The Danger Box Page 4

  One by one, Buckeye lost his friends. He scared everyone away. My grandparents took him to the family doctor, who said that some kids just have a hard time growing up. And then Zoomy appeared; not me, the first one. Well, he didn’t appear, he somehow popped out of Buckeye’s mind, and one morning came downstairs with him for pancakes.

  No one but Buckeye could see or hear Zoomy, but he turned into such an important part of the family that my grandma always set a place for him at the kitchen table. Although Zoomy stayed a Chamberlain secret, I guess he seemed real enough at home. Gam and Gumps said Buckeye would eat his supper, then run around the table and eat Zoomy’s supper. Buckeye and Zoomy helped each other with chores, went out to play, even told each other jokes. Zoomy was always there for Buckeye, and Buckeye was at his best with Zoomy. This went on until Buckeye became a teenager and stopped talking, “at least at home,” as Gumps growled. Zoomy kinda slipped out of sight — that is, if someone invisible can disappear.

  Inside, I kept puzzling. Why had Buckeye stayed away for so long? Why was he always angry? And what would happen when he showed up again?

  At least he wasn’t happy to see me.

  That was a very good thing. I couldn’t imagine life without my grandparents. Not for half a minute, not for half a second. Not at all. I didn’t want a father or a mother like other kids.

  I spent the morning helping Gam hang laundry and stacking kindling in the backyard as fast as Gumps could split it.

  Then I had an idea.

  After lunch I asked, “Is it okay if I go to the library today?” I tried to sound casual.

  I could feel Gam looking at me. “Hmmm” was all she said.

  Then Gumps said, “I’m walking over that way anyway, so I’ll go with you.” It was Sunday and the store wasn’t open.

  “Thanks, Gumps,” I said.

  “You’ll keep the house locked,” I heard him saying to Gam. I couldn’t see her face, but there was a moment of total quiet in the kitchen.

  We all three understood: Buckeye felt dangerous.

  * * *

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Four

  A FREE NEWSPAPER ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SOUL

  ~At fifteen I was allowed to shoot a gun. Killing birds became a passion. I thought about shooting night and day.

  ~I left my hunting boots by the side of my bed so that I could wake up and slip them on without wasting a second.

  ~For years, I kept exact lists of each kind of bird I’d shot. I made up a system for when I was out in the field — I tied certain knots on a long string attached to a buttonhole in my jacket. As soon as I got home, I wrote down everything, translating the knots onto a chart.

  ~Once a group of friends played a trick on me. Every time they saw me aiming for a bird, they all shot their guns, too, until I didn’t know what to count and what not to count. Then I realized they were just trying to mess up my counting and sorting system. Not everyone understands the beauty of lists.

  ~When I got older, I didn’t like killing any living animal unless I had to do it.

  ~I started out wild. I turned tame. My wildness turned into words.

  ~I started out asking questions and kept asking them. Tons of them.

  ~Sometimes I answered them myself. Sometimes I couldn’t.

  ~Questions are more fun than shooting.

  Who am I?

  NEXT ISSUE TO COME.

  FREE!

  * * *

  I’M AT HOME in the library even though it’s not cozy. Maybe that’s because it’s part of the history of Three Oaks, and Three Oaks is part of me.

  One of my great-something grandfathers, Henry Chamberlain, started a sawmill in the wilderness not far from here. It was near three huge oak trees that grew so close they looked like a single tree. That was in the 1850s, and most houses in the United States were built from wood. Hardwood like oak and maple was the best, and Michigan had plenty of that.

  Soon Three Oaks was a small town with a main street, the one that’s still Elm. There was a general store, a couple of churches, and a schoolhouse. When you compare the old photographs to now, it doesn’t look too different — except for horses and wagons everywhere, muddy roads, and grown-ups wearing suits and long dresses. The train tracks were right where they are now and the buildings haven’t changed a whole lot.

  It was a small lumber town until a guy named E. K. Warren invented something that made this place rich and famous. At least for a while. That something was called:

  ~Featherbone.

  It was a bendy material made from turkey quills, and replaced whalebone corsets for women. (A corset is underwear that can squeeze a woman’s waist until it gets tiny.) I guess featherbone was revolutionary. It was more comfortable to wear and much cheaper to make. Plus, it’s way easier to catch a turkey than a whale.

  Featherbone was also used in horsewhips. Women being squished and horses being hit: Not too nice-sounding a business, but I guess that’s what people wanted.

  After making some huge, brick factory sheds — a couple of them are still standing — Mr. Warren designed the fancy office building that’s now our library. Gumps says old E. K. was trying to impress his customers. That’s why there’s marble on the floors and walls, a whoop-dedoo staircase right inside the front doors, places for chandeliers, and endless rooms with brass doorknobs. It was all that featherbone money.

  When women stopped wearing corsets and cars were invented, the company shrank down. Featherbone was still used for making stiff collars and hems until the 1950s, when the business closed. The office building turned into a big museum celebrating Three Oaks, and at one time it had 80,000 artifacts from the pioneer and factory days, things like butter churns and quilting frames and bicycles with giant wheels. The place was named in honor of Henry Chamberlain.

  I once saw a photograph of him. We both have a small nose and he wore glasses, too. If old Henry hadn’t gotten excited about chopping down trees right on this spot, E. K. Warren might not have settled here, looked at a turkey feather, and thought up featherbone. And without that, Chamberlain Antiques and Whatnots might not have had treasures to sell. None of us would be here.

  Our town is a mixture of luck and chance — with a few inherited traits and tools.

  OUR LIBRARY IS like a skinny person in a giant pair of pants; all the books fit on the first floor, and there is still plenty of room to spare. No one ever goes to the basement or third and fourth floors, and I’ve heard there’s a ghost but I’d rather not think about that.

  Until recently, a few computers were kept on the second floor. That’s also where we have what’s left of the old museum: mostly bread bowls and portraits of people who look like they might have a toothache. Gam says they probably did.

  There’s not much electricity upstairs, but one day my grandma and I were allowed to go inside the exhibit areas with a flashlight and a magnifying glass. I was crazy about the homemade tools, the ones used by the blacksmiths, woodworkers, coopers, and cobblers. Here is a list of favorites:

  ~Chisel

  ~Block Plane

  ~Jack Plane

  ~Surface Plane

  ~Maul

  ~Adze

  ~Shave

  ~Scraper

  ~Level

  Most look sharp, heavy, and kind of scary. Like they belong in someone’s Danger Box.

  That Sunday, when Gumps and I went to the library, he stayed downstairs to read newspapers in a big chair and take a bird nap. He calls it that because he can do it sitting up with his beak closed. I climbed the big stairs to the computers, just down the hall from the tools. If the people who built houses, stores, and all kinds of wagons in Three Oaks could see this small tool in a lightweight box, they would flip. Tools weren’t so easy to handle in those days.

  Each one of the four computers sits on an old school desk. The desks are separate, like you’re supposed to get the no-talking idea. In front of the closest one, I pulled out my Daily List Book. Usually no one’s upstairs in the summer, but this time the
re was a person sitting nearby, a short person with a dark head. I was so surprised that I stopped dead and then slid sideways into my chair.

  As I sat down, the person said, “Shoot!”

  A girl. She sounded like she’d forgotten something. Either that or she was mad that I’d turned up. She pushed her chair back angrily and slap-slapped past my table, toward the stairs. Flip-flops. I looked up. She looked down. Neither one of us said a word. That’s kind of unusual for Three Oaks, where everyone always says hello. Maybe we’d startled each other.

  Here’s what I saw: a round pink shirt, a plum-shaped chin, and hair in two pointy pigtails. The pigtails stood out like horns that had slipped down on either side of her head, one lower than the other.

  Slap, whack, smack — rubber beach sandals on a marble staircase can sound like firecrackers.

  After she left, I crossed off ~Walk to Library. My pen suddenly burped out a small puddle of purple ink. I tried spreading out the extra with one finger, but that made it worse: Now I had a blob on a stick, or maybe a puff coming off a smoke bomb. My tidy list was getting messier by the second. Dangerously messy. Just like this summer.

  I wondered if Firecracker Girl would be back, and why she was upset. What if she and Buckeye met and blew up at the same time, like a chemical reaction?

  The thought made me smile, and then they both seemed less scary.

  * * *

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Five

  A FREE NEWSPAPER ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SOUL

  ~When I was young, my brother and I made a chemistry lab in the gardening shed. We had test tubes and burners and all kinds of other equipment. Our lab made some very bad smells.

  ~Once we dissolved real money, silver sixpences.

  ~I heard a story of a student who got tipsy with laughing gas and thought he could fly; that wasn’t me, don’t get any ideas.

  ~I was so serious about teaching myself chemistry whenever I was home that other students gave me the nickname Gas.

  ~When I was much older and had a bad stomach, I remembered that name.

  ~I think every name you’ve ever had stays with you, like the layers in a tree trunk or the skins on an onion. It becomes a part of you.

  Who am I?

  NEXT ISSUE TO COME.

  FREE!

  * * *

  WHEN I TYPED in BUCKEYE CHAMBERLAIN that afternoon, my heart began thumpa-whumping. I knew it was kind of a sneaky thing to do, to look for information about a maybe-father I’d just met. But connecting the word family to Buckeye felt just plain wrong. I couldn’t see that he was anything like us Chamberlains. I was just trying to be ready for whatever came next.

  After counting the eighteen letters in his name, I took a deep breath and hit the ENTER button. There were lots of entries, but not one speck of information that fit.

  Then I felt so sleepy after my night of worries, I put my head down on the computer and closed my eyes. Just for a second. Next thing I knew, Gumps was shaking my shoulder.

  As I sat up, he squinted at the screen and saw Buckeye’s name in the box. His eyebrows went up. Then he leaned down next to my ear and rumbled as quietly as he could, “Find anything?”

  I shook my head. “I thought I might find his home or his job,” I said, although I’m sure we both knew I was wondering about more than that. Things had happened so fast last night that my grandparents hadn’t asked Buckeye where he’d been living all these years. And he hadn’t told.

  “Probably the same old nonsense. Drinking his way through life,” my grandpa muttered.

  Then I had a frightening thought: What if Buckeye Chamberlain had come back to Three Oaks because he wanted to stop? What would it be like if he decided to come home?

  WALKING BACK FROM the library, Gumps and I were both quiet. When we passed the store, he tried the front door to be sure it was still locked. Then he walked around the back and did the same thing. This told me he had a pocketful of worry crumbs, too.

  The only time we both looked up quickly was when a truck drove down Elm Street, going fast. It was headed in the direction of our house.

  My grandpa muttered “Shoot,” something he hardly ever says, and grabbed me by the shoulder. Weird, I’d heard two shoots in one day. Gumps can’t cover ground fast with that clanky leg, but we ran. When necessary, he shouted, “Curb!” or “Dip!”

  “That Buckeye?” I panted.

  “Dunno,” he panted back. “Red. Looked like the same truck.”

  When we turned the corner, we saw a state police cruiser parked in our driveway but no red truck in sight. An officer was banging on our kitchen door.

  WE GOT TO the steps just in time to hear the policeman introducing himself as Officer Nab, then asking Gam if she was Buckeye Chamberlain’s mother.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. Her voice was as flat as old soda pop. “Zoomy, could you go upstairs and get my reading glasses for me?”

  “Now?” I asked. I knew she probably didn’t need them.

  “Now,” Gumps said firmly.

  I walked as slowly as I could. I really wanted to hear. Why had they sent me away? That never happened.

  I kind of shocked myself by wishing Buckeye had run into a tree or met some other bad end. I’d never known anyone who died, but it seemed like it would be a relief to all three of us. Bingo — gone! Then I thought about how violent car accidents were, and about blood and guts. Quickly crossing off that idea in my mind, I put lots of thick, purple Xs on it. How had I imagined something so nasty?

  When I got back downstairs with the glasses, the officer was drinking iced tea at the kitchen table. After talking about the weather and what a good year it was going to be for tomatoes, he asked directions to Drier’s Meat Market, which is an old family business just down the street from the store. They’ve been there since 1875 and are famous for their sausages, bratwurst, baloney, and hams. If he was thinking about Drier’s, he couldn’t have been there to report a death. He asked if it was true that Al Capone had bought meat there, and Gumps said yes. Gam wasn’t saying much of anything.

  As soon as Officer Nab drove away, I said, “So is Buckeye okay?” I tried to sound as though I wanted a happy answer.

  There was a pause, and I knew my grandparents were looking at each other.

  “Siddown, Zoomy,” my grandpa said. “The state police are wondering if we know where Buckeye is. And whether he was in Flint last week. They asked what he was driving.”

  “Why?” My voice came out in a squeak.

  “No idea. The officer didn’t say.” Gumps took off his baseball cap, itched his head with the rim, and put it on again. He sometimes does this when he’s uncomfortable.

  “Did you tell?” I was sitting in my chair now, and had just crossed off ~State Policeman Visits in my notebook.

  “Of course.” My grandpa clanked across the kitchen with the iced tea glasses and put them in the sink. “No idea about Flint, though. That’s a sorry place these days. Highest unemployment rate in the country.”

  Gam was spreading macaroni and cheese into a casserole dish and sprinkling bread crumbs on top. “We didn’t mention the box,” she said, as if talking to herself.

  “No,” Gumps said slowly. “Think we should have?”

  Gam turned around. “It just didn’t feel right to add more trouble to a heaping plate. The trooper said Buckeye’s had other run-ins. Misdemeanors, he called them.”

  “Whoa,” I said, my mind darting around like mad. “Like what?”

  “We didn’t ask,” she said.

  “Why not?” I asked. “What if keeping the box makes us criminals, too?”

  Gam spun away and started bing-bonging dishes around in a cupboard. Gumps sighed, a sigh big enough to blow things across the room.

  “I hadn’t exactly thought of it that way, Zoomy,” he boomed. “Kin is kin. Around here you’re innocent until proven guilty. Plus, we don’t even know what the problem was. We’ll keep that box in the garage for a few days. If Buckeye needs to take it, he will.”


  I stayed quiet. I somehow knew I’d said enough.

  I thought about the Rule, the saying about treating other people the way you’d like to be treated. That’s what my grandparents had just done.

  I felt suddenly ashamed of my unkind thoughts, and tried to worry about Buckeye, too. But all I could see in my head was that sliced-up eyebrow and his prickly throat sliding up and down as he gulped water at the sink. That and his big hand grabbing my notebook.

  The thought made me shiver.

  “WHAT DID YOU say your name was?” Firecracker Girl’s voice sounded loud.

  “Zoomy.” I was pretty sure her next question would be What kind of name is that. It wasn’t.

  “That’s bizarre,” she said. “Mine’s Lorrol, spelled L-O-R-R-O-L instead of L-A-U-R-E-L. My mom’s a ra-ra-rotten speller. She claims the spelling was on p-p-purpose, but anyway — it’s good luck being a palindrome.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “And don’t say you like it,” she added, as if I’d been picking a fight.

  “Okay.” I paid some attention to my computer.

  Bizarre … I knew it meant kinda strange. It also sounded like city talk. Who was this girl? And what the heck was a palindrome?

  Things were quiet for a few minutes on the second floor of the library. A train roared by outside, shaking the building. Silence again. I’d been doing a search on the emerald ash borer beetle, just to be sure I’d know if I found one — they’re deadly for ash trees, and have been turning up in Michigan. Now I typed in palindrome instead. I found out it meant language you could read backward or forward.