Excerpt from Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Beneath the wide mountain skies we could be whoever we wanted—Luke and Bo Duke, Starbuck and Apollo, the Lone Ranger and Tonto—playing our parts without inhibition, inventing our own boyhood games away from the critical gaze of adults. Rifle Range, Deer Patrol, Houdini. We were free to roam wherever we wanted—in my case, so long as I was home and scrubbed up in time for dinner—but also we had our own base, a secret spot you reached by pushing through a thicket of mountain laurel. That was where we built our secret fort, mostly from stuff we scavenged from the abandoned blueberry pickers' huts. We kept supplies there and plunked soda cans with my Red Ryder BB gun, an air rifle named for that comic strip cowboy, designed to look like a Winchester rifle. The same kind of gun you see in the movie A Christmas Story, the one Ralphie dreams about—You'll shoot your eye out, kid!—only mine didn't have a compass in the stock or a thing to tell the time.

The Red Ryder was our weapon of choice for Deer Patrol but as well as the BB gun we had a hunting knife with a scrimshaw handle and a Swiss Army knife. One time we crafted a spear from a piece of bamboo we took from Effy Scott's yard, the tomato plant collapsing under the weight of green fruit. We used rubber bands and a big nail we found at one of the old cement works. We took everything up to the Swangums to piece our weapon together and spent a lot of time making intricate adjustments, weighting the thing with small stones inside for the right sort of balance, ensuring the nail was tight enough to the bamboo that it wouldn't deflect when it met with its target. We wanted to be sure the point of the spear would embed. It took us an hour or more but the conclusion of the whole episode was over in just a few seconds.

Matthew had hold of the spear when we agreed it was ready and he told me to run, just that one word barked out like I'd made him angry for no particular reason.

What?

Run! he repeated, higher-pitched this time.

He had started to get a sense of the spear's weight, holding it lightly at his shoulder and feeling for the right sort of grip, fingers fluttering as if playing the flute.

I find it hard now to believe his intention took me so long to discern. I stood there awkwardly, unsure what to do, while Matthew closed one eye and started to line me up along the shaft of the spear, this spear we had made together. I really do think it took me three or four seconds before everything finally clicked.

And I ran.

I ran, not looking back until I heard the rippling sound it made pushing its knuckled length through the air, turning just in time to glimpse the spear a moment before it sunk its nose into my calf. When it dug in, it dug in far enough that it stayed there for seven or eight paces as I started to slow, the tail of the spear rattling on the stony ground below.

Now comes the hardest part of the story for me to relate to in adulthood and yet I'm certain this actually happened. I turned and picked up the spear, which had now disengaged from my leg a few yards behind me, and took the thing back to him. Like some kind of bird dog.

Matthew, looking immensely proud, reached out with both hands, palms facing skyward. Closing his fists around the shaft, he flexed the thing, gave it a slight and single shake. It was a good spear. It had flown true. Twenty, thirty yards.

He rested our weapon against a tree, gripped me by the shoulders and turned me around while whistling one of those long dying notes like when you read how much money some lucky guy has just won on the lottery.

When I twisted to peer over my shoulder, down past my shorts, I saw the hole in my calf and the blood. Not so much blood but enough to trickle down into the heel of my sneaker.

Cool wound, he said.

I looked over at the spear. The nail at its tip was pretty rusty and I don't remember if I knew about tetanus back then but I knew I should probably tell someone what happened. Although I suppose the reason I didn't speaks volumes about me as a kid. I would never have said anything because I felt ashamed, worried it was me who would get in trouble. So instead of telling anyone, I wore long pants for a week and fretted over how I would answer the question if somebody asked me why. Although why anyone would have asked me why I was wearing long pants, I have no idea.

Excerpted from Grist Mill Road by Christopher J Yates. Copyright © 2018 by Christopher J Yates. Excerpted by permission of Picador. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.