The Big Question

by John R. Erickson

  I heard the air whistle into his lungs. “You ate the whole thing?”

  “Shhh, not so loud. I didn’t eat the plate but, yes, the rest of it vanished.”

  A silly grin rippled across his mouth. “No wonder I smelled chocolate.”

  “But are you willing to forget my crimes? That’s the purpose of this meeting. You forget mine, I’ll forget yours, and that’ll be the end of it. We can get on with our lives and put all these feelings of guilt and remorse behind us. What do you think?”

  He blinked his eyes and grinned. “You know, it might work.”

  I whopped him on the back. “Great, we’ve got a deal. No punishment, no remorse. We’ll start all over with a clean slate.”

  “Yeah, I’m feeling better already.”

  “Great. Oh, there is one other thing.” I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “There’s a paper plate on the kitchen table, empty except for a bunch of crumbs. It’s in plain sight and…you know what? As long as it’s there in plain sight, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to forget about my error in judgment.”

  He gave me an empty stare. “Really?”

  “I’m sure of it and here’s what we’re going to do. You sneak into the kitchen, hop up on the table, and bring the plate back here. We’ll hold a little ceremony and bury it beneath the bed.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Only then can we put this ugly chapter behind us and get on with our lives.”

  “Yeah, but what if I can’t jump up on the table?”

  “Drover, you have to believe in yourself. It’s part of your training. If you believe it, you can do it. What do you say?”

  A strange glow came to his eyes and a little smile twitched at his mouth. “You know what? I think I can do it!”

  “Son, I can’t tell you how proud this makes me. I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. Now run along and finish the job. I’ll be waiting right here. Oh, and there just might be a little promotion in this.”

  “Oh goodie, a promotion! Here I go!”

  He went prancing down the hall, the proudest little mutt that had ever walked this earth. I cocked my ear and listened. His footsteps clicked into the kitchen. There was a moment of silence, then a terrible crash, as though…well, it sure sounded like somebody had tried to leap up on the kitchen table but had missed.

  Heh.

  An instant later, Slim’s voice boomed through the house. “Drover! Why, you little…”

  Drover came streaking back into the bedroom, his face frozen with a look of terror. “Help, murder, I got caught!”

  “Oh no. Quick, under the bed!”

  He burrowed beneath the bed. I didn’t. Heh heh. When Slim stomped into the room and switched on the light, I was standing beside the bed, wearing a tragic expression that said, “The little crook is under the bed. I can’t believe he stole all your cookies!”

  Slim was in a towering bad mood and it was written all over his face. For a moment he seemed unable to speak, then he growled, “That was the only Christmas present I got, you little pipsqueak, and I didn’t even get a bite of it!”

  I whapped my tail on the floor, rolled my eyes, and shook my head. This was so sad! I never dreamed the little wretch would stoop to this.

  In the other room, Miss Viola chirped a laugh and said, “Oh Slim, I’ll bake you some more. Don’t be too hard on the poor little thing.”

  Slim peeked under the bed and spoke to the quivering Drover. “Poor Little Thing, if you ever do that again, you’ll end up in a pot with the turkey necks. I guarantee it.” He straightened up, hitched up his jeans, gave his head a stiff nod, and stabbed me with his eyes. “And that goes for you too, Bozo. Stay out of my cookies!”

  What? Me? What had I…

  He stormed out of the room. Under the bed, Drover moaned, “He yelled at me!”

  I felt that I should say something, yet it was hard to find words of comfort at such a dark time. “Drover, there’s an important lesson here.”

  His eyes appeared under the bed. “There is?”

  “Yes. Once you’ve become a thief, everyone thinks you’re a thief. It all began with that first stolen cookie.”

  “Yeah, but you ate the whole plate!”

  I studied the claws on my left foot. “Well, we have no proof of that, just lies and gossip. Now, you stay under the bed and think about what a rotten little mutt you’ve turned out to be. Tomorrow will be a better day…or, who knows, it might be even worse.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  I made my way down the hallway and returned to the living room. Drover had lost all his friends, but that didn’t mean I had to give up mine. I got there just as Miss Viola was leaving. I dashed over to her and put myself in position to received Rubs and Pats.

  She gave me plenty of both. “My goodness, Hank, you’ve been eating well. You’re as plump as a toad.”

  Huh? Oops. I shot a glance at Slim to see if he’d been paying attention. His mind seemed to be somewhere else, so, heh heh, I dodged a bullet. Whew. That was pretty close.

  Viola turned back to Slim. “Well, you stay warm. We’re suppose to have some bad weather coming in tonight. If you need any help while Loper’s gone, give me a call.”

  She waved one last goodbye and closed the door behind her. Slim stared at the floor for a long time, then said, “That’s a mighty fine woman. If a man had any sense…”

  He left the sentence hanging in the air. He went over to his easy chair, flopped down, and picked up the latest issue of Livestock Weekly. I, being a loyal dog, followed him to the chair and flopped down on the floor beside him.

  For a long moment, he stared off into space. “Boy, I wish I had a cookie.”

  Right, me too, but a friend of ours had swiped them all. What was the world coming to? By George, a guy couldn’t even leave a plate of cookies sitting on his kitchen table without somebody walking off with it.

  I studied his face to see if…well, if he might be having suspicious thoughts, shall we say, and I was relieved on seeing none. That’s one of the great things about hanging out with bachelors. Heh heh. There are a lot of things they don’t notice.

  Slim read his paper until nine o’clock and by that time his eyes were getting heavy. He pulled off his boots, stood up, threw out his arms, and took a big yawn. “Well, pooch, Christmas has come and gone. It’s time to put old Slim to bed. Tomorrow, I’ve got to feed the whole ranch by myself.”

  I followed him down the hallway. In the bedroom, he turned on the light and gave me a wink. “Watch this.” He went to the bed and started banging on the mattress with his open hand. “Scram out of there, Stub-tail! I don’t allow cookie robbers under my bed! Hyah!”

  Moments later, a bug-eye, terrified Drover scrambled out into the open, spun his paws on the floor, and zoomed down the hallway into the living room. There, he would have to spend the night on a cold, hard floor.

  Slim gave me a nod. “By grabs, it don’t pay to steal from Slim Chance. Hankie, you can sleep on the bed and keep my feet warm.”

  Wow, what an honor!

  He bent down and gave me three pats on the head. “You ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but at least you’re honest...sometimes.”

  Oh yes. No question about that.

  He switched off the light and crawled beneath the blankets, and I took my Position of Honor at his feet. What a deal!

  Chapter Five: The Dreaded Phone Call

  To tell you the truth, I was beginning to have second thoughts about my…well, about that trick I’d played on little Drover. All at once it seemed kind of mean.

  Cruel. Heartless. Unfeeling.

  See, Drover rarely got into trouble, so he’d had very little experience at being scolded and yelled at. When he got a scolding, it really shattered his feelings. Me? I’d been scolded so many times, I knew all the lines by he
art.

  The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. In the glow of my mind, I saw the poor little mutt curled up on the hard floor, crying himself to sleep. Maybe, to be fair and honorable, I should…on the other hand, this was a great bed, warm and soft, and I figured that Drover could…borp…excuse me. I figured that Drover could…

  “I smell chocolate.”

  Huh? Did you hear that? Maybe not, because you weren’t there, but I was there and I heard it—a mysterious voice that came out of the darkness and said something about…what was it?

  Oops. Chocolate. That word brought a sudden rush of unpleasant memories plunging over the waterfall of my mind. Slim sat up in bed, and in a growling voice, he said, “And, Hank, Viola noticed that you looked FAT.”

  Fat? Me? Surely there must be some mistake.

  “I think we hung the wrong crook. Get out of my bed, you cookie thief!”

  Wait. I could explain everything. See, I was just…

  Whop! He clubbed me with his pillow. Well, it appeared that he wasn’t interested in hearing my side of the story, and when he started kicking me…well, I felt it was time to leave.

  If he didn’t want to share his bed with a friend, that was fine with me, and if his feet froze off in the night, he would have no one to blame but himself. I dived out of bed and made a dignified retreat into the living room.

  There, in the darkness, I heard Drover’s voice. “What happened?”

  “I, uh, couldn’t sleep. I’ve been worrying about you. I guess you’re feeling pretty bad.”

  “Yeah, it just broke my heart when he yelled at me.”

  “Right, and that’s been troubling me. See, in small but tiny ways, I must share part of the blame.”

  “Yeah, since you caused the whole thing.”

  “Drover, I’m willing to admit that both of us need to work on character development.”

  “Are you sorry I got blamed?”

  The word “sorry” caused me to flinch. “Look, if it’ll make you feel better, Slim figured it out and clubbed me with his pillow.”

  “No fooling?”

  “That’s correct, and threw me out of his room.”

  “Oh, that’s funny.”

  “It’s NOT funny.”

  “I think I can sleep now. Hee hee.”

  “What?”

  “I said, good night.”

  I scratched around on a piece of threadbare carpet, did three turns, and flopped down. Ouch. That carpet felt about as soft as pavement and this was not going to be a pleasant night. But at least I was going to bed with a clear conscience.

  It’s never easy to admit a mistake or to say “I’m sorry,” and a lot of your ordinary mutts are too stubborn to do it. Me? I’ve always been a firm believer in looking the truth right square in the eyes, stepping up to the plate, and….well, eating the cookies.

  Boy, those were some great cookies.

  Anyway, my conscience was swept clean, so I drifted right off to sleep and fell into wonderful twitching dreams about Miss Viola and a whole pickup-load of fresh baked pies, cakes, cobblers, strudels, dumplings, candies, and cookies, but then…

  My head shot up. I blinked my eyes and glanced around. Perhaps I had dozed. Yes, of course, and I’d probably been asleep for hours, but now…

  Something was wrong. I heard strange sounds—pellets of ice hitting the north window and the roar of wind in the trees outside. And there were other sounds coming from the house itself—creaks and squeaks and pops and groans.

  Have we discussed our wind in the Texas Panhandle? Maybe not. We don’t just have wind, we have WIND. In the wintertime, those Arctic northers come barreling off the Rocky Mountains like a locomotive and when they hit the prairie country, they make a big impression.

  It’s scary. I mean, when full-grown trees bend and groan, when a house pops and cracks and moans, it makes a guy feel pretty small. I rushed to the window and looked out. In the ghostly silver light of the moon, I saw the ground covered with sleet and trees coated with ice, bending, bowing, thrashing under the blasts of cruel wind.

  Gulp.

  It appeared that we were in the midst of a winter storm, with freezing rain and sleet and howling winds that could tear limbs from trees.

  Gulp.

  You know, a lot of dogs would have gone into a panic and tried to crawl under the nearest bed or table, but on this outfit, we have a different way of responding to winter storms. We don’t run and we don’t hide. We don’t whine or crawl under beds.

  No sir. WE BARK!

  I rushed to the Weather Center, checked the radar screen, and reached for the microphone of my mind.

  “May I have your attention please! This is the ranch’s Security Division. We interrupt our normal programming to issue a Winter Storm Warning. Repeat: this is a Winter Storm Warning from the Security Division’s Severe Weather Center.”

  “Hank, dry up!”

  “Only moments ago, our trained spotters reported…”

  “Hank, shut up that barking!”

  “…a powerful winter storm sweeping into the northern Texas Panhandle, bringing sleet, freezing rain, and powerful winds. Roads will become slick, especially on bridges and overpasses, and all driving is discouraged. If you’re camping out tonight, you’re in for a big surprise.”

  Suddenly, the light came on and I found myself…well, barking at the window. I whirled around and saw a tall, skinny carbon-based life form…wearing flannel pajamas. It had hair down in its eyes and appeared to be…well, mad. The hair rose on the back of my neck and I unleashed a ferocious…

  Wait, hold everything. It was Slim. Ha ha. You probably thought…anyway, it was Slim. Perhaps he’d heard my Weather Bulletin. Good. We needed to do something about the storm. I wasn’t sure what we could do, but more barking might help.

  I turned back toward the window and delivered a withering barrage of barking. Slim pointed a bony finger at me, I mean pointed it like a gun, and growled, “Dog, I’ve had it up to here with you and I’m fixing to…”

  He frowned, cocked his head, and listened. For the first time, he heard the wind. It roared through the cottonwood trees and caused frozen bushes to scrape against the side of the house. His eyebrows shot up.

  “Good honk, that don’t sound good.” He stomped over to the… “Out of the way, dog.” He stomped over to the window, stepping on my tail as he blew past, and peeked outside. His shoulders slumped. “Uh oh. Ice, and I just moved a hundred head of steers to wheat pasture. Man alive, I hope the electric fence don’t short out.”

  Right. I’d already thought of that. Remember our lesson on electric fences? See, an electric fence works great as long as the electrical current passes through the wire, but a layer of ice can cause the whole thing to short out.

  And you know what happens then. First of all, when a bad storm hits, cattle will drift in the same direction as the wind is blowing—from north to south. They drift to the south end of the pasture and bunch up along the electric fence. If the fence happens to be shorted out because of the ice, they tear down the fence and keep drifting south. Onto the highway.

  That’s what Slim was worried about. That’s what I was worried about. Drover wasn’t worried about it at all. After waking up and glancing around, he’d gone back to sleep.

  Slim stood there for a minute or two, staring at the window. “Well, there ain’t a thing we can do about it, so we might as well go back to bed.”

  Great idea.

  “If the cattle get out on the highway, I’ll hear about it soon enough.” He shuffled toward the bedroom, his bare feet swishing across the bare carpet. At that very moment, the phone rang. He stopped. His eyelids sank shut and he let out a groan. “Lord, please don’t let this be Deputy Kile!”

  He raced across the room and picked up the phone. “Hello. Yes. Well, I was trying to sleep but the dog wo
ke me up. Yes, he was barking at the wind. Who is this?” There was a moment of silence. “Oh. Deputy Kile. No, I can’t say I’m thrilled to hear your voice at…what time is it anyway? Four o’clock?” He heaved a sigh. “Okay, hit me with the bad news. I know you didn’t call to wish me happy birthday.”

  Slim listened, nodding his head and saying an occasional “uh huh,” and the expression on his face grew darker by the second. He ended the conversation by saying, “All right, I’ll saddle a horse and get there as quick as I can.”

  Uh oh, we had problems.

  Chapter Six: Viola Comes To Help

  Slim hung up the phone and gazed off into space. The silence was painful. I mean, I knew he’d gotten some bad news and I wanted to help, but what could I do? He started pacing around the room and that gave me a great idea—I would pace with him! Yes sir, a cowboy and his dog, pacing the floor at four o’clock in the morning. Pretty touching, huh? You bet.

  While he paced (with me two steps behind him), he talked to himself. “I’ll need help for this, somebody to drive the pickup, but who?”

  Viola, of course.

  “Loper’s in Abilene, the skunk. Billy? Don’t think so. I can hardly stand his company in the middle of the day, never mind at four o’clock in the morning.”

  Hey, this wasn’t complicated. Viola. She was a sweet lady, ranch-raised, a good neighbor, and as incredible as it seemed, she actually liked Slim.

  “Uncle Johnny? Nope, too old.”

  Miss Viola! The last thing she’d said when she left was, “If you need any help while Loper’s gone, give me a call.”

  He stopped pacing. I stopped. He scowled at the floor and pulled on his chin. “I can’t think of a single, solitary person in the whole world I’d want to bother at a time like this.”

  Oh brother, what a bonehead! I had no choice but to issue a stern bark. “VIOLA!”

  His eyes came into focus and he stared at me for a long moment. “Wait a second! What about…Viola?”