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CHARLIE DOLLARHIDE

Charlie Dollarhide is another great book by Robert Holland! It is an action-packed sports mystery with realism. It also shows the challenges of diversity. I loved this book as much as the other Frost Hollow books I've read. It's great how Charlie and other Robert Holland characters can make the right decision on their own. If you like sports and mysteries, I recommend Charlie Dollarhide!

--Brian Hall, age 11

What a great plot! I liked the way Charlie Dollarhide saved money from going to the Mafia. He tried hard to help other Native Americans not to pay interest to the Mafia for their casino. The best part was when Charlie used his bow and arrow to save his life. Anyone who likes suspense should read this book.

--Michael Menna, age 10

Chapter One

Thuglets On The Loose

I slipped the strap on my knapsack over my shoulder, turned toward the main aisle that ran down between the banks of green metal lockers, and when I looked up, the three biggest bullies in the school stood blocking my way, smirking over having cornered a poor skinny freshman.

The only question left was how badly they were gonna hurt me, because from the stories I'd heard, these three guys had a habit of hurting people. Sometimes it was just for fun, sometimes ... naw, it was always just for fun. And today they looked mean. I took off my knapsack and dropped it onto the bench in case I got a chance to run.

"Well, well, if it ain't one of the Indian boys," Hank Whapnell said. "Where'd you get a screwed-up name like Dollarhide?"

"You know what they say about Indians, don't you?" Ron Seely asked.

They moved steadily closer and to tell you the truth I was scared. All three of them were bigger and three years older and worse, I couldn't fight my way out of a paper bag, or at least I was pretty sure I couldn't, but then I'd never been in a fight. I know, I know, what kind of guy hasn't been in at least one fight? Well, me, for one, because I was short and skinny, and the only reason I hadn't gotten beaten up before was because I could run like the wind, like a hare, like a cheetah, and now I was trapped and my streak was about to end.

The first punch came from Whapnell. It could have been worse. He aimed for my stomach and I turned to the side and while it hurt it didn't knock me down. What it did do is kind of hard to explain. Everything seemed to slow down like a movie in slow motion, and when he started his next punch, aimed at my nose, I waited till the last second, ducked, and he slammed his hand into the locker.

Whapnell was a lot better at cursing than he was at punching and he stood bent over holding his hand and screaming over and over, "my hand, my hand, I busted my hand " Well, that isn't exactly what he said, but if I put that in here, the book would be banned in Boston and every school library, even though you can hear the same swears in almost any movie.

But at least, with Whapnell standing in the way, the other two guys couldn't get to me, and I tried to keep Whapnell in front of me to block them, and that worked until suddenly Seely pushed him out of the way and tried to tackle me. I jumped straight up, grabbed the top of the locker and hauled myself upward, curling my legs, and Seely flew under me, and when I dropped back down, I landed on his head with both feet and he started screaming about a broken nose, and that's when I made a big mistake. I was feeling so good about having escaped, that I took my eye off Marty Minger. POW! Just like it says in the comic books, when somebody gets hit. But it doesn't hurt in the comic books and this punch caught me in the nose and it hurt. Suddenly I was bleeding all over my shirt, and before I could react, he hit me again and now my lip was bleeding and my nose hurt a lot.

Behind me, I heard Seely get up off the floor and now I was fighting for my life. My dad always says that the best thing to do when you're in a fight against more than one guy, is to get in a couple of hard shots and run. But they still had me cut off and my arms are so short I couldn't hit Minger without getting hit, and I didn't want to get hit again, because I was afraid I'd go down and then they could pound me as hard as they wanted.

But I could still duck and dodge and jump around and I could kick, and that's what I did. I even went a little nuts. I started screaming and kicking out at them and the first one I kicked was Minger because the other two were still moaning. I got him in the right shin and he howled, letting the ki-yi's out of him like a cartoon dog. And then I kicked him again, this time in the crotch, and he groaned and doubled over onto the floor. Whapnell started to get up and I kicked him in the stomach and he flopped back onto the floor. Then Seely came at me from behind but I heard him coming and I just doubled over and he went right over my back and slammed his head into the lockers. I jumped up onto the bench, tripped over my backpack, tumbled onto the floor, rolled, and got up running, only to slam smack into the great rounded belly of the football coach, Mr. Johnson.

"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted as he grabbed me by the head hole of my tee shirt. Everything stopped. Nobody said a word. "All right, all of you, up to the basins and get washed up." We trudged to the front of the locker room and washed up as best we could. Both my lip and my nose had stopped bleeding and I washed the blood off my face. Seely had a nasty cut on the back of his head and he had to hold a paper towel to it, but his nose had stopped bleeding. Mr. Johnson looked us over, nodded, and marched us down to the nurse's office.

It was an ugly trip, with everybody staring at us and kids pointing to the blood on our shirts.

The nurse, Mrs. Miller, a woman as soft and warm as a spring day, gave us a solid round of "my-mys" and began her examination while Mr. Johnson went for the principal.

She had her report ready when Mr. Johnson came back with Dr. Carlson.

"It doesn't look too desperate," she said. "Whapnell will need to have his hand x-rayed, and I think Seely will need some stitches in the back of his head. Two bloody noses, but neither one seems to be broken."

"Thank you, Doris," Dr. Carlson said, and then she turned and looked at us, shook her head, walked over, closed the door, and then turned to face us. I had never seen her close up before and I wondered if she was always so red in the face.

"Okay, then," she said, "who wants to go first?"

Silence.

She looked at me and I figured she had to know what had happened because Whapnell, Minger, and Seely were the biggest bullies in school and they'd all been thrown out of school at least once, and I'd never even been sent to the office. But if I said anything, sure as cereal gets soggy in milk these guys would come looking for me.

"Well, if no one is going to tell me what happened then I'll do the simplest thing. You're all suspended for two weeks, pending an expulsion hearing."

It wasn't fair. I think everybody in the room knew it wasn't fair. Worse, I knew all I had to do was speak up, and I really needed not to get suspended because my parents, who think that the most important thing anyone does is get an education, probably would take a dim view of their oldest son getting thrown out of school. In fact, I figured they'd ground me for life.

But of the two risks, I decided to face Dad rather than having to watch out for those bullies coming up behind me if I ratted them out. After all, I knew what those guys would do, but since I'd never been in a fight before, there was a chance that Dad might listen to my side of the story. The best part was that I wouldn't have to lie. I could tell the God's honest, straight-out truth about what had happened and I gotta tell you, I don't get to do that too often. All I could do was take the risk and hope I could explain it later.

"Still nothing to say?" She nodded. "Pick up your things and go home. You'll be hearing from me."

If getting suspended was unfair, the expulsion threat was even more unfair. Those three goons couldn't have cared less about getting expelled, and now all they had to do was wait till they could catch me alone and I'd be cooked like a missionary in a cannibal's pot. And I knew from the way they looked at me that it was only a matter of time.

Outside, in the hall, I turned toward the front of the building, where the buses parked, and the three thuglets headed for the parking lot.

The next surprise was that the track coach, Mr. Robinson, was waiting for me at my bus.

"You got a second, Charlie?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Heard you had a little trouble."

I nodded.

"Well, never mind that. I know what happened, so you don't have to say anything." He grinned. "I was looking through the times for the forty-yard run in gym class and I was hoping you might come out for track."

Now there was something I'd never even thought about. I mean, I was just a measly little freshman and only big guys played sports.

"You ran the fastest forty yards in the history of the school. In fact, you ran it as fast as a pro wide receiver. I think you could run the hundred and two-hundred meters. You interested?"

Of course I was interested, not only because of the prospect of being a star at something, but because after I told Dad about getting suspended I could tell him about this, and that would help take the sting out of getting tossed for two weeks or maybe longer. "When does it start?"

"Tryouts are next Thursday." He turned his clipboard face up, slipped a piece of paper from it, and handed it to me. "This gives you all the information about equipment and it has a place for your parents to sign. You get that back to me as soon as you can, okay?"

"Sure, Coach." I kind of shuffled my feet, thinking that maybe I had a way here to get my sentence reduced.

"Is there a problem?" he asked.

"I won't be able to make the tryouts, and my dad's not gonna be real happy about me getting tossed out."

"Let me see what I can do about that." He grinned. "After all it was three against one and Dr. Carlson's had plenty of trouble with those guys." He frowned "You're also probably wondering what might happen after school. I'll put the word out to all the cops on the Island."

Whoa, now there was a rare thought. The cops would be on my side? Weird. Very weird. Where we'd come from in upstate New York the cops had definitely not been on the side of the Indians.

"And keep your studies up."

"I will. My parents believe in education."

"I know," Coach Robinson said. "I already talked to your father. He's a straight-up kind of guy."

I couldn't think of anything to say. I had never thought of my father as anything more than my father. He was just Dad. What I did know was that you never, ever crossed him because then his eyes went blacker than black and his face froze and you knew without question that the world was about to end. It was why we'd come here. We'd heard that on Martha's Vineyard being an Indian didn't matter so much. Well, it turned out that wasn't quite true, but it was mostly true, and where it counted most, with the cops, it was altogether true. Even better, the Wampanoags had found us a place to live, and Dad started right away in the cabinet shop. He can do anything with wood, which was why Mr. Hart had driven all the way to New York to hire him.

Coach Robinson clapped me gently on the shoulder. "If your dad has any questions, tell him to give me a call."

"Thanks," I said.

"Gotta protect my next track star."

The bus ride home went smooth as silk. Everybody wanted to know what had happened and I just said I'd gotten into a fight with the thuglets and been suspended. It's an old rule. Cover your backside. Don't give anyone a reason to come after you, because you can't spend your life looking over your shoulder. I didn't think that up. Dad told me that. It's the way he deals with people. He's always friendly and fair and he works harder than ten men.

The only hitch is that my mother's father never got over her marrying a full-blooded Mohawk Indian. Her parents are both Irish, which explains how I ended up with blue eyes to go with my straight black Indian hair. My little brothers, John and Sam, have the same coal black eyes that Dad has, but their hair is kind of curly and sort of reddish brown.

Like all little brothers they can be a pain, but we get along pretty well. I think they're gonna be built more like my dad, real wide-bodies, whereas I take after my mother's side, skinny. Dad's not real tall at just over five-ten, but somehow he manages to look tall. To me he looks like a giant but then I'm only five-five which is the same height as my mother. But there's hope. Her father is over six feet and if I keep taking after her side of the family I could wind up taller than Dad. Wouldn't that be a rush!

But I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch. And anyway that sort of stuff really doesn't matter. As Dad says, "you are what you make of yourself." Sometimes it's hard to believe that, and worse, it means a lot of work, but as Dad says, "look ahead, always look ahead so you'll know what you have to do to get where you want to go."

The trouble with things like that is that you have to know where it is you want to go and to tell you the absolute truth, I don't have any idea where I want to go. I have trouble thinking as far ahead as the next day.

My two best friends, Pete and Tyler, had saved me a seat near the middle of the bus and walking just that few feet down the aisle felt like about a mile with everybody staring at me.

"Hey," Tyler said. "You okay?"

"Nothing serious." I sat down and Pete leaned in from the seat behind.

"I heard you kicked butt, man!"

I glanced around and with everybody listening I knew that whatever I said was gonna be all over the place minutes after the first kids got off the bus. And no matter what I said the bullies would not be happy. If I said I beat 'em up, well, they'd come after me. If I told the truth it'd make them look like idiots and guess who they were gonna blame? Probably not Arab terrorists, right?

"I don't really know how it happened," I said. "It was more like a bunch of accidents all at once."

That didn't make anyone on the bus happy, of course, but then I had my hide to think of, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't get that lucky a second time. On the other hand, if what the track coach had said was true, they probably wouldn't be able to catch me, either.

"Your nose looks pretty swollen," Tyler said. "Is it broken?"

"Mrs. Miller says it's okay."

"I heard Seely was covered in blood," Pete said.

"He had a cut on the back of his head," I said.

"How'd he get that?" Pete asked. "You punch him?"

"I think he fell," I said.

After it was clear that I either didn't have anything to say, or I was just unwilling to talk about it, the questions died out. But it was hard to talk about anything else and not until we got to West Tis did things begin to get back to normal. All I wanted to do was get home and get something to eat and look in the mirror and see how much damage Minger had done with his big hammy fists.

Instead, there was Mom waiting for me when I got off the bus, because, of course, the principal had already called her. She didn't look real happy.

"You want to wait till Dad comes home to explain this?"

We started walking up the long drive to the house. "It wasn't my fault," I said. "Three guys jumped me in the locker room."

"And one of them has a broken wrist and one of them had to have the back of his head stitched up. Is something wrong with this picture?"

"Mom, I got a lot of homework and I have to get all my assignments for the next week. Would it be okay if I waited till dinner to explain what happened? It's kind of complicated."

"Okay, fair enough. I can wait. You hungry?"

"Always."

"I made you a roast beef sandwich and there's plenty of milk."

"Thanks." I smiled. She sure knew how to take care of a guy. "There's some good news, too," I said, "But I'll save that too, if it's okay."

"It's okay." She looked around at me. "How's the nose?"

"It's sore, but it's okay."

She stopped me and made me turn as she examined the nose and lip. "You'll heal," she said. "I've certainly seen a lot worse."

"Can I take my sandwich and milk upstairs?"

"Just make sure to bring the plate and glass back down."

"I will."

If it seems like Mom cut me a lot of slack, there was a reason. I told you. I just never got into trouble, and the thing is, it pays to have a clean record.

And, as it turns out, I had a new reputation. Sam and John came into my room as I was eating my sandwich and just stared at me with big round eyes. It was as if they were looking at a complete stranger.

"Did you really do it?" Sam asked. He was nine to John's seven and a little more bold.

"It was mostly an accident," I said.

"We heard they had to go the hospital," Sam said.

News travels fast on the Island, especially in the off-season when there are only about fifteen thousand people, but this had set an all-time record. I shrugged. "It's not a big deal," I said.

"How'd you do it, Charlie?" John asked.

I laughed. "You guys got the wrong idea. One of them tried to punch me and hit the locker. Another one tripped and banged his head on the lockers and then he got under my feet when I tried to get away. The other guy I kicked in the shin and then in the crotch."

You could see the disappointment wash over them like an incoming tide. It wasn't what they had in mind, but I wasn't about to make stuff up.

"What's Dad gonna say?" Sam asked.

I shrugged.

"He's probably gonna be mad," John said. "He always gets mad at me when I get into fights."

"That's 'cause you lose your temper," Sam said.

"No, it's 'cause you get into fights," I said.

"You think you'll get grounded?" Sam asked.

"Got me," I said, thinking more and more that there was no way I was gonna skate free on this, but still holding out hope. It's just the way I look at things. I figure the odds for things going wrong are the same as for stuff coming out right, so you might as well look on the bright side because bad thinking will always drag you down. Both Mom and Dad are positive that way and they've gone through enough bad stuff to sink an ocean trawler.

If that sounds like I was trying to talk myself into something, well, you're right. The way it really looked was that nearly all the adults I couldn't ignore had ganged up on me and now I was gonna pay.

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