The Sparrow Found A House (Sparrow Stories #1)

by Jason McIntire

  Chapter 24

  The Great Raw Potato Battle

  Katie and Nana had just barely disappeared around the corner when another car came up the other way. This one had “Hubbert Insurance” marked on the side, and Jessie knew that Izzie had arrived for her visit. They hadn’t known exactly what day she would come, because she was waiting to hitch a ride with her mom. Mrs. Hubbert might pick Izzie up again when it was time to go, or the Sparrows might give her a ride. The Reliance public schools were on an extended winter break, so there was some flexibility.

  Izzie looked nervous as she was greeted with warm hugs and handshakes. Helping her unpack in the room, Jessie noticed that her friend had come prepared for the worst-case scenario. Her bulging suitcases contained, among other things, a portable DVD player and ten boxed season sets of her favorite shows. Coming to the country to watch television reruns seemed a bit incongruous, but Jessie said nothing about it.

  “So you might as well, like, show me the place while it’s warm,” Izzie suggested. “I think there’s some snow in the forecast.”

  “You’re right about the snow,” Jessie said, “so we thought we would do something fun outside today. How does a potato shootout sound?”

  Izzie blinked and glanced almost imperceptibly out the window, to see if her mom had left. “A potato shootout,” she repeated flatly. “Has this got something to do with cooking, or are you guys like, actually throwing potatoes at each other?”

  “No, no,” Jessie laughed. Pulling a small plastic pistol-looking thing from her pocket, she tossed it to Izzie. “That’s a low-power compressed air potato gun,” she said. “It doesn’t shoot the whole potato, just a little piece of it. So each player carries a raw potato as an ammunition source.” Out of her other pocket came a hole-filled potato. “To reload, you stick the gun barrel into the potato and twist. Then you’re ready to shoot.”

  “Oh, like paintball.” Izzie grimaced. “I got pounded pretty good in paintball the one time my brother took me. Does that potato thingy hurt when it hits you?”

  “Only a little, if you’re right up next to it. That’s why we’ve got a rule that you have to stay ten feet away from other players. Realistically, of course, you don’t want to get that close anyway, because five hits takes you out of the game. Oh, and you have to wear these.” She handed Izzie a pair of safety glasses. “Like the Sergeant says, you only get one pair of eyes.”

  “Okay.” Izzie took a deep breath. “I’ll try anything once.”

  “Battle starts after lunch,” Jessie told her gleefully.

  That afternoon, the adversaries carefully selected their ammunition for size and texture, and then squared off on opposite sides of a clearing in the nearby woods. The teams were Moe and the girls against Chris and Ben, with the Sergeant serving as referee. Before blowing the whistle to start the battle, he reminded them of the rules. “No shots to the face, five hits eliminates. You’re on your honor to keep track of hits on yourself. Last team standing wins. Players out of ammunition are eliminated. If this whistle blows twice, the game is over and everybody comes in to the sound of the whistle. Don’t get too enthusiastic and lose yourselves in the woods. If you realize that you don’t know where you are, call me on your cell phone and I’ll find you. Now start shooting!”

  The Sergeant gave a loud, long whistle, and the two sides sent forth a volley apiece. Finding their armaments wholly ineffectual at the current range, they paused to strategize. On the Red Team, Moe was for a frontal assault. “We’ve got them outnumbered,” he observed. “Our best chance is to go after them right now, while we know where they are.”

  “He’s just saying that,” Jessie told Izzie, “because he thinks the boys are smarter than we are.”

  “Well, we’ll totally see about that,” Izzie replied in an offended tone. “Anyway, I’m not charging across open ground like the Light Brigade at Gettysburg.”

  “I think the Light Brigade was a different war,” Jessie remarked uncertainly.

  “Whatever. Anyway, I say we send the little berserker here out as a diversion, while we sneak around both sides in a clever flanking maneuver.”

  “Izzie, I’ve got to ask this: how do you know all these military terms?”

  “What do you think I watch Blood-Soaked Flags for, to pass the time of day?”

  “I might have known. Okay, that sounds all right to me. Moe?”

  “I think I’m being sacrificed, but I guess I’ll do it for the team.”

  “Okay, give us two minutes, and then start your diversionary charge.” They began to crawl away.

  “Hey!” Moe called after them in a voice entirely too loud for the front lines. “How do I know when it’s been two minutes? I don’t have a watch.”

  “Count!” Jessie hissed.

  “One, two....”

  “Not aloud, you silly – to yourself!”

  On and on they crawled, until Jessie was fairly sure that they should have reached the boys’ position by now. Quite a distance back, she could hear Moe giving his idea of the rebel yell as he charged across the clearing. What she didn’t hear was any noise of the Blue Team firing on him. Just a few feet away, she could see Izzie’s brown coat circling back around toward her. “Surely we must be behind them by now, Iz. Iz?”

  Suddenly she looked up face to face with Chris. They both screamed and raised their weapons, but then remembered the ten-foot safety rule and scrambled back to reach shooting range. Chris let fly first.

  “That’s not fair!” Jessie protested loudly. “That wasn’t ten feet.”

  “Sure it was!” Chris paused momentarily in reloading.

  “It was not,” Jessie insisted as she took a step back. “But it is now!” She let him have it, then turned and dove for cover and Chris indignantly shot another round after her.

  Finding her reloader suddenly stuck on a potato sprout, Jessie panicked and ran in the opposite direction, with Chris following hard after her, trying to reload, shoot, and yell allegations of cheating at the same time – with the result that his shots didn’t even come close. Jessie finally freed her gun barrel on the run, twisted a good round out of the potato, then turned and scored a bullseye. Chris, nonplussed and between reloads, saw her quickly grabbing another round. He dashed behind a tree and they had at it, until finally Chris called out that he was dead.

  “You’re not dead,” Jessie yelled back. “I only hit you four times.”

  “Well somebody got me the fifth,” Chris insisted.

  “That would be me, sucker.” Izzie was grinning broadly as she walked up. “We win, Jess. Moe and Ben finished each other off, so I came to help you.”

  The girls gave each other a high-five as Chris muttered good-naturedly about unfair odds and back-shooting. Just then they realized that they weren’t alone. They had been silently joined by a curious golden retriever. “Well hello,” said Chris, who loved dogs and was planning to get one of his own. The girls joined him in petting the beautiful animal, until the dog suddenly pulled away and ran off. Their eyes followed his course right to the feet of his master... Mr. Dimes.

  He glared at them with suspicion. “Did you kids lead my dog off?” he demanded in a menacing tone.

  Acting braver than he felt, Chris stepped between Dimes and the girls. “No, sir, we didn’t,” he said. “Your dog just got here on his own.”

  “My dog don’t run off without somebody calls him,” Mr. Dimes added with fury. “You just stay away from my dog, you....”

  “Girls,” Chris said as the old man began to swear loudly, “walk away. I’m behind you.”

  “Don’t you go anywhere while I’m talkin’ to you,” Dimes menaced with more profanity as Chris began to back off.

  Dimes walked toward him. Chris’s heart was thumping against his ribs. What would he do if the man actually attacked him? Bombard him with potato pellets? If Dimes went for him, Chris decided, he would turn and run. He and Jessie could certainly outdistance the old redneck with ease. His main concern was Izzie,
whose only regular exercise consisted of mall-walking. They couldn’t leave her behind, even if they had to carry her.

  “Mr. Dimes,” Chris said more bravely than he felt, “you are on my father’s property, and he is just over that rise.”

  Dimes paused his step, but not the stream of abuse coming from his foul mouth. Chris turned and walked away, praying under his breath to drown out the ugly words and the hate behind them. From the top of the rise, he finally dared to look back. Dimes was gone. Chris suddenly found that his knees had turned to water, and almost cried when he saw the Sergeant coming up the hill with the girls.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Jessie told her friend as they walked back to the house. “This is the first time Mr. Dimes has come on our side of the fence.”

  “And it will be the last,” the Sergeant added, “if the law can stop him.”

  That night, three phone calls were made. The Sergeant called the County Sheriff and made a complaint. The Sheriff called Mr. Dimes to issue a warning. And finally, Dimes completed the triangle by calling the Sparrows.

  The kids listened from the other room as the Sergeant answered the call. He waited until the initial tirade had subsided to make any response. “Mr. Dimes,” he finally replied, “whether or not my kids encouraged your dog to follow them is beside the point. You were on my property, and you threatened my children. Intentional trespassing is a Class B misdemeanor, which is quite serious, but I’m not pressing charges against you this time. If you have an issue you want to discuss, you’re welcome to call or come visit me at this house. But I cannot and I will not tolerate your terrorizing my children.”

  There was a pause, and then the Sergeant hung up without another word.

  “What did he say?” Chris asked. “That you can repeat, I mean.”

  “He said that he wouldn’t come on our land again,” the Sergeant told them, “but that we’d better be sure not to come on his either. And we will, guys. Do not ever cross that fence into Dimes’ property, no matter what. There’s no telling what he might be capable of doing.”