The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer

by Alexander Key

  The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer

  Alexander Key

  To a certain knowing otter

  I met on a stream one day.

  May his tribe increase.

  1

  He Opens a Cage

  Swimmer’s first escape was a tricky bit of business that required the most of his cleverness and stealth. It involved unlatching the iron gate to his pen, opening the laboratory door and the one to the hall, then slipping all the way through Dr. Hoffman’s sumptuous town house to the front entrance, which had two locks.

  The most delicate part of the operation, which Swimmer considered great fun, was stealing past the two guardian bulldogs who had no use whatever for an educated otter with a silver bell around his neck. The bell was a tinkling nuisance he had been unable to get rid of, so he held it between his teeth until he had fiddled with the locks and was safely outside.

  On the sidewalk Swimmer froze, shocked by the unexpected rush of midnight traffic. Dogs and doors he could deal with, but the horror of man’s traffic was something else. Finally, seeing his chance, he streaked across the avenue and managed to make it unharmed to the park on the other side.

  A sort of creek, he knew, wound through the park and opened into a canal not far away. Somewhere in the smoggy distance the canal emptied into a river. Up that river, surely, lay wildness and freedom.

  As he slid eagerly down to the creek, Swimmer had a momentary vision of the sparkling stream he had played in as a pup. It was a delightful place—full of crawfish and trout, and with hundreds of little waterfalls and pools to explore. He and his family had spent a wonderful summer in it before being captured.

  The pleasant vision instantly dissolved as the murky creek closed over him. He came up snorting in disgust. The water, he thought, was enough to make a mud turtle gag.

  Determinedly, though, he sped forward in the direction of the canal. It couldn’t possibly be much worse there than here. If he could stand it till he reached the river, he’d soon be out of man’s world forever.

  The canal gave him another shock, but it was the reeking river that stopped him. The river was a horror.

  So by daybreak Swimmer was back at his prison. There was nothing else to do, unless he wanted to tackle the immensity of the city on foot, facing a nightmare of traffic.

  Since it was impossible to enter the house the way he had left it, he went around to the service entrance and waited for the arrival of Clarence, the black caretaker.

  At the sight of Swimmer, Clarence’s long jaw sagged. “Swat me down!” he muttered. “Who let you out?”

  “Nobody,” Swimmer said irritably, in the voice of an exasperated gnome. He was in a high state of disgust, as well as a little sick at his stomach. “Stop staring like a gloop and let me in.”

  It was the first time he had ever spoken directly to anyone, though he had often used his voice to play jokes on Miss Primm, his teacher in the lab.

  Clarence swallowed, clearly jolted. He was very lean and had a thin, shrewd face. Suddenly he slapped his knee and began to laugh. “So it’s you that’s been saying ‘Hi, dovey!’ to Miss Primm and kidding her along! And we thought it was the mynah bird. I should have known you could talk.”

  Swimmer grunted. He had never thought very highly of the human voice. There were more pleasant sounds. “I’m not proud of it. Are you going to tell Doc about me?”

  “Of course not! He wouldn’t believe it, anyway. And don’t call me a gloop. I’m your friend.”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest, cross my heart,” Clarence told him solemnly.

  Swimmer studied him a moment. Of all the humans he had come to know since his capture, he liked Clarence best. Which wasn’t saying much, of course, for there wasn’t much you could say about the whole human tribe. But at least Clarence had always been good to him, and he was not a pompous old goat like Doc.

  “Clarence,” he said slowly, “would you help me escape?”

  “Escape? Hey, what kind of talk is this? Were you trying to run away this morning?”

  “I’ll tell you when I’ve had some breakfast. Let’s go inside before somebody sees us.”

  The lab was a separate wing of the house where the much-talked-about Dr. Rufus Hoffman was studying animal intelligence. It seemed to Swimmer that Miss Primm, Clarence, and the various secretaries did all the work and studying while Dr. Hoffman, when he was not away lecturing, merely strode about majestically, playing the role of God. Once there had been more than a dozen captive creatures in the place, including three other otters in the enclosure with the otter pool. Now the lab housed only a white mouse, a black mynah bird, and himself.

  As he slid into the pool to erase the smells he had acquired during the night, the white mouse sent forth a thought of inquiry: How did you find the world outside?

  It stinks, Swimmer told him.

  I knew it was better here, the mouse replied. You are safe and warm, and there is plenty of food. What more do you want?

  You wouldn’t know. You were born here.

  The mynah bird sent a thought: I know. I remember the great forest where I was born. But I can only dream. Aloud, in a voice like a bell, he called, “Another day, another dollar. Oh, what a wonderful life!”

  Swimmer sniffed uncertainly at a dish of shrimp Clarence placed before him and wondered what Dr. Hoffman would think if he were told of the silent conversations that went on among the prisoners. Old Doc probably wouldn’t believe it. But Clarence would. Clarence was one of those very few humans who could sometimes feel things that couldn’t be seen or heard.

  “Now, let’s get this straight,” Clarence was saying. “You really were trying to run away, eh?”

  “I had it in mind,” Swimmer admitted.

  “Then what happened that made you come back?”

  When he had explained to Clarence about the river, the black man said, “You’ve been here nearly three years. Why didn’t you try running away before?”

  “Because I wasn’t ready. I was only a pup when I came here, and that’s a crazy world out there. What chance would I have had?”

  “And now you think you’re ready?”

  “I’ve been ready,” Swimmer acknowledged sourly. “I’ve had it to the teeth with education. Your kind, I mean. And I don’t like these shrimp. They stink.”

  “But they’re the best shrimp money can buy!” Clarence protested.

  “I know it. I don’t blame you. It’s the way things are. If you’d ever tasted a crawfish right out of a high-country pool …”

  Clarence tugged thoughtfully at his jaw. “I see what you mean, Swimmer. And you think it’s better where you came from?”

  “Of course it’s better!”

  “And you want me to help you escape?”

  “That’s the idea. Will you?”

  Clarence slowly shook his head. “No. I think that would be wrong.”

  Swimmer kicked over the dish of shrimp. “You said you were my friend! What’s wrong about helping me?”

  “It’s like this,” Clarence began patiently. “You’re no more fitted to go back and live where you came from than I am to go to Africa and live off monkey meat, like my people once did. You see? Nature would kill us. We’re soft and weak. We’re civilized. Anyone as smart as you—”

  They were interrupted by the opening of the laboratory door and Miss Primm’s forcibly cheery greeting, “Good morning, all. How are we this morning?”

  Clarence said, “ ’Morning, miss,” and the mynah bird, in a perfect imitation of Swimmer’s gnomelike voice, called, “Hi, dovey!”

  Miss Primm gave a little sniff, then smiled and took her seat at the desk facing th
e otter pool.

  “Swimmer,” she began brightly, “I’ve just had the most exciting talk with Dr. Hoffman. We’re to appear at two big lectures next week—Washington and Nashville. Isn’t that wonderful? So we must work very, very hard to improve our spelling. We wouldn’t want to shame the doctor before all those important people, would we?”

  Swimmer almost said Phooey, but controlled himself and scrambled over to an apparatus with a keyboard like a giant typewriter. Whenever he pressed a key, a large tab with the same letter on it would flip up on the board behind him.

  Quickly he tapped out: N-O S-C-H-O-L T-O-D-A-Y. H-A-D B-A-D N-I-T-E. F-E-E-L L-O-W-S-Y.

  Without another glance at her, he crawled into his concrete den and curled up to sleep. Maybe his spelling wasn’t so hot, but there wasn’t a thing wrong with his geography. He knew exactly where Nashville was. To reach it from Washington, Clarence would have to drive their van across the high country where he had lived as a pup.

  The very thought of it sent an excited tingling through Swimmer.

  Whenever Swimmer was scheduled to appear at one of the great Dr. Hoffman’s lectures, he and Clarence would travel in the van, which also carried the big apparatus with the keyboard and the lettered tabs. The doctor usually went in his limousine, and Swimmer saw little of him until it was time to begin answering questions at the keyboard.

  Though the doctor treated him like a laboratory creation, Swimmer often found it great fun to be in front of an audience, the center of attention. It was that way in Washington. He was an immediate hit with the bigwigs, who soon began asking questions of their own.

  “Swimmer,” said a famous senator, “what do you think of people?”

  He tapped out: N-O-T H-A-F A-S M-U-C-H A-S T-H-E-Y T-H-I-N-K O-F T-H-E-M-S-E-L-V-E-S.

  Another asked, “What is your opinion of money?”

  V-E-R-Y L-O-W, he replied. Y-O-U O-U-G-H-T-A G-E-T R-I-D O-F I-T.

  “Swimmer, do you believe in God?”

  W-H-O E-L-S-E C-O-U-L-D H-A-V-E C-R-E-A-T-E-D A-N O-T-T-E-R?

  “Swimmer, how do you feel about your benefactor, Dr. Hoffman?”

  H-E-S N-O B-E-N-N-Y F-A-C-T-O-R. H-E-S A-N O-L-D F-R-A-W-D.

  The audience was still laughing when a uniformed Clarence hauled him off the stage and locked him in his cage in the van.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Clarence. “You had no right to say such a thing about Doc in front of all those people.”

  “Why not? That’s how I feel.”

  “But you didn’t have to say it. He’s been good to you. You have a fine home, the best food—”

  “Aw, fiffle! I’m nothing but a trained slave, and you know it. He bought me and my sister from that dirty trapper just to experiment with, and instead of trying to help her when she got sick, he told the vet to get rid of her. He was through with her anyway—”

  “Now, Swimmer,” Clarence interrupted. “I’ve explained how it was. She had to be taken out of the pen to protect the rest of you. But it was too late. All of you got sick. It’s too bad the others died, but …”

  “Go ’way,” Swimmer muttered. “I hate you. I hate your whole stinking tribe.”

  For a little while, remembering his mother, whom the trapper had killed, and playful little Sprite, his sister, he really did hate the entire human race. What Clarence did not suspect was that Swimmer could always tell how people felt toward him, and usually what they were thinking. So could the white mouse and the mynah bird and every other creature he had met except man. Dr. Hoffman’s true feelings had never been hidden from them.

  Since Clarence liked to drive at night, the van was headed west for Nashville as soon as the keyboard-and-tabs machine was loaded. With the van in motion, Swimmer’s mood changed. Immediately he turned to a lower corner of the cage and began digging at the fastenings.

  Three of the fastenings were clinched nails that held the heavy wire to the frame. By turning the bent nails a little more, the wire could be loosened. It ought to give plenty of space for four and a half feet of overly educated otter to squirm through.

  Sometime after midnight Clarence halted near an all-night restaurant. “I’m going in for coffee, Swimmer. Can I bring you anything?”

  Swimmer was not hungry, but he figured he ought to eat all he could while he had the chance. “How about some fish?”

  He was surprised and momentarily delighted when Clarence brought him a mountain trout only a few hours out of the hatchery. “Hey, let me sit up front with you and eat it,” he begged. “I can’t see the country stuck back here.”

  Clarence sighed. “Sorry, old pal. You’re to stay in the cage, and I’m to keep it and the van locked at all times. Those are Doc’s orders. And don’t get any bright ideas about running away. Just remember you’re civilized. You belong with Doc.”

  “Aw, fiffle! Then how about taking off this crazy bell for a while? I’m nearly out of my ratted mind with it.”

  “You never complained about the bell before.”

  “I’m complaining about it now! All it does is tinkle, tinkle, tinkle—”

  “Swimmer, you know I can’t remove the bell without ruining the harness. That’s silver chain.”

  His spirits fell as the van got under way again. The bell was a danger. How he was going to get rid of it he didn’t know, but first he had to break out of the cage, and the fastenings were giving him trouble. As he struggled with them he heard thunder overhead, then the sudden slash of rain. A strange uneasiness came over him.

  The rain increased and became a steady downpour as the van wound upward into higher country. It was spring, and through a partially open window came the rich smells of a blossoming earth and occasionally the loved sound of rushing waters. Swimmer was aware of these, but he was robbed of all joy by a growing apprehension. Something was wrong. He forgot the fish entirely.

  Suddenly he turned from the fastenings and examined the cage door, shaking it in the hope that the lock hadn’t caught. But the lock was secure, and the key was in Clarence’s pocket.

  The feeling of wrongness grew. Swimmer whirled back to the fastenings, and the van shook as the night seemed to explode with swirling wind and rain. All at once, in a sureness of danger closing upon them, he hurled himself against the wire and cried shrilly, “Stop, Clarence! Stop! Stop the van!”

  The loosened wire gave under his frenzy of motion, and he burst out of the cage like a ball, spun about, and leaped forward to the driver’s seat.

  A startled Clarence had time only to gasp, and instinctively he pressed the brake. That alone saved them. A second later and a couple of feet beyond, the van would have been crushed by the tons of rock that came sliding down the high slope on the right. Clarence jerked the wheel, and the van skidded on the wet paving and turned completely around. There was a moment when the swinging headlights edged a plunging boulder and a falling tree, then the van struck the guardrail on the other side of the road and stopped abruptly. He sat clutching the wheel, dazed.

  “Are—are you all right, Clarence?” Swimmer said worriedly.

  “I—I think so. Lordy, what a close one!” Suddenly Clarence sat up. “Hey—what—how—how did you know something was going to happen?”

  “I just knew.” Swimmer could have told him that even a one-eyed newt would have felt the approach of danger.

  “How did you get out of your cage?”

  “I just got out. I had to. This is good-by, Clarence. I’m leaving.”

  Even as he spoke, Swimmer was hurrying to the rear door of the van. It was locked, but he knew that from inside the van only a quick upward jerk of the handle was needed to release the lock, and the door would swing open.

  “No!” Clarence cried, lurching to his feet. “No! You can’t do that! Swimmer, listen to me. You’re not wild anymore. You’ll die out there. Honest—”

  Swimmer had already grasped the handle. He threw his weight against it. There was a click, and the door swung open a few inches into the wind. Instantly he s
prang for the ground several feet away.

  But a devil rode the wind that night. Halfway through the opening Swimmer felt the sudden shift and tried to twist away. He did not quite make it. The door slammed against a leg and held him dangling a moment as pain shot through the leg. When he dropped to the ground the leg was numb.

  For uncertain seconds he crouched beside the van, shocked and trembling. Then he became aware of the sound and scent of the stream somewhere beyond the guardrail. Slowly, almost fearfully, he began limping through the blackness toward it.

  2

  He Follows a Trail

  The creek was far down a rocky slope, and it was high and roaring from the spring rains. In the mountain dark, with one leg useless, Swimmer reached it only with the greatest difficulty.

  Before his capture he would have plunged happily into the wildest water and found it great sport to battle the current. But now, even though he couldn’t see the stream, its very thunder terrified him. He sank down in the brush near the water, shaken and uncertain. This was home country, but he had never expected to feel so lost in it.

  Once, as he was trying to decide what to do, he thought he heard Clarence calling. The sound was so very faint against the water’s roar that he wasn’t sure, but it brought a terrible longing just to see Clarence again and feel his comforting presence. He turned, almost ready to try the long climb back. But pain shot through his leg as he started to move, and he sank down again, shivering in the rain.

  He had never been cold like this. Never in his life. Not even that time in his pup days when he had played tag under the ice with his family and some of the neighboring otter folk. What was wrong?

  At last he realized that Clarence had spoken the truth about being civilized. He had been cooped up too long in that dratted steam-heated lab. Now he was so soft he couldn’t even take a little spring rain. It was disgusting.

  And to make it really rough, he probably had a broken leg.

  With the thought that his injured leg might actually be broken, Swimmer’s already sodden spirits began to sink still lower. How was he going to swim and catch food? How was he going to travel to different feeding grounds? And with dogs and wildcats to worry about, how could he protect himself?