The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester by Barbara O'Connor Page B

Owen said this with an air of confidence, but on the inside, he had some big worries about trusting Viola. “Besides,” he added, “I know Viola better than anybody. There is no way she’s going to go down there in those woods and help us.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    “I got Jarvis’s hacksaw,” Viola said when she stepped out of the woods into the clearing. “I decided to come help y’all, after all.”
    Owen’s stomach sank clear down to his feet.
    Travis and Stumpy stared at Viola with their mouths hanging open.
    Then Travis’s face turned red and he stomped over to Owen. “Way to go, Owen!” he hollered. “
Now
what are we gonna do?”
    Owen looked down at his feet, his mind racing. His sneakers were coated with dirt, his legs scraped and bruised. He looked at his hands, red and blistered. Sawing and clipping and digging and hacking was hard work. Much harder than he had thought it would be.
    He and Travis and Stumpy had gotten to theclearing early that morning, when the dew was still clinging to the wildflowers and ferns. But they hadn’t made much progress. The ground was hard and full of rocks and roots. Some of the bushes pulled right up, but others had to be dug and chopped and yanked. Even the smallest trees required sawing and hacking. Branches had to be hauled off to the side. Large rocks had to be rolled away.
    “I got Jarvis’s hacksaw,” Viola repeated, waving it in the air. She was wearing garden gloves that were way too big and a khaki canvas hat pulled down over her ears.
    “Great,” Owen said glumly. He flung his arm in the direction of one of the larger pine trees. “Then cut that down.”
    “Okay.” Viola ran over to the tree and started sawing.
    “Closer to the bottom,” Owen said. “You can’t leave a big ole stump there.”
    Owen looked at Travis and shrugged. What else could he do? Besides, they
could
use Viola’s help. Why not let her do all the hard work with the larger trees and bushes? Maybe inviting Viola to help really
had
been a good idea.
    But Travis and Stumpy didn’t look like they thought Viola helping was a good idea. They looked like they were mad as all get-out.
    While Viola happily sawed away at the tree, Owen whispered to Travis and Stumpy, explaining to them why Viola helping them was a good idea.
    “. . . and
then
,” he whispered, “we’ll only have to work on these puny little bushes while she does all the hard stuff.”
    He grinned.
    Stumpy looked convinced, but Travis was still red-faced, glaring over at Viola and looking like he was ready to storm out of there.
    “. . . and
then
,” Owen whispered, “we’ll tell her we changed our minds about putting the submarine in the pond and that the railroad company is sending someone to pick it up in a couple of days, so she doesn’t need to come back down here. And
then
”—he glanced over at Viola, who had paused from her sawing to blow her nose—“we can figure out how to get the submarine into the pond and go for a ride!”
    Owen watched Travis’s face change ever so slowly from mad-as-all-get-out to maybe-that-will-work.
    So the boys picked up their tools and set to work sawing and clipping and digging and hacking again.
    That night after dinner, Owen sat by his grandfather’s bed and told him some more about Tooley.
    He told him about how Tooley wasn’t quite as green as he used to be.
    How his throat wasn’t quite as yellow and the heart-shaped spot wasn’t quite as red.
    He told him about how Tooley didn’t seem to be eating the water bugs and crickets in the cage and how he didn’t swim very much anymore.
    “And last night,” Owen said, “I heard some other bullfrogs down there in the pond and, well, um, I felt kind of bad.”
    Owen’s grandfather raised his bushy white eyebrows.
    “I mean, you know . . .” Owen picked at the dirt under his fingernails. “ ’Cause those other frogs were free, but, um, Tooley’s in a cage.”
    His grandfather’s mouth was a little droopy on