by John Eubank
“And why is our cooling system working so well?” asked a tall man with thinning, sandy hair that stuck out in several directions and resisted any effort to comb or control. He had three strong hair-swirls, called “cowlicks” after the whirls cows get from grooming themselves with their tongues.
Named Hendrelmus Steemjammer, he went by Henry. His bushy eyebrows needed trimming, his lower teeth needed straightening, and his entire body seemed slightly crooked. A smudge of black grease went unnoticed on his cheek, and his hands, heavily calloused and scarred, had two knobby fingers that pointed at odd angles from old breaks. The spaces under his nails and between his fingerprints were filled with a permanent layer of black gunk from frequent work on the marvelous but sometimes treacherous and always well-greased machinery of his beloved Beverkenhaas.
“Dad,” a teenage boy said, looking up from a paper full of formulas which he calculated by the light of beeswax candles, “we were doing math, not science.”
Henry made a perplexed blink. “Math?”
It was all too common an occurrence when he home-schooled. His mind not only wandered, it seemed to his children to actually teleport from subject to subject.
“Indifferentials,” said his son, Will. “I don’t get it.”
Henry didn’t fully understand the math lesson, either. Calculus, taking differentials and whatnot, was easy-peasy. He could do that in the morning before his first cup of kaffee, when his brain was nearly paralyzed.
But incalculus, hah! That was a tricky discipline indeed. With incalculus, if one side of an equation actually equaled the other, there was a problem. The truly mind-numbing part was grasping exactly how one side should not equal the other, because that actually mattered.
Henry usually ran such problems through the Variable Engine, but he didn’t want the boy to know he could cheat. Better if he actually learned how to do it himself, Henry thought, but not right now.
“Forget the math,” he said with much enthusiasm and only a slightly foreign accent. “Why is it that our wonderful cooling system works so well?”
Will, whose full name was Wilhelmus Anselm Steemjammer, got up to stretch. Tall and sandy-haired like his father, he had hard muscles from working long hours in the yard and house. He’d recently turned fifteen, and Henry noticed that his boyish features were fading as he turned into a young man.
“Too easy,” Will said.
“Help me teach your sister, then.”
“How about a snack, first? This chill’s making me hungry.”
Henry smiled. “Bring us all something, then.”
How much like his mother he looked, he thought, as he watched Will go to the kitchen. He had her dark gray-green eyes and straight nose, thank goodness. Henry felt his own bulbous nose was odd looking, and his large eyes bugged out a bit too much.
The boy shared his father’s triple cowlick, but one was on the front, where it naturally combed over. Still, the back cowlicks tended to stick up like turkey tails! Steemjammer hair-swirls were unlike others and seemed to have wills of their own: every morning he faced a battle before the mirror, armed with a comb and homemade gels.
“Angelica,” Henry asked, “how goes your math?”
“Too easy,” said his daughter, who spoke, like her brother, without a trace of accent. “I’m doing Dutch.”
A golden blonde, the ten-year-old girl had a rare septuple cowlick, causing her long, wavy hair to stand straight up, fanning out a bit at the top like an expensive hairdo from a fancy salon. A few strands went sideways, which she braided and tucked into the lofty thatch of the rest of her hair.
Her bright eyes were large but didn’t bug out, and Henry found them lovely. Their color depended on the lighting and hues around her; her irises could range from soft green to gray to a near-amber. As long as her nose resisted the temptation to bulb out like a garlic root, her father thought - and it seemed it would stay straight - she’d grow up to be a real beauty.
“Ah, goot,” Henry said. Good. “Hoo gaas oo verkamer op de Dutch?” How goes your studies in Dutch?
“Horrible,” she complained. “Why can’t they keep it simple and just add an ‘s’ to make words plural, like English? Why do I have to memorize all these other ways?”
“English is simple? What about ‘cacti?’ And if it’s ‘geese’ for ‘goose,’ why isn’t it ‘meese’ for ‘moose?’”
“Dad.” Angelica knew she’d never win this argument, so she changed the subject to something that had been bothering her lately: “Is this real Dutch?”
Henry’s bright blue eyes, which were already big, grew even larger as they opened wide with shock. “Of course it’s real Dutch! Straight from Bavaria.”
“Bavaria?”
“Ach, that’s not it. Indeed no. I meant, um – hmm. Well, strip my gears! I’m blanking.”
“Holland.”
“Ya, that thing. Good old Holland.”
“Anyway, I was talking to Brie-”
He arched an eyebrow. “You speak with cheese?”
“Huh? It’s a name.”
“Ya, for a moldy French dairy product.”
“She’s a girl.”
“Do her parents realize what they’ve done?”
Angelica sighed. “Maybe not. I was trying to say that she showed me the Internet-”
“The what?”
“The Internet, and please don’t ask me if it’s for catching fish! It’s a computer thing.”
He blinked, not understanding. “Is it electricity-powered, leef?” Dear.
She nodded.
“I wouldn’t trust it, then,” he stated firmly. “Electricity is treacherous. Extremely dangerous.”
He absentmindedly scratched his arm, where a healed scar showed long and white. It had been caught in some spinning gears and badly cut a few years earlier. At the time, he’d said he was lucky it hadn’t been severed.
“Dad, listen,” Angelica said, wondering how he could be so confused, “she showed me stuff in Dutch on her computer, and it wasn’t the same!”
“Ect neet!” Henry said. No way! “Not the same?”
“I understood some. It talked about tulips and canals. But if that’s Dutch, how could what we’re learning be Dutch, and they’re so different?”
“Ah, now I see.”
Deep in thought, Henry rubbed his face, unknowingly smearing the grease mark all over his cheek.
“Please don’t make up a story,” she chided. “You’re the one who says to always tell the truth.”
He smiled. “Of course. What we’re learning must be an older version of Dutch, one that our ancestors preserved over many years. It may seem strange, but one day, when we go home, it will all make sense. Trust me.”
***
Returning from the kitchen with a plate, Will offered them slices of homemade bread and fresh cheese they’d made from their goats’ milk.
“Still too cold for math,” he said, shivering.
“I know,” Angelica suggested brightly, “let’s go outside and practice fencing or shooting the heavy crossbow!”
“Tomorrow,” her father said. “Let’s solve the mystery of our wonderful cooling system. How is it that our red hot boiler, on the hottest day of the year, instead of cooking us into little roasts, makes it delightfully cool?”
“Freezing, you mean.”
Angelica sat by an open window that let warm outdoor air in. Even so, she wore a pretty red sweater that her mother had knitted for her.
“Well, it is working a bit too well,” Henry admitted. “I’ll fix it if you tell me how we get cold from heat.”
“We use the heat,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she urged her brain to remember, “to squish something.”
“To compress a fluid, good,” said Henry, motioning with his hands like he was pressing something together.
“Right, the fluid is … I forgot.”
“Will?”
“The compressed fluid is cooled and then released,” Will said monotonousl
y, “and the molecules are suddenly free to move around. They need energy for this, so they take heat from the area, creating cold.”
“Perfect, except the last word,” Henry said. “There’s no such thing as cold!”
Angelica sat up, puzzled. “Huh?”
“Cold’s an illusion. We make it up in our heads.”
“I’m shivering for what reason, then?”
“Because of less heat. Always remember, there is only heat. More heat or less heat. Cold cannot move into or out of a system. Only heat.”
“Dad, you say ‘cold’ all the time!” Will protested.
Henry started to argue but couldn’t help chuckling, instead. “Flink kint.” Smart kid. “It’s hard to go through life not saying ‘cold.’ Just try to keep your mind on the deeper truth, then.”
“But I am c-c-cold,” Angelica said through chattering teeth. “And if we don’t warm up, I’ll catch a cold, too!”
“Right, I wish your mother was here, because she’s so much better at teaching,” Henry almost said but stopped himself. It was a touchy subject, especially with little Angelica. Almost six months earlier, his wife, Muriel, had mysteriously vanished. He had theories as to what had happened, but he couldn’t share them, at least not yet. So much had to be kept secret for their own good.
When he wasn’t taking care of the children or running Beverkenhaas, he spent his time trying to figure out where she was and how to get her back. He needed to do that, soon, he knew. Her absence was hard on them all.
“This home-schooling,” he told them, “is tricky for me. At least you’re learning something practical. The public schools, how utterly and completely useless!
“Ganoof.” Enough. “Go outside and finish your lessons while I fix the cooler. Don’t forget your chores.”
A loud, sharp THUMP THUMP THUMP and SNAP came from under the floor.
“Verdoor!” he said. Oh no! “Let me handle this.”
He grabbed a brass oil lamp - the kind old train conductors and engineers used, with a wire handle for carrying and a hand-blown glass globe. Stomping down the wooden steps into the basement, he vanished into the inky darkness.
***
The Steemjammer kids hardly reacted. Minor emergencies – machines suddenly acting up and needing attention – happened all the time in Beverkenhaas.
“How does he do that?” Angelica said.
Will blinked like his father had. “Huh?”
“I asked him how the Dutch we speak can be so different from other people’s Dutch, and he gave an answer that didn’t mean anything!”
“Oh, you’ve discovered one of his better tricks. He’s pretty good at it, isn’t he?”
“But why does he do that?”
He shrugged. “Obviously there’s some big secret we’re not supposed to know.”
“What?”
“If I knew, it wouldn’t be secret.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“That’s because I don’t have one.”
She sighed. “I bet it has something to do with Mom.”
He noticed how she fought to stay tough and not get emotional. Thinking about their mother used to really upset her, but lately she’d been keeping it under control.
“She’ll be back soon,” Angelica said, “won’t she?”
“Very soon, I think,” Will said, wishing he could sound more confident. “Let’s go outside and warm up.”
***
After finishing their lessons, they moved on to their afternoon chores. Angelica fed and milked the goats. Next, she collected white, green and chocolate brown eggs from the hens’ nesting boxes, where Gustaavus, her dad’s favorite little stone gnome, seemed to stand guard.
He wore a bright red cap and goggles, and instead of smiling like the other gnomes, his expression was quite serious. She imagined he was focused on some extremely important task.
“Good Gus,” she said, kissing him on the forehead.
After shoveling manure and feeding the horse and cow, Will pumped several hundred gallons of water into the rooftop reservoir - a large wooden tank that he accessed by climbing a ladder up the side of the house. The pump had a long handle made of stout ash wood and a metal pipe that came from their hand-dug, brick-lined well. If he put his back into it, he could pump twelve gallons a minute.
It was extremely important, he knew, to keep the reservoir full. Besides providing them water, it fed the boiler, and if it ever went dry, horrible things could happen. He didn’t mind this chore, but still, he wished his dad would fix the automatic pump.
Will took a moment to look around. On the roof, it seemed he was much higher up than he really was. Their acre lot was jammed full of crops and livestock pens, which crossed the property lines into the vacant lots on either side. No one seemed to notice or care.
Down on the street, a couple of kids stopped their bikes to gawk at Beverkenhaas before moving on. Will’s heart tugged as he recognized them. They’d once been his friends, playing together all the time, but something had happened. He hadn’t spoken to them in years.
He remembered how they complained bitterly about having to take out the trash or clean their rooms, while Will and his sister ran a small farm with their parents, not to mention the endless labor needed to keep the machinery working. But he didn’t mind.
In fact, it was satisfying to think about all they could do by simply burning wood, but something had been bothering him lately: a feeling that he and his family didn’t belong in Ohio. It was obvious that his parents were hiding something, but what? Were they in some sort of witness protection program? Spies? None of his guesses made any sense.
He knew he needed to toughen himself and say: “Dad, show me where we’re from. Point to the exact spot on a map. Then, tell me why we left and why we use steam when no one else does. Also, why is Mom gone? Straight and plain answers, right now.”
He’d tried before, but, as his sister had noticed, their father was good at giving non-answers. Will felt if he was firm enough, he could get the full story. He told himself to be strong this time and not give up until he got a real answer.
***
He met his sister at the back door, above which hung an old iron shield painted with a pair of penguins and a sword crossed over a ball-peen hammer. Latin words were written in white: “Donec ignis potens et altum vaporem.” Keep your fire stoked and your steam high.
They kicked off their dirt-caked klompen – wooden clogs - which they’d been wearing because of the mud, and went inside.
“Still freezing,” Angelica said, her breath misting.
“Even colder,” Will agreed, “except that cold ‘doesn’t exist.’”
She laughed. “Right!”
Putting on sweaters, they looked for Henry.
“Dad?” Will called.
This time, he thought, he’d do it. He’d keep asking until he got to the truth, but where was his father?
“Dad?” Angelica yelled down the stairs.
The only answer was the rattling and clanking of machinery, so they went down.
“Dad?” said Will at the bottom of the steps.
The large, deep basement, filled with contraptions and dominated by the big, hot boiler, offered many places for a person to hide. They searched, but their father was nowhere to be found. His oil lantern, however, still burning, sat on a workbench.
“He’s gone,” Will said.
Chapter 3
a hOUSE OF SECRETS
“I didn’t see the children leave for school this morning,” Waverly Norman announced with grim satisfaction.
Ron winced. He’d been in the garage, working on his latest undertaking, a way to project three-dimensional images of building designs in the air with lasers. All he’d wanted was to sneak inside unnoticed and get a cup of coffee.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” she said.
“It’s Saturday?” he offered.
Glancing up from her knitting, she started to chide him for stup
idity but realized it was in fact the weekend.
“They didn’t go to school yesterday,” she recovered.
“Maybe they were ill.”
“I saw them picking crops and chasing that horse. They aren’t sick. They’re truant, and I’ve decided to call the School Police!”
Ron wondered if there even was such an entity in this remote area. They lived outside the town of Bellevue, Ohio, and their street, Newcomen Lane, was a largely failed real estate development, with most of the lots remaining unbuilt.
“After that,” she said, “I’m calling the Health Department. Then, we’ll see some action around here.”
“What if these Steemjammers home-school?” he mused.
“Then, they should be put in prison!”
Stridently loyal to the public school system, Waverly despised home-schooling and had lobbied hard against it. The only donations she’d ever made in her life were to a political organization dedicated to ending the practice.
“Now you’ve done it,” she said, rubbing her temples. “You’ve given me another migraine.”
“I think knitting those thingies is what’s giving you headaches,” he said. “That and worrying about everything.”
And constantly correcting everyone, he tactfully decided not to add.
“These are doilies,” she corrected, jabbing at him with a long steel needle as if it were a fencing foil, “not ‘thingies.’ And as any idiot could tell, this is purling, not knitting.”
Her aged mother, Agnes Finch, who sat in her favorite armchair, also worked on a doily. She’d recently suffered a stroke but could hear, think and move just fine. The only harm it had done was to take away her ability to speak. She rolled her eyes and went off in disgust.
“I think Agnes was knitting,” Ron said.
Waverly answered with a ball of yellow yarn, thrown at his forehead hard enough to actually sting a little.
***
“I guess he’s really gone,” Angelica said.
They’d just finished another search of Beverkenhaas and found nothing, not one clue. Will was worried sick but tried not to let it show. He knew his sister was doing her best to be strong, but he feared she wouldn’t hold up much longer. Three days had passed with no sign of their father.