Man Trip (4 page)

“I’ll get it.” Stella ran to the kitchen.

“Hello,” she sang, probably thinking it was her boyfriend, Clarence.

She covered the receiver with her hand and stretched the phone cord toward me from the kitchen doorway. “For you.”

“Who is it?”

“Some girl.”

I froze. “Girl?”

“The name Shayla mean anything to you?”

T
hink.

“Uh … uh … tell her I’m not here,” I whispered.

“Calvin!” Mom whispered back. “Answer that phone.”

Stella raised a clenched fist. “I will
not
tell her you’re not here, and unless you want some
Texas Nice, microchild, you’d better come here and talk to this girl.”

Texas Nice was something Stella always threatened me and Darci with. I figured it was a hard slug in the arm. But she’d never followed through with it.

Not yet, anyway.

Still … Shayla?

I ran toward the front door. “I gotta go find Streak … and … and … and feed her. She must be starving.”

Even though I’d already fed her.

“Oh, right,” Stella said, low. “Just run away.
Coward
.”

“No, I just gotta feed my dog!”

“Calvin, you come back here and answer the phone,” Mom said.

“Streak!” I called, banging the screen door open.

I ran out into the night.

Looking back through the window, I could see Stella talking to Shayla. What was she saying?

After school a couple of days later, Julio and I were down by the river with bamboo fishing poles catching aholehole, which are spikeyfinned little silver fish. We’d caught six, and they were roasting in the sun next to us on the thick deep grass.

The lawn mower sat up the slope behind us, exactly where I’d left it. I felt guilty for not finishing. But I’d do it later.

I’d mostly managed to avoid Shayla, too, but not the frogs with bows that she kept leaving on my desk.

The bufos in my yard were the opposite of cute. Maybe I’d bring one to school and give it to her. She’d scream her head off.

“What are you grinning at?” Julio said.

“Uh … nothing.”

Julio hooked another aholehole. “Hoo! Cool, yeah, when they tug on the line?”

“I know. That’s the best part.”

Now we had seven fish roasting in the sun.

I heard the sound of Ledward’s jeep.

He waved and got out with a bundle of yellow flowers wrapped in green leaves.

“Fish biting?” he said, heading down to me and Julio.

I nodded. “Just these small ones.”

He crouched over the seven aholeholes on the grass. “I see.”

Julio stuck more bait on his hook. “They’re biting bacon today.”

Ledward chuckled. “That always worked for me, too.”

I lifted my chin toward the flowers. “Smells good. What are they for?”

“Yellow ginger. For your mom.” He glanced at the empty garage. “Not home yet, huh?”

“Soon, prob’ly.”

Ledward watched us fish for a few minutes. “What you going do with these aholeholes?”

I shrugged.

“Feed um to the ants,” Julio said. “They’re junk fish.”

Ledward frowned. “If they’re junk fish, why don’t you just throw them back in the water after you catch them?”

We both looked at Ledward. Throw the fish
back
?

“You just killing them for no reason.”

I looked at Julio. Who threw fish back? Nobody I knew.

Julio raised his eyebrows.

“Was me,” Ledward said, standing up, “I’d throw them back. If you not going eat um, let um live, ah?” He smiled. “Hey. Gotta get these flowers in some water.”

He headed back up to the house.

Julio looked at me.

“I know,” I said. “Weird.”

A
few minutes later Mom drove up and pulled into the garage. She got out and went right into the house. Good. If she saw that lawn mower sitting in the same place, she’d say, “The man of the house always finishes what he starts.”

I frowned. I wasn’t much of a man of the house.

Julio pulled up his line and wound it around his bamboo pole.

“Take the fish,” I said.

“What for?”

“I don’t know. Give them to Maya’s cat?”

“Pshh. Just throw um in the bushes for the mongooses.”

“What you’re saying is you’re lazy?”

“Bingo!”

Julio flicked his eyebrows and left.

I tossed the seven dried-out fish into the bushes and smelled the fish stink on my fingers. Some lucky mongoose would have a feast.

When I put my fishing pole back in the garage, Streak was sitting there with a tennis ball in her mouth.

I laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” Streak was the laziest ball fetcher on the planet.

She dropped the ball.

“All right,” I said. “But you better bring it back to me, and I mean all the way, got it?”

Streak ran out into the yard.

I picked up the ball and tossed it toward the river. Streak bounded down after it and brought it back … halfway.

She dropped it and sat.

I walked down to pick it up.

I squatted to scratch her chin. “Lazy dog, you are something else, you know?”

Just then, Ledward came out and waved to me. “I have an idea.”

I stood, tossing the ball up and down. “What kind of idea?”

“Come,” he said, nodding toward the river. “Let’s sit.”

We sat side by side on the grass. I tossed the ball from one hand to the other.