Alvin Fernald, Superweasel Read online

  “Got any good ideas for antipollution projects?” asked Shoie. He always showed great respect for the Pest because in the past, she had rescued him (and Alvin, too) from some particularly wild situations brought on by ideas that poured from the M.B.

  “Pollution. That means dirty stuff.” She pushed her hair back across her shoulders and out of her eyes. “You could write poems about pollution and have them printed in the school paper.”

  Shoie snorted at the idea. Alvin asked jeeringly, “What do you know about writing poems?”

  “Lots. We studied them in school today. We found out that some kids can’t write poems at all, and I write them very easily.”

  “You’re crazy,” said Alvin to his little sister. “Let’s see you write a poem about pollution.”

  She gazed out the window for a minute, then took a deep breath, closed her eyes, danced around in a complete circle, and said rapidly:

  Roses are red,

  Violets are blue;

  But who can see them?

  Smog ruined the view.

  “Hey! That’s not bad,” said Shoie.

  “Try another,” encouraged Alvin.

  This time she gazed out of the window much longer. Her eyes glazed over. Suddenly she whirled about on one foot, and declared loudly:

  Drive on, drive on! In a traffic snarl,

  We’ll gas ourselves to death;

  The fleas will dance upon our graves

  If they can draw a breath.

  “Hey, Pest, you really can write poetry,” exclaimed Alvin. He considered for a moment. “But I’m no good as a poet, and if you wrote the antipollution poetry then it wouldn’t be my project.”

  “Not your project.” The Pest had a habit of repeating the words of other people, like a faint little echo.

  “We’ve got to come up with something,” said Alvin. “Now let’s analyze the problem scientifically.” That was one of his favorite sentences. “What does Miss Miles really want us to do?”

  “Clean up our environment,” said Shoie.

  “But you can’t do that all by yourselves,” objected the Pest. “You’d need lots of people.”

  “Right,” said Alvin. “So the best thing we can do is get everybody involved. We’ve got to figure out who the biggest polluters are around Riverton, and point them out to everybody in town. We’ll put the glare of publicity on them!” He was warming to his subject.

  “Right on!” declared Shoie enthusiastically.

  The Pest whirled around, stopped abruptly, and proclaimed:

  Stop DDT, and 2,4-D

  And all that poison junk;

  Stop ruining our ’vironment,

  A POLLUTER IS A PUNK!

  The Pest was one of the third-grade cheerleaders, so she shouted the last line.

  “I already know who’s the biggest polluter in town,” announced Alvin quietly.

  “Who?” asked Shoie.

  “Think about it for a minute, old man. Remember when we used to be able to catch fish in Three Oaks Pond any time we hiked out there? Now there’s not a single fish left alive in that pond. They’re all dead, killed by pollution.”

  “Who’s polluting the pond?” asked Shoie indignantly.

  “Well, we all know that the Weasel River runs into the north end of the pond, and then comes out again at the south end. Right? The river is bringing pollution into that pond.”

  “Where from?” asked the Pest.

  “Shoie, do you remember that day last summer when we hiked up the river to the chemical plant? When we got there, we discovered that a lot of oily, yellow stuff was pouring out of a pipe line from the plant, and running right into the river. That’s the polluter — the chemical plant. Nature probably has been building that river and Three Oaks Pond for millions of years, and some lousy polluter destroys them in a year or two.”

  “Windy Biggs’s old man owns the chemical plant,” said Shoie softly. “He’s the lousy polluter.”

  “Even if you know the chemical plant is spreading poison,” said the Pest, “what can you do about it? Alvin, you’re full of ideas, but how can a thirteen-year-old boy fight a big company like that? It would take Superman, to accomplish anything.”

  Something clicked in the Magnificent Brain. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought for a long moment. Superman! “That’s it!” he said triumphantly, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “That’s what we’ll do! That’s our antipollution project!”

  “Our antipollution project!” echoed the Pest.

  “What’s our antipollution project?” Shoie was baffled.

  “Superman and Batman and Spiderman and all those other guys are crime fighters. We’ll be crime fighters, too. We’ll fight the greatest criminals of all — the polluters. On the blackest of nights we’ll suddenly appear out of nowhere and strike back at them. We’ll leave our secret mark behind. Then we’ll disappear, as though we’d never existed! We’ll be superheroes!” Alvin was getting carried away.

  “Sounds like fun,” said Shoie, not knowing exactly what Alvin had in mind. “What do we call ourselves?”

  “Ah! That’s very important.” Alvin began pacing the floor. “If we want to strike hard at the polluters — focus publicity on them — then we strike, not as three persons, but as one. A single caped crusader who seems to be everywhere at once in his eternal battle against the arch fiends of pollution!”

  “Oh, Alvin!” said the Pest. “You use such shivery words.” She gazed admiringly at her brother. “Besides, you’re including me in your project, too.”

  Alvin hadn’t even thought about that. He’d included her subconsciously. “Well,” he said gruffly, “you can come along and write poems.”

  “I still want to know who we’re going to be,” said Shoie.

  “It should be some living thing out of nature, to represent our environment.”

  “A living thing out of nature,” repeated the Pest.

  “Maybe an animal?”

  “Right on!” encouraged Shoie. “Some brave animal — a real fighter.”

  “I have it!” exclaimed Alvin.

  “What?” Shoie and the Pest asked simultaneously.

  “We’ll be The Weasel!” A pause. Then, “Even better, we’ll be Superweasel!”

  “Superweasel?”

  “Sure. Grandpa Ketch told me all about weasels when I stayed at his farm last summer. Weasels are great. Pest, go get the ‘W’ volume of the encyclopedia.”

  The Pest skipped back a moment later with the book, easily ducking under the Foolproof Burglar Alarm. The three kids sat side by side on the edge of the bed. The Pest found the right page.

  Across the top of the page was a picture showing a long, slender animal with a pointed nose. It was gracefully built, and looked particularly alert and intelligent.

  “‘In its tireless destruction of vermin, rats and mice, the weasel is a friend of nature and of man,’” read Alvin.

  “‘Friend of nature and of man.’”

  “‘It is not so helpful, however, when it robs poultry houses,’” continued Alvin.

  “We won’t rob any poultry houses, will we?” asked the Pest. “I’m scared of live chickens.”

  “Of course not.”

  “It says here,” said Shoie, reading ahead, “that the weasel is absolutely fearless.”

  “That’s us,” said Alvin.

  “‘One species is called the ermine,’” quoted the Pest. “‘The fur is so magnificent that only royalty, in days gone by, was allowed to wear it.’ Oh, Alvin, that’s so romantic!”

  “Fearless!” exclaimed Alvin. “A friend of nature and of man. That’s us! Besides, we’re trying to clean up the Weasel River, aren’t we? So what could be better than Superweasel?” He paused, then dropped his voice until it was scarcely more than a whisper. “Superweasel! That name will be whispered in awe and admiration in thousands of homes — and cursed by polluters throughout the world.” He sprang to his feet. “Follow me!” he shouted.

  In the bathroom,
Alvin opened the medicine cabinet and took out the bottle of iodine. “Hold your fingers over the sink,” he directed.

  The kids thrust their forefingers out, and Alvin placed a drop of iodine on each, including his own. “This is the way the Indians, who also were great pollution fighters, swore themselves to secrecy,” he said solemnly. “They cut themselves, and then mixed their blood together.” He coughed slightly. “I don’t want the Pest to hurt herself, so we’ll use iodine instead of blood. Now, do you solemnly swear to keep secret the identity of Superweasel?”

  Simultaneously they said, “Yes!” Upon signal from Alvin they rubbed their red-smeared forefingers together.

  “Superweasel,” proclaimed Alvin in his deepest and most mysterious voice, “soon will strike terror into the hearts of criminal polluters all over the world.”

  The Pest whirled once on one foot, then said in her soft little voice:

  Hurray, hurray, the Weasel’s here!

  He saves our air and water!

  He does a job he needs to do —

  As ’portant as bread and botter!

  “Botter?” asked Shoie.

  The Pest smiled sweetly up at him. “Otherwise it wouldn’t rhyme.”

  Chapter 3

  The First Superadventure

  “Hic!”

  Alvin had the hiccups. Normally this was no problem (occasionally he faked the hiccups in school, just to bug Miss Miles). But it isn’t easy to sneak through the darkness as a superbeing when you have the hiccups.

  “Hic!”

  “Doggone it, Alvin,” whispered Shoie, “can’t you be quiet?”

  “Be quiet,” echoed the Pest.

  Alvin turned off his flashlight, and stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Just below him he could hear the gurgle of the Weasel River as it rounded the bend toward town. He looked up at the sky. There was only a sliver of moon showing. Good. The darker the better. Superweasel — consisting of three shadowy figures — was at work on his first big assignment to save the environment.

  Alvin reached out and squeezed his sister’s thin little shoulder. “How about it, Pest?” he whispered. “Do you feel like a guardian of the environment?”

  “I feel like a cookie,” she whispered. “It’s been a long time since dinner.”

  And it had been a long time since they’d eaten. As a matter of fact, Alvin and the Pest were supposed to be in bed.

  They’d gone to bed at their regular time, then waited until their parents were watching television. When they thought the coast was clear, Alvin activated his Portable Fire Escape (an old rope with knots in it, tied to the foot of his bed, and thrown out the window). As quietly as possible he and the Pest lowered themselves to the bushes outside the kitchen. They picked up an old, dented bucket from the garage, and headed down the dark streets.

  Shoie was sitting under a streetlight on the corner of Maple and Third, waiting for them. “Power to Superweasel,” he said, holding out his fist with his thumb straight up. Alvin grabbed the thumb in his fist, and the Pest grabbed Alvin’s thumb. It was Superweasel’s secret password and handshake.

  “If I’m going to lead the way,” Alvin said importantly, “then you carry the bucket, old bean.”

  “Okay.” Shoie glanced at the bucket as he took it.

  “Hey, I remember this one. It’s the bucket you brought to school when Miss Miles let us raise that little rabbit in the classroom. We used it to carry water and food.”

  “Never mind about that. Let’s get going.”

  Now, scrambling along the riverbank through the darkness, Alvin wasn’t so sure they were doing the right thing. What if Mom or Dad decided to look in on them while they slept? What if Superweasel was arrested for trespassing?

  “Are you guys sure you want to go ahead with this?” he whispered.

  “I think it’s exciting,” said the Pest.

  “I’m okay,” said Shoie, though his voice sounded doubtful. “How about you?”

  “Hic!” Alvin turned on his flashlight and resumed his scrambling journey along the faint trail through the trees beside the stream.

  Ten minutes later the kids came to a large clearing. Far out in the center they could see the chemical plant. Huge floodlights bathed it in the brillance of daylight. A high fence of mesh wire surrounded the plant. The little river ran along one side of the factory, just outside the fence.

  “No hic flashlight from here on,” declared Alvin. “We sneak up the riverbed until we’re right beside the corner of the factory. That’s where they’re dumping the bad stuff into the river. There’ll be at least one night watchman around, maybe more, so keep your heads down.”

  Alvin took a deep breath. Crouching low, he ran up the riverbank toward the factory. The other kids followed. Halfway to the fence, the bank dropped almost to water level, and they stumbled into a pool of light from the floodlamps. Alvin felt as though he were on some gigantic, brilliantly lighted stage. The riverbed made a big curve up ahead, and he figured they could save time by taking a shortcut across the clearing, then dropping back into the riverbed. Crouching even lower, he scurried across the clearing. Almost immediately he lost his balance and fell on his face in the wet grass. Shoie tripped over him, did a somersault in midair, and landed on his back.

  “Harrrrrfffffff!” The bucket clanged across the ground.

  “What’s wrong with you guys?” whispered the Pest. “Can’t you be quiet?”

  Alvin scuttled on across to the stream bed, lowered himself down the bank, and found that once more he was in dark shadows. Two other figures came slithering down the bank.

  “Ooooooooofff!” Instantly the Pest started scrambling right back up the bank, her head bathed in the factory’s floodlights, her golden hair glistening. She was holding one hand over her nose and mouth, and seemed to be trying to escape.

  Shoie, too, was gasping for breath. Alvin knew why. The awful odor went down his throat, through his lungs, and right on down to his toenails. “Hic!” The effect of the hiccup drew a new batch of the horrible stuff into his lungs. For a moment he thought he would pass out.

  He jerked the Pest down beside him so she couldn’t be seen from the factory, and risked turning on the flashlight.

  At their feet, overgrown with weeds, was the mouth of a pipe about two feet in diameter. No one would ever find it — unless he followed his nose.

  Alvin was turning purple, and risked one quick gasp to keep himself alive. He heard the sound of falling water, and aimed the beam of the flashlight at the liquid flowing in a steady stream from the pipe into Weasel River. It was a horrible dirty yellow color. Here was the source of the awful smell.

  Alvin jerked the bucket out of Shoie’s grasp and, hanging onto Shoie’s jacket, he leaned way over and held the bucket under the lip of the pipe. Quickly it grew heavier. When he judged that the bucket was three-quarters full, he pulled himself erect and scrambled up the bank. He lay flat in the grass, but in full view of the factory.

  Shoie and the Pest staggered up and dropped beside him. All three gulped the fresh air.

  “Hic!” Alvin thrust the bucket as far as he could from his head.

  “No wonder all the fish in Three Oaks Pond are dead,” whispered Shoie.

  “That’s awful stuff!” said the Pest.

  Alvin silently agreed with them, but didn’t think they should discuss the subject here in the open. He put his fingers to his lips, and lifted his head to survey the situation. The entire fence, as far as he could see, was brightly lighted. But no. There was one exception. The factory’s tall smokestack cast a dense shadow across one small section of the fence.

  That shadow was where Superweasel must make his entry!

  Alvin pushed himself to his feet, grabbed the bucket and, crouching low, ran for the fence. He hoped no watchman was looking in his direction. As he ran, the water sloshed out of the bucket and splashed across his pants legs and shoes. It was a horrible feeling, and smelled like he had stepped into a nest of dead skunks.

>   Alvin fully expected someone to shout at him at any moment. Although Shoie had started well behind him, the Mighty Athlete passed him in a burst of speed that made Alvin feel like he was crawling.

  Superweasel — all three parts of him — aimed at the base of the fence. In the dim light Alvin could see that the bucket was still half-full of the poisonous liquid.

  “Where’s the clothesline?” he whispered.

  The Pest unzipped her jacket. Coiled around her waist were about ten turns of her mother’s best clothesline. Patiently she uncoiled it, then handed one end to Alvin and the other to Shoie. Alvin tied his end to the handle of the bucket.

  “You get the honor, old bean,” he whispered to Shoie. “You’ve always been the Mighty Athlete.”

  “Geeeeez! Thanks a lot. You guys can run if anything happens, but I’ll be caught up there.”

  “Power to Superweasel!” said Alvin.

  Shoie took a deep breath, then grabbed the end of the clothesline in his teeth. He shot up the fence like a monkey.

  Alvin could barely see Shoie straddling the top of the fence, but he felt a sudden tug on the rope. He eased the bucket off the ground, and it disappeared into the darkness above.

  “You next,” ordered Alvin. “I want to be sure you can make it, so you won’t be stuck out here all alone.”

  Actually (as Alvin well knew) the Pest was much more athletic than he was. Inserting the tips of her little sneakers into the wire mesh, she moved rapidly upward. Alvin followed, wheezing.

  The three figures straddled the top of the fence for a moment, staring out across the factory yard.

  “Hic!”

  “Can’t you stop that, Alvin?” whispered the Pest. “Cathy Kemp says that if you cross your legs and your arms, lean as far backward as you can, hold your breath, and think about zebras it’s a sure way —”

  “Shussssssh!” The sound was urgent. In the dim light, Alvin pointed. A man had just come around the corner of the building, and was walking slowly toward the fence. In his hand was a flashlight.

  Alvin imagined that there was a gigantic gun strapped to the man’s waist. He could feel the sweat pouring down his face in the cool night air.