The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

more selfish concerns: What if Dad had discoveredthat Kinky was missing, and knew I’d disobeyed his orders not to touch the gerbils? Or what if he saw Kinky in my pocket when I rode up the driveway?
    As it turned out, I had plenty of time to slip Kinky back into the cage with her sisters. The garage was empty, the big front doors securely shut as usual. I dropped Kinky back into her cage. Then I retraced my steps through the garage and entered the house by the front door.
    I found Mom in the backyard. She stood on the lawn next to the lake, where Dad was dragging Gail’s empty bright blue plastic wading pool across the lawn. “Oh, good, you’re here,” Mom said.
    She held me by the shoulders and looked me up and down, then sent me back inside for a clean blouse. “Wear the red striped one,” she called after me. “I ironed it and hung it up in your closet. Put on a clean pair of shorts and comb your hair, too.”
    This was getting more mysterious by the minute. By the time I returned to the yard Donald was there, too, in an equally stiff shirt, hair combed and slicked to one side, only his sly blue eyes a clue to his real nature.
    Unlike me, Donald had no interest in reading. In fact, he hated any sort of calm. As my mother put it, “Poor little Donald needs more action than he gets.” We lived on a lake, and my brother loved to mix himself a tall glass of chocolate milk for breakfast at 5:00 A.M. before sneaking outside to catch frogs and snakes beneath the dock. He was a petty thief who would try every back door until he could get into a neighbor’s kitchen and help himself to food better than ours. He lifted restaurant tips so fast that waitresses went home shortchanged whileDonald always had enough money for Cokes. He even swiped coins from the collection plate at the Lutheran church where Mom sent him alone to Sunday school; we weren’t Lutherans, but Mom sent him anyway hoping that “somebody over there will save that kid’s soul.”
    Donald had a genius for escaping mischief unscathed, which left me as his fall guy. Arguing with Donald was like arguing with a prophet: he always knew he was right. During the short time we’d lived in Virginia, he had already convinced me to lick a frozen pipe and race a newspaper boy on a bicycle, which led to me being run over by the bicycle and breaking my nose. Most recently, Donald had convinced me to climb to the top of a telephone pole, using the same metal rungs the telephone repairmen used, and shimmy down it again in shorts; Mom had to spend an entire evening plucking splinters out of my legs.
    My mother came up to me as I stood there waging war with Donald. She whipped a comb out of her apron pocket and dragged it through my short hair with a heavy, hopeless sigh. My hair was as dry and brown as toast; Mom had to spit on the comb to make the strands lie down. Then she ordered me to stand next to Donald until our father was ready.
    “Ready for what?” I asked, but Mom ignored this and went to sit in the shade with two-year-old Gail, who was dressed in a ruffled blouse. With that outfit and her wild blond curls tamed into ringlets, Gail looked like somebody’s princess doll.
    Donald sidled closer to me as we watched Dad drag the wading pool to first one location, then another, with Tip the fox terrier barking madly at the scraping sound. “You’re stupid,” Donald said, and hammered his fist into my thigh.
    “Not as stupid as you,” I said automatically, punching him back. It was our standard greeting.
    Donald grabbed my arm and pinched it hard. Before I could pinch him back, Dad ordered us to collect toys from our bedrooms and bring them outside. “Anything small,” he added. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and baggy khaki shorts, his pale legs sticking out like straws. A cigarette hung from one corner of his mouth. “Make it quick, before the light changes.”
    Donald, Gail, and I ran through the house as if we were on a treasure hunt. I gathered