Sabotaged

15

Jonah was amazed that Katherine didn’t start screaming, “Ew! Ew! Get it off me!” and start running away from the man. She did look a little pale. But she just wiped her hand on a clump of beach grass and said faintly, “Maybe, if there’s something we could use as a bandage…”

“My sweatshirt!” Andrea volunteered. She took off running down the shore, to the spot where she’d left her sweatshirt and shoes right before she’d rushed into the water.

“How bad is it?” Jonah asked quietly.

“I forget how it works with head injuries,” Katherine said. “Do they bleed a lot and always look worse than they really are? Or is it the other way around?”

Jonah didn’t know.

He looked carefully at the man for the first time. It had been easier to stay mad when Jonah wasn’t looking, when he was thinking of the man as just part of some trick or trap-or a clue-not as a real live, flesh-and-blood person. But the man was real. Beneath his tattered white shirt, his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, and Jonah almost felt like cheering at each sign that the man was still alive.

“He’s old,” Jonah said, surprised.

The man had wrinkles beneath the sand caked on his battered face. Along with his thinning white hair, he had a white beard that might have looked dapper and well trimmed if he hadn’t just gone through a boat crash.

“Why would an old man go out in a boat by himself?” Jonah asked.

Before Katherine had a chance to answer, Andrea was back and handing Katherine two sweatshirts. She’d picked up Jonah’s, too.

“The one sleeve dragged in the water a little,” Andrea said breathlessly. She pulled her shoes back on; she hadn’t taken the time to do that before.

“That’s okay,” Katherine said. “If we just wrap them around like this… and press against the wound…”

Andrea held her hand firmly on the sweatshirts, even when the blood began to show through. She glanced back at the tracer man behind them.

“Why doesn’t he need a bandage?” she said.

Jonah walked over to the tracer man and studied the back of his head.

“He doesn’t have any big cuts like that,” Jonah said.

That was probably the reason the tracer was sitting up and talking-even weakly-while the real man lay still and unmoving.

And what does that do to time? Jonah wondered dizzily. Is this man’s head injury part of the trap or the trick? Or is it just… something that happened?

“It doesn’t make sense,” Andrea complained. “Both men were rescued the same way. Right?”

“You and Jonah were just a little later getting the man away from all those broken boards,” Katherine said apologetically. “From where I was standing, I could see the one tracer boy swim out to him while you were still floundering about, getting thrown around by the waves.”

Jonah wanted to protest, We were doing the best that we could!

But then, to his surprise, Katherine added, “And I was a lot slower holding the branch out to you…”

Just then a sudden gust of wind shoved against them, practically knocking Andrea over. Both girls were forced to hold their hair back so it didn’t whip into their faces. Andrea peered up at the sky, where the dark clouds were now racing even faster.

“I think there’s a storm coming,” she said, shivering in her wet clothes. “That’s why the water’s so choppy.”

Katherine frowned.

“The man’s not even conscious,” she said. “He can’t stay out here in a storm.”

A bolt of lightning slashed the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. Andrea looked up appealingly at Jonah.

“Will you help us get him to safety?” she asked. “And then worry about what it all means for time?”

“What kind of a person do you think I am?” Jonah asked indignantly. “You think I’d leave a hurt old man out on a beach in the middle of a storm? Of course I’ll help!”

“Thanks,” Andrea said, smiling at him. Even with her hair blowing around, the smile made her look pretty again.

Am I being used again? Jonah wondered. Did Andrea’s mystery man know that I’d react to her like that? Did he know this storm was going to blow in? Did he cause it?

Or was Jonah just being paranoid, as Katherine had said?

“Okay, great,” Katherine said. “We’re all willing to help. But what are we going to do? Even working together, I don’t think we could get him back to that Indian village, and there’s nowhere else to go…”

Without thinking about it, all three kids looked toward the tracer boys.

They were casting anxious looks at the sky as well. They jumped up and grabbed another downed branch which, as soon as they moved it, turned into a tracer as well, with the original branch still lying flat on the ground. This branch had slick, shiny leaves and several rather large offshoot branches, but the tracer boys dragged it effortlessly across the ground. When they reached the tracer man, they gently eased him into a crook between the main branch and one of the offshoots. Then they tugged on the other end of the branch, pulling the man along behind them.

“The very latest in ambulance transportation, circa-what? One thousand B.C.?” Katherine muttered.

“Who cares! We’ll try it!” Jonah said.

He ran over and grabbed the end of the branch, but it wasn’t quite as light as the tracer boys had made it seem. Jonah had to do a lot of tugging and jerking to maneuver the branch into place beside the unconscious man. Then, no matter how the three kids tried, the best they could do was roll him facedown onto the branch.

“One of us will have to walk beside him, holding him on,” Katherine directed.

Ahead of them, the tracer boys were marching steadily along, the man perched on the branch sliding smoothly behind them.

For Jonah, Katherine, and Andrea, it was more a matter of tugging, jerking, and snarling at one other, “Can’t you push any harder?” and “I’m doing my best-can’t you push harder?” Jonah began to have a lot more respect for the tracers. They may have looked scrawny and malnourished-and they were wearing ridiculous clothes and evidently belonged to a culture that hadn’t figured out how to invent the wheel. But they were incredibly strong. In Jonah’s time, they probably would have won several Olympic gold medals for something.

Jonah couldn’t have said how close they’d gotten to the deserted Indian village-halfway back? Two-thirds of the way?-when the blinding rain began.

This is impossible, he wanted to say. I give up. But how could he say that when Andrea and Katherine were still pushing and pulling and tugging and yanking, even as water streamed into their eyes, twigs stabbed into their arms, and mud slipped against their shoes? So he kept trying too.

The tracers were just a dim glow ahead of him. And then, suddenly, they were out of sight.

“No! I can’t-” Jonah screamed. Rain pounded against his face, drowning out anything he tried to say.

“Let’s go into the same hut,” Katherine said, speaking directly into his ear.

The same hut? Oh… The Indians went into one of the huts in the village, Jonah realized. That’s why I can’t see them.

He got a final burst of energy, pulling the branch even harder. Then he dropped the branch and tugged the man into the dim but dry hut. All three kids collapsed in a heap, not even caring that they had fallen right on top of the tracer boys.