20

After that night I just stayed around the house like a good angel. Mom did ask me how I got out of my bedroom so fast to get the binoculars. I gave her that innocent look and just said, “Boy, you must have been in a sound sleep. The fire whistle was going on for a long time before you woke.” That seemed to satisfy her and, like any lie, the fewer details you give the better it is.

But it wasn’t Mom who I thought was going to kill me. I was just hauling a wheelbarrow full of dirt around the side of the house when a huge man roared up the driveway on a motorcycle. He had a long beard combed down the middle and pulled back over his shoulders and tied together in a knot behind his neck. He looked just like the Hells Angel who said he was going to kill me. I’m dead, I thought when he got off his chopper and reached into one of the black leather saddlebags and pulled out a hammer and spike and swaggered in my direction.

I figured he would pick me up, press me against a tree trunk, and drive the spike through my forehead and leave me hanging there while he burned our house down. All I had to fight back with was a pick and shovel, and I was so tired I could hardly lift either of them to defend myself. My only regret was that I hadn’t written down my obituary, but I figured Miss Volker would do a good one. I had read her This Day In History column and July 28 was when Henry VIII had Thomas Cromwell executed, and Robespierre was guillotined, and a U.S. Army bomber accidentally flew into the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building and killed fourteen people. It was already a good day for death, and I was about to go down in history.

“Hey, kid,” he called out, and waved his hammer at me as if he were Thor and about to crush my little head with one massive blow. “Where is War Chief?”

“What?” I yelled back, and got ready to run away.

“Your pony,” he said as he stomped toward me. “I’m the farrier who is here to fix your pony.”

“I thought you were a Hells Angel,” I said.

“I used to be,” he replied. “But fighting all the time and being really drunk and nasty got boring. So now I just take care of animals.”

“Over there,” I yelled back with some relief, and pointed to where War Chief was trying to catch flies in his mouth.

He turned around and grabbed more tools from his saddlebags. Mom was down working at the pants factory, so I just hung around with the farrier. He took off War Chief’s old worn-down horseshoes. “Boy, this sure is overdue,” he said as he began to carefully clip the hooves and peel away the old layers. He filed them down and shaped them. Then he gently went from hoof to hoof and cleaned the frog. After that he nailed new shoes onto War Chief. Finally he went back to his motorcycle and returned with a bunch of carrots. As he rubbed War Chief’s nose and fed him he turned to me and asked, “Is your mom here to pay me?”

This was my chance to escape. “She told me that she was trading me for your work, so you can take me with you,” I said in my polite voice. “I’m more valuable than money.”

He glanced at me and grinned. “I’m sure you are,” he replied. “But it’s a lot cheaper to keep money in my pocket than to feed a kid. I’ll hold out for the cash.”

“I’m sure she’ll pay you,” I said. “She works really hard and is the most honest person I know—more honest than me.”

“She told me on the phone that if she wasn’t here to go to the pants factory,” he said, “so I’ll go down there.”

And then I desperately blurted out, “Do you want to see the igloo I made out of books?”

He looked me in the eye then reached forward and placed his big, soft hand on my forehead. “I think you’ve been out in the sun too long,” he said. “You better go in there and get some rest.”