“Mrs. Drummond,” the words sounded breathy and crackling. “Are those the children you have with you?”
She held their gaze a moment longer before turning toward the old man. “Yes, Mr. Parker, I have them right here. I urge you to reconsider your decision. These children are particularly unruly and lacking in discipline. I am afraid their presence will only upset you — ”
“That is quite all right, Mrs. Drummond,” he said. “A little noise will probably be good for me after all these years.”
“That is total nonsense,” she responded with a temper. She quickly caught herself, though, and spoke more gently. “If you will permit me, I will be happy to stay here with you and make sure that they do not misbehave — ”
“No, no, I appreciate your concern, but I want to speak with them alone. I will call you when they are ready to leave. Thank you very kindly, Mrs. Drummond.”
“Yes sir,” she said, nodding her head. Then she turned and walked back across the room.
“Please close the door behind you, if you will, Mrs. Drummond,” the old man said as he turned his wheelchair around and faced her.
“Yes sir,” she responded again, holding them in a murderous stare until the door closed across her bloodshot eyes.
Mr. Parker turned back to the kids. “So you are the children who are playing in the tree house these days?” The old man looked at all three of them in turn.
“Yes, sir, uh-huh,” Beamer and Ghoulie answered. Scilla just nodded her head.
“I don’t entertain guests often. Actually, it’s been something like thirty years, maybe more. I can’t remember.” He spoke the words as if they required a great deal of effort. For a moment his eyes held a faraway look. Then he snapped out of it and said, “I don’t know what kids drink these days . . .” He pointed a shaking finger toward a small table where several glasses and a pitcher were neatly arranged. “I asked Mrs. Drummond to make some lemonade. I couldn’t imagine that kids would ever stop loving lemonade. Please help yourselves.”
The three quickly picked up glasses already half-full of lemonade. “Thank you, Mr. Parker,” each said one on top of the other.
“No, no, call me Sol . . . please.”
Solomon Parker didn’t have as many wrinkles as his sister, thought Beamer, but then nobody did. He wasn’t as big as she was either. He looked kind of frail, in fact, and sad, and moved as if his head and arms were almost unbearably heavy.
“I heard about the tree house,” he said. “Never got to play in it myself,” he added with a note of bitterness. “My big sister didn’t like the kid who built it — let’s see, I believe his name was . . . uh . . . Stoll . . . something.”
“Billy Stoller,” Ghoulie corrected him.
“Yes, that’s right. Anyway,” he went on as if the words tasted like sour lemons, “Rebecca convinced my parents that playing in the tree house was dangerous, so they wouldn’t allow it.”
Rebecca? Oh . . . right . . . Old Lady Parker’s first name — the “R” of the “R.I.P.” initials written on the walls of the caves beneath her house, remembered Beamer. Of course, considering the adventures we’ve been on so far, she might have been right. None of us has ever been hurt, but we’ve sure gotten our hearts pumping. But then, if those adrenalin juices didn’t get flowing, you probably couldn’t call it an adventure.
“I consider that one of the greatest regrets of my life,” the old man said with a grim smile. “Oh, I am sorry if my robots frightened you on your last visit. My assistant, Mrs. Drummond, insists on such security measures. I designed them, of course . . . years ago,” he said, his voice fading as if he was reaching far back in time again. A moment later he popped back to the present and said, “Her job, though, is to . . . uh, keep the bills paid and . . . provide for the household needs. So, naturally, she wants to keep everything . . . safe. Frankly, I can’t imagine what I could have that anyone would want.”
Beamer wasn’t so sure. Those sentry robots looked old-fashioned in some ways, but outside of science fiction, you couldn’t find robots even today as advanced as those were.
“Actually, I built everything in this room at one time or another,” Sol said, waving his hand across the room. “Never came to much, though . . . none of it.” His voice dripped with regret.
Beamer sipped his drink as he walked along beside one of the covered tables. He thought he could make out a highway and some buildings through the milky plastic drape.
“Go ahead and pull off the plastic,” Mr. Parker said to them.
Ghoulie and Beamer put down their drinks. The plastic came off like a wave on the sea, trailing spider silk like drops of spray. They all coughed violently as a cloud of dust billowed in the air.
“Sorry about the dust. I never . . . noticed it before,” he said through hacking coughs.
What they saw was a sprawling miniature city that looked like downtown Middleton minus the newer buildings. “What is this?” Ghoulie asked.
The old man looked at the scene in puzzlement. “I don’t remember,” he finally said with a heavy sigh.
Just then Scilla ran over to join them, but she didn’t realize how slippery the dust was on the floor and skated into the table. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she gasped. She didn’t hit it all that hard, but a section of buildings was knocked loose.
Suddenly a light blinked on in Sol’s eyes. “Pick that up,” he said to Ghoulie.
Ghoulie swallowed and carefully removed the buildings. Beneath them was a miniature tunnel snaking its way along beneath the city. Set within the tunnel, one after the other every few inches as if they were ribs for a snake, were rings. About the size of a girl’s bracelet in the model, one would have been maybe the height of a house in real life.
Sol wheeled his chair around the table and fingered a switch below. A cylindrical train moved along inside the tunnel rings. The strange thing was it didn’t seem to be touching the ground. In fact, it didn’t look like it was touching anything — just moving along, suspended in the air amid the row of rings.
“I . . . I remember now. This was my . . . effort to build a . . . a transportation system driven by . . . magnetic pulses.”
Sol hesitated for a moment, then said, “I wanted to own a railroad. Didn’t have enough money, though, so I settled for something smaller — a city trolley company.”
“Yeah, we saw the trolley station,” Scilla said.
“Oh, it’s still there,” Solomon asked, “after all these years?”
“It’s seen better times,” Scilla said with a shrug.
“I’m sure it has. It did well for a number of years. We went . . . uh . . . bankrupt, though, back in the early nineteen fifties,” he said more softly. “That was when the city switched to . . . gasoline bus services — no tracks, you see. People were tired of bumping over them in their cars.
“After I lost the trolley company, I dreamed of making new transportation systems,” Solomon said as he wheeled over next to Ghoulie. “This is the area of Middleton next to the . . . city monument. I built this model . . . oh . . . fifty years ago, but I couldn’t get the city interested. As you can see, it works, but no one believed what their eyes could see. They thought it was all a . . . trick,” he said with a sound that might have been a grim laugh.
They uncovered more objects in the room. Scilla got the boys to pull off the plastic cover from the big object with claws she had seen when she first entered the room. As it turned out, whatever were at the end of those two arms weren’t claws or hands or talons or anything else the three could recognize. But when Sol turned the machine on, a powerful electrical pulse arched between them with a loud sizzle.
“Don’t remember what that’s for,” said Sol. “Everything . . . went wrong for . . . a very long time.” Again he seemed to fade from the present. “I had such dreams,” he said with the slightest mocking laugh. “Dreams don’t always come true, you know.” He coughed and turned back toward the window.
Beamer remembered what Ms. Parker had told them about dreams months ago. She had spoken of all the people on Murphy Street who had gone on to accomplish great things — Nobel Prize winners, writers, musicians, engineers who made spaceships, even great cartoonists. She said she wanted to see if we made our dreams come true. Of course, Beamer’s dreams weren’t all that big yet. Just getting on first base with a hit was a big enough dream for the moment. But Ms. Parker hadn’t said anything about her brother’s lost dreams. Had she been wrong? Did some people on Murphy Street see their dreams come crashing down like Sol’s?
One thing was for sure: Solomon Parker had given up. That was the only way to explain how he had gotten exiled to this world of cobwebs and discarded projects. Beamer was a little young to understand what it all meant, but it sounded to him like the man had lost faith — faith in the fact that, despite all his troubles and disappointments, God would eventually work things out and bless him. That’s what his parents had told Beamer to remember when things went wrong. Okay, maybe a kid’s problems weren’t in the same league with an adult’s, but they always felt like it at the time.
Solomon suddenly shook his head and swallowed deeply. “I understand you found my train set?” Solomon asked out of nowhere.
“How did you know about that?” Beamer asked, wide-eyed.
“The same way I heard that you were the kids from the tree house,” he answered, pointing toward an intercom in the wall. “I overheard you talking to the robot when you came here the first time. I’d forgotten that I even had a train set.”
“And it still works,” said Ghoulie. “It’s amazing, especially when you consider how primitive the technology was at the time.”
“Really!” he said with a delighted chuckle. “I’ll bet Rebecca has been wondering all these years why her electric bill is so high. I should probably go over to the old house and turn it off.”
Suddenly the door opened again, and Mrs. Drummond stalked in with a look of impatience. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Parker, but it is time for your afternoon nap. These youngsters have taken enough of your time and are probably testing your patience.”
“Oh, must they?” the elderly man asked. “It’s been so long — ”
“We must consider your health, Mr. Parker. I don’t want you to become too anxious. Hurry, children!” she said, clapping her hands to speed them up. “Leave your drinks on the table and come along.”
“But I never got around to the reason I wanted to see them. I wanted to ask you to take me to your tree house,” he said quickly before Mrs. Drummond could usher them out of the room.
Beamer was startled to hear the request, but they were all quick to say, “Yes/Hey, no problem/Sure.”
Mrs. Drummond, however, gave him a look of alarm. “The strain would be far too much for you at your age, Mr. Parker. Really, I must insist that — ”
“No, no, that’s what I want to do,” he persisted. “I’ve waited a long time and, as you suggest, I’m not getting any younger. Please contact me when you think of a good time,” he said to Beamer and his friends. “Mrs. Drummond, give them my phone number so that they can call.”
“Yes, of course,” the stern woman said with a deep frown. “Now we must be going,” she said, herding them out of the room like goats. “I knew I should never have admitted you,” she muttered after she closed the door. “You’ll undermine everything I’ve tried to do — the very idea of a man in his state of health climbing up to a tree house.”
Beamer started to tell her about their transporter/elevator, but she scooted them ahead of her even more quickly toward the staircase. He turned around to look at the others and almost fell down the first couple of steps. He turned forward again and saw Mrs. Drummond at the foot of the steps.
“Come on, don’t dally,” she said, waving them on down the steps toward her.
How did she get to the bottom of the steps so fast? She looks like Mrs. Drummond, but she can’t be. Beamer twisted around to look back up the steps. Mrs. Drummond wasn’t up there anymore. But how could she be the same woman who was just pushing them from behind? There is no way that Mrs. Drummond could have sped past us down the steps to the lower floor without us seeing her. “Hurry, hurry on out,” she said to the kids, holding her hands high as if she were afraid she would get dirty if she touched them.
“Quickly,” the woman said as she drove them outside onto the porch. The spiderlike sentries were already there, waiting for instructions. “Make sure to get them off our property and secure the gate behind them.”
“But what about the phone number?” Beamer asked as he stumbled backward down the porch steps.
“What phone number?” she asked without a flinch. “Just go away and don’t come back!” the now-angry woman said. She whirled around and stalked back into the house.
Beamer stared after her, wondering if she was a witch.
As the woman slammed the door behind her, she saw her twin sister coming down the wide hallway from the back staircase. “My dear Mrs. Drummond, I hope you’ve done the right thing,” she said. “If it had been up to me, I’d have called the police the first time they came, and we would have been done with it.”
“ — and exposed us to additional public inspection?” Mrs. Drummond shot back at her.
“I hope you are right,” said the sister. “Anyway, let’s get back to our game. I never realized how much fun Monopoly could be.”
“Certainly, Flora, I am anxious to defeat you once again.”