The Secret Laundry Monster Files

by John R. Erickson

  I turned away from the little sneak and marched . . . well, waddled away. I mean, I was so full of horse feed . . . I walked away, is the point, and turned my back on the guy who had brought me so much grief and had done his very best to ruin my life.

  Well, I had just pulled the ranch through another dangerous night, filled with strange sounds, howling coyotes, prowling raccoons, and Laundry Monsters. It had been a toughie, and maybe you think I went back to bed. No sir. At exactly 0641 I barked the sun over the horizon and turned that department over to J. T. Cluck, the Head Rooster.

  As a rule, chickens are dumb and incompetent, which is the mainest reason why I never trust J.T. or any other chicken to bark up the sun. We also have the fact that chickens can’t bark, and even if they tried, it would be a silly bark, certainly not enough to force the sun over the horizon.

  No, barking up the sun is a job for the Head of Ranch Security, and chickens need not apply. On the other hand, once I’ve taken care of the heavy lifting—heaving the sun over the eastern horizon—I don’t mind turning it over to J.T.

  He has a small talent for crowing, don’t you know, and he does okay, once I’ve got the sun on the road. He stands there in front of the machine shed, puffs himself up, and spends fifteen or twenty minutes making silly motions with his neck and squawking at the sun.

  It’s all pretty dumb, seems to me, but it doesn’t cause any great harm, and I guess it gives his hollow little chicken life some meaning.

  Anyways, I left a few small chores for J.T. and hoofed it down to my office-bedroom beneath the gas tanks. I was bushed, exhausted, worn to a frazzle by a night of dangerous work. I went straight to my gunnysack, scratched it up a few times, and collapsed.

  You might have noticed that I didn’t take the time to do the procedure we call Circle the Bed. That gives you some idea of just how exhausted I was. Circle the Bed is extremely important, and there are many reasons why we do it. Hmmm. But at the moment, I can’t . . .

  There are many important reasons why we circle our beds, but I’m afraid they are so secret and classified, I can’t reveal them. No kidding. You never know who might be listening. In this line of work, we must be very careful. As we say in the Security Business, the ears have eyes.

  The walls have eyes.

  The walls have EARS.

  There we go. The walls have ears, and we never know to who or whom those ears might belong, but they always seem to come in pairs—the ears do—and when they happen to belong to someone in our vast network of enemies . . . well, it can be very dangerous.

  I’m not allowed to say any more about this. If our enemies ever discovered the reasons why we circle our beds . . . I’m not even allowed to speculate. It could lead to a huge breach in our Security Apparatus, and the consequences could be . . .

  Sorry, that’s all I can say.

  You’ll just have to go on wondering why we circle our beds, and if anyone asks if we discussed this, please deny any knowledge of it.

  Okay, where were we? I don’t remember.

  Something.

  Chickens? No.

  The weather? I don’t think so.

  This really annoys me.

  Wait, here we go.

  I had just returned to my office after a long night of . . . so forth, and collapsed on my gunnysack bed. I was spent, exhausted. I had given my best energy to the ranch and now there was nothing left. I needed sleep. My whole body cried out for sleep.

  As I curled up into a ball of fur and turned out the lights of my mind, I became vaguely aware that Drover was there beside me, sleeping his life away on his gunnysack. He was making certain odd noises, such as “honk,” “wupp,” and “snork,” in his sleep. I made a mental wupp of these pork chops and began snorking the . . . muff mirk sassafras . . . zzzzzzzzzz . . .

  Chapter Eight: It Was a Pickup, Not a Liberian Freighter

  Perhaps I dozed off. Yes, I’m almost sure I did, and for the very best of reasons. I was bushed, but we’ve already discussed that, so let’s move along.

  I must have slept for several hours. In my line of work (I’m Head of Ranch Security, have I mentioned that?), in my line of work, it’s rare that we get a chance to sleep two or three hours without an interruption. This time it happened, but then it came to an end, as it always does.

  I heard a vehicle approaching the ranch.

  Traffic Control is an important part of my job around here, so staying in bed was out of the question. My left ear shot up, even as the rest of my body clung to sleep, and soon a stream of data was flashing back from Data Control’s massive computer center.

  Our initial report suggested that the unidentified vehicle was . . . a Liberian freighter? Hmmm. That seemed odd. I mean, a freighter is a kind of boat, a ship, and ships are usually found on oceans, right? My ranch is located in the Texas Panhandle, and if you’ll move over here into the Map Room . . .

  Well, maybe you can’t do that, but if we were in the Map Room, I would point to a map of the Panhandle and you would notice right away that we have no oceans. We don’t even have many lakes. We do have a creek, but it’s not very deep, certainly not deep enough for . . .

  Okay, it appeared that we were getting garbage reports from our instruments, so it was necessary for me to move into Alert Stage Two. This required that I lift my head and, most difficult of all, crank open the outer doors of my eyes, which allowed me to . . . well, look out and see things.

  I blinked my eyes several times, did a Visual Sweep of . . . Okay, we were facing the wrong direction, so I went to the huge effort of swiveling my head around to the east, and it was then that I saw . . .

  It wasn’t a Liberian freighter. It wasn’t any kind of freighter. It wasn’t even a boat, which confirmed my first response to this alert. What I saw was . . . what I saw was . . .

  Saw was? Have you ever noticed that if you spell “saw” backward it becomes “was”? I found this very interesting. Could it be some kind of clue or coded message?

  I decided to wake up Mister Sleep-Till-Noon and get a second opinion.

  “Drover, wake up. I have a very important question to ask you.” He didn’t wake up. He mumbled and honked and muttered in his sleep, so I went to sterner measures and barked in his ear.

  Heh heh. I must admit that I get some wicked pleasure in waking up Drover. You never know what the little mutt will say or do. This time, his head shot up and his eyes popped open.

  “Oh my gosh, help, murder, Mayday! I think she loves me but flypaper comes in rolls.” He stared at me for a moment. “Oh, hi. I thought you were Beulah, and you just said you were crazy in love with me.”

  “No. I’m not Beulah and I don’t love you. And if anyone’s crazy around here, it’s you.”

  “I’ll be derned. There for a minute . . . You’re not Beulah?”

  “No. I’ve already said that. You’re babbling in your sleep.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not asleep.”

  “Okay, you’re awake and babbling, which is even worse.”

  “Gosh, maybe I was asleep.”

  “I just said that.”

  “You did? When?”

  “Just now.”

  “Huh. I must have been asleep. I didn’t hear a thing.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Drover, please be serious and try to concentrate. This could be very important. I want you to listen to two words and tell me if you think they could be part of a secret code.”

  “Okay. Am I supposed to pick the words?”

  “No. I’ll pick the words and you will listen. At that point, you will give me your opinion.”

  “Now?”

  My lip curled into a snarl. “Wait until I give you the words, tuna.”

  “Oh. Okay. Sorry.”

  “The two words are . . .” I glanced over both shoulders, just to be sure our conversation was secure and confidential.
We never know who might be dropping the eaves. “The two words are . . . saw was. Do you see anything unusual about those words?”

  “I can’t see ’em at all.”

  “Okay, do you notice anything unusual?”

  “Well, let me think.” He wadded up his face and rolled one eye around. I guess that meant he was concentrating. “If a guy had one sawa and then got another sawa, he’d have two sawas. I guess.”

  I stared into the emptiness of his eyes. “There is no such thing as a sawa, Drover, and if one sawa doesn’t exist, then we can’t possibly have two sawas.”

  “I think I’m confused.”

  I rose to my feet and began pacing in front of him. “Yes, Drover, either you’re confused or else you take some fiendish pleasure in slowing down my investigations. I’m trying to involve you in my work. I gave you a chance to state your opinion, and what did you do?”

  “I don’t know. I was asleep.”

  “Of course you were asleep. You’re always asleep. That’s one of your biggest problems. But every once in a while, Drover, we must wake up and smell the taffy.”

  “Boy, I love taffy.”

  I whirled around and drilled him with my gaze. “Hush, not one more word. Now listen carefully. Do you realize that saw is was spelled backward? The two words are mirror images.” He stared at me. “Hello? Is anybody home in there?”

  “I thought it was taffy.”

  “What?”

  “You said I had to smell the taffy.”

  “Forget the taffy, Drover. The two words are mirror images of each other.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have a mirror.”

  I heaved a huge sigh and walked a few paces away. Was I going insane or was he? I couldn’t tell, but at least one of us . . . I had tried to ask the runt a simple question and somehow he had managed . . .

  At that point, I made an important decision. I left Drover on his gunnysack and hurried away, got as far away from him as I could get, before he infected my mind with . . . whatever it was.

  Chaos. Typhoid fever.

  Make no mistake about it. That’s a weird little mutt.

  Oh, and I decided that the whole business about saw was meant absolutely nothing. It was gibberish, a rabbit trail without a rabbit.

  On the other hand, we most certainly did have an unidentified vehicle approaching ranch headquarters. That turned out to be a very important piece of information, and it soon led me into unwatered charts.

  Uncharted waters, I should say. The unidentified vehicle soon led me into uncharted waters.

  You see what Drover does to me?

  Okay, now we’re cooking. Once I had a strong visual sighting of the vehicle, I knew that it was no Liberian freighter. The clues were everywhere. First, there was no ocean, no beach, no water, no jellyfish. Second, the vehicle had wheels and was moving down the road, which made it virtually impossible that it could be a ship. And third, I suddenly realized that the whole business about the so-called Liberian freighter had been a product of my . . . uh . . . sleeping mind, as you might say, and was therefore absurd.

  I even had to face the possibility that my loony conversation with Drover had been partly my fault.

  But the important thing was that I had just intercepted an unidentified vehicle as it was creeping toward our ranch compound, and I wasted no time in sounding the alarm. Near the front yard gate, I issued Warning Barks. When the vehicle didn’t slow down or flee in terror, I advanced to the next stage in the Readiness Procedure. I hit Full Flames on all engines and went . . .

  My goodness, it appeared that a cat had just walked into my path. How sad! How unfortunate! Do you see what this meant? It meant that unless I went to some trouble to alter my course, I would probably . . . heh heh . . . give the kitty a “plowing,” shall we say.

  Run over him. Bulldoze him.

  Now, wouldn’t that be too bad? I would have felt terrible about doing such a thing, but you must remember that once we go into the Full Flames procedure, it’s very hard to make even the tiniest corrections in our course.

  Okay, maybe it’s not all that hard, but only if a guy wants to go to the trouble of doing it. And I didn’t. You know why? That wasn’t just any ordinary cat up there. It was Pete, the same little creep who had told me the truth only hours before and had ruined my Theory on Cats. And now he would pay.

  Heh heh. He didn’t see or hear me coming. I wasn’t surprised. See, cats aren’t very smart. In fact, they’re dumb. But even more important, they often walk around with their eyes closed and their mind on other things. They purr while they walk, stick their tail straight up in the air, and they have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the world.

  What was going on in Pete’s world was that I was streaking out to intercept a strange vehicle, and he just happened to be walking along in my path. Or close to it. I had to make a few course corrections to get a good clean shot at him, but that was no big deal. Heh heh.

  VROOOOM!

  Reeeeer! Hiss!

  Yes sir, I got him bulldozed, ran right over the top of him and sent him rolling. As I roared past, I yelled back over my shoulder, “Oops, sorry, Kitty, but I’m on my way to a Code Three!”

  He picked himself up off the ground and glared ice picks at me through the cloud of dust. I loved it! What a wonderful way to start the day.

  Yes sir, I was feeling terrific, but now that I had plowed the cat, I had to turn to more important matters—the unidentified vehicle that was approaching headquarters. I turned all sensory devices toward the front and began gathering clues and targeting information.

  Green and white Chevy pickup, bearing two-four-zirro-zirro.

  Pretty impressive, huh? You bet it was, but there’s more. At that point, I also went into Stage One Barking. We have several stages of barking, don’t you see, and Stage One is the . . . well, the first stage, and maybe that was obvious, but what wasn’t so obvious was that we also have a Stage Two, a Stage Three, and a Stage Four.

  Stage One is the first of many stages, in other words, and we use it to alert the trespasser that he has been picked up on the Security Division’s vast radar network. A lot of times your trespassers will give up at this point—stop the vehicle and jump out with their hands in the air.

  And sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, we know we’ve intercepted a hardhead, and we move straight into the higher stages of barking. When this happens, things get very tense, and on a few occasions, we’ve had to go to the drastic measure of shooting out their tires with tooth lasers. No kidding.

  But this guy seemed to realize that he was in Big Trouble. As I swooped in and confronted him with a withering barrage of Stage One Barking, he coasted down the hill and . . .

  “Get out of the way, fool!”

  . . . pulled up to the yard gate. Yes sir, he knew he’d met his match and he was smart enough to surrender before we had to do some destruction to his pickup.

  At that point, you probably think that he stepped out of the pickup. No, that’s not what he did. Hang on and you’ll see.

  Chapter Nine: The Lovely Miss Trudy Arrives

  The stranger didn’t step out of his pickup right away. First, he opened the door. Only then did he step out. See, if he hadn’t opened the door . . . Never mind, but sometimes these tiny details are pretty important, I mean, if he hadn’t . . .

  He opened the door and stepped out, is the point, and then and there I was able to amass a complete description: tall, skinny, a clean pressed western shirt, blue jeans, dark eyes, new straw hat, and . . . hmmm, very interesting. He was wearing a pair of yellow boots, and they were not only yellow, but they also had little bumps all over ’em.

  This struck me as very strange. I mean, I’d spent my whole career around guys who wore cow­boy boots, but I’d never seen a pair that was yellow and bumpy. What was the deal here?

  Did I da
re dart in for a thorough Smell­o­naly­sis? I lifted my gaze and studied the stranger. He was tucking in his shirt. Oh, and he slapped at a spot of dust on his jeans. In other words, he wasn’t paying any attention to me, which meant that I might have just enough time to swoop in and give the boots a thorough sniffing.

  Maybe you think this was a waste of time, sniffing a guy’s boots. Well, under ordinary conditions, I might agree, but there was something odd going on here. What exactly were those little bumps on the surface of the leather? Maybe you hadn’t thought of that, but consider the possibilities.

  Those bumps might have concealed tiny microphones or some other sensing device that we had never seen before. They’re very clever, you know, our enemies. Just when we think we’ve solved all their tricks and disguises, they come up with something new . . . and possibly menacing. We must stay on constant alert and leave no sturn untoned.

  At that very moment, Drover arrived on the scene—huffing and puffing and late. “Oh, hi. Did I miss anything?”

  “Shhhh! Of course you missed something. You always miss something because you’re always late.”

  “Yeah, this old leg . . .”

  “Never mind the excuses. You missed the First Wave, you’re late, and thus, you have no idea what we’re watching in this case.”

  “Oh, you mean the yellow boots?”

  “Right. Because you dawdled around, you couldn’t possibly have known that we’re alarmed about those . . .” I gave him a withering scowl. “How did you know about the yellow boots? Who told you?”

  “Well, nobody told me.”

  “Ha! You expect me to believe that? Out with it, son, I want to get to the bottom of this barrel. Was it the cat?”

  “Was what the cat?”

  “Was it the cat who tipped you off about the yellow boots? I must know, Drover. This could be very important.”

  “Well, let’s see here. No, it wasn’t the cat. He got run over by a passing dog.”