The Manny Files book1

by Christian Burch

  Uncle Max went on with the story “We decided to sleep out in the tent the next night to see if we could catch the ghost. We had flashlights, a Polaroid camera, and a big sheet to capture the ghost with. It got later and later, and there was no ghost. At about two in the morning both your mom and I had grown tired of waiting and we fell asleep. Not very long after I woke up to the pshhhh sound of a shaving-cream can. I opened my eyes and could see the shadow of toilet paper blowing in the wind on the outside of our tent. I shook your mom awake and told her to get the camera. We were scared to death, but we wanted to find out whose grave we had been sleeping on. We peeked out of the opening of the tent and saw the back of somebody dressed in a dark robe, leaning down and writing a message on the ground. ‘Now!’ I yelled at the top of my lungs, and I charged out of the tent and tackled the ghost with the big white sheet. I tried to keep a hold of the ghost while it squirmed and wiggled wildly under the sheet. I could see the unfinished message written on the ground. It said SLEEP SOMEWHERE ELSE OR I WILL … When your mom was ready with the Polaroid, I uncovered the ghost’s head and was blinded by the flash of the camera. Your mom screamed and I got scared. The ghost pulled away and ran around the house, taking the sheet with it. We hovered over the Polaroid picture to see if the ghost would show up on film. When it finally developed, there I was holding the sheet open to reveal your grandma clutching a can of shaving cream.”

  “Grandma was trying to scare you?” I looked at him with my eyes wide open in disbelief.

  “Yes!” Mom said in a can-you-believe-it voice. Then Mom took over the story. “We ran into the house to catch her, but she was already under the covers, pretending that she had been asleep. She said that it must have been a bad dream and that we’d probably had too much soda to drink before bed. We knew it had been her, though. She was all sweaty, and there was a can of shaving cream on her nightstand.”

  “So the craziness is inherited?” said Lulu. “We don’t stand a chance.” She looked over at India, who shook her head in agreement.

  “Time for all children with insane families to go to bed,” said Mom.

  “That’s us,” India said, grabbing my shoulder.

  We wandered off to our tents, and I was too tired to write much in my journal. Instead I just opened it up and wrote:

  July 7

  Camping Trip

  THE MOST FUN DAY OF MY LIFE, EXCEPT I HATE FLY-FISHING.

  19

  If Only I’d Worn My Toupee

  The next morning when I crawled out of the tent, there was a message written in shaving cream on the ground. It said GOOD MORNING, KEATS! I’m not sure, but I think the manny wrote it, because he had a freshly shaved face. He denied it, but nobody would act as his alibi. An alibi is someone who can back up another person’s story. I learned what an alibi was when Ms. Grant had lunchroom duty. I slipped on the water-covered tile floor, and my entire tray of turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy flew into the back of Ms. Grant’s black slacks. She got mad and told me that I shouldn’t be running in the lunchroom and I needed to stay after school. Sarah told her that I wasn’t running, and Ms. Grant changed her mind about keeping me after school. She said, “It’s good that Sarah’s your alibi. She’s very honest.” Then Ms. Grant walked away with a big mashed-potato stain on her butt and gravy dripping down the back of her leg. Sarah covered her mouth and giggled, but I was too embarrassed to join her.

  Even when Lulu claimed to have seen him do it, the manny denied writing the shaving-cream message. He said that he thought Belly did it.

  “I did,” said Belly, nodding her head yes, even though she can’t write or even spell.

  After breakfast we took our tents down and packed our things into the boat. Dad said that today was a big fishing day because we were going through deep pools that had lots of fish in them. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to fish.

  Mom was the first one to fish. She used a fly called the Hairy Mary. She said it was her lucky fly. Mom let Belly hold on to the rod with her while she cast. I guess it was lucky, because they caught a big fish that Dad guessed was twenty pounds. They called it Belly’s fish, like she had actually caught it.

  Belly even turned to me like I was her younger brother and said, “Are you going to fish? It’s easy.”

  “Nope,” I said without explaining, and I watched Belly’s fish swim away.

  Uncle Max took the fly rod and started casting. He used Mom’s Hairy Mary fly because he liked the name. The fish he caught was a little smaller than Belly’s fish, and he caught it in the gills, so it was bleeding all over the inside of the boat. Lulu held her nose and gagged and looked out the other side of the boat. Dad had to kill the fish by hitting it on the head with a stick. India looked like she was going to cry, but she agreed with Mom that the fish needed to be put out of its misery. Dad wrapped it in plastic and put it in the cooler. The manny took his hat off and held it over his heart. He said he was paying his respects. After we gave the fish a moment of silence, Uncle Max handed the fly rod to the manny, who switched from the Hairy Mary to the Stone Fly. Uncle Max was done fishing for the day. That’s the rule of catch and release. If you kill a fish, you can’t cast a rod for the rest of the day.

  The manny had never been fly-fishing before, but you couldn’t tell. He didn’t cast as well as Dad, but nobody in the boat had to scream or duck out of the way of his hook. Except Lulu—she screamed every time he cast, but I think she was just trying to mess him up. She stopped screaming when the manny caught a fish.

  The manny kept yelling “woohoo” as he reeled his first fish in to the boat. Uncle Max and I took turns high-fiving him, while India, Mom, and Belly held the fish in the water and petted its nose. Lulu wrote in “The Manny Files” and pretended like nothing was even happening. I pretended to fall into her and tried to knock “The Manny Files” into the river, but Lulu clutched it to her chest and kicked me away with her foot. I almost fell in instead, but India grabbed me. The manny said that if I had fallen in, he would have used his expert fishing skills to catch me.

  “We never would have seen Keats again,” said Lulu. The manny laughed, even though Lulu meant it to be mean.

  “This might be my new sport,” said the manny as he cast his line out in the river. “You might read my name next to Ernest Hemingway’s in the annals of great fishermen.” Ernest Hemingway is Dad’s favorite writer. He was a fisherman. Just as the manny had finished bragging, the hook smacked him in the back of the head with a louder crack than when it had hit my life jacket. The red bandanna flew off the manny’s head, and I watched it float down the river. The manny gasped and yelped, “Sh—ouch!” I think he was going to say a bad word, but he stopped himself. The Stone Fly was lodged right in the back of the manny’s head, and there was a little blood dripping down the back of his neck. Mom sat him down and went to work on dislodging the fly. She loves doing stuff like that. Her favorite things about being a mother are taking out splinters and peeling sunburned skin.

  “If only I’d worn my toupee,” said the manny.

  “Be still,” scolded Mom as she slipped the fly out of the manny’s head and held it up like she’d won a competition. India started blotting the manny’s head with a tissue that she had soaked in rubbing alcohol. Mom applied Neosporin and a Band-Aid over the cut. The Band-Aid was shaped like lips, so it looked like somebody with lipstick had kissed the back of the manny’s head. Mom gave Belly the box of Band-Aids, and before we knew it, Belly’s face was covered with lips.

  I scooted over so the manny could join India and me in the people-who-don’t-fish section of the boat, but he didn’t sit down. Instead he picked up the fly rod and began fishing again! Within minutes he had a fish on his line. It was a big one too (bigger than Lulu’s). He said that the big ones liked blood. Uncle Max took the manny’s picture with it before he set it free.

  The manny handed me the fly rod and said, “Do you want to get back up on your horse too?”

  “Sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t s
ure at all.

  I took the rod from the manny’s hand and watched Lulu sink down into the boat and cover her head. India did too, but at least she waited until I wasn’t looking. Belly stretched down on her stomach and covered the back of her neck and head with her arms like she was in a tornado drill.

  They stayed in their positions while I cast wildly back and forth across the water. I hit the boat with the fly a few times, and Lulu screamed the same way she does when I chase her with a frog. Just when I was about to quit fishing, I felt a tug on the end of my line.

  “I think you got one!” exclaimed Dad as he grabbed the net. Every time the fish tugged at the line, I felt like I was going to fall into the river. Uncle Max held on to me. I played the fish just like Lulu had done, letting it tire itself out before I reeled it in. Uncle Max grabbed the rod every once in a while to give my arms a rest. When the fish was close enough to the boat, Dad swooped it up with the net and unhooked it. Belly opened her eyes really wide when Dad held the fish up. It was almost the same size as her. Dad said it was at least thirty pounds. I was so excited that I couldn’t speak. I just kept shaking my legs and petting the fish. It was shiny silver with rainbow colors. When I tried to speak, all that came out was nervous laughter.

  Everybody cheered and congratulated me, even Lulu, who wanted to hold it to see what a thirty-pound fish felt like. Uncle Max took a picture of me with my fish, and I told him I wanted a copy for my journal. Lulu thought it was gross when I kissed the fish good-bye and watched it swim away. She told me she was never sharing a glass of water with me again.

  The manny called me Papa the rest of the day. It was Ernest Hemingway’s nickname.

  July 8

  I caught the biggest fish of the trip today. The manny argued with me that he actually had caught the biggest fish because he weighs 150 pounds and he caught himself. He hooked himself in the back of the head. Lulu told him that it would count only if we released him back into the river. The manny told her that she had a very quick sense of humor. She blushed. She likes compliments. Even from the manny.

  We ate the fish that Uncle Max hooked in the gills for dinner tonight.

  I can’t wait to fish tomorrow.

  Born on this day: John D. Rockefeller, Philip Johnson, Kevin Bacon

  20

  The Fuzz

  It was colder when I woke up the next morning, and I could hear rain pounding against the tent. We made breakfast (peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches) inside our tents and ate them while Mom and Dad decided if we were going to stay and wait until the rain stopped. Dad looked up toward the sky and said that he didn’t think the rain was going to stop for a few days. I don’t know how he knows things like this. He says it’s because he was a Boy Scout. I was in Boy Scouts for a little while, and all we did was pick up trash along the side of the highway and talk about why drugs were a bad choice. We didn’t learn the things that Dad learned, like how to build a boat out of sticks or which plants are poisonous to eat.

  When the rain let up a little, Dad said that it was our chance to leave. We were going to float all the way to Uncle Max’s Honda Accord and go home three days early. Dad said that everybody who wanted to fish had caught one, so we might as well head home. We packed up our bags. Lulu wrapped “The Manny Files” in the rain gear that she had brought for it, a big plastic bag.

  Floating through the rain was fun, even though it was cold. Belly shivered, and Mom wrapped her arms around her to keep her warm. All you could see was Belly’s face with her tongue hanging out, trying to catch raindrops in her mouth. India, Lulu, and I huddled together, and I watched the misty fog float through the trees. Lulu can be really nice when she wants to be.

  The river looked mysterious, like in the books I’ve read about the Loch Ness monster. We floated for most of the day before we arrived at the car.

  The manny and Dad had just pulled the boat out of the water when a crash of thunder shook the ground. Mom screamed and rushed Belly and India to the car. Lulu and I followed behind them.

  Dad and Uncle Max quickly loaded the van with our tents, bags, and boat. Mom drove the Eurovan, and the manny drove Uncle Max’s car. I rode with Mom and Dad this time because Mom said that Uncle Max and the manny needed some alone time.

  How can they be alone if they’re together? I thought, too exhausted to actually ask it outloud.

  I didn’t care. I slept the whole way home anyway.

  It was midnight when we finally reached our street and I woke up. Mom told us that we needed to be extra quiet when we went inside because Grandma and her friends would be asleep and they weren’t expecting us. We didn’t want to scare them.

  “What about unloading the boat?” I asked.

  “We’ll do all that tomorrow. Tonight just go in to bed,” said Dad.

  Uncle Max and the manny had already turned down another street. India said it was the street the manny lived on. India always knows everything. I think she might be a spy.

  When we rolled into our driveway, there was a police car parked in it with its lights flashing and reflecting off the garage doors. All the neighbors were out on their porches and in their yards, curious about the commotion. Their faces were red from the police lights.

  Mom worriedly rolled down her window and asked, “What’s happened, Officer? Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the officer. “We were just here on a disturbance-of-the-peace call, but everything is fine.”

  Mom let out a big breath.

  The officer went on, “Apparently this is the third night in a row that loud music and laughing were coming from inside the house and disturbing the neighbors. When we got here, we expected to find a teenage party. We knocked on the door, and an older woman peered out through the curtain and yelled to her friends that it was ‘the fuzz.’ She let us in, and we found five older women playing cards and listening to the Beatles too loudly. They’ve promised to keep it down.” The officer paused for a moment. “And to stop calling us the fuzz.”

  Mom thanked the officer, who got in his squad car and left. The disappointed neighbors went into their houses. They were probably hoping for a scandal, like if Lulu lost her mind and had to be taken away in a straitjacket.

  I started singing, “‘Bad boys, bad boys. Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?’”

  Dad laughed.

  Inside the house June, Thelma, and Wanda stumbled all over themselves apologizing to Mom. Virginia was on the back deck smoking a cigarette. She waved to us through the glass of the door.

  The house was messier than usual, with seven empty wine bottles on the kitchen counter and empty pizza boxes on the kitchen table. There were cards strewn across Grandma, who was lying in her hospital bed.

  Grandma didn’t apologize. Instead she said, “What are you doing home so early, anyway? You look like a bunch of wet dogs.”

  “We’ll tell you all about it in the morning,” said Mom. “But now I have to get these kids to bed.”

  The canasta ladies promised to come clean our house bright and early the next morning, and they left. I hugged Grandma and went to my bedroom to change into dry warm pajamas. I could still smell the red wine from Grandma’s breath.

  July 9

  We’re already back from summer vacation. It was the shortest one ever, but it felt the longest. It started raining, so we had to come home early. Right when I was starting to like fishing. I am glad that Uncle Max and the manny were there. I think Lulu is glad that Uncle Max was there too. Maybe once Lulu is comfortable with her new boobs, she’ll want the manny around too.

  The police were here when we got home because Grandma had a party that got out of control, even though it was just her canasta group. She didn’t have to go to jail, but the policeman didn’t like it when Grandma called him Fuzzy. I think she might have a police record now. I can’t wait to tell the manny that Grandma is a felon.

  Born on this day: David Hockney, Barbara Cartland, Tom Hanks

  21

>   “Summer Lovin’”

  We spend most of the summer swimming at the pool at the golf and tennis club. Scotty’s dad is the manager, so we always get free chips and drinks. Scotty takes swimming lessons every morning so that he won’t have to wear his floaties anymore. I took swimming lessons last summer from a high school girl named Robin. She was really tan and her hair was the same color yellow as Dolly Parton’s. During regular swimming hours she did fancy dives off the high dive. Every time she came up from underneath the water, she’d squeal, “My top came off. My top came off.” The high school boys sat around her when she sunbathed.

  One time Sarah and I were judging each other’s dives off of the low board. I’m still too scared to go off of the high dive.

  Sarah did a front flip.

  I did a can opener.

  Sarah did a perfect straddle jump.

  I did a belly flop.

  I thought it would be funny, and maybe even raise my score, if I came up out of the water squealing, “My top came off. My top came off.” Sarah thought it was hilarious. She laughed so hard that she fell on the ground and rolled around. Robin, who was sunbathing on the cement by the high dive, didn’t think it was as funny as Sarah did, especially when all the boys around her started to laugh. The next time she taught me swimming lessons, I had to tread water for five minutes.

  It’s hard to tread water when you’re trying not to cry.

  The manny takes us to the swimming pool when it’s warm and sunny. We fill the Volkswagen Eurovan with blow-up toys, towels, and other kids from around the neighborhood. On the way to the swimming pool the manny sings, “‘Summer lovin’, had me a blast.’”

  India always answers back, “‘Summer lovin’, happened so fast.’”