So Popeye joined in, calling swearwords out into the steamy air beside the ditch.
That seemed to please the oldest boy. He looked solemnly at Popeye and said, “Okay, you can be in our club.”
Then he pointed at the other kids one by one. “Calvin, Prissy, Walter, Willis, Shorty.” He jabbed a thumb at himself and said, “Elvis.”
Popeye jabbed a thumb at himself and said, “Popeye.”
All the kids started hooting and hollering and poking each other with their elbows and holding their sides and saying, “Popeye?”
Popeye’s face grew hot.
Elvis ignored the other kids and slapped a hand on Popeye’s shoulder. “I’m making you senior vice president,” he said.
“Hey!” Calvin hollered. “I’m senior vice president.”
“Not anymore, you ain’t,” Elvis said.
Calvin clamped his mouth shut tight and glared at Elvis.
Popeye didn’t want to make Calvin any madder than he already was, so he tried hard to keep his face serious and not all smiley like he was feeling inside.
He had started this day as a fly-staring, clockwatching, bored boy.
And now here he was, senior vice president of the Spit and Swear Club.
4
POPEYE SAT on the side of the road and waited. The door of the motor home stayed shut. The curtains stayed drawn. No sounds came from inside.
“Guess it’s too early,” he said to Boo.
Boo’s tail brushed back and forth in the weeds, still damp with the morning dew.
Popeye wanted to see inside that motor home more than anything.
The day before, right after he had become senior vice president of the Spit and Swear Club, a window of the motor home had slid open and a woman had called out, “Y’all get on in here,” and all those kids had gone tumbling inside without so much as a goodbye, leaving Popeye to spend the rest of the day alone.
Bored.
Again.
So first thing this morning he had dashed out to wait.
“What in the name of sweet Bernice in heaven is that?”
Popeye looked up to see his uncle Dooley strolling down the road toward him. Dooley hadn’t seen the stuck-in-the-mud motor home yet. He had slept on the couch all day yesterday and then tried to get his car started about a million times before he gave up and went out back to his trailer to sleep some more.
“It’s a Holiday Rambler,” Popeye said.
Dooley took his baseball cap off, scratched his head, and let out a whistle. “That thing is some kinda stuck,” he said, examining the big tire sunk deep in the mud.
“Yep.” Popeye looked over at the leaning motor home. “It’s a vicissitude,” he said, “getting stuck in the mud like that.”
Dooley probably didn’t have much to say about a vicissitude, so he said, “Anybody in there?”
“Yep.”
“Who?”
“A bunch of kids,” Popeye said. “They live in there.”
Just then a rattletrap of a car came bouncing down the road and jerked to a stop beside them, sending out a spray of dirt and gravel. Dooley said, “See ya,” and climbed in the backseat with a couple of other guys, and the car drove off, leaving a trail of black smoke behind it.
The door of the motor home swung open with a bang. Elvis stomped down the step and walked right past Popeye with his fists jammed into his pockets and his hair flopping over his eyes.
Popeye jumped up. “Where you going?”
Elvis glanced at him and kept going, right up the middle of the road.
Walter (or maybe it was Willis) hollered from a window of the motor home, “Mama said you better get back here!”
Elvis shook his fist in the air.
Every now and then he hauled off and kicked a piece of gravel so hard he made an oomph noise.
“What’s wrong?” Popeye hurried along beside him. Boo trotted behind them with his tongue hanging out, panting.
“Calvin is a hog-stinkin’ sack of nothin’,” Elvis said.
A hog-stinkin’ sack of nothin’?
That was as good an insult as Popeye had heard in a long time. He made a mental note to remember it.
“How come?” Popeye said.
“He’s just a toe-jam tattletale, that’s all.”
A toe-jam tattletale?
That was another good one worth remembering.
“How come?” Popeye asked again.
Elvis stopped suddenly and whirled around to face Popeye. “Let’s do something,” he said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Elvis said. “What’s there to do around here?”
Popeye looked around.
Weeds. Ditch. Trees. Mailbox. House. Shed. Trailer.
He shrugged. “Not much.”
Elvis kicked at a rusty can on the side of the road, sending it tumbling into the weeds. “Shoot,” he said. “Must be something to do.”
“What about the Spit and Swear Club?” Popeye asked. He was dying to do some more spitting and swearing.
“Aw, that stupid club ain’t a club no more,” Elvis said.
Popeye’s heart sank clear down to his sneakers. “How come?”
“ ‘Cause it was stupid.”
Popeye could hardly believe his days as senior vice president of the best club he’d ever been in—shoot, the only club he’d ever been in—were already over.
Poof! Just like that.
When they got to the corner, where the road met the main highway, Elvis scooped up a handful of gravel and hurled it at the stop sign.
Thwang.
Popeye scooped up some gravel and threw it at the stop sign, too.
Thwang.
They walked along the shoulder of the highway for a while. Popeye liked the way Elvis didn’t want to talk all the time like most other kids did.
Every once in a while, they stopped to pick some blackberries. They caught grasshoppers. They found a soggy lottery ticket in the weeds. They stopped to poke at a snapping turtle sunning on the hot asphalt at the edge of the road. Popeye used a stick, but not Elvis. Elvis poked that nasty looking snapping turtle with his finger. Quick, hard jabs that made the turtle yank its head into its shell with a hiss.
After a while, they turned around and went back to Popeye’s house and sat on the porch steps. Velma’s voice drifted through the screen door from inside the house.
“George IV, William IV, Victoria, Edward VII . . .”
Popeye hoped Elvis wouldn’t think Velma was cracking up. But Elvis acted like it was the most normal thing in the world for some old lady to be reciting the kings and queens of England in chronological order.
The boys watched a dragonfly flit around the weeds out by the mailbox.
They played tic-tac-toe in the dirt with a stick. They took turns scratching Boo’s stomach with the tic-tac-toe stick.
Then, out of the clear blue, Elvis grabbed Popeye by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. “Let’s have an adventure,” he said.
Popeye blinked. “An adventure?”
Elvis nodded. “It doesn’t have to be a big adventure,” Elvis said. “It can be a small adventure.” He gave Popeye another little shake. “Let’s have a small adventure.”
A small adventure!
That was exactly what Popeye had been needing.
A small adventure.
“Okay,” he said.
Elvis ran off toward the woods behind the shed. “Come on!” he called to Popeye over his shoulder.
Popeye jumped off the porch steps.
“Come on, Boo,” he said. “Let’s go have a small adventure.” Then he hurried after Elvis, his stomach turning flips of excitement and his heart light and breezy as a cloud.
5
POPEYE AND ELVIS spent all afternoon trying to have a small adventure.
They followed a trail that ran through the woods and ended up at a dirt road.
They followed the dirt road until it came to a dead end.
They overturned moss-covered rocks in the creek behind Popeye’s house and built a dam out of branches and mud to trap minnows.
They walked to the gas station down on the main highway, where Popeye was never supposed to go without asking Velma first.
But they didn’t have an adventure.
Not even a small one.
“This place is boring,” Elvis said, dragging a stick through the dirt on the side of the highway as they made their way back to Popeye’s house.
“Yeah, I know.” Popeye dragged a stick in the dirt, too.
Boo sauntered along behind them, stopping from time to time to sniff a signpost or scratch a flea.
“Maybe we should start the Spit and Swear Club again,” Popeye said, trying to sound like he didn’t care one bit, even though he was about to bust wide open from hoping.
“Naw.” Elvis shook his head. “We’d have to let Calvin join, and you know what he is.”
Popeye’s hope popped like a balloon and disappeared into the sultry summer air. “Yeah,” he said. “A hog-stinkin’ sack of nothin’.”
“Dern right.” Elvis sliced the air with his stick in a big Z shape.
Zip.
Zip.
Zip.
“And a toe-jam tattletale,” Popeye said.
“Dern right.”
When they turned onto the gravel road, all those curly-haired kids came racing toward them.
Prissy and Calvin and Walter and Willis and Shorty.
“Daddy was digging and digging, but that wheel is stuck like cement and he’s mad as fire and gone off somewhere,” Walter said.
“And Mama don’t even care,” Prissy said, running over to give Boo a hug.
“Yeah,” Shorty said. “She’s just sittin’ there cuttin’ pictures out of the Good Housekeeping magazine.” A line of grape Popsicle juice ran down his chin, his neck, and clear on down his stomach.
Elvis kept on walking like those kids were invisible. Popeye hurried after him.
“Where y’all going?” Prissy called, racing to catch up with them. She poked Elvis in the arm. “Where y’all going?” she repeated.
“None of your beeswax, bug-brain booger-breath,” Elvis said.
Popeye grinned and walked beside Elvis like he knew where they were going.
That Elvis. He was for sure the best insulter Popeye had ever laid eyes on. No doubt about it.
The whole gang of them made their way down the side of the road, Popeye and Elvis walking silently, their hands jammed in their pockets, and all the others skipping along behind them, jibbering and jabbering, throwing rocks and picking wild-flowers and whistling for Boo to follow them.
Popeye couldn’t help but notice how different Elvis was from all the others.
Elvis was taciturn.
taciturn: adjective; reserved or
uncommunicative in speech; saying little
All the others were loquacious.
loquacious: adjective; talkative
Every now and then, Elvis jumped to the other side of the drainage ditch and back again.
Popeye jumped to the other side of the drainage ditch and back again.
All the others (except Shorty) jumped to the other side of the drainage ditch and back again.
After three or four good jumps, Prissy slipped in the mud and fell into the knee-deep water.
Elvis kept right on walking in that silent way of his, but all his brothers hooted and hollered, clutching their stomachs and slapping their knees. Prissy let loose with a string of cusswords and threw gravel at everybody before she sat on the side of the road to dump muddy water out of her tap shoes.
Then she ran off toward the motor home, promising to tell their mama on every one of them and threatening to eat all their M&M’s.
When they got to Popeye’s house, Elvis whipped around and yelled, “Y’all go on home and I mean it.”
Walter looked at Willis and Willis looked at Calvin and Calvin nudged Shorty and they all raced off and disappeared around the curve in the road.
“Let’s go check our minnow trap,” Elvis said.
So Popeye and Elvis and Boo trotted through the weeds and jumped over logs and ducked under branches until they got to the creek.
The cool, clear water flowed through tree roots and tumbled over mossy rocks, settling into a pool formed by the dam of branches and mud the boys had built. About a dozen tiny silvery minnows darted around in the pool.
Elvis cupped his hands and scooped some up.
Popeye cupped his hands and scooped some up.
Elvis put his hands in the creek and let the minnows swim away.
Popeye put his hands in the creek and let the minnows swim away.
Then they sat on the mossy bank beside the creek.
The birds chirped above them.
The water gurgled below them.
Boo snored beside them.
And then . . .
. . . a small adventure came floating down the creek.
6
ELVIS JUMPED UP. “What’s that?” he said.
Popeye leaned forward so he could get a better look at whatever it was floating toward them.
A tiny boat!
A yellow and brown and blue boat that dipped and bobbed as it made its way down the creek, bumping into rotten leaves that floated on the water and gliding smoothly over tiny waterfalls that flowed over the slippery rocks.
Popeye felt a swirl of excitement as the boat got closer.
A boat!
He had played in this creek about a bajillion times and had never, not once, seen a boat.
Elvis didn’t even take his sneakers off before stepping down into the water to scoop it up. Then he climbed back onto the sloping creek bank, holding the little boat out in the palm of his hand.
Popeye peered at it with his good eye. “A Yoo-hoo box!” he said.
The boat was made out of a waxy cardboard Yoohoo chocolate drink box. Someone had made the box into a perfect boat, without a single piece of tape or staples to hold it together.
“I wonder where it came from,” Popeye said.
Elvis looked up the creek. “Where does this creek start?”
Popeye lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “I’ve been a pretty far ways up there,” he said, “but I’ve never been to the end.”
“How far’d you go?”
“Not that far, I don’t reckon.” Popeye didn’t want to tell Elvis that Velma wouldn’t allow him to go farther than hollering distance from home.
Elvis peered inside the boat. “Hey!” he hollered. “There’s something in here!”
He pulled out a tiny square of folded paper.
Popeye hopped from foot to foot while he watched Elvis unfold the paper.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then he peered over Elvis’s shoulder and both boys read out loud together:
“Yoo-hoo! Ha! Ha!”
Elvis looked at Popeye and Popeye looked at Elvis.
“What the heck kind of dang ignoramus talking is that?” Elvis said.
But Popeye’s heart was thumping in his chest, and he felt an odd surge of love for the person who had written the note and sent it down the creek in that perfect little boat.
Well, maybe not love.
But like.
Popeye liked the person who had sent the note down the creek in the Yoo-hoo box.
He studied the note in Elvis’s hand. The words were scrawled in big, sloppy letters with a blue colored pencil.
“Serendipity,” he said.
Elvis’s eyebrows squeezed together, and he frowned at Popeye. “What are you talking about?”
“Serendipity,” Popeye repeated. “It’s like when something good happens all of a sudden when you’re not expecting it.”
Serendipity had been last week’s word from Velma, so Popeye knew all about it.
serendipity: noun; the occurrence of events by chance in a happy way
Elvis nodded. “Yeah.
”
They both leaned over and looked up the creek.
Popeye tried to imagine who in the world had sent that little Yoo-hoo boat down the creek.
Elvis brushed his hair out of his face and looked at Popeye with narrowed, serious eyes. “We got to find out who sent this boat,” he said.
Popeye nodded solemnly.
“Let’s hide it,” Elvis said.
The boys raked up a pile of rotten leaves with their hands. Elvis placed the boat on the ground beneath a crooked oak tree and they pushed the leaves over it, covering it completely.
“We got to keep this a secret from Calvin and them,” Elvis said.
A little tingle of excitement ran through Popeye. He and Elvis had a secret!
As they made their way back down the path through the woods toward the field, Popeye called out, “Hey, Elvis, is this our small adventure?”
But Elvis just kept on walking in that way of his—head down, fists jammed in his pockets. Taci-turn.
So Popeye turned to Boo and whispered, “Boo, I think this might be our small adventure.”
7
EDWARD III, RICHARD II, Henry IV, Henry V . . .
Popeye ate cereal at the kitchen table while Velma tried to keep from cracking up.
When she got to Elizabeth II, Popeye said, “Me and Elvis are gonna be back yonder at the creek today, okay?”
Velma pulled a couple of squishy pink curlers out of her hair and tossed them into the fruit bowl on the table. “Don’t you be going too far into them woods, you hear?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There’s snakes and I don’t know what else back there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you keep your eye on that boy Elvis,” Velma said. “We don’t know nothing about them people.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Seems to me like they oughta be gettin’ that big ole trailer out of here, if you ask me.”
“It’s a Holiday Rambler.”
Velma ran her fingers through her thin gray hair. “Who in the world ever heard of folks living like that, anyway? Them kids wouldn’t be so wild if they lived in a house like normal folks.” She shook her head and made a tsk-tsk noise. “Running around here like a pack of stray dogs.”
The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis Page 2
