CHAPTER

17

THOUGH LESLIE’S FART faded—slowly—from the house, the memory of his words did not. All through the next day, as Boz was introduced to the workings of the bakery and a temporary room in a closet off the back kitchen, John inwardly panicked.

Nor did his worries end with bed. He lay awake that night going over and over Leslie’s revelation, his thoughts tumbling around and around on creaking gears.

They were living with Maria. Which meant that Maria didn’t have enough money to pay back Leslie. Which meant that the Pig would sell the bakery. Which meant that Maria would be miserable. And the Coggins would be left homeless, with Great-Aunt Beauregard looking for them and nowhere to go. Again.

John sighed, and Page stirred restlessly in her sleep.

Facts, John, facts, he reprimanded himself. Worries don’t solve problems. He smacked himself on the forehead to drive the point home to his brain.

Why doesn’t Maria have enough money? Because her oven is dying and she can’t afford to pay for fuel. So she should buy a new oven with which she could bake and sell twice as much. But she doesn’t have the money to buy a new one. So maybe I could try to fix the old one. But then she would still have to buy the coal. Unless . . .

He sat up.

If I can find a way to build a new oven that runs on something other than coal, he thought, yanking up his socks. If I can devise an oven that runs on something everyone wants to get rid of, like vegetable scraps, then Maria won’t have to spend anything on fuel. Then she could bake as much as she wants!

The blood in John’s head was pumping now, the gears beginning to whirr with excitement. But he made no sound, pausing only to grab a piece of paper and a pencil from the top of the bureau.

Down the stairs he crept to the kitchen, holding his breath all the way. Very carefully, very quietly, he shut the door and lit the candle. The tiny flame flickered over the cookbook shelf as he pulled down the volume that Maria had put there. He laid out his pencil and paper and opened the book to the page on principles of convection. Finally, John began to draw.

He was so immersed in his task that he didn’t hear the door creak open again, nor the swish swish of a creature dragging itself across the floor. It was not until the wizened face popped up from under the table that he noticed. And it was all he could do not to yell.

“Whatcha doing?” Boz whispered through a mouthful of crumbs.

“Go away, Boz.” John gave him a not-so-friendly push.

“Now is that any way to treat a verus amicus?”

“Why should I tell you? You left me and Page. By ourselves. With my great-aunt Beauregard and a crowd of angry townspeople out to kill us for ruining their festival.”

“Nonsense. Maim, perhaps, but not kill.”

“Go away, Boz!”

“I can see that you’re perturbed.” In a moment, Boz had slid past the stool and vaulted onto the table, smushing John’s drawings under his butt. “But I had hoped my heroics at Peddington’s Practical Hotel would have gone some way toward remedying my remissness.”

John’s silence was pardon enough for Boz. He wiggled his torso cheerfully and clapped his hands together. “So what might you be up to?”

“I’m working,” John retorted.

“On what, pray tell? A cure for halitosis? A resurrected Autopsy?”

“No!”

“Then what?” Boz lifted a buttock high in the air and peered at the sheets under it. “You know what comes of thwarting a cat’s instinct for curiousness.”

“Fewer furballs,” John said, snatching for the paper.

Boz whipped out a drawing and placed his hand on John’s forehead to prevent John from reaching it. “It can’t get no satisfaction.”

Boz raised his prize toward the light. Seeing the hopelessness of the situation, John sat back on his stool with a thump. They were silent for a moment as Boz examined the drawing. Then—

“You know, my wee wriggler, this is very interesting.”

John said nothing.

“In fact, if my ocular powers don’t deceive me, I’d say that this was a design for a new oven. A new brick oven fueled not by coal, but by some alternative means. A new, supremely efficient oven that will allow Maria Persimmons to blast her bitterest rivals somewhere into the next century.”

“I know it might not work,” John grunted as Boz returned the drawings to him. “But I want to do something more for her.”

“Aha! Do I detect the budding bloom of the genus crushus cinnamonius?”

“What are you talking about, Boz?”

“He’s saying you’re sweet on Maria,” said Leslie from the open door. “Understandable emotion for little boys experiencing the change. Trying your hand at love poetry?” he inquired, swaggering into the room and reaching for the drawings. Boz snatched them from his fingers.

“Yes, he has. Would you like to hear what he wrote?”

Leslie snorted in joy. “Go on, Boz, I haven’t had a good laugh in a long while.”

          “Oh, Maria, mamma mia, your luscious heels are hairy.

          Your songs are sweet as milk, I do not want for dairy.

          Your hair’s like grass and tarnished brass; it’s you I want to marry.”

“Let me see that,” Leslie said suspiciously, reaching again for the paper. But Boz had a different thought in mind. He chomped down, hard, on Leslie’s index finger. Leslie howled in pain.

“Oh, I am sorry,” Boz said as Leslie danced round the room, blood spattering his plum-colored nightshirt. “Did I hurt you? Instinct, you know. I always like to have a bite before breakfast. You ought to put a plaster on that,” Boz advised as Leslie jammed his finger in his mouth to stop the bleeding. “It might become septic.”

In agony, Leslie stumbled out of the kitchen.

John frowned. “Boz, that was a bit much.”

“My profuse apologies, my dear boy, but there was not much else I could do.”

“You tried to eat his finger.”

“A mere flesh wound. He’ll soon recover.” Boz flapped his arm dismissively. “In the meantime, I have saved your plans.” He handed them back to John. “And as a sincere token of my esteem, I would like to offer my assistance.”

Boz knelt like a knight of old.

“I, Boz the Malodorous Mendicant, do solemnly swear to help Prince John the Delusional build the most magnificent cooking oven that the world has hitherto seen.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Remember what happened the last time you tried to help me? We ended up facefirst in a vegetable emporium.”

“But this is different!” Boz exclaimed. “We are dealing with things of a stationary bent. There is little risk of adventures in motoring.”

John sighed. It would be useful to have another pair of hands.

“Okay. But only if you promise on your life to let me be in charge.”

“Right, then, to work!” Boz leaped to his feet. “First things last! Have you decided upon a combustible?”

“A what?”

“Fuel, my dear boy, fuel.”

“I don’t know. It needs to be cheap. I was thinking vegetable scraps—”

Boz cut him off.

“While I admire your ecological evangelism, might I suggest a more potent alternative?”

“Like what?”

Boz opened the door to the stove, reached into his pocket, and threw an object into the flames.

A miniature fireball shot past John’s nose.

“What was that?”

Boz uncurled his stunted fingers. In his palm lay a dried poo pellet from Maria’s Henrietta hens.

“Chicken poo?”

“Chicken poo,” Boz said sternly. “Particularly powerful chicken poo. Of course, it won’t be of much assistance in Maria’s current configuration, but your new oven should put paid to that particular conundrum.”

John considered the situation. Boz was right. If he could find a way to tap into that energy, Maria would never have to pay for coal again. Seeing his interest, Boz solemnly handed him the pellet.

“Your poo, sir. Now naturally, I am acting under the assumption that you intend to keep this project strictly on the subterranean QT.”

“What?”

“You want to keep it a secret from Maria.”

“Yes,” John said. “And Page.” He couldn’t bear to see a look of disappointment on his sister’s face. If he failed again, he would have no one to blame but himself.

“As you wish,” Boz said, rubbing his hands together and pacing round the table. “But we will need a suitable cover story for our nefarious activities. And to keep the warbling warthog from sniffing out the truth. The small vestiges of cells in his cerebrum may have already made him suspicious.”

John was certain of that. Leslie might be dumb, but he wasn’t blind. He was going to know something was up if they started building an oven in the backyard.

“‘Wunderbar,’ he shouted, in his most eloquent Egyptian, ‘I have it!’” Boz twirled on his toes.

“Shhh!” John clamped a hand over Boz’s mouth. “You’re going to wake up the whole street!”

Boz crossed his eyes.

“Do you promise to keep your voice down?”

Boz nodded.

“Fine,” John said, removing his hand. “What’s your idea?”

Boz leaned in and twirled the imaginary end of an imaginary mustache. “Rubbish.”

“Rubbish?” asked John.

“Rubbish,” answered Boz. “The disintegrating dreck of modern civilization, the garbage of garçons, the picks of literati’s litter.”

“I know what trash is,” John interrupted, “but what does that have to do with ovens?”

“Simple, my dear Simon. We pretend we are building an incinerator to burn rubbish!” Boz trumpeted, his voice bouncing off the rafters. “It is square, sturdy, and made like a brick pit house. It will send up a smokescreen wide enough to hide a colossus. And for the coup de pue, it is stinky enough to deflect even the most persistent inquisitors. Masked in this sheep’s clothing, our wolf will emerge in the spring with its bellyful of chicken excrement and its throat full of fresh-baked bread.”

John picked at the knife scar on the table. The idea wasn’t completely crazy. A trash incinerator would explain the bricks they would need, and the smoke. If it worked, Maria could build an extension onto the back of the bakery and have a whole new kitchen, twice the size of her old one.

But what if it was a bust? What if things went splat all over the kitchen floor? Would he be able to live with himself if his new invention didn’t work? Then John remembered. He wouldn’t be able to live here at all unless it did.

He took a deep breath.

“Okay. Let’s go for it.”