A beam of light came sweeping my way, then paused, with me right in it.
“There she is!”
Not good. I dodged to one side, out of the beam. It swept back and forth, missing me and missing me again, but their drumming footsteps came closer and closer. What to do? My mind was so tired and fuzzy. Then my body—oh, thank you, lovely body—took charge and the next thing I knew I was climbing up the nearest tree, maybe not with my usual speed or grace, but up up up and out almost to the end of a high branch. Down below the beam swept back and forth, and suddenly Marlon and Pamela appeared. She ran very fast, a flashlight in her hand, and Marlon trailed slightly behind, panting heavily. I stayed right where I was, still and silent. They passed directly under me, so intense I could feel it, like an intensity cloud rising up.
Their footsteps faded away, and the yellow cone of the flashlight grew dimmer and dimmer and finally winked out. I waited. The moon came out. I waited some more. An owl hooted. Once I’d had an encounter with an owl, and once was enough. I crept down from the tree and headed for home. Where was home? I wasn’t sure. But my body would know.
The moon is special to me. Of all the beauties of the night, the moon is the most beautiful, so you can understand why I feel about the moon as I do. Like me, the moon moves with a silent grace. I followed it now as it peeped in and out of view through the treetops. After what might have been a long time, or almost none at all, I crossed a dirt road that seemed familiar. A long white-painted fence rail ran along the side, shining in the moonlight. Mom was a big believer in fresh paint. I walked under the rail and into a meadow I knew very well. Not far away rose the old barn, and much closer stood the wishing well. Not long after Dad had gone away with Lilah Fairbanks, Mom and I had paid a night visit to the well. She held a silver coin in her hand and stood before the well for a long long time. Then she sighed, pocketed the coin, and we turned for home.
“I was going to wish bad things for him, Queenie,” she said. “But he’s the father of my children.”
That was a very strange night. And more strangeness was happening now. A person—not Mom—was standing by the well. This person was very busy, uncoiling a long rope ladder. The moonlight shone on his face. It was Maxie Millipat.
I CAN SLEEP JUST ABOUT ANYWHERE, but most nights I prefer Bro’s room. I start on the floor, where there is almost always a comfy pile of clothes, some dirty, some clean, but I end up on the bed. Once I’m on the bed, I usually start at the bottom, but I often find myself at the top, sharing Bro’s pillow, or, if I get the feeling he doesn’t really care all that much about the pillow, taking it for myself.
That was what we had going on the night after my first day in law enforcement. Law enforcement turned out to be extremely tiring. I was so tired I didn’t really need to wriggle around on the pillow to get comfortable, but I did anyway. Why? Because in law enforcement we did things right, as I’d learned from watching the sheriff. For example, his pants had a neat crease. We were neat-crease types in law enforcement, and if I was a pants wearer you would have been amazed by the neatness of my creases. Since I wasn’t a pants wearer, I did the next best thing, which was wriggling around on the pillow. I wriggled, wriggled, and wriggled some more. How deliciously sleepy I was, but the wriggling made the feeling even more delicious, so I kept doing it, wriggling and wriggling and—
“Arthur, cool it.”
That was Bro, muttering something, his voice thick with sleep, that I interpreted as cool it, but maybe he was saying something else, like Arthur! Do whatever deputies have to do!
So I wriggled a bit more.
“Arthur!”
Aha. Right the first time. Wow. This really was my day. I put a stop to the wriggling, rolled over, and fell into a deep sleep at once.
Have you ever noticed that dreamtime can be connected to what goes on in the rest of your life? Actually I have not, but something like that was happening in my dreams now, my head on the pillow, not far from Bro’s. I could even feel his breath on my fur, and smell it, of course. Bro’s breath had a nice minty smell, which came from chewing minty gum. Not that he was chewing gum at the moment. His wad of gum was stuck to the headboard, ready to be popped back into his mouth first thing in the morning.
But we’re way off track. Back on the track I was … I was … having thoughts about dreams! Got it! Whew. That was a close one. I was getting to the subject of pants, and how I never wore them, creased or not. What I do wear is my collar. There are two silver tags on it, one with my name—Arthur!—and the other … well, I’m not sure what’s on the other tag. It’s not important. What’s important is that in my dream Sheriff McKnight was crouching in front of me and hooking something else to my collar, something shiny and golden, namely a deputy badge. What a great dream! I kept it right there, with me, the sheriff, and my badge, kept it and kept it until I began to hear a sound that bothered me.
This sound came through our open window, which faced the toolshed and beyond it the meadow, and was very faint and distant. I opened my eyes. I hear better with my eyes open. What’s with that? Had to be some reason I would never figure out, so I stopped thinking about it at once. You can always rely on me for that sort of thing. With my eyes open, I now heard an oddity about the sound. Not only was it far away, but also it had a tiny hollowness or echo or something, like it was coming out of a cave. I’d had an experience with a cave once, very scary.
I rose, eased down off the bed, got a paw caught in one of Bro’s sneakers, shook it off, and went to the window. I pressed my nose against the screen and felt the warm night air. The moon was up and everything looked nice and peaceful. Then the sound came again, not nice and peaceful at all. Far away, echoey, faint, yes, but a human voice, crying out. I came very close to recognizing that voice, which was pretty amazing, although that’s the kind of ability you find in the law enforcement community. The voice faded away. I stayed where I was. An owl hooted from over in the woods. Silence. Well, not a complete silence. I could actually hear the very soft roar of Catastrophe Falls. After a while the wind rose up and took the sound of Catastrophe Falls away. Around the same time, the human cry started up again, no closer but now a little stronger, getting pushed by the wind.
I went over to the bed. Moonlight shone on Bro’s face. Kids need their sleep. That’s something Elrod says all the time. “When I was a kid I slept twelve hours straight, every night, rain or shine.” I believed him completely. Even now he was a great napper. Not in my league, of course.
But I didn’t want to wake Bro. His face was so calm, and somehow in the moonlight he looked younger than he was. Part of my job was taking care of him. Then the cry came again. I made a low, rumbly sound. No reaction from Bro. I bumped his shoulder with my muzzle. He rolled over the other way. I barked, not loud, just a bark between him and me. He rolled back over and opened his eyes.
“Arthur? What is it?”
I started wagging my tail, the only idea that came to mind.
“Go back to sleep.” He closed his eyes.
I barked again, louder this time.
Bro’s eyes snapped open.
“You have to go outside?”
No! Well, yes, but not for that. I barked again, maybe a little louder than I’d meant to.
“Arthur! You’re gonna wake up the whole house!”
The door opened and Harmony came in. She wore white pj’s—Bro wore sweatpants and a torn T-shirt—and almost looked like a stone statue in the moonlight.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“Arthur’s restless,” said Bro. “I think he wants to go out.”
“I thought you walked him before bed.”
“I did. But you know how he sometimes doesn’t pee when he’s supposed to and just holds on for later.”
A discussion about my peeing habits started up. Ordinarily I would have found that very interesting—anything involving peeing is interesting, as I’m sure you know. But the human cry came again, still as distant as before yet much loude
r. I glanced at Harmony and Bro. They hadn’t heard it? How was that possible?
I went to the window and pressed my nose to the screen again. The peeing discussion went on and on. I barked, an impatient sort of bark I couldn’t have kept inside even if the thought had occurred to me.
“For god’s sake!” Harmony said.
They came over and stood beside me.
“Maybe there’s a fox out there,” Bro said.
They gazed into the night.
“I don’t see anything,” Harmony said. “But … but maybe I hear something.”
“What kind of something?” said Bro.
“Shh. Listen.”
They both turned an ear toward the screen. They were trying so hard! I loved Harmony and Bro. They always tried hard at everything. Trying hard was one of Mom’s big beliefs. But those little ears! Sometimes trying hard is not enough.
“Hear anything?” Harmony whispered.
“Just you whispering,” said Bro.
She glared at him, was about to say something, and then went still.
“Hear that?” she said, her whisper even fainter than before.
“Nope,” said Bro.
“Listen.”
They listened. The distant human cries rose, faded, rose again.
“Maybe,” Bro said. “It sounds kind of like a horse. Over in the apple orchard.”
“We don’t have a horse.”
“Then what is it?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Bro rose, somehow slipping on his sneakers in the same movement.
“What about Mom?” Harmony said.
“Let her sleep.”
Harmony thought about that.
“C’mon, Harm. Time to step it up. We’re almost twelve years old.”
Harmony nodded. “I’ll bring my phone.” She looked at me. “Super quiet now, Arthur.”
Super quietly we headed out of Bro’s room, down the stairs, and out the side door. I didn’t hear a thing. Well, actually I heard plenty, but just pretended I didn’t. Soon we crossed the lawn and entered the meadow, me in the lead, following those human cries. They came and went, but when they came, the sound was closer, and getting closer with every step. The moonlight made it easy to find our way, and Harmony and Bro were also wearing their headband lights. Headband lights were a bit scary and the sight of them always got me barking, but would that have been super quiet? I moved on in silence, a deputy on the job for the county.
We sped through the night, following the cries to the apple orchard, where the moonlight turned all the apples silver. It turned out the cries weren’t coming from the apple orchard, but from somewhere beyond, somewhere over thataway, in the direction of the old wishing well. Some memory, perhaps recent, about the wishing well stirred in my mind, but it got smothered by that other memory, of my visit with Mom at the end of the whole Lilah Fairbanks episode. I didn’t blame myself one little bit. You can only remember so much in this life.
Meanwhile the cries had gone silent. We headed for the wishing well anyway. There was nothing else in this direction except the empty meadow, sloping all the way down to the river. The kids came to a sudden stop.
Harmony pointed toward the well. “Bro?”
Something white seemed to be poised on the low wall of the well, something very still and I suppose I should add beautiful.
“It’s Queenie!” Harmony said.
I was pretty sure it was not. I don’t mean the white figure. That was Queenie, all right. I mean whoever had been crying those cries. No time to think about that because now the three of us were on a dead run.
“Queenie! Queenie! Queenie!”
Slowly Queenie turned her head in our direction, those golden eyes now not golden but like two tiny moons. Did she come running to us, beside herself with happiness? Ha! Instead we did the running, Harmony scooping Queenie into her arms as soon as we reached the well and hugging her tight, while Bro patted her, and I just stood there waiting for this little meet and greet to end.
It might have gone on forever, but then, from down in the well, came that human cry. “Help! Help me! I’m going to die!”
A VERY GOOD MOMENT IN MY LIFE, THIS reunion with my family, now spoiled. Harmony and Bro rushed to the edge of the well, peered down, their headlamps probing the darkness below.
“Oh my god!” Harmony said.
“Maxie?” said Bro.
“Help! Help!”
“Maxie?” said Harmony. “What are you doing down there?”
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
If you think much about humans—which I do not—you come to the conclusion that there are good ones and bad ones. Mom, for example, is a good one, the best I’ve ever encountered. Marlon Pruitt was a bad one, as bad as they get. I would have placed Maxie Millipat in the good category if he’d ever actually crossed my mind, but on this particular night I wasn’t so sure.
Let’s start with how I’d first seen him as I’d come out of the woods, standing by the well and fussing over a rope ladder. Good or bad? After a while, when he’d gotten it all straightened out, he reached into a backpack and took out a wooden mallet and some tent pegs with hooked tops, just like the tent pegs we have at home. I know because once I’d been taken on a family camping trip. Never again, by the way. Maxie then tapped the tent pegs into the top rope strand, gave the ladder a few tugs to make sure things were firmly planted, and put on a forehead lamp of his own. After that, he tossed the other end of the ladder into the wishing well. Then he swung one leg over the low circular wall of the well, grabbed on to the rope ladder, and started down. Almost at once, the pegged-down part of the ladder popped up out of the ground, the whole shebang getting yanked toward the well, up and over the lip, and down the other side, like the well had decided to swallow the ladder, with Maxie on it.
A troubling image. Perhaps I should have kept it to myself. After that came the sound of a fairly distant splash, followed by watery thrashing, and finally some screaming—calls for help, that sort of thing. The beam of his headlamp stabbed wildly up into the night sky and then went out. The volume of Maxie’s screaming rose a notch or two.
Maxie’s screams were rather unpleasant, so I got ready to put him in the bad category. On the other side of the argument we had the fact that he was some sort of friend of the twins, which would make him good. I climbed onto the lip of the well and gazed down, but it was too dark down there for even me to see. Meanwhile I was thirsty, tired, and hungry, too much of all those things. So I just sat there in the moonlight, maybe not at my best, but free. Free and on my own land.
Sometime after that, Harmony, Bro, and … and Arthur—I suppose I have to include him—had finally found me. No doubt they hadn’t rested since my disappearance and had been searching for me the whole time, but couldn’t they have been quicker? Still, I welcomed them. I was planning to let them cuddle me to their hearts’ content, except we had hardly gotten started when Maxie piped up from down in the well. Interrupting my big moment, if you see what I mean.
So: Maxie bad.
Meanwhile, the night had turned very noisy.
“How did you get down there in the first place?”
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
“Did you just dive in?”
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
“With what?”
“A ROPE!”
“We don’t have a rope.”
“THEN GO GET ONE!”
And now Maxie began to cry, a horrible sound. Harmony turned to Bro. “Isn’t there a coil of rope on the wall in the old barn?”
Without a word, Bro ran off toward the old barn. Harmony leaned over the lip of the well. “Don’t worry, Maxie. Bro’s gone for a rope.”
“It’s so bad, Harmony,” Maxie sobbed.
“Just hang on,” said Harmony. “Are you treading water?”
“No, no. It’s worse than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
/> “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Down in the well, Maxie whimpered and said nothing. Harmony reached out and stroked my back. It felt nice. I let her keep doing it.
“Where have you been, Queenie?” she whispered.
Nowhere I wanted to think about ever again. I preferred to simply be stroked for the time being, although a nice late dinner and a bowl of fresh cream would hit the spot. Any reason we couldn’t get going? I’d tired of Maxie and his situation. Everyone said he was brilliant. I was sure he’d figure it out eventually. To give Harmony the hint, I eased myself off the top of the well and took a step or two toward home, just the roof visible from where we were, the shingles the color of the moon. But at that moment, Bro came running up, a big coil of rope over his shoulder.
I’m the type who really needs no one, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now. And when someone of that type decides it’s time for a nice late dinner and a bowl of fresh cream—served in Queenie’s special saucer, of course—then that someone doesn’t hesitate to get the show on the road, waiting for no one. Yet in this case our particular someone was in fact hesitating. Why?
Bro lowered the free end of the rope into the well, letting it uncoil slowly from his shoulder.
“Can you see it, Maxie?” he called down.
“Yeah,” said Maxie in a weak voice.
“Then grab on and pull yourself up.”
“How?”
“Huh?” said Bro. “Just climb.”
“CLIMB HOW?”
“Plant your feet on the side of the well,” Harmony called down. “Then go hand over hand on the rope and walk up at the same time, small steps.”
I heard Maxie muttering down below. “… feet on wall … hand over … small steps …” Then came a grunt or two, followed by a sudden cry, a splash, and a scream that hurt my ears. My only thought was: Can we go home now?
Bro and Harmony looked at each other.
“Time to get Mom,” Harmony said.
Bark vs. Snark Page 17
