Free Hero of Hawaii by Graham Salisbury Page A

anyway how’s about you teach me to walk on those stilts?”
    Carlos stared at the grass.
    “Come on. I never learned how.”
    Carlos stepped off the cans and held them up by their strings.
    “Cool,” I said, taking them.
    “Calvin!” someone screeched from the garage.
    I glanced over my shoulder.
    Stella, holding up the dog-poop shovel.

S tella was from Texas and lived with us as Mom’s helper. She was in the tenth grade at Kailua High School. She wasn’t just bossy, she invented bossy.
    “What?” I said, stepping up on the tin can stilts.
    “Your mom called and said to clean up the yard for the party.”
    “So clean it.”
    “You, Stump. Not me.”
    I squinted at her. I hated when she called me Stump!
    “Justice for the meany,” Maya said.
    Stella wasn’t leaving until I took the shovel. “Let’s go!” she snapped. “I don’t have all day.”
    “This is all your fault,” I said to Streak.
    Streak tilted her head.
    “Hey, Carlos, you want to help me?”
    Carlos grinned.
    “Go on, Carlos,” Julio said, his eyes still closed. “I’ve done it before, and it’s really fun!”
    Maya grabbed Carlos’s shirt. “Oh no you don’t. Carlos, don’t listen to these fools.”
    I shrugged. Still on Carlos’s tin can stilts, I clomped over to get the shovel.
    Stella eyed me. “Are you some kind of a circus freak? Oh, I know, you just needed help getting up to normal height.”
    She snickered at her own joke.
    “So funny I forgot to laugh.”
    She grinned, holding out the shovel. “Get it all, Stump. We don’t need some kid stepping in something.”
    “Stop calling me Stump!”
    “Well, you’re short, aren’t you?”
    “Stop! I mean it!”
    “And if I don’t?”
    I snatched the shovel out of her hand just as Ledward’s jeep pulled up. He honked.
    “Scoop the poop,” Stella cackled, then rode her broom back into the house.
    “Darci!” I called. “Ledward’s here!”
    Julio and Willy scrambled to their feet.
    Darci ran up from the river. “Yay! Yay! Yay!”
    Ledward got out. He was half Hawaiian, half Filipino, and tall as a telephone pole. He looked down on us. “Is this my construction crew?”
    “Yeah!” we all said.
    I peeked into the jeep. The lumber wasnew. It smelled good. “Can we help you, Ledward?”
    “Sure can. You going to work in those boots?”
    I looked down at the tin can stilts. “You like them?”
    “Used to have a pair myself.”
    We were as excited as ants in the kitchen. Together we took lumber, blue tarps, stakes, extra garden hose, and Ledward’s tool box out onto the grass. Ledward built the takeoff towerfirst. It was about six feet high. Then he made a ramp and tacked plastic tarps down over the wood. Below that he staked more tarps into the grass and ran the slide all the way down to the water. But Darci made him shorten it. She didn’t want the slide to end in the river, where the current could take you away.

    “Ho!” I said. “This is outstanding!”
    Later I shoveled up all the dog poop, but I didn’t flip it into the bushes like I usually did. I dumped it in the weeds under Stella’s bedroom window, which she always left open for fresh air.

    By the time Mom got back from work, the slide was done and everyone but Ledward had gone home.
    Darci grabbed Mom’s hand the second she got out of the car. “Come see! Come see!”
    “Wow!” Mom said, hooking her arm in Ledward’s. “The kids are going to have so much fun!”
    Ledward glanced at the sky. “There might be a problem … radio said a storm is coming.”
    “What’s a little rain? They’re going to get wet anyway.”
    “Might be more than just a little rain.”
    Darci bounced on her toes, as excited as I’d ever seen her. “Nothing can stop my party, nothing, nothing, nothing!”

T he next morning, Saturday, Ledward came back over. He grabbed the morning paper off our driveway and headed into the house.
    Darci, Mom, Stella, and I were in the living room, looking out the window at