08718

Mom left me here forty-nine minutes ago, according to the calculator watch I won this spring selling magazine subscriptions to help fund the middle school marching band trips. It’s hot in here. With the windows up it’s smothering, like in my galvanized steel fort that Dad calls a “shed” and keeps putting yard equipment in. With the windows cranked down, it’s like sticking my face in the fireplace insert fan. Dry, blasting gusts. At the moment, I’ve decided on down in the back, up in the front. Like my hair.

Another wheat truck zooms by, rocking the car and blowing itchy dust in the back windows. The hood is up and the flashers are on, and country people look out for each other, but our old car gave out just over the brim of a hill, so by the time anyone sees us they’re already well past. And they probably can’t see me in here, laying in the backseat

It was a fancy sports car that picked up Mom. Not from around here. Probably someone from Spokane who heard miraculous, tempting tales about the healing waters of Soap Lake.

“He only has room for one,” she said through the passenger window. She employed her serious voice, but it was different, higher. “It’s only fifteen miles back to Madson. I’m gonna get someone at Earl’s to drive me back and fix us up, and then we can get you to camp.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry, Mikey!”

“It’s okay.”

Her hand cupped my cheek. “You’ll be okay. It won’t be long.”

“Yeah.” I squinched up my nose to let her know I wasn’t scared. She was worried about me.

She smiled. “Don’t turn on the radio, it’ll kill the battery.”

I nodded.

“Get out a book, you have a book right?”

I wanted to roll my eyes, but something told me I should nod instead, so I did. Of course she knew I had multiple books. Duh.

Serious face. Massive eye contact. “Don’t. Go. With. Anyone.” Each word punctuated with an index finger.

“Okay.”

She looked away, then back. The dust was getting in her eyes. “You’ll be okay.”

“Yeah.” Now the dust was getting in my eyes. She tucked my hair over my ears. It flopped right back.

“Okay.” She tapped the windowsill and retreated. “I’ll be back soon. A half hour.” She turned and jogged to the sports car’s open passenger door, yelling back, “Check your watch!”

That was at 2:15pm, almost an hour ago.

After a few minutes of being scared, there had followed a period of being bored. On the radio, the Scorpions reminded me that there is no one like me, John Cougar regaled me with a little story ‘bout Jack and Diane, and John Williams’s son teased me about how even Africa was getting some rain. When the radio turned itself off, I unzipped my duffel and pulled out three Madson Public Library books: Pawn of Prophecy (first time through, not bad so far), The Two Towers (second time through, pinnacle, no pun intended), and The Dead Zone (trying out Stephen King on my Mom’s recommendation). After mulling for a moment, I settled on comfort and guaranteed thrill: J.R.R. it was.

Now it’s getting hotter, and Merry and Pippen slurping Ent-draughts is making me thirsty. The sun is soaring high above the rocky basalt hilltop the road cuts through, transforming more than half of the vinyl seat into a lava field. I squeeze into the other side, that renowned oasis of frigid deliverance known as “right next to a lava field”. I’m considering running across the road to enjoy the narrow shadow cast by the sheer hill when my watch beeps.

“06,” it reads. I think maybe the battery is going dead, but then I realize it’s somehow put itself in calculator mode. I switch it back. 3:09pm. She’s been gone for 54 minutes.

It beeps again.

“06”

I’m sure I didn’t accidentally do it; I’m barely able to press those miniscule buttons on purpose without using a pencil. Maybe it is the battery. I push the mode button on the side past the alarm and stopwatch, and back to time.

It beeps again.

“5318008”

My eyebrows shoot up. This I definitely recognize. I contort my arm to view the display upside down. In a slight breach of etiquette, it’s skipped the prurient precursors “8008” and “58008” and gone straight for the pre-teen funny bone.

I giggle reflexively, but stop myself, looking up over my shoulder to ensure I’m alone. This calculator is not sophisticated enough to have a memory function. How’s it doing this?

The watch beeps and “5318008” is replaced by “06”.

I push my black glasses up my sweaty nose and consider “06” upside down. “Go?”

The watch beeps and the display changes to “1”.

“One?”

“0”

“Zero?”

“0”

I’m so confused. Then the watch displays “1” and plays an ascending scale of three beeps, followed by “0” accompanied by a descending scale. It tickles a memory. When Mrs. Danner was introducing us to the new TRS-80 classroom computer earlier this year, she talked about how computers have their own language. How everything to them is 0’s and 1’s, false and true, no and yes.

“Ohhh! 1 is ‘yes’ and 0 is ‘no’!”

“1”

“Holy crap. I’m having a conversation with my calculator watch!”

“707”

“Lol? What’s that?”

“06”

“You want me to go?”

“1”

“Go where?”

“0606060606”

I switch the watch back to time. 3:15pm. Mom had been gone for twice as long as she said. Maybe something happened. I sit up just as another wheat truck rolls by, rocking the car. Dust dances in little eddies across the road. When the car started acting up, Mom thought we could make it to camp. I think she said it was close, just down the hill.

I squeak the back door open and slide onto the gravel. I blow out a jet of air. Wow it’s hot out here. Remembering what I’ve seen in movies, I lean back into the car, dig through my duffel, and pull out a t-shirt, then drape it over my head.

“Okay. Time for a walk.”

Beep. “1”

I trudge down the hill. The gravel crunches, releasing little puffs of Mt. St. Helen’s ash with each step, like I’m Godzilla stomping through Tokyo. Experimentally, I attempt to recreate the monster’s screech, but it just makes me cough in the dry air, so I stop.

Soon I’m past the hilltop cutout and the landscape spreads wide before me. The road extends straight for a while, then curves to the right before cutting through another hilltop and disappearing. In the distance twinkles Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir formed by Grand Coulee Dam. I know the camp is near the lake; we get to swim every day. And sure enough, ahead and to the right of the road is a large stand of trees. Mom said the camp was in the woods so it must be there.

My watch says 3:37pm. My arms are hot. I should have put on something with sleeves to block the sun. At least I’m not sweating anymore.

A wheat truck approaches from behind. It shifts up and barrels down the hill toward me. The shoulder of the road is narrow here, with a gentle slope down through long dry grass and weeds into a wheat field that’s already been cut. Just to be safe, I slide off the road a few steps to let the truck pass. It kicks up dust, gravel, and a scattering of wheat kernels as it roars by on its way to the grain elevator.

I start to climb back up to the road, then pause to consider. The trees are right there. It’s close. I think I can make it faster if I go cross country. My loosely laced high tops (which have never seen a basketball court) aren’t ideal for traversing a field of stubble, but they’ll do. I tromp out onto the field.

Beep. My vision swims a little when I look down at my watch. I blink it away.

“0”

“No? It’s right there.” I pointed at the trees as if my watch had eyes.

“637”

“Leg. What do you mean? I’m on my legs either way. And I’m not getting squished by one of those trucks.”

“0”

I shake my head. “Sorry, I’m going.”

I set off across the field. This is dry land wheat, which grows much shorter than irrigated, so the yellowy stubble is only four or five inches tall. It’s arranged in rows, alternating with dry, crumbly soil. For comfort, I try to walk along the dirt strips, but I’m cutting across the field at an angle, so every few paces I have to step over the stubble. There’s a rhythm to it, so I match my stride to one of our marching band cadences. I start to whistle “Stars and Stripes Forever”, but my lip cracks, so I wince and stop mid phrase. Humming will do.

I find an uncut stalk and rub the head between my hands to extract the kernels, which I pop in my mouth to crunch on. I know if I chew long enough, the sweet, nutty granules will turn into a thin, sandy chewing gum. You take what you can get out on the farm.

In the middle of the field I come upon an unseeded section in the lee of a low ridge, maybe fifty feet long. It’s populated with rocks, sagebrush, and other weeds. There’s even an old piece of rusted out farm equipment I don’t recognize, abandoned, dwindling. I’m sad for it.

If the ridge were facing the other way, it would be an excellent place to rest in the shade, but unfortunately it’s facing south. More of an oven than an oasis. Deciding it’s easier to go through than around, I push into the cheatgrass.

Almost immediately, I hear a sound coming from my right, like BB’s clattering in my air rifle’s shot tube. A western rattlesnake is coiled on a kneehigh rock, warning me away. I’ve seen rattlesnakes before, but not this big, or this close. I freeze.

“You’re okay,” I say.

Defensively, I flare my palms out in front of my chest, like a T-Rex at gunpoint, and slowly back away.

“That’s your warm rock. You can have it. My blood’s already too warm.”

When I’m twenty feet away it stops rattling, and I start to breathe.

Beep. “637.”

“Leg!” I turn to walk up the hill. “Well, as you can see, I didn’t get bit. I know what I’m doing out here. My leg is just–”

My ankle twists on something concealed in the grass and I tumble into a sagebrush and roll to the ground. Now I’m not only hot, but also dirty and scratched up. I just lay there for a few seconds, moaning, before rolling to my knees and hopping to my feet.

“Ouch!” I collapse again, doused in a wave of pain. I shove my fingers in my right shoe to rub the anklebone on the outside of my foot. It’s tender to the touch. Not yet swelling, but probably would be soon. I need to move now. I try again to stand, but can barely put any weight on it. It would be a long walk to the camp, or back to the road.

No way around it, but first things first. I sit back down, poke the laces through the upper grommets in the high tops, and, cringing, pull them tight. Hopefully this will give my wounded ankle more stability. Then I retrieve my loose t-shirt from the sagebrush, shake it off, and tie it firmly around my head.

As I’m psyching myself up for the painful journey to come, I hear a noise above the ridge: a large animal plodding through the field. Can’t be a bear. An elk? Loose cow?

“Whoa now.” A deep voice. A smoker’s voice.

Don’t. Go. With. Anyone, my mom says in my head.

My rattlesnake instincts come alive. Already sitting, I lean back behind the large sagebrush. I’m here with Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, concealed in the long grass under a tree, hiding from the Nazgul sniffing them out. Long moments pass; the horse nickers.

Beep.

I slap my hand over the watch and freeze. One breath. Two. Three.

The rider coughs wetly. Then I hear the chick, chick of a lighter.

I peek at the watch. It says “7738”. Bell?

“Alright, git up,” the rider says, and kisses the air. “Let’s go home, Belle.”

Bell!

Calculator Watch hasn’t steered me wrong yet!

“Help! Sir!” I stumble up, hopping on one leg. Over the brim of the hill I see a man with a bushy gray beard and a grimy yellow cowboy hat, cigarette dangling from his hidden mouth. He’s astride a chestnut horse with a white nose stripe. Both are peering down at me.

“Oh my!” he says, making it one word, in a voice two octaves higher than before. “Comin’ down!” He launches from Belle’s back and sidesteps down the hill. “What’re you doin’ down here, darlin’? Ya hurt?” He comes in close, smelling of smoke, horse, and something else, a grandpa smell.

And the tears come.

“Our car broke down and my mom went to get help and she’s been gone for an hour and I was trying to get to camp over there in the trees and I twisted my ankle!”

He looks where I’m pointing, then back at me. Squatting, he puts his hands on my upper arms, gives a little squeeze, and looks at my face. “You’ll be ok, just need some water and shade. Hang tight.” He goes up the hill and returns with a red half-gallon thermos, ice rattling inside. It sounds like the first heavy raindrops of a summer storm. I drink greedily from the stem.

“I’m Del Roberts. My ranch is over yonder,” he waves a hand, “Belle and I are just out for a stretch. She needs to get out in the afternoon.” He shoots a look at Belle, who’s nibbling casually at the stubble. “Those trees there, well that’s the Gilbert place, not a camp, but there are a few ranches that do summer camps around the lake. What’s it called?”

I had to think about it. “Red…?”

“Red Rock Ranch? Triple-R?”

“Yeah.” That was definitely it. I remember because my brother kept calling it “Red Rum” over and over in this creepy voice for some reason. He’s so weird.

“Ha, well Triple-R’s near five miles past those trees, eight by road. You had your work cut out for you.”

Why did Calculator Watch tell me to go? That walk would have taken me hours.

Mr. Roberts slaps his thighs. “Well, come on then. Me and Belle can get you there pretty quick.”

I know Red Rock Ranch has horseback riding; I guess I’m going to get a preview.

He gives me a piggy-back ride up the hill, hat in hand. The grandpa smell is coming from his hair. After setting me gently on the ground, he rubs Belle’s nose and mounts.

“Which foot is hurt?”

“My right.”

“Perfect.” He offers me his hand. “Stick your left foot in the stirrup and I’ll pull you up behind me. Just flip your leg over.” After a couple tries, I slide up onto the blanket behind his saddle.

“You good?”

I say, “Yeah” just as Calculator Watch beeps “1”.

“Hold on.” I grab two fists full of his black and white flannel shirt, and he kisses the air. “Git up now Belle.”

And then we’re walking. It’s scary at first. I feel unstable with my legs spread so far around Belle’s sides. So much wider than my bike! But I think Mr. Roberts senses when I start to feel more comfortable, because he kicks Belle up to a running walk as we leave the field for a dirt road.

And then: “Okay, kid, hold on!” and he kicks Belle up to a lope. Suddenly I’m inner tubing at Crater Lake behind my uncle’s boat, sledding down Magnolia Street, blocked off after a snowstorm shuts down the schools, riding my bike down dead man’s hill on a dare. I’m either going to die, or I’m going to live. Mr. Roberts lets out a holler, and I follow suit. Soon we drop back to a running walk for the rest of the ride, but my heart is still pounding.

Before long, we emerge from a stand of black cottonwoods into a broad graveled area surrounded by barns, corrals, and other large structures. Several adults in ranchwear look up; one is addressing a group of preteens in a lesson about saddles.

A woman with orange hair, a brown cowboy hat, and an “RRR” patch on her blue denim shirt saunters over as Mr. Roberts dismounts.

“Hey there, Del.”

“Howdy-do, Ellen,” Mr. Roberts says. “Got one a yours here, I think.”

She squints up at me, then her eyes go wide. “Graham! Here’s the missing kid!”

Across the parking lot, from behind a shiny white pickup labeled “Earl’s Garage”, steps a stocky young man wearing a shirt like Ellen’s, a skinny older man with a baseball cap, and my mom.

“Mikey!” she screams, sprinting toward me. Everyone stops to stare. Mr. Roberts lifts me from Belle’s back just as she arrives and crushes me in a fierce hug. “Oh Mikey, you’re okay!”

It turns out when she and Earl had returned to the car, it was gone, side-swiped off the road, presumably by a passing wheat truck. Whoever did it never owned up. I had to sign up for camp later in the summer because of my ankle. It’s just as well since my mom was really embarrassing in front of those other kids.

And Calculator Watch? It asked me to call it “08718” (“Bilbo”). Just wait until you hear what else we got up to.