“Boys, hold on!” Dad shouts.
Two riders pull up on our left, sunlight burning off the metal monsters between their knees. Another three slide up on our right. Then two more sweep in front of our Ford. Suddenly, we’re surrounded. Boxed in. More riders roll up—ten, fifteen, now twenty—and our Ford rushes on in a sea of snarling motorcycles.
Raw, leathery voices call out to us.
“Hey, fellas, where you off to?”
“Here doggie-doggie-doggie!”
Butch lunges toward the edge of our truck. I try holding him back, but the oak log I’m crouching on rolls under me and I go with him, swinging like a busted chain.
“Ride him, cowboy!” a rider shouts.
I taste something warm in my mouth and realize I’ve smashed my lip on the log. Arms around my chest lift me: Frankie pulls me up.
Butch leans over the edge, snapping at the rider. I can’t hold him so Pete clambers through the cab’s back window. With his blond hair snapping in the wind, he shouts at us to get down as he puts his arms around Butch and drags him back.
Crash Callahan has pulled up alongside Dad’s door. He leans over and raps his knuckles against it.
“Where to, pop?” he asks. “Going to the picture show?”
Dad stares straight over the steering wheel like he don’t even see him.
“You deaf, man? I’m talking at you!” Crash jams his fist into the door’s metal. Will jumps off his seat and shouts, but Dad shoves him back down and keeps right on ignoring Crash.
Crash don’t like that, so he spits a blob of white saliva that darts somewhere behind him into the cyclones of yellow dust. He lifts his hand and waves. Sunburned faces parade past us in a fresh scream of metal as the riders roll on.
Oak logs slide under me again. Dad is slowing us down. The last of the riders seem to fly on even faster, leaving us behind in their cloud of yellow dust.
We come to a stop in the middle of the road and listen as the roar of Crash’s horde grows fainter and fainter.
As fast as they appeared, the riders are gone.
Will is swearing up a storm in the cab.
In the back, Frankie’s sprawled over the logs, his glasses hanging from one ear. Butch barks, struggles against Pete to get loose, to chase the men on the motorcycles.
I run my tongue around the inside of my mouth, checking to make sure I’ve got all my teeth. I do, but I’ve cut my lower lip bad. I go to spit blood over the side of the truck. I miss and it dribbles down my shirt instead.
“They’re headed for Sam’s place,” Pete tells Dad.
My stomach turns over at that: Crash and his gang are off to torture lonely old Sam again.
But then I catch sight of my father in the rearview mirror. His eyes are icy blue.
“Hold on,” he says as he buries the gas pedal.
Five minutes later, we come up on old Sam standing in the road in front of his trailer, hatless, his curly hair blazing in afternoon sun like a silver halo around his square head. The .22 rifle gleams dully in his hands.
Dad gives a tap on the horn as we come rolling slowly up to him, leans out his window, and says in a soft voice, “Sam, you all right?”
“They took Myrtle’s mailbox.”
The massive head jerks to a dark hole at the road’s edge. A few clumps of dirt sit by it, fingers of green grass peeking out of them, waving in the breeze.
Dad puts a hand on his shoulder. At his touch, old Sam turns and we see his tomato-red cheeks and steel-wool beard are streaked with tears.
“They tore Myrtle’s mailbox right outta the ground,” he cries. He sways, and Dad’s hand tightens on his shoulder. “I been down with the hay fever. I didn’t hear them coming . . . I ain’t good for much when the hay fever gets me.”
Dad is silent.
“A man’s got his dignity,” Sam says. He looks skyward. “I’m sorry I let ’em take it, Myrtle. You know how I am when the hay fever gets me.”
“Better climb up here, Sam,” says Dad. “We’ll drive down a ways and take a look.”
A quarter mile down Hopkins Road we find what’s left of Myrtle’s mailbox. The four-by-four post is scraped up and splintered but otherwise fine. Somehow grass still clings to its earth-darkened point. But at the other end, a heap of brightly painted metal blossoms like the petals of a red, white, and blue flower: the mailbox crushed and twisted beyond repair.
Sam stoops and takes it in his arms, standing there a minute. When he climbs back up on the logs, fresh tears leak from the corners of his eyes. He lays the mailbox over his knees.
Then, on a breeze that smells like honeysuckle, we hear the distant thunder of engines.
“They’re coming back!” Will cries out.
Sam’s fingers tighten around the mailbox, the knuckles bone white.
Dad looks at him. “Sam, seems them boys on the bikes are coming back.”
Sam nods grimly.
“They done you wrong,” Dad tells him. “And I think we can help you fix them for it. Only one condition: no shooting.”
Sam sits still on his log. “How you figure to fix them?”
“I’ll tell you when you promise on Myrtle’s grave that twenty-two will not have any part of it.”
Sam chews his dip and thinks. He spits—a jet of brown juice that arcs over the truck into the road.
“On Myrtle’s grave.”
In the cab, Dad allows himself a slow smile.
“Just hold on,” he says.
He brings the Ford to life once more and turns us around, giving the truck as much gas as he safely can with such a heavy load in the bed. We’re almost back to Sam’s trailer when Dad suddenly brakes again, bringing us to a stop. Twisting in his seat, he says to Pete, “Quick now, drop the tailgate.”
At Pete’s touch, the tailgate drops down with a clang.
“Now,” Dad says, “start rolling them logs out the back.”
That puzzles me. We spent half the blame day loading them logs into the truck. But with fresh light in his watery eyes, Sam rises, his road-mapped face crinkling into the fresh creases of a crooked smile as he shuffles to the back of the truck and kicks one enormous log over the tailgate.
Thud.
Dad gives the Ford a little gas, turning the wheel ever so gently as Sam kicks another log over.
Thud.
Thud. Thud.
Frankie taps my shoulder and motions toward the tailgate. Together we climb over and roll out a log. Pete joins us. Next thing I know, Will comes through the cab window to help.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Dad drives the truck in a gentle S shape, slow and easy all the way back to Sam’s, with us rolling logs out the back the whole way.
With every log, Sam gets cheerier and cheerier.
“Ooh-wee,” he breathes to himself. “Ooh-wee, the Hoodlums are in for a surprise!”
When at last we reach the place where Myrtle’s mailbox stood, the truck bed is empty. Giant, fat pieces of Mr. Madliner’s oak tree lie scattered all across Hopkins Road.
From up the road, that motorbike roar is getting louder.
It’s a good view of the road from Sam’s front porch. Dad and us boys crouch behind the railing, but Sam sits in his rocking chair, Myrtle’s mailbox on his lap, rocking himself with one foot. True to his word, Sam has leaned the .22 against the side of the trailer.
It ain’t long before we hear those familiar raw and leathery voices on the wind.
“Somebody got Butch?” Dad asks.
“I got him,” Frankie says.
“Hold him tight, son,” says Dad, “because here they come.”
Up the road, another yellow cloud is rising above the trees. The metal growling grows louder. Another minute, and that wave of glimmering steel comes rolling over the horizon, looking so even and so perfect that I’m breathless at the sight of it.
They ride in a tight pack, almost a perfect square of sun-seared faces and blackened leather, hot sunlight dripping from their metal machines.
A rush of fear and doubt seizes me and suddenly I think Dad’s plan won’t work. The riders have too much time to see the logs, too much time to slow down, to maneuver—
GRUNTCH.