Читать книгу A Threefold Cord - Howard Goldenberg - Страница 12

Chapter Seven

Something puzzled Nystagmus. The question came to him while he lay in bed at night as he listened to Papou snore. He listened and he waited for his beloved grandfather to take another breath. Papou breathed and Nystagmus relaxed. The question was: When we went into that garden and saved the cat, why did that grownup suddenly run away?

That adult looked so frightened when Snoth just said the one word – Police. A good person would not be afraid of the police.

More questions: And is that person a man or a lady? What does he or she want to hide? What if it’s not a human person – what if it’s a witch or a wizard! Nystagmus shuddered. He knew such things were not real but in the dark night they could still make him really scared.

He thought about these things until his brain was tired. He was nearly asleep when one new scary question woke him like a splash of cold water: If that is a bad person, is there something I should do?

Papou was breathing just fine. Nystagmus didn’t need to stay awake. But now sleep would not come. He heard the clock ticking and tocking loudly. He heard cars in the street. The wind blew the branches of the trees outside his window and the dog next door barked a few times. And then all the world fell asleep. Everything slept but Nystagmus.

He remembered a child’s face, a small face, the face of a very young boy. It was the face of the boy who swung the striped cat. The boy’s face was not just cruel; he looked scared. Not just scared, terrified.

Nystagmus had not fallen asleep, he had fallen into dreaming, halfway between asleep and awake. And that child’s face seemed to be a sort of answer to Nystagmus’ questions. If we can find out what terrified the cruel boy we might discover what the scary grownup was hiding. And then we would know what we have to do.

Nystagmus felt he couldn’t wait until Sunday. He would go and find his friends in the morning.

In the morning Nystagmus knocked on the door of Jennifer’s house. Her dad came to the door and said, “Jennifer has gone with her mother to the bank.”

Jennifer was robbing the bank again. Nystagmus knew she went bank robbing every Saturday morning where her mum worked as a volunteer. The bank was unique: people donated to the bank and others took what they needed from it, like a blood bank. But this was a milk bank, a place where mothers who had too much breast milk donated for babies that needed it. Mrs Jennifer – that’s what Nystagmus called her – he couldn’t say her real name which was Nguyen – Mrs Jennifer helped other mums whose little babies were sick or weak to receive the precious fluid.

Jennifer knew from her mum that breast milk was precious, so precious you couldn’t buy it in any shop. It could save the life of a baby that was too little for milk from a cow. It had saved Jennifer’s baby sister when she was born too early.

Jennifer helped her mum. Her job was to wash empty bottles. But the bottles were never quite empty. Jennifer helped herself to the drops of milk at the bottom, sucking up each drop with a large syringe. She counted every drop. She needed forty-eight. She collected fifty to be sure she had enough. Then she hid her big syringe in her backpack.

Nystagmus went around to Snoth’s place and told him what he had been thinking. He said: “Jennifer’s out. Robbing that bank as usual. She’s a bank robber and no-one even knows there’s been a robbery.”

The boys laughed. Then Snoth had an idea: “There are some things we need. I’ve seen them in the Bargain Shop. I’ll just go to my money box. They will cost six dollars.”

They hurried to the shop and bought three small personal alarms. The alarms came with batteries included. “One each,” said Snoth, handing Nystagmus his.

Outside the shop, Snoth pressed the button. The noise was tremendous: an old lady with blue hair cried out, “Police! Fire! Ambulance!” A big black dog barked once and ran away, yelping; a baby in a pram cried; another lady with a round tummy and gold glasses dropped her shopping. Oranges and eggplants, all gold and black and shiny, rolled over the footpath. Shoppers everywhere hurried to the boys and asked if they were they okay.

Snoth quickly switched off the alarm while Nystagmus helped the lady collect her eggplants and oranges.

“That’s a pretty alarming alarm,” said Nystagmus.

(Why did Snoth buy those alarms? Do you think the three friends are in danger?)