The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester

by Barbara O'Connor

They had walked right up the middle of the tracks all the way to the main road and back again.

  They had put their ears against the metal rail to listen for the train.

  But the train only came late at night.

  “Come on, boys,” Owen called to Pete and Leroy when he got to the end of the path at the tracks.

  The two dogs trotted along behind him, sniffing at every tree and rock and pricker bush.

  Owen looked up the tracks.

  Then he looked down the tracks.

  Nothing unusual.

  Just the same stuff he saw nearly every day.

  The mound of red dirt that ran beside the tracks.

  Gravel.

  Weeds.

  A few rusty soda cans.

  A broken bottle.

  Nothing unusual.

  “Shoot,” Owen said out loud, making Pete and Leroy look at him and cock their heads.

  Owen had wanted to find whatever it was that had fallen off the train all by himself. But maybe he should tell Travis and Stumpy.

  Owen and Travis and Stumpy had always been good at finding stuff together.

  But then there was the problem of nosy Viola, lurking around, following them, spying on them.

  He would have to wait until just the right time to tell Travis and Stumpy.

  “Come on, boys,” Owen called again to Pete and Leroy.

  Then he headed back up the path toward home, with the two dogs trotting along behind him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Shhh.” Owen pressed a finger to his lips and motioned for Travis and Stumpy to duck behind the barn door.

  He peeked through a crack in the warped boards.

  Viola was tromping across the yard, swinging a Girl Scout canteen with one hand and pushing at her glasses with the other.

  “Dang,” Owen whispered. “She’s coming this way.”

  Travis jabbed a finger up toward the hayloft.

  Owen nodded.

  The three boys dashed across the dirt floor of the barn and scurried up the rickety ladder to the loft. They flopped down on their stomachs, their cheeks pressed against the hay-covered floor, and waited.

  “I know y’all are in there, Owen.” Viola’s irritating voice drifted into the barn.

  Travis poked Owen with an elbow and Stumpy made a little snort noise. Owen flapped a hand at both of them and mouthed, “Be quiet.”

  Viola’s sandals made a slapping noise as she entered the barn and stopped at the bottom of the ladder.

  “I know y’all are in here.” That irritating voice slithered up the ladder and circled around Owen.

  Dang! That girl sure was annoying.

  “What are y’all doing?” The voice pounded Owen on the back of the head.

  The slapping sandals moved away from the ladder and shuffled over to the corner of the barn.

  “What’re y’all building?”

  Owen lifted his head the teeny tiniest bit and peered over the edge of the loft. Viola was rummaging through the stuff that he and Travis and Stumpy had spent all morning gathering. Rolls of chicken wire. Tomato stakes. Baling wire. Twine. Old door hinges.

  Viola poked at a roll of chicken wire. “I know what y’all are building,” she said.

  Travis pursed his lips and glared down at Viola.

  Stumpy’s eyes grew big and round as he looked at Owen in a What now? kind of way.

  Owen crawled to the rear of the loft until he got to a milk crate full of old tractor parts. He grabbed a greasy rubber fan belt, a handful of rusty nuts and bolts, and a broken gauge of some sort. Then he crawled back to the edge of the loft and began flinging the things down to the barn floor, trying to get as close to Viola as possible without actually hitting her.

  The bolts made pingy noises as they hit garden tools and engine parts and ricocheted off the wheelbarrow and the lawn mower. The gauge skidded over the dirt floor and hit the wall of the barn with a crash, followed by the tinkle of broken glass.

  The fan belt landed right on Viola’s sandal. She jerked her foot away and gazed coolly up at Owen.

  “Y’all are building something for that sad old frog,” she said, giving her glasses a nudge up the bridge of her nose with her thumb.

  “His name is Tooley and he’s not sad,” Owen called down from the loft.

  Viola picked up the fan belt and twirled it around her finger. “Frogs don’t have names.”

  “Says who?” Travis hollered down at Viola.

  Stumpy pushed some hay off the edge of the loft. “Yeah, says who?” he said.

  Viola brushed hay out of her hair and glared up at the boys. “Says me and anyone else on the planet with half a brain.” She tossed the fan belt onto the pile of chicken wire. “Frogs don’t have names and don’t want names. Frogs want to be frogs and live where frogs are supposed to live.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Travis said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Stumpy said.

  “Your mother’s calling you,” Owen said.

  As soon as the words left his mouth, Owen’s stomach clenched up into a ball of angry. Why did he have to go and say that again?

  First of all, he said it all the time.

  Second of all, Viola never even blinked an eye when he said it, so what was the point?

  And third of all, Viola’s mother never called her. Viola’s mother never did anything but sit on the porch in her bathrobe looking at magazines. The only time Owen had ever seen Viola’s mother step one foot off her porch was the time she went to the flea market and came back with a bunch of tiki torches. Viola had told him the tiki torches were for a Hawaiian luau party. Owen had peeked through the hedge every day for nearly a week to see the Hawaiian luau party, but all he ever saw was a pile of tiki torches and a barbecue grill full of rainwater.

  Viola pushed aside the tomato stakes with the toe of her sandal. She inspected a tangled roll of baling wire. She squinted through her thick glasses at the rusty door hinges.

  “Y’all are building a cage,” she said.

  Owen hurried down the ladder and grabbed the door hinges from her. He jammed them into his pocket and said, “Go away.”

  “Yeah, go away.” Travis jumped off the last rung of the ladder and stood between Viola and the pile of stuff, his feet spread, his arms folded, his chin stuck out.

  Stumpy jumped from halfway down the ladder and landed on the barn floor with an oomph.

  “You don’t really need hinges, you know.” Viola nodded toward the baling wire. “And staples would work better than that wire.”

  “Staples are for paper, you ninny,” Travis said.

  “Yeah,” Stumpy said. “Staples are for paper, you ninny.”

  But Owen stayed quiet. He was trying to keep his irritation from getting the best of him and turning him into a foot-stomping baby.

  But it was hard.

  Because he knew Viola was right about the staples. And he knew she didn’t mean staples like the little ones for paper. She meant those heavy-duty kind like his father used to staple plastic over the windows in the winter at their old house on Tupelo Road.

  “I know where there’s a staple gun,” Viola said, grabbing her canteen off the hay bale.

  She turned to Owen and looked smug.

  Owen hated it when Viola looked smug.

  More than anything, he wanted to say “Where?”

  But he knew that Viola wanted him to say “Where?”

  Which was why she was looking so smug.

  So instead of saying “Where?” Owen said, “Rocket.”

  Rocket was the secret code word that he and Travis and Stumpy had made up to ditch Viola. They had agreed that if one of them said “Rocket,” they would all run as fast as they could to their hiding place down by the train tracks.

  So that’s what they did.

  They ran as fast as they could out of the barn, across the yard, down the path, through the woods, and around the pond. They crossed to the other side of the tracks, pushed their way through the scrubby bushes, and crawled up un
der the branches of an enormous rotten oak tree that had fallen years ago and landed against a pine tree, forming a perfect tepee.

  The boys were gasping and laughing and high-fiving each other when Pete and Leroy came sniffing through the brush, tails wagging, noses sniffing.

  “Uh-oh,” Owen said. “I hope Viola didn’t follow them.”

  Owen crawled out of the tree tepee and looked around.

  No sign of Viola.

  Good, he thought.

  Then the time had come.

  He was going to tell Travis and Stumpy about the thing that had fallen off the train.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The boys looked all afternoon. They combed the woods. They tromped through pricker bushes. They waded along the edges of the pond, their feet sinking in the gooey mud.

  They found a plastic milk crate with the bottom broken out.

  They found a coffee can full of mud.

  They found a piece of PVC pipe with PROPERTY OF MONROE COUNTY stamped on the side.

  And they found an old metal thing with a rusty bolt sticking out of it.

  But none of those things seemed like something that would have fallen off the train and made the noise that Owen heard.

  The thud.

  The crack of wood.

  The tumble, tumble, tumble sound.

  “Are you sure the noise came from around here?” Travis said, tossing a handful of rocks into the pond.

  “Sure, I’m sure,” Owen said.

  “I mean, maybe it was farther up that way.” Travis nodded up the tracks. “Maybe it wasn’t near the pond.”

  Owen shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Then you know what that means,” Stumpy said.

  Owen and Travis looked at Stumpy and waited.

  “That means it could be up yonder behind Viola’s house.” Stumpy set his mouth in a hard line and drew his eyebrows together.

  A deep, dead, gloomy silence fell over them.

  They stared at their shoes, their hands shoved in their pockets.

  Suddenly Owen’s head shot up and he snapped his fingers. “Allergies!” he hollered, grinning.

  Travis and Stumpy stared at Owen.

  “Viola never goes back that far,” Owen said. “There’s weeds and stuff back there. She hates that. She sneezes and gets sick and all.” He shook his head. “Naw, Viola won’t be nosing around here.”

  Owen looked up the tracks. He knew every inch of them, how they curved slightly just beyond the pond, then continued on through the fields way in the back of Viola’s house. After that they went over the main highway, out of Carter and into Fort Valley.

  Out of Fort Valley and into Byron.

  Out of Byron and into Macon.

  And on and on, clear on through the state of Georgia.

  As the sun sank lower and the sky grew darker, the boys agreed to come back to the tracks and look some more, if they could ditch that nosy Viola.

  Then they headed back toward Owen’s house to catch mosquitoes for Tooley.

  “Here you go, Tooley,” Owen said. “These are yummy.” He opened the peanut butter jar and released three mosquitoes into the frog house in the closet. Then he spread a piece of newspaper over the top of the plastic tub to keep the mosquitoes from escaping.

  He waited.

  He listened, hoping to hear Tooley hopping around inside, catching the mosquitoes.

  But it was quiet.

  Owen lifted the corner of the newspaper and peeked inside. Tooley sat on the branch. The mosquitoes flitted around the plastic tub. One of them landed on the branch right beside Tooley, but the big green frog didn’t move.

  Not even one little bit.

  Owen sighed.

  He reached into the tub and lifted the bullfrog out. He examined Tooley’s yellow throat, his webbed feet, his froggy face with the heart-shaped red spot between his eyes.

  Owen got an icky feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Tooley did look a little sad.

  Owen set the frog down on the floor beside his bed.

  He waited.

  Tooley didn’t jump.

  Owen nudged him a little.

  Tooley didn’t jump.

  The first time Owen had set Tooley down on his bedroom floor, the frog had jumped clear across the room in one giant leap.

  Owen sighed again.

  He scooped Tooley up and put him back on the branch in the frog house. He covered the frog house with the chicken wire and the brick, then went over to look out the window.

  The moon cast a soft glow on the yard and the woods out back. The night was quiet for a few minutes, and then the faint clatter of the train drifted into the silence.

  Louder, louder, louder.

  Clatter, clatter, clatter.

  The train roared by . . .

  . . . and then was gone.

  But this time, there was no thud.

  No crack of wood.

  No tumble, tumble, tumble sound.

  Owen tried to imagine something in the bushes or the gully or the woods somewhere out there beside the tracks.

  Something that had fallen off the train.

  But what?

  What had fallen off the train?

  And where was it?

  Owen was determined to find it.

  But first, he and Travis and Stumpy were going to have to build that cage for Tooley. It would be the best frog cage ever. It would be big enough for swimming and jumping. Half of it would be out of the water, with logs and leaves and squishy mud to sit in. The other half would be in the water, with room for Tooley to swim in big, big circles, kicking his froggy legs the livelong day. And a whole parade of water bugs and grasshoppers and crickets and flies would go right through the chicken-wire sides of the cage and Tooley would gobble them up.

  And Tooley would not be sad.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Owen tucked the duct tape under his T-shirt, motioned for Pete and Leroy, and tried to open the screen door so it wouldn’t squeak.

  He failed.

  The screen door squeaked and Earlene’s harsh voice thundered from the front hallway.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out yonder,” Owen called back.

  Earlene stormed into the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and shaking her ugly ole head. “You’re going nowhere till you sweep up every crumb of dirt and blade of grass you tracked in here last night. I don’t know why on God’s green earth you can’t take your shoes off like I’ve told you a million times and . . .”

  She yammered on and on but all Owen heard was blah, blah, blah.

  He let out a big, heaving sigh and trudged to the broom closet.

  “What’s that under your shirt?” Earlene said, squinting over at him.

  “Nothing.”

  The duct tape fell out from under his shirt and rolled across the kitchen floor. Earlene snatched it up and shook it at Owen. “What’re you doing with this?”

  “Nothing.”

  Earlene’s face turned red as fire as she shoved the duct tape back into the junk drawer.

  The whole time he was sweeping up dirt and grass, Earlene stood stiffly beside him, her fists jammed into her waist and the toe of her clunky shoe tap, tap, tapping on the floor while she yammered some more. Her voice swirled around the room like a horde of angry bees. Owen hummed to himself, very, very quietly so Earlene wouldn’t hear. His humming helped turn Earlene’s words into a steady buzz. But every now and then, a word tumbled out of the swirling buzz.

  Frog.

  Mud.

  Disgusting.

  Trouble.

  Noise.

  Owen hummed a little louder so he could shut out all of Earlene’s words and think.

  He thought about meeting Travis and Stumpy out in the barn. He thought about putting all the chicken wire and tomato stakes and stuff into the wheelbarrow and taking it down to the pond. He thought about how to keep Viola from sticking her nosy nose into his business and ruining all his fun.

  �
��Hurry up,” Owen called over his shoulder as he scurried down the path toward the pond, the hinges and baling wire banging and clanking as they bounced in the bottom of the wheelbarrow.

  Travis and Stumpy huffed and puffed behind him, dragging a roll of chicken wire that left a trail in the pine needles scattered along the path.

  When they got to the pond, they stopped, panting, wiping sweat off their brows.

  “I was thinking we should attach the cage to the dock,” Owen said. “That way, we can reach it without getting in the water.”

  Travis and Stumpy nodded in agreement.

  So the boys dumped the stuff in the weeds beside the dock and set to work building a cage for Tooley.

  But they didn’t have wire cutters to cut the wire.

  They didn’t have a saw to cut the tomato stakes.

  They didn’t have a plan.

  “We need a plan,” Owen said.

  “Yeah,” Travis said.

  “Yeah,” Stumpy said.

  Owen tossed the hinges into the wheelbarrow. “Let’s hide this stuff in the bushes and go to Stumpy’s and make a plan,” he said.

  While Joleen Berkus glared over at them from her glider on the porch, Owen and Travis and Stumpy sat on the sidewalk in front of Stumpy’s house and made a plan for the frog cage on notebook paper.

  First they made a list of the tools they would need, like wire cutters and a staple gun and a saw.

  Then they drew a picture of the cage, showing the measurements for each of the sides and where the door would go.

  They drew and wrote and drew and wrote and then . . .

  . . . a short, fat shadow fell across the paper.

  The boys looked up.

  Viola stared down at them with her big fly-eyes through her thick glasses. “I know what you’re doing,” she said.

  Owen looked back down at the notebook paper and pretended like he didn’t see her chubby white legs standing there beside him.

  “Jarvis has a staple gun,” Viola said.

  “Jarvis is a wormy-headed doofus,” Travis said.

  Stumpy slapped his knee and snorted.

  Jarvis was Viola’s brother, who sometimes went to high school and sometimes worked in a sign-painting shop over in Fort Valley.

  He was pale and freckly and wore thick glasses that gave him fly-eyes, like Viola’s.