My Life as a Cowboy Cowpie
Page 5
What had I done? How had everything gotten so out of hand?
Of course, I knew the answer before I asked. It was a simple word that started with the letters REV and ended in ENGE (with not a whole lot of letters in between). Revenge: what a terrible thing. It’s like a wheel that just keeps spinning faster and faster until it’s out of control and everything gets flung off. In this case the “everything” was one of the most important things . . . my friendship with Wall Street. Well, there was no doubt about it, I’d learned my lesson. From that moment on I would never seek revenge again. Never. And as soon as things got straightened out, I would—
Suddenly, I heard voices and slowed to a stop. They were around the storage shed just in front of me. Kids’ voices. In fact, one of them sounded an awful lot like Chad Diamond. And the closer I got, the more I knew the reason:
It was Chad Diamond.
“I’m telling you guys,” he was saying, “chicks are all the same. Show them a little attention and they go bonkers.”
“You’ve done this before?” a second voice asked.
“All the time,” he said. “Find some girl who thinks she has it all together, get her all worked up, then drop her and watch her shatter into a million pieces.”
“Cool,” a gravelly, third voice chuckled.
“Yeah,” the second agreed.
“Gotta do something to pass the time,” Chad said. “Hey, pass me the cigarette.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I pressed against the shed’s wall and moved in closer to hear better. Soon I was beside a bunch of empty fifty-five-gallon barrels.
“This time, though,” Chad continued, “I’ve got myself a doubleheader.”
“What do ya mean?” the second voice asked.
“That dork-oid with the glasses.”
“Wally Mc-what’s-his-name?” the gravelly voice asked.
“Yeah,” Chad said. “The way I figure it, he and she are like best friends.”
“So?” the second kid said.
“So, not only do I get to stomp on her heart, but if I play it right, I get to ruin their friendship, too.”
Gravel Voice chuckled. “You’re evil, dude, real evil.”
“Thanks.” There was a moment’s silence as I heard him take what sounded like another drag from his cigarette.
“So when you gonna dump her?” the second voice asked.
“Tomorrow, at Parents’ Day. I figure, let her get all excited about introducing me to Mommy and Daddy, and then when the big moment comes, I totally ignore her.”
“Like you don’t even know who she is,” Gravel Voice said.
“Exactly.”
“Cruel, real cruel.”
“Yup,” Chad said, “just the way I like it.”
The other two kids chuckled in appreciation.
“Well, we better get back before they miss us,” Chad said.
“Yeah,” they agreed.
I could hear by the crunch of dirt under their feet that they were leaving. Unfortunately, they were leaving directly toward me! Now, the way I figured it, I had three choices.
CHOICE ONE: Stay there and confront Chad; you know, face to face, man to wimp. Tell him what I heard and that I wasn’t going to let him do it. Of course, this was the best choice . . . except for all of his muscles, all of his friends’ muscles, and my extreme allergy to being beaten to death. (I break out in a bad case of death every time it happens.) Look, it’s not that I can’t fight; I’ve fought with the best of them (it’s just that my folks get real tired of paying for all those hospital bills).
CHOICE TWO: Run like the wind. Not bad except for my size thirty-seven clown feet.
CHOICE THREE: Hide. And since there were all these empty barrels around me, and since I could easily fit inside one . . .
Quicker than you can spell superchicken, I hopped into one of the open barrels. And just in time. I’d barely made it inside before the group rounded the corner and passed me.
Fortunately, no one bothered to look inside the barrels.
Unfortunately, it was my barrel that they decided to flick the cigarette butt into.
No problem . . . except for it landing on my clown shirt, which suddenly caught fire.
Even that would have been okay, if I’d just stayed quiet and burned up like a nice, well-behaved clown. But, being new to the clown business, I
“YEOW!”
didn’t.
“What was that?” Gravel Voice asked.
“I don’t know,” Chad said. “It came from one of these barrels.”
At first I paid them no attention. When you’re busy swatting out flames all over your body, it’s hard to notice the minor distractions. But when I finally got the last of the fire put out and looked up, I saw three very concerned faces gazing down at me.
“It’s okay.” I gave a nervous laugh. “I’m okay.”
But, somehow, I got the impression that they weren’t exactly concerned about my health.
“Well, well, well,” Chad sneered. “What do we have here?”
“Uh, not much,” I explained. “Just your typical clown in a barrel.”
He leaned closer and leered down at me. “It wouldn’t be the type of clown that spies and eavesdrops on people, would it?”
“Well, I, uh . . .” I figured it was time to stand up and explain. But I’d barely gotten to my feet before
K-WHOMP
Chad pushed the barrel (and me) over. Before I could catch my breath (or break into a good healthy scream), he gave it a good, hard
K-Thud
kick. And then
K-Thud
another. And
K-Thud
another.
Of course, I tried to scramble out and onto the ground, but just when I thought I knew where the ground was, it turned into the sky . . . and then the ground again . . . and then the sky. That’s right, the ol’ barrel and I were definitely on a roll . . . in more ways than one.
“Uh, guys . . .”
Roll, Roll . . .
“ . . . listen, this is a lot of fun, but—”
Roll, Roll, Roll . . .
“—maybe if you let me get out I can help push and—”
Roll, Roll, Roll, Roll . . .
W-oooosh!
The good news was, I was done rolling. The bad news was, I was suddenly sailing. Sailing and
“AUGHHH!”
screaming. Lots and lots of screaming.
The best I could figure, they’d rolled me over the edge of the bluff, and by the way the sky and clouds were spinning around, I was momentarily airborne in a “Mayday-Mayday-this-is-Wally-McDoogle-coming-in-for-a-crash-landing” kind of way.
And, sure enough, I . . .
K-RASH!
did just that.
Unfortunately the K-RASH didn’t stop my Rolling (or my “AUGHHH!”ing), but at least my flying days were over. At least I was back on the ground where I was safe and
K-RASH!
Wait a minute, didn’t I already K-RASH hitting the ground? So, if I just K-RASHed hitting the ground, then this other K-RASH must have come from running into something.
With that bit of Einstein logic, I poked my head outside of the rolling barrel. It was still the same view of the ground and sky, spinning around . . . only now it was ground and sky spinning around from inside a corral.
Oh, I get it. I’d K-RASHed through a fence, and now I was rolling inside a—
K-thud.
Well, no, I wasn’t rolling anywhere. Suddenly, I’d come to a dead stop. That was the good news. But as we all know, there’s always some bad . . .
“BROOOO . . .”
I stuck my head back out of the barrel and took a peek. I’d hit something and come to a dead stop all right. Unfortunately, the word dead was more accurate than I wanted. Because that something wasn’t a something but a someone. A someone with very sharp horns and very angry eyes—very sharp horns and angry eyes that looked exactly like they belonged to . . . Satan Breath.
“Uh, hi there,” I kinda half-squeaked. “Good to see you again.”
Snort, snort . . .
He didn’t look happy. But at least he wasn’t pawing the ground. Because, from my last experience, I knew that when they paw the ground, you’re in real—
Paw, paw . . .
Uh-oh. It looked like Satan Breath had something else on his mind. Something else that involved lowering his head and
Paw, paw . . .
trot, trot, trot
run, run, run, run
charging toward me and my Barrel Buddy full tilt!
“BROOOO!”
Finally, we
K-Bamb “AUGHHH!”
roll, roll, roll . . .
connected. And then we
K-Bamb
“EEEEK!”
roll, roll, roll . . .
connected again.
Yes sir, it was great to get back into my screaming and rolling routine. But, then, just when I was really getting the hang of it, he decided to try a new game. I wasn’t sure of all the rules, but it involved sticking his horns inside the barrel, missing my ribs by a couple of inches, then lifting us up and hurtling us high into the air.
“AUGH . . .”
What fun it was to be flying again. But, as we all know, what goes up, must come
K-Thud!
down. And, according to Bully Boy, what comes down must
“AUGH . . .”
go up again.
And so our little game continued:
“AUGH . . .” K-Thud!
“AUGH . . .” K-Thud!
“AUGH . . .” K-Thud!
But after a while, even that got boring. I mean, when you’ve experienced one compound fracture, you’ve experienced them all. By the looks of things, my new playmate must have thought so, too. So, for his grand finale, he stuck his horns even farther inside (nearly making me the world’s first human shish kebab), lifted Barrel Buddy and me high over his head, then rolled his neck around and around, which meant we went around and around . . . until, suddenly, with all of his might, he threw back his head, and we shot up faster than a greased space shuttle— almost as high, too. Which, of course, enabled me to continue perfecting my fine art of
“AUGHHHHH”ing
In fact, he tossed us so hard that we flew over his fence and onto the dirt road outside the pen. Now we were back to our simple
roll, roll, rolling . . .
routine. That was great, no sweat. Well, except for the
HONK . . . HONK, HONK, HONK!
livestock truck coming straight at us. LIVESTOCK TRUCK COMING STRAIGHT AT US?!
I’m afraid so.
Now, I don’t know the last time you’ve been inside a rolling barrel, but these things are not as easy to steer as you might think.
HONK . . . HONK, HONK, HONK!
Unless, of course, you get the newer models that come complete with power windows, CD player, and—oh yeah—a steering wheel. But this was obviously an older version that
HONK . . . HONK, HONK, HONK!
had none of those luxuries . . . which meant the only way to avoid becoming livestock-truck road kill was to crawl out of my little spinning barrel of death and—
HONK . . . HONK, HONK, HONK!
All right. I hear you already!
So, some way, somehow I inched myself to the very edge of the barrel. This allowed me to do two things:
1. See the truck’s giant tire (complete, of course, with the giant truck) less than six feet from my face. And to
2. Leap out of the barrel for my life.
So after saying a fond farewell to Barrel Buddy and promising to write, I leaped. Basically, it was a pretty good leap. Well, except for the part of my
bounce . . . bounce . . .
“OUCH, OUCH!”
. . . skid, skidding . . .
down the road (without any of your standard bouncing and skidding protective headgear). Still, I succeeded in veering out of the tire’s way (not to mention the truck’s). And then with just a few more bounces, skids, and ouches, I finally and at long last—
K-BAMB!
hit a nice, sturdy tree. A nice sturdy tree that immediately sent me into the land of unconsciousness. But even as I was drifting off, I managed to squeeze out one last thought regarding Chad Diamond:
Now it was really time for revenge!
Chapter 8
War!
The good news was, when they eventually found my body, I hadn’t died, yet.
The bad news was, I hurt so much, I wished I had. I mean, I had bruises from the tip of my hair to the end of my toenails . . . and everywhere in between. But Parents’ Day was tomorrow, and I had to hurry up and recover, because tomorrow was my last day to make sure Chad Diamond experienced my full wrath.
Cowboy Roy told me to take the rest of the day off and get some rest. I was really touched by his care and compassion—especially the part where he tenderly explained, “I don’t care if ya die two days from now, but tomorrow I need a clown.”
I’d sent out word for Wall Street to come visit me. I had to tell her what I’d learned about Chad and his little plan. But she told Opera she wasn’t interested in what I had to say. She said she was still real mad at me and hadn’t forgiven me. To be honest, as much as Satan Breath had hurt me, those words hurt even more. After all, weren’t we supposed to be best friends (even if she is a girl)? Still, if that’s the way she wanted it, then that’s the way she’d have it.
A couple hours earlier Opera and I had worked out a plan on how to get even with Chad. I don’t want to brag, but I gotta tell you it was going to be a doozie. Now it was just a matter of waiting until tomorrow. And what fun is waiting without doing a little writing on my superhero story. So, grabbing Ol’ Betsy, I went to work:
When we last left Chester C. Chessclub he was zooming across the country in his Nerd-Mobile to Carl’s-REALLY-Bad Cavern. For it is here that the notorious, not-so-nice nut case, 2-Kool 4 U, is transforming the world’s water so that all who drink it will become hyperly hip.
Thanks to his latest supernerd computer, along with his supergeeky calculations, our hero knows he has just arrived outside the hideout. (The fact that his ears are bleeding from all the pounding rap music is a pretty good clue, too.)
So, in a flash of superclumsiness, he stumbles from his Nerd-Mobile (a 1962 Nash Rambler for any adults who are interested), pushes up his taped-up glasses, and rearranges the pencils in his pocket protector.
Now, finally, he’s ready to face his felonious foe.
He steps into the mouth of the dark cave and shouts, “2-Kool, are you in here . . . here .. . here? Hello .. . hello . .. hello? Echo ... echo ... echo?”
And then, suddenly, directly behind him our hero hears ...
“Well, take a lookie here,
the chump’s finally done made it.
Out tryin’ to save the world,
when he’s got less than a minute.”
Chester C. spins around and, sure enough, it’s 2-Kool. (If you can’t tell by the lousy rhymes, you can tell by the shaved head, sunglasses, and the body piercing——the dude has more rivets in his body than a naval shipyard.)
“2-Kool!” Chester C. shouts over the pounding music. “You must stop this craziness!”
“I done gave ya a minute,
to be doin’ your thing.
Now it’s 53 seconds,
A’fore my coolness reigns supreme.”
“Fifty-three seconds!” our hero shouts.
“I said 53 seconds
to do what you gotta do.
But now it’s 45,
’fore I make this ol’ world too——”
“All right! All right!” our hero shouts. “I get the idea!”
But, try as he might, he can’t think of anything to do. The clock is ticking down with just seconds left to save the world, but nothing comes to mind. No plan, no words, no nothing. . . .
I stared at
the screen, trying to think of something, anything, but the ideas just wouldn’t come.
What was going on? Normally these stories take off by themselves, and it’s all my little pinkies can do to keep up with them on the keyboard. But now there was nothing, as in zilch, as in nada, as in zippo.
But I already knew the reason. It had nothing to do with the story or even my imagination. Instead, it had everything to do with my wanting revenge. Because, no matter how hard I tried to think about something else, my mind just kept going back to Chad Diamond and getting even. I don’t want to say that it had taken over my thinking, but—well, all right, it had taken over my thinking. Completely. No matter what I did, it just kept growing and growing and growing some more. Even as I shut down Ol’ Betsy and tried to go to sleep, getting even was all I could think about. Because if everything went according to my plan, I’d be getting even in a very, very big way.
Unfortunately, we all know about my plans . . .
* * * * *
Parents’ Day started out normal enough. By midmorning we’d suited up in our different costumes and greeted our folks as they rolled into the parking lot. Of course, my parents responded exactly like I knew they would. . . .
“Oh, Wally, you look so adorable.” (That, of course, would be Mom.)
“A wimp??! They got my boy dressed up and wearing makeup like a girl??!!” (That, of course, would be Dad.) “I sent you here to become a man, not some sort of, of, of . . .”
“Clown,” Mom said helpfully. “He’s dressed up as a clown, sweetheart. And a very cute one at that.”
Honk-a Honk-a
(That, of course, would be
her squeezing my red-ball nose.)
(Thanks, Mom.)
Speaking of red, I don’t think I ever saw Dad turn so many different shades of it. I could tell the poor guy was about to blow a head gasket, so I quickly directed them toward the grandstands where they could get a good seat to watch the show. After a little more fussing and fuming from Dad (and one more Honk-a Honk-a from Mom), they finally headed for their seats.