Puddlejumpers (28 page)

Dashin flicked a toggle switch and spoke into the handset of his radio. “Wooden Nickel, keep a car near the Holsapples'. We still think the kid could turn up there. Do you roger that?”

A nasal voice rattled from the speaker. “That's a ten-four, One Thin Dime.”

Dashin's gaze fixed curiously on the horizon. He turned to Russ. “Ain't that a sight?”

Russ looked out his window. The entire valley was dark, except for his farm, which was aglow with what looked like every light in the house.

“You usually leave your place fired up like a Roman candle when you're not home?” asked the sheriff.

Russ shook his head.
Now what?

Dashin turned on his strobe and goosed the accelerator, speeding toward the distant farm. With a smug look to Russ in the mirror, he sang quietly to himself, “Turn out the lights, the party's over…”

The house was fully lit except for the darkened crib room, where the Snow White lamp, clamped to the headboard, provided a soft glow. Joey's rooster T-shirt was stretched like a canopy above her head. It captured steam misting from a dozen pots and pans laced with Pav's most potent herbs. Ernie, his thumb still bound to Joey's, watched Runnel weave stalks of wheat through Joey's hair while Pav sprinkled hot water over red and yellow autumn leaves covering the girl's chest. The two Puddlejumpers were so intent on their work they almost forgot Ernie was there.

In the kitchen, Root stopped funneling water from the faucet to a kettle on the stove. He thought he heard Buck and Cully hooting from the field, but a whistling teapot made it difficult to hear. By the time he got the pot off the burner, all was quiet. Pav called from the crib room,
“Kadudee-ha!”
and Root leapt onto the pulley rope, hoisting the pot to the ceiling. Boarding from the top of the fridge, Chop maneuvered the teapot onto a taut clothesline, then piloted a perilous ride through the house. Once the water was on its way, Root hurried outside to check on the scouts.

Ernie cringed as Chop steered the kettle down the clothesline to a crashing stop against the headboard. Working quickly, Pav dipped a bottle cap into the kettle, measuring three capfuls into the cup containing her potion. Stirring, she brought the drink to Joey's lips and poured the bitter draft down her throat. Chop shook Shawn's baby rattle over Joey's belly button as the Puddlejumpers chanted,
“Kadudee, mataki, mataki, sadaki.”

Pav blew into Joey's mouth, filling the girl's lungs with air, until she collapsed in a near faint. The chanting and the rattle stopped. Runnel gripped Joey's and Ernie's bound-together thumbs and snapped the wheat shaft. No one dared take a breath as they waited expectantly. The only sound was the grandfather clock ticking from the hall. A breeze from the window fluttered the T-shirt canopy above Joey's head, but she remained still as death.

Feeling like he was about to break into a million pieces, Ernie prayed with all his might for Joey to move or blink or breathe. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “C'mon, Rooster—crow.”

Suddenly her eyelids fluttered like the wings of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. She took a deep breath and her chest began to rise and fall in a gentle rhythm. Ernie nearly crushed Runnel and Pav in a joyful hug, while Chop pranced along the headboard.

The sheriff's car sped down the driveway and lurched to a stop by the house, freezing a deer in its headlights. The animal bounded away as the search party hustled onto the porch. When they entered the kitchen, water was boiling on every burner, a milk shake whirred in the blender, the cupboards and fridge were open, and a pulley clothesline dangled from the ceiling.

“Oh my God, Russ. What has that boy done?” said Betty with alarm.

Russ was too shocked to answer, but the sheriff did it for him. “I thought I'd seen everything, but this kid just about beats the band.”

They tracked the clothesline and a trail of mud past discarded milk cartons and numerous spills. Two raccoons asleep on the couch startled awake and scurried out the dog door. When the adults reached the closed door at the end of the hall, Russ shoved it open.

They found Ernie standing self-consciously next to Joey asleep beneath Snow White and the T-shirt canopy. Her body was plastered with wet autumn leaves and her hair dreadlocked with wheat. The pots were still steaming, but there wasn't a Puddlejumper in sight.

“Well… I found her,” was all Ernie could think to say.

Aghast, Betty rushed to her daughter and stripped the leaves from her body and covered her with a blanket. “Oh, my baby. My poor sweet baby.”

“And she's gonna be okay,” he reassured the adults.

Russ turned to Ernie, his voice grim. “I just hope you didn't do anything you'll regret.”

“I saved her! I mean, not by myself…”

The sheriff grabbed Ernie by the back of the neck. “If you want to press charges, I'll bust this kid's britches right here and now.”

“Just get him out of here,” said Betty, trying not to cry.

“But you don't understand…”

“Send him back to Chicago or whatever godforsaken place he came from.”

“But it was the Holsapples…”

“You just shut your mouth, boy,” fired the sheriff, then turned to Russ. “Any objection if I zip this kid down to the station?”

Russ shook his head.

“But, Russ, I can explain,” Ernie pleaded.

“I'm sorry, Ernie. You need help. More help than I can give.”

Dashin squashed the boy with his pudgy arm. “You heard the man—you just got your ticket punched,” he said, wrestling him toward the door.

Ernie caught the door frame and gripped it tenaciously. “No! Russ, listen, it's me, Shawn!” cried Ernie. “I'm the Quilt Baby! It was little creatures who took me and the Holsapples are really monsters and they're trying to kill me!”

Russ stared, shaken by the orphan's claims.

Dashin pried Ernie's grip from the door. “You're the only monster around here, and let go of that damn door!”

“Russ! You gotta believe me. Please! Russ!”

Russ listened, transfixed, as Dashin hauled the ranting boy down the hall. Ernie was growing more hysterical. “Let go of me! This is my house! You can't do this!”

Distressed by the boy's fading cries, Russ stared uneasily at Snow White clamped to the headboard, a strange and vivid reminder of his baby kidnapped so long ago. He hadn't seen it since that terrible night. He turned toward the hall, wanting to call the sheriff back.

“We better call Doc Thorpe right away,” said Betty as she cradled her daughter. But Russ wasn't listening. His mind was far away, lost in an impossible dream.

“Russ!” said Betty urgently.

“I'm sorry, what?”

Outside, Ernie struggled to break free as Dashin manhandled him into the backseat of the squad car and cuffed his wrist to an overhead bar. “You ain't going nowhere, so stop your blasted squirming.”

As soon as the sheriff went back inside, Ernie rolled down his window with his free hand and leaned out to shout at the house. “Russ, don't let him take me! Don't let him take me, Russ!” When Russ didn't come to the door or even to the window, tears leaked from Ernie's eyes but he quickly wiped them away.

Dashin returned with the boy's suitcase, tossed it onto the seat, and rolled up the window. “Now leave it shut, or I'll cuff your other wrist, too,” he growled, then slammed the door and got behind the wheel.

Ernie saw the curtains shift in the kitchen window. Russ was watching him with a strange look on his face. Ernie rolled down his window and leaned out as far as the cuffs would allow and shouted, “Russ, please! I can prove it! I can prove it's all true! I can save the farm! I can make it rain!”

Dashin reached into the back and whacked him, then cuffed his other wrist to the bar. Cursing, he rolled up the window and slammed the transmission into gear. As the sheriff's car sped up the drive, Russ' face in the window got smaller and smaller.

Ernie screamed one last time at the top of his lungs, “I'm Shawn Frazier!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Between a Buzzard and a Hawk

A
T THE TOP OF THE
Frazier driveway, Sheriff Dashin slammed on the brakes, barely avoiding a collision with the black Cadillac as it fishtailed off the highway. Dicky Cobb was at the wheel, with Holsapple riding shotgun and the twins hunkered down in back. The sheriff leaned out his window with a frown. “Better slow down there, Dicky—you almost shaved off my front end.”

Ernie cringed as Holsapple got out of the car and hobbled around to the sheriff's window. He squinted at the boy handcuffed in the backseat, then, with a forced smile, said, “Evening, Tom—what you got in the backseat?”

“We caught the little bugger,” Dashin declared proudly.

Holsapple pressed his face against the back window to get a closer look at the prisoner. “I always said this boy was bound for trouble.”

Though trembling inside, Ernie stared evenly at the old man. For once in his life he was glad to be in the back of a cop car.

“Where you taking him, sheriff?” asked Holsapple.

“I got a room with his name on it down at the jailhouse.”

Holsapple casually opened the back door. “Why go all the way back into town? We'll keep him at our place, least till you find Joey,” he proposed.

Dashin turned around in his seat to make eye contact with Holsapple. “Oh, we got Joey. Turns out this kid had her all along,” he reported.

“She's alive?”

“Oh, yeah. Devil only knows what all he was up to. Once that little girl comes around, I'm sure she'll have a tale to tell.”

Holsapple fell silent. “Where is the poor child now?”

“Don't you worry—she's back with her mother, and I'm sure Doc Thorpe's already on the way.”

“Well, that's a comfort,” said Holsapple, then leaned into the backseat and thrust his face inches from Ernie's. “I promise you this much, boy—you're gonna get what's coming to you.”

Ernie tried to back away but the cuffs wouldn't let him. Holsapple's stare felt like daggers piercing his skin. Dashin slid out from behind the wheel, put a hand on Holsapple's shoulder, and eased him out of the car. “Look, Harvey, I know how you feel,” he said. “But rest assured, this kid's gonna get what's coming and a whole lot more.” The sheriff closed the back door. “Well, I'd best be getting on.”

For a moment, Holsapple turned his murderous stare to the sheriff, then he smiled. “You take her easy, Tom.”

“You know I will,” said the sheriff.

Dashin started to get back behind the wheel when a pitiful whimpering sound came from the Caddy. He shined his flashlight into the backseat. Angus and Axel squinted into the bright light. The sheriff noticed a blanketed cage on the seat between them.

“What you got there, boys?” the sheriff asked.

No one said a word until Holsapple replied, “Nothing but a couple of no-good raccoons we trapped.”