A Rambler Steals Home Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  June 6

  One

  Two

  Three

  June 7

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  June 8

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  June 12

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  June 13

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  June 20

  Twenty-Seven

  June 21

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Later That Summer, When Days Were Shorter and Roots Were Longer

  Thirty-Three

  Acknowledgments

  Middle Grade Mania!

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Carter Higgins

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Cover illustration © 2017 by Brandon Dorman

  Title page art © 2017 by Brandon Dorman

  Cover design by Sharismar Rodriguez

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-544-60201-4

  eISBN 978-0-544-60203-8

  v1.0217

  For my dad, who took me to all those minor-league baseball games

  June 6

  One

  “AREN’T we lucky?” Garland asked. “Just traveling souls, making traditions and cheeseburgers.”

  “Lucky,” I said right back. I didn’t really know if I believed that part, but I sure could believe in the summer’s traditions.

  Garland always said being a rambler of the road meant three things: food, family, and fun. Triple and I always said it meant three other things: blisters, grease splatters, and loneliness. But there we were, rambling back into Ridge Creek for another summer.

  The Rambler’s windows were down, and a hot breeze gave away the hiding place of a skunk out in a roadside ditch. Garland sang at the top of his lungs, sounding like someone who should stick to doing it in the shower. And since he was driving the Rambler, he was almost in reaching distance of our shower stall, so I guess that counted. Triple played along on his banjo, which wasn’t really a banjo—​it was just an empty shoebox with a paper towel tube for a neck and rubber bands for strings. Garland had gotten real mad when he found out Triple used the good scissors to cut a hole in the lid, but that shoebox was worth saving. Triple had named him Twang. I didn’t want to admit to either one of them how much I liked their broken duet.

  So as we bumped along the country roads, the three of us stretched our necks around to rest our eyes on the landmarks. It was a routine that told us the rambling was about to settle down. It would slow to a complete stop for the summer, and so would we.

  While Garland and I counted landmarks, Triple sang, making up new words for the stories we knew by heart. There was the old drive-in: “Roll down the windows of your car, set your eyes on a movie star!” The farm with all those calm cows that stood staring together, always in the same direction: “Bales to the east; moos to the west!” And of course, the general store that sold gigantic concrete planters that looked just like turkeys: “Mister Mayflower sticks his zinnias in his fancy turkey dinn-ias!”

  Once Garland kicked in the parking brake and unhooked the Grill from the back of the Rambler, we wouldn’t see the drive-in or the cows or the turkeys. We’d stay close to the Grill all summer, because even though we were done with the driving for a while, we weren’t done with the work. But that would be okay, because we’d be right in the shadow of the best baseball stadium there ever was. We’d have traditions and time and each other. Besides, I always did prefer summer grease splatters to winter blisters, and the next few months would be full of those hot, prickly burns.

  If only I could’ve counted on grease splatters to be the biggest trouble of the season.

  Two

  OF all the times we piled up in the Rambler, summer was my favorite. The bleachers weren’t all that great for your hind parts, but at least they were bolted in one place.

  Triple liked the springtime’s rambling, but I think that was mostly because you couldn’t drive anywhere without hitting some kind of carnival, and he would’ve been happy eating cotton candy for every meal of the day. That’s how it is when you’re seven, and Garland didn’t seem to mind like maybe a mama would.

  Garland, our papa, liked the turning of the leaves up north when it was the cider and sweater time of year. Then, right after the pumpkins got all smashed up and you’d have pies coming out your ears, it was time for Christmas trees. That tightrope of a drive along Canada’s edge and west to Wisconsin got a little tricky because our Rambler wasn’t exactly made for snow tires, but that was Garland’s favorite of the rambling seasons. That’s when he laughed the most.

  Hauling Christmas trees out of a Wisconsin forest made for some juicy blisters, no thanks to scraggly mittens that let icicles and pine needles poke through. The woods were right off a four-lane highway where all that broke the black of night were white lights coming and red lights going. We just lived right there in our Rambler, parked in the roadside lot, where most people only stayed long enough to pick out a tree. It was a whole lot of hard work to give someone else something to hang tinsel and candy canes on.

  Every winter, Garland said, “Aren’t we lucky? We get more Christmas trees than anyone could fit in their home, even if they were the president or the queen.”

  I’d still love to have just one.

  And that one tree would be in one home.

  Ours.

  Garland’s love of the season is why my middle name is Christmas. He said didn’t he get lucky, having a name like Garland and then finding the Christmas‑tree business? He took it as a sign, but I thought it was probably just a coincidence.

  I’d never tell him that.

  Even though we rambled, we always had one moneymaker hitched up to the back of our Rambler—​and that’s where the grease came from. That old concession stand trailer had been Garland’s Grill since he bought it at a flea market in the middle of Oklahoma. The man with the cash box said it was only fit to stay in place and maybe serve up cold‑cut sandwiches and cans of soda, but Garland had a bigger vision. He saw wheels that worked, and a fryer that was new to us even though it came from an old fast‑food restaurant somewhere in Indiana—​and, of course, he saw Christmastime. Even when the summer sweated, he tied up strands of fake greenery and Christmas lights on the front of Garland’s Grill, then knotted it all up with a floppy red bow. I don’t know if he was jolly because he loved Christmas so much or if it was the other way around.

  Everywhere we went, Garland changed what we served at the Grill. The Christmas‑tree people lined up for hot chocolate and gingersnaps, and on sweater days it was apple cider and cinnamon-sugar-too-sweet donuts. All up and down those spring highways, it was snacks and bottles of water.

  And no matter where we were, when we were done for the day, Garland still made us do school right there in the
Rambler. “Aren’t we lucky,” he said, “making up the things we want to learn and doing it as we go?” He was a lot of things to me and Triple: Our papa. Our boss. And our teacher. So I used to call him Mr. Clark to tease him. But one day I called him Garland to get his attention, and it just plain stuck.

  I think he liked it, since it was what our mama used to call him.

  After Triple had gotten his fill of carnival cotton candy every spring, it was time to get back to Virginia. We rode into town just in time to watch the Ridge Creek Rockskippers play ball from June to September. Garland’s Grill set up shop right there in the parking lot of the James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium, where its wheels didn’t have to matter for a while. We’d fire up the fryer and get the burgers ready to flip and we didn’t have to do school all summer.

  “Poor little schnauzer stuck to the ground, won’t ever chase his tail around!” sang Triple. The schnauzer mailbox with the hanging ears and sweet eyes meant we were close. Garland and Triple rolled up the windows, since it was getting later and they were getting louder.

  Every summer when we drove into town, we went the long way. Garland liked to ramble as long as we could before we got to that parking lot, like he didn’t quite feel right with two feet on the ground. Maybe Garland was a little superstitious about sunsets, but for as long as I could remember, we got to Ridge Creek once it was already dark and everything was quiet.

  The houses were mostly set way back from the main road, which must have made getting the mail a muddy run on rainy days, and you couldn’t even connect a tin-can phone from your window to the one next door. Seemed like they were all wasting the best part of being neighbors.

  There was the clearing to the creek, the one you had to wrestle tentacles of honeysuckle and Queen Anne’s lace to get through. In the dark, it would be hard to know it was there, but we did anyway.

  We passed the Sweet Street Mart, and I didn’t even have to be inside to smell the sour-pickle air about it.

  The Heritage Inn was about the only thing around with its lights on, which was a good thing, since we’d circle back around to its parking lot to stay. It shared that parking lot and a bunch of stories with the stadium, and since it didn’t have much in the way of room service, it was a real good place for us to end up. The people at the inn would get hungry, and we’d be right outside their front door shaking salt on fries.

  But, like always, not before a slow drive past the James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium. We may as well have parked, because each side of its entrance didn’t stretch much farther than from the driver’s seat of the Rambler to the tail end of Garland’s Grill. Even though it was dark and I couldn’t see the insides yet, I could feel what the place looked like. I could see the red paint of the giant ROCKSKIPPERS fading to the color of a mouse’s tail, mostly on the ROCK part. A red-and-blue Rockskippers flag hung still and lonely in the thick, hot air, and right at the entrance was the box office, covered in pennants and hope and ghosts of the past. It was on wheels too, but it never left this place.

  “Cool,” Triple said. “I wonder if they finally got cotton candy.”

  “Maybe,” I said, in a little bit of wonder myself.

  “Hey, Derby, you promised you’d teach me that Rockskipper high-five, remember?” Triple said when we rolled past the tall banner, the one from the roof to the ground, the one that showed some of the first Rockskippers celebrating something great.

  “Promise,” I said.

  Garland was looking up even higher. “Looks like Ferdie’s working late tonight.”

  I leaned out to see. The man had a flashlight in his teeth, and he was aiming it way up above him at the stadium’s marquee. He hadn’t changed a bit in the last year, except for maybe being a little saggier in the shoulders. Some things are easy to spot, even in the almost-dark.

  Ferdie’s job as the stadium’s caretaker made him the voice of that marquee, and otherwise he didn’t say much. And like him, that big sign was quiet for the whole year, empty until the season started back up. Those letters meant life to the Rockskippers.

  “What do you think it’s gonna say?” Triple asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Garland said, but he studied every letter that was up there.

  All I could make out was SAVE.

  “The date, maybe?” I finished what Ferdie might have been starting. “But everyone knows that Opening Day is tomorrow.”

  “Maybe,” Garland said, and picked up the Rambler’s tempo.

  “Save me the fastest turtle!” Triple added. He’d be sleepless over that on our first night back, getting to the creek in time for a good one first thing in the morning.

  And just like that, the traditions were on.

  Three

  WE rattled onto the patch of concrete where the stadium parking lot ended and the Heritage Inn parking lot began. Garland let the engine idle for a minute before he turned it off.

  “Here we are. Hit the hay.” He’d aimed the front of the Rambler away from the stadium, so the driver’s‑seat window looked out toward the darkness.

  Triple curled up on his bunk by the refrigerator, and Garland was being awful slow to stand up. I only had a few steps to walk between the passenger seat and my very own room, so that’s where I went. Garland shared the double bunk with Triple, and they’d given me the whole queen bed in the back. It wasn’t much, but Garland always said Ladies first and I did think that was really nice. It closed off to the rest of the Rambler with only a shower curtain and two crossed fingers, but at least I got my very own window. That gave me a straight-on view of the Heritage Inn’s front door, which was a handy place to keep a good eye on Betsy Plogger, who was never up to anything good.

  “Night, Garland,” I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  I slid the shower curtain shut behind me, then pushed the little seahorse curtain away from the fogged-up window. My mama had made that curtain when I was real small, and she was better at a whole lot of things than sewing. The pattern didn’t match up quite right, and the side facing out of the Rambler was faded, thanks to the highway sun. But that seahorse curtain was one true thing I could keep of her.

  Out the window, in the fuzzy light of the Heritage Inn, I liked what I saw.

  A big poster hung on the fence with something that looked like Christmas ribbons, and it spelled out its message with giant letters.

  Welcome back, Sugar Sue

  Sugar Sue.

  Only one person called me that, and the sight of that permanent black marker pressed down by her own two hands made me itch. Or it might have been because we’d finally stopped moving, but there was a little extra tingle in whatever was traveling through my soul.

  I squinted to read the rest. Underneath, it said

  See you at the box office first thing.

  Love, June.

  My trusty old friend Marcus Emmett was one of the best parts of every summer. The other best part was June. June Mattingly.

  June was the rock to the Rockskippers’ skip. That box office, the one on wheels and covered in pennants, was her place. She sold tickets and was the first thing anyone saw before they marched into the stadium with their families and foam fingers. Most people thought she never left that little home on its stuck-down wheels, but I knew better.

  We’d been friends since I was younger than Triple, since the summer Marcus dared me to sneak into the stadium. I got caught by Ferdie, who was the spit kind of mad, but June pretended like I was supposed to be there all along. That was the last summer my mama was a rambler, so after that, June was the one who knew when I moved from seahorses to sparkly things and when I changed my mind back again.

  It was easy to see the glamour in a name like June Mattingly when yours was Derby Christmas Clark. It was hard enough being a rambler of the road without being named after some home-run contest.

  So I’d been looking forward to our first morning in Ridge Creek mostly because of June. It was about time I got rid of those boys for a bit. Maybe she would finally show me ho
w to put on lipstick. In the other years, we’d sit on her porch swing eating strawberries and drinking lemonade, and maybe if she could sneak them by Mr. Mattingly, she’d bring out his favorite oatmeal raisin cookies from somewhere inside.

  “See you at the box office tomorrow,” I said out loud.

  Meeting June at the box office wasn’t tradition at all, but if that’s what she wanted, then that’s what we’d do.

  June 7

  Four

  IT was barely light out when I woke up that first morning in the Rambler. My opening day in Ridge Creek was full of traditions: June in the morning, Marcus at the creek in the afternoon, the Rockskippers in the early evening, and Garland’s Grill after. A whole summer of days like that was a welcome sight for a rambler.

  But the problem with living in an RV in a parking lot was that there was no way to dump the toilets in any kind of civilized manner, so Betsy Plogger’s Aunt Candy let us use the restrooms near the lobby in the Heritage Inn. Betsy lived at the inn year-round with the rest of the Ploggers, so she felt like she owned the place too. But it was Candy Plogger who ran the show, and if she said so, people listened. I thought she let us use those restrooms mostly because she was an old friend of my mama’s and sometimes she felt a little bit sorry for us.

  It was still early and I could probably avoid Betsy Plogger if I hurried, since I bet she was still getting some beauty sleep. So I snuck in the side door of the inn to use the ladies’ room.

  Glamorous.

  By the time I got back to the Rambler, Triple and Garland were up and making eggs. “Protein for the pro team!” Garland would always say. Except this time he didn’t, because he had a mouthful of breakfast.

  “Turtle-catching today?” I asked Triple.

  “I can smell the fast ones already,” he said, kicking one anxious foot into the storage bench under our table, the one that seated four people.