by Maxine Kumin
“Maybe it is,” Trippy said.
We got out of the bear enclosure and went over to pet the goats.
“Mom says she promised Henry that she’d visit with his mother. She’s going in to have iced tea and whatever, so she asked if we could hang out on our own.”
All of a sudden there must have been a little breeze because I heard the same sounds I’d heard once before. I’d asked Henry and he said they were probably birds but he couldn’t say for sure because he’s a little deaf to begin with.
“Little trills and chucks, I hear them too,” Trippy said.
“It must be birds, somebody must be raising birds near here.”
“Let’s go see.”
Trippy wheeled me out past the veggie garden, down through the cornfields. I’d never been out that far. It was neat wheeling down the rows with the cornstalks waving overhead, not knowing when that row would end, and you came out and there was another field and another.
“Are you way tired yet?”
“It’s not bad.” Trippy was puffing a little. “Listen!”
And then we both could hear the sounds coming steadily, almost like music, a music we’d never heard before. Right in front of us was this big boxy building that looked like an abandoned sugarcane warehouse, not that I’ve ever seen a sugarcane warehouse.
It wasn’t exactly hidden by the live oak trees but it wasn’t exactly obvious, either. Kudzu vines grew all over it, making the building look as if it had grown up out of the ground. Kudzu was climbing the surrounding trees too. Sunlight barely filtered through the clearing.
By now we were whispering. “This is spooky,” Trippy said.
I wondered what it was for. “Maybe it’s a meeting place. Maybe criminals meet here to plot their crimes.”
“Lizzie, let’s go back! We shouldn’t be here, I just know something’s gonna happen!”
But by then I had pried away a piece of rotted wood and found a sort of slit. I bent down low in my chair so I could look through.
What I saw in there blew my mind.
“Well, what is it? What’s in there?”
“Shh. Here, bend down and look. Quick!”
Trippy wheeled me just far enough from the open slit so that she could take my place.
Then she put her hands over her whole face and stood up. “Oh my God, what are they?”
“Some kind of little monkey. They have to be monkeys with those tails.”
“But all that golden fur! Who’s ever heard of monkeys that color?”
“I don’t know. And I’ve never seen monkeys that tiny.”
“Maybe they’re here on loan from some zoo,” Trippy said.
“Maybe.” I didn’t want to say so right there but I knew I was looking at a crime.
“Come on, let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.” Trippy was really jittery.
“Me too. I’m pretty sure we’re on somebody else’s land and we might get in trouble for trespassing, so let’s not mention where we’ve been.”
“Okay.”
There was a little shack across the way we hadn’t noticed at first and suddenly this tall skinny guy came out. When I looked closer I could see he was still a kid but a lot older than we were. When he saw us he threw his hands up like we were the FBI or something and then he sort of realized we weren’t there to arrest him. So he reached out his hand to shake mine and said, “Hola. My name is Julio.” And I said, “Happy to meet you, my name is Lizzie. And this is my friend Trippy.”
“Hablas español?” he asked, and I told him I knew only a little. He used a combination of Spanish and English and some sign language to tell us he worked in the building and he also tended the cornfields and yes, he was the one who weeded the vegetables and picked cucumber beetles and potato bugs off the plants early every morning. That figured, because I didn’t think Henry the Huge could do all that. I asked him where he lived and he pointed off to one side under the live oaks to the shack that might have been a storage shed or henhouse once.
By now Trippy had pressed both hands over her mouth as if to say she couldn’t believe this was happening—and to tell the truth, neither could I. He saw the look of surprise on my face and he said, “I know, it’s not much, but I live there for free.” What he really said was half in Spanish but I understood what he meant—“Mi casita no es gran cosa, lo sé”—and then he said it all in English. His English sounded perfectly good to me but he acted like he wasn’t quite comfortable with it.
We didn’t dare stay any longer, so I gestured to show we were going back through the fields, but before we left he put his fingers to his lips and said, “Secret. Promise?” which he then said over again as “No digas nada, ¿me prometes?” I nodded and held my right hand over my heart to show I promised and Trippy did the same thing. My heart was beating so fast that it felt like I had just run the hundred-yard dash back when my legs could work and Trippy turned my chair around and we headed back. Trippy wheeled me most of the way and then I wheeled myself the rest, so it would look normal.
Mom was coming out of Henry’s house as we came around the garden. Our timing was terrific. And just as we were getting ready to leave, Jeb Blanco’s Learjet swooped down, so we had to stay for that. We watched it land a long way away on Henry’s cow pasture. And right on time the Lincoln Navigator came whizzing up Henry’s road and drove out to the plane. Pretty soon Jeb Blanco came driving back and this time the same two men were in the backseat.
He got out of the car and greeted Mom and me as if we were his long-lost friends. We observed the amenities—that’s what Mom calls it—and said we were fine and how was he and then I introduced Trippy and then Henry joined us.
Jeb Blanco said, “Ah, hola, Henry. I’m glad you’re here today because I found the names of some greens that I know will grow here for you,” and he took out a little red leather notebook. “I’m going to write these down and then we’ll have to see where we can buy the seeds to try them out.” He patted his shirt pocket, his suit pocket, his back pockets, then he said, “I think I must have left my pen in the plane.”
I reached into the little case that’s attached to the right arm of my chair and held a ballpoint out to him.
“Ah, good! Thank you.” He turned sideways to lean the notebook on the hood of the car, then printed in very precise capital letters MALABAR SPINACH, NEW ZEALAND SPINACH, and BATAVIAN LETTUCE and tore the page out. I could see Henry’s lips moving as he read the words. Then he folded the page in half and slipped it into his shirt pocket. I felt Trippy nudging me. She was nodding at Jeb Blanco and wiggling her left hand so I knew she was telling me he was one of her clan. I found out a long time ago that only about ten percent of people are left-handed. Trippy is one of them and she sort of collects other lefties but I didn’t think she would mention this to Blanco. I was right. And then I had to open my big mouth.
“I think I remember where I saw you, Mr. Blanco.”
“Really, pequeñita? Tell me.”
“It was on the jetty out past where we live in Woodvale. Practically right next to where the cruise ships leave? I think I saw you walk out there one time. Or maybe a couple of times.”
He acted puzzled. “Woodvale? I don’t believe I have ever been there.”
“Wasn’t it you walking with your briefcase past our cottage, down the right-of-way? I thought I saw you out there talking to one of the fishermen.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Last week someone claimed he knew me in Atlanta. The week before that somebody in Philadelphia swore I was his second cousin and now I am in … where did you say you live?”
“Woodvale.” But by now I was feeling embarrassed.
“Right. Woodvale, where I have never been. Well, how would you like a ride in my plane, pequeñita? You and your little friend here? The next time I come to see Henry and his poor mama.”
I murmured something about how that would be nice. But what I was really thinking was that I wouldn’t go up in his plane with him if he offered me a
million dollars.
CHAPTER 8
I hated to see Trippy go back to the frozen north the next day, but at the same time I was worried. Here we were walking around with a deep secret and I was scared neither of us would be able to hold it in much longer. Trippy swore with a “cross my heart and hope to die” swear that she would be faithful to our secret but I knew how tempted she’d be to tell the whole story.
I said, “I think we better encrypt the monkeys in our emails. How about if we call them ‘the goldfinches’?”
“That’s a great idea! I’m going to start looking them up as soon as I get home.”
How long could Trippy last? For that matter, how long could I? And then I started thinking about Josh. If I had to spill the beans I felt he was the one friend I could trust. We’re a lot alike. Josh’s whole name is Joshua Blaine. A lot of the other kids kind of snicker when he answers a question because when he gets excited and raises his hand it sort of flaps, and if Mr. Hammersmith catches them making derogatory (look it up) sounds, he gives them detention. Well, let them be jerks if they want to. Josh has a nifty electric wheelchair and his mom drives a van with a side door and a ramp so he can roll himself in and out on his own. I know this because our moms turned out to be alumnae of the same college. They both went to Wellesley, which is in Massachusetts, but they didn’t know each other there. Josh’s mother is five years older.
“So how do you say it,” I asked him, “is it alumn-eye or alumn-knee?”
“Well, it turns out people say it either way, but the ‘eye’ ending is the right one because it’s the plural of alumna.”
“For a guy it would be alumnus, right?”
“Yep. And here’s where it gets tricky. The plural is alumni, with an i. It should be pronounced ‘knee,’ but almost everybody who hasn’t taken Latin says ‘eye.’ For some reason this cracked me up and then Josh cracked up too.
This was over lunch. Then out of the blue, I invited him to come home with me the next afternoon. Of course my mom thought it was a great idea since I hadn’t been exactly eager to invite anyone from Graver. “I thought you hated everybody at school.”
“Well, apparently not.”
“When were you thinking?”
“How about tomorrow?”
“I’ll call his mother,” Mom said, and it was settled.
It wasn’t exactly a surprise but more of a relief when Josh accepted. The next day I couldn’t wait for school to let out. As soon as I got home I waited out front for Josh. But I didn’t want it to appear obvious that I was waiting for him so I wheeled up to Mom’s plantings of petunias, which are a pain in the neck to keep watered but they do bloom a lot. I sort of leaned forward and acted busy deadheading them until I heard an approaching vehicle. Josh’s mom was driving. Anyway, I did what Mom taught me to do. I observed the amenities and introduced myself.
And then his mother said, “Hi, Lizzie. I’m Josh’s mom. Please call me Jenna.”
I said, “Would you like to come in and meet my mom?” but just then my mom appeared, and the two of them stood outside talking, so that was taken care of. Josh and I wheeled up the ramp into our house and of course after Jenna drove off Mom asked us if we’d like anything to eat, like grapes or tangerines and oatmeal cookies. After pigging out we went into the study where my computer is. It used to be my mom’s and we sort of shared it but then she got a new one. So now this is my own Mac and it does everything but talk. After a few minutes Mom called in to say she was going down to the beach to catch a swim, did we want to come?
“I think we’ll hang out here. I’m going to show Josh some of the stuff on my computer.”
After I heard the door close I swore Josh to everlasting secrecy, even under torture or in durance vile, like in the Middle Ages, and then I described what I’d seen in the warehouse. “Little monkeys—at least thirty of them all in cages, about six or eight to a cage—all swinging on the bars and climbing all over each other on these big tops of trees someone had put in, and curling up in these wicker baskets that were tied to the treetops, and keeping up this constant sort of chuckling and trilling.
“I couldn’t tell whether it was a distress call or just their way of communicating. They’re beautiful, Josh. They have these—I don’t know what to call them—manes, I guess, all silky yellow.”
“Let’s Google them,” Josh said, and we did. There were about twenty entries for small monkeys and after we browsed through them all we printed out a promising one.
“ ‘Golden lion tamarins,’ ” I read. Josh had wheeled in so close to me that I could smell the freshly ironed smell of his shirt and our wheels were in danger of locking but I didn’t care. “ ‘Slightly smaller than squirrels. They are about twelve inches tall, not including the tail, and can weigh up to two pounds.’ ” We learned all sorts of facts. Like when they mate, the mother always has twins. The father stays around to help take care of them and he often carries the babies on his back. They live in the rain forests of Brazil and they are endangered because farmers are clearing the rain forests to make room to grow crops for their families. The tamarins have lost 95 percent of their natural habitat.
“Well, if they’re endangered, whoever’s importing them is breaking the law.”
“Big time,” I agreed. “But who do you suspect is smuggling them? And how? It can’t be Henry. And I’m pretty sure it can’t be the older kid we met, the one who takes care of them and swore us to secrecy. He looked pretty scared himself.”
“What about the guy you were telling me about—the guy you met that day with your mother?”
“Jeb Blanco, that’s what he says to call him. His whole name is Jesús Ernesto Blanco.”
“Right. Let’s Google him.”
There were thirty-four hits for Jesús Ernesto Blanco. One was a convicted felon from Colombia. Another was a prizefighter in Texas. Another was the owner of a grocery store in Nebraska who was accused of swiping produce at night from a market chain to sell in his store. Another was a hero for performing the Heimlich maneuver on a diner who was choking at a neighboring table at La Zesta somewhere in Manhattan, and so on.
“Wait a minute!” said Josh. “I bet this is our guy: ‘Jesús Ernesto Blanco, owner of Imp-Ex, a major import and export firm with headquarters in New York City, has recently acquired Miami Flash, an importing nexus for rare objects from around the globe. Two years ago, Miami Flash was indicted for illegally importing three orangutans, ostensibly intended for zoos in St. Louis, Denver, and Seattle. An alert customs agent is credited with discovering the animals in a shipment of teak lumber; one of the orangutans was dead and the other two were in respiratory distress. Miami Flash stock tumbled and the firm barely averted bankruptcy.’ ”
“Wow! First orangutans, now tamarins. This guy is a major, major criminal.”
“But what does indicted mean? And what’s a nexus?”
“When in doubt look it up,” Josh said. So we did.
I also looked up ostensibly without telling him because I wasn’t sure. Three new words in an afternoon—not bad.
We got off Google then because we could hear my mom coming back. I didn’t have to ask Josh to keep my secret. He got the picture.
“Can Josh stay for supper?” I asked her. She said sure, if he phoned his mother and she okayed it.
We talked about a lot of things during supper—spaghetti and meatballs, which Josh said was his favorite meal—stuff we might never have gotten to if we hadn’t been sitting across from each other at our kitchen table, not the hideously noisy cafeteria at Graver. We said a lot more about where we were with our bum legs. Josh can walk. Sort of, as he put it. He uses his chair at school because he doesn’t want to have the whole student body watch him gimp-and-gallump from place to place. I knew just what he meant. I can sort of walk too, though with me it’s more like clip-clop-flop. It’s humiliating to do it on two quad canes in front of a whole cast of normals, and my legs are only good for four or five steps, like from chair to couch. And don�
��t tell me to exercise. Believe me, you people reading this don’t know Day One about exercise. I’ve done at least a million push-pulls. I’ve stepped a million steps between the parallel bars.
Mom would say, “Lizzie, I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate.” And then we’d both laugh.
Mom came up with ice cream and brownies from somewhere for dessert—she is just a magician when it comes to putting a supper together out of odds and ends. Then she left us and went out on the porch to read one of her academic journals. We kept on talking.
Josh’s favorite subject is history but he’s like me, he’ll read anything.
“The back of a box of cereal, ads for life insurance, whatever,” he said.
He says he averages about three books a week, pretty much like me. He reads a lot about the civil rights movement. I’m more into Jane Goodall and saving the habitat for animals. I already told you that he does the Sudoku and Jumble puzzles every day, which made it clear to me that we were meant for each other. For fast friends, I mean. I wasn’t thinking anything, you know, sexy. And he has an older brother Greg, who’s a senior at Graver, but I haven’t met him so far. Turns out he’s been in Italy for three weeks with his Advanced Latin class. Is that ever boss? The sweet thing is that he has his own car. Josh says it’s a real junker but it runs and sometimes he can get Greg to drive him places but then he has to go on his canes.
Then we got to talking about our “conditions.” That’s Josh-talk for what the doctors say when you have to go for a checkup, as in “given your condition” … and he asked me what I remembered about hitting my head. “I remember racing out onto the board and slipping and thinking, uh-oh, something bad is about to happen. But I swear I have perfect amnesia for the rest. You read about characters in books having perfect amnesia and then I had it and it was true. I didn’t remember anything until I woke up in the hospital around midnight that night.”
“Wow. So you were unconscious for what—about twelve hours?”
“Something like that. Everything was hushed with no overhead lights on and I didn’t know where I was. I just knew I had this horrible headache. It was so scary because I was connected to all these … apparatuses dripping stuff into me and measuring my heartbeat and pulse and beeping. I was so confused. I knew I wasn’t dead because the machine was beeping but I think I must have cried out because then my mom woke up—she had been dozing in a chair next to my bed. My head hurt so bad it was unbelievable, and they said I couldn’t have any painkillers until they found out, and I quote, the extent of the damage.”