Alan was shovelling out the pigpen, all alone. It was nighttime, and there was a full moon. Suddenly, a large pig wearing overalls shuffled up to him with something in its mouth and dropped it at his feet.
He looked down and saw a large, gleaming handgun.
“Look,” the pig said and blew on it. A layer of fine, white dust rose from the gun and settled on his boots. “I’m going to bust out of here,” the pig said.
“You could just climb the apple tree,” Alan said, and the pig gave him a boost up to the first branch, which was higher than he remembered. The pig was a good climber.
Halfway up, they stopped and had an apple.
“Hey!” the pig said suddenly and pointed with his trotter. Alan looked up and saw the attic window of the inn, very close. A face appeared at the window. A person waving at him. It was his father, he was sure of it. He yelled and started to fall . . .
. . . and woke up, his heart beating like crazy in his chest. He lay there, breathing for a while. It hadn’t been a nightmare, exactly. But he didn’t much want to go back to sleep again. He was still half-dreaming, and he knew that if he went into the Inn, Mrs. Creasor or somebody, maybe Fred the donkey, would tell him that there was nobody up there and it was locked and he couldn’t go in. That would turn it into a nightmare for sure.
His alarm clock said it was three a.m. He got up and put on a bathrobe, not bothering to turn on the light, as there was a full moon, just like in his dream. The rain had stopped. He stood at his bedroom window, enjoying the air wafting in. The backyard was all lit up in blue and silver. The moonlight was so strong, he thought he would probably be able to read by it if he took a book out there. The leaves on the trees were wet, catching the light and twinkling, as if someone had put tiny lights on them. It smelled great; wet earth and growing things.
I should get up in the middle of the night more often, he thought. Maybe he would go out there and see if he really could read by moonlight. In any case, he was wide awake, now. Might as well sneak downstairs and get some milk and maybe a piece of pie, if Ziggy hadn’t eaten it all.
He took his birthday flashlight with him. It was a gift from his sister, a pocket-sized version of the kind the police use, she said. Black and smooth, with an adjustable beam. He didn’t really need it, but it was good to have it, just in case. He wasn’t planning to turn on any lights (it might wake his mother), and anyway, he liked the way it felt to creep around in the dark, when there was enough moonlight to see by.
The stairs, lit by the window above the front door, were easy. He could see all the way into the living room from the stairs, too. More silver-blue light was pouring in from the window in there, so that the little green night light that was always on in the downstairs hallway looked pale in comparison. Picasso, who could see just fine in the dark, glided ahead of him, heading towards the kitchen. If someone was up, maybe there was food available.
If I was in pioneer times right now, he thought, I wouldn’t have a flashlight, and you couldn’t just turn on the light if you needed to. You’d have to strike a match. I wonder if they had matches back then.
In the kitchen, he found two plates on the counter, covered with plastic wrap. One was his mother’s half-finished piece of pie, and the other was a whole, kind-of-large piece. He cut a tiny sliver off the big one, and decided, heroically, that he would let his mom have the rest.
The light from the fridge, when he opened it to get some milk, spoiled the sneaking-around feeling he’d been enjoying. He might as well eat his snack in real, twenty-first century light, and that meant the study. It was a small room opposite the living room, where the computer was, and all the reference books were. He usually did his homework in his room, but he and his mother shared the computer, so he did a lot of it down there, too. It was a good room for writing essays in, and they had started doing serious essays in school last year. I’ll have to set things up better in there before school starts, he thought.
He shut the door and turned the light on beside the computer. Might as well google Tom Sawyer while I’m up.
Alan and his mother had an ongoing “conversation”, she called it, about internet use. He knew that most kids and parents did, and generally he wasn’t glued to the machine—he wasn’t a computer nerd, and he wasn’t interested (yet, anyway) in surfing to places he wasn’t supposed to go. His mom had a filter put on, even so. He liked looking things up, though, and he had his own email. The arrangement was that his mother had access to his email, and in return, he had access to hers. They had exchanged passwords and sometimes shared emails back and forth.
About half an hour later, after Alan had bookmarked some stuff about Tom Sawyer (he thought his mom would probably have a copy of the book) and checked his email (a link from Ziggy, sent before bedtime, to a site that identified handguns. He couldn’t get to it, though. The filter, probably). Then he checked his mom’s inbox to see if there was something from Candace. At least, that’s what he told himself.
He wondered if his mom ever snooped though his email. Probably not. She trusted him. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t trust his mother, either. It was just that, well, she had been distracted that day, and if there was something going on with his sister, she might have decided not to tell him for some reason. Which could mean it might be a really bad thing. As the only working man in the family, he wanted to know about it.
There were two emails still in the inbox, and he read them both, feeling like a sneak while he did so, but gritting his teeth and telling himself he had to.
The first was from Candace, and she was fine. Everything was perfect. She had won an award (he knew it!) and was having “a splendiferous time” and didn’t want to come home, ever (but she put a smiley face beside that, so she was only kidding).
The second email was from somebody called Emile Joseph. The problem was, it was in French. Now, Alan was doing okay in French class at school, but no way he could read this.
The subject line read “votre prière,” which meant “your prayer” or something close. The letter opened with “chère Madame,” which was easy, but then launched into a long and complicated sentence that he couldn’t manage. There were words he knew, though. “Prison”, which meant the same thing in English and French. “Amnesty Internationale”, which he’d heard about somewhere, and most importantly, “votre mari,” which meant your husband. Someone was writing to his mom about his father!
His heart was racing. He knew by this time that he really shouldn’t be reading his mother’s private letters, but this had as much to do with him as it did with her, and why hadn’t she told him? Quickly, before he changed his mind, he pressed print and waited, chewing on a fingernail, for the email to emerge from the printer. Picasso suddenly uncurled from the chair she was in and perked her head up, and at the same moment he heard a noise from upstairs. His mother was up. Maybe the sound of the printer had woken her. The paper was half out of the machine. It wasn’t a long letter, but he wanted all of it. He would take it to Josée tomorrow and get her to read it for him. Then, depending on what it said, he would decide what to do. Maybe his mom would mention it tomorrow—but maybe she wouldn’t. He didn’t want her to catch him snooping in her emails though, that was for sure. He quickly switched the screen so that it went back to his own inbox, grabbed the paper as it finally fell free of the printer, folded it up and stuffed it into his robe-pocket, just as his mother opened the door.
“Alan? Are you okay, honey?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Just couldn’t sleep, that’s all.”
“Ah, I see you found the pie,” she said, grinning and taking his plate. “You want some hot chocolate?”
“Excellent, Mom. Thanks.” There was a pause, as if they were both waiting to see if the other one had anything more to say, then laughed at the expressions on each other’s faces.
“You’ll need your sleep, you know,” his mother said.
“I know. I was looking up Tom Sawyer.”
“Why on earth would you want to do that at four in the morning?”
“Mrs. Tench’s orders,” he said, grinning.
He logged off, shut down the computer and followed her to the kitchen. While she heated milk for hot chocolate (made the best way, with real cocoa powder and lots of sugar), he told her about Mrs. Tench’s homework assignment, which he and his friends had forgotten to mention at dinner time. She thought it was hilarious.
“I like that woman,” she said. “There’s a copy of it on my bedroom bookshelf. I’ll get it for you tomorrow. You may find it a bit dated, though, and it was written at a time when black slavery was a way of life in the States, so there’s some awful language and ideas in it. You haven’t done it in school yet, I take it.”
“No. We did slavery, but I’ve never heard of any Tom Sawyer.”
“Too hot for the school board, I expect,” she said. “Too bad. After you read it, tell me what you think.”
“Okay.” Hmm. Sounded really interesting, actually. “Too hot for the school board” sounded something like internet sites he wasn’t supposed to see.
He took his hot chocolate up to bed with him, but didn’t finish it. Once he was back in bed, the email letter safely folded up and stashed in the back pocket of his favourite shorts, his mind filled up with thoughts of his father. Soon those got mixed in with the mystery at the Pioneer Village, then a pig was talking in French and offering him some apple pie, and he was asleep.
Josée was full of excitement the next morning.
“Guess what, mes amis? Mamère was interviewed by the police yesterday! She told me all about it and everything.”
“What—did she do something wrong?” Ziggy said. They had changed into their costumes, and were waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Mrs. Tench had told them to wait in the staff lounge until she was ready, then she’d walk down to the site with them.
“No, silly. It was about the escape they had at the prison last week, where Mamère works? Remember I told you? Two prisoners got away, and the police think that they got out through the kitchen, so they interviewed all the kitchen staff. Mamère said she was nervous until they told her she wasn’t a suspecte.”
“So, how did they escape?” Alan asked. “And did they interview her in a cell?”
“No, no. They just interview them at the prison, in an office there. All of them, the dishwashers, the cooks, everybody. They think the prisoners were hiding in a bunch of garbage and cardboard boxes in the kitchen storage room, then the truck came and took them away.”
“Cool,” Alan said. “And they haven’t captured them yet?”
“No, I don’t think so. Or else they wouldn’t have to interview Mamère, yes?”
“Were they murderers, these prisoners?”
“Of course not. They don’t have those there. Just robbers and like that. The really bad guys they send to Kingston, Mamère told me.”
Mrs. Tench chose that moment to descend on them from her office. Today she was wearing a huge white apron over her pioneer grandma dress, and her sleeves were rolled up.
“Today,” she said, “we’re all going to do laundry the old fashioned way. Come along.”
They followed her out to the site and down to the inn. Alan went to the kitchen door of the inn and returned the pie plate (licked clean, then washed) to Mrs. Creasor. She thanked him then came out to join them. Sheldon was there, building up a large fire, over which a big iron kettle was heating water. A couple of tables were set up nearby, and some wooden washtubs, some things that looked like small canoe paddles, and a canvas bag tied with string.
Doing laundry the old-fashioned way turned out to be sheer hard work. You had to use a bucket to get the hot water from the big kettle to the washtubs—many trips, and the smoke got in your eyes. You had to keep on pumping water from the well and carry the dirty water to the ravine to pour it away. You had to answer the questions of tourists, who were really interested in what you were doing, but didn’t seem to want to help out.
“This isn’t like candle-making,” Josée said. They were all sweating. The sun was very hot that day. Alan and Ziggy were the official water-carriers, but they got to have a turn—well, they were told to have a turn—washing. You filled the big vats with hot water, added the clothes, then stirred with the paddle-things. You used a washboard (a wooden frame like a mirror with bumpy glass where the mirror should be), and you scrubbed the material up and down on that to get the dirt out. You swished the canvas bag around in the hot water to make more soap suds (Mrs. Creasor said it was homemade soap—they could help with that another day) then you scrubbed some more. Then you had to haul water to rinse everything.
They did the curtains from the inn. They did tons of aprons. They did four pairs of overalls, and they even did a bunch of rugs from the log house—rugs that were covered in dust and ash from the open wood fireplace they had in there.
“If Ivan comes along with some coal to wash, I’m outta here,” Alan said at one point.
They strung a laundry line between the inn and the apple tree and hung everything up in the sun to dry, using wooden pegs that a man, Mr. Scott, brought them from the woodworking shop. They hadn’t had a chance to visit there yet, but Mr. Scott told them to drop by, and he’d show them how to carve some pegs for themselves.
By that point, they were more interested in lunch than in woodcarving. They all had red, pruney hands, from scrubbing things in hot water, and they were all really, really tired.
“I bet pioneer kids took afternoon naps without being told,” Ziggy said, dozing in the grass while Alan and Josée pegged the last of the curtains on the line and flopped down to join him.
Mrs. Tench called them over to the fire.
“I know it’s not strictly pioneer-style, but we’re having a proper cook-out for lunch,” she said. She had a large basket with her and started taking things from it. Sheldon brought over a metal grill from his shed, and soon hamburgers were sizzling there. There were hot-dogs, too, roasted on sticks on the fire, and big crusty buns and lots of relish and ketchup and mayo, and Sheldon roasted some corn and potatoes in the hot coals, which they had slathered with butter and salt. Mrs. Creasor came out of the inn with a platter of cinnamon sticky buns that she’d just made, there was apple pie from yesterday, and in case they were still hungry, there were marshmallows to roast.
To drink, there were jugs of ginger-beer—like ginger ale, but more gingery, and not as fizzy, and gallons of lemonade, which Mrs. Creasor said was definitely not from a mix.
Between them, Mrs. Creasor and Mrs. Tench managed to make everything look pioneer-style, even if it wasn’t. There was no plastic to be seen—they’d taken the packaging off everything and stashed it before the tourists could see, and the hotdogs and hamburger patties were laid out on pewter plates. Plenty of visitors joined the feast, as well as Ivor and Ellen, Sheldon, Joan, Greta and some other staff members that Alan and his friends hadn’t met yet. It turned into one big party, which, after the heavy-duty morning they had, was just fine with them.
It was only after lunch, when the three were lying down in the long grass by the barn (where they hoped nobody would see them and think of a job for them to do) that Alan had a chance to give Josée the email he’d printed out the night before.
She took it and studied it for a while.
“This is difficult French, Alain. It’s not like we speak at home—it’s very formal. The man is saying that he has received her request a long time ago but has now got some possible news—enfin, finally—about her husband. Dieu—that’s your dad, isn’t it?”
“Keep going,” Alan said.
“And though they cannot be . . . certain. Um . . . they have word from an insider of a big secret prison somewhere in the interior that he might be being held there. The man is a lawyer, I think. Then he says it’s not safe to send emails, and they should meet and talk.”
“Holy jumping Jehosephat,” Ziggy said. Both he and Alan were sitting up. “That sounds like a movie script.”
“No wonder your mother was so strange last night,” Josée said. “What’s she going to do? Will she have to go to Haiti?”
“I don’t know,” Alan said. “She hasn’t even told me about this, but if she has to go, she won’t be able to keep it a secret. Maybe I can go, too.”
“Good luck,” Ziggy said. “I’ve been trying that for years. They don’t go for it.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have a grandfather to stay with, don’t you see?” Alan said, standing up suddenly, and speaking fast and a bit loudly. “And if you’re locked in a secret prison somewhere in a foreign county, you need all the help you can get.” He strode away, past the apple tree, heading for the ravine.
“Yikes,” Ziggy said. “It sounded like he was almost crying. Alan never cries.”
“Ben oui,” Josée said. “You got your ice cream cone ticket there? Me, too. Let’s get some and bring him a cone, too. I think he might need it.”