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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781490383620 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | CreateSpace Publishing |
| Publication date: | 08/10/2013 |
| Pages: | 146 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.34(d) |
| Age Range: | 10 - 13 Years |
About the Author
Michael de Guzman is the author of Melonhead and Beekman's Big Deal. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Read an Excerpt
THE BAMBOOZLERS
By Michael de Guzman
FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX
Copyright © 2005 Michael de GuzmanAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-374-30512-9
Chapter One
HOME ON THE RANGE
Albert Rosegarden raced through downtown Mountain View, Idaho, on his bicycle like his tail was being snapped at by a fork of lightning. Albert Rosegarden was in an enormous hurry. He had to get home before his mother got the call. So he could explain his side of it first. His bicycle was painted silver by his own hand. It had only one gear, no fenders, bald tires, and no brakes. He'd just been suspended from school.
"I see we're picking up right where we left off last year," Mr. Grimes, the assistant principal, had said to him not more than five minutes ago. "You're back in school a week and already in trouble. I'm suspending you for three days. You should be proud of yourself, Mr. Rosegarden. Only twelve years old and on your way to becoming a career criminal."
Albert didn't buy into that idea for any part of a second. He was just calling them as he saw them. He wasn't guilty of anything worse than that. If Mrs. Hissendale hadn't said that the earth was round, like the ball she was bouncing on the floor, if she hadn't said it with that I-know-more-than-you-do expression on her face, he might not have said anything.
He pedaled furiously past Davis's General Store, which featured work clothes, then past Sylvia's Gourmet Shop, which was big on goat cheese, then past Owen's gas station, which offered free air. It was Thursday, the eighth of September. It was ninety-four degrees, and the wind was blowing dust in three directions at once. The day had been heading downhill ever since he'd opened his eyes and heard his mother in the kitchen.
Thursday was one of his mother's days off, the other being Sunday. Elly was a cocktail waitress at the Goat Herder Lounge, the only bar in Mountain View with a live piano player. The only mountain in Mountain View was so far away that its dim outline was barely visible on a clear day.
"I'm your mother," Elly announced every Thursday morning of the school year. "I can get up once a week to have breakfast with you."
Being that this was the first Thursday of the school year, Elly had decided on pancakes. Elly didn't do well in the kitchen on five hours' sleep. She wasn't much for cooking under the best of circumstances. The batter was lumpy. The outsides of the pancakes were burned. The centers were squishy.
Albert had put the first two pancakes his mother served him into his pants pockets when he thought she wasn't looking, then declared himself full.
"Those were delicious," he'd said.
"Don't forget where you put them," she'd said, bringing her cup of coffee to the table. She never ate anything for breakfast. "They'll get sticky and you won't be able to get them out."
He'd put them back on his plate.
"I wish I was a better cook," she'd said.
He'd eaten the pancakes then, squishy centers and all. He tried as hard as he could, as often as he could, to please her. Especially when she started getting philosophical.
With the pancakes fermenting in his stomach, he'd ridden off to school. On the way, the Hansen brothers, Howard and Martin, ran him off the road with their pickup. It was something they did most mornings. It was their weak-minded notion of a joke. He'd gone barreling off the shoulder into a herd of grazing goats, who took off bleating like they'd been attacked by a pack of wolves.
He flew past Belcher's Insurance, which promised honest coverage for all, then past Simmons' Jewelers, which had a three-foot-high fake diamond ring hanging over its door, then past Crystal's Diner, which was famous for its pie.
Albert's pale blue eyes squinted like he was looking for something he couldn't quite see. His curly black hair fell over his forehead. He had the face of an angel, of a boy who could do no wrong. He was small for his age. And watchful.
A quarter of a mile outside town he turned up a dirt road that was marked by a weather-beaten mailbox and a cow in a ditch. Two hundred yards later he arrived at a mobile home that was secured to a concrete slab. Elly was sitting in the doorway. They'd rented it ever since she'd decided that they'd spent enough time on the road. That was two years ago.
"We're staying here," she'd said while they were consuming their first humongous wedges of Crystal's chocolate cream pie.
At the time it hadn't made any difference to Albert. It didn't seem to him then that one place was any better or worse than any other.
"I'm tired of driving," she'd said. He watched her stand as he parked his bicycle next to her fourteen-year-old Ford, which was rusting out around the wheels. She was tall, with honey blond hair and deep green eyes. Albert thought she'd be elected Miss Mountain View in a landslide, if there were such a thing.
"I'll get a pail of water to stick my feet in," Elly said. "We'll sit out back and talk."
"It wasn't my fault," he said, following her into the trailer. The kitchen was the size of a boat's galley.
Elly put the pail in the sink and started filling it. "It's never your fault. Mr. Grimes thinks you're going to end up in jail."
"I'm not going to end up in jail," Albert said. "All that happened was that Mrs. Hissendale said the planet Earth was round like a ball."
"And you said?"
"That it was shaped more like her head."
"You told Mrs. Hissendale her head looked like the planet Earth?"
"Well, it's a lot closer to that than it is to a ball," he said. "It's like an egg. Or a pear."
"You can't tell your teacher her head looks like a planet," she said.
"Then she shouldn't tell us stuff that isn't true," he said.
"A lot of people will tell you things that aren't true," she said. "Sometimes they do it on purpose, sometimes they don't know any better. What matters is understanding the difference. And knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet. It's tricky. But you have to learn."
"In first grade," Albert said, "when that teacher told me about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and how he never told a lie, I told her she was wrong because you told me the story was made up."
"I also read you King Arthur," she said, "but you didn't go around knocking people off their horses."
"I didn't know anybody with a horse," he said.
They moved outside and sat in the two white plastic stacking chairs which were set next to the barbecue grill. Elly put her feet into the cold water and sighed.
"What am I going to do with you, Albert?"
"Take me out to the middle of the forest and leave me there," he said. He was hoping for a smile.
"There is no forest here," she said. "And even if there were, you'd just find your way back. You were suspended twice last year. You have to stop. You need an education or you'll end up busting your behind for tips when you're forty and living in a trailer."
"You're forty-two," Albert said.
"Don't be a wise guy. Nobody likes a wise guy. I was making a point. It was an example. You have to learn how to take care of yourself. You have to learn how to behave in school. You have to take other people into account. You have to grow up."
"It's hard to grow up."
Elly laughed. "Where'd you read that?"
"In a magazine at the dentist's office."
"It's not news. Of course it's hard to grow up. It's hard to be grown up. The whole thing is hard."
"How come you're not mad at me?"
"I am mad at you. I just don't have the energy to yell. I'm going to ask you to give me a break. I need a vacation."
"Go somewhere," Albert said. "I can take care of myself."
"Right here is as far away as I can afford to go," Elly said. "What I'm asking is for you to be a little smarter."
"Okay," Albert said.
Elly leaned back and closed her eyes.
Albert thought about what he could do to help his mother go on vacation. He added up what he could make from odd jobs every week, then added his entire allowance and concluded that it would take about a thousand years to save enough to make it happen.
He thought about what it would be like to leave Mountain View and go off on an adventure himself. There had to be more to life than what he'd encountered so far.
They picked up the conversation later, when Albert decided to help his mother make dinner.
"You could get a different job," he said. "You're too old to be standing all night." He was opening a can of baked beans.
"I'm not too old for anything," Elly said. She was shaping a dollar thirty-nine cents' worth of ground beef into two hamburgers.
"Why do you have to work at night?"
"Because that's when I can make the most money."
"Why can't we go someplace else?"
"Why would we do that? You want cheese?"
"I do," he said. "It would be different someplace else, that's all. Maybe even better."
Elly gave her son a long look. "From the time your father left us in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, until the day we got here was seven years of hard living in a large part of the continental United States. I don't remember seeing anything better that would be available to people in our economic bracket."
"Different would be enough," he said.
"It would be the same for us, Albert. I wish that wasn't so, but there it is."
They put the pot of beans, the hamburgers, the cheese slices, buns, ketchup, and two glasses of iced tea on the banged-up old tray Elly had brought home from work, and went out back.
"Remember the time we drove across Arkansas all night?" Albert asked.
His mother placed the hamburgers on the grill.
He loved the way they sizzled when they first went on.
"We had a flat tire, ran out of gas, and a hose broke and all the water leaked out of the radiator," she said.
He was eight when they drove across Arkansas. They'd left the last place because they couldn't quite catch up with the rent.
"That's how we met Norman Ritz," he said.
"Who could forget Norman Ritz?" she said. She laughed.
Albert loved the sound of his mother's laughter.
"He came stumbling out of that shack by the side of the road like a wild man," she said.
"I was going to run," Albert said.
"He had a glass eye that was a different color than the real one," she said.
"It fell out when he was fixing our car," Albert said. "I had to go underneath to get it, and he showed me how it went back in."
"He was a nice man," she said. "He wouldn't take any money." She turned the hamburgers over.
Albert stirred the beans. He moved the pot to the side of the grill because they were bubbling. "I'll try harder at school," he said.
He watched her. She looked weary. He could see discouragement in her face.
"I just need things to be a little easier," she said. "That's all I'm asking."
They heard an engine that sounded like a high-speed coffee grinder pull into the clearing by the trailer.
"Who could be coming to visit us?" Elly asked.
They heard the engine die.
Elly started for the front of the trailer.
"Anybody here?" a man's voice called out.
Chapter Two
THE OVERNIGHT GUEST
Elly went rigid.
Albert saw his mother put her finger to her lips, signaling him to stay quiet.
"Shouldn't leave the front door open," the man's voice said, getting closer. "You never know who might come around."
Albert couldn't remember seeing his mother so upset. He thought it must be his father returning, and he braced himself. He'd never heard a positive word about his father.
"Smells good back here," the voice said.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE BAMBOOZLERS by Michael de Guzman Copyright © 2005 by Michael de Guzman. Excerpted by permission.
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