The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook

by John R. Erickson

  But then she’d dashed it all by shoving me out of the yard and saying, “That’s it.” All at once I felt used, tricked. I had dared to reveal tender emotions to this lady, had crawled out of my shell of . . . something.

  Oh well. I hadn’t expected it to work anyway. I mean, Sally May was a hard case. We dogs were pretty successful at fooling Slim and Loper, but Sally May was always tough. We could fool her once in a while, but not very often.

  So, in spite of my broken heart and so forth, I wasn’t exactly shocked when our plan fell as flat as a gutted snowbird and Little Alfred got captured going out the front door. I was still sitting beside the yard gate when his momma escorted him around to the backyard.

  “No, Alfred Leroy, you may NOT go fishing by yourself.”

  “But Mom, I wasn’t going awone. I was going wiff Hank.”

  A chirp of laughter shot out of her mouth. “Hank! Am I suppose to feel better about that? Sending you down to the creek with that dog?”

  “He’s a good dog, Mom.”

  “I know you think so, but to any mother in this world, sending you and Hank off to fish is like sending off Laurel to supervise Hardy. No.”

  “Aw Mom, pweese?”

  “No. And if you want to argue about it, we’ll go over to the hay field and discuss it with your father.”

  “But Mom, I’m bored. There’s nothing to do awound here.”

  She stopped. Her brows rose and a smile spread across her mouth. “Oh really? Well, young man, I have just the cure for that.” She seized his fishing pole and tackle box and set them down near the corner of the house. “You see these flowers and shrubs in the backyard? They all need to be watered.”

  The boy scowled and pooched out his lower lip. “That’s not what I wanted to do.”

  “I’m sure it’s not, but I have to go fix lunch for the men, and since you’re so bored and can’t think of anything to do, you can just do my watering.”

  His lip pooched out even further. “I don’t even wike your dumb old fwowers.”

  She stiffened. “Do we need to talk to your father?” Alfred shook his head. “All right. Straighten up your attitude. The spray nozzle is on the hose. Give everything a good watering—and don’t make a mess.”

  “Bummer.”

  She towered over him and crossed her arms. “The proper response, young man, is not ‘Bummer.’ It’s ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Now, try it again.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s better. I’ll be out to check on you when I get the potatoes whipped.”

  She went into the house. Alfred followed her with a dark scowl. Kicking at tuffs of grass, he sludged over to where I was sitting beside the gate.

  “I got caught.”

  Yes, I’d noticed. And I’d be the last dog in the world to say, “I told you so.”

  “I have to water my mom’s swubs. Tom Sawyer never had to water dumb old swubs.”

  Life was sometimes cruel.

  “You want to come into the yard and help, Hankie?”

  Uh . . . no thanks. I had gained a little ground with his mom and I wanted to hang onto it for a while. I would watch—and supervise—outside the yard.

  He heaved a sigh, trudged over to the hydrant, and turned on the water. He picked up the hose and began watering the shrubberies. There was a spray attachment on the end of it, see, and he could change the shape and intensity of the spray by squeezing the handle.

  I watched as he experimented with the thing, going from a broad mist to a single stream that squirted quite a long distance. It was fairly obvious that the best setting for this job was the broad mist, but it was just as obvious that the boy preferred the Fire Hose setting, with which he could send out a stream of water halfway across the yard.

  This began to cause me some concern. Alfred and I had been through a lot together, and I knew him pretty well. One of the things I knew about him was that he had a weakness for ornery tricks, and that he wouldn’t be content watering plants for long.

  There is a Universal Law of Physics which states . . . let’s see if I can remember the exact wording . . . which states, “Loaded water hoses in the hands of little boys tend to go off in all directions.” Yes, that’s it, and as you might imagine, this began to cause me some concern.

  See, even though Alfred and I were great pals, it was only a matter of time until he got bored with watering plants and began looking around for . . . well, live targets, shall we say. And I had reason to suspect that he might include ME in that category.

  I had just about made the decision to abandon my position at the gate and move my freight to a safer location, when suddenly and all at once something wonderful happened. In the course of spraying the shrubberies and flower beds, Alfred sent a shower of drops into the iris patch at the northeast corner of the house.

  Would you care to guess who or whom was loafing in the iris patch, and who or whom got nailed by the spray? Tee-hee. Pete the Barncat. Mister Never-Sweat. Mister Kitty Moocher. Mister Lurk-in-the-Flower-Beds.

  Ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha.

  Pete hated water. My ears shot up, my eyes popped open, and new meaning surged into the dusty corners of my life. All of a sudden I forgot the cares and responsibilities of running my ranch, and I prepared to indulge myself in the sheer delight of watching Kitty-Kitty get the hosing he so richly deserved.

  Pete came flying out of the iris patch. His ears lay flat on his head and he wore a most unhappy expression on his face. Tee-hee. I could hardly contain myself. Ten feet west of the iris patch, he stopped and looked around. Then he began licking the water off his left hind leg.

  Well, I was really involved now. Do you see the meaning of this? That cat was so dumb, he didn’t know where the water had come from! No kidding. He didn’t get it. I mean, there was a five-year-old ranch boy holding a loaded garden hose, and Pete thought the water had come from a passing cloud!

  Hard to believe, huh? Not for those of us who study cats in great deeth and dovetail . . . great depth and detail, I should say. See, cats have a tiny form of intelligence. They’re good at scheming and avoiding all forms of work, but they don’t understand kids or cowboys. Your average ranch dog, on the other hand, will put the clues together (little boy + garden hose + shower of water) and figure it out in the brink of an eye.

  How do we do it? Well, tremendous intellectual powers, for one thing, and also we understand the minds of ranch lads and cowboys.

  But Pete missed it, totally missed it. He sat down in the grass to lick himself dry . . . and what do you suppose happened next? Heh-heh. You know. I know. Even Drover would have known. It was obvious to everyone on the ranch but Pete, and much to my joy and delight, he never saw it coming. And he got fire-hosed.

  We’re not talking about a little sprinkle, fellers, or a few stray drops that hit the mark. By this time, Little Alfred had mastered his weapon and had learned how to deliver the maximum amount of water to a small target. Pete got blasted, plastered, smeared.

  I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I laughed, I chortled, I guffawed, I snickered. I whooped for joy, barked, and moved my front paws up and down. Pete heard me and came at a run.

  Seeing him in this soggy condition brought even more and deeper meaning into my life. I mean, the little snot was soaked to the bone. His whiskers were stuck together. His ears were pinned down and dribbling water. His hair was plastered into lumps, and his tail had lost all its fluff and now resembled the tail of a possum.

  Tee-hee, ho-ho, ha-ha. It was wonderful.

  He came slithering up and gave me an evil eye. “Well, Hankie, I guess you’re enjoying this.”

  “You could say that, Kitty, yes. And it serves you right for being all the things you are: hateful, spiteful, sneaky, and greedy, just to name a few. Oh, and lazy. If you’d been out catching mice instead of loafing in the shade, this wouldn’t have happened. You go
t exactly what you deserved, Kitty, and yes, I must admit . . .”

  HUH?

  Splat! Slosh! Slurp!

  All at once my lecture was interrupted by a, uh, fire-hose torrent of water which . . . surely the boy had been aiming at the cat. I mean, we were pals, right, and we’d both been sharing the joy of seeing Pete’s chickens come home to root . . . rot . . . roost . . . whatever . . .

  We’d been sharing a precious moment of joy and happiness, and we were pals and we understood one another and . . . yikes, the little snipe was giggling and dragging the hose and running in my direction . . . and there was a devilish gleam in his eyes and . . .

  SPLAT!

  Forget what I said about him aiming at Pete. He’d been aiming at ME, and this was no accident. He’d fire-hosed his best friend in the whole world. I was shocked, outraged, wounded, and to register my sense of wounded . . . SPLAT!

  Okay, that did it. I should have known he’d . . . I went to Full Throttle on all engines and got the heck out of there. I ran into a patch of tall weeds some fifteen yards west of the gate, and there I stopped to repair the damage and check out the situation.

  The good news was that he’d run out of hose and I was out of range of his stupid water. The bad news was that he had managed to give me a thorough soaking. The badder news was that Pete and I were sharing the same patch of weeds.

  He batted his eyelids and gave me his usual smirking grin. “Now, what were you saying, Hankie?”

  I gave him a withering glare. “I was saying . . . shut up, cat, and that’s my last word on the subject.”

  Well, Little Alfred had a big time squirting all his friends on the ranch, but he should have stopped there. He didn’t, and when he saw his mother’s face at the kitchen window . . .

  You’ll never guess what he did.

  Chapter Seven: Alfred Gets in Big Trouble

  I don’t think he meant to cause as much trouble as he ended up causing. I figure it was just a passing impulse that seized him. He should have resisted it. Even I knew that. But he didn’t.

  There he was in the yard, see, with a loaded garden hose in his hands. He had scattered all the cats and dogs, and had become the King of the Yard. That’s when he spied his mother. She was working at the kitchen sink, her face framed by the open window.

  My guess is that a wicked thought popped into his head: Wouldn’t it be funny if the hose somehow pointed itself towards the window screen and his mom somehow got sprayed?

  I saw it coming but was helpless to do anything about it. It happened in a flash. With a flick of his wrist, he beamed a jet of water at the side of the house and began moving it southward, towards the open window. When it hit the window, we heard a screech from inside the house, and Sally May’s face disappeared.

  Well, he had wanted to get his mommy’s attention, and he had certainly gotten it.

  Moments later, she came boiling out the back door, throwing it open with such vigor that it hit the side of the house with a loud whack. Her face was red and something bad had happened to her hairdo. A prairie fire burned inside her eyeballs.

  I was sitting in the weeds, some seventy-five feet west of the scene, yet the very sight of her caused me to melt into my tracks. It was clear, even at a distance, that Sally May had entered into one of her Thermonuclear Moments.

  Birds stopped singing. Crickets ceased chirping. The wind stopped blowing. Ants scurried into their holes. Grasshoppers dived for cover. Butterflies sped away as fast as they could fly.

  In that moment of awful silence, Little Alfred realized that he had made a BIG mistake, squirting his momma with the garden hose. He threw down the hose and headed for the front yard, pumping his little legs as fast as they would go.

  “I didn’t mean to, Mom. Honest. It was an accident.”

  “Alfred Leroy, you come back here!”

  She started after him in a stiff-legged walk, swinging her arms. I had seen that walk before, and it sent chills of fear rolling down my backbone. I sank deeper into the weeds. She stalked around the side of the house and called his name again. He didn’t answer. It appeared that he had gone into hiding.

  Just then, Loper arrived for lunch. He stepped out of the pickup, slapped some hay dust off his clothes, and started towards the house. Sally May met him at the front gate and they held a high-level conference. I was far enough away so that I couldn’t hear every word, but I heard enough to catch the drift of it.

  “Your son . . . NOT funny . . . disrespectful . . . acting like a brat . . .”

  Loper listened, nodded his head, and patted her on the arm. “I’ll take care of it, hon.”

  “My hair is a mess. The little donkey.”

  Loper chuckled. “He’s reminding me more and more of your side of the family.”

  At last a quick smile dashed across her mouth. “He’s just like his daddy and you know it. Well, I left some peas on the stove. Lunch is ready.”

  She went back into the house. Then and only then did I dare come out of the weeds and slip down to the yard gate. I wanted to, uh, stay abreast of the latest breaking news, so to speak.

  It didn’t take Daddy long to flush Alfred out from the cedar shrub in front of the house. A couple of calls in that deep voice brought him out. With his head down, Alfred followed his dad around to the back of the house. There, they sat down on the step. Loper pushed his hat to the back of his head, placed his hands on Alfred’s shoulders, and looked him in the eyes.

  “I hear you squirted your mom with the hose.”

  The boy’s head bobbed up and down.

  “How did that happen?”

  Alfred shrugged.

  “Was it fun?”

  That caught him by surprise. A grin leaped across his mouth and he nodded his head. “Yeah, but I didn’t know she’d get so mad.”

  “Well, now you know. What you did was wrong. It was disrespectful. You chose to do it, you had your fun, and now you need to accept the consequences. I want you to take off your muddy boots, go into the house, and tell your mother you’re sorry.” Alfred nodded. “After lunch, you’ll go to your room and stay there for two hours.”

  “Aw, Dad!”

  “I want you to think about this. Are you listening? Never squirt your mother with the garden hose.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Never squirt your mother with the garden hose. Understood?” The boy nodded. Loper offered his hand. “Shake on it. Now, take care of your business and let’s put this behind us.”

  “Okay, Dad, but two whole hours?”

  “Two whole hours. That’s the price for your fun. Next time the price will be quite a bit higher—only there better not be a next time.”

  The boy shuffled off to the house, leading with a Big Lip. Just as he went inside, Slim came up from the machine shed for lunch. He sat down on the porch and began pulling off his boots. “What’s wrong with Button? He’s liable to step on that lip.”

  “Oh, he just got sentenced to two hours in solitary. Squirted his ma with the water hose.”

  Slim tried to hide his grin. “Mercy. Imagine, a son of yours doing such a thing.”

  “That’s what my wife said, but I think it comes from him hanging around with you and that dog.”

  Huh? What dog? Surely he didn’t . . . hey, I’d just been sitting there, minding my own business and . . .

  Oh well. They went inside for lunch, chuckling over their stale jokes. I didn’t see the humor of it myself. I mean, I get into enough trouble around here without being blamed for Little Alfred’s crimes.

  And just for the record, let me state that I never would have sprayed Sally May with the garden hose. I’ve been accused of pulling a few dumb stunts, but never one as dumb as that.

  Although it was kind of funny.

  Well, there I was with nothing much to do and nobody to play with, no
w that my pal had been sent to jail. Two whole hours! It might as well have been two years.

  Maybe you think I should have gone back to work—you know, made a patrol, barked at the mail truck, checked traffic on the county road, stuff like that—but it was already too derned hot. A guy needs to start those jobs earlier in the day. And besides, there was the matter of being a Loyal Dog.

  See, when our pals get sent to jail, we dogs are sort of obligated to stick around to show Solidarity. How would it have looked if I had walked off and left him in there all alone? Not good. No, Showing Solidarity was part of the job and I had to do it, even though I hate sitting around and waiting.

  It was boring, very boring. The minutes dragged by. I tried to amuse myself with the usual stuff. I gnawed at a couple of fleas, dug a hole, watched the clouds. Ho-hum. Slim and Loper came outside, rubbing their bellies and bragging about all the rhubarb pie they had eaten. (Nobody offered me any of that pie, by the way.) Then they parted company and went back to work.

  After that little flurry of excitement, I settled back into the dull routine of snorking the borking rumpus . . . merf snerk . . . whiffen poof . . . I must have dozed off. Yes, I’m almost sure I did, and the next thing I knew, my eyes slid open and I saw . . .

  Someone. A person. A small personish someone standing over me, with a fishing rod in one hand and a suitcase in the other. Wait, it wasn’t a suitcase. It was too small to be a suitcase, so maybe . . . a tackle box?

  Okay, while I had been dozing, this unidentified stranger had slipped into ranch headquarters and appeared to have some crazy ideas about fishing on my ranch, only we didn’t allow unauthorized fishing, so I came roaring out of a deep sleep and . . .

  Huh?

  Okay, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness . . . to the bright daylight, I should say . . . once my eyes adjusted to the environmental situation that confronted me, I soon realized that I was looking at Little Alfred.