Free Us and Uncle Fraud by Lois Lowry Page B

could fling himself fearlessly, headfirst, from the splintery dock. He could do it forward, backward, curled into a ball, or with his arms spread wide.
    "It's easy, Louise!" Tom and Marcus would tell me every summer. Yet when I stood on the edge of the dock looking down into the lake, the water seemed to change. It was murky, dark, and terrifying from that unaccustomed angle; and when finally, shivering, I would force my legs to move like springs and send me into the air and down, I would fall awkwardly, slapping my stomach, stinging my knees, and I would come to the surface choking, angry, and humiliated.
    I turned Claude's misspelled postcard over in my hands, and wondered if Marcus was right, if Claude felt that way, scared and incompetent, when he held a pen and tried to plunge into something that came so naturally to the rest of us.
    After we had examined it carefully for new messages or clues—but there were none; there was only that foolish, misspelled greeting—Marcus and I tucked the card away in the drawer of my bedside table with Claude's note. It was reassuring, at least, to know that he was still thinking of us. Surely one day soon he would write to ask if we had found his gift; he would give us an address, and we could write to him and ask humbly for his help. We
still searched diligently, almost every day. But we were running out of places to look.
    And now, when we searched in the basement, our shoes got wet. The water had seeped up through the cement floor, in uneven lines where the floor was cracked, and soon it had spread a damp film across the entire surface. Father checked the furnace every day before he went to his office.
    One evening he came home from work dripping, as usual. He spread his wet coat over the staircase railing to dry, peeled off his boots in the kitchen, and poured himself a drink.
    He turned to us and went through his usual routine, though it was wearing thin by now. "Raining cats and dogs, right, pip-squeaks?" he asked.
    "Better than hailing taxicabs," Marcus and I responded as we had now for days, and he ran his hands through our hair and smiled. But his thoughts were obviously elsewhere.
    "I have to go back in to the office after dinner, Hallie," he said to Mother. "The National Guard's coming in tonight with sandbags. The wall's crumbling along the west edge of the cemetery. And up along the River Road, Peter Marek's whole pasture is under water. His cows are all in the barn, but if the water gets higher it'll cut the barn off, too. They're going to try to move his whole herd across the road to Anderson's land later this evening."
    Mother shook her head and began to put dinner on the table.
    "Alexandra Marek's in my class at school," I said. "I bet she gets to stay up and watch. I never get to watch anything interesting."
    Father chuckled. "You and Marcus can watch our furnace," he told us. "If the water comes up around the base of the furnace, I want you to push that red switch that says 'Off' at the top of the basement stairs. Promise?"
    "All right," I said grudgingly. "But I'd rather be out there watching them herd cows through a flood."
    "I'd rather see the wall of the cemetery falling apart," Marcus said. "Then all the dead bodies will start falling into the river." He made a ghoulish face and was about to go into his vampire imitation, but Mother stopped him.
    Tom came from his room and sat down at the table. Mother lifted Stephanie into her high chair and began to serve dinner.
    "Is it true?" Tom asked. "Is the cemetery wall going?"
    Father nodded. "They're going to sandbag it," he said.
    "Can I go? Can I help them?"
    But this time Father said no. "You're too young, Tom, and it's too dangerous. The river hasn't been this bad in my lifetime. Somebody's going to get killed before this ends."
    "You won't be in danger, will you, Matt?" Mother asked with a worried frown.
    He smiled. "I almost wish I could say yes. I wish
I could help them. But I'll be in my office, high