I hope that a lot of you will take the time to read this blog novel and offer me some feedback on it. I'm trying very hard to keep the excerpts short so it won't take more than I couple of minutes to read them. This is like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, but I wrote mine first. I think mine are better too. Please feel free to comment. Part one was posted yesterday. If you need to, go back and read it also.
I slipped into my favorite jeans
and t-shirt and slapped on my St. Louis Cardinals hat. After I took a quick
look at myself in the mirror, I started down the stairs. Remembering that it
was Saturday and that my dad would be at his music store all day long improved my
mood dramatically.
Most of the kids at school figure
that since my dad owns a music store he is cool. He can be sometimes.
When I got downstairs, I saw Mom
was halfway asleep in her chair. Since she had her eyes closed, I didn’t figure
she was actually reading the newspaper she held.
“Who won the game last night?” I
asked, making her jump awake.
“Your dad said they won six to
two.”
“What are you reading?”
Mom sighed. Her sighs always seemed
slightly sad in some sinister way--sorry for the alliteration. I’m a writer.
We do stuff like that sometimes.
My mom is too nice to be sinister. That’s why I never could figure why
she married Dad. Alliteration, by the way, is the repetition of initial
consonant sounds. We poets know that. I liked to use it when I wrote poems.
Boy, the guys would laugh me back into the fifth grade if they knew I wrote
poetry.
“Guys and Dolls is coming to the Fox,” Mom said.
“Any
of those dolls good looking?”
“It’s a musical, Walt. I starred in
it when I went to college.”
“You went to college?” Amazing. I’d
been her kid all my life and I never knew she went to college.
“For a while. Then I met your
father.” She sighed again.
“Just think, Mom, if you hadn’t met
Dad, you wouldn’t have had me.”
She smiled. “Too late to change
that now.”
“Very funny,” I said, but inside, I
didn’t feel like laughing. Dad was forty-one when I was born and Mom
thirty-seven. Dad always said I was an
accident. The way he looks at me
sometimes I think what he really means is that I was a mistake. I snatched the
paper from her. “Get Dad to take you up there to see it.” Now, that’s funny, I thought.
She looked at me like I was stupid.
“Three
home runs last night. Awesome!”
I handed the paper back to Mom, who
folded it up and set it aside like a bad Christmas present.
“So ask him,” I said.
“Your dad won’t even go to see a
ball game, much less to the theater.”
“If I could drive, I’d take you.” I
kissed her on the cheek. “I’m going for a bike ride. You think if I stopped by
the store, Dad would give me money for some baseball cards?”
“It depends--”
“On his mood. I know.” This time, I
sighed and dashed out the door.
I decided not to chance hitting my
dad up for some cash, so I just rode past the store and out into the country.
Stock
car racer, Walt Earnhardt, stares at the track in front of him. His machine
roars under him like a jet plane. He hits the curve at a hundred and eighty
miles per hour and screeches around it. He hits the straightaway. His engine
wails like a banshee straight from hell. He sees the camouflage flag waving in
the breeze. Camouflage?
I cruised around the curve at thirty miles per
hour and headed for Duckwater Creek. I braked as I saw a man, dressed in
camouflage, standing on the bridge. When I heard a loud crack, I slammed on the
brakes almost throwing myself over the handlebars.
The old man, known fondly as Crazy
Cooter, pointed his pistol at something on the bank. When the gun cracked
again, I decided I would probably forget relaxing at Duckwater Creek that day,
so I turned around and headed back toward home.
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