“C’mon, Basher, let’s go!” I shouted over my shoulder as we ran toward the woods.
“What’s the hurry? And before breakfast.”
It was odd seeing Bash running behind me for a change. I grinned. “I want to see if we can find that fox’s den in the daylight.”
“It’s not daylight yet. The sun’s still yawning.”
I’d rolled out of bed even earlier than time for morning chores. Mom and Dad were picking me up in two days. I didn’t want anything left undone. Getting to shove Bash out of bed before the rooster woke up for a change, well, that was just an added bonus.
I turned and backpedaled. “The sun will be cutting through the woods by the time we get far enough in.”
Bash rubbed away a yawn. “Beamer, you’ll be back. We don’t have to squeeze all the adventures in at once.”
I felt so light and airy inside since that day last week in the barn on the fairgrounds when I let Jesus into my heart. It reminded me of when Bash ran us through the part of the creek with the jagged stone and my sneakers ripped apart—suddenly, I had a lot more room to move around, and the breezes were cooling.
Being saved didn’t stop crazy from happening. Being saved made being alive easier because Someone always was there. Now I had Jesus to talk to. Even in the dark, the light was on inside.
I turned and kept running. After a summer on the farm, I could run a lot longer before getting winded. “If we get to the woods before the nighttime animals go to bed for the day, we might find out if Bonkers really saw a fox that night we camped out and got lost in the woods.”
Bash trotted beside me now. “Too bad you capsized Look Out Fort in the pond. We could use it to scout the woods. And I could take a nap.”
“This afternoon, let’s go swimming again. Hey, maybe we can try for some bass this time if you get out the fishing poles!”
“Rods and reels.”
“Whatever. And we never built that racecar you wanted to design from grain barrels and trash can wheels.”
Bash picked up his pace. “There is that.”
I grinned. I used to expect the worst and was disappointed if it didn’t happen. That somehow made me crankier, and then things did get worse. Now, I kinda liked the idea of adventure, worse and all. Strands of sunrise tried to haul themselves over the horizon just before we plunged into the darkened woods. It was easier to pick out the animal trail that Bonkers had started us on that moonless night a few weeks earlier when we camped out at the edge of the woods.
Bash threaded a couple bushes where it looked like the trail wound. “Maybe Bonk saw an opossum. It was dark. It could have been a possum.”
“Or maybe he saw the elephant our jungle team hoped to spot.”
“That’s my gag.” Bash rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Wait a minute. You’re playing. Okay, I’m in. Maybe it was the rhinoceroseseses. C’mon, Ray-Ray Sunbeam Beamer, let’s go.”
“Stop calling . . . aw, skip it, Bash Tash A-Rash. Don’t get left behind!”
I zipped around an oak tree. And put on the brakes. “Yipes!”
Bash smashed into my back. “Why’d you stop?”
“Shh.”
Bash tried to peer over my shoulder. “Did we find the rhinoceroseseses?”
“Skunk.”
The skunk wandered about fifteen feet in front of us in a patch of clearing. A white line ran from his wide black forehead to the tip of his pointy nose. Two wide white stripes ran the other way down his black, fuzzy back. A bushy black tail with a white center flickered in the air. It looked like it either needed a good brushing or a haircut.
Bash squeezed around my shoulder. “Wow. Is it Bonkers’ skunk Buster?”
“It’s not fat like Buster. And Buster would have come over to say hello by now.”
This skunk had its back mostly to us—not a comfort—as it dug through a mound of leaves and dirt with its sharp little claws. It ignored us. When you have a built-in squirt gun as good as a skunk’s, you can ignore a lot.
Bash scratched his ear. “I wonder why it’s sneaking around?”
“Maybe he’s looking for some bugs to eat or a place to sleep.”
“Hmm.” Bash chewed on his tongue a few seconds. Then he stepped forward. His eyes fairly jumped with excitement. Morning people don’t stay groggy long before exploding awake.
“Maybe he’s a secret agent skunk. And he’s on a case. I bet he’s looking for stolen secret decoder rings. Two rings with big, purple stones in ’em that are really micro-computers. And an agent named, um, Marcus Mad Dog DeLozier Miranda the Sneaky stole ’em and Secret Agent Skunk has to find ’em.”
’Maginative people don’t stay sane long before exploding with something silly. “But he’s a . . .”
The skunk examined the dirt mound, poked at it with his little nose, then clawed some more. Only two days before I’d go home. Not much time for one last adventure. This time, I was going to have fun. This time, it was my turn to make up the game. I wanted to show Bash I’d learned how.
“Why, it is a Secret Agent Skunk. But not purple rings. I think a woodland turkey stole something from that fox’s den we’re looking for. Um, baseball cards.”
Bash pondered this. Finally, he nodded his head thoughtfully. “Baseball cards. Hmm. A wild turkey. Okay. That might work. Um . . . oh, I know. The forest has a baseball team called the Laughing Brook Foxes. The fox was in charge of the baseball cards to be passed out to all the little kid foxes.”
Yeah, that would do it. I clamped my hands on Bash’s shoulders like he was a secret agent in my command and explained the situation. “Only a wild turkey wanted to steal them because he plays for the other forest team, the Turkeys. That weasel Spy Turkey left the foxes with only Wild Woods Gobblers baseballs cards.”
“Yeah, Secret Agent Beamer, that’s it. So the fox hired Secret Agent Skunk to find where Spy Turkey hid ’em.”
I studied the investigating skunk. “We better stand guard.”
The skunk didn’t find the cards in the dirt mound. He waddled further into the woods on its short legs.
I shoved Secret Agent Bash. “Follow him. He might need our help cracking the case.”
“Check.”
Off we went, Secret Agent Bash and Secret Agent Beamer providing protection for Secret Agent Skunk. He sometimes walked and sometimes scampered in that skunk waddle. He didn’t seem to mind our help, although he didn’t stop to thank us, either.
“Probably he doesn’t want the Spy Turkey to spot us,” Bash said. “So he’s keeping cool and not tipping him off to us.”
The missing baseball cards weren’t in the hollow of a fallen log. They weren’t hidden alongside several shrubs the skunk investigated. They weren’t stashed behind the moss, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t growing on the north side of the tree.
Secret Agent Bash pushed back his baseball cap. “Wow, Spy Turkey’s good.”
I put up my hand. “Look, Secret Agent Skunk glanced back at us. He’s waving at us with his tail.”
Bash tugged his cap back down. “Some kinda signal, I bet. I think it means, ‘Watch out.’”
“Yeah. We must be getting close.”
Secret Agent Skunk stopped again at what looked like it might have been a rabbit hole. He poked his head inside and studied it.
I pressed against a tree and watched. “I wonder if that’s it.”
Secret Agent Skunk’s shoulders disappeared as he pushed further inside the burrow. Then his body slid on through. His bushy tail flapped a bit just before the hole swallowed him up. Secret Agent Skunk was gone.
Bash pumped his fist. “I think he found it. It must be where Spy Turkey stashed the Laughing Brook Foxes baseball team cards.”
“C’mon, Secret Agent Bash. We better move in and keep watch. We can warn him if Spy Turkey comes. Um, wild turkeys are small, aren’t they?”
“Bigger’n our chickens. But black and scrawny with skinny, red necks.”
“Okay.”
We waited. I shuffled a little closer. We waited some more. Bash sidled up beside me.
“What now?” I walked around the burrow to inspect the entrance from all sides.
“Bonkers says skunks like to find burrows or logs to sleep in when the sun comes up.”
I dropped to my knees and crawled forward a bit. “So is he done spying for the day?”
Bash crawled up beside me, then scuttled closer to the burrow. “I bet Secret Agent Skunk found the cards and has to guard them until his secret agent team arrives to help.”
Bash stuck his head to the hole. “Hey, Secret Agent Skunk! We can help you take the baseball cards back to the foxes.”
Secret Agent Skunk didn’t answer.
Bash sat down by the hole. “Maybe if we could reach in there, we could drag him and the cards out and be heroes. Then we could take Secret Agent Skunk home to be our pet, like Buster.”
Fun is fun, but I saw it was time to do what Mom and Aunt Tillie hoped I’d do when I came out here this summer—talk common sense into Bash.
I sighed as I toed some dirt into the hole. “Your mom would climb a tree and not come down if we brought a skunk home. You’d have to take care of Darla and your dad would have to cook supper. Remember that night your dad cooked? Fried lizards in fly sauce, I think.”
“I guess.” Bash slumped against a tree.
Finally, Bash was listening to me, the smarter one, and staying out of trouble.
Suddenly, Bash pushed off the tree. “Look, here comes Secret Agent Skunk.”
The skunk’s triangle face popped into view. He was biting on the stick I’d been poking down the burrow. Well, c’mon, it takes forever to talk sense into the Basher. So while I waited for him to catch on, I figured I’d poke around a bit to check the deepness of the burrow. I dunno, maybe there were secret tunnels and escape routes to thwart Spy Turkey.
Secret Agent Skunk playfully batted at my stick. He crawled out of the hole and made some kind of hissing sound.
Bash dropped to his knees. “He’s talking to us. Hi, Secret Agent Skunk. Do you need us to take a message to the Laughing Brook Foxes?”
I scooted beside Secret Agent Bash and held out the stick. “Wanna play some more? C’mon, fella, here it is.”
Secret Agent Skunk made some kind of secret snarling noise to tell us how much fun he was having. Then he rounded his body in a “U” shape so that both his front end and back end faced us.
He prepared to deliver a coded message!
---------
“Woo-wee!” Bash choked out as we gagged our way out of the woods.
I coughed and wiped some yellow, misty stuff off my arms. “I just remembered something else different about Bonkers’s pet skunk and wild skunks. Wow!”
Bash wheezed. “I thought he’d save that kind of thing for Spy Turkey.”
“I think he found the Spy Turkey. Two big turkeys.” Bash sniffled and grinned. “Secret Agent Skunk didn’t even tell us if he found the stolen baseball cards. Maybe he meant to, but when you threw up, he ran away.”
I coughed some more and wiped my eyes, careful to use the arm that hadn’t been hit by the yellow mist. Suddenly, it occurred to me—I’d finally got the little twerp back! I told him I’d get him for all the trouble he dragged me into. Only, it happened after I no longer wanted revenge.
I flopped down in the hayfield and burst into laughter. “Keeping you out of trouble is harder than I thought.”
Bash shrugged. “Well, it’s baths in tomato sauce again. Good thing we had a good crop of tomatoes this year. Ma says that one of these years, we’ll get to use some for spaghetti sauce too.”
I wiped more tears from my eyes, sneezed and got to my feet. “Country people are weird. But mostly in a good way.”
Bash gagged one more time. “Pops probably won’t let us in the barn. We smell too bad.”
“We smell worse than a dairy barn?”
Bash exploded in snorts and giggles. “Well, yeah. So when are you going home, Beamer?”
“Mom and Dad should be here day after tomorrow. Then we’ll start out for home the next day. Yuck, this stuff stinks!”
“You know what, Beamer?”
“What?”
“I bet you get to stay another two weeks.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a hunch, Beamer. Just a hunch.”