Island Boyz by Graham Salisbury

Author:Graham Salisbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780375890086
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2002-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

Waiting for

the War

About a mile inland from Pearl Harbor, Henry Long and Sammy Maldonado, two sixteen-year-old island boys, were trying to ride a horse.

Actually, they were trying to catch it.

To Henry the horse was a menace. It would just as soon kick you in the face as look at you, and Henry was kicking himself for having bought it. But he sure wasn’t about to admit that to Sammy.

It was the old forgotten brown horse in the weedy pasture not far from his house. It had been in there for as many years as Henry could remember.

Now it was his.

But he couldn’t ride it because he couldn’t get on it, and he couldn’t get on it because he couldn’t even catch it. The horse had a mean streak as long as an aircraft carrier.

It nipped him on the shoulder. It stepped on his foot and kicked his shin. Henry couldn’t even get a rope over its head, and he was sorry he’d paid any kind of money for it. But Henry had his pride and wasn’t about to admit the horse was a mistake.

“The old man just ruined it,” Sammy told Henry. “Because he never rode it.”

“It ain’t ruined. It’s a good horse.”

“What’s so good about it? You can’t even catch it.”

“So. It just needs to get used to me.”

“Or maybe it just don’t like people. But it looks like a good horse, yeah? Check out its back. Straight, not swayback.”

Henry glared at Sammy, who he knew had never been on a horse in his life. “You catch it then. You get on it.”

“But I think you could ride it, if you’re nice to it.”

“Nice to it?”

“Yeah. Give it grass, pet it.”

“You don’t pet horses.”

“How come?”

Henry shook his head. “You just don’t. You brush it, you slap its side or neck, you give it apples and weeds and comb its mane, but you don’t pet it. It ain’t a dog. It ain’t a . . . a . . . a cat.”

Sammy shrugged.

Henry looped up the short piece of soft rope and stuck it in the back pocket of his khaki pants.

The horse had belonged to a nice but sly old guy named Wong. “Only eleven years old,” he’d said. “Still young yet, like you, Henry. He just jumpy because of the bombs, yeah? Was too close to all those explosions. Even had one went off in this pasture. Over there. See the hole?”

Henry saw the indentation in the grass. That had been a bad day, he remembered. Lot of noise, lot of smoke, planes, police, sirens. Almost two years now since the Japanese planes came. Thank goodness it was only one bad day, and lucky the Japanese never landed troops like everyone thought they would. Really lucky.

“You sure you can ride it?” Henry asked Wong.

“Yeah yeah. Look at him. Strong. Spunky. Got a nice high step. I give you ’um for . . . hmmm . . . fie dollah.”

That’s what did it. Five dollars. For a horse! Henry couldn’t pass it up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.