FIVE

Roy zipped through his homework in an hour. When he came out of his room, he heard his mother talking to his father on the phone. She was saying that Trace Middle had decided not to take disciplinary action against Dana Matherson because of his injuries. Apparently the school didn’t want to provoke Dana’s parents, in case they were considering a lawsuit.

When Mrs. Eberhardt began telling Mr. Eberhardt about the wild tussle between Dana and his mother, Roy slipped out the back door. He wheeled his bicycle from the garage and rode off. Twenty minutes later, he arrived at Beatrice Leep’s bus stop, and from there he easily retraced Friday’s ill-fated foot chase.

When Roy got to the golf course, he locked his bike to the pipes of a water fountain and set off jogging down the same fairway where he’d gotten clobbered. It was late in the afternoon, steamy hot, and few golfers were out. Nonetheless, Roy ran with his head down and one arm upraised for deflection in case another errant ball came flying in his direction. He slowed only when he reached the stand of Australian pines into which the running boy had vanished.

The pine trees gave way to a tangled thicket of Brazilian peppers and dense ground scrub, which looked impenetrable. Roy scoured the fringes, looking for a trail or some human sign. He didn’t have much time before it would get dark. Soon he gave up trying to locate an entry point and elbowed his way into the pepper trees, which scraped his arms and poked his cheeks. He shut his eyes and thrashed onward.

Gradually the branches thinned and the ground beneath him began to slope. He lost his balance and went sliding down a ditch that ran like a tunnel through the thicket.

There, in the shadows, the air was cool and earthy. Roy spotted a series of charred rocks encircling a layer of ashes: a campfire. He knelt by the small pit and studied the packed dirt around it. He counted half a dozen identical impressions, all made by the same set of bare feet. Roy placed his own shoe beside one of the prints and wasn’t surprised to see they were about the same size.

On a whim he called out, “Hello? You there?”

No answer.

Slowly Roy worked his way along the ditch, hunting for more clues. Concealed beneath a mat of vines he found three plastic garbage bags, each tied at the neck. Inside the first bag was common everyday trash—soda bottles, soup cans, potato chip wrappers, apple cores. The second bag held a stack of boys’ clothing, neatly folded T-shirts, blue jeans, and underpants.

But no socks or shoes, Roy observed.

Unlike the other bags, the third one wasn’t full. Roy loosened the knot and peeked, but he couldn’t see what was inside. Whatever it was felt bulky.

Without thinking, he turned the bag over and dumped the contents on the ground. A pile of thick brown ropes fell out.

Then the ropes began to move.

“Uh-oh,” Roy said.

Snakes—and not just any old snakes.

They had broad triangular heads, like the prairie rattlers back in Montana, but their bodies were muck-colored and ominously plump. Roy recognized the snakes as cotton mouth moccasins, highly poisonous. They carried no rattles to warn in advance of a strike, but Roy saw that the tips of their stubby tails had been dipped in blue and silver sparkles, the kind used in art projects. It was a most peculiar touch.

Roy struggled to remain motionless while the fat reptiles untangled themselves at his feet. Tongues flicking, some of the moccasins extended to their full lengths while others coiled sluggishly. Roy counted nine in all.

This isn’t good, he thought.

He almost leaped out of his sneakers when a voice spoke out from the thicket behind him.

“Don’t move!” the voice commanded.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Roy said. “Honest.”

When he lived in Montana, Roy once hiked up Pine Creek Trail into the Absaroka Range, which overlooks Paradise Valley and the Yellowstone River.

It was a school field trip, with four teachers and about thirty kids. Roy had purposely dropped to the rear of the line, and when the others weren’t looking, he peeled away from the group. Abandoning the well-worn path, he angled back and forth up the side of a wooded ridge. His plan was to cross over the top and quietly sneak down ahead of the school hikers. He thought it would be funny if they trudged into the campsite and found him napping by the creek.

Hurriedly Roy made his way through a forest of towering lodge pole pines. The slope was littered with brittle dead logs and broken branches, the debris of many cold, windy winters. Roy stepped gingerly to avoid making noise, for he didn’t want the hikers down below to hear him climbing.

As it turned out, Roy was too quiet. He walked into a clearing and found himself facing a large grizzly bear with two cubs. It was impossible to say who was more startled.

Roy had always wanted to see a grizzly in the wild, but his buddies at school told him to dream on. Maybe in Yellowstone Park, they said, but not up here. Most grownups spent their whole lives out West without ever laying eyes on one.

Yet there was Roy, and a hundred feet across the glade were three serious bears—snorting, huffing, rising on their hind legs to scope him out.

Roy remembered that his mother had packed a canister of pepper spray in his backpack, but he also remembered what he’d read about bear encounters. The animals had poor eyesight, and the best thing for a human to do was remain perfectly still and silent.

So that’s what Roy did.

The sow bear squinted and growled and sniffed for his scent on the wind. Then she made a sharp coughing noise, and her cubs obediently dashed off into the woods.

Roy swallowed hard, but he didn’t move.

The mother bear rose to her full height, bared her yellow teeth, and faked a lunge toward him.

Inside, Roy was quaking with terror but on the outside he remained calm and motionless. The bear studied him closely. Her changing expression suggested to Roy that she’d figured out he was too meek and puny to pose a threat. After a few tense moments, she dropped to all fours and, with a final defiant snort, lumbered off to collect her cubs.

Still, Roy didn’t move a muscle.

He didn’t know how far the bears had gone, or whether they might come back to stalk him. For two hours and twenty-two minutes Roy remained as stationary as a plaster statue on that mountainside, until one of his teachers found him and led him safely back to the group.

So Roy was extremely good at not moving, especially when he was scared. He was plenty scared now, with nine venomous snakes crawling around his feet.

“Take a deep breath,” advised the voice behind him.

“I’m trying,” Roy said.

“Okay, now step backwards real slow on the count of three.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Roy.

“One ...”

“Now wait a second.”

“Two ...”

“Please!” Roy begged.

“Three.”

“I can’t!”

“Three,” the voice said again.

Roy’s legs felt like rubber as he teetered backward. A hand seized his shirt and yanked him into the thicket of pepper trees. As Roy’s butt landed in the dirt, a hood came down over his face and his arms were jerked behind his back. Before he could react, a rope was looped twice around his wrists and secured to the trunk of a tree. Roy could feel the smooth sticky bark when he wiggled his fingers.

“What’s going on!” he demanded.

“You tell me.” The voice had moved in front of him. “Who are you? Why’re you here?”

“My name is Roy Eberhardt. I saw you run by the school bus the other day.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“On two different days, actually,” Roy said. “I saw you running and I got curious. You looked kind of ... I don’t know, wired.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“Yeah, it was.” The snake wrangler was using a false husky tone—the voice of a boy trying to sound like a grownup.

Roy said, “Honest, I didn’t come out here to hassle you. Take off this hood so we can see each other, okay?”

He could hear the boy’s breathing. Then: “You’re gonna have to get outta here. Like right now.”

“But what about the snakes?”

“They’re mine.”

“Yeah, but—”

“They won’t go far. I’ll catch ’em again later.”

Roy said, “That’s not what I meant.”

The boy laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you out the back way. Just do as I say and you won’t get bit.”

“What a guy,” muttered Roy.

The boy untied him from the Brazilian pepper and boosted him to his feet. “I gotta admit, you did pretty good,” the boy said. “Most kids would a peed their pants.”

“Are those cottonmouths?” Roy asked.

“Yep.” The boy sounded pleased that Roy knew what kind of snakes they were.

“Where I used to live, we had lots of rattlers,” Roy volunteered. He thought that if he could start a friendly conversation, the kid might change his mind and take the hood off Roy’s face. “I never heard of a cottonmouth with sparkles on its tail.”

“They’re goin’ to a party. Now start walkin’.” The boy grabbed Roy from behind and guided him forward. He had a strong grip. “I’ll tell you when to duck for branches,” he said.

The hood was either black or dark blue, and Roy couldn’t see a speck of light through the heavy fabric. Blindly he stumbled and swayed through the thicket, but the barefoot boy kept him from falling. Roy knew they were out of the trees when the air got warmer and the ground beneath his feet got flat. He could smell the fertilized sod of the golf course.

Soon they stopped marching, and the kid began to loosen the knots on Roy’s wrists. “Don’t turn around,” he said.

“What’s your name?” Roy asked.

“I don’t have a name no more.”

“Sure you do. Everybody’s got a name.”

The kid grunted. “I been called Mullet Fingers. And I been called worse.”

“You don’t really live out here, do you?”

“None a your business. What’f I do?”

“All by yourself? What about your family?” Roy asked.

The boy rapped him lightly on the back of the head. “You ask too many nosy questions.”

“Sorry.” Roy noticed his hands were free, but he continued to hold them behind his back.

“Don’t turn around until you count to fifty,” the kid instructed him. “Otherwise, you’re gonna wake up one morning with one of those big ole cottonmouths in your bed. Got it?”

Roy nodded.

“Good. Now start countin’.”

“One, two, three, four...,” Roy said aloud. When he reached fifty, he whipped the hood off his head and wheeled around. He was alone in the middle of the driving range, surrounded by acres of golf balls.

The barefoot boy was gone, again.

Roy ran all the way back to his bicycle and rode home as fast as he could. He wasn’t frightened and he wasn’t discouraged. He was more excited than ever. cmLQNCrA3c9B9vBSlk5Dka2v5Ew+w3IQlf1Wcf4Wv3tAwb6gnK0rRlHjXXLMabVR