Josh

1938

I WAS A LITTLE NERVOUS, WAITING for Margaret O’Malley in the abandoned shed down the street from the infirmary among the paint rollers and mop buckets and rusty barbed wire. Not because I was afraid she’d stand me up. I knew she’d come. She was Margaret O’Malley. I just didn’t know what kind of shape she’d be in when she arrived. Truth be told, when I’d left her the night before, she hadn’t looked too good, and she wasn’t making much sense.

“Nice glasses,” I said, when she slipped in. “You look like—”

“I know. Aunt Bridey told me. A movie star,” she interrupted.

“—one of the three blind mice,” I finished.

She grabbed an old boot from a pile beside the door and threw it at me. This was reassuring, even though I was surprised when she missed. Maybe, I told myself, the sunglasses had thrown off her aim.

“Let’s go to the infirmary,” I said, “and reconnoiter.”

“First, let’s have a look around,” she replied.

“Actually,” I started to explain, “that’s what ‘reconnoiter’ means—”

She gave me a shove and snickered. “I know what it means! Gotcha!”

The Victory infirmary wasn’t anything special, just a two-story brick building near the train depot. Through the windows, you could see the front desk, a couple of chairs, and the elevator.

In the rear, there was a beat-up old service door.

“What’s that for?” asked Margaret, pointing to the crate by the back steps.

“It’s where the milkman leaves the milk,” I said, “for Cookie.”

“Who’s Cookie?” she asked.

“The cook,” I said. “I met him while Preston was here.”

“How many people work here?” wondered Margaret.

“Not many,” I replied. “Even back before the massacre, Doc O’Malley usually just went to people’s houses. But there’s one nurse, or two if you count the lady who snoozes at the desk, an orderly, a cleaning lady, and Cookie. Boy, that milk crate looks like a handy-dandy place to plant the explosive device.”

Margaret was quiet for a few seconds. I guess she was starting to realize I’d already done a load of reconnoitering, sometimes known as looking around, without her. Maybe another girl would’ve been happy that her friend had gone out and done so much work ahead of time. Margaret was not that girl.

“What time did you get here this morning anyway? The crack of dawn?” she snapped, whipping off her sunglasses and narrowing her sizzling eyes at me.

“Uh, yeah, w-well,” I stammered, “after Biggs came to tell Luke about his dad, I was so riled up that I couldn’t sleep, and I just wanted to get on with things, you know, do some pre-reconnoitering I guess you could say, just laying the groundwork so to speak, and so I—”

“It was before the crack of dawn, wasn’t it?” she demanded. “You left me a note telling me to meet you at ten a.m., came here in the pitch-dark, and started doing it all without me.”

“Aunt Bridey said you needed your sleep after, well, everything that happened, and with the overstaying. I just wanted to make sure we had time,” I protested. “After all, you’re . . .”

“What? Weak? Babyish? A girl?”

“No!”

“What then?”

I just hauled off and said it: “Running out of time.”

All she had to say to that was, “Oh.” Like it hit her in a funny place, too.

Then she said, “Hold on, partner, explosive device? We’re bombing the infirmary? No offense, but that sounds really stupid. And illegal. And won’t Aristotle be in the infirmary?”

“We’re not using a bomb. We’re using a blasting cap,” I said.

“Right,” she muttered. “Oh. That’s totally different. Sure. A blasting cap. Whatever that is.”

“I’ll filch one from the mine,” I explained. “When it blows in the milk crate, it’ll be our diversion. So we can get Aristotle down the elevator—supposing he’s on the second floor, if that’s where he is—and out the door, and onto the donkey.”

“Aunt Bridey’s short-legged donkey?”

“No, the rocket-powered donkey the little men from space are bringing to take Aristotle to Neptune,” I said.

“Ha, ha,” she laughed, and then choked, and then threw a coughing fit worthy of Preston.

“Margaret?” I said uncertainly. By now, we had reconnoitered our way back to the abandoned shed, and I whisked her inside. When she could breathe again, she was white as a ghost and I was considering checking her into the infirmary.

“Overstaying,” she gasped, catching her breath as she sank to the floor. “Listen. If something happens—if time runs out, and I’m so weak I can’t—make it there myself—get me to the white gazebo on the hillside above town. It’s where I have to be—at midnight—to get back.”

“Okay, Margaret,” I stammered. “I will—but how will I know?”

“You’ll know,” she said, grimacing. And then after a pause, she said, “Hey! Hold on! Did you say Biggs came to Luke’s tent to tell him about Aristotle?”

And for some reason, as we sat there amid stripes of sunlight falling through the dusty windows onto the floor around us, I punched the wall. It scared Margaret. It scared me. And it hurt.

“He lied, Margaret!” I said. “He lied about everything. Biggs told Luke the worst lies anybody could’ve told him. It was almost like he knew what Luke would believe, and what would do the most damage.”

“He told Luke,” Margaret began quietly, “that Mr. Ratliff really never planned to compromise at all. He said Mr. Ratliff was actually one hundred percent behind the detectives, and the rules, and the guns. He said Mr. Ratliff wanted to teach the miners, especially Aristotle, a lesson.”

“Yeah—right—how did you know?” I asked. But I guessed the answer to my own question. “Oh—because all Biggs’s lies are going to turn into what everybody believes about Aristotle, now and for all time, all the way to your time?”

Margaret shrugged sadly.

“You should have heard the way Biggs told it, though,” I said. “Like he’d made up the whole story especially for Luke. And you should’ve seen how Luke listened. Like he’d been waiting to hear it. Biggs just waltzed right into his tent at one in the morning, while people were still running around in the streets hollering about the murder. He sat down in Aristotle’s chair at their breakfast table and made Luke sit down across from him.”

“Did they invite you in?” Margaret asked. “How did you hear all this?”

“Stuck my head under the tent flap and eavesdropped,” I confessed. “Flap-dropped. Something.”

“Good boy,” said Margaret with a sad smile.

“Biggs told Luke that Aristotle’s plan never had a chance of working, and didn’t deserve to work anyway, because it was pathetic and weak. And Luke looked at him and said, ‘You’re right. I told him we had to fight.’ And Biggs said, ‘Smart boy.’”

“Biggs doesn’t just want to beat the miners,” mused Margaret softly. “He doesn’t just want to ruin Aristotle. He wants to keep Aristotle’s son as a trophy. Luke is the icing on his horrible cake.”

“Then Biggs told Luke the rest of his lies. He said Mr. Ratliff ordered Aristotle to head back to Canvasburg and tell the shiftless miners it was all over. Biggs said Ratliff ordered Aristotle to admit to all of Canvasburg that he’d been wrong from the start with his letters and his protesting, and to tell them it was time to go back to the mine, with a pay cut for punishment, and to be thankful for that much. Biggs told Luke his daddy turned as yellow-bellied as a sapsucker. He told Luke Aristotle demanded ten thousand dollars on the spot and a mule to ride over the mountain. He wanted to scram then and there and run away from everything, even Luke. Biggs told Luke that was when Ratliff laughed in his father’s face and called him a coward. And then, Biggs said to Luke, your daddy went loony and killed Theodore Ratliff.”

Margaret flinched at the sound of that.

“But the thing is, Luke knows his dad would never kill anybody,” I said after I thought it over some more. “Even if he really does think Aristotle is a weakling. Even if he has been mad for so long because Aristotle wouldn’t let him fight that it’s done something to his brain. Even if he wants to believe his dad’s way failed. Underneath it all, there’s no way Luke could think Aristotle would commit murder and run out on everybody in Canvasburg. Luke loves his dad. I know he does. He has to.”

That’s when the terrible look crossed Margaret’s face.

“Josh?” she said shakily.

“Yeah?”

“You have to love your father,” she said. “I have to love my father. It’s who we are. It’s the way we’re made. But what if Luke—”

I said, “No.”

“I hate to say this as much as you hate to hear it, but listen,” she pressed. “What if our plan works? What if we get Aristotle out, send him across those mountains into New Mexico and bring Luke to him, and Luke won’t go? What if he crosses over to Biggs’s side anyway?”

“No.”

“Josh,” she said. “What if saving Aristotle doesn’t save your friend?”

She was one tough cookie. Not afraid to look the worst directly in the eye. “Stop,” I pleaded. “It will. I know it will. I know Luke. Luke is good. I feel it like I feel my own bones inside me.”

At this, Margaret O’Malley stared at me like I’d just hung the moon. Then she smiled and said, “That’s good enough for me.”