WHILE PHOENIX WAS IN THE upper chamber, Lucy had grown so agitated she’d unconsciously started chewing the tip of her tail. Beckett finally nudged her, and she immediately dropped her tail in embarrassment, but the tail chewing hadn’t escaped Junior’s notice. It made him wonder if his father, who didn’t approve of Lucy, might not be right about her. Chewing your tail wasn’t very ladylike. At the same time it aggravated him to think it had to do with her being so wrapped up in that mutant squirrel.
When the squirrel had been gone a long time, Junior predicted that they would never see hide nor hair of him again.
“What makes you say that?” Lucy asked.
“I have a feeling he’s been scamming us from the start,” Junior said.
Beckett snorted. “Scamming us for what purpose?”
“Huh?” said Junior, putting a paw to an ear.
Whenever Beckett said something that annoyed him, Junior pretended he couldn’t hear. It drove Lucy crazy.
“Why would Phoenix climb all that way if he wasn’t trying to help us?” she asked.
“He likes to show off,” Junior said.
“You saw him on the dock,” Emily chimed in.
“Doing something well isn’t necessarily showing off,” Lucy pointed out.
Soon after this Phoenix reappeared on the flagpole high above them, and the rats let out a great cheer. Even Junior cheered. After all, the squirrel might have good news, and Junior loved the pier as much as anyone. He waited for Lucy’s I told you so as Phoenix made his way to the end of the cornice, but she was too relieved to gloat.
It was a good thing she didn’t, for after hesitating a while, Phoenix pattered back to the flagpole and pulled another vanishing act. Junior certainly wasn’t above gloating, but he restrained himself in case Phoenix had just forgotten something. When Phoenix hadn’t returned by midnight, however, Junior yawned extravagantly and said, “That squirrel’s history. Time for some shut-eye.”
“What do you mean, ‘history’?” said Lucy, who’d been on the verge of chewing her tail again.
“He’s ditched us.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Why would he care about the pier? He’s not one of us.”
“But what if he went back for something and got hurt?” Lucy cried. “Or captured?”
Several rats nodded gravely, and Junior shut his snout. Lucy got more and more anxious. Finally, she blurted out that someone should go up and check. The rats liked the idea in principle, but no one felt like reenacting Junior’s fall. When Lucy decided to attempt the climb herself, Beckett protested that she mustn’t press her luck.
“You almost got killed rolling that can of peanuts,” he reminded her.
“She did?” Junior said, frowning.
But Lucy wasn’t to be dissuaded. As soon as she started up the building, Beckett rushed to an overflowing trash can on the street corner. The can was made of wire mesh, climbable even for him, and he tugged a discarded rag from the refuse, ignoring an interesting-looking magazine. Back at the foot of the building he got Junior and half a dozen other young rats to help him stretch the rag out directly below where Lucy was making her way up the relief work.
She’d already passed the spot where Junior had fallen. As a philosopher rat once said, “Fear is failure’s best friend,” and she wasn’t a bit hampered by fear—though this may have been less because she was exceptionally brave than because she was too worried about Phoenix to spare any worry for herself. In any event her eyes were glued to the cornice as she worked her way up, pawhold by pawhold. But about halfway to the cornice her paws began to cramp from the strain. And then she had a stroke of bad luck—two strokes, actually. A gust of wind hit her, and at the same instant a car alarm went off down the block, startling her so badly she lost her grip.
“Pull!” Beckett croaked as Lucy plummeted.
He and the others pulled the rag so taut that when Lucy hit it, she actually bounced up in the air. After her second landing she lay on the rag, dazed, while they lowered her gently to the sidewalk.
“Are you all right, Luce?” Beckett asked.
“Not really,” Lucy said, sitting up gingerly. “But thanks for catching me.”
“Did you break something?” Junior asked.
She shook her head and looked up forlornly. There was still no sign of Phoenix on the flagpole or cornice.
“I guess all we can do is wait,” she said resignedly.
A lot of rats lead nocturnal lives, liking darkness for their creeping and pilfering, but the wharf rats tended to sleep at night, and once the car alarm shut off, many in the scouting party started to yawn. While few of them bought Junior’s theory that Phoenix had ditched them, there didn’t seem to be anything they could do here, so they began trudging home. Eventually, Lucy and Beckett were the only ones left in front of the substation.
“Do you think he might have gotten electrocuted, like his friend Tyrone?” Lucy asked in a small voice.
Beckett had no answer. As he and Lucy took turns looking up, it got later and later, till finally there weren’t even taxis cruising the neighborhood.
Finally, Beckett fell asleep on his paws. Lucy was exhausted too, and her neck hurt from craning, but she kept up her vigil till the front door of the substation swung open. As a human in blue coveralls came out carrying a tool sack, Lucy jerked Beckett off the curb, under the Con Ed truck. There was a beeping sound from overhead, then the human got into the truck, started the engine, and roared away, barely missing them with a rear tire. Beckett crouched in the gutter, trembling. Even Lucy was traumatized enough to agree that it was time to go home.
It was nearly sunup when they got back to their crate, and Beckett conked out as soon as his head hit the insole of his shoe. Lucy leaned back in hers, her eyes flicking between the empty loafer and the pile of magazine shreds. First their father had left them, and now Phoenix was gone too. She wasn’t prone to tears, but a few leaked out before sleep finally carried her away.
* * *
While Lucy and Beckett slept in the next morning, the pier was a hive of activity. Junior and a lot of the other young rats were listening to his father’s stump speech—or phonebook speech, seeing as Augustus was again standing on the phonebook by the metal drum. Even though the demolition was slated to begin the next day, he was more focused on the upcoming special election, for he had his doubts about Beckett’s deciphering abilities and would have bet his prize ball of provolone that the notice on the pier door was just one of the humans’ ubiquitous advertisements. But, if the humans did try anything, shouldn’t the citizenry have a mayor who could stand up to them? As the rats waved their tails in approval, Augustus drew his toothpick and vowed that, if the humans dared show up, he would lead the charge against them.
Not far off, another crowd, this one composed mostly of older rats, was gathered around the three elders. The elders, less skeptical about the demolition, were encouraging everyone to make preparations for evacuating the pier.
“But where would we go?” someone cried.
“Underground, according to Mrs. P.,” said the eldest elder.
“What’s that, exactly?”
Wise as they were, the elders had no experience with this menacing-sounding place.
“Mrs. P.’s been there,” said the youngest elder. “Maybe she can lead us.”
The middle elder remained with the crowd while his two colleagues slipped off to pay Mrs. P. a visit. With Oscar gone and Lucy sleeping in, no one had gotten Mrs. P. her breakfast, but she still appeared in her doorway with a cheerful smile on her face. It disappeared, however, when the eldest elder told her the community hoped she would lead them underground.
“Oh, but I couldn’t do that!” she exclaimed.
“Dear me. Why not?”
“Because I don’t intend to evacuate.”
“You don’t believe young Beckett?”
“I have nothing but the greatest faith in Beckett’s reading skills. I’m just too old to pull up stakes at this point. They can demolish me along with the pier.”
This was alarming. Since it was common knowledge that Mrs. P. was partial to Lucy, the two elders sought her out to see if she might be able to convince Mrs. P. to change her mind. Beckett answered the knock on their crate and told them his sister needed her sleep.
“But it’s an emergency!” the youngest elder cried.
Lucy jolted awake. Normally, she would have been mortified to be found still in bed—and mortified for company to see their slovenly crate. But the memory of last night, of their dashed hopes and Phoenix vanishing, numbed her to embarrassment.
When the two elders explained why they’d come, she and Beckett followed them straight to Mrs. P.’s. The great rat invited everyone to take a cushion and asked the siblings how their mission had gone.
“Strange that Phoenix would come back out and then disappear again,” Mrs. P. said after Lucy told her.
“I suspect something grisly happened to him,” Beckett said.
“Poor squirrel,” Mrs. P. said with a sigh. “But I suppose it’s time for you to think about evacuating.”
“We can’t go without you!” Lucy cried.
“As I told them,” Mrs. P. said, eyeing the elders, “I’m too old to—”
“No, you’re not!” Lucy insisted. “Beckett and I can help you.”
Mrs. P. shook her head. “Pack rats never part from their collections, dearie. And I have far too much to cart with me.”
“But those are just things. Things aren’t important.”
“What a wise young rat you are,” Mrs. P. said. “But remember, we’re all made of time as well as fur and blood. We pack rats spend a lot of our time accumulating things, so they’re part of us.”
“We’ll help you carry your favorites,” Lucy said.
But nothing she could say could sway Mrs. P. When the two elders took the discouraging news back to the pallet, some rats went off to join Augustus’s crowd. Most others adopted a wait-and-see attitude, packing up their valuables but holding off leaving till they had no choice.
Lucy and Beckett had the advantage of possessing no valuables to pack up. Beckett’s library was public property—next winter’s fuel. They also had the advantage of Lucy’s knowledge of the city. And Beckett’s ability to read would hold them in good stead in the world of humans. But they had no intention of leaving without making a final effort with Mrs. P.
When they stopped by her place, they found Mrs. P. stuck in the doorway between the gallery and the fromagerie. She’d gone to fetch some cheese for herself, but since the last time she’d done so, she’d put on quite a bit of weight. Lucy and Beckett yanked her back into the gallery by her tail. Undignified as this may have been, Mrs. P. laughed.
“Looks like I’ll have to do a little gnawing on that door,” she said. “Though if I’d been stuck long enough, I suppose I would have lost a few ounces and made it through.”
Lucy helped her back to her cushion in the parlor, and Beckett brought her a chunk of her best Vermont cheddar. Lucy waited till Mrs. P. had a nibble before making her pitch.
“You can’t really expect me to go down into the sewers when I can’t even make it to the fromagerie,” Mrs. P. said. “But you two must go.” She set down her cheese, opened her amulet, and pulled out the key. “I’d like you both to have something nice to remember me by. Open my lockbox and take whatever you’d like.”
The tears Lucy had shed in her shoe early that morning must have lowered her resistance, for a couple more leaked out now. She and Beckett politely declined the key. They stayed until Mrs. P. finally started yawning and shooed them out.
A lot of the older wharf rats had gathered near the metal drum, many with their bundled belongings stacked around them. Beckett tried to steer Lucy that way, but she headed for their crate, too distraught to face others just then, and he followed her. She sat down on the toe of her loafer and buried her head in her paws.
“Oh, Beck, I can’t stand to leave her,” she said with a sob.
“Shhh,” Beckett said.
“What?” Lucy said, blinking up at him.
Beckett pointed at a scabby tail poking out of the nest of paper shreds.
“It appears the prodigal has returned,” he said softly. “And he seems to be asleep.”