On the Road to Mr. Mineo's Read Free

sniffling.
    â€œAre you paralyzed?” Stella poked at Gerald’s chubby white knee.
    â€œPrickers,” he said in a quivering voice.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPrickers.”
    Sure enough, the shrubbery that Gerald had had the good luck to land in was filled with prickers. Sharp, mean-looking prickers that grabbed at Gerald’s shirt and left angry red scratches on his arms and legs.
    â€œWhat am I going to do?” Gerald looked at Stella out of the corner of his eye, keeping his head still, his neck stiff.
    Stella tapped her chin. “Hmmm,” she said. “Let me think.”
    Stella thought.
    And Gerald waited.
    Stella thought.
    And Gerald waited.
    â€œOkay,” she said. “I have a good idea.”
    Gerald groaned.
    â€œWe’ll hold hands,” she said. “And then, on the count of three, I’ll pull you out.” She beamed at Gerald. “Trust me,” she added. “I’ll do it so fast you won’t feel a thing.”
    Gerald looked at Stella in a wild-eyed kind of way and said, “But I don’t want to.”
    Stella jammed her fists into her waist. “You want Levi and those germ-infested friends of his to get a whiff of you stuck in the bushes crying?”
    Gerald’s eyes grew wider.
    â€œOkay, then,” Stella said. “Let’s do it.”
    She took both of Gerald’s hands in hers.
    â€œOn the count of three,” she said.
    â€œOne.
    â€œTwo.
    â€œThree.”
    Stella tugged.
    And tugged.
    And tugged some more.
    It took a lot more tugs than Stella thought it would. She tried to ignore Gerald’s hollering and just concentrate on tugging.
    Finally, Gerald was free. He lay on the ground beside the shrubbery in a scratched-up, torn-shirt heap. Stella stood over him, her hands on her knees.
    His eyes were closed.
    â€œGerald?”
    He opened one eye.
    And then the other one.
    â€œOkay, good,” Stella said. Then she raced over to the garage and started up the ladder to look for the one-legged pigeon.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    Gerald Finally Says No
    Gerald blinked up at the sky.
    He took a breath in.
    He let a breath out.
    He was still alive. But he was all scratched up and ached from head to toe.
    Stella poked her head over the edge of the garage roof and whispered, “That pigeon’s back.” Her curly hair stood out around her head like a lion’s mane.
    â€œLeave me alone,” Gerald said, examining his scratched-up arms.
    â€œI have another idea,” Stella whispered down to him.
    Gerald sighed.
    â€œWe’ll make a trap,” she said.
    Gerald picked leaves out of his hair, pretending like he didn’t hear her.
    â€œWe can use the trash can and prop it up with a stick and tie a string to the stick and put some birdseed under it and…”
    Gerald limped over to the back porch. He dabbed at his arms and legs with his shirttail while Stella yammered away about her cockamamie idea. He wanted her to go home.
    Stella came down the ladder and disappeared into the garage.
    Gerald pretended not to notice.
    A few minutes later, she came out of the garage with a long wooden dowel and skipped over to the ladder. “Come on,” she called as she scrambled back up to the roof.
    Gerald heaved another sigh.
    Then he plodded, stoop-shouldered, to the ladder and climbed up to the roof to join Stella.
    *   *   *
    They spent all afternoon working on the trap that Stella had designed. But they had a lot of problems.
    The trash can wouldn’t stay propped up with the dowel.
    The dowel was too long.
    The trash can was too big.
    Then Stella tried to convince Gerald to climb over the fence to the yard next door and borrow a little birdseed from Mildred Perry’s bird feeder.
    â€œCome on, Gerald,” Stella said. “Please?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause.”
    â€œGive me one good reason.”
    Gerald gave Stella three good