already swelling up above his eyebrow. Ernie's gang returned a few
minutes later, throwing stones and shouting that they had actually seen
the pigsty where the Walls kids lived and that they were going to tell the
whole school it was even worse than everyone said.
This time both Brian and I chased after them. Even though they
outnumbered us, they were enjoying the game of taunting us too much to
make a stand. They rode down to the first switchback and got away.
"They'll be back," Brian said.
"What are we going to do?" I asked.
Brian sat thinking, then told me he had a plan. He found some rope under
the house and led me up to a clearing in the hillside above Little Hobart
Street. A few weeks earlier, Brian and I had dragged an old mattress up
there because we were thinking of camping out. Brian explained how we
could make a catapult, like the medieval ones we'd read about, by piling
rocks on the mattress and rigging it with ropes looped over tree
branches. We quickly assembled the contraption and tested it once,
jerking back on the ropes at the count of three. It worked—a minor
avalanche of rocks rained onto the street below. It was, we were
convinced, enough to kill Ernie Goad and his gang, which was what we
fully intended to do: kill them and commandeer their bikes, leaving their
bodies in the street as a warning to others.
We piled the rocks back on the mattress, rerigged the catapult, and
waited. After a couple of minutes, Ernie and his gang reappeared at the
switchback. Each of them rode one-handed and carried an egg-sized rock
in his throwing hand. They were proceeding single file, like a Pawnee
war party, a few feet apart. We couldn't get them all at once, so we
aimed for Ernie, who was at the head of the pack.
When he came within range, Brian gave the word, and we jerked back on