Chapter Six: Our Very First Customer

I knew right away that this guy didn’t live in our neighborhood, because he was dressed in safari clothes. What are safari clothes? Khaki pants and shirt and a wide-brimmed hat. They weren’t cowboy clothes, and this guy looked different.

Oh, and did I mention that he had a several days’ growth of beard on his cheeks and chin? He did, and if he hadn’t had such a pleasant face, I might have growled at him.

The stranger walked up to Little Alfred and gave him a smile. “Hi there, son. You’re selling lemonade?”

“Yes sir.”

The man extended his hand. “David Wilkens. I’m an archeologist.”

Alfred shook his hand. “I’m Alfred and this is my dog, Hank. What’s an arkimolgist?”

“Well, I study things that are very old: tools made of flint, prehistoric houses and storage pits, clay pottery, shell beads, bones, things like that.”

Bones? My ears shot up. All at once, I was interested in this conversation.

Little Alfred dug his hand into his pocket and came up holding something in his fingers. “I have an arrowhead. My dad found it yesterday.”

Mr. Wilkens slipped a pair of glasses on his nose and studied the arrowhead, turning it around in his fingers. “It’s a nice little Washita point from the Plains Village period, made of good-quality Alibates flint. It’s eight or nine hundred years old.”

“Older than my dad?”

Mr. Wilkens laughed. “Well, I haven’t met your dad, but I’d say so, yes. Now, here’s what I want you to do, Alfred. I want you to put this in a plastic bag and tell your dad to record the location where he found it on a piece of paper, and keep them together. An artifact without site information is no good to anyone. Can you do that?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. When your dad finds another artifact in that location, he can put it in the same bag, and one of these days, when I come back and ask to see your collection, you’ll have some information I can use.”

“Is arkimology fun?”

Mr. Wilkens tugged on his chin. “It’s fun if you’re curious about the past, but it involves a lot of hard work.”

Alfred showed off the muscle in his right arm. “I bet I could do it. I’m pwetty stwong.”

“I’ll bet you are. Maybe your mother can bring you over to the site and we’ll put you to work screening dirt.” He glanced down at the pitcher. “You got any lemonade left?”

“Yes sir. You’re our first customer.”

Mr. Wilkens peered into the pitcher. “It’s only half-full. What happened to the rest of it?”

Oops. Alfred’s gaze slid around to me and his eyes seemed to be asking, “What do I say now?”

With my eyes, I sent back a reply. “If you want to lose a customer, tell him your dog drank out of it. If you don’t want to kill the business . . . how can I say this? Tell him a tiny falsehood—not a big whopper, mind you, but a tiny restructuring of the truth, let us say.”

The lad got the message and gave me a secret grin. He turned back to Mr. Wilkens. “Oh, I got thirsty and took a dwink.”

There we go! Just right. Not a huge whopper but a slight restructuring of the facts. Alfred gave me a wink and I winked back. Heh heh. We had dodged a bullet. Pretty clever, huh? You bet.

Mr. Wilkens continued to study the pitcher. “You must have been pretty thirsty.”

“Sir?”

“It’s a two-quart pitcher. If it’s half-empty, it means you drank a quart of lemonade. I’m surprised your stomach could hold a quart.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at Alfred’s stomach. “And your abdomen doesn’t appear to be distended.”

Alfred’s smile vanished. “Well, I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . .”

“Maybe you spilled some of it.”

“Yes sir, that’s it. I almost forgot.”

“Or . . . ” Suddenly, with no warning, his eyes swung around and . . . yipes . . . came at me like bullets. “. . . maybe someone else took a drink.”

Me? Hey, I knew nothing about this deal, almost nothing at all. And besides, dogs don’t drink lemonade. We drink water, plain water. Honest.

There was a long throbbing moment of silence. Then Alfred gave me an elbow in the ribs. “Hankie, see what you did! Now you’ve ruined my business!” The boy swallowed hard and looked up at Mr. Wilkens. “My dog stuck his head into the pitcher and . . .” He covered his face with his hands. “I told you a big fat lie and now I can’t sell you any lemonade!”

Alfred hid his face and I squirmed, as our new business went sliding toward the brink of bankrubble. I felt terrible, but don’t forget who’d told the fib. It wasn’t me. Okay, maybe I . . . never mind.

Alfred peeked out between his fingers. “How did you know?”

“Your dog has drops of lemonade on his face.”

Huh? Drops? I sent the old tongue out to, uh, mop up the evidence. Slurp.

Mr. Wilkens looked off in the distance. “There’s a lesson here, Alfred. Two lessons, actually. Lesson One: Never tell a lie. It’ll always come back to bite you. Lesson Two: If you just have to tell a windy tale, don’t tell it to a professional archeologist. Do you know why?”

“No sir.”

“Because, my boy, we are detectives. We have to draw conclusions from tiny bits of evidence, and very little escapes our notice.”

Alfred nodded. “I’m sorry.”

The man gave him a hard look. “Are you sorry that you got caught or sorry that you told a fib?”

“I’m sorry I told a fib.”

Mr. Wilkens clapped his hands together. “Good, that settles it. Now we can get on with our business. I’ll take the rest of your lemonade.”

Alfred dropped his hands and stared at him. “But my dog . . .”

“Son, in this heat, I wouldn’t care if your dog took a bath in it, as long as it’s wet and cold.” He went to his pickup and came back with a thermos bottle. “Fill ’er up. What do I owe you?”

“You can just have it for free.”

Mr. Wilkens reached for his wallet and came out with a bill. “How about five bucks? Will that cover your expenses?”

Alfred’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “Five bucks! Hankie, we’re rich!” The boy took the money and waved it in the air.

That was good news, all right. We’d saved the business and made a fortune in the lemonade market, but all at once I had lost interest in sudden wealth. You know why? Because my gaze had wandered over to the back of Mr. Wilkens’ pickup, and there, to my complete astonishment, I saw . . . you won’t believe this part, so hang on . . . I saw the most gorgeous lady dog I’d seen in weeks. Months. Years. My whole life.

We’re talking about killer good looks, drop-dead good looks. Golden hair. Long dignified nose. Proud head. Deep brown eyes. Ears that seemed to flow like a frozen waterfall of sorghum syrup.

WOW! You talk about eyes bugging out of your head! Fellers, my eyes popped out so far, I had to grab ’em out of the air and stuff ’em back where they belonged.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the kind of dog who gets silly about the ladies, but this gal appeared to be something special and all at once, I lost all interest in the lemonade business. See, she was standing up in the back of the pickup and I was pretty sure that she was looking at . . . well, at ME, might as well come out and say it.

In fact, she appeared to be staring at me, and we’re talking about eyes that shouted, “Oh dear, oh me, oh my! I’m looking at the handsomest, bravest dog in all of Texas!”

Well, what can I say? I don’t go around advertising my charms, but she’d picked them up right away. In addition to being beautiful, she was obviously very intelligent. I needed to check this out.