The Adventures of Hap Farr and Henry Hawk

By J.N. Hyatt

Arnold Hap Fox tells the story of his adventures with Henry Hawk when they run away from the sixth grade in Cleotis, Indiana, trying to join their fathers in Biloxi on the Gulf. Inspired by Huckleberry Finn, they patch up a derelict canoe to float down the Wabash to the Ohio and then to the Mississippi. Cap'n Veech warns them, These days Huck's trip couldn't happen. There'd be Amber Alerts and squads of social workers on his tail to bring him back home and put him in counseling. Wouldn't get much past Paducah.

Hap and Henry with Hap's dog Shep nearly drown, wash up in Kentucky, and begin hiking. Henry is a talented liar. Hap is more innocent and imagines the dangers ahead. They are arrested for vagrancy, thrown in jail, and wind up in protective custody on a farm where Augusta and Arbutus Gorch are experienced foster parents. Ignoring warnings about bears and snakes, Henry insists they run away to head south. After three nights in Bobcat Woods, Hap decides he isn't cut out to be an explorer. He is happy to hole up at Eve's Orchard, a floundering commune, that keeps afloat selling goat cheese and marijuana.

From his reading about motherless boys, Hap worries that he will receive his comeuppance for his rebellion, but he cannot imagine what that comeuppance will be. Along the way he learns that he is more comfortable at home in his bed instead of playing Daniel Boone. He also finds out that even when adults are confused, there is more than one kind of family that cares about its children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481755580

J.N. Hyatt

J.N. Hyatt has taught English for enough years that she does not waste her readers time or energy.

Book preview

Chapter One

Arnold’s a pig’s name, a pig’s name, a pig’s name! I seen it on the TV, Arnold the pig! They called you that ’cause you just grunted, didn’t talk till first grade. And you smell like garbage! When they’re mad, sisters say things like that, at least my sister did. For a long time I believed her. I even thought I looked like a pig. My eyes are kind of little and my nose scoops up with a fat end, not all the way turned up like a pig’s but still pretty ugly. Mostly I got along with Joleen but she was part of the reason I did what I did.

Living in Cleotis, I didn’t have a lot of grownups to talk to, and if I talked to strangers, most times they told lies to see if I caught on. I don’t know why grownups do that, maybe to show they’re smarter than kids, but I already knew that. I got on pretty good at school with my teachers, but after first grade you can’t talk to them much or other kids call you goody-goody and teacher’s pet. Most teachers just want you to be quiet anyways, so I kept my head down with my nose in a library book. Ever since third grade when Miz Reade showed me, I liked chapter books like Call of the Wild or The Jungle Book or Johnny Tremain, where things happened in far-away places. But then when I wound up with Mrs. Sweet, I decided she was no teacher who would help me.

Joleen was fourteen when Mom left, I was going on eleven, and Buddy couldn’t walk yet even though he was four. One night Mom drove off in Dad’s pickup after we were in bed. They found it at the bus station, but nobody remembered her buying a ticket. I don’t remember much about her ’cept that she hummed washing dishes. Sometimes I can still hear that hum but it reminds me I don’t know where she is. I figured things just got too much for her around here, so she went off to find a better place, kinda what I did, ’cept I had an idea where I was going.

That fall Joleen was going to the consolidated high school, I was going into sixth, and Buddy was almost able to crawl. Mostly he stayed in his crib on his back, looking up at the ceiling. I think he could see, sometimes he looked right at me, but he never turned his head at a noise. After the doctor talked about his delay, Mom went off, and Joleen had to change diapers and do laundry. I did lots of cooking like hot dogs or baloney cheese buns. Dad stayed home from work for a while, sat on the couch, not talking ’cept to yell at the TV. He let Buddy slide around on the kitchen floor where he could pull himself along with his arms.

Mostly, I liked to go outside with Shep. I let him off his chain and we sat on the back steps, watching birds come and go. Shep’s a big dog, all black with a wide head and yellow eyes. Dad said he might be a German shepherd with some Labrador or Rottweiler thrown in, but his ears don’t prick up very high. They sort of droop down or go flat on his head and they’re real soft when I put my face down beside his. I think he looks like a black wolf I saw once on TV, ’cept his nose isn’t so pointy. Most times his tail hangs down, but if he gets worried, it gets stiff and straight with his fur kind of spiky. Then people go round us when they see him.

Sometimes I took Shep along if Dad sent me to the store, but next door Miz Beeler’d start hollering about leash laws in that town. She never let her dog out of the yard, a bowlegged, fat, black and white thing with its nose pushed in so far it looked like its eyes were going to pop out. It couldn’t breathe right through that nose ’cause when we went by, it waddled up to the picket fence, huffing and snorting. Shep never bothered it though he could have snapped it up in one bite. One time Dad took me and Shep down to fish in the river, and after that he let us go without him. Shep waded in to paddle around and then sniffed at weeds growing along the bank. We sat there, being peaceful, pretending to fish till it got dark. I liked watching the water slide by. Sometimes people in canoes or rowboats saw us and waved. I waved back though I’d never see them again.

As I remember, that summer was hot and sticky like most summers are in Cleotis with some terrible big storms after dark. I’d be in my bed all sweaty, watching the green lightning outside the window and covering up my head to keep out the thunder. Buddy slept through it all in his crib across from my bed, but if trees were thrashing around, I could see twisters sucking our house clean off the ground. Maybe the wind could pull Shep out of his doghouse and strangle him on his chain. Dad said he couldn’t come inside, dogs lived outside and just people lived in a house, so I stayed under the covers until the thunder moved on. Then I snuck out to see if Shep was okay. He acted all happy to see me, so we sat on the porch and watched the rain coming down.

Even when no storms came, I snuck out after everybody went to sleep. The skeeters weren’t bad after dark, so I sat on the porch steps with Shep and we watched fireflies wandering around and the moon coming up. I could see better when there wasn’t a moon. The leaves and branches got silver instead of black, and when I looked sort of sideways, I could tell what was inside the shadows. Mostly, I listened like Shep. The seven year locusts made a racket in the trees like they were cutting off branches with tiny little saws, and I could hear bats flapping their wings like cards shuffling. An owl lived in our trees. It hooted from one side of the yard and then the other, but I never saw it fly. I knew there were cats in our alley creeping along after mice, but mostly I listened to hear the big soft things that come out at night to watch what we’re doing. I held my breath to see if I could hear them breathe, but maybe the locusts were too loud or the soft things held their breath, too. Shep never growled so I guess he didn’t smell them, but I knew they were watching. Their eyes didn’t glow, but I could feel them turned in my direction like they could see what I was thinking. Maybe, if they didn’t like it, they’d slide closer and get inside my head. I tried to stay up till the locusts quit sawing and got quiet like in the mornings, but I couldn’t sleep out of my bed so I wound up back there later. I still like nighttime better than day, if I’m not in the woods.

Sometime that summer Aunt Liddy came. Maybe Dad told Joleen but nobody told me. She was just there in the kitchen when I got home. She had frizzy grey hair and big glasses with pink plastic frames that made her eyes look extra big. Wash your hands, boy, she said. We’re about to have supper. Joleen said she was family, Dad’s uncle’s widow, so that made her old like a gramma, but nobody said if she had her own kids. Her house dress hung loose like on a hanger, and she walked hunched over like she couldn’t straighten out her back. Her fingers were all knobby with long nails painted red. Skin on her skinny arms drooped down in little wrinkles and purple blotched like somebody beat her up. She started right in bossing Joleen and me around, getting everything redded up, she called it, even to washing window panes with vinegar water and drying them with newspaper pages. She talked fast and loud, but sometimes in the middle of what she was saying, she stopped and started jerking like the words got stuck in her throat. If I was near, she grabbed me and jerked me too, like her nails could dig words out of me. Then she exploded and went on talking like nothing had happened. The first time I saw her jerking, I came close to see what was wrong. She grabbed me closer so when she exploded, she spit right in my face. She didn’t mean to, but after that I tried to stay out of reach. When she was in the other room, Joleen made fun of her, jerking and calling her Aunt Lid-duh-duh-DEE! She took over the cooking, though I got tired of navy beans and onions with ham scraps and corn bread. Even though I didn’t like to, she was pretty easy to fool. Mostly she took care of Buddy, got him to sit up, but the best thing she did was let Shep come into the house.

When Dad went to work, she let Shep come as far as the kitchen where he curled up in a corner. She said, That dog’s no protection against invasions if he’s chained in the yard. I didn’t know what she meant by invasions, but I was glad Shep could come inside where it was a little cooler ’cause of the fan.

The thing was Buddy wouldn’t leave him alone. Aunt Liddy bought Buddy a bang bench, a thing with wooden pegs sticking up and a wooden hammer to pound them down flat. Then he was supposed to turn it over and pound them through from the other side. He’ll go into construction like his dad, said Aunt Liddy. Just look at him g-g-go.

Buddy really liked banging with that hammer, but he didn’t seem to know to turn the bench over. Once all the pegs were flat, he squirmed off on his belly, looking for more things to pound. He hunched along like a wooly worm with his bottom in the air until he came to something and then he’d sit up and whack it. Sometimes he hit the table leg or the wastebasket, but he liked best going after feet. I decided, if he couldn’t hear noise, maybe he was testing the feeling in his arm, if something was hard or soft or could move away. He went after Shep’s paws till Shep learned to move when he saw Buddy coming. He never growled or snapped, but he looked up at me with a really sad look like he didn’t understand why Buddy wanted to hurt him. Joleen and Aunt Liddy laughed and egged Buddy on, but I took Shep outside to prowl around where he couldn’t get hurt.

I guess I had it okay in Cleotis even after Mama went off, but things didn’t stay so good for me in that town. We lived on the south side not far from where Raccoon Creek joins up with the river. Joleen used to tell about the big flood when a school bus got washed off the bridge. I guess it happened before I started to remember, but I used to wonder what happened to the kids. Every time I got on the school bus, I planned what to do if water came up, but my bus didn’t go over any bridges. Joleen’s would that fall to take her to high school. I asked what she was going to do in another flood, but she said I was being a baby and dreaming up things to get scared. Now why would a person do that? Nobody likes to get scared. But lots of times these thoughts came into my head by themselves and stayed there, making pictures like they were real. Down by the river I could see alligators coming out of the water to get Shep like they did in Florida on the TV. I knew Florida was far away, but maybe they could swim up the river. When I asked Joleen, she just laughed and told me to grow up. It was pretty hard for me to find out about things with only Joleen to ask and her thinking I was just a baby, so I had to figure out a lot by myself.

I don’t remember any other boys near my age on our street, so mostly I hung around outside with Shep and listened to what grownups were saying even when it didn’t make any sense. One time Mr. Josten told a woman buying pickle loaf at his store that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. She nodded like she agreed, but I’d never heard of such a thing so I went home to try it. The sidewalk by our alley got sun all day long, so I thought it would be hot enough to fry the egg I took from the fridge without asking. But it just sat there sort of running into cracks until some red ants found it and started crawling all over. Shep licked it up, ants and all, and when Aunt Liddy found an egg missing, she wacked me upside the head for wasting good food. I wish grownups would get together and decide what they’re going to tell kids. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to figure out so much by ourself.

Until I met Henry Hawk, I guess I asked Cap’n Joe Veech to make sense out of things. One day Cap’n Veech came on me and Shep down by the river. Along with a little folding stool, he carried a bucket and a long pole. He looked at my stick with a string and kind of grunted, What you using for bait?

I lifted my line but the worm had crawled off so the bent pin was bare. He didn’t say any more until he unfolded his stool and sat on it. Then he poked a finger into his shirt pocket and brought out a package of real hooks. Channel cat’ll take a bare hook, he said, but you might try one of these. He helped me tie it on my string even to adding a little swivel thing just above it. His fingers were broad at the tip and his fingernails reminded me of big butter beans. He had to be older than my dad ’cause his hair was white in tight little curls under his straw hat, but he walked straight up with his big hands hanging down from his shoulders. Shep came over to sniff him and then wagged his tail. Cap’n Veech scratched behind Shep’s ears and under his jaw in all the right places. Then he threw my line back in the river and handed me the tree branch I used for a pole.

Next time you come fishing, he said, you might try a longer pole or more line on this one. You’re pretty close to shore there, and I’ve found they start biting farther out in the stream.

He tied a shiny little plastic fish on his line and then sailed it way out in the river, the crank thing on his pole making a long buzz. Shep lay down by his feet so I decided my dog thought he was all right even though we’d never met him before. We sat there most all the morning, not talking just watching water slide by.

We didn’t catch anything, and at last Cap’n Veech stood up to crank in his line. Not biting today, he said, but I’m getting hungry. You want to come to my house on Freemont? Mama can fry us up some ham’n eggs.

I didn’t know where Freemont Street was, and Aunt Liddy was always telling Joleen not to go off with strangers, but she hadn’t told me and I was hungry so I went. For a while we walked through the trees and bushes along the river and then we cut in to the far end of town. Houses along there weren’t very big and had lots of stuff in their yards like flowers growing in the middle of old tractor tires and pickup trucks with no wheels, set up on blocks. Old boards leaned up against wash tubs with wringers, waiting till somebody decided to fix them. I saw some kids digging in the dirt who stared at me, their eyes big and their mouths open. Some grownups on the porches waved at Cap’n Joe and asked if he’d caught anything, but he just shook his head. Dogs came to check out Shep, but he didn’t let them sniff under his tail. After a few tries they let him pass, mostly yellow dogs with long skinny tails but some small, brown and black spotted ones like hunting dogs.

We went along till we came to a little falling-down house under some trees. The front was all porch and covered in vines that hung down making shade. The floorboards on that porch slanted toward the front railing where posts were missing every now and then, but I guessed it was strong enough if it could hold up the person sitting there.

She was the widest person I’d ever seen, maybe hundreds of pounds, so big she hung over the sides of her chair. I guess her legs couldn’t carry her anymore, so she scooted around in a chair with rollers, not a wheelchair but kind of a desk chair with arms. Somebody had put up drawer pulls in the right places so she could grab on and pull herself inside the house. She watched us coming up the walk and then she called out, That skinny white boy got a mama who know you bringing him here?

Cap’n Veech rested his pole on the edge of the porch and looked down at me. I shook my head and mumbled, I don’t got no mama.

He says he doesn’t have a mama, Cap’n Veech told her. Thought you might scramble up some eggs for us fishermen.

Oooooee! she cried and began pulling herself into the house.

Go ’long with her, said Cap’n Veech, waving his arm at the screen door. Maybe you can help with the dishes. I’ll rest myself here on the porch and keep an eye on your dog.

The floorboards on the porch were kind of bouncy under my feet, but I went inside the kitchen where the woman was scooting from the fridge to the stove, slapping big slices of ham in a skillet and cracking eggs into another. Reach me down another plate from that shelf, she ordered, and get knives and forks outa the drainer. I did what she said, trying to keep out of her way ’cause she could move fast in that chair, pulling herself along on the drawer knobs.

There wasn’t much room in their kitchen ’cept for a table and two chairs, but everything looked swept up and tidy. Two coffee mugs and two glasses sat on the table, and bowls and stuff were lined up on the counters where she could reach. The windows didn’t have curtains and the table was only bare boards, but it looked like she could sweep and scrub even though she was stuck in that chair. The air smelled like gasoline till the ham smell took over. In the other room I could see a big black metal thing like at Josten’s store that he called a space heater.

You got a name, honey? she asked me. I’m Ida Veech and you come home with my boy, Cap’n Joe. He got a medical discharge from the military and almost made cap’n with the state police.

I mumbled my name and she turned herself around from the stove. Come here, Arnold, she ordered, holding out her big hand. When you meet somebody, you shake hands and say Howdydo. Les try that again. My hand disappeared inside her big one that felt soft but strong. She told me, Now say ’Howdydo, Miz Veech. I’m pleased to meetcha. My name’s Arnold Farr. After I did what she said, she smiled and nodded. Thas the right way to do it, she said. Somebody’s letting you grow up by yoseff without teaching you how to get along. An’ when somebody don’t know what to do, they hang back an’ act stupid. Now fetch us some biscuits outa that bread box. We’ll eat on the porch where it’s cool.

That was the beginning of my education which Miz Veech took on herself for no reason I could tell, but she and Cap’n Veech explained things and answered my questions when I had one to ask. They talked like I was almost grown up and never made me feel stupid. I counted on them a lot along with Henry Hawk, but then they had to go off and leave us when we needed them most.

That first day we ate on the porch at rickety little TV tables Cap’n Veech unfolded from their corner. He went inside to the fridge and brought back a pitcher of ice tea that he poured into three glasses. Aunt Liddy never let me drink ice tea ’cause she said it would overstimulate my system, but this was sweet and cold and afterwards I didn’t feel overstimulated whatever that meant.

I thought it sounded funny to hear Miz Veech call Cap’n Joe boy, but I guessed he was her grownup boy, her son, taking care of her when he wasn’t off fishing. I guessed they didn’t have lots of money or he’d have bought her a wheelchair, and I couldn’t help wondering how she got out of her rolling chair to go to bed or the bathroom. But I didn’t ask, just watched and listened for what I could learn. Miz Veech was darker than Cap’n Joe but only in patches like the bark on a sycamore tree. I guessed she was all brown once, but when she got so wide, her skin stretched the brown apart and made pink patches. When she wasn’t eating, she laughed a lot, and she jiggled all over.

They asked me where I lived and if I had any brothers or sisters, so I told them about Aunt Liddy and Joleen and Buddy and that my dad worked construction and nobody knew where my mom had gone to. Cap’n Veech knew my dad, at least he said his name, Denzel, though I hadn’t told him. Miz Veech asked if social services knew about Buddy, but I didn’t know what she meant. When I ran out of things to tell them, Miz Veech said, Now Arnold, you be among friends here, but you might not be telling everbody all that, like at school in the fall. I took her to mean I’d been talking too much, so after that I kept