The Weirdo
Authors: Theodore Taylor
 
Copyright © 1991 by Theodore Taylor
Reader's guide copyright © 2006 by Harcourt, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work
should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,
Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
First Harcourt paperback edition 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Theodore, 1921â
The weirdo/Theodore Taylor.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Chip Clewt fights to save the black bears
in the Powhatan Swamp, a National Wildlife Refuge, in North Carolina.
[1. BearsâFiction. 2. SwampsâFiction. 3. Wildlife conservationâFiction.
4. North CarolinaâFiction. 5. People with disabilitiesâFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.T2186We 2006
[Fic]âdc22 20050055093
ISBN-13: 978-0-15-294952-5 ISBN-10: 0-15-294952-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-15-205666-7 pb ISBN-10: 0-15-205666-1 pb
Designed by Trina Stahl
Printed in the United States of America
G H
THANKSFor Michael and Marci
with love
Dr. Eric Hellgren of the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, Kingsville, Texas, provided the bear information contained in this book. Eric trapped, tagged, and tracked the
Ursus americanus
over a two-year period in Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Ralph Keel, resident biologist for Great Dismal, shared his knowledge with me. My own first swamp experience came at age eleven when my father took me up Dismal's Feeder Ditch to Lake Drummond to fish for crappie and bream. Last but by no means least, loud applause for editor Allyn Johnston. Her suggestions and perceptive blue pencil, as well as her patience, made a big and positive difference.
Â
Theodore Taylor
Laguna Beach, California
May 1991
Most people think that swamps, bogs, and marshes are all the same, but scientists know different. Swamps are dominated by trees, and marshes by grasses, and bogs by peat moss heaths. The Powhatan combines all three.
Â
Thomas Telford
North Carolina State
Bear Study
Â
PoacherâA person who trespasses on private or government property to take fish or game illegally.
Â
Webster's New Collegiate
Dictionary
S
AMANTHA SANDERS
was nine years old the afternoon she found Alvin Howell dead. She'd spotted the bright blue cloth over at the edge of Powhatan Swamp just as she turned into her yard. Odd, because it hadn't been there when she went to school in the morning.
Putting her books down on the front porch, she crossed Chapanoke Road, jumped the ditch, and came upon the cloth quicker than she'd expected. It was half-hidden in the brush. Raising a branch, she saw a man's face, mouth wide open as if he was trying to yell, eyes swollen with fright. On his chest was a splotch of red.
Screaming, Sam stumbled back, falling down into the ditch water. Heart beating in her ears, she crawled
out and ran for the house. Her hand shook as she lifted the hidden front-door key off its nail and struggled to get it into the lock.
Inside, she called the school district office, weeping now, trying to make herself understood. She wanted her mother, Dell Sanders. Her papa, a Coast Guard bo'sun, was out on temporary sea duty. Her brother, Steve, was at baseball practice.
Delilah Sanders came on.
"Mama, Mama, Mama ... there's a dead man...."
"Where, Samantha?"
"Dead man..."
"Where, Samantha? Calm down. You're not making any sense."
"Dead man out in front of the house..."
"Are you sure?"
"He's there."
"All right, listen to me. I'll call the sheriff. You lock the door and stay inside. Get some water, take an aspirin. All right, Samantha..."
"Yes, Mama. Come home, please come home."
"I'll be there just as fast as I can."
Dell arrived home twenty minutes laterâeven before the sheriff's car came up the road, roof light flashingâand went about holding Sam and calming her down.
A moment later there was a sharp knock on the door. A deputy in plain clothes, identifying himself as Ed Truesdale, showed his ID card and asked, "Where is he?"
"My daughter said he's right across the road. Look for some blue just over the swamp ditch."
Truesdale, taking a gun out of his coat, hurried off in that direction as Dell and Sam watched silently. Sam clutched her mother. They saw him jump across the ditch, lift a branch, and stand there, looking down. Then he returned to his car to use the radio.
In a few minutes, he was up on the front porch again, asking if he could come in.
Dell said, "Sure. Would you like some coffee?"
Truesdale said, "Yes, thank you. Could you tell me who found him?"
"My daughter, Samantha. This is Samantha."
Looking ill, Sam stood a few feet away.
Truesdale said, "Miss Samantha, why don't you come over here an' sit beside me an' tell me what happened. I got a daughter little bit older'n you." He took a seat on the couch and motioned her over.
Sam went over and sat down.
"Where you go to school?"
"MacFadden, in Currituck."
"Be darned. I put two daughters through there. What grade?"
"Fourth."
"Good grade. Well, I've got a few questions, Samantha. How'd you know he was there?"
"The dead man?"
Truesdale nodded.
Sam told him she saw blue and went over to investigate.
"An' you didn't see the blue there this mornin' when you went off to school?"
"No, sir."
"When you went up the road this morninâI'm guessin' you take the bus..."
Sam nodded.
"... you see anybody? Any car pass you, in either direction?"
"No, sir."
"You see anybody on foot?"
"No, sir."
"You ever seen the dead man before?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where?"
"At Dunnegan's." That's what everyone called the nearby convenience store.
"You know his name?"
"No, sir."
"He is, or was, Alvin Howell. Lives, or did live, 'bout seven miles north, off Tucker Road." Truesdale
scratched his head. "Uh, you ever see Mr. Howell come down Chapanoke before?"
"No, sir."
"Well, I guess that's 'bout all, Samantha, an' I do appreciate your help. Now, what you have to do is put this unfortunate incident outta your head forever. Hard to do, I know, but try, huh?" He smiled widely at her and stood.
Seven years later, no one had found out who killed Mr. Howell. The incident had deepened Sam's dread of the swamp.
Her papa had once said, "Only the Powhatan an the one who did it knows." He was probably right.
***
THREE-THIRTY
P.M.
The big Buick station wagon with Virginia plates made a rooster tail of ivory dust along the dirt road to the old white two-story farmhouse that sat on the northern edge on the Powhatan, west of the George Washington Canal.
The Sanders farm was on the North Carolina side of the border, the "hick" side, as stuck-up Virginians often said, conveniently forgetting there wasn't much difference between rural Tar Heels and rural hayseed Virginians.
Finally, the green wagon pulled into the front yard.
Sam's Uncle Jack merrily tooted several times, causing her father's two penned hunting dogs to break the chill autumn silence. The din sawtoothed across the brown cornfields and over into the swamp.
Sam opened the front door and yelled for old Martin, the bluetick coon hound, and Rick, the black Lab duck dog, to shut their loud mouths. They enjoyed making noise when visitors drove up.
Then she hurried across the creaky porch and approached the new Le Sabre, saying, "Hi, Uncle Jack, Aunt Peaches...," looking in at the occupants.
"Hi, Samantha, you pretty thing."
He always said the same thing on seeing Sam. She knew different. If pretty was gauged by girls in fashion magazines or on the morning soaps, Sam wasn't pretty. In her own hard-eyed opinion she was as plain as freckled biscuit dough. So she always cringed inwardly when Uncle Jack gave his silly compliment.
Uncle Jack was promptly echoed by his wife, who said, "My, you do look delicious." Peaches was her legal, christened name. Mrs. Peaches Sanders.
Were fence posts delicious? Sam had never measured her buttocks but figured they were no more than sixteen inches cheek-to-cheek. Was being skinny and lanky, all legs, bony-shouldered, "delicious"? Maybe, if she had the face to go with the reed body.
Oh, if wishes were horses...
Sticky-sweet, but always good-hearted, Uncle Jack
and Aunt Peaches were in their late forties, well-to-do, unlike Sam's parents. Golf- and bridge-playing folks. Jack Sanders had a successful insurance agency in Virginia Beach.
"You two all ready to go?" Sam asked.
"I am. Don't know 'bout her." Jack glanced over at Peaches with raised eyebrows, grinning.
Sam said enviously, "Just think, you two'll be in Paris in the morning." She wished, never mind the horses, she was going along. Even if they silly-talked all across the Atlantic. Going anywhere but up this miserable country road, going anywhere there were lights and people and things to do.
Peaches said, "I've been thinkin' 'bout this trip for six months, Samantha. I do declare I have packed an' unpacked ten times the last week." Then she laughed at herself.
Uncle Jack, a porky, jowly man, unlike Sam's rail-thin father, added his own laughter. "Twice last night. Twice."
In the rear seat, staring off at all the barking ruckus with yellow eyes, sat Field Champion Baron von Buckner, CDX, SDX, RDX. Otherwise known as Buck, he was Uncle Jack and Aunt Peaches's prize weimaraner. The initials stood for Companion Dog Excellent (Obedience), Shooting Dog Excellent, Retrieving Dog Excellent.
Buck had been winning ribbons and trophies since
he was seven months old. He'd been a national field trials champion three times in succession. Top ten All-Age Gun Dog. Sleek and strapping, smooth coat the color of the wintry sky, he was now available for breeding. Jack valued him at fifty thousand dollars, but Sam still didn't believe that a dog,
any
dog, could be worth that much.
Sliding out of the car, Jack went around to the tailgate, dropped it, and reached in to pull out two forty-pound sacks of Science Diet, plus a shoe box of assorted vitamins.