“Search me!” said his father. “I don’t know anything about a wagon.” Grandma didn’t say anything, but she was too busy to fool around with a wagon. If she wasn’t picking beans, she was weeding. And if she wasn’t weeding, she was baking pies or washing clothes or mending socks or feeding the chickens.
After lunch, Zack went out on the porch to look for the turkey. And there it was, standing in the yard, just waiting for him. It seemed to know that Zack wanted to get to the machine shack, because it strutted back and forth at the bottom of the steps, a low gobble coming from its throat. Now and then it stopped, one foot off the ground, and stared at Zack sideways, with one dark, beady eye.
“You just wait,” Zack said. “When I finish my trouble-shooter, you big fat bunch of trouble, you’ll be sorry you ever pecked me.”
But Tailpipe seemed to have all the time in the world to wait. He would move off toward the evergreen grove in one direction or the garden in the other, but the minute Zack started down the steps, back he flew, wings spread, and Zack would run up on the porch again.
Okay, Zack thought. I can play the waiting game too.
Finally the turkey went behind the lilac bush. Zack rushed down the steps and ran like the wind.
But Tailpipe had been watching all the while and started after him. It was too late, though, to catch up, and Zack yanked open the rickety door of the shack, tumbled inside, and banged it closed after him. He turned around and jumped a mile. There on the floor sat Josie, her legs crossed.
“Hi,” she said. “Running a race or something?”
“Sort of,” said Zack, letting out his breath and trying to look calm. “What are you doing here?”
Josie shrugged. “Just looking for something to do. What else have you got that needs fixing?”
“You put the wheel on my wagon?” Zack asked.
“I had a spare wheel, that’s all,” said Josie. “Your grandma helped.” She pointed to the wagon with the screen nailed to the back and the rain gutter nailed to the screen. “What’s all this?”
There was no point in lying. “I’m making a machine,” Zack said.
Josie looked the wagon over. “What will it do?”
“Scare a turkey,” said Zack.
“How?”
Zack picked up a croquet ball. He dropped it down the piece of rain gutter. The ball came out the other end and whammed against the front rim of the wagon.
“Oh,” said Josie. Then she said, “What else do you need? Maybe I can help.”
“Well,” said Zack, “we could use a little more noise.”
“What else?” asked Josie.
“We could use water, maybe, that would shoot out in all directions.”
“What else?”
“We could use my friend Matthew, who keeps saying he’s coming to the farm with me but always has an excuse.”
“I’ll be waiting,” said Josie. “In the meantime, we’ve got another problem. The burglar struck again.”
“Really?” Zack sat down on a box. This was starting to get interesting. “What did he take this time?”
“The key to my brother’s apartment.”
“Why would he do that?” Zack asked.
“Because!” Josie gave him a look that meant, Don’t you get it? “Once he has the key to a house or an apartment, he doesn’t even have to climb in through a window. He can just wait till everyone’s gone, then walk right up to the door and let himself in.”
That almost seemed too easy. “When did Adam find out it was missing?”
“Last week. He had our truck loaded up with stuff from his room, and when he got to the city and reached in his pocket, the key was gone,” Josie told him.
“The thief took the key right out of his pocket?”
“I don’t know, but Adam was really mad. He had to go to the landlord and get another key, then take it to a hardware store and make a duplicate.” Josie looked down at the wagon with the screen and the rain gutter and the croquet ball. “Do you think this machine could help scare off a burglar?”
* * *
Eleven
* * *
SHOW ME
The next Saturday there were two boys in the pickup truck, one in an orange T-shirt with a race car on the front, the other in a purple T-shirt with a skull and crossbones. They’d be staying overnight at the farm, and Matthew had brought along his backpack. He was very quiet. Zack’s dad was at the wheel, Matthew was over by the window, and Zack was squeezed in the middle.
But Zack was right where he wanted to be. When they reached the farm, old skull-and-crossbones Matthew would have to climb out first. And while the turkey was chasing his friend, Zack could make a run for the porch. It was about time Matthew found out how hard it was to run away from a turkey.
It wasn’t long before the neat blocks of houses and trees and driveways were left behind, and the pickup truck was whizzing along a four-lane highway.
The houses were getting farther and farther apart, with long stretches of land where there were only trees and no cornfields. More stretches of land with only cornfields and no trees.
At last the truck turned onto a two-lane road that went up a little hill and down again.
It turned once more onto a gravel road. And finally, after it had passed some more farms, it turned up a narrow dirt lane straight into the clearing beside Grandpa’s house.
And Tailpipe was waiting.
When the truck came to a stop, the old gobbler spread its wings and flew over, as if to peck at it.
Matthew’s eyes went wide when he saw just how big the turkey really was, and Zack could feel his friend’s knees shaking next to his own.
“Is that it?” Matthew whispered to Zack.
“That’s him,” said Zack.
Dad got out of his side of the truck and began unloading feed sacks from the back.
Matthew was still watching the turkey.
“Well,” he said at last. “It’s just an old bird, after all. It’s not a mad dog or a charging bull or anything.” He opened the passenger-side door and climbed down.
The turkey attacked. It flew at Matthew, gobbling loudly, its feet scuttling along the ground, feathers flying.
“Ouch!” Matthew yelped as the turkey pecked. Peck, peck, peck.
Matthew swung his arms and kicked his feet, and meanwhile Zack climbed out the other door and made it up onto the porch. This time, when Matthew followed, the turkey flew halfway up the steps behind him before it gave up the chase.
Grandpa came out just then.
“Well, well! Two boys for the price of one!” he said, and grinned. “I can always use an extra farmhand around here.” He went to help Dad unload the feed sacks, as Zack and Matthew went inside.
“Man! That turkey sure can peck!” said Matthew, rubbing his leg. “I can’t wait to see him go flying!”
“Told you!” said Zack.
Grandma had breakfast on the table and smiled when she saw Zack’s friend.
“This is Matthew. He lives down the street from us,” Zack said.
“Glad to have you, Matthew, and you’re just in time,” she said as she placed a platter of waffles on the table. “Ham and eggs coming up. I hope you’re both hungry.”
“I’m always hungry,” said Matthew, and dug his fork into the waffle on top.
When breakfast was over, Zack asked Matthew to help with some chores. They carried two piles of old magazines up to the attic, brought down a fan for the kitchen, crawled under the sink to plug a hole around a pipe, and checked the mousetraps in the closets. Matthew was glad to see they were empty.
When the work was done, the boys went outside and looked for Tailpipe. The turkey was at the far end of Grandma’s garden. They saw Josie sitting on top of the woodpile next to the machine shack. She scrambled down when she saw them coming.
“Josie, this is Matthew,” Zack said, and turning to Matthew, “Josie’s the one who put a new wheel on the wagon.”
“Hi, Matthew,” said Josi
e.
Matthew didn’t even answer. He just unwrapped a stick of gum, stuck it in his mouth, and said to Zack, “I thought it was just you and me.”
“Nope,” said Zack. “It’s the three of us.”
Matthew shrugged. “So let’s see the trouble-shooter machine,” he said.
The three went inside the shack.
Zack could tell right away that Matthew didn’t think much of what he’d made so far.
“We can pull it wherever we need it to go,” Zack explained. “And it makes a really loud bang to begin with.” To demonstrate, he picked up a croquet ball and dropped it down the rain gutter. It rolled out the bottom and hit the front end of the wagon with a bang.
Matthew went on chewing his gum. “You could just pick up a croquet ball and throw it at the wagon, and it would make the same noise,” he said.
Zack knew that, but he was only getting started. Matthew may have been the first friend he had made when the family moved to their new house, but he wasn’t always such a great friend. And right now he wasn’t much fun, and he certainly wasn’t being very polite to Josie.
“Well . . . there’s a lot more to do,” Zack explained.
“Yeah,” said Josie, looking Matthew square in the face. “This is only step number one. You’ve only seen the beginning of the turkey trouble-shooter.”
“Okay,” said Matthew, “so show me!”
* * *
Twelve
* * *
MOVING DAY
Zack was thinking so hard and so fast his brain hurt. The problem was that he had already tried all kinds of things with the wagon and the lazy Susan, and none of them had worked out. All week he had been going over ideas of what he would try next. He wasn’t sure of anything, but he had to say something.
“Next,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pack of balloons left over from Emilene’s birthday party, “we need some water balloons,” and he handed one to Matthew, another to Josie. “You can fill them at the pump on the back porch.”
While Matthew and Josie were up at the house, Zack went digging desperately through the stuff on his grandpa’s workbench, looking for the lightweight pie tin he had seen before. He drove a thin, sharp nail through the center of it so that it stuck out the other side.
When his friends came back, he showed them the nail in the pie tin. “We need to arrange things so that the pie tin is standing up on edge with a water balloon behind it. When the ball shoots out the end of the rain gutter, it will hit the pie tin, which will fall backward onto the balloon; the nail will pop it, and there will be this big bang, with water all over the place.”
Now Matthew began to look a little bit interested. He took the gum out of his mouth, and stuck it to the floor of the wagon a few inches from the end of the rain gutter. He stuck the edge of the pie tin in the gum so that it was standing straight up. Then Josie placed her water balloon between the back of the pie tin and the rim of the wagon.
“Ready?” said Zack.
“Go!” Matthew and Josie said together.
Zack dropped the croquet ball down the top of the piece of rain gutter. It rolled out the other end and hit the pie tin, but only hard enough to tip it slightly, not knock it over.
This time Matthew didn’t make fun of it. He only said, “I think the rain gutter should be longer.”
“You’re right,” said Zack, and now his brain was in overdrive. “We need to start higher. A lot higher. Because when the water balloon bursts, that’s only the beginning.”
Josie was looking at him curiously, but Zack barreled on: “We have to build it someplace where it can stay awhile.”
“Yeah!” said Josie, watching him all the while. “If you can’t take the machine to the turkey, we’ll get the turkey to come to the machine.”
Zack couldn’t have said it better himself.
“Right. So I think we should build it in the barn,” Zack continued. “Grandpa doesn’t use it much in summer. And we can haul our stuff there on the wagon. Now we just have to figure out what to take.”
Matthew was already moving slowly around the shack, shaking cans to guess what was inside and opening boxes. Josie, too, started checking out barrels and climbing on cinder blocks to see what was up on the shelves.
“Man, this place is a museum!” Matthew said. “Bird feeders, an old sewing machine. Some kind of propeller.”
Josie even found a can of marbles. “Your grandma uses these to spread around plants in her window garden,” she said.
“And look at this!” said Zack. He held up a toy gum-ball machine, with one red faded-looking candy rattling around inside. There was a lid at the top to add more gum balls and a trapdoor at the bottom to let them out. “I’ll bet this was my dad’s when he was a kid.”
Matthew found a fireplace bellows too. When you moved the handles out and in, it squeezed out puffs of air. Matthew pointed the nozzle at the back of Josie’s head and pumped the bellows. Josie’s hair stuck straight up in the air.
The first thing to do was make the rain gutter longer. So Zack and Matthew picked up all the sections of rain pipe they could find and put them on the wagon. They kept piling on stuff—the washing machine wringer, a steering wheel, and a bicycle pump; the bellows, the marbles, a roasting pan, and the propeller. They even added the gum-ball machine.
When they couldn’t fit one more thing on the wagon, they opened the door of the shack and looked out—Zack one way, and Matthew the other.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Josie, who was at the back of the wagon, trying to hold the load together.
“The turkey’s standing right out by the silo,” said Zack, “and he’s looking our way.”
“So?” said Josie.
“So the minute we step out there pulling this creaky wagon, he’s going to peck us up one side and down the other, that’s what,” said Matthew.
“He never pecks me,” said Josie.
The boys turned around and stared at her.
“Why not? ’Cause you’re a girl?” Matthew asked. “ ’Cause he’s too polite to peck a girl?”
Josie rolled her eyes. “Watch,” she said, and motioned for Matthew to hold on to the load in the wagon. Then she squeezed between the two boys in the doorway.
In fact, she walked right out into the open space between the barn and the machine shack. When Tailpipe saw her, he spread his wings and began to gobble. But as he came skittering across the ground, head down and feathers flying, Josie reached one hand into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out a handful of Cheerios, and threw them directly in the path of the turkey.
Just like magic, the turkey’s whirling feet began to slow, the wings began to fold, and then he called to the hens and began to peck, peck at the Cheerios.
“Works every time,” said Josie.
The boys stared at the turkey. They stared at each other. Why hadn’t they thought of that?
“Well,” said Matthew, after a moment, “so we’ll build a turkey-scaring machine anyway, for the times it doesn’t work.”
“It’s got to do more than scare a turkey,” said Josie. She looked at Zack. “Have you told him?”
“Told me what?” asked Matthew.
“Wait till we get inside the barn,” said Josie.
Matthew pulled the wagon, Zack walked along one side to steady the load, and Josie followed behind to see that nothing fell off. When they got inside, Matthew looked all around, his eyes huge. Zack wondered if he’d ever been inside a real barn before.
“Now,” Matthew said. “Tell me what?”
But first Josie had a few questions. She looked hard at Matthew and asked, “What do you know about detective work?”
Matthew looked from Josie to Zack and shrugged.
“Have you ever had a break-in at your house?” Josie asked.
“No,” said Matthew.
“Has anyone ever broken into your dad’s car?”
“No,” said Matthew.
“Has anyone ever stole
n anything from your backpack?”
“No,” said Matthew.
Josie sighed and looked at Zack. “Maybe he can help and maybe he can’t,” she said.
“Josie thinks there’s a burglar robbing the farms around here,” said Zack. “A really clever burglar.”
“Thinks? Knows!” said Josie. “The Smiths’ snowblower, the Baileys’ angel food cake, the Hendersons’ pig, my mom’s gold bracelet, Zack’s grandma’s earring, my brother’s key to his apartment . . .”
“Wow!” said Matthew. “Anybody get fingerprints? Any clues?”
“All we found were some sneaker prints in the ground outside one of our windows where he probably crawled in,” said Josie. “V marks, like a duck makes.”
“So maybe it was a duck,” said Matthew, but no one laughed.
“Well, the only thing we can do right this minute is work on that machine,” Zack said. Now that he’d finally gotten Matthew to the farm, he didn’t want to waste time. Especially if a burglar was coming back.
* * *
Thirteen
* * *
DOWN THE RAIN GUTTER
The largest part of Grandpa’s barn, with the rafters above and the stack of hay in one corner, was at the very front, the part of the barn a person would see first when he walked through the big double doors. The stalls for the cows were farther back, with a door that opened to the pasture.
All sorts of things hung from nails—a raincoat, a harness, a cap, a rope. An old pegboard leaned crookedly against the wall, where it had fallen among the cobwebs.
Zack and his friends took over the large space and went through the pile of junk they had brought from the machine shack, trying out first one thing, then another, to see what could work. After they had fitted sections of rain gutter together, they brought the stepladder from the back porch and nailed one end of the gutter up high on one of the thick posts that held up the roof. Josie could drop the croquet ball down it by standing on the next-to-the-last step of the ladder and holding on to the post.