Adventures in Reading

by Debra Chapoton

  Chapter 4

  Dave and Rob were sweaty and hungry when they finally reached the lodge. There were sandwiches set out in the dining hall and they helped themselves. They sat down at a small table next to their moms who were halfway through their lunches.

  “Where have you two been?” Dave’s mom asked.

  “Around,” Dave answered. His mother didn’t press for a better answer and took another bite.

  Rob’s mother brushed her bleached blonde hair out of her eyes and patted her mouth with her napkin. “I don’t want any trouble this year,” she warned. “They’ve got horses here this summer and I want you and Ricky to keep away from the stables.”

  Rob glanced at Dave and raised an eyebrow. “Ricky’s already riding, ma.”

  “What!” She started to rise from her chair then sat back down. “Oh, just wait till your father gets back from golfing.”

  Then Dave’s mother looked at Dave. “I suppose your brother is riding, too?”

  “Yup,” Dave said, “last we saw of them they were galloping through the woods. We tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen to us.”

  The two mothers looked at each other then one of them said, “Oh, well, boys will be boys.” They both laughed, finished their food, picked up their beach bags and headed out. Dave’s mother turned back a second and handed Dave two room keys. “Here,” she said, “we unpacked your suitcases. Your room is 212 and the other key you can give to your brother. He and Ricky are in 214.”

  Rob yelled after his mother for his key and she told them that the second keys were on the dressers in both rooms.

  Two more people came in to the dining room after the women left so the boys kept their voices low as they planned out a little surprise for Lonnie and Ricky. Dave’s mom never should have trusted him with Lonnie’s key.

  Lonnie and Ricky were starting to get sore bottoms. Every time Missy trotted her horse their horses followed suit and they bumped up and down without control. Ricky glanced back at Kevin once and saw that he seemed to being sitting the trot like a cowboy. He couldn’t figure out how to do it. They circled around half of Mount Rocky before reaching a two-lane road. Missy stopped her horse and held up her hand.

  “We can go back to the stable now or cross over onto State land and ride in there for another half hour. The trails are wider and smoother and there’s a nice meadow we can canter through.”

  Lonnie looked back at Ricky who gave his head a little shake. He was aching and hungry. “Another time,” Lonnie said. “We have to get back for lunch.”

  “Whatever,” Missy said. She looked up and down the road. There were rarely any cars that went by here. She led them in a circle, but as she looped by Kevin she motioned with her head for him to cut in behind her. As they backtracked on the trail now Kevin and Missy were together with the bullies behind them. “Payback time,” she whispered to Kevin. She gently urged Misty into his slowest canter and Kevin did the same with Keno. The two horses kept pace and the kids sat on their saddles as comfortably as if they were on the merry-go-round.

  Johnny and Blackie, however, kept up by trotting as fast as they could. They wouldn’t change their gait into a canter unless instructed to do so by their riders. Lonnie and Ricky had no idea how to make the horses change gaits. It was all they could do to hang on and bounce up and down painfully.

  At last they reached the area where Dave and Rob had attacked them and the trail narrowed. Missy slowed to a trot and finally a walk. The last stretch was long enough for the horses to all cool down. She had already decided that she was going to make these jerks rub down their horses themselves, a job that she always did. Her great-grandfather wouldn’t object, she was sure.

  Dave and Rob’s room was actually connected to 214 by two interior doors that could be locked from one side only. Apparently their mothers had left the doors open when they unpacked everything. They checked out their room, nothing fancy, two twin beds and a bathroom, then looked at the other room. It was exactly the same.

  On their way out of the dining room they had each sneakily made off with a handful of little ketchup packets. Now the plan they had hatched seemed kind of lame. They were going to put ketchup in all of their brothers’ underwear or in the pockets of their jeans.

  “Think of something else,” Dave said. “This is stupid.” He tossed his handful of ketchup into the wastebasket.

  “Squeeze out all their toothpaste?”

  “Lame.”

  “T.P. their room?”

  “Dumb.”

  “You think of something.”

  Dave walked over to the window and looked down at the beach. “I know. Sand. Just a little sand in their sheets. They’ll be itching all night.” He went into the bathroom and took the two plastic wrapped drinking cups that were provided and tossed one to Rob. “A cupful ought to do it.”

  Missy rode into the corral and dismounted. She quickly tied Misty to the hitching post and hurried over to the gate in order to close it as soon as the last horse and rider were in. Kevin had tied up Keno and was already unsaddling him, but Johnny and Blackie had headed straight for the water trough and Lonnie and Ricky had no control.

  “Get me off this nag,” Lonnie muttered. He tossed the reins over the horse’s head and into the water. He started to swing his left leg over the horse’s rump and accidentally kicked Ricky in the knee.

  “Hey! Watch it!” Ricky scolded, then he laughed as Lonnie tumbled to the trampled earth, his weak knees giving way as soon as his feet hit the ground. Ricky was afraid the same thing would happen to him so he was extra careful as he dismounted. He didn’t let go of the saddle until he was certain his legs would hold him.

  Missy and Kevin had already put their saddles away and were coming back out just in time to see Lonnie get up and brush himself off, all the time cussing out the poor horse.

  “Okay, that’s enough water. Bring them over here,” Missy commanded. “You have to unsaddle them and then rub them down.”

  “Fat chance, girlie. I don’t think so.” Lonnie huffed and spit on the ground. He walked as steadily as he could to the gate and let himself out. “Come on Ricky. Let’s go eat.” Ricky stumbled after him and was just nice enough to latch the gate behind himself. Missy and Kevin watched the two boys walk bow-legged off toward the lodge.

  Impulsively Missy called after them, “Too bad! We would have told you about the other cave entrance!” The boys kept walking.

  The lodge had two cooks who prepared all the meals for the guests in the lodge. Today they had baked several fruit pies and had set them all on the kitchen windowsills to cool. The delicious aroma wafted out toward the beach where several adults commented on the smell, the ladies all delighting in the luxury of a week off from cooking and cleaning.

  The same appetizing scent reached the sharper nostrils of three bears still wandering in the forest.

  Dave and Rob pulled back the bedspread and top sheet of each twin bed then spread the sand on the lower half of the bottom sheet. They remade the beds with more care than they had ever done their own in the past then high-fived each other. They slipped back into their own room and locked the adjoining door from their side. They hoped that their brothers wouldn’t think to bolt their side so they could sneak back in whenever they wanted. They changed into their bathing suits and grabbed a couple of bath towels.

  “Okay,” Dave announced as he ran his fingers through his hair, “time to check out the beach and the available female flesh.”

  Rob grabbed his key off the dresser and stuck it in a little zippered pocket on his suit. “Ready,” he said.

  Lonnie and Ricky stopped near the kitchen windows and gaped at the pies.

  “I hope those are for lunch,” Lonnie said.

  “Probably not,” Ricky said.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Lonnie said as he glanced around to see if anyone was watching. He took two steps toward the window when he heard the porch door creak open and saw his brother and Rob step out. He cur
sed and said, “Yeah, I guess we’ll have to wait for dinner. Come on. Don’t let them see us.”

  They back tracked around the side and circled the lodge. They entered through the front door and cut through the lobby to the dining room. Luckily there were a few sandwiches left. They didn’t even sit down to devour them; they stood at the window and watched their brothers try to flirt with a couple of high school girls. When they finished their food they searched out their mothers to get their room key. They weren’t very happy to find out that they’d have to ask Dave for their key.

  It took Missy and Kevin a half an hour to get all four horses rubbed down. Missy was glad for Kevin’s help since she usually had to do it all by herself. She didn’t mind the work, but today she was starving for lunch and wanted a little time to take a dip in the lake before she had to take a couple of lodge guests out on the trails this afternoon. Kevin wasn’t opening the Snack Shack until 3 o’clock so he’d have plenty of time to swim, too.

  When they finally made it back to the lodge all of the lunch items were cleared away. Kevin coaxed one of the cooks into making them grilled cheese sandwiches and they ate them in the kitchen, sitting on a couple of stools at one of the prep stations. Missy kept eying the pies on the windowsills while Kevin talked to the cook about her son who Kevin knew from school.

  “I’ll be right back,” Missy said, getting off the stool and heading toward the lobby. She munched the last of her sandwich and wiped her hands on her jeans. There was a small office in the lobby where Kevin’s mom, Mrs. Jackson, could often be found. Missy wanted to check the sign-up sheet for horse-back-riding that was kept on the counter there.

  “Hi, Missy,” Mrs. Jackson greeted her. She was always so friendly and happy. Everyone liked Mrs. Jackson. Missy loved the story about how Mr. and Mrs. Jackson had met at the lodge when they both worked here when they were off from college in the summers. That was like forever ago, when the lodge had another wing before it burned and also when they had lots of horses. Mr. Jackson had been a stable boy and Mrs. Jackson had been a maid. Now they managed the place and were in the process of buying it from Missy’s great-grandfather. They would get all the property, too, except for the little stone cottage across the lake, which Mr. Stark had said that Missy would inherit.

  “Hi, Mrs. Jackson. Are there any more people signed up to ride?” she asked.

  “No, honey, you’ve just got the one couple. Nobody tomorrow, of course, since it’s Sunday, but Monday and Tuesday are full. Looks like you’ll be riding all day long.”

  “I don’t mind. I love it.” Missy looked at the list and was happy to see that the bullies’ names weren’t under Monday or Tuesday. “Hey,” she said when she noticed that their names also weren’t written down for today.

  “What’s the matter, dear?”

  “Oh, nothing, well, yeah. These boys said they were signed up and we took them out riding, but,” she paused and turned the sheet toward Mrs. Jackson, “they weren’t signed up.”

  “Let me guess, Dave and Rob?” Mrs. Jackson scowled, raising one eyebrow for a question mark.

  “No, their brothers, Lonnie and Ricky.”

  Mrs. Jackson shook her head and thought for a moment. “Tell you what. If they try that stunt again, ask them for a “riding coupon”. I was already thinking of typing up a form people would have to sign releasing us from liability.”

  “Liability?”

  “That means so they can’t sue us if they fall off and get hurt. They ride at their own risk. I’ll have a tear-off portion at the bottom where I’ll write in their names and the time of their ride. They can hand that to you. That will be the “riding coupon”. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Give us our keys.” Lonnie and Ricky came up behind their brothers just as the pretty girls they were talking to started to laugh.

  The girls were more likely in the same grade as the younger boys, but Dave and Rob got there first. They both stood up blocking the boys from getting a closer look at the bikini-clad blondes.

  “Here,” Dave shoved a key at Lonnie, “get lost.”

  “Where’s mine?” Ricky asked his brother.

  “On the dresser in your room. Adiós, hermano.”

  Because he knew it would bug his brother, Lonnie peaked around him and smiled at the girls. “Hi, I’m Lonnie,” he said, “and this is Ricky. See you at the campfire.”

  They quickly made their exit, jogging up the beach, across the grass and into the lodge, anxious to find their rooms and get changed into swimsuits.

  The rest of the afternoon was fun for everyone. Lonnie and Ricky dove into the water, swam past the dock and continued on across the lake. They were hoping to better their time of thirty minutes, a goal they had set for themselves last summer and only achieved once. Missy and Kevin swam out to the dock and played underwater tag with three kids, one of whom Kevin knew from previous summers. Dave and Rob never got into the water. They succeeded in talking the two girls into walking around to the front of the lodge and sitting on the front porch with them, out of sight and earshot of all of the adults. Later, Kevin opened the Snack Shack and sold a dozen sodas, four bags of potato chips and six candy bars for a profit of $8.80, his slowest day so far this summer. Missy guided a newly married couple on the trails and into the state forest and back. They saw a doe and her two spotted fawns and this prompted the couple to ask questions about the wildlife. The wife had heard a rumor that there were mountain lions around. Missy assured them that the rumor was false. She did tell them, however, that they had recently trapped and relocated a couple of harmless bobcats. The rumor probably started because of that. Missy guaranteed them that there were no dangerous animals at Big Pine Lodge, no mountain lions, bobcats or bears. The wife seemed relieved. When they got back to the stables the husband gave Missy a five-dollar tip.