Monkey Business (6 page)

Chapter Nine: Attacked by a Naked Woman

B
efore the monkey could take defensive measures, we went streaking toward the house. When we came to the yard fence, I sprouted wings, fellers, jumped that fence like a deer, landed safely on the other side, and didn't slow down until I was standing on the porch, pressing against the screen door.

Drover was just a few steps behind. “We made it, Hank, we pulled it off!”

“Yes, we did, and nice work. I think Sally May will be proud of us for this one, Drover. Now we sound the alarm and alert the house. Bark, Drover, as you've never barked before!”

Boy, did we bark! We bristled the hair on our backs and lifted our heads and leaned into our barking. Loper had already gone for the day, but I knew Sally May was there.

The door opened and Little Alfred, age four, came toodling out into the utility room. He was wearing red and white polka-dot pajamas. His eyes were still puffy with sleep and he had an easy grin on his face.

“Drover,” I said, “if we can coax him to open the screen door, we'll take refuge in the house.”

“But what if Sally May . . .”

“As long as we stay in the utility room and remain quiet, she'll never know we're there.”

“I'm scared of Sally May.”

“All right, I'll go into the house and you stay out here and entertain the Pasha of Shizzam.”

“I think I'll go inside.”

“I thought maybe you would.”

Little Alfred came to the screen door and grinned down at us. “Hi, doggies, what ya doing?”

In the security business, there are certain techniques we use for begging our way into areas that are off limits. We whine, wag our tails, whimper, quiver, hop up on our back legs, and scratch on the screen with our paws.

If you've never seen a highly trained, well-conditioned cowdog going through the Heavy Beg maneuver, you'll just have to take my word for it. It's very impressive.

Little Alfred's mother, had she come to the door, would have provided a stern test of our ability. She was a hard sell. Her heart must have been whittled out of petrified wood. But Little Alfred was younger, kinder, and more pliable, and he also happened to be a special pal of mine.

When he came to the screen door, I called in all the old IOUs. I mean, this was an emergency situation and I put our friendship on the line. I put enough heavy begs on him to break his heart four times, and you know what? He opened the screen door and let us into the utility room.

Under ordinary conditions, I would have been satisfied to remain out in the utility room, along with the muddy boots, overshoes, old smelly gloves, chaps, spurs, and so forth. But this was a serious deal, and while the utility room was probably safer than the outside, it wasn't quite as safe as the house itself, with its thick walls and lockable doors.

Hence, when I saw that Little Alfred had left the door into the house ajar . . . well, it occurred to me that he probably
wanted
us to take refuge inside the house. That made perfectly good sense. I mean, here was a kid who realized the value of his dogs and wasn't about to take any chances with them.

These kids will surprise you, how sharp they are.

So I scrambled through the door and entered the house. Right away, I faced a decision: Which way to go? I was standing in the hall, don't you see, with the kitchen to my right and the bathroom to my left.

It was common knowledge that at this hour of the day, Sally May would have finished cleaning up the breakfast dishes and moved into the living room, where no doubt she would be playing with Baby Molly on the floor or reading a magazine.

Now that we were safe inside the house, warning Sally May about the monkey seemed less important in the overall scheme of things than hiding from her. After all, she had been known to throw dogs out of her house for no apparent reason.

A turn to the right would lead to a confrontation with her in the living room. A turn to the left would lead us into the bathroom, where no one would think of looking for us.

So, naturally, I chose to go left instead of right. “Come on, Drover, into the bathroom!”

Only later did I discover that Drover didn't follow me into the bathroom. Only later did I realize why.

The bathroom door was open a crack and I went plunging inside, throwing the door back against the bathtub with such force that it made a loud WHACK. This was followed by a woman's scream. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Huh?

By George, there she was in the bathtub, taking a bath. With Baby Molly. Instead of playing with her on the living room floor. Where she should have been. At that hour of the . . .

Her scream tipped me off that I had invaded a lady's privacy and given her a scare in the midst of her bath, and that perhaps I wasn't welcome in there. By the time I realized the error of my ways, I had motored out into the middle of the tile floor. Hard tile, very slick, made changing directions something of a problem.

It was at that point that Sally May nailed me on the nose with a wet washcloth and exclaimed, “GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM, YOU FILTHY DOG!”

Let me pause here to point out that, while I
was
in her bathroom and I
was
a dog, as she had noted, I was NOT filthy. That very morning, only hours before, I had cleansed myself in the overflow of the septic tank, and we're talking about a complete emersion up to the tips of my ears.

I might have carried a few random particles of dust on my body, but we must remember that dust comes from God's good earth. If dust comes from dirt and dirt comes from the ground, then it follows that her charge was groundless.

Well, Sally May was a strong-armed ranch woman with a history of throwing rocks with deadly accuracy, and even sitting down in the bathtub, clutching a towel to her chin, and holding a baby in her lap, she could deliver a stinging blow with a wet washcloth. That thing hurt, and it also blinded me, since it draped across my nose and covered up my eyes.

I hit right full-rudder, reversed all engines, spun around in a circle, fell down three times on the tile, and got the old bod lined up with the door.

I throttled down hard and took aim at the open door, with every intention of getting the heck out of there.

I'll never understand why Little Alfred
closed the door on me
. Surely the kid . . . I mean we were friends, right? Good pals, tight buddies. We'd played together and hiked together and laughed together, and I can't believe that he would have locked me in there with his mother, knowing full well that . . .

On the other hand, the boy did have his ornery side. I noticed that a certain sparkle came to his eyes, like a match lit in total darkness, and that a nasty little smile leaped across his mouth. Hmmm, yes.

But the long and short of it was that I, blinded by a wet washcloth, went scrambling for what I supposed was an open door, only to find it closed. Did it hurt when I rammed the door? Yes, it did, but not nearly as badly as the bar of soap that Sally May sent whistling across the room. Like most of her shots, this one went straight home, got me right in the ribs.

Clutching the towel to her chin, her hair in disarray and her eyes revealing destructive thoughts, she rose from the water like a sea monster.

“GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM! HIKE! GIT! SHOO! SCAT!”

Hey, she wanted me out of her bathroom? Not nearly as badly as I wanted to get out, but it just so happened that she had raised a hoodlum child who got his laughs by locking innocent dogs up in bathrooms with insane naked women.

Sally May threw on her housecoat and began flogging me with the towel. Near panic, I went sliding around the bathroom, looking for an exit or a hole to climb into. Somehow the trash can got knocked over and the toilet seat fell down with a crash and towels and washcloths fell from their proper places.

Suddenly the door opened and Little Alfred's face appeared. “Hi, Mom, what ya doing?” The grin on his face told it all—the little skunk had engineered this disaster and had been watching the entire show through the keyhole.

But the weed of crime bears bitter fruit. The boy had not only pranked me, but he had pranked one of the toughest, smartest, and meanest ranch wives in Ochiltree County.

“Did you let that dog in the house? And then lock him in my bathroom?”

She didn't wait for an answer but snatched him up, turned him over her knee, and frailed his little bottom. I paused for a moment to enjoy the first squalls from the little hoodlum, then I seized this opportunity to run for my life.

Chapter Ten: Democracy in Action on the Ranch

W
ithin seconds, I had made a pass through the house and taken cover in the darkness beneath Sally May's bed. It was a tight squeeze, but I managed it.

In the darkness, I listened to the rumble of battle. Sally May had wrung a full confession out of Little Alfred and he had been thrashed for it. Justice had been served.

“Now get your clothes on, Alfred. I have a dental appointment in forty minutes. And find that dog and throw him out!”

Throw ME out of the house? I had news for Little Alfred. There was no way he was going to haul me out from under the bed and throw me outside with that monkey. I had made a new discovery about monkeys, don't you see. I didn't like 'em at all.

I had these thoughts on my mind when I heard a voice: “Hi, Hank. Did you get in trouble with Sally May?”

It was Drover's voice, and it was very near. My eyes probed the darkness and saw only darkness.

“Are you under this bed?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“Of course I am, and for very good reason. I was being flogged by a naked woman with a wet towel. What's your excuse?”

“Well, it sounded like things were getting hot in the bathroom and I thought . . .”

“You thought you'd take the chicken's way out and hide under the bed, right?”

“Well . . .”

“And so you left one of your former friends to be mauled in a locked bathroom. I don't suppose it ever occurred to you to stick around and help, did it?”

“Well, yeah, it did occur to me, but I thought it was a pretty bad idea.”

“This will go on your record, Drover, and be­lieve me, it will not go unpunished.”

“Oh drat. But anyway, we're safe from that crazy monkey. I knew he'd end up causing trouble.”

“Yes, and so did I, Drover. I hope you've learned a lesson from all of this.”

“I guess I have. Never trust a monkey in a red hat?”

“Exactly. And furthermore . . .”

Suddenly I heard footsteps on the floor. Small feet wearing shoes. Little Alfred was looking for us. We froze, hardly daring to breathe or move a muscle. The footsteps came into the bedroom and moved about. They stopped beside the bed. I held my breath and waited.

The boy's eyes appeared beneath the dust ruffle. They seemed to be upside down. Yes, of course they were, since he had tilted . . . I thought we were goners because he looked straight at me, but apparently it was too dark under there for him to see us.

The eyes disappeared, the footsteps moved into the living room, and Little Alfred said, “Mom, I can't find the doggies.”

Sally May was crashing around in the other end of the house. “Well, we don't have time to look. We've got to leave right this minute. If those dogs make a mess, I'll . . .”

She didn't finish her sentence, but she didn't need to. I had already made a mental note that, while in her house, we would make no messes.

When she came home, we would be lying on the rug beside the back door, minding our own business and guarding her house against robbers and fiends. No messes, not even one. She would be SO proud of us!

I heard the back door slam. The car started and went roaring up the hill in front of the house. And then . . . silence. I inched my way out from under the bed.

“All right, Drover, you can come out now. The coast is clear.”

“How can you have a coast without an ocean?”

“What?”

He sneezed. “I said, it sure is dusty under there. Tears up by siduses.”

“Are you saying that Sally May doesn't clean under her beds? Are you suggesting that she isn't a good housekeeper? Get to the point, Drover.”

He sneezed again. “I dodt doe the poid, but by dose is all stobbed up.”

“Well, let me remind you that a stopped-up nose is a small price to pay for being safe inside the house, away from the monkey.”

“I thought you two were frids.”

“Me? Friends with a monkey? Drover, I never trusted the little whelp, not for a minute.”

He sniffed his nose. “Thid what was all thad stuff aboud you being the Grade Gred Podendade?”

I glared at the runt. “Great Grand Potentate? I don't know what you're talking about. You must have been dreaming.”

“Doe, I wasn't dreebig. You said you were the Grade Gred Podendade, and the bucky was your Captain of the Guards.”

“Rubbish. Come on, let's make a pass through the house and check things out. We're in charge now.”

I crept out of the bedroom, peeked out the door, looked around in all directions, and started into the living room to give it a security sweep.

Drover was behind me, walking on tiptoes and checking things out with big moon eyes. “Hake, can buckys oben doors and cub into houses?”

I stopped. “What?” He repeated the question. Translated into common, non-sinus language, it meant, “Hank, can monkeys open doors and come into houses?” It was your typical dumb Drover-type question.

“Don't be ridiculous. We're safe inside the house, and I wish you'd stop asking silly questions.”

“Whad's the edser?”

“The answer, which is obvious to everyone but you, is no, monkeys cannot now and never have been able to open doors and come into houses.”

“How do you doe?”

“I know because . . . because it's the law, Drover. Or if it's not, it should be and will be. We live under a system of laws, not monkeys. No monkey is above the law and no law is below a monkey.”

He ran his eyes around the room. “Baby so, but Hake, I'm feelig a little scared byself. I don't ever wad to see that bucky again.”

“Nor do I, but that's my whole point, Drover. The law is here to protect us, to give us feelings of security, right? And laws are made by mature, responsible individuals, right? Hencely, we will put the democratic system to work and pass a law against monkeys.”

“Well I'll be derd. I devver would have thought of that.”

I gave him a fatherly smile. “Which is only one of many reasons why you're not Head of Ranch Security. Come on, let's get this thing signed into law and then we can relax. I'll give you a little lesson in government.”

We went into the living room and I hopped up in that big rocking chair over by the east window, just below the hanging plant. I told Drover to sit on the floor in front of me.

I cleared my throat and struck a dignified pose. “The chair will now entertain a motion from the floor.”

Drover gave me a blank stare. “You mean, that chair's going to dance on the floor?”

“No, that's NOT what I mean.”

“Well, you said ‘entertain,' and I just thought . . .”

“Are you trying to make a mockery of our system of government? To hold a proper election, we must have a chair that recognizes a motion from the floor.”

“I never heard of a chair that could recognize anything.”

“Forget about the chair, Drover. It's just legal terminology. Now, you make a motion from the floor.”

After giving me another blank stare, he stood up and walked around in a circle. “How's that?”

“What are you doing?”

“Making a motion. I guess. I don't know what I'm doing.”

“No, incorrect, absolutely wrong. A motion from the floor, Drover, is whatever it is that we're fixing to vote on.”

“Oh. Well, I'll vote for that.”

“Not yet! We still don't have a motion, you brick.”

“Well, how much emotion do you want?”

Sometimes . . . oh well. I managed to hold my temper. “Drover, listen to me. Don't think. Just say your part.”

“I don't know my part.”

“Hush and listen. When the chair calls for a motion, you will say, ‘The floor moves that monkeys cannot possibly open doors or enter houses.' That's all there is to it. Are you ready?”

“I guess.”

“All right. The floor is open to motions.” I waited and got nothing from Drover. “Well?”

“Is that chair really going to talk to me?”

“NO! I am the chair and you are the floor.”

“This is crazy.”

“Just say your lines, Drover.”

“Okay. Let's see: ‘The floor is moving around and monkeys can't come into this house.'”

“That's close enough. The floor has made the motion and the chair will second it. All in favor say ‘aye.'” We both said “aye.” “Motion has carried by unanimous vote of all present. Congratu­lations, Drover, we have taken self-government to the dogs.”

“Sure looks that way to me.”

“And as a result of this solemn action . . .”

All at once my right ear shot up and I cut my eyes to the side. “Did you hear something?”

“Yes.”

“Describe the sound.”

“Door opening and door closing.”

Suddenly I noticed a certain dryness of mouth. “It must be the wind, Drover. Of course it was the wind. What else could it be?”

It appeared that Drover's eyes had begun to cross. “The monkey?”

“Impossible. There are laws against . . .”

And then we heard the voice. “Duggies? Where are you, duggies? Pasha comes for you.”

HUH?