by James Howe
“But one day she met Jed Cantelloni in the produce section of the superette. I was watching through the store window as he approached her with a pineapple in his hand. I saw the look in his eyes when she showed him how to tell if it was ripe. They did the rest of their shopping together and came out of the store all smiles because they’d found out they used the same brand of dish detergent. But he stopped smiling when he saw me. ‘Don’t you find such a big dog a lot of bother?’ he asked her. And she didn’t say, ‘Oh, no, of course not.’ She said, ‘He’s my cousin’s dog.’ She never even noticed she’d forgotten to buy my food.
“It was a whirlwind romance. They got married two weeks later and went to Mexico for their honeymoon. On the way to the airport, they dropped me off at Chateau Bow-Wow. And that’s the last I saw of either of them.”
Just then, a light went on in one of the downstairs rooms. We all ran to hide behind a bush. Being the tallest, Hamlet and I were the only ones who could see inside. Craning my neck, I made out a man with thinning hair and a thickening middle scratching his head and yawning. From the way his lips were moving, it seemed that he was whistling.
“That’s him,” Hamlet said.
There was a high-pitched yipping.
“And who’s that?” I asked.
Hamlet’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t know,” he said.
The front door opened. Out stepped Jed Cantelloni, a jacket thrown over his pajamas. He was holding a frisky puppy at the end of a leash. “Ready for our morning walk, Cupcake?” the man who didn’t like dogs said cheerfully. “Let’s go then, pal.”
“I can’t believe it,” Hamlet said as they started down the sidewalk. Cupcake turned briefly and sniffed in our direction, but fortunately, her master tugged at her leash and they disappeared around a corner.
“What an awful person,” said Linda, as we watched them go. “How could he do that to you, Hamlet?” She shuddered. “This would never happen in Upper Centerville.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Bob. “We still don’t know what’s become of Tom and Tracy.”
Bob and Linda gave each other a soulful look.
“How’s about we go in and snitch Cupcake’s favorite toys?” Felony asked. “Maybe spill her water.”
“And we could claw this bum’s Barca-Lounger while we’re at it,” Miss Demeanor snarled.
“I appreciate the offer,” Hamlet said, “but it isn’t the dog’s fault, and Cousin Flo, well, she’d be really upset to see any of her furniture ruined, so—”
“But she let this guy get rid of you,” said Felony. “Don’t you want to get even?”
Hamlet shook his head. “It’s not her fault either. It’s no one’s fault. Why shouldn’t they want a cute little puppy instead of an old coot like me?”
“That’s enough of that kind of talk,” said The Weasel. “Come on, Hamlet, you stick with me. I’m going to cheer you up.”
And so, as The Weasel sang “The sun’ll come out tomorrow,” we set off on the final lap of our journey, the one that would take us to our last hope—the second address in Hamlet’s file.
It was daylight now. The streets were getting busy with cars and the sidewalks were filling with people. We were forced to take back roads and, when we could, cut through yards and parks and playgrounds to avoid being too conspicuous. My stomach was making more noise than The Weasel’s singing, but we pushed onward, ever onward, knowing that we had little time before we’d be missed and our chance to save Hamlet would be lost forever.
I don’t suppose any of us could have anticipated what would lie at our journey’s end. Certainly, we never imagined Archie might be living in such a place as the huge stone house that confronted us in the sleepy little town of London.
“Wow,” I said to Hamlet when I saw it. “I know you said Archie was rich, but—”
Hamlet looked confused. “He’s not this rich,” he said.
“Well, he sure owns a lot of cars,” said Howie. “And, look, he’s got servants.” Several people in uniform were walking across a yard that was big enough to be a public park.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked Chester.
Chester looked up at the address on the gate in front of us: 1717 Burrito Boulevard.
“This is it,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”
We all looked back at the numbers. That’s when we noticed the sign above them. We weren’t sure what it meant at first, but Chester explained it to us. Hamlet shook his head sadly.
“What am I going to do now?” he asked.
I lifted my eyes once more and read the words:
SUNNYDALE NURSING HOME
[ TEN ]
A Paranormal Experience
WE crept through the gate of the Sunny-dale Nursing Home only to be met by another sign. This one was larger than the first and had lots of words written on it, but there were only three that mattered to us at the moment. Three little words near the bottom.
NO ANIMALS ALLOWED.
“Well, Pop,” said Howie, “there’s your omen.”
“More obstacle than omen,” Chester muttered. Then, seeing the forlorn look in Hamlet’s eyes, he added, “And an obstacle is nothing more than a victory waiting to happen!
I recognized Chester’s statement as one of the many he’d been quoting ever since finishing that recent best-seller, Everything I Always Wanted to Be I Already Am. I wondered if The Weasel had read it too; it seemed like his kind of book.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Hamlet said, “but I don’t see how—”
“All we need is a plan,” Chester said.
Howie ran to a nearby rock garden and pulled a fern out by its roots. “Here,” he said, presenting it proudly to Chester.
“That’s plan, Howie, not plant.”
“Oh.”
“Keep that up, and we’ll be bounced out of here before you can say—”
“Open window.”
We all turned at the sound of Felony’s voice.
“There’s an open window over there by the parking lot,” she said. “We make our way under the cars, see; then it’s a dash and a leap and we’re in.”
“Not a bad plan,” Chester said, squinting his eyes and nodding approval. “With a little help, it’ll be better than not bad. It’ll be good.”
Felony and Miss Demeanor scowled. I had the feeling they weren’t used to having their plans improved upon.
But Chester wasn’t used to having somebody else come up with the plan in the first place. “The problem is we don’t know what’s on the other side of that window,” he went on. “Now, the hedge underneath will make an excellent hiding place while one of us gets up on Hamlet’s or Harold’s back and checks out the interior. The only other problem is how we get to the window without being seen.”
“I told ya,” said Felony, gritting her teeth, “we skedaddle under the cars.”
“But some of us aren’t going to fit,” Chester pointed out, with a nod toward Hamlet and me.
“I’ve got it!” said Howie. “We’ll disguise ourselves. That’s what they do in the movies. Okay. It’s a nursing home, right? So let’s make ourselves look like nurses. First we need those little white hats. Wait, I’ve got a better idea. We could pretend we’re delivering pizza.”
“Excellent idea, Howie,” said Chester, rolling his eyes. “Maybe you could write it up and submit it in triplicate, hmm? Meanwhile, the rest of us will try to come up with an alternative.”
“Okay, Pop,” Howie said.
“Let me just give this some thought,” Chester said. “We need to be sure that no one sees Harold and Hamlet. Hmm.”
Hamlet cleared his throat. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, Howie’s idea may be useful.” Leading us to a large tree, he indicated a pile of cut-down branches. “In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth,” he told us, “an army disguises itself with the branches of a tree. We could do the same thing. If anyone spots us, we could just stand still and we’d look like—”
“A bun
ch of branches with furry feet and tails,” said Miss Demeanor. “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard.”
“Now, wait a minute,” said Chester. “It might just work. After all, a bunch of branches is less likely to raise suspicions than a bunch of animals on the loose.”
We nodded our heads. All except Howie, that is, who was too busy trying to figure out what triplicate meant.
And so, with branches clenched firmly between our teeth, we set out across the parking lot, looking like a cross between an Arbor Day parade and a very strange family of deer with sprouted antlers. We got close enough to the window so that we could see some movement on the other side when suddenly a door opened and a man and a woman burst out. We froze.
Looking out across the parking lot, the man said, “Listen, Helen, it’s all well and good that you want to humor him, but this is a waste of time.”
“It may be, George,” said the woman. “But he is mentally sound. If he said he saw—what was it he said again?”
“‘Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane.’ Whatever that means.”
“Why, George, it’s from Shakespeare. And you know how Archie loves to quote from Shakespeare.”
I heard Hamlet gasp. “Archie,” he said weakly.
“That’s just it,” said the man named George. “He loves to quote from Shakespeare. That doesn’t mean we have to drop everything and run out here just because he saw a bunch of trees move. He was probably daydreaming about the good old days and—”
The woman placed her hand on the man’s arm and he stopped speaking. She pointed in our direction. I gulped and swallowed a little sawdust in the process.
“Look,” she said. “Over the roof of the blue Honda. What in the world are those branches doing there?”
The sawdust was tickling my throat. Hamlet, meanwhile, was starting to quiver with excitement from hearing Archie’s name. Between the two of us, Birnam Wood was getting a little shaky.
“Good heavens!” the woman cried. “They are moving. What is going on?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t have a clue,” he said. “But there’s one way to find out.”
With no more warning than that, the two of them moved briskly in our direction. Chester spat out his branch seconds before I sneezed and lost a grip on mine. “Run for it!” he squealed.
“The door!” Felony cried. “They left the door open!”
We ran out from behind the parked cars and scrambled toward the open door before George and Helen knew what was happening.
“Animals!” Helen cried.
“Stop them!” George shouted.
Several residents of the nursing home had gathered on the other side of the open door and instead of stopping us were cheering us on.
“Look,” said a woman with blue cotton candy hair, “there’s a cat that looks just like my Boopsie.”
Felony looked up in alarm. “Boopsie?” she said. “No way do I look like a Boopsie!”
“Boopsie! Here, Boopsie!” the woman called out after us. We raced madly down a hallway and through a door into the room with the open window. Hamlet had the lead; so it was that we all collided with him when he came to a sudden, jarring stop.
“Archie!” he woofed.
Sitting at a table in a tattered bathrobe and faded pajamas sat an old man with a face full of whiskers and eyes full of tears. “Hamlet,” he said, opening his arms.
Hamlet limped to him and laid his head on the old man’s knee.
Just then, Helen and George charged into the room.
“Good heavens!” cried Helen when she saw us. “Where did all these animals come from?”
“Out!” George yelled, waving his hands in the air. “Go home! All of you, go home!”
The woman with cotton-candy hair appeared in the doorway behind them, making clucking noises with her tongue. “Here, Boopsie!” she said. She picked up a piece of bacon from one of the tables and held it out in front of her. “Nice kitty, here, girl.”
Felony looked at the rest of us and licked her lips. “Hey, if she wants to call me Boopsie, who’m I to stand in the way of makin’ a little ol’ blue-haired lady happy?”
Or in the way of a free breakfast, for that matter.
“Oh, no, we can’t have that,” said Helen as Felony (also known as Boopsie) purringly accepted the bacon from the old woman’s hand.
The old woman looked up and said, “But they’re hungry, Helen.” With that, one plate after another found its way from table to floor and we were all treated to a delicious breakfast garnished with pats on the head—even The Weasel, whom one woman said reminded her of the collar of her favorite coat.
Helen and George tried to stop it, but it was no use. The old people were so happy to have us there that the two officials finally threw up their hands and went off to do something official elsewhere.
Hamlet was the only one of us who didn’t eat. He was too busy just being with Archie.
“I’m sorry, old boy,” Archie said. “I just couldn’t bear to tell you the truth. All our travels together, all the thick and thin times, how could I tell you I was leaving you behind for good? Danged nursing home, I don’t see what they’ve got against animals anyway. But this is the only place I could afford, boy. I know, I know, I always said I was rich. And I was. Rich in spirit. But let me confide in you a little secret, dear friend. I’ve lost my spirit. I’m poor in every sense of the word now, Hamlet. I’m alone. And that’s the worst kind of poor there is.”
Hamlet cocked his head and whimpered. Archie seemed to know right away what he was saying. “Willie? Oh, Willie and I haven’t had a good talk in months. Oh, sure, sure, he’s here, but we just don’t have anything to talk about anymore.”
Hamlet whimpered again.
“You want me to get him?” Archie asked.
Hamlet woofed.
“Really? You want to see Willie?”
The Great Dane panted and woofed some more as Archie’s face seemed to grow younger by the minute.
The residents of the nursing home were getting quite a kick out of this exchange.
“Who’s this Willie you’re talking about?” asked the blue-haired lady, holding—much to my surprise—a purring Felony on her lap. “I don’t remember knowing anybody here named Willie.”
“You’re not talking about William, are you, Archie?” asked a man with thick glasses and an even thicker mustache.
Archie shook his head. “William is a big fellow,” he said. “No, no, I’m talking about Little Willie. Why, it’s no wonder you’ve missed him. He’s only three feet tall.”
I looked at Chester, who had sidled up next to me. “I think,” he commented, “we may have reunited Hamlet with a nut case.”
But it was a different kind of case that entered the room moments later—a large suitcase on wheels that was covered with stickers and pulled with considerable effort by Archibald Fenster, the great Shakespearean actor.
Helen and George came in a step behind him to inform us that “someone” was on the way to “see to” the animals. I love hearing things like that. It makes meals sit so easily on the tummy. But they didn’t rush out of the room. This time they stayed and, like the rest of us, gathered around Archie to find out what a traveling case on wheels had to do with the mysterious Willie.
“Let . . . me . . . out . . . of. . . here!” a tiny, tinny voice demanded.
It sounded enough like Rosebud to make every hair on my body stand up and salute.
“Are you going to behave?” Archie said to the box.
“Yeah, yeah,” said the voice. “Come on, Arch, I been in here for three months. Give me some air, huh?”
Archie looked around the room. Seeing that everyone’s eyes were glued to the case on the floor, he bent down and undid the locks.
“Well, it’s about time! The voice grew louder as the top opened.
Archie reached in and lifted out . . .
“A dummy!” said Helen, peering over Archie’s shoulder. “Why, Archie, you never t
old us you were a ventriloquist.”
“What’s a ventriloquist?” Howie asked Chester.
“Ventriloquists,” Chester explained, “are people who talk without moving their lips and make it seem as if someone else is doing the talking.”
“Like Hamlet and Rosebud,” I added.
Hamlet glanced in my direction and nodded bashfully.
“Say, Arch,” Willie said. The dummy was now seated on Archie’s knee.
“Yeah, Willie?”
“Looks to me like you’re losing your hair.”
“It’s true, Willie. I just don’t know what to do about it.”
“Yeah, that’s a tough decision.”
“Tough decision? What do you mean?”
“Toupee or not toupee.”
We all laughed. And our laughter encouraged them to go on performing. Archie, I later learned, wasn’t really a Shakespearean actor; he just called himself that as part of his act.
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”
“Romeo and Juliet” Chester whispered to me.
“That’s no light, Arch,” Willie cracked. “That’s the sun reflecting off the top o’ your head!”
These guys were funny. More than funny, they were good. I guess I should say that Archie was good, since he was doing everything. I had to keep reminding myself that Willie wasn’t real.
After an hour or so of watching them perform, I could see that Hamlet had had a good teacher. No wonder he’d had us all convinced those bones could talk.
Just when they were finishing up—“Say goodbye, Willie.” “Goodbye, Willie.”—I noticed Dr. Greenbriar and Jill standing in the doorway, laughing along with the rest of us. Archie noticed them too. His smiling face grew grim when he saw the words CHATEAU Bow-Wow on Jill’s T-shirt.
Putting Willie aside, he stood slowly and said, with quiet dignity, “I suppose you have to take them now.”
Dr. Greenbriar nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.
