“What’s your problem?”
“You and Carmen ran off and stuck us with Colin Needle… and Alma.”
“What’s wrong with Alma? She’s sweet.”
“She just follows me around like a puppy dog. She tried to hold my hand!” Tyler said it with such outrage that it was all Lucinda could do not to laugh out loud. “And Colin, all he does is complain about how stupid Steve’s games are, or how loud the music is.” Tyler threw his hands over his ears as someone turned the mariachi-style music up even louder. “He must be loving this…!”
It was a song Lucinda recognized-“La Bamba.”
Carmen ran up. “Leave your boring brother here with my boring brother. Let’s go jump on the trampoline!”
Surprised, Lucinda laughed and let herself be pulled out of the house and into the front yard.
“I’m going to send Colin out to join you!” Tyler warned.
“Yo no soy marinero!
Yo no soy marinero, soy capitan
Soy capitan,
Soy capitan!”
“Ba, ba, bamba…! Ba, ba, bamba…!” Lucinda sang as she and Carmen bounced up and down beneath the low, gray sky. Her new bracelet jingled merrily, and her feelings came together with the music and her own clumsy but energetic jumping and became something like joy: it was going to be a good Fourth of July after all.
Carmen stopped bouncing and swayed to a stop. “Whoa, who’s that?” She stared out across the empty front yard.
Lucinda looked up to see a distant figure stumbling past the cow barn. Whoever it was looked unwell, rolling like an old drunk. In fact, it looked a bit like Great-Uncle Gideon-an old mad invalid with his robe billowing.
It was, she realized a moment later. It really was Gideon.
Chapter 15
One moment Tyler and Steve Carrillo were loudly explaining to Colin Know-Nothing Needle how full of bull he was-that video games not only didn’t make you stupid, they improved your hand-eye coordination; they even used them to train for the United States Army!-then the next moment everybody was running around yelling “Call a doctor!” and “Somebody tell Hector!” Tyler heard his sister shouting the name “Gideon” and he and Colin both jumped up at the same time and ran toward the front yard.
Gideon Goldring, looking sick and exhausted and very thin, was crouched in the late-afternoon sun, surrounded by Lucinda and Carmen and Alma and a growing crowd of other Carrillo relatives. As Lucinda gave Gideon a drink from a bottle of water someone had brought from the kitchen, Mr. Walkwell and Ragnar suddenly appeared around the corner of the house at a run.
“Where did he come from?” Ragnar demanded.
“He just… he just showed up,” Lucinda said. “He came across the fields.”
Tyler heard something else above the babble of voices, a thin, high-pitched cry in the distance. Colin Needle, who had been staring down at Gideon with his mouth hanging open, looked up and then shook his head like someone waking up too fast. “Hang on-that’s my mother …!”
And indeed another shape was bumping across the fields toward the Carrillos’ house, half-walking, half-trotting-Patience Needle in her old-fashioned clothes, waving her arms and shouting, “Don’t touch him!” Tyler realized he had never heard the witch raise her voice before. “Don’t!” she cried as she hurried toward them. “You must leave him alone!”
Gideon was so pale that his skin was almost green, his forehead damp with sweat. “Won’t, ” he suddenly said, pulling away from the bottle so that water splashed onto his chest. He tried to grab at Lucinda’s arm but his eyes, though wide, didn’t seem to see anything, and his hands were twitching too much for him to control them. “Won’t … go… back… ”
“Back where, Gideon?” Ragnar asked. “Where have you been?”
But the old man was lost in some world of his own, head rolling from side to side as he struggled to get up. “You can’t…!” he said, smacking at the hands of those who were trying to restrain him. “Let go of me, you damn… monster!”
“We have to take him to a hospital,” said Hector Carrillo.
“No!” Mrs. Needle all but screamed. She staggered up and kneeled beside Gideon, holding his head with one hand while feeling his wrist and forehead. “No hospital! He will be fine. I know how to help him. We need only get him back to the farm. I have medicines there… special things… ”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you drag this man away-this sick man -before he’s even been examined by a doctor.” Mr. Carrillo stood up. “Ragnar, Simos, put him into my truck.”
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance, Dad?” his daughter Carmen asked.
“I can get him to the clinic at Liberty in twenty, twenty-five minutes,” Hector Carrillo told her. “It’ll take at least that long to get an ambulance out here.”
Mrs. Needle gave him a glare that could have stripped paint, but Mr. Carrillo just stared back at her with calm authority; Tyler couldn’t help being impressed. “Then I will go, too,” she said at last. “I found him wandering at the farm and chased him all the way here. I will not leave him so easily.”
“Don’t let her!”
Tyler looked at Lucinda in surprise. “Luce…?”
But his sister was already pulling on Mr. Carrillo’s arm. “Don’t let her. I’ll bet she’s the one who did this to him! Gave him some kind of… of potion or something. And she’s probably the one keeping Gideon from answering your calls, too. She probably doesn’t even tell him-that’s what she did to us last year.”
“How dare you!” Mrs. Needle rose to her feet and stood over Lucinda, her face white and her expression so furious that even Mr. Carrillo took a step back. “How dare you talk like that in front of strangers, Lucinda Jenkins? What a terrible thing to say!”
“They’re not strangers to us! They’re our friends!” His sister looked terrified but determined. Tyler felt real pride in her.
“You tell ‘em, Sis,” he said.
Patience Needle let her gaze linger on Lucinda a moment longer, then turned to Mr. and Mrs. Carrillo, the anger now wiped from her face. “Everyone has been worried for Gideon. He’s been missing for days. You can see how upset we all are. I’ve been his doctor for years, more or less. Please don’t let the words of a frightened, confused child keep me away from him.”
“But how did Gideon get past the fences?” Mr. Walkwell demanded.
Mrs. Needle drew herself up straight. “I turned them off when I saw him stumbling along in the distance like a madman, of course. Did you think I would let our employer be fatally electrified?”
Mr. Walkwell snorted, but he turned and began trotting back toward Ordinary Farm. “Then I must make the fences work again before… before any more trouble happens.” Lucinda guessed he would shed his boots as soon as he was out of sight. He could run like the wind on his naked hooves.
Mr. Carrillo’s gaze, for a long moment, had been resting on Lucinda: now he turned to the housekeeper with a hard smile. “Yes, I suppose you can come with us to the hospital, Mrs. Needle. But we’ll need to take more than one car. Might as well take all the kids, too-they can see the fireworks in Liberty.” He turned to his wife. “Silvia, where’s your brother…? Ah.” He waved to a man with a beard whose tattoos Tyler had admired earlier. “Jaime, you have your van, right? You bring the kids and follow me.”
Ragnar and Mr. Walkwell had been talking quietly. “I will come too, Hector,” the Norseman said. “And Simos will go home and make certain things are well there, because he does not like driving in cars so much.”
“Where could he have been?” Tyler shouted to Lucinda over the noise of Jaime’s stereo, which was blaring Mexican heavy metal music, something Tyler hadn’t even known existed. “We looked everywhere! Do you think Gideon was in… you know… the Fault Line?” If he could hardly hear himself, he realized, there probably wasn’t too much danger Jaime was listening to their conversation from the front seat. “I wonder what Mrs. Needle knows about it. I’ll bet she and Colin had him knocked out somewhere. Drugged or something.”