The Celery Stalks at Midnight

by James Howe

  “How are we going to find those vegetables now?” I asked. “They’re somewhere inside one of those pails.”

  “Obviously we’re going to have to look for them.”

  “But how?” I protested. “When? The man’s leaving for the dump any minute.”

  “And guess who’s going with him?”

  “Oh, now, wait a minute ...”

  “Are we going for a ride, Pop?” Howie piped up.

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “Oh, boy!”

  “Now, hold on there, Chester,” I said. “I didn’t bargain for a sightseeing tour of the town dump in today’s activities. Besides, you know I get carsick. I’ll ... I’ll stay here and ... and look for Bunnicula.”

  Chester wasn’t having any of my arguments.

  “It’ll be faster with all three of us looking,” he said. “Besides, the trip to the dump can’t take all that long. We’ll be there and back before you know it.”

  The man was inside the truck starting the engine as his wife emptied the extra garbage over the side.

  “See you soon, dear,” she said as he started to pull out of the driveway. She went back into the house, and Chester said, “Now’s our chance. Let’s go.”

  Chester and I jumped up and over the edge of the truck in one gazelle-like movement. But Howie, who lacks the agility—not to mention the legs—of a gazelle, succeeded only in falling over backward onto the gravel. Frantically, he scampered back and forth by the side of the truck, yipping his head off.

  “Sshhh! Harold, get him!” Chester advised.

  I leaned over the side and scooped poor Howie up by the scuff of his neck just as the truck turned into the street. With a flip, he landed in the garbage pail next to me.

  “This has been a great day for my mouth,” I commented, trying to spit out the dog and cat hairs that coated my tongue. “Do you suppose we could stop for a lemonade?”

  Chester gave me a look.

  “Let’s start digging,” he said.

  Just then, Howie’s head popped up out of the garbage pail. Strands of spaghetti cascaded over his forehead and ears, as tomato sauce ran down the sides of his nose.

  “Boy,” he said, licking his chops and catching the rivulets of sauce with his tongue, “that must have been some party they had last night.”

  The Dog in the Green Toupée

  C’MON, HOWIE,” Chester said, “quit clowning around. We’ve got serious business to take care of.”

  “Who’s clowning?” asked Howie, licking his lips. He ducked back down into the garbage pail, his voice calling out from its depths. “There’s some great stuff in here. Corncobs. Melon rinds. Apple strudel. Whipped cream. Oh, and here’s a nice, big, juicy—”

  And then all I could hear was a loud crunch.

  Chester sighed heavily. “Harold,” he muttered, “could you do something about Howie, please? I believe I’m about to have heart palpitations.”

  I looked at my friend Chester and shook my head. “No one ever said it was easy being a father,” I commented.

  “Very funny,” he replied. “Now, would you please ask the kid to knock it off?”

  I must admit my mouth was watering for a little of that apple strudel, but I decided it would have to wait. After all, my digestive tract would know no peace with Chester champing at the bit the way he was. I knocked on the side of the pail and entreated Howie to remove himself.

  Reluctantly, he agreed.

  “Can you help me get out of here?” he asked.

  “I think my foot’s stuck in a ketchup bottle or something.”

  “Here,” I said, jumping up against the side of the pail. “I’ll pull you out. Just grab my neck.”

  Chester backed away. “Be careful you don’t pull the whole thing . . . ” he was saying when my foot slipped on a banana skin Howie must have thrown out earlier.

  “Whoops!” I cried. I fell back as Howie and the garbage pail came tumbling down. Howie flew past my head. The pail’s contents spilled all over the floor.

  And Chester.

  And me.

  Nervously, I shot a glance to the front of the truck to see if the driver had heard the crash, but he must have been playing his radio really loudly, because he didn’t even turn around.

  When I turned back, Chester was staring at me. A watermelon rind sat on the top of his head like an oversized beret. His face was plastered with seeds.

  “Gee, it looks like you’ve grown some freckles since I saw you last,” I joked.

  Chester wasn’t in a laughing mood. He shook off the remains of the watermelon and suggested I do the same with the tea bags and coffee grounds that adorned my head.

  Howie, meanwhile, was contentedly chewing on a steak bone that had landed at his side.

  “Any more where that came from?” I asked eagerly.

  Howie didn’t reply; he was too busy slurping over his find.

  “Later, Harold, later,” Chester muttered. “Right now, we’ve got to see if we can find those vegetables.” He gazed into the overturned pail. “Wait a minute,” he cried suddenly. “There, next co those cans, doesn’t that look like a . . . I’m going in to take a look around. Harold, start checking the other pails.” And he disappeared from sight.

  With Chester out of the way, I was all set to root through the garbage that was strewn about to see if I could find something good to eat, when the truck suddenly swerved to the right and my stomach lurched to the left. I groaned. There’s nothing like a sudden case of carsickness, I thought, to knock the appetite right out of you.

  “Boy, this bone is great,” Howie remarked just then. “It could use a little seasoning though. Would you pass that jar of peanut butter, Uncle Harold?”

  As the truck veered around a bend in the road, I moaned and batted the peanut-butter jar toward Howie. Nauseated, I made my way toward a still-standing garbage pail and began snooping around. What do dead vegetables smell like? I wondered as I poked my nose under the lid. The odor of freshly cut grass greeted my nostrils.

  Oh, no! I thought, a sudden rash of panic running through me. My hay fever! I could feel that familiar tingle in the end of my nose.

  “Aah . . . ah . . . ah-choo!”

  The lid of the garbage pail flipped over as hundreds of blades of grass sailed into the air. After riding the currents for a brief, liberating fling, they tumbled down, one after the other, to nestle into their new home on the top of my head, sticking to the wet spot the coffee grounds had so recently made ready for them.

  Howie looked up from his repast and chuckled at what he saw. “Gee, Uncle Harold,” he said, “you’d make a great title for a spy novel: The Dog in the Green Toupée.”

  “Ha . . . ah . . . ha . . . ah . . . choo!” I replied.

  Chester emerged from the pail just then, dragging in his teeth a stalk of celery.

  “Boy,” I said, trying to shake off the stubbornly clinging grass, “you smell terrible. What’d you get into in there, anyway?”

  “You don’t smell like a rose yourself,” he said, dropping the celery. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter what else is in there, the important thing is that I’ve found the white vegetables. Or some of them, at least. I’ll bring out the rest and then we can get to work.”

  Chester withdrew once again into the inner recesses of the pail only to return several times with various specimens of vegetable specters. He laid them out neatly on the floor of the truck, his appraising eye passing over each in turn.

  “How do you know that celery’s one of the culprits?” I asked. “After all, celery is white to begin with.”

  “Sometimes,” Chester said. “And sometimes, it’s green. Anyway, we can’t be too careful. We wouldn’t want to leave a killer celery stalk on the loose, would we?”

  “Well, I hope you’re right,” I muttered. “If not, we may be getting a phone call from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vegetables.”

  “Thank goodness we found them in time,” Chester went on with a sig
h. “Howie, bring the toothpicks over here.”

  Howie glanced up from his bone, a look of bewilderment on his face. “Toothpicks?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Howie, his lips covered with peanut butter, smiled weakly. “I think I forgot them, Pop. I must have left them back at the garden behind Max’s house. Gee, I’m sorry. I . . . uh . . .”

  The tip of Chester’s tail tapped the floor nervously.

  “Great,” he said, “that’s just great. Now what’re we going to do?”

  “Well,” I replied, “before your heart palpitations start up again, I think I have a solution. Inside that pail over there,” I went on, indicating the one that had exploded its contents all over my head, “there are a lot of twigs. They’re a little big for the job, but I don’t see any reason we couldn’t use them instead of toothpicks.”

  Chester considered my suggestion and, after a moment’s reflection, nodded solemnly. “I like it,” he said. “It’s . . . it’s natural, organic, back-to-the-earth. Thoreau would have been proud of you.”

  Well, I wasn’t sure what Thoreau had to do with it (in fact, I wasn’t sure who Thoreau was, though I had a sneaking suspicion he’d once pitched for the Yankees), but I decided to accept Chester’s response with modest appreciation. After all, a compliment from Chester is something like a shooting star: rare, and if you blink, there’s a good chance you’ll miss it.

  We picked out several likely candidates for stakehood from among the twigs and, with great ceremony, drove them through the hearts of the vampirical veggies.

  We were admiring our work when all at once we heard a loud BANG!

  “They’re shooting!” Howie cried. He covered his ears with his paws. “Don’t let them get me, Uncle Harold,” he whimpered. “I’ll give them back their steak bone. I didn’t mean to take it, honest I didn’t. Just don’t let them shoot me. I’m too young to die. I’m too nice to die. I’m too me to die.”

  “Will you cut that out?” Chester snapped. “Nobody’s shooting.”

  “How can you be sure?” I asked. “Maybe there’s a law against stabbing vegetables with twigs in the back of a moving pick-up truck.” I lowered myself to the floor, getting out of the line of fire.

  I became aware then that our ride had become very bumpy. And that we were slowing down. The truck pulled off the road and rolled unevenly to a complete stop.

  Before we could figure out what was going on, the driver jumped out and walked to the rear end of the truck. “Great,” I heard him mumble, “a flat! Just what I needed!”

  He lowered the tailgate. “Well,” he went on, “I’ll just get the spare and . . . well, well, well, what have we here?”

  I looked up to see him staring straight at me. I tried to smile.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked, startled. Don’t ask me, I thought, they’re the experts on reproduction.

  He stood there scratching his head. “Boy, what a mess you’ve made. Come on, get out of there. Let’s go.” He swatted at us, indicating in his unsubtle way that the ride was over.

  For my part, it didn’t take much persuading. I was relieved our little adventure had come to an end. Between the garbage and the hayfever and the carsickness, I was delighted to say goodbye to the truck and feel solid ground underfoot once again.

  As the three of us walked along the highway toward town, I said to Chester, “I’ll be glad to get home.”

  “So will we all,” Chester said wearily. “So will we all. But first . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. “Destiny calls.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Harold! Chester!” a distant voice cried out.

  We stopped in our tracks.

  “Chester,” I said, shaking slightly. “Did you hear . . .”

  “Yes, 1—”

  “Harold!” the voice called again. “Chester!”

  Chester’s eyes went wild. “It isn’t Max this time,” he said. “It must be . . .”

  Then we heard the sound of someone laughing.

  We turned and saw Howie standing several feet behind us, a grin plastered on his face from ear to ear.

  “Boy, Pop. Boy, Uncle Harold. You really fell for it. Heh, heh, heh.”

  Chester and I looked at each other.

  “Harold, can’t you do a better job of keeping the kid in line?” Chester asked me as we resumed walking.

  “I don’t know, Chester,” I replied, “he’s your son.”

  And Howie kept chuckling all the way into town.

  The Transformation of Toby and Pete

  BY THE TIME we reached the sign that said, “Welcome to Centerville . . . The Place That People Who Live Here Call Home,” I was feeling better. There’s something about a leisurely walk in the country, regardless of the circumstances, that invigorates the soul and reminds one that the simple pleasures are the best. After all, what could be more gratifying than a stroll down a country lane with your two best friends, even when the country lane is in reality a four-lane super highway complete with speeding cars and bleating horns, and one of your two best friends is getting a migraine trying to read the writing on the spinning hubcaps, while the other is ranting and raving about killer vegetables, and all three of you reek of eau de garbage? One must learn to overlook such minor drawbacks and take one’s enjoyment where one can. Which is exactly what I was doing late that Saturday morning when Chester suddenly went into his stalking position.

  He scampered behind a rock, wiggled his rear end, and flattened his head so that no one on the other side could see him.

  “What’s up?” I asked innocently, sauntering up to his side. Howie joined us a second or two later. “Let me guess. You’ve just seen a suspicious-looking string bean hanging out in the cabbage patch.”

  “And you’re waiting to see if the rice squad shows up,” Howie chimed in.

  Chester was not amused.

  “Ssh,” he admonished us.

  “But what . . .”

  “Over there,” Chester said, “across the road.

  You want suspicious-looking, Harold, I’ll give you suspicious-looking. What’s wrong with that picture?”

  My gaze drifted to the house across the road.

  I saw that in its front yard was gathered a small group of kids. One of them was standing apart from the others. Though I looked them over carefully, I was unable to discern anything peculiar going on.

  When I said nothing, Chester went on. “Their clothes, Harold,” he said. “Look at what they’re wearing. I ask you—is that normal?”

  I saw then that two of the kids were wearing long black capes—the one standing alone and another who seemed to be pushing several others forward. When I looked more closely, I was in for an even greater surprise.

  “That’s Toby and Pete!” I cried.

  “Not so loud,” Chester replied. “I know that’s Toby and Pete. But I don’t want them to hear us.”

  “Why don’t you want them to hear us?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Pop, why don’t you want them—”

  “I have my reasons,” Chester said. “Come on, we’ve got to get closer and listen in. Follow me.”

  I must admit it did seem a little strange for Toby and Pete to be wearing capes, but having lived in a house with two normal, active boys for many years, I had come to expect the unexpected. Heck, I’d lived with Chester for many years. And if that hadn’t taught me to expect the unexpected, nothing ever would.

  Stealthily, we crept along the edge of the road, and when we saw that no cars were coming, hurried across to find a good hiding place behind a rhododendron bush.

  I could see clearly then that it was Pete who was standing off to one side and Toby who was pushing the others toward him. What we overheard was curious. Very curious indeed.

  “Here they are, Master,” Toby said, shoving several of the boys and girls forward. “I caught them snooping around.”

  Pete said, “You did, eh? Good work. Now, what shall we do with them, hmm?”
r />   One of the kids in the group spoke up angrily.

  “We didn’t mean anything, honest. We just wanted to know what was going on. We didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think is right,” Pete shot back, swirling his cape over his arm. “You don’t know who I am, do you? Well, you’ll find out. You’ll find out. Take them away!”

  Toby started to push the kids toward the back of the house as they cried, “No, no, no!”

  “What do you think is going on?” I whispered to Chester. “It’s not like Peter and Toby to be so rough.”

  “Maybe they’re just playing,” Howie suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Chester replied softly.

  “There’s something too serious in their manner.” We noticed then that Pete was telling Toby to wait a moment. “Hello, what’s this?” Chester asked as his ears lifted.

  Pete was pointing at one of the girls in the group. “Don’t take that one,” he instructed Toby. “Leave her with me.”

  “Me?” the girl cried out in alarm. “No, please, I beg you.”

  Toby pushed the girl forward and she fell on her knees. He left with the other kids, disappearing around the corner of the house. Pete stared at the girl for a long, tense moment.

  “What is your name?” he asked at last. “Hilda,” the girl replied, her voice shaking slightly.

  “Hilda,” Pete repeated. “What a charming name. You are new to our little town, are you not?”

  “Yes, I just moved here.”

  “I thought I’d never seen you before. Get up. Come closer.”

  Slowly, the girl stood. But she didn’t move any nearer to Pete. She seemed scared of him.

  “Come, come,” Pete said, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  That’s what I was thinking, I thought. That’s just old Pete. Why would anybody be afraid of him? He’s a creep sometimes, it’s true. I remembered the time he painted a white stripe down Chester’s back because he wanted a pet skunk. But still ...

  “I’m not afraid,” the girl said. “It’s just—”

  “Just what?” Pete tilted his head to one side.

  “I’ve heard about you. I’ve heard . . . things . . .”