Under the Beetle's Cellar

by Mary Willis Walker

  She was relieved to see him obey. “Sorry,” she said. “He’s not my dog. He gets confused when people have contact. He’s a retired police dog, a bit unbalanced. I’m sorry.”

  Jake said, “Theodora, this is Molly Cates. She works for Lone Star Monthly and she’s writing something about the Jezreel mess. I’ve been telling her about Walter. Molly, meet Theodora Shea.”

  Molly was afraid to let go of Copper’s collar, so she raised her free hand and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Shea.” Theodora Shea was probably in her seventies, smooth-skinned and plump under her loose embroidered Mexican dress. Her fluffy white hair was yellowed and sticking out in places and her prominent nose curved gently. She wore white face powder. A cockatoo indeed. The resemblance made Molly smile.

  “Molly, will you help me bring some chairs down from the porch so we can sit and talk a bit?” Theodora asked.

  Molly looked down at Copper, who appeared to have relaxed. She took a chance and let go of his collar. Then she carried two wicker chairs from the porch and put them at the foot of the steps, one on either side of Jake’s wheelchair.

  Although both Jake and Molly declined the offer of refreshments, Theodora excused herself and was back in a few minutes bearing a tray with three glasses of lemonade and three huge slices of chocolate cake. She set the tray down on the bottom step and shot both dogs a warning look. “With Walter gone and the poetry group not meeting, I’m drowning in cake. You young people can help me out.”

  She handed icy glasses to Molly and Jake. Molly refused cake, but Jake took his plate and rested it on what lap he had, which was just large enough to support the plate.

  Theodora sat down and said, “We have got to do something. Two FBI agents came to see me the second week, and I told them exactly what I thought about this madman up the road in Jezreel. All this palaver is just not going to work.” She took a sip of her lemonade.

  Molly noticed how moist and rich the cake looked as the forkfuls moved steadily from Jake’s plate to his mouth, how fluffy the white filling in between the layers looked. “Is that whipped cream?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Theodora reached over to pick up a piece from the tray and hand it to Molly. “We need to snipe him and have the SWAT team move in like the wrath of God, before they have a chance to harm the hostages. I feel certain that Walter would agree with this assessment.”

  “They can’t snipe him,” Molly said with her mouth full. “He never shows himself, never even passes an uncovered window.”

  Theodora took a long, hard look at Molly. “How do you know that?”

  “My ex-husband, Grady, is an Austin cop who’s on the negotiating team.”

  Theodora ran her hand through her fluffy white hair. “Well. I knew you hadn’t got it from the news, because I watch and read everything. Would they snipe him if they could?”

  “That’s a tough one. The problem is they’re a civilian agency. Mordecai has never been convicted of a crime and he’s not actually killing anyone right now that we know of. It’s a moot point anyway since he keeps out of sight.”

  “What does this ex-husband of yours think is the next step?”

  “They’re reevaluating it,” Molly said.

  Theodora made a clucking noise. “Oh, come, come. You’re among friends. Cut the jargon.”

  Molly smiled. “Okay. Every time they talk to Mordecai he reminds them that he will kill the hostages the second anyone sets foot inside his fence. The reason they haven’t moved in is that they believe that. But, if you believe Mordecai’s timetable, we’ve only got three days left now. Grady thinks it might come to SWAT, or actually HRT is what the feds call it—Hostage Response Team. He sees them as an absolute last resort because of the high risk to the hostages, but the negotiation’s gone nowhere. One problem the HRT has, though, is they don’t know where on the twelve acres the hostages are.”

  “That’s a big problem,” Theodora conceded. “A big problem.”

  Jake was quiet. He’d already finished his cake and was going after the crumbs by mashing them onto his fork.

  Theodora noticed his empty plate. She leaned over, took it from him, and handed him another one. “Oh, this is intolerable,” she said, “the waiting. Doesn’t it make you want to march right in there and give them what for?”

  “No,” Molly said, “it makes me want to run and hide until it’s over.”

  “Me, too,” Jake said.

  “You say the negotiators are discouraged. I believe it. On TV that Patrick Lattimore looks close to emotional meltdown. Looks like he’s giving up.”

  “They are discouraged.”

  “If that negotiator friend of yours gets to speak to Walter,” Theodora said, “I’d like to send Walter a message. Ask him to send my love and tell him how much we miss him in the poetry group. We haven’t done anything since he’s been gone. It just doesn’t feel right to go on without him. I’d like him to know we are waiting for him.”

  “Poetry group?” Molly asked.

  “Yes. A group of us who enjoy poetry. We get together here every week. The last few months we’ve been reading Emily Dickinson. Oh, I just wish I could send Walter a complete Dickinson right now. He likes to memorize poetry. It’s such a comfort during difficult times to have in your head when you need it.”

  “Need it?” Molly said.

  “Yes. I’m afraid by now he might be running out and needs some replenishment. Don’t you read poetry?”

  “Almost never,” Molly admitted. “I wish I did. But I can’t imagine needing it. And Emily Dickinson! I have unpleasant memories of a high school anthology: ‘There is no frigate like a book.’ ”

  “Oh, it’s such a crime the way they teach poetry in schools, especially the way they teach Dickinson. Really, she has so much to say to these alienated young people. She’s very accessible. I taught English for thirty years, before I retired, and sometimes I worry that the readers of poetry are dying off one by one. I have this recurring vision that one day the very last of us will be walking home from a library with a book under her arm and keel over and that will be the end of the breed, and no one will ever know or mourn it.”

  Molly glanced up at the porch. The retriever was lying in the same place and Copper was lying next to her, his head resting against her flank.

  “They seem to have hit it off, don’t they?” Theodora said. “Maggie makes friends easily.”

  Jake said, “I’ve never seen Maggie do anything but lie right there at the top of those steps with her eyes closed.”

  Theodora laughed. “Maybe that’s one good way to make friends—just make space for them on your porch.”

  Jake handed Theodora his plate, from which he’d cleaned every crumb. “Thanks. It was delicious as usual, but we have to go. Can you keep on checking the house?”

  “Sure. No trouble. Don’t you worry, Jake.” She turned to Molly. “Wait a minute. I’d like to give you something to take with you.” She bounded up the steps and returned in a few minutes with a large tinfoil package and a fat book. She handed the package to Jake. “It would be a favor to me to get some of this out of my kitchen,” she told him. The book she handed to Molly. It was The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

  “I’d appreciate it if you would give it to your negotiator friend, in case he gets a chance to send it in to Walter. Would you do that for me, please, Molly?”

  Molly had to stifle a snort, thinking about Grady’s response to that request. It was ludicrous. In the hierarchy of things she’d like to send in to the hostages, a book of poems by a repressed New England spinster was at the bottom of the list. Better to send them chocolate cake. “Sure,” she told Theodora Shea, sticking the book in her bag.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the wild beasts of the earth.
”

  REVELATION 6:8

  “You kids know what a vegetable peeler is,” Walter Demming said. “Your mother has one, I bet, in the kitchen drawer. Along with all the stuff like corkscrews and garlic presses and spoons with holes—you know, the stuff she uses for cooking.”

  “My mom doesn’t cook,” Heather said. “We take home from McDonald’s or sometimes Chinese.” When she spoke the word “Chinese,” her face glowed, as though just saying the word had filled her mouth with juicy, succulent bliss. Walter’s mouth watered in response, and for an instant he tasted and smelled the chicken in hot garlic sauce from China Sea, where he and Jake often got takeout dinners, which they ate on Jake’s veranda, with lots of Shiner Bock to wash it down.

  “I love Chinese food.” Sandra closed her book and abandoned all pretense of not listening. “Egg rolls, fried rice, sweet-and-sour pork. There’s a place near us that delivers.”

  “My mom cooks really good,” Hector said. “The best tamales. The best. Everybody says so. They’re so good she sells them and every year she does this thing for the church where she makes hundreds of them and they raise lots of money by selling them. If I could have anything right now—other than an Uzi—it would be a huge pan of my mom’s tamales. When we get out of here, my mom will have a party for us and we’ll stuff ourselves with her tamales—as many as we want.”

  “My dad cooks,” Josh said, “and I help him. We’ve got a couple of those vegetable peelers. We use them to peel potatoes when we’re making mashed potatoes. But we leave a little skin on because my dad says it makes them more interesting. We put lots of butter and milk in them, and after you’ve had the mashed potatoes we make, you could never eat the boxed ones, the fake kind you like, Kim.”

  “You can put butter in the box kind, too, Josh,” Kim said, “and salt and make them taste really good and there are no lumps.”

  “What I love even better than mashed potatoes,” Josh said, “is fresh bread. My dad got this machine, a bread maker, for Christmas. So we make bread and we cut it while it’s still hot even though you’re not supposed to, and we put butter and sugar on it and it smells better than anything in the world.”

  A reverent and hungry silence followed.

  Walter felt his stomach doing flips of desire. If they ever got out of here, the first thing he was going to do was make bread and put butter and sugar on it while it was still hot. It was the most desirable thing in the world. He looked around at the kids and thought if you could look into their heads and see what they were picturing, you would have some delectable illustrations for a cookbook.

  “One sure thing,” Sandra said softly, “I’m never, ever gonna eat cereal again.”

  “Me either,” Conrad said.

  “Well, anyway,” Walter said, “back to the vegetable peeler. It’s a thin metal thing about this long.” He held his right thumb and forefinger as far apart as he could get them. “It’s got a thin pointed blade with a long slot running the length of it. You use it to peel vegetables. But Jacksonville didn’t understand why the old lady gave it to him. Where were the vegetables? What was he supposed—”

  “For the bars,” Bucky blurted out. “He’s so dumb. It’s for peeling the bamboo bars!”

  Walter raised his eyebrows. “I never said Jacksonville was a genius. He’s got some good traits—he’s loyal and honest—but he’s not what you’d call a quick thinker. It takes him a while to figure things out, Bucky. So be patient. And remember he’s been under a lot of stress. Most of us don’t think so well under pressure.”

  Boy, is that the truth, he thought. Some of us don’t think at all under pressure. So far he’d been a total bust. Today, when he got on that phone, he was going to have a last chance to do something. Surely the reason the FBI had not come in to rescue them was that Samuel Mordecai had threatened to kill them if they attacked. Otherwise they would not have allowed forty-eight days to pass without doing something. You couldn’t just kidnap a school bus and get away with it. And another problem was that they probably didn’t know where the kids were being held. That made a rescue difficult in a place as big and spread out as this compound had looked to him. If he could just let the FBI know where they were and what he would promise to do during a rescue, it might help. He’d also like to let them know that if they didn’t come in, he and the kids were dead for sure. But it was risky and he only had one minute to do it. It all depended on—

  “Mr. Demming! Earth to Mr. Demming!” The twangy girl’s voice interrupted his train of thought. Walter looked around. It was Kim, trying to call him back to the story, always there, from the start, to point out to him how responsible adults should behave. “Mr. Demming, are you okay?”

  “Oh, sure. Sure. Sorry. I was thinking about something else. Where was I, Kim?”

  “Jacksonville was trying to figure out how to use the vegetable peeler.”

  “Oh, yeah. He kept looking at it, trying to figure it out. It was an old vegetable peeler—they last forever—it’s a kitchen utensil you only need one of in a lifetime. It had a little rust on the blade part, but it looked plenty sharp. After a while he remembered a friend of his peeling carrots and then he looked at the green bamboo bars, and slowly he got the idea. Maybe he could scrape the bars. Maybe he could peel enough away so he could escape. Maybe he could do it now, in the dark, before morning.”

  Josh let out some dry, hacking coughs that sounded ominous. Walter paused, worried the coughs might lead to an attack. After a few seconds, however, Josh recovered, and nodded that he was all right.

  Walter continued: “He picked the peeler up with his claw and tried to peel one of the bamboo bars. But the peeler just slid off. It didn’t do anything. See, vultures don’t have strong claws like hawks and eagles because they’re scavengers who don’t usually kill their prey. But their beaks are very strong. So Jacksonville tried using his beak instead to hold the peeler. That worked better. After a few minutes he made some progress. He had a long way to go, but he was a hard worker and he kept on scraping. While he worked, he thought about Lopez. He wondered where he was.

  “You kids have probably been wondering, too. Where has Lopez been all this time? Last time we saw him, he’d burrowed into a hill outside the town after eating too many slumber bugs.

  “Well, Lopez finally woke up after about twenty-four hours of sacking out. He remembered Jacksonville had said he was going to go into Moo Goo Gai Pan. So Lopez headed on into town. His progress was pretty slow because armadillos tend to shuffle along with their noses plowing the ground. Even when they’re hurrying, armadillos are slow. They’re even slower than we human beings, and by the standards of the animal world, we are pretty darn slow.”

  Conrad laughed. “That’s why you always see them squished on the road. Ugh.”

  “Roadkill.” Sue Ellen wrinkled her nose.

  “Road pizza,” Hector said.

  “Highway hamburger!” Heather called. “Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts!”

  “Blasted armadillo butts,” Josh chimed in. “Mutilated monkey meat.”

  “Dirty turkey vulture feet,” Walter sang.

  They all laughed uproariously. Walter thought the laughter was the most beautiful sound in the world. He hadn’t heard much of it lately. He wished he could sing and tell jokes, make up songs, entertain them, but he couldn’t. His story would have to do.

  “On his way to town, Lopez came to this neighborhood where giant anteaters lived. These are cousins of the armadillo—they’re both edentates—but anteaters are much bigger, and they have long hollow noses, really long. And claws that are awesome. And when Lopez set eyes on the female anteaters, well, he just couldn’t believe it. They were so big and glossy. And they had these long, plumy tails that swayed when they walked. He loved looking at them.”

  Hector and Kim laughed.

  “And the anteaters were all eating slumber bugs—they had camped out next to a huge hill that was just chock-full of them. Also, they were drinking cheap wine from ju
gs. They had a huge supply of that, too.”

  Walter stopped. He kept getting lost, forgetting where he was in the story. His mind kept wandering back to the phone call he was going to make. Martin said it would happen around ten and they would come get him right before that. Now it was almost nine and he wanted to go into a corner and practice some more. He wanted to have some time alone to be silent and get prepared. This was the last chance. He tried to imagine what was going on aboveground, but he had so little to go on.

  “Mr. Demming. Earth to Mr. Demming. Go on,” Lucy said.

  “Right. Now … Let’s see. Were we talking about Lopez? He knew he should be looking for Jacksonville, but one of the females invited him to visit awhile. And one thing led to another. Lopez ate slumber bugs, he drank wine, he kissed the female anteaters, and he fell asleep again. When he woke up it was dark and he felt really guilty about Jacksonville. So he asked around. Had anyone seen a vulture of Jacksonville’s description? Someone told him about the Tongs capturing a buzzard and dragging him off.

  “Lopez didn’t know what to do. He was scared to go into the Tong camp alone, so he got the anteaters to go along with him—for protection. He bribed them. He promised if they came and helped him rescue his buddy, he would buy them some more wine. So they all went to the Tong camp. It was dark and they saw the fire, so they crept up to it and looked through the bushes. In the firelight they saw the big pot boiling and all the Tongs gathered in a circle around poor Dr. Mortimer.

  “Now Lopez knew they were going to have to do something right quick if they were going to save the doctor. He had to come up with a plan. What he did was this: He told all the giant anteaters to suck wine up into their long snouts and spray it out. But that plan didn’t work because the anteaters had already drunk all the wine, every drop. So he had to figure out something else.

  “Now, it happened that all the anteaters who’d come with him were boys. The girls had all gone to bed. So here’s what Lopez did: He got the anteaters to line up. There were lots of them and they’d all drunk so much wine they were full of it. He counted to five and at the same time they all peed on the Tongs. Long streams of pee.”