by Spencer Baum
“They’re not like any other tracks I’ve seen,” she said.
Kevin bent over to look at the deep, oval dents in the mud.
“What’s up here?” said Kevin. “Elk?”
“They’re not elk prints,” said Jackie. “Look how far apart they’re spaced. Whatever made these was too big to be an elk.”
“Too big to be an elk?” said Kevin. He wondered what lived in the mountains that was bigger than an elk.
“I want to follow them,” said Jackie.
“Of course you do,” said Joseph. “In case you haven’t noticed, Kevin, my sister’s a sucker for nature.”
Jackie ignored the comment and began following the animal tracks up the mountainside. Kevin and Joseph went after her.
“Do you guys smell smoke?” Kevin asked.
The fresh scents of wildflower and spruce that had welcomed them as they came up the mountain was now masked with the smell of smoke, and under the smoke was a pungent fume like rubbing alcohol. Kevin had the strange thought that if he needed to, he could close his eyes and follow his nose, like a bloodhound.
“People have been up here recently,” said Jackie. “These aren’t natural smells.”
The tracks led them up and around the mountain, the fumes growing stronger with every step. They were turning inward, towards the back side of the mountain and away from the city. Pebbles began to overtake the grass, then rocks, then small boulders. They came to a clearing and found a hole on the mountainside big enough to swallow a car. It was a dark, open cave surrounded by a wide mound of fallen rock. A sheen of dust floated in the air.
Jackie kicked at the pebbles with her shoe. “These rocks cover the animal trail,” she saidl
The fiery fumes were potent now. It smelled like a gas station.
A step. A slip. The sound of rocks cracking together echoed from inside the cave.
“Someone’s in there,” Kevin said.
“Maybe it’s Jackie’s animal,” said Joseph.
“I don’t think so,” said Jackie. “These fumes would drive it away. Maybe we should go.”
“You know what this is?” said Joseph. “That explosion we heard at the park. I bet this is it!”
“But where is everybody?” said Jackie. “And what is that smell?”
These were great questions. Not only were there no people around, there were no fences, no cars, there wasn’t even any caution tape.
“Maybe they’re inside,” Joseph said, nodding his head in the direction of the open hole. “I bet this all has something to do with the diamond in Kevin’s pocket.”
“Diamond?” Kevin said. “You think it’s a diamond?”
“Could be,” said Joseph. “What if, for all this time, when everyone thought there was turquoise in the mountain, there actually was a diamond mine, and now some secret mining guild came and blasted open the mountain to get the diamonds out.”
“It rained all night,” Jackie said. “Those tracks would have been washed away. Whatever made them was here today. It’s so strange.”
“Do you guys hear someone coming?” Kevin asked.
“Miners are probably deep in there pulling out the diamonds as we speak,” said Joseph.
“Why would an animal come here, if not to go in the cave?” Jackie said.
“The cave was just formed,” Joseph said. “The mining company. The explosion.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Jackie said.
“Hush you two,” Kevin said. “I think someone’s coming.”
Kevin’s ears had found a car off-roading up the mountainside. Kevin had a clear picture in his mind of how far away it was, just from the sound of it.
“Oh my God, Kevin. Your face!” Jackie said.
“What? What’s wrong with my face?”
“Nothing! Your black eye, your swollen lip, they’re totally healed!”
Totally healed? In all the excitement, Kevin had nearly forgotten that this adventure began on the losing end of a fight. He touched his lip. The tenderness and swelling were gone. He touched under his eye and didn’t feel even a sliver of pain.
“Weird,” Kevin whispered.
The car came to a stop. Doors opened. People stepped out.
“Someone’s up there,” said a man’s voice. Some effect of the mountain, some echo off the rock, carried the man’s voice clearly into Kevin’s ears. Even though the man was out of sight, he sounded like he was two steps away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Joseph said.
They turned and went back down the mountainside.
“Hey, wait right there!” came a shout from below.
Two men emerged from the treeline. Kevin stopped to get a look at them. They were wearing uniforms, like park rangers, or cops.
“Stop! Police!” shouted one of the men.
“Keep going!” Joseph hissed.
Kevin took off in a full sprint down the mountain.
“Stop! Stop, I said!”
The men were racing in a diagonal up the mountain. Joseph and Jackie were already too far ahead, so the men cut their path straight to Kevin. Compared to Joseph and Jackie, the men looked like they were moving in slow motion.
“Damn, those kids are fast,” he heard one of the men say as Kevin zipped past them both and into the cover of the trees below.
Trees, rocks, and shrubs whisked behind them as they ran. Kevin saw Jackie leap over a boulder, and Joseph shimmy across a fallen branch with the same agility and ease they possessed on the run up to the mountain. He remembered their earlier leap over a tall, barbed wire fence, and he laughed. The whole afternoon was leaving the boring realm of reality and entering the fun world of dreams. A few hours ago, Kevin was a freshman at Turquoise High School on the losing end of a fight. Now he ran into the open grassland beneath Turquoise Mountain, chasing his new friends, breaking all the rules that were supposed to apply to him, and laughing.
Fire Ants
From A Treasury of Insects by Tristan Nelson III
Fire ants in the American South display a strange quirk of nature. Take an animal, or a plant, that has evolved to live in one location, move it to another, and it will usually die. Penguins are ill-equipped to survive in the Sahara. A Canadian pine could not live in the tropics. Drop a man in the middle of the ocean and he will eventually drown.
But sometimes nature flips the coin. Sometimes an animal that might have many natural enemies at home will thrive beyond reason if moved to a location where those enemies don’t exist.
So it was with the Brazilian Fire Ant, whose ancestors were targeted by giant anteaters, parasitic maggots, viral fungus organisms, and a thousand other insects in the hyper-competitive world of the rain forest. To survive in Brazil, the fire ant developed a powerful poison sting and an aggressive attitude.
Fire ants arrived in the United States in the 1930’s, when a boat traveling from Brazil to the coast of Alabama foolishly used hundreds of pounds of Brazilian sand as ballast. Of course there were fire ants in that sand, and of course they crawled into the many packages of food being delivered to Alabama.
Without their many rain forest enemies to hold them in check, the fire ants flourished. In only a few years, their large mounds came to dominate the landscapes of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. Fire ants ruin crops, attack livestock, and occasionally have run-ins with people, with horrifying results.
The world of global trade has helped the fire ant further spread its empire. Cargo ships, the same that transported the ant from Brazil to Alabama, have already taken the ant to China, Australia, and the Philippines. Governments have spent millions trying to slow the spread, with no success. The fire ant can survive wet or dry conditions, in extremes of heat or cold. It is only a matter of time before the fire ant takes its place among nature’s greatest conquerors, moving wherever it likes, doing whatever it wishes, paying little mind to the human pests who want to share the fire ant’s space on this earth.
Chapter 4
Jackie and Joseph lived on the outside of town in one of the homes Kevin’s dad called a “McMansion.”
“Disgusting,” his dad would mutter every time they drove past the housing developments on the outskirts of Turquoise. Kevin had learned this opinion wasn’t his dad’s alone. It was the preferred topic of conversation whenever company was at Kevin’s house. Over steaming cups of espresso, Kevin’s dad and his weird friends kept close track of the biggest houses in town. They knew which mansions belonged to Hollywood celebrities, which belonged to Las Vegas casino kings, and which were retreats for Texas oil barons. Not caring much either way, Kevin had always assumed his dad was right, that these houses, and the rich people who lived in them, must be “disgusting.”
Standing inside Jackie and Joseph’s living room, Kevin was angry that his dad was so quick to judge. The big shade trees in the front and back were examples of what Kevin’s dad called “phony non-native landscaping,” but they were pretty, and probably went hand-in-hand with Jackie’s love of nature. A basketball hoop mounted over the garage was the sort of fun touch Kevin wished were present at his house. Inside the living room, there were high ceilings, skylights, a red-brick floor, and in the center of the room, surrounded by tall potted plants, stood a cast iron sculpture Kevin recognized.
“My dad made this,” he said, touching the arm of Woman Throwing A Spear.
Jackie took a minute to register. “Benjamin Browne is your father? How cool! Your dad is very talented. My mom loves this sculpture.”
“I was in fifth grade when he made this one. It was one of my favorites.”
Kevin thought about his dad’s current project, a series of ceramic bowls he called “Contained.” Kevin missed the days when his dad made sculptures of people and animals.
Across the living room, into the open kitchen, Kevin saw more evidence that his dad had misjudged the people in these homes. Standing on the kitchen counter, underneath the cabinets, was one of his dad’s beloved Tingley 2000 Home Barista Espresso machines.
“These machines might change the world,” Kevin’s dad had once said of his own Tingley machine. “They make espresso at home as easy as coffee or tea. Now that people can be lazy about it, they’ll start making their own espresso, and that will bring the whole world one step closer to good taste.”
Funding the arts and drinking espresso would make this family popular with Kevin’s dad; their apparent reading habit would have appealed to Kevin’s mom. The entire side wall of the living room in Joseph and Jackie’s house was one giant bookshelf, complete with a library-style sliding ladder. Joseph took The Great Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 7 out of his back pocket, brushed the dirt off the cover, slid the ladder to one side, climbed up half way, and re-shelved the book. It fit perfectly between Volume 6 and Volume 8 of the same series. On the opposite side of Volume 8 was a thick hardcover book titled The Transcripts of Lou Sweeney. Next to it were A History of The Lou Sweeney Radio Show and Unafraid of the Truth: An Autobiography of Lou Sweeney.
“Wow, Jackie wasn’t kidding,” Kevin said. “You really like this Lou Sweeney guy.”
“The truth, wherever it takes us,” Joseph said with a grin. “That’s his motto.”
“He’d probably be interested in what happened to us today,” Jackie said.
Joseph’s eyes opened wide. “You’re right! I should post something on the fan site.”
“Hello, Dorkbrain? Kidding,” said Jackie. Joseph furrowed his brow, as if this topic were nothing to kid about.
Kevin looked over the rest of the bookshelf. Someone in the house liked to read classic literature. Someone else liked to read books on science. One shelf was devoted to books on math, another looked like it was all history. But more than half of this bookshelf belonged to Joseph. Unsolved mysteries, conspiracies, missing persons, government cover-ups, aliens in the desert—
A book caught Kevin’s eye and screamed for his attention. Safe Cracking For Fun and Profit. He pulled it from the shelf.
“You’re into safe-cracking?” asked Joseph.
“No,” said Kevin, “well, it’s interesting to me, that’s all.”
Kevin opened the book and looked at the first page.
Safe Cracking For Fun and Profit by “Sticky Fingers” Smith. Chapter 1: The Allure of the Locked Door.
Human beings are curious creatures. Curious to a fault. Even the most mundane of objects becomes exotic when it is purposely hidden from view.
“To be honest, I found the book pretty useless,” said Joseph. "I followed the instructions to the letter, and have never cracked open a safe.”
“That’s too bad,” Kevin said. He put the book back on the shelf.
“I don’t think it’s too bad,” said Jackie. “Sticky Fingers is probably in jail somewhere right now. No one needs to be breaking into someone else’s safe. Unless you’re a crook, you know the combination or you call the locksmith.”
Kevin opened his mouth to speak his strong opinion on this subject, but was interrupted when the front door opened, and a tall, skinny man stepped inside. The man wore a dirty blue uniform with a white oval patch over the breast pocket. The patch said “Liberty Pest Control.”
“Hello, Tom,” said Jackie. “You can just leave the bill on the table.”
The man nodded at Jackie in acknowledgement and put a piece of paper on the end table.
“Tom, this is Kevin Browne,” Jackie said. The tall man stepped into the room and nodded.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Browne,” Tom said, in a slow, Southern accent that wasn’t at all from Turquoise. “If it’s alright with you, I won’t shake your hand, seein’ as how I’ve just been bug sprayin’ out back.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Kevin said, his eyes drifting to the Liberty Pest Control logo on Tom’s shirt. Kevin, like everyone in town, remembered the great rat infestation of downtown Turquoise, now a few years in the past. Seemingly out of nowhere, a horrible rat problem developed in the office buildings downtown. The city called on Liberty Pest Control to get rid of the rodents. For six months, a large portion of downtown was fenced off and covered with black tarps, the Liberty Pest Control logo affixed to every fence. The news reported that pest control specialists were seeking out the master nest in the sewers. One day the fences and tarps disappeared and the rat problem was over. Kevin hadn’t seen the Liberty Pest Control logo since.
“Well, have a good--” Tom stopped himself. An odd look came over his face, like he’d just eaten something sour. Tom reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a clear, plastic box. He took three giant steps across the living room and swung his arm down to the floor, slamming the box into the ground. He trapped an ant, which frantically ran up the box’s sides.
Tom slid the box along the floor, and in one smooth motion, tilted it up and snapped a lid on the open end.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” said Tom. “Don’t know how an ant got in here.”
“That’s okay, Tom,” said Jackie.
“A fire ant, even,” said Tom. “Very interesting. Well then, I’ll just leave the bill on the table.”
Tom went through the front door and closed it behind him.
“Our parents are weird,” said Jackie. “My dad saw a black widow in the garage right after we moved here, and now pest control comes once a week. I’ve told my dad we need to cancel the contract and learn to live with the spiders, but he won’t do it.”
“When do your parents come home?” Kevin asked.
“Dad will be home around 6:00. Mom just left to run some errands, she’ll be back soon,” Jackie said.
Kevin looked at the clock over the fireplace. 2:30. At school, the day was nearly over.
His fight with Ruben seemed so distant now. Just a few hours in his past, but in his memory, it might as well have been another life.
“Where can I find a mirror?”
“This way,” said Jackie. She led Kevin down the hall, to a bathroom with tiled countertops and a storage pantry built into the back wall. K
evin flipped on the light, and found his face just as Jackie had described it, completely unblemished. His skin was soft, his cheeks were the right color, nothing was swollen, nothing was damaged. His complicated plan for the evening: dumpsters, Kung Pao Chicken, avoiding his dad – it was all unnecessary now. The only evidence left of a morning gone wrong was the stain on his shirt, which was easily explained with any one of a thousand believable stories.
“You’re sure I didn’t look like this when we met at the park?”
“Yes,” said Jackie. “This morning you looked like you’d just stepped out from a war. This whole half of your face was puffy and bruised.”
Jackie gently prodded the skin underneath Kevin’s eye, exactly as she had done at the park. This time it didn’t hurt at all.
“Do you always heal this quickly?” Jackie asked.
“No. At least, I don’t think so,” said Kevin, realizing he had no prior experience with black eyes before today.
“It was the sap,” said Joseph. He popped his head through the door. “Don’t you think?”
“That’s my guess too,” said Jackie. “I want to go research it. But I also don’t want to sit down, you know?”
She did a little shuffle from one foot to the other.
“I’m feeling antsy too,” said Joseph. “I think we’re hopped up on adrenaline and whatever else is flowing in our blood since we ate that sap.”
Kevin leaned in closer to the mirror to get a better look at his face. He pulled at the skin under his left eye, where Ruben’s fist had connected in a knockout blow. Not even the slightest scratch or discoloration. He leaned in closer still, wondering why it seemed like he couldn’t get a better angle of sight on his reflection.
“I guess it could be adrenaline,” Jackie said. “But I feel like it’s more than that. I feel like something inside me wants to jump out and grab hold of something.”