Crash himself stamps his foot and smacks his palms against his thighs, wild with delight. To Kemper he shouts, “Told you, little man, this here’s the circus, and I’m the lion!”
Pressed against the window, those seven council members see it all. One of them lets out a low whistle. His face is the color of ash.
“Lawrence,” he says to Travers. “My little Nancy’s wedding is next weekend. I want to be able to walk her down the aisle. Emphasis on ‘walk.’ I’m switching my vote.”
Kemper rushes over. “Damn it, Henry!” he tells the man. “There’s no more than a hundred voters out there. I’ll deliver three times that in one corner of your district this November!” He thumps the windowsill with the flat of his hand.
But the councilman shakes his head. “November is five months away, Mr. Kemper. We won’t last five minutes with that crowd if we vote to flood these people out.”
Councilman Travers nods his head quickly. “I motion to table the proposition! Is there a second?”
It’s hard to tell just how many of them second the motion: they all shout it together.
“All in favor?” Travers asks quickly.
All of us in the gallery join in: “Aye!”
Crash gives a wild whoop of his own then and runs over to the table. He lifts that tiny wooden hammer and smashes it down so hard the head comes off. Then he dashes down the center aisle and flings those doors open wide.
Everybody’s moving now—Kemper, the council members, the chemical company people. In all the hustle, there’s only two people who aren’t watching the show outside: Ma and Dad.
Travers walks slowly over to them. “You’ve won, Gene,” he tells Dad. “Care to call off your huns?”
Dad looks away from him. He puts a cigar in his teeth and lights a match.
In the gallery, we’re celebrating. Will kisses Anna May. Pete gives an ear-splitting whistle. Mr. Halleck lifts his flask. We make it down from the gallery just in time to meet Ma and Dad at the bottom of the stairs.
“We did it!” I shout, tears of joy running down both cheeks now. Our family’s stopped Kemper. We saved our home.
Mr. Halleck shakes Dad’s hand. He looks at Ma and lifts his cane to the windows. Outside, the riders are still swirling about the building.
“Just listen to all those good and honest people.” The old man laughs.
Chapter 21
THE FOURTH OF JULY
Apple Creek glitters like a jewel thirty feet below me, tossing back pieces of the evening sky. Frankie, Pete, and Will tread water in the deep hole, looking up, watching, waiting.
From the top of the railroad piling I take a moment and freeze them in my mind. I’ll remember this forever.
I jump.
The creek’s perfume storms through my nostrils as I fall, the ageless scent of silt and sand rushing into my lungs. I open my mouth and let it fill me completely as I stretch my arms out wide as I can reach and just fall.
Toweling off in our room back at Stairways. Our home of stone that has stood for two hundred years and which is still standing, safe and sound thanks to us. There’s bits of shiny mica on the tops of my feet and between my toes from that brown-sugar creek sand that never really comes off.
Frankie is finishing up on the telephone downstairs, talking with Aunt Effie and Uncle Leone. When he comes into our room, he’s wearing a smile a mile wide and tells me Uncle Leone is home from the hospital now. Walking stiff, but walking.
“Doctors wanted him to use a cane, but he refused. That’s my old man,” Frankie says, smiling.
He goes over to his mattress and the pile of typewritten pages on the floor next to it. He wrote up the rest of that story as soon as we got back from the council meeting. Dropping onto his mattress, he scoops them up.
“You know something, Jack,” Frankie says, thumbing through them. “Once we publish this, your whole family will be famous.”
“Think so?”
“I sure do.” Frankie thumbs the pages. “This story’s got everything: heroes, villains, a great challenge, and, most importantly, a happy ending.”
A happy ending. I think on that. Ma and Dad sure were clever to convince Crash and his riders to show up for us. And their plan certainly saved Stairways and a good many other homes in our valley. But would my plan be enough to save Pete?
“You really think it’ll be enough to make Pete famous?” I ask Frankie.
Frankie nods. “I really do.”
He hands me the pages. I read a few lines and I realize: I’m holding a treasure. In these pages, in these splotchy, typewritten words, is a chance at saving my brother.