Charlie stuck his tongue out at her back as he watched her. He shrugged and started weaving in and out of the trails that wound around huge dirt piles. The area used to be a field farmed by the family that owned their house, but it had been subdivided. Charlie's dad had purchased a few of the lots and had tried to develop them, but he got overwhelmed by the project and ran out of money. Now the old field was a wonderland of dirt piles, weeds, and stubborn alfalfa that had gone wild and was now in blooms of white and various shades of purple.
Charlie picked up speed, enjoying the feel of the breeze brushing his bare skin as he rode. Once he had been feeling pretty good, he began tackling the little hills, riding up and down them, sometimes going all the way over, sometimes turning partway and coming back down. He spent a while on that little roller coaster as he eyed the jump. The one that had given him the big purple gash on his side. He was gonna beat it today.
He paused to rest for a bit, wiping the sweat off of his forehead and riding back over to his bottle of Country Town for refueling. When he got to the bottle, it was covered with little black ants swarming on the bottle inside and out. He scowled as he picked up the bottle and brushed the ants away, then shrugged as he took a big gulp, ants and all, emptying the bottle after a few swigs.
Refueled, he eyed the jump at the end of a long runway. It was a little mound of dirt, about a foot high, that he had dug with his little shovel. There was a dip on the other side, the hole he had dug the dirt from, giving him a little extra clearance after going over the jump. He'd only tried it once before, and he had the mark to prove it. That time he had veered off to the side too far, tipping his bike and sliding along the ground until he stopped. He'd gotten scraped up pretty good, but most of the scrapes had healed, 'sept for the gash.
He set Winston and Frankie down, side by side, by the side of the trail.
"Wish me wuck!"
Charlie sped toward the jump, then turned his bike around, trying to gauge his speed and direction, wanting to make sure he hit the mound just right for the most air.
After a few test runs, he was ready. He rode to the beginning of the straightaway, glared at the jump, gritted his teeth, and pedaled with all his might, the breeze blowing past his body and lifting his long hair as he kicked up a cloud of dust.
He rammed into the mound and cleared the top of it, flying just enough to feel his tummy tickle, then landed with a crash into his hole. His back tire caught on the dirt and stopped, but he kept going head first into the dirt, collapsing in a heap. His knees and the palms of his hands stung fiercely. His lip trembled as he lay there, then it all broke loose and he started to sob. He had been so cwose! And he huwt so bad!
He lay there sobbing for a while, then finally calmed down enough to sit up and examine his injuries. The palms of his hands and his knees were pretty scraped up and little pebbles were embedded in his scrapes. A little trickle of blood ran down his right knee.
Still sniffling, he picked himself up and started hobbling around muttering, "Yawwow fow bweeding, pwantain fow stings." Finally, he found the familiar fern-like leaves. He pulled a few off, brushed them off, and stuck them in his mouth, wrinkling his nose at the bitter taste as he chewed the poky leaves. He found some plantain and added a leaf to the mush in his mouth. He puckered his face up. The plantain was even more bitter than the yarrow! He collected a few mullein leaves and started wiping his knees and palms off the best he could with them while chewing the pulp. When it was finally chewed up well, he brushed the blood off the best he could with the leg of his shorts and spit a slimy wad of goo on his hands, rubbing his palms together and putting the glob on his bleeding knee. The bleeding did dry up finally, and the sting did lose its edge a little.
Charlie picked up his bike and headed back toward Winston and Frankie when he heard a familiar rumbling, rattling and squeaking of Wayne's truck along with the heavy guitars and loud voices of his heavy metal music coming down the highway.
Charlie's eyes lit up and a grin spread across his face. He came!
He turned his bike around and raced down the driveway to his fortress to meet Wayne.
Wayne got out of the truck, dragging on a hand-rolled cigarette that he put out as soon as he saw the crazy boy racing toward him, his long hair streaming behind him.
Wayne was shirtless as usual, his deeply tanned skin weathered and scarred, a tattoo of a dove in flight on his back. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. A broken smile opened in the middle of his scruffy goatee as he waved at Charlie.
Scamp, Wayne's black and white, three-legged, brown and blue-eyed mutt, raced toward Charlie, and followed him, yapping happily as Charlie arrived at Wayne's truck, skidding to a stop just before he would have run into Wayne.
Wayne greeted Charlie with knuckles. "What's up, little man?"
Charlie grinned. "Hey Wayne! I wish you coulda seen my jump! I was so high! I cwashed pwetty good at the end, but it was so cooh!"
Wayne laughed. "I see that! Looks like you got yerself doctored up pretty good too!"
Charlie nodded. "Yep!"
Wayne smiled. "Hey, I got somethin' for ya!"
Wayne dove into the truck as Charlie played fetch with Scamp, tossing him the slimy, filthy old tennis shoe Scamp always carried around for that purpose, while Wayne proceeded to tear through the mess in his truck.
Wayne emerged with his hand closed around something, which he quickly placed behind his back. "Pick a hand, little buddy!" He kept switching hands until Charlie tackled him, laughing, and Wayne "accidentally" dropped the green-coated rock. Charlie dove between his legs to grab it.
"Wow! You found me a wock with cwystoh cowa?" Charlie hugged Wayne around the waist. "Thanks, Uncoh Wayne!"
Wayne blushed under his leather-tough cheeks and looked away, glad that Laura hadn't quite gotten Charlie to stop calling him that.
Wayne regained his composure and looked down, pointing at the rock in Charlie's hand.
"I found it around my place. There's a lot of that sh- stuff around there from all the ore that got spilled. You and yer pa'll have to come by and dig through it some day."
"I'd wove that! So what kinda wock is it?"
Wayne lifted the rock from Charlie's hand and set it in his palm, pointing to the side.
"See these little crystals here?"
Charlie nodded.
"Do you remember what they are?"
Charlie traced the rock. "Phenocwysts?"
Wayne nodded, "Good memory! What do the phenocrysts tell us about the rock?"
Charlie stuck his tongue between his teeth. "That its... intwusive igneous?"
Wayne grinned. "You've got it. This fu— um, rock, used to be part of a big glob of magma just below the crust. It started to cool a little. Not everything cooled at the same rate, and some of it crystallized sooner, which is why the phenocrysts are so big. Then that glob got forced through cracks in the crust, and became fingers of magma pushing their way through the limestone and baking the fu– um, limestone into what's called skarn. That's just baked limestone, basically, and it's full of all kinds of cool sh— stuff like gold and copper and silver, which is why they used to mine up in the White Horse mountains. Anyway, this magma cooled to form this rock."
Charlie's eyes lit up. "That's so cooh! What's it cawed?"
Wayne grinned. "This little fu–um, rock is some sort of porphyritic granitoid."
Charlie laughed. "Gwanitoid? That sounds like some sowt of awien or somethin'!"
Wayne chuckled. "Kind of does, don't it! Granitoid just means it's something like granite, which is a common intrusive igneous rock. There are a lot of rocks that are close, but it's hard to tell exactly what it is without studyin' it and runnin' some tests."
Charlie nodded. "What's pouw—fowitic mean?"
"That's just a fancy name for what we were talking about, with those big feldspar phenocrysts showing up against the gray rock."
Charlie nodded. "Pour—fowitic. Big cwystohs in an intwusive igneous wock." Charlie stared at the rock for a long time, wrinkling his forehead.
Wayne just watched his little friend. He'd seen that look before. He knew those little gears were turning in the boy's mind, and he couldn't wait to hear what he would come up with.
Finally, Charlie looked up. "Do those phenocwysts... do they fowm like the cwystohs I'm gwowing in cups?"
Wayne grinned. "Kind of! With your crystals, the minerals slowly precipitate– that just means settle out– of the solution and grow into crystals. In magma, it's kind of like when you're making ice cream and some of it freezes into ice chunks when the rest of the ice cream is still more soupy."
Charlie looked at the rock carefully. "Cooh! Why's it dawk on top?"
"Good question! That's because when the fu– uh, magma got pushed up into that limestone and started cooling down, water with lots of iron was pushing up through the cracks too and staining the rocks it touched."
Charlie rubbed his chin. "Iwon? Like mommy's cuwing iwon, or the iwon she uses to iwon daddy's shiwts?"
Wayne laughed. "Not quite. Iron is an element. It's everywhere! In your blood..." He grabbed a nail from a box in the back of his truck, "It's what the nail, and a lot of my truck, and all kinds of metal things are made of!"
Charlie looked at the nail, then at the dried blood on his shorts.
"I got iwon in my bwood?"
Wayne chuckled. "Yep! That's what makes it red. It helps your blood carry oxygen to your cells."
Charlie wrinkled his nose as he looked down at the rock. He'd have to ask Wayne about what a cell was later. "So how'd the cwystoh cowa get on thewe?"
"The chrysocolla pretty much got there the same way the iron did, but later. You'll notice that there's a lot of sh– stuff covering this rock. These are secondary minerals, left after the rock was formed. All this stuff was dissolved in water that flowed through the cracks in the rock, and left the deposits as it evaporated, kind of like those crystals you've been growing on your calcite."
Charlie grinned. "Oh! This is weawwy cooh! Thanks, Uncoh Wayne!"
Wayne tousled Charlie's hair. "You're welcome, Charlie. Now, uh, put that in your pocket. We got work to do!"
Charlie's eyes lit up as he crammed his rock into the mess in his pocket. Wayne reached into the bed of his old truck and pulled out a circular saw. The saw was worn, and the cord wrapped around it was patched in several places with electrical tape. He bent down and handed it to Charlie. "Think you can handle this?"
Charlie nodded solemnly.
"Hold on to the handle. Don't touch the fu– the blade."
He handed it over to Charlie, who bent down a little with the strain.
"Got it?"
Charlie nodded.
"Good. Take it over to the house and set it on the floor."
Wayne grabbed his chop saw and followed Charlie to the foundation with the subfloor laid over it.
Charlie straddled the heavy saw, carrying it with both hands between his bowed legs, watching very carefully to make sure the gleaming blade stayed far from his tanned skin. He sniffed its scent– oil and sawdust, and puffed out his chest a little as he strode carefully over the uneven ground to the foundation.
When they got back to the truck, Wayne dug through his cab again to find a small belt with a loop and a pouch, which he handed to Charlie. Charlie grinned as he fastened the belt around his waist, then Wayne handed him a small hammer and a handful of nails. Charlie dropped the nails in his pouch and turned the heavy hammer around in his hands, grinning. This was the real thing, not a toy. He slipped it into the loop on his belt and patted it proudly.
Wayne brought out an old boom box and set it on the hood of his truck, then grabbed an extension cord and handed it to Charlie to plug into an outlet on a nearby power pole. This was the only lot Rich had been able to get hooked up to power, which is why he started building what was to be a rental house on the lot. Charlie lifted up the cover on the outlet box and plugged the cord in. Wayne plugged his radio in and pressed play. The radio jolted alive with Wayne's RUSH tape, and they were ready to work.
Wayne led Charlie back to the foundation, and they climbed onto the subfloor of Charlie's fortress. At least it had been when the basement had just been poured, until Laura told him he couldn't be there without Wayne. She wasn't really comfortable with Charlie being there with Wayne, but Rich had intervened. Rich and Wayne were good friends, even though it seemed like they had nothing in common.
Wayne led Charlie to a corner of the subfloor, his heavy boots clomping on the plywood as Charlie's watershoes pattered beside him.
Charlie nodded vigorously. Wayne pointed out where he had marked for the nails with his pencil, then knelt down and started a nail in one of the marks. "See how I did that? Just hold the nail steady on the mark and give it a good tap to get it started. But watch your fingers! It hurts like a mother... It hurts when you hit them."
Charlie nodded, then knelt down on the rough plywood and took his hammer out of the loop on his belt. He took careful aim and swung, but the hammer glanced off the nail with a "ping!" and the nail bent a little.
"Dang it!" Then he froze. Oh oh.
Wayne just shrugged. "It's ok! You'll get the hang of it." He held the nail straight and drove it in with two solid blows.
They moved to the next spot, and Wayne set the next nail. Charlie swung again, bending the nail right over. "Cwap!" He froze again and looked up anxiously at Wayne.
Wayne just smiled. "It's ok, dude! You'll get there!" He straightened the nail with the claw of his hammer and drove it in.
He set the next nail, then put his hand on Charlie's shoulder. "Here, let me help you." He helped Charlie set up his arm just right and guided his arm through a few practice swings, just tapping the nail with a little "plink!"
Wayne let go of Charlie's arm. "You've got it!"
Charlie aimed and swung, hitting the nail with a solid "thunk!"
Charlie grinned and kept swinging. He missed a few times, but he finally drove the nail in.
Wayne set another nail for Charlie and stepped back. Charlie drove it in, only missing twice.
They moved to the next spot, and Wayne handed Charlie a nail. "Go ahead and set this one."
Charlie gulped.