Ah, summer in Yawnee Valley! Welcome, welcome. Smell the wildflowers blooming in the woods! Smell the cows, who bend down with hungry lips to tear those wildflowers from their stems, chewing them, swallowing them, and regurgitating them, up and down, to and fro, from mouth to stomach to mouth again, for hours and hours, till their petals, pistils, and stamens have degraded into cud, which the cows finally digest. Sorry! That was disgusting. But hey, the flowers have nice names! Peaseblossom and thistle, broom and leek. Cowslips, hawthorn, eglantine. And, of course, hearts-ease, known too as Johnny-jump-up, or love-in-idleness, or the field violet.
If you've read the first two books in this series, The Terrible Two and The Terrible Two Get Worse, you know the field violet is a special kind of flower. The field violet is the state flower. And if you know that, then you probably know it's illegal to pick them. It's not like you'd get sent to jail. Still, it's frowned upon. You could get in trouble.
Of course, trouble never stopped these two, and it probably never will.
That's a lot of violets!
"One of us smells like a turkey," said Miles. (He's the one on the right.)
"What?" said Niles. (He's the other one, the one on the left.)
"Like a turkey," said Miles. "Like Thanksgiving dinner. One of us smells like Thanksgiving dinner."
"Oh," said Niles. "Yeah. That's you."
"What?" said Miles. "How do you know it's me?"
Niles pointed to a couple of places on Miles's outfit. "You're wearing sage. And leeks. You rub that stuff on a turkey."
"You could have warned me!" said Miles.
"I said just do violets."
It's true. Niles had said that. But early that morning, when they were scrounging flowers in the forest for camouflage, Miles had thought it'd be cool to have some variety. A little white. A couple shades of purple. So he'd picked some leeks and some sage and even some wild garlic. Now that he was belly down in a violet patch, breathing hard and baking in the midday sun, Miles was having regrets.
When Miles had regrets, he tended to act as if he had no regrets.
"Well, I still think it looks good," said Miles.
"I even think it smells good," said Niles. "I like turkey."
"Then what the heck are we arguing about?"
"I didn't think we were arguing."
"You said I smelled like a turkey!"
"You said you smelled like a turkey," said Niles. "I never said anything!"
"How can you say that, when you're saying something right now!"
They continued to argue about whether they were arguing.
Nearby, a branch broke.
A boy cursed. Another boy laughed.
Miles and Niles both shut their mouths.
They buried their heads in the flowers so they blended in with the field, which was on a little hill that overlooked a circle of trees. Miles and Niles crawled forward and took up a post behind a big piece of granite. From there, they could spy on the grove.
There was trash in the grove—crushed cans and magazines torn in half, a crumpled sweatshirt sinking into a mud puddle. An old knife stuck out from a stump. Crudely painted signs were nailed into tree trunks.
The voices in the woods grew louder. Someone delivered the punch line to a bad joke. A rude song was sung badly. And then three boys burst into the clearing, cackling, shoving, and kicking.
Papa Company.
Two of the boys were hard to tell apart. They wore identical olive drab pants and identical olive drab T-shirts, with little identical olive side caps smashed onto their identical heads. (They were identical twins.)
Miles and Niles kept their eyes on the third boy: the tallest boy, the biggest boy, the boy who was swinging a rusty cage with his left arm.
This boy wore a bunch of heavy military medals pinned to his T-shirt. The decorations pulled his collar down from his neck and made the whole shirt sag. He looked ridiculous, but the rest of Papa Company (all two of them) didn't think so. His medals demanded respect. They were symbols of power. (They had been purchased, five for three bucks, at a thrift store in downtown Yawnee Valley.)
The leader of Papa Company hung the cage from a low branch at the edge of the clearing. It rattled and shook.
The cage had something inside it.
The thing inside it shrieked.
Up at the rock, Miles craned his head forward and squinted. He wanted to see what was in the cage.
A dark shape flitted around and banged against the metal. The members of Papa Company gathered around and laughed. One poked a stick through the bars. There was more shrieking, some chattering, and a few frantic clicks.
Niles put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "What is it?"
"I think," whispered Miles, "I think it's a squirrel."
"Dumb squirrel," said a boy, down in the grove.
"Yep, it's a squirrel," said Miles.
The leader of Papa Company got bored with the squirrel. He crossed the clearing, pulled the knife from the stump, then plunged it back into the stump.
This was some kind of signal.
The other two boys got quiet.
The leader pointed to one of them.
"Raise the flag, Dugout."
"Yes, sir, Major Barkin, sir," said Dugout, whose real name was Daniel.
"Good," said Major Barkin, whose real name was Josh Barkin. (If you've read the first two books in this series, you probably already figured that out.)
Dugout removed a folded flag from his backpack. Papa Company watched solemnly as he climbed a big oak tree, unfurled the flag, and draped it over a big bough.
The flag showed the white skeleton of a rattlesnake on an all-black field.
Up in his hiding place among the violets, Miles grinned at Niles and raised two fingers in the air.
Niles grinned back and touched his fingertips to his friend's.
Now. If you've read the first two books in the series, you know what's going to happen next. And if you haven't, here's the deal: Josh Barkin and his crew are about to get pranked.