The Project (3 page)

“Don’t forget to text your folks and tell them where you are,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, in a sec,” Luke said.

A long wooden tray system stretched from the pile of sand over toward one of the University of Iowa buildings. Spaced out along it at regular intervals were big funnels made out of orange witches’ hat–type traffic cones, upside down, with the tops cut off.

The volunteers were working in pairs—one shoveling sand into the base of an upside-down cone, and the other holding a sandbag underneath. When the sandbag was full, they cinched it closed with a plastic tie. Then the two of them carried it over to a pallet. Every now and then, a front-end loader would arrive and pick up a pallet, then carry it down to the river, where a long line of sandbags lay side by side, starting the wall.

“Here, take this,” Tommy said, handing Luke what looked
like an MP3 player but, knowing Tommy, probably wasn’t. Tommy was wearing a matching one, slung around his neck on a lanyard.

Tommy Wundheiler was going to be a spy someday. He said he was going to work for the CIA, or the NSA, or the DIA, or possibly even the MIC. Luke hadn’t even heard of half of those organizations.

Two years ago, when Tommy was thirteen, he had even applied to the CIA to see if they had any positions for spy kids, but they had written back and said they had no openings at the moment. Luke suspected they were just being polite.

Tommy was always buying spy gadgets online.

Luke thought some of the stuff was quite funny, like the Green Gas. You put one drop in someone’s food and it made them fart uncontrollably. Or the Sky Spy, which was a kite with a built-in video camera that you flew over your enemies to see what they were up to. Then there was the Brief Safe, designed to hide money or important documents. It looked just like a pair of men’s undies and came complete with skid marks so nobody would want to touch it.

It took Tommy a couple of months to save up his allowance for each spy gadget, so there were a lot of things he wanted but hadn’t bought yet. It had taken him a whole year to save up for a pair of night-vision goggles that let you see in the dark.

Luke had suggested that when he got his job with the CIA (or the NSA, DIA, MIC, etc.), they would give him the gadgets and he wouldn’t have to pay for them. But
Tommy said he didn’t want to wait that long.

Now Luke examined the MP3 player closely, trying to work out what secret it was keeping. He couldn’t see anything unusual.

“What is it?” Luke asked. “Looks like an MP3 player.”

“Looks like, but it isn’t,” Tommy said mysteriously.

Luke tried to act surprised.

Tommy said, “It’s a two-way radio, disguised as an MP3 player. The microphone is hidden here”—it was cleverly concealed about halfway down the earphone cable, where the cable split into two—“and you listen through the earphones. You can have a conversation with someone and people think you are just listening to music.”

“Wouldn’t they wonder why you were talking to your MP3 player?”

“Just pretend like you’re singing along,” Tommy said.

“Nobody would believe that,” Luke said.

“Why not?”

“Have you ever heard me sing?”

Tommy laughed. Luke slung the gadget around his neck and put on his gloves.

Tommy always had the coolest toys.

“I’ll shovel, if you like,” Luke said. That looked like the harder of the two jobs.

“I can handle it,” Tommy said.

Luke shrugged, then grabbed a sack and held it underneath the cone.

Tommy dug the shovel into the sand and emptied it into the cone.

Luke quickly learned to keep the mouth of the sack tight around the cone; otherwise the sand came out in clouds and got into his mouth and nose and hair.

When the bag was full, they each grabbed an end and hauled it over to the pallet.

“That’s one,” Luke said.

“That’s awesome, dude,” Tommy said, and they stood and looked at it for a moment.

“How many do you think we need?” Tommy asked, glancing down at the line of bags by the river.

“That depends on how high they want to build the wall,” Luke said. “And how deep. If the base is four sandbags wide and they—”

Tommy held up a hand, stopping him. “One down,” he said.

“No worries, bro,” Luke said. “Let’s finish off the rest and go home.”

Down by the river, another group was working in pairs, unloading the sandbags from the pallets and stacking them on the beginnings of the river wall, under the direction of some guys with clipboards and pens, who Luke assumed were engineers from the county.

Even Ms. Sheck turned up after a while, in a tank top and pair of cutoff jeans. She must have gone home to get changed. Her hair had finally escaped from the constraints of school policy and was jutting out at odd angles in all directions. Her wrists were covered with multicolored bangles, and she had a silver stud in the side of her nose and a tattoo of a roaring lion on her upper arm. She would have looked
more in place at a rock concert than in a classroom. Luke caught himself staring and quickly turned back to his work.

“Luke, one, two, this is Tommy, three, four. How copy? Over.” Tommy’s voice sounded in the earpieces of the secret MP3 walkie-talkie.

“I’m standing right here,” Luke said.

Tommy stopped digging. He pointed at the walkie-talkie and cupped his ear as if he couldn’t hear.

Luke sighed and pressed the hidden
TALK
button. “Loud and clear, bro.”

“Copy that, Luke, one, two,” Tommy said, and nodded at Ms. Sheck. “Can you believe she’s got a tat? Over.”

“She sure looks different without her teacher clothes on,” Luke said, waving at her. She smiled, her hands full of sandbag, sharing the load with a guy with his shirt off.

“Oh, and you’ve seen her without her clothes on?” Tommy said. “Awesome!”

“You wish,” Luke said.

“This is her first year teaching,” Tommy said. “I wonder what she did before.”

“Probably a hired assassin,” Luke said.

“Or a spy for the CIA,” Tommy said.

“Or a stripper,” Luke suggested.

Tommy grinned and dug the shovel back into the sand.

The afternoon wore on. The trucks full of sand kept coming. The piles of sacks did not seem to diminish.

Luke held the sack tightly around the cone and looked across at Tommy. His long flop of black hair was plastered against the side of his head. His T-shirt was soaked in an
oval patch across his chest. He was shaking the sand off the shovel into the cone. He seemed to be struggling a bit, and the shovelfuls were starting to come slower.

“My turn,” Luke said.

“Nah, I’m good,” Tommy said, although clearly he wasn’t.

“You’re just showing off your muscles for Ms. Sheck,” Luke said.

Tommy laughed. “I’d better let you have a turn, then. Give you a chance to impress her.”

He handed Luke the shovel and swapped onto the sand-pile side of the wooden tray.

It was a simple enough motion: dig the shovel into the sand, twist around to the tray, turn the shovel to empty the sand into the upside-down cone, and turn back to the sand-pile.

It took Luke a couple of minutes to settle into a routine, but once he got his rhythm, he found it easy going and, little by little, kept increasing his speed. It was much easier than digging drainage ditches on the farm back home.

Shovel, twist, turn. Shovel, twist, turn.

After a while, a new volunteer, a younger kid Luke didn’t know, came to help Tommy move the bags, which left Luke free just to shovel.

They ran out of sandbags after about an hour, and Luke paused for breath. Someone from the city was handing out water bottles, and he took one gratefully. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and noticed a few people staring at him.

He glanced quickly at Tommy, wondering if he had done something wrong, but it turned out to be the opposite.

“You’re pretty strong for a little guy,” the kid next to him said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it. There were murmurs of agreement from the crowd.

Luke shrugged it off. He’d dug a lot of ditches on the farm. This was nothing.

“You guys have done almost as many bags as the rest of us put together,” the water guy said.

Luke said nothing, embarrassed.

“Show-off,” Tommy said, and Luke flicked half a shovelful of sand at him. Tommy laughed and shook it out of his hair. He dug a handful of sand out of his sack and threw it at Luke. For a moment there was a flurry of sand flying back and forth, creating a mini sandstorm over the tray. Then Tommy, his eyes screwed shut against the sand, stumbled and lurched forward.

He put out a foot to regain his balance and crashed into the edge of the wooden tray. It twisted and tipped, then collapsed on itself with a loud crack, spilling sand and witches’ hats across the ground.

“Oops,” said Tommy.

The old rapper came trotting over. “Who did this?” he demanded.

Tommy raised a hand. “My bad.”

“No, it was my fault,” Luke said.

Tommy picked up an end of the tray, which was now just a loose heap of timber, and said, “We’ll have to fill the sandbags without the cones, I guess.”

“That’ll be too slow,” the old rapper said.

“Give me a sec,” Luke said. He grabbed some discarded
wire that had bound the bundles of sacks together. The old man shook his head and wandered off.

“Can you lift up the end?” he asked Tommy. “Hold it together?”

Tommy lifted one end, and Luke grabbed one side and wound a length of wire around it, then crossed over to the other side and twisted the wire tightly around that. He repeated it with another length of wire; then one of the other volunteers found him a heavy screwdriver, which he put between the two wires and twisted around and around. The wires became taut, bit into the wood, and gradually pulled the two sides back into shape around the upside-down cones.

He lashed each side with another length of wire, and did the same for the cracked section in the middle.

He tested it with a good shake. It was more wobbly than before, but it was usable.

The old rapper came back when Luke had finished, and glanced at his work. He said nothing and left.

“That’s awesome, dude,” Tommy said.

“Us Kiwis can fix the world with a bit of two-by-four and some number eight wire.” Luke laughed.

“True dat.” Tommy laughed with him, then got back to work.

Later, Luke heard Ms. Sheck singing down by the river. She had a surprisingly good voice. Other people joined in all along the riverbank.

He laughed out loud for no real reason. The ducks were still paddling in circles on the river, the sun was peering
through the trees on the far bank, and he was having a really good time. From over by the library building came the smell of cooking. Luke could see smoke where people were setting up barbecues to feed the volunteers.

The river wall was now three or four sandbags high, and the idea that the river could ever rise enough to breach it seemed simply absurd.

L
uke got home after eight. His mother and father were playing Rummikub in the living room, and his dinner was in the microwave.

He was tired but exhilarated. He had helped save the town. A dusting of fine sand drifted from his clothes as he took off his shoes in the entranceway. He saw his mother notice, so he quickly got the brush and dustpan from the hall cupboard and swept up the mess.

For someone who had lived on a farm most of her life, she was extraordinarily tidy. The floors were vacuumed twice a day, the windows were washed weekly, and heaven help any male in the household who forgot to put the toilet seat (and lid) down after using it.

Never flush with the lid open
, she’d say.
You might as well spray crap all around the room
. (His mother’s fussiness when it came to housework did not extend to language.)

“Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad.”

“You’re filthy!” his mother said. “Where have you been?”

“Down at the river, helping out with the sandbagging,” Luke said.

“Couldn’t you have texted us,” his father said, “to let us know where you were?”

Luke winced. “Oh, yeah, I was gonna. I just forgot.”

“You forgot.” His mother shook her head.

“You can remember the score of every All Blacks rugby game ever played,” his father said, “but you can’t remember to text us when you’re going to be home late.”

“Sorry,” Luke said.

It was true. He could remember almost everything—phone numbers, sports scores, the license plates of every car they’d ever had. If you gave him a handful of dollar bills and let him flick through them, he could write down each of the serial numbers and get it right. And yet half the time he couldn’t remember what day of the week it was.

“You’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on,” his mother said.

“I’ll run upstairs and shower,” Luke said.

“Just before you do that …,” his father said.

“Yeah?”

“Your school rang this afternoon. The vice principal.”

“Mr. Kerr. Oh …” Luke looked at his socks.

“Yes, ‘oh,’ ” his father said.

“Sorry about that,” Luke muttered.

“It’s like your last school all over again,” his father said.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Luke, you can’t afford to get expelled. The university
pays your fees at this school, and we can’t afford to pay your fees elsewhere.”

Luke’s mother’s eyes switched from Luke to his father when the conversation turned to money.

“It really wasn’t that big a—”

His father cut him off. “And what if they involve the police? If you get arrested, you could get deported to New Zealand, and that would mean we’d all have to go.”

Luke shut his mouth abruptly. It had never occurred to him that a stupid joke could result in their getting booted out of the country. That would be disastrous.

His family had been flat broke for a couple of years, since they were forced to sell the farm back in New Zealand. Even here in Iowa they were living in a dingy, creepy old house while his father tried to pay off his debts. They couldn’t even afford a TV.

“Sorry,” he said.