Horns & Wrinkles Read Online Free Page A

moods, my older sister, sat closest to the inside door, in case the phone rang. My other older sister, Fragile Fran, had her headphones on, as always. Even Grandpa Bridgewater had come over for the show. He was the first to pipe up.
    "Hear tell we've got another horn in the family."
    "What do you mean, another one?" I asked.
    "First things first, young lady," warned my mother, who wasn't about to let Grandpa B sidetrack her. "Just what have you and Duke been up to now?"
    So I told them, and since they all knew Duke, they were mostly satisfied that I couldn't have done much differently, except maybe not worry so much about Lottie. Parts of what I told them lifted some eyebrows, though none that belonged to my sisters. They were too busy acting bored to lift anything but a sigh. That's a stage they're stuck in, except when I bring home some poor starving frog or beetle or garter snake. The way my sisters dance then, you'd think the house was on fire. They're dead set against boarders and always accuse me of trying to be the son that Dad never had. I don't know about that, but I do know that reptiles and amphibians seem to understand me way better than my sisters do.
    Anyway, as soon as I'd finished, everyone's eyes shifted to Grandpa, wanting to hear about the other horn in our family.
    "This going to be an Uncle Floyd story?" my dad asked, which meant that he'd probably heard it before but never mentioned it because of my mom, who doesn't approve of river stories.
    "Thereabouts," Grandpa admitted. "Might have a rock troll or two in it."
    Then nothing got said for a bit as Grandpa got his facts straight. He was a knobby old guy in his eighties, prone to coughing fits, felt hats, and getting lost. While waiting, I couldn't spy a neighborhood kid moving, or feel a breeze shuffling, or hear a clock ticking. The whole world seemed to be hanging on what he had to say.
    "So?" Mom prodded at last. "Uncle Floyd?"
    "Yup," Grandpa B said. "The one who was the younger brother of you girls' Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Huntington. Actually, Huntington had a horn for a bit too."
    Everyone exchanged looks, the way we always did during Grandpa B's stories.
    "Was that before or after his lumber mill went bust?" Dad calmly asked.
    "Oh, before. Right after him and Floyd got run out of Missouri for their bullying."
    "Bullying?" I said.
    "You didn't think Duke was the only one of those in the family, did you?"
    "And the horns?" Dad prompted.
    "Those happened the first winter they were up here. They'd chopped a hole in the river ice to scrub up some and the next thing they knew..."
    "Horns," I said, filling in the blank.
    "Yup. They both had 'em, and they were growing every now and then too."
    "When they bullied someone," I guessed.
    "Chances are," Grandpa B agreed. "And then one day in late March, or maybe it was early April, just about the time when the ice was going out, they heard a real ruckus down to the river. Huntington dashed down there and found a pretty young lady trapped on an ice floe with a flock of sheep. They were floating away from shore, farther and farther every second, with no hope of ever getting ashore, not unless someone came to their rescue."
    "Couldn't she swim?" Lillie asked, astonished.
    "Not a stroke. And particularly not in the river. Back then folks thought the river just sucked you right under. Today it's lots calmer."
    "Did they go to her rescue?" I asked.
    "Certainly did. Huntington nearly drowned himself doing it. He could hardly swim a lick himself, but somehow or other, he got that young lady and all her flock ashore. Cold as that water was, he was blue as a jay by the time he was done. But when he climbed out of the river, he'd shed his horn and had his own handsome Bridgewater nose back."
    "He'd done an act of genuine kindness," I whispered to myself.
    No one was paying much attention to me, though. They were waiting for Grandpa to finish the story. He knew it too. You could tell by the way his shoelaces all of a