Puddlejumpers (17 page)

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened?” she said sharply. “Holsapple cut down the trees and sucked it all dry, and I got that right from Russ.”

Ernie shook his head. “Did Holsapple live up here when the Quilt Baby got kidnapped?”

“I don't know, I guess,” she said, then pointed to a distant spot. “They put up a derrick right where Russ found the quilt.” She dismounted and tied Sassy to the fence. “It's way out there. If we get caught, it's certain torture and possible death.”

“Are you always this dramatic?” scoffed Ernie as he hopped from the saddle onto the top rail of the fence. He walked along the narrow beam with the assurance of a tomcat.

“I know what I know,” she asserted.

“Ever been caught before?” he asked.

“No way, but I heard you been caught plenty.”

“Says who?”

“Says your paperwork, and I didn't get caught doin' that, neither,” boasted Joey as she grabbed the knapsack and coil of rope from her saddle.

“What's all that for?”

“Just in case. Two years ago a kid from school fell in some old mine shaft out here,” she explained. “Broke both legs. You sure you want to do this?”

Without a word, Ernie jumped down on the Holsapple side of the fence. Joey patted Sassy's flank. “Don't worry, girl—we'll be right back.”

She jumped the fence to join him on enemy terrain, but Ernie had already started across the field. She ran as fast as she could and finally caught up with him crouching beside a derrick.

“Which one?” he asked.

“Follow me,” she said, and took the lead.

They threaded through the maze of derricks and pumping wells like commandos advancing through a minefield. Joey suddenly dove for cover behind a bulldozer. When Ernie landed beside her, she pointed to a cloud of dust moving across the field. A pickup truck was coming toward them, fast. Alarmed, they hid behind the dozer blade as the vehicle wheeled to a stop next to the derrick in front of them. The driver, a man with coarse skin, spiky hair, and yellow-stained teeth, spit a stream of tobacco juice out the window. Ernie was afraid the man had spied them and was shooting them a sinister wink, until he realized that the guy's left eye was completely seared shut.

“One Eye,” Joey whispered.

In the back of the pickup were a dozen laborers, all smoking and spitting and grousing. Their faces were sunburned and smeared with oil. They looked just as ready to fight each other as work on the rigs.

“Holsapple's thugs,” Joey whispered. “My mom says they all belong in cages.”

One Eye jumped out of the truck, a ring of iron keys jangling from his belt. He unlocked a steel-mesh cage housing an oil gauge, then tweaked the pressure valve. Satisfied, he got back behind the wheel and fishtailed away. The workers in back cursed his neck-snapping acceleration. Joey and Ernie coughed and covered their eyes from the swirling dust.

“That was too close,” exhaled Joey. “If we were smart, we'd turn around right now.”

“Forget it, they're long gone.”

“So you say,” she doubted, but started counting the derricks anyway. “That one,” she said, then dashed back into the open with Ernie right behind.

They skidded to a stop beside the tall derrick. A crudely painted sign identified it as
DERRICK 19
. Next to it was a rusted oil pump enclosed in a chain-link fence with barbed wire along the top. Joey pointed to the soil just beyond the machine's iron arm that ratcheted noisily up and down, pumping crude oil from deep underneath.

“There. It was right there,” she shouted. “That's where they found the quilt.”

Ernie knew getting to the spot was going to be dangerous. The only break in the fence was at the ratchet arm. He started toward it, but Joey grabbed him by the shirt. “You want your head chopped off?”

“Try not to worry so much,” he said cockily, but he wasn't feeling so brave. Setting his jaw, he dove headfirst past the ratcheting arm and rolled to a dusty stop.

“You look like a pig in a slop trough,” Joey yelled over the noise.

“Least I'm not a chicken, Rooster,” he yelled back, brushing himself off. He fished Holsapple's keys out of his pocket and used them to dig around in the dirt.

“What are you doin'?!” she shouted.

“What do you think I'm doing, I'm looking for clues.”

“Well, hurry up. Holsapple can smell trouble on his property like no other person alive!”

Ernie struck something hard a few inches beneath the soil. He looked past the ratcheting arm to Joey. “I hit something. C'mon, help me.”

“Forget it,” she replied. “It's probably just a rock.”

“I'm telling you, I found something—don't be such a wuss!”

Joey glared at him. He glared back, which really made her mad. Gritting her teeth, she swayed back and forth to match the timing of the iron pendulum, then jumped. The huge arm caught her heel on its back swing, tumbling her into the dirt at Ernie's side.

“You okay?”

“'Course,” she said as she rubbed her throbbing ankle.

Pulling a jackknife from her pocket, she helped dig until they uncovered a three-by-three-foot sheet of plywood. They shoved it aside to reveal a narrow shaft descending into the darkness. Ernie cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Quilt Babyyyyy…”

Joey laughed nervously. “Right, like anybody's down there.”

Ignoring her, Ernie dropped a stone. It hit the ground with a thump. He turned to Joey. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

She took a flashlight out of her backpack and shined it downward. The hole was twenty feet deep.

“For nothin'. It's some old mine shaft,” she said. “Maybe not,” countered Ernie.

“Maybe what, then?”

“Maybe something.”

“Maybe some people think they're smarter than Russ, the sheriff, and all the detectives,” she suggested sarcastically.

Ernie smiled. “Maybe I am.” He tied the rope to the base of the pump, then tossed the free end down the shaft.

She shook her head. “Maybe you're crazy.”

He started down the rope. “Maybe you don't care what happened to Russ' kid.”

Joey watched as he descended the rope hand over hand. “Maybe you wanna get us trapped down there so Holsy can eat us for supper, piece by piece,” she yelled as he disappeared into the black.

Ernie touched down at the bottom of the pit. When he looked up, he could see Joey's silhouette at the top of the shaft. “Maybe you should throw down the flashlight,” he shouted.

“Maybe you should…aww, forget it,” she muttered, then began to shinny down the rope. Halfway down, she lost her grip and fell in a heap at Ernie's feet.

“You okay?”

“'Course I am,” she said with a wince.

Joey flicked on her flashlight and panned the beam across the rugged surface of a subterranean cavern. A passageway receded into the darkness.

“Jeez Louise, a tunnel,” she sputtered.

Ernie pointed to the left. “Shine the light over there.”

Joey illuminated a thin wooden pole that ran horizontally along one wall before disappearing into the earth. They shuffled over to examine it. Joey trained the flashlight along its surface. The wood was a whitish color with peeling bark.

“It's just an old piece of birch,” she said.

“But what's it doing down here?” He tapped it with his knuckles. “It's hollow.”

“So?”

“Gimme the light,” he said as he swiped the flashlight from her hand. He shined it deeper into the tunnel. The light glistened off a puddle in a rock basin about twenty yards away. “What's that?”

“Water! It must be some underground spring!” blurted Joey excitedly. “C'mon.”

They eagerly approached it. Joey knelt beside the puddle and swirled the water with her fingers, then tasted it. “It's fresh, all right,” she confirmed. Kicking off her shoes and socks, she waded into the puddle. The water rose above her ankles. “Come on in, the water's great,” encouraged Joey as she reached down to splash some of the cool spring water on her face. “If Russ and Gramps could get hold of this water, they could beat the drought! God-zilla, wait'll they hear about this!”

Not listening, Ernie stared trancelike at the puddle. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called out,
“Hoo…hoo.”

“What's that for?” asked Joey, spooked.

“I don't know.”

Then he did it again, his voice echoing eerily in the dark tunnel.
“Hooty-hoo, hooty-hooooooooo.”

“Hey, don't get weird on me. Not down here.”

He crouched by the puddle, lost in thought.

“Hey, Cubber, wake up and stick with the program, okay?”

He met her worried gaze. “This is not a mine shaft,” he declared.

“Okay, it's a tunnel with a spring in it.”

“Don't you understand?” he asked incredulously.

“Understand what?” she answered, equally exasperated.

“You said the Quilt Baby just disappeared, right?”

She nodded.

“No clues, nothin', not even the dogs could track it, right?”

She nodded again, not yet sure what he was trying to say.

“Well, he did just disappear…right into this kidnappers' hideaway.”

Joey frowned.

“That hollow piece of birch could've been their air shaft,” Ernie continued, “and they got their water from this spring. Air and water, that's all they needed. That gang could've been down here days, maybe weeks.”

“Okay, so what if the gang did keep him here for a day, a week, a year, which I doubt and double doubt,” said Joey, standing ankle-deep in the puddle. “So what? That was twelve years ago and you ain't got a clue where they took him next.”

Ernie spotted another piece of birch, this one running vertically up the wall of the cave. He tried to budge it, but it was anchored in the dirt.

Joey splashed him playfully. “Get in here, Cub. The bottom is like this really soft sand—you can dig your toes in it and everything.”

Handing her the flashlight, Ernie kicked off his sneakers and socks and stepped into the puddle. The moment his foot touched the surface, they rocketed through the water, landing in a heap ten feet below, wet and gasping for breath. Ernie had never felt anything like it before. It was weird, like exploding through a black ring of wetness that soaked him from bottom to top.

In the darkness, it was Joey who spoke first. “Ernie Banks, you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he answered. There was a tremor in both their voices.

Joey picked up the flashlight and shined it on her knee. It was bleeding. She aimed the light overhead. The puddle hovered in the ceiling, defying gravity.

“What is that?” she whispered.

Ernie stared at the water suspended in the ceiling hole.

“I don't know,” he muttered.

Joey put the light on his face. His chin was cut. “How are we going to get out of here?” she whimpered. “We're done for.”

“Be quiet and shine the light.”

She panned it across some sort of chamber. As the light moved, they saw a fallen ceiling beam atop a splintered table, then chairs, pottery shards, a stone sink with a birch-pipe faucet, and finally a row of walnut cabinets, each one bearing an oak tree insignia carved into its face. As impossible as it seemed, someone had once lived here, but even more impossible was the fact that everything was in miniature, so small that they towered over their discovery.

“What is this place?” gasped Joey in awe.

Ernie dropped to his knees in front of the cabinets. He ran his hand across the carvings, then turned the faucet on the tiny sink. A hairy spider emerged and he toppled backward, landing on his backside.

“I hate spiders,” declared Joey.

Ignoring her, Ernie tried to open one of the cabinets, but it was stuck. He dislodged a piece of timber from the ceiling. Dirt sprinkled on them from above and Joey covered her head. “Oh my God—we're going to get buried alive!”

“Shhh!” he insisted as he rammed the face of the cabinet with the timber, collapsing it inward.

“You're the one making the racket!”

He managed to get one hand inside and began to feel around.

“I've got something,” he said, wide-eyed.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Something,” he grunted.

Whatever he had a hold of, it didn't want to come out. He twisted his arm and positioned his body at a different angle and finally extracted a cedar chest, no bigger than a bread box.

“Holy smoky!” exclaimed Joey. There were cherrywood handles on each side and sturdy oak hinges at the back. But what they saw next changed everything. There was a baby's face hand-carved on the vaulted lid. In amazement they whispered, “Quilt Baby.”

Suddenly a digging sound grabbed their attention. Joey panned the light to the opposite corner, where a dirt wall was beginning to crumble, as if something were trying to tunnel in from the other side. She froze, and the flashlight dropped from her hand. It rolled into a crevice just out of reach, its beam of light now projecting dimly against the far wall.

His heart racing, Ernie looked for a way out. The dark puddle was ten feet above, but there was a birch pipe running parallel to the ceiling beneath the water. He gave the chest to Joey.

“We'll never get out, we're going to die here,” she croaked.

With surging adrenaline, Ernie took a running jump and scratched and clawed and kicked up the wall until he could catch hold of the pipe. Dangling, he rocked back and forth like a gymnast, gathering enough momentum to swing his feet up through the puddle and hook his calves on the floor of the tunnel above. Hanging upside down, he could feel the water seeping into his jeans.

“You made it!” cried Joey.

“Give me the chest!” he ordered, stretching down as far as he could.