The Danger Box

by Blue Balliett

  “Lorrol,” I said slowly.

  She turned sideways and looked at me.

  “I. Know. This. Handwriting.”

  “You do?”

  “Maybe everyone old-fashioned wrote that way, but it sure looks the same. And I’m pretty good at noticing little stuff, you know I am. I mean, I memorized what I saw.”

  “I believe you.” Lorrol nodded.

  We scrolled, in silence, through page after page of lists and notebooks.

  “Tell me when to stop,” she said softly.

  I nodded. I don’t think either one of us was breathing.

  The chart was huge: Gas was clearly a champion record keeper. Suddenly we were looking at a section called “The Beagle field notebooks.”

  “Field Books,” I said.

  “Ooooh,” Lorrol breathed.

  There were notebooks that listed names in South America, names I recognized from the little bit of research I’d done so far. Rio de Janeiro … Buenos Aires … Valparaiso …

  Then, in one second flat, my whole world came to a stop.

  * * *

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Sixteen

  A FREE NEWSPAPER ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SOUL

  ~I kept an explosive secret for twenty-two years.

  ~I didn’t think the world was ready to hear it.

  ~That’s a very long time.

  Who am I?

  NEXT ISSUE TO COME.

  FREE!

  * * *

  “ZOOMY?” LORROL’S VOICE seemed to be coming from outside a bubble, and I was inside.

  I reread those three words: Galapagos, Otaheite, Lima.

  And there, next to the words, was a picture of a cover I knew, complete with torn label. My brain couldn’t seem to believe what I was seeing.

  I opened and closed my mouth a bunch of times, but nothing came out. Have you ever had an experience so huge that you almost didn’t know if you were alive or dead? Well, that was me, lost in

  ~shock

  ~hope

  ~grief

  until I flashed on the obvious: I’d found a notebook with a copy of the cover of Darwin’s Galapagos notebook. The real thing was in some library. Otherwise they couldn’t have scanned it and made this list.

  “Dummy” was all I could say.

  “Huh?” Lorrol whispered.

  “Me.” My eyes were still racing along the entry, as fast as they could go, and I then read: Current whereabouts unknown … microfilmed by Cambridge University Library in 1969. The notebook has been missing, presumably stolen around 1983. …

  I don’t think I will ever have another moment like that in my life.

  Explosion is too quiet a word. Suddenly I was soaring, I was floating like an eagle, I was weightless…. I was the place where horizontal Deeps meet vertical Deeps and BOOM! I was both the FIRE and the CRACK in firecracker.

  I was ~bigger, ~bigger, ~bigger than me. Lorrol was patting my arm, but it didn’t feel like my arm anymore, it was light and tingly. I knew I wanted to click on the image but my hand wasn’t going anywhere.

  Lorrol, somehow, knew what to do. I saw her reach for the keyboard.

  And there was the first page, with that word, Benchuca, circled. I recognized everything. She clicked again: There, miraculously, was the second page. And the third.

  Finally, I found some words: “This is it! I had it, I had it, I had it! I HAD DARWIN’S MISSING NOTEBOOK!”

  * * *

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Seventeen

  A FREE NEWSPAPER ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SOUL

  ~My secret had to do with how we all came to be who we are.

  ~I couldn’t prove my theory except by collecting more and more data, and that I could do anywhere. I started with the specimens from my trip, and kept going. I wrote to people in faraway places, and asked many questions. Examples popped up wherever I looked, even in my backyard. The more I observed, the more I believed I was onto a Big Idea.

  ~My wife had a clear vision that she had grown up with. This thought comforted her whenever death took away someone she loved.

  ~My way of seeing didn’t fit with hers. That upset us both.

  ~I didn’t, didn’t, didn’t want to hurt others with my secret.

  ~At the same time, I believed it was only a matter of time before it would escape, and I thought it should be shared in the right way.

  ~After I’d been thinking about this exciting problem for many years, I told one of my friends that explaining what I saw as life’s great puzzle felt like “confessing a murder,” as it was likely to horrify and upset so many people.

  ~It was agony living with such a secret.

  ~Sometimes logical truth doesn’t make the hardest experiences in life any easier.

  Who am I?

  NEXT ISSUE TO COME.

  FREE!

  * * *

  BEFORE WE CALMED down, Mrs. Cloozer came over and asked if we’d like to play outside. Who knows what we’d been doing — probably hooting and hollering.

  And we certainly hadn’t seen the man in the armchair stand and walk quietly toward the door.

  I was both super-excited and super-sad. And Lorrol believed me. I don’t know why or how, but she did.

  “You know what feels really shocking?” I asked.

  “What?” she said.

  “Knowing that Charles Darwin carried that notebook around with him and actually touched every page. Then I touched every page, almost one hundred and seventy-five years later. And we were both trying to understand what we were seeing. That’s crazy.”

  “It is.” Lorrol nodded.

  I told her what my grandpa always says when he’s surprised in a good way: Well, if turtles have wings.

  “Awesome.” Lorrol beamed.

  I nodded.

  Waves of happiness were followed by waves of pain — I couldn’t believe I not only had lost Darwin’s notebook, but had no proof aside from my notes. And who would listen to a twelve-year-old kid who couldn’t see too well?

  Lorrol picked up my thinking; not only did we belong to the Unknown Parent Club and Same Word Club, but we also seemed to belong to the Reading Minds Club now.

  “I know, this hurts. Who’s gonna pay attention to a couple of kids, right? But here’s what I think we should do: Send lots of issues of the Gas Gazette to the Darwin people in England, so they know we’re serious researchers, plus just tell what happened. Spill the Beans. So what if they don’t believe us.”

  “Yeah, the Beans …”

  “Lots of people say that what Darwin saw on the Galápagos Islands started him thinking in a different way, and led him toward his biggest ideas.”

  “Really?” I asked. I hadn’t gotten that far in my research.

  “Yeah, really. The Galápagos are mostly known because of Darwin’s visit. And our friend Gas has gotta be one of the most famous people in the world.”

  “And that makes this one of the Most Important Missing Notebooks anywhere,” I said. It felt weird to have something feel both so good and so bad at the same time. “Think there’s a reward?”

  Lorrol was quiet for a moment. She shrugged.

  I must’ve looked like a squashed insect, because Lorrol added, “Hey! It was in your hands, and I don’t think keeping something is nearly as important as finding it. You and I know the truth, and maybe that’s what matters in the end.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I looked at my hands. Then I pulled my list book out of my pocket and wrote, in purple pen,

  ~TURTLES HAVE WINGS.

  That helped. Lorrol nodded. “Think I’m going to start doing that,” she said. “Keeping lists. Telling myself what’s what.”

  “I’ll bring you a couple of my notebooks and pens from home,” I said. “We have a supply.”

  “Thanks,” Lorrol said.

  “Purple is the color of believing,” I added.

  When I looked down again, my careful letters had smeared, as if the words were airborne.

  THE NEWS SENT Player Four flying out of town.

/>   He called the police station, explained that he needed to get home for work reasons, and left his contact numbers. When the Ford truck was released, he’d be back to pick it up. He paid Mrs. Gander’s bill and accepted a fresh carrot muffin for the road. Through it all, he felt no joy.

  He’d wished on that star, way back in Flint, and now gotten what he wanted. His wish had come true, and it felt rotten.

  As he sped past field after field of corn, his window rolled down and the wash of summer sounds and smells pouring in, he felt sad. Very sad. Blue, yellow, green, white, blue, yellow, green, white: the simple colors of a simpler life. Tears prickled in his eyes and he could hear his grandma saying, “Don’t forget to plant the spuds! You’ll never be sorry.” He hadn’t understood then, this talk about potatoes, but he did now. Doing a simple, basic thing at the right time mattered.

  What had he gotten himself into? Why was he doing what he did for a living?

  He’d always been paid well, but was living this way worth it in the end? The player thought of the words on the wall of that elegant office in Dearborn: Survival of the fittest is a deadly game. Who can win forever?

  Suddenly he pictured the two kids, unlikely friends in a tiny town, head to head in front of the computer screen. Their wildest dreams had become a reality, but no one would ever believe them. It wasn’t even clear, after the fire, that the boy’s family would survive.

  He hadn’t meant to burn down the store after breaking in; he’d heard a noise, dropped his cigarette, and hurried out empty-handed, realizing that the family must have kept whatever was valuable. He’d then watched their home that night, seen the boy hide something in the toolshed, and found the notebook after everyone rushed off to the fire. A quick look around the empty, unlocked house revealed nothing of the right size that seemed more valuable than the odd little book. Poor kid.

  The player realized that if he gave back the notebook, that would certainly help, but what was he thinking? Stop. Just play the game, he told himself roughly. He hoped the package had arrived safely in Detroit. He would never have sent it by regular mail if he’d had any idea what he was sending….

  What luck he’d had! The kids had practically handed him a huge reward, there had to be one, if not a juicy price for reselling the notebook on the sly. So why wasn’t he happy? Survival was not a pretty business, had he forgotten?

  He frowned, wiped his eyes with the palm of one hand, and stepped on the gas.

  MY GRANDPARENTS DIDN’T have any flying turtles to help them through the next few days. Home was quiet, too quiet.

  “Police found the guy who owns the truck,” Gumps announced one morning. “Name’s Wade Finner. He was staying with Mrs. Gander, and sure sounds like the creep who came into the store that day.”

  “Huh!” I said, and tried to look surprised. I couldn’t wait to tell Lorrol his real name; wade plus fins was too perfect.

  “They don’t have any evidence on him, but apparently the box was some sort of delivery. Anyway, Finner left town, but he’ll be back to get his truck when they release it. That was one bad-luck delivery for Buckeye and for us, I’ll say that.”

  “Maybe not so unlucky,” I said. Gumps only grunted.

  I’d tried to make things better by sharing the amazing notebook news right away, but Gam and Gumps only pretended to believe me. I could tell, and I didn’t blame them. After all, what on earth would a lost Charles Darwin notebook be doing in Three Oaks? And wrapped up in a blanket, inside a ratty box, in a truck Buckeye had stolen?

  But they were happy I had Lorrol, my first real friend, and that she and I were busy at the library every day. I also told them about us making copies of the Gas Gazette.

  Buckeye was recovering from his burns and also getting help with a serious drinking problem, as the grown-ups called it. There was a lot of his life he plain didn’t remember, and my grandpa explained to me that that sometimes happens with alcoholics. Hearing about it, I swore to myself I would never be like that.

  We were outside watering the garden, which is a good time to talk about uncomfortable stuff.

  “Liquor can make you feel good for a while, then angry, then you mess up and don’t even know what you’ve said or done.” Gumps sighed. I thought of Buckeye’s threats in the library. Even if he hadn’t meant them, how could you trust someone who had been so mean?

  “So what’ll happen to him?” I asked.

  “We won’t know for a while,” Gumps said. “Buckeye did a mess of destructive things, but sometimes the law allows people to pay in other ways.”

  “Oh,” I said. This didn’t sound good. “Do they know yet how the fire started?”

  My grandpa then sounded so sad I wished I hadn’t asked. “No, and they may never. I guess it burned so hot and everything was so dry that there’s not much they can figure out. The police sorted through the ashes.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. After a moment I asked, “Is Buckeye ever coming home to live with us?” My voice kind of squeaked at the end of the question.

  “Don’t you worry about that.” Gumps’s voice was gruff. “Things will work out as they should.”

  I tried not to think about it. I couldn’t even imagine a less scary version of my maybe-father.

  Meanwhile, my grandpa planted like mad and went downtown after lunch every day in his heaviest work boots, armed with rakes and shovels. He was combing the rubble for treasures, and he brought some home.

  They were sad to see, but also special. My grandma lined them up on the entryway windowsill: a zucchini-shaped lump of melted blue glass, a plate with an old pair of spectacles stuck to it, and the giant Clydesdale horseshoe, now decorated with chips and flakes of other things. Leftover lives. The last of many family stories.

  Gumps was not one for giving up, and he said he wasn’t going to rest until everything was fresh as a daisy. He was making that piece of land, land we still owned, real clean. People who had backhoes and dump trucks came to help, and loads of charred wood and twisted metal were hauled away.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked. I wasn’t allowed to go along because there was too much dangerous, sharp stuff underfoot.

  “I’m not sure,” my grandpa said. “But this is our town and our land and we might just do something with it. Something to help us and other folks.”

  In that time right after the fire, neighbors were always stopping by our back door, bringing cooked chickens and casseroles. The store burned down on the third of July, and no one in town had the heart to set off any fireworks that weekend. It was the quietest holiday Three Oaks had ever seen. The No Insurance news must’ve got around real quick, because even though we’d always been a private kind of family, we suddenly weren’t alone. Things were changing and that part of it felt good.

  The three of us worked extra hard, which left less room for worry crumbs and tsuris. I kept my lists detailed and neat and long, hung the wet laundry, made all the beds, then met Lorrol at the library. My grandma went into a baking frenzy and sold a bunch of pies every day. The button jar had to be emptied, and her fingers turned a pale blue from handling so many blueberries; I told her she was evolving into an exotic beetle, and she swatted me with the dish towel.

  One secret I held on to was the hunt for Fish. Lorrol and I decided it would only frighten everyone if we told about that day of on-site investigations, but we continued to work full speed ahead in the library.

  We both had an odd feeling that if we kept on learning about Charles Darwin, finding and sharing, something big would happen — kinda like a garden giving back vegetables after you’ve watered the seeds.

  ONE DAY AFTER lunch Gumps cleared all of our plates, started to do the dishes, then said, “Naw, this can wait! Who’s coming with me?”

  Gam and I could tell this was Something. We got ready and hurried out the back door.

  As the three of us walked along the sidewalk, I thought about the last time we’d gone this way together — or sort of together, because my grandpa had disappear
ed ahead. Today the Deeps were beautiful: robin’s egg blue overhead, thick green all around, and a just-right breeze that made you feel like nothing terrible could ever happen again.

  We’d crossed the train tracks and were close to the empty lot when Gumps said, “Well, I’ll be.”

  At the same time, Gam said, “Oh!” and sounded happy.

  “What, what?” I couldn’t see any details in the gap where the store had been, but I saw movement.

  Here’s what was happening: My grandpa had put up a sign. It said,

  The Chamberlains thank you for all your kindness.

  Feel free to use this Land to barter any goods.

  No money will be allowed.

  Every Wednesday afternoon is Chamberlain

  Whatnots Exchange Day.

  Gam clapped her hands after reading it aloud. “You are amazing, Ash Baker Chamberlain!” she said.

  We strolled around. People were exchanging things they grew and things they owned, trading by bartering.

  Gumps took me over to a corner where he’d set up a plank desk with a crate for a seat. “Thought you might like to keep a record of some of what’s bartered, Zoomy. Bought you a fresh record book for the job.”

  There was a brand-new ledger and two purple pens. “Love to!” I said. “Can I get Lorrol to help? She’s terrific at lists, too.”

  “Of course,” my grandpa boomed, looking almost happy. “More the merrier.” He went looking for another crate while I found Lorrol at the library.

  Here’s some of what she and I recorded that afternoon:

  ~a bag of winter boots = a bushel of fresh green beans

  ~an ice cream maker = a zucchini casserole and a spaghetti pie, both ready for freezing

  ~a huge stack of National Geographic magazines = a winter parka with fur around the hood