by Andrew Smith
The animals all clapped and laughed.
The bats shrieked, “Ethan Pixler is taking a bath! Ethan Pixler is taking a bath!”
And my great-grandmother sang:
On my passing I will walk in a garden
Awash with the blood that grants heaven’s pardon.
A fragrant rose from ev’ry sin I’ve committed
Will bloom and sing out, “This sinner’s been acquitted.”
Oh, the garden of blood! Oh, the garden of blood!
I will walk with Him in the garden of blood!
Again, not nearly as fun as “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” but I didn’t think most of the animals at the party could clap, on account of their front arms being so stubby, and not having shoulders or palms, and so on.
When I climbed out from the pool, I was finally clean, but also completely soaked. And for the first time since I’d fallen into that (excuse me) stupid hole after (excuse me) dumb James Jenkins threw the ball too high when we were playing (excuse me) idiotic Spud, I felt good, and happy, too. But as soon as I realized how nice this all was, I was sad all over again, just thinking about what Mom and Dad were going through in the world up above.
I began to wonder if I’d ever be able to do anything at all in my life and not have my parents suffer because of it. After all, my mother cried for days when I started preschool.
She even cried when Dad took the training wheels off my bike for the first time.
And while everyone else danced and the music continued on an endless loop, Bartleby saw that there was something new that was making me unhappy.
“You should be having a good time, Sam!” Bartleby said. “Why aren’t you dancing? Why such a long face? You’re not an armadillo! Ha ha! I’m the one with the long face! Ha ha! Get it, Sam? Get it? Long face? Armadillo? Do I need to draw you a picture?”
I sighed. “I’m just— I’m afraid my mom and dad are worried and sad.”
Bartleby straightened up. His eyes became serious and narrow slits of black glass.
“Sam,” Bartleby scolded, “you are NOT responsible for other people’s happiness or sadness. Perhaps you need to spend a few more weeks down here so I can help you straighten out all this growing-up nonsense, because that’s what it is. Nonsense. But for now I think you need an attitude adjustment!”
And when Bartleby said “attitude adjustment,” his voice got dreamy and soft and his eyes opened up again. Then he snapped his front claws like a castanet and called out, “Server! Can this boy get a server, please? Is this a party or a dentist’s waiting room? Come on, folks!”
Through the crowded dance floor came a slender golden coyote with long, graceful legs. The coyote seemed to be smiling at me, but coyotes never aren’t smiling, I think. And there was some kind of table strapped to the back of the coyote, so when she stopped beside me I could see the table was filled with chocolate cupcakes and glasses of ice-cold milk.
The coyote, grinning because that’s what coyotes do, said, “Would you like some refreshments, Mr. Pixler?”
“Oh, thank you. But I’m not Ethan Pixler,” I said. “My name’s Sam Abernathy.”
The coyote hunched down and squinted, her eyes shifting suspiciously from side to side, because that’s also what coyotes do. Then she snatched up the shoe I’d taken off and started to slink away with it (because coyotes do stuff like that, too.)
Bartleby snapped, “Hey! Where are you going with that shoe? Put it down!”
The coyote turned into a little wadded-up ball of guilt, her tail curled tightly forward between her legs. She lowered her head almost as though she thought it would make her invisible, but she still kept my shoe in her teeth.
“Audrey,” Bartleby warned, “put down the shoe.”
Audrey, the coyote, dropped my shoe and raised her head as though she had no idea what had just happened. Her tail stayed put between her legs.
Coyotes, like most dogs, generally feel guilty about something their instincts drive them to do.
I ate two cupcakes and drank three glasses of milk from the serving tray on the back of Audrey, the very friendly and polite but sneaky coyote. When I was finished, I told Audrey thank you very much, and she offered to lick the frosting and milk mustache off my face. I thought that was nice of her, but also a little disgusting, so I told her maybe not this time.
“Okay. Well, back to work for me!” Audrey said.
And when she wandered off through the crowd of dancing animals, I noticed that my shoe was missing, and that Audrey, who was just disappearing behind a circle of dancing jackrabbits, was carrying it off in her teeth.
So much for trusting coyotes, no matter how polite they are!
Tink tink tink!
Tink tink tink!
Everything got quiet. The dancers and music stopped.
Bartleby tapped his claw onto the side of an empty milk glass and cleared his throat.
Tink tink tink!
“Folks! Folks! Our guest of honor has finally arrived!”
And when Bartleby said “guest of honor,” his eyes grew so large, they nearly swallowed his entire face, and he waved his empty milk glass slowly toward me.
Then he added, “Speech! Speech!”
“Speech! Speech!” squealed the bats on the ceiling.
Nothing is as quiet as the quiet inside an underground cavern when a thousand sets of ears are waiting for you to say something noteworthy.
“Um? Sam?” Bartleby said.
“What am I supposed to do?” I whispered.
“Give your speech,” Bartleby whispered back.
“I don’t have a speech,” I argued in a whisper.
“Nobody will notice, as long as you say something incredibly clever,” Bartleby pointed out.
And when Bartleby said “incredibly clever,” well . . . you know the rest.
ROBBING BANKS WITH A FLATBREAD
“I’d like to start by saying that I have never given a speech before.
“Well, not unless you count talking to other four-year-olds at preschool for show-and-tell as giving a speech.
“And I’m afraid I have nothing to show you, and therefore nothing to tell you about—so let me simply say thank you to—”
One of the otters who’d helped Bartleby push me into the water raised his (or her—with otters it’s impossible to tell) front paw urgently and said, “Ooh! Ooh!”
“Yes?” I asked.
The otter said this: “Cuéntanos una historia sobre el robo de un banco!”
I froze.
I said, “Um.”
The otter repeated himself (or herself), slowly, deliberately, like he (or she) was talking to an (excuse me) idiot. “Cuéntanos una historia sobre el robo de un banco!”
Audrey, the polite and very sneaky coyote who had small bits of my shoe that she’d chewed to pieces stuck to her snout, said, “He wants you to tell us a story about robbing banks!”
Apparently, Audrey was not just polite and sneaky, she also liked to eat shoes and spoke several languages.
I cleared my throat, buying time to explain myself. After waiting more than a century for my (or whoever’s) arrival, the animals here in the underground party had understandably come to expect certain things from their guest of honor, and I was unsure how to proceed, fearful that I would disappoint them.
It was, after all, the first speech I had ever in my life had to give, and I did not want to fall into a hole, so to speak.
“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered to Bartleby.
Bartleby gave me an armadillo grin, which was not actually a grin so much as it was Bartleby’s attempt at ventriloquism. Through his teeth, he whispered, “Just tell them anything at all that you like to do, and then pretend it’s the same thing as robbing a bank.”
I cleared my throat again.
I began, “Last month, when I visited my aunt and uncle in Plano, they allowed me to make myself an olive and soppressata flatbread for lunch. . . .”
“Which you then
used to rob a bank?” Audrey shouted from somewhere in the crowd.
“He robbed a bank with an olive and soppressata flatbread!” shrieked the bats.
“From scratch?” snapped a snapping turtle.
The snapping turtle looked angry, but it could have been mostly my own prejudicial reaction to his appearance. Also, as with otters, I could not tell if the snapping turtle was a boy or a girl, so I’m just going with my instinct and guessing the snapping turtle was a boy turtle.
“Um. Yes, I made it from scratch,” I said. “I started off by—”
“Was it gluten-free?” the snapping turtle blurted out. His gums made clicking sounds.
I said, “Huh?”
“Gluten-free!” snapped the snapping turtle, who apparently was not known for lengthier, more descriptive comments.
“Gluten-free!” echoed the bats.
And Audrey, the coyote, said, “Gluten is a general name for the proteins found in grass-related grains, such as wheat.”
Not only was she polite and sneaky, Audrey also enjoyed eating shoes, was multilingual, and knew a lot of stuff about life.
“You can’t rob a bank with a gluten-free soppressata flatbread!” argued an as-yet-unheard-from contentious jackrabbit.
“Ethan Pixler could do it!” shouted a prairie dog with chocolate frosting on his face.
“Ethan Pixler puede hacerlo!” agreed the otter.
The bats echoed, “Ethan Pixler!”
It was crazy.
And just as all the animals were building into a frenzy of excited arguments about gluten and bank robbery, Bartleby raised his armadillo claws and said, “Music! Music! Let’s dance!”
The little radio came back on.
My great-grandmother’s twangy voice began again.
Then everything shook and rumbled like the world was collapsing in on us.
I had never experienced an earthquake before, but this must be one, I thought. Everything rattled. The walls of the cave moaned deep complaints about the suddenness of change—but that’s exactly what you’d expect from rocks.
And Bartleby’s eyes narrowed. His shoulders, if he had any, hunched together.
Bartleby said, “They’re here for you, Sam! They made it!”
And the bats said, “They made it!”
EIGHTH GRADE
THE HIGHEST AND THE LOWEST POINTS IN BLUE CREEK
Dad didn’t start talking to me again for nearly a week following that rainy survival campout.
Unsurprisingly, he caught a terrible cold and was bedridden for the first few days after we got back. But everyone could tell there was something more than a cold that kept Dad from being his usual filler-in of all the blanks.
It was a definite low point for us.
And I felt awful, but there was no going back. Like gravity combined with an unseen hole that gapes open in the path ahead of my footsteps, once I had gone there, all I could do was hope for some kind of soft landing.
It was a lot for Dad to deal with. In fact, the morning after we ate boiled worms in the downpour, one of the first things Dad said to me when we woke up from not actually sleeping was, “You were joking about not wanting to go to MIT, right, Sam?”
But I had to admit the truth and tell him that no, I was not joking—that I really, truly, did not enjoy anything at all that involved math or science, and that I knew what I really wanted to do more than anything else. I told Dad that I wanted to learn the culinary arts. I wanted to be a chef—maybe even a famous one who could be on television, like Resa O’Hare.
And Dad just shook his head. He poked a damp stick into the embers of our fire, trying to prod some energy from it. It was drizzly and gray in the morning, and Dad said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Sam.”
If Mom and Dad were a separate country, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Sam” would be their official motto. It would be in Latin, in a gold ribbon across the bottom of their flag or something.
Nescio quid facturus sum tecum Sam
“The only future for our world is math and science. It’s the only opportunity for success and happiness you’ll have, Son.”
I didn’t tell him that he seemed to be doing just fine, successwise, despite the fact that he was a kilt-wearing, miniature golf course–owning Texan who neither spliced genes nor calculated near misses with asteroids, and who also ate garbage out of used beer cans.
Then he said, “I guess we should clean up after ourselves and hike out to where Mom said she’d meet up with us.”
Those were the last things he said to me that morning. And that was pretty much the last thing he said to me for about five days.
For a while I felt like Dad would never snap out of his moping around. He didn’t need to say it outright: I had shattered his dreams, even though they weren’t actually his dreams, but were more like a cloud of bad-smelling air that followed us around everywhere, and that he expected me to breathe in and enjoy.
It made me sad to think how all of a sudden, at eleven years old, I had forced my father to confront the reality that I had formed my own ideas about the way things should work out for me, even if I might make mistakes trying.
• • •
Blue Creek Days are always held just before Halloween. The date has something to do with the traditional time for planting onion seeds in Texas. Traditionally, onion growing had been a major factor in the settling of Blue Creek, since the area around our town was at one time famous for growing onions, as opposed to being famous for having four-year-old boys who get trapped inside abandoned wells.
With just a little more than a week to go, I took advantage of every opportunity I could to experiment with different interpretations of macaroni and cheese at Karim’s house, and tried to avoid my dad as much as possible. Hayley Garcia and the rest of the Science Club kids worked on setting up a display and assembling our experiment for picking up and recording low-frequency rogue radio communications signals, which she had hypothesized were long-running (possibly successful) attempts at interactions with alien cultures.
Karim suggested that we combine the activities. He said there would be no more effective way to invite space aliens to Blue Creek than by offering up some quality macaroni and cheese.
I was nervous about the whole thing. What if I didn’t do my best? What if my food ended up being disgusting—and everything I thought I loved doing turned out to be a complete failure?
“This. This is the highest point in Blue Creek,” Hayley Garcia said. She placed a computer printout of the town on the table in Mr. Mannweiler’s classroom, her fingertip stabbing the precise target for our experiment. “Right here would be the best location for gathering the data for our project.”
Michael Dolgoff looked bored. This all happened in our Science Club meeting on Wednesday afternoon. Earlier, Michael Dolgoff had campaigned to reintroduce the bug gladiatorial arena. He told us how he’d recently conducted a cage match between a centipede and a wolf spider. The wolf spider got away in his house, so Michael Dolgoff’s mother took away his television, computer, and cell phone.
Karim and Bahar studied the point on Hayley Garcia’s map where she’d pinned her index finger. No place in Blue Creek struck any of us as being particularly higher in elevation than anywhere else, but where Hayley was pointing did surprise some of us.
Bahar said, “That’s right where Lily Putt’s is.”
“Exactly,” affirmed Hayley Garcia, who was president, despot, and Minister of the Department of Crackpot Theories for our club. And she added, “To be precise, the highest point in Blue Creek is at the top of the head of the T. rex hazard, which is located at hole thirteen.”
It kind of made me feel proud that the highest point in Blue Creek was at the top of our fake dinosaur’s head in my family’s miniature golf course, and that possible conversations with extraterrestrial civilizations could be taking place inside his hollow fiberglass skull, but I wasn’t sure why.
SUNDAY MORNING BISCUITS
AND GRAVY
This starts with a computer search and pretending to be someone I am probably not allowed to pretend to be.
I’ll be honest: Dad was not the only one who wasn’t quite himself the week following our last survival disaster. I was a mess. And it only had a little to do with feeling guilty about telling Dad I was not happy about devoting the rest of my life to physics or whatever subject he thought was going to navigate the ship of my future. I was also very anxious about coming up with a dish that would convincingly win Kenny Jenkins’s (excuse me) dumb Blue Creek Days Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off Challenge.
And on top of everything else, one thing I still couldn’t figure out that was bothering me more than anything else for nearly a week now was this: James Jenkins.
My head was filled with questions, and even if the answers seemed sensible to me, they didn’t hold up with the James Jenkins myth that everyone in Blue Creek had collectively constructed for the past seven years.
I mean, why was James Jenkins nice to me? Was he really trying to help me when we were stuck in Coach Bovard’s torture chamber? Did he actually ask me to come over to his house and hang out with him? Why? Why did he pick me to confess to about how much he loved to dance? Why did he show me those pictures of himself dancing? What was I supposed to do with that information?
I realize you can’t ask yourself rhetorical questions, because you’re always going to think up instant answers as though you’re talking to yourself, which is what I was doing. Because I think I knew the answer to what I was supposed to do with the stuff I’d learned about James Jenkins.
So during the usual time when I’d normally be sneaking in and watching shows about food and cooking on the living room television, I got onto our computer and looked up the dance studio called Acceleration in Austin.
I looked through the school’s photo gallery page and found more pictures of James Jenkins there than just the two on the home page. And I also clicked on the link to the “Breaking the Barriers: Austin’s Ballet Boy Wonder” newspaper story that appeared in the Statesman.
