The thought makes me feel sick, like I’ve eaten something rotten. But I can’t think about it now. I promised Mom I’d meet her in the Learning Garden to help with the tourists and I’m superlate. I’m running as fast as I can when the blue dragonfly suddenly appears, flying by my ear and spinning circles around my head.
I slow down just a little, panting. “Can’t talk now. I’m in a rush.”
But the dragonfly goes nuts, zipping this way and that in the air in front of me. I stop running, placing the palms of my hands on my thighs, breathing fast.
“What is it?”
The clouds are thicker now, changing from gray to black. I can feel the moisture in the air. The dragonfly soars up in a straight line, against the black sky. Then he doubles back, flying perpendicular to the first line.
“T?” I ask.
He pauses to agree with me, bobbing up and down. Then he continues to spell.
“R . . .” I say, still breathing hard, as the first raindrop splatters against my arm. “Y.”
The dragonfly pivots around and dives in front of my face, nodding maniacally.
“Try?”
The dragonfly nods again.
I glance over to the Learning Garden. The Umbrella ride is way up in the air, canopy fully extended. Even from here, I know it’s packed. I can make out the tourists, crammed together along the platform railing, and I can see legs dangling from the Umbrella swings. I can even hear the squeals of glee as the rain falls harder, sprinkling my head, my shirt, the ground.
“Try what?” I ask the dragonfly.
He flies away from me then, toward the Learning Garden.
“Hey!” I call out.The dragonfly doesn’t turn around. “Hey! Blue Dragonfly!”
The dragonfly slides to a stop.
“You want me to follow you?”
He nods and starts to zoom away again. I jog after him.
“Listen,” I say, panting. “Do you have a name? I can’t keep calling you ‘Blue Dragonfly’!”
The dragonfly zips in front of me really fast, and then dives back. He starts to spell.
S . . . P . . . A . . . R . . . K.
As I read it, I start to smile. “Spark? That’s perfect.”
A cheer goes up from the crowd on the Umbrella as a full rain shower pours from the gray, clouded sky. I should be used to it by now, but I’m still always surprised that people deliberately come here to stay out in the rain. Any other place, they’d be running indoors as fast as they can.
The row of sugar maples encircling the Learning Garden comes into view. I pick up the pace so that I can huddle under the always-flowering magnolia tree while it downpours. The dragonfly—er, Spark—flies in front of me, darting through the first line of trees. I’m right behind him, getting soaked.
Just as I duck under a branch, a terrible noise spreads through the air. It’s a creak and a scream and a crack, all at once.
Spark skids to a stop. I hear a snapping sound, this noise even louder than the first.
We both turn to the Umbrella at the same time.
People are screaming.
Screaming.
I don’t understand at first. But I look closer and see the people on the individual swings spinning around, out of control—I hear the
clickclickclick
of the rising Umbrella shaft, relentless, unstopping.
I’m close enough that I can see Chico waving his hands like a banshee behind the controls.
I look up to the Umbrella again, just as the platform seems to slip just a little and the screams become even more awful.
The Umbrella.
It’s stuck.
SAME DAY, MONDAY, AUGUST 25
The Umbrella
I jump out from under the tree and rush to Chico. Above me the Umbrella sways. The tourists’ screams sound like the roar of a tidal wave.
“What’s happening?” I ask Chico.
“No sé, no sé!”
He throws me his phone and tells me to call 911. I try to keep my voice calm.
“There’s an emergency. Rupert’s Farm. Off the pike. Take the entrance from the front.”
“What type of emergency, ma’am?”
“The Umbrella’s broken,” I tell her.
She gasps. “The Umbrella?” Then she goes back to her original, professional voice. “The Umbrella, really?”
“Yes,” I say. “The Umbrella.”
“Oh my,” she says. She recovers more quickly this time. “We’ll be right there.” She pauses. “In a second. Oh my.”
I snap the phone shut and look back at Chico. He’s putting all of his weight against a lever, but it’s not moving.
The Umbrella pitches to the left.The swings are dangling above me now—people’s legs and feet flapping like bats against the rainy sky. “Do you think they’ll jump?” I stare up at the platform.
“They can’t jump!” Dad runs up behind us, his face red with worry. “They’re twenty stories high.”
“But what if—”
Dad yanks out a wrench from the pocket of his pants and places it around the big rusted bolts attaching the iron plate to the Umbrella’s motor. He turns the nut in one big swinging movement, then swings it again and again until the first bolt falls off.
“Dios mío!”
Chico exclaims a minute later. Inside the motor case, wrapped around the cogs and gears of the engine, are the white, stringy thick roots of the nearby chocolate rhubarb plants. The gears stop and start as they try to spit out the roots.
But the roots are winning.
I think back to one of the last conversations I had with Grandmom.
You’re gonna figure this out yourself in your own good time, Polly, but I can give you a head start. Just a little nudge. If it’s from the earth, it’s the winner, and it’s a gracious one, so don’t try to fight it. The ocean, the water, the earth—they’re on our side. Remember that.
Chico grabs an axe and hacks at the roots.
“NO!” I yell.
But Chico hacks and hacks and hacks, his clothes plastered to his body from the rain. He seems to have cut away all the roots that were attached to the motor pieces, but when he turns around, he’s clearly frustrated.
“Can’t get it,” he mutters, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He looks to Dad, who bends down and examines the motor. Then Chico extends his arm into the motor casing to try to pull out the root strings still caught inside, but his hand is too big for the inner plate. It won’t fit.
Dad tries next, but his hand is even bigger than Chico’s.
I think I hear a small child scream from high above me. Everything inside of me—my breath, my heart—has stopped; someone has to fix this. Now.
Dad slams his hand against the metal guard over the motor. My eyes widen. Then Beatrice runs out, grabbing Dad’s wrist.
“Basford! He’s up there!” She looks wild, as if she’s transformed into some kind of crazy animal. “Get him down! GET HIM DOWN!”
I hear Beatrice say Basford’s name, but it’s as if it runs through my ear canal slowly, tangled, and it takes me seconds to understand that Basford, my new friend, is up on the ride. When I look up, the platform sways and another thundering creak slashes through the air.
“It’s the roots,” Dad tells Beatrice. “I can’t pull it out.”
Beatrice leans down, helpless. She looks over at Chico, her face broken. “Help,” she begs.
And then it just comes out of my mouth, like a breath. “I think I can try.” An image of Spark spelling the word against the sky flashes through my mind.
Dad snaps, “No. Absolutely not.”
Chico looks quickly over at Dad, but Beatrice just stares at me. She doesn’t say not to go. I push through them, wiping the raindrops from my face, and look inside the casing. There is one big string of root that is clogging the gear.
“Polly, don’t you dare—” Dad shouts, but it is too late. I stick my right hand inside the gearshift.
“Dios mío,”
Chico mutters. “Policita—”
I stare straight ahead, not blinking, ignoring Chico and Dad. Instead, I move my hand closer to the motor and try to think clearly. I need to pull out that one string, that one piece of root, and the motor should churn easily again. Right now the motor seems to be coughing, working one second and then stopping the next.
“POLLY!” Mom shouts from behind me. I don’t turn around. “Get your hand out of there right this second!”
I can feel the heat of the motor close to my hand. My heart is beating so fast, it feels like a jackhammer.
“Stop that motor right now!” Mom screams.
“He can’t,” Dad says anxiously. “If we shut it off, we may not be able to get it down.”
A shoe falls off someone’s foot, landing near us.
Chico kneels down next to me. More screams, more cries from up above.
“Tú puedes,”
he whispers. “Polly,
tú puedes
.”
You can do this.
Slowly I open my eyes and look at the single root, white and thick like a braid of hair. My right hand wavers—I’m trembling—and I see how close the cutting rotor of the motor is to the root. I don’t feel the rain at all.
My shoulders tense, and my hand trembles harder. I want to make a fist, but I can’t unless I want my hand chopped in half.
This is a mistake. This is a very big mistake.
“Polly.” Aunt Edith is here now too. “Remember Emerson.
Trust thyself.”
She speaks slowly, calmly. “You don’t have to do this. But it would be a good thing if you can.” I can feel her put her hand gently on my shoulder. “Try.”
Try.
I turn back to the motor, ignoring the screams from the ride and the sound of sirens drawing closer. I forget about everyone and concentrate.
Try.
I reach in and touch the end of the root, which is still about six inches away from the motor. I tug, gently, and then, gripping the root more strongly, I pull harder. I do my best to ignore the running motor, but it’s like looking at the bottom of a vacuum cleaner that keeps rolling and rolling, just waiting for its chance to suck up a finger. I grasp the root then, as hard as I can, and
yank!
It comes out. I snatch out my hand and fall backward, about one inch away from amputation.
I’m still holding the wayward root when I hear the people on the platform cheer. About one hundred sets of eyes are looking down at me in a circle, including those of some firemen. Beatrice and Patricia and Freddy have all run up to the controls.
Mom jumps in and pulls me up by my armpits. “My baby, my baby,” she whispers, and I can feel her body shake underneath her thin shirt. She hugs me so hard that my head is pressed deeply into her shoulder. When she releases me, I realize the rain has stopped. The Umbrella is still high up in the air.
“It needs to go through its cycle again before it can close,” says Dad. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Oh, pumpkin.” He leans down and hugs me too.
“I’m okay, Dad,” I lie, still trembling.
Beatrice stands about three feet away from me. Tears stream down her dark cheeks. “Come here, little girl. Come here.” I move to her, allowing her strong arms to circle me. She used to call me “little girl” all the time. “Thank you, Polly. Thank you.” I can feel Beatrice shake as she hugs me; her words are whispered and her breath feels warm.
“What happened?”
Beatrice releases me a little, looking me straight in the eye. “Foolishness,” she says as she deliberately steps on the leaf of a plant. “Foolishness!” she repeats angrily. “Irresponsible. People could die!” She kicks a plant. “My Basford could have died!”
It’s like the whole world blurs as I realize what she’s saying.
The plants.
They were clogging up the ride. On purpose.
“Seriously,” Patricia interrupts my thoughts. “I would have never thought you had that in you.”
Freddy puts his arm around my shoulder. “My little sister. Braveheart.”
Aunt Edith and Mom and Dad and Freddy and Beatrice and Chico and Patricia and everyone are looking at me like I’ve sprouted wings and am going to fly. I cross my arms and look toward the Umbrella, which has finally come back to the ground. People are jumping off, wet mothers hugging their wet children, young boys shaking their hands in a wild kind of drying dance, teenagers wrapping their arms around their wet shirts, firemen walking around, smelling the flowers. It’s like the whole farm has breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Actually, the farm isn’t relieved. The people are relieved. The farm—
my
farm—
wanted this
to happen.
“BASFORD!” Beatrice yells. He’s walking over to us, taking small steps, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Beatrice darts over to him as fast as her little legs can carry her, almost knocking him over. “I’m so glad, I’m so glad,” she says as she smothers him with another one of her hugs.