Hoot

“Roy knew the rules against fighting on the bus, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He clenched his right fist and brought it up blindly over his shoulder, as hard as he could. The punch landed on something moist and rubbery. There was a gargled cry; then Dana’s hands fell away from Roy’s neck. Panting, Roy bolted for the door of the bus.”

Roy displays courage and determination. The running boy’s resolve makes Roy want to find him and learn more, but Dana has other plans. Roy solves the dilemma by breaking the rules. He hits Dana and pushes his way off the bus. For Roy, some things are more important than bullies and bureaucracy. He does not yet know what those things are, but his instincts tell him to follow the running boy and find out.

“On one wall of Roy’s bedroom was a poster from the Livingston rodeo that showed a cowboy riding a ferocious humpbacked bull. The cowboy held one hand high in the air, and his hat was flying off his head. Every night before turning off the lights, Roy would lie on his pillow and stare at the poster, imagining that he was the sinewy young bull rider in the picture. Eight or nine seconds was an eternity on top of an angry bull, but Roy imagined himself hanging on so tightly that the animal couldn’t shake him no matter how furiously it tried. The seconds would tick by until finally the bull would sink to its knees in exhaustion. Then Roy would calmly climb off, waving to the roaring crowd. That’s how he played the scene in his mind.”

Roy’s fantasy life makes him the hero in a spectacularly difficult situation. Heroism is a common yearning for both children and adults. Roy misses Montana, and the rodeo symbolizes the heroic beauty of the mountainous state, but his fantasies hint at his courage and determination. He wants to force his problems to bow down to him.

“Garrett said, ‘Now they think you’re a tough guy.’ ‘Who does? Why?’ Roy didn’t want to be thought of as tough. He didn’t particularly want to be thought of at all. He just wanted to blend in quietly and not be noticed, like a bug on a riverbank. ‘They think you’re tough,’ Garrett went on. ‘Nobody’s ever slugged a Matherson before.’”

Roy hit the bully Dana in the nose to escape him. Now Roy is something of a hero among his schoolmates. Like many children, he wants to slip through the school day and avoid trouble. Now he is a public figure and cannot hide.

“‘Well, I weigh exactly ninety-four pounds,’ Roy said, ‘and I’ll bet you’re at least a hundred and five…’ One of Beatrice’s friends giggled, and Beatrice shot her a scowl. ‘…which means you could probably knock me around the cafeteria all day long. But it wouldn’t prove a darn thing,’ Roy said. ‘Next time you’ve got a problem just tell me, and then we’ll sit down and talk about it like civilized human beings. Okay?’”

Roy has a Beatrice problem. She has a violent temper. She has already pushed him around and warned him to stay away from the running boy. After apologizing for shoving past her on the day he escaped the school bus, Roy astutely appeals to Beatrice’s sense of civility—which, he hopes, will encourage her to treat him with more respect.

“Roy didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t know how far the bears had gone, or whether they might come back to stalk him. For two hours and twenty-two minutes Roy remained as stationary as a plaster statue on that mountainside, until one of his teachers found him and led him safely back to the group. So Roy was extremely good at not moving, especially when he was scared.”

Roy’s boyhood experiences in Montana have prepared him for the new dangers he faces in Florida. Then, it was grizzly bears; now, it is poisonous snakes. The same adventurous urges that get him into trouble also teach him powerful lessons about how to protect himself. Though still a child, Roy is better prepared than others his age.

“‘I’m not running away. Whatever happens just happens.’ Roy wasn’t trying to act cool. He’d thought a lot about the Dana situation. Another confrontation seemed inevitable, and part of him simply wanted to get it over with. He wasn’t cocky, but he had a stubborn streak of pride. He had no intention of spending the rest of the year cowering in the rest room or sneaking through the halls just to avoid some dumb bully.”

Not merely pride but independence of mind typify Roy’s thinking. Even when he does not know what to do, Roy chooses to ride out the problem on his own. Somehow, he knows he will come out safe in the end. His is a tough-minded, surprisingly grown-up attitude. He may not win every battle, but he can endure them all and keep going.

“‘Eberhardt, why do you care about this kid?’ It was a good question, and Roy wasn’t certain he could put the answer into words. There was something about the look on the boy’s face when he went running past the school bus those days; something urgent and determined and unforgettable.”

Roy, who dreams of rodeo heroes and the big mountains of Montana, finds in the running boy a person who displays courage, determination, and smarts. All the things wrong with him—no shoes, skipping school, dirty clothes—somehow enhance the impression that he is someone on a mission, a person who will go to great lengths to achieve something. The running boy is not that far from a rodeo hero or any hero who might inspire Roy to reach beyond his tedious life of homework and bullies.

“You’re going to be an unemployed foreman if anything like this happens again. Mother Paula’s is a publicly traded company with a global reputation to protect. This is not the sort of attention that’s beneficial to our image. Do you understand?”

Mother Paula’s vice president Chuck Muckle berates Curly for the construction delays. He does not care that a police officer fell asleep and had his car spray-painted, or that the weather suddenly is terrible. It is Curly’s responsibility to fix things. This attitude signals that the company will not care about the fate of a few owls. Muckle’s tirade transfers his incentives onto Curly, who must become, more than ever, the brawn behind the corporation’s plans.

“His final option was to stand and fight. Roy was a practical boy; he knew the odds were overwhelmingly against him. He had quickness and brains on his side, but Dana was big enough to crush him like a grape.”

Already beaten up by Dana, Roy is trapped in a no-win situation where he will suffer further injury whether or not he stands up for himself. Roy’s great strength is his ability to evaluate a problem. Instead of panicking, he considers carefully his options and uses his brain to solve problems his body cannot.

“‘See, I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt them dogs—just rile ‘em up.’ ‘Dogs do not like snakes,’ Beatrice explained. ‘Makes ‘em freak out. Bark and howl and run around in circles,’ her stepbrother said. ‘I knew the trainer would drag ‘em outta here soon as he saw the cottonmouths. Those Rottweilers ain’t cheap.’”

Mullet displays one of his ethical rules. He never harms anyone or anything. All the pranks he has played on the construction site injure no one physically. His goal is to protect the owls. In doing so, he does not hurt the dogs; he does not hurt the snakes; he does not hurt the humans. His vandalism is high-minded and carefully thought out.

“Roy stood rooted in the center of the road. He had an important decision to make, and quickly. From one direction came the police car; running in the other direction were his two friends….Well, the closest things to friends that he had in Coconut Cove. Roy drew a deep breath and dashed after them.”

Though he is not rebellious, Roy’s curiosity and sense of right and wrong have caused him trouble. He must choose between making things right with his family and community and protecting the only people he really cares about in Coconut Cove. His sudden decision to run from the police commits him to seeing things through by helping the truant-vandal Mullet. He crosses the line, at least for a moment, and finds himself on the bad side of the law but the good side of his heart.

“Roy didn’t understand how a mother could kick her own child out of her life, but he knew such tragic things occurred. He’d heard of fathers who acted the same way. It was depressing to think about.”

Roy straddles two common worlds: the orderly, proper world of law-abiding families like his own, and the disordered, sometimes criminal world of broken and conflicted families. Because he does not fully understand the suffering, betrayals, and lies that complicate Beatrice’s world, he does not know how to respond appropriately and helpfully to her situation and that of her runaway brother. Beatrice’s world is a new experience for him.

“‘How would you and Mom like it,’ Roy pressed on, ‘if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was “Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it’s no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.” How would you feel about that?’”

To his father, Roy makes the story’s chief moral argument, that people should not damage other creatures’ lives just for human convenience. Roy’s father understands this dilemma and how hard it is to fix such problems. He respects his son’s ethical concerns, but he knows these things do not always turn out for the best. Still, Roy has started his father thinking.

“All he had to do was settle the argument between his heart and his brain.”

Roy’s mother sympathizes with her boy’s plight. She tells him that sometimes logic and feelings conflict. Roy is relieved to hear her supportive words, and he understands what she means. The hard part, though, remains: how to navigate between reason and compassion.

“As Roy rode away on his bike, he pondered the possibility that Mullet Fingers was better off roaming the woods than living at home with a witch for a mother. Roy wondered what made a grownup turn out so ill-tempered and obnoxious.”

Roy suddenly sees grown-ups in a different light. They are no longer large, authoritative figures. They are flawed and, sometimes, ugly in their behavior. Facing that fact squarely gives Roy a new, if ironic, sense of confidence. He is now a little bit better at facing adults’ disapproval; he is a little bit more like Mullet.

“‘Ever since I was little,’ Mullet Fingers said, ‘I’ve been watchin’ this place disappear—the piney woods, the scrub, the creeks, the glades. Even the beaches, man—they put up all these giant hotels and only goober tourists are allowed. It really sucks.’”

Mullet echoes the anguish of every environmentalist. Humans often destroy ecosystems and kill creatures just to make money. Mullet may be a vandal, but his viewpoint is honorable and his heart is in the right place. His stand against the construction site may be a lost cause, but it is a noble fight that inspires Roy because Mullet at least tries to do something about the harm people inflict on their world.

“Roy felt a strange mixture of apprehension and excitement. Part of him was worried about the tactics used by Beatrice’s stepbrother, and part of him was rooting for the kid.”

He does not want to be an outlaw, but something about Mullet’s defiant plans to save the owls appeals to Roy’s sense of rightness and of doing something worthwhile in a world blind to its cruelty. This is the same feeling he had at the outset when he first saw Mullet dashing along a street, over walls, and through backyards: This kid is doing something important, even if it breaks the rules.

“‘Maybe someday I’ll go back to school,’ the boy went on, ‘but for now I’m ‘bout as smart as I need to be. Maybe I can’t do algebra or say ‘Nice poodle’ in French or tell you who discovered Brazil, but I can make a fire with two dry sticks and a rock. I can climb a coconut palm and get me enough fresh milk to last a month […]’”

Like Roy, Mullet has a practical mind, but, unlike Roy, he is consciously using it in a grand cause, learning what he needs to know in the process. It is a way of life foreign to Roy, yet somehow, he recognizes in Mullet a kindred spirit—a boy who does what he must to resolve the problems he faces.

“Roy still hadn’t settled the argument between his brain and his heart. Surely there had to be a way for him to help the birds—and Beatrice’s stepbrother—without breaking the law. He needed to come up with a plan.”

Roy is not willing to become an outlaw. For one thing, it would break his mother’s heart. Besides, as much as he cannot win a fistfight against Dana, he also cannot win a direct attack against the restaurant corporation. He needs to use his brains to outsmart both opponents.

“Although the airboat was very fast, the ride across the shallows was like gliding on silk. Again Roy was astounded by the immense flatness of the terrain, the lush horizons, and the exotic abundance of life. Once you got away from all the jillions of people, Florida was just as wild as Montana.”

Roy is beginning to appreciate the wonders of Florida. It is completely different from the mountainous grandeur of Montana, yet it has an allure all its own. Just because a place does not remind him of his favorite locale, that does not mean the place is worthless—far from it. Each bit of wilderness has its beauty that deserves admiration and protection.

“That night, lying in bed, Roy felt a stronger connection to Mullet Fingers, and a better understanding of the boy’s private crusade against the pancake house. It wasn’t just about the owls, it was about everything—all the birds and animals, all the wild places that were in danger of being wiped out. No wonder the kid was mad, Roy thought, and no wonder he was so determined.”

Roy’s trip on an airboat shows him the real beauty of wild Florida, now threatened by too many people and their endless construction projects. He realizes why he has been drawn to Mullet. His daring acts and heroic manner are based on important values worth fighting for—worth Roy fighting for.

“Roy didn’t look back and he didn’t slow down. He pedaled as fast as he could, his arms taut and his legs burning. He wouldn’t stop until he reached the crest of his imaginary Montana mountain and coasted downhill into the coolness of the valley.”

Roy escapes from Curly, who caught him feeding crickets to the owls. He is not really in trouble—it is Curly who needs to keep the owl problem secret—but he is thrilled to commit an act that even vaguely resembles the daring of Mullet’s vandalism. Roy’s need to do something important, even heroic, begins to fulfill itself as he takes on the challenge of defending the owls. He has found his worthy cause.

“Until that moment, Officer David Delinko had been so busy worrying about solving the Mother Paula’s case and saving his own career that he hadn’t thought much about anything else. Now he understood what was going to happen to the little owls if he did his job properly, and it weighted him with an aching and unshakeable sorrow.”

Delinko meets a family of burrowing owls and realizes that the construction equipment he is protecting will soon bury the owls alive. He is not very bright, but he shares human compassion for innocent creatures. Suddenly, he shares Roy’s moral quandary: Should he obey his superiors or step in to defend the owls?