Small Fry

By Anita K. Grimm

Twelve-year-old Ryan Morrison is social kryptonite. He’s much too short and way too intelligent for any kid in his eighth grade to want him for a friend, and his freakishly small size attracts every bully in school. Unable to forge a healthy relationship with his troubled father who scoffs at Ryan’s dream of becoming a famous paleontologist who discovers an unknown species of dinosaur, Ryan feels miserably detached from school and family. Until, that is, the day Ryan unearths a seven-foot silver canister from a river bank and hides it in his bedroom. Of alien technology and design, it opens to reveal a perfectly preserved “fossil”—a 34,000 year-old Ice Age caveman.
Incredibly, Bahntouka is very much alive. With Ryan’s help, he adjusts to modern life with curiosity and surprising intelligence. His gift for insight and gentle wisdom helps Ryan’s dysfunctional family begin to bond and heal, even as Bahntouka desperately yearns for his lost wife and baby, entombed in another silver canister somewhere in Oregon or Washington. But when the corrupt Marion County Sheriff and his drug-running accomplices threaten his new family in an escalating life-and-death struggle, Bahntouka reacts with extraordinary courage and sacrifice to rescue them, unleashing man-sized courage in the boy everybody calls Small Fry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781982237301

Anita K. Grimm

Anita Grimm has been an award-winning teacher, a full-service music store owner, a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused and neglected children), a horse trainer and guitar instructor, and the survivor of a deadly typhoon on the Tasman Sea. Her first Young Adult novel, A Certain Twist in Time, has delighted adults as well as young adults. She lives in southern Oregon with her husband and an intuitive rescue dog who can read her mind.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

RYAN

An ethereal thought drifted through my mind, evaporating like contrail vapor as I strained to capture it. Was I dead? The notion that my mind floated in perpetual nothingness seemed to verify it. Though I struggled to move, my mind hung suspended in a dark void, free of moorings, deprived of a body. The attempt to move felt similar to a nightmare when you must flee for your life but your legs turn boneless as octopus tentacles.

What should have been my body offered no response to my brain’s commands. Not even my eyelids complied. A murky grasp of utter darkness surrounded me, thick as pumpkin soup, empty as space, a nothingness I must somehow escape.

This featureless abyss in which I drifted gradually produced a faint ticking sound like thousands of distant clocks. The ticking grew denser, louder, more like swarms of tiny pellets driven into metal or glass. Pain bloomed in the emptiness—a throbbing in one leg, a slow-burning fire in the other that seared up my ankle to my knee, and a snowballing ache in my head. My awareness expanded. I must still be attached to a body after all, I thought. Chill deepened all around me, spreading and seeding my tiny universe with wintery discomfort, except for the warm trickling sensation down one side of my face. Gusty moans and whining whistles of wind pummeled and rocked the… the what? The car. Uncle Harold’s car.

My eyelids flickered open, though my eyes refused to focus. Anxiety niggled at me, pushing my brain to remember what the heck had happened and to pin down where the car had stopped. Ribbons of nausea curled through my stomach, but that made me smile. I knew if I tossed my cookies in Uncle Harold’s car—junk heap that it was—he’d be totally upset. Mostly ‘cause cleaning up that mess would mean having to clean out all the fast-food trash, the faculty bulletins, those old science magazines that never quite made it to the dump, and clumps of student papers with ketchup stains.

I beat back the nausea and concentrated instead on smearing away blood that trickled down my face and dripped onto my favorite jacket.

Uncle Harold’s car had always been a road hazard. Now mangled beyond usefulness, even the old-fashioned dashboard lights were dead. Outside what remained of the windows, night had fallen, and the storm still raged around us. Inside, the cheesy dashboard on the passenger side had twisted around one of my legs. I was pinned inside the remains of Uncle Harold’s crappy 1965 Dodge Dart.

Wincing at the pain I felt when I twisted my head, I glanced at the driver’s seat. Uncle Harold was slumped motionless, crunched into a soft, unconscious pretzel, his face resting on the steering wheel, his head dripping blackish blood that pooled on his pants and the car seat. Oh my God. Was he dead? If Uncle Harold was dead, my entire world would collapse.

Uncle Harold? I reached out and tapped his shoulder. There was no response.

Through gusts of rain and wind hammering the half-shattered windshield, I made out a massive concrete abutment rammed against the car’s crumpled hood. It had guarded the entrance to the bridge we’d been about to cross, and the car’s impact had accordion-pleated the hood and probably the engine. Uncle Harold must have driven into it at full speed to cause such damage. He would never have been that careless. His driving normally made me fidgety because the old man was so aggravatingly careful. The wind must have blown his car off the road into the abutment.

Grappling with the dizziness that fogged my brain, I clutched the old-fashioned door handle and tried to shove open my door. Even shoving my full body weight against it, the door refused to budge. Dad often told me I weighed about as much as a pregnant aardvark and laughed that I’d never be tall enough to ride in Disneyland’s Autopia cars by myself. I didn’t know why such a memory would surface here in a car wreck. Maybe I thought that any normal twelve-year-old could wrench that car door open. Again, I tried to force it open, but it must have been wedged too tight from the impact. I was hurt and trapped in the stormy darkness, maybe with my uncle’s dead body, without another soul around. What could I do?

For the past three weeks, the whole Pacific Northwest had been battered by one late-winter storm after another, downing trees and power lines, turning tame creeks and rivers into uncontrollable maelstroms that took out bridges and houses. Maelstrom. That was the extra credit word on my eighth-grade pre-AP English class’s spelling test this week. The flooding was the worst even Oregon’s old-timers had seen, and certain preachers were already talking arks.

My focus turned back to the car’s interior. No airbags had protected us. They hadn’t been standard equipment back in yesteryear when this Dodge rolled off the assembly line.

At least Uncle Harold had installed decent seat belts in his old wreck… before he wrecked it. Dad always shook his head at how low-rent cheap his older brother was. I hate to admit it, but Dad was pretty much on target about that. Uncle Harold always said he didn’t need a new car as long as this old heap still ran. Of course, Uncle Harold was a part-time university professor, and they didn’t make as much money as veterinarians like Dad. But now my cheapskate uncle would have no choice but to buy a new car. Knowing him, he’d replace this waste of metal with a rusted-out 1975 Pinto or something. Damn. If he was still alive.

That thought slammed into my gut like a chunk of ice. Uncle Harold was my best friend, my only friend, the only human on earth who got me and never put me down. He didn’t even mock me because my normal speech patterns were so advanced for my age. Not like the kids at school did. Not like my father. Tears pooled in my eyes. Please, God. Don’t let him be dead.

We’d been driving out on the rural Oregon roads of Marion County through forests broken by occasional farmland, and the freezing February air now pouring in from the broken windshield had me shivering and miserable. I thought about how I’d seen a ton of car wrecks on TV and in movies. Most of those cars burst into flames, roasting the poor guys inside. Would the next thing I’d see be flames leaping out from beneath the car? I tried the door again. No luck. Uncle Harold and me were trapped inside this crunched heap of junk metal, about to become crispy critters, and there was nothing either of us could do about it. My mouth turned to sand, and I began to hyperventilate.

It should’ve been a no-brainer to figure out how to escape the car. Dad was forever reminding me how I’d tested five points below the late cosmologist, Stephen Hawking on an IQ test and should be able to think my way out of anything. Usually he did this after I’d just done something boneheaded. On the upside, at least a small explosion and a fire would warm me up before I died.

I nudged Uncle Harold again. It felt like nudging a slab of beef hanging in a butcher shop. Like a dead carcass. Shit! Uncle Harold must truly be dead! Tears gathered around my eyes.

I forced myself to think about something else. I’d be in major trouble if Mom knew I was thinking in curse words. My older brother, Logan, spouted the S-word all the time, and nobody said anything about it to him. Of course, he was nineteen, which I guess counted for something. And he wasn’t a runt like me.

I might have called my uncle an old miser behind his back, but the truth was I totally loved the man. I was fiercely protective of him if Dad started criticizing Harold when he wasn’t around. It hadn’t been lost on the family that I was far closer to Uncle Harold than my own father. That was why I spent time with Harold every chance I got.

Now it was up to me to get us out of this mess. Damn—if Uncle Harold was still alive, of course. I unfastened the seat belt and swept broken glass off the seat so I could move a little closer to him. With my right leg stuck in the crunch of metal, I couldn’t move far. Maybe stretching my body to the max would be enough. Leaning toward my uncle, I extended my left arm to reach the old man’s jacket pocket. Inside, I closed my fingers around the rectangular shape of his smartphone. With any luck, he’d remembered to charge it, which would be a small miracle considering how distracted he’d always been when it came to life’s details. Now if God was truly watching over us, there would be cell phone coverage out here in the tulles.

I grinned as the phone’s surface lit up, gratefully pressed the phone app, and tapped in 911.

An operator came on. What’s the address of your emergency? she asked in a nasally voice I could barely make out above the storm.

Address? Crap! We don’t really have an address here, I said, my heart drumming against my ribs. How would they find us with no address? We’re out on the old Jenkins Trail Road heading for Salem. I don’t see any lights around here. The wind blew our car into the bridge abutment. It’s crushed—the car, not the bridge—and we can’t get out. The river’s high. I can hear it roaring outside the car. My voice had developed the shakes.

Anybody hurt? the Nose asked.

My uncle is bleeding and unconscious. I don’t know if he’s dead. If he’s still alive, he needs a doctor bad. I’m banged up and trapped in here, but okay, I guess.

Names?

I’m Ryan Morrison. My uncle is Dr. Harold Morrison. He’s a professor at Willamette University, not a medical doctor.

I’m sending help right away, Ryan, but I can’t stay on the line. We’re getting too many emergency calls, and I have to keep this line open. Hang tight, and help will arrive shortly.

Shortly? I’d navigated through the adult world long enough to know that could mean anywhere from fifteen minutes to three hours. I shifted on the seat to find the most comfortable position, but the pain in my head and leg had worsened, and my stomach rolled with nausea the way it had that time Dad took me and Logan deep-sea fishing on the southern Oregon coast.

My teeth chattered in the cold, but the bleeding coming from my head and saturating my jacket had dwindled to a trickle. I touched the cut beneath my hair, wincing at the pain. A goose egg had swelled around it. Sucking in my breath against the pain while reaching across the seat, I could barely feel Uncle Harold’s side with my fingers. The old man’s breathing was shallow and faint, but at least he was still alive.

Should I call Mom? I wasn’t a baby, but it sure would make me feel better if she were here. She’d be home from her nursing shift by now. No, I’d just worry her, and she was at least an hour and twenty minutes away. We’d probably have been picked up by the ambulance before she could get here. I sure did miss the comfort of being in her arms though. Maybe I was just a big baby like Logan said.

My family lived in an upscale three-story cedar house outside an 1874 logging town called Pinebridge that had sprouted from the forest near Hacksaw Creek. The timber industry had seen hard times in the more recent past, and Pinebridge was now home to more boutique shops, restaurants, and folks looking for a slower pace of life or a vacation home than it was to loggers. Though we lived only an hour away from Salem, if you drove at a good clip, it felt as if we lived miles from civilization, surrounded by forest, mountains, and rivers.

Over the eons the Hacksaw, which was more a river than a creek, had lived up to its name by carving its way down through the layers of forest soil, creating a yawning ravine in the Bureau of Land Management forest.

Uncle Harold loved the ravine. Its wide gravel shores provided a paradise of ferns, mossy logs, and clear water sheltered by the overhanging forest above. It was perfect for hiking, fishing, camping, and exploring. That was not what attracted Uncle Harold. He came for the fossils embedded in the high clay and sandbanks of the ravine. He’d explained to me that the ravine was a time machine of sorts, that every layer of soil starting from up top on the forest floor down to the riverbed took you back thousands of years in time.

Uncle Harold taught Anthropology 101 and 102 at Willamette University, but his real love was paleontology, a passion that took him away most summers on fossil digs in the Dakotas and Montana. In the ravine he and I had unearthed a dire wolf fang and a Columbian mammoth vertebrae which we added to our collection of smaller fossilized bones and teeth.

Lately, nobody could get into the ravine. The Hacksaw had swollen to a boiling, gluttonous monster that roared bank to bank, choked with boulders and logs and ravenous for more, cutting away great swaths of the ravine’s banks. Father had told us to stay well clear of it. I relished the promise of more fossils to hunt in newly exposed banks when the floods stopped and the Hacksaw shrank back to normal. I could hardly wait.

51877.png

A distant siren woke me. I must have fallen asleep or maybe passed out again. The rain had slackened to a thick drizzle, and the wind had dwindled to a stiff breeze. I reached for Uncle Harold and saw him wince and blink his eyes. He groaned softly. A relief so strong I wanted to cry surged through me.

You okay, Uncle Harold?

Yes, Harold said, hissing between his teeth. I think so. He raised his head off the steering wheel with another groan and glanced around. What happened? Where are we?

He pushed his shaggy black and gray hair back out of his eyes and groggily pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from a front shirt pocket to wipe his bloody face.

We slid off the road and hit the bridge abutment. The car is so trashed we can’t even get out.

Uncle Harold woke up a little more as the siren grew louder. Blinking red lights appeared through the rain as a vehicle crossed the bridge toward us and passed by before pulling across the road in a U-turn to park behind what was left of the Dodge Dart.

Uncle Harold’s eyes focused and rounded. Shit, he mumbled, glancing at the rearview mirror. It looks like that baboon’s caboose, the county sheriff. Your mom and dad are going to kill me. Keep your little smart-alecky mouth in check, would you?

A beefy middle-aged man hauled himself out of the cruiser whose lights reflected in every raindrop, glittering the night in red and blue. He stretched as if he was bored and time was but a foreign concept affecting only lesser mortals. For all he knew, we could have been bleeding out in the crunched car, and he acted like that was the least of his concerns. Leisurely, he reached back inside the cruiser for his hat, then adjusted his gun belt around an ample gut before strolling over to Harold’s window.

I’m Sheriff Brannon Calder, he announced as if boasting. See your night ain’t going so well for ya.

Dad had once commented that Sheriff Calder acted like he owned Marion County and he couldn’t be rushed or bothered if there wasn’t a bank robbery in progress or an ax murderer on the loose. Anything less seemed barely worthy of his attention. There wasn’t enough glory in it for him.

Everyone in Marion County knew Sheriff Calder by name and sight. Dad said voters liked him because he’d kept the crime stats low and ruled both the county and his deputies with an iron fist. He’d been elected six times and ran unopposed for the last two of his four-year terms. But Uncle Harold said there was always something predatory about him like a prowling shark on the hunt. Harold despised him, and I trusted my uncle’s instincts.

Uncle Harold rolled down his hand-crank window. It only lowered halfway before it stuck. Calder shined his department-issued flashlight into the car and swept it around the interior with undisguised suspicion. Either of you hurt? he asked as if that were a minor side issue.

I’m in need of medical attention, Uncle Harold said through gritted teeth. My nephew should see a doctor too.

Some concerned citizen called 911. We were dispatched right away, and the hospital is sending help, Calder informed us.

That would have been me, Sherlock, I thought, rolling my eyes.

Meanwhile, Deputy Shanks will be assisting me. The sheriff motioned to the cruiser for Shanks to get out and come help.

A weasel of a man opened the cruiser’s passenger door and stepped out with his hand placed firmly on the butt of his holstered service revolver. He approached the Dodge’s passenger side on cautious, skinny legs and eyeballed me like Marvel Comic’s Doctor Doom through the spiderwebbed cracks of glass. He chomped a wad of gum like the teenage streetwalkers Logan had described while he puffed out his chest to appear more intimidating. Together, they reminded me of the old Laurel and Hardy comic flicks on television—apart from their ill-tempered crocodile dispositions.

I’ll need to see your license and registration, Calder ordered Uncle Harold. Proof of insurance too.

Seriously, Sheriff? I can’t even move in here. Where’s the ambulance?

The ambo and fire truck are on their way. Meanwhile, being uncooperative with me just might land you in a holding cell instead of a hospital bed. Get your papers together. I don’t have all night. He shined his light into Harold’s eyes.

Uncle Harold’s nose was bleeding again. The sheriff’s flashlight showed the distress in Harold’s half-disoriented eyes and grayish skin. Ryan, can you reach under me and get my wallet out of my right trouser pocket? And then get my insurance and registration out of the glove compartment?

It took a few minutes and some struggling. Brannon Calder used the time to inspect the crumpled interior of the Dart, hunting for drug paraphernalia and empty alcohol containers, no doubt. Then his flashlight inspected the papers Uncle Harold supplied. He handed them back after scribbling the information in his notebook. And how much have you had to drink tonight, Mr. Morrison? The flashlight was back in Uncle Harold’s face.

Harold mopped his face. His demeanor was usually calm and steady, but I could see the outrage clenching his jaw and glaring from his eyes. I don’t drink, Sheriff. But if you can pry me out of this tin can, I’d be glad to perform a sobriety test. That is, assuming I can walk. My ankle’s killing me.

I can smell the alcohol through this window. Only an impaired driver would crash his vehicle into the butt end of a bridge, Brannon Calder muttered. What the hell were you doing out in this storm anyway? He took hold of Uncle Harold’s door handle and tugged as hard as he could. It refused to budge. Go fetch me the Breathalyzer, Pete, he grunted to the deputy. That’ll prove he’s over the legal limit. Diving drunk with a child in the car is a shortcut to Judge Granger’s famous courtroom. They’re stuck inside this old junker like rats in a trap. The fire crew will hafta use their Jaws of Life to cut ’em out.

I studied the splotches of rain darkening the sheriff and deputy’s light brown uniforms. Rainwater dripped from Calder’s plastic-covered hat brim. He and his gum-snapping deputy might think they were hotshot heroes of law and order, but they were the ones standing out in the rain. I grinned.

Calder narrowed his eyes. What you smirkin’ at, kid? Cat got yer damned tongue? Better wipe that grin off yer stupid-ass face unless you need me to learn you some respect for yer elders.

When the Breathalyzer registered zero, the sheriff’s personality morphed into its default mode. I’d been victimized by a handful of bullies at school over the years. Experience had taught me the sheriff had probably been a bully since he’d mastered the tricycle. By now he’d perfected his skills.

The bully narrowed his attack-dog eyes, drilling them into Uncle Harold’s face. Don’t mess with me, Morrison. You’re on something. What is it? Meth? Heroin? Bath salts? Crack cocaine?

Uncle Harold wiped his hands on his trouser legs and drew the fingers of one hand through his hair, which drove the sheriff harder into his role.

C’mon, Mr. Morrison. Green dragons? Fentanyl? Maybe ecstasy or PCP? Mexican valium? What?

"It’s Dr. Morrison," I said through clenched teeth. Uncle Harold threw me a warning glare.

My uncle winced as he blotted his nose. A slow burn had ignited in my belly. Now it roared into flames.

Leave him alone, I shouted. He doesn’t do drugs or alcohol. He’s hurt, so back off.

Deputy Shanks, standing outside my window, drew his weapon, aiming at my face. You’re asking for it, sonny. Watch your mouth.

Calder raised an eyebrow at his deputy. Look, boy. Maybe you’re the one on drugs. It don’t matter. The hospital will run drug screens on you both, and the minute you’re outta this wreck, me and Officer Shanks will tear it apart until we find evidence. My advice to you, kid, is to pack that smart-ass tongue back inside your face and keep it there… unless you want a bed in juvie tonight.

The fire truck and ambulance arrived within minutes of each other, showering the night in a chaos of blinking red lights. The firemen pried open our car like a tangled sardine can and fitted Uncle Harold with a neck brace before carefully lifting him out onto the stretcher. Once I’d been cut free, they declared me fit enough to ride up front in the ambulance. I still had my uncle’s cell phone and texted Mom that we would in St. Ignatius Hospital after a car accident. That’s where she worked, though she’d be home fixing dinner by now.

At the hospital I received a CT scan on my head, four staples to close the wound, and a bandaged leg. The doctor diagnosed me with a mild concussion but released me to go home with Dad, who had just closed his vet clinic and was still in Salem.

Uncle Harold didn’t fare as well. He’d lost a lot of blood from mashing his face into the steering wheel. His nose was broken, his right ankle fractured, and his concussion was serious enough to keep him in the hospital. Five days minimum, the doctor ordered. After that, he would need help and good care, and he couldn’t stay alone in his shabby little bungalow filled with books and fossil collections in a rundown section of Salem. It was decided he would come live with our family for a while after his hospital stay.

51839.png

I felt woozy during the trip home in Dad’s black Ford Explorer. The pain pills, which had tamped down my headache and painful leg in the hospital, were starting to wear off. I felt close to drowning in the tight-jawed tension that ballooned inside the Explorer. I couldn’t draw an easy breath. The tension darkened my father’s eyes and radiated from the iron grip he held on the steering wheel.

I closed my eyes against the headache, remembering a walk I’d taken with Uncle Harold last autumn. It was the first time I’d spoken the words out loud. My father and I aren’t close, I’d confided. Dad used to brag about me and Logan like we were his clones or something. But when I turned nine, that stopped. It’s only Logan Dad’s proud of now. He brags about Logan’s academic record and star-athlete awards to all his friends. ‘A chip off the old block if there ever was one,’ he’d tell them. Me? He never mentioned me anymore. I could feel what a disappointment I’d become without his ever saying the words.

It hurt me in the deepest part of my gut as if some empty chasm had opened between us that neither Dad nor I could find a way to cross. It wasn’t hard for Uncle Harold to see that I was nothing like my father and brother. Dad and Logan loved sports—either playing them or lounging around in front of the big screen and cheering on their favorite teams. I have no more than a passing interest in sports, and I certainly have