The Case of the Falling Sky

by John R. Erickson

  Then, suddenly, out of the darkness of the gloom, I heard a voice. “You know, I think I dreamed that . . . the roof blew away.”

  “Huh? Donkey squared the surple maple turnip greens.”

  “No, wait a second. I dreamed . . . I dreamed . . . oh my gosh, Hank, I dreamed that the sky was going to fall!”

  I had been rowing the little boat of my mind out into the vast ocean of warm molasses, when all at once . . . I heard my name spoken, or even called, and so I turned my little boat around and rowed back to the . . .

  I sat up, let us say, and stared at the figure before me. It was a dog with a familiar face. Further observation and focusing procedures revealed . . .

  “Drover? Is that you?”

  “Where?”

  “There, where you are. Is that you?”

  “Well, I’m where I am . . . I think. Yeah, I guess it’s me. Were you dreaming?”

  I cut my eyes from side to side. “Yes, of course, that’s it. I was merely dreaming. But . . . wait.” I struggled up to a standing position, which proved to be difficult because I, well, somehow stepped on my left ear. “Drover, did you tell me that you dreamed about something?”

  “You just stepped on your ear.”

  “You dreamed about my ear?”

  “No, I said . . .”

  “Never mind the ear. Did you say that you dreamed about . . . the sky?”

  “The sky.” He wadded up his face and rolled his eyes. “You mean, the sky up there?”

  “Yes, same one.”

  “Well, let me think here.” Suddenly his eyes popped open and a look of horror came over his face. “Oh my gosh, Hank, yes! I dreamed that the sky was going to . . .”

  “Going to fall? Was that it?”

  He dived under his gunnysack. “Yes, that was it! And you heard about it too? Help, murder, oh my leg, the sky’s going to fall!”

  “Wait, don’t panic, it’s just a silly rumor that the chickens . . .” There’s no such thing as being too careful, right? I knew the sky wasn’t going to fall, or do anything else, but because of my great interest in Health and Safety, I decided to . . . “Scoot over, son, I’m coming in!”

  I decided to, uh, join Drover inside his private bunker and bomb shelter. Under his gunnysack, that is. I flew down the stairs and slammed the door behind me. There, in the eerie silence, we waited for . . . well, something to happen. The minutes crept by. Then . . .

  “Hank? Are you in here?”

  “Affirmative. How about you?”

  “Yeah, I’m here too.”

  “Ah! That explains it. I’ve had a foot in my face for the past fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He moved his foot. “How’d you know about the sky falling?”

  “I was out on patrol and got a tip from a rooster. How’d you hear about it?”

  “Well . . . I’m not sure. Maybe I dreamed about it.”

  The minutes crawled by as I thought about Drover’s statement. “You dreamed about it?”

  “Yeah, the sky fell down or the roof blew off or something. It was all in my dream.”

  I ran that information through my data banks. “Wait a second. You don’t suppose . . . Drover, is it possible that I said something about the sky falling and then you . . .” I heaved a deep sigh. “Drover, I’m going outside to take a look around.”

  “Gosh, be careful.”

  I crept out of the bunker and slowly rolled my eyes up toward the sky. The air hissed out of my lungs. “Drover, I’m giving the All Clear Signal. You can come out now.”

  “Well . . . I think maybe I’ll . . .”

  “Out! Come out at once! I want you to see this.” The edge of the gunnysack rose and I saw one of Drover’s eyes peeking out. I took the sack in my enormous jaws and jerked it away. “There, now look up. The sky is still there, just where we left it.”

  He rolled his eyes upward. A big grin spread across his mouth. “Oh good, I’m so glad! It didn’t fall!”

  “That’s correct, and there’s an important lesson here for all of us.” I glanced over my shoulders, just to be sure that nobody was . . .

  HUH?

  It was then that my keen eyes picked up an unusual pattern of color and light. I squinted and looked closer. It was . . . a cat, a cat who was sitting there in the darkness and watching us. And, no doubt, spying on our conversation.

  I turned to Drover and dropped my voice to a whisper. “Shhh! Not a word. We’re being watched.” I cut my eyes toward the cat.

  Drover grinned. “Aw heck, it’s just Pete, good old Pete.”

  “Good old Pete? Is that what you said?”

  I motioned for the little goofball to follow me a few steps away. There, I finished my lecture in a low whisper. Why were we whispering? It had to do with Security Procedures, and you’ll soon find out if you keep reading.

  Chapter Five: The Cat Tries to Spy On Us

  As you might recall, Drover and I had just gone into an Emergency Conference in a highly secured room in the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex.

  “Drover, I’ve warned you about carrying on conversations in front of the cat. He’s not part of our organization and we don’t want him listening to our business.”

  “Gosh, you mean . . .”

  “I mean we have information in our files suggesting that he might be an enemy plant.”

  “You mean . . . like okra or tomatoes?”

  I studied the runt for a moment. “What?”

  “You think Pete’s a tomato?”

  “Do I think Pete is a tomato? Drover, what are you talking about? How do you come up with these loony questions?”

  “Well . . . you said he was a plant and all plants are vegetables, and I just thought . . .”

  I gave that some thought. “Oh, I see now. You garbled my use of the word ‘plant.’ Listen carefully so I won’t have to repeat myself.”

  “What?”

  “I said, listen repeatedly so that I don’t have to care for myself. We have two meanings for the word ‘plant.’ One word, two meanings. A plant can be a vegetable, but a plant can also mean ‘an enemy spy.’”

  Drover’s eyes grew wide. “Gosh, you mean . . . the tomatoes are spying on us?”

  The air hissed out of my lungs. “No. I mean we have reason to think that Pete is spying on us.”

  “But you said he wasn’t a tomato.”

  “He’s not a tomato. He’s never been a tomato and he’ll never be a tomato, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop talking about tomatoes. Pete is a cat.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “A cat can’t be a tomato.”

  “What about tomcats?”

  “Tomcats can’t be tomatoes. If they were, we’d call them tom tomatoes.”

  “A tom-tom is a drum.”

  “Exactly. Now, are we clear on my use of the word ‘plant’?”

  He rolled his eyes around. “You mean . . . Pete plays the drums?”

  I marched a few steps away and tried to clear the cobwebs from my mind. “Drover, we’ve worked together for several years, and in some ways I even consider you a friend.”

  “Gosh, thanks.”

  “But I must be honest and tell you that sometimes, when I’m trying to carry on a normal conversation with you, I begin to feel . . . insane, almost as though my mind had turned into . . . mush.”

  “Mush?”

  “Yes, mush. Do you ever get that feeling?”

  “Well . . . I ate a mushroom once, but I didn’t like it and spit it out. Is that what you mean?”

  I felt overwhelmed, beaten, defeated by the forces of chaos. “Yes, Drover, that’s what I mean. The whole point of this conversation is that you ate a mushroom.”

  “I’ll be derned, so did I.”

  I marched back over to h
im and stuck my nose in his face. “Now listen, you little lunatic, forget about mushrooms, tomatoes, and drums. That cat over there could very well be an enemy spy, and we don’t want him listening to our conversations.”

  “Oh. You mean, about the sky falling?”

  “Right. Exactly. And do you know why we don’t want Pete to know about it? Because, Drover, that business of the sky falling was nothing but chicken gossip.”

  “Yeah, but we believed it for a minute or two.”

  “Which is the whole point of this lecture. If Pete knew that we had fallen for chicken gossip, he might get the idea that the Security Division is full of freaks and nitwits. And if that kind of information ever got back to our enemies . . . well, you can imagine what kind of damage it might cause.”

  Drover’s eyes popped wide open. “Oh, I get it now. We’re keeping secrets from Pete?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, Drover, that’s it. Thank you for understanding. Now, let’s find out what the cat’s up to.”

  And with that, I swaggered over to Mister Sneak and Lurk—Pete, that is—who was sitting near the northwest angle-iron leg of the gas tanks. He had his tail wrapped around his body and he wore his usual cunning smirk.

  Have we mentioned Pete’s cunning smirk? Maybe not. He spends a lot of his time smirking, don’t you see, and that always makes me suspicious. What does he have to smirk about? It’s almost as though . . . well, as though he knows something we dogs don’t know. Does that sound possible? No, it sounds very impossible, but still . . . it troubles me, that smirk of his.

  Anyways, I marched up to the cat and wasted no time sneezing the upper hand. “Okay, Pete, let’s have some answers.”

  He looked up at me and broadened his smirk. “Well, well! Hi, Hankie. What are you doing up so late at night?”

  “Never mind, kitty. Get to the answers.”

  “Answers. Hmmm. Let me think. Yes. No. True. Potato. And tomorrow.”

  I waited for more. “What’s the point?”

  “Well, Hankie, those were all answers. That’s what you asked for, answers. Would you like to hear the questions?”

  My first impulse was to laugh in his face, and then to give him such a stern barking that it would rattle his teeth. But on second thought . . .

  “Sure, why not? Just for laughs, let’s hear your so-called questions.”

  He rolled over on his back and began playing with his tail. “Very well, Hankie. The first answer was yes, and the first question is, ‘What’s a three-letter word that means uh-huh?’”

  “That’s a dumb question, kitty, but go on.”

  “The second answer was no, and the second question is, ‘What’s a two-letter word that begins with N and ends in O?’”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “‘No’ only has two letters, Hankie, N and O.”

  “Oh. Yes. Keep going.”

  “The third answer was ‘true,’ and the third question is, ‘Cats are smarter than dogs. True or false?’”

  “That’s cute, Pete. Nice question but wrong answer. Keep going, something about a potato.”

  “Oh yes. The answer is ‘potato,’ and the question is, ‘Name a square root that isn’t square.’”

  I narrowed my eyes at the cat. “That doesn’t make sense. A square root is supposed to be a number.”

  “Think about it, Hankie. A potato is a root and it has an oblong shape, so it’s not square.” He snickered. “Don’t you get it?”

  “A potato is a . . . okay, sure, I get it, Pete, but is that your idea of humor? It wasn’t funny, so let’s hurry along to the last answer. What was it?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Right, that was it. So what’s the question?”

  All at once Pete stopped playing with his tail. He sat up, glanced over his shoulders, and turned to me with his big moon-shaped eyes. “You might not want to hear this one, Hankie.”

  “I’ll be the one who decides that.”

  “It’s a little . . . SCARY.”

  I stuck my nose in his face. “Hurry. Up!”

  “All right, Hankie, if you insist. The question is, ‘When will the sky fall?’”

  HUH?

  There was a long moment of silence. I stared into the cat’s weird yellow eyes and felt a jolt of electricity moving down my backbone and out to the end of my tail. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. I could hardly believe that I’d heard what I’d heard, or that Pete had said what he’d said.

  And then, at that very precise moment, I heard . . . you won’t believe this part, it was just too much of a coincidence . . . at that very pricey moment, I heard a sound off in the distance.

  The crowing of a rooster!

  HUH?

  Do you see the pattern? The clues were stacking up, falling down on my head like hailstones, and they were all leading toward a shocking conclusion. Here, take a peek at our Clue List.

  CLUE LIST #806

  Top Secret Information!!

  Clue #1: J.T. Cluck makes a prediction that the sky is going to fall tomorrow.

  Clue #2: Drover has a mysterious dream that the sky is going to fall tomorrow.

  Clue #3: Pete the Barncat predicts that the sky is going to fall . . . tomorrow.

  Clue #4: Just as Pete makes this revelation, a rooster crows—the very same rooster who made the original prediction!

  End of Secret Clue List

  Please Destroy at Once!

  There, do you see the pattern now? What really spooked me about this deal was that the clues formed a CIRCLE. As you may know, clues always fall into certain shapes and patterns. Most of the time they form squares, triangles, polygons, pygmies, rectangles, and wedges. But sometimes, on very rare occasions, they will settle into a circular pattern, and fellers, a circle of clues is the very most dangerous kind.

  There it was, the Dreaded Circle of Clues. I had seen a perfect Circle of Clues only once or twice in my whole career, and . . . is this getting too scary? I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else to say. When we started this mystery, I had no idea that it would lead us into something as scary and terrifying as . . . well, the sky falling, might as well say it.

  I mean, when J.T. first mentioned it, I thought it was a joke . . . chicken gossip. Honest, I never dreamed we’d get out into the middle of the story and . . .

  It’s getting pretty scary, that’s the point, and you know me. I worry about the kids. A little scare now and then is okay, but the real Heavy Duty Scary Stuff . . .

  What do you think? I guess we could shut down the story right here. You could walk away from it and pretend that you don’t know anything and didn’t hear anything. I know, that would be kind of a chicken’s way out, but . . .

  Yipes! Did you hear that? “Chicken’s way out?” Is that another clue?

  This is getting deeper and darker all the time. I’m almost afraid to say another word, but without words we’d be . . . well, speechless, and then what would we say?

  You be the judge. Should we lock up this mystery and walk away from it, hoping that . . . gulp . . . nothing will happen?

  Or should we do what cowdogs have always done—swallow our fear, hold our heads at a proud angle, and bull our way through to the bitter end, letting the chipmunks fall where they may?

  We’ve got to reach a decision here.

  You’ve got two minutes to think about it.

  Chapter Six: The Dreaded Circle of Clues

  Okay, time’s up. What shall we do?

  Go on? That’s your vote?

  Whew! Thanks a bunch. See, I was afraid you were going to close your book, hide it under the bed, and go do something else. You can do that, see, but I can’t, because I’m . . . have I mentioned that I’m Head of Ranch Security? I am, and I can’t walk away from a mystery just because I’m scared out of my wits and l
iver.

  So, thanks again. I don’t know where this will lead us, but I’m pretty sure that it’s going to get rough before it gets any rougher.

  Anyway . . . where were we? Oh yes, we were interrogating the cat and had just come face-to-face with the Dreaded Circle of Clues. The hair was standing up on my back, and we’re talking about a line of hair standing up like the brussels of a teethbrush . . . bristles of a toothbrush, let us say. And a buzz of electrical current had moved down my spine and out to the end of my tail.

  Pete was staring at me with his weird moon-shaped eyes and twitching the last two inches of his tail. Maybe he was probing to see if his revelation about the sky falling had left me . . . well, shattered, scattered, and witless. To be real honest, it had, but I couldn’t let him know it.

  The cat spoke. “What is it, Hankie? All at once you look worried.”

  “Worrried? Me? Ha ha ha. Whatever gave you that”—I whirled around so that he couldn’t see my face—“silly idea?”

  “Well, Hankie, I just thought you looked worried . . . or concerned about something.”

  “I’m not worried or concerned.”

  “But you moved away and now I can’t see your face.”

  “I got tired of the scenery, Pete. Staring at cats gets boring.”

  He crept around so that he could see my face again. His eyes lit up. “Hmmm, yes, I see it now! You do look worried.”

  I moved again, so that my face was out of his view. “Pete, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but this whole exercise seems pointless. Anyway, I’ve finished my interrogation and you can run along. Good-bye.”

  “But you didn’t ask me any questions, Hankie. I asked all the questions.”

  “Exactly my point. You helped me with the interrogation and now we’re done. We have no further questions, so run along and chase your tail.”

  Would he take the hint and leave? Of course not. Cats never take hints. They hang around, stay too long and too late, and make a complete nuisance of themselves. It’s part of their mission in life.

  I saw his face peeking around the bulge of my massive shoulder. He was watching me again, the little pest. “Hi, Hankie. I still say you look worried about something. Could it be that you’re worried about . . . the sky falling . . . tomorrow?”