King of the Mild Frontier Read Online Free PDF Page A

making a perfectly decent and beautiful citizen of the U.S. look like a common criminal. My dad gave him until Friday, and on noon of that day, Glen limped across the street on his metal hip to retrieve the mail from our post office box. I’d gone to work with my dad every day that week, just to be there when the money showed up, but the slowness of Glen’s stride and the pained look on his face as he limped back across the street said his Marilyn Monroe look-alike had done taken him to the cleaners.
    My granddad was resilient, though, and by the middle of the afternoon he was comfortable with the idea that he’d been hoodwinked and was busy concocting a story to tell my grandmother about where thirty-seven dollars might have mysteriously gone.
    My dad shook his head again and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, a gesture I would witness each and every time he caught me in a bonehead move until the day he died. “What were you thinking, Glen? I just can’t figure out why you’d fall for that.”
    My granddad smiled sheepishly, then lit up and said, “I like cookies.”

Something Neat This Way Comes
3
    â€œWANNA DO SOMETHING NEAT?” are four words that strike terror in my heart to this day. My answer was always yes when the question came from my brother. Then he’d tell me what the neat thing was, and it would always seem not so neat until he explained how what seemed like something that could really get you in trouble was, in fact, neat. Then I’d get in trouble.
    I’m around six years old and I’m playing cowboys outside with my friend Ron Boyd and some other kids from the neighborhood. I have to pee so bad I’m about to turn into a hurled water balloon, but Ron’s older brother, Joe, is notaround and we younger kids have sworn that no one will tell him we’re playing Roy Rogers, lest we pay dearly, and for the last half hour or so, I’ve been Roy. If I go inside to pee, I stand to lose my exalted spot atop the yellow broomstick that is Roy’s mighty palomino, Trigger, and I’m working my sphincter muscles like a body builder, prolonging those last precious minutes. Finally agony wins out and I drop my cap pistol to get a better grip on my penis and streak for my house. John, sitting in a chair reading a book, observes the obvious as I burst through the door and says, “Wanna do something neat?”
    â€œYeah, but just a sec. I gotta go to the bathroom.”
    â€œThat’s the neat thing,” he says. “Go there.” He points to the four-by-five heat-register grate in the middle of the living-room floor.
    â€œHuh- uh ,” I say. “You’ll tell.”
    â€œPromise I won’t,” he says. “Wait till you see what happens. It’s really neat.”
    By now I have to go so bad I’m dizzy, and only my death grip is stopping me from peeing into the wall like a strip miner.
    â€œJust take down your pants and pee down the grate,” he says. “I promise I won’t tell. I’d do it myself, but I don’t have to go.”
    â€œHave you ever done it before?”
    â€œLots of times,” he says. “And see? I never got in trouble for it.”
    â€œNo, sir…”
    â€œYou’ll be sorry if you don’t. It’s really neat.”
    â€œOkay, but you promise you won’t tell.”
    He crosses his black heart.
    In the same nanosecond my pee hits that hot furnace, the yellow steam rolls up around me like I’m Mandrake the Magician in the middle of a disappearing act, which I’m not but really wish I was. I know instantly from the sssssssssss and the horrific stench that I better not be making plans to play Roy Rogers again soon. I best be rehearsing my role as a jailbird, because it is going to be a long time before I leave my room.
    This is a job for bawlbaby. My eyes squint and my lips roll back over my buckteeth and not one tear comes out because