100 Cupboards Read Free Page B

fell, there would be an enormous dust cloud where he landed. Would Uncle Frank even hear him? How long would he lie there? What would he look like to Frank, from up in the loft? He shivered.
    As he climbed through the second level, he glanced around. Large pink chalk clouds decorated the floor beside a hopscotch grid. He quickly scrambled up the last couple of rungs and stuck his head through the floor into the loft.
    â€œHeya, Henry,” Uncle Frank said. He was sitting at a desk buried in stuff. “You like the climb?”
    â€œSure,” Henry said, breathing hard. He came the rest of the way up and stepped off the ladder.
    Frank smiled. “It goes higher. Up all the way to the roost. Climb on up if you like. There’s a little door you can throw open, and a shelf that’s pretty much pigeon world. You have to be careful. It gets slick if they’ve been there recently. It’s probably the highest elevation in Kansas, not counting other barns and the silos. There’s some big ones around here.”
    â€œSilos?” Henry asked, looking toward the roost. “Like where they store grain?”
    â€œThat’s what I mean,” Frank said. “Now, Henry, I want to tell you something. Your aunt doesn’t know about it, and I might not even tell her for a good while. But I need to spill beans to somebody, and here you are.”
    â€œWhat is it?” Henry pulled his eyes down from the roost and looked at his uncle. Frank had a computer on an old buffet, a hutch full of doors and drawers. The monitor sat in the middle, surrounded by mounds of knickknacks—jumbled figurines, small vases, and tools. Henry could see a hatchet handle and a miniature Canadian flag in one pile, half a model ship in another.
    Frank leaned back in his chair and curled his lips against his teeth. “I got a store on the Internet, and I sell things to people all over the world. Been doing it for almost two months now, and today I’ve struck it rich!” Frank laughed. “I’ve just sold two tumbleweeds for fifteen hundred dollars.”
    â€œWho’d buy tumbleweed?” Henry asked. “That’s a lot of money.”
    Frank grinned and put his hands behind his head. “Yes, it is. I would have been happy with ten dollars for the both of them, but some Japanese businessmen got their blood up for the weeds, fought it out with each other, and here I sit, a wealthy man. That’s seven hundred and fifty dollars a pop.”
    â€œWow,” Henry said. “Do you really think they’ll pay?”
    â€œSure they will.” He straightened and slid forward in his chair. “Are you busy with something? How about we ride into town for some ice cream and then go pickin’ money? Run in and tell your aunt we’re going. I’ll be in just after I e-mail my new client.”
    Â 
    Henry didn’t ride in the back of the truck this time. He bounced and jostled between the door and the long prong of the stick shift. He was not buckled. He had waited to be told, but now he suspected that wouldn’t happen.
    Henry cranked his window down, put his arm out, and leaned his face into the wind. They were going all the way to the other side of town, his uncle had said, and so they had taken the farm roads around rather than driving straight through. Henry’s father had given him a book on city planning for Christmas, so he couldn’t help thinking of the road as a sort of beltway, a ring road. Only it’s gravel, Henry thought. And barely two lanes.
    He stopped thinking about cities and watched the town of Henry slide past to his right. He was thrown against his door and bounced up to the roof as the truck failed to leap a pothole. The window handle dug into his leg, and he hit his head on something. Still, he didn’t buckle. He did, however, sneak his hand up when he thought his uncle wasn’t looking and lock his door.
    Locusts were flying up in