by Paul Griffin
Dial Books for Young Readers
Penguin Young Readers group
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
Copyright 2017 by Paul Griffin
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Ebook ISBN 9780399539091
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Jacket art © 2017 by Vincent Moustache
Jacket design by Maria Fazio & Jessica Jenkins
Version_1
For Mom and Dad
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chords
PART 1: FALL 1. CALIFORNIA DREAMING
2. THE BRONZE STAR
3. THE RUNT
4. MARTY
5. DOOT-DOOT-DOO
6. YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT KEEPING HIM
7. DEAR DAD,
8. GUTS AND PANCAKES
9. THIS DREAM IS REAL
10. GIVE ME YOUR PAW. I MEAN HOOF.
11. THE STRIPED ONES
PART 2: SPRING 12. PEANUT BUTTER AND THE MAGIC NOSE
13. MUD
14. A FROG’S NETHER REGIONS INDEED
15. CINCO DE MAYO
16. THE LONG SLIDE DOWN
17. PIG BOY
18. IS HE FRIENDLY WITH STRANGERS?
19. PUTTIN’ DOWN THE OLD FOOT
20. STRAWBERRIES, NUTS, STRAWBERRIES
21. BAD FRUIT
22. THE ANGEL
23. THE SMOKESCREEN
24. FINDERS KEEPERS
25. CALIFORNIA (BY WAY OF PITTSBURGH), HERE WE COME
26. STAY WITH ME
PART 3: SUMMER 27. THE SCORCHER
28. THE GROWING PROBLEM
29. THE PIG-WHO-THOUGHT-HE-WAS-A-DOG DAYS OF AUGUST
30. HELLO AND GOOD-BYE
31. DOUBLE’S KNEE
32. THE ZOO
33. THE TRUTH ABOUT SERGEANT MARTIN ANTHONY VENTURA
34. THE (NON) EMERGENCY
35. MY HEART IS A DRUM
36. ANIMAL CONTROL
37. THE PLAN, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS MY STUPIDEST IDEA YET
38. BUCK
39. THE RIVER
40. DEAR JENNY,
41. PINCHING STARS
42. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED SHOT
43. KEETH
44. HEAVENLY HILLS
PART 4: THE GLORY
Also from Paul Griffin
Acknowledgments
PART 1
Fall
1. CALIFORNIA DREAMING
The day Marty came into my life started normally enough. Paloma Lee and I met up before school, in the courtyard, and strummed our guitars. This was a month into sixth grade, the first Friday of October.
Pal’s guitar was covered in stickers. One was a Smurf playing a guitar. She had long, loopy black hair and shiny black eyes. Not the Smurf, Paloma. She’d sewn tiny bells to the cuffs of her jeans, and every time she tapped her foot she jingled. The wash-off tattoo on the back of her hand said The Dream Is the Only Thing That’s Real.
If you go by that height-weight chart in the nurse’s office, Pal was big for her age. If you ask me, she was perfect. Her size matched her spirit. I was big too, at least size wise. Six foot two and two hundred fifty pounds isn’t even on the chart when you’re eleven. Everybody kept begging me to try out for football. “Renzo, you’d be a killer,” they said, but I had zero interest in killing anybody. I didn’t think I’d like getting killed a whole bunch either.
“Lorenzo Ventura, look me in the eye,” Pal said. “Why you so sad?”
“I’m not sad,” I said. “I’m smiling, aren’t I?”
“That’s your liar’s smile,” she said.
She was right. This was the day Reggie and her piglets were being auctioned off. We took in Reggie that summer when our neighbor had to sell his farm quick, before the bank grabbed it. Reggie was pregnant, and I asked Mom if we could keep the babies. She said sure, I just had to win the lottery first, and then we’d have the money to feed them.
I picked at my guitar and tried to block out the movie running in my mind: Reggie in a truck bed packed with strangers headed for the butcher. I almost told Pal about it, but then she’d be sad too. So instead I said, “Come over later for Mavericks and tacos.” Chasing Mavericks was our favorite movie, about this kid who dreams of surfing the raddest waves in the Pacific. It had cool music too.
“Can’t,” Pal said. “I promised Mrs. Nikita I’d let her streamer curl my hair and hang my picture in the window. If she doesn’t start bringing in customers, she’s out of business.”
The wind blew road sand from last winter into my eyes. Our school was at the crossroads, where the train tracks cut up with the old cemetery road. It was one of those dusty patches where the sycamores stop and the weeds creep in. The trees were bare already, gray. Fall came early to southwest Pennsylvania.
“California, Renz,” Pal said.
“California, yup.”
We were going to be street musicians and camp up in the hills by the Hollywood sign. Then, when Pal got discovered, I’d be her guitar man and bodyguard, just so long as I didn’t have to punch anybody. We’d surf by day and jam all night. The dream was crazy, but our friendship was real.
We met in kindergarten, in peewee folk band. Pal was four when her mom caught one of those lung infections that start out a tickle in your throat, and a week later you’re dead. My dad died before I was born. Pal and I were missing half of who we were. When we were together, we were one whole person.
“Quit being sad,” Pal said.
“I’m not.”
The bell rang to start school.
“What makes a hero?” Mr. Gianelli said.
Max Hawkes raised his hand. “Can I go to the bathroom?”
“I hope so,” Mr. G said. “Heroes. They’re rare these days. Or are they everywhere? Mr. Ventura?”
A picture of my dad came to me. Big grin, dressed in his Army uniform. He was the real reason I wanted to visit California someday. Mom had scattered his ashes in the Pacific. They’d gone out to Malibu for their honeymoon.
“Renzo?” Mr. G said.
“Heroes are rare,” I said.
The combat medics have a saying: Heroes go to heaven. They have another saying too: Don’t be a hero.
The bell rang, this time to end school.
“Wait,” Mr. G said. “Your mission is to write about your hero, and why she or he is such.”
Everybody groaned about homework on the weekend. My mind was on Reggie’s piglets, sold and scattered by now, no brothers or sisters all of a sudden, no mom. If I kept thinking about it I’d well up, so I didn’t, and I didn’t.
2. THE BRONZE STAR
Somebody had gotten to our sign again.
CO
ME RIGHT ON UP!
—
Maple Clutch Orchard
RoTTiNeST
“Juiciest Freestone Peaches
This Side of the Kishux River”
Family Owned Since 1925
I headed uphill to the house for nail polish remover, the one thing that made permanent marker impermanent. Bella, our black Lab, didn’t greet me at the door. She was two weeks from having yet another round of puppies, and she couldn’t do much more than sleep in front of the wood stove. I wanted to take her up to the arbor for some air, but she wasn’t in the den. I checked my room, and she wasn’t there either.
The afternoon light was orange on the wall. I stood there a second, in front of my closet door, to soak in the quiet. Then, with that hero essay for Mr. G on my mind, I opened the door.
On the top shelf was my dad’s Bronze Star in a picture frame.
AWARDED TO
MARTIN ANTHONY VENTURA,
FOR VALOR
His commander wrote, “Sergeant Ventura crawled through twenty yards of crossfire to his platoon mate PFC Rajiv Bedi, who’d been hit by a sniper. Raj told Marty to hightail out of there, since Marty was about to become a father in three months. Apparently Marty said, ‘What kind of father would I be if I left my brother out here?’”
I had pictures too. In one he’s serenading Mom with his guitar. I never saw her smile that true in real life. In another, from the honeymoon, he’s on a surfboard. He was big like me, and he rode it on his belly. I could hear him going “Woohoo!”
On the next shelf was a peach jar half full of guitar picks, one for each bar or wedding Dad played. He’d written the dates on them with fine-tip marker.
He’d kept a classic CD collection, Johnny Cash, Sarah Vaughan, Bruce Springsteen, Odetta. The boombox was speckled yellow and white. Mom saw him hang a flyer on the church bulletin board and hired him to paint the barn, even though it didn’t need painting. Double Pop, my grandfather, told me that one, and all the other stories too.
Then there were the letters handwritten to me, before I was born. I must have read each fifty times.
Mom’s truck chugged up the driveway, and the gravel pop-pop-popped.
I wasn’t ready to be around her sadness just yet.
I snuck out the back door and forced myself down to the barn and Reggie’s empty stall to rake out the straw.
Except it wasn’t empty.
Bella’d had her puppies right there in Reggie’s bedding. She was licking them clean. Those spiky-haired pups climbed over each other to get at Bella’s milk. I ran up to the house for Double Pop.
3. THE RUNT
Ugliest puppies ever,” Mom said. “Ugh, those stripes. One of John Mason’s shepherds got at her again, the giant one, I bet you.”
“Keeth,” I said, which was short for killer teeth. I’d never seen him myself, but legend was he tore the throat out of a hunter who’d wandered onto Mason’s property.
“That dog is the devil made flesh,” Mom said. “What can you expect when his owner is Mason?”
“He called again,” Double said. Mason was the condo king, and he wanted our land for a golf course.
“Daddy, I’ll die before I sell to that man.”
“I told him just that too.” Double’s grandparents started Maple Clutch, but if it was up to him, we’d sell the place yesterday and move to the Carolinas, where your money stretched so much, you could wrap a dollar around a tree, he said. Double was a soldier too, Vietnam, shot in the knee. It locked up on him in the Pennsylvania winters.
“You stay, a, way from that half a wolf, Renzo, and I bet you it is one too,” Mom said. “I don’t want you within a mile of Mason’s property. You hear me?”
“Yup.”
“‘Yup.’”
“Yes, okay? I understand, sheesh.”
“Lorenzo Ventura, don’t you sheesh me.”
“All right now,” Double said.
“Here I’m sure to be up all night with that stack of bills, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and now this mess with the dog, throwing her litter early.”
“Me and Renzo, we got Bell and the pups covered.”
“Striped puppies,” Mom said. “I bet they don’t sell for twenty dollars apiece.” She marched off, but then she turned back, her eyes wet. “Sorry, Renz. I know it’s not your fault.”
“It’s all right, Ma.”
“It’s not all right. None of it.” She left fast.
“She’s having a rough one tonight,” I said.
“Yup,” Double said, which is where I got it from. “The auction was hard on her.” He patted my shoulder. His hand was a giant’s but it landed on you softer than a sparrow. “I’ll get the heaters and blankets, son. You break a bale and rake in some fresh straw.”
I was smoothing out the bedding for the pups when I noticed one wasn’t striped like the rest. He was brown and gold spots and getting stepped on by the other dogs.
Except he wasn’t a dog.
He was the runt piglet Mom must have missed when she swept up Reggie and her brood for the auction.
Bella picked up that fuzzy little pig in her teeth and set him down in front of her. She looked at him, and then she looked at me.
All I could do was smile.
Bella sighed, and then she nudged that goofy-looking piglet downward so he could get his share of the milk.
Mr. Lee’s police car pulled up to the barn. Pal slept over in the spare room when Mr. Lee worked the night shift, but tonight we were camping out in the barn with Bella and the pups—and the piglet.
“Is his nose red or black?” Pal said. Her hair looked pretty, streamer curled. She grabbed her guitar and rushed past me.
“You’ll want your earmuffs, Pal,” Mr. Lee said.
“I bet I’ll survive without them, Popparoo.”
“There’s no telling her what to do,” Mr. Lee said.
“She’s doing just fine,” Double said.
Mr. Lee opened the trunk. “Kindly give me a hand here, Renzo. I brought the air mattress for her, and that box of s’mores is for you, son. You said you’re working on taking a few pounds off, but I figure it’s Friday night, live a little. You pop ’em in the microwave, they should come out all right. Let’s don’t forget Miss Pal’s Hug-Me-Bear in the shotgun seat. I spoil her, I know, but it makes me happy, what can I say?”
Here’s what everybody else said: He was too soft to be a cop.
Mr. Lee once told me his dream was to go his whole career without ever having to draw his gun. That sounded pretty good to me.
4. MARTY
Pal lasted an hour in the barn before she headed into the house for her guestroom bed. Bella curled up next to me, and then her pups curled up next to her, the piglet too, all bunched together. The piglet slept flat on his belly with his stubby little legs spread out, like he was dreaming of flying.
I opened my notebook to get going on my hero essay for Mr. G. I’d brought along a letter from my dad.
To My Son,
Your mom tells me the doctor did the ultrasound, and now I owe her a million dollars. She swore you were going to be a boy. Apparently an angel came to her in a dream and whispered your name.
Well, I don’t know if I believe in angels, but I believe in your mom. If she wants to name you after her father, I can’t think of a better namesake. If angels do exist, Pop is the king of them. I guess he’ll be Double Pop to you, right?
That’ll be something, the four of us together at a Steelers game, or drawing in a haul from the orchard on a sunny day. We’ll bunch up around that wobbly kitchen table, and after dinner we’ll get the music going. I can’t wait to teach you the guitar. I can’t wait to meet you, Lorenzo.
Love,
Dad
I wrote and rewrote that essay, except it turned into a letter.
The p
iglet made snuffling noises. He was shivering. I cuddled him, and he tucked his head under my arm. He breathed in like my armpit was a perfume factory. That got me smiling big enough to show teeth.
Bella’s ears went up. Double came into the barn with a thermos. “Seems you got a buddy there,” he said.
He poured a cup of warmed milk for me. I dripped some into my hand, and the piglet licked it clean. His fuzzy little snout tickled me.
“How many pups we got us here?” Double said. “Ten?”
“Nine,” I said.
“Unless they changed the science of counting on me, I see nine black-and-whites, plus your little gold-and-brown friend there makes ten.”
“Thanks,” I said, stroking the piglet’s tiny ears. “For counting him, I mean.”
“The way Bella’s looking at you, I bet she’s thinking, Now, I don’t like folks holding my pups just yet, but since it’s Renzo, he can cradle the big one a minute. He’s, what now, two weeks older than the others? Two pounds heavier too. He’ll get big fast.”
“How long before Mom sells off the pups, you think?”
“Six weeks, I’d say, before she puts the sign out.”
“Bell needs a friend, Double. Can’t we keep one this time?”
“Now, you know I’d like to keep them all, son. It’s just tough, you know?”
“What about him, though?” I nodded at the pig. “I don’t think anybody will want him for a pet.”
“No, I don’t guess he’s the pet pig kind. Never mind he’s the runt, he’ll be a good four hundred pounds by the time he’s all done.”
“All done,” I said. I knew what he meant.
Double stroked the piglet’s head. “I don’t suppose you’ve come up with names for these here pups, have you?”
“That one with the tongue sticking out his mouth? He’s Eddie.”
“That’s just the right one for him.”
“There’s Molly in the corner,” I said. “Ray-Ray, Al, Bobby, Mimi, Lucy, Willow, Ziggy.”