The Doldrums

CHAPTER

TWO

♦ MIND YOUR TONGUE ♦

Two years had passed since the iceberg incident, and Archer was now eleven years old. Mr. Helmsley spent most of his time in his study and at the office, and Mrs. Helmsley busied herself about the house. It was a Saturday. But Archer wasn’t outside. Aside from school, he never was. This was his mother’s decision.

“What happened to your grandparents?” she asked on a regular basis.

“An iceberg,” mumbled Archer.

“You must speak up,” she replied. “Enunciate.”

“An iceberg,” said Archer. “They floated out to sea atop an iceberg.”

“That’s right. They floated out to sea atop an iceberg. And do you want to float out to sea atop an iceberg?”

This was not the sort of question that could go either way. This question had a right answer and a wrong answer.

“But there are no icebergs in Rosewood,” said Archer.

That didn’t matter. If it wasn’t an iceberg, it would be something else. After eleven years, Mrs. Helmsley was well aware of Archer’s tendencies, as she so often put it. Archer was like his grandparents. And that wouldn’t do. Mrs. Helmsley had no desire to see Archer drift out to sea atop an iceberg.

“And I don’t want to read another newspaper article aimed at embarrassing us.”

So when Archer wasn’t at school, he spent most of his time assisting his mother with tedious tasks around the house such as dusting the animals (which he still spoke to when she wasn’t around), polishing the wood floors, and today, licking a mountain of envelopes and stamps for a neighborhood mailer.

WILLOW STREET FLOWER FESTIVAL

The spring blossoms were stunning and I look forward to seeing what everyone is cooking up for the summer festival: Saturday, July 10th. And save the date for the autumn festival: Saturday, September 27th.

By the time he used all of the stamps, Archer had a paper cut on his tongue and his mouth was rife with glue.

“That’s all there is,” he said, and stood up to leave.

“Hold it,” his mother replied.

A large pile of unstamped envelopes sat next to her. She grabbed her purse and went to buy more stamps. Archer groaned and plunked his head to the table. This was not how things were supposed to be in Helmsley House. Helmsley House was a shrine to exploration and adventure. Not a place to spend your days licking stamps.

Archer had always thought his grandparents would return and whisk him off to incredible places. Instead, they whisked themselves onto an iceberg and Archer was left alone. He continued thumping his head up and down. The doorbell rang. Archer paused, thinking he’d knocked himself silly, but there followed a second ring. He poked his head into the hall.

“Don’t answer it,” said the badger. The fox agreed. But Archer went to the door.

♦ SCARLET TRUNKS ♦

Not only was someone ringing, but they were also jostling the doorknob up and down. Archer was too short to reach the peephole, so he went to the window and pressed his face to the glass. The front steps were cluttered with trunks that hid whomever they belonged to.

It’s them! he thought, dashing back to the door.

Archer threw it open, but the man who stood before him was not his grandfather. This man was tall and slender and wore a dingy jumpsuit stained with grease and grime and smelling of gasoline. He had a kind face and a gentle eye, but only one. An eye patch covered the other. Archer swallowed hard.

He’s here for the glass eye! Archer thought.

“So this is the Helmsley House,” said the Eye Patch, peering over Archer’s head and around the foyer. “I’ve heard it was lovely, but this is the first I’ve seen it with my own eye!” He directed that eye at Archer. “Are you Archer?” he asked.

Archer went prickly and nodded carefully. He knows my name?

The Eye Patch must have sensed his unease because he quickly stood to the side and pointed at the trunks.

“I’m only here to deliver these,” he said. “They belonged to Ralph and Rachel—were at the Society in Barrow’s Bay for nearly two years. Not sure why no one brought them before.”

The trunks were scarlet, well-worn, and beautiful.

“These belonged to them?” Archer asked.

The Eye Patch nodded. “Mind if I bring them inside?”

Archer helped the man lug the trunks into the foyer. There were five in total, and once they were all inside, the Eye Patch returned to the front steps.

“Those trunks won’t be in here for long,” he said with a somber look in his eye. “I know what everyone thinks, but I put my bets on your grandparents being alive.”

Archer wanted to believe that. “It’s been two years,” he said.

“That’s true,” the Eye Patch admitted. “But Ralph and Rachel have seen worse.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Now I’d best be running. A few of your neighbors looked like they might call the police—don’t think they see many greasy eye patches roaming Willow Street these days.”

Archer would have smiled, but he was too busy wondering who this man was. Before he could ask, the Eye Patch tapped a finger to his forehead and disappeared down the sidewalk.

Archer shut the door and knelt before a scarlet trunk, grateful his mother wasn’t home. She wouldn’t have let these into the house. But he had to be quick. She was only getting stamps. He clicked the latch on the trunk, lifted the lid, and all at once he was surrounded with peculiar smells—a bit of seaweed, a whiff of mist, and a faint yet distinguishable hint of swamp.

Inside the trunk were his grandfather’s belongings, but just as he began to dig, he stopped. There were footsteps outside. Someone was at the door. His mother. Archer slammed the trunk, grabbed the smallest one, and dashed upstairs. As he sprung for his bedroom, a shrill yelp sounded from the foyer. He threw the trunk under his bed and casually returned downstairs.

The trunks were already gone, and in their place stood a dusty and sweaty Mrs. Helmsley who looked at him as if he had a spider crawling on his forehead.

“Have you been upstairs this whole time?” she asked.

Archer nodded. “I was trying to brush the glue off my tongue,” he replied. “Why?”

Mrs. Helmsley wiped a dirty hand against her cheek. It made a streak.

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “That’s the end of it. Now, into the kitchen—I have more stamps.”

Archer couldn’t stop guessing what was inside the trunks as he licked his way through a second mountain of stamps. When Mrs. Helmsley released him, he hurried upstairs with three more paper cuts on his tongue.

♦ HELMSLEY GOLDEN AGE ♦

Archer sat on his bed across from the small trunk. Inside he found a pair of binoculars, a bundle of old journals, and a tape labeled “audio conversion.”

Archer untied the journals and carefully flipped through the pages. They were filled with details of his grandparents’ travels, and from the dates he figured they had been around twenty-seven when they wrote them. Archer had leaned back on his bed and was reading a journal when something struck him. He sat up and removed the tape.

“‘Audio conversion,’” he mumbled. “But that means—”

He ran from his room with the tape in hand.

At the end of a narrow third-floor hallway was a large room lined with skinny windows on one side and maps on the other. Stretching down the center was a long wooden table littered with more maps and globes. Archer hurried past it to the corner of the room, where a smaller table held a complex audio system. He inserted the tape and sat down.

For all its dials and gauges and knobs, the system had one simple on/off switch. Archer clicked it and hit another, but instead of hearing his grandparents’ voices, he heard static and a voice saying, “Bonjour?”

Archer grabbed the microphone. “Brochure?” he asked.

“Oui, bonjour.”

“Free brochure?”

“Oui! Bonjour.”

“Thanks, but I’m not interested in a free brochure.”

Archer wasn’t sure who this person was or what they were selling, but he didn’t care. He flipped a different switch. The tape clicked on and began rolling. Archer leaned forward.

T A P E S T A R T

A LOUD CRASH / A STRANGE SQUAWK / THE POURING OF TEA / AND THEN THE VOICES OF GRANDMA AND GRANDPA HELMSLEY

A PHONE RINGS AND GRANDMA HELMSLEY ANSWERS

FOOTSTEPS RUNNING FROM THE ROOM / GRANDMA HELMSLEY STILL ON PHONE

FOOTSTEPS OF GRANDPA HELMSLEY RETURNING / GRANDMA HELMSLEY HANGS UP

T A P E E N D

Archer sat quietly, staring at the machine. He heard something familiar in his grandfather’s voice. But perhaps that only made sense. He was a Helmsley after all, like Archer’s father and Archer himself. And whatever it was about that voice, it sounded wonderful. Both did.

Archer leaned back in the chair.

If they could survive a plane crash in the desert, he thought, would an iceberg be so bad? Maybe the Eye Patch was right.

As Archer ejected the tape and stood up to leave, he spotted a wooden box beneath the table. He ran his fingers through the dust and discovered the initials R.B.H. Those were his father’s initials. It can’t be the same box. But sure enough, he lifted the lid and found that it was filled with books. He sat down again, wiped the spines clean, and opened a book titled The Wind in the Willows. It was very good. It reminded him of his house.

Archer carried the box upstairs to his room where he moved on to Gulliver’s Travels, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Treasure Island, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

It took Archer only a few days to read all of these books, and his mother left him alone as he did, glad to see he was doing something sensible. Of course, she might have thought otherwise had she bothered looking at the titles.

When he finished Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Archer set it down and slid off his bed. A door at one end of his room gave way to a balcony and he stepped outside.

♦ ARCHER’S DECISION ♦

There was a secret world behind the houses on Willow Street. Trees sprouted from the ground, and each house had a walled-in garden and a balcony on the top floor overlooking it. From here, Archer often spied on the neighbors. He leaned against the railing and looked down into the gardens.

A wonderland, he was thinking. I need to find a rabbit’s hole.

But the only holes in the city were sewer holes, and he couldn’t imagine there was much of a wonderland down there.

Still, as he stood there, quietly staring across the gardens, Archer made a decision. He decided he wasn’t going to sit around anymore. He was going to figure out a way to escape that tall, skinny house on Willow Street and find an adventure of his own. He had to. After all, Archer was a Helmsley, and being a Helmsley meant something. Archer knew what it meant. It meant he had to do something great—something worthy of the Helmsley Golden Age—something that could even restore the Helmsley Golden Age. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he couldn’t let the Helmsleys be reduced to stamp lickers. What would his grandparents say if they knew that? No, he was going to find an adventure that would make them proud. And because his grandparents couldn’t help him, he would find someone who could.

Little did he know that the very boy he would ask lived just next door. That boy’s name was Oliver J. Glub, and at that very moment, Oliver was sitting on his balcony trying to see how many blueberries he could stuff into his mouth. Archer watched closely, guessing Oliver could fit at least twenty, but after number thirteen, he was beginning to have his doubts.

“You’re going to explode,” called Archer.

Oliver swallowed hard. “That’s impossible,” he replied.

Despite being neighbors and attending the same school, these were the first words they had ever exchanged.

♦ JUST A GLUB ♦

Archer and Oliver attended the Willow Academy, a school four blocks away, across from Rosewood Park. A long time ago, the Willow Academy had been a Button Factory (and the students still called it that). But after a number of renovations and a fresh coat of paint, it now looked something like a school. Still, great smoke towers loomed high above the roof and Archer sometimes stumbled upon a button, which he added to his collection. It was here, at the Button Factory, that Archer had his second encounter with Oliver.

Oliver was a quiet boy and kept mostly to himself. But if you’re a quiet boy and keep mostly to yourself, others will often speak for you.

“He’s got a few too many, you know, cracks in his nut,” said Charlie H. Brimble.

“He is a nut,” said Molly S. Mellings. “And I hope a squirrel takes him away.”

“That would never happen,” said Alice P. Suggins. “He’s one nut no squirrel would want.”