The Dangerous Animals Club Read online

  Thank you for purchasing this Simon & Schuster eBook.

  * * *

  Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  CONTENTS

  1. THE DANGEROUS ANIMALS CLUB

  2. FAQ

  3. LOCAL HERO

  4. LAND OF ENCHANTMENT

  5. THE ALCHEMIST

  6. THE MIDDLE CHAPTERS

  7. THE FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLEBEE

  8. THE PRICE OF NOTHING

  9. ONCE IN A LIFETIME

  10. A WAGER WITH FREDDIE

  11. LISTEN TO THE DOG

  12. MISS HARD TO GET

  13. CHAOS THEORY

  14. THE SOUND OF SURPRISE

  15. CONFERENCE HOUR

  16. LOST IN ACT ONE

  17. THE POLITICS OF ROMANCE

  18. DATING TIPS FOR ACTORS

  19. THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

  20. WITHOUT A HANDLE

  21. A SEASON OF MISDIRECTION

  22. THE WORLD’S NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

  23. HEART. BROKEN.

  24. THE LIGHT OF THE FIRST DAY

  25. IT’S NOT MY DOG

  26. DON’T ARGUE WITH THE ROAD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For my boys Robert and William.

  As dear and dangerous as they come.

  1.

  THE DANGEROUS ANIMALS CLUB

  DON’T ASK ME, “How are the kids?” I never have any idea. I know they eat and get dressed and go to school, but as to what is going on in their lives and in their heads, forget it. It is the secret world: the world that every child has and that no parent gets to see.

  Ann and I are active parents. We try to meet all of our kids’ friends and their parents and ask questions and look under the bed, and check in the closets, tap their phones—but we still don’t know the various deals with Satan they may make when they leave the house. We’re not unique. Every parent is in the dark.

  When I was five, I had an invisible monster that lived alternately in my closet and under my bed in a kind of winter-home/summer-home arrangement. His name was “Eye the Monster.” Eye would come out of hiding when I was alone and we would talk.

  I had an up-and-down relationship with Eye. I often appreciated his middle-of-the-night visits. We would talk about school and about girls I had crushes on. You would think that Eye the Monster didn’t care about the opposite sex. But he did. He always argued for patience and honesty. He urged me to be more aggressive with the ladies on square dance day. It was hard advice to take. I was never a player. I thought five years of age was too young to be married. But not Eye. He thought I could be a trailblazer and be married and have children before I was in fourth grade. And this was years before MTV.

  Besides being a confidant and an advisor, Eye had another side. He could be angry. There was a period when his opening my closet door and coming into my room at midnight terrified me. I snuck a steak knife from the kitchen and kept it under my pillow as a last line of defense. I hid the knife in the morning so Mom would never see it when she made my bed. Love, terror, and steak knives were all part of my secret world.

  Eventually, my parents became aware of Eye the Monster. On a car trip to San Antonio, Eye came out from under the backseat. He told my dad, who was driving, that we had to go back home. Davy Crockett was at the Alamo, and we could get killed by Mexicans. Dad didn’t listen. I started crying. Eye the Monster started screaming at Dad.

  Dad was not pleased. He had to work hard to get a few days off to go on a family vacation. Being a pediatrician, he realized that what he wanted was a vacation from screaming, crying kids. By the time we got to Waxahachie, Dad turned the car around and we came home.

  The big secret my parents never knew was that I was also a member of a club across the alley at Billy Hart’s house. I would kiss Mom on the cheek and “go out to play.” In reality I ran down to Billy’s for a meeting of the Dangerous Animals Club.

  Billy already had a clubhouse in his backyard so it was only natural that he should be the president. He was also older than I was. He was almost seven, and I was content to put myself in his capable hands.

  The purpose of the Dangerous Animals Club was straightforward. Both Billy and I were big fans of dangerous creatures. We made a list of all the dangerous creatures we wanted to catch. Being in Texas, there were a lot of them. The list included: rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moccasins, black widows, scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, leeches, and the deadly coral snake, which we were hoping lived in the woods nearby.

  We went out into the fields and hills and creeks carrying jelly jars and burlap sacks. We used broken broomsticks and umbrellas as tools of capture or weapons, if necessary. We would lift rocks and roll over rotten trees, hoping to find something horrible, catching it alive and bringing it back to the clubhouse, effectively making Billy’s backyard the most dangerous place in Texas.

  Charlie Harp, another neighborhood boy, a little younger than I, became aware of the Dangerous Animals Club. He heard our mission statement; he saw the clubhouse. He wanted in. Billy and I refused at first. What good is a secret club if everybody is a member? Charlie ran home and came back with a brown paper bag. Inside was a genuine rattlesnake skull. He said we could display it in the clubhouse if he could be a member. He was in. And we were now three.

  So I kissed Mom good-bye and told her I was going out to play. I ran over to Billy’s where we met and swore that if we told anyone about the club, we would be put to death. We had a disagreement as to whether it should be a blood pact. Charlie Harp argued it had to be a blood pact if punishment for telling was death. There was a logic to that, but I was opposed to any kind of bleeding that happened on purpose. Billy, being a natural leader, said the blood oath wasn’t necessary. The activities of the Club were already dangerous enough.

  We agreed and went out for our first task: to find a scorpion or a centipede. Billy was sure that if we went down to the creek we would find a scorpion. He heard that they liked rotting wood. There were several dead trees lying on the ground.

  As I think about it, Billy was a damn good president. His instincts were right on. We went down to the creek and found a fallen tree. We moved a decaying branch with our bare hands—and wha-la, there was a scorpion!

  We slapped a jelly jar over it. The scorpion started slashing at the glass and our hands with its tail, as scorpions are wont to do. We righted the jar and filled it with rubbing alcohol. The scorpion started swimming furiously. We screwed on the top and we headed back to the clubhouse. One day, about thirty minutes of time invested, and something nasty in our possession. Priceless.

  I ran home for dinner. Mom asked me if I had fun playing with Billy. I said emphatically, “Yes!”

  The next day we headed down to the creek where Billy hoped we could catch some leeches, and if we were lucky, a water moccasin, one of Texas’s four poisonous snake species. Billy told me that water moccasins weren’t as deadly as coral snakes—which was disappointing—but they were more aggressive. That encouraged me. I didn’t want to be wasting my time with something that wasn’t potentially lethal.

  We started wading through the creek water. Leeches swam up and tried to attach themselves to our legs. How great was that! We just scooped them up in a jar and we had leeches. Another creature to check off our list. Too easy.

  Now we were on to the snakes. Water moccasins apparently love stagnant water—so we were in the right place. The water had a thick green foam on top of it and you could see the mosquito larvae
swimming under the murky surface. Billy suggested we start turning over rocks by the bank of the creek.

  I flipped over a big piece of limestone and there was a baby water moccasin. It opened its little mouth and showed its baby fangs. Billy reminded me that the babies are just as poisonous as the grown-ups. I nodded and reached down to get it. Billy yelled to me to remember to grab it behind the head. Not to worry. I knew that. Everyone in Texas knows you grab a poisonous snake behind the head.

  But the water moccasin didn’t want to be caught and it took off through a field of tall grass. I ran after it shouting to Billy that it was headed toward him. I could see the snake making a rippling trail in front of me. It seemed to stop for a second. There was movement near my feet. I reached down quickly and pulled up—the mother water moccasin! She was four feet long and angry. In all of my haste, I hadn’t grabbed her behind the head but around the fat middle of her body. She hissed and readied an attack, showing her trademark white mouth and huge fangs.

  I screamed and started swinging the snake over my head. I used the centrifugal force to keep her from bending back and biting me. I was now holding her by the tail, swinging her around my head and walking around wondering what to do. Billy came up to me to give me advice. He assured me that as long as I could spin the snake fast enough, the g-force would keep her from striking. I told him I was getting tired. I needed to throw the snake. He told me I couldn’t. He said the water moccasin was not only aggressive, but it had a good memory and would follow me home.

  I started to cry.

  I told Billy that I had to let it fly, to let him get a head start for the clubhouse. Billy started running. I screamed after him, “If I throw the snake and run, will she be able to follow me?” Billy stopped and shouted back, “She’ll track you by scent. It could take days, but she’ll find you.” He took off like a jackrabbit. I stood in the middle of the swamp grass, swinging the snake over my head and crying.

  I couldn’t do this forever. I decided that the snake was probably dizzy and disoriented. That would buy me some time. I slung the snake. She twirled, helicopterlike, several yards through the air and landed in the creek. I took off. I ran as fast as I had ever run in my life. To confuse the snake, I didn’t run directly home, but took a circuitous route in the opposite direction. I ran over to Driftwood Street and down the alley behind Mark Henley’s house. There was a terrifying German shepherd that always barked at us when we rode our bicycles. I figured if the snake tried to track me, she would have to deal with the dog first.

  I got home in full gallop. I blasted through the kitchen door. Mom was putting supper on the table. She asked if I had a good time playing with Billy. I said “yeah” as she spooned some lima beans onto my plate. I asked her if we lock the doors at night. Mom looked at me with a touch of surprise and answered, “Yes, honey. Always. Why?” I started eating and said, “Oh, just wanted to make sure no one could break in.” Mom rubbed my back. “Oh, don’t worry. I always lock the doors.” I smiled. I was as safe as I possibly could be in an unsafe world.

  BILLY HART AND I had a cooling off period of about three days, waiting for some sign that the mother cottonmouth hadn’t tracked me down. When she never showed up, we figured the DAC could begin its full-scale operations once again. Billy produced a huge Whitman pickle jar from the Wynnewood Movie Theater, our local Saturday matinee hangout. He had a sly grin on his face. “Know what we’re gonna do with this jar?”

  “No,” I said.

  “We’re going to catch us a tarantula.”

  This was the best news I had heard since I found out the tooth fairy paid more money for bigger teeth. A real tarantula. The clubhouse would be a showplace with a tarantula next to the leeches, next to the scorpion, next to a real rattlesnake skull.

  “When do we get the tarantula?”

  Billy thought for a moment. “We have to get some supplies. My brother has to go to the drugstore and buy denatured alcohol.”

  “What is that?”

  Billy again showed his expertise. “It’s deadly poisonous. They only sell it to adults. My brother will buy some and give it to us. Then we go out and find a tarantula hole. And then we find its escape hole and put the pickle jar over it. Then we pour the denatured alcohol down the main hole and when the tarantula tries to escape out the back, we got him.”

  Let me just say right now, Billy Hart was a genius. He was right about everything, except for maybe the bit about the mother snake following me home. Anyway, Billy’s brother bought the awful stuff and gave it to us, and we wandered into the hills behind our homes.

  For the uninitiated, the way you find a tarantula hole is to find an arid locale (most of Texas), then you look for a hole in the ground that looks kind of like a gopher hole but with some telltale webbing around the entrance. Once you find the main hole, you walk in small but ever-widening concentric circles until you find another hole with a slight trace of spiderweb around the outside. This is the escape hole. It’s usually about twenty to thirty feet away.

  Billy and I found a hole that looked suspicious. It was three inches in diameter with some cobweb blowing in the breeze. We walked around the hole, and sure enough, about twenty feet away on the other side of a scrub oak was a second hole. I put the Whitman pickle jar over the escape hole. Billy pulled out the denatured alcohol. He handed me a thick piece of cardboard for phase two of the operation.

  He said, “We don’t know if the hole is deserted or not. I’ll pour this in and if a spider jumps in the jar, you slide the cardboard under it and we’ll have us a tarantula.” We laughed. We would have done a high five if it had existed back then. Billy unscrewed the cap, turned his head, and held the can as far away from him as possible so as not to be poisoned by the fumes. He poured the entire contents down the main hole. He threw the can away and then ran to join me behind a boulder, where I was stationed, watching for any action in the pickle jar.

  We waited an eternity, which was probably more like ninety seconds, when—plop—a huge, brown tarantula popped into the jar. We screamed with glee. We had a giant, reddish brown, hairy spider with a leg span of about eight inches in the pickle jar. Billy nudged me to slide the cardboard under the mouth of the jar. I ran up and reached down to slide the cardboard in place when plop. Another large spider popped into the jar. And then plop, another, and plop, another. I ran back to join Billy.

  Another plopped into the jar and then plop. Plop. Plop. Plop. A half dozen more. The jar was about half full with angry, squirming spiders. Plop. Plop. Plop. Plop. Plop. Plop. It didn’t stop. They kept filling the jar. There had to be fifty tarantulas in there. The entire pickle jar was filled and more spiders kept jumping into it from the escape hole.

  Billy and I started to panic. “Now what are we going to do?” I asked him. Billy thought about it and said, “We can’t take the jar back to the clubhouse and we can’t leave them in the jar. That would be cruel.” Billy thought about it some more. After due consideration, he said, “We have to knock the jar over and run.”

  Remembering my recent run-in with the snake, I asked, “Will they follow us?”

  Billy shook his head, “No. Spiders are stupid. But we have to make sure we never come back to this part of the woods again. We poisoned that hole so there’ll be tarantulas everywhere.” We knocked over the pickle jar. Once again we bolted.

  I got home and Mom was in the kitchen. “You’re back early,” she said.

  I walked over and grabbed a chocolate-chip cookie she had just pulled from the oven.

  “You and Billy have a good time?”

  I grunted with a mouthful of cookie, “It was okay,” and went into the den to watch TV.

  The next day Billy and I met at the clubhouse to discuss future missions. We didn’t have a lot to show for our trouble. Things got worse when Charlie Harp, who had never joined us on any excursions, came over and said he had to take the rattlesnake skull back home. It was a major setback for the club.

  The real blow came when Billy decided w
e had to mount and display the scorpion, which was currently floating near the bottom of the jelly jar we caught him in. I took the top off, reached in, pulled the scorpion out, and placed it on the table when it flashed its tail at us. It was still alive! It ran off the table and into the clubhouse. Billy and I screamed and ran into the yard. Miraculously, the scorpion had lived for days in an environment of pure alcohol, much like I did in the 1980s.

  With the scorpion on the loose, we had to abandon our clubhouse. Billy pointed out that since the clubhouse was made of rotten wood, which scorpions love, it would never leave. We didn’t dare go back inside.

  There was something poetic about the scorpion taking over the Dangerous Animals Club clubhouse. If there were such a thing as a “scorpion poet,” he may have sung of the Beowulflike heroism of one of their own who survived so many trials for such a rich reward.

  We never talked about it, but these were dark days for the DAC. Billy and I still played together, but it was hard to continue without a clubhouse, a rattlesnake skull, and all of nature turned against us.

  There was one brief moment when the DAC thought of staging a comeback. One afternoon a large, beautiful box turtle was sitting on my patio. Just sitting there! As if dropped from the heavens. I ran over to get Billy to show him my find. I asked him if we could include the turtle as a trophy for the Dangerous Animals Club. Billy pondered and furrowed his brow. It was doubtful, he said. The turtle could hardly be considered dangerous. It just sat there. But it could be a part of a new wildlife club: the Wildlife Club of Texas. The purpose of the club would be the same as the DAC, but its reach would be more ecumenical.

  I called Mom outside to see the turtle. She was impressed. I asked her if we could keep it. Mom looked unenthusiastic, but agreed to take me to the pet store to buy it a proper home.

  I described the size of the turtle to the man at the pet store. I should mention that in those days, the late 1950s, pet stores were not staffed with the young enthusiastic animal lovers that work at pet stores today. The people who ran pet stores back then were just one cut above carnival people, the scariest people on earth.