Mr. Earle listened, then turned to Ryan. “Mrs. Wilmette just came to your house. It seems Ernest has run off. No one can find him.”
ERNEST GOES DOWN HARD
Ernest had made it to North Side Park just as his adrenaline ran out. It was probably a good thing, because fatigue stopped him from running into the woods frantically and getting himself lost. Forced to slow down and catch his breath, he gave his mind a chance to pause and actually take in his surroundings.
It was dark out, but not so dark that Ernest couldn’t find the right trail to lead him to the cave. The rain was coming down harder, though, and he was really looking forward to getting that windbreaker.
He started climbing up the slope to the cave entrance, but the rain had made the ground muddy and slick. The farther he got up the slope, the more he kept sliding back. Ernest remembered an old Greek story about a guy who had to keep rolling a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom every time. That was how Ernest felt now, only he was the boulder.
Ryan had been right about him. Right about all of it. He was just a sheltered little kid who thought he could fix everything, but in the end only made it worse. What hurt most of all wasn’t that Ryan had been right, but that Grandpa Eddie had been wrong. Wrong about Ernest, wrong to entrust him with his last, dying wish.
Ernest was now on all fours climbing up the slope. He could see the cave opening just a few feet in front of him, only no matter how hard he dug and clawed at the loose earth beneath him, he couldn’t close that last little distance. But he wouldn’t stop trying. He’d keep at it all night if he had to.
And he would have, too, if the ground beneath him hadn’t completely given way.
It was like having a rug pulled out from under him. Ernest face-planted into the mud, and the next thing he knew he was rolling down the hill, along with half the slope. The mudslide was sudden and fierce and so powerful that he was too shocked to even be scared.
On instinct, Ernest reached out for something to grab on to. He grasped at anything that would keep him from falling, and finally his arm wrapped around the trunk of a tree about twenty yards from the trail.
And then his luck got worse.
His arm snapped, just above the elbow.
AFRAID
It was only a matter of time before the factory would close. Ryan’s mom told them that Mr. Wilmette didn’t get the bank loan before they ended their call. But Ryan couldn’t think about that now. Ernest was missing.
After Mr. Earle hung up the phone, Ryan told him that they had to go to North Side Park. He was sure that Ernest was going back to the cave, back to the beginning. The poor kid probably thought a wish of his own might make everything okay. Tess grabbed some flashlights and then called the fire department from her cell phone as Mr. Earle drove them hurriedly to the park.
“Ernest!” Ryan called, running down the paths, his flashlight panning the woods frantically. “Ernest!”
“You’re too far ahead!” Mr. Earle called, but Ryan sprinted deeper into the woods. There was no sign of Ernest. Ryan was having a harder time than expected navigating the trails in the dark and the rain. The search was starting to look hopeless.
Ryan was scared now. He had a strong feeling that this was one of those fateful moments, the kind where things could go either way.
Then an unwelcome thought flashed in Ryan’s mind as quickly and as forcefully as he tried to push it out.
Rollo. This whole thing had started sixty years ago because a sweet kid with a big heart died. What if that’s how this story ends, too?
“Ryan!” he heard Mr. Earle yell again, from farther away.
Ryan started running helter-skelter, calling out to Ernest in a voice that was increasingly loud and increasingly desperate. But it wasn’t working. He ran faster, shouted until he was hoarse. The trees began to all look the same; the paths twisted and spun until they were unrecognizable.
And then he stopped. He didn’t know where he was any longer, and he couldn’t hear Mr. Earle and Tess calling to him.
Ryan was starting to panic. He could feel fear getting the better of him, just as it had the other night when Lizzy had told them about Andrea Chase. When he’d said those awful things to Ernest. He wasn’t going to let fear take over again.
Ryan closed his eyes and slowed down his breathing. He was still scared. Terrified, actually. But he realized that it didn’t matter if he was afraid. What mattered was putting the fear in its place.
Ryan opened his eyes and slowly scanned the woods with his flashlight. He was at an intersection between two trails. The beam of light landed on a wooden trail marker. Good. Mile 0.5 was etched into the wood and painted blue.
He knew this marker. He’d overshot the cave.
Ryan doubled back on the trail. He was getting his bearings; the trail was feeling more familiar, even in the dark. He picked his pace up to a steady jog. He could hear Mr. Earle and Tess now, but they still sounded far away.
He didn’t answer. He was thinking.
Ryan found the spot where they would always leave the trail and hike the woods to the cave. He stepped off the trail, slowly now, and shined his flashlight. He started calling for Ernest, but was more intent on listening.
Just then, a flash of lightning lit up the woods all around him. For a brief moment everything went suddenly, deathly quiet.
Less than a second later the woods were plunged into darkness again, but the flash had been long enough for Ryan to see what he needed to see.
A LATE-NIGHT RUN
It was a slow night in the firehouse. Chad Finnegan was stacking the CPR dummies in the supply room when Chief Collins poked his head in the door.
“Finnegan?”
“Hey, Chief.”
“Some kid wandered into the Nature Preserve off North Side Park. You run those trails, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Suit up. You’re with Jenkins and Rafferty. Two minutes.”
BROKEN BONES AND MUD SKIING
Ryan hurried to the spot on the hill where he’d seen, in that brief, illuminated moment, a prone figure lying in the mud. It was Ernest, facedown, half-conscious and moaning softly, his left arm bent at an impossible angle.
Ryan crouched. “Ernest,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
Ernest moaned in pain. The storm raged overhead, the lightning and thunder coming back-to-back as the rain came down fast and hard. Ryan heard a rumbling sound. At first he thought it was more thunder. But then he felt it.
Beneath him.
“We need to get you out of here.” Ryan struggled to lift Ernest without upsetting his broken arm, but it wasn’t easy. Every twitch and shift caused Ernest to gasp from the pain, and Ryan feared that if he moved him too quickly, his friend might go into shock.
But that rumbling was getting stronger.
Ryan took a deep breath and then hooked his head under Ernest’s good arm. Ryan got him up halfway and Ernest promptly vomited. With uncertain legs on uncertain earth, Ryan summoned all his strength and hoisted Ernest up in a fireman’s carry.
Then, with small, hurried steps, he made his way down the slope.
Ryan felt the ground sliding underneath him. It was kind of like skiing, but without skis. Behind him, he heard a great crashing sound, and even though he didn’t dare look back, he knew what it was.
The entire hill was collapsing on itself.
Ryan decided his best bet was to ride the mudslide. He could see the bottom of the hill and the trail a few yards beyond, and braced himself for the worst. He knew that when they reached the bottom, the mud would stop sliding abruptly and he’d have to be ready.
Sure enough, the slope leveled out and the ground beneath him settled, and he felt like he was being shoved forward. Ryan managed two, three long strides before inertia overtook him and he began to pitch forward onto the trail.
We’re going down hard, Ryan thought.
But as fate or chance or destiny or magic would have it, M
r. Earle was there to catch them.
Though catch might be an overstatement. Mr. Earle did slow their bodies with his own, so that when they all fell to the ground, the kids landed on him, which probably prevented a concussion or two. But Ryan twisted his right ankle badly, and the collision made Ernest cry out and faint from the pain.
Mr. Earle, who suffered a broken nose courtesy of Ryan’s forehead, managed to scoop up Ernest in his arms. Ryan couldn’t put any pressure at all on his right leg, but then Tess, who had been searching another trail, found them. She went directly for Ryan, hooking his arm around her neck and guiding him and the others out of the woods toward a large oak tree in the middle of the park. She rested Ryan gently against the massive trunk and then helped Mr. Earle lay Ernest out and elevate his legs. Tess then took off her jacket and covered Ernest’s chest with it while Mr. Earle inspected him for more injuries.
It was an old oak tree with a thick canopy of leaves that kept out much of the rain. The storm was finally passing, it seemed. While they were tending to Ernest, Mr. Earle shot Ryan a concerned look. Ryan gave his teacher a short nod. Ernest needed the help more.
Then Ryan closed his eyes. His leg was throbbing, he was soaked to the bone, and there was a cold bite to the wind, but he didn’t care. Because Ernest was alive. His friend was alive and right now that was everything.
His eyes popped open at the sound of lightning striking a nearby maple tree. Right in front of him, along the tree line of the Nature Preserve, he saw the maple split cleanly down the middle and fall majestically toward the ground.
Completely smashing Thompkins Well.
WHERE IN CLIFFS DONNELLY IS ERNEST WILMETTE’S WINDBREAKER?
“Ryan?”
“What?”
“Are you up?”
Ryan opened his eyes and looked over at Ernest. They were both lying on stretchers in the back of an ambulance. An EMT sat on a little bench between them. “I guess so.”
“We have a problem,” Ernest said.
“We’re in the back of an ambulance, Ernest. That pretty much goes without saying.”
“No, not that,” Ernest said. “My windbreaker.”
“What?”
“I left it in the cave. What if someone finds it?”
Ryan thought for a moment. “You’re telling me that’s why you went into the woods tonight? To get your windbreaker out of the cave?”
“Uh-huh,” Ernest said.
Ryan started to giggle.
“Ryan?”
But Ryan was laughing harder now, the kind of laughter that takes over everything and makes your whole body shake. Which, considering Ryan’s current state, actually hurt more than a little.
“I’m sorry, Ryan. I tried. I really tried.”
The desperation in Ernest’s voice sobered Ryan up just enough to regain himself.
“Ernest,” Ryan said. “Your windbreaker isn’t in the cave. It’s at my house. You left it there when you slept over last month.”
BOYS
Chad leaned back against the cab as the ambulance sped toward the hospital.
“ETA seven minutes,” Rafferty said through the cab window. “How are they doing?”
Chad glanced down at the two boys on either side of him. “Good,” Chad said. “Quiet.”
The bigger of the two boys looked to be about twelve, the other one younger. Or maybe just smaller.
The little one started talking to the bigger one. He had scared eyes, not that you could blame him. That was a nasty break.
Chad remembered when he had broken his leg. He was thirteen. He and Matt Redigger had gone jumping off Pike Road Bridge into Fulton Creek.
He had been scared, too. Like the little one here with the broken arm, looking to his friend to tell him it would be all right.
That’s what Matt had done for him. Made it all right.
The two boys were whispering across their stretchers now. Then the bigger one started laughing.
“Okay back there?” Rafferty asked from the cab.
Chad wasn’t sure. The bigger one might be going into shock. But then the little one started to laugh, too.
“Yeah,” Chad said. “They’re okay.”
BUDDY THE FORGOTTEN
They were half a mile away from the house when Lizzy’s mom groaned in that way people do when they remember something truly inconvenient.
“What?” Lizzy said as her mom did a U-turn in the middle of the street.
“We have to go back to the hospital.” Her mom sighed.
“Okay. What did you forget?”
“Not what,” her mom said wearily. “Who.”
SNAP, CRACKLE, POP
Ernest’s mom and Mrs. Hardy met the ambulance as it pulled up to the hospital. Ernest knew he should be scared to see his mother. He’d be in big trouble for running off, getting lost in the woods, and breaking his arm. But what Ryan had told him about his windbreaker made him so happy he just couldn’t worry about anything else.
It was a compound fracture. The doctor gave Ernest a shot before setting it, to dull the pain. The medicine worked fast. The last thing he remembered was two nurses holding him down, one by the shoulders, one by the legs, while the doctor grabbed his arm below the elbow and counted down from three. At one Ernest heard a pop, followed by several loud crackling sounds.
Shouldn’t that hurt? Ernest thought.
And then he was out.
OVERTIME
“How long has he been in there?”
“Since about five thirty,” Jeanne said.
“What? That’s over three hours!”
“I told him he could go at seven,” Jeanne said. “He wanted to stay.”
Julia MacComber looked through the window into the neonatal ICU. Buddy was sitting beside the unit’s one patient, singing softly into the little incubator.
“Well, that’s a surprise,” she said. Then she headed for the elevators. Lizzy would be waiting.
PATCHING UP
Lizzy was indeed waiting for her mom by the ER admitting desk when Ryan hobbled out of a nearby exam room.
A nurse had put a brace on Ryan’s ankle, cleaned and bandaged his head, and taped up his ribs.
Ryan gave Lizzy a quick rundown on the last few hours—Andrea Chase arrested, Ernest upstairs with a broken arm, secrets safe, cave completely covered in landslide, and Thompkins Well destroyed—and promised a fuller account in good time.
“Where’s your mom?” Lizzy asked.
“Outside, trying to reach my dad on his cell.”
Lizzy rushed off to find her own mother just as Ryan’s dad and Mr. Wilmette arrived at the hospital. They had been at the factory, which got spotty cell reception even in good weather and virtually none in a storm like this. As such they hadn’t gotten any of their wives’ frantic messages over the last hour until about fifteen minutes ago.
Ryan stood up as the two men converged on him.
“Ernest?” Mr. Wilmette said, his voice sounding small, timid even.
“Broken arm. No concussion. He’s sleeping, Room 314.”
Mr. Wilmette hurried off to find his son. Ryan’s dad took in his own.
“You look terrible,” Doug Hardy said, a strained smile on his face and a whole lot of fear in his eyes.
“I’m okay,” Ryan said. “I heard about the loan.”
“Never mind the loan,” his dad said, trembling as he wrapped his arms around Ryan and pulled him closer. Ryan could feel the man’s frame shaking as he held his son, afraid to let go.
For the first time in months, Ryan was not afraid.
But he didn’t let go, either.
A SERIOUS TALK
Ernest’s parents sat on the edge of his hospital bed and looked at him. They’d been doing that all day, like they were afraid they might lose him if they looked away.
His dad said that they were very sorry about keeping Ernest in the dark these last few months and that they should have talked to him about what was going on with the factory and the bank.
This statement took Ernest by surprise, because it was not immediately followed by the word but. Ernest’s parents said they were sorry, with no qualifications.
His dad even promised to fix the problem. He and Ernest’s mom were going to be more honest and open with Ernest about things that affected them all as a family.
Starting now.
“Three months ago,” said his dad, “the factory won a big contract with an international corporation that’s opening up a new plant in Cincinnati.”
It was great news, wonderful news. Not just for Ernest and his family. But for the factory. For the town.
The only problem was that, to guarantee enough product to secure the contract, his dad would need to expand the factory.
“But isn’t that a good thing?” Ernest asked.
“A very good thing,” his dad replied. “Expanding means I can hire more people. The problem is that expanding costs money.”
“So that’s why you were putting Grandpa Eddie’s house on the market,” Ernest said to his mom.
She nodded. “Except your grandfather’s house is very old, and on that side of town …” His mom stopped short. “Well, let’s just say we wouldn’t get enough on the sale to make a difference one way or the other.”
“The bank just won’t play ball, Ernest,” his dad said.
Suddenly, Ernest could understand why his parents had been so stressed and distant. It’s bad enough having a problem. But to create a solution and then have someone stop you from making it work—that could drive a person nuts.
“So, Ernest,” his dad said, looking squarely at his son. “What do you think?”
Ernest thought he understood everything his parents had told him. But then he figured he must have missed something, because the answer seemed so simple, so obvious.
“Why not sell our house?” Ernest said. “It’s worth a lot more, right?”
“Well, yes,” his mom said. “But where will we live?”
“Grandpa Eddie’s house.”
His dad and his mom looked at each other.
“I think it’s a great idea, son,” his dad said.
Hope and doubt were fighting it out across his mother’s face. “Will it be enough?”
A Drop of Hope Page 17