’s shoulder. “These are locations, right?” he said.

  “Right,” said Yoenis.

  “So, the first thing we need is a map.”

  Uchenna frowned. “You are obsessed with maps.”

  He smirked at her. “Sometimes obsessions are useful.”

  So Rosa brought out a map of Cuba.

  “You don’t happen to have a pink highlighter, do you?” Elliot asked.

  “Why pink?” Uchenna asked. And then her eyes lit up “Ohhhh . . .”

  “Sorry, mi’jo,” Rosa said. “I don’t have any highlighters.”

  “Yes, you do,” Yoenis said. “I brought you some from Miami!”

  “Why? I don’t use highlighters.”

  Yoenis shrugged. “I had some extra room in my bag.” He hurried off and came back with a pink highlighter.

  “Okay!” said Elliot. “Rosa, if you would read out the addresses, and Yoenis, if you’d find them on the map and mark them in pink, that would be very helpful.”

  So they began. The first were farms at the distant edges of Cuba, as far from Havana as you could get. But as Rosa kept reading out addresses, the pink crept inland.

  “¡Miren!” said Rosa at one point. “That is my brother’s farm!”

  Yoenis colored it pink.

  “What date is next to your brother’s farm?” Elliot asked.

  “July twenty-first.”

  “Do you know what happened on July twenty-first at your brother’s farm?”

  Rosa furrowed her brow. “Not off the top of my head. . . .”

  Uchenna looked knowingly at Elliot and then asked, “Is it possible that your brother bought the Schmoke’s Sure-to-Choke insecticide around then?”

  Rosa’s face went pale. “Yes . . . he was telling me about this new insecticide that all the farmers were using. . . . He said it worked miracles.”

  “What’s the opposite of a miracle?” Uchenna asked. “Or . . . actually, miracle, but evil?

  “A disaster?” Elliot suggested.

  “Yes. A disaster. That’s what the Sure-to-Choke was.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Yoenis.

  Elliot answered Yoenis’s question with another question: “When did the drought start?”

  “This summer, I’d say,” Rosa replied. “Or late spring. . . .” And then it was her turn to say, “Ohh . . .”

  “Keep filling out the map,” said Elliot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  An hour later, they were nearly finished with the list, and almost all of Cuba looked pink. The only non-pink spot left was Havana. They were working quickly now, Rosa calling out addresses and Yoenis coloring them in. A few minutes later, Havana itself was being encroached upon. Professor Fauna was pacing around the kitchen at sixty miles an hour. Jersey was chasing him.

  Suddenly, Rosa gasped.

  “What?” Uchenna demanded.

  Rosa pointed at an address on the paper. “This is right behind our house.”

  “And what’s the date?” Elliot asked.

  Rosa said, “About three weeks ago.”

  “When the Madre de aguas—” Yoenis began.

  “—last visited me.” His mother completed the thought.

  “Just a few more addresses to go,” Elliot told them. “Don’t stop now.”

  A few moments later, Rosa read out a number of addresses that ran along the malecón. “They’re even poisoning the bay!” she spat. “¡Los diablos!”

  “But why?” Yoenis asked. “The bay doesn’t need insecticide!”

  “Go on!” Elliot urged them. “Almost there!”

  “Almost where?” asked Uchenna.

  But Elliot did not answer. He just stared at the map.

  They colored in the last few addresses.

  “There,” said Elliot at last.

  Professor Fauna hurried over to see. Jersey’s teeth were clamped to his heel.

  “The Schmokes have been systematically poisoning Cuba’s water supply,” said Elliot. “Driving the Madre de aguas out of the hills and valleys, out of the fountains and sewers, and finally even out of the bay.”

  “Like our island model in class,” Uchenna explained. “The Madre de aguas has been fleeing the poison, through the underground water table. But where are they driving her to?”

  “Right there,” said Elliot, pointing to the only non-pink spot on the whole map of Cuba. “The only place they haven’t poisoned. That’s where they want her to go.”

  “But what is THERE?!” the professor cried, tearing at his hair.

  “No more caffeine for him, ever,” Rosa muttered.

  Yoenis shook his head and looked disgusted with himself. “I should have known.” He put his finger on the non-pink spot. “This is the location of the new Schmoke International Hotel.”

  “But why?” Rosa asked. “Why do they want my sweet friend at their hotel? What do they plan to do with her?”

  Yoenis shrugged. Jersey gnawed on the professor’s shoelaces.

  After a moment, Uchenna said, “Maybe it has something to do with the farmers?”

  “The Captains of Agriculture!” Elliot exclaimed.

  Rosa looked confused. Yoenis said, “There’s a fancy event for the ‘Captains of Agriculture’ at the Schmoke International Hotel!”

  Professor Fauna stood up so forcefully that he knocked his chair over. “¡Amigos!” he bellowed. “Let us go on a date with some farmers!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The group stuck close together as they hurried through the streets of Havana toward the new Schmoke Hotel under the heavy gray sky. Elliot led the way. Uchenna followed close behind, the backpack containing Jersey pulled tight against her shoulder blades. Elliot had objected to bringing him (“my sweater just can’t take it”), but Uchenna pointed out if they were going to save the Madre de aguas, they should probably bring along the only thing she was afraid of. In case she tried to eat them again.

  Behind them came Yoenis and Professor Fauna, who was still recovering from his caffeine infusion and was therefore walking like he’d stepped on an electrified sewer grate.

  They came to the plaza with the Schmoke International Hotel. The gleaming marble building with sparkling glass windows towered over old cobblestones, reflecting the clouds that refused to rain overhead.

  In front of the hotel, dozens of people stood around in the sunshine, greeting one another, shaking hands, slapping backs, laughing. Some of them were wearing olive-green military uniforms, others were government officials dressed in khakis and nice shirts, while still others wore the faded jeans and guayaberas of farmers and ranchers who’ve just changed after a long day in the fields.

  “The Captains of Agriculture,” Elliot said, gazing across the plaza at them.

  “I guess so,” agreed Uchenna.

  Jersey chirruped.

  “Shh,” Elliot told him.

  Uchenna studied the hotel and considered their options. They could try to blend into the crowd entering the hotel—but there was probably a guest list. Besides, who w
ould believe that two kids were Captains of Agriculture?

  Yoenis tapped Uchenna on the shoulder and indicated that they should follow him.

  Around the side of the hotel there was a service entrance tucked away behind a row of royal palms. Servers in black and white uniforms rolled carts laden with silver platters up a ramp and into the hotel. The members of the Unicorn Rescue Society loitered casually, watching them work.

  Uchenna spoke softly to Elliot, “You don’t happen to have four black serving uniforms with you, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “I do,” said Yoenis. They all looked at him like he was joking. “I brought them from the States. They’re in my suitcase at my mom’s.”

  Elliot said, “I swear you are Mary Poppins.” He pointed. “That cart is pretty big.” Near the base of the ramp, a server was carefully arranging a frilly white cloth over a cart.

  “And we’re pretty small. . . .” Uchenna added. “If Yoenis or Professor Fauna could create a distraction . . .”

  “Professor Fauna would be delighted to create a distraction!!!” Professor Fauna announced. “It is his specialty!!!” He strode forward with an enormous smile.

  “Buenas,” he said to the server who had been arranging the cart. “¡¡¡¿¿¿Tremendo evento esta tarde, no???!!!”

  The server wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve. “Sí, señor.”

  “¡Me encantaría si me invitaran!”

  The server looked confused.

  “What’s he saying?”

  Yoenis turned away so the server wouldn’t see him stifling a laugh. “He says he wants to be invited to the party.”

  “¿Me puedes conseguir una invitación? ¡Y ropa elegante, claro! No conozco a los capitanes de la agricultura, pero si los conociera seríamos buenos amigos!”

  “He says he doesn’t know the Captains of Agriculture yet, but he’s sure they’d be great friends.”

  Elliot muffled a guffaw in his sleeve. Uchenna said, “C’mon.”