Thumb and the Bad Guys (4 page)

We stopped in front of Mayor Semanov's house.

All of the houses in New Auckland had very small front yards. Each
front yard was divided by a narrow cedar walkway that led up to the front door.
Nobody had grass or flowers. I don't think plants could grow in our sand.

Some people had a few large rocks that they painted different colors
and laid out in patterns. Others had small headstones to remind them of relatives
who had died. None of the relatives were buried in the village. They were buried on
an island down the coast.

Mayor Semanov had something different sitting in his front yard. He
had a big iron ball. It looked like one of those balls that cartoon convicts wear
shackled to their ankles, except it was rusted.

Ms. Weatherly pointed to Major Semanov's iron ball and said, “Class,
what is that?”

“It's an iron ball,” I said.

“Yes. It is,” said Ms. Weatherly.

I grinned.

“What else?”

We all looked at each other. Nobody said anything.

“Did anyone in this village ever ask the man who owns this house where
he found this very interesting ball?”

I knew that Big Charlie Semanov had found his iron ball on the shore
near the narrow entrance to our bay. He had lost some buoys and spotted them washed
onto the rocks. He rowed a dinghy to shore and found that iron ball wedged between
two rocks. He hefted the iron ball over to his dinghy and carefully placed it
between struts and surrounded it with buoys so it wouldn't roll around. Then he
brought it back to New Auckland and dropped it in the sand in front of his house as
decoration.

Everybody noticed it, of course, and we all thought it was an odd
thing to find on a beach. It couldn't have washed on shore. It was too heavy.
Somebody must have put it there.

We all knew the story of how Big Charlie had found that scrap of metal
but none of us said a word. We just weren't used to telling teachers about things
that happened in our village.

We all looked at each other again and shook our heads.

“All right. Back to class.”

We marched back into the school, stopping only to let Ms. Weatherly
close up her umbrella before stepping inside.

We sat down in our seats.

“Any ideas about the original purpose of that iron ball?” asked Ms.
Weatherly.

“It looks like something a convict would wear,” I suggested.

Ms. Weatherly laughed. “Good idea, but unless there's a loop for the
shackle, not possible.”

“I always thought it was some piece of antique fishing equipment,” said
Susan. “Something to keep a net from floating to the surface.”

“Good thought,” said Ms. Weatherly, “but far from the truth.”

“So, you know what it is?” asked Big Bette, the smallest person in our
class, even though she was in grade seven, just like me.

“I do indeed.”

Before we could ask about that iron ball beside Mayor Semanov's front
door, something truly strange and astonishing happened.

One of the blonde curls on Ms. Weatherly's head fell to the floor.

I don't mean a strand or two of hair fell to the floor. I mean that a
complete curl, composed of hundreds of strands of genuine man-made nylon, drifted
down to the floor, bounced twice, flipping each time, and then came to a rest next to
Ms. Weatherly's left foot.

Nobody laughed. We all just stared down at that curl.

Ms. Weatherly stepped away from it, causing all of us to look up at
her.

We gasped. We could see where the curl belonged because Ms. Weatherly
now had a curl-sized patch of white plastic on the side of her head.

Ms. Weatherly sighed and calmly walked to her desk. She opened her top
drawer, reached inside and pulled out a container of white glue. Holding the glue in
one hand, she walked back to the curl and picked it up.

“Any other ideas?” she asked as she casually squeezed some glue onto
the curl. She set the glue bottle on her desk before rubbing the glue around one
side of the curl and then gently lifting it to the bare white patch on her cap and
holding it in place. She kept holding it as she looked at each one of us, waiting
for someone to answer her question.

“Let's go back and look at that iron ball one more time,” said Ms.
Weatherly, letting go of her curl. It stayed in place, as she seemed to know it
would. She picked up her umbrella and led us back outside.

Five minutes later we all stood in front of Mayor Semanov's house
again, staring down at the iron ball.

To understand what happened next, you need to know that when good
fishermen from any country in the world wake up, they all look at the ocean or the
river or the lake or pond where they plan to fish.

Fishermen in New Auckland gaze at our bay every morning, as soon as
they get out of bed. They look out a window before they go to the bathroom or turn
on the kettle or put the dog out. It doesn't have to be a long look. With just a
quick glance any good fisherman can read the color of the water or the rhythm of the
swells.

One summer a fellow from a university came and stayed in our village
for a week. He was a bug specialist who identified eight species of hoverflies within
minutes of hopping out of the seaplane.

Fishermen are like that man. They learn how to look for things most of
us simply ignore and treat as background scenery.

Big Charlie Semanov hadn't planned to fish that morning, so he'd slept
late and when he looked out his window he didn't see the ocean at all. Instead, he
saw an entire class of kids and one quite strange-looking woman with an umbrella all
standing in front of his window, staring down.

Big Charlie quickly opened his door so that he could look down, too,
in case there was something wrong with his house. He didn't see anything
unusual.

“What are you all doing here?” asked Big Charlie.

“We were just looking at your cannonball,” said Ms. Weatherly.

“My what?”

“His what?” asked eighteen kids.

“Your cannonball. On the ground right here. Where did you get it? It's
quite a find.”

“You mean that round metal thing?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know it's a cannonball?”

“Well,” said Ms. Weatherly, sticking her hand out from under her
umbrella. Her fingers came back dry so she folded up her umbrella and tucked it under
one arm. “I spent the early years of my life in museums, staring at cannonballs and
swords and muskets. My mother was responsible for a museum and I used to roam the
hallways when she worked late. This is a cannonball. It is British, and it is
eighteenth-century. You found it up here someplace?”

“Yes.”

“Then there's a good chance that it came here with Captain James Cook,
who explored and claimed this coast for England. If you had found this cannonball in
the Caribbean or the Mediterranean then we would never be able to guess its history.
But the only eighteenth-century explorers in this area were Captain Cook, George
Vancouver and George Dixon. Where did you find it?”

“On the beach by the narrows,” said Big Charlie.

Ms. Weatherly kneeled down and took a long, close look at the
cannonball. She stood up again and pointed at it.

“This cannonball has never been fired.”

“How can you tell?”

“A cannonball can't simply explode out of a barrel without scraping
the sides. There are no scrape marks.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea. I can only tell you that it wasn't fired from a
cannon. How did it get on that beach?”

“Well, it sure didn't roll there,” muttered Mayor Semanov.

Ms. Weatherly turned to all of us and said, “Back to class. We have a
mystery to solve.” Then she turned and started marching back toward our school,
almost dragging the rest of us behind her.

“Take your seats,” she said when we were back inside. “Quickly.
Quickly.”

“We have us a puzzle,” said Ms. Weatherly when we were settled. “We
have a cannonball from the past. Let's see if it has any secrets to tell.”

“I don't think metal balls can talk,” said Little Liam seriously,
which was actually pretty interesting because for entire months at a time most of us
weren't sure if Little Liam could talk.

“But it can tell secrets,” said Ms. Weatherly mysteriously, almost
like she was trying to keep a secret herself.

I sat back, trying to make a tough choice.

Dad insisted that I tell him one story and only one story at the end
of every day. It had to be a story about something interesting that I had learned or
heard or saw or thought. Some days it was a challenge to find that one single story,
but on Ms. Weatherly's first day of school, I had choices.

I could tell Dad about the nylon curl floating to the floor and Ms.
Weatherly gluing it back almost in the right place. Or I could tell him that Big
Charlie Semanov had an eighteenth-century cannonball in his front yard.

“I am going to divide you into teams,” said Ms. Weatherly. “Who would
like to read about the voyages of Captain James Cook and the other explorers and try
to see when any of them might have explored along here?”

Robbie and Big Bette raised their hands. I wasn't surprised that
Robbie volunteered. Robbie was great with computers and loved those role-playing
games where you pretend to be on an expedition or a crusade.

“If you can,” added Ms. Weatherly, “try to find out what kinds of
cannons they had on their ships.”

Robbie and Big Bette nodded.

“Who would like to take pictures of that cannonball, with your mayor's
permission, of course, and try to see if there are any markings? You'll have to
weigh it, too, and read all you can about cannonballs.”

Little Liam raised his hand. Nick, too.

“And finally,” said Ms. Weatherly, “who would like to explore the rocky
beach where the cannonball was found? Look around. If you do find something, leave it
in place so the whole class can have a look. Who knows? Maybe a ship sank on the
rocks and there are lots of artifacts.”

Susan and I glanced at each other, nodded and then raised our
hands.

“Excellent,” said Ms. Weatherly.

“Look,” said Susan, whispering out of the side of her mouth and
looking at me. “Down at the dock.”

I glanced out the window beside the blackboard. Five fishing boats
rested next to the dock. Men were loading nets and supplies. One of the five boats
belonged to Kirk McKenna.

We watched him untie the back line on his boat and toss it on deck.
Then he untied the front line and, holding it, jumped on board. He fired his engines
and slowly made his way toward the narrow mouth of the bay.

Kirk McKenna was going fishing.

6
A CLUE

AFTER SCHOOL, SUSAN
AND I
met behind the boulder that guarded the path up to the pond.

“I don't think anybody saw me,” I said.

“Me, either,” said Susan quietly.

We both ran up to the spot just below the pond where Kirk McKenna had
bent over and erased a footprint.

I crouched down like I'd seen trackers do in Western movies and ran my
hands over the dirt. I had no idea what I was trying so hard to find.

“He definitely came from below the pond,” I said.

We jumped from rock to rock and stopped next to the waterfall by the
stream below the pond. The waterfall wasn't wide and most of the far side was lined
with boulders so big that you couldn't see past them.

I stood beside the stream, staring.

“Don't even think about trying to swim or wade over,” said Susan
firmly. “You could get killed.”

“Kirk McKenna was over there.”

“Maybe our eyes were playing tricks on us. There's no way to
cross.”

“What if I go under the waterfall?” I asked as calmly as possible.

“Are you crazy?”

“No. We saw a flashlight beam that seemed to almost glow, like it was
shining through water. Maybe when the water falls down from the pond it leaves a dry
space behind it, like a cave. Maybe I can walk through that space to the other
side.”

“You've been watching too many movies, Thumb.”

“If I'm right I should be able to put my hand right through the water
near the edge here and feel air on the other side.”

I held onto a rock next to me while Susan grabbed the back of my
sweatshirt. I plunged my hand into the waterfall.

I pulled my hand back out, turned to Susan and grinned.

“I'm going through,” I said.

I pushed one leg under the falls, still holding onto a large boulder
next to me. I felt around with my foot, making sure there was a solid surface where
I could stand.

I stood up and simply walked under the waterfall.