Thumb and the Bad Guys (3 page)

Last year, Mayor Semanov trapped five beavers and put them in his
fishing boat and dropped them off at a cove up the coast. A month later we had
beavers again. I think it was the same ones. Our mayor trapped them a second time
and dropped them at an island down the coast. This time they didn't come back.

The trail behind the school didn't stop at the pond. It continued
higher still, climbing over rocks and around big boulders. It stopped at a hump on
the side of Linda Evers Mountain where you could stand and see the entire ocean, no
mountains in the way. The flat hump was called Black Bear Hump because a black bear
was once spotted there. I think he liked the view.

Sometimes Dad and I climbed the trail to Black Bear Hump at sunset.
There's an old gnarled cedar and we'd sit with our backs against it and watch the
orange sun seem to settle right into the ocean.

I've stood at Black Bear Hump and seen fishing boats and oil tankers
and cruise ships glide down the coast from Alaska, and every time I saw a cruise
ship I knew that hundreds of eyes were probably staring at me. I knew that people on
those ships couldn't tell there was a small village tucked into a bay behind the
mountains, unless they saw smoke on a clear winter morning.

Susan and I slipped out of the fire truck. We could see Kirk McKenna's
shadow as he followed the beam of his flashlight behind the large boulder that masked
the trail up to our pond. We raced across the sand to the bottom of the trail. We
listened for a moment and then – without even discussing what we should do – we both
started to climb.

We didn't have to worry about making noise. We mostly stepped over
large flat granite rocks that twisted around boulders. Susan and I knew every turn.
Kirk McKenna's constant humming let us know that he was still going up and not
listening for somebody following him.

“What if he turns and starts coming back down?” whispered Susan.

“We'll just slip off the trail,” I said with more confidence than I
actually felt.

“But what if he really is a bad guy and he discovers that we're spying
on him?”

“Kind of exciting, isn't it?” I asked with a grin.

I wasn't sure if she saw my grin since it was dark.

“I'd feel better if we let him have a little more lead,” said
Susan.

We waited. I could see the flashlight beam vanish as Kirk McKenna
reached the pond. We couldn't hear him humming any more so we just stood there
staring at the dark, quiet mountain above us.

“You didn't think we'd see anything on our stakeout, did you?” I
asked.

“No.”

“You just thought it might be fun to pretend we were spies,
right?”

“Yeah.”

“Scared?”

“Sure. When we get close to the top he might be right in front of us,
waiting. We don't know where he is right now.”

We climbed more slowly, stopping to listen after every few steps.

As we sneaked closer, I could hear the mountain stream rushing down to
our pond and flowing out again to the ocean below. The sound of water was so loud
that I was sure Kirk McKenna couldn't possibly hear us. I was just as sure we
couldn't hear him, either, even if he was close.

Susan and I reached the last big boulder before the plateau. We knew
that the pond was on the other side. I pressed my back against the cold granite and
slowly peeked around the corner. I couldn't see any flashlight beam and couldn't see
any shadows that moved. I pulled my head back and stood next to Susan, breathing
deeply.

“What did you see?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing. It's too dark.”

“What happens now? I don't want to get any closer. He might be waiting
for us.”

“If we climb a boulder we can hide on top and still see his flashlight
beam whenever he comes back.”

“Do you think he went up to Black Bear Hump?”

“I don't know. I just know I can't see him.”

Susan nodded and we climbed to the top of a boulder and hid behind
some large rocks. Unless we moved or stood up, nobody would be able to tell we were
there.

I watched and listened.

Susan grabbed my arm and whispered, “Listen.”

Over the roar of the water I could just hear a distant painful wail,
like a person being tortured in the movies.

“What is that noise?” asked Susan.

“Wolves?”

“No. It's too creepy.” She shivered.

The noise would stop for a few minutes and then start again. It didn't
get louder or closer but it stayed creepy and strange, like fingernails on a
blackboard but changing pitch and tone.

It finally stopped, but I didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad
one.

I could hear Susan breathing. I glanced over at her.

“Susan,” I said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“I see a light.”

We ducked even lower. Susan glanced toward the pond. Light seemed to
come from inside the waterfall that cascaded down from our pond to the small stream
below it. The light got brighter and then disappeared for a few seconds before it
reappeared, shining toward us. The light jiggled around as Kirk McKenna made his way
from rock to rock and back up to the path.

Kirk McKenna stopped right below us and shone the flashlight back
toward the way he'd come. He spat and then walked slowly toward something he'd
spotted. He bent down low and roughed up a bit of soil with his fingers.

“He's hiding his footprints,” I whispered to Susan.

“There just might be a bad guy in our village,” Susan said softly. I
could hear the tremor in her voice. “What are we going to do, Thumb?”

“We're going to stay right here until Kirk McKenna is back inside his
house and snuggled up in bed.”

“And then?”

“And then we'll sneak back down and after a good night's sleep we're
going to find out why Kirk McKenna wiped away his footprints.”

“I don't think I'll be sleeping much,” said Susan, ducking down to
make sure Kirk McKenna had no chance of spotting us.

I ducked, too.

We'd seen enough.

4
MS. WEATHERLY

SUSAN DIDN'T WANT TO
LOOK
for some hidden path below the pond unless Kirk McKenna was out
fishing. He didn't go anywhere on Saturday, so Susan and I hung around the dock,
helping to mend nets and keeping an eye on his house.

Kirk McKenna didn't fish on Sunday, either, but just after lunch the
seaplane, which usually came only on Thursdays, swooped between mountains and
circled the village. We knew that Max had a passenger because he only circled when
he was giving somebody the chance to look down at the village and to peek behind
mountains before landing.

Max landed on the flat waters of the bay and his plane glided slowly
toward the dock. Susan and I each grabbed a line and hopped onto the nearest
pontoon. We pulled the seaplane tight to the dock and then tied off the lines.

Max opened the door to the cockpit. He climbed down and then reached
inside and pulled out a couple of suitcases.

His passenger, a woman, climbed out backwards and carefully stepped
first onto the pontoon and then onto the dock. She was slender and tall and had tight
blonde curls that looked plastered to her skull.

She turned around and looked over at me, and I tried hard not to gasp.

She wore so much make-up that when she smiled, the smooth surface of
her face cracked like dried mud. Her lipstick was bright red and it covered more
than just her lips. Her cheeks had perfectly round circles of pink rouge, and her
eyebrows looked too long and too thick to be real. She wore a loose dress with a
pattern on it that looked like wallpaper – bright red with large yellow flowers
blooming everywhere. The curls on her head were not made of hair at all but of nylon
sparsely attached to what looked like a white bathing cap.

“I've brought the new teacher,” said Max to me, smiling. “Could you
and Susan carry her bags up to the house?”

“The new teacher?” asked Susan, almost in a whisper.

“Ms. Weatherly,” said the woman, nodding to us.

“My name is Thumb,” I said. “And this is Susan.”

“Thumb?”

“It's kind of a nickname. I lost my thumb in an accident. My real name
is Leon Mazzai but I haven't heard that name used out loud for so long that it
sounds like it belongs to a distant relative, not me.”

“I can see both thumbs, young man. Did they sew your thumb back in
place?”

“Nope.” I held up my right hand and wiggled my thumb. “This one is a
fake. I can take it off. I have to take it off sometimes, just to clean it.”

“Oh,” said Ms. Weatherly.

I didn't really have a fake thumb. But I did have a beautiful cedar
box that Annie Pritchard had carved. The box had a hole in the bottom so my real,
attached thumb could poke through and rest on a bed of cotton and look like it was
just lying there. When visitors came to the village we all tried to convince them
that my thumb was a fake so we could get them to peer into the box. Then, when they
were inspecting my thumb, I'd wiggle it and scare them.

I know it sounds silly. I guess we liked to think that we knew
something that people who lived in cities didn't know. We had a secret, a joke that
made us feel good when sophisticated city folk fell for it.

Susan and I carried Ms. Weatherly's bags up to the vacant house where
the teacher lived. It looked just like every other house in our village. Teachers
didn't have to pay rent. It was one advantage of teaching in New Auckland and was
probably the only way we ever managed to get teachers.

As soon as we showed Ms. Weatherly her house, I ran to tell Dad that
she had arrived. Dad dropped the book he was reading, put on a clean shirt and
rushed off to introduce himself and to invite the new teacher to dinner.

5
MESSAGE FROM THE PAST

I WOKE UP EARLY
ON
Monday and ran to Susan's house.

Dad and I lived in the middle of the row of houses closest to the bay.
Susan lived in the second row. She didn't have the same view, but at least the wind
didn't whistle through every crack in the house. Sometimes the wind was so strong
inside our place that we had a hard time keeping a match lit when we wanted to light
a fire.

I waited for Susan on the cedar sidewalk. I think it was raining.
Sometimes the rain that fell on New Auckland was more like a heavy mist or a damp
fog.

I was wearing a baseball cap. Tiny drops of water hung from the edge
of the cap, suspended for long seconds before falling.

I could hear the whine of outboard motors as kids from smaller
villages arrived for school.

“Maybe Ms. Weatherly is a bad guy,” I blurted out even before Susan
had completely opened her front door.

“What?”

“She came to dinner at our house and Dad asked why she wanted to come
to a place like New Auckland.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, that's just it,” I said as we started walking to school. “She
didn't say anything. She kept changing the subject.”

Our new teacher was writing her name on the chalkboard when we got to
the classroom. Her back was turned to us. She wore a bright green dress with purple
flowers on it.

Nobody was late, and when the bell rang, Ms. Weatherly turned around
and said, “Good morning, class.”

I gasped. If anything, she was wearing even more make-up than she'd
worn when she got off the plane and came to our house for dinner. She wore so much
make-up, I was surprised she could hold her head up.

“Good morning,” I heard myself and others say back.

“My name is Emma Weatherly but you can call me Ms. Weatherly. I am
your teacher for the rest of this year.”

She sighed, like she was surprised and almost sorry to have heard her
own words. Her eyes darted to the side window where she couldn't see much, mostly
the side of a mountain and a few scattered boulders in the sand. There were some
small shrubs and trees that were struggling to survive in niches they'd found.
Unlike animals or people, they couldn't pack up and travel to a place where life
might be easier.

“I like projects,” said Ms. Weatherly. “It is my belief that kids
learn when they are excited about projects. Grab your coats and follow me.”

We all stood up. Ms. Weatherly made her way to the back of the
classroom and then led us down the short hallway.

As soon as she was outside, she raised an umbrella over her head and
walked toward the village. We followed, of course.

I had never seen anyone use an umbrella in New Auckland. When it
rained, everyone wore hats or just let rain fall on their heads. Umbrellas were
something that women in movies about life in another century used to shield
themselves from the sun while they lounged in skiffs rowed by young men with English
accents.