Free Trial by Fire by Norah McClintock Page A

boasted about it at school. He makes fun of Mr. Goran’s
accent. He calls him names. He’s knocked over the old man’s mailbox a couple of times.”
    “Did he ever get arrested for any of that stuff?”
    “Not that I know of.” Charlie bit into his ice-cream cone. “Anyway, Mr. Goran seems
okay. He sure works hard. And he knows what he’s doing.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “We have a fall fair up here every year. There are a lot of competitions—baking,
needlecrafts, livestock and produce. All the entries are anonymous, you know, so
the judges can’t be influenced by whether they know someone or not. Mr. Goran won
a bunch of prizes last year. I think he got firsts for his beets, his tomatoes and
his squash. And he won first for his oats in the grain category. The tourists who
were there— we always get a lot of city people—they all clapped. But people in town?
No way.” He paused to pop the last bit of his ice-cream cone into his mouth.
    “People up here sure carry a grudge,” I said. “It must have been hard for Mr. Goran.
I’ve seen his place. It seems big for one person to run alone. Did he have anyone
working with him?”
    “There was a guy out there for a while. I think he was from the same place as Mr.
Goran. They spoke the same language. But I heard he went back home to get married.
That was during the winter. Mr. Goran put up some notices around town—he wanted to
hire help for the growing season. I think he took out an ad in the paper too.”
    “And?”
    “He didn’t get anyone.”
    “But there must be plenty of people who need work,” I said. The news was filled with
grim statistics on unemployment.
    “You’re not kidding. I sure could use some extra money.”
    “You should have asked him for a job.”
    Charlie’s face flushed red. He crumpled the napkin he had been holding and glanced
at his watch. “I gotta go.”
    “Already? But I have more questions.”
    He stood up. “What does it matter? He’s not going to farm anymore. That’s what everyone’s
saying. If he even lives.” His voice was hard and dismissive. He sounded like a different
person. He sounded like Mike Winters.
    “What’s the matter, Charlie?” Something was bothering him, Something had changed.
    “Nothing. I gotta go.” A couple of minutes ago, he’d been happy to see me. Now he
couldn’t wait to get away.
    “Was it something I said?”
    “See you around.” He strode down the street. I stayed put.
    He stopped at the first intersection he came to, even though he had a green light,
and hung there for a few moments.
    He turned.
    He looked at me.
    He walked back slowly and dropped down beside me on the bench.
    “I like you,” he said.
    “It’s kinda hard to tell, the way you walked off.”
    “I like the way you stood up to Mike.”
    “You stood up to him too.”
    “And I like the way you seem to care about Mr. Goran.”
    “He’s a nice man,” I said.
    “That makes me feel even worse about what I did,” Charlie said. He looked down at
the ground.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I never told anyone.”
    I waited.
    “It’s about Mr. Goran,” he finally said.
    I had figured that out already.
    “We had to do fundraising last year for a school project to buy livestock for families
in developing countries. You know, so much money will buy a goat, and a goat can
provide milk for a whole family. Stuff like that. There was a prize for the team
that raised the most money. A trip to the city, a hotel right downtown, tickets to
the museum.”
    “And?”
    “I figured that Mr. Goran would be a good person to ask. He’s from a developing country,
and he’s a farmer. He would know how much a goat or some chickens would mean to a
poor family. So I asked him, and he gave me a hundred dollars—cash! That’s way more
than I got from anyone else. It’s more than anyone else on my team collected.” He
paused and chanced a peek at me. “You’re going to think I’m such a jerk when I tell
you the