The daredevils, p.2
The Daredevils, page 2
Bottom line: this summer was going to be my most important yet.
But first, my chat with Dad…
Our house was actually the same house that my dad had grown up in. My grandparents left it to him in their will. Dad’s office was once a sunroom before becoming his bedroom back in the day, and something told me it didn’t look any better now than it did when he was a kid. One peek inside and you could see he was in desperate need of an assistant, which was something Mom had been trying to get him to agree to. The place was in complete disarray. He was still working out of the boxes he’d packed from when we moved in two years ago.
“How can you function like this?” I asked, stepping around the mess.
“It might look bad, but I know where everything is,” he claimed.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, now have a seat and stop trying to distract me.”
Dad pushed a few things out of the way and sat in his armchair while I hopped in the recliner reserved for patients. “You should hire an assistant to help you get this joint under control.”
“Now you sound like your mother. Not necessary and not interested,” he replied.
“I could do it for…let’s say…fifty bucks an hour.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
I watched him pat his pockets and then glance over at his desk. “Looking for something?” I asked.
“Can’t seem to find my glasses,” he mumbled.
I giggled.
“What?”
“Try your head,” I said. “You know where everything is, huh?”
He made a face, then reached up and found them. After he had his glasses situated, we got down to business. “Loretta, your mother and I have talked.”
Of course they had. Our chats always started this way. Mom and Dad were an inseparable team, always on the same page. It was so annoying. Next he would mention something about me getting into trouble, and then I would have to remind him it wasn’t my fault. He and Mom had gifted my brother with a special talent for building things—traps were Waylon’s favorite. You should’ve seen the shoebox mousetrap he rigged up so that he could catch and release the little critter we had in our last house. The thing involved fishing line and toothpicks and his old Tinker Toys. It looked like an engineering project—and it worked!
But traps aside, Waylon had also inherited a good dose of timidness and absolutely no muscles; me, on the other hand, I was blessed with wits, fast fists, an even faster temper, and the propensity for finding trouble. Dad took credit for my wits—I got them from Mom—but liked to say the rest didn’t come from him or Mom, but from my uncle Rusty. Apparently, my father’s brother had been a hell-raiser. A real daredevil. The first time my uncle got arrested was for drag racing golf carts on the back nine fairways at the private club where he was working landscape. The next time was for a fight he got in at the county fair after a couple of dudes grabbed his girlfriend’s butt. I wished I got to meet him.
Nevertheless, I was mistaken, because the topic of me and trouble wasn’t how this particular chat proceeded. Instead, Dad went off course and pretty much endorsed my summer plans, though he didn’t know that, and he also found a way to complicate the situation, making it more challenging.
“Loretta, you and your brother will be entering middle school in the fall, and things are going to be quite a bit different for both of you. Not only will you be surrounded by far more peers, but it’s also likely you will see little of each other throughout the day.”
Tell me something I don’t already know, I thought.
“It’s time to let your brother grow up and learn to take care of himself. You can’t go on protecting him forever. Besides, you want to be known for more than the girl who fights her brother’s fights. You need to find your own way.”
I shrugged, pretending not to hear that last part. “I could always beat kids up after school instead of during the day,” I suggested. “Word will spread and problem solved.”
“Problem not solved, Loretta. I’m serious. Your mother and I realize this is no small ask, and that this transition won’t be easy for either of you, so to help you prepare and get used to the idea, we’ve signed you up for a summer camp.”
I sat forward. “A summer what?”
Dad opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t let him.
“What kind of camp? Where? And when?”
“Relax,” he said. “It’s a day camp at the youth center, and it’s not every day. Your brother is enrolled in robotics, and we got you registered for the sports group. You’ll be at the same camp but not together. Starts next week. It should be a good warm-up for middle school.”
Dad continued talking, but what I heard loud and clear was his plea: You’ve got to toughen your brother up and get him ready to survive middle school because your mother and I don’t know what to do. The best my boomer parents could come up with was some lame summer camp, which wasn’t going to help at all. It was only going to interfere with what I had planned. All of a sudden, I had less time than I’d thought. Never mind renegotiating my summer contract.
“We can talk more later, after you’ve had a chance to reflect on things,” Dad said, giving me one of his shrink lines. “I’ve got to get ready for my first patient now.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I was out of there. I had work to do.
Fraternal twins are the result of two different eggs being fertilized by two different sperm. So while the term “twins” leads you to believe two individuals must be very similar, the truth is, fraternal twins can be as similar or dissimilar as any other pair of siblings. They’re only called twins because they inhabited and developed inside their mother’s uterus at the same time.
I could’ve learned all of this from simple internet research, but I got the specifics from Mom and Dad after asking about it one night during dinner. Being a veterinarian and psychologist, my parents liked to talk science, which I appreciated. Of course, once they mentioned sperm and eggs, Loretta lost it. She asked to be excused from the table because it was getting too gross. For being such a toughie, she could be a wimp sometimes.
Anyways, long story short, Loretta and I are fraternal twins—and boy, were we ever different. And I’m not only referring to the fact that I’m a boy and quite a bit smaller than her. There was plenty more. Take our names, for example. My sister was no country music star, or any type of singing star for that matter, so unless you could find me a Loretta who was a champion fighter, I would have to say her name wasn’t the best fit—and she would agree. Mine, on the other hand, was perfect.
When we were in first grade, we got assigned a family tree project. The project was made better if you could include pictures and information about family members going back as far as possible, which had Mom digging through boxes of old photos alongside us.
“Here’s one of your great-grandpa Waylon,” she said after coming across a picture of the old man sitting in his rocking chair.
“The guy I’m named after?” I asked, staring at the photo.
“The guy you’re named after,” she replied. “Grandpa Waylon had a small house tucked away in the northern forest. My grandma died before I ever came along, so it was just him. Mom tried to get him to move closer, but he never did. Grandpa Waylon was at home with the surrounding wilderness, continuing to hunt and fish and split wood until the day he died. He was what you’d call an outdoorsman, hence his beard and ponytail.”
It was a big beard—and I saw his ponytail.
“Grandpa Waylon was always so full of stories and had so much to share,” Mom went on. “He’d take me on nature hikes, teaching me all about the plants and animals we saw. I used to love visiting him.” Mom smiled at the memory of her grandpa and then continued looking through the boxes.
What can I say, when a seven-year-old boy learns about his incredible great-grandpa who he’s named after, he gets excited. That was all it took, and my fascination with anything related to outdoor adventure was born. It was in my blood. If I could’ve grown a beard to match my great-grandpa’s, I would’ve, but I didn’t waste any time getting started on my ponytail. After five years, my hard work and dedication hung all the way to the waistband on my underwear. It was my prized possession.
Dad liked my hair. He joked that I could go on tour singing with Willie Nelson. Willie happened to be a country music superstar with signature ponytails of his own. He was also great friends with Waylon Jennings when Waylon was alive, so Dad’s joke made sense for two reasons.
Mom, on the contrary, didn’t love my hair, and Loretta hated it. Even so, my sister had still threatened and roughed up more than one kid for picking on me about it, which contributed to her getting the rep of being a bruiser and me a momma’s boy. You know what I say? So what if I was quiet and not as tough as her. If they knew she was the one still enamored with her baby blankie, they might change their tune.
Please don’t tell her I told you that, she’d beat me up—okay, not really, but she’d want to. Loretta gets really mad about that stuff. Not me. Stuff like that bounces off my armadillo skin—but not the wolf’s. It agitates the wolf. And that was exactly how Loretta looked when she emerged from her chat with Dad—agitated.
“You’ve still got your face in that book,” she snarled. “You should just watch the movies.”
“Books are better,” I countered. “I love how wimpy Neville Longbottom becomes one of the heroes by the end of this one.”
“So what you’re telling me is there’s hope for you yet?”
“What? No. I’m not telling you anything except—”
“Fine. Then I’m telling you there’s hope for you yet, but time’s a-wastin’ and we need to get started.”
“Get started with what?”
“Go get ready. We’re going to the Millennium Falcon.”
The Millennium Falcon was nothing more than a rusty old farm machine, an ancient combine lodged deep in the woods behind our house that had been left for junk long ago—but it was one of our favorite hangouts. Waylon and I didn’t get out to it much during the school year, but we spent hours exploring the woods last summer—that was what happened when your parents created a contract limiting your screen time—and the combine was one of our best discoveries. It was mysterious and dangerous, and just plain huge, which made climbing on it a blast. One look at its immense size and odd shape and I named it the Millennium Falcon.
We made one other noteworthy discovery last summer when we stumbled upon the signs of a forgotten meeting place tucked away in the middle of a clearing even deeper into the woods. Waylon named the site the Circle of Stones, because as its name implies, we could still see where the large rocks had been arranged in a circle. Most important to my brother, the Circle of Stones was proof that we were on sacred ground.
“Do you know what this means?” he exclaimed. “Early explorers must’ve been here at one time. They would’ve positioned their camp near this location.”
Waylon believed the spirits of these early forest explorers were always with him in the woods after that. And as he’d soon find out, he’d want their help this summer—we all would.
You see, Waylon and I hadn’t made our best discovery yet. That would be happening soon, but first, to the Millennium Falcon. I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
“What exactly are we getting started with?” Waylon asked, looking up at me as I stood atop the Millennium Falcon.
“Summer,” I replied. “We’re getting started with summer.”
I’d decided the best way to toughen my brother up was to keep my intentions secret. Sort of like in The Karate Kid—the original. Ever see it? You need to. It’s great. I won’t give anything away, but in that movie, Mr. Miyagi, the mentor, has the boy he agrees to train, Daniel, doing all kinds of manual-labor jobs. What Daniel doesn’t realize is that the jobs are actually teaching him karate techniques so that he can stand up to his bullies. I needed to come up with my own Mr. Miyagi training plan so that I could put muscles on Waylon without him knowing what I was doing. But how?
“Summer? That’s it?” Waylon groaned.
“Yeah, you got a problem with that?”
The kids in school cowered if I ever challenged them like that, especially if I shook my fist in their face, but not my brother. Even if he was a wimp, he wasn’t scared of me—which I loved and hated.
“If that’s all you’ve got, then I have an idea,” he said.
“Oh, yeah? Let’s hear it.”
“We’re going to build a fort.”
“We’ve tried that before,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, but never with this,” he replied, waving his hatchet in the air. The silver blade glistened in the sunlight.
My brother had received the small ax for our birthday last month. He’d been asking for it ever since we read the book Hatchet in school—which Waylon loved because it was another wilderness survival story. I’d forgotten all about the hatchet, but clearly Waylon had not. The thing was still brand-spanking-new and he was eager to use it.
“You brought that with you?” I said.
“Yeah!” he exclaimed. “I stuck it in my pack with the rest of my survival gear. We’ve tried making forts before, but today we’re going to build the real deal, not some wimpy temporary thing.”
I almost laughed in his face, but then it hit me. I didn’t care if the fort happened or not, if it fell over or stood strong. If my brother wanted to spend the day wielding his hatchet, then I was going to let him, because that sounded like the exact sort of activity I was searching for. Here was my first Mr. Miyagi training exercise.
“Fine, but I don’t want a fort. It needs to be a hideout,” I said, playing along. “We’ve got to keep it hidden from the dark side.”
“When I’m done, we can camouflage it,” Waylon said. “That’ll make it a hideout.”
“Perfect,” I agreed. “Lead the way.”
We left the Millennium Falcon and hiked through the woods until Waylon found what he determined was the perfect area. No surprise, he selected a spot on the edge of the clearing near the remnants of the Circle of Stones. I didn’t care. I just wanted him to get started. Biceps didn’t grow on their own.
“We’re going to build a wigwam,” he explained.
“A wig what?”
“A wigwam. It’s what some Native Americans made for homes.”
It sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t picture it. “Can you hide it?” I asked.
“Yes, I’ll hide it, don’t worry. But first we need to build it.”
I stepped out of the way and let him go at it—and go at it he did. Waylon hacked and hacked and hacked. The hatchet was the perfect addition to his survival pack, which, among other things, contained a knife, a rope, and his trusty slingshot. Waylon kept a small pouch of stones in the side pocket on his pack so he could get to them in a hurry if he ever needed to. Like his ponytail, he’d been obsessed with the slingshot ever since first grade, so let me just tell you, my brother had deadly accuracy with the weapon.
My pack was more practical. I had several items, including a flashlight—though I’d never been in the woods in the dark—a water bottle, crackers, and Blankie. If you’ve got something to say about that, I’ll knock your teeth out.
Over the course of the next few hours, Waylon took down several young trees and stripped them of their branches. I busied myself organizing his clippings and clearing the area of any dead limbs and sticks. I was in no rush. Putting muscles on my brother was going to take time. Lots of time. Eventually, though, Waylon set the hatchet aside and selected a sapling from his pile. He took the sapling and stuck one end of it into the ground.
“Now you pull down on the top so the tree forms an arch,” he told me while holding the bottom in place.
I tried. I tried hard, but it wasn’t working. We needed more help, and in Waylon’s case, more muscles. A few hours with his hatchet wasn’t enough. I was about to tell him his bright idea wasn’t going to work, but I waited too long. My wimpy brother lost hold of his end. The young tree sprang into the air with such force that it yanked me right off my feet. It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to catch myself. I flew forward, landing on my face and skidding across the ground on my stomach. Training or not, I was ready to wring my brother’s neck. I came up spitting dirt—literally!
“This isn’t going to work!” I yelled.
“I know!” he snapped back.
“Isn’t there something else we can make? The wigham is too difficult.”
“It’s wig-wam,” Waylon stressed, “and I’m thinking.”
I was steaming mad, but I didn’t say anything more. I could see he was disappointed and frustrated, and I didn’t want him to give up.
“We should be able to build a lean-to,” he said after a minute. “It won’t be as big and elaborate, but if we do it right, it could still be a great hideout.”
“Do we need to bend any trees?”
“No.”
“Good,” I huffed.
He gave me a dirty look and then began explaining. “First, I need to make a bunch of stakes out of the trees I cut down. After that, we pound the stakes into the ground like we would if building a fence. The stakes need to go from tallest in the front to shortest in the back, so that we have a slightly slanted roof and not a flat one collecting water and caving in on us.”
“That would stink,” I groaned.
“We follow that procedure to make the two side walls and a back,” he continued. “The front stays open. I’ll need to add a few crossbeams and corner posts, but you get the idea. Last thing we do is lay a roof.”
