My Life as a Smashed Burrito with Extra Hot Sauce Read online

“Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t.”

  “You’ve never held a baseball bat?” I couldn’t hide the amazement in my voice. What type of kid never held a baseball bat? “Didn’t your dad ever show you how to hold a baseball bat?”

  “Yeah,” he snorted in contempt, “like I’m sure my old man’s going to play baseball with me.”

  I started to answer but let it go. It was like a new Gary began to appear in front of me. As I kept watching him struggle and fight with the simple little job of paddling, I started—I don’t know—I started to feel kind of sorry for him. Sure I could have laughed and made all sorts of jokes. But somehow it wasn’t funny. Instead, it was kind of sad. I mean, if no one showed him simple stuff like holding a baseball bat, what else didn’t they show him?

  Who knew what this guy’s life was really like. Who knew what type of stuff he had to put up with at home. Maybe, underneath that tough exterior there was a tender, sensitive heart that just needed—

  “Listen, Moron,” he snarled at me from over his shoulder. “If you don’t start paddling, I’ll bash your brains in.”

  I started paddling with all of my might . . . but I also kept watching.

  A few hours later we set up camp with everyone else. Opera and my group cheered me on while Gary’s Goons did the same for him. We were both scoring points like crazy. You see, we’d each figured out that if we let the other guy help us and score some points off us, then we were actually helping him, which meant we should be scoring even more points for ourself!

  Confusing? You bet. Especially when the conversations went like this:

  “Here, Gary, I brought over your dinner.”

  (I score 5 and 1 / 2 points.)

  “I didn’t want you to get my dinner.”

  (I lose 5 and 1 / 2 points.)

  “Please, go ahead and take it.”

  (I score 5 and 1 / 2 points.)

  “Well, all right,” Gary sighs. “But only if it will help you score.”

  (Gary scores 10 points.)

  See what I mean about confusing? And we went around and around like that all night. Everything from getting refills on hot chocolate, to untying each other’s shoes, to slapping off the other guy’s mosquitoes. Talk about exhausting. But the last one, the one when we got ready for bed, that’s the one I’ll never forget. . . .

  “You’re still in your wet clothes.” I said. “You can’t sleep in them, let me get you some dry ones.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “No bother,” I said as I got up and walked over to his duffel bag.”

  “I don’t need any—”

  “Sure you do,” I said, picking up the bag.

  “McDoogle!”

  But he was too late. I already had the thing unzipped. Inside there was nothing but a couple pairs of used socks (very used), a worn T-shirt or two, and some cut-offs. “Where’s the rest of your clothes?” I asked. “Didn’t you bring them?”

  “Of course I brought ’em,” he sneered. “I just, uh, they’re . . .” he faltered for a second. “They were in with my sleeping bag. Yeah, they were rolled up inside the sleeping bag that you let float off.”

  “Oh,” I said, not buying a word of it. “Well, you can’t sleep in wet clothes.”

  “They’re fine,” he shrugged.

  “Listen, my mom packed an extra blanket (along with an extra everything else in the world). Why don’t you use it?”

  “I don’t need your stupid blanket,” he growled.

  I was stumped. The guy was obviously lying, and he obviously needed a blanket. What could I do? Then a thought came to mind. A pretty good one. “Listen, Gary, I’m a bit behind in the points. You’d be doing me a real favor if you let me score by loaning you this blanket.”

  He looked at me a long moment.

  “Come on, just this once. I’ll owe you.”

  “Well, all right,” he finally muttered, “but just this once.”

  “Thanks.” I grinned. At least I was grinning on the outside. On the inside, I was really starting to hurt for the guy. I mean, he didn’t have anybody to teach him sports stuff. He didn’t have anybody to pack him decent clothes. What else didn’t he have?

  Later, as everyone lay in bed, I thought I’d find out. “Gary?” I asked.

  “Now what?” he mumbled.

  “I was wondering. Why did you, like, you know, come here?”

  “What?”

  “To church camp. I mean, you don’t go to church or Sunday school or anything like that, do you?”

  There was a long pause. Finally, he answered. “Dale paid my way.”

  “Dale?!” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice.

  “Yeah, he swings by every once in a while to see how me and Mom are doing.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to sound matter of fact. But my mind began to race. So Dale already knew this guy. So Dale saw something in him, too. So Dale was actually trying to help. Hmm . . .

  An hour later Gary and the rest of the camp were sound asleep. But my mind still hadn’t shut down. Since there was no way to find the “off” switch and since I was still thinking about Gary, I finally sat up and took a good look at him. There he was, curled into a little ball under my one thin blanket. It was funny, but asleep like that he didn’t look so tough or so mean. In fact, he looked kind of . . . helpless. He also looked cold. Real cold.

  I crawled out of my sleeping bag and immediately found out why he looked so cold. It was cold. It was freezing. I reached over to my backpack and quickly slipped on a coat and a pair of long johns Mom had packed. (Packing thermal underwear in the middle of summer may seem strange, but then again, you don’t know Mom.)

  Next I unzipped my sleeping bag all the way around to make it flat like a blanket. Finally, I got to my feet and carried the flattened bag over to Gary. I looked down at him a moment. He seemed even smaller and more helpless than before. Gently, I laid the bag across him. He stirred a little but didn’t wake up. Good.

  I glanced over to where Wall Street was sleeping. For a second, I thought of waking her up and scoring about a zillion points—you know, for being such a good deed doer. But somehow . . . I don’t know. I guess somehow I knew this deed should be on the house.

  Imagine my surprise when I turned and saw Dale standing beside me. In his hand was an extra sleeping bag. “I thought you might need this,” he said, handing it to me. Then, before I could answer, he turned and headed back to his tent. Talk about amazement. I tell you, the guy never seemed to run out of surprises.

  Chapter 9

  Danger . . . Big Time

  The next morning Gary didn’t say a word about the sleeping bag. When I came back from brushing my teeth, it was rolled up and stuffed into my backpack like nothing had ever happened. But something had happened. Something had happened to me, and maybe, just maybe, something had started to happen to Gary.

  I noticed it when we began forgetting about points. I noticed it when we didn’t fire off quite so many put-downs. And I noticed it the most when Dale gave his last talk on wisdom.

  The canoes were loaded and everyone was ready to push off, so Dale made it short and sweet. “I hope over this last week you’ve all seen the importance of wisdom.”

  The group nodded. Some of us more than others.

  “But no study on wisdom would be complete without mentioning the greatest wisdom of all . . . the wisdom of asking Jesus Christ to forgive you of all your wrongs . . . the wisdom of asking Him to come inside to be the Lord of your life.”

  I threw a glance at Gary. He was staring at Dale real hard—but not like he wanted to flatten him. This time it was more like he was listening.

  Now me, I’d heard it all a million times before—how Jesus died on the cross for our sins and how we need to let Him control our life and all that stuff. But ol’ Gary, I tell you, the guy just kept on staring and listening like he’d never heard it before.

  “Now, it can be a scary thing,” Dale continued, “letting go of your life—letting go and
completely trusting somebody else with it. But that’s what faith is all about. And the neat thing about having faith in God is that He will never let you down. No matter what you do, He’ll never drop you; He’ll never let you go. You have my word on it. Better yet, you have His. So, before we wrap up, I just want to know if there’s anyone here who hasn’t given God control of their life yet and wants to.”

  I stole another glance over at Gary. He wasn’t looking at Dale anymore. Now he just sort of stared at the ground . . . hard, real hard.

  “Anyone at all?” Dale kept waiting. Gary kept staring. It was almost like a private thing between them. Like Dale had made the speech just for Gary, and now he was waiting for him to make the decision.

  But Gary didn’t move. Not a muscle. He wasn’t doing it out of stubbornness, though. By now I knew that much about him. Gary wasn’t being stubborn, he was just being scared. Stop and think about it a second. I mean, the guy obviously didn’t have any decent parents. He obviously didn’t have any decent clothing. He probably didn’t have any decent anything. All Gary had was himself. And if he gave that away, well . . . what was left?

  I wanted to tell him I understood. I also wanted to lean over and tell him not to worry, that being a Christian was pretty cool. But I knew I hadn’t been the best example. So I just sort of stood beside him and kept my mouth shut.

  Finally, Dale closed with a little prayer. Then he gave us some last-minute instructions. About three miles downstream there would be a parking lot to the right. We were supposed to dock our canoes there, load them on the trailer rack, and hop on the bus back to camp. He warned us not to paddle past the parking lot. “There’s some really heavy white water just downstream. I don’t want any of you hotshots goofing off and getting near it. Got it?”

  We got it. Before he could think of anything else to say, we shoved our canoes into the water and took off.

  For the longest time, Gary and I didn’t say a word. I just steered from the back trying to straighten our zigzags as Gary sat in the front doing a worse imitation of paddling than he did the day before.

  But the silence couldn’t last long. I knew I had to say something. I’d never talked to anybody about God before (though I know we’re supposed to). And I wasn’t too keen on starting off with somebody like Gary. But after last night and after Dale’s little talk, well, I had to say something . . . anything. So, after pushing my glasses back on my face and muttering a little prayer for help, I started:

  “That Dale, he’s something.”

  No answer.

  “Gary?”

  “I heard you.”

  I tried again. “He’s a pretty cool guy, huh?”

  “He’s all right.”

  I swallowed, took another breath, and tried a third time. “I mean, you can really trust him and stuff.”

  No answer.

  “Especially what he says about God. You know, about letting go and trusting Him and everything. Sure, it’s kind of scary, but you know, the thing is—”

  “Weasel?”

  “Yeah, Gary.”

  “Shut up.”

  Well, that about wrapped up my days as an evangelist. Billy Graham could rest easy. No way I’d be taking over his job. Or so I thought. But in less than an hour things started to pop.

  “There it is,” I called. “There’s the parking lot.”

  Everyone was turning in and pushing toward shore. Well, almost everyone. “To the right,” I called. “Start paddling to the right.”

  “I got it,” Gary said.

  But he didn’t have it. In fact, the more he paddled, the further he pushed us to the left, the further he pushed us away from shore.

  “Gary, I know what I’m talking about. To the right.”

  “Shut up, I’ve got it.”

  By now we were drawing the attention of everyone back at shore. “Hey, Wally!” Opera shouted. “Where you going?”

  I didn’t answer. I had a few other things on my mind. “Will you just let me paddle?” I snapped, not quite so politely.

  “I said shut up!” Gary shouted even less politely.

  “If you’re not going to do it right, let me do it!”

  But nothing I said worked. That shouldn’t have been a big surprise. After all, everyone was standing on the shore gawking. And everyone knows the number one rule in the Bully’s Handbook is “Never, never let some four-eyed wimp outdo you—especially in public.” So Gary kept right on paddling . . . even if it was in the wrong direction.

  “Wally . . . Gary . . .” The voices from shore grew fainter as we kept on paddling—each of us fighting for control, neither of us giving an inch.

  And then I heard it. It was a muffled kind of roar. But a muffled roar that got louder by the second.

  “It’s the rapids!” I shouted. “We’ve got to get to shore!”

  “I’m trying!” Gary yelled. “I’m trying!”

  We paddled as hard as we could, any way that we could. But nothing worked. Every second the current got faster. And every second our chances of getting out got smaller.

  “Paddle on the left!” I shouted. But it did no good.

  The roar was much louder. And for good reason. We were now, officially, in the rapids!

  The first set wasn’t so bad. Scrape-splash! Scrape-splash. We shot over the tops of the rocks and dipped hard into the water—again and again. It was almost fun. Almost. But not quite. And not for long.

  “We got to get out of here!” Gary shouted from the front. “There’s bigger ones ahead!” He paddled even harder, which put us in even worse shape until . . .

  Thump-Crash! Thump-Crash! We shot over our first rocks.

  “Do something!” Gary shouted over the roar and the spray.

  “I’m doing, I’m doing!” I shouted as I tried to paddle.

  “LOOK OUT!” Gary cried as we shot over another group of boulders. Thump-Crash! Thump-Crash! Thump-Crash!

  I tried to push off the passing rocks with the paddle. But we were going too fast. Thump- Crash! Thump-Crash! It was like a roller coaster out of control—only without seat belts!

  “HANG ON!” Gary shouted. “HERE’S A BIG ONE!”

  The canoe scraped against something, and for a second we slowed. Then suddenly we dipped forward and dropped straight down into a huge hole.

  KERRR-SPLAAAASH! Water was everywhere. “GARY!” I coughed and sputtered. “GARY, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

  “HERE!” he shouted as the water cleared and he came into view. He’d pitched his paddle and was hanging on to the edge of the canoe for dear life. “HANG ON!” he screamed. Again we fell. KERRR-SPLAAAASH-CRINKLE-CRINKLE! This time we weren’t so lucky. That “CRINKLE-CRINKLE” was our canoe twisting in the middle. Quickly, it began filling up with water.

  “JUMP!” I screamed. “JUMP!”

  “YOU’RE CRAZY!”

  “WE’VE GOT LIFE JACKETS—THE CANOE’S HISTORY. JUMP!”

  Gary would have argued but something else caught his attention.

  “A WATERFALL!” he cried.

  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t Niagara Falls or anything like that. But for us it was big enough. We were still in the canoe when we shot over the edge and hung in midair for hours (or at least half a second). Then the front end dipped, and we found ourselves doing a nosedive straight down.

  “WE’RE GOING TO DIE!” we both shouted. (Which was the first thing we’d agreed upon during the whole trip.)

  We hit the water hard and were thrown out of the canoe (or what was left of it). I was underwater now, I knew that. It was like a nightmare. Bubbles and water were everywhere. I was twirled and spun around so hard I couldn’t tell which way was up. I knew I had to get to the surface. I just didn’t know where the surface was. I crashed into the rocks again and again but didn’t feel any pain. The only pain was in my lungs. They were about to explode. I had to get a breath. Water or no water, I needed to suck something into them. Then somewhere in the back of my mind I began to realize what was happening . . .

>   I’m drowning.

  But instead of seeing my whole life pass before my eyes, all I could think of was, Great, I’m probably the only one in the world who has drowned while wearing a life jacket. Now doesn’t that just figure.

  When I couldn’t hold off anymore, when I had to breathe or die, I suddenly bobbed to the surface—just like that.

  I gulped in as much air as I could before I was dragged under again. But I was only under a second before I came back up coughing and choking. My glasses were gone, and I couldn’t see a thing. But as far as I could tell it didn’t much matter. Everything around me was roaring water.

  “GARY!” I shouted. I don’t know why I was suddenly worried about him. I had other details to worry about, you know, like saving my own life. But right then, he was all I could think of. “GARY!”

  Then, almost beside me, he popped up, coughing and gagging. “WALLY?” he shouted, desperately looking for me. “WALLY!”

  “I’M RIGHT HERE!”

  He spun around. “I THOUGHT YOU DROWNED.”

  “NOT YET!”

  “LOOK OUT!” he shouted.

  I took a deep gulp of air and just in time. We both flew over another mini-waterfall and crashed into the water. More tumbling and spinning, but it wasn’t quite as bad this time. (Either that or we were getting the hang of it.) Soon we were both at the surface coughing and gasping for air.

  “WE GOT TO GRAB HOLD OF SOMETHING!” Gary shouted.

  “WHAT?”

  “THERE, OVER THERE!”

  “I CAN’T SEE A THING!”

  “GRAB HOLD OF ME!” Gary shouted.

  “BUT I CAN’T SEE A—”

  “SHUT UP AND GRAB HOLD OF ME!”

  I obeyed. In a few seconds, we were at a huge tree limb that had wedged itself into the rocks.

  “HANG ON TO THIS BRANCH!” he shouted. “HANG ON!”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice.

  So there we were, both hanging onto a tree limb in the middle of a roaring river. Boy, if ever I could have used a hand from ol’ Mutant Man, it would have been then. Of course, I didn’t exactly have my computer handy. And I didn’t exactly figure it would be much help . . . especially when the tree limb began to shudder under our weight . . . especially when it gave a slight groan and started to loosen.