The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester Read Online Free PDF Page A

and crickets and flies could go right through the chicken wire so Tooley would always have something tasty to snack on.
    And every once in a while, the boys could open the top of the cage and take Tooley out and play with him.
    It would be great.
    “Let’s go on down to the dock and start cutting the baling wire,” Owen said after dropping two grasshoppers into the tub for Tooley.
    He retrieved the baling wire and wire cutters from the shed, put them in a plastic grocery bag, and carefullyclosed the door behind him so Earlene wouldn’t have anything to yammer about. Then he started across the yard with Travis and Stumpy behind him. But just as they got to the edge of the woods, Viola crawled through the hedge and said, “You should catch crawfish.”
    Owen sighed and rolled his eyes at Travis and Stumpy.
    “Be quiet,” Travis said.
    “Yeah, be quiet,” Stumpy said.
    Viola eyed the grocery bag in Owen’s hand.
    “What’s that?” she said.
    “Nothing.” Owen jiggled the bag at Viola. “Your mother’s calling you,” he said.
    “Bullfrogs love crawfish,” Viola said, pushing at her glasses. “I read it in the encyclopedia at my cousin’s house.”
    Crawfish?
    Really?
    There were tons of crawfish in the creek beside Travis’s house. Owen had caught about a million of them last summer. The boys had even had crawfish races and made trophies for the winners.
    “You think you know everything, but you don’t,” Travis said.
    “I know that bullfrogs don’t want names and they don’t want to live in cages and they love to eat crawfish.” Viola lunged for the grocery bag in Owen’s hand, but he yanked it away before she could grab it.
    “Go away,
Vi-o-la
!” Owen hollered. Then he motioned for Travis and Stumpy to follow him and started down the path through the woods. After a few feet, he whirled around to see if Viola was following them.
    She wasn’t.
    She was standing at the edge of the woods with that smug look on her smug face and sending irritation zipping down the path full steam ahead.
    “She’s gonna follow us,” Stumpy said.
    “Naw,” Owen said as he stomped down the path, swinging the grocery bag. “When she goes in the woods, she gets wheezy and itchy. Besides, she hates the pond. There’s too many gnats and too much mud and poison oak and all.”
    Owen hoped he was right.
    But with a girl like Viola, you never knew.
    “There!” Owen stood up and grinned down at the cage.
    The perfect cage.
    The cage where Tooley would live and be happy.
    “Let’s go get him!” he said, and raced up the path, through the woods, into the yard, and over to the back steps to the tub where Tooley sat, blinking up at the summer sky.
    Pete and Leroy leaped off the porch, tails wagging, and trotted over to join the fun.
    Owen lifted Tooley out of the tub.
    The back door opened and Earlene stepped out of the house and glared down at him. Her eyes darted from him to Tooley to Travis to Stumpy and then to him again.
    “You’re not going back yonder to those train tracks, are you?” she said.
    “No, ma’am.”
    She glared some more.
    “You’re not going out on that rotten ole dock, are you?”
    “We’re taking Tooley down to the pond.” Owen held Tooley up so his froggy legs dangled.
    Owen was a master of evasion.
    He could evade a question better than anybody he knew.
    But Earlene was persistent.
    “You’re not going out on that rotten ole dock, are you?” she asked again.
    Owen’s mind raced. He was thinking that maybe he needed to sharpen his evasion skills.
    “We put the cage in the pond for Tooley,” he said.
    “You listen to me, Owen Jester,” Earlene said. “I’m in no mood to be fishing three drowned boys out of that snake-infested pond.”
    Owen heard Travis and Stumpy shuffling in the dirt behind him.
    Travis and Stumpy were scared of Earlene. They always left all of the evading to Owen.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Owen said, because what else could he say?
    Earlene made a
hmmpf
noise