Free Bang! by Sharon Flake

so he’s running around in circles like a girl. “Take it off, Mann! Take it off!” Slapping his legs, he drops his pants and trips over them. I’m laughing, holding a skinny light-green hopper in my hand. Walking up to Kee-lee with my mouth wide open. Bringing the hopper closer and closer to my stuck-out tongue.
    “Aw, man,” he says, turning away.
    I smack my lips. “That was good,” I say, chewing. I hold another hopper out to him. “Now you eat one.”
    He takes off running, falling down in the grass.
    “You too scared to eat a bug?”
    While he’s peeing and yawning, I take that hopper and flick it in his mouth. Pee shoots everywhere. Kee-lee’s slapping his tongue with his wet fingers.
    Throwing half the hopper my way and spitting out legs and a head.
    I’m slobbering over myself, I’m laughing so hard. Rolling around in the itchy grass and holding my side. Pointing to Kee-lee, who’s laughing now too and can’t stop.
    “What?” my father asks, laughing hisself.
    “Kee-lee ate . . .”
    “What?”
    “A hopper. A hopper was on my . . .”
    We’re all laughing, holding our sides and getting dust and grass stuck in our hair every time we move. After a while we lie on the ground with our hands under our heads, staring straight up at the sky. The clouds are white, like somebody stuck ’em in a washer and poured in extra bleach. The grass smells spicy, like them cardboard pine trees that hang in your car window. Already, I’m liking this trip.
    It’s August, so it stays light a long time. My father looks tired. He’s been driving since yesterday. “How far we going?” I ask.
    “Forever,” he says.
    Kee-lee yawns and stretches. He’s covered in pink Calamine lotion to make the ant bites stop itching. He lay down in a patch of carpenter ants and they ate him up good.
    My father picks up speed. “We need to find someplace to stay for the night.”
    I’m looking for a motel or hotel sign. Kee-lee’s saying he ain’t sleeping on no cot. He wants a real bed. My dad’s not saying a thing. He’s got country music on the radio and a cold beer between his legs. He points out the window. “There’s a spot.”
    I don’t see nothing, just grass and trees. I look across the road. There’s a gray sign with sticks glued around it saying CAMPGROUND. SPACE FOR $20 A NIGHT.
    Kee-lee tells my dad he ain’t sleeping outdoors with bugs.
    My dad pulls into the driveway and pays a fat white man at the gate. He drives into the campground with one hand, pointing to the back of the truck with the other. He lets us know he brought the grill, tent, cooler, and some food for us to eat. “We gonna do some good eating.”
    “Good eating?” Kee-lee and me both laugh.
    “What’s good eating?” Kee-lee asks.
    “Anything you can catch: fish, possum.” My father steps out the car.
    Kee-lee takes one end of the cooler, I take the other. “Rats. I ain’t eating no rats.”
    My dad’s standing by the car with his arms folded and his sleeves rolled up. “Seems to me you’d take the tent out first.” He looks up at the sky. “It gets dark fast in the woods. You wanna be setting up in pitch-black, worried about what’s crawling over your fingers and into the tent?”
    We drop the cooler, grab the tent, and help my father set up. I’m sticking poles in the ground and looking all around. The people next to us are white. The people across from us are white too. So are all the other people here. “They ain’t gonna shoot us, are they?”

Chapter 22
    IT’S STILL GONNA be a while before it gets dark. So Kee-lee and me pocket a few rocks and set off walking. “To hit somebody,” I say, “if they start something with us.”
    Neither one of us has ever been to a place like this. There’s people everywhere: sitting outside of tents or in parked cars or vans, grilling stuff that smells so good it makes you wanna beg like a dog. Kids are everywhere too. Running. Laughing. Playing cards, catch and tag, hoola-hoop,