Chapter Seven: Inside the Coverous Cavern
At last he made his move, and not a second too late. Too soon, I guess it ought to be. He made his so-forth not a second too soon.
He darted through the nearest doorway and into his bedroom, which lay just to the south of the kitchen. That was a piece of good luck for us, that his room was close by.
Alfred didn’t say a word to me or Drover about following him, but then again, he didn’t need to say a word. I was ready to get out of there.
On silent paws that made not a sound, I brushed past Drover and whispered, “You stole my bacon, you little creep.”
We whisked ourselves through the door and into Alfred’s room. The boy oozed himself into his bed and, well, I guess he wanted us to crawl UNDER the bed, but in the excitement and confusion of the . . .
We jumped into bed with him, is more or less what we did, and went slithering beneath the covers, straight to the bottom. See, I’m not fond of the underneath-side of beds. Too many spiders.
And dust. Drover has allergies, don’t forget, and the last thing we needed was for him to go into a fit of sneezing.
But back to the spider deal, I’m no chicken liver but I don’t get along with spiders. Don’t laugh. We have a variety of spiders in this country called the Brown Fiddlebow and they’re nothing to play around with.
They bite, don’t you see, and they don’t rattle or hiss before they bite. Rattlesnakes are bad enough but at least they give you some warning. Those spiders merely bite, and I’ve heard stories about what happens.
Your legs rot away. Your tail falls off. Your ears turn brown like autumn leaves and then they fall off too.
You want to crawl under a bed with a nest of Brown Fiddlebow spiders? Neither did I, and if Little Alfred didn’t want two wet dogs under the covers with him, that was, as we say, too bad.
And besides the spiders and so forth, I like soft beds.
So there we were, under the covers and at the bottom of the bed, with Little Alfred’s feet sticking in our faces. It was then and there, in the silence and in the darkness, that I came to a terrible realization.
“Drover,” I whispered, “I’ve lost my bacon.”
“Oh darn.”
“And if you find it before I do, I would appreciate it if you would turn it in to the proper authorities.”
“You bet.”
“Because if you don’t, if you steal another piece of my bacon, you little chiseler, your mother won’t recognize your face when I get finished with it.”
“Yeah, good old Mom. I wish she was here.”
“If she were here, Drover, it would be very crowded.”
“Oh, she didn’t take up much space. They always said Mom was so thin, you couldn’t see her if she turned sideways.”
“Hmmm. That’s very interesting.”
“Yeah. And Uncle Spot always said she was too skinny to cast a shadow.”
“I’ll swan.”
“They said she had worms.”
“No kidding.”
“And she didn’t take the time to eat right.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Too busy raising pups.”
“Drover, did you hear anything I said about the bacon?”
“Oh yeah, she loved bacon. I’d almost forgotten how much she loved bacon.”
“Drover, are you there?”
“Good old Mom. I wonder what she’s doing today.”
Sometimes . . . oh well. I had more serious matters to think about than Drover’s mother, the poor woman. Just imagine the sleepless nights she’d spent, wondering what could have produced her feather-brained son.
Yes, I had very serious matters to think about, such as the footsteps that by this time had reached the kitchen. I lay perfectly still and listened.
The light switch clicked on.
“Hello?” said Loper. “Any ghosts around? Hon, nobody’s here. You must have heard the storm.”
“Check Alfred and make sure he’s all right.”
“Hon . . .”
“Please.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll check Alfred. I don’t have anything better to do at this hour of the . . .” His voice trailed off into silence. Then, “Hon, did you spill some water on the kitchen floor?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“That’s funny, I just stepped in a puddle.”
Upon hearing this, I turned to Drover. “Did you hear that?”
“What was it? Gosh, I hope it’s not one of those monsters.”
“It was Loper. He’s in the kitchen and he stepped in a puddle of water. And I think I know where it came from.”
“Yeah, all this rain and stuff.”
“Not rain and stuff, Drover. You.”
There was a moment of silence, and then I heard him sniffle. “Well, I was scared. I heard Sally May’s voice and I thought she was going to come into the kitchen and find us and chase us with a butcher knife, and it scared me so bad . . .”
“Okay, okay. I knew you’d do something, I just didn’t know what.”
“Yeah, and I feel terrible about it.”
“And don’t forget that you ate my bacon. Little Alfred brought that first piece just for ME and you stole it.”
“Oh, the guilt’s just piling up! I’m not sure I can live with myself.”
“Never mind, Drover. We’ll take this up at another time—if we should happen to survive the night, that is.”
“Oh my leg!”
“Shhhhh.”
Where were we? Oh yes, Loper was in the kitchen and had just discovered the Mysterious Puddle—which wasn’t so mysterious to those of us who knew Drover. And now he, Loper, that is, was making his way into Alfred’s room.
If he turned on the light, we were sunk. I mean, two dogs under the covers in a little boy’s bed make humps, right? If he turned on the light, he would see the humps, jerk off the covers, and we would be exposed for all the world to see.
The rest of what might follow was too scary to think about.
We held our breath and waited. Would he turn on the light? No, he didn’t.
Going strictly on the sounds picked up by my ears, here’s what I imagined that he did. He walked over to the bed and looked down. Alfred was asleep—or so it appeared. Loper straightened the covers and said, “Well, everybody’s in bed except me, and what am I doing walking around in the middle of the night?”
He yawned and then . . . uh-oh. He sniffed the air. “Smells like goats in here. We may need to haul some sneakers to the dump.”
He yawned again and went back to bed. Back in the bedroom, I heard him say, “Hon, I think you were dreamin’. Everything’s fine.”
“Loper, I heard something, I know I did.”
The bed squeaked. “Well, you can take the next patrol. I’ve got a date with a beautiful pillow. Night.”
Silence. The sounds of Loper’s snoring reached my ears, and at last I dared to breathe. Alfred’s toe gouged me in the ribs and the next thing I knew, he was under the covers with us.
“Hi, doggies. We sure fooled my dad, didn’t we? He thought I was asweep, and he didn’t even know y’all dogs were here.”
Right. We lucked out, but there was no sense in pushing our luck. It was time for us to go back outside.
“We’re in a cave, aren’t we? You want to pway Expwore the Cave? Don’t ya think that would be fun?”
Uh . . . no, we really needed to be going, but thanks anyway.
“It’s still waining outside, and thundoo and wightning too, and I’m gwad we’re all together in my bed. I was scared, but I’m not scared anymore. I’ve got my doggies wiff me.”
Yes, that was touching, a boy and his dogs, but the other side of that particular coin was “a boy’s MOTHER and his dogs,” and that one gave me the creeps. We could fool Loper, but Sally May was another story.
She couldn’t be fooled. She had eyes in the back of her head, ears that heard everything, a nose that could find a sugar ant in a ten-section pasture.
And worst of all, she was always suspicious. I mean, every time she came around me, she seemed to read my innermost thoughts, some of which . . . many of which . . . okay, most of which aroused her disapproval.
And if it was okay with everyone, I was ready to take my chances with the storm outside, now that we were fairly sure that it was just a storm and not an invasion of . . . I had never totally bought into that business of the Little Green Monsters anyway.
“So you weckon I ought to wet you back outside?”
Uh-huh. Yes. That was the best idea, in and out with no major bloodshed.
The boy heaved a sigh. “Well, all wight. Come on and we’ll sneak y’all back outside.”
Whew!
All three of us crawled out of the coverous cavern. Once outside the sheets, I turned to Drover and was about to tell him to hurry up when I heard . . .
Smack, smack, gulp.
I froze and sniffed the air. All at once I caught the smell of . . .
