There were pictures of SJ’s mom in the book too, and of Noble and his wife together—boating, fishing, waving from the Grand Canyon. As SJ lingered over the pictures, I pulled out a folder that had been tucked into the back of the book.
“SJ, look!” The folder was filled with laminated copies of The Sundance Scuttlebutt. The Gus Neary pirate edition was there, and the Selma Witzel alien abduction issue too. There was even one about ghosts of outlaws haunting the T-shirt shop. I shivered, glad I’d never gone into that shop before it closed.
“That was my first paper!” SJ nodded to the story about the ghosts. “Dad wouldn’t take me out or let me have a party for my birthday. He wouldn’t even let me go outside. So I spent all day getting The Sundance Scuttlebutt up and running.”
Something nagged at my brain as I listened to SJ talk about her birthday. Something familiar. But I was too busy shuffling through Mr. Cabot’s collection of SJ’s papers to concentrate. Mr. Cabot may have thrown away the news SJ printed to sell, but he’d saved at least one copy of every edition for himself.
Every edition but one.
I sighed with relief when I realized that the Super-Duper Humdinger savvy-family edition of The Sundance Scuttlebutt wasn’t in the folder. SJ had promised not to show that issue to anyone, and it looked like she’d kept her promise.
“I think you were wrong, SJ,” I said, flipping through the laminated papers. “I think your dad has been paying attention.” Sarah Jane didn’t answer. She’d turned the scrapbook to the beginning, and was looking at photographs from her parents’ wedding. I watched her slowly turn the pages.
“Wait!” I stopped her. Swiveling the scrapbook toward me, I flipped back and forth through the same three pages. The same three pictures.
Normally, I wouldn’t have given a thundering toot about the wedding photos. But something about these caught my attention and held it. I stared at them without blinking until it hit me:
“This is the glade at my uncle’s ranch . . .” I said slowly. “The one my cousin Fish got married in.”
“No way! Why would my mom and dad get married there?” SJ tried to grab the book back, but I wouldn’t let her.
“See the juniper stumps?” I pointed. “They’re the exact same ones!” I nodded at the first picture. There, in full color, Noble and Summer stood together between two twisting juniper stumps, exactly like Fish and Mellie had only weeks ago. These had to be the same stumps—I’d stared at them for too long when I was frozen by Mom’s savvy not to recognize them now.
“It can’t be the same glade,” SJ answered, yanking the scrapbook away from me and pointing at the picture herself. “There aren’t any trees behind these stumps.”
I squinted. She was right. In this photograph, there were no towering, interlacing birch trees behind the couple, just an open grassy meadow. I turned the page and jabbed the next picture with a grin.
“Look again!”
The second picture showed the same stumps and the same gooey-eyed couple holding hands. But now the two birches were there as well—small and leafy—each no taller than the bride. Next to me, Sarah Jane shook her head, mystified.
I turned to the next page and pointed again. Sarah Jane’s mom and dad were kissing—husband and wife. Only, the birch trees behind them were suddenly high and lofty, branches intertwined just as they were now.
Sarah Jane blinked at the photos in the scrapbook. I sat back, leaning against the safe, thinking suddenly of another tall birch tree I’d met recently, and of the engraved marble bench beneath it.
On the far wall, the cuckoo clocks all struck the hour, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. How long had we been in Mr. Cabot’s office? I wondered. We couldn’t afford to sit around all day looking at these pictures. Mr. Cabot might come back at any moment!
A final cuckoo echoed the hour through the room. With time on the brain, I remembered time-hopping Aunt Jules’s words as Fish’s blustering savvy storm made the birch trees in the glade crack and bend at his wedding.
Trees this size don’t grow back overnight, you know. At least, not since we lost the last Beacham with any talent.
The last Beacham with any talent . . .
Sarah Jane continued to stare at the bewildering photos. Despite her fondness for far-out stories, SJ hadn’t grown up knowing about savvy talents—having cousins disappear, read her mind, or trigger storms or lightning. I couldn’t blame her for not putting two and two together quickly. When it came to savvy families, she’d never learned the math.
But I had. And things were adding up fast.
Dollars to donuts, Summer Beacham Cabot had been the one to make the birch trees grow in seconds in the glade. I was willing to bet she’d also grown the one next to the house in Sundance. And if Sarah Jane’s mom had had a savvy, that might mean that Sarah Jane had one too . . .
A chilling thrill ran through me at the prospect, until a new thought struck. One even scarier than the idea of a Sarah Jane with larger-than-life powers. What if SJ were my cousin, or some other relative I didn’t know about?
I stood up fast, riddled with heebie-jeebies. I’d locked lips with her! And I’d considered doing it again!
“ You okay, Ledge?” SJ asked, standing up as well.
I didn’t answer. I could only stare. I stared at Sarah Jane so long I felt like I was trying to see right through her, trying to see if I could spot any trace of a savvy, or any family resemblance: Grandma Dollop’s nose, Aunt Jenny’s eyes, Fish’s cockeyed grin. When SJ waved a hand in my face to break my gawping gaze, I ducked under her arm and dodged right, sure I’d catch kissing-cousins cooties if we got too close again.
“Uh . . . you’re thirteen, right?” I asked, continuing to back up.
“For, like, six months now,” she answered, regarding me cautiously as she clutched her father’s scrapbook in one hand and Uncle Autry’s deed in the other. I could see the gears in her brain moving, though they still hadn’t clicked into the same rhythm as my own. When I’d spilled family secrets outside her house, I hadn’t told SJ about thirteenth birthdays. I’d left that part out.
“So did anything . . . you know, extra-weird happen on your birthday?”
SJ narrowed her eyes.
“No, just what I told you. Daddy wouldn’t even let me go outside. That’s the day I starting writing my paper. What are you trying to get at, Ledge?”
Her writing! Sarah Jane’s persuasive stories had been staring me in the face for the last three and a half weeks. I opened my mouth to speak, to share my savvy-SJ suspicions. But I never got the chance.
“What in blazes do you kids think you’re doing?” Sheriff Brown stood in the doorway, thumbs hooked over his gun belt, pointed badge shining.
Jonas Brown stared at us. Then he glowered at the cracked-open safe. The man looked like he wished he’d called in sick that morning, or chosen not to respond to whatever silent alarm or tingling sheriff-sense had brought him to the CAD Co. building.
Unhooking his thumbs from his belt, he took off his hat and scrubbed his forearm across his face. I quickly tucked Grandma’s jar into one of the gusseted pockets of my cargo shorts. Sarah Jane shoved the scrapbook into the safe. Then she jammed the deed she’d found down the back of my shorts, making my eyes bug out and my face burn red.
When the sheriff dropped his arm and looked at us again, the end of the world, my world, was written across his face as clearly and believably as if it were a headline in one of Sarah Jane’s papers.
I only prayed they offered art classes in prison.
Chapter 31
IF SARAH JANE COULD’VE MADE A written statement, it would’ve been easy for her to convince the sheriff that we’d stumbled onto the scene of a break-in at her father’s building, scaring away who-knows-how-many nameless, faceless robbers before they’d had the chance to steal anything. Though it was soon plain enough that Sheriff Brown didn’t believe two kids could bust into a safe using a circus-elephant’s sledgehammer. The sheriff didn’t know what I
could do.
“You kids have put me in a pickle.” Brown scowled as he loaded us into the backseat of his truck. “Mr. Cabot has a right to know you were both here. But telling your dad about this now, Sarah Jane, while he’s already sailing his destroyers through Sundance . . . well, that wouldn’t seem to be in the best interest of the town. Who knows what else your daddy might flatten if he found out how close you got to danger?”
“I won’t tell if you don’t, Sheriff,” offered SJ. “Daddy does have a way of flying off the handle.” Then, casting me a quick, I’ve-got-no-other-choice grimace, she raised her hand to her mouth and said: “Doesn’t Daddy hold the deed to your wife’s beauty shop, Sheriff?”
I shook my head. Sarah Jane had no shame.
The sheriff chewed that tidbit for a time, before saying, “I think we can leave you out of this, Sarah Jane. I wouldn’t want your daddy thinking I can’t keep the kids in this town safe.”
SJ may have gotten off scot-free, but I wasn’t as lucky. Sitting in the Crook County Sheriff’s Office twenty minutes later, I waited for Uncle Autry to come for me, praying every prayer I could think of, hoping God might intervene with my uncle on my behalf. Sheriff Brown hadn’t locked me in a cell, or put me in handcuffs either. But he did make me sit for an eternity on an uncomfortable chair next to his desk. I listened as he dispatched one deputy back to CAD Co. to seal the crime scene, and another to notify Mr. Cabot about the break-in.
When Autry arrived, he was mad.
Really, really mad.
If God had put in a good word for me with my uncle, it didn’t show. I knew how mad Autry was, not by his expression, or by anything he said, but by the sheer number of enormous yellow-and-black wasps that flew into the building with him, an entourage of angry wings and stingers. Once inside, the wasps all scattered, bumping against the windows and circling coffee mugs and soda cans. They hovered in the glow of computer monitors and strafed past stacks of Post-its.
Somewhere, a woman shrieked. A clerk across the hall scattered a full ream of white copy paper as he swatted at the intruders. Autry’s silent upset was so strong, he didn’t raise a finger to control the hordes of flying things. As far as I could tell, nobody was getting stung. But when one of the wasps landed on the end of my nose, I guessed I might be first.
“Um, a little help here?” I looked up at my uncle, moving nothing but my eyeballs. Autry stared back at me. Then he canted his head toward the wasp, a warning look darkening his features. He might’ve been warning me, or he might’ve been warning the wasp. Either way, both of us snapped to attention. The wasp lifted from my nose and flew away fast, while I jumped to my feet like the sheriff’s chair had grown a stinger of its own.
Autry spoke with the sheriff in another room as the chaos with the wasps continued. When he finally came back, he was grim and unsmiling. The sheriff nodded my way once, then Autry ushered me out of the building, two hundred wasps following in our wake, the Pied Piper of Pests taking us all with him.
I wanted to tell Autry about all the good stuff I’d managed lately: getting Grandma’s jar, the ladder I’d built, my sculptures in the salvage yard, and how I’d begun to deal with my fear and finesse things a little—no, how I’d begun to finesse things A LOT. Just as he’d imagined for me back when I was unable to imagine it for myself.
More than anything, I wanted to ask him about Summer Beacham, about Mr. Cabot . . . and about Sarah Jane. I didn’t understand; if Mr. Cabot had married into a savvy family, why did he hate us? And why did he keep so many secrets—important secrets—from Sarah Jane?
But, climbing into Autry’s truck outside the sheriff’s office, my uncle still hopping-hornet mad, I knew that this wasn’t the time or the place for any of it.
It wasn’t long before I missed the buzz from the wasps we’d left behind; driving out of Sundance, Uncle Autry’s voiceless fury became sheer torture. By the time we neared the ranch, the silence between us had grown unbearable—so unbearable, I decided to break it.
“I think Sarah Jane Cabot has a savvy.”
Autry hit the brakes so hard the truck fishtailed before coming to a stop, engine stalled, facing the foreclosure sign.
“What are you talking about, Ledge?” Autry spoke without looking at me. His tone was flat. Too flat to pretend he didn’t know what I meant.
“Sarah Jane’s mom, Summer. Her last name used to be Beacham.”
Autry said nothing, so I kept hammering.
“The Beachams used to come here too, right? Mom said you wrestled one of them in a pile of cactuses—”
“Cam.” Autry nodded once, still staring forward. “Cam Beacham was Summer’s older brother.”
“So . . . does that mean we’re related to Sarah Jane? Are the Beachams Eva Mae’s descendants too?” These questions seemed to wake my uncle up. He snorted and a crooked half smile touched his lips.
“I hate to break it to you, Ledger, but your grandfather invented that whole story. There was no Eva Mae El Dorado Two-Birds Ransom.” He waved one hand in a dismissive gesture. “When your mom and Aunt Jenny and I were kids, the first savvy ancestor was a buck-toothed man named Bullthorn Johnston who dropped a dozen hot biscuits that rolled away across the plains. By the time those biscuits trundled to a stop, they’d picked up so much dirt and so many stones, they became the Rocky Mountains. According to your grandpa, old Buck-tooth Bullthorn, still hungry, took a bite out of the top of Little Bear Peak and had extraordinary talents ever after, talents that he passed on to his children . . . and his children’s children . . . and so on.” Autry rattled off the story like he was dumping rocks out of his shoe.
“There was no Eva Mae?” I must’ve sounded disappointed, because Autry turned toward me at last. His face remained stern, but a flicker of regret softened his eyes.
“Who knows, Ledge?” he said on a sigh. “I mean, who knows really? For all I know, Bullthorn Johnson was one of Eva Mae’s long-lost brothers. But neither of them ever lived here—even if this land has been in our family for years.”
“So Sarah Jane’s not, like, my cousin or anything, is she?” I asked, sweat beading on my forehead.
Autry stopped short of laughing. “No, Sarah Jane’s not your cousin, Ledger. And her mother wasn’t mine.”
I wiped the sweat from my brow, relieved.
“As for the Beachams,” he continued. “I suppose they could’ve been kin once, way back when. But no, these days the Beachams are just another savvy family, like the Danzingers or the Kwans or the Paynes. There’re a lot of us, Ledge. Sometimes we know each other, sometimes we don’t. But this ranch has always been a safe place, even for those who aren’t kin.” Autry shot a hard look at the foreclosure notice before adding: “At least, it was.”
I wanted to tell Uncle Autry how sorry I was for making everything go south. But he wasn’t done talking, so I stayed quiet.
“I met Summer and Cam here when we were kids. June to August, your great-uncle Ferris ran this place as a lodge and had it filled with old ramshackle cabins.”
“Great-uncle Ferris. Really?”
“That man could turn snot into icicles in ninety-degree weather!” Autry couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “Your grandpa may have fixed this place up and made it bigger, but Ferris owned it. Whenever we’d visit, us kids would head for Sundance whenever we could get away with it . . . same as someone else I know.” He cleared his throat, flashing me a look that was half reprimand, half sheepish confession.
“That’s how Summer and I first met Noble,” he continued, fixing his eyes back on the foreclosure sign. “Noble was actually a good guy when we were kids. A little odd maybe, but who was I to judge? I was still learning how to keep caterpillars out of my pockets and no-see-ums out of my underpants. Noble caught on quick to the fact that we were different. Summer’s savvy was astonishing. She could turn anything into—”
“A tree?” I cut in. Autry looked at me, surprised.
“Figured that out, did you?” Then on a sigh, he ad
ded, “Me with the bugs . . . Summer with the trees . . . Noble’s always had a talent for collecting unusual things. Even when it came to friends.”
Picturing my uncle as a kid, squished flat under glass, I shivered.
“Back when Noble married Summer, his collections were pretty tame,” Autry went on as though he’d read my mind. “Rocks, stamps, coins. But he really did love her. And Summer loved him too.”
I made a face.
“Everything changed after Summer got sick, Ledge, really sick. She made a decision Noble couldn’t understand, hoping that in some way she wouldn’t have to leave him and Sarah Jane. Noble got so angry then—angry at her for being sick—angry at her for—”
“For turning herself into a tree?” I knew it was true, even as I asked it. The big white birch tree that held the old house on the hill in Sundance inside its branches . . . that tree was Summer Beacham.
If Autry was surprised that I’d figured this out on my own, he didn’t show it.
“I supported her decision,” he went on. “What else could I do? Summer was dying. Noble wanted her to wait, to keep fighting. But Summer knew that if she waited any longer, she’d lack the strength to make the change. She didn’t even know if she could do it. Summer could change just about anything into a tree . . . a tin can, a stone, even her brother Cam’s lucky baseball glove. You know that big cottonwood down by the river?” Autry watched my eyes go wide, then chuckled wistfully. “But change herself?” He shook his head, smiling even as his eyes grew moist. Several moments passed before he went on.
“I was there until Summer’s last leaf shivered and unfurled, breathing in the sun. Then Noble kicked me off his property, and that was that. He made it plain that he didn’t want Sarah Jane to have anything to do with me, my girls, the ranch, savvy folk, savvy anything, and that I’d do well to remember it, since I’d signed over a deed to him for my land when he loaned me the money to put up the conservatory. We’d been friends when I signed the paper. It just seemed like a formality. But as soon as Summer made her last boughs, I took one look at Noble and understood that borrowing from him had been a mistake—one which, someday, might come back to bite me.”