The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester

by Barbara O'Connor

  “We’re just trying to help.”

  “I’m not stupid, Owen,” she said.

  “No, you’re just dumb,” Stumpy called from the back steps. He and Travis pushed each other and roared with laughter.

  “Don’t worry,” Owen said. “Me and Travis and Stumpy are taking care of everything, okay?”

  Viola narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “Just admit it, Owen,” she said. “Y’all are going to put that submarine in the pond, aren’t you?”

  Silence.

  Viola whirled around and stomped off toward the hedge, calling over her shoulder, “I’m telling on y’all!”

  “Wait!” Owen hollered.

  Viola stopped.

  Owen ran over to her, his mind racing. He had to think of some way to keep Viola from ruining everything with the submarine.

  “Look, Viola,” Owen said. “We are going to call the railroad company. I swear.” He held his hand up and looked solemnly at Viola.

  “But you’re going to put it in the pond first, aren’t you?” she said.

  Owen glanced over at Travis and Stumpy, then he said, “Yes.”

  Travis stamped his foot. “Dang, Owen!” he said.

  “I knew it!” Viola gave Owen one of her smug faces.

  “Trust me, Viola,” Owen said. “We’re going to take care of everything.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Okay?”

  The silence hung thick and heavy in the summer air. Owen studied Viola’s freckled face, her glasses perched down on the end of her nose. He had an uneasy feeling about her. She was liable to tell somebody about the submarine before he had a chance to get it in the pond.

  Owen made an instant decision to take a gamble. “You can help us if you want to,” he said. “Get some tools and meet us down there tomorrow.”

  Travis and Stumpy stopped laughing and stared at Owen, wide-eyed and openmouthed. Owen shot them a look that said, Trust me, I know what I’m doing.

  Viola flapped her hand at Owen. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Like I want to spend my day cutting down trees. Besides,” she added, “you don’t even know if that submarine works. Y’all are stupid to do all that work cutting down trees and stuff before you even test it.”

  “Aw, heck,” Owen said. “That’s a piece of cake. We got all that stuff figured out.”

  “Well, good luck,” Viola said, turning to leave.

  Owen tried not to look too relieved.

  “If you change your mind, just come on down,” he called after her.

  As soon as Viola disappeared through the opening into her yard, Travis and Stumpy hurried over to Owen.

  “What the heck did you do that for?” Travis said.

  “Do what?” Owen said.

  “Tell her she could help us.”

  “Because . . .” Owen beamed at Travis and Stumpy. “If she thinks she’s in on our plan, she’ll keep her yap shut and won’t tell on us.” Owen said this with an air of confidence, but on the inside, he had some big worries about trusting Viola. “Besides,” he added, “I know Viola better than anybody. There is no way she’s going to go down there in those woods and help us.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I got Jarvis’s hacksaw,” Viola said when she stepped out of the woods into the clearing. “I decided to come help y’all, after all.”

  Owen’s stomach sank clear down to his feet.

  Travis and Stumpy stared at Viola with their mouths hanging open.

  Then Travis’s face turned red and he stomped over to Owen. “Way to go, Owen!” he hollered. “Now what are we gonna do?”

  Owen looked down at his feet, his mind racing. His sneakers were coated with dirt, his legs scraped and bruised. He looked at his hands, red and blistered. Sawing and clipping and digging and hacking was hard work. Much harder than he had thought it would be.

  He and Travis and Stumpy had gotten to the clearing early that morning, when the dew was still clinging to the wildflowers and ferns. But they hadn’t made much progress. The ground was hard and full of rocks and roots. Some of the bushes pulled right up, but others had to be dug and chopped and yanked. Even the smallest trees required sawing and hacking. Branches had to be hauled off to the side. Large rocks had to be rolled away.

  “I got Jarvis’s hacksaw,” Viola repeated, waving it in the air. She was wearing garden gloves that were way too big and a khaki canvas hat pulled down over her ears.

  “Great,” Owen said glumly. He flung his arm in the direction of one of the larger pine trees. “Then cut that down.”

  “Okay.” Viola ran over to the tree and started sawing.

  “Closer to the bottom,” Owen said. “You can’t leave a big ole stump there.”

  Owen looked at Travis and shrugged. What else could he do? Besides, they could use Viola’s help. Why not let her do all the hard work with the larger trees and bushes? Maybe inviting Viola to help really had been a good idea.

  But Travis and Stumpy didn’t look like they thought Viola helping was a good idea. They looked like they were mad as all get-out.

  While Viola happily sawed away at the tree, Owen whispered to Travis and Stumpy, explaining to them why Viola helping them was a good idea.

  “. . . and then,” he whispered, “we’ll only have to work on these puny little bushes while she does all the hard stuff.”

  He grinned.

  Stumpy looked convinced, but Travis was still red-faced, glaring over at Viola and looking like he was ready to storm out of there.

  “. . . and then,” Owen whispered, “we’ll tell her we changed our minds about putting the submarine in the pond and that the railroad company is sending someone to pick it up in a couple of days, so she doesn’t need to come back down here. And then”—he glanced over at Viola, who had paused from her sawing to blow her nose—“we can figure out how to get the submarine into the pond and go for a ride!”

  Owen watched Travis’s face change ever so slowly from mad-as-all-get-out to maybe-that-will-work.

  So the boys picked up their tools and set to work sawing and clipping and digging and hacking again.

  That night after dinner, Owen sat by his grandfather’s bed and told him some more about Tooley.

  He told him about how Tooley wasn’t quite as green as he used to be.

  How his throat wasn’t quite as yellow and the heart-shaped spot wasn’t quite as red.

  He told him about how Tooley didn’t seem to be eating the water bugs and crickets in the cage and how he didn’t swim very much anymore.

  “And last night,” Owen said, “I heard some other bullfrogs down there in the pond and, well, um, I felt kind of bad.”

  Owen’s grandfather raised his bushy white eyebrows.

  “I mean, you know . . .” Owen picked at the dirt under his fingernails. “ ’Cause those other frogs were free, but, um, Tooley’s in a cage.”

  His grandfather’s mouth was a little droopy on one side. He nodded at Owen.

  Owen could hear his mother out in the hall putting sheets and pillowcases in the linen closet. He leaned toward his grandfather’s bed and said in a low voice, “I’m thinking maybe I should let him go.”

  There.

  He had said it.

  The thought that had been niggling at him for so long.

  And now that he had said it, he felt better.

  That night, the train clattered down the tracks behind the house.

  The clatter, clatter, clatter started low and got louder and louder until it became a whoosh and then trailed off to a faint clatter, clatter, clatter again.

  And then it was gone.

  As Owen sat in the window of his bedroom, breathing in the scent of honeysuckle and new-mown grass, listening to the crickets and bullfrogs, he knew he had to do two things.

  He had to let Tooley go . . .

  . . . and . . .

  . . . he had to get that submarine into the pond.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Owen had begged and pleaded and begged and pleaded to stay
home from church.

  Begging and pleading almost never worked.

  But today a miracle had happened.

  His mother had said yes!

  So he and Travis and Stumpy had worked all morning, sawing and clipping and digging and hacking.

  Viola had come down there to tell them she had to go over to Macon with her cousin but they could use Jarvis’s hacksaw if they wanted to.

  Travis had told her they didn’t need her and they definitely didn’t need anything that belonged to her loser brother, Jarvis.

  After a while, they had gotten tired of sawing and clipping and digging and hacking, so they gathered around the Water Wonder 4000 to figure out how they were going to get it down to the pond once they were finished clearing the trees and bushes.

  “Maybe we could take the wheels off a wagon, tie ’em on the sides, and just roll it,” Stumpy said.

  “That’s dumb,” Travis said. He slapped the side of the submarine, making a hollow, clanging noise that echoed through the trees.

  “Yeah,” Owen said, “that is pretty dumb, Stumpy.”

  Stumpy shrugged.

  “Maybe we could pull it behind our bikes,” Owen said.

  Travis rolled his eyes.

  “What if we got some more kids to help us pull it?” Travis said.

  Owen shook his head. “Naw, this is our secret,” he said. “Other kids’ll just mess things up.”

  “Like Viola?” Travis said.

  Owen blushed. He had messed things up by letting Viola get involved, but Travis didn’t have to keep reminding him.

  Stumpy pushed on the submarine with his foot. “It’s just too heavy,” he said. “We’ll never do it.”

  “Yes, we will,” Owen said.

  “And then you’re just going to drive it all around the pond like you know all about driving a submarine, right, Owen?” Travis asked as he hurled a stick over the top of the Water Wonder 4000.

  “Look,” Owen snapped, “if y’all don’t want to help me anymore, then go on home. I’m the one that found this submarine and I’m going to get it in the pond and I’m going to take it for a ride with or without y’all.” He stomped through the weeds and scrambled up the slope toward the train tracks.

  “Wait!” Travis called after him.

  Owen stopped.

  “Okay,” Travis said, “we’ll help. But we’ve got to figure out how to do it.”

  “We will,” Owen said, stamping his foot.

  Travis and Stumpy joined Owen up by the tracks. They stood in silence, looking down at the submarine, so red and shiny and fantastic. The silver dolphin sparkled in the sun that filtered through the trees.

  “Let’s go up to the hayloft and think of some more ideas,” Owen said.

  So they headed to the barn and climbed up the ladder to the hayloft. They took out the list of ideas they had made earlier and sat on the dusty wooden floor and studied them. They talked about them and added to them and argued about them until they were all just plain sick of it.

  “I’m sick of this,” Travis said.

  “Me, too,” Stumpy said.

  Owen had to admit, he was sick of it, too. He didn’t want to keep talking about getting the submarine into the pond.

  He wanted to get the submarine into the pond.

  “Let’s go check on Tooley,” he said.

  So the boys climbed down out of the hayloft, tucked the wrinkled notebook paper with their list of ideas under the tarp with the tools, and headed to the pond.

  Owen lifted Tooley out of the cage and set him on his lap. The bullfrog settled down in the folds of Owen’s shorts and closed his eyes.

  “Do you think he’s sick?” Owen said.

  “Naw.” Travis nudged Tooley gently with his finger. “He’s just tired.”

  “Let’s make the cage bigger,” Stumpy said.

  “Yeah,” Travis said. “We could make it go all the way around the dock.”

  But Owen kept quiet.

  He knew that Tooley didn’t need a bigger cage.

  He knew that Tooley needed to be free.

  He needed to swim around Graham Pond with the other frogs.

  He needed to climb on the logs and float on the leaves and nestle in the mud and eat the bugs . . .

  . . . but not in a cage.

  “We could catch more frogs and have a whole frog town!” Stumpy said.

  “Yeah!” Travis tossed a rock into the middle of the pond.

  Ploink.

  Tooley opened one eye . . .

  . . . and then closed it.

  Travis and Stumpy went on and on about the frog town they could make and how it could have little froggy apartments made out of logs and froggy restaurants where the bugs would be and there could even be a froggy mayor.

  “Tooley!” Stumpy said. “Tooley could be the mayor.”

  But Owen kept quiet.

  He knew that Tooley didn’t want to be the mayor of Frog Town.

  Tooley wanted to be free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Eat your squash,” Earlene snapped.

  Owen looked down at the blob of yellow mush on the plate in front of him.

  Earlene rattled pans and clanged spoons and mumbled to herself while she huffed around the kitchen.

  She was annoyed that Owen had managed to beg and plead his way out of church that morning.

  She was annoyed that he had stayed gone all day without telling anybody where he was.

  And she was annoyed that he didn’t want to eat that blob of nasty squash.

  “We’re leaving for church in five minutes,” Owen’s mother called from upstairs.

  The Jesters always went to church twice on Sundays. Once in the morning and once in the evening. Owen was still amazed that his begging and pleading had worked that morning, but he knew there was no way he was going to get out of going to church that evening.

  “Eat your squash,” Earlene snapped again.

  Owen dipped the tip of his fork into the yellow mush and then dabbed it onto his tongue.

  That seemed to annoy Earlene even more. She yanked the plate off the table, muttering about starving children somewhere in the world, and dumped the squash into the dog bowl.

  “Go get ready for church,” she said.

  While Mrs. Suttles put a smiley-face sticker on his Bible-passage work sheet, Owen stared out the window and thought about Tooley.

  He had been thinking and thinking and thinking and, somewhere between listening to Travis and Stumpy talk about Frog Town and swirling his fork around in Earlene’s mushy yellow squash, he had made a decision.

  As soon as he got home from church, he was going to go down to the pond and let Tooley go.

  So now he was sitting on a metal chair in the basement of Fork Creek Baptist Church, wishing Mrs. Suttles would hurry up with those smiley-face stickers and hoping, hoping, hoping that his parents didn’t want to stay for Bible Bingo.

  Sometimes they did.

  If they stayed for Bible Bingo, it would be dark when they got home and he wouldn’t be allowed to go down to the pond.

  Owen stood in a circle with the other kids as they said some prayers and sang some songs and then they were finally done. He raced upstairs to find his parents, hoping, hoping, hoping they were not sitting at the Bible Bingo table.

  They weren’t.

  Owen said a silent yahoo in his head and raced out to the car.

  As the sun sank lower in the sky, the pond seemed to be settling in for the night.

  The moss-covered logs along the edges were empty. No turtles basking in the summer sun.

  The water was still and smooth as glass. No water bugs leaving ripples across the surface.

  Not a single pair of yellow bullfrog eyes peering out from the floating leaves that gathered in clumps in the shadows.

  The low hum of crickets was starting, interrupted from time to time by the buzz of a mosquito.

  Owen lifted the lid of the perfect cage.

  He reached in and scoope
d Tooley up. Then he sat on the end of the dock and had a little chat with the big green bullfrog.

  He told him about how much fun it had been to come down to the pond every day and look for him.

  He praised him for his ability to avoid being captured for so long. The way he had darted out of the net quick as lightning. The way he had shot out from under the colander.

  And then he apologized for a few things.

  “I’m sorry I made you stay in that cage so long,” Owen said to Tooley. “Viola said you never wanted to be Tooley Graham and that you just want to be a frog,” Owen said. “So, well, if that’s true, and, um, I guess maybe it is ’cause Viola’s almost always right even though she’s so dumb, well, anyway, I’m sorry about that.”

  The frog moved a little in Owen’s lap.

  “And, um . . .” Owen stroked Tooley’s back. “I’m sorry if I made you sad.”

  Owen leaned over the edge of the dock and lowered Tooley into the water.

  “Goodbye, Tooley,” he said.

  Then he let go of the most beautiful bullfrog in Carter, Georgia, and watched as it pushed its long froggy legs and disappeared into the pond without so much as a splash.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Owen knew Travis and Stumpy would be mad as hornets that he had let Tooley go.

  But he didn’t care.

  Tooley had been his frog, not theirs.

  Travis stomped around the dock muttering “Dang it!” and “No fair!” and Stumpy glared and repeated everything Travis said.

  “And then we spent half the dern summer building that cage!” Travis hollered.

  “Yeah!” Stumpy hollered.

  Owen looked at the perfect cage attached to the edge of the dock.

  The empty perfect cage.

  Then he gazed out across the pond, wishing he could see into the murky water and catch a glimpse of Tooley, swimming happily with the other frogs, resting peacefully among the rotting leaves on the muddy bottom. Maybe enjoying a snack, chomping on a juicy cricket.

  “You think your stupid girlfriend, Viola, is right about everything,” Travis snapped.