CHAPTER 1 Jerome Barnes was exploring the junkyard when something curious caught his eye Off in the distance past the stacks of tires and dilapidated automobiles and ancient water heaters and bales of wire crows First there were two then four then eight Of course crows weren’t out of the ordinary in Shoney Flats but soon there were a dozen of them and they were behaving in a way Jerome had never seen before swooping and calling excitedly as though they’d cornered something they weren’t quite sure about Which made Jerome want to see what it was So he made his way to the far side of the junkyard being careful not to walk into rusty old fenders or mufflers or sheets of metal doing his best not to lose sight of the great black birds Then as he found himself in the shadows 1
SCRAP CITY of sleek gliding wings the birds perhaps rattled at the interruption let out deep angry caws and took off And that was when Jerome heard it Somewhere in there among the piles of junk was a whir A peculiar sort of whir If you were to ask him in what way this whir was peculiar he couldn’t tell you He just knew it was something he’d never heard before It went wrrrlgh in the strangest way That must have been what had excited the crows The whir came every few seconds It was definitely nearby And it was definitely peculiar Each time it came a whir here a whir there Jerome took a step in its direction like a game of Hot and Cold At first he thought it sounded like an old refrigerator but then he realized there probably wasn’t electricity this far from the junkyard shack which was a good fifty yards away It’s probably a generator he thought like the one behind his house that sputtered and coughed when the electricity went out No not a generator Something else Wrrrlgh it came again a little louder than before which meant Jerome was getting close Then the whir abruptly stopped Jerome stood still and listened straining his ears He waited He waited some more Whatever it was he thought with a sigh it’s over now He shrugged and turned back to the broken-down shack where he’d left his dad and uncle who were meeting with the old junkman 2
D S THORNTON His dad was a commercial real estate agent That meant he helped businesses buy and sell property Sometimes it was land and sometimes it was buildings After a whole year without a single sale Jerome’s dad had a client A client who wanted to buy the junkyard Earlier at the shack his dad had told him to wait on the porch while he went inside to talk to the junkman But after a half hour of listening to the men inside talk or really his dad talk Jerome couldn’t take it any longer The more his dad tried to press his points to the old junkman how a shopping center would be good for Shoney Flats how the junkyard didn’t have the customers it once had how it was good to retire while he still had the energy the more frustration Jerome could hear in his father’s voice Jerome knew this frustration well because it had been there just under the surface for months They called the junkman Wild Willy Wild Willy wasn’t his real name of course his real name was William Videlbeck But everyone in Shoney Flats called him Wild Willy even Jerome’s dad Or they called him a crazy old goat When Jerome was little he had thought Mr Videlbeck’s name really was Crazy Old Goat because he’d heard it so often That crazy old goat out at the junkyard people would say While he waited on the porch Jerome had tried to get a glimpse of Wild Willy He’d never seen the old junkman before But it was hard to see through the screen door 3
