The Grasshopper Trap Read online

  I realized, of course, that fear of darkness was a serious flaw in my character. Since my character was riddled with flaws anyway, I didn’t worry much about one more. Nevertheless, I didn’t want my friends to find out I was afraid of the dark, and I went to great lengths to keep my secret from them. Take, for instance, the time Ronnie Ditmire came out to our farm to spend the night with me.

  Ronnie had no sooner set foot in the house than he came up with the suggestion that he and I sleep out in the backyard. He said he’d had a lot of experience sleeping out in backyards in town, but this was his first opportunity to do so in the country.

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “Sure. In the dark, you mean. Sleep out. That would be fun. You don’t mind a lot of black widow spiders crawling all over you, do you, Ronnie?”

  “You got black widow spiders in your yard?”

  Patting my hair back down, I retracted a few premature goosebumps. Unfortunately, my evil sister, the Troll, overheard our conversation and rushed to put in her oar and roil the waters. “What are you telling Ronnie? There are no black widow spiders in our yard, you silly!”

  “There are too,” I said nervously.

  “Ma!” the Troll roared. “Are there any black widow spiders in the yard?”

  Mom, ever ready to rush to my defense, stuck her head out of the kitchen. “No, of course not. Where did you ever get a dumb idea like that?”

  “See?” the Troll said.

  “I thought there were,” I said, smiling weakly at Ronnie.

  “Good,” he said. “Then we can sleep out in the yard tonight, after all.”

  “I can’t think of any reason why not,” I said. “Unless you happen to be bothered by poisonous snakes. Ever seen anybody get snakebit? First they swell up into a great big horrible ball, and then they turn blue and green and yellow and then it starts to get real bad.”

  “My dad says there ain’t any poisonous snakes around here,” Ronnie said. “So we don’t have to worry about snakes.”

  “I thought we did,” I said.

  “Of course not,” the Troll put in. “There aren’t any poisonous snakes around here—not even when it’s dark!” She cackled trollishly.

  “Ma!” I yelled. “The Troll is bothering us. Tell her to leave us alone!”

  “Don’t refer to your sister as the Troll,” my mother said. “Now, Trudy, get out of there and leave the boys alone.”

  The Troll backed slowly out of the room, grinning evilly. “Hope you have a good time sleeping out-in-the-dark. The weather report in the paper says there’s going to be heavy darkness all night tonight cackle cackle!”

  Just my luck—heavy darkness. And here was Ronnie, pressing ahead with his plan for sleeping out. This was getting out of hand. We were actually getting some old blankets and quilts down out of the attic to make a bed in the yard. What madness! I considered asking Ronnie to take an oath of secrecy and then confessing to him my disgusting fear of darkness. He would probably understand.

  “I’ll tell you something weird,” Ronnie said. “I tried to get Fred Phelps to sleep out with me one night, and he said he couldn’t, he was afraid of the dark. A big guy like Fred, you wouldn’t expect him to be yellow-bellied chicken, would ya? He even made me take a secret oath not to tell anybody.”

  “Fred’s dumb, too,” I said. So much for that idea …

  Darkness was already coming down off the mountain, crawling out of the woods, and oozing up from the creek bottom. Down in the swamp, a chorus of frogs welcomed the coming of night. Stupid frogs.

  Several times in my young life, through some monumental miscalculation, I had been surprised by darkness while playing with friends at a neighboring farm. Galloping along at the head of a column of French Legionnaires, I would yell over my shoulder, “Watch out for an ambush, men. It’s getting dark and …”

  Whoa, hoss.

  I take a look around. Hannnnnhhh! My deadly enemy, darkness, has slipped in between me and my house! “Uh-oh,” I tell the other Legionnaires. “I’m late for supper.” And then I fire myself into the darkness. I can feel its long, bony fingers clutching at me, its grisly jaws nipping at my heels, and I streak, streak I say, through the silent, creepy blackness until, at last, I burst into the benevolent, life-saving light of my kitchen. Startled by the bang and whoosh of my sudden arrival, the womenfolk emit small shrieks and bound about in a mist of hairpins. Ah! Once again I have defeated the enemy! I slide into my chair and ask, “What’s for supper?”

  The Troll detected my fear of darkness early on, and used it for her own amusement. Once, walking home with her through the woods in winter, I noticed that the shadows of the trees had lengthened and were now blending together into great patches of—darkness. The last of the daylight slid up the barren birches as if being sucked through giant straws into the gaping maw of night.

  “It’s getting dark!” I warned.

  “So what?” the Troll said, crunching on ahead through the snow.

  “We’d better run,” I said. “We don’t want to get caught out here after dark.”

  The Troll stopped, turned around, and studied me thoughtfully.

  “We can’t run,” she said. “If we run, the wolves will attack.”

  I looked around, as one is wont to do after such an announcement. “What wolves?”

  “The wolves that have been following us,” she said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen them!”

  Well, now that she mentioned it, I did indeed see the wolves, slipping along through the shadows to the left and right of us.

  The Troll calmly studied my reaction. “Why are you twisting yourself all up like that, you silly?”

  Apparently she had never before seen anybody wind up the mainspring. Not run! I would have laughed if I’d had the time and the inclination, but I had neither. Sprannnnnnngg! And I was gone.

  At the time, I knew nothing about the infectious nature of panic. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been so surprised when, upon reaching my top cruising speed, I noticed the Troll passing me on the left and still accelerating, her braids snapping like bullwhips as she cut in front of me. Maybe she thought there actually were some wolves following us, I don’t know. More than likely it was simply that panic loves company. For my part, I couldn’t have cared less about a mere pack of wolves. A pack of wolves wasn’t even in the same league as a pack of darkness.

  But now here were Ronnie and I, engaged in the insanity of actually spreading quilts and blankets on top of an old hay tarp in preparation for spending the night outdoors. If I even relaxed my feigned enthusiasm for the undertaking—good word that, undertaking—Ronnie would become suspicious. Then both Fred Phelps and I would become outcasts at school next fall, when Ronnie spread the word that we two yellow-bellied chickens were scared of the dark. Poor ol’ Fred’s reputation was already shot; mine hung in precarious balance.

  Of course, all I needed was a tiny little night light. Something the size of a birthday-cake candle would do—a fifteen-foot birthday-cake candle. Any obvious night light, though, would cause Ronnie to put some tough questions to me, like, “What you doing with that flashlight and the big stack of batteries?” Even if I’d had a big stack of batteries, I couldn’t have risked it.

  “What say we turn in?” Ronnie asked. “It’s already dark.”

  “I noticed,” I said.

  I glanced longingly up at our house, the lights of which were being flicked off one by one as my mother made her final rounds. She opened the back door and called out, “I’m going to bed now. You boys all right?”

  “Yep,” Ronnie said.

  “Yaup,” I said.

  Mom went back inside, and minutes later the last light on our side of the house flicked off. Ronnie and I were in TOTAL DARKNESS! Not just the well-defined cube of darkness that filled a bedroom, but a great shapeless ocean of night!

  “You ever hear the story about the stranger who got himself hung for claim-jumping, and his ghost still wanders these parts looking for revenge?” Ronnie said.


  “Yeah, I heard it.”

  “Well, my pa seen that ghost crossing a field right out this way one night. Foggy it was, he said, and …”

  Idea! Why hadn’t I thought of it before! I leaped out of the covers and told Ronnie I’d be right back. “I forgot to brush my teeth,” I said, rushing toward the house. In the bathroom, I jerked the string on the overhead light, waited an appropriate length of time, and then sauntered back outside. Perfect! The light from the bathroom window cast a nice rectangular patch of light right next to my side of the hay tarp.

  “You left the bathroom light on,” Ronnie said.

  “Dang,” I said. “If that doesn’t beat all! Oh, well, a little light won’t hurt anything.”

  “This ghost story is better if it’s plumb dark,” Ronnie said. “But anyway, this ghost …” He droned on about the ghost and its horrible doings. I smiled sleepily, starting to drift off as I secretly stroked the grassy patch of protective light, occasionally turning to admire it in all its loveliness.

  Without warning, an ominous shadow suddenly appeared in my patch of light. Wha? I turned and looked up at the bathroom window. No! There, framed in the window, stood the Troll! She was in silhouette, so I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was grinning her evil grin as she stared down in my direction. Slowly her hand reached for the light string. NO! DON’T DO IT! She made several teasing motions with the light string, then—Zap! The light was gone. Faintly, off in the darkness, I could hear the hollow sound of trollish laughter. She would have already locked all the doors to the house. Trolls are nothing if not thorough.

  So now there was nothing to do but suffer the night away. For me, the Troll had murdered any hope of sleep. Under my breath I put a curse on her: May a garter snake turn up in your underwear drawer! (And a garter snake would, which shows you can’t discount the power of curses.)

  A friendly wind swept back the clouds and a few stars appeared. Starlight was better than nothing. I noticed several little black shapes flitting about among the stars.

  “And after the ghost got done with the two boys …” Ronnie was saying. “Hey, what are those black shapes flitting about among the stars?”

  “Just some bats,” I said.

  “Bats!” cried Ronnie. “I can’t stand bats! Quick, let’s go inside!”

  “Too late,” I said. “The Troll has locked all the doors.”

  “Aaaaiiiiigh!” Ronnie said. “What’ll we do?”

  “I don’t mind bats, myself,” I said. “But if they scare you, maybe you can hide under the covers. Sometimes bats like to crawl under the covers, but if I see any try it, I’ll drive them off.” I studied the quivering lump under the blanket. “I’m going to be awake anyway.”

  Trailer Trials

  Shortly after man invented the wheel, he invented the trailer. Ever since then, he has been trying to figure out how to hook up the lights.

  I know a man who claims the lights on his boat trailer once worked twice consecutively. Anyone with one or more trailers will instantly recognize this as an outrageous claim, but the man is a member of the clergy, and for that reason alone I believe him. On the other hand, he’s also a fisherman, so he may be exaggerating a bit. Possibly his trailer lights worked only once consecutively.

  Over the course of his life, any sportsman worthy of the name will own a dozen or so trailers of various kinds—utility trailers, tent trailers, boat trailers, house trailers, horse trailers, trail-bike trailers, and snowmobile trailers, to name but a few. That is the reason researchers estimate that one-eighth of a sportsman’s life is spent trying to hook up trailer lights.

  The trailer comes equipped with a rectangular light, whereas the plug on your car is round, or perhaps vice versa. In any case, you can be sure the two plugs won’t match. Therefore you must replace the original trailer plug with one that matches the car’s, a task that seems simple enough. You reason that since only four wires lead from the trailer plug and four wires lead from the car plug, there exist only a limited number of wrong combinations. True. The limited number is 4,389.

  Once you have wired the new plug to your trailer and plugged it into the car plug, the standard procedure for checking the trailer lights consists of having your wife, Alice, if that is her name, stand behind the trailer and call out reports on what is happening to its lights. The dialogue goes something like this:

  “I’ve got the left turn signal on, Alice. Is the trailer’s left-turn signal blinking?”

  “No.”

  “What’s blinking?”

  “Nothing’s blinking. But the other light got real bright. Then it went out.”

  You switch a few wires around.

  “I’ve got the brake lights on, Alice. Did the trailer brake light go on?”

  “No. But the left-turn signal is blinking. Is that good?”

  The check-out procedure continues throughout the day until it is too dark to work, Alice goes in the house and phones a divorce lawyer, or you are dragged off to an asylum. The divorce rate among trailer owners, by the way, is nine times that of the rest of the population.

  Trailer lights have little insidious tricks they like to pull on you. For example, the left-turn signal will start blinking of its own accord. The drivers of the cars following you think you are about to turn left, of course, and thus are hesitant to pass. Noticing the line of cars stretching out behind, you drive slower to make it easier for them to pass. The other drivers think you are slowing down to make your turn, and they are now even more hesitant to pass. Eventually, some of them become irate. The others merely hope you will pull into the next rest stop so they will have the opportunity to beat you with tire irons. While hauling a trailer, I avoid rest stops.

  Another little trick of trailer lights is to black out entirely, particularly on dark and stormy nights. The emergency procedure requires Alice to ride in the trailer and shine a flashlight to the rear. Since it is illegal for passengers to ride in trailers, however, she must be fitted out with a disguise. Wrapping her with a tent works fine, although there may be some difficulty explaining to a highway patrolman why a tent should be holding a flashlight and cursing.

  Trailer hitches can be a problem, although they are nothing as compared with trailer lights. The hitch simply clamps down over a steel ball on the car. The steel balls come in three sizes—too large, too small, and just right. The just-right ball is the one you lent your neighbor to haul a trailer to Nova Scotia, because he had one of the other two sizes.

  Once you have placed the hitch on the ball, you pull back a lever that activates a locking mechanism which always jams for a reason no one has ever been able to understand. Here’s a tip. To clamp the hitch jaw against the ball, insert two fingers up between the jaw and the ball and then press down hard on the lever. The two fingers volunteered for this operation should be minor ones for which you have no immediate plans, or better yet, those of the neighbor who borrowed your just-right ball.

  Trailers seldom come equipped with spare tires. Naturally, you assume you can purchase a spare. The trailer’s wheels, you then discover, are of a size and style manufactured only by a small firm in Lower Tibia before the revolution. This creates the suspense of hauling a trailer without a spare tire for it. Getting a flat on a trailer without a spare rates as one of life’s great predicaments. Your options are few. You can leave the trailer parked by the road to be plundered while you haul the flat to the nearest town to be repaired, or you can try to persuade Alice to run along holding up one side of the trailer, provided it is of the lightweight variety. If the latter course is chosen, I suggest you keep your speed at no more than five miles per hour and even slower on upgrades. Sure, driving that slow can be boring, but Alice deserves some consideration for doing her part.

  Speaking of boredom, here’s something guaranteed to relieve it. Going down a steep grade, you glance out the side window and notice some idiot trying to pass you on the wrong side. Then you see it is your trailer! Oh, it is a thrilling sight, I can tell
you, especially if the trailer is carrying an eighteen-foot boat. Some people are thrilled right out of trailering. Others vow never again to try to get by with the too-small ball when only the just-right ball will do.

  Safety chains, by the way, are required on all trailers. Their purpose, should the hitch come loose, is to rip the rear end off the towing vehicle, thus further punishing you for using the wrong ball.

  I bought my first trailer a few years after getting my family started. Like any outdoorsman, I needed to haul stuff but couldn’t afford a pickup truck in addition to the family sedan. The trailer served as a compromise.

  A World War II surplus trailer, it was designed to be hauled behind a jeep. After much dickering, the proprietor of Grogan’s War Surplus, Henry P. Grogan himself, finally threw up his hands in exasperation and sold me the trailer for practically nothing. It was a steal, the only one I ever got from the shrewd, tightfisted Grogan.

  As a kid, I had distinguished myself as the most loyal and frequent customer of Grogan’s War Surplus, which looked as if some minor battle of the war had been fought right in the store. It was a delirium of fantastic war stuff—helmets, fatigues, web belts, canteens, sleeping bags, guns, bayonets, machetes, rubber rafts, jungle hammocks, jerry cans, landing nets, and the like. During the years of my youth, I bought several of each item, with the exceptions of machine guns and tanks. Not that Grogan wouldn’t have sold me machine guns and tanks if I’d had the cash. I was, after all, his favorite customer.

  The war was long over now, and Grogan no longer prospered as he once had. The day I walked in looking for a trailer, I noticed him giving a customer the hard sell on a piece of merchandise.

  “But what do I need a flamethrower for?” the man said.

  “Why, it’s good for all sorts of things,” Grogan said. “Ridding your lawn of weeds, for example. You just go whoosh with this thing and the weeds is gone. Never come back, neither. You can burn out stumps with it, too, and let’s see, ah, it works good for scaring off prowlers. Yessir, works real fine for that.”