by Eric Bower
Well, I did eat a little bit. After all, it’s not a good idea to starve yourself. But aside from a few hot dogs, cheese sandwiches, a few slices of chocolate cake, toast, eggs, bacon, fried chicken, turkey, ham, sausage, apples, and about two dozen bananas . . . I really didn’t eat much of anything the day before the fair.
I had invited both B.W. and Shorty to come with me, and they had both sounded quite excited about it.
Until they learned that the other might be coming as well.
“Really?” B.W. had said to me in school, when I told him that Shorty would most likely be joining us. “You really want that tiny girl to come along too?”
“Yes. Why not? I like Shorty. She’s a lot of fun.”
B.W. shrugged as he sat down at his desk, and I sat down at mine. Well, I attempted to sit at my desk, but I missed my chair and fell, somehow poking myself in the eye with my ankle.
I’m genuinely starting to wonder if maybe I am cursed. It wouldn’t be the first time . . .
“I suppose she is fun,” B.W. began as he pulled out his homework. “Sort of. But I guess that my problem with her is that she’s, well, don’t you think she’s a little bit . . . immature?”
“Huh?”
Immature? Shorty? I mean, I guess she could be a bit silly at times, and she had a habit of giving people unflattering nicknames, like when she’d call me Wide B—whatever that nickname was that she called me earlier which now I can’t remember. Ahem. But did I actually consider her to be immature?
“Maybe a little bit,” I said. “But she’s still a nice person.”
“Of course she’s a nice person,” B.W. said as he smiled at me. “She’s a very nice person. I’m the first one who’d say that about her. But hanging out with her is sort of like hanging out with a little kid. And I don’t really want to hang out with a little kid, do you?”
Shorty’s opinion of B.W. was no better. In fact, it was about twelve and a half times worse.
“He’s a creep,” she said, when I mentioned that he would be going to the fair with us.
“Tell me what you honestly think about him.”
“I think he’s a slimy creep.”
“But how do you really feel?”
“He’s a slimy, creepy fool who is clearly hiding something from you,” Shorty said quite plainly.
“Shorty, if you have an opinion on him, please be upfront with me about it. Stop speaking in vague riddles.”
“He’s a slimy, creepy, foolish hider who shouldn’t be trusted by you or by your parents.”
“Well, if you can’t give me a straight answer, then I’ll just stop asking you.”
“Stop kidding around, W.B.,” Shorty said as she shoved me. “Look, I’m glad you’re starting to make friends here in Pitchfork, but I don’t think B.W. is who you think he is. There’s something really fishy about that kid, and I don’t like it.”
As I climbed back into the house (Shorty had managed to knock me across the room and out the window with a single shove), I noticed something a bit fishy too. But it wasn’t B.W. It was yet another terrible odor coming from the kitchen. This one was even worse than usual.
“Excuse me,” I said to Shorty as I made my way to the kitchen to see what was happening.
As I opened the door to the kitchen, I was knocked back by a powerful stench that hit me in the nose like a stinky fist.
“Oh goodness!” I cried, as I immediately buried my nose in my hands.
I gagged. The smell was so bad that it attacked every sense that I had, including my sense of sight, my sense of hearing, and my sense of touch. The stink burned my eyes and my skin, and it left a smelly ringing sound in my ear. How can a smell make a ringing sound, you ask? Well, that’s a darn good question. Congratulations. You’re a good question asker. The answer is: I don’t know, but I know that it did, and it was absolutely awful.
The smell was so bad that I dropped to the floor and groaned, completely overwhelmed by an odor so terrible that I feared it would live in my nostrils forever. It was so bad that it paralyzed me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. It was like I’d been kicked in the breadbasket by an ornery mule. My life passed before my eyes for the second time, and it included the first time that my life had passed before my eyes a few months ago, which made the whole thing take a really long time. I was about to die from exposure to that horrible odor. They’d have to bury my body in the middle of the desert so it wouldn’t stink up the cemetery.
Suddenly, I felt someone grab me by the hair and pull me out of the kitchen and into the safety of the living room. As the kitchen door slammed shut behind me, I felt my body begin to return to normal again.
“Wheeew!” Shorty said, her little eyes beet red and watering. “That’s something foul in there! I reckon it smells like someone left two tons of rotten onions in the sun, and then tried to cover up the stink with a carriage full of rancid milk and fresh cow plop!”
“It’s much worse than that,” I gasped, pulling out my handkerchief to wipe my sweaty face. “It smells like someone turned that kitchen into an outhouse for all of Arizona Territory. My eyes are running so badly from the smell that they’re trying to jump off my face and dash out the door!”
Shorty giggled as she helped me open the windows in the living room to air out the Baron Estate.
“It smells like a bunch of dead octopuses that someone covered in sweaty stockings, and then—”
“Alright, I get it!” a very cross-sounding voice interrupted. “I know it smells bad in there. I don’t need to hear your sass-mouthed jokes and frumps about it.”
Shorty and I turned around and saw a very angry and very hurt looking Rose Blackwood. She was dressed in one of Aunt Dorcas’s aprons, with her hair and clothing covered in flour, sugar, syrup, and burnt splotches of berries and chocolate. She smelled nearly as gross as one of her pies.
“Sorry,” Shorty and I said as we tried to hold in our giggles.
“It was supposed to be a cherry pie,” Rose said as she opened another window, picked up a blanket, and tried to fan the stink out of the house. “But then something went horribly wrong, and it started to look more like a cake. So I added some chocolate and tried to make it a cherry chocolate cake. But then something went really horribly wrong, and it started to look more like a pudding. So I added some vanilla to it and tried to make it a cherry, chocolate, and vanilla pudding. But then something went really, really, horribly wrong, and it started to look like candy. So I added some nuts and tried to make it cherry, chocolate, vanilla, and nut candy. And then something went really, really, really, horribly, awfully wrong, and it turned into . . .”
“Cow plop?” Shorty suggested.
“Shorty, go home,” Rose said darkly.
“Okay!” Shorty said brightly. “I’ll see you at the fair tomorrow, W.B. Hopefully I won’t be seeing Belford Eustace Nigel Egbert Doolittle Ignatius Cattermole Threepwood Whitestone the Third there too.”
She skipped out of the house and closed the door behind her. When she was gone, Rose turned to me with a quizzical look on her face.
“Who is Belmont Useless Eggsnerd No-neck Threestone . . . whatever it is she said?”
“B.W.”
“Oh,” Rose said, as she wiped some of the burnt chocolate from her eyebrows. “I like that kid. He’s much politer than your bouncy little friend.”
“They don’t like each other very much. In fact, I think B.W. and Shorty actually hate each other. And I don’t understand why. I don’t know what to do about it. Do you? Maybe I should have—”
“Not now, W.B.,” Rose said, already making her way back to the kitchen. “I have less than twenty-four hours to make a decent dessert for the Pitchfork Fair baking contest. Do me a favor and stay out of the kitchen. And please don’t bother me. This is very important.”
That night, I was once again struck with the t
errible, annoying, frightening, and all-too-familiar feeling that someone was watching me. I was lying in bed and slowly drifting off to sleep, when suddenly the feeling hit me like a runaway donkey cart.
It was an awful feeling, like someone had just doused me with a barrel full of ice water. I actually felt someone’s eyeballs on me. But not just any eyeballs. These were angry eyeballs. The sort of eyeballs that would jump out of their owner’s face and blink you to death if they could. It was a very unsettling feeling.
But not nearly as unsettling as what happened next.
Without moving an inch, I slowly opened one eye and peeked towards my bedroom window.
From the light of the moon, I could see the shadow of a very tall and very dangerous-looking person. They were peering into my bedroom and watching me.
I’m not what you would call fast or quick or even average when it comes to moving. In fact, I’m what some of you might call lazy or lethargic or slower than a depressed slug. But in that instant, I became quicker than lightning. I jumped out of bed and crossed my room in two long strides, threw open the door, dashed down the hallway, and then fell down the long staircase of the Baron Estate in less than three seconds flat.
As I lay there on the bottom step, the giant lump already forming on the back of my skull, I smiled at the pink and purple squirrels which danced around my head as I slowly lost consciousness.
“Pretty squirrels . . .” I mumbled. “Such pretty squirrels . . .”
Blinded By the Spray of Hot Pear Filling
“W.B.? Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
They were talking to me. How nice. My eyes fluttered. My vision was blurred, so all I could see was the outline of the three large squirrels standing over me. One of them was gently dabbing my forehead with a wet washcloth, which I thought was really sweet. I figured that I should be nice to the squirrels in return and promise to give them acorns and talk to them about squirrel things.
“Hello, squirrels,” I murmured through lips that felt as though they were made of molasses. “Find any good nuts lately?”
“Oh dear, do you think he’s suffered brain damage?”
“No. I’m afraid that’s just what he’s like when he’s waking up. W.B.! You were having another strange dream!”
Someone splashed a glass of cold water in my face. I sputtered and sneezed, then wiped my face and rubbed my eyelids. When I opened my eyes, instead of three giant squirrels, I saw M, P, and Aunt Dorcas standing over me. Which I suppose made a lot more sense.
“Oh,” I said as I slowly tried to sit up. “Hello, everyone.”
“Are you alright, W.B.?” M asked. “You must have taken a terrible tumble in the middle of the night. Why were you coming downstairs so late?”
“That’s a foolish question,” Aunt Dorcas said stiffly. “The boy was clearly trying to raid the ice box and eat my prized apple walnut pie and my cinnamon pear tarts before I could have the chance to enter them in the fair today.”
“I was not!” I objected. “First of all, I had completely forgotten that you had a pie and tarts in the ice box!”
“If you hadn’t forgotten, would you have tried to eat them?” my eggy aunt demanded.
Yes, of course I would have. But I couldn’t tell her that.
“Yes, of course I would have. But I can’t tell you that.”
Bah. Foiled by my stupid brain again! I must have been more injured than I thought. Normally I was better at hiding things like that from Aunt Dorcas.
“If you weren’t coming down for food, then why were you sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night?” P asked.
I noticed he was sewing another hat for Geoffrey the horse. This one was more of a casual hat, with a wide brim and a big “S” sewn onto the front. My father was a strange man, but at least he was committed to his strangeness. Whenever he began a project, he saw it through to the end.
“I saw someone at my window,” I explained as M helped me up. “Someone was watching me. And I think they’ve been watching me for a while. Lately, I’ve been feeling eyes on me, and they haven’t been friendly eyes.”
My mother frowned. Aunt Dorcas blinked. My father went back to sewing Geoffrey’s hat. Before anyone could comment on what I’d said, there was a knock at the door. I limped over and answered it. It was Shorty.
“Hi, W.B.,” she said sadly. “Nice pajamas.”
I looked down and saw that I was wearing my white and blue polka dotted nightshirt, and a yellow nightcap with a fuzzy ball at the end. I shrugged. She was right. They were pretty nice.
“Thank you. What’s wrong?”
Shorty sighed as she removed her cowboy hat and ran her tiny fingers through her curls.
“I have some bad news,” she told me. “I’m not going to be able to make it to the fair today.”
I felt my heart sink.
“What? Why? We’ve been looking forward to going to the Pitchfork Fair for weeks. It’s all we’ve talked about.”
“I know, but my father got some really bad news yesterday,” Shorty told me. “It turns out that the fancy doctor he’d been seeing in Pitchfork, the one who is also a barber and a used-shoe-salesman on the weekend . . . well, he’s a con man. He’s a quack. A fake. A phony. A charlatan.”
“You mean he was a crook? A cheat? A grifter? A hoaxer? A swindler?” M asked.
“A humbug? A pretender? A mountebank? A flimflammer?” P asked.
“A scam artist? A fraud? A chiseler? A double-crosser? A racketeer? A pettifogger?” Aunt Dorcas asked.
“Yes to all of that,” Shorty said, her lower lip beginning to tremble. “He took my father’s money and ran away. And now Pa’s devastated. He’s getting treatment at Pitchfork Hospital for his ripped lip, which the quack sewed up wrong, and he’s also getting treatment for a new rash that formed on his face from the so-called ‘miracle oil’ that the quack gave to him. The doctors at Pitchfork Hospital said that the miracle oil is nothing but carrot juice and camel spit. They don’t know where the quack found the camel spit. There aren’t even any camels in Arizona Territory!”
I pictured Shorty’s father and how upset he must have been. To think that you were finally going to have your lifelong dream of growing a fantastic mustache come true, only to have that dream ripped away by a sneaky liar; it sounded horribly cruel to me. I guess it just goes to show you: never trust a doctor who sells used shoes on the weekend. You just can’t trust them.
“I’m so sorry, Shorty,” I said as I gave my friend a hug. “And please, tell your father that I’m sorry as well. I guess you’ll want to spend some time with your folks today instead of going to the fair.”
Shorty nodded as she brushed a tear from the corner of her eye.
“Yeah. Ma asked if I wouldn’t mind staying with them at the hotel today, just to keep up Pa’s spirits. And I can’t say no to that. My poor pa is sadder than a hungry giraffe with a stiff neck. I’m sorry, W.B. I hope you have a good time today. I’ll see you later.”
“Wait!”
Shorty had already begun to leave, but my eggy Aunt Dorcas quickly ran to the door. In her hands, she was carrying one of her little cinnamon pear tarts. It had extra whipped cream on top, just the way that I liked it.
“Here you go, Iris,” Aunt Dorcas said as she handed Shorty the tart. “I want you and your parents to have a taste of the fair, even if you can’t make it there. Best of luck to you. Give your father an extra big hug from all of us.”
Shorty’s wide grin returned.
“Thanks, Aunt Dorcas,” she said, grabbing my aunt by the waist and giving her a one-armed hug. “That’s mighty sweet of you. I’ll see you all soon, Barons. I hope you all have a great time at the fair. I want to hear all about it when I come back!”
And then she was gone. As my aunt tried her best to catch her breath, which Shorty had squeezed out of her as though she were
a frustrated accordion player, I shuffled over and tapped Aunt Dorcas on the shoulder.
“Do you think I could get a taste of the fair for breakfast?” I asked my aunt, trying to make my eyes look as sad as possible as I gently rubbed the back of my head. “I had a terrible fall, and my head hurts really badly. Maybe I’d feel a bit better if I had a tart or two, or a few slices of your delicious apple pie? With whipped cream? Extra whipped cream maybe?”
Aunt Dorcas smiled as she placed her hand on my shoulder.
“If you touch my pie or any of my tarts, I will be forced to bake a mincemeat pie using your fingers and toes for filling, my greedy little Waldo. Now go take a bath and get dressed. We leave for the fair in less than two hours.”
My mother was still concerned about the fact that I had spotted someone staring into my bedroom window, and after I convinced her that it wasn’t a dream (I reminded her that I usually only dreamed about squirrels and food), she asked my father if he had any ideas about improving the security of our home.
“Well, let’s see,” P told her, as he held a plate out the kitchen window and fed Geoffrey his regular breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup. “We have excellent locks on the doors, and windows which can’t be picked by the pickiest lock picker. The windows are all made of an unbreakable glass, which I invented because W.B. kept crashing through them. And if an intruder tries to slide down our chimney, they’ll find out the hard way that I’ve placed a metal grate in the middle of it, which would leave them stuck in there for good. What else should we do?”
“Maybe we can invent something that will alert us if someone is sneaking around the house at night?” M suggested. “Perhaps something that would detect anything larger than a coyote creeping around the property, which could set off a series of bells and whistles and chimes to warn us?”
