Masters of Disaster

by Gary Paulsen

  The bones in the tunnel, Riley later discovered at the library, were buffalo bones that had been brought in by train during the last days of the great buffalo hunts, to be ground up for fertilizer. But the bone market had suddenly gone bust and, looking for a place to store them, the shippers had told their men to put the buffalo skeletons in the old cavern.

  Riley also investigated and found the Hansens’ names on a passenger list for a ship bound for South America, where they had gone to work on a cattle ranch. He put all this in his report.

  And the zombie poop was really bat guano, which, Reed later discovered, while not blinding or deafening or hair-removing, did seem to have a tenacious odor that everyone had some trouble getting used to. Although he could no longer smell himself. Or anything else, for that matter.

  His mother ordered him to bathe in several gallons of tomato juice and insisted on burning his clothes in the backyard. She scheduled an appointment with a therapist so Reed could work through his issues about solid waste, and she spoke on the phone for a very long time with the family doctor about what symptoms to watch for in case Reed had contracted rabies, and then she found a website where she could purchase the unbleached organic cotton briefs that were recommended, along with liberal doses of ointment, to soothe the weepy blisters on the insides of his thighs that proved he was allergic to bat guano.

  6

  Cowboys and Fishermen

  “I’ve come up with our next project, men. Or I should say, the next two projects.” Henry was walking home from school with Riley and Reed the week after the haunted house fiasco.

  Riley jumped in front of Reed and threw his arms out protectively. “We’re having enough trouble with one adventure at a time.”

  “Thanks, Riley, but the sores on my legs have pretty much healed, and I gotta tell you, I wonder what he’s got in mind,” Reed said. “I think I’m getting kind of hooked on the rush we get from doing these things.”

  Riley looked at him skeptically but stepped from between him and Henry. “Okay, Henry, what’s the plan?”

  “We need something bold, like two adventures at a time, to overcome the biggest mistake I’ve made so far. Think about it for a second: What’s our worst dilemma?”

  “The stench,” Reed said.

  “That’s bad, sure, but the worst thing is that we haven’t let anyone know about our adventures. We’ve been setting up all these cool things, but we haven’t gotten any kind of reputation. This is the kind of stuff that Brings People Fame and Fortune.”

  “I posted every report on my blog, Henry,” Riley reminded them.

  “Yeah, and that’s great. Maybe Reed and I never said anything, but we’re both impressed by your online reports,” Henry said.

  “Yeah, and you never make me seem like a clueless dork, either, Riley,” Reed added. “I always sound kind of fearless when you write about what I’ve done. And it’s nice how you don’t make too much about the whole stink factor.”

  “You’re welcome,” Riley said. “But I see Henry’s point: Even though I post all our adventures, we’re not really getting the word out.”

  “Who would we want to tell?” Reed asked.

  “Girls,” Henry said. “The kinds of things we’re doing would really help us to be more popular with girls, if they only knew about how … brave and um … creative and”—he nodded to Riley—“well documented we’ve been lately.”

  Riley nodded back. “None of us seem to be able to make any kind of decent connection with a girl.”

  “I don’t know about you two,” Reed put in, “but the only problem I have talking to girls is that I can’t get close enough to a girl to talk. If she can hear me, she can smell me—no matter how many times my mother makes me scrub with special detergent and spread baking soda paste all over my skin to absorb the vile reek.”

  “Success with girls, I’ve figured out, is about image,” Henry said, ignoring Reed. “I’ve been thinking about how we can change our image. We need something that Makes Us Attractive to the Opposite Sex. We should do something tough. Rugged.”

  “In suburban Cleveland?” Reed snorted. “Good luck.”

  “No, listen! My uncle has a farm out on the edge of Mud River, a couple of hundred acres,” Henry said. “He invited us to spend the weekend.”

  Reed shook his head. “Farms mean animals. Animals mean poop. Me and any more poop means that my mother is going to move me out of the basement and into the garage because no one, she says, should have to live with the kind of smells that I bring back from your adventures.”

  “There are supposed to be some giant catfish in the river,” Henry went on, remembering not to breathe through his nose near Reed. “They live in the mud along the bottom and get to be one, maybe two hundred pounds. I thought we’d take the old rowboat and some poles and catch one. Catching huge fish is macho.”

  “Fishing sounds okay, because water doesn’t smell. But you said you had two projects.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Henry nodded. “The rodeo. Everyone knows that cowboys have to beat girls off with sticks. Really, it’s a stroke of genius—I wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner.”

  “Genius?” Reed shook his head. “It sounds like the most painful thing ever. My dad took me to a rodeo when I was little, and I remember lots of blood and lots of things breaking. Things like arms and legs and heads.”

  “Nah,” Henry said, “that’s just to impress the audience. Nothing like that will happen to us.”

  “Rodeos,” Riley pointed out, “are all about riding huge, violent, untamed animals and falling off them. Though”—he stopped to think—“one thing Reed is really good at is falling. He’s almost as good at falling as he is at collecting horrific smells.”

  Reed nodded. And then, as if to prove his point, tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

  “I’ve already worked it out,” Reed went on. “My uncle saved some old horses that were going to be put down after they retired from the rodeo circuit. He brought them back to his farm to let them live their lives out in a pasture alongside the river. He said they’re completely tame, so old they’re nearly blind, and as gentle as kittens. We can ride them this weekend.”

  “Riding a couple of old horses doesn’t sound so bad,” Reed said. “Especially if you and Riley do the riding and I just watch. Clean and safe.”

  “Even if we don’t do actual tricks,” Henry said, “riding old rodeo horses will be bound to impress all the girls. Or some girls. Maybe just one girl …”

  “And how do we make sure the girls find out?” Riley asked. “No one’s reading the blog.”

  “We’ll take a lot of pictures,” Henry said. “No matter what happens, there are sure to be at least a few shots that look really good, full of action. We pick the best ones and start showing them around school.”

  “I want to see what happens. I’m in,” Riley said.

  “I’d like to go fishing, but I’m not going anywhere near the manure. Count me out,” Reed said firmly. “Because you know what? I’ve been thinking, and I think girls will like me if I learn to stand up for myself and stop doing things that could seriously injure me and make me smell.”

  “Sure, Reed. We’d never make you do anything you didn’t want to,” Henry said. “So it’s settled. My mom will drive us to my uncle’s farm this weekend and we’ll go fishing and ride broncs.”

  “He doesn’t look so scary,” Reed said. It was Saturday morning and the boys were leaning on the top rail of a fence behind the barn, looking at the bull. He was in a pen next to the one that held the two horses that Henry and Riley were going to ride.

  “Are you sure he’s even alive?” Riley asked. “He’s just standing there, staring at the dirt.”

  “Well,” Henry answered, “Uncle Joe said he’s pretty old. But still alive—see, he’s breathing. His name is Willard and he’s super-mellow, like a milk cow, really. Little girls used to ride him at carnivals and county fairs. They’d put a ladder against his side and let the kids climb up
and sit on him.”

  “He does look mellow.” Reed studied the bull.

  “Uncle Joe said he wouldn’t buck unless the bucking strap was tied around his withers.” Henry looked at Reed. “You sure you don’t want to climb on and see what it’s like? Just for a quick picture? You’ll be on and off in ten seconds, tops. A photo of you sitting on a bull would be better than one of us just riding old rodeo horses.”

  “Yeah,” Reed said. “I can do that. Ten seconds. What could happen in ten seconds?”

  Henry gave Reed a boost onto the bull’s back. “Settle into the shoulder just back of the hump. And wrap the end of the rope around your wrist—that’s how the pro riders do it.”

  Riley pulled his camera out of his backpack. Henry mounted one of the two saddled horses in the next pen and eased him near the fence to get into the shot with Reed on the bull.

  At first Reed was tense, but the huge bull stood quietly, breathing gently beneath Reed, his chest going in and out like a giant bellows. Peaceful, really, Reed thought.

  “Gig him in the ribs with your heels,” Henry called. “Just enough to get him to move out of the shadows so that Riley can take a really good shot in the sunlight. I’ll be in the background on the horse.”

  Reed tentatively nudged the bull’s ribs and felt Willard move—a mountain of flesh—one slow step forward. So far, so good, he thought, and smiled for Riley, who was shooting pictures as fast as his shutter would click.

  Riley backed toward the fence surrounding the pen to get a better shot. It was an electric fence, and his hip brushed against the wire. The current made him jerk backward so hard that the wire broke and the end snapped forward and up, slapping Willard’s rear with a good jolt of electricity approximately four and one half inches below where he pooped.

  With what could only be called lightning speed, Willard jumped straight into the air, so high, Riley wrote later in his report, that even though he looked like he probably weighed a full ton, he seemed to rise even with the roof of the barn. Willard cleared the fence around his pen and hit the ground running full speed toward the pasture where the cows grazed and, farther on, the river, which bordered the pasture.

  Reed’s wrist was still lashed to the bull’s shoulder, but the rope began slipping as he ran. Now wrapped and tangled in the tail of the rope, Reed slid down Willard’s side until he was flapping like a flag alongside the galloping bull.

  Willard, being so old, probably would have stopped running, but Reed’s screams of “Call 9-1-1!” so unnerved the bull, which was not used to rodeo cowboys bellowing for rescue, that he kept surging forward in a panic, trying to get away from Reed’s piercing shrieks and flailing body.

  The two old roping horses, bred and trained to chase running cattle, somehow found a few last ounces of their youthful strength, leapt the fence separating their pen from the pasture and tore off toward the river with insane speed in pursuit of Willard and Reed—one of them carrying Henry, who was clutching the saddle horn with both hands.

  As the horses sprinted to catch up with Willard, Reed—still tangled in the rope—slid until he was underneath the rampaging bull, being dragged through the mud and cow patties in the pasture.

  All three animals flew off a three-foot bank and slammed into the murky mix of mud and slimy algae and dark water at the shallow edge of the Mud River. The rope that Reed was tangled in finally came loose, and he went flying another twenty feet before belly flopping in the middle of the river.

  As Henry sat in the mud and watched, Reed clawed and spit and screamed and fought his way out of the water, clutching what later proved to be a seventy-four-and-a-half-pound catfish that, in a stroke of amazing luck, had happened to be lazily swimming directly underneath where he splashed into the river.

  “I’m okay,” Reed called. “I swallowed ten pounds of stuff I don’t even want to think about—I mean, that was a pasture we went through—and underneath a bull is not the best place to ride, but I’m okay. I don’t want to worry anyone or brag, but I think I caught an alligator when I landed in the water—I can’t really see with all the mud in my eyes, plus I’m kind of afraid to look at what I’m holding. But I’m okay.”

  “I got the most awesome video and photos while you were being dragged on your face through the pasture,” Riley hollered as he finally reached the riverbank. “This camera has an amazing zoom lens. I got you and the fish, too!”

  “And you were worried about doing two plans at the same time.” Henry wagged his finger at Reed. “You should have trusted that everything would work out. It always does. This may be our best adventure yet. Because being dragged upside down by a panic-stricken bull who was chased by two runaway horses and then landing on your face in the river and catching a ginormous catfish with your bare hands is the best possible outcome. I couldn’t have planned it better. Is it just me, men, or do you think we have a real talent for adventure?”

  “Adventure?” Riley said. “I’d say we’re even better at disaster.” He waded in to help Reed onto the riverbank.

  Reed raised his fish in triumph. “We’re the Masters of Disaster!”

  7

  The Last Great Race/Memorial Day Parade Disaster

  THE DOGSLED PLAN

  Final report and summary respectfully submitted

  by Riley Dolen

  The Dogsled Plan was launched at precisely 0900 hours, 43 minutes, on Saturday morning, 47 hours and 17 minutes prior to the Memorial Day parade, when Henry Mosley began to figure out the parade entry he and his friends Reed Hamner and Riley Dolen (author of this report) would submit this year.

  Mosley’s inspiration was a pack of seven dogs—a Rottweiler, a golden Lab, two Irish setters, a Border collie, a wire-haired terrier mix and a Chihuahua—the current client list of Hamner’s fledgling dog-walking business. The dogs were tangled together and squirming and Hamner was patiently trying to untangle their leashes from each other when Mosley first conceived his parade entry idea.

  Mosley suggested emulating the Iditarod, the dogsled race across Alaska, despite the facts that there hadn’t been sufficient snow for a dogsled race in May in Ohio since the Ice Age and that access to the kind of sled dogs that traditionally run the race was sorely lacking. The willingness of Queso the Chihuahua, Kelly and Paddy the Irish setters, Glavine the Border collie, Wiley the terrier mix, Carl the Rottweiler, and Annie the golden Lab was taken as a given in the midst of Mosley’s enthusiastic adoption of the dogsled concept.

  Without securing the full support of his peers, Mosley devised a mock sled made of plywood, harnesses made of nylon webbing sewn together, and a gang line and tugs made of rope that would be hooked to the front of the sled. Having once read a book about dogsledding, Mosley insisted that clamping four skateboards underneath the mock sled would compensate for the lack of snow, but that complete control of the contraption would remain with the boys due to the addition of an old piece of carpet as a makeshift brake, fastened to the back of the sled with stout line.

  Despite Hamner’s reluctance to utilize the dogs from his business, Mosley prevailed by likening the parade to the daily walks on which Hamner was paid to take the dogs and suggesting that replacing the leashes with rope tugs tied to a gang line, and riding in the sled instead of walking with the dogs, would provide minimal disruption of the dogs’ schedules and create absolutely no possibility for disaster.

  Hamner and Dolen lacked the will to say no because (1) Hamner knew that one Erika Peterson and her synchronized skate team would be selling lemonade at the parade and (2) yours truly had a desire to see how everything turned out. The plan was reluctantly put into action.

  The morning of Memorial Day was spectacular. The sun was shining, the sky was filled with puffy clouds and there was absolutely no evidence that later in the day a mixed herd of llamas, ponies and dogs would stampede through the front of the ice cream store, funnel out the back covered with rocky road ice cream and peach fat-free yogurt, swing around to the left and run amuck in the back alley befo
re being rounded up by a mounted police force.

  Initially, Mosley’s plan unfolded smoothly, with the singular exception of the small tangle that forced Hamner to run alongside the dogs as they pulled the sled from his house down to the starting area because the house pets didn’t know what a lead dog was. Well, Queso knew, but no other dog wanted to follow a Chihuahua. Especially when they were four times faster and fourteen times bigger than Queso.

  At that point, Mosley was still insisting, “The whole thing is going to go like clockwork.”

  The parade stepped off from the community center at precisely 1000 hours, led by the veterans, the parade marshal and the mayor, all of whom were riding in convertibles.

  Following the dignitaries were many papier-mâché–decorated floats representing various community organizations. The fire and police departments flashed lights and blasted sirens from their respective trucks and cars. The high school football team led the marching band and cheerleading squad from the school. A quilting club, a cooking class and a book group shared space on an antique steam engine. A group of five llamas and ten riderless ponies from the local petting zoo followed closely behind a small theatrical group from the after-school center’s production of Grease. The dogsled, assorted tractors, collectible muscle cars and a motorcycle stunt team brought up the rear of what everyone later agreed could have been the best Memorial Day parade suburban Cleveland had ever seen.

  At this juncture, it is important to mention that for years, the area at the center of the suburb had been the stomping ground of a domestic cat gone wild. Scarred from many battles, partially hairless from countless scrapes and gently confused as a result of his advanced age, Goren had used at least six of his nine lives and currently lived under a Dumpster near the ice cream store.

  Despite being feral and half mad, Goren was surprisingly social and enjoyed a good parade as much as anyone else in town.

  Mosley was at the rear of the sled, and Hamner was trotting along in front, confidently leading his dog team through the streets, waving to his relatives and friends and searching for signs of Erika Peterson and her synchronized skate team along the parade route as they approached the spot from which Goren had chosen to watch the parade—174 feet from the entrance of the ice cream store. When the dogs jogged past Goren, they were immediately behind the ponies, which were behind the llamas, which followed the assortment of theater students dressed up in poodle skirts and black leather jackets, singing an a cappella version of “We Go Together” with what this reporter can only call an excessive amount of “shang-shoo-bop”s.