Dad gave me his crooked smile. "Sounds like you've thought this through
pretty well," he said. He told me he had his heart set on buying a
particular piece of rose quartz but didn't have the six hundred dollars I
was charging, so I cut the price to five hundred and let him have it on
credit.
Brian and I loved to go to the dump. We looked for treasures among the
discarded stoves and refrigerators, the broken furniture and stacks of
bald tires. We chased after the desert rats that lived in the wrecked cars,
or caught tadpoles and frogs in the scum-topped pond. Buzzards circled
overhead, and the air was filled with dragonflies the size of small birds.
There were no trees to speak of in Battle Mountain, but one corner of the
dump had huge piles of railroad ties and rotting lumber that were great
for climbing and carving your initials on. We called it the Woods.
Toxic and hazardous wastes were stored in another corner of the dump,
where you could find old batteries, oil drums, paint cans, and bottles
with skulls and crossbones. Brian and I decided some of this stuff would
make for a neat scientific experiment, so we filled up a couple of boxes
with different bottles and jars and took them to an abandoned shed we
named our laboratory. At first we mixed things together, hoping they
would explode, but nothing happened, so I decided we should conduct an
experiment to see if any of the stuff was flammable.
The next day after school we came back to the laboratory with a box of
Dad's matches. We unscrewed the lids of some of the jars, and I dropped
in matches, but still nothing happened. So we mixed up a batch of what
Brian called nuclear fuel, pouring different liquids into a can. When I
tossed in the match, a cone of flame shot up with a whoosh like a jet
afterburner.
Brian and I were knocked to our feet. When we stood up, one of the walls
was on fire. I yelled to Brian that we had to get out of there, but he was
throwing sand at the fire, saying that we had to put it out or we'd get in