King of the Mild Frontier Read Online Free PDF Page B

they left home. Cascade, as I’ve said, is a small town, and in those days so safe no one even locked the doors to their houses or cars. Nine- and ten-year-olds were routinely left to baby-sit younger siblings, and I am lucky to have lived long enough to say it was a bad idea, at least in the case of John Morris Crutcher. They must have known it wasn’t a great idea because they left my sister, Candy, with our grandmother. “You don’t know what he’s like,” I’d tell my parents when they were getting in the car.
    â€œOh, it can’t be that bad, Chris,” my mother would say. “You always overdo it.”
    Oh, yeah?
    I’m seven and John is two years and nine months older. No sooner than the dust clears our driveway, he asks, “Wanna do something neat?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThis is something really neat.”
    The yellow steam rolling out of the heat register, forever staining my T-shirt and my reputation, is little more than a distant memory.
    â€œTell me what it is .”
    â€œWait here.”
    He returns, Eddie Young in tow, packing Eddie’s brand-new BB gun.
    I’ve got him now. “You’re gonna get in trouble. We’re not supposed to have those.”
    â€œWe’re not having it. It’s Eddie’s.”
    â€œYeah, but we’re not supposed to even have it around.”
    â€œShut up. Now do you want to do something neat?”
    I eye the gun. So forbidden. So neat. “I guess. What?”
    â€œYou go down and hide behind the tree, then whenever you’re ready, run as fast as you can along the ditch and we’ll shoot at you.”
    Our front lawn sprawls over a gently sloping hill clear down to Main Street, the only paved street in town and alsoHighway 15, the lone state highway connecting southern and northern Idaho. Thick pine trees stand on the north and south ends of the lawn and a shallow gravel ditch runs its length, next to the highway.
    â€œNo, sir. I’m not doing that. What if you hit me in the head?”
    He points to the sky. “Look, dummy, it’s almost dark. We’ll barely be able to see you, much less hit you in the head. It’s like the shooting gallery at Zim’s. Come on, it’ll be neat.”
    The image of the shooting gallery does it. About forty miles north of Cascade, six miles outside an even smaller town called New Meadows, is Zim’s Plunge, a swimming pool fed by natural hot springs. It is open year round, even on the coldest days of a snowy winter, and going there is a truly special treat. No one leaves Zim’s without spending a few dimes in its shooting gallery, which consists of a primitive electronic rifle holstered about twenty feet from a small plastic bear behind glass on runners. The bear has an electronic target on both sides and on his stomach, and if the light from the gun hits that target, the bear rises to its hind legs and roars, turns a one-eighty, and heads the other way. Once you get him on his hind legs, you can keep him there by firing into the target on his stomach. He roars and kind of jerks one way and then the other until you miss. No matterhow many times you hit him, nothing happens more than a roar and a reversal of direction. He does not drop to the ground like a rock the way I do when the first BB my brother fires hits me square in the temple. Porch lights switch on in all three houses on adjacent blocks as I lie on the ground holding my head, screaming what I know are probably the last sounds I will make. Eddie Young snatches his BB gun and runs for home as my brother races down the hill to my side.
    â€œWhat’s going on over there?” a neighbor hollers. “Chris Crutcher, is that you making all that noise?”
    â€œIt’s okay!” my brother yells back. “He just fell down. I’ll take him in the house.”
    I scream louder, my temple pulsating. John takes my hand away from my head and feels the spot