Your Mother Was a Neanderthal Page 4

  Ma and the rest of the women stood next to a huge rock at the base of the cliff. Lin-Say and Jos-Feen pounded on the rock with their fists. Ma called, “Nat-Li.”

  “The quake must have loosened that boulder and sealed the entrance to the cave,” said Sam. “And Nat-Li’s trapped inside.”

  “This is our chance,” said Fred. “We push away the stone, save Nat-Li, and become heroes. Then we can ask for anything we want.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Remember—”

  But I was too late. Fred was already in the middle of the clearing calling, “Time Warp Trio to the rescue.” We didn’t have much choice but to follow him.

  Fred didn’t even give anyone a chance to be surprised. He walked right up to the rock and started calling out instructions. “Lin-Say, Jos-Feen, Sam, and Joe on this side. Push on three. One, two, three.”

  We pushed. The stone rocked about an inch and fell back.

  “More muscle,” called Fred. He waved the other women over to push. “One, two, three.”

  The stone rolled about two inches, then fell back.

  “We’ll never be able to move this,” I panted. “It must weigh a ton.”

  “Ma,” a voice called faintly from behind the stone.

  “We just need more muscle,” said Fred. “Duh! That’s it. They can’t be too far away.” Fred cupped his hands and yelled into the forest. “Duh, Duh! Boog, boog!”

  Ma, Lin-Say, and Jos-Feen looked at Fred like he had lost his mind.

  “Duh, Duh! Boog, boog!” yelled Fred.

  And you won’t believe it, because Sam and I didn’t either, but like magic, Duh and his whole band of guys appeared out of the trees.

  Fred dragged Duh out into the open and over to the rock. The whole time he kept making pushing motions and talking about boog. The rest of the guys followed cautiously. And in less time than it takes to say “Operation Rescue,” Fred had Ma, Duh, men, women, Lin-Say, Jos-Feen, Sam, and me on one side of the boulder.

  “All together now,” yelled Fred. “One, two, three.”

  Everyone pushed.

  The stone rolled slowly up ... up ... up ... and then fell back with a thud.

  Everyone collapsed to the ground. Shadows grew longer as the sun sank lower.

  “It’s no good,” said Sam. “We can’t all push in that small of a space.”

  “Ma?” Nat-Li called through the rock.

  “But she’ll die in there,” said Fred.

  I looked at Ma. I looked at Duh. I knew they didn’t speak our language. But the look on their faces said the same thing.

  ELEVEN

  Wait a minute,” said Sam. “Let’s figure this out.” Sam started pacing back and forth and talking to himself. “Nat-Li is trapped behind the rock. If 5 people can move the rock 1 inch, how many people will it take to move the rock 24 inches?” Sam grabbed a stick and scribbled in the sand. “5 people for every inch times 24 inches equals ... 120 people.”

  “So let’s do it,” said Fred.

  “There are only two small problems,” said Sam. “One: we don’t have 120 people. And two: even if we did, we couldn’t fit 120 people on one side of the rock. We need a more simple solution.”

  The word simple rang a bell in my head.

  “What about your pal, Archimedes?” I said.

  “He won’t be around for another 39,000 years or so,” said Sam.

  “No, I mean what about that lever thing?”

  “Joe, you’re a genius,” yelled Sam. “Give us a fulcrum, a long enough lever, and a place to stand, and the Time Warp Trio will move the world ... or at least one very large rock.”

  Fred grabbed a sturdy-looking branch.

  I rolled a small stone near one side of the boulder.

  Our Stone Age audience watched us closely. We jammed the stick under the boulder and over the smaller rock. The three of us pulled down on our lever. The boulder rocked and then slowly rolled up. The stick creaked, bent, and snapped. We landed in a heap, holding half a lever.

  Duh looked carefully at the broken stick. He walked off into the woods and came back carrying a log ten feet long and twice as thick as our original lever.

  “Now you’re thinking,” said Sam.

  Duh wedged the lever under the boulder just like he’d seen us do. He pulled down. The boulder rocked.

  We grabbed the lever and pulled down. The boulder rolled up. Lin-Say, Jos-feen, and Ma pulled the lever down. The boulder rose up, teetered, and suddenly rolled off to one side, crashing down the hill.

  Nat-Li raced out of the cave and danced around hugging everyone in sight—Ma, Lin-Say, Jos-Feen, Fred, Sam, me, and even Duh. I couldn’t tell for sure through the wild beard, but I think Duh’s face turned an embarrassed red.

  Ma made hand motions and gave orders to her clan. All the women nodded and smiled. Duh and his men nodded and smiled. We had absolutely no idea what was going on, but we nodded and smiled.

  That night we had the greatest party ever thrown in the Stone Age. The women showed Duh’s men how to build huge roaring bonfires. Ma’s clan brought out a feast of fruit, nuts, flat bread, stews, and a dark fizzy drink.

  “Caveman Cola,” said Fred. He took one of the fresher-looking pieces of meat from one of the men and held it over the fire on a stick.

  “Boog?” asked Duh.

  “No. Cooked boog,” answered Fred. “Burger.”

  “Booger?”

  “Burger.”

  Fred folded a piece of the bread around the cooked meat and handed it to Duh.

  Duh took a bite and smiled. “Burger.”

  Sam finished fitting the last of four circular pieces of wood onto the ends of two sticks he had tied to a small log. Lin-Say and Jos-Feen watched closely. “Wheels,” said Sam. “These are wheels. We need these on our skateboards so we can do three-sixties.”

  “Three-sixties?” said Lin-Say.

  “That’s right,” said Sam. “That stands for the three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle, but I think we’ll have to invent numbers and circles before I explain all that. For now we’ll just stick with skateboards.”

  “Three-sixties,” said Jos-Feen.

  I found my straw and played a kazoo kind of version of “Three Blind Mice.” “Music,” I said. Nat-Li clapped, and then honked her own tune on the straw.

  Someone started drumming. People started dancing around the fire. Then Duh acted out the rescue.

  Nat-Li played herself, crouching off on one side of the fire, looking afraid.

  Three guys played the rock. Ma tried to push them. Fred and Ma tried to push them. We all tried to push them. They wouldn’t budge.

  The drums beat faster. Sam and Duh pretended to wedge a stick under the rock guys. Duh and Sam jumped. The drums stopped. The three guys rolled off into the darkness and Nat-Li jumped triumphantly into the firelight.

  The drums started up again. Everyone laughed and danced, and then we did the whole thing over again. And again. And again. And again. And again until the bonfires dimmed low and the full moon began to sink in the lightening sky.

  “Hamburgers, music, and parties—not a bad start on civilization,” said Fred.

  Sam doodled A, B, C, and 1, 2, 3 in the sand. “There might be some hope for the species after all. Tomorrow we’ll start numbers and letters. Who knows. By 39,999 B.C. we may be able to put together a book.”

  “I still can’t believe there were no paintings in the cave,” I said.

  “They took us everywhere and we saw everything,” said Fred. “It must be in some other cave.”

  Sam traced three stick figures.

  Nat-Li looked at Sam’s scribbles and then suddenly jumped up and ran off.

  “Was it something I said?” asked Sam.

  “No,” said Fred. “I think it’s your ... problem dandruff.” Fred laughed and punched Sam in the arm.

  Nat-Li came back dragging Ma by the arm. Ma took one look, said something to her clan, and we were instantly surrounded by women half-leading, hal
f-pushing us into the cave.

  “I didn’t mean it,” said Sam.

  “I didn’t do it,” said Fred.

  Someone lit torches. We were swept through the main cave and back to the entrance of the small cave with the bars.

  “Not again,” said Fred.

  Ma took a torch and motioned for us to follow. We looked at the prehistoric crowd in the weird torchlight behind us. Duh held up one hand. Nat-Li waved her straw. “Three-sixties,” said Jos-Feen. Lin-Say cupped her hands to her mouth like a megaphone and called, “Joe Sam Fred, o-kay o-kay.”

  “It doesn’t look like we have much choice,” I said.

  And we followed Ma into the dark cave,

  TWELVE

  The little cave turned out to be much bigger than we thought. A narrow passageway, only big enough for one person at a time, spiraled back, deep into the earth. The noise of the main cave fell away, and we followed Ma in spooky silence. The passage spiraled tighter and tighter until we were at last forced to crawl on our hands and knees. We followed the flickering torch and listened to the sound of our own breathing. We squeezed through one last crack in the rock, and suddenly found ourselves standing in an immense underground room.

  Weird, drippy-looking columns of stone rose on all sides from floor to ceiling. Crystals sparkled in the torchlight. We stood gawking in amazement until Ma motioned us over to a large flat wall of rock.

  She pointed to the wall and said, “Joe Sam Fred.”

  We looked and saw a spiral of painted stars, moons, handprints, and three stick figures on the cave wall.

  “It’s the painting,” said Fred.

  “It must be the very first version of The Book,” I said.

  “It’s a miracle,” said Sam.

  Ma put Fred’s Cubs hat gently on his head. She touched each of us on the head. And I could have sworn she said, “Eena. Meena. Mina.” Then she stepped back and with a wave of her torch said, “Mo.”

  The flame flickered. A familiar green mist started to swirl around the cave. Ma raised both arms and laughed. And before we could say a word of thanks or good-bye, we were swallowed up and gone.

  THIRTEEN

  Sam sneezed. The green mist melted away. And Fred, Sam, and I were standing back in my room, loaded with equipment and fully clothed as if we had never been anywhere.

  Fred shook his head and pulled on his Cubs hat.

  I felt something in my hands and looked down to see I was holding The Book.

  Sam cleaned his glasses, then looked at my clock and calendar. “Four-thirty. 1992.”

  And at that very moment my mom called, “Joseph Arthur?” and opened the door.

  We were caught red-handed.

  I was still trying to think of a good excuse to explain why we had emptied the kitchen drawers and closets when my mom looked us over and said, “Traveling?”

  “We ... we ... we ...”

  My mom looked at The Book in my hands and shook her head. “I don’t know what your uncle was thinking when he gave you that present.”

  “Well you see, Mom, we were just getting ready to go ... uh, camping,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Fred. “We were going camping.”

  Sam looked around the room and pretended to clean his glasses again.

  My mom looked the three of us over once more and shook her head. “But I suppose he was about your age when I first showed him The Book.”

  I was still trying to think up a better excuse when that last line sunk in.

  “You showed who? What?”

  My mom raised one eyebrow and laughed, looking a lot like a certain woman we had just left 41,992 years and a minute ago. “Well, who do you think taught her little brother Joe the magic he knows?”

  POP QUIZ

  1. If Mr. Sleeby walks an average speed of 2.5 miles per hour, how many miles does he walk in 4 hours?a. 10.

  b. 12.

  c. I don’t know how far Mr. Sleeby walks in 4 hours.

  d. I don’t care how far Mr. Sleeby walks in 4 hours.

  e. I can’t tell you how far Mr. Sleeby walks in 4 hours because I’ve just been run over by a woolly mammoth.

  2. Given a fulcrum, a long enough lever, and a place to stand, a person could theoretically movea. The world.

  b. To Alaska.

  c. I don’t know.

  d. I don’t care.

  e. I can’t tell you because I’ve just been run over by a woolly mammoth.

  3. Archimedes wasa. A Greek mathematician.

  b. A shortstop for the Chicago Cubs.

  c. I don’t know.

  d. I don’t care.

  e. I can’t tell you because I’ve just been run over by a woolly mammoth.

  4. Fred, Sam, and Joe start in the year A.D. 1992 and travel back in time to the year 40,000 B.C. They are trapped in a cave by 4 wooden bars. If it takes each guy 20 minutes to saw through half a bar, do you think they’ll escape in time?a. Yes.

  b. No.

  c. Maybe.

  d. None of the above.

  e. I can’t tell you because I’ve just been run over by a woolly mammoth.

  5. This book costs $3.99. Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. Cro-Magnon man, our direct ancestor, lived about 40,000 years ago. If you were a woolly mammoth, then would you do your math homework?a. 64,040,011.

  b. $3.99.

  c. What?

  d. Leave me alone.

  e. I can’t tell you because woolly mammoths can’t talk.

  SCORE YOURSELF!

  For every a answer, give yourself 5 points.

  For every b answer, give yourself 4 points.

  For every c answer, give yourself 3 points.

  For every d answer, give yourself 2 points.

  For every e answer, give yourself 1 point.

  GRADES

  25-21 Son of Archimedes

  20-16 Distant Cousin of Archimedes

  15-11 Didn’t Know Archimedes

  10- 6 Doesn’t Care About Archimedes

  5- 0 Should Really See a Doctor About That Mammoth Problem