Rainmaker by Kevin Markey

Author:Kevin Markey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER 11

Early Friday morning, a caravan of cars pulled away from our house. The sun was still low in the sky, and mist rose from warming front lawns as we wound down the street like a big mechanical snake. It looked like it was going to be a nice dry day. I knew for a fact it would be a great one. We were finally on our way to the North Woods.

There were six cars altogether, each one packed to the gills with kids and camping gear. I sat in the middle row of the lead minivan, with Stump to my right and Slingshot on my left. Mr. Bones shared the back with our tents and the rest of our gear. My dad drove, and Stump’s dad rode shotgun. Before we even reached the highway, we’d already tortured them with eighteen choruses of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Root Beer on the Wall.”

“Forget root beer. What I could use is a coffee,” Dad said to Mr. Plumwhiff, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“I’d settle for earplugs,” Mr. Plumwhiff replied as we launched into the next verse of the world’s longest song. He swiveled in his seat to face us. “Are you boys planning to sing the whole way?”

“Eighty-one bottles of root beer on the wall, eighty one bottles of root beer,” we belted by way of an answer. “If one of those bottles should happen to fall, eighty bottles of root beer on the wall!”

Mr. Bones barked along happily to the words.

“This could make for a long drive,” my dad muttered.

“It feels like an eternity already,” said Mr. Plumwhiff.

In fact, the trip lasted only about two hours. We sang for less than half of it. The rest of the time, we played yellow-car skittles.

Whenever someone saw a yellow car, he shouted, “Skittles!” Whoever said it first got a point. If two people yelled at the same time, you could jinx the other guy. Then he couldn’t talk until someone said his name. That was the best, because then you could nab more points.

I got on the board first and led Stump and Slingshot by a score of two to one when Stump jinxed me on a Mini Cooper. Rats! I should have been quicker!

Knocked from the game, there was nothing much to do except look out the window. As the van speeded ahead, I watched the woods grow deeper and the towns fewer and smaller the farther north we got. After a while, there seemed to be no towns at all, only the occasional white farmhouse with a big stack of firewood on the porch.

A few minutes after jinxing me, Stump nailed Slingshot on a fast, jet-plane-loud Camaro. Suddenly our own car got awfully quiet.

“That’s more like it,” said Stump’s dad. “Peace at last.”

Stump didn’t like that, so he said my name and then I unjinxed Slingshot.

We passed a shingled cabin, its dirt yard littered with rusted tractors. Hanging from its mailbox was a sign offering live bait for sale.

“What kind of bait, do you think?” I asked.

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