Commander in Cheese Super Special #1

by Lindsey Leavitt

“The First Gentleman is on a tour with his children,” a Secret Service agent said. “He is not taking questions.”

  Dr. Abbey waved his hand. “It’s fine. I love talking to fellow citizens. What can I help you with?”

  The man in the hat pointed at Mount Rushmore. “Last week, my friend Jamaal found a large gold nugget right here on Rushmore. Now he can quit his job at the ice cream shop and follow his dreams.”

  “Way to go, Jamaal!” Macey said.

  “If he works at an ice cream shop, he’s already living the dream,” Banks said.

  “We know there’s gold in that hill, and we’d like the National Park Service to allow us to dig for it,” the man said.

  “Visitors stay on the pathways,” Ranger Dan said. “Those rocks up there aren’t stable! If everyone started walking and touching the monument, you’d break a leg or Jefferson’s nose.”

  “This is a memorial, not a gold mine,” Dr. Abbey agreed. “Please respect this land.”

  The man in the cowboy hat shrugged. “Good luck keeping people away when there’s gold to be found, Dr. Abbey.”

  The Secret Service led the group off the path. They spoke into their walkie-talkies and discussed closing the park.

  Banks groaned. “This stinks.”

  “Can’t we go anywhere without people in suits protecting us all the time?” Macey asked. “No offense, people in suits.”

  “None taken,” a Secret Service agent answered, his face blank.

  Dr. Abbey laughed. “Let’s just stop at the Sculptor’s Studio, and then we’ll head over to the Wind Cave. Tonight I’ll make sure we do something just the three of us.”

  They kept walking. Stopping. Smiling. Walking. Stopping. Smiling for the camera. Ava and Dean tried not to look lumpy in the vest pocket.

  Finally, they reached the Sculptor’s Studio.

  “Let’s take a ten-minute break,” Ranger Dan said. “There are some snacks and a gift shop.”

  Macey and Banks plopped onto a bench next to a large model of Mount Rushmore. Their dad hurried over. “Guess what! There really is an ice cream shop. We can go there right now.”

  Macey sat up straight. “But I want to come back tomorrow.”

  “Why?” Banks asked.

  Macey elbowed him. Brothers can be so clueless.

  “Oh, right. So we can pick up the mice,” Banks said.

  “Pick up the what?” Dr. Abbey asked.

  “The…dice,” Banks answered. “In the gift shop. We’re…er…collecting dice now.”

  Ava and Dean sighed. Humans are not always as smart as mice.

  Dr. Abbey grinned. “Sure. The photographers wanted to get a few more photos here tomorrow morning anyway. But first, ice cream!”

  “Uh…sure, Dad. But we were just talking about something…kid stuff,” Macey said. “Can you give us a second?”

  Dr. Abbey held up his hands. “You guys want to bond. I get it.”

  “Dads can be so weird sometimes,” Banks whispered.

  Once Dr. Abbey was gone, Ava and Dean climbed out of the pocket and into Macey’s cupped hand. Gregory and Mrs. Squeakerton scurried out of the backpack and through a cracked-open door.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay, little mice?” Macey asked. “You can see more sights with us.”

  Of course Ava would rather have stayed in a cozy hotel room with Macey. But the mice were here for a reason, even if she didn’t completely know the reason yet. She pointed to the staff room door that her mom and Gregory had gone through. Macey carried them over to the doorway.

  “We’ll come back for you tomorrow at ten a.m.,” Macey said. “Make sure you’re here on time. We won’t be able to wait for you.”

  “Have fun exploring!” Banks said. “Be safe!”

  Ava and Dean ran into the dark room. Mrs. Squeakerton and Gregory waited for them near a mouse hole hidden behind a vending machine.

  Mrs. Squeakerton took her kids’ claws. “Good job, little mice! You got us here. Now let’s see what these country mice need.”

  The Squeakertons entered a dark tunnel with a dirt floor. Ava ran her claw along the smooth walls. The tunnel ended in a small cave. A mouse waited in front of a door.

  “Oh, good. You made it. I’m Mina Testerman.” Mina wore a fringed tan dress with blue beading around the collar. Her accent was different from the Squeakerton mice’s. Ava and Dean had only ever spoken to Washington, D.C., mice. They had never used the radio. They had never before heard an accent. “We are so glad you were able to help us. Thank you for traveling such a great distance.”

  “We are excited to see your little mouse burrows,” Gregory said. “I’ve read about mice who live in the wild. It’s quite different from our fancy White House life.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s wonderful living in the president’s house.” Mina smiled warmly. “Instead, we just live inside the president’s head. Actually, a little above Lincoln’s chin.”

  “Well, he had quite the chin,” Gregory said.

  “Are you a big fan of presidents?” Mina asked.

  “The biggest!” Gregory said. “Aren’t you?”

  “Not especially,” Mina said. “Although it’s not the presidents’ fault that their faces got carved onto our mountain, is it?” Mina pushed a button, and the doors slid open.

  “Is this…You have an elevator?” Gregory asked.

  “We call it a slide-o-vator. Sort of like a train, I suppose. It moves in all directions,” Mina said. “Please, join me.”

  The Squeakertons stepped into the slide-o-vator. When the doors closed, the box pushed to the right.

  “Whoa,” Ava said. “Who invented this?”

  “My ancestor,” Mina said. “Back when they started carving the faces, in 1927. We figured we should have a hole in the studio so we could learn what the silly humans were up to.”

  The slide-o-vator lurched forward. Yes, forward. Then it rolled up, down, and sideways. The Squeakertons grabbed the railing. Mina stayed calm and still.

  “I will quickly show you our burrow,” Mina said.

  “How far away is it?” Dean asked.

  “About a human mile. We should arrive…” The slide-o-vator stopped, and the doors slid open. “Now.”

  The Squeakertons walked into the biggest room they had ever seen. And these were mice that had watched state dinners in the White House East Room. They knew big.

  “It’s bigger than a football field,” Dean said in wonder.

  “It’s like New York City,” Ava said. “For mice.”

  It was hard for the Squeakertons to see all the details in the dim light. They could see streets, homes, and other buildings made out of everything from brick to stone to clay. There looked to be a park to their right and a café to their left. The only light in the room came from a hole cut in the ceiling.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” Gregory asked.

  “Oh, yes. You must be used to human electrical lighting.” Mina handed each mouse a headlamp. “We light the streetlamps at night, but we mostly use our whiskers for direction.”

  Dean rubbed his whiskers. He had never really thought to use them for anything. “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “Asleep. It’s daytime.” Mina laughed. “I almost forgot—you aren’t nocturnal! I remember your dad told a funny story on his radio show. You got up in the middle of the night for water and ran into Woodrow Wilson’s shoehorn! A mouse that can’t see in the dark? We laughed forever.”

  Ava and Dean wished their dad would share less embarrassing family stories on his radio broadcast. They knew they were sorta famous, for mice. It was weird having someone they had just met already know things about them.

  “Well, life is different in the White House,” Dean said defensively.

  “Can you tell us more about this room?” Mrs. Squeakerton asked kindly.

  “Yes. Hold hands and follow me.” Mina led them down six mouse blocks. They passed streetlamps, mouse mailboxes, and even mini trees. Mina stopped in front
of a statue of a mouse. His leg was up on a boulder. He had a bow and arrows on his back, and a fierce mousy look in his eyes.

  “This is Chief Standing Mouse. The statue is the town meeting place. We meet here at sunset for a group hug and at sunrise for a tribe meeting,” Mina said.

  “How many mice meet here?” Ava asked.

  “Well, let’s see.” Mina rubbed her chin. “We’ve welcomed new mice here for generations. We are careful to avoid predators. So I’d say there are probably twenty thousand mice living here.”

  Ava wasn’t sure how many Squeakertons lived in the White House, but she knew the number was in the hundreds, not the thousands.

  “There are many more rooms cut from our main burrow.” Mina pointed to some tunnels. “I believe our ancestors started this burrow about five hundred years ago.”

  Gregory’s mouth hung open. “But Mount Rushmore isn’t even a hundred years old.”

  “There were mice before Mount Rushmore,” Mina said. “There were humans before Mount Rushmore. The Lakota people lived in the Black Hills for hundreds of years. They called this mountain the Six Grandfathers. We lived in harmony with the original humans.”

  “And now?” Gregory asked.

  “Now…we have a problem,” Mina said worriedly. “We believe we’ve been discovered. Follow me to the Treasure Rooms.”

  The Testerman Treasure Rooms were triple the size of the Squeakertons’. There were rooms and rooms of odds and ends.

  “This is the Arrowhead Collection,” Mina said. “Behind that is the Tools Collection. We have a Twigs Collection and a Lost Cameras Collection. Oh, and a Candy Collection.”

  Dean’s ears pointed. “A Candy Collection?”

  Mina nodded. “Mount Rushmore gets three million visitors a year. Kids have been leaving candy forever. I wouldn’t eat any of it.”

  “But sugar is sugar.” Dean sighed. “Do you have a Fresh Candy Collection? I love those chocolate gold coins.”

  “Well, if it’s gold coins you want, come in here.”

  And that’s when the Squeakertons walked into the Expensive Stuff Collection. There weren’t buttons or toys or candy in this room. This was real live treasure.

  “There has to be thousands of dollars of gold in here,” Mrs. Squeakerton said.

  Mina smiled. “Millions. And millions. And millions.”

  Gregory admired a sword. “Is this real gold?”

  “That was from a Civil War soldier. There’s still blood on it.”

  Gregory backed away slowly.

  “How can you even tell that anything is missing?” Ava asked.

  Mina pulled out a tablet. She pushed a button, and a list appeared on the screen. “We do a daily inventory of all our items. Don’t you do that at the White House?”

  “Uh…no,” Mrs. Squeakerton said. The Squeakerton mice didn’t have that kind of technology. Plus, they weren’t worried about anyone taking their treasure. No one knew they were there.

  Mina shrugged. “Well, we’ve noticed small items disappearing over the last week. First, it was a rug. Then a scarf. Some branches from rare plants. But the last item was a large gold nugget.” Mina set down her tablet. “These aren’t just a few lost objects. We have a thief.”

  Gregory leaned against a silver watch. “So…who do you think did it?”

  “There are two openings to the Treasure Rooms. A computer scans your claw at the main entrance. Only Treasure Keepers can enter alone, but any Testerman mouse can visit. We have everything we need, so I don’t think a mouse would steal.”

  “Where is the other opening?” Ava asked.

  “At the back of the Hall of Records. The Hall of Records is a cave behind Abraham Lincoln’s face. The sculptor Gutzon Borglum wanted to store important US documents there. Of course, they were getting close to our burrow, so we put a stop to that.”

  “I thought the US government put a stop to that,” Gregory said.

  Mina winked. “We created a rockslide to scare them into stopping. Mice are smart.”

  “Maybe it’s a ghost?” Dean said, excited. “I’ve wanted to see a ghost forever. Our great-great-grandpa swore he saw Rutherford B. Hayes playing pool in the Game Room.”

  “What would a ghost want with a mouse rug?” Gregory asked.

  “Could it be something in nature?” Mrs. Squeakerton asked. “Like…wind?”

  “But the wind would blow everything,” Mina reasoned. “Not just some things.”

  “Humans know about the hall because they built it,” Ava said. “So maybe one got up here.”

  “It would be very hard for a human to get up here without security noticing,” Mina said. “Humans built a time capsule in 1998. That’s the last time we saw a human nearby.”

  The mice thought. They wondered. They considered.

  Dean jumped up. “Hey! The treasure hunters! Someone found gold here last week, and now they all want to dig up Rushmore.”

  Mina looked alarmed. “They can’t do that! We have worked very hard to keep our burrow a secret from humans. Stolen treasure is one thing. Humans discovering a huge ancient mouse city is another. These thieves could ruin our burrow.”

  “I have an idea.” Ava hopped onto a gold bison figurine. “We can stop the humans right now.”

  “How?” Gregory asked.

  “We know who the thief is,” Ava said.

  “That’s right.” Dean pumped his fist in the air. “The guy who works at the ice cream shop found a gold nugget.”

  “You mean stole a gold nugget,” Mina said.

  “What was his name?” Dean asked. “Jared? Jack? James?”

  “Jamaal,” Ava said. “We have our guy.”

  “Well done!” Mina clapped.

  “But…,” Gregory said, plopping down next to a large ruby, “we’re talking about a full-grown human here. How on earth are we going to get this guy?”

  Ava and Dean smiled at each other. “That’s the fun part.”

  1. Glasses

  2. Marbles

  3. Shiny gold ring

  4. Raspberries

  5. Toothpaste

  6. Cymbals

  7. Prickly thorns

  8. Beeswax

  9. Rope

  10. More rope

  “How are we going to use this?” Gregory held up a raspberry.

  “Those are snacks for later.” Dean shoved more berries into his backpack. He would have preferred cheese, maybe a nice Gouda, but the Testermans didn’t have cheese.

  They walked outside. There was a tram built into the mountain. Mina hopped into the cart. “Buckle your seat belts.”

  The Squeakertons couldn’t see their seat belts, or anything really. The sun had already set. They switched on their headlamps.

  A coyote howled. Dean jumped. “What about…what about predators?”

  “Mice always have to worry about predators,” Mina said. “I mean, I guess you don’t. In the White House.”

  “Tell that to the mice who lived with President Jimmy Carter!” Gregory boomed. “He found a mouse in the Oval Office in 1978 and set enough traps to kill dozens of us. Horrible tragedy.”

  “We don’t have a lot of Jimmy Carter’s stuff in the Treasure Rooms,” Mrs. Squeakerton said quietly.

  The chirping of a bird drowned out the coyote’s howls. “Don’t worry, that’s not a bird of prey,” Mina said. “Sounds like a thrush. Must have a new nest built up high. Been hearing that chirping for weeks. Chirp, chirp, chirp. Wish birds were as smart as mice.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Dean laughed.

  “I wish we were closer so we could understand the bird,” Mrs. Squeakerton said.

  “The bird could eat us!” Ava said. “No way am I getting close to any animals out here.”

  “Well, hold on to your headlamps,” Mina said. “We have a booby trap to set!”

  The cart rolled down the tracks. It picked up speed and twisted around the side of the mountain.

  “This…this is like a roller coaster.” Mrs
. Squeakerton’s teeth chattered.

  “Of course it is!” Mina threw her arms in the air. “We have a slide-o-vator already. This tram was built for fun!”

  The mice flew down the mountain, dipping around boulders and swooping under trees. Dean felt like he was flying! Ava felt like she might throw up. Motion sickness stinks.

  Finally, the track rolled into a straight road, and the cart swerved to a stop.

  “The Memorial Team Ice Cream shop is in the granite buildings by the flags.” Mina slung a pack over her shoulder. “Come along!”

  The shop was named after the baseball team formed by the carvers of Mount Rushmore. Some of the men who carved the mountain were hired for their baseball skills instead of their sculpting.

  “ ‘This team played in the 1939 state championship,’ ” Dean read from a plaque. “They had a chance to carve a mountain every day. Why waste time playing baseball?”

  “Dean!” Gregory hissed. “This is not the time to read historical facts.”

  Not the time to read historical facts? When had Gregory ever said such a thing? Clearly, he was taking this human trapping very seriously.

  “There’s Jamaal.” Ava pointed at a bald man wiping down the counter.

  “How can you tell?” Mrs. Squeakerton asked.

  “His name tag,” Ava said.

  “Let’s go set up,” Dean said.

  The mice snuck into the back room.

  Ava and Dean quietly set out the marbles, one by one.

  Mrs. Squeakerton shoved the thorns into a blow dart. (Oh, that wasn’t on the list! Yes, there was also a blow dart. Surprise!)

  Gregory shined the ring until it sparkled.

  Mina unraveled the rope.

  The mice waited for two minutes. They waited for twenty minutes. Still no Jamaal. All they needed was for him to walk into the room. Then the toothpaste would squirt out, the marbles would roll, and the glasses would…

  Look, it was a smart plan. If you’re a mouse, you probably already see where this plan is going. If you’re a human, you probably wouldn’t understand even if someone explained it to you.