Cold Cereal Read online

  After dinner Mom had the idea that the four of them should take a walk around the neighborhood and maybe drop in on the Utzes.

  “We can wish them a happy Thanksgiving,” she said, and didn’t say anything about asking them to explain what exactly had happened earlier on the porch. Scott supposed the subject would just come up naturally. And during their walk his parents explained that they’d been talking and that John would be staying with them while Mom was doing research in Antarctica. This had the effect of thawing the last of Polly’s shyness, and she began firing off comments and questions like she was making up for lost time.

  The Utz house was dark and shuttered. Mom and John and Polly waited on the sidewalk as Scott rang the bell and peeked through the gaps at the edges of the windows.

  “Maybe they left for the weekend,” called Mom, and maybe they had—but when? There were two newspapers and an unclaimed package on the porch. Scott thought of the episode with John this morning, and of the riddle in his pocket.

  Something was wrong.

  THE GOOD AND HARMLESS FREEMEN OF AMERICA, or Freemen for short, share a history that is shrouded in mystery and contradiction. If you ask the Freemen themselves, they will tell you that the organization is a direct continuation of the Round Table of King Arthur. Since there is historical confusion regarding whether King Arthur or any of his knights were real persons or simply the stuff of legend, this claim is difficult to verify.

  The Freemen certainly don’t suggest any connection to Camelot through their iconography, which is mostly concerned with vague mysticism and breakfast cereal. Their most visible symbol, the Sickle and Spoon, symbolizes the harvesting of cereal and its consumption.1 Freemen consider the night sky to be the Inverted Bowl of Heaven, which is filled with the cereal of the gods (stars) and of course the Milky Way. The Grand Hall of any well-established Freemen lodge will have a domed ceiling painted to resemble the cosmos. The floor will be decorated with any manner of icons and symbols.2 From floor to ceiling will stretch two freestanding columns fashioned to resemble bundles of tall wheat and topped with capitals like ornate bowls. These represent the finished and unfinished cereal, which is also symbolic of each member’s journey from an unfinished Initiate to a fully realized (and therefore fully free) Freeman. In some lodges each column will also be crowned by a globe: one painted to represent the Earth, the other utterly black. The meaning behind these globes is one of the Freemen’s most closely guarded secrets, and made known only to those who reach the highest level of membership.

  The Freemen have 987 levels of membership, the first three of which are achieved merely by filling out an application. The 8th level is granted upon full acceptance into the local lodge, the 13th following Initiation, the 21st at the end of the Initiate’s second week, and the 89th the first time he brings snacks.3

  At the 89th level the Initiate will become a First Squire. At the 144th level he makes Second Squire, and at the 233rd he attains the rank of Knight Errant. At 377 he is a Knight of the Round, at 610 a Launcelot, and at 987 a Knight of the Siege Perilous. When a member crosses each of these important milestones, he is celebrated with a pageant and mystery play. Each play is intended to reveal some new secret of existence that has heretofore been hidden and to explain some fresh facet of the Freemen’s ultimate purpose.

  The Freemen believe that something has been lost. The Freemen believe that man is no longer whole. They hold that humanity’s connection to the supernatural has been severed and that we can no longer feel the rough hands of our Creator: a Great Cultivator who has raised us, reaped us, and now wants us all to Awake to a New Morning in the Inverted Bowl of Heaven, once again reunited with the marshmallow magic of the universe.

  CHAPTER 20

  Scott’s mom had been packing for two weeks, but the following morning was still a panic. She’d prepared for her trip too early, and now she could no longer recall what she’d packed and what she hadn’t, so the contents of each of her bags had to be taken apart and cataloged and put back together again. Polly followed Mom from room to room making helpful suggestions. Scott and John, meanwhile, stood stiffly in the living room and let the rest of the house bob around them.

  A Goodco commercial was playing on the television. The Snox Rabbit, with his spreadsheets and supercomputers, was trying once more to discover the secret ingredient that made Honey Frosted Snox so delicious (all kids knew it was Honeycomb Magic; the Food and Drug Administration understood it to be monosodium glutamate). The Snox Rabbit pulled his ears in frustration. It made Scott want to brag, “I’ve met that guy,” but he was concerned with how that would sound.

  The four of them drove to the Philadelphia airport, where they learned one of Mom’s bags was too heavy and so each suitcase was reopened and its contents redistributed while Mom handed over her identification and learned she’d been placed on the terrorist watch list because the name Doe sounded fake.

  Eventually they rushed her to the edge of security, and she turned to face her kids. Scott was holding a small armful of things she’d willingly removed from the heaviest bag if it meant she would be allowed to check it through to New Zealand. She kissed him, and then Polly.

  “I didn’t mean to leave like this,” she told them. “When you think of me in the coming weeks, try to remember me as a sane person.”

  John took the pile of clothes and books from Scott. “Can we send these to you? At the base?”

  “I am not even worried about those things right now. At this point if we just manage to put the right person on the plane, I’ll consider the morning a success.”

  She kissed Scott and Polly again and fumbled with her passport and boarding pass at the first security checkpoint. Then she was waving to them from the winding line, and five minutes later she was gone.

  The other people in the airport made it impossible to forget that John was there. Despite his sunglasses and baseball cap they stared and pointed and whispered in each other’s ears. Look at him there, thought Scott, holding Mom’s things. I didn’t need help holding Mom’s things. He moved to take them back.

  “That’s okay,” said John. “I’ve … well, all right.”

  On the way home John demonstrated that he hadn’t driven a car in kind of a long time. The wrong person got on the plane after all, thought Scott, because he was feeling dramatic and sorry for himself.

  In the front seat, Polly whispered occasionally to her little prince figurine and tramped him to and fro along the armrest. The little prince discovered the magical lever that lowered the Crystal Portal of the Wind, and so Scott was gusted intermittently from the passenger window as Polly worked it down and up again.

  “Please stop,” said Scott.

  “Is that your imaginary friend?” John asked Polly, nodding at the prince.

  “He’s not imaginary,” said Polly, and she confirmed this by way of stabbing John in the arm with its tiny sword.

  “Ow.”

  They crossed over the Walt Whitman Bridge and back into New Jersey.

  “So your mom will spend all day getting to New Zealand,” John said after a stretch of silence, “and then she stays there for a couple days?”

  “That’s where they give her her big red coat,” Polly explained. “And she takes a class on how to behave in Antarctica.”

  “How to behave?”

  “Yeah. Like: Don’t take anything from the ice. Don’t leave anything behind. No touching the penguins. Stuff like that.”

  “I have to admit,” said John, “I don’t really understand why a breakfast cereal company needs a physicist. Or why they need her in Antarctica.”

  Scott huffed. Though in truth he didn’t really understand it, either.

  “Goodco funds all kinds of research that isn’t about breakfast,” said Polly. “Like, as a charity.”

  “Well. Then I guess I’m glad I’m filming a commercial for them tomorrow.”

  “Are you doing it at the factory?” asked Polly, and then she trilled with sudden excitement. “Are
you filming it at our house?”

  John grinned with his movie star teeth. “I don’t think that’s been decided. I’m still waiting to hear word. They wanted to do the commercial in California, you know. I convinced them to let me film it here so I could see you two.”

  Scott didn’t have to look to know his father was watching him in the rearview mirror. The whole situation made him feel sick to his stomach.

  Well, something was making him sick, anyway. It was possibly John’s driving.

  Home again, Scott raced ahead of his father and sister and let himself in. Once upstairs he shut his bedroom door behind him.

  “Ma get off okay?” asked Mick from under the bed.

  “Barely. Why are you under the bed?”

  “Like it down here. ’S dark. Musty.”

  “Are you ready to go look for Harvey some more? I’ve thought of a way you can repay me for my help.”

  Mick crawled into the open and blinked. “How’s that?”

  “You can help me look for Erno and Emily, too. I think something’s happened to them. Erno left me this note.” He handed the riddle to Mick, who climbed atop the bed to read it.

  “’S gibberish,” pronounced the elf after a minute.

  “I don’t think it is,” said Scott.

  “Well I don’t know much abou’ businessmen types, or where they retire. Don’t a lot o’ people go to Florida?”

  “Listen—if I’m right and Erno is in trouble, then I think he left me a riddle only because he was afraid the wrong person might read his note. He would leave me something only I could solve.”

  “Yeah?”

  “‘The accountant’s student came to be the chairman of his company.’ A couple weeks ago we met an accountant named Merle Lynn.”

  “Merlin? That old fraud?”

  “Merle Lynn. He was just this guy. But the wizard Merlin’s student was King Arthur, wasn’t he?”

  “So they said,” Mick mused. “There was a lot of excitement abou’ that boy. We thought he might be a good king to the Fay. One of our queens tried to help him out, but he wasn’t so different from all the rest in the end.”

  “King Arthur was real?”

  “As real as you an’ me,” said Mick. “Well, as real as you, anyway. Don’ want to speak ill o’ Queen Nimue, but I think it was a mistake givin’ him that sword. Starts everything off on th’ wrong foot, that does. You know what makes a nice gift for a new king? Houseplant.”

  “Sure. Anyway, Arthur became chairman of his company, if you call his company the Knights of the Round Table. Or England. So where did King Arthur retire?”

  Mick’s eyes brightened, and he smiled up at Scott. “Avalon.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Erno studied Mr. Wilson’s riddle and lifted his legs whenever Biggs came near. The big man pushed the vacuum over the carpet where Erno’s feet had been, pulled it back again, pushed and pulled around the room. He really was such a fussy giant. He’d vacuumed twice since they’d arrived. But then again, the kids were probably getting more crumbs in his carpet than he was accustomed to.

  Erno still intended to keep the riddle to himself, for now. Emily was just out the back door taking a shower, but at least there was no possibility of her walking into the living room unexpectedly: she was having her shower while blindfolded and tied to the porch railing.

  Erno whispered,

  “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust

  We push and pull to fill the void

  If change is just, then change we must

  I would not see my work destroyed

  “P.S. Your doctor’s a hag—

  Papa’s got a brand-new bag.”

  “What work, I wonder,” he continued to whisper, not that a whisper was necessary. The drone of the vacuum cleaner was loud enough to overwhelm more conversational tones or even, for example, the distant shouts of a girl who was finished with her shower but still tied to the porch railing. Erno skimmed the poem again and glanced at Biggs. He waved for the big man’s attention.

  Biggs flicked a switch, and the vacuum groaned its last. “Yuh?”

  Erno nodded at the vacuum bag, which deflated as the machine exhaled. “What happens when you fill that thing with … ashes and dust?”

  Biggs scratched his cheek. “Gotta change the bag.”

  Then, from out back: “BIGGS!”

  The big man was startled—you could tell because his expression almost changed. He rushed through the kitchen, grabbing a towel and a thick bathrobe on the way. Erno stuffed the riddle back into his pack and removed the book he’d been reading. A minute later Emily entered the room, looking like a wet movie star in her big, white, furry bathrobe.

  “Been shouting for five minutes,” she grumbled. “We need a new system. I really think we should take a serious look at the system as it stands right now.”

  “Biggs was cleaning. Hey—what’s another word for void?”

  “Vacuum, emptiness, nothingness, vacuity, abyss—”

  “Thanks, that’s enough.”

  “Why’d you need to know?”

  “No reason.”

  Biggs had to go to work at the library, and Emily wanted to tag along and research Goodco.

  “You’ll be okay?” Biggs asked as they prepared to leave him behind. “Won’t get bored?”

  “I won’t get bored.” Erno was certain.

  They left, on foot, and after counting to fifty, Erno leaped to open the foyer closet and wheel out the vacuum cleaner. He stared at all its parts for a moment, then unzipped the bag and found a smaller paper bag inside. He pulled at this, but it wouldn’t come free, so he pulled harder and fell onto his backside with the bag and a thick burst of gray, clumpy fluff. It got all over the floor; it stuck to his face and hair. Erno snorted a couple of times to clear his nostrils and examined the paper bag.

  It had a circular hole, reinforced with cardboard where it had been attached to the vacuum’s throat. He peered into it. Was there a shape inside, a shape that couldn’t possibly have been sucked in through the vacuum’s mouth?

  After a minute he tweezed it out through the circular opening with his fingertips: a long cardboard mailing tube, furry with dust. There were plastic caps in each end, and he pried one of these out and pulled at the contents.

  It was another yellow scroll tied with a pink ribbon. What really surprised Erno, though, was what huddled at the bottom of the tube, below the scroll: money. A great wad of bills—hundred-dollar bills—bound by a strip of pink paper. Ben Franklin’s thick face gazed up at Erno from each bill, looking bored and disappointed, a look that said, You should really put me in the bank, you know—a penny saved is a penny earned and all that—but you won’t, I know you won’t; nobody listens to old Ben Franklin. Erno counted the crisp notes hastily and then wondered as he finished why Mr. Wilson had hidden ten thousand dollars inside a vacuum cleaner.

  Next he untied the scroll, heart sinking as he expected yet another riddle. But this sheet of yellow paper had a small gold key taped to its center and a handwritten message:

  Where Emily threw up a rainbow.

  Well, there was only one place where Erno could remember Emily doing that.

  Biggs kept a bicycle for warm weather. It took all the strength Erno had to lower it noisily down the trunk of the tree, dangled from a length of wet rope, so that when he descended he could only manage to slide on his palms and arches.

  He was going to get in trouble. There was no way he could get into the tree house by himself, much less hoist a bike back up there. But he’d keep his errand a secret. Despite being much smaller than Biggs, he could still ride the man’s bicycle if he didn’t mind bumping his crotch against the crossbar from time to time. Of course he did mind bumping his crotch against the crossbar from time to time.

  Once, four years ago, Emily had traveled alone by train to the National Mathlympics in Washington DC. All the other mathletes were middle schoolers, and Emily was only nine; but she’d been training with seventh and eighth gr
aders after school because the fourth grade had ceased to challenge her. She wasn’t team captain, but this was only because of her complete lack of leadership qualities, and because the older kids would never have consented to being fronted by a nine-year-old. But Emily was hands-down the star mathlete—she’d just never traveled alone before is all.

  She had looked pale that morning. More than usual even.

  So Mr. Wilson (who had been so much more enthusiastic about his foster children back then, Erno remembered) cooked Emily a huge good-luck breakfast with sausage and bacon and French toast and fried eggs. Mr.Wilson also believed in something called “breakfast dessert,” which Erno generally found redundant. He’d just eaten French toast, after all, which is basically just a pile of doughnuts. So when asked, Erno said he thought he’d skip breakfast dessert today. Emily selected a bag of miniature fruity marshmallows. Pink, green, yellow, orange. She comforted herself by eating these all the way to the train station—and inside the train station, and while waiting for her tickets to print at the kiosk. Then she spilled both the bag and the contents of her stomach on the way to the train platform. Erno thought he could probably remember the exact spot.

  It wasn’t until he neared his destination that Erno realized what a sick joke of a hiding place this was. The train station was a Greek-looking stone box in the center of Goodborough, and its columned facade faced the tallest building in town: the Freemen’s Temple. If the temple had an architectural style, it would be called Early American Evil. It looked like it had been assembled on an Indian burial ground from the mismatching pieces of seven or eight evil castles. Somewhere a hundred years ago a bunch of vampires must have returned home at sunset and wondered where all their gargoyles had gone.