The Case of the Falling Sky

by John R. Erickson

  He stopped the pickup and opened the door. You see what a powerful force maturity can be? Even though Slim was a shameless joker, he couldn’t resist the high moral example I was setting for the entire ranch. And with words that touched me to the soles of my heart, he said, “Hurry up, bozo, before this wind yanks the door off.”

  Pretty touching, huh? You bet. He was thrilled to have me back on the job. I guess my little protest had thrown quite a scare into him.

  I leaped up into the cab of the pickup, and you’ll be proud to know that I marched straight over to my assistant and addressed him in a soft, mature tone of voice. “Move, pipsqueak, you’re in my spot.”

  He moved and I reclaimed my position of honor beside the window on the passenger side. That’s what “shotgun” means, don’t you know, that special spot beside the window. We call it “shotgun” because . . .

  . . . because back in frontier days, before the invention of pickups and dog food, people and dogs had to ride around in stagecoaches, see, because they didn’t have pickups. And every stagecoach had a window on the right side and if you rode in that spot, you had to carry a shotgun, because . . . well, because the mosquitoes were terrible in those days and were as big as quail and . . .

  Let’s skip this. I don’t know why we call it the “shotgun” seat, but the important thing is that we do. If you have further questions on this, ask a chicken.

  Where were we? Oh yes. It was March, an ugly windy day in March. Drover and I had gone out with Slim Chance to feed cows and I rode all the way to the pasture sitting in the Shotgun Position. Once in the pasture, Slim parked the pickup on a hill. There, he honked the horn and waited for the cows to come in to feed.

  The wind was screaming straight out of the west, blowing so hard that we could feel it rocking the pickup. Oh, and it moaned through the cracks in the pickup doors, a very moinful morn.

  Moinful moan.

  Moanful moin.

  Mournful moan.

  Slim gazed out the window and shook his head, then turned his red-rimmed eyes on me.

  “You know, dogs, I’ve got a feeling that our forefathers didn’t come to this country in March, ’cause if they had, our foremothers would have told ’em to keep driving. Man alive, this wind is awful!” A strong gust of wind sent a shower of sand against Slim’s window. “And it’s getting my nice clean pickup dirty.”

  Nice clean pickup? I stared at Slim and tried to . . . okay, it was a joke. It wasn’t funny but I made the Supreme Effort and squeezed up a smile. That’s part of a dog’s job, don’t you know. We not only have to Share Pain, but we’re responsible for Joke Responses too. When they make corny jokes, we’re expected to laugh, or at least smile. I know, it seems kind of silly, but that’s what we do for a living.

  It beats chasing quail or dragging a sled over frozen tundra.

  But I noticed that Drover wasn’t doing his part. Instead of laughing or smiling, he seemed to be in one of his stuporous states, staring out the window at . . . we’re never sure what Drover sees when he’s in one of his dreamy states. And I really didn’t care. The point was that he was being a slacker and a half-stepper, while I was carrying the whole load for the Security Division.

  “Drover, I feel that you’re not paying attention to your business.”

  His gaze drifted over to me, and through the fog of his mind, I saw his eyes come into focus. “Oh, hi. Are we home yet?”

  “No, we’re not home. We are waiting for the cattle to come into the feed ground.”

  “I’ll be derned. That’s what I’m doing too.”

  “Of course that’s what you’re doing, because you’re here in the pickup with me and Slim.”

  “I’ll be derned. I knew I was somewhere.”

  “That is, your body is here in the pickup. We’re not sure where your mind is.”

  “Oh, it’s right here with me. We always go places together.”

  I glared at the runt. “Drover, Slim’s bored and he’s starting to make corny jokes. He expects a reaction from us dogs, and you’ve left me to do all the work by myself. Do you suppose you could trouble yourself to listen and maybe even laugh now and then?”

  “Oh sure. Ha ha ha. Hee hee hee. That was a good one.”

  “You didn’t hear his joke.”

  “Oh. What did he say?”

  “He said . . . to be honest, Drover, I don’t remember.”

  “Gosh, it must not have been very funny.”

  “It wasn’t funny, but that’s the whole point. If his jokes were actually funny, I wouldn’t need your help. It’s the corny jokes that make this job difficult.” I went nose-to-nose with him. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d . . .”

  You won’t believe what happened next. I was shocked.

  Chapter Eleven: Danger! High Voltage!

  See, when I put my nose right next to Drover’s nose, a spark of electricity jumped across the space between them, giving both of us a jolt.

  I found myself staring into his eyes. “You just . . . you just shocked my nose!”

  “No, I think you just shocked mine. And it hurt. Oh, my nose!”

  “Drover, I was sitting right here and saw the whole thing. You sent a spark of electricity through your nose and into HICK mine.”

  “Gosh, you’ve still got the hiccups.”

  “I do not still have the hiccups, and don’t try to change the subject. HICK.”

  “Then how come you just hicked?”

  “I did not hick. I said ‘stick,’ as in stick to the subject.”

  “Yeah, but I forgot the subject.”

  “You shocked my nose. Don’t try to deny it.”

  “Well, okay. But I didn’t do it.”

  “Drover”—I put my nose into his face again— “how can you sit there and . . .”

  ZAP!

  It happened again, another huge jolt of electricity. It must have been, oh, ten thousand votes. Volts, I guess it is, volts of electricity. At least fifty thousand volts. Did it hurt? You bet it did.

  Drover grinned. “See? I didn’t do it.”

  “I saw it, pal, and you did do it! That didn’t come from me. I don’t know what you’re up to, Drover, but I’m fixing to . . .”

  At that point, I noticed that Slim was looking at us and beaming such a wide grin that I could see particles of dust and grit on his teeth. And he said (this is a direct quote), he said, “Heh. This old wind’s making so much static electricity, y’all dogs are throwing up sparks.”

  Huh?

  Static electricity? Okay, maybe Drover hadn’t actually . . .

  See, when the wind blows long enough and hard enough, it sucks electricity out of the electric power lines and flings it into the air, and all at once the air is . . . I don’t know. Somehow the wind does something and these deadly electrical currents are . . .

  The point here, the important point, is that I suddenly realized that the atmosphere all around us was loaded with deadly high-energy electrical zapazoids and it was no longer safe for me to go nose-to-nose with my assistant.

  And at that point, I did what any normal, healthy American dog would have done. I backed away from Drover and muttered, “Drover, sometimes I think you’re trying to make a mockery of my life.”

  To which he said, “Oh, thanks. Me too.”

  Just then, Slim opened his door and got out to feed the cows, and my thoughts were buried under a cloud of windblown sand and dust. The cab of the pickup was suddenly transformed into a wind tunnel, with dust and sand and bits of grass flying through the air.

  Above the blast of wind, I heard Slim yell, “Outside, dogs! Y’all need to answer the call of the wild!”

  Outside? Into that wind? Was he crazy? Forget that, Charlie, I was doing fine inside the pickup.

  “Get out of my pickup and take care of your business!”

 
Okay, fine, but he didn’t need to screech at us like we were deaf or something. For his information, I wasn’t deaf and I didn’t need to answer any “calls of the wild,” to use his silly expression, but if he was going to scream and yell and make such a big deal out of it . . .

  I jumped out of the pickup and was promptly blown sideways by a blast of wind. The moment Drover’s paws hit the ground, he felt the slap of that wind in his face. He drew himself up into a knot and began to moan. “Oh, I hate this wind!”

  I could barely make out what he was saying. “You ate what?”

  “This wind!”

  “You ate the wind?”

  “Yeah, with my whole body and soul!”

  “You ate the wind with your soiled body? Drover, if you’d actually eaten the wind, you would have eaten it with your mouth, not with your soiled body.”

  “What’s a spoiled potty?”

  He wasn’t hearing me, so I raised my voice over the howl of the wind. “No, I said, you eat with your mouth, not with a soiled body.”

  He gave me a blank stare. “A mouse spoiled the potty?”

  “What? You saw a mouse? Drover, why wasn’t I informed at once?”

  “No, you said a mouse ate the spoiled potty.”

  “What? Louder! You say a spoiled mouse is acting naughty?”

  “No, I said . . .” All at once, he fell to the ground and burst into tears.

  I rushed to his side. “What is it, son? What’s happened to you?”

  Through his tears, he moaned, “I don’t know what we’re talking about! I’m so confused, and I hate this wind!”

  “What?”

  “I said, I HATE THIS WIND!”

  “This is no time to be thinking of food, son, not in this terrible wind. Let’s not try to talk.”

  The sky had turned a dirty shade of brown and tumbleweeds were flying through the air. Down along the creek, big cottonwood trees groaned and twisted in the screaming gale.

  We watched as Slim struggled to string out a sack of feed on the ground. The edges of the bag were flapping in the wind and the brim of his hat had folded around his ears. If he hadn’t held the hat down with his hand, it would have been on its way to Mexico.

  When he’d finished pouring out the feed, he staggered back to the pickup and yelled, “To heck with this! Load up, dogs, and let’s head for the barn!”

  Yes sir! In a flash, I sprinted to the door and was waiting there when Slim arrived. I went into Deep Crouch and waited for him to open the door. I had it all planned out, see. The very instant he opened the door, I would go flying inside the cab, out of all the wind and dust.

  Pretty clever, huh? You bet. It’s the kind of special technique we often use in the Security Business. We’ve found that careful planning can save a lot of time.

  He grabbed the door handle and pulled, and I timed my jump perfectly so that . . .

  BONK!

  Okay, Slim couldn’t get the door open, because of the wind, and I . . . uh . . . wrecked my nose on the side of the pickup, shall we say, and it HURT. It not only hurt my nose, but it also caused me great HICK embarrassment and humiliation.

  Tears of pain filled my eyes, and through the shimmering wateriness of my vision, I looked up at Slim and saw that he was . . .

  You’d think that if a loyal dog bashed his nose into the side of a pickup, his cowboy friend might show some concern, right? Well, he didn’t. You know what he did? He laughed, and yelled, “It works better when the door’s open, pooch.”

  Very funny.

  Did I need to be told that jumping into a pickup works better when the door’s open? No. But that didn’t stop him from . . . never mind. Let’s just skip it.

  Oh, and one more point. You’ll be glad to know that the shock of bashing my nose against the side of the pickup cured my hiccups.

  Fifteen minutes later, we made it back to ranch headquarters and pulled up in front of the machine shed. Loper was standing inside the barn, looking out at the weather. We dived out of the pickup and sprinted into the shelter of the barn. There, we stared out at the storm and listened to the wind as it rumbled across the tin roof. And fellers, it was RUMBLING. Even though we all knew the barn was pretty stout, we began to wonder if it could stand the force of that wind.

  I noticed that Slim and Loper lifted their eyes and were checking out the rafters. Then Loper said, “The radio says the wind’s gusting up to sixty miles an hour. Tell you what. Let’s shut ’er down for the day and go to the house. This wind’s bad enough to hurt somebody.”

  Slim nodded his agreement.

  Loper waved good-bye, took a good grip on his hat, and trotted down to the house. Slim closed the sliding doors on the machine shed and ran to his pickup. He started the motor and drove away, leaving me and my assistant . . . well, just sitting there to be thrashed by the wind.

  Chapter Twelve: This Ending Is Pretty Scary, So Beware

  So there we were, standing out in front of the machine shed. Drover let out a moan. “Everybody but us has a house, and now they’ve all gone. What’ll we do?”

  I braced myself against a powerful gust of wind. “We’ll just . . . I don’t know what we’ll do, Drover, but it won’t be much fun. You know, it’s a sad day when a couple of loyal dogs are turned out into a screaming windstorm and left to be . . .”

  A huge gust of wind oblatherated . . . obitterated . . . obliterated my words, and it was so powerful, the whole barn shook and rumbled.

  Drover’s eyes grew wide with fear. He looked around and said, “Hank? Do you remember what J.T. said?”

  “No. I’ve never trusted the testimony of chickens.” There was a moment of silence. “What did he say?”

  “He said . . . he said when the wind starts blowing hard, it’s a sign the sky’s fixing to fall.”

  “Rubbish. We’ve already discussed this twenty times today and there’s nothing more to say.”

  “And . . . and remember what Pete said last night?”

  “Drover, I never listen to cats, and you should know that too.” There was another moment of silence. “What did Pete say that relates to our, uh, present situation?”

  Drover rolled his eyes to the brown-colored sky. “Don’t you remember? He predicted the sky was going to fall. Today.”

  “What are you saying, Drover? Are you trying to frighten me? I’m sorry, it won’t work. For your infomation . . .”

  At that very moment, a huge, enormous, incredibly powerful blast of wind struck us, blowing us both off our feet and sending us rolling across the gravel drive. We rolled twenty or thirty feet, and might have rolled twenty or thirty miles if we hadn’t lodged against the north side of the water storage tank.

  There, I struggled to my feet, which was no easy job, let me tell you. I mean, that wind was getting worse by the minute. My ears were blown straight back on my head and I could hardly open my eyes. Oh, and the air was now filled with flying objects: tumbleweeds, an empty paint can, a grocery sack, and several chicken feathers.

  Whoa! Chicken feathers? Was that a clue? See, in the Security Business, we have our facts and our clues. Sometimes a fact is just a fact, but sometimes it’s more than just a fact and it becomes a clue. And, to be honest . . .

  Do we need to take another HICK look at the Secret Clue List? Maybe I can summarize. Pay close attention because I don’t want to repeat this, not in this terrible wind.

  Okay, over the past twenty-four hours, we had assembled a Secret Clue List, right? Many, or even most, of those clues had related in one way or another to chickens, right? I mean, the word “chicken” just kept coming up, over and over again, and somehow it always seemed to be pointing back to . . .

  Over the howl of the wind, I yelled, “Drover, I’m having second thoughts about this.”

  “What? Help, murder, oh my leg!”

  “Drover, we both agreed th
at J.T. is just a dumb cluck and that we should ignore his silly forecast about the sky falling, remember?”

  “Help!”

  “Well, I’m beginning to think . . . Drover, we need to take cover immediately! I don’t want to alarm you, but all at once, I’m beginning to suspect . . . that THE SKY IS FIXING TO FALL!! Follow me, son, our very lives are in danger!”

  “Help! This leg’s killing me!”

  So there we were, two brave dogs struggling in a world turned upside down by one of the most ferocious winds ever recorded. You probably think we ran to the Security Division’s Vast Office Com­plex and took shelter in our gunnysack bunkers. That would have been a sensible thing to do. I mean, no place is safer, warmer, friendlier, or more secure than a gunnysack bunker.

  Unfortunately, it was too late for that. We had no choice but to seek shelter in the closest building at hand, which happened to be a little wooden toolshed that sat on a cinder block foundation just west of the chicken house.

  Against incredible odds, we staggered against the screaming wind and through a shower of stinging sand and flying debris, oh, you should have seen us! Ordinary dogs would have been blown away and then smashed flat by the falling sky, but somehow we made it to the toolshed.

  I had feared we might have to crawl underneath the shed and hide in the dusty darkness with the black widow spiders and lizards and centipedes, but luck was with us. The door of the shed had been ripped off its hinges by the wind, so we were able to leap inside and take cover.

  Whew! Even though the wind was causing the shed to rock on its foundation and roaring across the tin roof, we knew we were safe at last.

  Drover even managed to squeeze up a weak smile. “Gosh, we made it.”

  “Of course we made it. Did you ever doubt it?”

  “Well, yeah, I was kind of worried . . . Hank, you really think the sky’s going to fall?”

  “No question about it, son. I mean, the clues in this case have followed a crazy back-and-forth pattern, but through it all, I never doubted for a moment that the sky was going to fall on this very day.”