The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls

by John Lekich

  “I was the one smoking,” I said. “Wiley tried to tell me it was against the rules. But I just wouldn’t listen.”

  George looked toward Wiley. “Is that true, Brubaker?”

  Wiley nodded.

  “Okay, Brubaker, you’re off fryer duty,” said George. “That’s Holloway’s job until further notice.”

  “I’ve been promoted to mop detail?” asked Wiley, as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune.

  George nodded. “Report to my office in five minutes, Holloway,” he said. “I’ll assign you a locker and issue you an official uniform.”

  Then George Dial disappeared behind the door of his private broom closet.

  “Do you realize what has happened here?” Stuart asked me. “He just made you the new Grease Pig.”

  “Why me?” I asked, sounding just like Wiley, who was jumping around shouting, “Free at last!”

  Lowell put his arm on my shoulder sympathetically. “When you’re in Rat-boy’s office, would you mind telling him you saw Russell with a mustard packet in his teeth?” he asked. “That would really freak him out.”

  “Why not?” I replied. “What have I got to lose?”

  Nat smiled at me gratefully. “Welcome to Hamburger Hell,” she said.

  TWELVE

  By the beginning of September, I had spent over a month in Snowflake Falls. That’s four whole weeks of Oscar keeping me up all night long and Charlotte pestering me the rest of the time. Even when Charlotte and I weren’t together, she would often follow me at a distance on her bike. “Why are you following me around all the time?” I would ask.

  “It is my civic duty to see that you don’t steal anything,” she would reply.

  As if Charlotte’s superior attitude wasn’t enough emotional torture, my time in Hamburger Hell was turning me into a human chew toy. It was Wiley’s vast experience as a former Grease Pig that clued me in to why dogs had started chasing me on my paper route. “The smell of grease has a way of sticking to you like bacon-scented aftershave,” he explained, advising that I should protect my ankles from bites by wearing several pairs of extra socks. “Trust me,” he added. “Big dogs will chase that smell for blocks.”

  But no dog was worse than Popcorn, who had suddenly decided to make a regular appearance on my route. At first Popcorn was just a white blur attached to a bark that sounded like the world’s smallest chainsaw. Most dogs would give up after a couple of blocks, but Popcorn just kept going until he was tired out or managed to get some of his teeth into the outer layer of my sock armor. This could go on for several blocks.

  I talked to Popcorn’s owner, who was a very nice man named Lyle Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz said that he’d been keeping Popcorn inside the house for weeks because his spirits had been way down lately. “I think he really missed chasing the last paperboy,” said Mr. Kurtz. “I’ve tried different dog treats. But nothing pepped the little guy up until he saw you pedaling down the street.”

  I asked Mr. Kurtz if he could keep his dog inside until I finished my route. “But you’re the highlight of his day,” he said. “It’s the only way he gets any exercise. I take him for walks, and he flops down in the middle of the sidewalk like a puddle of milk.”

  When I protested that Popcorn was interfering with my delivery duties, Mr. Kurtz said, “You’re not afraid of a little dog, are you?”

  “Only because I’m running out of socks.”

  “He’ll stop chasing you as soon as he gets to know you.”

  “When’s that going to be?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to say,” said Mr. Kurtz. “No offense, son. But when the wind shifts, you smell a little like a deep-fried taco.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  Mr. Kurtz took a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and stuffed it in the front pocket of my shirt. “Look, just let him chase you for a while. It’s good for his morale. Odds are he’ll just chew up the hem of your pants. But if he gets lucky, I’ll spring for the tetanus shot and a twenty-dollar bonus for pain and suffering.”

  I was going to tell Mr. Kurtz to forget it, but then he looked at me and said, “Thanks for giving me back my dog, son. It means a lot.”

  To make matters worse, I was now an official student at Snowflake Falls Secondary. While this gave me a break from Oscar, it also meant that Charlotte knew exactly where to find me at all times. It turned out that the school Charlotte was even worse than the summer-vacation Charlotte. The first thing she said when she saw me in hall? “A gentleman would carry my books.”

  “I’m no gentleman,” I said. But because Charlotte was Charlotte, I ended up carrying her books anyway.

  To make matters even extra worse, I was now under the watchful eye of Ms. Penelope Pendergast during school hours. Twice a week, I had to rush through my morning paper route so I could spend forty-five minutes of precious free time being counseled by her. “No offense,” I said when we were first introduced, “but I’d rather be sleeping.”

  Ms. Pendergast thought this was highly amusing. “There’s nothing like a good laugh to start the day right,” she said. “Don’t you agree, Henry?”

  At first, I thought Ms. Pendergast was being sarcastic. But this is not the Penelope Pendergast way. Even to the most casual observer, it’s clear that she is an optimistic person who believes that everyone is basically good at heart.

  Ms. Pendergast was also a knitter; she always had a sweater or scarf in the works. Being a Home Economics teacher, she would often have a fresh-baked blueberry muffin waiting for me. This gave me something to look forward to during our morning conferences.

  I don’t want to give you the idea that Ms. Pendergast was some sort of elderly lady. She dressed very stylishly and had the kind of haircut that always looked naturally in place and she smelled a little like vanilla extract, which was actually quite pleasant. She was very big on smiling as a form of encouragement. Not that I gave her much to smile about.

  During our last meeting, I was buttering the top of my blueberry muffin, when she asked me for an update on my progress in Snowflake Falls. “Well,” I said, “I’m the new Grease Pig at Top Kow Burgers.”

  This made Ms. Pendergast smile with encouragement, until I informed her that being a Grease Pig was not like a promotion at all. “Think of it this way,” she said. “You’re in the best possible position to rise above it all.”

  I thought maybe Ms. Pendergast was going to make me write a series of reports on how I was getting along in Snowflake Falls. Instead, she said, “I just want you to get to know everyone, Henry. Your assignment is to introduce yourself to at least one stranger every day. Can you do that for me?”

  There was something about Ms. Pendergast that made me not want to disappoint her. So I started going up to strangers and introducing myself. “Hello,” I would say. “My name is Henry Holloway and I’m new in town.”

  I noticed that a few people automatically felt for their wallets before returning my greeting. But for the most part, everyone did their best to be nice. On the other hand, meeting an entirely new person every day can really drain your energy. No matter what their disposition.

  Early in September, Leon came back to town to make his report. I filled him in on everything. “You don’t look so good, Henry,” he said. “I’ll make a note of the bags under your eyes.”

  “I’m stressed-out, Leon.”

  Leon narrowed his eyes. “I can’t say for sure, but I think you’re developing a nervous twitch.”

  I pleaded with him. “I only get a few minutes of sleep a night. And when I do, I have these terrible nightmares about Popcorn. I need to get out of Snowflake Falls.” He nodded but said there was “a slight problem.” Judge Barnaby was getting reports from various town spies about how I was finding lost asthma inhalers for people and getting cats out of trees. While Leon told me he was very sympathetic to my predicament, he said Judge Barnaby felt I was showing hopeful signs of becoming a solid citizen.

  My only relief was writing letters to Uncle Andy. I
wrote him one almost every day. They were long letters all about the people who were driving me crazy in Snowflake Falls. I mailed them all to my uncle’s prison with the appropriate postage. But I never got a single reply back.

  On top of having to be unnaturally honest and considerate all day long, I had to put up with having Charlotte join me for lunch in the school cafeteria. Needless to say, she did very little eating and a lot of talking. Of course, there were those individuals who considered my embarrassment a highly popular form of lunchtime entertainment. They gathered around in a group just to watch my face turn red while Charlotte took fifteen minutes to explain why she always cut the crusts off her sandwiches.

  “That’s the way English royalty does it,” she would say, before going on and on about some dead king who got his head lopped off like the crust on her lunchtime sandwich.

  Sometimes, it was just too much. One day Charlotte looked at me from across the cafeteria table with those stupid rocket-scientist glasses of hers, and I asked, “How come you don’t invest in a pair of contact lenses anyway?”

  “I can’t wear contact lenses,” she answered matter-of-factly. “They irritate my eyes.”

  “So why don’t you at least get a cooler pair of glasses?” I inquired.

  Charlotte started to get all wound up again. “Because these glasses are just like my dad’s,” she said. “I’ll never take them off, and my mom will never take off hers either. You know why?”

  “Why?” I asked, mostly because I knew she was going to tell me anyway.

  “Because the Wingates are a team,” she said. And then, just in case I didn’t get it, she added, “We’re Team Wingate!”

  Charlotte informed me that—even though I didn’t wear glasses—she considered me an official member of Team Wingate. Mostly this meant that she would ask my opinion on everything. Just so she could tell me how wrong I was.

  Yesterday she insisted on showing me this book called Famous Hairstyles Through the Ages. There was a specific page marked with a red plastic drinking straw. It showed a picture of a Roman soldier with very short hair. “What do you think of this hairstyle, Henry?” asked Charlotte, while eyeing my skull with great interest. “I think it projects a great deal of masculine authority.”

  “Stop staring at my head like that,” I said. “And anyway, why do you want to become a hairstylist so much?”

  “Are you serious?” she gasped. “The money a good conversationalist can make in tips is fabulous.” Then she looked at me very seriously. “When I become the best hairstylist in town, I’m going to donate all my tips to the Empty Stocking Christmas Fund.”

  You would think that my job at Top Kow Burgers would be a welcome break from Charlotte. But it didn’t take me long to realize that George Dial was doing everything he could to get back at me for not leaping at the golden opportunity to be his DVD-watching best friend.

  I scrubbed every surface of the kitchen until my hands were raw and my feet were aching. I took out the garbage and set George’s homemade traps for Russell the rat. Even though Russell did not exist, it did not stop me from regularly getting my fingers caught in the spring-activated traps. In addition to which, the crappy garbage bags would regularly split open, leaving me covered in old hamburger wrappers, leftover fries and congealed milkshakes.

  After the last split-garbage-bag incident, I visited George in his broom-closet office with the idea that maybe I could get on his good side. I stood there for a while, looking at the many pictures of monster trucks and cars that were pasted to the wall next to all his Employee of the Month award certificates. When he finally looked up from his paperwork, he asked, “What is it, Holloway? I’m busy here.”

  I explained to George that my Hamburger Hell duties were getting to me. “Come on, Speed,” I pleaded. “Give me a break.”

  George Dial glared at me, like I had made a big mistake. “Only my friends call me Speed,” he said. “And you’re not my friend, are you, Holloway?”

  The guy looked so ticked off that I just had to ask him one last question. “How come you hate me so much, George?”

  George thought about his for a moment. “I don’t hate you exactly,” he said, dropping his super-officious manager’s voice and sounding almost human. “I’m just majorly disappointed, you know?”

  When I asked him why, he said, “I guess I heard about you and my imagination took over. I thought you were going to be some big-time jewel thief or something.” George looked at me, all forlorn. “In case you haven’t noticed, nothing exciting ever happens in this town.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” said George, looking even more forlorn. “I guess I just didn’t expect you to be so…ordinary.”

  It sounded so bad that I felt the need to defend myself. “I never used to be ordinary,” I said hopefully. “I used to steal fast cars and go to the opera in the middle of the day and eat French pastry for lunch.”

  “How does that help me now?” asked George.

  “I’m on probation, George,” I explained. “Being ordinary is my only choice right now.”

  “At least you have a good excuse,” he said. “I know what everyone out there says about me, you know. You think I like being responsible all the time?”

  “Everybody jokes around,” I lied. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “You know there’s a rat around here somewhere,” said George. “I’ve seen it. At least I think I have. And that’s no joke.” Then he looked at me sorrowfully and added, “You don’t think I’d enjoy doing something totally fun and irresponsible?”

  “So why don’t you?” I inquired.

  “It’s no use,” he answered. “You just don’t understand the burden that comes with entrepreneurial leadership.”

  At this point, I was frantically trying to think of something that would make George feel better. “Cheer up,” I said. “The monster truck rally is coming soon and the Devil’s Dumpster will be parked in your gramma’s garage.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “All I can do is watch somebody else have all the fun.”

  He sounded so depressed that I finally gave up trying to cheer him up. Cutting to the chase, I asked, “Isn’t there anything else I can do to be promoted from Grease Pig?”

  Much to my surprise, George replied, “I’ll think about it.” Then he snapped back into manager mode—telling me to straighten the bill of my cap (“The Top Kow manual states that your horns should be properly aligned at all times.”) before doing a surprise inspection of my fingernails.

  You might think, How can Henry’s life get any worse? But somehow it managed to do just that. At first, I didn’t think that being a volunteer reader for Mr. Harley Howard was going to be so bad. I mean, it had to be less stressful than standing up to my armpits in hamburger grease. Then I met Harley Howard. “There’s only one thing I respect less than a thief,” he said, by way of introduction. “And that’s a thief who’s stupid enough to get caught.”

  It turned out that Harley Howard was by far the richest man in Snowflake Falls. Charlotte told me that he was a businessman who had made a lot of money and then retired and had come to live in Snowflake Falls because it was his wife’s hometown. Then his wife died and he became the town hermit, wasting away in this big old mansion.

  Harley Howard’s house was extremely untidy, full of overflowing ashtrays and layers of dust. But even the dust couldn’t hide the value of all his possessions. Everywhere you looked, there was something that would have made my friend Lenny dance for joy. I noticed that he had the most expensive stereo system I’d ever seen. “Touch anything and you’re toast,” said Harley. “That goes double for my record collection.”

  “What would I want with a bunch of old records?” I asked.

  “They’re extremely valuable collector’s items,” said Harley. “Among other things, I have every recording Frank Sinatra ever made. I don’t suppose you know who Frank Sinatra is?”

  It so happens that Frank Si
natra was a great singer of the kind of music my mother liked to play on the piano. I know this because my mother liked to talk about how great he was all the time. “I know who he is,” I said.

  Harley Howard snorted. “So name three songs he liked to sing.”

  I named four songs and then stopped. Harley Howard looked amazed. “My mother liked him,” I said.

  “Your mother had good taste,” he said. Then he looked at me and didn’t say anything for a while. I thought he wasn’t going to talk at all until he said, “I had one hell of a singing voice, you know. They used to call me the Frank Sinatra of Snowflake Falls.”

  “Did you participate in the Christmas sing-along?”

  “Participate? I was the Christmas sing-along. But that’s ancient history.”

  “You don’t sing anymore?”

  “What for?” he said. “There’s nobody around to listen. Nobody who matters anyway.”

  It was hard to imagine Harley Howard singing. Or having any kind of fun at all, for that matter. He had a couple of wisps of gray hair sprouting from the sides of his head. Because he couldn’t see very well, he squinted a lot. This made his face resemble an unhappy prune.

  Harley Howard’s favorite expression was “bullcrap,” which he used to punctuate some of his most sincere thoughts. “Losing your sight is one bullcrap of a deal, Holloway,” he observed. “I’m just sitting here watching everything fade away. You know the worst part? It’s the boredom. When you’re going blind, they say your other senses get stronger,” he said. “So you end up hearing like an owl. So what? It’s a load of bullcrap.” He thought about this for a moment and gave a laugh that sounded like somebody walking through a pile of dry leaves.

  It turned out that I was Harley Howard’s fifth volunteer reader. Everybody else had quit because Harley was known for miles around as the crankiest man in town. Plus, he lounged around all day in the world’s most expensive bathrobe while smoking the worst-smelling cigars on the planet. His library featured a whole bunch of dusty wedding and anniversary photos of Harley Howard and his late wife.