Moo’s mom stood with Mom and Dad.
“Your mom’s a hippie,” observed Amy.
My mom’s a warrior, said Moo, like your mom and dad. She just forgot for a while.
They held hands.
SLAM! A car door, out on the road.
Noises from the roadside.
Amy looked over to see people getting out of cars.
She lifted her lip and made a face at them. She couldn’t help it.
People from town. Some of them were laughing. Big fat surprise.
“Hippies!” someone called out. “Hippies, go on home. Let people work! You know: work?”
(“My parents are scientists!” Amy wanted to shout. “People like them make everything possible!”)
No. She would be silent. This was her parents’ fight.
Something made a lot of noise, approaching from out of sight, beyond the woods.
The noise went WUBBAWUBBAWUBBAWUBBAWUBBAWUBBA and made the whole atmosphere vibrate. A news helicopter appeared over the trees. It advanced, maybe a hundred feet in the air, circling.
More cars pulled off the road.
Some people got out and took pictures of the Big Duke. Amy could hear them saying, “Wow-wee!” and “Lookit that thing!” as if it were designed to spit out pumpkin pies instead of poison the water and soil.
They were shouting now, out there on the big red X.
The red X, Amy now saw, had a spirit. Or rather, the ground beneath it did.
An open wound.
Over by the cars, there was movement. Someone advancing through the weeds. Someone marching across the field with a club in one hand.
Amy’s mouth hung open again.
Was that person mad enough to go out there and start hitting her mom and dad with things?
No way! Amy started forward, and so did Moo.
But it wasn’t someone going out there to hit and yell and be mad and mean. Amy squinted, and—
“It’s Mrs. Barch!” she gasped.
And so it was.
Mrs. Barch wasn’t carrying a club. She had a plain old stick and simply used it to steady herself as she crossed the uneven ground.
“Come on!” called Amy, grabbing Moo’s hand. And the two of them ran up behind Mrs. Barch and took her by the elbows.
“Goodness!” said Mrs. Barch (she was old again, of course, with a scratchy voice). “Amy Wood! Thanks, girls. Well, Amy, your parents have got spunk, I’ll give them that. They’re right, too, and more people than you know find themselves in agreement. Look at that Henry Zane boy out there. No big surprise. Poor kid never had a chance.”
Mrs. Barch looked down at Moo, squinted, and said, “You’re that Kopernikus girl, aren’t you?”
Moo nodded.
“You’re better,” observed Mrs. Barch.
Moo nodded.
“Well, good. Good! Then I’ll expect you at school tomorrow, if we’re all lucky enough to stay out of jail and not get chopped up.”
They reached the X and left Mrs. Barch with the other grown-ups.
Heading back toward the woods, they—
GRRrrRRRRRRRUMMMMBBBBUUMMMBBBUUUUBBBUUB!
Behind them, above them, such a noise! Louder than the news helicopter!
It was the Big Duke’s clawed wheel. It was coming down faster all of a sudden, and it was turning as if something had flicked a monstrous on switch. It spun slowly at first, but quickly picked up speed—VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!—gears gnashing, cables screaming, until the digging wheel was a blur, a hurricane of iron teeth zeroing in on the exact…middle…of…the…X.
Zeroing in on Mom and Dad and Moo’s mom and Mrs. Barch and Chief Byrd.
Not Henry Zane, though. He was GONE like a track star, sprinting for safety.
“Get that thing SHUT DOWN!” he shrieked into a walkie-talkie as he shot past Amy and Moo. “WHO IN HELL GAVE THE ORDER TO ENGAGE THE GANTRY ARM?”
The walkie-talkie protested, saying that no one had touched nothin’, that the thing had just started up and WOULDN’T SHUT OFF, and Amy’s whole body went cold, and then Henry Zane was too far away to be heard, over by the road, watching in horror like everyone else as the terrible wheel kept chewing downward.
Chief Byrd was trying to move everyone off the X.
Mom and Dad and Moo’s mom and Mrs. Barch weren’t having it, though.
Amy could hear what they were thinking.
I don’t believe it, her mom and dad were saying in the privacy of their own heads. It’s a trick. They’ll scare us off and then start digging for real.
They looked at each other then, Mom and Dad did. Some kind of signal passed between them. Something Amy couldn’t quite read. All she knew for sure was that the heart symbols over their heads suddenly grew ten times bigger and brighter.
Mom and Dad ripped off their shirts.
What? Why?
Underneath their plain, everyday shirts, they wore T-shirts reading KUNG and FOO in huge red letters.
Mom was Kung. Dad was Foo.
“No,” said Amy, “way!”
Way, said Moo. I knew it!
“NO,” repeated Amy, “WAY!”
Mom and Dad shut their eyes and kept on playing chicken with the giant wheel.
Except it wasn’t a trap. It wasn’t playacting by the mining company. The wheel was out of control; why didn’t her parents see that?
The whole machine shook and rattled. In half a minute, maybe less, the churning wheel would descend on the X, and it would be like someone had thrown hamburger into a fan (brrrraaaaaaaaaaaappp!—pieces of Mom and Dad, chunks of Mrs. Barch and Chief Byrd!).
“I think that’s quite enough,” said a voice that was like the cop/teacher/president voice mixed together with a sort of queenly tone, like a swan commanding an army.
If I need to tell you who it was, you haven’t been paying attention.
She arrived from the direction of the road, like a sailing ship in a dark gown, gray hair flying like sails, with her mouth set like a trap that had snapped shut. She propelled herself with her didgeridoo on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side, she had help.
A familiar figure in a dark suit. With hair like a haystack. Hair like a whole entire farm. It was the odd stranger who had convinced Amy’s parents not to give up and go home.
Amy squinted and subtracted years.
It was Oliver, of course.
Not boy Oliver, full of uncertainty and sadness, but an Oliver who looked like he knew quite well what he was about. Despite the hair, he had an aura of being confident and strong, even sort of shiny in his coat and tie and long, dark coat, the way a racehorse looks. A large, sleepy-looking gray bird perched (none too steadily) atop his head, but he still looked fine and good, despite this.
Ms. Goolagong stopped at the edge of the red X and pointed her didgeridoo at the deadly wheel and shouted—
BRAAAAAAAP! Iron teeth smashed the didgeridoo into matchsticks.
Ms. Goolagong seemed surprised, but only for a moment.
Then she just pointed up with her own finger and said, “STOP.”
No, she didn’t. She didn’t say it.
Amy heard her think it. Heard her command it.
STOP, said Ms. Goolagong, and Amy could see her shaking. Not with fear, or because she was about to collapse, but because whatever percent of her was a witch, she was using 100 percent of it.
In the meantime, the other grown-ups had turned to observe the new arrivals. Chief Byrd looked concerned. Ms. Kopernikus looked curious. And Mom and Dad…
It was hard to tell what Mom and Dad were thinking and feeling. Amy reached out with her witch senses, stretching and listening….
They were puzzled. They thought Ms. Goolagong looked familiar, and somet
hing about her frightened them.
It can’t be her! Amy heard them thinking. But it is!
Amy wondered how many other people here had been in the woods thirty years ago, to see the witch vanish into thin air with three kids on her lap. How many of them had made themselves forget? How many had simply refused to believe what they had seen?
Ms. Goolagong was looking awfully witchy, scowling and gesturing at the Big Duke as if she could magic it to a stop with the powers of her mind.
Did they think she looked witchy, or maybe just kind of sad?
Her parents, Amy saw, had put off their confusion for the moment and were moving to help the strange woman. Old people needed help sometimes.
But the wheel slowed.
Buh-ROOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo…
“Yes!” cried Amy.
The wheel slowed, and slooooooowed…but it didn’t stop.
Amy and Gertrude, said Ms. Goolagong. Don’t just stand there.
Amy wanted to cry out that she was only half a percent of a witch, and that being able to see the healthy heart of an apple tree or the ghost stories in a patch of earth was not the same as being able to move things and reach into things and command them and change them…but she didn’t say this.
Instead she tried.
The next thing she knew, she and Moo were reaching, reaching out with their whole selves, wanting the wheel to STOP, to BREAK! They squeezed and witched and pushed and became like a big cloud of invisible Play-Doh around the claws and cables and speed and whizzzzzzzzz…and the wheel slooooowed some more….
But not enough.
Amy was so afraid, suddenly, that it was almost like a calm.
Inside the calm was an idea. A simple, sensible idea.
Sometimes, she said to Moo, just because science is deep doesn’t mean it can’t be simple.
Moo looked puzzled for a second, but then she saw the idea in Amy’s head and nodded furiously.
With half the town watching, plus a lot of people in TV-land, Amy and Moo unzipped their hoodies and swung them over their heads.
The butterfly hoodie behaved like a sling, with something like twenty rocks and stones in its pockets. It whirled faster and faster. The cow hoodie did the exact same thing, spinning until it was a blur, like an airplane propeller.
Until Amy and Moo cried, NOW!—and sent the hoodies flying like arrows straight into the wheel.
Which ripped them to shreds. (Sad face.)
And choked on them.
KER-CHOOK! GRiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind! KERCHOOK! CRASH! CHOOKA!
Choked on rocks and stones from the woods and the school and the pond and everywhere.
Choked and—CHOOKA PHZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!—died. (Happy face.)
The Big Duke started leaking black smoke here and there. It began to smell like burning rubber. Mining company people climbed down and ran into the field, holding on to their hard hats.
Mom and Dad and Moo’s mom and Chief Byrd and Mrs. Barch all opened their eyes. Just one eye apiece at first, glancing one way and another.
“We’re dead,” said Mrs. Barch. “I can tell. Well, I never thought I’d be surrounded in heaven by a bunch of former students. Which, no offense, wouldn’t have been my first choice. A big, fat glass of wine, on the other hand—”
“We’re not dead,” said Chief Byrd. “We’re alive, and very lucky. It wouldn’t have been my choice to be out here at ALL, except that I’ve got a whole town full of zealots and hippies and—”
“Shhhhh,” said Ms. Goolagong.
“And witches,” said Chief Byrd.
“Nothing was ever proven,” argued Ms. Goolagong.
“It WAS you!” said Dad, stepping up.
“We SAW!” said Mom, beside him.
They were trying to sound confident, Amy could tell, but their eyes told a different story. They looked dreadfully, badly confused. They looked like they might start crying.
They looked at Ms. Goolagong (who said nothing), and they also looked at their own daughter and her friend Moo. And Ms. Kopernikus stepped up beside Mom, and she was looking at them funny, too. And looking puzzled.
They recognize us, said Moo.
Is that good or bad? asked Amy.
Hard to tell, said Ms. Goolagong. They might just go mad. Give them a minute.
(How would you explain it to yourself? Amy wondered. Hey, I remember seeing this girl thirty years ago, even though she’s only ten and I know for a FACT she wasn’t born yet….)
Mom turned to Dad, saying, with an unsteady giggle, “I always thought she looked familiar….”
And with that, all three parents kind of collapsed onto the ground and sat there with their eyes wobbling around.
Amy and Moo left them alone for a while to get their minds wrapped around things, and paid attention to a separate drama happening about ten feet over THAT way.
Chief Byrd pointed a stern police finger across the cornfield. “Henry Zane!” he roared. “Get your [unsuitable word] over here!”
People had started walking over from the roadside, taking pictures. Of the broken machine looming over everything like a dead giant, and the serious-looking chief of police. They took pictures of the protesters sitting on the ground.
And they took pictures of Henry Zane as he came slinking back to the red X.
“Henry,” said Chief Byrd, “this machine of yours is a menace.”
Henry Zane wasn’t quite as defeated as he’d seemed. He looked at Byrd with a fire in his eye and said, “Listen, you officious clown. If anyone was in danger, it was their own stupid fault for standing here right on the insertion mark when they knew darn well what was going to happen. And yeah, the machine’s got bugs. It has three million moving parts and at least five different electronic systems operating in tandem. Most of these idiots here”—he pointed all around at the townspeople—“can barely keep a car running. In any case, there’s nothing to keep us from pouring some more money down its throat and getting back up to speed before the holidays. We’ll be in the ground by December tenth, I’ll betcha. Merry Christmas, everybody.”
The crowd around Henry Zane made unfriendly noises, but you could tell he didn’t care one bit. He knew very well what percentage of them were warriors, were likely to stand up to him in any real way, and that was almost zero percent. It was the kind of thing he counted on.
They didn’t let him down. They walked away, taking pictures as they went.
“Mr. Zane?” said a voice. A different kind of voice.
It was Oliver’s voice, Amy realized. His man voice.
“What?” seethed Henry Zane.
Oliver stepped forward, snapped open a briefcase, and handed the mining boss a sheaf of papers.
Henry Zane looked at the papers as if they might be poison, but he took them.
“What kind of nonsense—”
“Mr. Zane,” said Oliver, “I represent the Eighth Federal Ecological Zoning Board, an agency certified by the United States Department of the Interior, as well as being under the auspices of the 2006 Paris environmental accords, et cetera and so forth. It is my pleasant duty to inform you that this land is the sole ecological support of one of only five herds of wild cows in the continental US. We have secured federal protection for these endangered animals and their habitat, and as such, this land now falls under the protection of the Endangered Species Act and is strictly off-limits to mining and any other industrial concerns, et cetera and so forth, legal language, legal words, et cetera.”
Henry Zane’s eyes were twitching. Both of them. You hardly ever see that.
“I wanna speak to your boss,” he sneered.
“My boss is the president of the United States,” said Oliver. “I can give you a number, but I doubt she’ll take your call. She’s busy doing work and things.”
The hearsay bird on Oliver’s head woke up long enough to say, “President of the United States,” and then zonked out again.
Henry Zane looked like a slowly deflating balloon. There was a tiny symbol floating over his head, Amy saw. Something like…well, it was a piece of poop. Gross. If you looked closely, you could see that it wanted to be heart-shaped. It looked like it was trying but hadn’t had much success so far.
There was a symbol over Oliver’s head—his wild haystack head—something like a crown with a heart in it.
“MooOOOoooo!” said Moo to Henry Zane.
Henry Zane looked insulted, stuck out his tongue, and slumped away toward the road.
* * *
—
AMY SAT DOWN BETWEEN her mom and dad and said, “Hi.”
They put their arms around her.
When people are feeling scared and uncertain, Amy knew, it was often a good idea to say some nice things to them.
“You guys are brave,” she said. “AWFULLY brave.”
Nothing.
Or you could give them something else to think about.
“By the way,” she said, “technically, I still did what you told me to do. I wasn’t on the X, so technically—”
“Shhhh,” they said. “It’s okay.”
“Confusing,” said Dad, “but I have faith that an explanation that makes some kind of sense—” His voice got shaky.
“Shhhh,” Amy told him.
Moo sat down with her mom. They grinned at each other and shrugged.
Dad looked at Ms. Kopernikus and said, “Thanks, Heather.”
“It’s good to see you again,” said Mom. “It’s been a while.”
Ms. Kopernikus managed to look happy and sort of sad at the same time. She said, “I know.”
Moo, said Amy. They called your mom Heather.
Hello, I know my mom’s name. Dur!
No, I mean…like Heather from the school and the woods. Little Heather, who—
OMG! said Moo, eyes bugging. No way!
Amy could see it in Ms. Kopernikus’s face if she really tried. The small girl who was brave enough to kick and fight even when her arm was being twisted. She was in there!
NO, repeated Moo, WAY!
But she saw it. She slowly took her mom’s hand and just sat there looking at her some more.
Two Girls, a Clock, and a Crooked House Page 18