The World’s Greatest Dinosaur War Ever

The World’s Greatest Dinosaur War Ever

3. The World’s Greatest Dinosaur War Ever

Watsons Birmingham 11/1/01 9:39 AM Page 22

said your name was Poindexter.” The class cracked up, part from his country style of talking and part from laughing at me. I could tell that even Mrs. Cordell was fighting not to break out laughing.

Though he was looking friendly when he said this I kind of knew it had to be teasing, because whoever heard of anybody’s momma giv- ing them a name like Poindexter? When he sat down next to me I tried to imitate Byron’s “Death Stare” but it didn’t work because the kid smiled at me real big and said, “My name’s Rufus, what are we doing?”

“Times tables.” “That’s easy! You need some help?” “No!” I said, and scooted around in my chair so all he could do was

look at my back.This guy was real desperate for a friend because even though I wouldn’t say much back to him he kept jabbering away at me all through class.

When lunchtime came he followed me outside right to the part of the playground where I sit to eat. He forgot about bringing a lunch so I gave him one of Momma’s throat-choking peanut butter sandwich- es and let him eat the last half of my apple. He really was a strange kid; he only ate half the sandwich and folded the rest up in the waxed paper and when I handed him the apple he even ate the spots where you could see my teeth had been, he didn’t even wipe the slob off first.

And, man, this kid could really talk! He was yakking a mile a minute, saying stuff like “Your momma sure can make a good peanut butter sandwich” and “How come these kids is so darn mean?”

Then he said something that made me get all funny and nervous inside, he said, “How come your eyes ain’t lookin’ in the same way?” I looked to see if maybe this was the start of some teasing but he looked like he really wanted to know. He wasn’t staring at me either, he was kind of looking down and kicking at the dirt with his raggedy shoes.

“It’s a lazy eye.” He stopped kicking dirt and said, “Don’t it hurt?” “No.” He said, “Oh,” then kicked a little more dirt and hollered out,

“Ooh, boy! Look at how fat that there is!” “What?”

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“You don’t see that squirrel?” he asked me, and pointed up at a tree across the street. “That sure is one fat, dumb squirrel!”

I looked at the squirrel, it didn’t look fat or dumb to me, it was a regular old squirrel sitting on a branch chewing on something. “How come you think it’s dumb?”

“What kind of squirrel sits out in the open like that with folks all round him? That squirrel wouldn’t last two seconds in Arkansas, I’da picked him off easy as nothing.” The new kid pointed at the squirrel like his finger was a gun and said, “Bang! Squirrel stew tonight!”

“You mean you shot a gun before?” “Ain’t you?” “You mean you really ate a squirrel before?” “You ain’t?” “A real, real gun?” “Just a twenty-two.” “How’s a squirrel taste?” “It taste real good!” “You mean you really shoot ’em with real bullets and then you real-

ly eat ’em?” “Why else shoot ’em?” “Real squirrels, like that one?” “Not that fat and not that stupid. I guess all the fat, stupid ones been

got already. Since I been born all that’s left in Arkansas is skinny, sneaky ones. I think them Michigan squirrels is worth two Arkansas ones.”

“You aren’t lying?” He raised his hand and said, “I swear for God. Ask Cody.” “Who?” The little shrunk-up version of the new kid was standing by him-

self up against the fence that runs around Clark, watching us.The new kid waved at him and his little brother came running over.

The big one pointed over at the squirrel. “Cody, lookit there!” Cody laughed and said, “Ooh boy! That sure is a fat squirrel!” “Think you could pick him off from here?” Cody pointed his finger like it was a gun and said, “Bang! Squirrel

stew tonight!” I couldn’t believe this little kid had shot a gun too. “You shot a real

gun?”

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“Just a twenty-two.” “With real bullets?” The little one looked at his big brother to see why I was asking all

this stuff. It seemed like they were trying to be patient with me, like I was a real dummy or something.The older one said, “Tell him.”

“Yeah, it was real bullets, what else you gonna shoot out a gun?” I still didn’t believe them but the bell rang and lunch was over. I

know he didn’t think I noticed, but the big kid gave his little brother the other half of my sandwich. I guess both of them had forgot about lunch.

This saver stuff wasn’t going anything like I thought it was supposed to. Rufus started acting like I was his friend. In the morning on the bus he’d always come sit next to me, and Mrs. Cordell put his regular seat next to mine in school. Every day at lunchtime he followed me out to the playground and ate half of my second sandwich, then sneaked the other half to Cody. He even found out where we lived and started coming over every night around five-thirty.

I didn’t mind him coming over to play, because both our favorite game was playing with the little plastic dinosaurs that I had and you couldn’t really have any fun playing by yourself. That was because someone had to be the American dinosaurs and someone had to be the Nazi ones. Rufus didn’t even mind being the Nazi dinosaurs most of the time and it was O.K. playing with him because he didn’t cheat and didn’t try to steal my plastic monsters.

The only other guy I used to play with was LJ Jones, but I quit playing with him when a lot of my dinosaurs started disappearing. I’ve got about a million of them but before LJ started coming over I had two million. It’s kind of embarrassing how LJ got them from me. At first he’d steal them one or two at a time and I asked Byron what I should do to stop him.

By said, “Don’t sweat it, punk. The way I figure it one or two of them stupid little monsters ain’t a real high price for you to pay to get someone to play with you.”

But LJ wasn’t satisfied with doing one or two, I guess he wanted a raise, so one day he said to me, “You know, we should stop having these little fights all the time.We need to have one great big battle!”

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“Yeah, we could call it the World’s Greatest Dinosaur War Ever,” I said, “but I get to be the Americans.”

I should have known something was fishy when LJ said, “O.K., but I get first shot.” Most of the time it always took a big fight to decide who had to be the Nazis.

I started setting up my dinosaurs and LJ said,“This ain’t right. If this really is the World’s Greatest Dinosaur War Ever we need more mon- sters.You should go get the rest of ’em.”

He was right. If this was going to be a famous battle we needed more fighters. “O.K., I’ll be right back,” I said.

This wasn’t going to be easy. I wasn’t allowed to take all of my dinosaurs out at once because Momma was afraid I’d lose most of them. Especially because she didn’t trust LJ. Every time he’d come over she’d tell me, “You watch out for that boy, he’s a little too sneaky for my tastes.” I had a plan, though. I’d go upstairs and drop the pillow- case I kept my dinosaurs in out of the window. I wasn’t so stupid that I’d drop them down to LJ, I’d drop them out of the other side of the house and then run around to get them.

My plan worked perfect! After I went and picked up the pillowcase I set up my dinosaurs and LJ set up the Nazis and we started the battle.

He took first shot and killed about thirty of mine with an atomic bomb. My dinosaurs shot back and got twenty of his with a hand grenade. The battle was going great! Dinosaurs were falling right, left and center. We had a great big pile of dead dinosaurs off to the side and had to keep shaking more and more reinforcements out of the pil- lowcase. Then in the middle of one big fight LJ said, “Wait a minute, Kenny, there’s something we forgot about.”

I was ready for a trick. I knew LJ was going to try to get me to go away for a minute so he could steal a bunch of my monsters. I said, “What?”

“These dinosaurs been droppin’ atom bombs on each other.Think about how dangerous that is.”

“How’s it dangerous?” LJ said, “Look.” He made one of his brontosauruses run by the pile

of dead dinosaurs and when it got two steps past them it started shak- ing and twitching and fell over on its side, dead as a donut. LJ flipped him on the dead dinosaur pile.

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