The Ballad of Tubs Marshfield Read online

  “I’m happy to say everyone will make a full recovery,” she told Tubs, handing him another tube of arnica balm. “Even you.”

  “Even Gloria?” Tubs asked.

  “Even Gloria,” she said.

  “What was it like inside the factory?” he asked her.

  “It was smooth and cold and strange,” she said. “And then the lemmings came, and it got really strange.”

  Tubs laughed. “Their magic worked.”

  “Their magic, Roy’s hammer, and a very angry duck,” she said. “But they’ll have it fixed in a day or two—people are like us, they’re hard workers.”

  “If they don’t fix it, we can’t break it tomorrow,” said Tubs. Lila laughed. She looked so happy now.

  “Remember when Billy thought you were a witch?” Tubs said.

  “I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Lila, “because it was yesterday. But you can’t blame Billy. It’s hard to think straight when you’ve lost your feathers and don’t know why.”

  29

  Tubs left the hospital and walked along the edge of the water. Above him the sky was full of stars spread across the blackness, and the moon was high. He could feel a new song out there waiting to find him. As he walked along the edge of the swamp, Tubs wondered what had made Pythia help them instead of eating them. Then he wondered if maybe she did eat a few of them and no one noticed in all the commotion.

  Maybe she helped them because she received a new prophecy, he thought. Maybe we’ll never know. Maybe the swamp called for an idea—and an alligator showed up.

  Or maybe the swamp had dreamed them all—frogs and bog lemmings and fearless, featherless ducks, and alligator witches. “Life is mysterious,” said Tubs to the stars.

  The lights were blazing at Tubs’s house by the time he arrived home. Fireflies blinked around the dock like glitter in the air. Small boats were moored outside and every kind of creature sat on the dock or drifted in the water or roosted on the roof.

  As he got closer, he could smell a delicious scent wafting over the breeze. Chicory and fiddlehead ferns and porcupine sedge and water plantain.

  Inside the house, Beau was cooking, standing at the stove in his cowboy boots holding a wooden spoon and wearing an apron. The portrait of Elodie seemed to smile even bigger than before.

  “Tubs, where you been?” shouted Beau.

  The yellow tree frog was pouring glasses of rose-mallow wine and the house was packed with frogs he had known forever and frogs he had never seen before that day. There were frogs at the piano, a frog playing his clarinet. Frogs dancing in the living room. There were frogs looking at maps and drawings of the factory spread out on the kitchen table. There were even frogs who still had tails chasing each other out onto the dock, or sitting in boats looking up at the stars.

  “How do all these frogs suddenly know where I live?” Tubs asked.

  “Well, our species sure does love a party, huh?” said Beau. “Reckon they couldn’t resist.”

  “It’s because everyone loves the new song,” said the tree frog. “It’s good to change things up every two hundred million years or so.”

  “Yup,” said Virgil. “Everyone likes a good day of house cleaning. Felt real nice to clean up the swamp.”

  “Everyone likes a good light display,” said a firefly. “They must have seen us shining from the other end of the swamp.”

  “Everyone,” said Roy, “is here for the magic! Just look around. Beau has made some magic soup, Lila gave us magic balm, Tubs wrote a magic song, the fireflies made magical sparkling lights. The trees grew magically out of the ground and the birds glided magically into the sky. And our magic eyes in front of our magic brains got to see it all.”

  “That ain’t magic,” said Virgil. “That’s just how life is. A creature is a creature.”

  Tubs looked up and saw Lila and Gloria standing in the doorway. Gloria was wearing her tie. There was a downy covering of blue along her wings where her feathers were starting to grow back. Lila waved and they made their way through the crowd.

  Gloria looked weak but happy. “I’m sorry I missed all the excitement,” she said. “I like to see a pipe explode as much as the next sparrow.”

  “How are you feeling?” Tubs asked.

  Gloria looked up at her friend with shining black eyes, “Better,” she said. “I never spent so much time in my tree before. Really got me thinking. Hey, Tubs,” she said. “You know what side of the tree has the most leaves?”

  Tubs opened his mouth to answer.

  “The outside,” said Gloria.

  “See?” said Lila. “She’s better already.”

  Billy waddled across the room and gave Lila a peck on the cheek; then he hopped up to stand on top of the piano. He wore a green hat with a flower in the brim, and his remaining feathers were combed back neatly.

  Tubs took out his harmonica and someone shouted, “Play that zydeco, Tubs!” The new frogs and the old, and the lemmings and the birds, and the crawfish and the water rats all danced long into the night, the way they had every night for thousands of years.

  Around midnight, the frogs broke into “Kiss Me, I’m the Fastest” and began to take their boats home. As the guests began to leave, they called out, “See you at the pipe” to one another, and “Can’t wait to break that pipe,” and “Get a good rest, now.” And “Don’t forget your hammer.” “Don’t forget your ropes. We might need to climb the smokestack this time.” “Lila, you got them papers to show the other humans?”

  As Virgil was leaving, he gave Tubs a wink and a pat on the arm.

  “Just between you and me,” said Virgil, “I can’t wait to do all this again tomorrow.”

  When everyone had gone home, Tubs and Lila sat in the red-and-white boat, looking up at the stars. “You’re not going to be here tomorrow, are you?” she asked.

  “How did you know?” he said.

  “Tubs, I’ve been looking at your face since we were tadpoles.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what Pythia said,” he told her.

  “But you know that prophecy isn’t true,” she said. “And now that we know the pipe is there and how to break it, creatures will start getting better.”

  “A lot of the prophecy was true,” said Tubs. “I had to leave to find the pipe. Frogs everywhere are singing my song, and I stood beside the greats today while they protected the swamp. But I mean what she said when she was thinkin’ ’bout eating me. Pythia said my home was wherever I played songs, and she was right, Lila.”

  Lila smiled. “Doesn’t take an alligator witch to know that about you, Tubs. Music is your home. Just like it was for Elodie.”

  30

  Tubs put on his gold-and-crimson vest and his best shoes and left as the first rays of sunlight spread out over the water. He took his harmonica and his bindle stick, and a jug of rose-mallow wine.

  There were no salamanders or star-nosed moles waiting for the train this time. And he hoisted himself into the boxcar and found a place to sit—not too close to the open door, but not too far from it, either. Tubs watched as people bustled on and off the train; they hugged each other and smiled. A creature is a creature, he thought; they’re so much like us.

  As the train began to roll, it sang its own song, and he took out his harmonica and played along. Outside, the trees spread their branches to the heavens, and wisps of clouds danced in the blue. The train passed houses and buildings and fields. The grasses and the flowers and the kudzu blurred by. Suddenly through the clearing he could see the swamp, bright and green and shining.

  Soon the train was racing, and Tubs felt the wind in his face. He held on tight and watched the whole world speed past.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Eli. And thanks to Eli again for the soundtrack of my writing life. Thanks to Anna Stein, Claudia Gabel, Stephanie Guerdan, and Jacquelynn Burke. Thanks to my parents for eagerly awaiting each chapter. Thanks to Em for her genius and magic spells. Thanks to Ann Godwin, always. Thanks to my
partner and fellow traveler, Marc Lepson. We did it, ML.

  About the Author

  Photo by Marc Lepson

  CARA HOFFMAN spent her childhood playing by a riverbank and in the woods with her best friend. She studied music and later traveled, living on an island in the Mediterranean Sea. She is the author of three award-winning novels for adults and has received a MacDowell Fellowship and an Edward Albee Fellowship. She currently lives in Manhattan and Athens, Greece.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Books by Cara Hoffman

  Bernard Pepperlin

  Copyright

  THE BALLAD OF TUBS MARSHFIELD. Copyright © 2020 by Cara Hoffman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Cover art © 2020 by Olivia Chin Mueller

  Cover design by Corina Lupp

  Illustrations by Olivia Chin Mueller

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  Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-286549-6

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-286548-9

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  2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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