A Tale Magnolious, page 21
“Not yet.” Bernice looked back at Nitty and Twitch with dogged determination. “Papa knew about the Red Cross. He was right. He knew about the Whirlybog before anyone else, too. And I’m not leaving here until I find out what it does. For Papa’s sake.”
“Bernice, wait.” Nitty started after her, and saw that Twitch was struggling to get to his feet to do the same.
“I’m fine.” Twitch gave Nitty a warning look. “Bernice is right. We came here to get hard evidence, and we can’t leave without it. Otherwise no one will ever believe us.”
Nitty hesitated as she watched Twitch moving unsteadily down the flour mound. This is wrong, she thought. But if Twitch kept going, the only thing she could do was stay with him.
Reluctantly, she followed him and Bernice as they snuck through the storage room, staying hidden behind the piles of food as much as they could. Nitty’s heart hammered as they drew closer to the whumping.
The three of them got down on their knees and crawled the last few feet to the door.
Twitch handed Nitty the burlap sack, then slid the hairpin from his pocket. “Ready the instrument of capture,” he said to Nitty, solemnly.
Nitty raised the burlap sack. Beside her, Bernice raised the rolling pin—prepared, Nitty guessed, to give Neezer a thorough pummeling.
With temporarily renewed energy and a true stealth Nitty found masterly, Twitch slid the hairpin into the door’s lock. His eyes, though glazed, gleamed with exhilaration when he touched the doorknob and it turned under his grasp.
Silently, he pushed the door open a crack and lifted his periscope to his face. Together they peeked inside.
The Whirlybog was the oddest-looking machine Nitty had ever set eyes on—a massive structure of wood and metal covered in the blades of windmills. It was a large-scale replica of the sketch they’d discovered in Neezer’s invention notebook. But the machine before them struck Nitty as much more ominous in reality than on paper.
“Look there.” Bernice pointed toward the Whirlybog’s control panel. There, at its center, was the very Dustometer dial Crispin had baked into his bread loaves. Each point on the dial had a name, and Nitty’s pulse raced as she read them: Chokeberry Silt, Oily Loam, Bison Sward, Toeter Grime.
“Duster names,” Twitch confirmed. “But what do they mean? And what is that?” He pointed to a drafting table, where a model full of miniature houses and taller buildings sat. His eyes narrowed. “Wait…that reminds me of the map I found in Neezer’s car. It’s…it’s a model of Fortune’s Bluff! But some buildings are missing—”
He swallowed the rest of his words as Neezer suddenly came into view, walking toward the giant clear holding tank at the center of the Whirlybog. He held three mason jars in his arms. He climbed a small stepladder, set the jars on the ladder’s top step, and opened the Whirlybog’s holding tank.
“A half a jar of Blast, I think,” he mumbled as he opened one of the jars and poured a portion of its churning contents into the holding tank. “A third of a jar of Gale, and a full jar of Cyclone.”
Down from the ladder, he turned the Dustometer on the Whirlybog to the Toeter Grime setting. Then he raised a large red lever to the side of the control dial, and as he did, the blades of the Whirlybog spun faster.
“More power.” Neezer smiled triumphantly. “More wind. And we’ll have the biggest duster yet!”
Nitty’s eyes became saucers, and she glanced at Bernice and Twitch, who were both looking on with a mixture of anger and astonishment. “The Whirlybog’s not ridding the town of dusters,” she whispered. “It’s causing them!” She’d seen enough—enough to tell Windle and everyone else in Fortune’s Bluff what Neezer was doing. Now they could leave before they were discovered. “Let’s go!”
Proof! Bernice mouthed then, pointing to one of the mason jars still sitting on Neezer’s stepladder.
“Bernice. No!” But before Nitty could stop her, Bernice inched through the door, heading for the jar.
Nitty held her breath, not daring to move, as she watched Bernice’s painstaking progress across the floor. Neezer’s back was still safely turned to them, and Bernice’s fingers were within inches of the jar when it happened.
Twitch covered his mouth with his hand.
Nitty braced herself against him, hoping she could muffle what she knew was coming. Twitch’s cheeks ballooned with the effort of trying not to cough, but still, the smallest gurgle rose from his throat.
All three of them froze, because the gurgle had come in between WHUMPs, and, though small, it had been distinct. Nitty held her breath as she watched Neezer stiffen. She waited for him to turn around, but he didn’t. Instead he reached for the red lever. The windmill blades spun furiously, and the whumping grew louder and faster. Much faster.
Then Nitty heard it. A sound much worse than the Whirlybog’s ominous whumping. It was the sound of whistling—a high-pitched, nasal whistling. But it was the tune being whistled that struck fear in Nitty’s heart: a tune Twitch had once warned her must never be heard from the likes of the villainous mayor. Or else.
What Nitty heard was the sound of Neezer’s nose whistling Beethoven’s Fifth.
* * *
Nitty sprang to her feet as Twitch hollered to Bernice, “Run!”
Bernice, however, did not run. She lifted her rolling pin and brought it down with a conquering crack! against the Whirlybog’s holding tank. Nitty waited for a splinter, a shatter, anything. Bernice, eyes expectant and vengeful, waited, too. But the holding tank did what it was built to do. The holding tank held.
With the surprise and disappointment of her failure scored on her face, Bernice snatched up Neezer’s Cyclone jar and was through the door in seconds.
Nitty wanted to follow but was momentarily mesmerized by the sight of Neezer turning toward them, an impossibly congenial smile spreading across his lips.
She did the only thing she could think to do. She grabbed the burlap sack and launched it, with all the might she could muster, directly at Neezer’s head. Then she too ran. She pulled Twitch, who had begun coughing as soon as he’d hollered his command and now couldn’t seem to stop, along with her.
The Whirlybog’s whumping had grown to a deafening bellow, and through the walls of the institute Nitty could hear the telltale whine of a duster brewing.
“He’s making a duster!” Bernice cried. “With the Whirlybog.”
Strange, thought Nitty, that Neezer wasn’t yelling after them, or pursuing them at all. But that smile of his…Nitty shuddered. His smile could only mean one thing: he would get them, one way or another. She knew now that the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth had been the portent of an indomitable end.
They reached the bottom of the mound of flour, but Twitch was panting and weak. He’d never be able to climb up the sacks to the window.
Nitty’s eyes flew about the room, looking for another exit, and they at last spotted a large door along the north wall. She could only hope it led to the outside.
“There!” she called to Bernice over the whumping, and propping Twitch up between the two of them, they half stumbled, half ran toward it.
Nitty didn’t look behind her as she ran. She couldn’t hear footsteps. She couldn’t hear anything over the Whirlybog. Every second that passed, she expected to feel Neezer’s pawlike hand clamping down on her shoulder.
But then she was flinging the door open and barreling into the darkness of night with Twitch and Bernice beside her.
Safe was her first relieved thought. Her second was Duster.
A duster, already fierce in its violent winds and blinding dirt, was whirling around them. She tried to run into the wind, but it overpowered her, knocking her to the ground, wrenching her arms from Bernice and Twitch. Neezer hadn’t let them go, Nitty realized. He’d sent the storm to catch them.
“Twitch!” She reached out in the darkness. Her words disappeared into the wind the moment she spoke them. “Bernice!”
She glimpsed Bernice for only a second, just long enough to watch Neezer’s Cyclone jar get wrenched from her hands in the wind and fall to the ground, shattering. Her heart sank. Their proof was gone. Then a thick cloud engulfed Bernice, and Nitty lost sight of her.
She pulled the collar of her shirt up over her mouth and nose and shielded her eyes against the stinging grit. There—barely visible—was a shadowy form.
The dust swirled faster, flying into her nose and eyes, even through her shirt’s fabric. She squinted, barely able to make out Twitch where he stood a few feet away.
“Bernice!” Nitty called. “Help!”
Bernice had disappeared completely into the darkness. And Twitch…Twitch couldn’t stop coughing. He was hunched over, clutching his sides.
“I’m…not…breathing so good,” he wheezed. He coughed again, and his bright blue periscope slipped out of his hand. It rolled the second it hit the ground, the wind making it spin and skitter in the dirt. A ferocious gust tore the periscope from the ground and into the air. Before Nitty could cry out, it was gone. Twitch, too, was gone, his form vanishing behind a black wall of dust.
“Nitty!” Twitch’s voice was the tiniest mouse in the lion’s roar of the storm.
“I’m here!” Nitty pushed the words from her open mouth, but as soon as she did, clots of dirt and dust choked her throat. She leaned into the wind, pulling her feet forward, step by step, reaching her outstretched hands toward the sound of Twitch’s voice.
“Nitty.” The mouse was tinier, weaker.
Bernice, Nitty was certain, would be fine. Wherever she was in the storm now, Bernice would find shelter, or some way to stay safe. But Twitch, with his fever and his cough…
Please, Nitty thought. Please let me reach him.
There was a crushing weight in Nitty’s chest, as if a boulder were sitting atop it, and she fell to her knees, struggling to breathe. She began crawling. But which way to go?
She could hear no sound from Twitch. The only sound was the screaming wind. She tried, once more, to call out, but her voice failed her. She closed her eyes and reached out her arms, sweeping the piling dust through her fingers. She couldn’t reach Twitch. She wouldn’t find him.
She gathered all the thoughts in her head and stretched them toward the Homes farm, toward Windle. And even more toward Mag.
Mag! she thought then. Mag, come to me. Help me.
If there was ever a time for Mag to be magnolious, it was now.
* * *
Through the miles of dust and wind, through the vastness of the wide, blowing world, Mag heard her girl call out to her.
She raised her head.
She lifted her ears.
Her pumpkin heart tolled a clanging alarm.
Her girl was in danger.
She lowered her head like a battering ram, and she ran.
* * *
Nitty’s breath was coming in shallow gasps. The dust was building a blanket, a heavy blanket smothering her….
But then the blanket was yanked away by a sweeping trunk. A trunk that gave the briefest stroke to Nitty’s cheek. A stroke that said, I am here. I am here. I am here.
Mag.
Nitty raised her head and, from the corner of her eye, saw the blur of a wooden plank tearing through the air. Then—whack!—it landed a jarring blow to her skull. The world spun with stars, but she fought to right it. Through the murky curtain of dust appeared the outline of the elephant, and a small, curled mound between Mag’s legs.
The storm subsided just enough for Nitty to make out Mag’s trunk lifting Twitch into the air, raising him up until he was umbrellaed under her enormous left ear.
Nitty sighed. Safe. Twitch was safe with Mag.
Now, at last, Nitty could sleep.
She closed her eyes.
But before she gave in to the warmth of her dust blanket, she heard a distant, nasal voice booming, “Beast! Murderous beast!”
When Nitty next opened her eyes, she found herself under a willow tree. The willow was weeping, silently but stormily.
“Don’t cry, Windle,” Nitty whispered hoarsely. For it was Windle whose head was bent low over Nitty in grief. He was seated in Clara’s rocker by her side. Nitty put out a shaky hand to touch the top of his uncombed hair. “Don’t cry.”
This only made Windle cry harder. “You’re all right, then! All right.” He brushed at his eyes to no avail. “You’ve been sleeping near on a full day now. Blast it if you didn’t give this crotchety ticker a fright.”
“But, Windle.” Nitty’s own eyes blurred. “You’re crying for me.”
Windle’s paintbrush eyebrows knit together. He straightened from a willow into a birch. “A momentary lapse of willpower, and I’ll thank you not to make a fuss about it.”
Nitty smiled at him, relieved to see that his crying had done nothing to diminish his terseness. She’d grown to like it (most of the time). Slowly she lifted her head to take in her surroundings. Why, she was back in the Homes kitchen in her cot! And—hoo-wee!—did she have a headache. Her throat was raw with grittiness, too, and she gratefully accepted the cup of froozle juice that Windle offered.
As she sipped it, she cautiously touched her forehead and discovered a sizable goose egg.
She raised her eyebrows, questioning, and Windle nodded. “You hit your head. Before we found you and Twitch. Probably hit it on some flying debris. The storm was a real whopper.” He frowned.
Nitty’s thoughts, which up until now had been fuddled and musty, turned suddenly sharp.
“The storm.” She sat up in alarm. “Twitch and Mag! Bernice!”
Windle laid an arm across her shoulders, gently but firmly lowering her back onto the cot. “They’re out of harm’s way. Bernice ran all the way here in the storm to get help. She tried to drive—confound her—but Crispin’s car was full up with dust. She got a lungful herself, and could hardly speak by the time she blew in the door, but she’s safe with Crispin now. All I understood was that you and Twitch were caught in the storm outside the institute. I ran for my truck, but its engine was dust-plugged. By the time the truck finally started, Mag was already gone.” He shook his head. “She broke down the barn door to get to you faster.”
Nitty’s relief lasted only until she noticed that Windle was skirting her gaze. Nitty glanced out the kitchen window, searching. The emerald green and fuchsia of the froozle field—still standing, if bowed—were marred by grimy layers of inches-thick dust. Nitty guessed it was getting on dusk. Still, it was hard to tell with the brown pea-souper hovering as a leftover from last night’s duster. The porch, though shadowy, was clearly empty. If Twitch and Mag were all right, then Mag would be there at the window, looking in on her. Twitch would be here, too, likely reading her one of his Detective Comics.
Her limbs jellified.
“What happened?” Her voice was small. “Where are they? Twitch and Mag?” Windle stared at his toes, until Nitty grabbed the pillow from underneath her head, bursting out with “I swear I’ll wallop you with this if you don’t tell me right now!”
At that Windle’s eyes widened, a near smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Then he did something that surprised both of them. He took her hand. Not just for a second. No. He took her hand and held on tight.
“Oh, Nitty girl, you walloped me good and hard already, the very first day you showed up here on this farm. Me, Twitch…the whole of Fortune’s Bluff.” He shook his head. “Now we’re all in a bind.” He heaved a breath. “Twitch is ailing, but Mrs. Higgler’s tending to him. She’s fixed him some froozle soup, if you can believe that.”
“His muddy lungs?” Nitty asked, and Windle nodded. She swallowed, remembering. “When we got caught out in the duster, Twitch couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe at all.”
Windle stared at the floor. “Nitty, he’s got dust pneumonia.”
Nitty’s heart was a mallet, striking her ribs fast and fierce. “Well, he needs more cough tonic, that’s all. And more froozle fruit. Rest, too, and then he’ll be fine.” She made her voice say the words, as a way of convincing her mind of their truth.
“Doc Grant has seen him already, but there’s nothing much to be done for Angus. I’m afraid your froozle fruit won’t cure him. His illness is too far gone for that. The fact is, his lungs can’t bear any more dusters.”
Silence fell between them. Nitty’s eyes filled.
Poor Twitch. Poor, brave Twitch. Here he’d finally uncovered proof of Neezer Snollygost’s villainy, only to have his muddy lungs betray him.
Nitty swung her legs over the side of the bed. “First I’ll see Mag in the barn. And then I need to talk to Twitch. Right away. We discovered something at the institute. Something so shuddersome you’ll scarce believe it.”
Windle frowned. “I thought Bernice kept saying Neezer’s name, but I couldn’t understand much else through her coughing fits. What’s he gone and done now? Built himself a throne?” Nitty shook her head, and she guessed she must’ve turned several shades paler, because Windle’s eyes widened. “What is it?”
With halting breaths, she explained all she, Twitch, and Bernice had seen at Neezer’s institute. Windle’s face, as she spoke, went through several stages of transformation—the bleached-bone look of shock, the grim acceptance of a difficult truth, and then, at last, the purpling bluster of anger. “No!” was his frequent exclamation, along with “He didn’t dare!” and “He wouldn’t,” and, finally, a resigned “The scoundrel.”
Nitty barely finished the dreaded recounting before a coughing fit overtook her. As she coughed, Windle shook his head, muttering, “How could I not have known?”
