Odds on Oliver (3 page)

“Oliver!” Mrs. Murphy's voice sounded very far away. “Are you all right?”

“No!” Oliver yelled back. He knew he'd blown it one more time.

Oliver hung on and felt around with his feet for another branch to light on.

Don't look down, he told himself. The worst thing you can do is to look down.

He looked down. Instantly he became dizzy. A crowd had gathered down below. He heard the wail of a siren.

I could go for a free fall, Oliver thought. Like a parachuter. He had always admired the jaunty way parachuters stepped out of the airplane, as calmly as if they were going to the corner store for a newspaper. Or a half-gallon of fat-free milk.

If only he had a parachute.

His feet kept going, kicking back and forth, looking for something to land on. Maybe he'd try for a free fall anyway.

“Hang on! We're on our way!” a voice called.

Better make it snappy, Oliver thought as he felt his good hand slipping fast.

“Gotcha!” the fireman said as Oliver fell, like a ripe peach, right into the man's hands.

Down on the ground, Mrs. Murphy kissed Oliver, and bought four tickets to the Firemen's Ball. Charlie was nowhere to be seen. Edna hid behind a tree.

“All right for you, Edna.” Oliver spoke sternly to Edna's tail. “Next time you can get that danged cat down yourself. If you fall out of the tree, see if I care.”

Edna wagged her tail sheepishly, and Oliver patted her head. “You're a cool cat, Edna,” he said, “even if you are a dog.”

6

H
AVAHART

The Blue Burd was gearing up for a gala Fourth of July party. Everyone in town was invited.

“Fill up these garbage bags, boys,” Oliver's dad said to Oliver and Arthur. “Let's make the place shine. Start in the shed. There's stuff there that's almost as old as the Declaration of Independence.”

Oliver's dad placed his hand over his heart as he recited: “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'”

“That's the Declaration of Independence,” Oliver said. “My dad knows it by heart.”

“I know what it is,” Arthur said. “Think I'm a dummy?”

They went to the shed and the first thing Oliver saw was his old Havahart trap.

“Hey, look, my Havahart trap!” Oliver cried. “So this is where it was. I've been looking for it for a long time. Now we can catch a woodchuck. Maybe a muskrat too.”

“What do we do with it after we catch it?” Arthur said.

“Let it go,” Oliver said. “Back to its native habitat. After we study it up close.”

Oliver found other good stuff. Beat-up hubcaps, a stack of ancient license plates going as far back as 1962, a battered felt hat with a wide brim.

“That's my dad's gangster hat,” Oliver said.

Arthur's eyes opened wide. “Your dad was a gangster?”

“Nah, he wore it to high school,” Oliver said. “With a vest and all.”

“Weird,” Arthur said. “Really, really weird.”

After they loaded the bulging garbage bags filled with junk into the back of Oliver's dad's truck, Oliver's dad gave them each a dollar. “For a job well done,” he said.

At dusk, Oliver and Arthur lugged the Havahart trap into the woods behind Oliver's house. The woods were black and full of night noises—spooky, creaking sounds that made shivers run up and down their spines and raised the hair on the backs of their necks.

“Oho-oho-ohooo,”
something sang in the night.

“Wha-wha-what's that?” Arthur stammered, following Oliver so closely that he kept stepping on Oliver's heels.

“Might be an owl,” Oliver said, faking calm. “Might be a ghost.”

Arthur rejected the idea of ghosts hands-down. “Beany Allen said he heard there were woodchucks as big as bears around here,” he said loudly, toughing it out.

A branch snapped. The wind rose and a lone bat sailed across the sky.

“Beany Allen is full of it,” Oliver said.

Oliver dropped into the trap the contents of one of the Blue Burd doggy bags he'd brought along for bait.

“Listen!” Arthur grabbed Oliver's arm. “I hear it! It's coming to get us. Let's go, Ol!”

Oliver hit the dirt and lay flat, like an infantryman. If only I'd worn my camouflage suit, he thought, I'd be invisible.

“I don't hear anything,” he said.

“It sounds like a monster,” Arthur said as the crashing sound came closer.

“We could dig a hole and hide,” Oliver said. He could hear a heart beating and didn't know if it was his or Arthur's.

A shape hurtled out at them from the darkness.

“Aarrrgghhh!”
Arthur cried.

“No!” Oliver shouted. “No, you're not getting us!”

He felt something wet against his face.

Something wet and rough, like a dog's tongue.

“It's only Edna!” Oliver yelled. “Edna, for Pete's sake!”

“I knew it all along,” Arthur said. He got up and brushed himself off. “Give Edna a treat, Ol,” he said. “Give her the other doggy bag, why doncha?”

“Nah,” Oliver said. “Edna hates leftovers.”

7

S
KUNKED

The next morning, the trap was empty, the food from the doggy bag gone.

Oliver dropped to his hands and knees and sniffed the ground.

“Bear tracks, most likely,” he said.

“Looks like cougar droppings to me,” Arthur said.

When they got back to the Blue Burd, the restaurant was humming. Extra help skimmed around, chopping, peeling, shredding, whistling.

“Heap big blast,” Arthur said. He had just read a book about Indians and apparently that was the way they talked.

“Who's setting off the fireworks, Dad?” Oliver said.

“U. Crumm,” his dad replied.

“Better nail down the refreshments, then,” Oliver said. “U. Crumm's a class-A eater, don't forget.”

“A champion,” his dad agreed. “And a great lady.”

He scratched his head suddenly, sending his tall white chef's hat awry. “Help me hang this poster, Ol. It just came from the Department of Health. It shows how to perform the Heimlich maneuver.”

“Oh, I know about that,” Arthur said. “Beany Allen's uncle saved a rich lady's life when she was choking on a piece of steak. He squeezed under her rib cage like the Heimlich maneuver says, and that piece of steak just came right out. She wanted to give Beany's uncle a reward but he said no thanks, it was all in a day's work.”

“What's Beany Allen's uncle do?” Oliver said.

“He's an auto mechanic,” Arthur said.

“He's also a dope,” Oliver said. “You wouldn't catch me turning down any reward from a rich lady.”

“U. Crumm's rich,” Arthur said. “You oughta see her car.”

Just then, U. Crumm pulled up in her big white Caddy with its tail fins gleaming and its chrome trim ablaze.

“Heap big squaw,” Oliver said.

“I
told
you she was a big shot,” Arthur said.

“I've come to inspect the fireworks,” U. Crumm said.

Oliver's mom and dad led U. Crumm to the boxes marked
CAUTION: FLAMMABLE
that were stacked against the wall.

“Very good, everything seems to be in order,” U. Crumm said. “Is that gingerbread I smell?”

Oliver's mom and dad took U. Crumm into the kitchen so she could inspect the gingerbread, too.

That night, at dusk, Oliver and Arthur set their trap a second time.

“Tonight's a full moon,” Oliver said. “That means good luck.”

Later, that same moon woke Oliver up with a long, bright finger poked right in his eye. He sat up and put one foot down, on his way to calling Arthur to ask if he was asleep. Then he decided to go back to sleep instead.

In the early morning, with the dew still thick on the grass, they set out again.

“Braves tread softly, carry heap big stick,” Oliver said.

“Teddy Roosevelt said that and he wasn't an Indian, he was president,” Arthur replied.

“You're a know-it-all, Arthur,” Oliver said. “Know that?”

They had almost reached the trap when Edna went wild. She barked like a wild thing and chased her tail round and round in circles.

“I told you, it's a cougar!” Arthur said.

“Smells like skunk to me,” Oliver said.

As they crept closer Oliver said, “Don't scare him. Else he'll spray us.”

It
was
a skunk, a very unfriendly skunk, that they had trapped.

Slowly, carefully, Oliver inched up to the trap and released the catch so the skunk could go free.

“Take off, bozo,” Oliver told the skunk.

The skunk waddled halfway out of the trap, looking to the left, then the right.

Edna barked and bobbed and weaved, like a prizefighter looking for some action.

She got it.

Carefully, the skunk took aim and fired.

“Whoa!” Oliver ducked, too late. Heroes never got sprayed by skunks. Heroes never ducked either, he was sure.

Arthur clutched his chest as if he'd been shot.

Edna leaped high in the air and came down like a stone.

“That smell makes my eyes smart,” Arthur said.

“Too bad it missed the rest of you,” Oliver said. He felt shriveled and sad and unheroic.

Edna only whimpered.

“What'll we do, Ol?” Arthur said.

“Fake it,” Oliver decided. “We just pretend nothing happened.”

“You think anyone will buy that?”

“Probably not,” Oliver said.

Edna lay on her back, all four feet sticking straight up in the air.

“You think she's dead, Ol?” Arthur said.

“Nah, she only wishes she were,” Oliver said.

8

T
OMATO
-J
UICE
B
ATH

Oliver's mom smelled them coming. She met them at the door.

“Get out of those clothes and into the tub,” she said. “All three of you. Yes, Edna, that means you too.”

“Close your eyes,” Oliver's dad said. “This is for your own good. Ours, too.”

Oliver's mom and dad emptied four restaurant-size cans of tomato juice on the heads of Oliver, Arthur, and Edna.

“Sometimes this does the trick,” Oliver's dad said.

“If it doesn't work this time,” Oliver's mom said, “I don't know what we'll do.”

“Lock 'em up in the woodshed until the Fourth of July party's over,” Oliver's dad said.

“The show must go on,” Oliver said.

“Why?” asked Arthur.

In the morning, they still smelled of skunk.

“Wooeee,”
said one of the men who was at the Blue Burd putting up the party tent. “You guys are pretty ripe. He got you good, huh?”

“Hey, boys,” another man said, “you take yourselves a bath in tomato juice. That'll fix you up. That's the ticket, tomato juice.”

“We already did,” Oliver said.

“I can hardly see,” Arthur complained, squinting into the sun. “I got skunk
and
tomato juice in my eyes and my ears
and
up my nose. My mom said to get out of the house or she might go crazy.”

“Better make yourselves scarce when the guests start arriving,” Oliver's dad said. “Lay low and hope the wind's blowing in the right direction.”

“Don't forget, Ol, keep an eye on U. Crumm,” Arthur said. “This is your big chance to be a hero. The minute she starts choking—on account of she doesn't chew each bite fifteen times like you're supposed to—get in there and start squeezing. And we split the reward for saving her life fifty-fifty. This is it, Ol. Your big chance. Try not to blow it, like you did all the other times.”

“All what other times?” Oliver said, on the defensive.

“Well …” Arthur began ticking off on his fingers. “When you went to rescue me from drowning and I could already touch bottom. Number one. Then the checkout girl saved your life, instead of you saving hers. Number two. Then instead of you getting Charlie down, the firemen had to go and get you. Number three.

“Plus,” Arthur said, “we were gonna trap a muskrat or maybe a woodchuck, and look what we got. That's number four, Ol. That's a lot, four.”

“So?” Oliver said.

“Get your act together, Ol, okay?” Arthur said.

Oliver and Arthur lurked in the bushes, watching the folks arrive.

Oliver brooded. It had all begun when U. Crumm slipped on the ice and smashed him flat. Nothing had gone right after that. He'd been going steadily downhill ever since.

U. Crumm owed him one, Oliver figured.

9

F
IREWORKS

U. Crumm got first place in the chow line. It was she who was to set off the fireworks, and she needed nourishment in the worst way.

Oliver got U. Crumm in his sight and never let her out of it.

“I'll just have a tiny bit of everything,” U. Crumm said. She'd brought her own plate, which was about the size of a small trampoline.

“I can't stand those tiny little plates they give you,” she said to no one in particular.

“I smell skunk,” many people said, wrinkling their noses and peering around.

Oliver's eyes followed U. Crumm's fork and knife and spoon on the busy trip to and from her mouth. She ate piles of potato salad, gobs of gravy, heaps of ribs and fried chicken. Chocolate cake and strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. Hot dogs and hamburgers and macaroni salad.

U. Crumm gobbled everything in sight and went back for more.

But never once did her jaws stop moving, never once did she falter and choke, much less turn blue. She even swallowed what must have been bushels of olives, pits and all.

Oliver watched, dismayed.

U. Crumm chewed slowly, carefully, chewing every mouthful at least ten times. The food slid down nice and easy.