Hoot (13 page)

FOURTEEN

Luckily the next day was Saturday, so Roy didn't have to get up early to catch the school bus.

As he sat down for breakfast, the phone rang. It was Garrett. He'd never before called Roy, but now he wanted him to go skateboarding at the outlet mall.

“I don't have a skateboard, remember?” Roy said.

“That's okay. I got an extra.”

“No thanks. I can't make it today.”

The true reason that Garrett had called was, of course, to find out what had happened to Dana Matherson at Trace Middle.

“Dude, somebody tied him to a flagpole!”

“Wasn't me,” said Roy. On this topic he couldn't talk freely in front of his parents.

“Then who? And how?” Garrett demanded.

“No comment,” said Roy, echoing Mullet Fingers.

“Aw, come on, Eberhardt!”

“See you Monday.”

After breakfast his father drove him to the bicycle shop to pick up his new tire, and by noon Roy was fully mobile again. An address for “L. B. Leep” was listed in the phone book, and Roy had no difficulty locating the house. It was on West Oriole Avenue, the same street as the bus stop where he'd first spotted the running boy.

In the Leep driveway sat a dented old Suburban and a shiny new Camaro convertible. Roy leaned his bike against the mailbox post and hurried up the sidewalk. He heard voices bickering inside the house, and he hoped it was only a TV show with the volume turned up.

After three firm knocks, the door swung open and there stood Leon Leep, all six feet nine inches of him. He wore baggy red gym shorts and a sleeveless mesh jersey that exposed a pale kettle-sized belly. Leon looked as if he hadn't spent five minutes in the exercise room since retiring from pro basketball; all that remained of his NBA physique was his height.

Roy tilted back on his heels in order to see Leon's face. His expression was perturbed and preoccupied.

“Beatrice home?” Roy asked.

“Yeah, but she's kinda busy right now.”

“Only take a minute,” Roy said. “It's about school.”

“Oh. School,” said Leon, as if he'd forgotten where his daughter went five days a week. With a curious grunt, he lumbered off.

A moment later, Beatrice appeared. She looked stressed.

“Can I come in?” Roy asked.

“No,” she whispered. “It's a bad time.”

“Then can you come out?”

“Nuh-uh.” Beatrice glanced anxiously behind her.

“You heard what happened at the hospital?”

She nodded. “Sorry I didn't get back in time to help.”

“Is your brother okay?” Roy asked.

“Better than he was,” said Beatrice.

“Who's there? Who
is
that?” demanded a chilly voice from the hallway.

“Just a friend.”

“A boy?”

“Yeah, a boy,” Beatrice said, rolling her eyes for Roy's benefit.

A woman not much taller than Beatrice materialized in the doorway behind her. She had a sharp nose, beady, suspicious eyes, and a wild fountain of curly auburn hair. Blue smoke curled from a cigarette poised in glittering fingertips.

It could only be Lonna, the mother of Mullet Fingers.

“Who're you?” she asked.

“My name's Roy.”

“What do you want, Roy?” Lonna took a noisy drag off the cigarette.

“It's about school,” Beatrice said.

“Yeah, well, it's Saturday,” said Lonna.

Roy gave it a try. “I'm really sorry to bother you,Mrs. Leep. Beatrice and I are doing a science project together—”

“Not today, you're not,” Lonna cut him off. “Miz Beatrice here will be busy cleanin' the house. And the kitchen. And the bathrooms. And anything else I can think of.”

Roy believed Lonna was skating on thin ice. Beatrice was obviously the stronger of the two, and she was seething mad. Lonna might have softened her tone had she seen what her stepdaughter's teeth had done to Roy's bicycle tire.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Beatrice said to Roy, her jaw set grimly.

“Sure. Whatever.” He backed down the steps.

“We'll see about ‘tomorrow.' ” Lonna's voice was snide and croaky. “Next time, call first,” she grumped at Roy. “Ever heard of a telephone?”

As Roy rode away on his bike, he pondered the possibility that Mullet Fingers was better off roaming the woods than living at home with a witch for a mother. Roy wondered what made a grownup turn out so ill-tempered and obnoxious. It wouldn't have surprised him if one day Beatrice literally chewed Lonna's head off.

His next stop was Dana Matherson's house, where another shaky example of motherhood lived. Roy had a feeling that Dana's father was no prize, either, and it was he who answered the door. Roy had expected another Neanderthal hulk, but Mr. Matherson was thin and jittery and unhealthy-looking.

“Hi. My name's Roy.”

“Sorry, we're not interested,” Dana's father said politely, and began to shut the door.

“But I'm not selling anything,” Roy said through the crack. “I'm here to see Dana.”

“Uh-oh. Not again.” Mr. Matherson reopened the door and lowered his voice. “Let me guess. He's hired you to do his homework for him.”

“No, sir. I'm just a friend from school.”

“A ‘friend'?”

Dana didn't have many friends, Roy knew, and the few he had were all much larger and meaner-looking than Roy.

“I ride the bus with him,” Roy said, and decided to recycle Beatrice's line one more time: “We're doing a science project together.”

Mr. Matherson's brow furrowed. “Is this some kind of joke? Who
are
you, really?”

“I told you.”

Dana's father took out his wallet. “All right, young man, no more kidding around. How much do I owe you?”

“For what?”

“For my son's homework.” Mr. Matherson held up a five-dollar bill. “The usual?”

He looked defeated and ashamed. Roy felt sorry for him. Clearly it was an ordeal, raising a goon like Dana.

“You don't owe me a dime,” Roy said. “Is he home?”

Mr. Matherson asked Roy to wait at the door. Moments later, Dana appeared, wearing droopy boxer shorts and a grimy pair of sweat socks.

“You!” he snarled.

“Yup,” said Roy. “It's me.”

“What are you starin' at, cowgirl?”

Not much, Roy thought. He noticed that Dana's lisp had disappeared, along with the swelling in his upper lip.

“You must be nuts to ride all the way over here,” Dana said, “just so you can get stomped to a pulp.”

“Come on outside. I haven't got all day.”

“What did you say?”

Dana stepped onto the porch and shut the door behind him, presumably so that his father wouldn't be a witness to the bloodshed. He wound up and swung fiercely at Roy's head, but Roy saw it coming. He ducked, and Dana's fist connected solidly with a fiberglass bird feeder.

Once Dana stopped howling, Roy said, “Every time you try to hurt me, something bad happens to you. Haven't you noticed?”

Dana was doubled over, shaking his injured hand. He glared up at Roy.

“Like yesterday,” Roy went on, “when you tried to kill me in the janitor's closet. Remember? You ended up getting whupped by a girl, stripped naked, and strung to a flagpole.”

“I wasn't naked,” Dana snapped. “I had my underpants on.”

“When you go back to school Monday, everybody's going to be laughing at you. Everybody, Dana, and it's your own stupid fault. All you had to do was leave me alone. How hard is that?”

“Yeah, well, they'll be laughin' even louder when I kick your skinny ass to kingdom come, cowgirl. They'll be laughin' like hyenas, only you won't be around to hear 'em.”

“In other words,” Roy said irritably, “you haven't learned a thing.”

“That's right. And you can't make me!”

Roy sighed. “The only reason I came over here was to talk things out. Put a stop to all this dumb fighting.”

That had been his mission. If only he could make peace with Dana Matherson, even temporarily, then he'd be free to focus his energy on solving the Mullet Fingers dilemma.

But Dana hooted in his face. “You must be crazy. After all the crap that's happened to me, you're so dead, Eberhardt. You're so dead it ain't even funny.”

Roy realized it was no use. “Hopeless. That's what you are,” he said. “By the way, that's a cool shade of purple.” He pointed at Dana's swollen knuckles.

“Get outta here, cowgirl! Now!”

Roy left him there on the porch, pounding the front door and bellowing for his father to let him in. Evidently the lock had clicked behind him when he'd come outside to take a punch at Roy.

It was a funny scene, Dana hopping up and down in his baggy boxer shorts, but Roy wasn't in the mood to enjoy it.

 

He hid his bicycle and snuck through the hole in the fence. In broad daylight, the junkyard didn't look so spooky; just cluttered. Still, Roy had no difficulty spotting the rusty old panel truck with J
O-
J
O
'
S
I
CE
C
REAM AND
S
NO-
C
ONES
painted on the flimsy awning.

Beatrice's stepbrother was in the back of the truck, zipped into a moldy sleeping bag. When he heard Roy's footsteps, he stirred and cracked one eye. Roy knelt beside him.

“Brought you some water.”

“Thanks, man.” Mullet Fingers reached for the plastic bottle. “And thanks for last night. You get in trouble?”

“No big deal,” said Roy. “How do you feel?”

“Like cow poop.”

“You're looking better than you did,” Roy told him, which was the truth. The shine had returned to the boy's cheeks, and his dog-bitten arm no longer appeared puffy and stiff. A blue button-sized bruise was visible on the other arm, where the boy had yanked out the intravenous tube before fleeing the hospital.

“Fever's gone, but I hurt all over,” he said, squirming out of the sleeping bag. Roy looked the other way while he put on some clothes.

“I came to tell you something. It's about the new pancake house,” Roy said. “I talked to my dad and he said they can build whatever they want on that land, long as they've got the legal papers. There's nothing we can do.”

Mullet Fingers grinned. “ ‘We'?”

“All I mean is—”

“You're sayin' it's a lost cause, right? Come on, Tex, you gotta start thinkin' like an outlaw.”

“But I'm
not
an outlaw.”

“Yeah, you are. Last night at the hospital—that was definitely an outlaw move.”

“You were sick. You needed help,” Roy said.

Mullet Fingers finished off the water and tossed the empty bottle. He stood up, stretching like a cat.

“You crossed the line, and why? 'Cause you cared about what happened to me,” he said to Roy, “just like I care about what happens to them weird little owls.”

“They're burrowing owls. I've been reading up on them,” Roy said, “which reminds me—they probably aren't too crazy about hamburger meat. They eat mostly bugs and worms, according to the bird books.”

“So I'll catch 'em some bugs.” The boy spoke with a touch of impatience. “Point is, it ain't right, what's happening out there. That land belonged to the owls long before it belonged to the pancake house. Where you from, Tex?”

“Montana,” Roy replied automatically. Then he added, “Well, actually, I was born in Detroit. But we lived in Montana right before we moved down here.”

“Never been out West,” Mullet Fingers said, “but I know they got mountains.”

“Yeah. Awesome mountains.”

“That's what we need here,” said the boy. “Florida's so flat, there's nothing to stop 'em from bulldozin' one coast to the other.”

Roy didn't have the heart to tell him that even mountains aren't safe from machines like that.

“Ever since I was little,” Mullet Fingers said, “I've been watchin' this place disappear—the piney woods, the scrub, the creeks, the glades. Even the beaches, man—they put up all these giant hotels and only goober tourists are allowed. It really sucks.”

Roy said, “Same thing happens everywhere.”

“Doesn't mean you don't fight back. Here, check it out.” From a pocket of his torn jeans the boy produced a crumpled piece of paper. “I tried, Tex, see? Had Beatrice write a letter, telling 'em about the owls and all. Here's what they sent back.”

Roy smoothed out the paper, which bore the Mother Paula's company emblem at the top. It said:

Dear Ms. Leep,

Thank you very much for your letter.

We here at Mother Paula,s All-American Pancake Houses, Inc., take pride in our strong commitment to the environment. Every possible effort will be made to address your concerns.

You have my personal assurance that Mother Paula,s is working closely with local authorities, in full compliance with all laws, codes, and regulations.

Sincerely,
Chuck E. Muckle
Vice-President for Corporate Relations

“Lame,” Roy said, handing the paper back to Beatrice's stepbrother.

“Yeah, it's just a whatcha-call-it ... a form letter. Didn't even mention the owls.”

They stepped out of the ice-cream truck into the sunlight. Ripples of heat rose from the junked cars, which were lined up in rows as far as Roy could see.

“How long are you going to hide here?” he asked the boy.

“Till they chase me out. Hey, what're you doin' tonight?”

“Homework.”

In truth Roy had only one short chapter to read for Mr. Ryan's history class, but he wanted an excuse to stay home. He sensed that Mullet Fingers was planning another illegal visit to the Mother Paula's site.