Ignatius MacFarland, page 19
I looked up at the sky. It was empty.
“Where’s Foo?” I whispered to Karen. “I thought she was helping us.”
“Don’t get attached to her,” said Karen. “The flying people are weird. They’re your friends one day and then the next day they act like they don’t even know you. Foo wanted to help me get you out of Arthur’s house and then she disappeared. All the flying people disappeared. Just when you’d think they would want to stand up for themselves and get involved, they all just fly away. They care so little about things on the ground that they’re willing to just leave even after the army attacked them and destroyed everything they had. I don’t think I’ll ever understand them.”
I thought it was kind of weird, too, until I remembered that we had a bird’s nest in our backyard last year that our neighbor’s cat climbed up to and knocked off the tree branch. The nest fell onto the ground and then the cat ate the eggs that were in it. It was really gross and sad and I kept wondering if the bird whose nest was destroyed was going to come and attack the cat or rebuild the nest in our tree again. But it never did. My dad ended up accidentally running the nest over with his lawn mower and the bird never rebuilt his or her house in our tree. So I had to figure that maybe things that can fly, whether they’re animals or people, just find it easier to cut their losses and move on.
I guess if I could fly, it’d be really easy to just fly away from my problems, which in a way I tried to do when I built that rocket. And it worked, because I definitely left the problems I was worried about, like Frank Gutenkunitz and all the mean kids in my school, back in our frequency. But then I found a whole new world of problems.
Man, sometimes I feel like I can’t do anything right.
Before I could think too much about all this, we got to the top of the hill, which was good because instead of thinking about all my little problems I immediately saw that there were a lot of creatures who were having some really big problems.
Stretching out before us in the valley was what looked like a huge prison camp. There was a big scary fence running around the place and lots of guards on watch. Inside the fence was this huge area that looked like some sort of coal mine or something. There were mountains of dirt piled everywhere and tons of holes in the ground. We saw lots of mole creatures crawling in and out of the holes. The ones who were coming out pushed big buckets of dirt ahead of them, which giant babies took and dumped out into these big trays that had mesh on the bottom. The babies then picked up the trays and shook them back and forth so that the dirt sifted through the mesh and then there’d be a bunch of pieces of gold left inside.
The babies then took the trays and dumped the gold pieces into these big heavy bowls that were sitting over fires. The gold melted as some weasels and feels stirred the pots with big metal poles. They then poured the gold into molds. When the gold cooled off, they turned over the molds and gold bars dropped out. Finally, the babies picked up the gold and put it on this big thing that sort of looked like a huge bathroom scale.
Standing next to the scale was Herbert Golonski! He was holding a pad of paper and looked at the readout on the scale and wrote down something on his pad and then the babies took the gold bars off the scale and piled them up on carts and covered the carts with cloth and then two of them would push the cart out of an opening in the fence that led to the path. They were always followed by one of the guards, who yelled at them and threatened him with his weapon and pushed them and generally did mean stuff, even though it didn’t look like the babies really needed anyone to tell them to push the cart since they didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter, anyway.
“There’s all our friends!” said Feep Feep in a loud whisper.
“This is unbelievable!” was all that Karen could say as she stared at the gold camp with her mouth hanging open. And she was right. It was pretty crazy.
BA-BOOF! Suddenly dirt exploded up from everywhere as a bunch of gorilla guards jumped up out of their own secret tunnels in the ground and landed in a circle around us. Then they pointed their swords at us, the gleaming sharp tips about one inch from our heads.
We were officially in big trouble.
34
THE GOLD HITS THE FAN
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Anti-Art.”
We looked and saw Mr. Arthur coming over the hill. A bunch of gorilla guards were behind him, as well as the big baby who had been guarding the White House gate. The waddler was wearing his suit and tie and had on a big pair of sunglasses so that he looked like a huge, swollen version of a secret service agent.
“Hello, Karen,” said Mr. Arthur as he stepped through the guards and stood in front of her. However, he suddenly seemed to remember what had happened the last time he had gotten too close to her and so quickly pulled one of the gorilla guards in front of him for protection. “Long time no see.”
“Yeah, long enough to open a gold mine and turn lots of your loyal subjects into slaves,” she said to him with a look of contempt on her face.
“Those aren’t loyal subjects. They’re people who broke the law.”
“What’d they do?” she asked with a smirk. “Not kiss your butt enough?”
I saw Peepup and Feep Feep exchange a look between them that showed they couldn’t believe Karen was talking to Mr. Arthur that way. And Mr. Arthur clearly wasn’t too happy about it, either.
“I’m trying to be nice here,” said Mr. Arthur, looking annoyed. “I could have you working down there in two seconds if I wanted to. You’ve broken the law more than any of them.”
“You’re unbelievable, Chester,” she said as she shook her head. “I really think you’ve lost your mind. You’re stealing gold now?”
This seemed to throw him. He got a surprised look, then said, “I’m not stealing anything.”
“Yeah? What are you doing, then? Just digging up all that shiny yellow stuff because you think it looks pretty?”
“I needed something for the prisoners to do and it was decided that we might as well mine the gold out of there, since there’s so much of it.”
“And who decided that? Herbert Golonski? Where did that guy come from? What, was he in the house with you when you blew it up?”
“No,” said Mr. Arthur, starting to sound like he was getting mad.
“Then who is he?”
“None of your business.”
“What are you, five?” she said with a snort. “Sorry to make you talk about your boyfriend.”
“Hey, he’s a boy and he’s my friend but he’s not my boyfriend!” Mr. Arthur snapped at her, sounding very much like Ivan’s little sister at that moment. He then looked around at the guards self-consciously. You could tell this conversation wasn’t really going the way he had planned. “And I make all the decisions around here. You got that? I’m the president, you know.”
“Yeah, you’re one hell of a president.” She laughed. “Gold’s not even worth anything here, you know. The creatures couldn’t care less about it.”
“If I say it’s worth something, it is. Gold’s only valuable in our frequency because a long time ago somebody decided it should be.”
“So that’s your goal as president?” Karen laughed. “To make gold valuable here?”
“Hey, I’d worry a little more about yourself right now,” Mr. Arthur said, losing patience. “Because you are in big trouble.”
Karen just shook her head and gave him the you’re-an-idiot look. “I thought you were pathetic because you turned this village into some kind of plagiarized vanity project, but now I find out you’re just doing it to get rich back in our frequency? That’s really lame, man, even for you.”
Mr. Arthur stared at her, thrown. “I’m not taking gold back to our frequency.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
Mr. Arthur looked at me, immediately figuring out that I was the one who told her and looking a bit freaked out that I had discovered his secret operation. Then he leaned in to us and whispered in a really exasperated voice, “Look, I didn’t even come up with that plan, okay? It was Herbert.”
Karen stared at Mr. Arthur for a second, then burst out laughing. “You’re such a loser, Chester. Even when you’re doing something evil, it’s not your own idea.”
Mr. Arthur stared at her with his mouth hanging open like someone had just sucked all the air out of his lungs. All the guards kept glancing at each other, then back at Mr. Arthur, wondering what he was going to do next. Or if he was going to do anything next.
Which was right when Herbert Golonski walked through the crowd of guards.
“Mr. President, you’re not going to let anyone talk to you like that, are you?” Herbert said as he shook his head like a teacher who had just found out you had cheated on an exam. “Especially not a criminal.”
“Hey, Chester, your boyfriend’s back,” Karen said with a smirk. “Maybe he brought you a gold necklace or something.”
Herbert looked at Karen, walked up to her, and smiled. But it was one of those smiles that said he didn’t think she was funny. “Your president is a very fair and patient man, my dear. But I wouldn’t expect his patience to last much longer.”
“Okay,” Karen said slowly as she narrowed her eyes at Herbert, “first of all, he’s not my president, nor is he the president of anything. He’s just some failure who tried to blow himself up and because of that, he ended up in this frequency where he is now passing off all the best achievements of actual smart and talented people as his own. Second, if I’m the criminal, how come it’s you who’s stealing gold from this place? And third . . .”
CRACK! Karen kneed Herbert extremely hard right in the groin. He made a sound like a sea lion and doubled over in agony. I have to admit, even though he was a jerk, I sort of felt sorry for the guy at that moment.
“. . . I’m not your ‘dear,’ ” Karen said, finishing her sentence.
As Herbert rolled around on the ground trying to catch his breath through what had to have been major pain, the guards all tensed up on their weapons, which were now even closer to our faces.
“Oh, man, I should have warned you,” Mr. Arthur said as he bent down to help Herbert. “She did that same exact thing to me once.”
Mr. Arthur tried to help Herbert stand up but Herbert just pushed him away angrily, his face red with pain. “Aren’t you going to do anything, Arthur? Are you going to let her get away with this? What kind of a world are you running here, anyway? Look around! Look at your guards! You know what they see? They see an ineffective leader. They see a pushover. And unless you make an example out of this—” Herbert pointed at Karen like she was a monster. “—Anti-Art, then you can kiss any and all security goodbye. Because if no one’s afraid of you, then no one’s going to do what you tell them to do. Not your people, not your guards, not your army. No one!” Herbert then struggled shakily to his feet, still clearly feeling the pain of Karen’s knee. He grabbed Mr. Arthur by the collar, got in his face, and said quietly enough that he thought Karen and I couldn’t hear, “And if no one’s doing what you tell them to do, then I can’t get this gold out of here!”
Mr. Arthur stared at Herbert, looking both afraid and unsure what to do. He was clearly intimidated by this Herbert Golonski guy. Then he suddenly puffed himself up, trying to be tough again.
“You bet I’m going to do something.” Mr. Arthur turned to the guards. “Lock her up in the White House prison. Right now.”
Two of the gorilla guards grabbed Karen’s hands and held them behind her back. She tried to pull out of their grasp but they were just too strong.
CLICK-CLICK! Another guard behind Karen snapped a huge set of handcuffs tightly around her wrists. The two guards held her by her upper arms as she struggled to get away.
“Let go of me!” she yelled as she thrashed about. However, she quickly slowed her struggling because I could see the handcuffs were cutting into her wrists as she fought. Seeing Karen with her hands locked behind her back and being subdued by the guards made me suddenly feel really sad, like the time Gary’s mom had their cat — who used to scratch us and attack us like crazy — declawed. We thought we’d be happy to be safe from her sharp nails but the first time we saw her try to jump from the couch to hang on the drapes and she slid down and crashed to the floor, we all felt really bad. It was sort of like even though we were scared of her with claws, she had lost her dignity without them. And that’s something you never want to see happen to anybody, no matter how mean they can occasionally be.
Well, maybe except for Frank Gutenkunitz. I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
Herbert watched all this, then turned to Mr. Arthur again. Herbert had a really mean look on his face that showed he was getting mad at everybody.
“Get rid of her, Chester,” Herbert hissed in Mr. Arthur’s face. “She already escaped once from your ridiculous prison. She’s never going to be anything but trouble. This girl has been running around for a year trying to turn people against you. Be a man, Arthur! Be a leader! Take her down to the square, bring everybody out, tell them this is what happens if they disobey you or try to do anything against your leadership . . . and then cut off her head.”
Karen’s eyes went wide. Even though she had always been cool under pressure, the idea that someone might actually kill her seemed to throw her quite a bit. As it did me. And Mr. Arthur.
“K-kill her?” Mr. Arthur said, the words sticking in his throat like saltine crackers when you try to swallow a bunch of them without any water.
“Yes! What do you think you’re doing? Playing games? Leaders have to take charge and they have to do ruthless things in order to stay in power. Haven’t you ever read Machiavelli? You can’t make people follow you unless they’re afraid of you. And they can’t be afraid of you unless they really think you will do something terrible to them if they don’t do what you want them to do! So do it, Arthur! Execute her!”
Mr. Arthur stared at Herbert with a very serious look on his face. Then he looked at Karen, and then at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking but his face looked like he was really considering what Herbert had just said. It was a scary look, sort of like when Mr. Haleran, our English teacher who was a really nice guy and who never got mad at anybody, found out that lots of kids had stopped doing their homework because they said he was too much of a wimp to yell at them or give them a bad grade. He came into class after hearing that and was a completely different person, really intense and angry, like whatever had been nice inside him sort of died upon hearing the news that everybody was taking advantage of him. Unfortunately, Mr. Arthur looked like he was thinking it might be time to prove something to the world.
I knew that if Mr. Arthur decided to take Herbert’s advice and tell the guards to execute Karen, he wouldn’t be able to turn back, even if he wanted to. He was too worried about being president and keeping his little world going and he was too much under the spell of Herbert to say no to him once he had already said yes. And I knew that I didn’t have the skills or powers to do what people always did in these situations in the movies, where someone they know is standing on the gallows and is about to be hung and all of a sudden they come riding in on a horse and shoot the rope with a gun so that their friend just falls to the ground and is safe and then some army rides in and saves the day. I didn’t have an army and I didn’t have a gun and I couldn’t shoot it if I did. I didn’t have anything to save the day with. All I could think to do was to speak up.
“Mr. Arthur,” I said as he looked at me, almost startled to hear my voice, “you can’t do this. This isn’t why you became president, is it? To have slaves and an army and to make everybody afraid of you? That wasn’t who you were back in our school. I know. My friends’ brothers and sisters used to know you and they said you were a nice guy. And I always used to look at your picture and feel like I knew you, too. Like I had something in common with you. I know you never felt comfortable in our frequency. Neither did I.
“I don’t know if any of your students were ever mean to you, or if you had bullies when you were a student, but I know I sure did. I couldn’t stand them, how mean they could be to me just because they decided they didn’t like me or because I was too nice or too scared to fight back. I never knew why they acted that way but maybe they were trying to prove to me that they were in charge. But I didn’t want them to be in charge and the school didn’t need them to be in charge. And if they weren’t there, our school would have been a nicer place.”
Herbert rolled his eyes and sighed. “Arthur, will you shut this kid up and do it already?”
Before anybody could stop me, I kept talking, trying to make Mr. Arthur realize just how crazy everything had gotten.
“The people in this frequency,” I said as Mr. Arthur stared at me, “they all liked you when you first got here. They liked that you taught them a new language and that you were bringing them so many new things. I mean, sure, you probably should have told them that the stuff you were bringing wasn’t all stuff you had thought up yourself, but that might even have been okay if you had just given them a choice about whether they wanted to like it or not. But now . . . you’ve turned into a bully.
“You didn’t need to bring in the creatures from the other valley to keep the people of Lesterville in line. Nobody wanted to hurt you. You just needed to protect them from the bad guys. But now you’re becoming a bad guy. And the more you do to scare people, the more they’re going to hate you. They might act like they like you and they might be afraid to do anything against you for a while, but they’re not going to stay that way forever. And then you’ll just have to start killing more and more of them.
“Karen only wanted to stop you because she saw how unhappy people were becoming under you. She wanted to save them from their bully. But I just know that deep down, you don’t want to be a bully. You’ve never wanted to be a bully. You just wanted people to like you and like what you do. And they still can. Just, please, don’t kill Karen.”
