I can't really explain how I spent my summer unless I go way back to last December when I read about the autogyro kit. I had this magazine, Popular Coptering, out of the library. I was cleaning my room with my brother Timothy. We share the same room. As usual, he started playing around, looking through his old photographs. He has a 35 millimeter camera my father got when the Army stationed him in Japan. My father never did learn to adjust it, but Timothy knew all about cameras. Last year he built his own darkroom. Anyway, Timo always started fooling around when mom told us to clean our room. I didn't want to end up doing all the work, so I started going through this magazine.
"Look at this," I said, and Timo came over to look. Some guy had written an article about a new ultralight autogyro kit. The guy said that a nine-year-old could build it in a weekend. If a nine-year-old could build it, why couldn't I?
"What is it?" asked Timo. "Some kind of model helicopter?"
"Does it look like a helicopter?"
"Sure."
"Don't you know the difference between a helicopter and an autogyro?"
"No," he said. "Should I?" Except to consider what would make a good photograph, Timo doesn't pay much attention to the world around him.
"In an autogyro," I explained, "the rotors turn freely. The air moves them."
"Like a windmill," said Timo.
"Not exactly. The blades turn in the opposite direction compared to a windmill."
"So what's the point?"
"The turning blades do what the wings of an airplane do. Provide lift."
"You're telling me it's a model airplane."
"It's not a model anything. It's a real autogyro."
"I don't see any motor," said Timo. "How's it supposed to get off the ground?"
"It's something like a glider. You have to get a tow."
"So what good does it do you to have one if you don't know anybody with an airplane to tow you?"
"Never mind," I said.
"Lousy photography," said Timo. Whenever he didn't understand something in a book or magazine, he would criticize the photography. He doesn't do it any more. Now he's in a new phase. Aquariums. Everything has to have some connection to tropical fish. Otherwise he couldn't care less.
"Are you boys cleaning your room?" My mother was calling up to us from the bottom of the stairs. We live up in the attic, or what used to be the attic before my father fixed it up.
"Yes, mother," said Timo. In a situation like this, we're supposed to call her mother instead of mom.
"It doesn't sound like it," she said.
"We had to discuss how to split up the work," said Timo.
So we didn't talk about the autogyro any more that day. But we did talk about it that night, when we were supposed to be going to bed. We usually spend about an hour talking after the lights go off, until mom or dad calls up the stairs, "No more talking. Go to sleep." Sometimes Timo tells lies. For example, he tells me that he sees these foxes walking on the ledge between our room and the stairwell. We have a lot of model planes and wooden horses and stuff on the ledge, and it gets shadowy at night. When cars go by on the street, you can see the shadows move. Somehow Timo can almost convince me when he starts telling lies like that, even though he's younger than I am. It's embarrassing.
On this particular night, Timo didn't tell any lies. We just talked some more about the autogyro. I told Timo about the article. It said that, thanks to a new design, anybody could put this kit together in a couple of nights. You didn't need a pilot's license, not even for the motorized version, because the law considered ultralights to be something less than aircraft-- more like hang-gliders or giant kites. Still, I concentrated on the least expensive model, the one without the motor. The article said that you could tow it behind a car. It said that in the Second World War a lot of submarines had autogyros along. They would surface and tow the autogyro behind on a cable. Whoever sat in the autogyro could see a long distance over the ocean.
The more I talked about it, the more I wished I could build an autogyro of my own. Timo wanted to know what I thought I would do with it.
"You really come up with some stupid questions," I told him. I did have a special purpose in mind, though. I've had my General Class amateur radio license for a couple of years now. My dad works as a custodian at the Junior High, and we don't have enough money for a lot of fancy radio equipment. So I build my own. I started building radio equipment a long time ago, and I'm pretty good at it by now. The rig I like better than any of the others I've built is a QRP CW transceiver. QRP means extremely low power. CW means that you have to use the International Code, based on the old Morse Code--dots and dashes, like on television shows based on the old West before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. In other words, I can't just talk into a microphone, I have to use something like a telegraph key, and I have to listen to little beeps to get my answer. Most people know at least S.O.S. in code: dit-dit-dit dah-dah-dah dit- dit-dit.
Most people don't understand that even with extremely low power, amateur radio operators can sometimes contact stations on the other side of the world. For example, once I communicated with a guy in Africa using no more power than you have in your pocket radio. Code makes it easier to contact far-away stations. The signal's always easier to hear than a human voice.
I found out that I could improve my chances of working distant countries by climbing to the highest point in the city. For best results, you have to go out at night and get up high. Of course, I was thinking that with an autogyro I could get up higher than ever before. And why shouldn't I fly at night?
So we kept on talking about building an autogyro until my father called up the stairs, "If I have to tell you one more time, I'm coming up there to reinforce my point."
"Brian won't shut up," said Timo. That was a laugh. Timo was doing at least half of the talking.
"Yes he will," said my father, "if he knows what's good for him." You don't mess with my father when he starts getting mad.
For the rest of the month we would talk about the autogyro every once in a while. Timo got to thinking how he could take aerial photographs if he got up in an autogyro. After that he was a little more enthusiastic and stopped making sarcastic remarks about Brian O'Brien, Boy Pilot.
I got along with him O.K. until Christmas Eve. Then he did about the worst thing that anybody's ever done to me.
CHAPTER TWO
At about the same time, just before Christmas vacation, I got to know this new kid in school. As usual, the kids in my class were playing keep-away on the playground during lunch hour. We all acted juvenile when you think about it. These two popular kids were always captains--James Ferraci and Thomas Zubov. James was a pretty smart kid, but Thomas was the dumbest kid in the class. The nun we had that year, Sister Mary Jerome, was always calling Thomas up in front of the class so she could give him a few swats with the handle of the little broom that went with the dustpan in the closet. Then she would make Thomas sit in the metal waste basket for fifteen minutes. Once Thomas's mother had to come and get Thomas out of the class. He had to appear in court. I don't know why exactly. Right in front of the class, his mother said, "Thomas is a pill." It's pretty bad when your own mother calls you a pill.
James and Thomas would take turns choosing team members. A few girls would play, but mostly boys. On this particular day, both teams had been chosen, and this new girl, Callie Clemson, was just standing there. She didn't look like much of an athlete. She looked like a pea on top of two toothpicks--long legs and a round little body. The teams were even, and this kid was left over. "What about the new kid?" I said
"What about her?" Zubov always acts pushy when he talks.
"She wants to play too," I said.
"She can play spectator," said Zubov. "She can play Howard Cosell."
"Listen," said James. "You can have her."
"I don't want her," said Zubov. "I already have enough girls on my team."
I didn't want to back down. "If she doesn't play, I don't play either," I said.
"Big deal," said Zubov. "Just because you're the smartest kid in the class doesn't mean you can boss everybody else around." What he said surprised me. First of all, I don't consider myself the smartest kid in the class. I always thought that everybody except maybe Zubov and Timo got straight A's. I mean, up until then I thought it was just normal to get straight A's. I don't think people should hate you for something you inherit. They were giving Callie a hard time because of the way she looked, and now Zubov was giving me a hard time because of my grades. I couldn't help it.
Besides, I never boss anybody around. My mother calls me Know-it-all O'Brien, because I think I have all the answers, but that's not the same thing as bossing people around.
So neither one of us played keep-away that afternoon. Instead we went over by the wall. Callie started talking about computers. She knew everything about them, and expected her father to get her an inexpensive one for Christmas. Since I read so many magazines in the public library, I knew exactly what she was getting--the Only True Computer for Under a Hundred Dollars the company called it. According to the consumer reports, it wasn't a bad machine. Sometimes the connection inside the case that was supposed to ground the circuitry didn't work properly. I mentioned this to Callie, but she didn't know anything about electronics. She just knew how to program computers. She promised I could come over and see it after Christmas.
On Christmas Eve Timo and I had to go to bed early. We were supposed to keep up all the Santa Claus stuff for the benefit of my little sister Kate. My parents wanted us all in bed early, so they could get busy. Timo started telling me that he knew what I was getting for Christmas. "I saw it in the attic of the garage," he said. "But dad made me promise not to tell."
At first I didn't believe him. "What were you doing up in the top of the garage?" I asked.
"Looking for something."
"For what?"
He didn't say anything for a while, and I thought he was having trouble making up a convincing lie. Then he said, "Promise you won't tell."
"Tell what?"
"What I was doing up in the attic of the garage."
"O.K.. I promise."
"I thought maybe they hid my presents up there. Dad caught me, and I told him I was looking for that crystal radio you built."
"And he believed you? I haven't seen that thing in years."
"Sure he believed me. But I know I can't fool you."
"Not with a story like that, you can't." I was watching the shadows go by on the wall above the stairs. On Christmas Eve they didn't seem spooky at all. I guess they usually don't seem spooky, unless Timo starts talking about foxes. Or sometimes he says he sees a man coming from the other side of the attic, the uninsulated part that my parents use for storage.
"How did you get up in the top of the garage, anyway?" I asked.
"Dad must have been up there that day. He left the ladder down." Usually only someone six-foot tall can get up in the attic of the garage. If my mother wants to pull the ladder down, she has to stand on something.
"So what am I getting?" I asked. I didn't believe him completely, but I was beginning to think he might be telling the truth.
"I promised not to tell."
I had no idea what I was getting. I hadn't been able to think of anything to ask for. Anything I really wanted, I knew my parents couldn't afford. I don't believe in asking for impossible stuff, though when I was a kid I used to ask for a pony or a monkey or something unrealistic like that. This year I had told my mother that she could surprise me. I had no illusions about her idea of a good gift. She would get me a pair of shoes or a new coat. I don't consider clothing a good Christmas present, but I didn't have any better suggestions.
"What difference does it make if you tell me now?" I always made the mistake of trying to reason with Timo. "I'm going to find out in a few hours anyhow."
"Right," said Timo. "Why do you want to know now if you're going to find out in a few hours?"
"I don't believe you saw anything."
"Yes you do."
"Just shut up and go to sleep," I said. I was losing my patience.
"Don't you want to know what you're getting?"
"No," I said. But I really did want to know.
"I'll give you a hint."
"If you don't shut up, I'm going to call mom."
"Mom!" Timo shouted. "Brian won't stop talking."
"Shhhh!" If mom heard, she didn't do anything about it.
"Don't you want a hint?"
I pretended to be sleeping. Even Timo wasn't dumb enough to believe that I could fall asleep so fast. "Brian," he said, "I know you're not sleeping."
I ignored him.
"I'll give you a little clue and then you can guess it. If you guess it, then dad can't blame me for telling."
I kept on ignoring him. I really was beginning to fall asleep. The faster you fall asleep, the faster morning comes. Usually it seems that no time passes at all between the minute you fall asleep and the minute you wake up.
"O.K.," said Timo. "Here it comes. What behaves like a cross between a helicopter and a windmill?"
"You mean--"
"Right, an autogyro. But you guessed it yourself. I didn't tell you."
"Dad and mom don't even know I want an autogyro."
"I told them a long time ago. They asked me what you wanted, because you told them you couldn't think of anything."
"They can't afford an autogyro."
"Dad got a discount."
"It wouldn't get here on time. They have to ship it."
"No, they had one right in the store. A demonstrator model. That's why they gave a discount."
"A demonstrator model? Timo, I happen to know that an ultralight autogyro all put together would be a lot more expensive than a kit."
"Did I say all put together? They just had the kit in the store, so you could see what you were getting. Dad told me they weren't selling at all, and the guy in the store wanted to get rid of it."
"They still wouldn't have enough--"
"They're buying it on their credit card. I told them you really wanted it a lot, and you wouldn't mind skipping your birthday present. It's a combination Christmas and birthday present."
"And it's up in the top of the garage?"
"Oh, they probably brought it down by now. It's probably in the living room right over by the tree."
I could see it hidden among the dusty lumber in the attic of the garage. I could see it waiting for me in the living room. I had a hard time getting to sleep after that. I kept imagining what I would do with the autogyro. For a while, I'd imagine putting it together. Then I'd hope the snow would melt so that I could try it out in a few days. I didn't think dad would want to tow me over icy roads. We'd have to do it out in the country anyhow, on some straight county road with nothing but fields all around. I thought those roads would all be clogged with snow. It was the first time I ever wished for a Christmas without snow.
Then I'd imagine flying it in the summer, using it as a mobile station and contacting Australia with my QRP transceiver. My fantasy went around in circles for a while. I was building the autogyro. I was trying it out. I was contacting Australia. After a few cycles it blended into a dream.
The next morning I woke up before it got light outside and ran downstairs. Timo had asked for an enlarger so that he could make big prints in his darkroom. I saw the enlarger right away-- over by the tree where I imagined my autogyro kit would be. I'm sure that the thing my parents bought for me cost almost exactly the same amount. They always try to treat us fairly. It was a new winter coat, an imitation of a navy pea coat. I tried to act pleased. As usual my mom said, "Don't thank me. Santa Claus brought it." I excused myself by saying that I had to go back to bed and get some more sleep.
The pea coat wasn't the only gift I got. My parents believe in balancing everything out. To balance my pea coat, Timo got an inexpensive western-style corduroy winter jacket. To balance Timo's enlarger, I got a set called 101 Electronic Projects. My cousin Michael got the same thing last year, and no doubt my father remembered how I helped Michael build some of the projects. My father himself liked the set and later the same week built a few things with it himself.
My parents obviously tried to find something I would like. They know I'm interested in electronics. It reminds me of Aunt Speed. She knows I'm interested in books, so she buys me a book every year. This year she bought me an extremely stupid kid's book called Cowboy Brian. She thought I'd like it because it had my name in the title.
They all had good intentions. But I don't read kids' books any more. When I visit the Public Library I go straight past the children's room.
About three years ago, 101 Electronic Projects would have made a great Christmas gift.
Still, I wouldn't have felt so bad about it if Timo hadn't lied to me. Up until Christmas Eve I was applying the sarcastic motto that Uncle Sean has hanging in his television repair shop: Expect nothing and you won't be disappointed. Then Timo got my hopes up. Timo's ten months younger than I am, but we're in the same grade at school. He skipped a grade. A few years ago the school assigned us both to the same class. In a Catholic school you sit there all day long with the same group of kids and listen to the same teacher talking. You don't get to switch from class to class the way they do in the Junior High. I was stuck in the same school until graduation. I was stuck with Timo--at home, in the classroom, on the playground. Before I fell asleep again, I started imagining that I could talk Timo into going to some military school.
CHAPTER THREE
Mom woke me up again when Aunt Speed arrived. Her real name is Aunt Maggie, but we call her Aunt Speed because of the way she drives. She never hesitates to go anywhere in the city, even though she's about a hundred and ninety years old, but she never goes faster than twenty miles an hour. Maybe she goes thirty on the highway.
Aunt Speed was coming over to show her slides of Ireland. She lived there until she was practically middle-aged, twenty-two or something. But she didn't take any pictures until she went back for a visit this Fall. I didn't feel like seeing any slides, but I didn't want to disappoint Aunt Speed. When she comes over to visit, she usually plays cards with the kids and lets us bet pennies. Nobody else does that.
When I came downstairs again, I said hi to Aunt Speed and went to sit in the kitchen with Meeko the dog. He's not allowed in the living room when company comes. I don't like to make small talk, so I keep Meeko company when he goes into exile. On this day, I needed the company more than he did. It made me feel better to play tug-of-war with his new plastic wiener. Dogs don't care too much what they get for Christmas.
Meeko doesn't have a pedigree, but he looks like a white scotty. He spends a lot of time tied up in front of the garage. He likes to go out to the end of his rope, take it in his teeth, and shake it hard like a rat he wants to kill. He growls or barks at everyone who passes by. A lot of people like him anyway and stop to talk to him. Every once in a while he bites the paper boy.
Meeko doesn't really love anybody except my mother. He's my dog officially. I'm supposed to feed him, but mom usually does. At night he sits behind her chair and growls if my father gets up to go to the bathroom. My Uncle Sean won't come in the front door unless we put Meeko out the side door first.
"How long since Meeko's gone outside," my mother asked me.
"I don't know," I said.
"Well how about hooking him up on his rope?"
"O.K.."
As I went through the door, I overheard her asking Timo, "What's the matter with Brian?"
"I don't know," said Timo. "Maybe he's got ants in his pants."
"What?"
"Maybe he's got a frog in his throat."
I closed the side door. "Come on," I said to Meeko. "Wait a minute, I have to get you hooked up." As soon as I let go of him, he ran out to the end of his rope and shook it. He almost got it going like a jump rope for a little while. Then he went around the side of the garage.
I was wearing my new pea coat. Some new snow had fallen, but it didn't matter now. For some reason, I started thinking about that crystal radio Timo mentioned. What had become of it? I figured it had to be in a box of junk up in the tree house. I liked the idea of going up in the tree house on Christmas to look for a crystal radio I built a long time ago. I had outgrown the tree house and the crystal set. But I was feeling sorry for myself, and I got a kick out of acting like a kid.
I still sit up in the tree house in the summer. It just doesn't give me a thrill any more. I don't pretend it's the cabin of an interstellar cruiser designed to give a spaceman the illusion of an earth dwelling. I don't even pretend it's located in the wilderness and I'm all alone there.
As I climbed the ladder, I could hear Meeko barking and noticed it was snowing again. He barks at big flakes and tries to bite them. Inside the tree house it seemed colder than out where the wind was beginning to blow. I hadn't been up there for months, and it looked different in winter. I suppose the light comes in from an unusual angle. The raw wood all around me looked pale. I started searching for the crystal radio and found it in a few minutes. I have an antenna strung from the tree house to a telephone pole at the other end of the back yard and a pipe driven into the soil for a good ground. The ground balances the antenna and doubles its effectiveness. I use the tree house for a radio shack in the summer. Now I connected the crystal radio to the antenna and ground wires.
I heard my mother calling me, but I didn't feel like answering. I put the earphones on and couldn't hear her any more. I didn't have to tune the radio at all. The strongest station in the city was coming through, playing Christmas carols, of course. I was thinking about the time I built the radio. My father took me up to Uncle Sean's television repair shop to get some diodes. You only need one for a crystal radio, but it doesn't hurt to buy a few and see which one works best. Some are more sensitive than others. We also bought some copper wire, a fixed capacitor, and a variable capacitor. Dad gave me a strong cardboard tube and I wound the copper wire onto it, according to instructions I found in a library book. I used a piece of wood for a base and wood screws for electrical contacts--not the best technique, but I was only a beginner. My father had some old- fashioned headphones that he let me borrow for as long as I wanted. In fact, I'm still borrowing them, the same way Timo's still borrowing his camera. My father lets us use anything that can't do us harm.
My mother wouldn't believe that a crystal radio works without batteries and without plugging into the wall. "You can't fool me," she said. "If it doesn't have a hidden battery, where does it get its power?"
"Mom," I said, "there are radio waves all around us every minute of the day and night." A strong signal has enough power of its own to excite a sensitive diode, as long as you tune the signal in with a coil and a capacitor.
"Well I don't know about that," she said. "But I do know that you need a battery to make a radio play."
At first the earphones, which had been out in the tree house all winter, almost burnt my ears off they were so cold. But by now my blood had warmed them up. I was sitting in an old easy chair my parents gave us. I started reading an old Superman comic book. I keep a lot of comic books up there. I've read them all more than once. They're pretty boring. But now I was feeling comfortable, reading about how Superman got married. But it turns out that Lois Lane dreamt it all. I was listening to Silent Night and enjoying a peaceful daydream. In the daydream my crystal radio had disappeared years ago, and I told my parents that I didn't want anything for Christmas except to get it back. My parents hired a private eye to search for it. He ended up in Hong Kong, where opium smugglers were using the crystal radio and a QRP transmitter to communicate with each other.
"Brian!" my father shouted up the ladder. "Are you up there?"
I took off the earphones and went over to the top of the ladder. My mother was there too. "Brian," she said. "You'll catch cold."
"I'm testing out my new coat," I said.
"I don't think I need any lip from you at the moment," my father said. "I've had just about enough of your smart mouth."
"It's Christmas," said my mother.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Sorry!" said my father. "You've had your mother worried sick."
"I just came up to look for my crystal radio."
"And now we've missed ten-o'clock Mass because of you."
"I guess we'll have to go at eleven," I said. "Or else twelve."
My father got red in the face and started up the ladder.
"Bill," my mother said to him. "It's Christmas. And Brian isn't feeling well."
"He'll be feeling a lot less well in a couple of minutes."
"Bill. I mean it. Not on Christmas."
He backed down the ladder and Meeko bit him.
My father hit Meeko with a rolled up newspaper. My mother started crying. My father said the dog should be put away. My mother said he never bites anybody without a good reason.
We ended up going to twelve-o'clock Mass.
All things considered, I've had better Christmases.
CHAPTER FOUR
That afternoon, after we got back from church and had bacon and eggs, Aunt Speed closed the curtains and showed her slides on the living-room wall. She had taken some pictures of our relatives in Ireland and a few shots of stone piles she called castles. The rest of the slides were either churches or grave- stones. She had more gravestones than anything else. Most of them had the name O'Brien on them and a couple had my full name, Brian O'Brien. It's depressing to see your own name on a gravestone.
Aunt Speed always said my parents should visit Ireland. My parents always said we couldn't afford it. Aunt Speed said it would hardly cost anything. Our relatives would be glad to put us up. But my parents couldn't afford the fare. I don't think they especially wanted to go over there and visit all those gravestones anyway. But Aunt Speed had a surprise. For her Christmas present to my parents she had bought a couple of raffle tickets. The first prize was an all-expense-paid trip to Ireland for two. And they had two chances to win it. My father said we never win anything. Timo said we won a turkey once. My mother told him not to contradict his father.
Near the end of the slide show, Callie called and wanted me to come over to her house and play with her new computer. My mother said, "You have company." But she said that Callie could come over to our house if she wanted to.
"Do you have a television I can use?" asked Callie.
"Sure," I said. "We have an old set in our room. From the 1950s."
"O.K.," said Callie. "I'll bring my computer."
At that time Callie still looked like a pea on top of two toothpicks, but once you get to know people you don't notice how weird they look any more. As soon as she came in the door, Meeko started growling at her. "Don't worry," I said. "Meeko never bites anybody unless he has a good reason."
"He remembers me," said Callie. "You remember me, don't you, Meeko?" She squatted down and put out her hand. Meeko sniffed it and stopped growling.
"You want to go upstairs with us, Meeko?"
Meeko started jumping up in the air. Then he ran back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen at top speed.
"Settle down in there," my father said.
"Come on," I said. And the three of us went upstairs.
Callie got her computer out of its box. It was smaller than a portable typewriter. She hooked it up to the antenna terminals of our T.V. and turned the dial to channel 2. She turned the T.V. on and started typing something on the keyboard of her computer.
"Something's wrong," she said. "It was working at my house." She typed some more. "Maybe it's the T.V.," she said. "Boy. If my father thinks the computer's defective, he'll mail it back to the factory. He's already irritated. He didn't know he'd have to assemble it."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"It didn't take much. He just had to put the circuit boards inside the two parts of the plastic case and then screw it all together."
"Can I have a look at that?" I remembered the article I'd read in the consumer magazine. I got a screwdriver from my desk and tightened the screws on the bottom of the plastic case. "Now try it," I said.
"It's working. What did you do?"
"Just tightened it up a little bit. This computer relies on a mechanical connection to keep it grounded properly. If it gets loose, it doesn't work the way it should."
Timo came upstairs carrying some enlargements he had just made in his darkroom. "You want to see something?" he asked.
"Get lost." I didn't feel too friendly towards him that day.
"Hey Brian," he said. "Did you tell Callie about your new autogyro?"
"What's that," asked Callie.
"Like a helicopter," said Timo. "Brian got one for Christmas."
"A model?"
"No, a real one. You want to go up in it?"
"My brother's a liar," I said. "Don't believe anything he says."
"Brian's not really my brother," Timo said. "Mom found him in a sewer when he was a baby. The rats were starting to eat him, so she rescued him and brought him home."
"So long, Timo," I said. "Nice talking to you. Too bad you can't stay."
"Anybody want to go outside and have a snowball fight?" When Timo said outside, Meeko stood up. "Want to go outside, Meeko?" The dog gave a little jump with his front paws. "O.K.," said Timo. "Let's go." He dropped the photographs on the desk and ran downstairs. Meeko followed him.
"Good riddance," I said.
"What's the matter?" asked Callie. So I told her how Timo had lied to me the night before. "I didn't even want an autogyro that much until he got started. Somehow hearing that I was getting it made me want it a lot more."
"Do you still have the magazine?"
"Sure," I said. As a matter of fact, it was overdue. I let her read the article about the autogyro kit.
"Pretty interesting," she said when she got done. But she really wanted to get back to playing with her computer. She showed me how she could program it to play simple games. "I'm already learning how to do more complicated stuff," she said.
I'm not crazy about computer games like some kids. I can take them or leave them. But I didn't mind spending the afternoon fooling around with Callie's computer. It beat sitting in the tree house and sulking.
After a while, Aunt Speed called up the stairs. "Anyone for blackjack?"
"You want to play blackjack?" I asked Callie.
"I don't know," she said. "Is it gambling?"
"Not exactly," I said. "I mean, you bet and everything, but Aunt Speed supplies all the pennies and takes them all home in a bucket when we're done."
"I never played it before."
"It's easy. Come on."
We played blackjack until supper time. Callie's mother called and told her to come home. After dinner I went upstairs and turned on my QRP transceiver. I listened for a while but didn't feel much like transmitting anything. Amateur radio messages are boring. Everybody wants to communicate, but nobody has anything to say. People end up talking about their radio equipment in great detail or bragging about the time they managed to contact a Presbyterian missionary in Japan. Or else you get these old guys babbling about how they've been hams for fifty years and telling everything they did in the Second World War.
I hate it when people call amateur radio operators hams. I don't even like ham. Pigs are just as intelligent as dogs and more intelligent than horses. I don't think people should eat them. I always think of the pig Arnold Ziffel on the Green Acres television show. I used to watch the reruns after school. Arnold seems a lot smarter than Meeko, to tell the truth. I like the taste of bacon, though. And my father says that as long as I live in his house I can eat the same food as everybody else. When I earn my own living I can be a vegetarian for all he cares.
That night Timo wouldn't leave me alone. He kept pretending I had the autogyro. "Can I go up in it, Brian? I want to take some aerial photographs."
"Shut up."
"Mom says we're supposed to share."
"Just go to sleep, will you?"
"It's not fair. You got an autogyro, and all I got was an enlarger."
"Go jump in the lake."
"An autogyro costs a lot more than an enlarger."
"Grow up." Timo hates it when I tell him to grow up. "Stop acting like a baby."
"You're the one who's acting like a baby."
"Give me a break."
But every time I started to fall asleep, he'd pick it up again. "You going to fly it tomorrow, Brian? Can I watch? Can I watch you put it together? Maybe I'll learn something. I'm surprised you don't have it put together by now. I thought you'd be able to do it in a few hours. If it takes a nine-year-old a weekend, you should be able to do it in a few hours. You think dad will let you fly it in the snow? Maybe it'll keep snowing until April. Where you going to keep it until then? You think dad will let you keep it in the garage?" He wouldn't quit. So I ended up punching him out. Then my father came upstairs and spanked us both, as if we were still kids.
"It's Christmas," my mother said.
My father said, "It's after midnight."
Next Section of Brian's Story.