Revver the Speedway Squirrel

by Sherri Duskey Rinker

  For William “Bill” Campana

  For Chris Buescher —S. D. R.

  For Harley, who loves squirrels —A. W.

  1

  In a grove of tall trees, the sunlight sparkled through branches and a light breeze wiggled new leaves. It was late spring. Finally, the first warm winds of the year made everything feel hopeful and happy.

  Through the spots of light, four giggling young squirrels lined up, ready and waiting. Their course was decided: jump off the low branch, run around the trunk, head straight to the maple tree, go down the hill, and then climb back up here.

  “Is everyone ready?” asked Bounce, hopping up and down.

  “Vr-vr-vr-VRRROOOOM!” roared another one.

  “Ready!” the other two said, excited.

  “Okay, then! Ready, set . . .”

  “NOOO!” yelled Revver before his brother could finish.

  “Not again!” Revver’s siblings moaned. Revver stomped in front of Bounce and put his nose against his brother’s. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Drivers! Start your engines!’” Revver was SO annoyed. How many times do we have to go through this? Everyone knows THIS is how to start a race!

  “Well, first,” Bounce argued, “we’re not drivers. And second, we don’t have engines. And third, you don’t even know what an engine IS!”

  “Oh, brother. Here we go again,” their tiny sister, Sprite, whispered under her breath.

  “I KNOW what an engine is,” Revver insisted.

  “What, then? What IS it, then, huh?” Bounce demanded.

  “That’s easy,” Revver said. He had watched millions of races from their nest overlooking the racetrack. He knew exactly what an engine was! “It’s the loud, smelly rumbly-ma-jingy thingy with all the twisty pieces underneath the lid.”

  “The rumbly-ma-jingy thingy?!” Bounce was losing his patience.

  “Yes. And I don’t really know what it does exactly, but it is very loud, and I know that it’s very important.”

  “So you don’t really know . . .”

  “Of course I know. I just told you.”

  “No, you just said you don’t know. But I know FOR SURE that squirrels don’t have—”

  Sprite ran over to Bounce. She squeezed his wrists to hold him still. She had to stand on her tippy-toes to look up at him. “Bounce, please, just say it the way he likes it,” Sprite pleaded in a whisper. “It’s important to him. Anyway, what difference does it make how we start? Let’s just race already.”

  Bounce was going to argue when: RRRRRRRIIIIIPPPPP!

  The sound was so startling that everyone stopped talking. Then an awful smell hit the air, and three squirrels cupped their front paws over their noses and groaned. The fourth squirrel, the oldest and biggest of them all, just grinned.

  “Hmm,” said Farty, patting his belly, “a loud and smelly rumbly-ma-jingy thingy . . . Guess what? I DO have an engine!”

  It was quiet for a split second before all four of them fell onto the grass, laughing.

  2

  “Whatcha makin’?” Revver asked Sprite as he leapt up to her. She sat in a little hollow under their tree, twisting and braiding long blades of grass together.

  “I’m not sure yet,” she said. “I’ll figure it out as I go along.”

  This was Sprite’s talent. She took grass or thin stems or long weeds and turned them into things. Revver loved watching her paws flying around when she did this, moving and twisting so fast. In a matter of minutes, plain things turned into something else.

  Often she made ropes and swings. She would hang them on the branches of the tree, where she could swing or spin from them or jump from one to another, right side up and upside down. Sprite was also an amazing acrobat.

  Sometimes Sprite wove little bowls or baskets. Revver loved watching her pick simple, straight things from around the grove and turn them into other, beautiful shapes. It was like magic.

  Recently she had started making chains that she wore around her neck or wrists. She gave Revver a thick, handsome chain made from orange reeds that he always wore around his ankle. She created chains for Bounce and Farty, too, but they always seemed to break or lose theirs.

  Once, she had spent many days making a long, beautiful one for Mama to wear as a necklace. It was a very fancy design with lots of different-colored stems and a little acorn attached to it. Revver thought it was the most beautiful thing Sprite had ever made, and he told her so. He could tell she was proud.

  But Mama didn’t seem to care much for her present. “Oh m-my!” Mama stuttered as she held it, looking uncertain. “Um, hmm . . . ​Well, I’d be very afraid I would break this or get it caught on something. How about if I put it in this little hollow for safekeeping?” Mama then dropped it into the bottom of the burrow in the tree.

  Sprite had nodded politely, but Revver just knew her feelings were hurt. She had worked so hard to make this special gift. He even thought he saw tears in Sprite’s eyes, but he had never seen her cry before, so he wasn’t exactly sure.

  It just broke Revver’s heart to think that his sister might be sad.

  Whenever Sprite did her twisting and weaving, Revver would sit and watch for a while, and then he’d jump up and say, “Sprite, watch me! Watch how fast I am!” And he would run off toward something and back, as fast as he could.

  “That was really fast, Revver. I’m sure that was faster than last time!” Sprite would always say.

  “Do you think I was faster than Bounce?”

  “I’m not sure. But you’re definitely getting faster.”

  Revver was obsessed with fast. Fast was Revver’s favorite thing.

  Bounce was always faster than Revver. It never mattered to Bounce, but it really bothered Revver. Sprite and Farty were always third and fourth or fourth and third. Neither one of them ever cared.

  “Just run for fun, Revver!” Sprite would tell him. But Revver was totally fixated on going faster. “I want to be the fastest! I want to WIN,” Revver would say, and Sprite would sigh and roll her eyes. She knew where he got these ideas: he was ALWAYS watching that loud, smelly track below the nest. Like Mama, Sprite did not like this one bit. Cars are dangerous! Everyone knew that. Everyone except Revver, of course.

  3

  The next day, while Sprite sat weaving, Revver ran back and forth as usual. But each time he returned, he dragged a new item. Soon, he had a great pile of things from around the grove: sticks, black walnuts, big chunks of bark, and some stems.

  “And what are YOU doing?” Sprite asked, barely looking up from her project.

  “I wanted to make something, too! So I’m going to make a car.”

  “A car?!” Now Sprite looked up. “What are you going to do with a car?!”

  “I’m going to get in it and go FAST!”

  “Oh, brother.” Sprite sighed. “Do you really know how to make a car?” Sprite looked at his pile. She doubted this plan.

  “Of course.”

  “Well, will you know how to make it STOP?” Sprite already knew the answer. Revver was not good at thinking things through.

  Revver thought about this awhile. He didn’t really care about STOPPING. He mostly cared about GOING. But she had a point. He should consider this. Really, he should.

  But Revver had no time or patience for considering. Instead, Revver said exactly what Sprite assumed he would say. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll figure it out as I go along.”

  Sprite shook her head and whispered, “Oh, brother.”

  Revver went right to work. He had no trouble fitting pieces together. Since the day he could first peek out over the nest, he had studied the track and racing. He knew exactly how a car should look!

  He made a bo
x out of bark chunks and stuck the pieces together with sticky tree sap. He made a place where he, the driver, would sit. He picked four black walnuts, the roundest he could find, and tied them to the bottom of his project with thick stems.

  “What are those?” Sprite asked when she looked up.

  “These are the go-a-rounds,” he said confidently. Sprite shrugged.

  Then Revver put a lid on the front part of the box.

  He knew that he needed something special under the lid. Of course, his car needed a rumbly-ma-jingy thingy. Something loud. And lots of twisty things.

  He grabbed some small, twisted branches, threw them in, and arranged them a bit. There. That looked right. Now for the noise. This would be harder.

  Finally, he had an idea.

  “Can I use this?” Revver asked Sprite, pointing to a little basket she had finished making.

  “Sure,” said Sprite, who was already working on something else.

  Revver took the basket and quietly tiptoed over to a nearby flower, where a big, fat bee had just landed. With his paw, he trapped the bee inside the basket, ran to his car, dumped out the angry bee, and closed the lid. Just like he thought, the bee made a LOT of noise. This sounds just about right! He had started his engine! Revver was so excited!

  He got into his car, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He was READY, ready to rumble through the grove at blazing speed!

  He waited. And waited. And waited.

  Nothing happened.

  He thought through his plan, and it seemed like he had all the important parts: he was sitting inside, the go-a-rounds were ready, the rumbly was rumbling . . . What’s wrong? He just could not imagine why his car was not going.

  Sprite glanced up at Revver. He looked very serious and determined as he sat in his wood box on top of walnuts. She quickly turned her face so that Revver would not see her laughing.

  At last, Revver got out of his car. As he opened the lid to free the bee, zap! The angry bee stung Revver’s paw before it flew away.

  He was stunned by how much it hurt! “Ouchie, ouchie, ouch, OUCH!” He jumped around, licking and rubbing his sore paw. A shock wave of pain went from his paw and up his arm. Revver shouted, “It gave me a zap!”

  “Technically, it was a sting.”

  “It hurts SO much!”

  “You kind of deserved that,” Sprite said, very matter-of-fact. Revver, still rubbing the bump on his paw, finally sat down next to his sister while she worked.

  Sprite could tell Revver was upset. “You made a very nice car, Revver,” she said.

  “But it doesn’t go,” he said sadly, kicking a piece of dirt.

  “Well, I still think it was very clever of you to build it.”

  He knew that his sister was trying to help, but he didn’t feel better. All this work for nothing, he thought. He was never going to go very fast this way. He needed to figure out something else.

  4

  The idea came to him right after his mother, brothers, and sister left the nest to scamper around and find food. They always began their day doing all those “normal” squirrelly things. Revver never cared much for the normal things that other squirrels did.

  Ever since yesterday, he couldn’t stop thinking about the car he’d built. Well, the car he’d tried to build. Cars were supposed to go! And he’d had big hopes of going so fast! . . . and then nothing. Sprite tried to make him feel better about it. But he didn’t feel better. Not. At. ALL.

  He stared up at the top of their tree from the nest. Lying on his back, he sighed. And then it hit him! It zoomed toward him in a blur. It moved SO FAST that he didn’t have time to get out of the way. A something fell from the top of the tree and conked Revver on the chest. “YOUCH!” He jumped up as the mystery object bounced off him and landed in the bottom of the nest.

  Revver rubbed his sore chest with his sore paw—which still hurt from the zap he’d gotten yesterday. He picked up the something that had hit him and examined it: a large chunk of broken branch that had fallen from the treetop. Whoa—that happened so fast!

  And that was how the idea STRUCK him.

  He leapt from the nest and climbed UP, higher and higher, as fast as he could. Finally, Revver reached the very tip-top of the tree. The ground was a long, LONG way down. He was SO excited! The sun was just peeking up, and a warm glow fell onto the racetrack below. Looking at the view, he sighed. “It’s even more beautiful from up here,” he said to no one in particular. He could see the entire track in all its glory.

  But he wasn’t up here to watch the track; it was way too early for that anyway. No cars were running yet.

  Now, for the first time since he’d started climbing, Revver paused. He’d seen enough races to know that he had to have a little strategy about this. The best drivers—the winners—waited until just the right moment to take the lead. They patiently raced right behind the leader, lap after lap, and then ZOOM! In a blink, they’d pull out ahead and take the checkered flag. Revver loved that great mix of speed and surprise.

  So he tried hard to think like a race-car driver, which was not easy, since he was a squirrel. Waiting and thinking were not easy for him, but he forced himself. He licked one paw and held it up in the air to check the weather. No wind. Perfect! The temperature felt just right. He looked all around and thought hard. No rain. No fog. Nothing to block his view. Again, perfect! He thought about what other thinking and checking he should do, but nothing came to mind. He shrugged and guessed he was ready.

  He looked down through the branches and saw the empty nest about halfway to the ground, just as he’d imagined when he looked up at this branch. Now that he focused on it, the nest looked A LOT smaller than he’d expected from up here. But still, he had a clear sight of it, and that was all that mattered. The excitement welled up inside him.

  This might be his best idea EVER! He imagined himself as a race-car driver pulling ahead at the perfect moment. Just like a chunk of broken branch, he thought. He took a deep breath and roared, “Vr-vr-vr-VRRROOOOM!” as he sprang off the limb, scrunched himself into a tight ball, and aimed to land a cannonball dive, waaay down, straight into the nest.

  5

  A pain shot through him from his tail. In a flash, smack! He had landed HARD on his back. Now he tried to catch his breath. He was so confused! He reached behind him to rub his aching bottom. Where was the feeling of the wind whipping around him? Where was the thrilling rush of plummeting through the leaves? Where was the excitement of going faster than he’d ever gone before in his entire life? What happened?!

  His sister glared at him from over his head. She looked down at him. He looked up at her.

  “REVVER!” she yelled so loudly it made him jolt. “What in the WORLD do you think you are doing?!” As she screamed into his face, spit flew into Revver’s eyes.

  Understanding slowly settled over him . . . ​The shooting pain in his tail. The rough bark digging into his back. Only sky above. Sprite had yanked him back to the branch by his tail at the exact moment he had gotten airborne! She was much stronger than she looked.

  The NERVE of her! “You followed me up here?!”

  “You’re darn right I did! I just knew you were up to something! I could feel it!”

  He had no idea she was behind him on the climb up, but Sprite had a gift for that. Like a graceful little bird, she almost floated through the branches.

  “Sprite! I had THE. BEST. IDEA. EVER! Why’d you have to stop me?!”

  “Why’d I stop you? WHY’D I STOP YOU?! Because you would have died! Did you really think that you’d just softly land—plop!—perfectly, right in the middle of the nest? You’d actually DESTROY it with a stunt like that! You’d be dead, and the rest of us would be homeless! Do you REALIZE how heavy you are?! Do you REALIZE how fast you’d be falling?”

  Revver thought for a second: FAST! Yes! That was the whole idea! His sister had ruined everything. He was angry.

  “Are you LISTENING to me, little brother?!” she yelled into
his face again.

  Sometimes she really, REALLY annoyed him. In his opinion, she took the “big sister” thing way too seriously. She was older by exactly one second, and she was less than half his size. But even he had to admit the possibility of destroying the nest and DYING had not occurred to him. He would be MUCH heavier than the wood chunk that had landed on his chest.

  His mind played back all the high-speed car crashes he’d seen on the track: cars flipping, parts and pieces flying everywhere. Big crashes left the cars shattered, hardly looking like cars at all. He thought about how that could have happened to their nest. He thought about what could have happened to HIM! Now he felt a little embarrassed that, once again, Sprite was the smarter one.

  At the idea of his family being homeless, his anger melted away a little.

  He thought about his sore paw and his sore chest. Now he also had a sore tail. He imagined how much more he’d be hurting if he’d crashed from the treetop.

  “Are you going to tell Mama?”

  “I SHOULD, you know.”

  Revver looked into his sister’s eyes. Even though she had just RUINED his whole plan, Revver still loved her. And he knew she loved him. He knew that she was always trying to protect him, and he hated upsetting her—which, unfortunately, happened A LOT.

  She exhaled. “No. I’m not going to tell. But NEVER AGAIN, Revver. NEVER. AGAIN. I’m serious. Now, WHY? Why would you get such a nutty idea?”

  “I wanted to go REALLY FAST!”

  “Oh, brother,” she said, annoyed. She helped him up and put her paws around his wrists and looked straight into his eyes. Then she said sincerely, trying to convince him for the millionth time, “Revver, squirrels—and YOU—ARE fast.”

  “Not really fast,” he said sadly.

  “Well, you’re fast . . . ENOUGH.”

  Revver was about to argue, but then he stopped. There was no point explaining. No one ever understood, not even Sprite.