I should mention here that although Skraggs routinely beat up the rest of us boys, apparently looking upon it as an inexpensive hobby, he did so usually without malice, almost cordially. What his beating-ups lacked in pain, they made up for in humiliation. You might smile and wink debonairly at a pretty girl flouncing by after school, but the effect was lost if your head at that moment was protruding from one of Skraggs’s half-nelsons.
Some of my friends held the opinion that it was best and safest to go along good-humoredly with Skraggs’s beating-ups. The idea was to act as if it were all in good fun and a welcome relief from your otherwise boring existence. I never liked that idea. Perhaps that is why Skraggs took such a serious dislike to me. He considered me a spoilsport.
I once made the mistake of trying to reason with Skraggs.
“Listen, Rupert, you’re not proving anything by beating me up all the time. Why do it?”
He thought a moment, then suddenly brightened, as if having hit upon a profound truth. “’Cause it’s fun, dummy!” POW!
In my appeal to reason, I had failed to take into account the entertainment factor.
I then decided to challenge Skraggs to a fair fight—my friends Bruce, Peter, and I against Skraggs. We confronted him on his way home from school one day.
“Hold it right there, Skraggs,” I said. “I got a bone to pick with you.”
Skraggs turned, rolling up his sleeves over his burley arms.
“Yeah? You and who else?”
“I’ll tell you who—me and Bruce and …”
I was distracted by the sound of running footsteps diminishing into the distance.
“Uh, well, me and my friend …”
The sound of another set of running footsteps diminished into the distance.
“So, Rupert. How ya doin’ today?”
Six blocks away I managed to shake Skraggs off my tail, but I knew the next time he caught me the beating-up would be a good deal less cordial.
Most of my classmates harbored the hope that one day Skraggs would make the mistake of beating up one of us badly enough that he would be sent to reform school. I was the odds-on favorite to gain status as his ultimate victim. I could tell from the looks my classmates gave me, looks of sympathy, looks of relief.
It finally became clear to me what I would have to do. I would have to murder Skraggs. Every day during the geography lesson, I would plot the perfect murder. It would be simple but ingenious. The police would be baffled:
INSPECTOR: First time I’ve run into a case like this. The culprit is obviously a brilliant but diabolical chap. Note, Watson, the clever use of a homemade arrow, impossible to trace.
WATSON: The arrow killed him, then?
INSPECTOR: Not really. The tip of the arrow was dipped in a highly poisonous substance. My guess is it’s spoiled potato salad—deadly stuff. My own mother warned me about it.
WATSON: But what’s this contraption?
INSPECTOR: A framework of old two-by-fours and fenceposts cleverly constructed at the proper height to hold the crossbow. Note how the structure is covered with weeds to conceal it. The string, you see, leads from the trigger on the crossbow to the victim’s bicycle seat. Any pressure on the bicycle seat releases the arrow. Absolutely ingenious! Do we know, Watson, if the victim had any enemies?
WATSON: Yes, sir. Several dozen of them are at this moment out in the street, cheering.
I never did get around to murdering Skraggs, although there was some mystery about the framework of two-by-fours and fenceposts discovered in the brush near his house. It was probably just as well. As the years passed, a peculiar thing happened. Skraggs began to shrink! By seventh grade, I was the same size as my old adversary. By the time we reached high school, I towered over him. Oddly, the more he shrank, the nicer and more ingratiating he became.
I am pleased to say that I am not the sort of person to hold a grudge. Even though I could have taken my revenge by beating up Skraggs anytime I felt the urge, I did not do so. In fact, I often took him pheasant hunting with me, just to show him my appreciation for all he had taught me in my years as his quarry.
My one disappointment with him as a hunting companion was that although he learned to retrieve nicely, he never caught on to pointing worth a darn. On the other hand, I sort of enjoyed his whining when the late duck season opened.
BOOKS BY PATRICK F. MCMANUS
Kid Camping from Aaaaiii! to Zip
A Fine and Pleasant Misery
They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?
Never Sniff a Gift Fish
The Grasshopper Trap
Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs
The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw
Whatchagot Stew
(with Patricia “The Troll” McManus Gass)
Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink!
The Good Samaritan Strikes Again
How I Got This Way
Copyright © 1989 by Patrick F. McManus
All rights reserved.
All stories in this book appeared previously as follows: In Outdoor Life: “The Skunk Ladder”; “How to Go Splat!” (originally titled “Into Each Life a Little Fall Must Reign”); “The Human Fuel Pump”; “’Twas a Dark and Dreary Night”; “Trailer Trials”; “The Grasshopper Trap”; “Get Lost!”; “Metamorphosis and Other Outdoor Phenomena Wives Don’t Understand” (originally titled “Metamorphosis and Other Outdoor Phenomena”); “The Swamp”; “A Hunker Is Not a Squat”; “Why Wives on Christmas Mourn” (originally titled “I Heard the Wives on Christmas Mourn”); “The Hunting Lesson”; “Nincompoopery and Other Group Terms” (originally titled “Off On a Lark”); “Character Flaws” (originally titled “Flaws”); “Mean Tents”; “Crick Ritual”; “Hunting Camp Etiquette”; “Stone Soup” (originally titled “The Wager”); “Sweet Sweet Sixteen”; “Down and Way Out in Brazil”; “Strange Encounters of the Bird Kind”; “The Outing”; “I, the Hunted.” In Gutmann Knife Annual: “First Knife” (originally titled “That First Knife”). In Field & Stream Hunting Annual: “The Case of the Missed Deer.” In Hunting Guns: “Gunrunning” (originally titled “How to Buy a Gun … Without Your Wife Finding Out”). In Field & Stream: “Bad Company”; “Letters from Camp”; “Never Cry Snake!” (originally titled “Don’t Never Cry Wuff”).
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First published in hardcover in 1985 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Designed by Kate Nichols
eISBN 9781466809420
First eBook Edition : January 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McManus, Patrick F.
The grasshopper trap.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-0111-2
ISBN-10: 0-8050-0111-5
1. Outdoor life. 2. Hunting. 3. Fishing. I. Title.
[GV191.6.M325 1986a] 796.5 86-12020
First Owl Books Edition 1986
The Grasshopper Trap Page 18