Knights of the Hill Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

in front of me. Just—
boom!
—there he was. It was Blaine, but course, I didn't know that then. For all I knew, he could've been something from outer space zapping out of the sky.
    “Halt there, knave,” he said, planting his hands on his hips. “Where doth thou thinkest thou art fixing to go?” Even way back then, he was broad shouldered and had him a deep tan and dark brown eyes and black hair that stuck up on top of his head like he hadn't combed it a day since school let out for summer. Nine years old and he already looked like he ought to be the star of something.
    “What'd you call me?” I said. I hadn't never heard the word
knave,
and I wanted to make sure he wasn't calling me any bad names.
    “Knave,”
he said, like he'd heard some dumb questions but that one was the topper. “That means thou ain't a member of my kingdom.”
    “Who are you anyways?” The way he was talking, I thought he might be from another country.
    “Me? I'm Sir Galahad. Who the hell art thou?”
    “I'm Batman.”
    He grinned his big old shiny white grin and said, “Why, hell, this here's fixing to be the battle of the century, then.” And he bucked his head down and charged straight at my belly with no more warning than a bobcat gives a weasel.
    Right there was when I done it. Froze him solid in his tracks. It was almost like I was looking down on the both of us, figuring just what I had to do, and then—
click
—everything rolledinto motion again. I dodged off to one side and at the same time grabbed ahold of Blaine's T-shirt at the shoulder, wrenching him around so's he couldn't hit me square on. Then, before he could figure out what was what, I tackled him like he thought he was fixing to do me, and we went tumbling down the side of this steep hill there, rolling over and over each other, ending up in the tall grass at the bottom.
    As quick as we hit bottom, I sprung up on one knee, ready for some more combat, but Blaine—he just laid back in that high grass and laughed out loud. “Boy howdy,” he said. “Where you from anyways?”
    “I'm from here,” I said, still not one hundred percent sure the fighting was over.
    “Nuh-uh,” he said. “You can't be from here. I'm from here, and I ain't never seen you before.”
    I explained how I just moved to town and my mom worked at the dollar store, and he kind of checked me over with his eyes squinted up and said, “Well, that's different, then. As long as you're a Kennisaw boy, we can be friends.”
    And we shook on it right then and there—Fourth of July, bottom of the hill, east side of Leonard Biggins Park.
    Turned out, we both come over for the same reason, to see T. Roy Strong, and Blaine made sure we got prime seats in a big white oak just to the side of the pavilion where the ceremony was supposed to take place. Now, I didn't know that much about T. Roy's high school career back then, just that he was the top-dog legend all over eastern Oklahoma, but Blaine knew the facts on him from Genesis to Revelation, and he didn't mind sharing them while we waited up in that tree for the ceremony to kick off.
    The deal was, over ten years before me and Blaine was even born, the Kennisaw Knights football team only lostthree games in an eight-year run. Six of them years, they went undefeated, with five of them six being straight in a row, just like we'd have a chance of doing later on. And out of all the great players to wear the black and gold, T. Roy Strong was the greatest. Bar none. He was a three-year starter at quarterback and could outrun, outthrow, and out-think any other high school quarterback in the country. Some said you might as well include college in there too 'cause T. Roy was that good.
    He held either division or state records in five categories, and one time he threw a touchdown pass out of his own end zone with his foot an inch from the back line. A one-hundred-and-nine-yard and thirty-five-inch touchdown pass! Another time he run a quarterback sneak to gain