Because of Shoe and Other Dog Stories Read online

  “Ten Dwids to Watch Out For,” said Judy.

  Across the street, Wayne Funderberg yelled, “De-TURD!”

  “If you carry yourself with confidence, people won’t think you’re such a doofus.”

  “Why should I care what these halfwits think?” A corn muffin hit him in the chest.

  “You care,” said Judy. “Why else would you make a zombie mouse in your basement?”

  “I’m not making a zombie mouse! And don’t talk so loud. My project is a secret.”

  Someone yelled, “De-TURD has a girlfriend!” Someone else threw a banana. Judy caught it.

  “See?” said Howard. “They don’t like you, either.”

  “Not yet,” Judy said calmly, eating the banana. “But they’ll come around. People admire my originality.”

  Howard was sure that wasn’t true. Still, it stuck in his mind. In English class he wrote a short story in which superintelligent aliens from another galaxy conquer Earth and enslave its people. They regard Earthlings as a grossly inferior race and treat them with contempt. The only exception is a single, brilliant boy named Broward. Unappreciated by his own race, Broward is greatly admired by the aliens, especially their princess, the lovely Xandra.

  It was a terrific story until the princess started speaking. For some reason, she sounded exactly like Judy Nussenbaum. Howard erased her dialogue but could not figure out how to rewrite it. The story limped to an unsatisfying conclusion.

  When the final bell rang, the kids ran out in a screaming mob. Howard followed cautiously.

  Judy caught up with him by the flagpole. “Buy me an ice cream.”

  “Buy yourself an ice cream!” He hurried past her.

  “I’ve been thinking about your experiment,” she said. “A zombie mouse isn’t much of a crowd-pleaser. You ought to consider doing something with more pizzazz.”

  “Oh, really! Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Why not drink the dog juice yourself? You could be like Lon Chaney.”

  “Who?”

  “Lon Chaney. He played Larry Talbot in the original Wolf Man. He became a werewolf after Bela Lugosi bit him. It might be interesting if you could pull off something like that.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Howard. “That’s not science, that’s just a stupid movie.”

  “It’s a scary stupid movie.”

  “It wouldn’t make sense to drink the formula, either. The material must be injected.”

  “So inject yourself. You can be a dog for a few hours. It’d be an improvement, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you. And for your information, genetic changes are permanent!”

  “Only if you do it wrong.”

  “No, not if you do it wrong! You’re so dumb! The only way to reverse the process would be to develop an antidote to restore the original genetic balance. Which has never been done, by the way.”

  “Chicken.”

  “I’m not a chicken. It’s just that it would be crazy to experiment with something so dangerous.”

  “Cluck, cluck. Now I know why you have chickens in your backyard. They’re part of your flock.”

  “You’re insane,” said Howard.

  “Maybe. But at least I know how to win a science fair.”

  “You’re not going to win!” Howard ran inside his house and slammed the door.

  In the basement, he tried to calm himself. It wasn’t easy. Even Wayne Funderberg wasn’t as annoying as Judy Nussenbaum. He fiddled with his microscope for a while, then quit in exasperation. His dog-mouse looked up at him and wagged its tail.

  “Boring!” muttered Howard. Somewhere in his mind a robot tap-danced. Hamsters steered a small zeppelin around a gymnasium. What was a dog-mouse compared to that?

  But a dog-boy? That was interesting. That was something to make the kids at Mortensen sit up and take notice. He pictured himself strolling into school half dog, half boy, with shiny fur and glistening canines. Wayne Funderberg would scream. Monique Moldinado and Tommy Alvarez would turn green with envy. And Judy Nussenbaum—well, at least maybe she’d shut up for a while.

  Almost without thinking, he began to calculate the formula. He spliced genes culled from Larry the bulldog and added the mixture to a mitochondrial solution and a sample of his own tonsils that he’d been saving since their removal three years earlier. He mixed the formula in a sterilized beaker. Would it work? Why not?

  No! screamed some other part of his mind. Are you mad? The idea was too risky. And for what? To win a school science fair? He leaned on his workbench. What was he thinking?

  It was Judy Nussenbaum. She was making him crazy. Before she showed up, he had been perfectly happy with his dog-mouse. More than just happy—he’d been euphoric! Whether the subhumans at Arturo V. Mortensen Middle School understood it or not, his project marked a turning point in science. He had invented a whole new species! The world would never be the same! And now here he was, nearly throwing it all away for the sake of mere showmanship!

  He was about to dump his formula into the sink when his mother appeared in the doorway upstairs. “Howard, it’s the girl next door! She wants to see you.”

  “Tell her I’m busy.”

  “I will not! Now, be a gentleman.”

  Moments later, Judy clomped down the stairs. The door closed behind her. “Hey, Frankenstein,” she said. “What’s cooking?”

  “What do you think?” he muttered. “I’m working on my project.”

  She peered into the mouse cage. “It looks a little bit like a Chihuahua. I guess that’s sort of interesting.”

  “More than I can say for you. If you even have your own project, that is.”

  “Mine’s already done. I’ve got a volcano, lava, the whole shebang. Lots of razzle-dazzle. You need help with that dog juice? We could mix it with lemonade so it tastes better.”

  “I told you, I’m not changing myself into a dog!”

  “Well, what’s your dog-mouse going to do? Fetch? Roll over? You need something that’ll get the judges’ attention.”

  “It’s a genetically distinct species. That should be enough for any judge!”

  “Yeah, right. Hey, let’s go to the convenience store and buy some candy.”

  “No! I told you I’m busy!”

  “Doing what? If you aren’t going to win the fair, what’s the point schlubbing around in this basement all day?”

  Howard had an idea. “If I drink the juice, will you leave me alone?” He held up the beaker.

  “What do you mean, ‘alone’?”

  “I mean will you go away and stop bugging me?”

  “You’ll drink that goop?”

  “Every drop.” Howard smiled to himself. Drinking the juice might not taste good, but it couldn’t harm him. His body would simply digest it. It was injecting the material that could cause a problem. But dingbat Judy didn’t know that.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “Deal,” said Howard, and he drank the beaker dry.

  Judy watched him for a few minutes. Nothing happened. After a while Howard reminded her of their deal.

  “All right, I’ll go. That juice doesn’t work anyway.” She trudged back up the stairs. “See you at the fair.”

  Howard felt only a moment’s relief. Then panic set in. Judy was right. His dog-mouse needed to do something! He tried training it: sit, fetch, roll over. Hours passed. He missed dinner. He went through handfuls of tiny dog treats. Without thinking, he ate some of the treats himself. The dog-mouse merely stared at him, tail wagging. “Hopeless!” he complained.

  It was long past bedtime when his mother called for him to quit. “You can finish in the morning, dear.”

  Howard was too weary to argue. He staggered to his bedroom and turned off the light.

  That night he had the oddest dreams. He chased squirrels and rode in a car with his head hanging out the window. Then he chased the car. Then the car chased him. Then he chased a bunch of squirrels inside a car. The car smelled funny. The squi
rrels smelled delicious! His hind leg jerked.

  When he woke up, his body was covered in thin fur. A pink tongue lolled from the side of his mouth. His nose was cool and wet. “The fair!” he thought excitedly. “The fair! The fair!” Though his hands felt clumsy, he managed to get dressed and rush downstairs.

  “Mouse!” he thought. “Mousemousemousemouse! Eat mouse!

  “NO!” he corrected himself sternly. “Not eat mouse. Mouse for fair!” He grabbed the cage and bolted out the door.

  * * *

  “Name?” said the woman at the desk.

  “Howard!” he woofed.

  She wrote down “Woof” and directed him to a table where he could set up his presentation. It went badly. Trying to write a description of his project on index cards, Howard mangled the words. His paws had grown clumsy. He whined and licked his nose. He ate the pencil. “Mousemousemouse,” he thought.

  The other kids came in and set up their projects. Everyone was busy. Nobody noticed him. If they had, they would have witnessed a remarkable transformation. Howard’s hands and feet shortened into stout paws, his ears flopped, his forehead flattened, and his coat grew thick and shiny. By the time the fair started, Howard was no longer Howard at all, but a bulldog wearing Howard’s clothes. The clothes fit poorly. Even as a dog, he lacked pizzazz.

  Judy was the only one who recognized him. “Howie?” she asked.

  “Rowf?”

  “Oh, Howie, it worked! Who knew? It really worked!” She ran to tell the judges, but they were unimpressed. Rules, they said, prohibited dogs from entering the science fair.

  “But it’s Howard Eubanks!” she said.

  “Rules are rules,” said Ms. Feldspar, the principal.

  With Howard disqualified, Judy easily won first prize. Her experiment wasn’t much, really, just a papier-mâché volcano that spewed steam from dry ice and melted cheese. But the sight of a village on the volcano’s slope being engulfed by oozing Velveeta delighted the judges and thrilled the crowd. “JU-DY! JU-DY!” they chanted.

  Howard was inconsolable. That afternoon he lay in the backyard with his feet in the air. He refused his kibble. He ignored the chickens. He growled at the crowd of reporters who appeared, seemingly from nowhere.

  For two days the “dog-boy” story dominated the local news. “Could your child be next?” asked anchorwoman Mindy Sneffins.

  Fortunately, the answer appeared to be no.

  When a family of Stone Age cave dwellers was discovered living in the hills west of Mungo, the reporters departed.

  Things returned to normal, except that Howard was still a dog. And he was angry. He was angry with the school and the judges and the mailman (for no clear reason). But mostly he was angry with Judy.

  “What did I do?” she asked.

  “Growf!”

  “It was your idea. I just encouraged you.”

  “Rowrowrow!”

  “Well, anyway, you can’t stay mad forever!”

  Howard thought he could.

  But Judy was persistent. “I passed around a petition,” she said one day from behind the fence that separated their houses. “It says we think you should have won the science fair.”

  “Roop?”

  “Sure. I got all the kids to sign. It was a great experiment, even if you didn’t think it through very clearly.”

  “Broo!” Howard barked.

  “Okay. Maybe I’m partly to blame. The point is, we all liked it.” She slid a ham bone under the fence.

  After she left, Howard chewed the bone thoughtfully. His tail began to wag.

  Slowly he adjusted to life as a dog. It wasn’t bad, really. He ate and slept and chased the chickens. Everything smelled wonderful. He developed a passion for squeaky toys.

  After school (Howard had been expelled), Judy took him for walks. At the convenience store she bought candy and chewy bones. She told him about the day’s events and about books she’d read and movies she’d seen. He tried to tell her about being a dog—the smells, the sounds, the pleasure of rolling in dirt—but it was difficult to explain. “Rowrowrowrop!”

  They walked home with the leash loose between them. “I’m proud of you, Howie,” she said. “It’s hard to change. Lots of people just stay the way they are forever. Especially the dopey ones.”

  “Rodope!”

  “Of course you were a dope. The only thing is, you may have changed too much.”

  “Arp!”

  “I know, I know. You drank the dog juice. But, Howie, that juice should have been injected.”

  “Ri-no!”

  “Everyone knows that’s the way to make a genetic change. What you did shouldn’t have worked at all.”

  “Arf!” he barked.

  “Why did it work? I don’t know. Maybe it’s psychosomatic.”

  “Woof?”

  “Psychosomatic. It means it’s all in your head.”

  Howard knew what it meant—he just didn’t believe it. “Fruff.”

  “Say what you want,” said Judy. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. You knew you were going to lose the science fair, so you were upset. And deep down, you were tired of being a dwid. Becoming a dog offered the only solution to the fix you were in. It was brilliant, really.”

  “Broof?”

  “Broof. I mean it. But now you can stop.”

  Howard shook his head. Spittle flew from his jowls.

  “You can, Howie. Trust me.”

  “Owruf.”

  “Of course you can. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

  So he did. Becoming human wasn’t easy, the way it was for Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man. He had to improve his attitude. He had to stop thinking he was better than everyone else. He had to shed a lot.

  His ears shrank, his fingers stretched, his fangs receded. He stared at the mirror.

  Judy stared too. “I wish they could have seen this at the science fair.”

  But Howard no longer cared about science fairs. Not at all. He cared about clothes! He ran to his bedroom and threw on a pair of jeans and a shirt.

  * * *

  The next morning Judy walked with him to school. As they drew near, Howard began to fidget. He sniffed the air for flying muffins, but couldn’t smell a thing. He tried twitching his ears, listening for the chant of “De-TURD! De-TURD!” but his ears wouldn’t twitch, and the chant never came. Instead, someone shouted, “Hey, everybody! It’s Howie!”

  A cheer went up. For a few glorious moments, it seemed as if the whole school had come out to welcome him back. Then a food fight started. Howard and Judy hurried to class.

  For Howard, things did not get better all at once, but they did get better. Monique Moldinado smiled at him in the hallway. Tommy Alvarez offered him a ride in the new zeppelin he was building. Wayne Funderberg was hit in the head with a corn muffin, and nobody ever discovered who threw it.

  And one day, as they were working together in the lab, Judy declared her project a success.

  “What project?” asked Howard.

  “Remember? I said I’d fix you. Well, I did it. You’re not a dwid anymore.”

  “I’m not?” He watched his dog-mouse carefully. “Singin’ in the Rain” played in the background.

  “Not much, anyway. I’d say you’re more of an original now, like me.”

  Howard smiled. It was good to be an original. If he’d had a tail, he would have wagged it. In its cage, his dog-mouse began to tap-dance.

  Patty

  Written and illustrated by Thacher Hurd

  Patty

  Me and dogs.

  Let’s keep it simple.

  Let’s just say that I used to think one way about dogs, but after that trip to Grams and Grampa’s last summer, things were a little different with me and dogs. Especially Patty. Just a little different.

  I mean, I still think dogs slobber too much, and we really need to do something about dog breath. Maybe it’s time for some doggie mouthwash.

  People seem to think dogs are the a
nswer to all of life’s problems. If we go running with our dog through sunlit fields of wheat like we’re in a dog food commercial, then all our problems will be solved? I guess I’m supposed to like dogs. I’m a kid, and kids like dogs, right? We have a nice black Lab named Patty who wags her tail and gets all slobbery when I come home. My parents really like Patty a lot. They think she can do no wrong. I just wish she wouldn’t want to slobber all over me when I give her a hug.

  I don’t want to make too big a deal out of this, but I have to mention that Patty may be sweet, but she also tends to throw up at strange times. Like the time my parents went out for a while but then they got delayed and it got dark.

  I don’t like being home alone at night. At first it’s okay, but then I get the feeling the bogeyman is looking in the window.

  So my parents go out, and all I do is go in my room and shut the door, and I make Patty come with me, and I won’t let her out. She doesn’t like that, but I feel nervous, and I end up in my bed with the covers pulled up high and my palms sweating, and I am thinking that every little noise in the house is someone coming up the stairs to chop me in little pieces and make me into soup.

  Patty is supposed to be the watchdog, but then she starts getting nervous too, and she’s pacing around my bedroom making little noises and then scratching at the door like she needs to go pee, but I know she doesn’t because I just took her out right before I made her stay in my room. So I know she’s faking that, and I don’t want to let her out anyway, though if you think about it, it would probably be better if she was out roaming around the house being really fierce and all and protecting me with her big growl (which she doesn’t really have) and her sharp teeth and her bad breath. I mean, her bad breath would drive anybody away.

  But no, I keep Patty in my room, and I get more and more nervous, and my palms get sweatier and sweatier and then I hear a terrible noise, and I look out from under the covers.

  Patty has thrown up. A big pile of throw-up in the middle of my rug. Great. It smells really bad, and I don’t know what to do. Just then my parents come home and open the door to my room and smell the barf and then things get complicated. They say, “David, you shouldn’t have done this,” and “David, you shouldn’t have done that,” though all I did was get scared—the dog did the throwing up. But as usual, it’s me in trouble, my parents petting the dog and looking down at me, and the dog looking up at me with those I-didn’t-do-anything-I’m-just-the-dog eyes.