When I got back to the house, I found four figures waiting in my yard: Orson, my dad, Uncle Ben, and a snowman.
The snowman was the only one smiling.
“What is this, Howard?” Dad asked. Orson must have just pulled him outside.
“A snowman.”
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . snow?” Dad said.
OK, I’d made a few modifications to the traditional snowman design. The first one was getting rid of the snow. It’s an unstable building material, and it made my hands cold. So instead, I used a plastic snowman that our family puts in front of the house at Christmastime.
I didn’t see what the big deal was. Everyone loved that snowman.
“Well, you see . . .” I started.
My dad stopped me.
“Howard . . . what happened to his arms?”
“What?”
“His arms.”
“Oh. I cut those off,” I said.
Let me explain: His arms were in the way. So I hacked them off and replaced them with a pair of holes so that his new robotic, metal arms could stick out and grab stuff. And I have to say, they looked fantastic!
But not to everybody.
“You cut off his arms?” Dad yelled. “What were you thinking?”
Actually, I was thinking this was a pretty great idea. I mean, Orson wanted a snowman, I wanted a robot — we got a snowbot. It was the best of both worlds. The tall, plastic body slid right down over the motorized frame and covered up all the awesome robotic stuff Uncle Ben brought over from his shop.
“Relax, Johnny,” Uncle Ben said, which is what he always said when Dad’s face reached a certain shade of red. “It’s not as complicated as it looks. Basically, it’s like one of those little remote-control cars. Only instead of a car, we used a riding mower.”
“My riding mower?” Dad howled.
“We’ll have it put back together by spring,” I promised.
Dad puffed out his cheeks like a balloon and slowly blew the air out between his lips. It’s not a pretty sound.
“Howard,” he said, taking off his ball cap and running his hand through a mop of messy black and gray hair, “I know you like to tinker around with stuff like this. But you made a promise to your little brother. All he wanted was to come out and build a snowman with a corncob pipe and buttons for eyes. That’s all. And you went and turned it into some kind of . . . Power Ranger.”
For the record, my dad thinks the Power Rangers are robots.
“But you haven’t even seen how it works yet,” I pleaded. “Give it a chance!”
To be honest, I thought it was over. Dad looked irritated beyond the point of no return. For several seconds, he just stood there letting his fatherly heat vision burn deep into my skull. But finally he said, “All right, let’s see it. Orson, go get your mother.”
Dad likes to have Mom there whenever I unveil one of my experiments. She knows where the fire extinguisher is.
All right! I was going to get to do a demonstration! Not to brag, but demonstrations are kind of where I shine. I mean, it’s not enough that the snowbot looked awesome. If it was going to win the robot contest, it had to do awesome things. And, in this case, that meant rolling forward, extending its arms, and giving the judges a hug.
That’s right, a cuddly, gliding, metal-armed snow-hugger . . . Beat that, G-Force! If the judges survived, that trophy was as good as mine.
It was a perfect plan — I knew it the second it popped into my head. The only problem was that I had no idea how to build a robot. That’s why I had to call in Uncle Ben. Not only is he the coolest uncle in the world, but he’s an amazing electrician. And talk about smart! He can go on for hours about computers or advanced technology or how space warlords are plotting to overthrow our planet. A lot of the stuff he knows, they don’t even teach us in school! And besides, if a thirty-six-year-old techie who loves comics books and sci-fi can’t help you build a judge-hugging electro-snowman, who can?
Orson rushed back out of the house, dragging my mom behind him. She must have thought it was an emergency, because she was wearing mismatched gloves and the light-up reindeer sweater she’d banned from all holiday photos. Her eyes instantly locked onto the happy, plastic, soon-to-be prize-winner in the front yard.
“Is that Mr. Jolly?” she asked, referring to his former life as a lawn ornament. “What happened to his arms?”
“Don’t ask,” Dad muttered.
“Now everybody stand back,” I said, an unnecessary warning if ever there was one, “and prepare to be dazzled!”
I pushed the snowbot onto the driveway and whipped out the remote control Uncle Ben had made for me. This baby was high-tech! Holding my breath, I pushed the power button to activate the motor. It started! Then, very slowly, Mr. Jolly began to creep forward on his knobby, rubber wheels. At the same time, he raised his arms into their fully extended, hug-ready position. It was working! It was working!
“Well, I’ll be,” Dad said.
I looked back down at the remote and pushed an arrow. The snowbot turned right. Instinctively, Mom stepped in front of Orson to form a human shield. I laughed. Then I pushed the other arrow. The snowbot turned left. This was one sweet mechanical snowman! I pushed the UP arrow. It picked up speed. I pushed the DOWN arrow. It picked up more speed.
I pushed the STOP button. It went into overdrive! Now it was really moving, which is why Katie Beth could not have picked a worse time to come out of the house.
Frantically, I tapped the OFF button. Nothing! I tried to warn my sister, but, as usual, a pair of headphones was blocking her ears. By the time she looked up, he was practically on top of her.
“AIGGGGGGH!” she screamed, and made a wild, terrified dash through the yard.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn that Mr. Jolly was chasing her. He seemed to match her every turn.
“Katie Beth!” I yelled. “Don’t let him hug you!”
The prospect of a robot hug appeared to be too much for her to handle, and she dove headfirst into our euonymus hedge. The snowbot paid no attention, rolling right past her and out into the street.
“I’ll stop it!” I said.
Now the thing about snowmen, even plastic ones, is that they’re really good on ice. I, on the other hand, am not. Every time I’d start to close the gap, he’d turn a corner and send me belly-sliding through the intersection. At one point, I thought he’d lost me, but then I saw Mrs. Gilroy standing in her driveway. She’d dropped two bags of groceries on the ground and looked like she might be in a mild state of shock. She was staring due north.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Gilroy,” I said, and headed in the direction of her gaze.
It wasn’t long before I caught sight of him again. He’d wheeled onto a side street, and it looked like our chase might finally be coming to an end. He still had me by a half block or so, but I was closing fast. And that’s when I noticed this street looked kind of familiar. Very familiar, actually. The past few blocks had been a blur, but I suddenly realized I now knew exactly where I was. I was on Mulberry Street.
I gulped.
I WAS ON MULBERRY STREET!
I was chasing a runaway lawn ornament down the middle of Mulberry Street — or as it’s known to every kid in town, Snowblind Alley. The seriousness of the situation hit me about the same time as the first snowball.
After that, it was an onslaught. Snowballs flew from everywhere. They came from bushes and from behind trees. They rained down from the sky. I tried to dodge, but there were too many. Within thirty seconds, every single inch of my body had been pelted.
This was my punishment for breaking the neighborhood’s first law of survival: don’t go down Mulberry Street. Snowblind Alley is winter’s icy heart. This is the place where the toughest, meanest, orneriest, most hate-filled bullies in Dolley Madison gather for their snow wars. And when they get tired of pummeling each other, they bombard passing cars or mail trucks or garbage men or stray dogs — basically anything that moves.
And if some poor, unsuspecting nerd should happen to make a wrong turn on his way to the library — Lord help him!
I tried to surrender, but every time I opened my mouth, a projectile landed in it. Not all of them were snowballs. When I finally made my way back to the corner, I turned just in time to see the snowbot gliding across an open field.
As I stood there watching him slowly fade into the distance, I wondered if I might someday hear stories about his fascinating adventures in faraway lands.
By the time I got back to the house, the yard was empty and Dad’s truck was gone. Apparently, he and Uncle Ben had joined the chase on wheels. Good. Maybe they’d find Mr. Jolly; not that it mattered anymore. The dream — my dream — was over.
I walked into the house and pulled my battered, snow-covered body up the stairs. Getting out of my wet, dripping things, I stepped into the shower and set the water to steaming. Gradually, my skin lost its blueness, and I began to feel human again. When I was fully defrosted, I stepped out, dried myself thoroughly, and slipped into my warm terry cloth robe. This was the way to spend a winter. Inside. Away from danger. I’d been foolish to attempt to build a robot that lived outdoors. I realized that now.
I strolled down the hall until I was back in my own room. It felt good there. It felt safe. Time to get dressed and get on with the rest of my life — my indoor life. I remembered Mom saying something about corduroys hanging in my closet. Now that I thought about it, there was nothing wrong with corduroys. Not really. They were a nice, reliable, indoor trouser. I opened the closet door.
WHAP!
A cold, mushy slushball splattered against my chest.
“Today’s lesson,” Stick said from behind the coat hangers, “is always expect the unexpected.”