“I want that chicken, and you’d better have it ready!” Deeter yelled back.
“Four o’clock at the sycamore tree,” Homer croaked delightedly, “with five dollars in a Campbell’s soup can.”
“Nobody gets that money until we see the chicken, alive and well,” said Deeter.
“You’ll see it. Just be there,” sang out Homer, and all the gang members waggled their fingers once again.
It was humiliating. Why had he teased Homer Scoates in the first place? Deeter asked himself. Why had he taken his multicolored pen?
Deeter went home and called Cornelia.
“I’ve got two dollars and fifteen cents,” he said. “How much do you have?”
“About three dollars, and Charles has a quarter,” she answered. “Mindy doesn’t have any money at all.”
“Okay, I’ll get the soup can. We’ll all go to the sycamore tree together,” Deeter said.
At four o’clock that afternoon, not a minute sooner, not a minute later, Cornelia, Charles, Mindy, and Deeter, carrying an empty tomato soup can, walked three blocks to the school. There were a few kids playing on the swings, one on the slide, two on the merry-go-round, and a bunch of boys shooting baskets.
Far off in a corner of the playground stood the old sycamore tree.
“Do they really think we’re just going to put five dollars in a can and walk away?” asked Cornelia. “Why, anyone could come along and take it.”
“We’re not going to walk away. We’re going to stay right there until someone shows up with the chicken,” Deeter told her.
The corner of the playground where the sycamore stood seemed to be deserted. There was no sign of a boy or chicken anywhere.
“I’ll bet this is just a trick to get the five dollars,” said Charles. “They shouldn’t get five dollars. They should get a punch in the face.”
“Do you want to start the fight?” Deeter asked him.
“There are seven boys in the Scoates gang. You and Cornelia and I would each have to take on two apiece, and there’s even one of them left over to get Mindy.”
Charles swallowed again. He’d been doing a lot of swallowing lately.
They walked up to the tree and stood looking in all directions.
“Just lay it on the ground,” said a voice from the tree, and Deeter looked up to see fourteen legs swinging from two large branches above them.
“Don’t do it, Deeter!” said Cornelia. “Not until we have the chicken.”
Squawk! came a loud noise above them, and a mesh laundry bag was slowly lowered on a rope until it dangled about three feet above their heads. In the bag was No-Name, her toes sticking out the tiny holes in the bottom.
“Okay,” Cornelia told Deeter. They dropped their money inside the can. “Put the can by the tree.”
“No, throw it up to us,” said Homer, swinging his legs and grinning. “Throw it to us instead.”
“How do we know we’ll get the chicken?” asked Deeter.
“The minute we catch the can, we’ll drop the rope,” said one of Homer’s friends.
Deeter swung back his arm and made an under-handed throw to the boys in the tree, while Cornelia and Charles raised their arms to catch No-Name. But the bag did not fall. The minute Homer Scoates had the Campbell’s soup can with the five dollars in it, he jerked on the rope, and the bag zoomed back up in the air with another loud squawk from the cockeyed chicken.
“Hey!” yelled Charles.
“Give us that chicken!” Cornelia demanded.
“We want to see you beg! We want to see you crawl!” chortled Homer, obviously enjoying himself. “Get down on your hands and knees and crawl around the tree three times, and then we’ll lower your dumb chicken.”
The demand sounded all too familiar to Deeter.
“No way!” cried Cornelia. “You give us that chicken or else!”
“Or else what?” The Scoates gang laughed, and swung their legs all the harder.
At that moment, however, one of the boys stopped swinging and stared across the playground. Then another boy stopped swinging his legs, and another and another.
Cornelia looked where the boys were staring. Then Charles and Deeter and Mindy turned. Coming across the playground toward them was a large girl with arms like rolling pins and a face as fierce as Cornelia had ever seen. She was wearing army camouflage shorts and a brown T-shirt with the words, Don’t mess with me, on the front. She was also wearing knee pads and holding a hockey stick.
“Who’s that?” Cornelia asked.
And the Homer Scoates gang answered, “Susan Slager!”
14
Plans
Susan Slager was the toughest-looking girl Deeter Delaney had ever seen. She didn’t need a message on her T-shirt. Nobody would mess with her, no matter what. She looked as though she could hide not only a chicken under her shirt, she could hide a whole coop full of chickens!
He had never been this close to her, actually. He had never been this close to any of the sixth-grade girls, and he could feel her breath on his face when she stomped up to where they were standing.
Susan Slager put her hands on her hips and looked around at Deeter, Cornelia, and Charles. She didn’t even bother with Mindy.
“Where,” she boomed, and her voice sounded like gravel going down a tin chute, “will I find Homer Scoates and his gang?”
Cornelia, Charles, and Deeter raised their hands at the same time and pointed up the tree.
Seven pairs of legs dangled motionless from the limbs above. Seven pairs of eyes stared fearfully down at the big girl with the hockey stick.
Susan Slager reached into the pocket of her army camouflage shorts and pulled out a piece of paper.
“‘If you ever want your stupid chicken back, you can look inside Susan Slager’s shirt,’” she read aloud. “Who wrote this?”
All six of Homer Scoates’s so-called friends pointed their fingers at him.
Charles realized that when he was riding around the playground looking for Susan Slager, he must have dropped the note, and somehow it got to Susan.
“Nobody looks inside my shirt,” said Susan and, dropping her hockey stick on the ground, she began to climb the tree.
Like rats deserting a ship, boys began jumping from the sycamore—tumbling, diving, leaping, yelping. They landed on knees and elbows, on hands and bottoms, but no sooner did each boy hit the ground than he scrabbled to his feet again and ran as fast as the wind. In all the commotion, Homer dropped the rope, and, with wings flapping inside the laundry bag, the chicken fluttered to the ground.
Cornelia, Charles, Mindy, and Deeter didn’t look back. Holding their precious chicken in their arms, they ran all the way home and didn’t stop till they were safely inside the Delaneys’ shed.
Cornelia leaned against one wall and closed her eyes, panting until she caught her breath. She couldn’t help laughing, however. “What a debacle this turned out to be!” she said, remembering another word on her advanced spelling list.
“A what?” asked Charles.
“A mess. A mix-up. A disaster. A joke. The Great Chicken Debacle, that’s what this is. Oh, Deeter, did you see the looks on their faces when Susan Slager started up that tree?”
“Did you see how fast they bailed out?” hooted Charles.
“Well, we’ve got No-Name back,” said Deeter, and then, turning to the chicken who was making her way out of the laundry bag, he said, “Hey, you. Are you worth all this trouble? Huh?”
No-Name fluffed her feathers indignantly, spread her wings, and clucked loudly.
Suddenly Cornelia stopped laughing. “The can! Homer still has our five dollars!”
Deeter let out a low moan.
But Mindy triumphantly held the can up in the air, the five dollars safe inside. “They dropped it,” she said.
“Hey, Mindy! Way to go!” shouted Deeter.
“Good girl!” said Charles, suddenly proud of his little sister, and Mindy’s smile spread from ear to ear.
Bu
t Cornelia took charge once more. “Okay, someone has to stay with No-Name every single minute until Mother’s birthday on Friday. We can’t leave this chicken for one second.”
“I’ll do it,” said Deeter quickly, wanting Cornelia to see how dependable he could be. “I’ll stay on watch all night long, and protect this chicken with my life.”
“Promise?” asked Cornelia.
“Promise,” said Deeter.
The next morning when the Morgan children went to Deeter’s, making their way through the lawn chairs they had dragged back there, around the pup tent and the big blue cooler where he kept the chicken feed, the music box, and the umbrella contraption, plus some Gatorade, they could hear a steady thunk, thunk, thunk coming from somewhere. They weren’t sure where. It wasn’t coming from inside the shed, and when they opened the door, they saw No-Name dozing peacefully in her box. So they closed the door and looked around.
Back by the creek, on the path to the road, Deeter was hard at work with a shovel. They could see nothing below his knees, however, because he was standing in a hole.
“What are you doing?” Cornelia asked.
“Don’t worry. I can see the shed from here. If anyone came along to take No-Name, I’d nab him,” Deeter assured her.
“What’s with the ditch?” Charles wanted to know, when he saw that the hole was at least four feet long.
“It’s not just a ditch,” Deeter said, lowering his voice in case there were spies about. “Which way do you think Homer Scoates came from when he stole No-Name?”
“This way, of course,” said Cornelia, pointing toward the road. “I doubt he’d walk right through our yards.”
“Exactly,” said Deeter. “So if his gang comes back, at least one of them will fall in my booby trap.” Sweat dripped down the sides of his face and his shirt was damp. It was too hot a morning to be digging a ditch, and he had obviously been at it for a long time already.
Mindy studied it skeptically. “Maybe they’ll just walk around,” she said.
“Not if they come after dark,” said Deeter. “And not if we cover it with sticks and leaves.”
“But Deeter!” Cornelia said. “Even if somebody does fall in, he’ll just crawl out again. How deep are you going to make it?”
“That’s not the point,” Deeter told her. “The point is to make it just deep enough that if anyone tumbles in, he’ll yell. And if he yells, I’ll hear him. At least I’ll be ready.”
It seemed like a good enough idea that Cornelia got Dad’s shovel from the garage, and she and Charles took turns digging too. They had never in their lives made a booby trap! Even if there were no Homer Scoates, it might be fun to make a trap, just to see what would happen. When the ditch across the path was about three feet deep, they decided that was deep enough.
While Mindy sat in a lawn chair outside the shed, making sure no one came by to steal the chicken, Deeter and Cornelia and Charles worked to weave twigs and leaves across the opening of the ditch and covered the pile of dirt as well. It would have been hard for anyone to know there was a three foot deep hole beneath.
The day dragged on. It grew hotter and hotter, muggier and muggier.
“Whew!’ said Mother, when the three Morgan children went home for lunch. “I thought we’d eat out on the back porch, but it’s just too hot. A storm is supposed to roll in tomorrow. I surely hope so.”
“Not on your birthday!” said Charles.
“Oh, we’ll have fun, no matter what,” Mother said. “I love a good storm, the louder the better.”
That afternoon the children could think of nothing better to do than to put on their swimsuits and have a water fight. Out came water pistols, water balloons, towels soaked in water, then rolled up, and lobbed toward the nearest victim. They chased each other through their camp, around Deeter’s tent, around the lawn chairs, hiding behind the shed and leaping out for an ambush, shrieking and yelping.
“That’s for stealing Homer’s pen!” Cornelia hollered as she squirted Deeter on the back of the neck.
“That’s for being so bossy!” Charles yelled as he lobbed a wet towel at Cornelia’s stomach.
“That’s for leaving the shed door open!” Deeter brayed as he threw a water balloon at Charles but got Mindy instead and had to let her squirt him in the face to get even.
At one point Deeter picked up a whole pail of water and took off after Charles, around the shed, through the walnut trees, around the lawn chairs, leaping over the creek and back again, and then it happened: ker-thwack! Charles disappeared.
“Charles?” cried Cornelia.
“It works!” yelled Deeter. “The booby trap works.”
From the depths of the ditch, however, came a howl of pain. Cornelia and Deeter and Mindy ran over to see Charles half lying in the ditch, holding his ankle, his face twisted in a grimace. He howled again as Deeter and Cornelia pulled him out and helped him over to a lawn chair.
“Shhhh,” Cornelia kept saying. “Shhhh, Charles. Keep it down.”
Too late. Mother was already coming through the walnut trees toward camp.
No-Name, don’t cluck! Cornelia pleaded silently as Mother stopped right outside the shed, looking about, and then hurried over to Charles who was holding his foot in his hands.
“What happened? Did you fall?” said Mother.
“It...it’s nothing,” Charles grimaced.
But now Mrs. Delaney had heard the commotion and was coming around the bushes from the house.
“He didn’t fall out of a tree, did he?” she asked. “You kids aren’t playing chicken again, are you?”
Mindy looked wide-eyed at Cornelia. And when no one said a word, she took it upon herself to explain: “He fell in a booby.”
“A what?” Mrs. Delaney said.
“A booby,” Mindy said again, looking hesitantly at her sister.
“Where did he fall, Mindy?” asked Mother. Mindy pointed, and Mother and Mrs. Delaney walked back to the path near the creek.
“Who in the world dug this ditch? It’s downright dangerous!” said Deeter’s mom. And then her eye fell on two shovels, hers and the Morgans’. “Deeter, did you dig this hole?” she asked.
“We all did,” said Cornelia quickly. “We were just protecting our camp.”
“Well, what in the world is so important back here that you have to booby-trap the place?” Mother demanded. “If the Hoovers decided to take a stroll after dinner or the mailman cut through here on his way to the next block, we could have people breaking their legs right and left. Cornelia, you take that shovel and start putting the dirt back in this minute.”
“B...but...,” Cornelia protested.
“Now!” said her mother.
“Deeter?” said Mrs. Delaney, and didn’t have to say another word because Deeter had already begun to shovel beside Cornelia.
“Charles, can you walk on that foot at all?” Mother asked.
“I...I think so,” he said as she examined it carefully.
“Well, I don’t think there are any broken bones, but we need to get some ice on it. Your dad’s coming home from Peoria tonight, and you kids better get cleaned up. But Cornelia’s going to stay until that ditch is filled.”
Charles cast an apologetic glance at his sister and Deeter, and then, limping along beside his mother with Mindy in the rear, started for home.
A half hour later Cornelia came in, ready for a bath.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered to Charles. “Deeter’s staying out in the shed again tonight. And by tomorrow at this time, it will all be over, we hope.”
Father got home about five-thirty and studied the kids’ faces. “Well,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he set his sample case on the floor. “Are we all ready for your mother’s birthday? Everything ready to go?”
“Absolutely,” said Cornelia.
“Positively,” said Charles.
“I guess,” said Mindy.
Mother laughed as she kissed her husband on the cheek. “Sounds to me
as though you guys have a surprise cooked up for tomorrow.”
“We didn’t cook it!” Mindy said.
“Mindy!” cried Cornelia and Charles together.
Mindy looked chagrined. “I didn’t say...”
“Shut up!” yelped Charles, and Cornelia immediately clapped her hand over Mindy’s mouth.
Father laughed. “Come on. I’m starving. Let’s eat,” he said, but he gave the kids a thumbs-up as they followed Mother to the kitchen.
Before she went to bed that night, Cornelia crept over to the shed and tapped lightly on the door.
The door opened slowly, and suddenly Cornelia was confronted by a hideous creature, with a slimy green face and fangs. She gave a little shriek before she realized it was holding a flashlight in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.
“Deeter!” she scolded.
The creature laughed, and Deeter removed a latex Halloween mask from his face. “Anybody tries to get in here tonight, he’s got a surprise coming,” Deeter said. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to be sure everything’s okay,” Cornelia told him.
“Everything’s okay,” he said. The shed, however, looked as though it were slowly becoming his bedroom. There was not only a sleeping bag, but a pillow. On top of the cooler that Deeter was now using for a bedside table were magazines, potato chips, popcorn, a water jug....It looked almost cozy, if it hadn’t been so warm in the shed. No-Name didn’t seem to mind, however, and was comfortably nesting in the box they had made for her.
“Can you honestly stay awake all night if you have to?” asked Cornelia.
“I’m sure going to try,” said Deeter.
“Okay. If you can make it through tonight, Deeter, you’ll never have to sleep out here again,” Cornelia told him.
She went back across the wet grass to her own house. The air was still warm and humid, and she wondered how Deeter could stand being in that shed all night with the door closed. The tent would be a lot more comfortable, but they couldn’t take that chance.
Even though everything seemed okay, even though Deeter said he would stay awake, even though the cockeyed chicken herself was nodding peacefully in her nesting box when Cornelia last checked, she had the awful, terrible feeling that an awful, terrible something was about to happen.
The Great Chicken Debacle Page 6