Grams and Papa
The smell of pancakes and frying bacon intensified as they got closer to the camp. Peng’s stomach growled. He hadn’t realized he was that hungry until now, but he could almost hear the eggs cracking onto a hot skillet and smell the maple syrup warming in a pan.
“I can’t take it anymore,” Eric said. “I’m going in.” He moved to take the lead on the trail.
Peng stopped him with his hand. “We need to wait. We at least need to get a look at them first. We don’t know who’s down there.”
“He’s right,” JR said. “If I’ve learned one thing on this trip, it’s that we need to listen to Peng. He’s our leader.”
Peng looked at JR to see if he was being sarcastic, but his expression was serious, and the other two boys nodded in agreement—although Eric’s nod was a bit reluctant. Peng felt a sudden wave of emotion that nearly squeezed the air out of his chest. He felt genuine affection for these boys, and he would do anything to protect them. He also felt a sense of power, as if invisible hands were lifting him, helping him to stand straighter and think more clearly. And he understood that the affection and the power were inseparably connected, although he didn’t know exactly how.
“Let’s move to that hill above the camp,” he said. “We’ll be able to see who’s down there.” They followed him without saying a word.
The light of dawn had replaced the darkness in the sky above the hills, but in the hollow, where the motor home was parked, shadows were still in full force. There were two large picnic tables in the campsite, a fire burning in the fire pit, and two camp stoves with empty skillets on them. The food they smelled had been transferred to plates and now sat on the table, covered by tin warmers like in a hotel. Inside the motor home, the light was on, but the door was on the other side, and there was no sign of people.
Then the door opened and slammed shut, and in the firelight, a shadow of a huge misshapen creature holding what looked to be a battle-ax reared. The other boys gave a simultaneous gasp when they saw it. The great shadow lumbered its way around the front of the motor home and then shrank into the figure of an old, gray-haired woman holding a spatula.
“That’s my grandma!” Eric said a little too loudly.
The old woman cocked her head as if listening.
JR put his hand over Eric’s mouth and pulled him down behind the bushes. “That’s your grandma down there? Like some sort of divine, bizarre coincidence?” He took his hand off of Eric’s mouth to let him answer.
“Not my literal grandma, idiot,” Eric said, lowering his voice to match JR’s. “But she might as well be. She looks just like her. And my grandma makes the best blueberry pancakes in the world. So why are we whispering? Why aren’t we down there throwing ourselves at her feet and worshipping her bacon and eggs? What’s she going to do? Spatula us to death?”
JR looked up at Peng and raised his eyebrows. Peng shrugged, and with his silent permission, they made their way down to throw themselves at the mercy of the woman who reminded Eric of his grandma.
Peng was afraid they might startle the woman, coming up on her in the semidarkness, but she barely blinked when she saw them, as if she had been expecting a group of scraggly boys to show up for breakfast before it was light.
“You boys are out early,” she said. “Getting a head start on the trail?”
“Actually, we’ve been lost all night,” Joey said. He seemed to be the one most determined to keep to the agreed story. And it didn’t hurt that he looked like he needed to be mothered. “We got separated from our leaders and have been trying to find our way back to our camp.” His voice cracked when he said it. Eric stared at him in admiration and added his meek nod to the act.
“You must be freezing,” the woman said.
“Not really,” Eric replied. “We’ve been hiking pretty hard all night. But we are a little bit hungry.”
“Of course you are. And you are in luck. Some of our kids were supposed to meet us this morning, but I don’t think they’re going to make it. I’ve just made enough food to feed an army, and I was wondering what I was going to do with it all. You boys go get a plate and then get around that fire. I’ll go find Papa and get you some blankets. We’ll get you warm and fed, and then we’ll help you find your leaders. They must be awfully worried.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Eric said, already moving toward the plates. “Those pancakes smell really good.”
“I think you’ll like them. They’re my specialty. And call me Grams—everybody does. Eat as much as you like. I can always cook up more if need be.”
“Thank you, Grams,” Eric said. “You are one of the most awesome people on the planet.” Eric dug into the food, and the other boys were quick to follow.
“I’ll be right back,” the old woman said, moving around to the door of the motor home.
Peng needed to use the restroom, and after looking around, he spotted a small wooden building about fifty yards up the road. He told the other boys where he was going, but he wasn’t sure they heard him. Their complete and total focus was on what they were putting on their plates.
The woman reminded him of someone. She was old like Permelia, but Permelia was thin and wiry; this woman was large and doughy. He was on his way back to the camp before he figured it out. It was her eyes. They reminded him of someone from his past. They were dark and hard. No matter how kind her words or how light her tone, the hardness never left. Her eyes reminded him of Mistress Wu. Peng picked up his pace.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he hit the camp. The boys were sitting around the fire, eating, joking, and having a good time. He walked past the tables with the food and picked up a large knife by the bacon and slipped it under his shirt.
Finally the woman came out holding a stack of blankets. For an instant, with the door open, Peng could hear a man’s voice. He recognized it immediately as the voice from Jackson’s radio—the gravelly voice that sounded like the rattle in someone’s chest when they were dying. It was Jackson’s boss.
For a moment, Peng was paralyzed. He had led the boys directly into harm’s way. This was the man calling the shots. This was the man telling Jackson and Jillian what to do. They were all practically prisoners again. Despite the smell of the food, Peng felt sick.
Then realization hit: if this was the boss, maybe he knew where to find Hope and Jin.
Suddenly Peng knew what he had to do. He stepped out from behind the tree and quietly let himself into the motor home, removing the knife as he did so. The light inside the vehicle was bright, and although sunlight was also gradually displacing the darkness outside, Peng still needed to pause for a moment to let his eyes adjust.
The man had his back to Peng, and he was talking into his radio. “Yes, all the boys are here, even the son.” The man was wearing headphones, and there was silence for a moment as he listened to someone talking on the other end.
“I told you I haven’t heard from Jackson in almost an hour, and I don’t know the status of the main target.” More silence.
“Well, you could have told us the other Scoutmaster was former Delta Force. We might have approached the situation a bit differently . . . Uh-huh . . . Yes . . . I understand. But if you want the kid, I’m still expecting full payment. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, have you ever thought that he will just come to you? Once we bring the kid in, you’ll have his whole family. Just send him a text with instructions. As soon as he gets out of these mountains, he’ll see it and know what to do. I’d say we’ve more than held up our end of the bargain.”
Once again there was an extended silence.
“You can hardball if you want, Dempsey. But that just means we leave a bunch of unexplained bodies at a campsite and have the authorities asking all sorts of questions. Or we can bring these boys to you and you can pay us the price we agreed on. It’s really your call.
“Uh-huh. Well, I can’t just leave the other boys to go around talking, and you don’t seem to want me to leave any more bodies, so my only choice is to bring them with us. We’ll tell them we’re taking them to their folks. Maybe Grams can give them some of her special hot chocolate and knock them out.
“Uh-huh. Okay, sounds easy enough to find. We’ll see you in a few hours, but Grams is going to be disappointed. She hasn’t killed anyone in a long time, and she hates playing grandma to kids.”
The man finished his conversation and pulled the headset off. He looked up and paused when he saw the windshield. “I wish you hadn’t heard that, boy.” The man got up and turned around.
Peng held out the knife in front of him.
“Now, what are you going to do with that?” the man said. “Put it down before you hurt yourself. I’m a trained knife fighter. You’re no match for me, son.”
Peng believed the man, but he didn’t put down the knife. Instead he held it up to his own throat and pressed hard enough to draw blood.
“Son, I’m not sure which school you go to, but I think you might have missed some of the finer points of taking a hostage.”
“You will do what I say,” Peng said, surprised that his voice was not shaking. “You will call the woman inside, turn on the vehicle, and we will drive away. Once we are far enough down the road, I will give you the knife. You can turn me over to the man on the radio and collect your money.”
“And if I call your bluff?”
“Then you will have no Chinese boy to deliver. You will have failed in your mission, and you will not get paid.”
“I don’t think you’ve got the guts to do it,” the man said.
“Then you don’t know me.” He saw the man weighing his conviction and met his eyes without wavering.
“One problem,” the man said. “If you kill yourself, what’s to stop me from doing whatever I want to those other boys?”
“Nothing.” Peng tried to keep his voice firm. “But more importantly, you wouldn’t get paid. Those boys are of no worth to you. Your contract says you must deliver me. Killing a bunch of Scouts will just put you on the FBI’s most-wanted list.”
“Already on it,” the man said, but Peng could see that his words were getting through. “All right,” he said finally. “I wasn’t looking forward to riding with a bunch of brats anyway. I’ll get Grams in here, and we’ll leave your friends to their breakfast. Don’t do anything stupid.” He opened the door. “Grams,” the man yelled. “Could you come in here for a minute?”
Peng began to inch his way slowly toward the back of the motor home. He wanted to keep his distance from the man with the voice of death and the smiling woman with the evil eyes.
The woman appeared in the doorway and said, “Oh my, what have we here?” Her voice still held the singsong friendliness of a helpful matron, but her eyes seemed to turn even darker.
“This boy says he will off himself if we don’t take him and leave the other boys. Says he will mess up our payday.”
“Oh my,” the woman said again. “We can’t have that, can we?”
“Pull in the awnings. We’re leaving.”
“But I was just starting to get to know those boys. It would be rude to leave them without saying anything.”
“Just do it.”
The woman huffed but did as instructed.
Peng continued to move toward the back.
The man sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. “The only door is up front if you’re thinking about sneaking out the back way.”
Peng looked around him. The side windows would pop out, and there was a hatch in the top if he needed it, but he wasn’t thinking about escape. He just wanted to get one last look at the boys before he left. One last look at his friends.
He made it to the back window just as the motor home pulled away. JR, Eric, and Joey all looked on in shock as distance began to separate them. He still held the knife to his throat, but with his other hand, he motioned for the boys to stay put. “Wait here,” he mouthed to them. “Wait for Matt.” Then, as he thought about it, he pointed down to the watch around his wrist and mouthed, “Tell Matt.” He continued to emphatically point at the watch and mouth the words as the motor home pulled away.
Looking at their faces, Peng felt a sense of loss. He turned away and caught the woman inching toward him, her foot in the air as if she’d been stopped in a game of Mother May I.
“Sit down,” he said to her. “You have what you want. Now take me to my mother.” Thinking of Hope as his mother didn’t feel strange anymore. It felt right. These awful people would take him to her and to Jin. He would find them, and then he would figure out a way to help them escape.
He sat at the back of the motor home and smiled at the old woman.
She did not smile back.