Dairy Queen

by Murdock, Catherine Gilbert

• ISBN13: 9780618683079
• ISBN10: 0618683070
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-22
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. Harsh words indeed, from Brian Nelson of all people. But, D. J. can't help admitting, maybe he's right. When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. Stuff like why her best friend, Amber, isn't so friendly anymore. Or why her little brother, Curtis, never opens his mouth. Why her mom has two jobs and a big secret. Why her college-football-star brothers won't even call home. Why her dad would go ballistic if she tried out for the high school football team herself. And why Brian is so, so out of her league. When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. Welcome to the summer that fifteen-year-old D. J. Schwenk of Red Bend, Wisconsin, learns to talk, and ends up having an awful lot of stuff to say.

Author Biography

Catherine Gilbert Murdock lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children. For more information please visit www.catherinemurdock.com.

Table of Contents

Schwenk Farm	1	(5)
Put to Work	6	(10)
Brian Bails	16	(11)
Amber	27	(8)
Back to Normal, More or Less	35	(7)
Jimmy Ott Steps In	42	(10)
Sunday	52	(9)
People Who Are Crazy and Need to Have Their Heads Examined	61	(6)
Dairy Queen	67	(7)
Wash Day	74	(7)
Training	81	(8)
The Long Weekend	89	(12)
Talk	101	(8)
Talk Back	109	(9)
Epiphany	118	(12)
Heifers Don't Play Football	130	(9)
Family Secrets	139	(9)
D.J. Goes to Town	148	(7)
The Opposite of Flirting	155	(9)
The Most Disgusting Thing I've Ever Heard Of	164	(8)
Whowever Said Love Was Fun?	172	(12)
The Banquet	184	(13)
Mom	197	(7)
Welcome to Schwenksville	204	(7)
Practice Begins	211	(10)
Dog Days	221	(8)
Making the Team	229	(13)
The Scrimmage	242	(10)
That's My Ball	252	(14)
Brian Nelson	266	(8)
The End	274

Excerpts

This whole enormous deal wouldn't have happened, none of it, if Dad hadn't messed up his hip moving the manure spreader. Some people laugh at that, like Brian did. The first time I said Manure Spreader he bent in half, he was laughing so hard. Which would have been hilariously funny except that it wasn't. I tried to explain how important a manure spreader is, but it only made him laugh harder, in this really obnoxious way he has sometimes, and besides, you're probably laughing now too. So what. I know where your milk comes from, and your hamburgers. I'll always remember the day it all started because Joe Namath was so sick. Dad names all his cows after football players. It's pretty funny, actually, going to the 4-H fair, where they list the cows by farm and name. Right there next to "Happy Valley Buttercup" is "Schwenk Walter Payton," because none of my grandpas or great-grandpas could ever come with up a name for our place better than boring old "Schwenk Farm." Joe Namath was the only one left from the year Dad named the cows after Jets players, which I guess is kind of fitting in a way, seeing how important the real Joe Namath was and all. Our Joe was eleven years old, which is ancient for a cow, but she was such a good milker and calver we couldn't help but keep her. These past few weeks, though, she'd really started failing, and on this morning she wasn't even at the gate with the other cows waiting for me, she was still lying down in the pasture, and I had to help her to stand up and everything, which is pretty hard because she weighs about a ton, and she was really limping going down to the barn, and her eyes were looking all tired. I milked her first so she could lie down again, which she did right away. Then when milking was over I left her right where she was in the barn, and she didn't even look like she minded. Smut couldn't figure out what I was doing and she wouldn't come with me to take the cows back to pasture-she just stood there in the barn, chewing on her slimy old football and waiting for me to figure out I'd forgotten one of them. Finally she came, just so she could race me back home like she always does, and block me the way Win taught her. Smut was his dog, but now that he's not talking to Dad anymore, or to me, or ever coming home again it seems like, I guess now she's mine. When I went in for breakfast Curtis was reading the sports section and eating something that looked kind of square and flat and black. Like roofing shingles. Curtis will eat anything because he's growing so much. Once he complained about burnt scrambled eggs, but other than that he just shovels it in. Which makes me look like I'm being all picky about stuff that, trust me, is pretty gross. Dad handed me a plate and shuffled back to the stove with his walker. When things got really bad last winter with his hip and Mom working two jobs and me doing all the farm work because you can't milk thirty-two cows with a walker, Dad decided to chip in by taking over the kitchen. But he never said, "I'm going to start cooking" or "I'm not too good at this, how could I do it better?" or anything like that. He just started putting food in front of us and then yelling at us if we said anything, no matter how bad it looked. Like now. "It's French toast," Dad said like it was totally obvious. He hadn't shaved in a while, I noticed, and his forehead was white the way it'll always be from all