Yummy, yummy, yummy! One more? How ’bout two?
“Now tell your story,” Mom said to Jake. “What happened? Where’d you go?”
Jake took a big gulp of cocoa, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So, okay, Anthony and I were talking, and his dog—you know him, the pit bull? He went after Strudel.”
Mutanski narrowed her eyes. “Why did he do that, exactly?”
“Um . . . I dunno,” Jake said.
“Hmm,” said Mutanski.
Mom asked, “So then what happened?”
I wagged my tail and sat up a little straighter. This next part was going to be good.
“Strudel attacked right back!” Jake said. “It was like he was all of a sudden a wolverine or something—fierce! It would’ve been scary if it hadn’t been Strudel. And Luca—this part was funny—he just turned tail and took off like a shot. You should’ve seen Anthony’s face. He turned bright red, he was so embarrassed.”
Mutanski laughed. “Remember that time when Arnie called Luca ‘the enforcer’? So I guess he got that wrong.”
“Can we leave Arnie out of this?” Mom said.
“Where is your paramour this New Year’s Eve?” Grandpa asked.
“What’s a paramour?” Jake said before Mom could answer.
“Her boyfriend,” said Mutanski.
Mom shook her head and frowned. “Leave him out of this, I said. He’s in Atlantic City.”
“That so?” said Grandpa.
“All right, Dad. Don’t give me that look,” said Mom.
“What am I supposed to do? Close my eyes?” said Grandpa.
“Never mind,” said Mom. “We still haven’t heard the rest of the story. Then what happened, Jake?”
“Well, I chased ’em and almost caught up over on 2 Street, the big New Year’s Eve party, but then a bunch of firecrackers popped, and you should’ve seen Strudel take off. I didn’t know he could move so fast.”
Mom looked down at me. “Very sensible, Strudel. I don’t like loud noises either.”
“I had a dog like that when I was a kid,” said Grandpa. “He hated anything that went boom—thunderstorms, too. He used to hide in a closet.”
“What happened to Luca?” Mom asked.
“He was too busy chowing down on something to care about the noise,” Jake said, “and Anthony was right behind me anyway. I took off after Strudel, only there were so many people I couldn’t see him anymore.”
“It was a mob scene over there,” Grandpa agreed.
“I kept calling and running,” said Jake, “till I didn’t know where I was anymore. And I was freezing cold.”
“What happened to your phone?” Mom asked.
Jake seemed reluctant to answer this question. When he finally spoke, he looked at me instead of his mom. “Dropped it?”
Mom closed her eyes and shook her head. It was the middle of the night. She was tired and pale. “Jacob Dominic Allegro,” she said. “I just don’t know about you sometimes. Your phone is gone?”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Jake insisted. “It was Strudel’s. He yanked it out of my hand.”
Luckily for me, Mom was not buying this argument. “And didn’t anyone ever tell you the streets are numbered? How could you possibly get yourself lost?”
“Give him a break, Mom,” said Mutanski. “It was dark, and not all the streets are numbered. He lost track of the river. He got turned around. I think he went clear up to Society Hill—that’s, like, three neighborhoods away.”
Mom sighed. “All right. Sheesh, what a time for my kids to gang up on me. So anyway, how did you get back?”
“I found Strudel, or he found me—I’m not sure which,” Jake said. “And I guess his sense of direction’s better. He was still trailing his leash, and as soon as I picked it up, he led me straight back home.”
Thirty-Six
Just like Chief, I had prevailed over evil; peace and justice had been restored.
There was only one problem: Anthony. When Luca ran away from me—the little dog, the runt, the pipsqueak—Anthony was embarrassed. And now Jake was afraid that his embarrassment would turn into anger and a desire for revenge.
Every time we went for a walk, Jake said, “We got to avoid Anthony no matter what, Strudel. You keep a lookout, and so will I.”
What he should’ve said was keep a sniffout, but anyway I got the point.
A week passed. Jake and Mutanski went back to school.
On a sunny Saturday morning, Jake took me out and I found a greeting at power pole central. It was from Luca, and it was only a few minutes old.
Uh oh. I looked back at Jake and yipped.
Wanna go home? Let’s go home. How ’bout we go home right now?
As usual, Jake didn’t understand. Then, before I could say more, here came Anthony and Luca, and they were heading up the sidewalk straight for us.
When I barked—Danger, danger, danger—Jake got the message.
“Shoot,” he murmured. He was holding his breath.
But then something surprising happened.
Anthony and Luca crossed the street. They were trying to avoid us!
When Jake told this story to Mutanski later that morning, she nodded. “Of course. What did you expect?”
“I expected to be smeared on the sidewalk like a bug!” said Jake. “What do you mean ‘of course’?”
“Little bro, let me explain,” said Mutanski. “Luca was supposed to be Anthony’s muscle, right? Only he isn’t. He’s a sweet, mild-mannered baby, and now the whole neighborhood knows it, too.”
“They do?” Jake said. “But I only told Lisa and a couple of the other guys. . . .”
“And I only told Ty and Jennica and Briana,” said Mutanski. “And each one of them told somebody who told somebody else. Get it?”
“I guess,” said Jake, but he still sounded confused.
“Look,” said Mutanski, “Anthony and his pal Richie were trying to be like some big powerful force around here with all their business enterprises. But part of that depended on people being scared of Luca. Now because of Strudel, nobody’s scared of Luca, and Anthony and Richie look like the idiots they are.
“I don’t know how long it’ll last,” Mutanski continued, “but for now, anyway, the two of ’em are lying low.”
Jake still seemed worried. “Laura, are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes, Jacob.” She grinned. “I am sure.”
That night Jake started a conversation in the middle again. I had to think fast to keep up. “Now you and me could strut around the neighborhood, Strudel,” he said. “With Anthony and Luca out of the way, we could dominate. What do you think? Are you up for it?”
Woof, I said, meaning Nope, not really, but you’re the boss.
“How about if we read a little?” Jake asked. “I’m not that tired yet, and tomorrow’s Sunday.”
Chief, Dog of the Old West
Rachel Mae tore open the crate from Sears and Roebuck only to be bitterly disappointed. The spyglass was on back order. The hot-air balloon was puny, suitable not for flying but for decorating the mantelpiece. As for the net, it might catch a butterfly but never a villain.
“Phooey!” exclaimed Rachel Mae, then she stomped off to her bedroom and slammed the door. Lately it seemed that none of her plans went right.
Now began a period of dark days around the old home place.
Not only was Sheriff Silver’s brainy, blue-eyed daughter in a funk, a new menace had reared its ugly, bewhiskered and big-eared head. This menace was a mouse that had laid waste to the grain stores in the pantry.
“Do something, Sheriff!” Chef Pierre cried in frustration. “The rodent will soon be better fed than we are.”
“He may have eluded your traps, Chef Pierre,” said square-jawed Sheriff Silver, “but he will be no match for our loyal, sleek and powerfully built canine. Get ’im, Chief!”
But Chief did not get ’im. Instead, he whimpered and ran to hide under Rachel Mae’s pink-q
uilted bed.
“Sacre bleu!” exclaimed Chef Pierre. “The brave canine hero is afraid of a tiny mouse!”
The mouse’s ongoing campaign of pillage caused nerves to fray like chewed burlap on bags of grain. Meanwhile, the dark cloud of despondency continued to rain down on Rachel Mae.
Then one day Sheriff Silver had an idea.
“Daughter,” he said over luncheon, “your family needs you to devise a plan to dispose of the menace that has shattered the peace of our happy home. Only you can do it, Rachel Mae. Will you? Will you help us?”
“Say please,” said Rachel Mae.
“Please,” said the sheriff.
“S’il vous plaît,” said Chef Pierre, reverting to his native language.
As the sheriff had expected, this was just the problem to engage the brain of the brainy, blue-eyed girl. The dark cloud lifted. The sun shone in. Rachel Mae smiled.
“All right, Pa,” she said. “I will.”
After a day and a sheaf of graph paper, Rachel Mae announced that her plan was complete.
“Does it require telegraph lines?” her pa asked her. “And steamships and the 11th Cavalry and dashing Colonel Joshua Trueheart?”
“It does, Pa,” said Rachel Mae. “And the spyglass on back order from Sears and Roebuck, too.”
“Well, darlin’, that’s wonderful,” said Pa. “Now tell me all about it. And don’t leave out a single thing.”
With Rachel Mae busy describing the details, Chef Pierre chased down the mouse, trapped him in the butterfly net and deposited him outside among his prairie-dog cousins.
The chef had just returned to his pots and pans when the household’s tranquility was once again disturbed by an intruder bursting in through the front door.
“Stagecoach robbers!” cried the intruder, who was none other than Nellie Bly Bumsted herself.
From Rachel Mae’s room down the hall came the sound of a sleek and powerfully built canine scrambling out from under the bed.
“Are you ready, Chief?” Sheriff Silver asked.
Woof, said Chief. And the two of them strode purposefully out onto the prairie, ready to restore peace and justice once again.
Jake closed the book and sighed. “That was a surprising one, wasn’t it, Strudel? Who expected a sleek and powerfully built dog like Chief to be afraid of mice? But maybe everyone’s afraid of something, Strudel—even canine heroes.”
Thirty-Seven
Things were pretty tranquil around my own old home place that winter. Jake and Mutanski went to school. Mom went to work. Arnie came to dinner most nights, and Grandpa brought pizza on Fridays.
There were no breaks from the cold weather, so I didn’t go outside during the day. I missed Oscar and Johanna; I looked forward to seeing them again when the weather warmed up.
One Thursday after school, Mom came home early from work. She was making a special dinner, she told Jake. Arnie was bringing company.
“It’s all kind of mysterious, Stru,” Jake told me. “It’s some guy he just met, and he wants the guy to meet us, too, but he won’t say why. He says he especially wants the guy to meet you.”
Jake smelled anxious, but I was not. Perhaps this fellow had heard how I had prevailed over both feline and human bullies. Perhaps he was an author like Thesiger Sheed Lewis, and he wanted to write my life story.
Thinking about this, I became more and more excited as the afternoon wore on. I ran in circles and chased my tail. I did the sofa-coffee-table-plaid-chair circuit at least three times.
Mutanski said I was in every way a total nuisance. Then she scratched me behind the ears—awww.
As usual, I heard human footsteps at the front door long before anyone else did, and I made an announcement.
Company! Hey, hey, hey—company! Alert, alert, alert!
“Enough, Strudel!” Mom said, which was her way of telling me what a good dog I am. Then Jake grabbed me under my belly and pulled me into his arms, which was his way of saying the same thing.
I licked his face.
“Ewww! Enough, Strudel!”
I know, Jake, I love you, too.
The door opened and a gust of Arnie’s unpleasant scent blew in, followed by Arnie himself. He was laughing and talking to the man behind him.
When that second human scent reached my nostrils, I felt my heart miss a beat.
It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.
But it was!
I squirmed so hard to get down that Jake had to drop me. I was hysterical with joy—jumping, nipping, barking, running in all directions, running around the cuffs of his trousers the same way I did when I was a puppy.
Arnie started to laugh. “I guess he remembers you, all right. That about clinches it as far as ID goes.”
As Jake was saying, “Wha . . . ? Who? I don’t get it,” I was being lifted into my previous human’s arms.
He wasn’t dead! He was right here!
I licked his face, and he pushed me away gently, just the way he always did. He had never liked having his face licked. But he was laughing and giving me good friendly squeezes and tickles behind my ears. He was glad to see me, too.
There was just one thing. My previous human (who turned out not to be dead) smelled like all the old familiar things—leather, aftershave lotion, dusty carpets and books. But he also smelled like something else: dog.
And I had the feeling I knew this dog, too. Her scent was like sugary tea, but I couldn’t place her. She was a dog I hadn’t smelled in a very long time.
A few minutes later, when the humans sat down to eat dinner, I realized Jake and Mutanski weren’t happy about my previous human’s return. At first I didn’t understand why not.
Then it came to me: They were afraid he would take me away!
And would he?
All of a sudden my joy turned upside down. If my previous human tried to take me from Jake, I wouldn’t go. I would plant my paws firmly on the plaid chair. I would hide under the bed. I would do whatever it took to stay with my family.
Even with Arnie at the table, I stayed under Jake’s chair during dinner. I wanted to hear every word of the conversation.
“Tell Professor Wagstaff how you happened to get to know Strudel,” Mom said to Jake once the plates were served and everyone was sitting down.
Jake explained how his teacher had assigned him to read to animals at the shelter, how he had read me Chief, Dog of the Old West because those stories were his grandpa’s favorites.
“Why, I read those books myself,” said Professor Wagstaff. “When I was your age, I thought all the wisdom you’d ever need in life could be found in them.”
“I don’t know about wisdom,” Jake said. “I just like ’em ’cause they’re exciting. Lots of action.”
For a few minutes the human talk was boring, in other words about subjects that weren’t either treats or me. Then Mutanski said, “I still don’t get it, Arnie. How did you find Professor Wagstaff, anyway?”
“I didn’t go looking for him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Arnie said.
“Sheer chance,” said Professor Wagstaff. “We share the same barber in Queen Village.”
“That’s right,” said Arnie. “And when I mentioned my girlfriend’s kid had a dachsie that ran away from the firecrackers on New Year’s Eve, my barber said he had another client with a dachsie that ran away in a thunderstorm, jumped out the window, lost his collar in the process. But that dachsie never came back.”
Professor Wagstaff picked up the story. “The barber mentioned all this to me, too, and I thought about the timing. It seemed just possible that the two dogs were one and the same. So I asked him to give Arnie my phone number, and Arnie invited me along tonight. It wasn’t until I saw Mitty, though—or more accurately, till Mitty saw me—that I was sure.”
Mitty used to be my name, but I had vowed not to think of it again. I didn’t like it any more than I liked Strudel. Neither one of them is heroic enough to suit a badger-fighter.
Now J
ake repeated it. “Mitty?”
Professor Wagstaff laughed. “He was named after a fictional character named Walter Mitty, a man who daydreamed a lot. Even as a puppy, Mitty aspired to do great things.”
I thumped my tail.
That part’s right. I did.
“Seems funny he’d be scared to death of a little old thunderstorm, then,” said Arnie. There was a smirk in his voice.
“Not at all,” said Professor Wagstaff. “Every hero has his tragic weakness, his Achilles’ heel, if you will. That’s the nature of heroes. Loud noises seem to be Mitty’s.”
Wait . . . loud noises? Thunder? Hadn’t Grandpa mentioned firecrackers on 2 Street as well?
So the calamity had been only a thunderstorm. That was the apocalypse I had escaped.
No wonder there had been no rubble and ruin in our neighborhood. No wonder Professor Wagstaff had survived.
Boy, did I feel foolish.
But then Chief was afraid of a mouse, wasn’t he? Maybe Professor Wagstaff was right. Maybe to be a hero, you have to have a weakness.
Jake had been talking, and now I realized he was telling the story of how I prevailed over Luca and led Jake himself back home.
Listening to all this praise, I tried to remain humble, but my tail did not. It was wagging itself.
Then Mom’s fork dropped clink onto her plate. “Jake, are you saying Arnie’s nephew, Anthony, threatened you with his pit bull? You never told me that part.”
Under his chair, Arnie scuffed his shoes like he was uncomfortable about something.
At the same time, Jake realized he had said too much. “Aw, it was no big deal, Mom. Just, you know, neighborhood stuff. But still. Strudel was real brave.”
“We will talk more about this later,” Mom said, and it seemed to me she sounded a lot like square-jawed Sheriff Silver.
“You call him Strudel?” Professor Wagstaff said.
“They named him at the shelter,” Jake said. “I was going to rename him, but by now Strudel’s kind of stuck.”
“Oh yes, that’s another coincidence—that you found him at the shelter in Old City,” Professor Wagstaff said. “After Mitty disappeared, I adopted a dog from the same one. It’s odd to think that if I had gone there sooner, I would have found him myself. But I wasn’t ready for a new dog right away. I was too broken up.
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