The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting Page 6

  You thought she was cruel and unfeeling? Had a heart of stone, and we’re talking about absolute granite? Well, hang on and stand by for this next piece of news.

  No sooner had Doom and Gloom, the buzzards, departed the scene than Sally May came out of the house, passed through the yard gate, said something nice and kind and totally inappropriate to her stupid cat, hiked up the hill to the storage tank, and looked down at me.

  And yes, I did rise to the occasion and did give her the Look of Maximum Woe and Misery. And thumped my tail many times. And summoned up the little groaning sound that I use only on very special occasions.

  And by George, it worked!

  “All right, Hank McNasty, I surrender. I hung tough on everything but the buzzards, and that was too much, even for me. Why, if someone from the church drove up . . .”

  She placed her hands on her hips and leaned down, so that I couldn’t possibly miss the, yikes, stern lines on her face.

  “If I let you in my house, will you act civilized?”

  Oh yes, ma’am.

  “Are you capable of being rational and sane and civilized for a few hours?”

  Oh yes, ma’am, on my Solemn Cowdog Oath!

  She raised a clenched fist. “And buddy, if you barf on my clean floors, if you chew on my sofa, if you wet on my carpet, YOU WILL . . .”

  I held my breath, waiting for her to finish that terrible sentence. What would it be? Marched outside and shot? Torn to shreds and pieces? Fed to the crows? Barbecued slowly over mesquite coals?

  “YOU WILL REGRET IT!”

  Whew! That was an acceptable risk. I could go for that.

  You bet, she had my Most Solemn Cowdog Oath that I would never, never do any of the so forth, never ever. But if I did, through some freakish act of nature, I would most certainly regret it.

  With all my heart.

  And soul.

  And liver.

  Forever.

  But of course, the odds against such a thing ever happening were infantassible. Sally May was taking no risk whatsoever, almost no risk at all.

  She dropped her cleansed fish, which I was very happy to see because, believe it or not, she had actually punched me in the nose on several occasions, with that very same . . .

  Did I say “cleansed fish”? I meant clenched fish.

  Cleansed fist.

  Clenched fitch.

  Her upraised hand contracted upon itself so as to form a deadly weapon, such as a club.

  She dropped her cleansed fish and straightened up, much to my relief, and spoke to me in a kinder tone of voice.

  “I shouldn’t do this. I know what will happen. You can’t be trusted. But what’s a poor woman to do? God gave me a heart and a conscience.” She lifted her eyes toward the sky. “Thank you, Lord . . . I guess.” Back to me. “Now, can you walk to the house or do I have to carry you?”

  Well, I could have probably . . . that is, being carried sounded pretty good to me, and after all, I was in a weakened, swollen condition, and if it was all the same to her, well, being carried would be fine.

  I gave her Very Sad Eyes and Slow Wags, as if to say, “Walking is out of the question, I hate to be such a burden, I really do, but maybe you ought to, uh, carry me, so to speak.”

  “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” she said. Then she bent over, wrapped her hands around my chest, picked me up with a loud groan, and began staggering down the hill.

  I felt terrible about it.

  We made it to the yard gate. There, she set me down, leaned against the gatepost, and gasped for breath.

  Between gasps, she said, “How could you weigh so much?”

  It was all that poison, no doubt. Rattlesnake poison is very heavy.

  “Well, can you walk the rest of the way?”

  I, uh, thought that one over—ran my gaze to the back door of the house and calculated the distance involved and . . . no, as much as I hated being a burden and an invalid, my old legs just couldn’t carry me that far.

  Boy, I hated that.

  When she’d caught her breath, she picked me up again and off we went toward the house—she staggering and grunting under her terrible burden, and I with all four legs pointed straight east.

  We passed Pete the Greedy Sneaky Barncat. He watched our little procession with a look of purest envy. I gave him a little grin and said, “She loves me more than she loves you, ha ha ha.”

  Oh, that killed him! Right there in the space of a few seconds, he died a thousand deaths and I lived a thousand lives, all of them happy ever after.

  It was one of the greatest moments of my entire career, and the little snot deserved every bit of it for telling me lies about the rattlesnake. See, he’d been the one who had . . .

  Well, I couldn’t remember every little detail of the morning’s tragedy, but I did know that it had been entirely his fault, because he had . . . something.

  Yes, I feasted on his sour look, and it was as sweet as honey in the mouth of my memory.

  We left Kitty-Kitty sitting in the ruins of his own shambles, and staggered down the sidewalk to the back door. There, Sally May dropped me again and more or less fainted against the side of the house, once again gasping for breath.

  “I’m too old for this. I can’t nurse a dog and raise two children at the same time. Hank, I’ve carried you this far. Do you suppose you could walk the rest of the way?”

  I studied on that. I would have done just about anything for Sally May, and boy, you talk about feeling guilty! But no, I sure didn’t see any way of doing that.

  I mean, I was actually getting weaker by the second.

  She caught her breath at last, propped the screen door open with her . . . well, with her fanny, so to speak, picked me up once again, and off we went into the utility room.

  I couldn’t be blamed for the laundry basket that was parked right in the middle of our road, and no one could have been sorrier than I that she fell into it.

  It was nobody’s fault, just one of those things that happen.

  Little Alfred was standing in the kitchen, dripping a stolen Popsicle on the floor. He witnessed the accident and thought it was funny, the little snipe. And he started laughing.

  Sally May didn’t think it was so funny. Her finger shot like an arrow toward the boy. “YOU stop dripping on my clean floor, young man, and YOU . . .” This arrow was pointed at, well, me, it seemed. “. . . can walk into the kitchen, because I’m not carrying you another step!”

  Okay, okay. Fine. Sure.

  I didn’t mind walking. It was the least I could do.

  No big deal.

  But she didn’t need to screech at me like that.

  Dogs have feelings too.

  Clenched fist, that’s what it was, not a cleansed fish.

  Chapter Eleven: Hiccups Overwhelm Her Compassion

  She made me a pallet on the kitchen floor and issued some stern orders. I was to remain in that portion of the house which had linoleum floors—meaning the kitchen and utility room. I was not allowed under any circumstances to set foot on any of her carpet.

  Well, that seemed reasonable enough, and I even understood the basis of her concern. She wanted to keep her carpet nice and clean, right? And some dogs were not as fussy about their personal cleanliness and hygiene as I, right? So she had passed a law that no dogs were allowed beyond the Linoleum Zone.

  In other words, the law had not been created just for me, and in fact, Sally May probably realized that she didn’t even need a law to govern my behavior.

  I understood about carpet—that it needed to be protected from dirty dogs and dumb dogs with no couth or manners. Yes, I had known hundreds of them in my time, and yes, she had good reason to be concerned about what they might do.

  I shared her concern 100 percent and knew that, as long as I was inside her house, t
he carpet would be perfectly safe, even if I happened to stray beyond the Linoleum Zone.

  Which I did. Out of sheer boredom. A guy gets tired of seeing the same four walls and counting the spots on the same old linoleum and . . . well, one thing led to another, and I didn’t think it would cause any great disaster if I ventured into the living room to check things out.

  But, yikes, she seemed pretty serious about enforcing her law, even though it didn’t really apply to me, and she more or less insisted that I remain in the kitchen—under her stern gaze.

  No problem there. I understood. A lot of these dogs behave like apes and gorillas when you let ’em inside a house, and her law was good, just, and necessary.

  And I understood that she had to be consistent. That’s the only reason she made me stay on the linoleum, don’t you see. If it applied to one dog, it had to apply to all dogs.

  She appeared to be working up a batch of wild plums for jelly. She had found a nice thicket of plums several days before, and she and the kids had picked two grocery sacks full. Now she had to wash and sort them, boil them in a big pot, and mash the juice out of them.

  It was a big job. I would have been glad to help, but I could see right away that there wasn’t much a dog could contribute to the effort.

  Now, if she had been cutting up a chicken or preparing a roast or trimming some steaks, I might have been moved to . . . well, show more interest in the proceedings. But plums didn’t interest me much.

  So I sat on my pallet and watched—stared at her, you might say, through the narrow eye-slits on my swollen face. Now and then, I caught her glancing in my direction. I thought nothing of it at first, until all of a sudden and for no reason that I could see, she whirled around and said, “Will you stop staring at me?”

  Huh?

  I glanced around to see if perhaps she had been addressing someone else in the room. No, we were alone, just the two of us, which meant that she had probably spoken to . . . well, me.

  Staring at her? What was I supposed to be doing? I mean, what else could a sick, wounded, swollen dog do in her kitchen but . . . hey, she had forbidden me from slinking off to a dark and private corner of the house, right?

  And I wouldn’t say that I was staring at her anyway. I was watching. Observing. Showing interest in her work. Was that such a terrible crime?

  I passed it off as a . . . I don’t know. A sudden passion, a mistake in identity, something bizarre. And I continued to watch her, to observe her working on this important project and . . .

  And ten minutes later she said it again. “Would you please stop staring at me? I’m sorry, Hank, I know you don’t feel good, but you look horrible with your face all puffed up and drool dripping off your lips. It bothers me. I don’t know why, but it does.”

  Oh boy. What can you do to please these people? Could I help it if I looked “horrible” or that I was drooling? How good would she have looked if she’d been snakebit on the nose?

  You know what she did? She stopped her work and rigged up a screen with two chairs and a sheet. She screened me off so that I couldn’t watch her anymore! I was shocked, and yes, it did hurt my feelings.

  So, with nothing better to do, I stared at the sheet. This must have gone on for half an hour or so, when . . . you won’t believe this. I had trouble believing it. It was lousy luck and it wasn’t my idea and it just happened.

  All at once I started hiccuping.

  Hic. Hic. Hic.

  Again, I thought nothing of it at first. I mean, everyone hic gets the hiccups now and then—dogs, humans, elephants. It’s a normal hic process, and it’s not something a guy has any control over. I mean, you hic don’t just wish that you could start hiccuping, do you?

  Of course not. Who wants to look and sound ridiculous? Not hic me.

  It probably had something to do with the snake­­bite. The poison, the deadly rattlesnake poison, was attacking my system and causing me to hiccup.

  Hic.

  See?

  Hic.

  There’s another one.

  Well, not in my wildest dreams would I have dreamed that anyone would take offense to my hiccups! Would you have thought so? I mean, here’s a sick dog who’s been confined to a corner of the kitchen and screened off from hic the rest of the world. He’s trying to survive his ordeal and mind his own hic business and . . .

  Sally May’s face appeared over the top of the sheet, and she said, here’s exactly what she said, word for word. She said, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  I thumped my tail on the floor. Hic. Doing what to her?

  “I’m trying to read a recipe. I’m trying to concentrate. I’m trying to make jelly for my family, because I love them and I want to do something nice for them. But I can’t concentrate because you’re over here HICKING.”

  Yes, I realized that, and I had no hic control over the alleged hicking. I was a hic sick dog.

  “I’ve read the same line in the recipe five times: ‘Add two tablespoons of hick.’ Now, will you please stop that and let me finish this job before I ruin the whole batch?”

  Sure, you bet. Anything for the good of the hic.

  Family.

  She went back to work. I stared at the sheet and concentrated extra hard on not hicking. No more hicking for me.

  Some dogs are able to use their mental pro­cesses to impose order and control over their bodies. Did you know that? Yes, it’s a rare gift that some of us have.

  What you do is sharpen all your powers of con­centration down to a tiny beam of concentrated something or other. Mental energy. Light. The mind shifts from being a lightbulb into being a laser beam. You then direct this powerful beam at the germs or worms or whatever it is that causes hicking.

  You burn them up, destroy them, turn them into mere vapor. Poof! They’re gone. No more hicking.

  You see? It worked.

  I couldn’t help being proud of myself. I’ve never been one to boast and brag, but this was pretty impressive.

  What? You think the hiccups came back? You think I lost my concentration? Ha. No way. My powers of concentration had proved themselves, and all I had to do was maintain that high level of concentration for a couple of . . .

  A flea chose that very moment to bite me on the tail section and . . .

  Hic.

  What rotten luck. I’d been doing so well, I’d just about had the thing . . .

  Hic.

  Sally May loomed overhead like a thunderhead cloud.

  “I’m sorry, Hank. I wish I were a better person, more patient, kind, and understanding. But I’m not, and you’re driving me nuts with that hicking, and you’re going back outside. Out! And you walk on your own four legs, mister, because I don’t need a trip to the chiropractor.”

  Okay, fine. If she didn’t want me . . . I pried my­self off the floor and followed her out the back door. I didn’t hic care. Staying outside was no big deal to me, but if I died in the night from exposure to the elements, I hoped everyone would know who had hic.

  Caused it.

  Passing through the back door, which she held open for me, I spied a nice soft patch of iris flowers, right under her kitchen window. No doubt that’s where she . . .

  “Hank! Keep walking.”

  No doubt she wanted me to return to the bed she had hic made for me up by the water well, which was just fine. I’d always wanted to die from snake­bite beside a water well. On a pallet of rags.

  I climbed the hill and collapsed on my bed. She went back to the house and resumed her work. I could see her face framed in the window, and for the rest of the day, I stared at her, drooled, and hicked, just to prove that I was a free dog and this was a free ranch and I could hick and drool and stare any time I hic wanted to.

  Human compassion is a very strange emotion. It seems to flourish after huge disasters, but let a poor dog get a little cas
e of hiccups and it withers like a vase of hic.

  Wildflowers.

  Did I survive through the night? You’ll soon find out.

  Chapter Twelve: History Seems to Repeat Itself, Doesn’t It?

  No, I didn’t perish in the night, in case you were worried, and thanks for worrying. I’m glad somebody was worried about me.

  I didn’t perish in the night, but I didn’t sleep so well either, because of all the stupid hicking. Take my word for it, the worst part of being snake­bit isn’t the swelling or the pain or the drooling. It’s the hiccups.

  But I felt much better the next day, and the day after that I had returned to my normal, robust state of health. The swelling had pretty muchly gone down. I could talk like a normal dog, without drooling or sounding goofy.

  And, thank goodness, the hiccups had passed—although I don’t want to talk much about them, for fear they might . . .

  Hic. Return.

  See? You have to be very foxy with these . I won’t even say the word. The point is, they went away and I don’t want them back.

  Yes, by the third day of my recovery period, the snakebite and all its unpleasant aftereffects had become a distant memory. Had it actually happened to me, or had I merely dreamed the whole thing? Shucks, I felt so good that it didn’t matter.

  The very best part of feeling good was that I settled the score between me and Kitty-Kitty. You might recall that Pete had . . . well, he’d done something. I couldn’t remember exactly what, but it had been serious enough that I’d held a grudge for three days.

  And I’m not the kind of dog who goes around holding grudges for three days, even against cats, so that tells you that whatever Pete had done, it had been pretty derned serious.

  Around ten o’clock that morning, I spotted him down by the yard gate. No doubt, he had gobbled down all the breakfast goodies and was waiting for someone to deliver the lunch scraps and lay them down between his paws.

  Typical cat. Too lazy to walk three steps for his next meal, and we could forget about him catching mice in the feed barn or the machine shed. That required much too much effort, and never mind that catching mice was his mainest job on the ranch.