Finally, Something Mysterious

by Doug Cornett

  The One and Onlys exchanged quick glances. That was doubtful, but we kept our mouths shut.

  A sudden swell of cheering came from the Bonanza crowd, and we looked over to see my dad doing his twenty-pound-marlin dance while Chad Foster played a groovy tune on the trombone. My mom was dancing the tango with a rubber ducky.

  Byron let out a little groan and bent his head between his knees.

  “So go ahead, Byron,” Shanks said after a little while.

  He looked up at her. “Go ahead what?”

  “Go ahead and explain yourself. This is the part where you fill in all the details of your crime. Haven’t you ever read a detective novel?”

  Byron considered this for a moment. “I’d rather not.”

  “Chunk is right,” Portnoy chimed in. “I think you owe us an explanation. Besides, I’ve got to know what you did in order to know what to do with you.”

  Byron looked like he was about to protest. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead he sighed and patted the bun of hair on his head. “Okay. Well. I guess it started when I was up in the firefighting chopper.”

  “The helicopter?” Peephole asked.

  “Yeah, the helicopter. I’ve been doing these training pickups and dumps for the last week or so. Out to Schuylerville Lake to pick up water, and then over to the open space below Highway 43 to dump it. I begged my mom to let me be in charge on a real flight out to the fire, but she said I had to prove I knew how to handle the equipment first. So every training run we pass over the center of Bellwood, and every run I look down on Mr. Pocus’s house. He’s always out there, working on his tomato garden. Every time I see him I get angry, because I’m reminded of all the grief he gave me. He used to torment me all the time, and I don’t know, I just…”

  “You don’t have to explain that to me,” Peephole said. “I completely understand.”

  “But this one morning, I look down from the chopper and he’s not there. His tomato plants are out there all alone, unprotected. And then something comes over me. I blacked out for a second with rage, and as we passed by overhead, I flipped the switch to dump the water. Seven hundred and eighty gallons. I wanted to ruin those stupid tomatoes of his. But because I had been so distracted all morning, I didn’t realize that we’d picked up the duckies in the lake. Well, I completely missed Pocus’s yard altogether.”

  “And you hit Babbage’s instead,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “But didn’t anybody see what you had done? What about the helicopter pilot?” Shanks asked.

  Byron shrugged. “Felix is the oldest pilot in the department. He knows his way around a helicopter, but he’s half deaf and not the most observant. He didn’t notice when we dumped nothing but air over the field. Anyway, after the chopper run, I booked it over to Babbage’s, but there was already a crowd gathering. And that’s when I started freaking out.”

  “Why?” Shanks asked.

  “Because I thought that Officer Portnoy might take the duckies back to the station, and my mom might see them, and she might be curious and ask questions and then figure out that I’d dumped them, which is a horrible misuse of the department equipment. Not only would she never allow me to go on a real mission, she’d probably kick me off the Junior Firefighters….But I live for the Junior Firefighters.”

  “So you broke into the storage shed and removed the duckies?” Peephole asked.

  Byron’s long fingers spread out in front of him. “It’s not really breaking in if I have the key,” he said. “Still, I knew it was wrong. I told myself that I wasn’t getting rid of evidence—I was moving it to a place where nobody would ever find it.”

  “We found it,” Shanks said.

  “Yeah, I figured that out as soon as I saw the duckies all over the Bonanza. There was even one on the fire department’s sign-up table. How could I have known the Bell Woods would suddenly be such a hot spot? I almost hit somebody on the old forest road.”

  “That was Janice Wagner,” I said. “There’s still one thing I don’t get. Why’d you go back and tear up Mr. Pocus’s tomato plants?”

  “How’d you know that was me?” Byron asked, real curiosity in his voice. He seemed like he was almost relieved to have confessed.

  “When we talked to you at the storage shed,” I explained, “you said that Pocus reminded you of one of his garden gnomes. But there’s a big fence between Pocus’s garden and Babbage’s backyard, and we couldn’t see any part of his garden from where we were talking on Tuesday morning. Only someone who has been in Pocus’s garden would know he had gnomes back there, but you told Shanks you’d never been to Pocus’s house. That’s what gave you away.”

  Everybody, even Byron, looked impressed with my detective work. “I wasn’t planning on doing it,” he said, “but when I saw Pocus grinning over his fence at the duckies, something about his face just got to me. I snuck back over there later and tore the tomatoes out, which was pretty stupid. I guess I owe him an apology, not that he’ll accept it.”

  “The old Pocus wouldn’t,” I said. “Who knows? I have a feeling that he’s a changed man.”

  “Officer Portnoy,” Byron said, gathering himself to his full height. “I’m ready to face justice. Can I ask one favor?”

  “What’s that?” Portnoy asked.

  “My mom is out fighting what’s left of the big fire now. Can I explain myself to her first? I think I owe it to her.”

  “Come on,” Portnoy said, escorting Byron by the arm, “let’s give her a call from the station.”

  Portnoy led Byron a few steps toward the crowd, then halted and turned back to us. He raised a flat hand to the brim of his hat. A real salute.

  We returned it. The One and Onlys, Bellwood’s official unofficial junior detective force, had solved the case of the mysterious duckies.

  “I think I sat in chipmunk poop,” Peephole said, twisting around to get a better view of the seat of his shorts.

  Shanks and I fell to the grass, laughing.

  “Peephole! I can’t believe you’re here!” I said.

  “Did you run away again?” Shanks asked, cringing.

  “Not this time.” Peephole shook his head. “I begged my parents to let me go to the Triple B. I told them I had important business to take care of.”

  “I can’t believe our luck,” I said. “You showed up at the perfect moment. If you’d been able to pull the ducky out of Janice’s tuba yourself, Byron would have escaped.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” he said with a wink. “Who do you think put that ducky in there to begin with?”

  “You?” Shanks and I yowled in unison.

  Peephole’s face flushed with a proud grin. “This chipmunk in a cowboy hat dropped it at my feet as I was walking up toward the stage. It gave me an idea. I stuffed it way down there right before the band went onstage, when everybody was watching Pocus announce the winner. I knew that Byron was the only person with arms long enough to reach it.”

  “But…how did you know that he was the ducky thief?” I asked.

  “You kept saying that you felt like we missed something at the storage shed. So as I was sitting next to Trill this morning, I went back in my memory to that day. I remembered that Janice’s shoes were really muddy, even though Bellwood was in a drought. It made sense once we found out she’d been in the swamp. There was another set of footprints out there—somebody with bigger feet. And that’s when I saw it in my memory of the storage shed. Byron shut his locker right as we started talking to him. Before he did, I caught a glimpse of them stuffed in there: a pair of muddy sneakers. Once I remembered that, everything fell into place. I knew that Byron had to be our ducky mastermind.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Not bad at all, Peephole.”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Shanks waved her hands in front of her. “You’re telling me that you touched a rubber
ducky that had been in a chipmunk’s mouth?”

  Peephole smiled casually. “I’m a big brother now. I can’t be afraid of dumb things like that.”

  The three of us looked at the crowd, which was now a full-on dance party. Janice was spinning around her giant tuba, Chad Foster was doing the funky chicken, and Pocus was two-stepping across the stage. Yep. Just another ordinary day in Bellwood.

  “Well, now what?” Shanks asked.

  I grinned. “Who’s hungry for some victory bratwurst?”

  A few days after the Bonanza, my parents got a phone call from Officer Portnoy. He congratulated them on their victory and said that it was an honor to come in second place to such rising stars of the sausage world. And then he asked to talk to me.

  “Macaroni, I wanted to congratulate you, too,” he said, his gravelly voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a bowl of clam chowder.

  “Call me Paul,” I said. “And thanks, chief, but it was mostly my parents who made the recipe.”

  “I meant on the ducky case. You and your friends figured it all out. Impressive stuff. Sorry I doubted you.”

  “We work pretty well as a team,” I said. “Is Byron going to jail?”

  “No. Mr. Pocus decided not to press charges over the destruction of his tomato plants. He mentioned something about a ‘new perspective.’ I think maybe the old man has lost it.”

  “What about stealing the ducks from the storage shed? Isn’t that tampering with evidence or something?”

  “Well, it would be, except the ducks weren’t officially evidence, because dumping duckies on somebody’s lawn isn’t a crime. And as Byron said, he didn’t break into the storage shed. He had a key, and access to the shed.”

  “So he didn’t commit any crimes at all?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “Oh, he committed at least one crime. By dumping all those duckies at the swamp, he was littering. He’ll be doing community service for a nice long while. Also, his mom kicked him out of the fire department. At least for now. So anyway, Paul, I figured I owe you guys for helping me solve this one. Okay”—he coughed—“for completely solving it. What can I do to repay you?”

  An idea suddenly occurred to me, but it was a long shot. “How well do you know Chief Willis?”

  “We went to high school together. I respect her as much as possible for a member of the fire department.”

  “Do you think you could ask her to arrange something for me? Well, me and a few of my friends…”

  * * *

  WOCK WOCK WOCK. The sound of the helicopter blades was deafening. Luckily, Chief Willis gave us big earmuff headphones that blocked the noise and connected us to the radio system. She checked that our harnesses were fully fastened, then gave the thumbs-up to the pilot.

  She and her fire crew were making runs back and forth from Schuylerville Lake to the front of the fire all day, and she had agreed to take us along for one dump. After much pleading and lengthy phone conversations with the chief, our parents agreed, too.

  As we lifted slowly into the air, Shanks and I peered out the open door of the helicopter at the helibucket, uncoiling its rope, then rising into the air below us. Peephole kept his eyes closed tight, muttering a prayer to the helicopter gods. He had required a lot of convincing before agreeing to come along for the ride (almost as much as our parents), and now he was clearly second-guessing his decision. Janice Wagner hadn’t needed any convincing. She had been waiting for this moment all summer. She flashed me an electric grin and a thumbs-up as we drifted farther away from the launching pad.

  Peephole’s face began to lose color. I nudged Shanks, who was taking in the view while munching on a mouthful of pretzel sticks. Normally, the chief said, food wasn’t allowed in the chopper, but Shanks had convinced her that we’d need “firefighting snacks.” When Shanks looked over at me, I pointed to Peephole.

  Shanks gulped down the pretzels with a mighty effort, then shouted, “Is she as big as a toaster?”

  “Huh?” Peephole looked up for the first time.

  “Trillium,” Shanks said. “Is she as big as a toaster? Or a shoe?”

  “That depends,” Peephole replied, his shoulders relaxing a little. “Kid shoe or adult shoe?”

  “Kid shoe.”

  “Bigger.”

  “World’s tallest man’s shoe?”

  “Much smaller.”

  “Could she fit in a cowboy hat?”

  Peephole looked annoyed. It was working. “Why would you want to fit her in a cowboy hat?”

  “I don’t want to put her in a cowboy hat. I’m asking if you could put her in a cowboy hat.”

  “I’m not answering that question because it’s so dumb.”

  “Loaf of bread?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “No, I’m asking if she’s as big as a loaf of bread.”

  “That depends. Wheat or white?”

  “What’s the difference?” I interjected. “They’re the same size!”

  Peephole thought about this. “Technically, I guess. But wheat feels bigger, doesn’t it? Anyway, yeah, she’s about the size of a small loaf of bread.”

  “Trillium Calloway: The Amazing Wonder Bread Baby,” Shanks said, as if reading a headline.

  “Your friends are funny, Pauly Sweet,” Janice said, laughing.

  “Pauly Sweet?” Peephole and Shanks said together. They looked at each other like they’d both won the lottery. I’d probably never be just Paul again.

  I’d always wondered what Bellwood looked like from above, and now I was getting the chance to find out. The ride out to Schuylerville Lake went by in a flash. Below us, the full tops of green trees blobbed the landscape, reminding me of the broccoli stalks that I avoided on my dinner plate. The swimming pools of the gridded residential neighborhoods soon transformed into ponds and lakes, and then Schuylerville Lake appeared, reflecting the fuzzy morning sun in the smoke-brown sky like a giant mirror laid flat on the earth. We dipped the helibucket carefully into the water, and the downdraft from the helicopter sent out ripples across the surface. Now that we had our ammunition, it was time to head for the fire.

  We could see the smoke rising into the air from a long distance away. So you’re the one causing all this trouble, I thought.

  “The fire is now ninety percent contained.” Chief Willis’s voice crackled through our headphones. “That means that most of it can’t spread anymore. Now it’s a matter of finishing the job.”

  The helicopter tilted toward the flames that were flicking up from the pointed tops of the forest’s pine trees. Below us, as far as we could see, were the charred-black remains of the trees and landscape.

  “Everything is burned,” Shanks said, sadness in her voice.

  “This was a big one,” Chief Willis agreed. “You want to know something cool? The fire ate up so many trees that the canopy of the forest is gone. This means that more sunlight can get to the ground now. And more sunlight means that new seedlings can grow. So, yes, a lot of the forest was burned in the fire—but think of all the new life that will now grow out of it.”

  For the first time Peephole cautiously leaned over for a glance below.

  “Ready with that thing?” Chief Willis motioned at the release button for the helibucket. “Ten seconds until we let it go.”

  The helicopter swooped lower, the smoke rising up into our lungs. “And…NOW!”

  Janice pressed the button. We all watched as a massive spray of water poured onto the flames below. Steam shot up into the air as we zoomed away.

  Before landing back in the field near the fire station, the helicopter hovered over Bellwood for a few minutes. Finally, I got my view from above. There were the interconnected roads, like the arteries of our town, where we raced on our bikes. There was Babbage’s lawn, where the little ducks first appeared, and there
was my house, off in the distance. There was Honest Hardware and its parking lot—the future home of my parents’ bratwurst food cart. There was the field where my parents had finally won the Bonanza and where Peephole proved his detective skills. And there was the old drive-in, the place that used to hold so much magic, being transformed into a Conquistador before our very eyes. The field was about to sprout glossy aisles filled with pink plastic toys, and the edge of the woods where the One and Onlys used to meet would soon be a slick black parking lot marked with diagonal lines. I looked down at the brick and cement block piles littering the once-wild field. There were wooden stakes jabbed into the field like it was a vampire that wouldn’t be killed.

  Bellwood was changing, it was true, but I was starting to understand that change didn’t have to be scary. I thought of Mr. Pocus’s new smiling face, and Trillium, and the Bonanza trophy in our living room. Yes, some things were gone forever. But I couldn’t help but be excited to see what would grow up in their place.

  As Trillium drank more milk, ounce by ounce, day by day, growing bigger in the hospital, the Calloways were getting ready for her. Peephole and his dad finished converting the study into a nursery, complete with what looked like dragons but what Peephole said were flying ponies painted on the walls. Peephole’s mom, getting stronger and stronger every day, finally finished a quilt to hang in the room.

  Trill came home on a bright, sunny morning in late August. The Calloways had a small party in their backyard to celebrate. When my parents and I arrived, Peephole greeted us at the door with his little sister in his arms, pride and confidence radiating from his face, as if he were showing us a trophy he’d won or an ancient treasure he’d discovered. Trill was even smaller than I imagined she’d be, despite the fact that she’d gained almost two full pounds since the day she was born.