The Daredevils, page 14
No! This can’t be happening! I screamed inside my head.
This was really messing with my plans. It was not good. Not good at all. If Dad hired the woman on the other side of this door, then it would be too late for Louie’s mother. I couldn’t stand by and allow that to happen. I had to do something. But what?
By now you should be able to guess how I figured that out. Don’t ever let your parents tell you watching TV is bad again. The answer was in a favorite movie of mine—The Parent Trap. Ever see it? You need to. It’s great. In that movie, twin sisters team up and perform some serious sabotage to prevent their father from marrying the wrong woman. There’s more that needs explaining, but what’s important here is the word “sabotage.” And also “twin,” because I had one of those too—if he didn’t still hate me.
I turned and ran. Time was short. I burst into my brother’s room.
“Waylon, get up!” I urged.
He sat bolt upright like a rocket. “Huh? What? What’s wrong?”
“We have an emergency. Get up and get dressed.”
He stumbled out of bed, still half-asleep, and began rummaging through the clothes that littered his floor. He kicked his dirty socks and underwear out of the way—gross! How did I know they were dirty? Double gross! But then an idea came to me.
I grabbed his laundry basket and filled it with every piece of clothing strewn about, and then I topped it off with Waylon’s best tire-track underwear. Don’t worry, I gloved my hand in one of his shirts before touching those things.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for this,” Waylon exclaimed after discovering the hand buzzer previously buried. I’d given it to him for Christmas a few years back, after he’d read Harry Potter and wanted us to open a joke shop like Fred and George Weasley—also twins.
“See what happens when you clean your room,” I said.
He stuck his tongue out at me.
“Bring the buzzer,” I said. “It’ll be a nice additional touch.”
“Why? What’re we doing?” he asked, fully awake now.
I quickly filled him in, and then he grabbed his favorite joke item. I was nervous, but Waylon was excited to do damage. Together, we hurried back downstairs to Dad’s office. I heard that squealing laugh again before we even got there—which should’ve been reason enough not to hire this lady. It was time for sabotage!
I barged in, throwing Dad’s door wide open. Let me remind you of his one cardinal rule: Unless there’s a fire or someone is dying, NEVER interrupt him when he’s with someone in his office.
But this someone wasn’t a patient; she was simply the wrong person for the job. And I had to make sure she knew that.
“Ohh!” the startled woman cried. “You have children!”
“Yes, I do,” Dad replied, his jaw clenching. “And I have no clue why they’re here.”
“There’s two of us. Double trouble,” I responded with a wink.
“We’re twins,” Waylon said, offering the woman his hand for a shake. “I’m Waylon.”
She placed her hand in his, and he grabbed on with a firm grip. Boy, did she get zapped good!
“Ohh!” she cried.
“Gotcha,” Waylon said, and laughed.
“Waylon! Loretta!” Dad scolded. “What do you think you’re doing? You know not to interrupt me when I’m in a meeting.”
“So here’s our laundry,” I said to the woman, slapping the basket on her lap, my brother’s skiddsters just under her nose. “I’m sure my dad has already covered this part of the job.”
“No, I’m afraid he hasn’t,” she replied, recoiling from Waylon’s trophy.
“Loretta!” Dad thundered again. “You’re out of line.”
The woman in the chair glanced from me to Dad. She was at a loss.
“When you’re done with that, can you make me some chicken noodle soup? I’m not feeling well,” Waylon said to her next.
She didn’t know how to respond.
“Taking care of us is the most important part of the job,” I told her.
Waylon began rubbing his belly, and then he unloaded, throwing fake vomit all over the basket and her lap.
“Ohh!” she screamed in horror. The woman sprang from her chair, dumping the basket and brushing off her lap. “Dr. Neal, thank you for your time, but I’m no longer interested in this position.”
And just like that, she was gone. Dad didn’t even respond. There was nothing for him to say. He watched his interviewee run away, and then he turned on us. “You need to leave,” he growled. “I’m much too angry to discuss what just happened with you now.”
“Dad, I’m sorry, but—” I started, trying to explain.
“Leave,” he said, unwilling to listen.
“Dad.”
“Now!” he exploded.
Waylon and I gathered up the laundry basket and vomit. Explaining anything to our father would need to wait until later. We kept our mouths shut and left without another word—almost. We were only a few steps from the doorway when his phone rang, stopping us dead in our tracks.
“Louie,” I whispered.
“You think so?” Waylon replied.
I dropped the basket and hurried back across the room.
“I said leave,” Dad warned.
When his phone rang the second time, I saw the name listed on caller ID. “Dad, you have to answer it. That woman wasn’t the one for the job, but the person calling right now is. She’s superb at organization, has experience as an administrative assistant (I didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded good), and she needs your help.”
A third ring. He looked at me, his hard glare melting away and turning into confusion.
“I’m coming to you now like you asked—because I can’t do this without you. Please.”
A fourth ring. There was so much to explain, but no time.
“Trust the Forest Spirits,” Waylon said, arriving by my side.
“Please,” I said softly.
A fifth ring—Dad reached over and picked up. “Hello…This is he…. Yes, I am…. Yes…That is also true…. I see. Well, can you come by this afternoon?…That’ll work. I look forward to seeing you then.”
He hung up and looked at us. “You two better sit down. You have some explaining to do.”
Our explaining started with us befriending Louie after meeting him unexpectedly.
“You’d love him, Dad. He’s big. Real big. And real nice. And he always wears camouflage,” Waylon said, rattling off information about our best friend.
“We’ll get to the camouflage,” I said, trying to slow my brother down.
“He prefers jazz,” Waylon added. “His father named him after Louis Armstrong. But your country might work if it’s got a harmonica in it. You should hear Louie play the harmonica.”
“I don’t understand,” Dad said. “If this boy is your friend, why were you sneaking into his house?”
I put my hands up. “We’ll get there,” I promised. “All of this is important.”
“Does this have anything to do with your adventure game?”
“Patience,” I said.
Finally, after getting him and Waylon to take a breath, I took the lead and began explaining about our mission to the Millennium Falcon and discovering a mysterious cigar box wrapped in cloth and bound shut.
“You told me about finding game directions, not a cigar box,” Dad interrupted.
“There was a note in the box,” I said, “along with some other stuff.”
“What other stuff?” he asked, growing agitated.
“Just stuff.” I was trying to avoid the dirty-magazine detail.
“I want to see it.”
“It’s not important.”
“I want to see it!” he demanded, his voice rising.
I turned to my brother. “It’s at the fortress,” Waylon said. “I can run and get it.”
“Yes,” Dad insisted. “Go.”
Waylon didn’t hesitate. He sprang from his seat and was gone in a flash.
I wondered why Dad was so interested in the cigar box but not enough to stop and ask. I was too focused on telling him our story so he was ready for Louie’s mother, Ms. Foster. I pressed ahead and continued bringing him up to speed, recapping our sacrifices and Waylon’s rite of passage.
“Yes, I know about all of that,” Dad said, sounding irritated, “but that still doesn’t tell me why you’re suddenly breaking and entering into houses.”
“I was sneaking in, not breaking and entering,” I corrected him. “And you may think you know about all of that, but you don’t know everything.”
He scowled. “What does that mean?”
This was where I began telling him about Louie’s mom, starting with the night she caught us holding the ladder as Louie climbed back into his bedroom. I told him about all the things Louie had said about his mother leading up to that moment.
“And you thought sneaking into her house would be a good idea?” Dad asked. “Based on what you’ve just told me, I’d say that was a reckless and extremely dangerous decision.”
“My frontal lobe isn’t fully developed yet,” I replied, which actually made him smirk for just a second.
“That doesn’t excuse what you did,” he countered.
“It was my rite of passage. I was counting coup.”
Dad sat back. “So this was your brother’s idea?”
I shrugged.
“And what made him think of it?”
I shrugged again. “I don’t know. He came home from camp with the idea.” That wasn’t the whole truth, but I didn’t feel like telling him about the fight we’d had.
Dad shook his head and let out a heavy breath. Was he disappointed? “Loretta, we’re not done talking about this, not by a long shot, but I still don’t understand why Louie’s mother called me this morning and why you’re convinced she’s the person I need to hire?”
I filled him in on everything I’d seen inside her house, detailing the pictures, the wine, and the letter she held in her hand. I also took time to tell him how immaculate she kept the place. And then I described the message I’d left for her on the bathroom mirror and, lastly, the history Louie shared with us after I’d returned from counting coup—about the house and spirits and his mother.
Dad sighed. His expression softened. “Your mother told me about your secret plan concerning your brother.”
“I knew she would. You two aren’t good at keeping secrets from each other. And you proved that wasn’t a good idea.”
Dad chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I did. But that’s not what’s important here. Loretta, you’ve proven that your heart is bigger than your fists. You’ve always been protective of your brother, but what you’ve done for Louie and his mom is all heart.”
“You told me not to do anything you wouldn’t do.”
He smiled.
It’s possible I would’ve told Dad about my fight with Waylon and why I was feeling so uneasy, but my brother returned before any of that happened. He walked in carrying the cigar box, and there’s really no other way to describe it—my father looked like he’d just seen a ghost.
Waylon handed the box to Dad and sat next to me. We watched in silence as our father flipped the latch on the front and lifted the top. “Oh my God.”
You’ve heard enough at this point to know my father was more of the sensitive type than a fighter, but I’d still never seen him cry—not until that moment. His eyes welled up as he touched the rabbit’s foot. He smiled through the tears when he came to Buzz Lightyear. I panicked when I recalled the dirty magazine, expecting him to pull that out of the box next, but then I remembered I’d confiscated it and I relaxed.
“Do you have the note?” Dad rasped, wiping his face.
Waylon passed the paper to him. My brother and I still hadn’t said a word. We braced ourselves for what might happen after Dad read the letter. What happened was not anything I was expecting.
My father lost control and began all-the-way crying. I’m talking sobs and body-shaking stuff. I can tell you this, when you witness something like that, your mind races, searching for answers. The explanation came to me all at once in what could only be described as my second Rapunzel epiphany.
“Dad, what was Uncle Rusty’s middle name?” I asked.
“Owen,” he croaked.
Waylon’s mouth fell open. My brother understood now too. RON wasn’t anyone’s name. Those letters were my uncle Rusty’s initials, Rusty Owen Neal.
“That note was meant for you, wasn’t it?” I said.
Dad nodded and sniffled. “Yes…but it was my children, my own daredevils, who found it. Talk about Forest Spirits.”
Daredevils, I thought. That was the perfect name for our club.
Waylon beamed.
“Your uncle and I smoked cigars from this very box on his last night before he left for boot camp,” Dad said after wiping his face again.
“You smoked a cigar?” Waylon exclaimed, sounding both incredulous and impressed.
“Only time,” Dad made clear. “It was awful, so don’t try it, but Rusty wanted me to join him…. Maybe he knew…,” Dad mused, his voice trailing off.
“Tell us about the things Uncle Rusty put in the box,” Waylon said, eager to hear the stories behind our uncle’s sentimental artifacts.
So Dad began—and Waylon and I were captivated. We heard more about Uncle Rusty than we ever knew. It was Dad who gave his brother the rabbit’s foot for good luck before Uncle Rusty went off to the army, but it seemed now that Uncle Rusty wanted to leave that luck with Dad—and Waylon and me. The cassette tape was one Uncle Rusty made of Johnny Cash and that he played over and over when they were young. That tape was what got Dad hooked on country. (I found out later that Johnny Cash’s older brother died when he was a boy, and that connection was something Dad felt with the Man in Black.)
The Buzz Lightyear piece was my favorite story and had my eyes wet by the end. Dad and Uncle Rusty were at the lake one summer day when a little girl started calling for help. She’d gone out too far on her raft and couldn’t make it back when the raft went flat. Uncle Rusty was only sixteen years old, but he heard her cries and swam out and rescued her. Dad said the girl was terrified and left marks all over Uncle Rusty from where her nails had dug into his skin. When they reached the beach, that little girl’s brother gave Uncle Rusty his Buzz Lightyear for being a real superhero. Uncle Rusty took the toy but never made a big deal out of what he’d done. In fact, he never told anyone.
It’s hard to sum up everything I felt and learned sitting with Waylon and my dad that morning. There was an element of Cinderella in our story. The way she’d snuck to the ball and the way Waylon and I had been sneaking out, the magic of the fairy godmother and the mystery of the Forest Spirits, and how a simple glass slipper or an old wooden cigar box could bring all the pieces together in the end. Okay, maybe not. What can I say? It was probably The Goonies that captured us best again—because of the way family is celebrated.
So much had just happened for my father. Thanks to a cigar box and note, and his children, he’d reconnected with Uncle Rusty. And there was so much yet to come for Louie and his mother. Like I said, family.
But first things first. Turns out the Forest Spirits had more in store for the Daredevils. Mom came home for lunch, surprising us, and surprising us even more when she asked Waylon and me if we knew anything about the email all the parents of campers had received, something about a garbage-can fiasco that had damaged P.E. Bubba’s car.
“You mean the car catcher?” Waylon corrected her, which wasn’t a great first move.
Waylon, Louie, and I sat around the Circle of Stones. It was our first midnight meeting since everything went down. There was no sneaking out required this time.
Ms. Foster, who was okay with us calling her Ella, was officially Dad’s assistant and things were already improving—most notably, Dad’s office. Ella had his space organized and under control in a matter of days. But more important, with Dad’s help, Ms. Foster was on the road to getting better. It would be a long road, Dad had reminded us, but she was on her way.
Aiding in Ms. Foster’s trip to getting better was the fact that she and Mom had become good friends. The two of them struck it off from the start, sorta like Louie and Waylon and me. Mom was happy to spend time with Louie’s mother outside of work so that Ms. Foster wasn’t always alone. She said Ella’s jazz music was a nice break from Dad’s country.
What about Louie? His mom was still terrified of losing him like she had her husband, but Ms. Foster was trying hard to let go. To let Louie live. By that, I mean she was allowing him to spend time with Waylon and me. And the real big news, Louie would be attending school with us in the fall!
Needless to say, Louie and I had succeeded in our rites of passage, which explains why we found ourselves gathered around the Circle of Stones again. My brother was adamant our victories called for a fire ceremony or we risked upsetting the Forest Spirits. We had reason to celebrate.
Waylon used Uncle Rusty’s lighter and brought our fire to life. As the flames grew, I began wondering what my brother would propose for a final round of tattoos, but before we got to that point, something truly unexpected took us by surprise. We had a visitor.
“Dad?” Waylon said. “What’re you doing here?”
“The Forest Spirits have spoken to me. I need to join your fire ceremony this evening.”
The three of us glanced at each other and shrugged.
“Okay,” Waylon said, smirking. “Our fire ceremonies always begin with tattoos.” He lifted his pant leg to reveal his rabbit and then showed off the eagle on his shoulder as examples. “You must step over here to receive yours.”
