Applewhites Coast to Coast Page 7

  E.D. turned to him, grinning, and winked. Jake recognized the gleam of pride in her eyes—E.D. was, once again, feeling the joy of “handling things.”

  Fifteen minutes after the workshop had been scheduled to start, E.D.’s gleam of pride had been replaced by a look of sheer panic. Jake was feeling it, too. If they’d had too small an audience in Haddock Point, they actually had too large an audience here. There were almost two dozen children in the room, and the oldest of the kids looked about seven. They were running everywhere. The adults who’d brought them had been introduced to Sybil and then ushered out with strict instructions to be back to pick up their charges in two hours. There would be no help from the parents. Two hours!

  “These kids are too young!” E.D. whispered urgently to Jake. “She wrote this book for kids ten and up! And they’re going to be too young for any of the workshop activities I had planned!”

  As the babble of children’s voices filled the room, Jake had a distinct feeling of impending disaster.

  Melody was already filming whatever caught her attention. At the moment, that was a girl in pink overalls with her thumb in her mouth and a stuffed rabbit under one arm. Jake figured she couldn’t have been more than four. Then Melody turned toward two of the boys, who were trading karate punches and kicks. Video like that would do nothing to impress the Rutherfords, Jake thought, and he began hustling the children to sit down in front of the chair where Sybil was sitting. E.D. came to help, as did Cordelia and Michael Lyons, who had been hovering near her. Together, they managed to get the kids seated.

  “Good morning, children!” Sybil said. Her forehead was wrinkled with an uncharacteristic expression of concern. When a few of the children said “Good morning” back, she looked relieved and went on. “My name is Sybil Jameson, and I write books.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jake noticed Rabbit Girl, who had refused to sit, drifting toward the table where Destiny sat drawing. “This morning I’m going to read you a little of the book I’m writing now.” She cleared her throat, told them the title, and began to read.

  A girl directly in front of her raised her hand and spoke without waiting to be called on. “Does it have pictures? Can we see ’em?”

  “This is a chapter book,” Sybil explained. “And I’m a writer. I don’t do pictures, I do the words.”

  “I do pitchers!” Destiny called from the table in the back. “I’m a nillustrator!”

  “Not now, Destiny,” Sybil said. She went back to reading.

  “I thought you said you write books!” a little boy called out. “All you got there is pieces of paper.”

  Sybil nodded. “That’s because this is what’s called a manuscript. It’s what there is before a book becomes a book.”

  “Do you make it into a book? How do you get the hard front on it?” a girl asked.

  “And how do you get all the words to fit on the page just right?” said one of the two boys who’d been punching each other.

  “Let’s save questions till I’m finished reading,” Sybil said. “Just listen to the story for now.”

  “I don’t like stories without pictures,” the first little girl said. “When are you gonna be done?”

  Sybil got through the second page and was halfway done with the third when the karate punching started again and Jake dragged the closest of the boys away to sit on a chair. Sybil had finished the third page and was about to begin on the fourth when screams erupted at the back of the room where Rabbit Girl had tried to take Destiny’s blue marker and Destiny had snatched it back. “Mine, mine, mine!” Destiny shouted.

  The kid sank her teeth into his arm, Destiny shrieked, and the entire room dissolved into pandemonium.

  Chapter Nine

  As far as E.D. could tell, it wasn’t actually much of a bite. After his initial shriek Destiny was hollering more than crying, and there weren’t even any teeth marks on his arm, just a little bit of slobber. But it was enough to send the room into utter chaos. “Somebody do something!” E.D. said in a low voice through gritted teeth.

  It was Melody who sprang into action, putting down her camera and hurrying to the light switch by the door. The room, which had no windows, went suddenly dark. Very dark. A scream was cut short by Melody’s shout. “LIGHTS GO OUT AND MOUTHS GO SHUT!”

  There was immediate quiet.

  “When the lights go on again you’ll need to listen to me and do what I say. Right?”

  Still quiet.

  “RIGHT?” Melody shouted.

  “Right,” came a scattering of subdued voices.

  The lights went back on—and the children blinked, all of them remarkably still. “Okay, kiddies, turn around and face me!” Melody said. As the children scooted themselves around, she looked from Jake to Cordelia to E.D. to Michael Lyons. “Go with me here,” she said to them, and focused again on the children. “Next thing is you’re all gonna get into groups and be creative with—let’s say the story of the Three Little Pigs!”

  As much as E.D. hated the idea of just “going with Melody,” she had to admit the girl had accomplished a lot in no time at all. The children’s eyes were very round, and slightly frightened. “Who knows that story?” Melody asked. They all raised their hands.

  Melody beckoned to E.D. “Let’s do this, Professor!” E.D. glanced at her mother, who, frowning, was rooting in the bag next to her chair, seemingly oblivious to what had just happened. Whatever they did, they’d better get at it quickly, before the kids had time to go wild again.

  Melody leaned in close when E.D. went over to her. “Groups!” she said. “Mini workshops. Dance. Drawing. Singing. Like that.”

  E.D. nodded. Jake could get a group singing, Cordelia would do dance. Destiny might be only five, but if kids here wanted to draw pigs and wolves and houses, he would surely be able to talk about doing it while he was doing it himself.

  Lots of the kids wanted to do everything, so Melody lined them up and gave them all numbers from one to four, and then E.D. announced which numbers went with which workshop. The ones went to the table with Destiny to draw—E.D. noticed they’d accidentally put the biter in his group—the twos were sent to Jake, the threes to Cordelia, and the fours to E.D. Michael Lyons was given the job of roaming between the groups, keeping the children from punching or biting anybody, and Hal’s job was to get it all, or as much as possible, on video.

  E.D. pulled a legal pad and pencil out of her briefcase and told her group, three girls and a boy, that they were going to take turns telling the story of the three little pigs and she would write it down for them. She sat them all at her table. “Start,” she said, pointing to the one boy, “with once upon a time, and after that you’re on your own. Tell it the way you remember it. When I stop one person, the next takes the story on from there. You got that?” The children, still a little nervous from the lights having gone out, nodded solemnly.

  Jake’s group had gathered in a far corner, and it wasn’t long before a ragged version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” began. As the children e-i-e-i-ohed, E.D. realized suddenly that Melody hadn’t taken on a group. Instead, she had her camera trained on Sybil, who was still in the rocking chair, ignoring everyone. She was going over her manuscript, frowning intensely, jotting notes and crossing things out with the total focus of her writer self. Sometimes when she was working, she’d forget to eat—so ignoring a roomful of children wasn’t that surprising.

  “You’re not writin’ nothing down!” a little boy in E.D.’s group said, and she turned her attention back to the task at hand.

  “Okay,” she said, “go on.”

  “So then,” the boy continued in a rush, “the wolf comes back to the door again and this time he’s gonna kick those pigs’ butts. . . .” E.D. wished she had thought to bring a computer. She’d expected the kids—the imaginary ten-and-ups—to do what writing there was to be done.

  When the parents returned, E.D. read aloud the pig story as the children had written it, which was a distinctly creative ta
ke on the original one, then the “nillustrators,” as they were now calling themselves, showed their pictures. After that the dancers did their dance, which was about the wolf chasing the pigs and consisted mostly of running around the outer edges of the room, and Jake’s group sang the pig part of “Old MacDonald” three times through. The parents shook hands with Sybil, who had finally put away her manuscript when they arrived. Two of the women had brought Petunia Grantham mysteries for her to autograph. The families all left looking happy.

  Jake shot Melody and E.D. a thumbs-up sign, and Hal told them, as he gathered the video equipment and stuffed it back into the bags, that he thought his video would be a winner. Melody grinned in triumph and clapped E.D. on the back as the librarian thanked Sybil. “I would have loved to stay for your workshop, but I had a previously scheduled meeting. It must have been wonderful!” Sybil accepted the compliment with becoming grace—considering, E.D. thought, that she hadn’t had a thing to do with the “wonderful” part of it.

  “We did it!” Melody said. “Onward toward victory!”

  “And then the librarian lady said our pitchers from my nillustrator workshop was delightful,” Destiny said around mouthfuls of apple pie back at the campground that night, where the family was gathered in lantern light at the picnic table for the dessert they’d bought on the way back from town. “But I don’t think that mean girl with the rabbit drew pigs good at all. They looked like bugs or hippos or something. My pigs were lots and lots better. They had really good curly tails.”

  “Now, now, Destiny,” said Lucille absently, poking at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Everybody’s artistic expression is valuable.”

  “Okay, but my pigs was way better,” Destiny insisted. “And my wolf was bestest of all!”

  Melody had just come back from the campground’s shower house and, in spite of the evening chill, was wearing only cutoffs and her bikini top as she rubbed a towel in her hair. “Yours were better, squirt. No question!”

  “Now, now, Melody . . . ,” Lucille began. “Creativity is about expressing your artistic impulse. It shouldn’t be a competition.”

  “Tell that to the Rutherfords,” Melody answered. “Or the people who give out Nobel Prizes. Pretty much everything’s a competition. Like how come your poems get published and most other people’s don’t?”

  Lucille smiled and wagged a finger at her. “Very clever, Melody. You’re very clever.”

  “All right, troops.” Zedediah banged his coffee cup on the picnic table. “Jeremy says we won’t get our next assignment until tomorrow night. So we have an extra day to fill in Tennessee. I’m thinking we might find something educational to do with this time. I spent the day scoping out the surrounding area. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to do close to Clayton except see the ‘famous fainting goats,’” he said with a chuckle, “so I’m thinking we might travel a little farther—”

  “Fainting goatses?” Destiny asked. “Grandpa! Grandpa! We gots to see fainting goatses!”

  Zedediah shook his head. “Destiny, I was kidding about them. There’s no educational value to—”

  “I want to see the fainting goatses!” hollered Destiny.

  Melody, who had sat down at the picnic table next to E.D., leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, “The kids rule!” Then she spoke to Zedediah. “I thought the Creative Academy considered pretty much everything in life educational, just like the Rutherfords,” she said. “I’ll bet not a single one of you has ever seen a goat faint.”

  “I WANT TO SEE THE FAINTING GOATSES!” Destiny hollered again, loud enough that the dog in the next campsite started to bark, which sent Winston into full-throated answer.

  That was how the family came to agree that the next day would be devoted to the pursuit of the highly educational activity of watching goats faint.

  Destiny was in his hammock, singing softly to himself a song he had made up about fainting goats, as E.D. got ready for bed later. She was grateful that however much trouble it was to turn the dinette into her bed, it was, at least, all hers. This led, of course, to thinking about Melody. Again. No doubt the girl was very smart. And she had an amazing knack for getting things to go the way she wanted them to. But when E.D. thought about the way Jake had been looking at Melody when she came back from the shower, she sighed. What, she wondered, might Melody want with Jake?

  “Fumes!” her father complained the next day as they drove away. “That wagon is emitting noxious fumes! This is the last time I agree to follow Archie!”

  Sybil, in the passenger seat, didn’t respond. She was bent over a sheaf of manuscript pages with a pen in her hand.

  “Fumes!” Randolph said again.

  E.D. shook her head. She had a feeling that in his own mind, her father had managed to rewrite the entire story of the Pageant Wagon and would from now on blame Archie for any trouble it caused.

  “We’re going to see the goatses faint! We’re going to see the goatses faint!” Destiny was chanting, over and over, straining forward to see out the windshield, as if they might appear in front of the bus at any moment.

  Chapter Ten

  “We could have made this trip in the same amount of time before Bill Bones fixed it,” Archie complained, when they’d been traveling for almost an hour. The road to the town that was famous for fainting goats turned out to be extremely narrow and hilly, with lots of twists and turns and sudden dips, and Jake was feeling a little sick as the Pageant Wagon lurched one way and then the other. Finally, though, they passed a sign, welcoming them to Duck Hill, Tennessee, population 732.

  “Not sure how famous the goats can be,” Zedediah observed, “if they don’t merit a mention on the welcome sign.”

  “You’re just grumpy about having to live up to your ‘life as education’ principles,” Melody said.

  “And you’re still trying to get a rise out of me, missy. Give it up. I’ve got six decades on you.”

  Jake remembered Melody staring Wolfie in the eyes, and then head-butting the fence of the goat pen. He hadn’t figured Melody out yet, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t going to just “give it up.” If the Applewhites and this Expedition were supposed to change her, it definitely wasn’t happening yet.

  The town square was nondescript except for a small but historic-looking courthouse. There weren’t any goats just standing around. Archie drove in big circles, getting farther from the center of town, until eventually they saw a hand-painted sign, nailed up on a telephone pole, that read FAMOUS FAINTING GOATS and had an arrow on it. They took that turn and followed a series of signs on smaller and smaller roads, until the buses were rumbling down a dirt track, kicking up huge clouds of dust behind them. “I sure hope we don’t have to turn around,” worried Archie. “If this road runs out we’re going to have to back out the whole way. . . .”

  Jake wondered what kind of folks lived out here. Folks with shotguns, he thought, probably. He remembered a horror movie that had given him nightmares for weeks, and had a sudden, fleeting fantasy of a deranged killer luring unsuspecting tourists out to the deep, dark woods, robbing them blind, then shooting them and burying their bodies in some wilderness ravine where no one would ever find them.

  Silly, he thought, and pushed the movie out of his mind. Who would think of luring someone to their death with the promise of fainting goats?

  They arrived at last at a little ramshackle farm with a weathered house, a tilted barn, and a big wire pen with six or eight medium-sized goats in it. As the buses fell quiet, a farmer came ambling out. Melody, who had spent the last half hour of the trip stretched out on her new bunk, came up and stood next to Jake with her camera focused on the scene outside. She put a hand on his shoulder and snorted with laughter. “Look at that,” she said. “He’s actually got a hayseed.”

  Sure enough, the balding farmer had a long stalk of grass sticking out of his mouth. Jake was relieved to see he didn’t have a shotgun. This was not, Jake thought, anybody’s idea of a deranged killer. The
man smiled at them amiably as they all climbed down from the buses. If he was surprised to see these two ornately decorated vehicles in his driveway, he didn’t show it.

  Zedediah stepped forward to greet him, but Destiny was there first, his camera in his hand. “Are those the fainting goatses? Can we see them faint? What makes them do it? Can they do it now?”

  The farmer looked him over and nodded. “Yup, they can. But it only happens when they’s skeert. And I gotta warn ya, they’ve just about seen—and heard—it all, so it’s harder and harder to startle ’em nowadays. You’re welcome to try, young feller. Welcome to try.”

  Destiny ran to the fence and clapped his hands at the goats. They kept chewing at the tufts of grass inside the pen. Then he tried shouting “Boo!” and “Gotcha!” and kicking the fence post. Then he screamed loud enough to make Jake want to cover his ears. The goats just chewed and stared at him.

  Soon the rest of the Applewhites were lined up at the fence. Melody and Hal each had video cameras out. “Hey!” yelled Randolph. “HEY, GOATS!” None of them even looked over at him. Randolph shrugged. He was not, Jake thought, used to being ignored. “I’ve got better things to do with my time,” he said, and headed back to Brunhilda.

  Archie disappeared into the Pageant Wagon and came back out with two lengths of pipe, which he banged together, making an astonishing racket. Nothing.

  “Maybe it isn’t just sound!” Cordelia said. “They’re used to that. Let me try something. Everybody hold very still.” Everybody did. “Quiet and still now,” she whispered. “Don’t move a muscle.” Suddenly she leaped into the air, arms and legs spread as if she was about to launch herself over the fence at them. They ignored her. “I should’ve had a scarf I could wave at them,” she said.

  Destiny ran to Brunhilda then and came back with Winston on his leash. “Get ’em, boy,” he shouted, pulling him close to the fence. “Bark, at least!” Winston sniffed the base of the fence post and then raised his leg and peed on it.