It was a long walk back to his hole. Stanley looked out through the haze of heat and dirt at the other boys, lowering and raising their shovels. Group D was the farthest away.
He realized that once again he would be digging long after everyone else had quit. He hoped he’d finish before Mr. Sir recovered. He didn’t want to be out there alone with Mr. Sir.
He won’t die, the Warden had said. Unfortunately for you.
Walking across the desolate wasteland, Stanley thought about his great-grandfather—not the pig stealer but the pig stealer’s son, the one who was robbed by Kissin’ Kate Barlow.
He tried to imagine how he must have felt after Kissin’ Kate had left him stranded in the desert. It probably wasn’t a whole lot different from the way he himself felt now. Kate Barlow had left his great-grandfather to face the hot barren desert. The Warden had left Stanley to face Mr. Sir.
Somehow his great-grandfather had survived for seventeen days, before he was rescued by a couple of rattlesnake hunters. He was insane when they found him.
When he was asked how he had lived so long, he said he “found refuge on God’s thumb.”
He spent nearly a month in a hospital. He ended up marrying one of the nurses. Nobody ever knew what he meant by God’s thumb, including himself.
Stanley heard a twitching sound. He stopped in mid-step, with one foot still in the air.
A rattlesnake lay coiled beneath his foot. Its tail was pointed upward, rattling.
Stanley backed his leg away, then turned and ran.
The rattlesnake didn’t chase after him. It had rattled its tail to warn him to stay away.
“Thanks for the warning,” Stanley whispered as his heart pounded.
The rattlesnake would be a lot more dangerous if it didn’t have a rattle.
“Hey, Caveman!” called Armpit. “You’re still alive.”
“What’d the Warden say?” asked X-Ray. “What’d you tell her?” asked Magnet. “I told her I stole the seeds,” said Stanley. “Good going,” said Magnet. “What’d she do?” asked Zigzag.
Stanley shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing. She got mad at Mr. Sir for bothering her.”
He didn’t feel like going into details. If he didn’t talk about it, then maybe it didn’t happen.
He went over to his hole, and to his surprise it was nearly finished. He stared at it, amazed. It didn’t make sense.
Or perhaps it did. He smiled. Since he had taken the blame for the sunflower seeds, he realized, the other boys had dug his hole for him.
“Hey, thanks,” he said.
“Don’t look at me,” said X-Ray.
Confused, Stanley looked around—from Magnet, to Armpit, to Zigzag, to Squid. None of them took credit for it.
Then he turned to Zero, who had been quietly digging in his hole since Stanley’s return. Zero’s hole was smaller than all the others.
22
Stanley was the first one finished. He spat in his hole, then showered and changed into his cleaner set of clothes. It had been three days since the laundry was done, so even his clean set was dirty and smelly. Tomorrow, these would become his work clothes, and his other set would be washed.
He could think of no reason why Zero would dig his hole for him. Zero didn’t even get any sunflower seeds.
“I guess he likes to dig holes,” Armpit had said.
“He’s a mole,” Zigzag had said. “I think he eats dirt.”
“Moles don’t eat dirt,” X-Ray had pointed out. “Worms eat dirt.”