Avery McShane

by Greg Lyons

  There were three dogs in the back seat of the jeep and one of them was Loca. She was a Dobermann-German shepherd mix with a bad temper and a lot of long sharp teeth. The other two dogs were mutts. I saw a couple of other things just before Pablo Malo passed by our hiding place and went on to wherever he was going. There were several cardboard boxes in the front passenger seat, and they were all wrapped up for shipping somewhere. I also saw a big white scar that stretched from one side of his neck to the other, right across his Adam’s apple. It looked to me like someone had tried to slit his throat one day. The last thing I saw was the shotgun leaning against the cardboard boxes.

  We all took a deep breath when the jeep rumbled past us. We didn’t move until we could no longer hear the engine.

  ‘Well, at least we don’t have to worry about the dogs,’ said Billy. ‘I swear that Loca looked right into my eyes.’

  ‘They didn’t see us,’ I replied confidently. ‘Let’s go and get some bananas.’

  We ran across the dirt road, climbed over the fence and walked down a row of banana trees. The bunches of bananas in those trees were pretty green, so we kept on walking looking for some riper, yellower ones. We were in pretty deep when we decided that none of the bunches was going to be ripe enough to eat and we were about to give up the mission, when we saw the red Spanish-tiled roof of Pablo’s farmhouse.

  ‘I say we sneak up to the house and take a look,’ whispered Todd. ‘There might be some ripe ones in there.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ replied Billy. ‘I mean . . . they say Pablo Malo is a really bad customer.’

  ‘And he has a shotgun,’ I chimed in.

  ‘Aww, come on, guys,’ said Todd. ‘We agreed to this mission, and the Machacas never give up on a mission.’

  Well, that did it of course. We had no choice but to follow through on our mission to find some ripe bananas.

  We reached the last bit of shade under the wide leaves of the trees. The adobe house was surrounded by a covered veranda that wrapped around the whole building. There were some hammocks strung out between some of the posts that held up the mossy tile roof of the veranda. Some scraggly plants grew out of the nooks and crannies of the roof. There were two arched windows to either side of the big wooden door that led inside the house. The door was closed and there was a large padlock on it. We could hear the sound of chickens coming from somewhere on the other side of the house, probably near the barn. Other than that – and the non-stop whining sound of the cicadas – we didn’t hear or see anything.

  ‘I’m gonna look inside,’ said Todd, proving again that he wasn’t the smartest kid on the block.

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ said Billy again. ‘I think our mission should be aborted. We can try this one again, once the bananas turn yellow.’

  But Todd was already slinking like a lizard towards the closest window, so Billy and I followed him and pretty soon we were all three standing with our backs to the cool adobe wall, side by side. I was the closest to the window, so I peeked through the windowpane and looked in.

  I’m not sure what I expected to see, but whatever it was, it wasn’t what I ended up seeing through that window. It was a big dining room with vaulted ceilings and whitewashed adobe walls, but that was about the only thing normal about it. There were stacks and stacks of wooden furniture piled to the ceiling, taking up most of the right side of the room: mahogany tables and chairs and dressers and bed frames. Each piece of furniture was wrapped in clear plastic, like they were ready to be picked up by someone.

  There was a doorless hallway on the far side of the room that led to the bedrooms, or maybe to the kitchen. On the left side of the room there was a metal office desk with a fluorescent lamp, a big flat paper map and a bunch of radio equipment on it. I couldn’t tell what area the map covered, but I could see the squiggly lines that showed all of the high spots and low spots of the ground in that area. My dad had once showed me some maps like the one on the table. He said they used them to decide how they were going to get to some place in the jungle where they needed to set up a drilling rig.

  The radio equipment was a mess of knobs and dials and wires everywhere, and there was a pad of paper and a pencil in front of the equipment. There was nothing on the walls and no other decorations around; not even a house plant or throw rug. Pablo Malo certainly wasn’t using the room for dining. It was half storage room and half something to do with the map and the radio.

  And then I saw them, next to the pad of paper in front of the radio equipment . . . a pair of silver spurs! It didn’t take me long to jump to a conclusion. I turned around to my buddies and when they saw the expression on my face, their eyes got real big, real fast.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, and now! Don’t ask any questions, just run.’

  We started to run in the same direction we had come from . . . and straight at Pablo Malo!

  There he was, just standing there looking at us with a cigarette burning between his teeth, his lips pulled back in a menacing smile. He had his shotgun in his right hand with the business end of it pointed casually at the ground. Standing next to him were Loca and the two mutts. Loca’s lips were pulled back just like Pablo Malo’s, only her teeth were a lot more pointed and sharp.

  ‘Little gringos,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘What you think you do? What you see?’

  We didn’t stay to talk. Just like we had trained ourselves to do, we took off, running away from him and straight into the cover of the banana trees. When we got into the shade we split up in three different directions. We heard Pablo laugh out loud.

  ‘Loca . . . ataque,’ he commanded.

  I didn’t look back, but I heard the snarls and barks of Loca and the mutts as they started out after us. I ran like the blazes. I could hear Billy screaming like a girl off to my right. Suddenly I heard the boom of the shotgun and a high-pitched scream of pain coming from Todd off to my left. Pablo Malo had actually shot him!

  I thought about going over to help, but I knew that there was nothing I could do but get shot myself, so I kept running. I crashed through the wide low-hanging banana leaves. I looked over my shoulder and saw what I was praying I wouldn’t. Loca was gaining on me and she was going to sink her fangs into me any moment. I reached around to my back pocket and pulled out my slingshot. I knew I only had one chance. It had worked for Billy a couple of days before.

  I stopped in my tracks, turned around to face the dog and pulled back on the thick rubber bands of my slingshot as if I were going to let loose a rock at her. Loca skidded to a stop about five metres in front of me, snarling and showing her rows of killer teeth. She was ready to pounce but she had learned respect for the weapon I had in my hand. The only problem was that I didn’t have anything in the sling to shoot at her. I wanted to pick up a rock, but that would mean that I’d have to take my eyes off her and one of my hands off the slingshot. It was a stand-off. I backed up a step and Loca took a step forward. I didn’t see any way she’d let me walk backward all the way home. I was in a real pickle and I was scared to death. The dog was going to kill me and eat me up. I was sure of it. My parents would never know what happened to me.

  ‘I’ve got ya covered,’ said a familiar voice behind me.

  It was Billy and he had his slingshot aimed right at the dog. Loca was now looking from me to him, but she didn’t look like she was ready to give up.

  ‘Reach into my back pocket,’ whispered Billy. ‘I’ve got a bunch of marbles there and they’re brassies.’

  Without taking my eyes off the dog, I reached back and felt around his green jeans until I found his pocket with the brass marbles. I pulled out two of them and quickly loaded my sling with one. Now it was two against one.

  ‘Here’s the plan,’ I said. ‘We can’t stay here much longer. Pablo’s going to be looking for Loca and he has that shotgun. I’m going to let loose at Loca and try to bean her on the snout. I’ll reload as quickly as I can while you keep ready to shoo
t her with yours if she decides to attack. OK?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ came his reply from behind me.

  I aimed that brassy right at the tip of Loca’s nose and I pulled the rubber back further than I ever had before. Billy and I were dead aims with our slingshots and we could pick off flying birds if we wanted to, so I wasn’t worried about hitting what I was aiming at. I was worried that it would only make Loca madder and that she’d attack us in a bloodthirsty rage. I let go of the rubber and the marble smacked into the dog’s nose with a bone-cracking sound. Loca let out a pained yelp and took off towards the house, screaming and screeching in that horrible way that dogs do when they’ve really been hurt. It was the same sound that the Fultons’ dog made when Mr Fulton accidentally ran over its leg backing out of the driveway. Billy and I didn’t wait around. We took off towards our bikes.

  When we got into the shaded safety of El Monte we doubled over with our hands on our knees trying to catch our breath. Todd’s bike wasn’t up against the spiky tree. That meant that he was still alive, or at least he was when he got on his bike. We jumped on our bikes and made a beeline for the hideout. It didn’t take us long. We didn’t even care that we had torn through the threat threads getting there. We would fix them later. Todd’s bike was on the ground at the base of the mango tree. We scurried up the wooden planks and into the tree house. Todd was sprawled out on the floor, moaning and groaning.

  ‘He’s gonna die!’ cried Billy. ‘Look at all the blood.’

  There was blood all over the back of his legs. I went over and knelt beside him. He just kept moaning, like he was about to pass out from the pain. Billy was muttering ‘Oh no’ over and over again. I took my T-shirt off and wiped the blood from Todd’s leg. With all of the blood wiped away it didn’t look so bad. There were only three little holes in his leg and I could see something stuck in one of the holes. I pulled whatever it was out with my fingers and wiped off the blood. It looked like a small piece of clear sand. All of a sudden I figured it out.

  ‘It’s rock salt,’ I cried out. ‘Pablo shot Todd with rock salt! He’s not going to die. He’ll just need some medicine and Band-Aids. I better get the other pieces out so it’ll stop stinging so much.’

  Billy stopped his chanting and even helped me pull out one of the salt pebbles. Todd squirmed a little, but he didn’t complain. We pulled up Todd’s shirt and saw where the rock salt had hit him there too, but those hadn’t gotten through his shirt and broken the skin. He was going to have some black and blue marks, but they’d go away soon enough. Todd was going to be fine.

  ‘That better?’ I said to Todd.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied weakly. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So what did you see that made you want to hightail it outta there?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Remember when we saw the body of the dead guy?’ I replied. ‘Remember his fancy belt buckle and silver tipped boots? You notice how his boots were rubbed and worn where the spurs normally go?’

  ‘Yeah . . . so?’

  ‘Well, I saw a pair of silver spurs on the table in Pablo Malo’s house and those spurs match the silver boot tips and the belt. They were given to the dead guy after he won some rodeo somewhere, or maybe he got them as a gift – I don’t know. But I am sure that they were all part of the same set.’

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ replied a wide-eyed Billy.

  ‘Yep . . . either Pablo Malo killed him, or he knows who did.’

  Chapter 5

  Bombitas

  The day after the scare at Pablo Malo’s farm, everything seemed fine. Todd didn’t tell his parents the truth about the holes in his leg and all the polka-dot bruises on his butt. He told them that he’d fallen off his bike on a gravel road. I was pretty sure they didn’t believe him, but I was also sure that they didn’t think that he’d been shot by a madman with a shotgun either. I had to bury my bloody T-shirt, and I told Mom that I’d left it next to the river when we’d gone swimming and that I would go back and get it when I could. She probably didn’t believe me, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it.

  I could hear my parents running around the house getting ready for the Fourth of July party that they were going to have that evening. Just about everybody in Campo Mata would be there. Billy had slept over at my place. He was still asleep in the bottom bunk, snoring, and it was starting to bug me. I was trying to finish reading The Hobbit and I only had a few pages to go, but Billy’s snoring was driving me crazy. I slammed the book shut hoping that would wake him up, but it didn’t, so I jumped down from the bunk and walked out of the room heading for the bathroom down the hall. When I got there I grabbed the plastic cup we always kept by the sink to rinse out toothpaste and filled it up with cold water. Then I went back to my room and stood over Billy. His mouth was wide open, so when he was about to inhale another noisy gulp of air, I poured the whole cup of water down his gullet. That woke him up. He sat straight up, coughing and hacking, madder than a Tasmanian devil.

  ‘Avery McShane . . . I oughta kick your butt,’ he spluttered. ‘Dang it.’

  He took a swing at me, missed and almost fell out of the bed in trying.

  ‘Wakey, wakey,’ I said cheerfully. ‘It’s Independence Day! It’s party time!’

  Fourth of July was everybody’s favourite holiday around the camp, not just for the adults, but the kids too. Billy’s mad face turned into a smiling one when he realised what day it was.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, rubbing the cobwebs out of his eyes. ‘We gotta go buy some firecrackers.’

  ‘Well, you might as well go and pretend to take a shower and brush your teeth,’ I replied. ‘When you’re done we’ll go to the safe and get some money.’

  Billy got up and headed for the bathroom while I made his bed. I always had to promise Mom that I’d tidy up the room before she would let me invite someone over to spend the night. I don’t think Billy even knew how to make a bed.

  Billy came back with his same old clothes on, except for his boots, which were by the front door. Mom didn’t let anybody come into the house with shoes on. Of course Billy’s hair wasn’t even the least bit wet.

  ‘Dad told me that Capitán Gómez wouldn’t let the fireworks truck into camp this year,’ I said. ‘Guess he wasn’t too happy about last year when those boxes of firecrackers blew up and nearly burned down the commissary. So now everybody has to go to the airstrip to buy fireworks.’

  ‘I still think that Chris and Scott were the ones who lit up that box of firecrackers,’ replied Billy. ‘They were there when it happened, and I saw them pointing at it and laughing about it.’

  ‘Yeah, for sure it was them,’ I said. ‘You know, after we buy the fireworks, I think we should drop by and talk to Capitán Gómez about Pablo Malo and the spurs and all.’

  ‘Maybe we can collect the reward,’ said Billy.

  ‘You want to tell our parents what we’ve been up to?’ I said. ‘I don’t think that’s such a great idea. Besides, we don’t actually know who did it.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ replied Billy. ‘My dad would ground me for a month if he knew that we’d been there trying to steal bananas, but we can’t just sit on the information, I suppose. What about your dad? Can we trust him? He’s always cool about these sorta things.’

  ‘My dad’s cool, but not that cool. I’d get in trouble too and I don’t want to get grounded either. I think we can trust Capitán Gómez. I mean, he seems like a nice guy, and I don’t think he’d tell our parents if we ask him not to.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan, but we need to get him to promise not to tell before we let him in on this, OK?’

  ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘We’d better get going,’ replied Billy. ‘We’ve gotta buy the best fireworks before they’re sold out.’

  We turned our bikes on to the short dirt road leading into the pipe yard and after a few pedals crossed over the cattle guard and made our way down the middle of hundreds of stacked drill pipes. Mati didn’t like crossing
cattle guards so he went around it and under the barbed wire fence. Billy and I had both taken off the playing cards that we usually left on the front forks to make our bikes sound like motorbikes. We were going to get our money from our hidden safe and we didn’t want to attract any attention. Since it was a holiday there weren’t any eighteen-wheelers around loading pipe, and no one was in sight. When we got to the aluminium workshed on the far side of the yard, we leaned our bikes up against it and walked around to the back of the building. That’s where our safe was. All of the money that we’d earned finding golf balls was in it.

  Manuel Ortega, who was the supervisor of the pipe yard, had helped us make the safe. He spent about an hour cutting and welding together some pieces of scrap steel. It ended up looking like a metal shoebox with a hinged door on top and a latch for the combination lock we bought at the commissary. Then he welded it on to a big, super-heavy manhole cover, so it would take a crane to steal it. We figured if someone went to that much trouble, they could have it.

  We cleared all of the tumbleweeds off the canvas tarp that camouflaged the safe and then pulled off the tarp. I got on my knees and grabbed the combination lock in my left hand and began to twirl the combination knob.

  ‘Eight . . . thirty-two . . . twelve,’ I said as I worked the lock.

  ‘Avery, you don’t need to say it out loud,’ whispered Billy. ‘You never know if someone’s listening.’

  ‘Do you see anybody here?’ I replied as the lock clicked open.

  Mati was busy scratching off some fleas that must have been camping behind his ears, but he stopped when he heard the click. I reached in and pulled out a wad of bolivars wrapped together with a rubber band.

  ‘How many bolivars should we take?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know . . . maybe a hundred and fifty?’ replied Billy.

  ‘That’s almost all we have,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy, ‘but this is for a good cause.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ I said.