Attack of the Spider Bots (16 page)

Beamer didn't know it, but at that very moment his mother was at City Hall, trying another ploy. She figured that since the tree ship was pretty old and practically a legend in the community, she might get the city to declare the tree house a “historical monument.” It was a shot in the dark and, unfortunately, it didn't work. She did manage to give the people there a good laugh. It wasn't exactly the Christmas cheer she had in mind.

“Well, it was worth a try,” she said with a shrug that night at dinner. Beamer's father smiled, got up from his chair, and came over behind her and wrapped her up in a big bear hug. It was all way too mushy for Beamer.

As he went back to his dinner chair, Beamer's dad said, “I've decided I just can't do it. If the city wants the tree house down, they are going to have to do it themselves. I imagine we'll have to pay for it, but — ”

Beamer couldn't tell if his dad was choked up or not, but he didn't finish his sentence. For some reason, though, what he said gave Beamer a strange feeling, like a warm glow, inside. Then when his dad prayed over dinner, he asked that God would work things out for the best.
Sometimes being part
of a family that trusts in God is a pretty neat thing.

The next morning, Ghoulie's mother called Beamer's mom and dad from the courthouse. In a last ditch effort, Old Lady Parker herself had approached the mayor personally to convince him to grant an “exception” to the height rule. Word was that she had known the mayor since he was “knee-high to a chipmunk” and if he couldn't bend the rules for the sake of her neighbor's tree house, then he couldn't expect any more election donations from the Parker family.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. It was going to be a great Christmas after all. There was no way the mayor could ignore Ms. Parker's request. Nobody ever ignored Ms. Parker.

Two days later, Beamer's Xbox time was interrupted by the rattle and groan of old trucks in the street. He and Ghoulie ran to the window and saw the approach of doom. Several men jumped off the back of a flatbed truck as another truck pulled up with a machine for grinding up tree limbs.

“What's happening?” Beamer cried as he ran out the front door.

“Just following orders,” the man in charge said as they pulled out their axes, chain saws, and other equipment.

Ghoulie ran alongside the grinding machine as it backed up the driveway toward the tree in the backyard. “Hey, you can't do this. The mayor said — ”

“The mayor changed his mind,” the man interrupted him as he pushed the boys out of the way. Only much later did Beamer learn what had happened. The mayor discovered that Ms. Parker had failed to contribute anything to his last two election funds. The destruction of the tree house became the mayor's personal payback to Ms. Parker.

Scilla saw what was happening from her second-story bedroom and ran down to throw in a few complaints of her own. “That's our tree!” she yelled. “You can't just bust in and — ”

Somebody revved up his chain saw, and Scilla's cries could no longer be heard.

Phones all over the neighborhood began ringing and, by the time the workmen had assembled their equipment, the Star-Fighters and all their assorted parents, guardians, nannies, and siblings were under the tree. The half of the neighborhood that had been there when the police came the first time was back. Some of them even carried placards protesting the tearing down of the tree house. A few of them shouted at the workmen — things they shouldn't have said, especially since it wasn't the workers' fault.

As the workmen approached the tree, a hush fell over the crowd. It parted to allow a powerfully large, elderly woman dressed in black to pass through. It was Old Lady Parker looking like a thundercloud on the verge of shedding lightning. Beamer hadn't thought it was possible, but it looked like she had even more and deeper wrinkles than she'd had the first time they saw her. And she looked just as scary.

Seeing her expression, the unpopular crew hurried to the tree. Beamer's little brother, Michael, started throwing acorns at them until his mother made him empty his hands and pockets. Beamer appreciated the support. He expected his sister, Erin, to pass out gifts to the demolition crew. Amazingly, she kept wiping tears out of her eyes. As far as he knew, her only contact with the tree had come when she threw things out her window to get the ship's crew to quiet down.
Girls were definitely strange creatures.

Ms. Parker spat out a vow to pour millions into supporting the mayor's next opponent. Then, with the grace of a mountain rotating on a pin, she turned, retreated through the crowd, and disappeared. Eyes were wet with tears, and the sound of sniffles filled the air. The workmen swallowed as if they had received a terrible curse, but they resumed their course up the tree. Beamer had never felt so helpless. At least against Jared, he'd been able to put up a fight. Now, there was nothing left to do. The tree ship was lost!

20

The Return

Then something happened. Beamer should have known it would. Yep, the tree, or the energy field around the tree, went into self-defense mode. Slowly the wind began to rise. Beamer almost didn't notice it at first. Before long, though, the wind turned into a whirlwind. It spun around and through the tree, picking up what was left of the snow. Soon the workers found themselves in a full-scale blizzard.

The branches also flailed about in the wind, whipping the men like a thousand switches. It wasn't hard enough to really hurt them but enough to — you know —
hurt, like a spanking
. The men began yelling at each other and the tree, holding onto the tree for dear life while everything they were carrying was ripped away by the wind and flung down into the safety net Beamer's mom had strung out below the tree.

Beamer's mom and dad remembered all the wild and crazy things their son had said about the tree and the tree ship and gave Beamer a puzzled look. The protestors couldn't tell what was going on. They just thought the workmen were tearing the tree house to smithereens.

Pretty soon the blizzard in the tree became so strong that several workmen began to lose their footing and fall into the net. People in the crowd stepped forward to help them out of the net. As it turned out, none of the workmen had so much as a scratch, but all of them had felt seconds away from seeing that bright tunnel of light in the sky.

“How come the storm's only in the tree?” one of the workmen asked after he crawled out of the net, totally bewildered at how still the air was away from the tree.

“There's no way I'm going back into the tree!” one of the workmen said to his boss. “That thing is haunted!” he said, pointing up toward the tree ship.

“Yeah!/He's right/Me neither” the other men shouted in agreement, though none of them apparently felt comfortable using the word “haunted.”

The leader took off his hard had and scratched his head, trying to think through their predicament. “Yeah, you're right,” he finally admitted, shaking his head, “I think we have . . . some . . . uh, natural . . . obstacles which make it impossible to complete this job. I'll figure out how to word it in the report later,” he said, waving his hands in the air, “Come on, boys, let's pack up and get out of here.”

They never came back.

Beamer would never forget the day Solomon came home from the hospital. It was only a few days before Christmas. A huge stack of luggage made a small mountain in the entry hall. Mrs. Drummond and her sisters stood nearby as prim and snobbish as always while they waited for Mr. Solomon's car. Between sniffles and blowing noses, they glanced fearfully up at the large figure standing like a monument at the top of the staircase. Old Lady Parker's voice boomed orders while her hands cut the air like she was wielding a wizard's staff. An army of servants did her bidding, moving up and down the stairs and back and forth from room to room. Meanwhile her searing gaze always returned to the triplets. If eyes could shoot lightning, those ladies would have been roast geese.

Solomon's cane gently tapped the floor as he walked over to his former assistant and her sisters. Scilla wondered what was going through his head. His face looked hard, but his eyes seemed watery. He didn't say a thing — just stared at them that way for a long time.

Solomon Parker had never realized that Mrs. Drummond had brought her identical sisters in to live with them. They'd practically had a palace all to themselves. Oh, they'd taken turns waiting on Mr. Parker, of course, but only as much as they had to.

Suddenly Mrs. Drummond broke down in tears. “I'm sorry, Solomon,” she sniffled. “I was just afraid it would all be too much for you — getting back into the business.”

“But you knew how much I wanted to run a railroad,” Solomon said, clearing the lump in his throat at the same time. “All those years, I could have been living my dream.”

“But then I would have lost you,” she cried.

“You mean, you and your sisters would have lost your life of comfort.”

The truth was they had gone to a lot of trouble to keep that life. To hide their little secret, they'd refused to hire live-in servants, which a house that large definitely needed.

Instead they'd paid a small cleaning crew to take good care of their part of the house — the first floor. But to save money, the rest of the house — Mr. Parker's rooms — was left to gather dust and cobwebs.

“All those years . . . what a fool I was to let you steal my life,” the elderly man said, shaking his head. “Yes, it was as much my fault as yours, I suppose. I was so buried in self-pity that I surrendered everything of value to the taking.”

“It . . . it wasn't the money, really it wasn't,” Mrs. Drummond argued, with a quick glance up toward his sister.

“I . . . I was afraid you wouldn't need me anymore.”

“Everyone needs somebody, whether they know it or not,” he answered.

Beamer and Scilla looked at Jack when they heard those words. They'd finally talked Jack into coming out of hiding for Mr. Parker's homecoming. Jack felt the heat of their gaze.

He tried to laugh it off but ended up just lowering his head.

“Wait here,” Solomon told the kids and shuffled off down the hallway.

Solomon's limousine driver walked in and began taking out the women's luggage. Another servant — Solomon's new butler — hurried down the hallway and took out more pieces. Ms. Parker barked orders down the second-story hallway, and three of Solomon's new maids came bustling down the staircase to help tote the last of the luggage.

Ms. Parker again fixed her hard eyes on the three women and said simply, “Leave now.” Her heavy, velvety voice seemed to roll around the walls of the huge entry hall like a cannon ball.

Mrs. Drummond and her sisters flinched in fear and quickly scurried toward the door. The deposed assistant, the original Mrs. Drummond, was still wiping her eyes and sniffling pitifully. Scilla, however, thought she caught a piercing glance as Mrs. Drummond passed the kids. The butler scrambled back in, and the maids hurried upstairs to resume their cleaning. Moments later, Scilla heard the car engine rev up and then fade into the distance as it drove away with the three Drummond ladies.

Solomon Parker reappeared, carrying a notebook. “Come with me,” he said as he walked by. “I have a little adventure for you.” As they reached the door, he turned back and looked up toward his sister. He smiled and waved.

Scilla almost gasped as she saw the old woman's face crease into a tight smile. It wasn't the prettiest smile she'd ever seen. In fact, Scilla wouldn't have thought of it as a smile if she wasn't used to Ms. Parker's hard expression. For a moment, she was afraid the old lady's face might crack from the effort, but she didn't get to see because Solomon hustled Scilla out the front door before him.

Another limousine drove up as they walked out onto the porch. “I didn't know you had two limousines,” Beamer said in amazement. This one was about twice the size of the other one and white instead of black.

“What kind of adventure are we going on?” Scilla asked as she turned back to Sol. “Are we goin' to your train set?”

“Maybe . . . in a way,” he said after a moment's pause. The driver opened double doors to let them enter the huge car. They plopped, laughing, into their long bench seat as the driver helped Sol get into the seat opposite them.

As they rode along, Sol spoke brightly of one project after another — the railroad he just found he owned and other projects for the city. First of all, though, he said he was going to open up his train set to visitors during the holidays. Secondly, he'd made a deal with the Middleton City Council to repair the trolley station and fix up the trolley cars. Yep, he was going to revive trolley ser vice for tourists when they were visiting the more picturesque parts of downtown Middleton.

Beamer had never thought of Middleton as much of a tourist attraction. After all, Disneyland it was not. What was the big deal about a river and a bunch of old boats and buildings? Clearly they were something only adults, with their aged imaginations, could enjoy.