Holes

Holt Rinehart and Winston

Excerpt

Stanley Yelnats was the only passenger on the bus, not counting the driver orthe guard. The guard sat next to the driver with his seat turned around facingStanley. A rifle lay across his lap.

Stanley was sitting about ten rows back, handcuffed to his armrest. His backpacklay on the seat next to him. It contained his toothbrush, toothpaste, and a boxof stationary his mother had given him. He'd promised to write to her at leastonce a week.

He looked out the window, although there wasn't much to see?mostly fields ofhay and cotton. He was on a long bus ride to nowhere. The bus wasn'tair-conditioned, and the hot heavy air was almost as stifling as the handcuffs.

Stanley and his parents had tried to pretend that he was just going away to campfor a while, just like rich kids do. When Stanley was younger he used to playwith stuffed animals, and pretend the animals were at camp. Camp Fun and Gameshe called it. Sometimes he'd have them play soccer with a marble. Other timesthey'd run an obstacle course, or go bungee jumping off a table, tied to brokenrubber bands. Now Stanley tried to pretend he was going to Camp Fun and Games.Maybe he'd make some friends, he thought. At least he'd get to swim in the lake.

He didn't have any friends at home. He was overweight and the kids at his middleschool often teased him about his size. Even his teachers sometimes made cruelcomments without realizing it. On his last day of school, his math teacher, Mrs.Bell, taught ratios. As an example, she chose the heaviest kid in the class andthe lightest kid in the class, and had them weigh themselves. Stanley weighedthree times as much as the other boy. Mrs. Bell wrote the ratio on the board,3:1, unaware of how much embarrassment she had caused both of them.

Stanley was arrested later that day.

He looked at the guard who sat slumped in his seat and wondered of he had fallenasleep. The guard was wearing sunglasses, so Stanley couldn't see his eyes.

Stanley was not a bad kid. He was innocent of the crime for which he wasconvicted. He'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was all because of hisno-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!

He smiled. It was a family joke. Whenever anything went wrong, they alwaysblamed Stanley's no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!

Supposedly, he had a great-great-grandfather who had stolen a pig fromone-legged Gypsy, and she put a curse on him and all his descendants. Stanleyand his parents didn't believe in curses, of course, but whenever anything wentwrong, it felt good to be able to blame someone.

Things went wrong a lot. They always seemed to be in the wrong place at thewrong time.

He looked out the window at the vast emptiness. He watched the rise and fall ofa telephone wire. In his mind he could hear his father's gruff voice softlysinging tohim.

"If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,
"The bark on the tree was just a little bit softer."
"While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
He cries to the moo?oo?oon,
"If only, if only."

It was a song his father used to sing to him. The melody was sweet and sad, butStanley's favorite part was when his father would howl the word "moon".

The bus hit a small bump and the guard sat up, instantly alert.

Stanley's father was an inventor. To be a successful inventor you need threethings: intelligence, perseverance, and just a little bit of luck.

Stanley's father was smart and had a lot of perseverance. Once he started aproject he would work on it for years, often going days without sleep. He justnever had any luck.

Every time an experiment failed, Stanley could hear him cursing hisdirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.

Stanley's father was also named Stanley Yelnats. Stanley's father's full namewas Stanley Yelnats III. Our Stanley is Stanley Yelnats IV.

Everyone in his family had always liked the fact that "Stanley Yelnats" wasspelled the same frontward and backward. So they kept naming their sons Stanley.Stanley was an only child, as was every other Stanley Yelnats before him.

All of them had something else in common. Despite their awful luck, they alwaysremained hopeful. As Stanley's father liked to say, " I learned from failure."

But perhaps that was part of the curse as well. If Stanley and his fatherweren't always hopeful, then it wouldn't hurt so much every time their hopeswere crushed.

"Not every Stanley Yelnats has been a failure," Stanley's mother often pointedout, whenever Stanley or his father became so discouraged that they actuallystarted to believe in the curse. The first Stanley Yelnats, Stanley'sgreat-grandfather, had made a fortune in the stock market. "He couldn't havebeen too unlucky."

At such times she neglected to mention the bad luck that befell the firstStanley Yelnats. He lost his entire fortune when he was moving from New York toCalifornia. His stagecoach was robbed by the outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow.

If it weren't for that, Stanley's family would now be living in a mansion on abeach in California. Instead, they were crammed in a tiny apartment that smelledof burning rubber and foot odor.

"If only, if only...

The apartment smelled the way it did because Stanley's father was trying toinvent a way to recycle old sneakers. "The first person who finds a use for oldsneakers, " he said, "will be a very rich man."

It was this lastest project that led to Stanley's arrest.

The bus ride became increasingly bumpy because the road was no longer paved.

Actually, Stanley had been impressed when he first found out that isgreat-grandfather was robbed by Kissin' Kate Barlow. True, he would havepreferred living on the beach in California, but it was still kind of cool tohave someone in your family robbed by a famous outlaw.

Kate Barlow didn't actually kiss Stanley's great-grandfather. That would havebeen really cool, but she only kissed the men she killed. Instead, she robbedhim and left him stranded in the middle of the desert.

"He was lucky to have survived," Stanley's mother was quick to point out.

The bus was slowing down. The guard grunted as he stretched out his arms.

"Welcome Camp Green Lake," said the driver.

Stanley looked out the dirty window. He couldn't see a lake. And hardly anythingwas green.

Continues...

Excerpted from Holesby Louis Sachar Copyright © 2002 by Louis Sachar. Excerpted by permission.
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