by King, Daren
Larry’s other sandal hit Larry on the head. “Ouch!”
“That was a secret,” Paul said, poking his nose through the floorboards.
“Paul is allergic to cheese,” Larry explained. “It makes his bottom turn blue.”
“The fur falls out too,” Paul said, “and my tail curls up like a question mark.”
“Is that why you wear that fashionable suit?” Mazie asked.
Paul nodded. “It’s also why I’m not coming down.”
“You have to come down,” Larry told him. “I’m calling a meeting.”
Graham folded his tattooed arms. “Don’t tell me you’re organizing another protest.”
“Not a protest,” Larry said. “A campaign.”
Up in the dusty storeroom, Sandra was trying to persuade Paul to go down. “You can’t hide your blue bottom forever.”
“All right,” Paul said, “but before I go down, you have to hide all the cheese.”
Sandra agreed, and when Paul arrived five minutes later, there was not a crumb of cheese in sight.
THE MEETING
TWENTY-THREE MOUSES LIVED UNDER THOSE floorboards, and even those Larry had never met knew of his brave attempt at stopping the bulldozers. The idea of a campaign caused quite a stir.
Larry Mouse stepped up onto a matchbox and raised his paw. The mouses and the Christmas-tree decoration gathered around, and the meeting began.
“We all know that humans have disgusting eating habits,” Larry said dramatically.
“Get on with it!” Graham shouted, and several other mouses laughed out loud.
Larry stepped down from the matchbox. He would not get on with it, not until each mouse was quiet.
“I think everyone had better listen,” Sandra whispered, “or we’ll be here all day.”
Graham nodded. “The next mouse to interrupt Larry gets a punch on the ear.”
Larry Mouse was back up on the matchbox. “Where was I? Yes, we all know that humans have disgusting eating habits, but there is one human meal that can only be described as sickening, and that meal is mouse noses on toast.”
“Myth!” one of the mouses shouted.
Graham looked around, and the mouse fell silent.
“Not only do humans eat mouse noses on toast,” Larry went on, “but they pay a lot of money for it. To humans, mouse noses are a delicacy.”
“Myth!” another of the mouses shouted.
Graham said nothing.
“Mouse noses on toast are a myth,” the first mouse said, stepping forward, “like caviar, and colorful parrot soup with extra beaky bits.”
“I swear on my blue bottom,” Paul said, taking Larry’s place on the matchbox, “mouse noses on toast are real.”
“We saw it with our own eyes,” Sandra said.
“I didn’t see it myself,” Larry said, “but when we left the restaurant, I went for a pee in the brambles.” He tried to tell them about the Tinby, how it wore the noses on its chest like medals, but the mouses were in hysterics.
“Larry went for a pee!” they shouted. “Paul has a blue bottom!”
“There’s nothing wrong with taking a pee,” Larry said. “I bet there isn’t a mouse in this room who hasn’t peed at least once today.”
“Mouse noses on toast!” the mouses shouted. “Caviar! Myth!”
Larry was about to give up when something small and brown plopped through a gap in the floorboards and landed on Graham’s head.
It was a mouse nose.
“Yuck,” Graham said, holding the little brown thing in his paw.
“That,” one of the twins said, “is the most disgusting thing ever.”
Larry stepped back onto the matchbox. This time when he spoke, the mouses listened.
TROUBLE IN THE STOREROOM
AFTER THE MEETING, PAUL AND SANDRA CLIMBED UP through the gap in the floorboards where the Tinby had thrown the nose. The Tinby was no longer there, but it had left some interesting clues.
“Footprints,” Sandra said, pointing to a trail of square markings in the dust. “And look. Another mouse nose.”
“The footprints lead over to the window,” Paul said. They climbed onto the window ledge and looked out.
They could see Rowley Barker Hobbs waiting patiently in the street. Paul tapped on the glass and the shaggy sheepdog came bounding up to the window, saying hello to the glass with his paws.
“If we can get this window open, Rowley Barker Hobbs can come in,” Sandra said.
“Locked,” Paul said, examining the latch. “The Tinby may still be in this room.”
“We should look for it,” Sandra said. “It may need our help.”
The walls of the storeroom were lined with shelves. The shelf nearest the window held a long cardboard box, and this was where they began their search.
Paul gnawed a tiny hole in the side of the box with his teeth. “Cabbage,” he sniffed, poking his nose through the hole.
“The Tinby hates cabbage,” Sandra said. “Let’s try another.”
The box beside that contained dried herbs, and the one beside that was empty. Up on the next shelf they found a box of candles and a large sack of flour. On the next shelf were two rows of cooking oil, and higher up still was a huge box of cheese, with a hole in the side where the mouses had helped themselves.
And high, high up on the top shelf they found the Tinby. Somehow it had become wedged in the neck of an empty wine bottle, upside down.
“It looks distressed,” Sandra said.
“I wonder why it climbed in there,” Paul said, scratching his ears. “Perhaps it thinks it’s a cork.”
Actually the Tinby thought it was a spaceship, but that was not why it was in the bottle. It had seen something horrible and had squeezed into the bottle to hide.
Paul climbed the rough brickwork, put one paw on the neck of the bottle and peered inside. “Can you hear me?” he called, and the Tinby wriggled its little square legs in reply.
“We’ll never get it out,” Sandra said. “The poor thing is stuck fast.”
“We need something slippery,” Paul said. “Dish soap should do it.”
But Sandra had a better idea. With one shove, she sent the bottle sailing over the edge of the shelf.
For a brief moment, the Tinby was moving faster than any Tinby had moved in the entire history of the world. Then, SMASH, the bottle shattered into a million silver-green stars.
By the time Paul reached the floorboards, the Tinby had gone, leaving only a Tinby-shaped mark in the dust.
Paul called for Sandra to come down, but she refused. “I think you should come back up,” she said. “And bring Larry with you. I have found something he may find interesting.”
THE PROTEST
FURTHER ALONG THE TOP SHELF, IN A DARK AND DUSTY corner, Sandra had found a box marked MOUSE NOSES WHISKERS ON. The top was open, but the box lay on its side and some of the noses had spilled out.
Paul stood with his paws on his hips, knee-deep in noses. Graham was there too. Larry had stayed under the floorboards. He had important work to do, he said, organizing the campaign.
“We should take some down for Larry,” Graham said.
“No,” Sandra said, “I have a better idea.”
A minute later, Larry looked up to see a huge sheet of cardboard drop through the floorboards. The words MOUSE NOSES WHISKERS ON were printed across it in big letters. Larry was halfway through reading the word ON when a second sheet of cardboard landed on his head.
“They’re flaps,” Paul said.
“From a cardboard box,” Graham added.
“Graham tore them off with his bare paws,” Sandra said.
“A box?” Larry said, scratching his ears. “A box of noses?”
The second cardboard flap was blank on both sides. Graham ripped it into several cardboard squares, and Sandra glued a matchstick to each square to make them into signs. Larry wrote a message on each with a huge felt-tip pen. HANDS OFF OUR NOSES, read one. MOUSE NOSES SMELL, read a
nother.
“That one doesn’t make sense,” Paul said.
“It’s a double meaning,” Larry explained. “What’s the old joke about the dog with no nose?”
The twins knew the joke, and told it together.
“My dog has no nose.”
“How does it smell?”
“Terrible!”
Paul looked at the sign. “It still doesn’t make sense.”
The plan was to protest in the restaurant itself, to make the customers think twice before ordering mouse noses on toast. Everyone agreed that this was a good plan, but it did have one flaw. If the chef caught them, he would chop them up with a knife.
Paul shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
Larry picked up his sign. JUST BECAUSE WE SQUEAK, it read, DOESN’T MEAN WE’RE MEEK.
“Look,” he said, “can we just get on with it? There are mouses having their noses cut off this very moment.”
Larry could be very persuasive at times, and this was one of those times. When he marched out of the dusty storeroom that warm afternoon, his sign held high above his head, the mouses followed.
It is rare to see twenty-five mouses and a Christmas-tree decoration marching across the floor of a posh restaurant chanting protest songs and waving cardboard signs. The customers carried on eating at first, not believing their eyes. Then, when they realized that the mouses were real, the restaurant erupted as customers ran screaming from the room.
For Sandra and the mouses it was as though the sky were falling in, as stilettos, shoes and boots crashed down all around.
“Back to the storeroom!” Larry yelled.
They didn’t need telling twice.
WHAT NOW?
“THAT WAS A DISASTER,” PAUL SAID, SHAKING HIS SORRY EARS.
Sandra and the mouses were sprawled out in the mousehole, under the dusty storeroom. Sandra was trying to straighten her halo, which had been bent in the stampede.
“A disaster?” Larry said, standing up. “It all went perfectly to plan.”
Graham laughed. “Just like your protest in the old wooden house!”
“The protest in the house was not a complete success, I admit,” Larry said, wiping his sunglasses on his fur. “But a good leader learns from his mistakes, and I will learn from mine.”
“Then learn from this one,” Graham said, “and cancel the campaign.”
Larry was dumbstruck. “Cancel the campaign? Graham, do you realize what happened up there? We emptied the restaurant. Some of those customers will never return. A few more demonstrations like that and mouse noses on toast will be taken off the menu, for good.”
“If you think we’re going back up there,” Paul said, “you’re crazy.”
Larry was pacing the room, stepping over his exhausted friends. “Losers. That’s what you lot are. Losers.”
“I’m a loser all right,” Paul said. “A loser with a blue bottom, and bruises all the way up his tail.”
“At least you still have your nose,” Larry said. “Unlike thousands of other mouses standing noseless in some nose-removal factory.”
Larry paused for effect, then continued.
“Noses in boxes, noses in the back of a truck, noses on toast. Noses gurgling about in a horrible human tummy. It’s enough to make you sick.”
No one said anything to this. What could they say? Larry was right, and only a mouse with an apple pip for a heart could hear his words and not feel moved.
Larry leaned against the wall, scratching his ears in thought. “What we need now,” he said, “is Direct Action. We strike, and we strike hard.”
“How do you mean?” Paul said, standing up.
“If they want noses, we give them noses. More noses than they can stomach!”
THE MOST PATIENT DOG IN THE WORLD
THEY HAD THE NOSES, A HUGE BOXFUL. THE PROBLEM was how to transport them to the room above the dining area without being seen.
“We set up a system of pulleys,” one of the mouses suggested. “Out the storeroom window, up and in.”
“Too complicated,” Larry said.
“I could carry them up,” Graham said, flexing his muscles.
“Too heavy,” Larry said.
“We throw them up the stairs one at a time,” one of the twins suggested.
“Too tiring,” Larry said.
“We eat them,” the other twin said, “scamper up the stairs and be sick.”
“Too disgusting,” Larry said.
The youngest of the mouses, a tiny, squeaky mouse named Inch, thought they should use magic.
“Too impossible,” Larry said.
“We tie the whiskers together to form a mouse-nose snake,” Paul said, “and drag them up.”
“Too stupid,” Larry said.
“We build a time machine,” said a mouse who had watched too much Cheddar Television, “and travel to a time in the future when the problem has been solved.”
“Too idiotic,” Larry said.
It was Sandra who came up with the best idea. “All we need to do,” she said cleverly, “is give the dog a bone. We buy Rowley Barker Hobbs a bone as a present, and he will carry the noses for us.”
There was one problem. They didn’t have any money, and you can’t buy a bone without money, not even in a story.
“Where is Rowley Barker Hobbs?” Larry asked.
“Out on the sidewalk,” Paul replied.
“He’s been waiting out there all this time?”
Paul nodded. He knew Rowley Barker Hobbs like the back of his paw, and he knew that the shaggy sheepdog would never wander off without saying hello.
“It seems to me,” Larry said, “that Rowley Barker Hobbs is the most patient dog in the world. I suggest we write him an IOU and buy the bone later.”
“What’s an IOU?” squeaked Inch.
“An IOU is a piece of paper that means I owe you something,” Larry explained. “The something is whatever is written on the piece of paper.”
“Or drawn on the piece of paper,” Sandra said. “Rowley Barker Hobbs can’t read.”
The next problem was how to lower the box of noses to the storeroom floor. They needed string, and they had none.
It was Graham who solved this problem. He emptied the noses onto the shelf and sent the cardboard box sailing down to the dusty storeroom floor, just as Sandra had done with the wine bottle. They only had to shove the noses off the shelf and they would land in the box with a soggy plop.
While this was going on, Sandra set about unlocking the window. She did this by bending her halo into the shape of a key. Rowley Barker Hobbs said hello to the glass with his paws. The window swung open and in he leaped, wagging his happy tail.
“Mr. Hobbs,” said Larry, the only mouse who had remained on the storeroom floor, “we have a bone for you. Well, a picture of a bone. The real bone comes later. First, we need your help.”
“Why aren’t you shoving noses?” Paul said, tapping Larry on the shoulder.
“Someone has to keep an eye on the box,” Larry replied, and Paul had to admit, he had a point. “What about you, Paul? Why aren’t you shoving noses?”
“I was shoving noses,” Paul said. “I just came down to find out why you aren’t shoving noses.”
Graham had come down too. He stepped out from behind Paul and gave Larry an army salute. “Noses shoved, sir.”
“Right,” Larry said, clapping his paws. “Are you ready, Mr. Hobbs?”
Rowley Barker Hobbs was always ready. That was what being the most patient dog in the world was all about.
LARRY THE COWARD
WITH NO STRING TO SECURE THE BOX, THE TWENTY-FIVE mouses had to ride on Rowley Barker Hobbs’s back and hold it steady with their paws. Sandra perched on his padded nose, to shout directions. The stairs were steep and rickety, which made the ride bumpy, especially for Inch. He had forgotten to take his travel-sickness pills and turned a queasy shade of green.
Not even Larry knew what they would find when th
ey reached the top. Perhaps the home of Bertrand Violin and his elderly wife, Bertranda. Or the chef, who sharpened his knife in the dark, and cut off the nose of anyone who dared to visit.
But the upstairs rooms were empty.
The room above the dining area had no windows, and was lit only by the light that shined up through gaps in the floorboards.
There was only one customer in the restaurant now, a huge man with a bald head. If the man had looked up, he would have seen Larry’s eye peering through a mouse-sized hole in the ceiling.
The waiter flipped open his notebook, took a pencil from behind his ear and walked up to the man’s table.
“Six slices of mouse noses on toast,” the man said, licking his lips. “Three with whiskers, three without.”
Larry stood up. “Right,” he said, clapping his paws. “I need a volunteer.”
Silence.
“A volunteer, brave as a lion, to sacrifice his or her nose to save the noses of mouses for generations to come.”
Paul raised his paw, but not to volunteer. He had a question. “What does the volunteer have to do?”
“Plug the hole,” Larry said, pointing to the hole in the floorboards. “We pour the noses over the plugged hole. When I give the signal, we yank the plug by the tail. Up comes the plug, down go the noses.”
“You’ve got a fat head,” Paul said, “why don’t you plug the hole?”
“I have to give the signal.”
“I could give the signal,” Paul said helpfully.
“My sandals would fall off,” Larry said.
Paul laughed. Larry, he decided, was a coward.
“What did you mean,” one of the twins asked, “when you said the volunteer would sacrifice his or her nose?”
“Figure of speech,” Larry said.
The twins were not convinced, and did not volunteer. Neither did Graham or any of the other adult mouses. The only mouse to volunteer was Inch, the smallest, squeakiest mouse of all.
“You’re too small,” Larry said. “You would slip right through.”