Dump Trucks and Dogsleds: I'm on My Way, Mom!

by Henry Winkler

  “That’s got to hurt,” I said to Emily.

  “I sure hope they’re not expecting us to become bendable buddies,” Emily said.

  “Look what they’ve done, kids,” my dad said. “They’ve created enough room for the three of us and Cheerio.”

  And so we got in.

  “Thank you very much,” I said to the acrobats.

  They just looked at me, and I realized that of course, they didn’t know what I was saying. So I used both hands to pat my heart. Emily and my dad did the same.

  “Ahhhhhhhh,” they all said at once. And then they used one hand to pat their hearts, too. Everybody except the guy who made himself into a pretzel. He patted some part of his body, but I’m not sure what it was. I think it was his ankle but it could have been his nose.

  The truck took off, bumping along on the snowy road.

  This certainly wasn’t the fastest way anyone ever got to New York, but it was the most unusual.

  CHAPTER 16

  TEN USEFUL THINGS YOU NEED TO

  KNOW WHEN YOU’RE STUFFED IN THE

  BACK OF A VAN LIKE A SAUSAGE WITH

  NINE CHINESE ACROBATS

  1. Really nothing, because the chances of you ever being stuffed in the back of a van with a human pyramid, two human coffee tables, and a human pretzel are slim to none. So, I’ve decided to blow off this list and substitute it with the ten things that flew into my imagination as we bumped along the snowy road . . . slowly.

  THE NEW LIST

  1. If they built a bathroom in the back of this van, where would they put it? And boy, could I use it!

  2. I wish I hadn’t given those old gummy bears with the lifesaver frozen on them to Emily, because I would eat them right now.

  3. I wish this was really a doughnut truck.

  4. If it were, I’d get the classic glazed, or no wait, maybe a jelly-filled one with chocolate sprinkles on the top. No wait, a lemon cream with powdered sugar.

  5. I hope my mom is okay and that there wasn’t a long line when she checked into the hospital. She hates lines even two people long.

  6. I hope there’s a hot chocolate machine on her floor, for her and for me.

  7. I wonder if Emily’s butt is still numb from the cold. Actually, I don’t want to wonder that. Thought, get out of my brain right now.

  8. I wonder if babies have eyelashes when they’re born.

  9. Note to self: When I grow up, never wear a ski hat with red pom-poms. That is a big no-no.

  10. These guys should go in the Guinness Book of World Records for holding an uncomfortable position for the longest time ever. It’s amazing that they did this for us.

  11. Whoops. Did someone fart?

  CHAPTER 17

  There were two great things about being in that van. The first was HEAT. It must have been negative two hundred degrees out there in the snow. The driver had the heater blasting, plus there was the heat that thirteen bodies and a dachshund make when they’re jammed together like M&M’s in a bag. The second great thing was that the acrobats had food. It wasn’t doughnuts, like I had hoped, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it was food and with the way our stomachs were growling, I would have eaten a shoe.

  The acrobats must have known how hungry we were. Actually, it wasn’t that hard to tell if your ears were working. When Emily’s stomach and mine growl, it sounds kind of normal. But when my dad is hungry, his stomach sounds like a locomotive.

  Anyway, the first acrobat at the bottom of the pyramid, using one hand to balance himself, reached out his other hand into his neighbor’s coat pocket and pulled out what looked like a power bar covered with sesame seeds. He passed it over to us, and gestured that we should help ourselves to it. I ripped the wrapper off, took a bite, and passed it to Emily. She took two bites, because she was really starving, and passed what was left to my dad, who popped the whole thing into his mouth. I have to say, it didn’t make a dent in my hunger. My stomach growled again.

  So the middle guy on the bottom of the pyramid balanced on one hand and reached into his neighbor’s pocket and pulled out a banana. Now we were talking real food. He passed it over to me, and this time, I broke it into equal thirds. (Did you notice I’m getting a little better with my fractions?)

  Cheerio, who had been asleep under one of the human coffee tables, got a whiff of the banana, and suddenly came to life. His tail started to wag at top speed, which is dangerous when you’re shoved into the back of a van like a jar of pickles. His little tail was whipping all of us. I mean, there wasn’t one of us he missed, except for the two guys on the top of the pyramid.

  “Easy, boy,” I said to him.

  But he wasn’t about to calm down until he chowed down. One of the guys on the top row reached into his neighbor’s pocket and pulled out a piece of beef jerky. Wow, these guys were like a human grocery store. The guy tossed it toward Cheerio, and when Cheerio smelled it, he flew through the air like a doggy acrobat. I think he really impressed everybody, because they all cheered. Cheerio really liked that, because I think I saw him smile.

  The acrobats continued to pull treats out of each other’s pockets. Let’s see. There was another banana; a sticky taffy candy; a fishy tasting, dried thing I don’t even want to think about; an almond cookie; and a couple of other tastes I couldn’t identify. Finally, our stomachs went silent.

  After the meal, I was feeling happier, and as we drove along the snowy highway, I started to hum a little song, one of the songs my mom always sings when we’re on a road trip. It’s kind of a stupid little song called “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain.” It made me think of my mom all alone in the hospital. I hoped she wasn’t sacred.

  Then, one by one, the acrobats joined in singing! I mean, they knew the words. So here we were, in the middle of somewhere in Massachusetts or maybe Connecticut, in a blinding snowstorm, singing, like a choir. I know you’re not going to believe this, but trust me, I’m telling you it happened. And it sounded beautiful.

  However, there’s only so long you can sing “She’ll be Coming ’Round the Mountain” when you’re worried. After more than an hour of driving, my dad started checking his watch, and I mean checking . . . like every six seconds. Then he started that throat-clearing noise like he does when he can’t come up with the right crossword puzzle word. It’s the kind of noise you make when you’re just clearing your throat for the fun of it. You know, when there’s nothing to clear.

  “Hank, can you see out the window?” he asked me, clearing his throat as he talked. “I want to make sure we’re still going in the right direction.”

  I tried getting up to my knees to get a glimpse out the window, but I couldn’t see past the second row of the human pyramid.

  “No, Dad. All I see are the tops of heads and the bottoms of feet.”

  “We should be well into Connecticut by now,” he said. “Look for a road sign.”

  I tried again, but this time all I got was nine pairs of eyes looking back at me.

  “No luck, Dad.”

  “I really need to know where we are,” he said. “I want to figure out our E.T.A.”

  E.T.A. What is he talking about? Eating Table Attitude. No, that doesn’t make sense. Entering Tunnel Approach? Maybe, but I never heard of that before. I got it! Eat Turnips, America! Whoops, now I’m really lost.

  “What’s an E.T.A., Dad?” I hated to bother him with definitions at a time like this, but as you can see, I hadn’t come up with much on my own.

  “Estimated time of arrival,” he said.

  Wow, I would never have figured that out in a million years.

  I could tell he couldn’t stand the tension anymore, because all of a sudden, he popped up and started to make his way toward the front of the van. This was definitely not a good idea, or an easy one, because he had to snake his way around the clump of bodies that formed the wall of the pyramid. And don’t forget the human pretzel who was still there twisted up in a knot.

  Stanley Zipzer is not a small m
an, or a particularly graceful one, so this was quite an operation. As he made his way over to the window, there was a lot of grunting on his part, and a lot of laughing on the acrobats’ parts. But he finally made it to the front, so he could peer over the seat and look out the windshield.

  “All I see is snow,” he said. “It’s just a blanket of white everywhere. Will it ever end?”

  “Did you know that in the United States, a typical snowstorm will have a snow producing lifetime of two to five days?” Emily piped up.

  “That’s my Emily,” I said. “Always there with the helpful info . . . that doesn’t help us at all at this moment.”

  “It’s science, Hank. Live with it.”

  “Enough of that, kids,” my dad said. “I’m trying to concentrate and see where we are.”

  He stared out the window for a long time, as if staring would make him see better or make the snow disappear. I felt really bad for him. My mom was counting on him to be there. She had been saying that for months. And now he couldn’t be there. That must have felt awful for him. I know, because it felt awful for me, too.

  And then an amazing thing happened. Well, it’s not actually so amazing that it would make the ten most amazing things list. But to us, at that moment, it was totally amazing. Like a magic trick, a sign appeared on the highway, lit up in red digital letters. It was a marvelous sight to see, this beautiful, red sign floating in whiteness all around us.

  And here’s what it said:ENTERING NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT NEW YORK: 80 MILES

  Eighty miles.

  Wow. That seemed close. We were actually going to get there!

  Or so I thought.

  CHAPTER 18

  My dad reached behind him, grabbed may shoulder, and gave me a hearty squeeze. If you ask me, it was a little too hearty, but I could understand that this was an exciting moment for him.

  “New York,” he said. “We’re almost home, Hank.”

  “It’s still eighty miles, Dad,” Emily pointed out. “So close, and yet so far away.”

  “Emily, could you think positive for once in your life?” I asked her. “We could still be on that mountaintop in Vermont, with you whimpering like a scared rabbit.”

  “Rabbits are silent, Hank. They do not employ their vocal chords unless they’re in extreme danger.”

  “Why don’t you follow their example, then? You could learn a thing or two from a bunny.”

  Emily and I were so busy arguing, that we didn’t notice the van slowing down. But my dad did.

  “What’s going on?” he asked the driver, who, of course, didn’t understand a word he was saying.

  My dad just started pointing like a mad man at the sign that said New York.

  “That’s where we’re going,” he kept saying. “New York. Please, we have to get there.”

  The dragon man just smiled at him and nodded his head. He also continued to slow down and pull over to the side of the road.

  “New York,” my dad said. “Please.”

  The car was stopped now, and the driver just looked at my dad without understanding. In desperation, my dad tried to say please in every other language he knew.

  “Por favor,” he tried in Spanish.

  “Bitte,” he said in German.

  “S’il vous plait,” he tried in French.

  “Grzyb,” he tried in whatever language that was.

  “What are you speaking now, Dad?” I asked.

  “Polish,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you knew how to say please in Polish.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I said mushroom.”

  “Wow, you must be really stressed, Dad. Calm down for a minute and let me give it a try.”

  So now it was mime time again. I crawled over the pyramid until I was facing the driver. In slow motion, I acted out each word.

  “We,” I said, pointing to myself.

  “Are going,” I said, pointing to the sign, “to New York.”

  The dragon man watched me carefully, trying to understand. When he repeated what I had just said, this time it didn’t sound like he was saying New York at all. It was New Something . . . but definitely not New York.

  Uh-oh.

  “My mother,” I went on, “is having a baby.” With that, I grabbed the driver’s hat from the seat and stuffed it under my parka so I looked pregnant. Well, at least kind of pregnant. Then I picked up an imaginary baby and rocked it in my arms.

  “Baby,” I said. And just to make sure it was all clear, I repeated, “Baby in New York.” As a finishing touch, I started to cry like a baby.

  “Waaahhhhhh,” I cried. “Waaaaaahhhhh in New York.”

  The driver was silent for a minute, putting together all my mime clues. Then suddenly it hit him.

  “Aahhhhhh,” he said. Then he handed me a piece of paper with a lot of writing on it. The letters were so small and so close together, I couldn’t focus on them. The whole page was a blur, so I handed it as quickly as I could to my dad.

  “The driver wants us to see this,” I said.

  “Mr. Chin and His Amazing Acrobats of Cheng Du,” he read.

  “That must be these guys,” Emily said. “So they’re not doughnut bakers.”

  “Duh,” I said to her. She stuck her tongue out at me.

  “You look just like your ugly iguana when you do that,” I said.

  “Katherine is not ugly. She’s quite attractive, in my opinion.”

  “Kids,” my father said. “Not now. Listen to this. Mr. Chin and His Amazing Acrobats of Cheng Du are appearing Saturday evening at Shubert Theater in New Haven, Connecticut. What day is today?”

  “Saturday,” I said. “That’s tonight, Dad.”

  “No wonder they stopped the van,” my dad said. “They’re not going to New York. They’re turning off the main road here. To New Haven.”

  So that’s what the dragon man was saying. Not New York. New Haven.

  Now it was our turn to say, “Oohhhhhhhh.”

  And all three of our heads dropped at the same time. We were stuck, still eighty miles from New York, and there wasn’t another car in sight. How were we going to get out of this pickle? I was completely out of ideas. I mean, my brain was shut down tight. I closed my eyes really tight and tried to squeeze them as hard as I could to start my brain thinking. But all that happened was nothing. A whole lot of nothing.

  I hit my forehead with the palm of my hand, trying to knock a thought loose. It must have worked because suddenly I had an idea.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said. “Give me your cell phone.”

  He handed me the phone, and I checked the battery. It was low, but maybe I had enough juice left to make a call. Maybe.

  I dialed the number and waited.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE TWELVE THINGS I SAID ON THE PHONE

  1. Hey, Frankie. It’s Hank.

  2. Frankie!!! Frankie??? It’s Hank.

  3. I can’t hear you, either.

  4. I still can’t hear you.

  5. How’s my mom?

  6. No, Frankie. My mom. Not your mom.

  7. Excuse me, Mr. Pretzel Man. Can you take your foot out from behind your ear?

  8. No, Frankie. Not your foot. One of the Chin guys’ foot. No, not his chin. His foot. It’s behind his ear.

  9. No, not his rear. His ear.

  10. Tell your mom to tell my mom that . . . What? You’re breaking up.

  11. Frankie? Frankie!!! Frankie????

  12. Click. Dial tone. Nothing.

  CHAPTER 20

  I was so frustrated that I slammed the phone shut and just sat there, staring at Mr. Chin. He smiled at me and said something in Chinese that I didn’t understand. Sure, easy for him to smile. He was on his way to New Haven to twist himself up like a rubber band. We, on the other hand, had to get out of the van and get back into the snowstorm with no hope of making the final leg into New York. I could only imagine what kind of fit Emily was going to throw when her toes started to freeze up again.

  Su
ddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pack of dogs approaching us—all different kinds of dogs. The first dog looked like a husky, one of those dogs that pulls dogsleds. He was surrounded by a boxer, a golden retriever, a labrador, a poodle, and another fluffy dog that looked like a shaggy rug covered in snow. For a minute, I thought they were lost dogs looking for shelter.

  But then I realized that the dogs weren’t alone, because right in back of them was a sled. And on that sled was a guy, standing up and guiding the dogs along the road. Whoa . . . a dogsled! Had we taken a wrong turn to Alaska? Once I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel about people who race dogsleds for thousands of miles across snow and frozen lakes and glaciers and everything. Hey, if they could do that, maybe this guy could find his way to New York. With us aboard, naturally.

  As soon as that thought hit my mind, I reached over Mr. Chin’s shoulder and started honking the horn like a nutcase.

  “Hey,” I shouted at the top of my voice, as Mr. Chin rolled down the window. “Where are you headed?”

  When the dogs heard the horn honking, they stopped dead in their tracks, turned, and stared at us.

  This was great. I was sure they were waiting to hear what I had in mind. But before I could even open the door to get out of the van, the dogs suddenly took off, running like they were chasing an imaginary tennis ball that had to be yellow so they could see it in the snow.

  “Hey, come back here!” I hollered out the window. “We need a ride. It’s an emergency.”

  Cheerio must have heard the dogs barking because his ears perked up and started to twitch. He’s a pretty social little guy, and there’s nothing he likes better than a pack of neighborhood dogs he hasn’t met before. He loves making new friends. With his stubby little legs, he climbed over the acrobats and jumped into the front seat and onto Mr. Chin’s lap. Sticking his head out the window, he barked his version of “Hey, guys. Come on back. Let’s have a cup of hot chocolate.”

  I don’t speak dog, but I’m sure that’s what he meant.

  When the pack of dogs heard his invitation, they did a U-turn and came charging directly toward the truck. It was hard to see through the falling snow, but I think the driver almost fell off the sled. All the dogs were attached to one main leash, and although he was holding on to it, it sure looked to me like the dogs were in control of the sled.