Benny and Henry sat together on the bus. They rode along without saying anything for a few minutes. Then Benny said, “I’d like to know what Frank was talking about. It’s just as if we stepped into the middle of a mystery.”
Henry smiled. “We’re always doing that, Ben. But if we could just find out what is wrong, we might help.”
“Do you think it’s those two boys?” Benny asked. Then he answered his own question. “I don’t.”
“We know Frank is interested in birds and gardens and weeds,” Henry said. “The chemicals and books make me think he knows a lot about chemistry. I suppose he could be doing some work for the paint company. He took a package from the driver.”
Benny thought a minute. “That man on the morning bus told me to ask Frank about his new neighbors. I wonder why.” He couldn’t think of any reason.
Henry and Benny stopped talking. Everyone on the bus was quiet except for a man who was snoring and a crying baby.
Then someone began to talk. Benny found himself listening. He heard a boy’s voice. “Wait till he gets a good start. Be ready when I give the signal.”
“Yeah,” another voice answered. “I’ll be ready. I’m not scared, and I don’t care what he says.”
The first voice sounded angry. “You don’t understand. We don’t care about him. We know he’ll be mad at us. It’s the people who are there who are important. Don’t forget that.”
The boys stopped talking. Benny didn’t dare look around to see who had been speaking. But he was sure he knew. They were the two boys Frank had sent out of the bus station, the two boys who had laughed at the Aldens. What could they be planning?
The younger boy started to talk again. “OK. I understand. What about the meeting tomorrow night? Do you think we can get in?”
“We can try,” the older boy said. “Frank will be there. I’m sure of that.”
“Shhh,” the younger boy whispered. “Somebody may be listening.”
“You mean those girls behind us? They don’t know what we’re talking about.”
“You can’t tell,” the other boy said. “I don’t trust anybody.”
Benny wanted to look around at Jessie and Violet. Were they sitting behind the whispering boys? It was hard to think anyone wouldn’t trust them!
“Oakdale!” the bus driver called. “Ten-minute rest stop.” He swung the handle that opened the big bus door.
Benny and Henry were the first ones to get off the bus. Violet and Jessie followed them.
Benny didn’t want the two boys from Plainville Junction to think he was watching for them. He saw a hobby fair poster. “Look,” he called. “Here’s an advertisement. Let’s ask someone how to get there.”
When he looked around a minute later, Benny saw the boys with their backpacks hurrying away from the bus. By the time the Aldens had been told the directions, the boys were out of sight.
The hobby fair was in the town hall. Tables had been set up for the displays. Some people met the Aldens as they were buying their tickets. A stranger smiled at Benny and said, “You’re going to be surprised when you see this fair.”
“Why?” asked Benny.
“Well, there are a lot of things you’d never think of. You must go and see the clock with three round faces. It tells the time and the month and the temperature. The three faces go round and round. You can stand and watch it for a long time.”
“Thank you,” said Henry. “We’ll go right to the clock.”
But when they reached the clock, the crowd was huge. The Aldens could not get near it.
“We’ll never see it,” Jessie said.
“Never mind,” said Benny. “We can come back to see the clock later. I just saw a sign that says ‘Fishermen’s Corner.’ We’ve just got to see that.”
A crowd of men and boys were looking at a board covered with fishhooks.
“How many!” said Violet. “I thought fishhooks were all alike.”
“Not at all,” Henry told her. “There are different hooks for different fish.”
“What are those?” Violet pointed at a display of bright-colored fishing flies. “They look like insects made of feathers.”
“They are called flies,” the man who had the exhibit told Violet. “They are made to look like little insects, so the fish snap at them. Only now the river is spoiled by the paint factory. The pollution kills the fish.”
Violet read the names of some of the flies, “Gray Ghost, Silver Doctor, Royal Coachman.”
“There’s a hook inside each one,” said Henry.
An old man looking at the exhibit said, “I remember when you could catch fish by just dropping a line in the water. It’s not that way anymore.”
The man who had explained the fish flies to Violet nodded. “Yep. Every factory pours dirty water into the rivers. It’s time to stop them! That’s what the meeting is about tomorrow night—how to save our river.”
Benny tried to think who else had spoken of a meeting tomorrow. Then he remembered. The boys on the bus!
“Let’s go somewhere else,” said Violet quickly. She didn’t want to think about hooks in fish.
The Aldens went over to the pottery display. A girl was spinning her potter’s wheel. She had just finished making a vase out of clay. Now she was making a design on the vase with a small wooden tool. As the vase whirled around on the wheel, the girl pressed the tool against the side of the vase. The tool made a perfect ring around the vase. Then another and another.
It was so fascinating to watch that Violet forgot all about the fishhooks.
Jessie turned to the others and said, “Now we can go see the clock. The big crowd is gone.”
After Henry had looked at the clock he said, “It’s hard to believe a boy invented this clock. It’s clever the way it’s made. The boy must be a genius.”
Jessie began to smile. “Look at this eggbeater,” she said. “It cleans itself! I always hate to wash an eggbeater. The egg is hard to wash off.”
Benny said, “Come on. I see a good wildlife exhibit. Let’s see what it’s about.”
The Aldens found there were drawings of birds, insects, and small animals. There were pots of wild plants and a bunch of wild flowers.
“Look at this,” said Henry. “Now whoever thought of this is very clever.”
Jessie looked at the card. “It says there are one hundred plants growing in this square—only one square yard of earth.”
“You can see the square was taken from the earth just as it was, with nothing planted on purpose,” remarked Benny.
Violet said, “Here is sour sorrel and wood sorrel, and white, pink, and red clover.”
Jessie went on, fascinated with all the little plants, “Here is a yellow five-finger and chickweed and a strawberry plant.”
“And a buttercup,” said Benny. “I wonder who put this exhibit together?”
Then suddenly the Aldens saw the boy who was in charge of the wild flower exhibit. It was the older boy who had caught the bus from Plainville Junction—the very one Frank had ordered out of the bus station! He was busy explaining something to some people who were interested in the exhibit.
“Yes,” he said, “we took a piece of land down by the river and put up stakes three feet apart to make a square. Then we counted all the different plants inside the square.”
A woman asked, “You found all these different plants in that small space?”
The boy nodded. “We want to show what’s lost when something like the paint factory spoils wild land.” He looked right at the Aldens when he said that as if he thought they were going to spoil the land.
“That’s a good exhibit, but that boy is not at all friendly,” Jessie said. “Let’s move on.”
The Aldens walked over to a collection of match-book covers. Violet said, “I guess people collect anything. There are matchbooks from every state and some foreign countries.”
“And here’s a collection of pins,” said Jessie. “Imagine collecting pins!”
Violet replied, “They are a good thing to collect because they don’t take up much room.”
Henry called Benny over to see model planes. Then Benny caught sight of an ice cream stand. “Let’s have ice cream cones,” he said. “I always choose chocolate.”
“How can you be hungry after all that lunch?” Jessie asked.
“Always room for an ice cream cone,” returned Benny.
“I wouldn’t mind one myself,” said Henry, feeling for his wallet.
Soon all the Aldens were enjoying ice cream cones. “Let’s see that exhibit,” said Benny, pointing to a display set up in the corner. “The sign says ‘Pickett’s Perfect Paints.’ Look at the crowd!”
As they started over, Benny frowned. Pickett’s Paints—that was the name on the envelope he had handed Frank. The Oakdale bus driver had given Frank a package for the Pickett factory.
The exhibit was interesting and bright. There were little toy houses painted in different colors. There were pieces of wood painted with Pickett paints and left out in the sun to weather. They showed how well the paint lasted and how bright it stayed.
The man in charge of the exhibit was trying to show how paint was made. He explained what made blue paint blue and red paint red.
A woman in the crowd said, “Mr. Pickett, just listen to me!”
So this was Mr. Pickett, the Aldens thought.
The woman continued. “I don’t care what you put in your paints. Your factory is pouring all that horrible waste into a public river. It isn’t your river. It belongs to the town.”
“It’s our river,” a girl said.
An old man asked, “Where are the fish? We used to get fine fish from the river. And have a good time fishing, too.”
A boy said, “Your old factory smells up the country for miles.”
But a young man said, “Give Mr. Pickett a chance to talk. He knows his business. A big factory can be good for people around here.”
Mr. Pickett looked happy to see at least one friendly face. He said, “Yes! I have a hundred workers in my paint factory. That means they earn money to take care of a hundred families. It means money to spend. I pay taxes for your schools. I’m a good neighbor to all of you!”
Suddenly there was a noise and everyone looked around to see what was happening. Some people began to laugh. Others shouted, “Go home!”
The Aldens stood on tiptoe to see what the excitement was about. It was a surprise. The two boys from Plainville Junction were pushing through the crowd toward the paint exhibit. They were waving signs.
One sign said, “SAVE OUR RIVER. DON’T POLLUTE!” The other read “NATURE IS BETTER THAN PAINT.”
Some men and women clapped. Someone said, “Those boys are brave to do that. I wouldn’t have dared do anything like that.”
Mr. Pickett stared at the boys and their signs. Benny wondered if he knew who they were. The boys never looked right at him. They waved their signs back and forth.
“Not fair! Not fair!” Mr. Pickett shouted angrily. “You can’t picket me!”
For a minute it looked as if the paint exhibit was going to be smashed. The man in charge of the hobby fair came running over.
“All right!” the manager shouted. “Some of you want Mr. Pickett’s factory. Some of you don’t. This isn’t the place to decide. Come to the town meeting tomorrow night, right here in the town hall. That’s the place to discuss it. You boys—take those signs and get out. I will not have trouble here.”
The boys did not argue. Perhaps they had done what they wanted to do. They had started people talking about the river.
The Aldens spent another hour looking around at the exhibits. At last Jessie asked, “When does the bus leave, Henry? We don’t want to miss it.”
Henry said, “We can spend half an hour here and still have time to get the bus. Where’s Benny?”
“He was here a minute ago,” Violet said. “Oh, there he is, over there with the manager.”
“I’m glad you came all the way from Greenfield to see our hobby fair,” the manager was saying to Benny. “It was too bad about that fuss around Mr. Pickett’s exhibit.”
Benny asked, “Who are those boys who wanted to picket Mr. Pickett?”
“Oh, everyone knows Jud and Troy. That’s what makes it so bad. You saw their wildlife exhibit. I’ll have to say they are smart boys.”
“We saw them first at the bus station at Plainville Junction,” Benny said.
“Yes, I imagine that is where you’d meet them,” the manager said. “If they were my boys, I’d have something to say to them. They may be right, but they shouldn’t act like that. Mr. Pickett has a right to show what he makes.”
“You said something about a meeting tomorrow,” Benny said.
“Yes, the voters of Plainville Township are going to meet here at the Oakdale town hall. Posters announced the meeting ten days ago. It will be a regular town meeting. Mr. Pickett is coming. People want to ask him about his plans. He wants to buy more land. He says he needs a parking lot. He put his paint factory out there in the country because he needed the water and he didn’t think anyone would care.”
“But people do care, I guess,” said Benny. “Can they stop him?”
The manager said, “Well, yes, I guess they can. But I don’t know if that’s what most people want to do. His business is good for Oakdale, and Oakdale is part of Plainville Township.”
“Benny, time to go!” Jessie called.
Smiling at the manager, Benny said quickly, “I’m Benny Alden. Perhaps you know my grandfather, Mr. James Alden.”
“I do indeed,” said the manager. “He has a smart grandson, I see that.”
Benny ran to catch up with Henry. “That was a great fair,” he said. “I’m glad we came. It turned out to be exciting!” |