Gemini Summer Read Free

sounded like a question. “Did you rinse those bottles?”
    “Yes,” said Danny.
    “You couldn’t have rinsed your feet?” said Mr. Kantor. “You think the store sweeps itself?”
    Danny looked down. Flakes of mud were falling from his legs and his trousers, from the wheels of the cart and its metal frame. Mr. Kantor was like a kind man hiding in a mean one, and Danny felt bad about the mud. He tried to kick it underneath the counter.
    Mr. Kantor examined each bottle, squinting over the top of his little spectacles. Six he pushed aside, shaking his head. “I should give you money for no deposit?” Then he took up a short pencil and licked its tip, and added numbers on a slip of paper.
    The boys spent their money right then, filling little brown bags from the boxes of candy near the counter. Danny took jawbreakers that would change color in his mouth, and caramels, and a packet of Munsters cards. Beau picked wax pipes full of juice, and a yellow sherbet fountain that looked like a stick of dynamite.
    Mr. Kantor stood above them with his neck bent like a buzzard’s, but he kept smiling. “Have you got your dog yet, Danny?” he asked.
    “No,” said Danny, counting out caramels.
    “What are your parents thinking? Every boy should have a dog,” Mr. Kantor said. “Dogs are always your friend no matter what. Dogs are good. People, they can be animals, you know. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”
    He emptied the bags that the boys had filled, and counted the candies. Danny watched his long fingers rolling the jawbreakers, and couldn’t help staring at the blue numbers tattooed on Mr. Kantor’s arm. He’d always wanted to know why they were there but hadn’t yet felt brave enough to ask.
    The boys left with the cart, their six rejected bottles rattling inside. At the top of the hill, where the path led into the woods, Beau told Danny, “Get in.”
    Danny didn’t want to at first, but Beau insisted; he said it would be fun. So Danny clambered into the cart and wedged himself along its length. Then Beau pushed it forward an inch, drew it back another.
    “Three, two, one,” he counted, and Danny shouted, “Ignition!”
    “Blastoff!” said Beau, and down the hill they went.
    The cart veered madly, tilting round the corners. It crashed through a bush and leapt from a root, and the bottles bounced round Danny’s knees. It very nearly went tumbling over the cliff—thirty feet down to the creek—but skidded aside at the last moment. Beau came stumbling behind it, his arms straight out; he could hardly keep up with the cart.
    Danny hurled the bottles at trees and boulders. They spun into bushes, bounded up, and spun again, and before they stopped he was past them.
    He shot over the bridge on two wheels. Then the path went uphill, and he was airborne at the top, flying for a moment with the last two bottles floating weightless beside him. Then he landed with a crash and kept going, out of the woods, onto the grass beside the road. He thought the cart would carry him clear across it, so he cried out for Beau to stop him. He was heading for the Colvig house.
    He looked back but couldn’t see Beau. The cart bounced and rattled over the boulevard, and Danny now was truly frightened. He imagined rattling across the street and up the Colvigs’ driveway, smashing into Creepy’s garage. But suddenly, like a miracle, the cart flopped on its side and spilled him onto the grass.
    Beau came up a moment later, panting and laughing, and collapsed at Danny’s side. Danny could hardly believe he’d ridden the whole hill; no one had ever done it before. He told Beau what it had been like to shoot over the bridge. And Beau told him how he had looked from behind—like Colonel Steve Zodiac. “Like Colonel Zodiac!” Beau shouted.
    Danny held up the last of the bottles. “Watch, Beau!” he shouted, winding up with his arm. He cried,
“Achtung!”
like one of the little blue Nazis in the
G.I. Combat
comics, and lobbed the