Dachshund Disaster

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “King,” I said. “Seriously, buddy. What are you doing?”

  He backed out of the blanket and shook himself all over. Lifting his chin regally, he finally decided to come back and let me give him a treat.

  When I tried calling him without a treat in my hand, though, he completely ignored me. It wasn’t because of his new name — he wouldn’t come even when I used the name Milton and Ruth had been calling him, Chutzpah, or whatever that word was.

  We didn’t have long to practice anyway. Soon I heard Aidan calling me for lunch. I picked up King, checked to make sure I hadn’t left anything on, and went back down the stairs. It takes two hands to lift the stairs and trapdoor back into place, so I put King on the floor of the hallway while I did that.

  It only took ten seconds, but when I turned around again … he was gone.

  King?” I called. “King! Where are you?”

  I looked down the stairs and saw Aidan at the bottom waiting for me. “Did King go down there?”

  “King?” Aidan said, wrinkling his nose.

  “My dog!” I said. “Obviously. Come on, Aidan. Did you see him?”

  Aidan shook his head. “You really want to call him King instead of Yowser? Are you sure?”

  “You’re a lot of help,” I said. I went to the door of my mom’s room, but I couldn’t see him in there. “King!” I called again. I crouched and looked under the bed.

  “RRRRRREEEEEOOOOOOOWW!!”

  A piercing yowl echoed down the hall. Meowser shot out of my room and bolted down the stairs in a blur of brown and black fur.

  “Rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf!” King barked gleefully, galloping after her.

  “Oh, no!” Aidan cried. “Meowser!”

  I ran down the stairs after them. By the time I got to the kitchen, Aidan was standing on a chair holding Meowser in his arms. Meowser’s fur was all fluffed out like she’d stuck her tail in a light socket. She was still going “Rreeooowwwrr! Rrreeoowrrr!” indignantly, showing her tiny pointed teeth as she meowed.

  King was bouncing around the bottom of the chair, yapping at the top of his lungs. “RARF! RARF! RARF! RARF! RARF!”

  The kitchen smelled of grilled cheese, but Mom and David and Bowser were all outside on the deck already. Aidan looked like he was about to cry.

  “Help me!” he wailed as I came in. “Meowser is scared! I don’t know what to do!”

  “It’s OK, don’t freak out,” I said. I ran over and picked up King. I held him tight even though he was wriggling in my arms like crazy and rarfing like a lunatic. “See? It’s fine. Meowser probably just startled him, that’s all.”

  Mom pushed open the sliding door and came inside. “What is going on in here?” she said. “I can hear the racket all the way at the other end of the garden.”

  “Charlie’s dog was yelling at Meowser!” Aidan cried. Tears trembled in his eyes. “Meowser was so scared!”

  “She’s totally fine!” I said. She was, too. She’d stopped meowing and settled for glaring at King. Plus, by the way, she is a huge cat, totally bigger than King. She didn’t have to be such a drama queen about it. “They were both startled! That’s all that happened!”

  Mom rubbed her forehead. “Charlie, could we maybe leave the dog in your room while we have lunch? Would that be all right?”

  David smirked at me through the glass door. Bowser was sitting on the deck next to him, thumping his fat black tail on the boards and giving King the stink eye.

  “It’s not fair!” I said. “King didn’t do anything wrong! He’s just getting used to a new place. Why should he have to be punished?”

  “It’s not a punishment,” Mom said. “It’s just to give us a little peace and quiet until lunch is over. Then you two can spend the afternoon in the yard with me while I garden. OK? Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “Fine,” I said, stomping out of the kitchen with King in my arms. It wasn’t fine and it wasn’t fair at all and it was my birthday, but I knew if I tried to argue about it, things would just get worse. I set King inside our bedroom and told him to be good.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I promised.

  He wagged his tail until he saw me start to close the door, and then his head drooped and he looked confused.

  “Sorry, King,” I said. “I know it’s not fair.”

  I closed the door on his woeful face and stomped back downstairs. Meowser was sitting on top of the fridge again, looking extremely displeased with the universe. She watched me through slitted eyes as I hauled open the sliding door and went out on the deck.

  It was a pretty October day, sunny and really windy with clouds flashing across the sun and whirlwinds of yellow leaves swirling down onto the grass. I didn’t want to spend my whole birthday being mad, so I tried to keep my mind on what it would be like to play outside with my very own dog.

  None of us had much to say during lunch. Aidan asked me to pass the grapes and I managed not to throw them at him, which I thought was enough of an effort from me. Mom tried to ask David about his schoolwork, but David just grunted and mumbled something the way he always does. He finished first and stood up in a hurry. Bowser lunged to his paws behind him.

  “David,” my mom said in her warning voice.

  “Can I be excused?” he said, but not very nicely.

  She sighed. “Are you sure you and Bowser don’t want to stay out here with me and Charlie? Maybe the dogs will get along better if they can play outside for a while. And you could use the fresh air.”

  “I’m busy,” he said, hunching his shoulders and shoving his hands in his pockets.

  Yeah, right. I’m sure he’s so busy playing video games and lying on his bed staring at the ceiling blasting out his eardrums with terrible music or whatever.

  Mom sighed again. (She does that a lot when she’s talking to David.) “You’re excused.”

  David and Bowser disappeared into the house. I crammed the last corner of my sandwich into my mouth. “Can I go get King?” I asked.

  “No talking with your mouth full,” Aidan scolded. I crossed my eyes at him and opened my mouth so he could see my half-chewed food. He giggled. “Gross!”

  “Yes, all right,” Mom said.

  I put my plate and my glass in the dishwasher and ran upstairs. When I threw open my bedroom door, I saw King in the middle of the round tomato-red carpet between my bed and Aidan’s. He sat up in a hurry, ducked his head, and gave me a guilty look.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “What did you do?”

  I took a step forward and realized he’d been chewing on something. I picked it up and saw it was one of Aidan’s toy dinosaurs — the triceratops, if the half-eaten horns were any indication.

  “Aw, man,” I said. “King! Aidan’s going to throw such a fit!” I looked around the room. With my luck, Aidan would come bursting in any minute. I did not want to fight about my dog again. Especially over a dumb toy that Aidan was too old to be playing with anyway. Usually he just set his plastic dinosaurs out on the rug and gave me lectures about their fighting styles, which I tried really hard to ignore while I did my homework.

  It wasn’t safe to hide the chewed-up toy in my closet, because Aidan went in there all the time — remember, he has no idea what “privacy” is supposed to mean. And if I threw it under my bed, King would most likely drag it back out the moment he had time to chew on it again.

  I ended up burying the dinosaur at the bottom of our hamper, under all our dirty clothes. I’d have to think of a better hiding place later, but at least Aidan wouldn’t look for it there.

  King sat in the middle of the rug with his head bowed, watching me with a worried expression.

  “It’s all right, King,” I said. “You could have done something much worse, trust me.” I crouched down and scratched behind his ears with both of my hands. “You’re a good boy, don’t worry about it. Come on, let’s go outside!”

  He jumped to his paws and shook himself all the way down his long hot-dog body. Then he lifted his head p
roudly and trotted ahead of me out the door and down the stairs to the kitchen. We saw no sign of Meowser as we went through, so I guess she heard us coming.

  Aidan waved at me from the far side of the garden as we came outside. “Look what we’re doing, Charlie!” he called. He and Mom were kneeling on the grass beside one of the empty flower beds. Mom was poking around in the dirt with her banana-yellow gardening gloves on. Aidan had a stubby trowel in his right hand.

  King sniffed around under the table on the deck, looking for crumbs from our sandwiches. I jumped down the three stairs to the yard and wandered over to Mom and Aidan.

  “We’re planting blubs!” Aidan cried. “They’re going to be flowers! Daffodils and tulips and everything!”

  “Bulbs,” Mom corrected him, taking the trowel out of his hand and turning over some of the soft black earth with it. A box of weird white and green turnip-looking things was sitting next to her.

  “What’d I say?” Aidan asked.

  “Blubs,” I answered, and he cracked up.

  “Blubs! That’s so funny!” I guess he was over the trauma of King chasing Meowser. Mom laughed, too. Aidan makes her laugh all the time.

  King came bounding across the grass with his ears flying out behind him. For a dog with such short legs, he could run pretty fast. I jumped up and ran away and he chased me around and around the yard, barking happily. When I tripped and fell, he ran over and leaped on my chest so he could lick my face.

  It was exactly what I always thought having a dog should be like. I felt like balloons of happiness were filling up inside my chest.

  I should have known it wouldn’t last.

  After about half an hour of chasing me around the yard and pouncing on fugitive leaves, King flung himself down in the grass and closed his eyes. His long ears flopped out on either side of his head and his stubby back legs stuck out straight behind him.

  “Tired already?” I teased, but I was ready for a rest, too. I went inside to get my book and my sketch pad. By the time I got back outside, King was on his paws again. He was standing next to Mom and Aidan, watching them plant the bulbs in the ground. His nose quivered and he leaned forward like he was trying to figure out what they were burying. Aidan reached toward him to pat his head, but King jumped back and rarfed at him.

  “Come here, King!” I called.

  He acted like he had no idea what I was saying. He didn’t even look at me.

  I went over and picked him up. It was awesome having a small dog that I could pick up whenever I wanted. That was one of the reasons I’d chosen a dachshund. If I’d gotten a dog the size of Bowser, I would have had to grab his leash and wrestle him wherever I wanted him to go. But with a little dog like King, I could easily pick him up to get his attention or stop him from being bad or whatever.

  He gave me a startled look when I picked him up, but when I rubbed his chest, he leaned back and licked my ear. I laughed and carried him over to our hammock.

  “You could help us plant if you want to, Charlie,” Aidan offered.

  “No thanks,” I said, climbing into the hammock. We all do chores around the house, but gardening is Mom’s thing, and she never makes us help if we don’t want to, so Aidan is the only one who ever does.

  I settled King on my lap, hoping he’d fall asleep while I did my art class homework and read my book. I was a few chapters from the end of Many Waters, by Madeleine L’Engle, and I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen. Plus if I finished it, I could start one of the Roald Dahl books that I knew Mom was giving me for my birthday.

  King wasn’t interested in napping anymore. He climbed around on my legs and chest for a while until he found a position where he could stand on me and peer out of the hammock at Mom and Aidan. It meant I couldn’t really use my pencil to draw, and I had to hold the book up at a weird angle so I could read it over his head, but at least he’d stopped moving, so it was OK. I don’t know what he thought was so amazingly fascinating about gardening, though. It always looks dead boring to me.

  I could hear Aidan exclaiming over each bulb. “And what color is this going to be?”

  “The daffodils will be yellow or white,” Mom said. “But the tulips will be lots of colors — dark red and indigo purple and hopefully bright orange, too, if I picked out the right ones.”

  Finally they finished planting the bulbs and went inside to get cleaned up. I finished my book a few minutes later and went after them. I told King to come with me, but he balked at the foot of the deck stairs and backed up, looking at the garden and then looking at me.

  “You want to stay out here?” I said. “That’s OK, if you want to. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “RARF!” King agreed. He turned and trotted back into the garden.

  I wasn’t worried about him out there. We have a really high fence all around the yard, so I knew he wasn’t going anywhere. I went inside, put away my book, and washed my hands. I was about to go back outside when the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it!” I shouted as I picked up the cordless. “Hello?”

  “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy BIRTHDAY, dear CHARLIE! Happy birthday to you!” The two voices on the other end of the phone started laughing.

  “Hey guys!” I said. Satoshi and Midori are in my class at school. We have two sets of twins — Emmy and Kerri Drake are the girl twins, and Satoshi and Midori are the boy-girl twins.

  “Did you get the dog?” Midori asked breathlessly. She always sounds like she’s in the middle of a marathon, because she is so hyper she pretty much never stops moving. I bet she was jumping around her bedroom while she talked on the phone.

  “I did!” I said. “I decided to call him King. He’s awesome. You guys should come over and meet him!”

  Satoshi groaned. “We have our grandparents’ anniversary dinner tonight,” he said. “Mom is making us stay home all day to help cook and clean the house.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot about that.”

  “The whole place smells like fish,” Midori added. “Fish and Windex. Blech.”

  “Maybe tomorrow after school?” Satoshi suggested hopefully.

  “Yes!” Midori shouted. “Swim practice was canceled because half the team has the flu, so I’m free! Let’s do it!”

  “I’ll check with my mom,” I said, grinning. “But it sounds great to me! I’ll call Arnold, too.” My friends hardly ever come to my house. They always have excuses, but I think it’s because they’re a little afraid of David and Bowser. Not that I blame them. But it was exciting to have a really great reason for them to come over anyway.

  “Cool,” Satoshi said.

  “Uh-oh, Mom is calling,” said Midori. “Have a great birthday, Charlie! We’ll see you tomorrow!”

  They hung up in a hurry. I love their house because they have a million weird toys and games and gadgets and their parents are always supernice to me, but it does seem like Satoshi and Midori are constantly busy with chores or extra classes.

  Mom came into the kitchen as I was about to dial Arnold’s number. She had showered and changed into a coppery red dress that matched her hair. I asked her if my friends could come over after school on Monday, and of course she said yes, because she wouldn’t even be there. It was Giovanni who’d have to deal with us. But he never minds Aidan’s millions of friends coming over, or even David’s grumpy-looking fellow eighth graders, so I knew he wouldn’t mind Satoshi and Midori and Arnold either.

  Arnold lives next door and he’s the best athlete in our grade, although Satoshi is nearly as good at baseball and Midori can usually stop about half of his goals when we play soccer together — but she stops all the rest of our goals, so that’s saying something! We don’t let her play goalie anymore because it makes the game no fun when no one can score.

  Arnold’s younger brother, James, is in Aidan’s class at school, so we see them a lot. I knew they were going to be so jealous that I finally had a dog.

  But before I could get through di
aling his number, Mom got to the screen door and made this weird half-scream, half-strangled noise, like “AAAAAUUCK!”

  “What is it?” I said. “What happened?”

  She pointed at the deck. Her mouth opened and closed like she didn’t know what else to say.

  I hung up the phone and hurried over.

  Right outside the sliding door, arranged on the deck, was a neat line of dirt-covered bulbs, with a trail of black earth leading back down the steps into the garden.

  And I bet you can guess who was sitting behind the bulbs, panting and wagging his tail like this was the proudest moment of his life.

  Uh-oh,” I said.

  “UH-OH!” Mom shouted. “Look what he did to my garden!”

  King’s nose and paws were covered in telltale dirt. Back by the fence, I could see giant holes where the bulbs had all been neatly planted half an hour earlier.

  “He was trying to help!” I said desperately. “He probably thought you wanted them back! I mean, look how he brought them to you. Aw, his tail is wagging. He thinks he did something good.”

  Mom clutched her hair. “My garden,” she said again. I knew King and I were in big trouble. Mom’s garden is her pride and joy. If she decided King couldn’t be trusted near it, I was afraid he’d be back at the Schwartz foster home in nanoseconds.

  “I’ll replant them,” I promised recklessly. “I’ll do it right now, I swear, it’ll be as good as new.”

  She looked at her watch. “I don’t have time to show you how,” she said. “Not if I’m going to make it to the supermarket and the bakery and the dry cleaners while they’re still open. And besides, I’ve just showered.” She looked at the bulbs mournfully. “I guess next weekend won’t be too late….”

  “I can show him how to plant them!” Aidan chirped from the kitchen doorway. “I did it perfectly, remember, Mom? That’s what you said! Charlie and I can do it. Right, Charlie?”