by Eric Bower
I should mention that I’m really quite fond of food. It is my favorite thing.
“Where’s B.W.?” M asked, sitting beside me at the table. “Didn’t you let him know that he was invited for supper? I was just telling Rose that you had finally made a friend at school.”
“I wanted to see him for myself,” Rose commented as she began to cut slices of the chicken pot pie for everyone. “I needed to know if he was real or just imaginary.”
“Ha ha ha,” I said dryly, rolling my eyes. “You’re hilarious. You ought to be on the stage. People pay good money for funny things like you.”
Shorty giggled as she accepted a large slice of pot pie from Rose.
“I thought it was pretty funny,” Shorty told me, and then she playfully pinched my leg from under the table, causing me to yelp.
I’ve had the black and blue bruise from Shorty’s playful pinch for over a month and a half now, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’ll ever go away.
The next morning at school, I sat there with the rest of the class and watched as B.W. struggled through his first oral report. Miss Danielle loved assigning us reports to present to the class. In fact, sometimes it felt like all we did at school was either give reports or listen to the other kids give reports. The kids at my school might not be strong readers, and we might need to use our fingers and toes to do arithmetic, and the only real science we’d ever been taught was that frogs and toads weren’t the same thing (though Miss Danielle had never explained to us the actual difference between them), but we’re pretty darn good at talking for long periods of time about things that we don’t really know or care about.
“Ummm . . .” he began, nervously adjusting his collar and combing his hair back with his fingers. “My name is B.W.”
“No, it isn’t!” Miss Danielle called from her desk at the other end of the room.“Your name is Belford Eustace Nigel Egbert Doolittle Ignatius Cattermole Threepwood Whitestone the Third! I’ve been practicing, so now I can say it quite quickly, over and over again. Would you like to hear?”
Miss Danielle did not allow us to use nicknames in class, which was why she always called me Waldo instead of W.B. When there were two students in class who had the same first name, instead of allowing one of them to shorten their name, she would refer to them by both their first and last names. When two students in class happened to have the same first and last name, she would refer to them by their first name and last name, followed by a very brief description of them. That explained why the two Christopher Crons in my class were known as “Christopher Cron with the Runny Nose” and “Christopher Cron with the Normal Nose.”
“That’s alright,” B.W. said quickly, before Miss Danielle could start repeating his name. “I’m sure you’re quite good at saying it fast. Anyway, my family moved here last week. And now we live in a little house in—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt!” Miss Danielle interrupted in a way that didn’t sound particularly sorry. “But you moved here from where?”
The other kids in class turned and began to whisper to their friends. Unfortunately, the only friend I had who I could whisper to was currently standing in front of the class. I tried to whisper to him loudly, so he could hear me.
Apparently, “whispering loudly” is also known as “simply talking,” which is not allowed when a student is giving a report in front of the class. So I was forced to listen to the rest of my friend’s report while sitting in the corner with the dunce cap on my head. Which was alright. My head was getting a bit cold anyway.
“I . . . uh . . .” B.W. stammered as he glanced at the map of the world that was tacked to our wall. “I moved here from . . . from . . . Greece?”
“Greece?” Miss Danielle exclaimed in a shocked tone. “Goodness! That’s very far away. Do you speak Greek?”
“They speak Greek in Greece?” said Christopher Cron with the Runny Nose. “Wow. And they’re actually able to understand each other?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” B.W. said quickly. “I’m actually not from that Greece. I mean, I’m from Greece, New York. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a small town in upstate New York. You probably wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s not on any maps.”
“How do you find your way around if it isn’t on a map?” one student asked.
“And how do you know that you’re actually there?” Christopher Cron with the Normal Nose added.
“You just do,” B.W. told them. “I moved to Pitchfork from Greece, New York, and now I live here with my father.”
“What does your father do?” Miss Danielle asked.
B.W. paused for a moment. I could tell by the pause that he was uncomfortable discussing his family. I could understand that. Usually, when I discussed my family, I got into trouble and ended up where I was at that moment—in the corner of the classroom with my favorite pointy cap on top of my head. I wondered if the same thing would happen to B.W. If so, Miss Danielle would have to buy a second dunce cap, because I didn’t really want to share. The dunce cap likely wasn’t large enough to fit both of our heads.
“He works for a bank,” B.W. finally said. “My grandparents used to work for banks too, but they’re retired. I really like science, and horses, and collecting coins. My old school was very different than this one. It was bigger, and we never had to give oral reports to the class. But I still like it here in Pitchfork. I hope my family can stay here for a long time. Thank you. I’m finished with my report, Miss Danielle.”
Miss Danielle glanced up at the clock mounted on the schoolhouse wall.
“The clock says you still have twenty-two and a half minutes left,” she told him.
“But I’ve run out of things to say.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Miss Danielle said. “I assigned a thirty-minute report, and I expect you to give a thirty-minute report. So keep reporting.”
But B.W. had nothing else to say. He continued to stand there in front of the class, and the kids continued to whisper to one another, and Miss Danielle continued to sit behind her desk, and I continued to adjust my dunce cap, until the twenty-two and a half minutes finally passed, and my friend could take his seat again.
Shorty and her parents were staying at a hotel in Downtown Pitchfork while her father received treatment from the brilliant doctor/barber/weekend-used-shoe-salesman, but she spent a lot of time with us at the Baron Estate. I liked having her around. Rose Blackwood joked that she was my girlfriend, but I didn’t care. Shorty was teaching me how to properly jump a horse, which I’d always wanted to learn to do.
With my father’s permission, Shorty saddled and mounted Geoffrey and galloped to the far end of our property. Then, with a whip of the reins and a little shout, she rode Geoffrey as quickly as she could across our backyard, and when she reached the little white picket fence that surrounded the Baron Estate, she pulled up on the horse’s reins, signaling it to jump. Geoffrey’s jump was quite graceful, and, when he landed, he spun around to face me and took a little bow. Shorty hopped off the saddle and gave a short curtsy as well.
I couldn’t help but applaud. She was a mighty fine jumper.
It didn’t go quite so smoothly when I tried it.
First, I accidentally hopped onto the saddle backwards, so I was facing Geoffrey’s tail instead of his head. When I tried to jump off so I could correct my positioning, my foot got caught in the horse’s reins. Geoffrey felt the pull and thought I was directing him to gallop, so he began to gallop.
Since I was facing backwards, and had nothing to hold on to, I did the only thing I could think of.
I panicked and started to scream.
But I did it in a very brave and manly way.
At least, that’s what Shorty told me later when I asked her how I looked.
As I screamed, I flailed my arms around, which probably wasn’t such a great idea because I lost my balance and fell off the horse. But si
nce my foot was still tangled in the reins, I was dragged all the way across the rocky yard surrounding our property, kicking up a cloud of dust so thick that it looked like London fog. While I was being dragged, I tried to grab onto anything I could, but the large rocks and little saplings that I caught ahold of just ripped out of the ground.
When we finally reached the fence, I screamed at Geoffrey, “DON’T JUMP!”, but since I was choking on dust and my mouth was filled with rocks and cacti, it must have sounded like I screamed, “GO JUMP!” because that is exactly what he did.
Geoffrey cleared the fence without trouble, soaring through the sky with admirable grace. But I wasn’t so lucky. As Geoffrey completed his graceful jump by landing gently on the ground like he did before, my face smacked right into the fence, breaking it apart.
And by “it,” I mean the fence. Not my face. Though considering how I’d be the one who’d have to fix the broken fence, I sort of wish that it was my face that’d been broken instead. I wouldn’t be expected to spend all day Sunday rebuilding and repainting my face.
When the world stopped spinning, and the little laughing squirrels stopped dancing around my head (when I’m dizzy or confused, I see squirrels . . . I don’t know why, so don’t ask), I slowly stood up and pulled my boot from the horse’s reins. I looked over and saw Shorty staring at me in astonishment.
“Wow, W.B.,” she finally said, when the power of speech returned to her. “That’s the most incredible jump that I’ve ever seen.”
That’s probably the nicest thing she could have said after seeing me display such a remarkable lack of riding talent, coordination, common sense, and . . . well . . . a lack of just about everything that a person could be lacking.
Isn’t she a great friend?
When Shorty wasn’t staying at the Baron Estate, B.W. was usually there. It was great always having a friend over, even though at times it seemed like B.W. only came over to talk to my parents and learn about their inventions and devices.
“Can you tell me more about the material you’ve invented that’s both bulletproof and fireproof?” he asked as he sat with my father at his work bench. “That sounds fascinating to me. How do you make it? And why is it so lightweight?”
As my father started to give a very long, very detailed, and very boring explanation about the science behind his seemingly impossible invention, I sat in the corner and listened to the ridiculous music that played in my head.
“Doo dee doo dee dooo duhhhh,” I sang quietly, as my brain started coming up with strange questions to distract me from their conversation, like if fish ever get cold in the water, and what the purpose of ear hair is . . . when suddenly I heard something strange.
I stopped singing as the wacky music in my mind shut off in an instant. My father was still giving his long explanation to B.W., who had pulled out a little notepad so he could write down P’s answer. I stood up, and walked over to the open window at the back of the work garage.
I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, but I thought I had heard the very distinct sound of someone sneezing outside. The sneeze was followed by a frantic rustling noise, which sounded very much like a person who’d been hiding in the bushes, who suddenly realized that their sneeze had given away their hiding place, and now they were quickly trying to escape without being seen.
At least, that’s what it sounded like to me.
I suppose the reason why that unimportant little sound caught my attention was because over the past couple of days, I’d been getting the strangest feeling. It felt as though someone was watching me. Sometimes I got that feeling while I was lying in bed at night, preparing to go to sleep. Sometimes I got that feeling while I was sitting down at the table to enjoy my second or eighth lunch of the day. And sometimes, I got the feeling when I was walking to school in the morning, crossing the Pitchfork Desert just as the sun was rising. Of course, I never saw anyone watching me, but that didn’t make the feeling go away. I had yet to tell anyone about the feeling, because I was worried they would think there was something wrong with my brain. My parents often worried about the state of my brain. If you’d injured your head as often as I have, people would be worrying about the state of your brain too.
I stuck my head out of the garage window and looked outside. The bushes certainly looked as though someone had been hiding in them. For one thing, they were almost completely crushed, which was a pretty good sign that someone was in them. The animals that made temporary homes in our bushes were usually much neater and much more careful, and they weren’t heavy enough to leave behind such large footprints.
And for another thing, someone had accidentally left their shoe behind.
It was a very familiar shoe.
Pretty Squirrels . . .
I’m no detective. I’m barely even a . . . whatever-it-is that I am.
I’ve read plenty of mystery books about brilliant inspectors who can spot a snapped twig or a spilled bit of soup, and from that little piece of evidence they can use their brilliant detective brains to solve a crime. My brain isn’t that clever. In fact, my brain often won’t tell me where I left my pants the previous evening.
But even I could recognize one of Rose Blackwood’s shoes when I saw it. For one thing, she was the only person I knew who wore bright red cowboy boots that had “R.B.” printed on them in cursive lettering.
I leaned out of the window and picked up the boot. After telling P and B.W. that I would be right back, I left the work garage and went back into the house.
My father and B.W. probably didn’t even notice that I had left.
I found Rose Blackwood in the kitchen with Aunt Dorcas. They’d been spending a lot of time working together, preparing pies and cakes and tarts to enter into the Pitchfork Fair baking contest. The Pitchfork Fair’s baking contest was a big deal, and it was taken very seriously by everyone in town. You might say that they took it a bit too seriously. Many terrible fights had broken out over what someone considered to be a misjudged pie or tart. There were families in town that had been feuding for decades over a single nasty comment made about the heavy-handed use of raisins or a sad lack of cinnamon in a dessert. Miss Danielle’s mother had once gone nine months without speaking to anyone in town after her famous blueberry pie had come in second place. A judge was once shot in the knee with a crossbow when he dared to suggest that a contestant’s strawberry cake was a little too dry. The judge’s grandmother later apologized to him for the shooting and told him that she had simply lost her temper.
Aunt Dorcas was a wonderful cook and an excellent baker. Rose Blackwood was a pretty good cook, but her baking was . . . well . . . I suppose you could compare her baking to my horseback riding, only not quite as good.
“Oh my,” said Aunt Dorcas with a sickly expression as she pulled Rose’s latest cake creation out of the oven. “What on earth happened to this chocolate cake?”
I could see what she meant. I’d never seen a chocolate cake that was green before. It was sort of shaped like a fish too, and not a particularly healthy-looking fish either. But the worst part about the cake wasn’t the way it looked. It was the way it smelled. It smelled like a combination of burning rubber and rotten cabbage. My eyes began to water from all the way across the room.
“Did you mean to shape the cake like a depressed trout?” Aunt Dorcas asked Rose Blackwood.
“Umm, yes?”
“Well, next time, don’t do that. Most people do not like to think of melancholy seafood when they’re eating dessert.”
Rose grumbled to herself as she dumped her fish cake into the garbage. It wasn’t the first fishy cake she’d dumped that day, and I doubted it would be the last.
“Rose?” I said.
Rose continued to grumble as she pulled another one of her terrible cakes from the oven.
The second cake looked like a squished toad, but the shape of the cake wasn’t even the stran
gest thing about it. The color was positively bizarre. It was silver. How she could turn a butter cream cake silver is still baffling to me. It seemed impossible. But then again, a lot of the things that happened to my family seemed pretty impossible. Maybe we’re just lucky. Or in the case of my unbelievable clumsiness and Rose’s consistently foul cakes, maybe we’re a bit cursed as well.
“I think this is yours, Rose!” I called out in a loud voice. “Were you just outside? Behind the work garage? Lying in the bushes? Sneezing with only one boot on?”
I held up the red cowboy boot. Rose finally looked at me.
“Oh,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I’ve been looking for that. Thank you, W.B. No, I’ve been in here baking all day. Please just leave my boot there in the corner. I’ll put it in my bedroom once I’m finished with my pies.”
Aunt Dorcas picked up one of the pies that Rose had baked. She sniffed it, and her face turned the same sickly shade as Rose’s fishy chocolate cake.
“Are you sure you aren’t already finished in here?” my aunt asked hopefully. “Maybe what you need is a nice break from the kitchen.”
“No,” Rose insisted, “I want to keep trying until I get it right.”
Aunt Dorcas frowned as she quietly dumped the stinky pie into the trashcan, on top of all the other failed desserts that Rose had attempted to bake that day. The kitchen was beginning to smell a bit like an overflowing pig trough in the middle of August.
While Rose Blackwood continued to mix ingredients into her mixing bowl, muttering to herself about how this was bound to be her first tasty cake or pie, I looked at her sleeves and her pants. They were covered in dark stains, though I couldn’t be certain if the stains were chocolate or dirt.
It was the day of the Pitchfork Fair, a day that I’d been looking forward to since the last fair ended, exactly one year earlier. Fair day was my absolute favorite day of the year. I would gladly give up my birthday for the next ten years if it meant that the Pitchfork Fair happened twice a year instead of only once. I was so excited about all the delicious foods they would be serving at the fair that I didn’t eat anything the day before, so I would have plenty of room in my stomach.