The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls Read Online Free
âTheyâre still gone.â
TWO
E ver since my mother died, my Uncle Andy has done his best to look after me. Iâm not saying he doesnât have his faults. But I have watched him try to be a totally good person, even though it is clear to just about everyone that he has no natural talent for it. Itâs funny how you can feel so close to someone, even though they are far from perfect. But thatâs exactly the way I feel about my uncle.
For better or worse, I take after my uncle in many ways. Like Uncle Andy, I have never been able to say no to a challenge. Of all the weak spots in my character, the weakest is that I can never resist a bet. No matter how foolish. Someone could say, âHenry, I will bet you five dollars that you canât eat a hotdog while standing on your head,â and I would automatically have to prove that I can.
One of the things I like best about my uncle is that if I said I could eat a hotdog while standing on my head, he would back me up one hundred and ten percent. He is constantly bragging about how Iâm some sort of boy genius.
It all started with the special intelligence test they gave me back in elementary school. I was eleven years old when they put me in this room with several people whose job it was to test me on different things. I scored way higher than anybody my age without even trying, which my uncle has never forgotten. When I started to show some natural curiosity about burglary, he said, âWhat do you want to know that for? We have documented proof that you are smart enough to become a lawyer and steal the legal way.â
Of course, life with Uncle Andy always had its ups and downs. But I really miss the ups. In fact, the thing I miss most is that we used to live in a real house. It was only a rental, and it looked a little sad from the outside. The paint was flaking a bit and a few of the porch steps were loose. But the best part was, it always felt like home.
Iâm sure some people would consider my former living arrangements rather unusual. I mean, not everybody has the unique privilege of living under the same roof with an assortment of small-time crooks. But thatâs where my Uncle Andy was thinking ahead. The beauty of this arrangement? Even when he was being temporarily detained by the judicial system, there was always someone to look after me.
You canât always count on a steady income from breaking the law. Sometimes things go your way and sometimes they donât. So Uncle Andy would often take in boarders from among his various associates. Rent was always what my uncle liked to call âvery democratic.â If you happened to be doing well at the moment, your rent was high. If you were down on your luck, your rent was practically nothing.
It is a well-known fact that responsibility can be very exhausting. That was the great thing about living in the same big house with a lot of irresponsible people. On their own, they would let a lot of parental-type things slide by. But as a group, there was always at least one person who could handle feeling responsible for a short period of time. When they got tired, somebody else usually took over.
You would think that a bunch of lawbreakers on the premises would be nothing but trouble waiting to happen. But nobody ever stole so much as a matchstick under our roof. It was considered very bad manners to steal from your own place of residence.
If you were going to live in our house, you had to obey a strict set of rules. Of course, when I was a little kid, I wasnât supposed to know what the rules were. After pulling my first heist with Uncle Andy at the age of seven, he tried his best to keep me from the details of the burglary business. Of course my natural curiosity got the better of me. So it wasnât long before I discovered that the house rules were posted in everybodyâs room but my own.
I think it is a sensible set of rules, especially if you ever find yourself
TWO
E ver since my mother died, my Uncle Andy has done his best to look after me. Iâm not saying he doesnât have his faults. But I have watched him try to be a totally good person, even though it is clear to just about everyone that he has no natural talent for it. Itâs funny how you can feel so close to someone, even though they are far from perfect. But thatâs exactly the way I feel about my uncle.
For better or worse, I take after my uncle in many ways. Like Uncle Andy, I have never been able to say no to a challenge. Of all the weak spots in my character, the weakest is that I can never resist a bet. No matter how foolish. Someone could say, âHenry, I will bet you five dollars that you canât eat a hotdog while standing on your head,â and I would automatically have to prove that I can.
One of the things I like best about my uncle is that if I said I could eat a hotdog while standing on my head, he would back me up one hundred and ten percent. He is constantly bragging about how Iâm some sort of boy genius.
It all started with the special intelligence test they gave me back in elementary school. I was eleven years old when they put me in this room with several people whose job it was to test me on different things. I scored way higher than anybody my age without even trying, which my uncle has never forgotten. When I started to show some natural curiosity about burglary, he said, âWhat do you want to know that for? We have documented proof that you are smart enough to become a lawyer and steal the legal way.â
Of course, life with Uncle Andy always had its ups and downs. But I really miss the ups. In fact, the thing I miss most is that we used to live in a real house. It was only a rental, and it looked a little sad from the outside. The paint was flaking a bit and a few of the porch steps were loose. But the best part was, it always felt like home.
Iâm sure some people would consider my former living arrangements rather unusual. I mean, not everybody has the unique privilege of living under the same roof with an assortment of small-time crooks. But thatâs where my Uncle Andy was thinking ahead. The beauty of this arrangement? Even when he was being temporarily detained by the judicial system, there was always someone to look after me.
You canât always count on a steady income from breaking the law. Sometimes things go your way and sometimes they donât. So Uncle Andy would often take in boarders from among his various associates. Rent was always what my uncle liked to call âvery democratic.â If you happened to be doing well at the moment, your rent was high. If you were down on your luck, your rent was practically nothing.
It is a well-known fact that responsibility can be very exhausting. That was the great thing about living in the same big house with a lot of irresponsible people. On their own, they would let a lot of parental-type things slide by. But as a group, there was always at least one person who could handle feeling responsible for a short period of time. When they got tired, somebody else usually took over.
You would think that a bunch of lawbreakers on the premises would be nothing but trouble waiting to happen. But nobody ever stole so much as a matchstick under our roof. It was considered very bad manners to steal from your own place of residence.
If you were going to live in our house, you had to obey a strict set of rules. Of course, when I was a little kid, I wasnât supposed to know what the rules were. After pulling my first heist with Uncle Andy at the age of seven, he tried his best to keep me from the details of the burglary business. Of course my natural curiosity got the better of me. So it wasnât long before I discovered that the house rules were posted in everybodyâs room but my own.
I think it is a sensible set of rules, especially if you ever find yourself
Readers choose
Chris Fabry
Tawdra Kandle
Claude G. Berube
Marilyn Campbell
Danielle Ellison
Aric Davis
Jill Churchill
Nancy A. Collins
Farrah Rochon
Catherine Aird