Raising Rufus

by David Fulk

  “My oh my oh my,” Mr. Fairfield said, dragging out each syllable for maximum drama. “If that doesn’t top it all.”

  “You might want to stay back, Ben,” said Mrs. Tinker. “We don’t want to get him too riled up.”

  “My oh my oh my,” Mr. Fairfield said again, still staring down at Rufus. “So where’d that thing come from, Gordy?”

  “Martin came up with it.”

  “Came up with it?”

  “Yeah, I dunno. He’ll have to explain it.”

  “My oh my oh my,” said Mr. Fairfield once more, in case anybody had missed it. Finally, he got up from the barn window and stepped over to Martin’s parents. “So what are you gonna do with it?”

  “That’s, uh, to be determined,” Mr. Tinker said.

  “Well, you can’t keep it here,” said the sheriff. “You know that, right?”

  “I know that, Frank,” said Mr. Tinker curtly. “Maybe you’ve got some bright idea of what to do with it.”

  “Wait a minute, hold the phone,” Mr. Fairfield chimed in. “I think I might be able to help out in that regard.”

  “How’s that?” Martin’s dad said.

  “Let’s try looking at this from a purely practical standpoint. What you’ve got down there is a tangible asset of some value.”

  Martin stiffened. He knew this was coming.

  “What we’ve got is a dangerous wild animal in our barn,” said Mrs. Tinker.

  “Short-term problem.” Mr. Fairfield was still grinning. “Look, I’ll just cut right to it, okay? How much you want for it?”

  Martin’s jaw clenched. He almost pushed over the birdbath.

  Mr. Tinker ran his fingers across his scalp. “I dunno, Ben. I was thinking maybe it…belongs in a science lab or something.”

  “Sure, sure, absolutely. I’m just saying there’s no reason not to…maximize the short-term potential first. Then later on…”

  Martin’s mom and dad exchanged a look.

  “I’ve got everything in place for it,” Mr. Fairfield said. “I can make it worth everybody’s while.”

  Martin’s dad let out a long, drawn-out breath. “What’ve you got in mind?”

  Martin had heard enough.

  “He’s not for sale!”

  He sprang out from behind the birdbath and charged into the group, eyes ablaze, lips trembling. “I found his egg, and he belongs to me!”

  “Whoa, slow down there, bud,” his dad snapped. “You think that thing belongs to you?”

  “I earned my own money and I fed him and I raised him!”

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay in your room? You need to get back up there right now.”

  “I won’t let you sell him!”

  “Nobody’s decided anything. Now get on up there. Go on.”

  “If you sell my dinosaur, I’ll—I’m gonna—I’m gonna—”

  “Martin. Room. Now.”

  Martin just stood there, shaking with anger. He’d never talked to his dad like this before, and even though it was kind of scary, somehow it felt completely right. He could sense it was throwing his dad off a bit too.

  But Mr. Tinker did not back down. He walked straight up to Martin and hovered over him menacingly.

  Martin stared up at him, jaw jutting out, trying hard not to blink. Then he looked over at his mom, hoping that maybe she would speak up for him. But she just stood there, showing no hint of sympathy. He looked back at his dad and said what he knew he shouldn’t.

  “You’re a jerk!”

  As he spun around and bolted across the yard toward the house, his mom let out a gasp. “Martin!”

  He could hear her following him but pretended he didn’t as he ran inside and let the door slam behind him. He knew where he was supposed to be headed, but when he got to the base of the stairs his legs just kept on going. He shot straight through the living room and out the front door.

  There was a big maple tree at the side of the front yard, and something told him that was where he was going, so he ran straight over to it and started climbing. Maybe if he could just get high enough, he could somehow leave behind all the rotten, stupid stuff taking place at ground level.

  Unfortunately he wasn’t much of a climber, and he was still struggling to pull himself onto a low branch when his mom caught up.

  “Martin, you do not get to talk like that! What are you doing? Come down from there.”

  “Leave me alone.” His hand got pricked by a sharp twig. “Ow!”

  “You’re going to hurt yourself. Martin, stop.”

  He pulled himself up onto the limb and tried to stand up to reach the next one, but his foot slipped and he dropped to the ground in a heap.

  “Oh! Good lord!” his mom exclaimed.

  She ran over to check if he was okay. Martin sat up quickly, but when she stooped down next to him, he turned away.

  “Leave me alone!”

  “You need to stop. Just take a breath, will you?”

  Martin stared off into the trees, eyes narrowed, chest heaving, lips contorted. They sat there for a good minute or so without speaking, which was just fine with him, since he was in no mood for a chat. But he could tell she was pretty wound up herself.

  Finally, she stood up again and let him have it.

  “Martin, are you out of your mind? You were keeping that thing down there the whole summer, after I told you to get rid of it? What were you thinking?”

  “He’s not a thing! He’s my friend.”

  “Really? And what if me or your dad or somebody else had gone down there? How friendly would he have been then?”

  “He wouldn’t have hurt you.”

  “Right, and you’re such an expert on wild animals that you know exactly what they’ll do. And oh, by the way, an animal that nobody has seen before, ever.”

  As far as Martin was concerned, this was all getting completely off the subject. “Dad’s gonna sell him, right?” he blurted out as he suddenly spun around to face her. “Both of you. You’ll sell him to Mr. Fairfield, and then they’ll make him into a freak show, and he’ll be miserable the rest of his life.”

  “We don’t know that. It’s all up in the air right now. Anyway, you had to know sooner or later somebody—”

  “How can you take Dad’s side? I thought you cared. He’s a jerk!”

  “Hey! You do not talk about your father that way!”

  Martin drooped his head between his knees, forehead nearly to the ground. His mom paced around for a bit, letting out an occasional heavy breath. She stopped and studied him for a long time, and then, seeming much calmer, sat down next to him.

  “You know, this may come as a shock to you…but your father loves you a lot more than you realize.”

  He gave a disdainful splutter.

  “Hey, I would know, don’t you think? Let me tell you something. Back in high school, when I first met your dad, I thought he was a jerk too. Just this arrogant jock with a swelled head from having so many girls at his feet. Then one day during a game, he was going for a ball and he accidentally ran over a boy on the sideline. Broke the kid’s collarbone. But you know what, he didn’t just walk away. He stayed with the boy until the ambulance got there, and he visited him in the hospital and really went out of his way to be nice to him for the rest of the year. That’s when I knew there was a sweet guy inside the tough outer shell.”

  Martin lifted his head up just enough to deliver his sarcastic retort. “Well, the shell must have hatched, because the sweet guy is gone.”

  With the beginnings of a smile, his mom reached over and rubbed his back. “He just wants to keep us all safe. So do I. You get that, don’t you?”

  Actually, Martin did kind of get that. What he didn’t get was what anybody was going to do to keep Rufus safe.

  “Come on,” she said, standing up. “Just go on up for now, and we’ll all get together later and talk about it. We’ll figure it all out.” She kept looking straight at him. “Okay, potato-puss?”

  He threw her a sidelon
g sneer.

  “Sorry,” she said with a half smile. “I can’t help myself.”

  Martin didn’t smile, but he got up and trudged back into the house with her. He wanted to believe it would all work out. Maybe they really would listen to him, and maybe Rufus would get a decent deal out of it.

  But when he got back up to his room and looked out the window, all his fears started bubbling up again. The three men were down there in the yard, talking. Sheriff Grimes had his stupid tranquilizing gun, and now Mr. Tinker had a long wooden stick and a big roll of telephone cord in his hands. Martin had seen that roll sitting in a corner of his barn lab, and now the stick and cord were obviously going to be put to some use he didn’t even want to imagine.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Fairfield was doing most of the talking, waving his hands around as he made his points. Martin tried to listen to what was being said. He couldn’t make out much of it, but a few of Mr. Fairfield’s louder phrases came through: “seven figures…cash cow…fifty-fifty partnership…absolute blockbuster…”

  Martin’s stomach gnarled up, and his heart began racing again. This was not how things were supposed to go.

  He started pacing around once more, thinking, thinking, thinking. If only he could reach Mr. Eckhart. But how? He was probably just arriving at the U. Maybe Audrey would have an idea. Martin realized he’d left his phone on the kitchen counter. But his mom was in there, so he would have to sneak down and get it without her seeing.

  He looked out the window and saw the sheriff open up his tranquilizing rifle and run a cleaning brush down the barrel. If anything was going to be done to help Rufus, it had to be now.

  He cooked up a desperate plan. If he could get into the woods through the trailhead down at the end of his street, he might be able to circle around and slip into the backyard at the far end of the barn, and probably nobody would see him there. Then he could pull away the cinder blocks, free Rufus, and head off into the woods, just the two of them, and stay hidden out there until Mr. Eckhart got back. Or at least until he could think up a better plan.

  Martin slipped quietly out of the bedroom and peeked down the stairs. Coast clear. He tiptoed down and spotted his mom in the kitchen, watching the others in the backyard through the window—probably as close as she wanted to get. He crept silently into the kitchen, grabbed his phone from the counter, and then slunk out into the hall, glided across the living room, and flew out the front door.

  He could almost hear the precious seconds ticking away as he ran down the street. He knew he would need somebody to alert Mr. Eckhart where he was, so, without slowing down a bit, he switched on the phone and dialed Audrey’s home number.

  “Come on…come on, answer.” Four rings. Five rings. Where was she? He’d just walked her home an hour ago! Six rings. Why couldn’t she have her own cell phone? Flustered, he clicked off the phone and dropped it in his pocket.

  Though it was only a quarter mile from there to the trailhead, by the time Martin got there he was pretty well spent. Still, he knew he couldn’t let that slow him down, and he pushed on into the woods. As planned, he hooked straight back around toward the house—but, not knowing this particular set of trails very well, he made a couple of wrong turns and ended up at the white rock instead. Totally annoyed, he gave the rock a hard kick—which only made things worse, because now he had a bruised toe.

  He knew the way back from there, but had already lost an extra ten minutes. So when he finally arrived at the far end of the yard, his whole body went limp when he saw that his dad and the others weren’t there anymore—which could only mean they had already gone into the barn to do their dirty work.

  Martin swallowed hard. He didn’t know which was more alarming—what they might do to Rufus, or what he might do to them. Either way, he had a sickening feeling he was too late to do anything about it.

  He raced over to the double doors and tried to peek in through the tiny slit between them. The view wasn’t very good, but he could make out the tops of three men’s heads behind a row of wooden crates. They were kneeling down, doggedly working on something on the ground in front of them. Martin couldn’t tell who was who, but they sounded pretty tense as they worked.

  “You got that one?”

  “Yeah, it’s good. Wait—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

  “I got it, I got it.”

  “Easy does it. Easy.”

  “Okay. I think we’re there. All good.”

  They slowly stood up, all breathing hard but looking hugely relieved.

  “Wow,” said Mr. Fairfield. “Not bad for three old guys, eh?”

  “Speak for yourself, buddy,” said the sheriff, and all three of them chuckled.

  Something moved just a bit on the floor in front of their feet, and Martin knew right away what it was: the tip of Rufus’s tail, sticking out from behind the crates. The worst had obviously already happened: they had tranquilized him and tied him up with the phone cord.

  Martin’s heart was palpitating, his teeth grinding. He wanted to scream out, but there was a giant lump in his throat blocking his voice box.

  “Whoo!” Sheriff Grimes sighed. “For a minute there I thought my head was gonna get bit off.”

  “Ha ha!” Mr. Fairfield cackled. “When he came at us like that, I thought we were all done for.”

  “Good thing you didn’t miss,” said Mr. Tinker.

  Hearing them joke about it did nothing at all to loosen the knot in Martin’s gut. He just wanted to smash the doors in, tear those cords off Rufus, and fly him off to another planet where the people weren’t so heartless.

  “So what now?” Mr. Tinker said.

  “We wrap him up in that tarp over there,” said Ben Fairfield, pointing to a big piece of canvas in a corner, “and load him up in your truck and take him to the Trout Palace.”

  “You got a place to put him there?” the sheriff asked.

  “For now we can just lock him up in the maintenance shed. That should work for a week or two.”

  “Is that gonna be secure?” said Martin’s dad.

  “Sure, sure. I’ll see to it nobody goes near there. You told your kid to keep his mouth shut, right?”

  Martin was only a tiny bit relieved that Mr. Fairfield had addressed that one to Sheriff Grimes, not his dad.

  “Oh, yeah. No problem with Donnie,” the sheriff said.

  “After we close next week, we’ll make a nice big holding area for him, get him good and fattened up over the winter. By next spring, we should be good to go. Gordy, why don’t you and Ann come over there first thing in the morning and we’ll talk some business.”

  Suddenly, there was a grunt from behind the crates, and Rufus’s tail swung weakly toward their feet. They all jumped back, and Mr. Fairfield quickly grabbed the stick out of Mr. Tinker’s hand and took a swing at the body on the floor in front of them. The thump sound of wood on rib cage pierced Martin’s heart like an ice pick.

  “No!” Fairfield barked. “Down!”

  He took another whack. Martin nearly jumped out of his shoes.

  “Ben, easy,” Martin’s dad implored. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Hey, a dangerous animal like that, you’ve got to show him who’s boss. Who’s up, who’s down, that’s all they understand.”

  When he reached back to take a third whack, Martin had seen and heard enough. He suddenly pounded his hands on the wooden doors with everything he had. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  “What in creation—?” said Sheriff Grimes.

  Bam bam bam bam!

  “Who’s out there?” Mr. Tinker called.

  “You can’t have him!” Martin cried out, fighting against tears that threatened to choke him. “He’s my friend and I won’t let him go!” Bam bam bam!

  “Criminy, he’s down here again?” Mr. Tinker muttered, heading quickly for the cellar stairs.

  Martin knew his dad would be out there in a flash; rather than face him, he wheeled around and took off at full speed into the woods
.

  He ran and ran, not even noticing that it was starting to get dark out there. As far as he was concerned, if he got lost or fell and broke his leg or got eaten by some deadly night creature, that was just fine with him.

  But he didn’t get lost or break a bone or get eaten; within a few minutes he found himself at a very familiar spot: the shore of Winoka Lake. He plopped down on his thinking rock and buried his head in his hands, rubbing his temples as though trying to erase all the awful sights and sounds he’d absorbed that day.

  He saw a drop of water hit the ground below him, leaving an amoeba-shaped blob of mud on the smooth, gray dirt. A second drop fell, and he realized it wasn’t raindrops, but his own tears.

  He took a long, deep gulp of air and lifted his head to gaze out across the surface of the lake, shimmering in the approaching dusk. He stared hard at the thousands of spots of light as they ignited and then quickly vanished, hoping maybe he could vanish along with them, and then reappear sometime in the far future when all this stuff would be just a vague memory.

  A crackling sound jarred him out of his sullen daydream, and he glanced back to see his dad approaching. He hadn’t expected to be discovered quite so quickly. Not wanting to provide even the slightest reminder of the Orville-the-hamster situation, he quickly brushed the salt water off his cheeks and fixed a steely gaze on the horizon.

  Mr. Tinker didn’t yell, like Martin expected he would; instead, he slowly wandered up and stopped a few feet behind him.

  “Hey,” he said calmly.

  Martin pretended not to hear; he just kept staring out over the lake. His dad sauntered over and sat down on another rock nearby.

  “Look, uh…I know you’re not on board with this. I get that. You got attached. But don’t forget, it was you that broke the rules. We told you, no pets. Especially a beast like that thing.”

  Trying to hold his tongue, Martin exhaled tightly.

  “But you know what, we don’t have to dwell on that. What you obviously haven’t thought about is the good that’s gonna come out of this. Things’ll be a little easier for us all for a change. Plus, you’ll probably be the most popular kid in school. I’d say it’s a pretty good deal.”