Free Hold Zero! by Jean Craighead George Page A

with it. Today, at least, he was going to do what made him feel at ease with himself. Besides, the good players could stay in the whole game if he didn’t show up. He pulled on a sweater and ran down the steps.
    At the dock he made numerous tries before he started the long-idle swamp buggy. Eventually the engine caught and the craft plowed out among the cattails.
    The island looked deserted. Leaves had fallen from the trees. Only seeds and berries remained. These, Craig thought, were not jubilant like the flowers and leaves, but hard and small—full of sleep and purpose. Craig opened a bittersweet berry and squeezed the yellow seed between his fingers.
    He walked to the hollow where the raccoon slept. A bat hung inside the hole, upside down, and quiet. Suddenly a chickadee sang. It was a wistful call. The bird did not sound like spring although the notes were the same. He wondered why.
    Slowly he sat down and crossed his ankles. His hand rested on a flat stone and idly he lifted it. White eggs of the ants clung to the underside, and a salamander slept, eyes open, too cold to know it had been disturbed. Craig put the stone back.
    He felt better. He didn’t feel rushed anymore; and then, because everything around him was waiting, he decided that’s how things were. Sometimes you had to wait.
    Happily he stretched out in the leaves. A jimson weed, dried and angular, touched his cheek. He observed it casually, and then not so casually, for the tip was as active as a hive. He sat up. The jimson weed was covered with tiny spiders that had emerged in the warm sun. They were crawling over each other in an effort to get as high as they could on the gray-brown stalk. Craig concentrated on a single spider of the hundreds that moved so hastily.
    The spiderling was pale and yellow, but determined. It attained the highest point on the weed and paused, turned its head into the autumn wind, and threw up its back feet. A thin thread of gossamer drifted out from its spinnerets. Craig rolled to his knees. The thread billowed in the breeze until it grew so long it had more strength than the spiderling. Then the spiderling let go and the thread bowed in the breeze and lifted the minute creature into the air. Craig stood up and saw the drifter turn and clutch its web with its front feet. It reefed in to the right as it sailed around a thistle. He followed the glitter of the sun on the web. It became entangled in a hackberry limb. The spiderling climbed it, reeling in its silk as it went. Then it turned its head into the wind again and spun out another balloon of thread. On this it rode out of sight.
    “So that’s how they get free,” he said to himself. “They sail away and reel in their threads, sail away and reel in their threads.”
    Suddenly he knew that was what he was going to do, too. He jumped on the swamp buggy. It started immediately. Twenty minutes later Craig was running up the hill to his home when he saw his friend.
    “Steve!” he called. “Hold it!”
    The angular Steve turned, distributed his weight on both feet, and waited for his friend.
    “Listen, I know how to get the rocket launched!” Craig gasped. “We sail away!” He drew a wide course with his arms. “We just sail to Batta and we reel in all the threads and wait.”
    “What are you talking about, Craig?”
    “Well.” He laughed at himself. “Let’s go to the island tonight and not come back until the committee comes to find us. Let’s just sit there until they look at the rocket.”
    “Well, I can’t tonight.”
    “Why?”
    “I’m going to the Soph Hop.”
    “Oh, well, just hop around for a few minutes. We’ll wait for you.”
    “No, don’t. I guess I’ll stay all night.”
    “You mean you want to dance? ” Craig asked incredulously. He couldn’t believe what he had heard.
    “Yes. I’m taking Cathy Smith to the dance, and I think I’ll stay—and dance.”
    Craig stared. “But, Steve,” he said, “we all said no girls, Steve. We