A brave new Middle Grade series...
Three exciting adventures...
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Book 1 KNIGHTS of the Empire Book 2 SPIES for Life Book 3 The Last HEROES Coming Soon! |
Read the first chapter of KNIGHTS of the Empire...
Filled with bits of survival and wilderness skills, wrapped up in an exciting story of brotherhood and loyalty. William Hudson and Jefferson Boone Junior come face-to-face with legends, and ghost towns, and being stranded in a desert rippling with hundred-degree heat. And no roads. Things like that can change you.
WARNING: Some things in this book are catching.
WARNING: Some things in this book are catching.
Chapter One
The Accident
"Any fellow who means to be a backwoodsman, whether it is for pleasure
or for work, should first of all get some practice at it at home."
Sir Robert Baden-Powell
Our plan was to drop the raft into a river at night, float all the way down to Mexico, then hike back home through the desert. Boone knew everything there was to know about surviving in the desert, and it was going to be the biggest adventure of our lives. The trouble was, the only body of water in town big enough to launch a boat was the Apestoso River.
The Smelly River, actually. That's the English translation. Because it wasn't really a river. Just a wash the county cemented in so it would quit flooding Ripley Street every winter. But the rule for kids who lived in Ashbury was that they were never--for any reason--to go into it. On account of flash floods. Which are really unusual in the summer but it didn't matter. That wash had been absolutely, positively off-limits for generations. Any kid stupid enough to try (who survived) got turned over to the county for prosecution. Usually by his own parents.
Now, Boone and I weren't criminals. We weren't running away from anything, either, because we both come from great families. Different, but great. It's just that in our little town in Arizona (not far from Tombstone--how cool is that?) there was hardly anything for kids to do that year but hang out and play games. Or go swimming down at the pool. Mostly on account of the economy. When we first got the idea for our raft adventure, we weren't counting on this thing with the economy getting in the way.
It was Boone's idea, really.
It came to him one day when we were killing time downtown before the pool opened, and happened to notice an old military life raft hanging in the window of Cooper's Pawn Shop. Man, it was a real life raft! A regular gateway to adventure, if you know what I mean. The biggest thing Boone and I had in common was our craving for adventure.
Real adventure. The kind where you go and personally set every ounce of strength you have against some wild wilderness--or the forces of evil--and win. For once in our life, instead of just reading about heroes (my dad ran the downtown library), we wanted to actually do something heroic, ourselves. Except we didn't know exactly what, or even how to get started. Until we saw that raft hanging in Cooper's window. Under a sign that said: $95.50.
It might as well been a thousand.
Only we didn't know that until we already made the deal. It took a lot of talking, but Mr. Cooper finally agreed to sell it to us on the payment plan (the take-it-home-only-after-it's-paid-for kind). He also agreed not to tell anybody. He didn't keep that part of the bargain (which I think is pretty shabby since he was an adult and should have known that's not how you do business), but that's getting ahead of the story, and I'm telling it the way it really happened. Totally.
Anyway, we got that thing almost half paid for just by pooling our allowances, and cutting back on expensive activities like movies and arcade games. We even collected cans and plastic bottles to turn in at the recycling center just outside town. We tried to get jobs but other than doing chores for our parents, there weren't any around for us to get. Since the economy went bust, no one was hiring twelve-year-old kids for anything. Heck, my sister Hannah was fourteen and she was excited just to land a babysitting job for the summer. Boone and I tried to get one of those, too, but we couldn't find anyone who wouldn't rather have a girl do it, and preferably one that was older. With references.
But right about the time we figured summer would be over before we even got that raft into the water, we ran into a real opportunity. At least, that's what we thought it was. I'm sure if we knew then what we know now, we never would have done something like that. No matter how starved for adventure we thought we were.
The truth is, if we hadn't been so busy picturing ourselves on our own exploring expedition down the Apestoso, we might have at least had some kind of a premonition. Only we didn't. Not even one. We were just looking at a way to bring the raft home from the pawn shop and dreaming about a whole week to practice our survival skills--on our own, without any rules.
I guess maybe it was the accident that threw us off.
See, the whole thing started on the day Boone's grandfather shot himself in the foot. It was Sunday afternoon when we first heard about it, and everyone said it was an accident. We were just finishing off some game tokens down at the Three Ps (more commonly known as Pickler's Pizza Palace), where Boone's mom had been working ever since his dad left for the war. It was pretty dramatic.
Two policemen came in and asked to see Boone's mom, and Mr. Pickler called her in from the kitchen where she was busy making a large cheeseburger pizza. I knew that on account of it was our pizza, and we order the same kind every Sunday. It got pretty quiet in there because, hey, Ashbury isn't that big of a town and everybody wanted to hear what they had to say.
"Amelia Boone?"
"Yes." It didn't sound like Mrs. Boone, at all. She has a voice that can yell you down off a mountain, and she's always yelling about something. But right then it was so soft and worried that the toothpick Boone was chewing on dropped out of his mouth and he went over to stand next to her. "Is it something about my husband?" she finally asked.
"No, ma'am, it's about your father-in-law."
"Oh, thank God!" She put a hand over her heart like it had stopped for a minute, and some of the color came back into her face under the white pizza-chef hat she had to wear in the kitchen.
But Boone still looked worried and he blurted out, "Is Grampy dead?"
"No, but he's been shot—"
"Shot! Who shot him?" Her face went white again.
"Shot himself. Accident," the policeman answered. "And now he's refusing treatment. Since you're listed as next-of-kin, we thought you could talk some sense into him."
"Well, I've never been able to before, but I'll try." She took her pizza hat off and felt the sides of her red hair to make sure it wasn't a mess or anything. "Come on, Jeffie, you better come, too." She was always calling him that--even in public--but, hey, you can't pick your mom.
By Monday, the whole story was out. The old crazy black man who lived way out by the Singing Bone Mine, was Boone's grandpa. Who would have thought? I mean, not that it matters. But, heck, when somebody's been your best friend for almost a year and his mother doesn't look that different from yours, it's sort of a surprise. OK, his skin is a little darker than mine but I thought he was Italian, or something. Like I say, not that it matters. We've got Indian blood in our family, and we're real proud of it. Oglala Sioux.
Anyway, as it turned out, Boone's grandpa drew a bead on the government census agent that pulled up into the yard asking too many personal questions. But before he could shoot, the rotten porch he was standing on gave way and the gun went off. After that, the big joke around town was if Old Jackson Boone had grabbed a shotgun instead of that little twenty-two, he'd have blown his whole foot off. They said he was lucky just to be missing a toe.
It was pretty embarrassing for Boone, because he always bragged about how heroes ran in his family, and his grandfather was an expert marksmen. He even told how he had won a couple of medals for fighting in the Vietnam War. After the shooting incident, though, everywhere we went, someone would ask how that expert marksman of his was getting along. I guess, up to then, it had been a boring summer for everybody and there's nothing like a good scandal to liven things up.
On Mondays, I usually slept over at Boone's because it was his mom's day off. And I remember on that next Monday after the accident, Grampy was there, too. I don't know when I started calling him Grampy, it just sort of happened because that's what Boone called him. I guess he never did end up going to the hospital, only let them take care of his foot in the emergency room, and then he wanted to go home. But there were some appointments the next day with the county people--man, did he hate those county people! Something that happened a long time ago, but Boone said he'd tell me about it later.
Meanwhile, I called home and had to talk my head off to get my parents to let me go with Boone to Grampy's ranch to help out for a week. Not because I couldn't pretty much do what I wanted during the summer (as long as I got my chores done) but because the man had been threatening government employees with a gun. And how easy it would be for a bullet to go astray and hit a boy. Mom hates guns. Even when I told her Boone's mom was going to pay us, it took more arguing. On account of the rumors going around about old Jackson Boone. Exactly what was he doing out there on that ranch for so long? He didn't even have any animals! That's how fast rumors get around.
Boone's mom finally convinced mine that we'd be perfectly safe with Grampy. I have no clue how she even did that. I only know that's how it happened that one day we were sitting around hot and bored, and the next I was in the middle of a nightmare. Scared for my life even. The thing is, you never could have guessed it, looking at Grampy. He was like any other old guy. Black curly hair a little gray on the sides, a mustache, and a short pointy beard that barely covered his chin. Now, I think about it, it's the same as the devil. But I didn't make the connection back then.
I also didn't make the connection how much Boone looked like his Grampy. If Boone had been older and had a beard, I may have seen it. Anyway, when we headed out of town so late on that Monday night, I just figured Boone and I were going to make a little money and get a whole week to practice our survival skills, even though we were supposed to be going there to help out Grampy until he could get around better. Not that we had to do anything medical for him, because the county nurse would come out twice to change the bandage and check his vitals. All we had to do was sort of help him get his meals, and be there to call 911 in case anything went wrong.
Which was why the whole thing felt like an adventure when we first started out.
Like I said, you'd think a person would get some sort of premonition when their life was about to change, but to be honest, I didn't have a clue. Boone warned me we would probably have to work a lot harder than we ever did at home because Grampy was old fashioned. But don't worry, he said, Grampy's idea of work was like nothing I'd ever heard of before.
"Bad or good?" I had to ask because, hey, a guy's got to look out for himself.
"Good," he said. "Way good."
Which--looking back on it--was the one and only reason I walked head on into trouble without even thinking twice about it. I trusted Boone like my own right hand. His dad was off fighting the war. His family was full of heroes. I didn't have anything but a house full of sisters back home, and I was starved for adventure. Besides that, this one week of helping out Grampy would give us a major shortcut to our rafting expedition.
So, there we were sitting in the back seat, ticking off the miles to Singing Bone, only listening with one ear while Boone's mom kept telling us things like:
"In the house by dark every night, Jeffie. Do you hear me? Dark is when the coyotes come out and some of them are rabid."
"That's a crock," said Grampy. He was in sort of a bad mood because his painkillers were wearing off. "Coyotes aren't dangerous to anybody."
"The rabid ones are, that's all I'm saying. And, whatever you do, boys, stay away from that old mine. Those tunnels go on forever. Some people have even died before they found their way out, again. Besides, there's explosives down there that never went off, and sometimes just stepping in the wrong place can--"
"That's a crock," said Grampy. "You'd have to stand on one foot, light the other one on fire, and then jam it into a two-inch hole to set one of those things off."
"I'm just telling them about the hazards, Jack. I wouldn't be a decent mother if I didn't tell them about the hazards." She looked into the rear-view mirror to see if anyone was coming up on us, and then tromped on the gas pedal to pass a slow-moving semi up ahead. "And don't even think about swimming in that pond, boys, no matter how hot it gets. The water is toxic from all the chemicals that wash down out of the mine. You could get some kind of disease."
"That's a--"
"Jackson Boone!" She yelled at him like he was one of us kids instead of somebody twice her age. "Did we, or did we not, come to an agreement about all this? We're not even there, yet, and you're slipping back into your old ways, already. If you're not going to stick to what we agreed on, let me know right now, so I can turn this car around!"
"Sorry, Amelia, but what are you exaggerating so much for? Hazards during the day, ate up at night--no wonder kids never go outside anymore. What are you trying to raise--a bunch of pansies?"
"I'm trying to make sure they reach voting age."
"What's the point if they're blind and deaf by the time they get there?"
"The point is, things have changed since you were their age. That's all I'm saying."
"Well, at least tell them the truth, for cripes sake. Some things a boy needs to find out on his own, anyway."
"I don't want any major disasters while they do it."
Mrs. Boone slowed to a near stop then--right out in the middle of nowhere--shifted into four-wheel drive, and tuned off the highway. The SUV bumped off the asphalt and began to plow through the loose dirt between giant cactuses that were almost as big as trees, and a whole lot of towering, rocky mesas. Straight into the desert. Like it was the most normal thing in the world to be heading into trackless wilderness in the middle of the night.
She just kept on talking. "You said you would help me. That was part of the deal, remember? You have no idea how hard it is to raise a boy this age without his dad around. I lose sleep nights. And let me tell you--"
We hit some kind of a dip and then a bump, and we all shot up like rockets and banged our heads on the roof at the same time. It was kind of funny, except Grampy swore like fire because Mrs. Boone's purse bounced off the seat and landed on his missing toe. She didn't even apologize. She just tromped on the gas pedal, again, and started speeding toward the next bump in the trail.
"Slow down, Amelia!"
"Not until you agree to keep a decent eye on these boys. Just like you promised!"
"Oh, all right!" He made a great effort to turn around enough to look over the back seat at us. The high white moon was shining in just enough through the windows to see him screw his face into something of a scowl and say, "Stay out of the swamp hole, boys, unless you want your privates to fall off!"
"That is not my idea of decent, Jack."
We would have laughed ourselves silly over that if we hadn't hit another bump and then swerved into a slide, fishtailed our way out of it through deep sand with Grampy swearing all the way, hanging onto the dash like he was riding a bucking bull. That would have been pretty funny, too, except Boone and I knocked our heads together so hard I bit my tongue and my eyes started to water. I was thinking his mom did that on purpose. I mean, she got all three of us at once. I wasn't far wrong. A couple of days later, I found out she used to race dune buggies down on the Baja, and she could out-drive most men.
Which is why we were all sitting there like zombies by the time we finally pulled around this gigantic mesa that looked the same as all fifty-three others we had passed already, and came to a dead stop in a wide patch of desert. Mrs. Boone turned off the car and all of a sudden it was so quiet we could hear ourselves breathing. That and the heat ticking off the engine.
I looked out my side window before opening the door. Other than a ghosty-looking saguaro cactus about thirty feet tall that was throwing a shadow across the ground in the bright moonlight, I didn't see anything that came close to a ranch house. Or even a miner's cabin. In fact, there wasn't a sign of human habitation anywhere.
Boone punched me in the shoulder and said, "Come on, Hud, we're here!" and flung open his door like he could hardly wait.
"Everybody carry something!" Mrs. Boone yelled after us. "And watch out for snakes!"
Read the first chapter of SPIES for Life...
Hud and Boone are back! But something strange is happening in Asheville. Could this be the time when they will have to take care of the whole bunch? Get ready for more danger, more driving, and way more adventure.
GUARANTEED to include tips that could save your life someday.
GUARANTEED to include tips that could save your life someday.
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CHAPTER ONE RATTLESNAKE HUNT “I had got into a regular nest of them...” Sir Robert Baden-Powell |
Funny how most people are afraid to go out of the city into a wild place. Living out here in Arizona, practically on the border of Mexico (not far from Tombstone—how cool is that?), hardly anybody goes out into the desert. But Boone and I love it out there. It's been sort of like our second home. Ever since last summer, when Grampy taught us everything we needed to know about surviving in it. And I mean everything. But that's another story.
The one I have to tell, now, is what happened to us when we came back from there and the whole country started to bust up. We didn't know it was that serious, at first. We just thought it was the bad economy everybody was talking about, and wondered why more trucks weren't running to keep grocery stores better stocked with food. The thing that was on our mind most during those first days of the crisis, was food.
In fact, I might as well be totally honest and admit we didn't have a clue what was really happening the day we first discovered the hideout. But I think it was something that was meant to be. Almost like we had help from somewhere. Anyway, I remember all Boone and I had on our minds that day was fried chicken. And there just wasn't any. So, we decided to go on a rattlesnake hunt. Course, it wouldn't taste exactly like fried chicken but it was close enough.
Especially when the only real meat we had for weeks was a couple bites of “we-didn't-know-what-it-was” smothered in noodles and gravy. Or under a ton of dumplings.
People were eating a lot of dumplings in Ashbury.
I admit, I used to be scared spitless of rattlesnakes. But Boone and I—we had a sure-shot secret for keeping them away. This was the first time we ever wanted to get close to one on purpose, though. I was so hungry after school that day the last thing on my mind was the hazards involved. Instead, I was remembering the time Grampy fried some up for us when we were half-starved in the mines, and I thought it was chicken. I might've puked when he finally told me, except it was gone by then, and had tasted pretty good.
So good, my mouth started watering just thinking about it, again.
“You ever set a rattlesnake trap, Boone?” I asked him about ten minutes into our way out of town. “I mean, we don't have a gun like Grampy did.”
“We'll probably have to make a snake-catcher, I guess.” He was just climbing down the rocky slope off the back end of the parking lot behind Helm's Grocery Store (where the desert started), and turned his ball cap around backwards so he could see better. Every time he did that, a couple dark curls popped out above the adjustable strap over his forehead. “I'll grab him behind the head, and you pop him off.”
“What? You gotta be kidding me!”
“OK, then you grab him, and I'll pop him off.”
About that time, I slipped on a couple of loose rocks and almost fell over. “Seriously, Boone. I read about a guy who tried that once, and you wouldn't believe what happened. That thing stretched its neck out—like it was made of rubber, or something—swiveled its head around totally backwards, and bit him on the hand! You can't catch a rattlesnake by the back of the head.”
“That's what the snake catcher's for. It's a long stick with a a V at the end, and—that's—what you pin him down with.”
We headed out across the flat hard-packed ground, toward a scattering of mesas between us and a line of some blue, far-off mountain range that belonged to Mexico. We wound in and out of rock outcroppings for awhile, and scattered clumps of sagebrush—I love the smell of that stuff. Strong, sweet and spicy all at the same time. It's like the smell of adventure whenever it hits me, and makes me feel good all over. No matter what's going on.
“Gonna have to be some long stick, if you ask me.” I picked a short dry leaf off one of the bushes as we passed by and popped it into my mouth to chew on. “I heard they can jump half their body length. Be easier just to whomp him with it.”
He started with his hyena laugh, and I knew what he was thinking. Me running around, trying to pop off a rattlesnake with a two-foot switch off a tumbleweed, probably. Which I did not think was funny. “Hey—why don't we do like those guys in India, and throw a bag over him?”
“Yeah, that's probably a better idea. If we ever even find a snake. Could be they're as scarce as the rabbits, around here.”
“Funny there aren't any rabbits this close to town. I bet it's the local dogs. Rabbits aren't stupid.”
“Can't think of any animal that's stupid. Except maybe the babies. Wouldn't feel right eating one of them, though. Ol' Grampy—he'd turn over in his grave.”
“I'd rather starve to death than be haunted by your Grampy when he's mad. It's hard enough just keeping out of the way of your mother.”
“Hey—” He stopped picking up rocks to put in his pockets and shot me one of his Grampy scowls. His skin was way lighter but it was the same expression.
“She's nice though.” I had to correct myself since he gets touchy if you say anything bad about his mom. Even if it's true. “Long as you stay on the right side of her.” I picked up a handful of rocks to jam into my pockets, too. “She's the weirdest mother I ever knew, though.”
“Yeah, well, she sure saved your bacon when you needed her to.”
“Yours, mostly. Courts couldn't let one of us off and not the other. But...” I started walking, again, to catch up with him. “I'd stand by her if she wanted to go to the moon, after that. Which is only about one notch down from working for her for fifty cents an hour just because she bought out Hogworths's Go-Cart Track that went bust.”
“Think about it, Hud, that was a brilliant idea. Besides, she's got something else she wants to do with it. And...” He made a wide circle around a chopped in half giant saguaro cactus that had been dead for so long it was caving in. Its wooden ribs, bleached gray from the sun, were falling out and scattered all around the base of it. “She can't make it happen if you and me don't help her.”
“That's what I was afraid of.”
“Hey, look. Here's one with a worn-away split at the end, that would make a perfect snake catcher. Better look for another one, too. In case it busts at the crucial moment.”
“Dang—that would be bad!” Picturing it in my mind was giving me second thoughts about this whole idea.
“Get a grip, Hudson. These things are really strong. Anyway, we won't even need them unless the bag idea doesn't work.”
“What are we gonna use for a bag?”
“I still got my gym bag in my backpack. We can use that.”
“OK. But I say we wait till the temperature cools down to about sixty. Snakes move a whole lot slower then.” I looked at my watch. Man, I wish I had talked my parents into letting me have a cell-phone before Mom lost her teaching contract. But being the last kid out of four I didn't have a chance. Three-thirty. And it was cooling off, already. Only about seventy degrees and dropping fast. Snakes stopped moving around when it got below sixty. If it stayed that way, too long, they'd wander off and hibernate somewhere. Except for the Mojave Greens. They could show up any time (with the deadliest poison because it went straight for your brain) –but we knew better than to mess with them.
To tell you the truth, we never messed with snakes, at all. But a lot of things change when times get past bad. There's stuff we did then we never would have thought of before. Hard stuff. And I have to say I am way glad we had at least some time to practice our survival skills before the worst of it came down. In fact, we wouldn't have had a clue how to look for food out in the dessert if we hadn't spent all that time with Grampy, learning how.
Of course, when he told us the end of the world had already started, we thought maybe he was as crazy as everybody said he was. But that didn't seem so crazy to us any more. And I have to admit just knowing we had the strongholds of Padre Gordo waiting out there in the dessert for us, chocked full of enough food to take care of a whole lot more than just us (if times got really bad), was something that went a long way toward helping me sleep better at night.
Especially when we finally made it through all that court stuff Miz Boone saved us from, and didn't have to get rehabilitated. They just released us into her custody. That lady (who anybody could tell was about as close to crazy as it gets without actually being there) got the whole town off our tail, back when we were in trouble for burying Grampy without permission. Even though we had permission from Grampy. Heck, it was his idea—but that didn't count. The county doesn't take things like that for excuses when they have something to prosecute.
We got off, though. I don't know exactly what she had to do to work that out, but she did. She even got my folks on her side—which was totally amazing—because they both work for the county. Well, they did back then. Mom's teaching contract runs out at the end of the year, and the library where my dad works is only open about three days a week, now.
The whole town's going bust, little by little. Which isn't the kind of thing a thirteen-year-old kid usually has to think about. Except it was about to blow all our plans to bits—Boone's and mine—just when things were starting to look up for us. I mean, what good is finally getting your freedom back if everybody's folks have to move halfway to the moon just to find work?
Boone's the best friend I ever had. The kind you only get from going through tough times together and come out on the other side. We have plans that can only (and I mean ONLY) be carried out right here. In Ashbury. Not with each of us getting planted down somewhere else just so our parents can get better jobs. I thought of asking if I could live with the Boones for the rest of my life but I don't think my folks would go for that.
Any way we looked, it didn't look good.
That is, until Miz Boone came up with her genius idea of buying out Hogworth's Go-Cart Track. It was going bust, anyway, and she made the owner an offer he couldn't refuse ( I don't know why people always go for those things). He moved off to Texas, where a brother of his owned a gas station. “People will be driving cars for a long time, yet,” he told Miz Boone, “But the first thing they cut back on when times get hard is fun stuff for kids.”
Man, he sure had that right. But it was more than just fun stuff for kids that was getting cut back on. We didn't know it that day, but the end of our town of Ashbury (that had been around for a couple hundred years) was already in sight. In fact, I actually think if we hadn't gone out to hunt rattlesnakes after school we would have been caught in the same trap everyone else was.
Seriously.
But there we were dinking around in the dessert about an hour away from town, looking behind bushes and under rocks, hoping we could spot a snake (before it saw us, first). And at that very same moment...
The first wave of soldiers was rolling into Ashbury.
The one I have to tell, now, is what happened to us when we came back from there and the whole country started to bust up. We didn't know it was that serious, at first. We just thought it was the bad economy everybody was talking about, and wondered why more trucks weren't running to keep grocery stores better stocked with food. The thing that was on our mind most during those first days of the crisis, was food.
In fact, I might as well be totally honest and admit we didn't have a clue what was really happening the day we first discovered the hideout. But I think it was something that was meant to be. Almost like we had help from somewhere. Anyway, I remember all Boone and I had on our minds that day was fried chicken. And there just wasn't any. So, we decided to go on a rattlesnake hunt. Course, it wouldn't taste exactly like fried chicken but it was close enough.
Especially when the only real meat we had for weeks was a couple bites of “we-didn't-know-what-it-was” smothered in noodles and gravy. Or under a ton of dumplings.
People were eating a lot of dumplings in Ashbury.
I admit, I used to be scared spitless of rattlesnakes. But Boone and I—we had a sure-shot secret for keeping them away. This was the first time we ever wanted to get close to one on purpose, though. I was so hungry after school that day the last thing on my mind was the hazards involved. Instead, I was remembering the time Grampy fried some up for us when we were half-starved in the mines, and I thought it was chicken. I might've puked when he finally told me, except it was gone by then, and had tasted pretty good.
So good, my mouth started watering just thinking about it, again.
“You ever set a rattlesnake trap, Boone?” I asked him about ten minutes into our way out of town. “I mean, we don't have a gun like Grampy did.”
“We'll probably have to make a snake-catcher, I guess.” He was just climbing down the rocky slope off the back end of the parking lot behind Helm's Grocery Store (where the desert started), and turned his ball cap around backwards so he could see better. Every time he did that, a couple dark curls popped out above the adjustable strap over his forehead. “I'll grab him behind the head, and you pop him off.”
“What? You gotta be kidding me!”
“OK, then you grab him, and I'll pop him off.”
About that time, I slipped on a couple of loose rocks and almost fell over. “Seriously, Boone. I read about a guy who tried that once, and you wouldn't believe what happened. That thing stretched its neck out—like it was made of rubber, or something—swiveled its head around totally backwards, and bit him on the hand! You can't catch a rattlesnake by the back of the head.”
“That's what the snake catcher's for. It's a long stick with a a V at the end, and—that's—what you pin him down with.”
We headed out across the flat hard-packed ground, toward a scattering of mesas between us and a line of some blue, far-off mountain range that belonged to Mexico. We wound in and out of rock outcroppings for awhile, and scattered clumps of sagebrush—I love the smell of that stuff. Strong, sweet and spicy all at the same time. It's like the smell of adventure whenever it hits me, and makes me feel good all over. No matter what's going on.
“Gonna have to be some long stick, if you ask me.” I picked a short dry leaf off one of the bushes as we passed by and popped it into my mouth to chew on. “I heard they can jump half their body length. Be easier just to whomp him with it.”
He started with his hyena laugh, and I knew what he was thinking. Me running around, trying to pop off a rattlesnake with a two-foot switch off a tumbleweed, probably. Which I did not think was funny. “Hey—why don't we do like those guys in India, and throw a bag over him?”
“Yeah, that's probably a better idea. If we ever even find a snake. Could be they're as scarce as the rabbits, around here.”
“Funny there aren't any rabbits this close to town. I bet it's the local dogs. Rabbits aren't stupid.”
“Can't think of any animal that's stupid. Except maybe the babies. Wouldn't feel right eating one of them, though. Ol' Grampy—he'd turn over in his grave.”
“I'd rather starve to death than be haunted by your Grampy when he's mad. It's hard enough just keeping out of the way of your mother.”
“Hey—” He stopped picking up rocks to put in his pockets and shot me one of his Grampy scowls. His skin was way lighter but it was the same expression.
“She's nice though.” I had to correct myself since he gets touchy if you say anything bad about his mom. Even if it's true. “Long as you stay on the right side of her.” I picked up a handful of rocks to jam into my pockets, too. “She's the weirdest mother I ever knew, though.”
“Yeah, well, she sure saved your bacon when you needed her to.”
“Yours, mostly. Courts couldn't let one of us off and not the other. But...” I started walking, again, to catch up with him. “I'd stand by her if she wanted to go to the moon, after that. Which is only about one notch down from working for her for fifty cents an hour just because she bought out Hogworths's Go-Cart Track that went bust.”
“Think about it, Hud, that was a brilliant idea. Besides, she's got something else she wants to do with it. And...” He made a wide circle around a chopped in half giant saguaro cactus that had been dead for so long it was caving in. Its wooden ribs, bleached gray from the sun, were falling out and scattered all around the base of it. “She can't make it happen if you and me don't help her.”
“That's what I was afraid of.”
“Hey, look. Here's one with a worn-away split at the end, that would make a perfect snake catcher. Better look for another one, too. In case it busts at the crucial moment.”
“Dang—that would be bad!” Picturing it in my mind was giving me second thoughts about this whole idea.
“Get a grip, Hudson. These things are really strong. Anyway, we won't even need them unless the bag idea doesn't work.”
“What are we gonna use for a bag?”
“I still got my gym bag in my backpack. We can use that.”
“OK. But I say we wait till the temperature cools down to about sixty. Snakes move a whole lot slower then.” I looked at my watch. Man, I wish I had talked my parents into letting me have a cell-phone before Mom lost her teaching contract. But being the last kid out of four I didn't have a chance. Three-thirty. And it was cooling off, already. Only about seventy degrees and dropping fast. Snakes stopped moving around when it got below sixty. If it stayed that way, too long, they'd wander off and hibernate somewhere. Except for the Mojave Greens. They could show up any time (with the deadliest poison because it went straight for your brain) –but we knew better than to mess with them.
To tell you the truth, we never messed with snakes, at all. But a lot of things change when times get past bad. There's stuff we did then we never would have thought of before. Hard stuff. And I have to say I am way glad we had at least some time to practice our survival skills before the worst of it came down. In fact, we wouldn't have had a clue how to look for food out in the dessert if we hadn't spent all that time with Grampy, learning how.
Of course, when he told us the end of the world had already started, we thought maybe he was as crazy as everybody said he was. But that didn't seem so crazy to us any more. And I have to admit just knowing we had the strongholds of Padre Gordo waiting out there in the dessert for us, chocked full of enough food to take care of a whole lot more than just us (if times got really bad), was something that went a long way toward helping me sleep better at night.
Especially when we finally made it through all that court stuff Miz Boone saved us from, and didn't have to get rehabilitated. They just released us into her custody. That lady (who anybody could tell was about as close to crazy as it gets without actually being there) got the whole town off our tail, back when we were in trouble for burying Grampy without permission. Even though we had permission from Grampy. Heck, it was his idea—but that didn't count. The county doesn't take things like that for excuses when they have something to prosecute.
We got off, though. I don't know exactly what she had to do to work that out, but she did. She even got my folks on her side—which was totally amazing—because they both work for the county. Well, they did back then. Mom's teaching contract runs out at the end of the year, and the library where my dad works is only open about three days a week, now.
The whole town's going bust, little by little. Which isn't the kind of thing a thirteen-year-old kid usually has to think about. Except it was about to blow all our plans to bits—Boone's and mine—just when things were starting to look up for us. I mean, what good is finally getting your freedom back if everybody's folks have to move halfway to the moon just to find work?
Boone's the best friend I ever had. The kind you only get from going through tough times together and come out on the other side. We have plans that can only (and I mean ONLY) be carried out right here. In Ashbury. Not with each of us getting planted down somewhere else just so our parents can get better jobs. I thought of asking if I could live with the Boones for the rest of my life but I don't think my folks would go for that.
Any way we looked, it didn't look good.
That is, until Miz Boone came up with her genius idea of buying out Hogworth's Go-Cart Track. It was going bust, anyway, and she made the owner an offer he couldn't refuse ( I don't know why people always go for those things). He moved off to Texas, where a brother of his owned a gas station. “People will be driving cars for a long time, yet,” he told Miz Boone, “But the first thing they cut back on when times get hard is fun stuff for kids.”
Man, he sure had that right. But it was more than just fun stuff for kids that was getting cut back on. We didn't know it that day, but the end of our town of Ashbury (that had been around for a couple hundred years) was already in sight. In fact, I actually think if we hadn't gone out to hunt rattlesnakes after school we would have been caught in the same trap everyone else was.
Seriously.
But there we were dinking around in the dessert about an hour away from town, looking behind bushes and under rocks, hoping we could spot a snake (before it saw us, first). And at that very same moment...
The first wave of soldiers was rolling into Ashbury.