Enigmatic Pilot by Kris Saknussemm Read Free Book Online

hauling himself onto the wagon and whipping the two rib-stickers out of the yard.
    After Grady’s father was gone, Lloyd said, “Farruh, do you think he’ll try to burn down our barn?”
    “Naw,” Hephaestus mused. “But I reckon we should keep an eye open for trouble. He’s right when he says there’s folks in town who are mad with me about money.”
    “Because of the Ark?” Lloyd asked.
    “Yep,” his father said, sighing. “And the self-pulling planter … and the milking glove … and the air wheel. You don’t know anything about what Smeg was saying, do you? I get the impression that you did have a run-in with them Marietta whelps.”
    “They chased me. I got away.”
    “Did they?”
    “What do you mean?” asked the boy, his eyes flaring.
    “I mean did you lead them into some snare of yours? That deer noose ’bout broke my good leg.”
    “They tripped a catapult,” Lloyd answered.
    Hephaestus wanted to believe that that was all there was to the story. It was enough to accept that his son even knew what a catapult was, let alone how to build and wire one.
    “All right. You go lock up the hens and tend to Phineas’s grave. I’m going to help your mother bring in some beans.”
    Hephaestus did not see that the boy headed back to the well and then off toward the no-man’s-land where he had led the stooges to ambush. And he did not know how many other secrets Lloyd had on hand, from wild-turkey snares he had modified in size to deadfall netting and fermentation jars full of nasty things ready to fly up off a hidden springboard. The pit Lloyd had captured Grady in was an example of taking advantage of a natural asset. The hole was part of a seam of clay and had been excavated years before. All that had been required was to disguise it and lead the quarry there. Lloyd set down one of the well buckets to pick up a few stones along the path. A long summer twilight was settling in, full of whip-poor-wills and spoon frog chirping. But there was another sound as Lloyd approached the pit, which he had covered with a section of mite-ridden thatching. A plaintive moaning.
    “Any bones broken?” he called, lifting the thatching.
    “Hey!” bellowed Grady from below. “Yoo li’l weasel. Ah’ll git yoo! Let me up! I mean it!”
    “I’m sorry, Grady,” Lloyd answered. “You need to learn a lesson. Three days should do it.”
    “Three days! Yoo lissen to me!”
    Lloyd dropped one of the stones he had picked up along the path.
    “Aw! Sheet! Damn thang hit me.”
    “I have plenty more,” Lloyd assured him. “Now, if you wantsome water—and believe me you do, then you’re going to say you’re sorry for what you did to my windmills.”
    “Sorry? Yoo goddamned mongrel!”
    Another stone fell, with similar results. Then another.
    “Hey! Hey! All right, Ah give. Ah’m sorry for breakin’ up yer toys.”
    “They’re not toys,” Lloyd hissed. “They’re
machines
. Reverence machines—and they’re not for hogswill like you to touch or even see. You’re going to learn that lesson over the next three days. And you’ll never breathe a word, because you’ll be so ashamed. Now stand back, I’m going to lower a bucket of water. I don’t want you to die of thirst before the lesson’s over.”
    The creature in the pit was very quiet now, bruised and hoarse and completely bamboozled. But the sploshing bucket came down, as promised, on a length of rope, and there followed a slurping sound of relief.
    Lloyd waited for the darkening hole to go almost silent again before he unbuttoned his britches and pulled his peter out. At first the trickle of fluid provoked no reaction. Then, when it dawned on the boy imprisoned below what was happening, the yelping was louder than that caused by the stones. But there was no one else around to hear. Lloyd had made sure of that.

CHAPTER 2
A New Kind of Animal
    G RADY S MEG DID INDEED LEARN A LESSON, AND L LOYD WAS CORRECT in his prediction that the bully would