Upchuck and the Rotten Willy Read online

  CHAPTER 1

  When the door closed behind me, I yawned and stretched. There were days I enjoyed sleeping late. This morning was crisp and cool, but not really cold. I was glad to be up. There was no wind. Not even the slightest breeze tickled the red and yellow leaves or rustled through dry, brown blades of grass. It wasn’t often that the wind was still. I paused a moment, listening to the quiet, yet marveling at how many sounds there were.

  Next door, Mrs. Parks told her husband to be careful driving to work and to bring home some chicken from the market for supper. Cars zoomed and rushed by on the big road near Luigi’s Restaurant. Crows cawed from Farmer McVee’s pecan orchard. Luigi’s was over five blocks away, and Farmer McVee lived nearly a half-mile from our housing development. Still, the crows who raided his pecan trees sounded as close as if they were flying right over the top of my house.

  I strolled around to the front yard and paused at the curb. Mr. Parks backed out of his driveway. I glanced both ways, to make sure there was nothing else on the road, then trotted across before he came in my direction.

  At the alley behind Tom’s house, I paused. Holding my breath, I moved nothing but my eyes. Once certain that Rocky was no place to be seen, I raced across the big, open grassy area toward the new high school. That’s where my friend and I were to meet this morning.

  It surprised me to find Tom already sitting on the wood fence between the baseball diamond and the football field.

  Tom cocked an eyebrow and glanced down at me.

  “About time you got up,” he teased. “Been waiting on you for two hours.”

  “Have not.” I frowned.

  Tom smiled. “Would you believe, five minutes?”

  We laughed.

  He nodded at the wide wood rail beside him. “Come on . . .”—he paused a moment—“ . . . up Chuck.”

  The corners of my eyes tightened as I glared at him. But as I watched, I couldn’t tell from the sly grin on his face whether he’d said it that way on purpose or by accident. Before I had a chance to figure it out, he turned his attention to the football field.

  I hopped up next to him on the fence and leaned forward, trying to catch his eye.

  “You do that on purpose?” I asked.

  Tom ignored me. Still, I wasn’t sure whether I could see a little glimmer in his eye or not. Without glancing at me, he motioned toward the field.

  “Man, look at the haircut on that pink dude. You ever see anything so ridiculous in your life?” He chuckled.

  I frowned and tilted my head to the side. “I think it’s called apricot. Not pink.”

  “Apricot, pink,” Tom shrugged. “Who cares? It’s hilarious.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “Talk about a ‘bad-hair day.’ ”

  “You know why their noses are so long and pointed?” Tom asked, only giving me a quick glance.

  “No. Why?”

  “So they can find—I mean, smell each other in the dark.”

  “Don’t need to be dark,” I managed with a straight face. “They smell so bad you can find ’em any time of the day or night.”

  Tom nodded. “They sure do! They don’t even have to be doing anything. I mean, all they’ve got to do is stand around—especially when it’s hot. They got an odor to them, that’s for sure.”

  “They’re loud and rude, too. I mean, you get a group of them together . . .”

  Tom nudged me with his shoulder. “All it takes for them to make a group is more than one.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Anyway, one at a time, they’re bad enough. But you get a group together and you never heard so much noise. It’s enough to wake the dead. Seems like, as big and floppy as their ears are, they wouldn’t need to be that loud. But . . .”

  “They sure are lazy,” Tom interrupted. “One of them lived two doors down from the house I used to have before we moved here. All he did was lie around and sleep most of the day. Waited for somebody else to take care of him. They’re rude, pushy, and mean. Shoot, they’d just as soon fight with one of their own as one of us. See that bunch near the far goalpost? See the way they’re struttin’ around and trying to look big and tough? You just watch. Sooner or later, they’ll start a fight and . . .”

  I nudged him so hard that he almost lost his balance. “Look at this one coming around the track toward us,” I said. “You know why his nose is so flat?”

  “Why?”

  “From chasing parked cars.”

  Tom’s eyebrows scrunched down, like he was deep in thought. “. . . chasing parked cars . . .” he repeated, twitching his mouth to the side. At last he blinked. “Oh, I got it!”

  Then he laughed, too. Both of us laughed so hard I thought we were gonna fall off the fence. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

  “That was a great one, Chuck.” He bumped his shoulder against mine. “A real classic. That’s as good as the ones Louie used to come up with.

  Suddenly, both of us stopped. The silence that grabbed us was instant—almost eerie. We looked at one another, then turned away—each somber and quiet in our own private thoughts.

  It was the first time in three weeks that we had mentioned Louie’s name. And though I’m sure Tom had thought about him as often as I had, neither of us ever talked about the horrible accident. We sat in silence for a long time. Neither of us looked at the other. Neither of us could find the right thing to say.

  Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Tom nodded toward the football field again. The pink dude with the weird hair was the first to spot us. He lunged and charged toward us, roaring and snapping, to bounce against the fence right below where we sat. The white dude who was with him followed right on his heels.

  “Ah, pipe down,” Tom hissed. “You two ain’t so tough.”

  “Come down here,” the white one barked. “We’ll tear you apart.”

  “Look.” Tom laughed. “Their haircuts make them look like they’re wearing skirts.”

  “Yeah.” I flipped my tail. “It looks like a little tutu. Ain’t they cute? Hey, tutu-butt, why don’t you do a little dance for us?”

  The poodles barked a few more times before their master reached them. She got their leashes and dragged them back to the track. The commotion caused quite a stir. The group that was loose and acting tough with each other, down by the far goalpost, spotted us. Barking and roaring, they raced across the football field.

  “Come on,” Tom called as he leaped down from the fence. “That many of the nasty things coming after us, we better get going. Even as dumb as they are, one might accidentally find a way through the fence and get around behind us. Then we’d be trapped.”

  I jumped to the soft grass. Tails high, we chased across the baseball outfield, down the third-base line, and past home plate. We didn’t even slow down to see if Rocky was out of his pen when we raced across the vacant lot between Tom’s house and the high school athletic field. We squeezed through Tom’s back gate and I followed him straight up the big pecan tree in his backyard.

  Once safe and relaxed, we stretched out on a limb to clean up and wash our faces with our paws.

  • • •

  Tom and Louie had been my best friends for as long as I could remember. Well, not as long as I could remember, but ever since I was old enough that the people I lived with started letting me go outside. A little over two months ago, Louie found out that people brought their dogs to the track around the new high school football field. The people walked around the track for exercise. Most kept their dogs on a leash, but others just let them run loose. Every Saturday for a whole month, Louie, Tom, and I met on the fence between the ball diamond and the football field to watch them and make fun of the dogs.

  I didn’t really have al
l that much against dogs. Still, it was a regular riot to sit around and tell jokes about them, or make fun of the way they looked and acted.

  It was great to have a best friend. I was one lucky cat. I had had two best friends. Louie and Tom were the best best friends anyone could ever ask for. Nothing could ever come between us. Nothing could ever separate us. It just wouldn’t be fair.

  But . . . nobody ever told me life was fair.

  CHAPTER 2

  We spent a while soaking up the morning sunshine. It was beautiful day. After a time, the wind picked up and shook our limb.

  I looked over at my best friend. His eyes were closed, but every now and then his ear twitched when the wind tickled the little hairs down inside. I moved closer. He peeked out of one eye when he felt the limb bend under my weight. I sat down and curled my tail under my bottom.

  “We need to talk.”

  “So talk,” he purred and closed his eye. “Got a new dog-joke you just thought up?”

  Even though his eyes were closed and he couldn’t see me, I shook my head.

  “No. I mean really talk.”

  He cocked his eye again. “About what?”

  I took a deep breath and sighed.

  “Louie.”

  Tom curled tighter into his ball. “I don’t want to talk about Louie. I don’t even want to think about him.”

  I moved closer.

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because!”

  His tail flipped around to cover his eye. I reached out a paw and pulled it aside. The eye popped open. The yellow slit that ran up and down in the middle grew so tight it glowed like a streak of fire.

  “Why?” I repeated.

  For only an instant, the fur puffed up on his tail. He took a deep breath and sighed. When he did, the hair smoothed down.

  “It hurts too much to talk about him. I try my best not to even think about him. He was a good cat. He was fun to be with. He ran out in the street and got hit by a car. Now he’s dead. There’s nothing else to say.”

  With that, he closed his eye and wrapped his tail back over his head. I sat for a long time, watching him. Thinking. Maybe there was nothing else to say. Maybe it was best to forget our friend—there was nothing we could do for him. There was no way we could change what had happened. So, if Tom didn’t want to talk about him, that was fine.

  My tail flipped to one side so hard that it almost knocked me off balance. My claws sprang out to hold on to the limb.

  If Tom didn’t want to talk about him, that was fine. I did! I wanted to talk about Louie. I needed to talk about Louie. If Tom didn’t want to listen—well, that was up to him.

  “He was fun to be with.” I echoed what Tom had said. “He was a good cat and he was fun. I remember that Pomeranian from over on Sixth Street. When he sneaked out of his yard and came strutting past Luigi’s Restaurant . . . man, he was acting like he owned the place. Figured he could just up and help himself to our spaghetti and meatballs. We started to run, but Louie just marched right up to him. Stared him square in the eye. Then he marched around and stared at the other end. With the little puff of hair on his head and the way his tail flipped up, Louie says: ‘I’d scratch this guy on the nose, but Pomeranians are so ugly, can’t tell whether he’s coming or going. Don’t know which end to scratch.’ ”

  Tom didn’t say anything.

  “Then there was that time over in Rocky’s back yard . . .”

  “That was dumb,” Tom said, without opening his eye.

  “No, it wasn’t. He didn’t mean to fall out of the pecan tree and land in Rocky’s food bowl. It was an accident.”

  Tom peeked up at me. “I know he didn’t mean to fall. It was what he did afterward.”

  “Yeah.” I kind of laughed to myself. “It was cool, though. I mean, Rocky saw him go kerplop—right in the middle of his food dish—so he came flying after him.”

  “If Louie hadn’t landed on his feet,” Tom unwrapped his tail from around his face and sat up, “Rocky would have got him for sure.”

  “Louie always landed on his feet.” I smiled. “Always.”

  Tom licked a paw and smoothed his whiskers. “Even landing on his feet, it was a close call. He just squeezed through the crack in the gate a half second before that dog got there. If he’d brushed so much as a whisker and slowed down, Rocky would have had him. It was that close.”

  My tail flopped back and forth as I laughed.

  “It was so close, Rocky didn’t have time to stop. Got his head through the crack—and that was it. Stopped like the rest of him had hit a brick wall. Stuck there, and all he could do was bark and yap and tell Louie what he was gonna do to him when he got loose.”

  “Prancing back and forth in front of him and teasing him was bad enough,” Tom said. Now his tail was flipping back and forth, like mine was. “But when he climbed back over the fence and started swatting Rocky on the behind . . . Never saw anything so funny in my life!”

  “And remember that time . . .”

  • • •

  The memories of our friend did make us feel better. We spent the rest of the morning talking and remembering all the good times we had had together.

  Louie didn’t have people like Tom and I did. He was an alley cat. The only people he even had anything to do with was Luigi. That’s who he took his name from—Louie—Luigi.

  Luigi was kind of round and plump. He had dark eyes and dark hair and a long mustache that drooped down under his nose. He wore a white apron that always had tomato sauce smudged on it. His tummy bounced up and down underneath the apron when he laughed. And he always laughed when Louie came to ask for food. The first time Louie took us there, Luigi laughed at us, too. He seemed to take great pride when we ate the plate of spaghetti and meatballs he set out for us. Especially when we gobbled all of it and licked the platter clean.

  We talked about how smart and quick Louie was, and what a great sense of humor he had. Being an alley cat, he had a strong distaste for dogs. Neither Tom nor I had ever thought much about dogs. Not until we started running around with Louie. Some of the neat things he could think up to say about them were absolutely hilarious.

  We talked and talked and talked. We talked or thought about everything, from the first time we had met Louie until that day we found him all smushed up near the curb by the shopping mall. We still missed him, but talking about all the good times seemed to make us feel better.

  • • •

  Tom stood up and arched his back. “Wonder what time it is. I’m getting kind of hungry.”

  How long we sat and talked, I didn’t know. I was hungry, too. I stretched the kinks out of my back. “Been a long time since we’ve seen Luigi. Bet he misses Louie. Let’s go say hi to him and see if he’ll still feed us.”

  The branch where we visited was a low one. Tom leaped to the ground and patted the grass with his paw.

  “Come on . . .” he paused, “up Chuck.”

  A puff of red exploded before my eyes. This time, I knew he did it on purpose. He was down—not up. My tail puffed as big around as a balloon. Claws sprang out, and my eyes squinted to tiny slits. In a rage, I flew from the tree and slammed into him.

  The force of my attack knocked him over. Hissing and spitting and scratching, we tumbled clear across Tom’s backyard.

  CHAPTER 3

  The fight didn’t last very long.

  We rolled around under the tree for a while. Tom got to his feet and took off. I was hot on his heels. He faked one way, then turned the other. As soon as he turned, I leaped and rolled him again. I bit him once, but that was about it. Aside from the hissing and scuffling, it really wasn’t much of a fight.

  It’s kind of hard to rip somebody to shreds when they’re laughing their fur off. I was mad and ready to tear Tom apart. Only when he didn’t fight back and just kept laughing . . . well . . .

  “I really do wish you’d quit with that ‘Upchuck’ stuff,” I panted.
r />   Tom ruffled his fur and used his hind foot to scratch the place where I’d bitten him behind the ear.

  “Oh, lighten up,” he laughed. “Can’t believe you get so bent out of shape over your stupid name.”

  “It’s not my name! It’s a nickname, and I hate it!” As I thought about it—remembered—my tail flipped one way, then the other. I didn’t flip it. It was kind of like my tail had a mind of its own and it flipped itself. “When I came to live with my Katie, she was dating this guy named Chuck.” My tail jerked so hard I had to move my hind foot to keep my balance. Tom stopped scratching behind his ear and leaned toward me.

  “Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “I know you’ve told me this before, but go through that dating stuff again. I’m still not too clear on what dating is.”

  “Okay. She thought this guy was really cute and all that stuff. I guess he liked her, too. Anyway, when a boy-people and a girl-people like each other, they go out on dates.”

  “Like?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “Like they go out and eat, or they go to a show, or they just sit on the porch and hold paws.”

  “What’s a show?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you got an idea.”

  “Okay.” I sighed. “I think it’s kind of like the Noisy Box in the living room . . . you know?”

  Tom nodded. “Yeah, my people have one, too. They sit in front of the thing a bunch. I don’t know why, but they just sit there with their mouths open and look dumb. Right?”

  “Right. Anyway, I think a movie is kind of like that, only bigger. And instead of one or two people watching it, there must be a whole bunch, because when they got home I could always smell lots of people and popcorn all over them. Katie would talk about how good the show was, and about buildings blowing up or people shooting each other or kissing and romance—all that junk.”

  Tom stretched out and rested his chin on his paws. “Okay. I think I’m with you. But why do they do that?”

  My tail flipped so hard it jerked my rear end the other way.

  “I don’t know. They just do. Anyway, she liked this guy named Chuck, and they were dating when I came to live with her—so, she named me Chuck. Then she and Chuck decided they didn’t like each other anymore, so they broke up and she started dating Jimmy.”