Authors: Mavis Jukes
“Right.”
“Nobody likes somebody else’s grubby mitts on their food. And once you touch it, eat it. Right, Mr. Lipman?”
“Right.”
“Mr. Lipman? Will you do the honors?”
She held up a two-liter bottle of orange soda.
Mr. Lipman began pouring the soft drink into the cups. “Actually, I’m supposed to point out to parents that we’re limiting beverages with added sugar at school celebrations.…”
“Yes, I know, but I figured half a small paper cupful on a half birthday wouldn’t be overdoing it. Pour everyone half a glass,” she suggested. “And have half a belt yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Mr. Lipman poured himself a small swallow and drank it. “Where did you get the cupcake idea?”
“My ex-sister-in-law.”
She added, “You should see her turkey cake. That’s even better.” She chuckled. “Her new husband’s been threatening to arrest her if she bakes him a turkey birthday cake. He’s a cop.”
“I can’t say as I blame him. A birthday cake made of turkey has
got
to be a criminal offense.”
“Well, it’s actually a chocolate cake baked and rearranged to be shaped like a turkey, iced with mocha frosting. And with squares of white cake for stuffing tumbling out from inside. And vanilla ice cream for mashed potatoes, and caramel syrup for gravy …”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope, I’m not. And strawberry sundae topping for cranberry sauce. It’ll be a little hard to serve in the bleachers, but we’ll figure it out.”
The kids politely ate their cupcakes and sipped orange soda.
“So you have a police officer in the family?” Mr. Lipman asked.
“Yup, right here in town. And he told me next time I honk and wave at his patrol car on the freeway, he’s going to pull me over and write me up.”
“You honked at him on the freeway?”
“I have to admit it: Guilty as charged. Not a honk, though. More of a beep.” Dollie laughed a little to herself. “I’m not going to do it anymore, though. He was mad as a hatter.”
“Well, I must apologize to Weston then,” said Mr. Lipman. “He told that to the class. To be honest, I thought he made it up. And said he was full of beans.”
“Oh, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Sometimes he
is
full of beans.”
Mr. Lipman asked, “Do you think your ex-sister-in-law’s new husband would be willing to come in on Career Day? The kids would enjoy meeting someone in law enforcement.”
“I’ll ask—if he’s still speaking to me. Clean up, Wessie,” she told her grandson. “I gotta get outta here. Get to passin’ the trash can around. Hop to it!”
Wow
, thought Carson.
It was hard to sort through Wes’s whoppers—hard to figure out fact from fiction. He wasn’t always well behaved, that much Carson knew.
He’d forged tongue sticks and said he didn’t.
But he wasn’t telling a whopper about the turkey cake.
He had flat-out stolen a foroon from the cupboard and claimed that “fairies” gave it to him.
That was fiction.
Yet he wasn’t telling a whopper about the demolition derby.
It was also a fact that Mrs. Crabbly
had
been spotted sitting in the back of a police car, and now—come to find out—Wes’s grandma really had honked at a police officer! Or at least beeped at one.
Wes’s grandma announced, “Okay, I guess I better go, but— Oops! I almost forgot!”
She took the tote bag off her arm.
There was an upside-down cat on the front. One rhinestone eyeball twinkled. “Everybody seen this bag Wes made me?” She held it up for the class. Nobody said anything about the cat being tail up. “But mercy me, what’s this at the bottom?”
She peered inside. “Now, what have we here?” she said mysteriously, and slowly reached in. “Now, what’s this down here at the v-e-r-y bottom of this b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l kitty tote my talented grandson made me at the community center?”
The class grew quiet.
They heard a faint gargling sound.
“Shh!” She gently lifted out a tiny little skinny scraggly scared Chihuahua with a black rhinestone-studded collar.
She told the Chihuahua, “Woof a Happy Phony Birthday to Wessie.” And she handed him to Wes.
Wes just stood there, frozen. The Chihuahua’s whiskers were trembling. His lips were twitching, then they rolled up and over his fangs.
Wes’s grandma looked over at Mr. Lipman. “It’s just a scare tactic, according to the canine shrink the shelter brought in to evaluate him. He’s a scared peanut and it’s all bravado. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, really.”
“Nonetheless, we do have a muzzle rule.” Mr. Lipman looked through the top drawer of his desk and took out a shoelace. “He must be muzzled when visiting the school.”
He gently tied the shoelace around the dog’s nose.
Wes’s grandma said, “That little pup’s no spring chicken, Wessie, so you need to be real, real gentle with that guy.”
Nobody had to tell Wes that. Wes was so gently holding the dog against his shirt. Just looking down at him, and the dog was just looking up at him, with his lips curled back and showing his teeth under the shoelace.
“Weston’s wanted a dog all his life, but you know Wes,” Dollie told Mr. Lipman. “We had a few goldfish, but, bless his heart, he kept overfeeding them. They looked like orange marbles. I had to give them away.”
“Ah.”
“But he was worried to death about this pooch after Mrs. Crabby told about him. Then I saw that nice ad about him in the paper. That was a flattering photo, I might add; they took it from his good side.
“I figured what the heck, why not. So I went on down and interviewed at the shelter to see if Wessie and me qualified as an adoptive family for a half-pint pooch.”
“Ah.”
“There was just me and a guy in a Porsche cap interested; he said he only wanted to be a backup.” She called over, “Cute, isn’t he, Wes?”
Then she said, “The shelter waited the minimum days. Then called me to come down and get him. Not that he isn’t full of personality, but they said he wasn’t highly adoptable at his age.” She whispered, “And I don’t think he’d win any beauty contests, either.”
The Chihuahua pinned back his ears and licked Wes’s nose.
“See? He’s got a good heart. Just like Weston does. The dog acts tough because he’s scared.” She added, “Wes acts tough because he’s tough.”
She glanced over at Mr. Lipman. “Sure, Wes may get freaked out by rodents of various sorts, but he’ll overcome that. And yes, he may have slept with ol’ Captain Piano, all the way up until your last Stuffed Animal Day.” She eyed Mr. Lipman. “But that doesn’t mean Weston isn’t tough as nails.”
Dollie whistled quietly and looked out the window.
Mr. Lipman turned to Dollie and said, “Thank you for the eyeball cupcakes.”
“No problem.”
Then he asked in a low voice, “Captain Piano wouldn’t be related to the rubber halibut that’s in the June Box, would he?”
Dollie answered, “Eee-yup. He’s a bass, actually.”
“Wes slept with that thing every night?”
“Right on the pillow, right next to his head. With the Captain singing him to sleep with ‘Down by the Bayou-oo-oo-oo’!”
“Are you joking?”
“We’ve had some long, quiet nights around our house since the Captain’s been locked up—but Wes has adjusted. He just powers through.”
Dollie said, “Wes loves fish and he loves to fish, just like his granddaddy did. I should find the time to take Wes fishing more often.”
After a long moment, Mr. Lipman said, “Well, what the heck. Take the bass home then. The fish may not technically be stuffed, but I suppose sleeping with him every night would qualify him as stuffed for the purposes of Stuffed Animal Day. And I suppose I can overlook the scuffle he got involved in. I was told the stuffed killer whale provoked it.”
Wes’s grandma picked up Captain Piano out of the June Box. She blew a few ants out of his gills and shoved him into her tote. “I’m glad you see it my way.”
The kids had gathered around Wes and the Chihuahua.
Eva was saying, “I have a fuchsia doll sweater with white heart-shaped buttons on the front at home that I think might fit him if you roll up the sleeves.”
Carson strolled over.
“Okay,” said Wes. “I think I’m going to name him Dandy. After my great-grandfather Daniel.”
Dandy scrunched up his small, wet black nose and made the scariest face he could at Carson under the circumstances of the makeshift muzzle.
“Daniel’s the one who figured out how to improve your chances of getting a date by using his Bad-Breath Pellets.”
Maybe Daniel did and maybe Daniel didn’t.
Who needed to know? Not Carson.
Carson had so much to tell his dad!
“Guess what, Dad! We got the demolition-derby date wrong. We went on the wrong twenty-second.
The demolition derby is on
August
twenty-second, which is Wes’s For-Real Birthday. Can we still go?”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. I got it right from the horse’s mouth: his grandma. And she’s bringing a turkey cake to the racetrack.”
“I may pass on that.”
“She adopted the lost Chihuahua for Wes.”
“She did? Terrific!”
“That was you who went down there to check on the Chihuahua, wasn’t it, Dad?”
“Yes.” His dad paused. “They say that dog’s only faking being a cranky, crotchety critter. But he could’ve fooled me! And he could use some dental work, I might add.”
“Well, thanks for going down there, Dad. And giving money for the ad. And putting us on the backup list. How many names on it?”
“As far as I know, just us.”
“I absolutely positively simply cannot understand how I got into this,” Carson’s dad told Carson when he picked him up.
“You got into it by filling out the parent volunteer sign-up sheet saying you would be happy to barbecue and play the guitar for a sing-along on the campout. And help make ceramic pinch pots or coil pots. Or participate in any other way that would help with the class. And so Mr. Lipman signed you up for barbecuer, campout sing-along song leader, pot pinching or coiling, and one of the many other ways that parents can help with the class: Nibblenose-sitting.”
“I got on the rat list?”
“You’re a lawyer, Dad. Don’t sign anything without reading it first.”
Carson’s dad lifted the lid of the trunk.
“Okay. In goes Nibblynose.”
“His surname is Nibblenose, Dad, not Nibblynose, and he cannot ride in the trunk. A rat has to ride in the backseat.”
“The cage won’t fit in the backseat. In fact, the cage won’t fit into the front seat or the trunk, either. Lookie here. This is a Porsche, not an SUV. I guess we better bring Mr. Nibbletoes back to Mr. Lipman.”
“Mr. Nibblenose can sit in my lap in the backseat, Dad. We can attach the cage to the luggage rack with bungee cords.”
“That, I’m afraid, would be against the law, unless we tie a red flag to it. The cage pokes out too far. It’s against the California vehicle code.”
“Your tie has red stripes. Would your tie qualify as a red flag?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it would. Wonderful. I will now proceed through the center of town with my tie flying
like a flag from a rat cage attached to my luggage rack. With a tissue box rolling around in the bottom of it.”
“Okay, thanks, Dad. And Mr. Nibblenose will sit safely in my lap. Just like the Chihuahua rode on Mrs. Crabbly’s lap in the back of the police car. Actually, the Chihuahua was in a hat. Do you have your Porsche cap with you, Dad?”
“No, I do not. And if I did, I wouldn’t volunteer it for a rat holder, and anyway, it’d never fit. Take a look at the size of that creature! It looks more like a possum than a rat!
“And may I add for the record: There is a physical barrier between the police officer who is driving the patrol car and the individual who is riding in the back of the patrol car. A thick plastic bulletproof division between the front seat and the passenger compartment, but in any event, get Mr. Dribblenose and get in.”
Carson opened the door of the cage.
“Never lift a rat by the tail,” Carson told his dad. He gently slid one hand under Mr. Nibblenose’s belly and scooped him up.
“I have no plan to lift a rat by a tail or anything else in the foreseeable future.”
“There we go,” whispered Carson to Mr. Nibblenose.
He held Mr. Nibblenose against his chest. “See, Dad? Isn’t he sleek?”
“Very sleek.”
Carson watched as his dad attached the cage to the luggage rack.
“And he’s a big guy!” said Carson. “Isn’t he?”
“Yes he is. He’s built like a linebacker. Now in we get. And hang on to him!”
Carson got into the back of the car. “Can you hold him for one minute just while I put on my seat belt?”
“I think you can manage,” said his dad.
Carson put on his seat belt one-handed.
His dad buckled up and pulled out of the parking lot. “So where did Mr. Lipman get this beast?”
“A gift.”
Carson held Mr. Nibblenose up so he could look out the window.
His dad batted at his left ear. “Did I just feel a whisker?”
Carson put Mr. Nibblenose back into his lap. “A neighbor of Mr. Lipman’s named Belinda gave Mr. Nibblenose to the class as a present. Along with the cage, a water bottle, a ceramic food dish, food, Critter Litter. The works. Wasn’t that generous?”
“Kindly keep that animal away from the driver.”
“I am. Belinda moved to Belize to open up a bikini and boogie-board boutique near the beach. So she had to find him a good home.… And Mr. Lipman’s class is a great home! Do we have any fruit in the house?”
“Yes. Fruit salad. And I’m happy you’re looking forward to a healthy snack, because today I stopped at the farmers’ market and bought locally grown organic fruits and cut them up in cubes.”
“Do we have fresh veggies, too?”
“Yes! Thank you for asking. I also bought snap peas, celery, broccoli florets, cauliflower, and carrots. Check the fridge. A plastic bag full of crisp, colorful, cut-up veggies is waiting for you—with yogurt dip.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I even made cookies again after what the Nuisance Bird did to the last batch.”