Free Time Bandit by Andy Hillstrand Page A

the boat. Our true dilemma was the choice between drowning and dishonor. From the deck of the Land’s End Inn our grandma had seen us tip over. We watched her run for help. We did not know how long we could hold out. Our body temperatures were dropping fast in 42-degree water. We were facing the Spit and just starting to panic, when a woman’s voice rang out behind us. I turned around. There, twenty yards away, was our Sunday school teacher, out of the blue, going by us in her skiff, out for an afternoon of pleasure boating. She pulled us aboard, shivering and ragged wet, and with the capsized boat’s painter tied to her boat’s stern she towed the boat to shore as if nothing had happened. Like the stranger told me, one of the angels over my head was watching us that day.
    Dad loved to hunt, which meant we hunted with him. We were younger than ten when he gave us our first guns—over-and-under .22s and .410s. Neal was into guns; he had taped shotgun shells to the end of his BB gun, using the BB as a firing pin. He had the most powerful BB gun in the world. He shot a raccoon with it. Neal, whom we called Diabolical and Neal the Eel, for carrying live eels in his pockets for snacks, had a hunger for combustibles. Once, he wondered what would happen if he threw a coffee can of gasoline on an open fire. The flame roared back at him. He spilled gas on his shirt and burst into flames. He ran around in circles, and we tackled him and rolled him in the dirt, but his burns sent him to the hospital anyway. Neal was always disappearing. He made himself scarce when Dad started yelling. He wandered quietly away. He fell out of the car on a trip to Buffalo. Neal once glued his eyes shut with super glue. He chopped down a tree that I was standing in. When he was fourteen, he hid in an arcade one night with a pillowcase and a crow-bar. He jimmied open the vending machines and filled the case with $250 in quarters, which he dragged home, leaving a trail of quarters for six blocks. He would not say whether he won the money or had stolen it. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, but we knew the truth. We called him Diabolical because as boys we thought he possessed the greatest criminal mind of the last century.
    Andy was cut from a similar pattern. He believed all dreams were possible. He wanted desperately to be an astronaut ever since he watched the moon landing on TV in sixth grade class. He built a rocket out of a zinc and tin garbage can. It was my idea to pack fireworks and explosive aerosols under the can as rocket booster propellants. Andy, with great ceremony and wearing his own version of a flight suit and helmet, climbed into the can. I lit the fuse. Andy never left the ground. But his trip to the emergency room was fast. One time, he fashioned wings out of balsa wood and newspapers, like a homemade kite, and attached them to his arms with string. He looked like a bat with headlines. We had our doubts, but the thought of him crashing was delicious. He climbed the tallest tree. He flapped his arms and jumped. There was no miracle that day, except that he did not kill himself. He only broke an arm.
    We could beat up on each other. But if an outsider threatened us, Andy descended with fury. He has been there for us our whole lives, like the time I rolled a car off the Spit road. I did not want the police to revoke my license. I did not have insurance. I called Andy from the wreck site to come before the police arrived. In only minutes, without a question asked, he was greeting the authorities with a story that they did not believe but could not officially prove was a lie.
    When Dad was away fishing, we used our guns without permission. We chose sides, and pitched battles began. We quickly learned to our delight that we were able to dodge .22 bullets from a quarter mile away. At Grandma’s house we shot back and forth across an open field. To hear bullets snap overhead was cool. Fortunately, we were not good shots and no real