Read Online The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau - Free Book Online Page A

cast an indifferent glance at Mrs. Murdo and walked away across the courtyard. The gate clattered behind him.
    “Poppy doesn’t have a plague, does she?” Lina said.
    “A plague? Certainly not,” said Mrs. Murdo. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
    “That boy,” said Lina. “That horrible boy.”

CHAPTER 7
                        
A Day of New People
    The next day, back in the plaza, Ben Barlow organized the residents of the Pioneer Hotel into teams. The teams would work together and eat lunch together. Each team would be led by someone from Sparks, who would decide where that team’s labor was most needed each day. Some days a team might work with the people of Sparks at the bakery or the shoe workshop or the wagon yard; other days they might do a job on their own, such as repairing a fence or digging a ditch. Sooner or later, nearly everyone would have done nearly every kind of work. This was the best way for them to learn, Ben said.
    Doon’s team included his father, two teachers from the Ember school (Miss Thorn and Mrs. Polster), Clary Laine, the greenhouse manager, and Edward Pocket, the librarian, who would join them for lunch but not work with them because he was so old.
    Doon found Lina in the crowd—the first time he’d seen her since they arrived. He told her about the Pioneer Hotel; she told him about the doctor’s house and what she’d learned from Torren about the Disaster. Lina and Mrs. Murdo were told they’d be a team of two with the job of helping Dr. Hester, since they were staying at her house. They were sent home, and all the other work teams went off to their first project: digging the hotel toilets.
    They went out into the scrubby woods behind the Pioneer. The work leaders had brought picks and shovels from town; they gave each person a tool. “You’ll dig fifty holes,” one of the leaders said, “each one six feet deep. Then you’ll build a shelter of scrap lumber around each one.”
    But the people of Ember had never done much digging or picking. They had to be shown how to put a foot on the shovel’s edge to drive it into the dirt, and how to lift the pick over their shoulders and bring it down hard. At first they scraped and hacked awkwardly at the hard, dry earth, grunting with effort, dislodging only a few crumbs of dirt with each stroke. After ten minutes of hard work, they’d made hardly more than shallow dips in the dirt. They were breathing fast. “Did you say six
feet
deep?” someone called out.
    “That’s right,” came the answer.
    So the Emberites set themselves to the task, which was for most of them the hardest work they’d ever done. After an hour, Doon had blisters on both hands and a kink in his neck. Some of the others had given up entirely and had flopped down onto the ground, dripping with sweat and aching in every muscle. Doon made himself keep going, but he was glad when the work finally stopped at noon and the team leaders marched them back into the town. He heard people murmuring to each other as they walked. “Do you think we’ll have to work like this
every day
?” “It’ll make us strong, I guess.” “Or else kill us.”
    Each team was assigned to a different household for lunch. Doon’s team went with the Parton family. Through the streets of the village, they followed a stout, cheerful woman named Martha Parton, whose wide rear end wagged from side to side as she walked. “Here we are,” she said after a few minutes. She opened an unpainted wooden door and ushered her six guests inside. “Welcome to our home,” she said.
    Doon looked around the low-ceilinged room. At one end was a long wooden table; at the other, a couple of benches stood before a niche in the smoke-stained wall. Sitting on the benches were two people, who got up and came forward as Martha introduced them. “My husband, Ordney,” Martha said. He was tall and narrow, with a mustache like a brown toothbrush under his nose. “And my son,