The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 15

One moment Tyler and Steve Carrillo were loudly explaining to Colin Know-Nothing Needle how full of bull he was-that video games not only didn’t make you stupid, they improved your hand-eye coordination; they even used them to train for the United States Army!-then the next moment everybody was running around yelling “Call a doctor!” and “Somebody tell Hector!” Tyler heard his sister shouting the name “Gideon” and he and Colin both jumped up at the same time and ran toward the front yard.

Gideon Goldring, looking sick and exhausted and very thin, was crouched in the late-afternoon sun, surrounded by Lucinda and Carmen and Alma and a growing crowd of other Carrillo relatives. As Lucinda gave Gideon a drink from a bottle of water someone had brought from the kitchen, Mr. Walkwell and Ragnar suddenly appeared around the corner of the house at a run.

“Where did he come from?” Ragnar demanded.

“He just… he just showed up,” Lucinda said. “He came across the fields.”

Tyler heard something else above the babble of voices, a thin, high-pitched cry in the distance. Colin Needle, who had been staring down at Gideon with his mouth hanging open, looked up and then shook his head like someone waking up too fast. “Hang on-that’s my mother …!”

And indeed another shape was bumping across the fields toward the Carrillos’ house, half-walking, half-trotting-Patience Needle in her old-fashioned clothes, waving her arms and shouting, “Don’t touch him!” Tyler realized he had never heard the witch raise her voice before. “Don’t!” she cried as she hurried toward them. “You must leave him alone!”

Gideon was so pale that his skin was almost green, his forehead damp with sweat. “Won’t, ” he suddenly said, pulling away from the bottle so that water splashed onto his chest. He tried to grab at Lucinda’s arm but his eyes, though wide, didn’t seem to see anything, and his hands were twitching too much for him to control them. “Won’t … go… back… ”

“Back where, Gideon?” Ragnar asked. “Where have you been?”

But the old man was lost in some world of his own, head rolling from side to side as he struggled to get up. “You can’t…!” he said, smacking at the hands of those who were trying to restrain him. “Let go of me, you damn… monster!”

“We have to take him to a hospital,” said Hector Carrillo.

“No!” Mrs. Needle all but screamed. She staggered up and kneeled beside Gideon, holding his head with one hand while feeling his wrist and forehead. “No hospital! He will be fine. I know how to help him. We need only get him back to the farm. I have medicines there… special things… ”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you drag this man away-this sick man -before he’s even been examined by a doctor.” Mr. Carrillo stood up. “Ragnar, Simos, put him into my truck.”

“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance, Dad?” his daughter Carmen asked.

“I can get him to the clinic at Liberty in twenty, twenty-five minutes,” Hector Carrillo told her. “It’ll take at least that long to get an ambulance out here.”

Mrs. Needle gave him a glare that could have stripped paint, but Mr. Carrillo just stared back at her with calm authority; Tyler couldn’t help being impressed. “Then I will go, too,” she said at last. “I found him wandering at the farm and chased him all the way here. I will not leave him so easily.”

“Don’t let her!”

Tyler looked at Lucinda in surprise. “Luce…?”

But his sister was already pulling on Mr. Carrillo’s arm. “Don’t let her. I’ll bet she’s the one who did this to him! Gave him some kind of… of potion or something. And she’s probably the one keeping Gideon from answering your calls, too. She probably doesn’t even tell him-that’s what she did to us last year.”

“How dare you!” Mrs. Needle rose to her feet and stood over Lucinda, her face white and her expression so furious that even Mr. Carrillo took a step back. “How dare you talk like that in front of strangers, Lucinda Jenkins? What a terrible thing to say!”

“They’re not strangers to us! They’re our friends!” His sister looked terrified but determined. Tyler felt real pride in her.

“You tell ‘em, Sis,” he said.

Patience Needle let her gaze linger on Lucinda a moment longer, then turned to Mr. and Mrs. Carrillo, the anger now wiped from her face. “Everyone has been worried for Gideon. He’s been missing for days. You can see how upset we all are. I’ve been his doctor for years, more or less. Please don’t let the words of a frightened, confused child keep me away from him.”

“But how did Gideon get past the fences?” Mr. Walkwell demanded.

Mrs. Needle drew herself up straight. “I turned them off when I saw him stumbling along in the distance like a madman, of course. Did you think I would let our employer be fatally electrified?”

Mr. Walkwell snorted, but he turned and began trotting back toward Ordinary Farm. “Then I must make the fences work again before… before any more trouble happens.” Lucinda guessed he would shed his boots as soon as he was out of sight. He could run like the wind on his naked hooves.

Mr. Carrillo’s gaze, for a long moment, had been resting on Lucinda: now he turned to the housekeeper with a hard smile. “Yes, I suppose you can come with us to the hospital, Mrs. Needle. But we’ll need to take more than one car. Might as well take all the kids, too-they can see the fireworks in Liberty.” He turned to his wife. “Silvia, where’s your brother…? Ah.” He waved to a man with a beard whose tattoos Tyler had admired earlier. “Jaime, you have your van, right? You bring the kids and follow me.”

Ragnar and Mr. Walkwell had been talking quietly. “I will come too, Hector,” the Norseman said. “And Simos will go home and make certain things are well there, because he does not like driving in cars so much.”

“Where could he have been?” Tyler shouted to Lucinda over the noise of Jaime’s stereo, which was blaring Mexican heavy metal music, something Tyler hadn’t even known existed. “We looked everywhere! Do you think Gideon was in… you know… the Fault Line?” If he could hardly hear himself, he realized, there probably wasn’t too much danger Jaime was listening to their conversation from the front seat. “I wonder what Mrs. Needle knows about it. I’ll bet she and Colin had him knocked out somewhere. Drugged or something.”

Lucinda frowned at him. “That’s not fair!” she shouted. “Colin was just as surprised as we were. I was watching him!”

Tyler had his doubts-he had already decided Lucinda was too soft on Colin Needle. “Then if he’s so shocked, why isn’t he here? Why isn’t he coming to the hospital?”

Lucinda shook her head. “He is! He’s in the truck with Mr. Carrillo.”

Tyler made a face. “Oh, he’s too good to ride with us, huh?”

His sister glared at him. “You are totally a jerk, Tyler Jenkins,” she said. Which was, of course, totally unfair.

The town of Liberty was what Standard Valley would like to be when it grew up, Tyler decided. Not that Liberty was big-it was probably less than half the size of Tyler’s and Lucinda’s hometown, but it was big enough to have a Fourth of July parade, which was just ending, and also big enough to have a fire department, several schools, and a movie theater, none of which could be found in Standard Valley. Tyler saw all this as Jaime followed Mr. Carrillo through town toward the clinic, a generic-looking building with a red tile roof that if it had been a bit smaller could have passed for a fast-food restaurant.

Hector Carrillo and his passengers had beat them there. Ragnar, Colin, and Mr. Carrillo were already in the urgent care waiting room.

“My mother’s filling out the forms,” Colin said. “She knows all the information-the insurance and all that.”

“You have insurance?” Tyler wondered how people from the past could manage that without birth certificates or whatever normal folk had.

Colin gave him a look of contempt. “ Gideon does.”

Mr. Carrillo walked over. “Look, why don’t you children go out and see a little of the town. Jaime, go with them, will you? It’ll be dark soon-they have fireworks in the park. Carmen, you have your phone?”

“Got it, Papacito.”

“Good. Check back in with us in an hour or so.”

Ragnar walked to the door with them, bearded face very stern and serious. “Don’t worry, children. Gideon will be well again. I will make certain of that.” Tyler hoped for the doctors’ sakes that they didn’t make the big man angry.

They walked with Jaime back into the middle of town. Tyler had forgotten what it was like to see so many people, or at least to see so many people he didn’t know. Living on Ordinary Farm was a bit like living on a ship out on the ocean-in this case, an ocean of farmland. Every now and then you took a lifeboat into Standard Valley and drank a milkshake at the diner or met up with the Carrillos, but the rest of the time you saw nothing but the same people day after day. But here in Liberty, even thought the Fourth of July parade was over it still felt like a parade, this seemingly endless stream of faces-kids, grown-ups, old people, folks laughing and drinking and eating, people shouting greetings across the main street to neighbors and friends.

“Uncle Jaime,” said Alma, “take us to the North Pole! Please!”

“You just had dinner,” he said. “And dessert, too!”

“Please. I want Peppermint Bark!” she said, at which point Tyler realized they were talking about an ice cream store.

By the time they got to the park they were sucking the last of the melted ice cream through the bottoms of their sugar cones. Carmen phoned her father, who said that Gideon was doing much better, that he was making sense now even though he didn’t seem to remember anything from the last few days. Her father said the doctors were calling his condition “heat prostration.”

Tyler thought that was all well and good, but it didn’t really explain where the old man had been for almost a week.

It was nearly dark and people were still streaming into the park. Carmen, Alma and Steve went to get drinks. Uncle Jaime had bought himself a cup of beer and was sitting on the grass happily drinking it and talking to a woman he seemed to know. Lucinda leaned over to Tyler. “Look what Gideon was holding,” she said. She held out her hand. Tyler stared at the dark, fibrous strands, hard to make out in the fading light.

“What are they?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of plants, I think. He was hanging onto them like they meant something important.”

Tyler shrugged. “But what made him crazy? That’s the real question … ”

Lucinda wasn’t listening any more. She was staring over his shoulder, her eyes wide as the silver dollar on Uncle Jaime’s belt buckle. “Tyler! It’s him!”

“Who? What are you talking about?” He half-expected to see Gideon running toward them across the park grass, bathrobe flapping, pursued by doctors and nurses, but saw only an undifferentiated crowd of people loitering around the edge of the grass, waiting for the fireworks to begin. “I don’t see… ”

“There.” She leaned in close to him. “Don’t stare, don’t point. There, by the fountain. It’s that man Kingaree.”

Tyler had never seen him, of course, but Lucinda’s description of him as looking like a bad guy in a western movie had stuck in his mind, so he had no doubt which one she meant. The tall, thin man in the long black coat-a strange thing to be wearing in summer weather, even at night-was talking to a round-faced man in more modern clothing, a beige sports coat. Even as Tyler watched, the tall, dark man looked around as if concerned someone might be eavesdropping, then he grabbed the man in the sports coat by his elbow and marched him toward an open-sided gazebo in one corner of the park.

“They’re going to that building over there,” Tyler said, jumping to his feet. “Come on-we can go around and through the trees on the far side. We’ll be able to hear what they’re saying…!”

“What? Are you crazy?” Lucinda shrank away. “I’m not going near that guy…!”

“What if he’s the one who kidnapped Gideon? What if he’s looking for him now?” Tyler couldn’t believe his sister would go all girly on him at a time like this. “Come on!”

Even as he led her around the edge of the grass, past all the people sitting on blankets, staring up at the sky expectantly, she was still trying to talk him out of it. “What about Carmen and the others? What about Jaime? Shouldn’t we tell them…?”

“We’re only going to the other side of the park. Grow up, Luce!”

He hurried them through the trees and over a low picket fence until the gazebo stood only a couple of yards away. Lucinda looked absolutely miserable, so Tyler decided that he wouldn’t climb the tree after all, although it would have let him shinny out on a branch until he was right over the roof of the building. Instead he moved as close as he could while still being ready to run at a moment’s notice, until he could hear voices. He guessed that the high, slightly nervous tones belonged to the man in the beige coat.

“… Just don’t understand it, that’s all.”

“There is nothing to understand, Mr. Dankle.” That was Kingaree, Tyler had no doubt-a voice as menacing as a scorpion poised to sting. “I have given you good American money already. To earn the rest of it, you will come when you are called and do what you are told.”

“Of course, of course! Haven’t I helped you like I said I would?” The man was almost squeaking. “I just have to think about… I have my reputation… ”

“Listen to me, lawyer.” Kingaree’s sudden words were like the crack of a gunshot. “I have killed better men than you with my bare hands, so I would advise you not to make me angry. ”

It was dark now, but Tyler could see Lucinda’s pale face and staring eyes beside him. He prayed she didn’t lose her nerve and make some noise that would give them away.

“Remember,” Kingaree went on, “you are in this thing far too deep to start getting any pretty sensibilities now. When it is time I will come and call for you, and you had best be prepared to come with me. It will be at night. I suggest you keep your evenings free for the next few weeks.”

“What do you mean? When are you coming?”

“I do not know that, Mr. Dankle. But believe me, when the hour comes, you will be among the first to know. And you will do what you are told. Do you understand me? ”

Dankle must have nodded, because suddenly Kingaree walked out of the gazebo and set out along the path at the edge of the park, his coat billowing like the wings of some great black bird. He strode past the seated families just as the first fireworks burst in the sky overhead, great, glittering, spark-dripping flowers of gold and red. People shouted in pleasure. Nobody except Tyler and Lucinda saw the tall man go-they were all too busy watching the fire in the sky.