by Maxine Kumin
It is possible for a set to have no elements. For example, there are no horses 25 hands tall (a hand is 4 inches). Such a set is called a null set, expressed by a pair of empty brackets { }. List ten other examples of a null set.
Most of the kids groan but Josh and I both think they are fun to work on. We came up with about thirty examples, like the set of months that begin with the letter K. Or the set of odd numbers exactly divisible by 4. Monday, when kids turn in their answers, The Hammer will hold up the wrong ones and say things like “near-ums don’t count,” or “close but no cigar.” He says it in a nice jokey way. You wouldn’t think it to look at him in a suit and tie but he’s really a very sweet person.
Then Josh wrote an essay on the Bill of Rights for his history class and after he was done I borrowed his laptop to write an essay on The Scarlet Letter for my English class. I asked Josh if he’d ever read it.
He said, “I think I did, but I don’t remember it well.”
So I described the plot. “The story seems so old-fashioned. I mean, I feel sorry for Hester, but even sorrier for little Pearl, who is probably going to grow up with a depressed mother. And anyway, I can think of a dozen women on TV who could be wearing the big A on their pinafores, if we still had pinafores.”
We both laughed. And then I emailed the essay to myself so I could print it out at home on Mom’s printer. With those chores out of the way, we got to talking about the murder on the jetty that Digger discovered and all the excitement it created. Josh said he thought the murder victim was probably in some gang that was out to get Jeb Blanco, who had once been a member too and Jeb Blanco killed him instead.
I said, “Maybe Jeb owed him money so he killed him.”
“But how did he get out on the very tip of the jetty in the middle of the night?” Josh asked.
“Maybe he came by boat.”
“In that case, where’s the boat?”
Then I said, “Jeb Blanco is giving me the creeps. Can we play Scrabble instead?” Josh really trounced me. He built m-o-s-q-u-i-t into the end o of my m-o-t-t-o and he managed to block me out of two triple word score chances. Scrabble can get to be a very fierce game. Mom and I have stopped playing because I am very competitive and I can’t stand to lose every time, but it’s even worse if she lets me win. I don’t know why I take it so hard. It’s a mother-daughter thing. But when Josh won I didn’t mind at all. Josh’s mom Jenna had bought fresh bluefish for dinner, and corn on the cob, which we shucked on the back deck. That’s one thing I can never get over in Florida. You can eat fresh corn like, forever. In Wisconsin it’s an eight-week … phenomenon, and that’s it.
Josh’s dad Will and his brother Greg tended the fish on the outdoor grill with a lot of kidding and poking each other with the baster. They were supposed to be using it to baste the fish with this special sauce Jenna had made from limes and I don’t know what. When it was ready we all assembled around the dining table and took turns rolling our ears of corn on the stick of butter that had been “sacrificed for the greater good,” Jenna said. Dessert was strawberries to dip in melted chocolate. I couldn’t help feeling how terrific it was to have a father there picking the bones out of his fish, and chewing his ear of corn keyboard-style all along one row and then the next, and even talking with his mouth full. Talking about Greg’s soccer team’s chances of going to the state championship, and about how sweet it was not to have to worry about the phone ringing to call him to the hospital because he wasn’t on call tonight. Josh had said that his dad was gone every other weekend when he had to stay out at Dirk Isle, and so they mostly didn’t see him from Friday till Monday night. We sat around the dining table just pleasantly chatting until the sun started to go down. Then Jenna said she would drive me home in the van, so Greg rolled me up the ramp and Jenna fastened me in and when we got to our cottage she unfastened me and let me shoot down the ramp the way Josh does. That was sweet too.
It turned out Mom wasn’t home yet, but the back porch door was open, so Jenna helped me get in. “I’ll wait around till she gets here,” Jenna said.
“No, don’t bother, I stay home alone lots of times when Mom isn’t here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. But promise me you’ll lock the door when I leave.”
I thanked her again for a lovely time. And then I said, “You have a very nice family.” My voice kind of squeaked as I said it. I didn’t realize I was close to tears. Jenna said, “Thank you Lizzie” in a sort of surprised voice and then she bent over and gave me a hug. Then she went out the front door and I locked it behind her.
I wheeled around and turned on a few lights. Mom and the Scarecrow had gone out to dinner—she’d left a note to tell me where they were and also to say that her cell phone was on if I needed anything. I leaned back in my chair and daydreamed about how it would be with the Scarecrow as my father, cheering me on at the debate team finals or just grilling bluefish for a family dinner. Maybe we could find Julio and bring him to live with us and just as I was imagining adding a room to the back of our garage I heard footsteps in the kitchen.
“Mom?” I said, though I knew it wasn’t Mom, and suddenly a hand came down hard across my face. It was a man’s hand I knew. He tied a bandanna so tight over my mouth that I couldn’t scream and then he tied my hands together with another one. Then he scooped me out of my chair while I kicked feebly and squirmed against his body, but it was no use.
He kicked the back screen door open with one foot, then he slipped around the side of the house and threw me into the back of a large car and we shot away from the curb. I was on the floor of the backseat, wriggling and moaning and he said, “It’s no use pequeñita. Give it up.” That’s when I knew for sure it was Jeb Blanco. Pequeñita. That’s what he always called me.
He didn’t say where we were going, but I knew. Don’t ask me how, but I felt it in my bones, so it was no surprise when we turned off smooth highway and bumped onto dirt and then turned again. He shut off his headlights as we crept forward and I knew we were on the little road that led to Julio’s shack.
When he finally stopped the car he got out and pulled out a penlight—you know, one of those tiny flashlights you can shine around in a small circle to find something you’ve dropped in the dark. By craning my neck up I could just make out the shape of a big padlock and I figured the police had padlocked Julio’s shack to preserve the evidence. They always put yellow tape around buildings or holes in the street to preserve evidence while they think about the next thing to do. Blanco cursed under his breath, but in Spanish so I didn’t know what he was saying. He came back to the car and popped the trunk. Then he went back to the lock and I saw he had a hacksaw in his hand. Once he’d sawed the lock open he came around to the back door of the car to get me. I desperately wanted to fight him off but he was right, it was no use. He hauled me out like a bagful of monkeys. Kicked the door open, walked in, and dumped me onto a bed. Even in the dark I knew it was Julio’s bed.
But what he did next was really scary. He shoved the bed with me on it farther into the corner against the wall. Then he set the penlight down under the bed so it cast only a small circle of light on the floor. There was a ratty dusty rug that had been beside the bed and I watched while he rolled it up. To my horror I saw there was a narrow trapdoor hidden underneath where the rug had been. He knelt down muttering and rooting around until his hands closed on the ring that let him pull it open. And then I was terrified because I knew he was going to put me down there. I moaned and shook my head back and forth but he just said in this calm voice, as though he had done this a hundred times before, “It’s no use pequeñita. No use at all. You will wait here for Julio.”
Then he went out of the shack and I figured he’d gone to look for a ladder and I was right, because about five minutes later he came back in dragging this big wooden ladder, like from before the Civil War. It was so old it was full of splinters, which he kept cursing at and stopping t
o suck a finger. It took him a long time to wrestle it into place. Then he went down it testing each step. I could hear him bouncing on them one at a time and then he came back up and came over to pick me up.
I struggled and fought as hard as I could until he said, “Listen, niña. Either we go down the ladder together or I just drop you down and forget about you, do you hear me?”
I nodded my head yes. Though which was better—to die instantly from being dropped on my head or to die of starvation and dehydration in durance vile? Because Julio was never coming back here. He was in protective custody someplace safe. I hoped he was happy there.
Once Jeb Blanco got me down the ladder I huddled on the damp dirt floor and started sobbing. I couldn’t help it. This was worse than my worst nightmare. He watched me for a couple of minutes and then he went back up the ladder and pulled the mattress off Julio’s bed. He threw it down so that it landed right next to me and he said, “There. Pull yourself up on that. I know you can.”
So I did. And then he threw me down this ratty old army blanket. “You will stay down there until Julio comes back, you understand?”
He didn’t wait for an answer but went back up the ladder. I watched the trapdoor close over me, leaving me in the pitch dark. Then I heard him unroll the rug and pull the iron bedstead back over it and then I heard him dragging in something, most likely some old wooden boxes that had once held birdseed and bunches of bananas. I could hear him grunting as he worked, and from the thumping I gathered that he was stacking them on the bed. Then the outside door closed and after that I couldn’t hear anything because I was sobbing so hard. I cried for about five minutes and then I got hold of myself and sort of snugged the blanket up around me as best I could with my hands tied together. I had two forever useless legs, and now my hands were all but useless too. I lay there thinking about how sorry for myself I’d been in the hospital after my accident. A kid just about my age tried to make friends with me there. He had been in a pickup truck rollover and his spinal cord was severed so his arms and legs were paralyzed and he was a quadriplegic. He lay on his back and spoke into a little tube that hung over his face. This was what he had to live with every day for the rest of his life. I wondered where he was now or if he was even still alive. In the total blackness I couldn’t do anything except lie there with four fingers holding that musty old blanket. I wondered how long it would take me to die.
I thought about how it must have been when Mom came home all bright and cheery and called, “Lizzie?” and then she and the Scarecrow saw my empty wheelchair and no sign of me. Mom must have totally freaked out when she couldn’t find me. I wondered what she did next. Did she sit down and cry or did she pick up the phone and call Digger and then the Woodvale police and then the Miami police? Or was she crying so hard that she couldn’t talk and so she handed the phone to the Scarecrow and he made the calls? And then I thought about Digger and Teresa, who were my abuelito and abuelita, and I thought that Teresa would have come over to our cottage right away to hold and comfort my mother and that Digger was already figuring out that I had been kidnapped by Jeb Blanco. But where would Jeb Blanco have taken me? Had he dropped me off the jetty to drown? What would Digger do? I cried a lot more. Some of it was over Josh who I might never see again just as we were getting started on a real friendship, and then I cried because I wouldn’t get to see Lia and Tom marry, and would the Scarecrow marry my mother after I was dead and on and on.
CHAPTER 16
At some point I must have dozed off, because when I woke up I heard the sweetest sound in my life, which was men’s voices and I knew they had come to rescue me. I tried to call out but of course I was gagged so the only sound that came out was a sort of gargle. I heard them exclaim over the broken padlock. Then there was the welcome sound of heavy boots entering the shack and their voices as they poked around in the wooden boxes and stomped into the corners. I couldn’t make out the actual words, but I thought I recognized Officer Frank’s voice. And then to my horror the voices moved away and the door closed and silence crashed back down on me like a grand piano dropped by mistake from a high-rise apartment.
I started to sob again. You would think that there couldn’t be any tears left by now, but there were. My chest hurt from heaving up and down and my nose was so stuffed up that it was getting hard to breathe and I was scared I would suffocate before I could starve to death. Years and years from now when somebody found the trapdoor and opened it, there would just be this pile of bones with a disgusting snotty bandanna still attached to the skull.
I don’t know how long I lay there thinking about how much my mom would miss me and how Tigger would be all confused by my absence—and even The Hammer in Algebra I would notice I was gone, so then Josh would get to answer every problem the rest of them were stumped by. And Josh, the real Josh, how much would he miss me?
My thoughts were jumping around all over the place now, from the Scarecrow to Lia and Tom and to my honorary grandparents I had come to love, when I suddenly heard another sound. A car door slammed and footsteps came running up to the door, then entered. Then I heard the sound of wooden boxes crashing down and then I heard the iron bed getting pushed back against the wall and the rug ripped away. Fingers found the ring on the trapdoor and flung it open. Daylight shone in and made me blink. Then a head peered in, blocking the light.
“¡Madre mía! My poor baby! At last I’ve found you,” said a familiar voice. And Digger started down the ladder. It took him only a minute to untie the bandanna from around my mouth and another minute to undo the one tying my hands together. Then he sat down beside me on that grotty mattress and folded me to his chest and rocked me back and forth as I blubbered some more. “Shh, mi amor, shh. It’s over, it’s over, it’s all right now,” he murmured.
“But how did you know where to find me?”
“Fifty years in police work, toda mi vida, fifty years of uncovering evidence and solving crimes, I knew where to look. I tried to reach Julio to take him with me but there was no answer so I just jumped in my car and drove out here alone. The minute I came in, when I saw the bed in the middle of the floor, I knew at once it was covering something. In so small a shack the bed would normally be against one wall, right?” I sort of hummed against his chest so he went on.
“And these old storage buildings, often they had a root cellar. A cool place to keep the fruit until it could be packed for shipping. But never mind all that. Now, let’s get you out of here.”
He tugged me to my feet and pulled me as far as the ladder. But there was no way I could climb it. Digger studied the situation. Then he said, “Put your arms around my neck, chica. We will go up the ladder together.” And we did. I could hear Digger grunting and straining under the load of my ninety-pound body. At last we were aboveground. The little shack looked like heaven to me then, with four walls, on terra firma, as Teresa would say. We both sat on the bedstead for a minute resting and then a terrible thing happened. Digger bent forward groaning, wrapping his arms around his chest.
“What is it what is it?” I yelled. “Oh Digger, is it your heart?”
He nodded, rocking back and forth holding his chest, and then he finally stretched out flat and pillowed his head on my lap. I saw his cell phone strapped to his waist and with a lot of wiggling and straining forward I was able to unhook it. It was just like Mom’s phone. I tried to stop shaking as I dialed 911.
My hands were clammy but my voice was strong as I told the operator how to find us.
“It’s on the little dirt road just past the turn to Wilderwood on County Road 232.” The operator told me to stay on the line until help arrived. I did, but meanwhile I was thinking that I gave Digger his heart attack—first with moving the heavy boxes, then with having to climb down the ladder and then, worst of all, carrying me back up piggyback. If he died it would be my fault.
I told myself that this was a macabre thought—from danse macabre, dance of death. It goes all the way back to the plague, the black death of the Mi
ddle Ages. I probably shouldn’t do this with words, especially at a moment like this, but it’s the only way I know to keep from screaming and pounding on things. The operator was still on the line. He kept asking me if the individual was still conscious. I kept bending down to talk to Digger and each time he murmured, “Still here, chica,” so that much was good. It felt like it was taking forever. And then at last I heard sirens. Their wail grew stronger, and behind them I could hear the special bleating horn of an ambulance.
Everything happened so fast after that. It was crazy, like a series of flash camera shots popping one after another. Digger on a stretcher with medics on either side. Police from Woodvale and others from the towns around Wilderwood swarming through the doorway and filling up Julio’s pitiful little shack. Some of them climbing down the ladder into the cellar—the trapdoor was still open—to look around. And then more medics kneeling beside me telling me I would have to go to the hospital in an ambulance too, just to be checked out after my ordeal. I kept saying I was fine, I just wanted to go home, but they said it was protocol. I haven’t had a chance to look that one up but anyway, I knew it meant that whatever they said I would have to do it. And then Brianna Longname was there kneeling down to talk to me over all the hubbub, and she said, “Your mom and grandmother have gotten the news. They will meet you at the hospital. In fact they’ll probably get there pretty soon after you do.”
By then Digger had been carried out on his stretcher and two very nice medics loaded me into the back of the second ambulance. When I started to cry again and said it was too scary to lie down and be strapped flat after being tied up, they said I didn’t have to, so they let me sit up and I had a medic on either side of me. One kept taking my blood pressure, which was also protocol and she said it was normal. The other kept giving me little paper cups of bottled water because I was so parched from being gagged. We had a police escort with siren and the ambulance driver used his horn every few minutes. I only wish I could have divided myself in two and one of me could have been in the other ambulance with Digger.