The Keep Our Planet Green meeting was just ending when I got back into the house. The usual Greeners were in a huddle in the living-room. There were a lot of people in the area who belonged to the group, but no more than a handful of them ever showed up for meetings and stuff. There was Mrs Ludgate, the postwoman, and Mr Meadows, a local farmer, but I didn’t know any of the others by name. I tried to stay aloof. They were all talking at once, as usual, and didn’t notice me dripping in the hallway, even though I looked pretty green because of the grass stains on my shirt and trousers.
I cleared my throat loudly, but they were making so much noise themselves that they didn’t hear me.
Now that I’d recovered from the shock of falling off the roof, I was beginning to feel a little shaky. I mean, it really was a miracle that I hadn’t hurt myself. Or broken the stupid fountain or my mother’s prize bush. I reckoned I was entitled to a little sympathy for what I’d been through.
I slammed the door so hard the wall shook. No one noticed that, either.
My mother started waving her arms in the air and shouting. The cluster of leaves that was caught in her hair shook. Unlike Mrs Bamber, my mother was never neat and presentable, not even when she tried. Tonight, however, she had sunk below even her own low standards. Besides having leaves in her hair, my mother’s old jeans and faded shirt were covered with dirt, and her face was smeared with ink. Most of the time my mother looks like she wrestles hogs for a living, but on days when Keep Our Planet Green meets she looks like she wrestles hogs with leaky ballpoint pens grasped in their trotters.
“This isn’t the end,” announced my mother. “I admit losing all those petitions is a bit of a setback, but with a little extra work we can replace them in no time.”
“You’re right about ‘no time’,” said one of the Greeners. “‘No time’ is precisely what we have. The Council votes next week. They’re not going to postpone the meeting again.”
My mother had had to beg for a little more time after Mrs Ludgate lost the petitions. Fortunately for the Greeners, one of the councillors had the flu and another was in Bali, so she was able to get an extra week.
I cleared my throat and stamped my feet. And was still ignored. You had to be a tree or a bird or something like that to get any attention from that lot.
“Well, it looks like the end to me,” agreed Caroline Ludgate. “I feel awful about losing those petitions, but we have to face the facts. There isn’t time to replace them, and without them we don’t have nearly enough signatures to make the Council listen to us.”
Alf Meadows, the farmer, nodded. “You know I hate to give up, Grace,” he said to my mother, “but I’m afraid I have to agree with Caroline. Bamber’s won. Maybe not fairly and squarely, but he has won. We might as well save our strength for the next fight.”
Silence followed this remark. Everyone looked from Alf Meadows to my mother.
I took advantage of the sudden quiet to cry “Mum!” I made my voice sort of shrill, so she’d know something bad had happened.
My mother didn’t hear me.
“Et tu, Alf?” she cried dramatically, her eyes on Mr Meadows. “Are you going to desert us now, when we need you most?”
I called, “Mum!” a little louder this time.
Alf Meadows said, “With all due respect, Grace, you don’t need me, or anyone else, now. The time has come for you to admit the truth. It’s over. Bamber gets his houses and his golf course and makes a lot of money, and we lose our woods, and probably get a new road we don’t want to boot. There’s nothing more we can do.”
I moved closer to the Greeners and gave myself a shake.
“Mum!” I cried in a small, terrified voice guaranteed to move the hardest heart. “Mum!”
It was the shake that did it. A fine spray of water settled over several of the Greeners, including their chairperson, my female parent, Grace Blue.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Elmo!” A leaf fluttered from my mother’s hair as she turned to scowl at me. “What is it now?”
Personally, I thought her attitude was a little unfair. I never interrupted my mother during her Green meetings like other children would. In fact, I always went out of my way to be as far away from them as possible. I didn’t see why she had to carry on like I was always bothering her.
“I fell off the roof,” I said simply.
Told that her child had fallen off the roof, a normal mother would demonstrate shock, horror and maternal concern at the news. She would gasp and tears would fill her eyes. My mother just looked suspicious.
“What on earth were you doing on the roof?” she demanded.
The question was so unexpected that I answered truthfully. “I was trying to see the new kid,” I explained. “In the car. And then—”
My mother frowned and another leaf drifted to the floor.
“You were spying on the Bambers?”
I backtracked quickly.
“I wasn’t spying. I was looking. I just wanted to see what the new kid’s like.”
“It doesn’t matter what he’s like now,” said my mother. “The Bambers will turn him into a greedy green-killer like themselves in no time at all.”
“Greedy green-killer” was among the more polite names my mother called Mr Bamber. Since Mrs Bamber was married to Mr Bamber, she was a “greedy green-killer” too.
“You know what I think about spying,” my mother went on.
I did know what she thought about spying. Not a lot. A friend of Mr Bamber’s joined the Greeners the spring before, pretending to be interested in saving what remained of the countryside, but really to spy on the group for Mr Bamber. My mother caught him taping a meeting. My mother didn’t approve.
“But, Mum—” I was determined to get the conversation away from spying and back to me. “Mum, you’re not paying attention. I fell off the roof! Don’t you understand? I might have been killed.”
“That’s what happens to spies,” said my mother.
I gazed at her in horror. She really was incredible. If I’d been a badger cub or something she’d have burst into tears at the thought of me falling off a roof.
It was Caroline Ludgate who finally showed some concern for me.
“Did you really fall off the roof, Elmo?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I really fell off the roof,” I answered. “And, yes, I’m fine.”
Mrs Ludgate peered down at me, looking for cuts and bruises.
“There’s not a scratch on you!” she said in amazement. “Are you sure you haven’t broken any bones?”
A few of the other Greeners started making sympathetic sounds, too.
At last I had an audience.
“That was the strange thing,” I told Mrs Ludgate. “I didn’t really fall to the ground, I just sort of floated down.” I pointed to the latest leaf to leave my mother’s head. “Like that.”
Mrs Ludgate smiled in that way adults smile when they’re not really listening to what a child is saying.
“That’s nice,” she murmured. “You’re a very lucky little boy.”
My mother’s mind was already back on Mr Bamber and the lost petitions.
“If only we were as lucky…” she mused.
“We don’t need luck,” said Alf Meadows. “What we need is a miracle.”
Everybody started talking at once again.
“I’m going to my room to change out of these wet clothes before I catch pneumonia,” I shouted over the uproar.
Nobody even glanced at me as I stomped out of the room.
I was pretty upset, I can tell you that.
“Stupid woods,” I muttered as I climbed the stairs to my room. “I hope Mr Bamber cuts them all down.”
I was so upset that I shut my door behind me and threw myself on my bed without even worrying about wrinkling the bedspread or getting it wet or anything. I didn’t even take my slippers off first.
I was so upset that I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until I heard the beep of my computer.