The Diamond War

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see it well enough.”

  “Well, it probably was one of the people we’re supposed to be meeting with. You know, about the baseball diamond thing.” Eddy still looked blank so Carlos started filling him in. “See, the thing is, I had this great idea about how we could chop down that whole grove over there. It wouldn’t be hard. It’s just bamboo and those little skinny trees. And then we could put first base right there and then the Weed-patch would be big enough. Wouldn’t it?”

  Eddy’s eyes lit up. “Yeah,” he said. “I think it would be. But those trees don’t belong to us. We might get in trouble.”

  “Trouble, schmouble,” Bucky said. “Those trees don’t belong to anyone, except maybe the Dragomans. And they’re never here. They don’t even know the trees are there.”

  Eddy nodded. “But what about this meeting then? What’s that all about?”

  So Carlos told Eddy all about the note—and more or less what it said about a big bunch of people who didn’t want the trees cut down. He finished the story by saying, “But the really weird part is we don’t have any idea how these nerds, whoever they are, found out what we were planning to do. We didn’t tell anybody. Did we, Bucky?”

  Just at that moment Eddy saw it again. “Look,” he yelled. “There it is again. Two of them this time. I saw two faces.” But Carlos and Bucky hadn’t looked soon enough.

  “That does it,” Carlos said. “I’m going in there and find out who it is. You guys stay here to catch them when they run out.”

  “Okay,” Bucky said. “I’ll stay right here and you go over that way, Eddy.” As Carlos headed for the grove Bucky crouched down like a football player getting ready for the snap. “I’m going to tackle the first thing that runs out of there,” he yelled. Carlos disappeared into the grove.

  There was no path. Slender tree trunks crowded around him, and thick blobby clusters of leaves were everywhere. Leaves trailed across Carlos’s face, blocking his vision. He was trying to push them away from his face when suddenly he found himself in a small clearing no bigger than a room in a house. All around him dense stands of bamboo and young acacia trees made a solid green wall. Around the clearing, at the foot of the green wall, there was a kind of border of smooth white stones. The grass in the clearing was short and green, almost like a lawn. And right in the middle of the lawn there was something long and silvery. Long and silvery and—alive.

  As Carlos stared in horror the long silvery thing raised its big oval head and pointed it right in his direction. It was a—snake! An absolutely humongous snake. Carlos yelled and smashed his way back through the green wall.

  Bucky and Eddy were waiting for him just outside the grove. When he burst out through the bamboo Bucky said, “Hey, man. Where were you? What happened?”

  “A snake,” Carlos started to yell, but for a moment nothing came out. Bucky and Eddy were staring at him strangely. He waved his arms, opened his mouth several times, made a squeaking noise, and then, tried again. “A snake,” he finally managed. “There’s this huge snake in there. About ten feet long.”

  “Wow!” Bucky said. “A rattlesnake?”

  “I d-d-don’t know,” Carlos stammered. “It was just big! Real big.”

  Bucky started looking around, he picked up a stick, balanced it in his hand, and then threw it back down again. Then he turned suddenly and ran back toward the Pit. A minute later he came back carrying a shovel and a couple of big sticks. Handing the sticks to Carlos and Eddy, he yelled, “Come on, you dudes. Let’s go chop up that…”

  Bucky’s voice trailed off in midsentence. “…snake,” he whispered. Then he gulped and said, “Oh, hi, Dad. I just had to come over here to tell Carlos something. I was coming right home. Here I come.”

  Mr. Brockhurst was standing near the brick foundation at the back of the Pit. He didn’t look happy. And just at that moment a bell started ringing. The bell was the one that hung on the Wongs’ back porch, and when it rang it meant that Eddy and Web had better get home. Fast.

  So that took care of both Eddy and Bucky. Carlos was left all alone just outside of the grove. For a moment he stood staring at the dense wall of quivering green leaves. He was remembering something. He was remembering that Carson Nicely had snakes. Big ones. And that Carson was Kate’s brother—and that Kate Nicely and Aurora Pappas were best friends. And of course the little Athena twerp was Aurora’s sister. It was all beginning to come together.

  “Okay, you guys,” he shouted. “We’ll be back tomorrow with hatchets and chain saws and—and—with a snake-killing dog too.”

  Actually he didn’t know if Lump would kill a snake. As far as he knew, Lump had never met one. But Carlos felt sure Lump could if he wanted to. He was certainly big enough. And of course there wasn’t really any chain saw. But it sounded good. “We’ll be back tomorrow for sure,” he yelled again.

  He started to walk away but after a minute he turned around and walked backward. Nothing moved in the grove. “You asked for it,” he yelled. “This means war.”

  Chapter 11

  FROM HER HIDING PLACE in the clump of bamboo Kate Nicely watched Carlos Garcia as he finally stopped waving his arms and shouting about chain saws and snake-killing dogs and disappeared into the bushes that surrounded the Pit.

  “Sure you will, stupid,” she whispered. Then she raised her voice and said, “He’s just bluffing, Carson. He’s just trying to scare us. Carson! Carson?” There was no answer and nothing moved in the Unicorn’s Grove clearing. Both Carson and Slinky had disappeared.

  It wasn’t until Kate had searched the grove thoroughly and pushed her way back out into the open that she saw him—a small dumpy figure marching off toward home with about ten feet of boa constrictor wrapped around his neck. She could tell he was angry. Carson Nicely didn’t get mad easily but when he did—look out!

  “Carson,” she called. “Carson. Come back here.” She ran after him but even when she caught up he just kept on stomping and glaring straight ahead.

  “Look, Carson,” she said. “I wouldn’t have let them hurt Slinky.”

  “They were going to chop him,” Carson said. “With a shovel. You didn’t tell me Slinky might get chopped.”

  They were almost to the sidewalk, with Carson still stomping and glaring, when they suddenly ran into all the rest of the council—Aurora, Ari and Athena Pappas, and Susie Garcia—on their way to the meeting. On their way to a meeting that hadn’t happened and now probably never would. The four of them stopped to stare at Carson as he stomped past with Slinky wrapped around his shoulders.

  “Oooh. Look at Slinky,” Athena said.

  “Yikes!” Susie squealed. “Stay away from me. Stay away from me with that thing, Carson Nicely.”

  “What happened?” Ari said. He twisted his fanny pack around and started to pull out a notebook.

  Kate sighed. She waited until Carson and Slinky had disappeared across Castle Court and the other kids had stopped staring after him before she sighed again and began to explain. “…I just had this—well, I guess it was a dumb idea about how to get rid of the PROs.” She looked at Aurora. “I just remembered all of a sudden about the way Carlos kind of freaked out that day when Matt brought that little old garter snake to school. Remember?” Kate made a scared face and jumped back like Carlos had done when he saw the snake. “Remember that, Aurora?”

  Aurora nodded.

  “Well,” Kate went on, “I suddenly thought that if he saw Slinky in the grove he might just, well, you know, kind of lose interest in the whole project. So I got Carson to bring him over here. But it didn’t work the way I wanted it to. Old Brockhurst got this shovel and started yelling about chopping Slinky up. And I guess he might have done it too, except his father showed up really angry. I mean, he looked mad. But Carson heard what Brockhurst was yelling about chopping Slinky and it really freaked him out. He’s crazy about that dumb snake.”

  Ari was writing something in his notebook. “How do you spell freaked?” he a
sked Kate.

  “F-r-e…,” Kate started—and then stopped and glared. “Look, Ari,” she said. “This isn’t a newspaper story. This is real life. And we have a real-life problem. Like, those creeps are going to come back here tomorrow with saws and axes and—”

  “I thought we were going to have a meeting,” Aurora said in her soft breathy voice. “I thought we were going to try to talk to them about ecology and the environment and about how the…” She stopped and shrugged. “Well, I guess not.”

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “I double guess not. Not if you were thinking of trying to tell them about the…” She looked around and lowered her voice and mouthed, “the unicorn.”

  But Athena had very good ears. “The what?” she said. “The unicorn? You said unicorn. I heard you. What about the unicorn?”

  “Shhh,” Aurora said to Athena. “I’ll tell you about it later.” Then she said to Kate, “So there’s not going to be a meeting then?”

  Kate nodded ruefully. She felt bad about ruining the meeting, even if it wouldn’t have worked. “It probably wouldn’t have done any good anyway,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Susie said. “I told you so. I said it was no use talking to those guys.”

  Ari stopped writing in his notebook. “So,” he said, “what’s going to happen next?”

  Kate looked at Aurora. She wanted to ask about the spell but didn’t know if she should. But Aurora guessed. “No,” she said. “I can’t get it back. I had this mysterious feeling about something that was going to happen. Something about…” She stopped and looked at Athena.

  “About me,” Athena said proudly.

  Aurora nodded. “But the feeling’s gone now. I’ve been trying and trying, but I can’t get it back.” She shook her head slowly, her gray eyes dark with despair. “I just can’t.”

  “Look,” Kate said. “Don’t worry about it. We can handle those crummy nerds. We’ll make them wish they never heard of our grove or the Weedpatch. Or baseball. We’ll make them wish they never even heard of baseball.”

  Susie jumped around shadowboxing the empty air. “Yeah,” she said. “And Dove bars. I’m going to make them wish they never heard of Dove bars too.”

  Aurora stared at Susie and then at Kate. She looked at Athena, who was bouncing up and down excitedly, and at Ari, who was writing in his notebook. “If I could only…,” she said. They all stopped what they were doing and looked at her hopefully, but after a moment she only shook her head.

  Chapter 12

  BY THE TIME CARLOS got home he was feeling hungry so he went right to the refrigerator. His mind always seemed to work better when he was eating—and at the moment he had lots to think about. But the big Dove bar box was empty and so was the cheese bin. He vaguely remembered eating the last of the Dove bars, and of course he knew what had happened to the cheese. Or, in this case, “who” had happened to the cheese.

  Right at that moment a voice said, “What happened to all the cheese?” Strangely enough, the voice wasn’t Carlos’s. Actually it belonged to his mom, Brigitta Garcia, who, he suddenly noticed, was there in the kitchen stirring something on the stove. “I was going to use it for the enchiladas,” she went on. “Do you know anything about it?”

  Carlos winced. He hated catch-22’s like this. Catch-22’s where you either had to rat on someone or else tell a lie. “Well,” he said. “I think Bucky might have eaten some of it when he was over here. He said he was hungry.”

  Then his mom, who was usually pretty cheerful for a person with four kids, turned around looking very uncheerful. “Why did you let him, Carlos?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell him to go home and raid his own refrigerator?”

  Another catch-22. This time where you either had to tell a lie or tell your mom you were afraid to ask someone who was supposed to be one of your best friends to go home. Let alone tell him to get his dirty paws out of your refrigerator. Carlos opened his mouth, shut it again—and was saved by the bell. Saved by having the door to the garage open and his father and brothers come in—while, at the same moment, his little sister suddenly appeared from the front of the house. In the confusion Carlos snuck out of the kitchen and headed for the upstairs phone.

  Carlos called Eddy first. When Eddy answered the phone the first thing Carlos said was, “What about tomorrow?”

  “What do you mean, what about tomorrow?” Eddy said.

  “You know. Like we told you. Tomorrow we’re going to chop down those trees. You’re going to be there, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Eddy said. “But what about the snake? You said there was a snake in there.”

  “There was. A humongous one, like a python or something. But I think I got that figured out too. I’ll bet it was a tame one. You know that little Nicely kid? Carlson, or something like that. He has pet snakes, doesn’t he? And Kate Nicely is real tight with the Pappases. So those Pappas dweebs are probably behind this whole thing.”

  “Yeah, Carson has snakes,” Eddy said. “His name is Carson. But why do you suppose they don’t want us to cut down that little bunch of trees? I mean, what’s in it for them?”

  Carlos had thought about that a little. “I don’t know for sure, but the note said something about ecology and that sort of thing. They’re probably just a bunch of ecology nuts.”

  “Hmm,” Eddy said. “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “Well, you don’t have a chain saw, do you? Or an ax?”

  Eddy laughed. “Me? ’Fraid not.”

  “That’s okay. Bucky has this hatchet. We can just take turns with the hatchet. But what we need is some more people.”

  “Why?” Eddy asked. “Why do we need more people if we only have one hatchet?”

  “Because they do. At least they said they did in the note. And we know for sure they have all three of the Pappases and Kate and Carlson Nicely.”

  “Carson,” Eddy said.

  “Okay, Carson. Anyway, the thing is, we may need to have enough guys to keep their guys from bothering the one who is doing the chopping.”

  “How about your brothers?” Eddy asked.

  “Well,” Carlos thought about it for a minute. It would be great to have two big guys like Rafe and Gabe on their side. But the more Carlos thought about it the more he knew it wouldn’t happen. Rafe was too old and too busy being a big hotshot high-school football star. And Gabe? Carlos had a sneaking feeling that Gabe, who once had made up a song about saving the rain forests, might wind up being on the other side. For a moment he had a quick flash of Gabe playing his guitar and singing about saving the rain forest of Castle Court.

  “Naw,” he said. “I guess not. How about Web?”

  Eddy laughed. “Web?” He laughed again, as if it was a big joke.

  Actually Carlos saw what he meant. Webster Wong, who could handle things like test tubes and microscopes and computers like a pro, wouldn’t be all that good at facing up to a bunch of angry nuts—ecology or otherwise. And besides, Web and Carson were kind of alike in some ways. “Aren’t Web and Carson friends?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” Eddy said. “Carson comes over here sometimes and Web goes to his house, but I think they’re mostly just visiting each other’s collections.”

  “Well, that’s okay then. Ask Web if he’ll come and be on our side.”

  Eddy didn’t say anything for a minute, and when he did he didn’t sound too enthusiastic. “Yeah, well this whole thing is beginning to sound pretty complicated. I mean, their side has secret weapons, like Karate Kate. And snakes too. I’m not too crazy about big snakes, even tame ones.”

  Carlos knew what Eddy meant. Everyone at Beaumont knew about Kate Nicely and all her karate belts, and he also certainly knew what Eddy meant about not liking snakes. But he couldn’t let Eddy back out. “Look,” he said. “I’ll bring Lump. Lump will take care of that snake.”

  “Yeah?” Eddy was obviously doubtful. “Lump kills snakes?”

  It was Carlos’s turn to laugh a phony laugh. “Lump?” he said. �
�You don’t believe Lump could kill that snake? That’s funny. Lump could probably kill that snake just by sitting on it.”

  They both laughed. “So,” Carlos went on, “our side has a snake-killing dog. And don’t forget, if Karate Kate is their secret weapon, we have one too. I mean Bucky Brockhurst, the toughest dude at Beaumont School. Our side has Bucky Brockhurst.”

  “Yeah,” Eddy said doubtfully. “If he’s not grounded. His dad sounded pretty mad.”

  “Oh, he won’t be grounded,” Carlos said. “Or at least if he is he’ll find a way to get out of it. Bucky’s good at that sort of thing. I’ll bet he’s already thought of a way to get out of it. I’ll call him and find out.”

  “Okay,” Eddy said. “You call him.” But he didn’t sound too enthusiastic.

  When Carlos called the Brockhurst’s number and Bucky’s sister answered the phone, he almost hung up without saying anything. The thing was, he knew Muffy wouldn’t call Bucky to the phone if she were mad at him, which she usually was, more or less. And it was probably more at the moment—since he’d just been grounded for kicking her. But by thinking very quickly, Carlos came up with a possible solution to that problem too.

  “Oh, hi, Muffy,” he said. “It’s Carlos.”

  “Yeah, I can tell.” Muffy’s voice was cold and suspicious.

  “Don’t hang up,” Carlos said quickly. “I’ve got an offer for you. How about—a quarter?”

  “A quarter—for what?” Muffy’s voice was not quite as cold.

  “You know,” Carlos said. “For telling Bucky I want to talk to him.”

  “He’s grounded. He’s not supposed to talk to anybody, on the phone or anything.”

  “Oh.” Carlos was really disappointed. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait until—”

  “Fifty cents.” Muffy said. “For fifty cents I’ll get him to the phone.”

  A few minutes later Bucky’s voice said, “Hi, dude. What’s up?”

  “Oh, hi,” Carlos said. “I just thought we ought to talk about tomorrow. I thought that—”