The Orphan Band of Springdale by Anne Nesbet

Author:Anne Nesbet [Nesbet, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780763699543
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2018-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

The next pigeon expedition went in an entirely different direction from Holly Hill, and that was thanks to Georges Thibodeau.

It was his obsession with airplanes that caused all the trouble.

Apparently he had spent the days since that Saturday when Gusta walked over Holly Hill thinking and thinking about pigeons and airplanes, and those two thoughts had twined into one larger plan that he pitched to Gusta during the noon recess.

“Hey, Gusta,” said Georges. “How’s Mr. Bertmann’s pigeon camera coming along?”

Gusta thought about that one particular workbench in the corner of Mr. Bertmann’s room, the surface covered with tiny little lenses and screwdrivers and ends of wire.

“It’s not quite ready, not yet,” she said. She felt a certain loyalty toward Mr. Bertmann and his experiments, so she didn’t want to say that it was hard to imagine that camera would ever be ready.

“Oh,” said Georges. His disappointment silenced him for a few seconds, but not longer than that.

“I was thinking of things it would be interesting to see,” he said. “I mean, to see from a pigeon camera’s point of view. Like airplanes. But we could go anyway. Want to take a look at the new airfield on the other side of town? We could carry a pigeon over that way, right? The pigeons need to practice wearing their camera harness, don’t they, even if the camera isn’t ready yet? That’s what you said before.”

In the end his sheer stubborn enthusiasm wore Gusta down, and she found herself walking on past the high school, with Georges carrying the pigeon cage on her right side. Inside the travel cage today was Mabel, who kept standing up and turning a couple of steps to the left or right as they went, as if she were just slightly unsettled in some way.

“It’s all right, Mabel,” said Gusta. “We’re going somewhere new. A labyrinth in the air for you!”

They had to walk to the airfield and then all the way to the other side of it, too, so that Mabel would cross over the airplanes on her way home. And then after all that walk, in fact there were only three planes. They climbed a little hill on the far side and looked at the landing strip there, the way this field had been carved out of the woods on one side and tucked up next to someone’s pasture on the other side.

“Pretty wonderful, isn’t it?” said Georges happily. “An airport out here?”

Airplanes were probably incapable of disappointing Georges, even when there were only three of them.

“I guess so,” said Gusta. She was lying: what she saw was a raw stretch of clearing, a newly paved landing strip, a tractor busily grading more land on the far side, and those three small airplanes. It didn’t strike her as “wonderful,” exactly. And the breeze was kicking up and getting chilly again. She was worried about Mabel becoming confused in the wind.

“Shall we let her go?” said Gusta. “Here, I’ll tuck her into her harness.”

When all the tiny buckles had been buckled, Gusta had a generous inspiration.

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