“No!” she stopped abruptly. “That’s not possible!”
“Shh! Keep digging,” he ordered, and she did. A guard approached, his eyes set on Penelope for several moments, and then moved on. The Doberman coughed. “There’s a group of us here planning an escape. We need your help.”
“Me?” Penelope was shocked. “I’m nearly an old lady! Look at me. I’m skin and bones. What possible use could I be?”
“We’ve watched you. You talk to no one. You’re very discreet. We need those who can keep a secret,” he explained. “And for an old lady, you’re a fine digger. We need efficient diggers.”
She blushed. “Thank you. But my family will be coming for me soon,” she explained. “Raelyn promised. It was the last thing she said to me.” An obscure image crossed her mind of her tall, sweet sister with the herbal hair, bending down and enveloping her in a burst of love.
The Doberman shook his head. “Your family doesn’t know what’s happening here. No one does.” He added, “or wants to.”
“That’s impossible! How can no one know?” No sooner did she say this, she recognized it for what it was: an admission of what she, herself, knew to be true. The tall chimney loomed before them, the stench of death as proof. She spoke on in disbelief: “What about the community just over those trees? Surely, they must know what’s going on right under their noses.” But Penelope was dizzy, the scoops of earth a blur amidst her forepaws.
“You can’t wait for your family.” The Doberman coughed again. “Join us.” He waited for her response, but none came. He continued, his voice nearly inaudible even inches away. “We’ve been digging a tunnel out. We don’t call ourselves ‘The Underground Squad’ for nothing,” he smiled. “There’s a long way to go. We can only work at night when the night guard is asleep.”
“He sleeps?”
“Fortunately, he does.” The Doberman coughed a third time. My goodness, she realized, he was not at all well. She noticed how tired he looked around the jowls and the eyes. Imagine that—digging all night after digging all day on only a few kibbles of food. Pangs of admiration, guilt, and terror jumbled her brain as she clawed into the soil.
“Alright,” she heard herself say. “I’ll do what little I can.” And from that moment on, she no longer recognized herself.
ALL ALONG THE EDGE OF BLUNDERTOWN, the bedroom curtains inch open silently in the early hours. Restless insomniacs tiptoe across the carpets in the dark, peering through the windows at the gray-violet skyscape. All is still. Momentarily, you make out a faint, curved line, thin as a pencil mark, outlining the edge of the woods. It is from that direction that the sounds come. Eerie, howling sounds, as if from a far-off, haunted house, they travel like radio waves over the forest canopy, past the newly erected fence, across the field and the children’s swing sets, the sheds stocked with rakes and snow blowers. The sounds swirl and curve, muffling their way through the windows, seeping into feather pillows, lodging themselves into your dreams. You imagine the howling is a chorus. Harmonies of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, soothing you to sleep like crashing waves on a summer night. But suddenly the uniform howling picks up tempo, a staccato of short notes screeching over layers of anxious, deeper tones. The music becomes a desperate pleading in the night, a frantic melody.
Then, just as suddenly, it stops.
“Harold?” An elderly woman turns on her bedside lamp, “Harold, there it is again!” she whispers. She taps his white-haired chest. An eye opens reluctantly, his snore becoming a groan. “Did you hear it?” she asks, relieved that he is finally awake, but worried. “Do you smell it, too? Or am I imagining things again?” She glances out the window from her bed. She swears she sees a faint trail of smoke in the distance.
“Mm.” His lids settle back over closed eyes.
“Harold!” He sits up, mops his face with a veiny hand. His elbow supports him precariously. “What do you think it is?” Her voice is hoarse from the night.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Probably burning garbage. Go back to sleep.”
“That’s not garbage. It’s different, a horrid smell, Harold.” His soft snore is his only response.
When she turns back toward the window, the sky is clear, the trail gone.
At the edge of Blundertown, the thin curl of smoke mingles and colludes with the nighttime sky, diffusing into the clouds: I’ll take some, you take some, let’s scatter our evidence away. Invisible wisps make their way over to the rows of houses and through the windows, settling between the sheets, the miniscule hairs in your nostrils as you tuck yourself back into bed. You simply don’t know, you tell yourself. It’s not your business, but you wish it weren’t so close to home. Little do you know that the neighbors are peeking out their windows too, telling themselves the same things before settling back into restless sleep.
In the morning, all is forgotten. Except by little Cindy, who molds play dough into four stubs and a chubby body, yellow into ears and blue into a wagging tail.
“Why do you say that, Cindy Lou?”
“Because, Mommy, that’s what it is. Dogs crying.”
CHAPTER 16
Will The Real Joan Robin Please Stand Up?
I DREAMED I HAD REACHED the ninth wicket, my final destination on the croquet course. I aimed, took a deep, optimistic gulp, and clonk!—propelled my bright yellow ball directly through the stake with my mallet.
“I won! I think I won!” I exclaimed while executing impressive victory leaps around my triumphant wooden ball. “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah,” I gloated.
“Not so fast.” Dad was tallying up the points—25 for me, 24 for mom. “Mommy still gets her last turn.” Behind me, my mother puffed a breath of magic into her hands and rubbed them together for the kill. She re-adjusted her feet and hips three times, eyeballing the trajectory from her ball to the final wicket with steely eyes, a competitive grin. She clutched her mallet and gave a masterful, steady swing. I watched her blood-red ball plunk forward, a perfect advance. I held my breath. The ball was still traveling toward the finish when I awoke.
SHE BROUGHT IN THE Ollie’s Daily and dropped it on the kitchen counter. “Rae, Love,” she called, “I’ve got good news for you!” Raelyn entered from the dining room where her homework was sprawled across the table. Her mother held page five in midair, peck-peck-pecking at the photo. “Ta-da!” she sang. “‘Investigators Give Compound A+!’”
Rae gazed at the newsprint. Curly, plump poodles posed on the page, as clean as newly fallen snow, each wearing a bright red ribbon. A picket fence in the foreground was set off by an array of colorful flowers. For a moment, everything went blank. Then a dizzying spiral of shadow and light engulfed the room.
“Rae? Raelyn!” the snap of her mother’s fingers appeared before her, and a sharp crease across her brow. “Honey? What just happened?”
Rae was leaning on the counter for support. “It’s not true. It’s not true, Mom.”
“What’s not true? What are you talking about?” Her mother’s voice was unusually slow and even.
“The photo. The dogs. It’s a lie. Or, or. . .a trick, or something.”
Ms. Devine placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and another on her forehead, feeling for clamminess or fever. Rae recoiled. “Honey, I know it’s been hard for you these past months. I know you miss her. It’s the Unknown, and it makes you think the worst. But it’s right here!” She again tapped at the newsprint. “This is what you—what we have waited to hear.”
“Stop it!” shouted Raelyn, covering her ears. “I’m telling you, it’s not—real!” She fled upstairs and slammed her door. How naive to have convinced herself that she could change the course of history.
The news article came up over dinner, but she couldn’t tell her parents how, or why, she was so certain about it. She saw the exchanges of concerned, our-daughter-needs-a-shrink glances. Smooth talk could not budge her.
“It’s proof they’re well cared for. It’s clearly a top-notch place,” her mother continued
to assure her.
“Okay. If this place is so great, then why can’t we see it with our own eyes?” Rae demanded.
Her father was rereading the last paragraph. “It says here that it will be open for visitation in the late spring.”
“Yeah, and they said way back in January there’d be visiting, too. Remember? There will never be visiting hours. Or a release date. Trust me.”
“Honey, listen,” her mother said softly, “you can’t get this upset about every little thing in life. You’ll drive yourself crazy.” Then she smiled as if a new, exciting thought had just presented itself. “Have you ever heard about the glass half full? There’s a glass of water filled to the halfway mark. One person says, ‘The glass is half full.’ Another says, “The glass is half empty.’ They’re both right. But the optimist sees it in a positive way, and the pessimist sees it in a negative way.” When her daughter didn’t react, she continued, “You see? Please try to be positive.”
Her father was studying the dynamic between the two of them. He shared neither his wife’s half-full nor his daughter’s half-empty world view. But he was finding it more and more difficult to look his child in the eye. He turned the paper over and sipped his drink.
The following evening at the closed-door legislative session, he and the others sat in their unassigned but regular seats, with Chief Jerkins at the helm. His gestures mimicked Joan’s at dinner the day before, only his fingers were fatter, raising page five and tapping heartily at the fluffy pooches. “See there, friends?” His fleshy orange face burst with Glass Half-Fullness. “This ought to put a sock in it!”
Vigil studied his colleagues. Most were following the Leader, but Ms. Cronk’s eyes were lowered, and Mr. Morris looked out the window. Vigil shifted several times in his seat before redirecting his focus to Chief Jerkins, who was still pontificating about his successful solution to the Canine Problem.
“Excuse me.” All eyes turned to Vigil Devine. The room grew pin-drop still. “When does visitation begin?”
“Visitation?” The members turned to Jerkins.
“Yes.”
“Visitation?” Jerkins sneered again. His beady blue eyes made their rounds from face to face. Then his lips curled upward, showing the dimple on his left cheek.
Mr. Devine cleared his throat. “As I recall, the Compound was supposed to have visiting hours from the beginning. It’s been two and a half months. It’s a simple question: What date, precisely, does visitation begin?”
No one had ever before challenged the Chief on the issue. His sharp eyes drilled into Vigil’s, and his grin was replaced by a clenched jaw. As much as Vigil wished to turn away, he remained steadfast, unwavering. Mr. Pumpkin Head’s jaw relaxed, and his piercing stare broke. He looked calmly around the room, his brow raised in inquiry. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Legislature,” he said in uncharacteristically low tone. “Does this gentleman have the floor?”
Pathetic “No, sirs” fluttered about, lashes downcast.
“I thought not.”
A prickle burned across Vigil’s forehead where it met his receding hairline. Beads of perspiration formed, dripping between his eyes and down the bridge of his nose. He mopped his face with a napkin. Cautious voices around the room addressed other items on the agenda, but he had lost the thread of the conversation. Within minutes, the meeting was adjourned.
That evening, he typed up his one sentence resignation letter, leaving the date blank. It read:
Dear Chief Jerkins:
I hereby resign my position in the Daffy County Legislature effective immediately.
Very truly yours,
Vigil W. Devine
He folded it and tucked it in the back reaches of his sock drawer until the time was right.
It didn’t take long. A heart-to-heart talk was long overdue with his soon-to-be twelve-year-old. The very next morning, he saw that she had hacked off all of her hair, leaving a dark, uneven mat at the scalp, begging to be noticed. What was happening? All he’d ever had to do was ask. She told him everything. She told him about the failed school club and Mr. E’s transfer. She told him about the secret bottom to the food pail and the bangs. She described everything she’d seen inside the Compound and told him about the photographs she’d taken, and her anonymous mailing to the Welfare Society—her last resort for help. The one detail she left out was that she had eaten dog food.
As he listened, Raelyn’s stature seemed to grow and his to shrink. She was like Alice, too large to fit into their house in Wonderland, and he, the diminutive toad in the shadow of a mushroom. From what had always been the child’s seat at the table, she dwarfed him. All the times she had approached them—seeking answers, begging for guidance, sobbing, arguing–-only to be met with his downcast stare. He’d had no idea she had done all those brave things: more evidence of just how asleep he’d been while awake and going through the motions. It had taken a garbage bag of curls to wake him up.
Finally, with a leap of trust, she confided in him about her latest plan—to rescue Penelope from that horrid place. She had the assistance of an unnamed fellow student, she warned, and no one was going to stop them. They could use a reliable grown-up in their corner.
After a long pause, even his voice seemed shadowed and small. “As an adult, I’d be facing twenty years in prison if I were caught there.” He shook his head. “I just can’t take that risk. For you or your mother. Or your brother.”
“We know. That’s why it’s going to be us kids.”
After another delay, he replied, “I’m concerned about your safety, Raelyn. We’re talking about real danger here.”
“We know that, too. We’re doing it anyway,” she announced. “We’re saving Penny.”
Enter Dad, newest member of the team. “How can I help,” he said at last.
Assembled around their dining room table three days later were Raelyn, her father, Gil, and Doc Goodman. Her mother was at work that evening, which was precisely why they were meeting then. They had agreed that she posed a danger to their plan. It wasn’t intentional on her part. Like so many others, it happened by osmosis—the hatred of the masses seeping into her mild disdain; the unconscious, gradual assimilation of ideas. In other words, she had become a canine foe.
She wouldn’t be home for another two hours.
They had only one opportunity to meet face-to-face to finalize the rescue plan for the following night. There could be no writing, no phone calls, texts, tweets, or emails. All those forms of communication were subject to confiscation. The secret police were onto certain people, and Doc Goodman was one of them. They would be tracking his movements, bugging his phone, intercepting and analyzing his computer activities. So far, the Devines were not on the radar. But just in case Doc had been followed there, a Scrabble board commanded the center of the table. To any outsider, it was harmless fun.
They had a full agenda. As real and dangerous as it was, Raelyn felt as if she were playing a game of Spy or cops and robbers. Her father cleared his throat. “I’ll start.” He placed three letter tiles on the center of the Scrabble board. They read, C-U-T. “First, the back fence of the Compound must be. . .CUT. . .in advance. That will be the point of ingress and egress.”
“What?” Gil asked.
“Entrance and exit.”
“C-U-T. That’s good, Dad!” Raelyn clapped for a few seconds until she noticed the somber expressions on the others and suddenly felt ridiculous and immature. This wasn’t a game, after all. She flicked the phantom hair off her shoulder, forgetting yet again that it wasn’t there.
“I’ll do that,” Doc volunteered. “I can’t risk being there for the actual rescue, but I’ll cut an opening in the fence.”
“Won’t they be following you?” Gil asked.
Doc paused. “You’re right.” He dangled his glasses in his hand. “. . .It’s my car they follow, really. I’ll drive to the supermarket, enter from the front and leave out the back door. I’ll have a cab take me close to the Compound, do my
business, get back to the store and leave from the front with a grocery bag. I’ll wave to the undercover cop waiting for me in the parking lot and go home. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good. Risky, but good.” Vigil lifted the Scrabble board slightly and pulled Angie’s color-coded map from under it. He showed it to Doc and pointed to the far boundary opposite the front gate. “You’ll want to cut right about. . .here.” Doc nodded.
“And,” Gil offered, “you’ll have to get there, CUT the wire, and get back FAST,” he proudly added the F, A and S tiles above the “T” of CUT on the Board:
Hey, not bad, Gil,” Rae exclaimed. “And,” she jumped up, picking through the tiles, “make sure it’s D, A, R, K—DARK out.” She placed the D to the left of the A in FAST and the R and K to the right:
Her father smiled, then turned serious again. “Then I’ll take you two—” he looked at Rae and Gil—“to the Compound in my CAR.” He placed the new letters on the board:
“And I’ll park two blocks away on Spring Street, which is somewhere over here.” With his finger, he drew an invisible X off the upper right corner of Angie’s map. “You two will proceed by foot to the back of the premises and crawl under the cut fence over. . .here.”
“Got it,” Gil agreed.
“Got it,” Rae mimicked. “We’ll have to RUN!” The U and the N followed:
She continued, “and then we get Penelope. . .” but when she looked at the next word she’d created, her head sank into her hands.
“Raelyn?” her father asked softly.
She stared again at the word in front of her. It spelled, D-O-GS. “It’s all wrong. We can’t just save Penny and leave everyone else there.” She searched the intricacies of the Scrabble board. “We have to find a place for this.” The others gazed among each other and felt the heaviness of the room. She was right.
The Thing at the Edge of Blundertown Page 13