Books > Danny's Desert Rats > Excerpts

The Rats

If it hadn't been so hot outside, we wouldn't have thought of the egg. And if we hadn't thought of the egg, we wouldn't have met Miss Clark. And if we hadn't met her, we would have enjoyed the rest of the summer a lot more. But then, of course, there was Bonkers....

"I bet you could fry an egg on that sidewalk," Danny said as we stood at the door of our town house, deciding whether or not to go out.

I grinned. "Want to try it?"

Danny looked at me and started to laugh. "Wait'll Mom leaves. She said she was going to the store."

Danny and I always think of something to do. We're a team, see. Ever since Dad left and we moved to this new development outside Chicago, Danny looks out for Mom and I look out for Danny.

It must be hard to be "man of the house" when you're only twelve. Aunt Mavis worries that when Danny starts junior high in a new school this fall, he'll get in with the wrong crowd. "One bad apple can spoil the barrel," she tells Mom. Aunt Mavis, of course, worries about everything. But I figure if Danny's job is to be "man of the house," my job is to look out for bad apples and keep Danny out of trouble.

In the heat of the summer, Rosemary Acres is like a desert. Most of the trees are shorter than Mom, who's five-foot-six. So if you want to stay cool, you have three choices: go down to the woods at one end of Lake Tarragon, swim in the pool, or stay indoors.

We hated it when we first moved here because everything's regulation blue-and-gray, there are only a handful of kids our age, and they have rules you wouldn't believe. But once we got to know those other kids, who felt just as stranded as we did, we started hanging out together and figured out how to get around the rules.

The one guy who still doesn't like Rosemary Acres is Paul Bremmer. He's thirteen, a year older than Danny, and I've never been sure exactly how Paul feels about me. He and his dad came from Oregon after Mrs. Bremmer died. They brought along their cat without asking first if pets were allowed, which of course they're not. Paul never forgave Miss Quinn, the resident manager, for making him give that cat away. We didn't realize just what it had meant to him until a few weeks before school was scheduled to start, but I'll get to that later.

"You guys eat the sandwiches I made for you?" Mom asked, coming downstairs in a sundress and sandals. "There's not a thing in this house but bread and baloney. I'm going to buy some real food. Anybody want to come?"

"Naw," said Danny. "We'll stay cool." We had the air conditioning turned on high.

As soon as Mom drove off, we got an egg from the refrigerator. We could hear her engine fade away as she left Cajun Drive and headed for Ginger Avenue, one of the main roads in the development. We almost brought a town house over on Parsley Place, but Danny and I didn't want to tell people we lived on a street called Parsley. This whole development is named after spices.

We started outside in our bare feet. The cement was so hot we went back and put on sneakers without tying them. We finally chose the sidewalk near the bank of mailboxes at the corner because it never gets any shade there at all.

"Think we should wait around for the other kids?" I asked.

"Naw, let's just do it," said Danny.

We crouched down and Danny carefully broke the egg over the sidewalk. I thought it might pop and hiss the way bacon sizzles when it hits the skillet, but it didn't. It just spread out, with the yellow yolk in the middle, and finally turned a little white around the edge, but that was all.

"How long do you suppose it takes?" I asked.

"I don't know," said Danny.

"Want me to go get a fork so if somebody calls the newspaper to say there're these guys frying an egg on the sidewalk, a photographer could snap a picture of you eating breakfast?" I asked.

Danny looked as though he was considering it, but just then we saw this woman coming down the block to get her mail. We don't know many of our neighbors yet. There are a couple of lawyers who live next door to us, and a "sexy babe," as Danny calls her, who lives across the street. This was the sexy babe. She was wearing a pair of white shorts and a halter top.

"Man!" said Danny. "You can see every curve she's got, and more besides!"

"How can you see more curves than she's got?" I asked, but then she was standing right next to us, putting her key in her box.

"Hi," she said, bending over and pulling out a couple envelopes. I could see the outline of her bikini through her shorts. When she locked the box again, she asked, "What are you guys doing?"

"Trying to fry an egg," I told her.

She stared down at us. "You don't have a stove?" she joked.

Danny grinned sheepishly. "We just wanted to see how hot it was outside."

She studied us for a minute, and then said, "You're the boys who live across the street from me, aren't you? I've been meaning to talk to you. I'm going to be gone for a week, and I need someone to bring in my mail each day and water my plants. Would you do it for ten dollars?"

"Sure," Danny and I said together.

"Good. Come over this afternoon sometime and I'll give you the key." We watched as her hips swayed back and forth up the sidewalk.

Danny grinned. "Man, I wish I had that swing in my backyard!"

I was about to say, "What swing?" and then I got it. When you get to be Danny's age, I guess, you talk in code. Danny and Paul are always saying stuff I don't understand.

I figured that the woman must be sort of kooky, though. She didn't know anything about us, so how did she know we wouldn't steal her stuff or have a party in her house while she was away? I mean, if you were looking for responsible people, would you choose two guys who were trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk?

Randall Hayes, certified genius, rode up right then on his bike. It's a great bike -- green and silver. Randall's eleven, a year older than me, and he's always inventing stuff. If you've got a problem to solve, you take it to Randall. We didn't have to explain to him what we were doing.

"You're trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk," said Randall.

"Yeah, but it's not working," I told him.

"You've got to have it hot hot!" he said. "Wait here, T.R." And he rode off.

T.R. is me. I don't have real names, just initials. Mom says I was named for Theodore Roosevelt, but Grandma Flora says those are my dad's initials, that's how I got them. They all tell me I can choose any name I want to go with those initials when I grow up.

Randall, though, calls me T.R. half the time, and the rest of the time he makes up names to fit my initials. Like Texas Ranger. Or Trade Route. This time, whenhe came back, he said, "Hey, Typewriter Ribbon, You want a fried egg? I'll give you a fried egg!"

He got off his bike holding a giant magnifying glass, and tilted it over the egg so it caught the sun directly. Before long the clear goo around the yolk turned white and began to bubble around the edge. The yolk looked drier too, maybe a little hard on top.

Wouldn't you know, though, that Miss Quinn drove up right then on her way to lunch, and when she saw three guys crouched there on the sidewalk, she pulled over.

At Rosemary Acres, You can't even plant a flower without the approval of the Landscape Committee. I sure didn't want Randall to get into trouble, so I did the only thing I could think of I sat on the egg.

Danny and Randall stared at me, and then they turned to Miss Quinn, who had rolled down her car window.

"Hello, boys," she said.

"Hi," I said. I could feel the egg soaking into the seat of my shorts.

"Sitting here on a hot sidewalk on a hundred-degree day?" she asked, looking at me strangely. Randall, I noticed, had slipped the magnifying glass into his hip pocket.

"Yep!" I said. "just soaking up the old sun!" That didn't make a bit of sense because Danny and I already had deep tans. We were almost as dark as Randall, who's naturally brown.

Miss Quinn looked from one of us to the other. "The pool would feel pretty good on a hot afternoon," she suggested.

"Oh, we'll get there," said Danny. "We like to get real, real hot first, and then go swimming."

"Like to fry, almost!" put in Randall, grinning.

"Well, have fun," Miss Quinn said finally, and drove off.

We waited till she was around the corner, then burst out laughing. I leaned forward on my hands and knees while Danny peeled the egg off my rear end.

"What are you going to tell your mom about those pants?" Randall asked.

"I'll tell her I was out here hatching an egg," I said, and we guffawed some more.

Randall rode along beside us as we walked back to our house, and the three of us sprawled under the one decent tree in the development, which happens to be right outside my bedroom window. Paul Bremmer came by just then, still sweating from shooting baskets, and he stretched out on the grass, too. That guy'll shoot baskets in snow or rain or sun -- it doesn't matter. He's a demon when it comes to basketball. Mom says it's probably the way he keeps his anger in check.

Then, of course, Mickey Harris saw us there on her way to the pool, so she stopped by -- Mickey and Danny are both twelve -- and wherever Mickey goes, she's got her nerdy stepbrother Norman with her, so the whole gang was there when Mom got back from the store.

"Well, if it isn't the desert rats," Mom said, laughing. She has light curly hair, not black and wavy like mine and Danny's, and she's got a smile that takes up half her face. "You all look like you crawled across the desert and lay down to die, you're so hot. Want some lemonade?"

We said yes, and after she went inside, Danny said, "I sort of like that -- the Desert Rats."

"Yeah, the Rats," said Paul. "We're a pack. You know, we stick together."

Randall was lying on his back, arms behind his head, staring up through the leaves at the sky. "We have to," he said. "We're the only guys our age in the whole development."

"Ahem!" said Mickey.

"You included," said Randall.

"Am I included?" piped up Norman.

"Unfortunately," said Paul.

I liked the idea of it, too. Sort of a club, I mean. A gang, a group. All for one and one for all -- that kind of stuff. Paul Bremer even sticking up for me, maybe.

"Danny's Desert Rats," I said proudly.

And that's the way it came about -- what we started calling ourselves: Danny's Desert Rats, or just Rats for short.

Copyright © 1998 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor