The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  “Are you saying you think I’m right?” said Noah.

  “Me? Say you’re right?” said Faye in mock indignation. “I won’t say you’re right even if you are.”

  “I’d love to see it fly with a real person in it,” said Lucy.

  “And what am I, Lucy?” asked Faye.

  “I mean so that a real big person could fly it,” Lucy said.

  “Right. Is it settled?” Faye looked at her friends. They nodded. “My cousins can complete it and release it to the world. We can claim credit when it’s safe.”

  Five hands went into the center. The Young Inventors Guild had made a decision, and while they knew it was the right one, they all felt a little sad just the same. It felt a bit like a mother bird watching her baby bird fly away. “Well, we’ll always have our journal,” said Lucy.

  Orville cleared his throat. “You were saying..?” he said.

  “You need to build the full-scale version,” said Faye. “We can’t do this ourselves and, for now, we cannot take credit. You will have to do the calculations for the full-scale version. It will be you doing all of the work from here on out.”

  Faye looked at the others. This was suddenly more difficult than any of them had thought. It had been theirs. It had belonged to them all. They had succeeded where all the adults before them had failed.

  Faye took a deep breath. “You will be the inventors of the world’s first aeroplane.”

  Wallace wrote in the journal frantically. “I need to know the name of the shop again, please,” he said.

  “For the record,” said Jasper. “Wallace and Lucy have been keeping a journal of all of... all of our notes.”

  “Then we’ll eat it,” said Noah. It took a moment for everyone to laugh.

  “The shop is called Wright Cycle Company,” said Wilbur. “But really now, are you sure you don’t want your names—”

  “We’re sure,” said Wallace, finishing his notes.

  “Right now, and I don’t mean to sound so secretive, but it really is not a very good time,” said Faye. “Our parents don’t know and they’re... working on a project... and everything needs to be secret. We don’t want you to mention us in connection with this craft. Really, absolutely no mention until we say otherwise.”

  Wallace mumbled to himself, jotting down figures and rereading his notes. He pulled out a separate piece of paper. “I’ll give you some measurements,” he said, handing the paper to Lucy, who added a few quick sketches.

  “And you’ll need a four-cylinder, twelve-horsepower engine,” Noah said.

  “And two propellers,” said Jasper.

  “Then,” said Faye, “with proper wind to give it that initial lift power, you will, without a doubt, get it to fly—”

  “But you’ll have to find a windier spot than Dayton, Ohio,” Jasper said.

  “But you can do it,” Wallace said. “It will be a three-axis control that—sorry, I don’t mean to... you both seem capable and knowledgeable in the mechanics of it. Your own design sounded excellent, minus a few small flaws.”

  “I bet you’ll be in the air before Christmas,” said Noah.

  The two brothers looked at one another and smiled.

  “But,” said Orville, “we can announce your enormous contributions to the future of aviation, after—”

  “Only after we tell you it’s all right to do so,” Jasper said.

  “For now, the credit should go to the Wright brothers,” said Faye.

  Wilbur and Orville both opened their mouths, but were stopped by five emphatic shaking heads. There was a moment of silence. The Wright brothers conceded.

  “Can we say that we had great assistance from family...” Wilbur looked at Faye. “... and friends...” They looked at the others. “... without whom it would never have taken off the ground?”

  “Absolutely,” said Faye with a smile.

  “Can we call it Faye’s Flyer?” asked Orville.

  “Just ‘Flyer,’” said Faye, although she did like the sound of it.

  “Oh, that’s a lovely name,” said Lucy.

  “But you’ll let us know if you ever want a ride,” said Orville with a wink.

  “You know what we would like?” said Faye, an idea jumping into her head. “We’d like to borrow some bicycles. Does everyone know how to ride?”

  They all nodded, save Lucy. It was getting late, and the night patrol would be coming every forty-five seconds. If they walked, it would be dark by the time they got back. It would be faster with bicycles.

  “We have just the thing,” said Wilbur, as he, Katharine, and Orville hurried back into the shop. They emerged with four bicycles—three made for one rider and one bicycle, a tandem, built for two riders.

  “Consider these gifts,” Wilbur said.

  Faye put her hand on a smaller, elegant bicycle. “This one’s mine.”

  “That one is built for a princess,” said Orville, with a bow, “and until now, we haven’t met one to bestow it upon.” Faye smiled and curtseyed back.

  Jasper, who’d recently taught himself to ride and was teaching Lucy, chose the tandem for the two of them. Noah took the biggest and Wallace took the smallest.

  “Ready?” said Faye, turning to the others. “Let’s go home.”

  “Home?” Jasper asked, his eyebrows raised in wonder. Had Faye, the leader of every escape plan, the head of the rebels, actually called her house in Dayton, Ohio, home?

  “Well,” Faye said, blushing as if caught in the act of something, “besides Sole Manner Farm, where else can we call home right now? Where else can we go?”

  Jasper gave her a small nod and a little smile. He understood. They all did.

  “Where on earth did you get that thing?” asked Rosie as Jasper and Lucy walked their tandem bicycle up to the porch.

  “Oh, we found it... at Faye’s,” Jasper said, smiling up at her.

  “Very well, but don’t you be getting too many skinned knees,” said Rosie. “Those contraptions are dangerous.”

  “I’m famished, Rosie,” Lucy said, rubbing her belly. The smell of roast chicken and gravy perfumed the air.

  “Well, of course you are. You’d better get washed for supper,” Rosie said, scooting the children in. Taking one more look at the bicycle, she shook her head as she closed the door. “I’ve made some of your favorites.”

  The two siblings sat down to a delicious supper, as did their friends in each of their own houses. The food tasted more delicious than ever, now that their aeroplane was safe, and they at least felt a bit safer and more in control of things than they had in a very, very long while.

  But they also had given away their only means of saving their parents—assuming, of course, their parents needed saving, and assuming the aeroplane would have helped save them. They would worry about new plans of escape and for finding their parents tomorrow. Tonight, they ate and breathed deeply and, even for just one night, it felt good just to be home.

  A BICYCLE BUILT FOR FIVE

  OR

  THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

  By Saturday, with no invention to protect and nothing else they could or had to do, the children spent a normal childlike afternoon riding their brand new bikes. Later, they had a picnic in their meadow, and thoughts turned to Miss Brett.

  “I never had a proper picnic before we met Miss Brett,” said Lucy, fondly.

  “Neither had I,” Faye said, suddenly feeling less hungry.

  By the end of the day, Miss Brett was on their minds, and they’d become anxious about returning to her classroom.

  Sunday brought more worries. Was Miss Brett all right? Had Reginald Roderick Kattaning returned? They worried all the more when, by two o’clock in the afternoon, the carriage still had not arrived. The carriages had always arrived just after lunch.

  “How very odd,” mumbled Rosie, wringing her hands and clucking her teeth. She had been sitting with Jasper and Lucy on the porch for hours.

  Faye walked over to Jasper and Lucy’s house. She carri
ed her bag and concern.

  “This has never happened,” she said to them. “Everything has always run like clockwork with these fellows.”

  “Oh, dear,” Lucy said. “I do hope the clock hasn’t been broken.” Her fingers went to her mouth and she began to nibble.

  The three children left their bags on the porch and walked around the block to Noah’s, where Myrtle was pacing and twirling her hair around her fingers. Then the four walked to Wallace’s.

  “Well, I never,” mumbled Daisy, cracking her knuckles.

  “What do you think is going on?” Wallace asked in a whisper.

  No one knew.

  “Let’s just wait for one of the patrol carriages or motorcars,” said Wallace.

  No one had seen a patrol that day, and that was not unusual. But as the clocks ticked and tocked, and hours passed, it was strange that the men in black were nowhere to be seen.

  By four o’clock, the children decided they needed a plan. All five of them and their nannies were pacing and worrying on Jasper and Lucy’s porch. Daisy was cracking her knuckles, Myrtle was twirling her hair, Camellia was tugging at her ear, and Rosie was clucking her teeth and shaking her head.

  “We need to do something,” whispered Noah.

  “We need to get out there,” said Faye.

  “I think we should go to your cousins and ask them to help,” said Jasper.

  Faye agreed. “Maybe they can help us get out to the schoolhouse,” she said. “Mother told me Orville has a motorcar.”

  “I don’t think we want to get him involved,” said Wallace.

  “If he did take us, we couldn’t exactly tell him to leave us in the lap of danger and run on home,” said Noah. “No law-abiding, kind, generous cousin would do that. Besides, I’d like to keep my head attached to my body. I saw the gleam in his eye when he saw the aeroplane. A ride with your cousin Orville might not be the best thing.”

  “But we do have to go somehow,” said Wallace.

  “Maybe the funny men don’t want us to go,” said Lucy.

  “I don’t care,” Faye said. “Lucy, Miss Brett is there. What if she needs us?”

  “She does!” cried Lucy. “She does need us!”

  “How do we get there?” said Wallace.

  “We don’t know where it is, let alone how to get there,” Noah said. “Those crazy coachmen always seem to go a different way. Who on earth could ever remember which direction to take or where it, or any other road for that matter, actually—”

  “I can,” said Lucy, blushing under the gaze of the four others. She looked at Jasper and stopped her little finger from finding its way into her mouth.

  “Of course you can,” said Jasper. He beamed at his sister. Of course, Lucy would remember. “And I know just how we’re going to do it.”

  “It may take us a month to get there,” groaned Faye.

  “It won’t,” Jasper said. “We won’t have the packages, and we can ride directly there. Our bicycles are almost as fast as the carriages.”

  “What are we going to tell the nannies?” asked Wallace.

  That was going to be a big problem.

  The nannies were already pacing and worrying on Jasper and Lucy’s porch, and when the children began to explain the plan, there was not much enthusiasm. Daisy once again cracked her knuckles, Myrtle once again twirled her hair, Camellia once again tugged at her ear, and Rosie once again clucked and clucked like a mother hen.

  “Oh, goodness, oh, dearie me,” Rosie said, shaking her head, close to tears.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Jasper said, patting Rosie gently on the back.

  “We must get out to the schoolhouse,” said Faye. “There’s no one here to take us and no one coming to get us. We’re on our own and we have to go.”

  The four nannies were persuaded to go inside and have a cup of tea, but not before Rosie gave them some sandwiches and water in canteens. Then the five children mounted their bicycles. Lucy’s feet hardly reached the pedals on the back of the tandem, but she was determined to push along and help her brother.

  But almost the moment they left their neighborhood, Jasper shouted to get down. Quickly, they all ducked into a toolshed at the edge of someone’s property.

  Silently, they watched as a man wearing a black beefeater’s cap nearly twice the man’s own height, a black military suit the likes of which none of them could recognize, and boots that reached nearly to his thighs rode by on a giant unicycle.

  “He’s got to be one of ours,” said Noah, shaking his head.

  “Shouldn’t we tell him? Shouldn’t we let him know?” asked Lucy.

  “Absolutely not,” Faye whispered loudly. And they watched as the man, full speed, rode past them.

  “He’s headed toward our house,” said Lucy. The man was gone before she finished her sentence.

  “No!” warned Faye in her most dangerous voice.

  “Why not?” begged Lucy, picking at a bit of sticky tar stuck to her shoe.

  “Because,” Faye said, her voice deep and soft, “this is our chance to get back at them, to get away, to rescue our parents.”

  “Get back at them?” asked Jasper.

  “They stole our parents and ruined our lives,” said Faye, quietly.

  “So this is all about getting back at them for taking our parents?” Jasper said, looking accusingly at Faye.

  Her devious expression dropped from her face. She suddenly realized what she had just said and how it sounded both to her and the others.

  “I didn’t mean... that is, I...” She didn’t know what she meant. Did she truly feel that the men in black were kidnapping evildoers? Or did she just hate them because her parents were gone?

  “Whatever Faye may or may not be feeling,” Noah said, “we have got to get going now. Whatever the men in black want, they don’t want us to get to the schoolhouse today, and we’ve got to get to Miss Brett. With all the danger in this crazy place, she could well be in the middle of some herself.”

  After that, Lucy’s instructions led them in a perfectly straight line. By going straight instead of in circles, Lucy got them to the edge of Dayton in fifteen minutes instead of well over two hours.

  “What’s that sound?” asked Wallace. He heard a hissing noise as they rode along the quiet road.

  Stopping, they saw quickly that Noah had a flat tire.

  “It’s a shoe nail,” said Jasper, pulling out the culprit. He quickly put his finger against the hole to keep the air from seeping out.

  “We’ll never make it with a flat tire,” groaned Faye. She bent over to look at the nail. Lucy slipped and fell into her.

  “Sorry, Faye,” said Lucy, pulling tar from the bottom of her shoe. A truck with roofing tar must have recently passed.

  “I can ride with you,” Noah said to Faye. But his gangly legs were an impossible fit for Faye’s bicycle to hold them both.

  “Can we switch the tire with Faye’s?” suggested Jasper. Since Noah’s bicycle was bigger, they could both fit on Noah’s bicycle.

  “The tires aren’t the same size,” Faye said as she shoved Noah off her bicycle, “and we have no tools to change them.”

  “There’s got to be a way to fix this,” Noah said, looking around.

  “If we can’t, we’re doomed,” Faye said.

  “Oh, no, we can’t be doomed!” cried Lucy.

  “Just hold on, there’s got to be something...” Looking around, Jasper began to feel hopeless.

  As Wallace watched Lucy pick at the tar stuck to her shoe, an idea hit him. “Lucy, let me have that tar,” he said. With the help of a small bit of dirt from the side of the road and the magnifying glass he kept in his pocket, Wallace melted the tar with the magnifying glass and mixed it with the dirt and sand. He then plugged the hole with the mixture.

  “We’ll need to let it set,” said Wallace, but the hole plug was holding well.

  Faye put her hand on Wallace’s shoulder. “Well done, Wallace.”

  “Where to fr
om here?” asked Noah as they waited for the plug to harden, nibbling on Rosie’s sandwiches and drinking some water. It was not very warm, as autumn had come upon them, but they had been riding hard and fast and they were feeling warmer than the weather.

  “Oh, it’s just straight up the road,” said Lucy, pointing to the middle of three roads leading out from Dayton toward the fields and farms of the countryside.

  “Amazing,” said Jasper, putting the cover back on his canteen. “It really was a straight road, nearly, from our homes to the farm.”

  Suddenly, they all realized what that meant. The beefeater on the unicycle might well have been on his way to their homes and now knew they were not in them. The men in black might be along any second. Which could be one of two things—good, if they were coming to take them to the schoolhouse, or very, very bad.

  Without a word, the five children scrambled onto their bicycles and sped down the center road as fast as their bicycles could carry them. They’d have to hope Wallace’s plug would hold. With luck, it would get them to Sole Manner.

  AN APPLE FOR TEACHER

  OR

  WALLACE EMPTIES HIS POCKET

  The rest of the trip back to the farm would have given the world’s calmest person the jitters. They rode as fast as possible, only to fly off the road and hide in a ditch every time a cart, horse, or tractor came by. They did not encounter a single member of the men in black brigade, but they could not tell for sure until the farmer or milkman or traveler passed them. Only then did they drag their bicycles up onto the road again and resume their lightning-fast ride. They didn’t know which was more tiring—the racing or the constant stopping.

  After about forty minutes, Jasper was exhausted. Although Lucy pedaled when she could, she was small and her legs were only so strong. The others were tired, too, but Jasper was determined not to show how beat he really was.

  “We’re nearly there!” he called, without a clue whether this was true or not.

  Suddenly, Lucy called out, “Look, look! It’s the twirly-twisty-birdy-boxy thing!”

  “Lucy, what are you talking about?” Jasper asked.