Free The Weirdo by Theodore Taylor Page A

girls' basketball had had in years.
    "Papa's on my back again," Sam said.
    "For what?"
    "He wants me to quit because of what happened last week. Said we could be next."
    There'd been a holdup at Burger King, which was in the next block on Broad.
    "And do what?" Binkie asked.
    "He didn't say. Maybe clerk in some store that shuts the doors at five o'clock. Shoe store, drugstore, any daylight store..."
    "And what does your mom say?"
    "
Silencio.
Nothing. My mama is the smartest woman
on earth when it comes to Papa. She waits until the right time to talk, then attacks. In bed, I think."
    Binkie laughed. "That doesn't happen where I live. Italians don't wait. If they don't agree, there's a shouting match on the spot."
    "That's the best way."
    "When's your next day off?"
    "Wednesday."
    "Let's hit the sand. Go to Nag's Head. Get a couple of sexy paperbacks, take my boom-box, daub on the sun-block."
    "I'm tempted."
    "Can you get the Bronco?"
    It was sitting outside the Dairy Queen for transportation home. Dell was good about lending it. "I can try."
    Dennis emerged from the back room, the day's take locked carefully in the safe. "Your old man is right, Sam. First guy that sticks a gun in my gut gets it all, and I'm out the door. Forever. They can take this job and shove it."
    "You nervous?" Sam asked.
    "For five hundred eighty-six dollars and forty cents, I am nobody's victim. Let's cut the lights and hit the street."
    A moment later the Dairy Queen faded into the night, and ten minutes after that Sam dropped Binkie
off at her house and headed toward that black sponge known as the Powhatan.
    Her mother always left the porch light on, as well as several lamps inside. Once Sam turned onto Chapanoke, the juniper-wood house stood out like a warm beacon, the windows welcoming white rectangles. The neighbor's lights, a quarter mile away and around a curve, were never visible.
    She'd only begun to make this drive alone in the past year and always felt relieved when she was inside the house, locking out the swamp behind her.
    Unlike Sam, Dell, a farm girl herself, had never felt isolated living by the black sponge. Sam realized too well that her mother would have been unhappy in town. Yet there had been a few nights, the bo'sun away on duty, when the dogs barked loud and long. Dell had taken her husband's loaded pistol and had gone out on the porch to look around.
    Sam wished she had her mother's courage.
    She arrived home safely, seeing nothing more than a red fox flash across Chapanoke.
    ***
    TELFORD'S portable battery-powered radio receiver had a two-megahertz range, and the bears' collar transmitter frequencies were placed ten kilohertz apart to
minimize interference. Each individual collar had a separate sending frequency. Each bear had its own channel within the Powhatan.
    "The swamp's so flat that there's no signal bounce, but we'll get some interference from the thick vegetation," Telford said.
    Under thick afternoon clouds, smell of rain strong in the warm air, he stopped the truck not far from the footbridge and loblolly grove, taking the receiver, along with the directional antenna, out of the back. They'd collared two more and set an additional three snares in the morning, going four miles south of the first site.
    "What we'll hear is a
beep-beep-beep
once we're operating."
    "Henry's
beep-beep-beep?
"
    "If he's still around. If we can't bring him up, we'll move on and try Number 2-88." That was the second bear they'd collared, a female.
    Connecting the directional antenna to the receiver, Telford plugged headphones into the jack and put them on, saying to Chip, "Okay, hold it up and slowly rotate it all the way around, the full three-sixty degrees. We'll see if he's home."
    The antenna resembled a toaster element about two feet long. Rotating slowly, Chip watched Telford's face for a sign that he'd picked up a signal.
    "What you have to do is listen in an arc...." Telford moved his head, listening. "Hold it there," he said,