Raising Rufus (6 page)

Squeak.

The sound stopped her in her tracks, and she turned around to see the lizard trying to take a bite out of the reptile book.

“What in the world is
that
?”

“What?”

She gave him a withering look.

“Oh, this? It's, um…a lizard.”

“I can see what it is. What's it doing in here?”

“I found him in the woods. His egg, I mean. He hatched.”

“Martin, you know you're not supposed to bring wild animals in here.”

“Actually, he's very tame.”

“You know the rule: you can use the barn for your hobbies, but no pets, period.”

The lizard was about to rip a page from a perfectly good library book, so Martin picked the little guy up, which it didn't seem to mind at all. But when his mom leaned in for a closer look, it
hissed
at her, backing her off.

“What's wrong with it? It looks deformed.”

“He could be a mutant.”

“Well, put it down, for gosh sakes. It could have all kinds of germs.” She picked up the cardboard box from the floor. “Put it in here.”

Martin didn't care for the direction this was taking, but he did what she said and gently put the lizard in the box. He felt a gray cloud descending over him as his mom let out a sigh and studied his face. Her voice was sympathetic but firm as she said exactly what he didn't want to hear.

“Honey, you'll have to let it go.”

“Mom—”

“No, no buts. A rule is a rule.”

“He can't survive out there alone. He depends on me.”

“See? You're too attached to it already.”

Martin felt he was older and wiser now, and could handle the emotional trials of having, or even losing, a pet. But he didn't sound very convincing as he made his case. “Really, I'm not. He's just a lizard. I know I can take care of him.”

“Sweetheart, you can't keep an animal here. Especially a sick one that you found in the woods. He'll have to go. Period.”

Martin stood there silently. An empty feeling started just below his rib cage and spread all the way out to his fingers and toes.

“Right now. Roger that?”

He managed the tiniest of nods.

She gave him a little smile and ruffled his hair. “Fifteen minutes, then come up and do your room. I'm thinking there could be a nice surprise at dessert time.”

She headed out, but stopped in the doorway with a puzzled look on her face. “There are lizards in
Wisconsin
?”

Martin gave a tiny nod; there were, though he wasn't too sure about this part of the state.

Still pondering it, she went out and headed back toward the house.

He looked down sadly at his beady-eyed little companion, dreading the next—and last—episode in their short acquaintance.

Martin carried the box a good distance into the woods, to a spot he never visited on his hikes. He knew the odds for the lizard weren't good out there, and he would just as soon not know how the story ended. A clean break would be best for all concerned.

He came upon a clearing with a small pond and decided it would be as good a place as any.

“How about here? You like this?”

The lizard just stared up at him from inside the box, as though wondering why they were in this strange place. Martin picked it up and put it down in a patch of tall grass.

“See? There's water…lots of bugs to eat…places you can hide. It's a good spot.”

He expected it to skitter away like most animals do when they're set free. But it just stood there, calmly sniffing the ground. Martin made a shooing gesture, as though it were a pesky squirrel.

“Go on. Go.”

The lizard still didn't move. Martin lunged at it, hoping to scare it off.

“Go!”

But the critter took only a single step back, without breaking its steady gaze at Martin's face.

“Okay, then. Don't go.”

He turned and walked away. But what he was afraid of was exactly what happened: it followed him.

“No! Stay.
Stay.
”

He knew in the back of his mind that a reptile wasn't likely to understand a dog command, but he hoped for the best as he started off again. Again, the lizard followed.

Martin broke into a trot, thinking that maybe the little guy wouldn't bother trying to keep up.

He was wrong.

Deciding that strict measures were going to be called for, he scooped up the lizard, carried it to the other side of a big log that stretched across the forest floor, and put it down on the ground.

“You have to stay here! I'm sorry, but a rule is a rule. Good-
bye.
”

He turned and marched away, knowing that was the last he would see of his little friend. Right away, a torrent of desperate squeaks and screeches came pouring out from behind that log.

The sound tore at Martin's heart, but he forced himself to keep going.
This is not like Orville,
he thought.
I'm older and wiser now. I am not attached to this lizard!
But the farther he got, the heavier his feet became.
It's just a dumb reptile. Let nature take its course!
He got a good fifty yards from the log, and he could still hear the lizard's squeals. They seemed to echo all around him, and he started feeling dizzy. He stopped to take a breath.

He was startled by a faint
whoosh
up above. What was that? A crow? A
hawk
?
Not already,
he thought. His palms were sweating, his heart racing. This was not right; it just wasn't.

Finally, he surrendered.
Leaving him out here would just be cruel,
he told himself as he headed back into the clearing, box in hand. He would have to deal with the consequences later.

By the time he arrived back at the barn, a good twenty minutes had gone by, so there was no time to waste. But what to do with this animal that would now have to be kept a secret?

Martin had an idea.

At the other end of the barn from his work space, there was a trapdoor. It led down to a big storage room below the main level of the barn. There was a lot of old junk down there—wooden pallets, cardboard boxes, broken-down lawn equipment, a wheelbarrow, a rickety old bed frame—and it was on the dusty side. But some sunlight came in from a few small windows high on the wall, and since nobody ever went down there, it seemed like a workable home for a small creature without the brain power to imagine it could do better.

Martin opened the trapdoor and climbed down a steep wooden staircase, pushing away a few cobwebs as he reached the floor.

“You can stay down here,” he said to the lizard, lifting it out of the box. “I'll bring you food and everything, but you have to be quiet. If anybody finds out you're here, we're both toast.”

He held it up close to his face. “Do I make myself clear, young reptile?”

He knew the lizard had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn't complain.

“What's your name, anyway? You need a name.” He thought about it, but not for too long. “Well, those beady eyes make you look kind of like my uncle Rufus. I guess that'll do.”

He put the lizard on the floor, and it looked up at him with intense curiosity, like a toddler watching a puppet show.

“Well…see you later, Rufus.”

Martin knew it would fuss and complain again the second he headed back up the stairs, and that was exactly what happened. This lizard did not appreciate being left alone.

After closing the trapdoor behind him, Martin knelt down and peeked into the room through a crack along the edge. He shifted around to keep the lizard in sight as it lurched back and forth, screeching up a storm. But after a few moments it seemed to forget what it had been carrying on about. It soon began exploring its new home a bit, and didn't seem to think it was so bad.

Then, it abruptly froze and crouched low.

With the quick reflexes of a cat, it darted after a cockroach that had skedaddled across the floor. And in the blink of an eye, the bug was on its way down the gullet of a lizard named Rufus.

“
M
om,” Martin said as she whipped up his favorite Saturday breakfast, apple-cinnamon pancakes. “Could I get my allowance?”

“That's your dad's department, love bug. You know that.”

“Yeah, but he's at work.”

“Are you in a rush?”

“Kind of.”

She gave him a curious look but didn't start an interrogation. “Well, honey, I don't have any cash. Can you wait till he gets home?”

“That's okay. I'll ride my bike.”

“Oh. To the Trout Palace?”

“Uh-huh.”

And ride he did, his mind racing the whole way. If Rufus was going to survive in that barn, he would have to be fed on a regular basis—and judging by his appetite, that could take some effort. Martin didn't want to have to be catching bugs all the time, and he was afraid if he kept filching food from the refrigerator, he would eventually get busted. So he was going to have to come up with his own food supply.

And that would require cash. Later on, he might be able to convince his parents that he was old enough to mow the yard for pay. But for now, he would have to rely on his usual source of income.

He made it to the Trout Palace in good time and found his dad in the Walleye Theater, driving two-inch screws into the stage floor. “You came here for
that
?” he said.

“I forgot to ask you yesterday.”

His dad mumbled something that didn't sound quite like a real sentence, then put down his drill, reached into his pocket, and handed Martin a crisp Lincoln.

“Thanks!”

Mr. Tinker seemed like he might say something else, but within two seconds Martin was gone.

It took him less than five minutes to pedal to the Food Bear, where he headed straight for the meat department and spent two dollars and fifteen cents on a small package of raw ground beef. He didn't want to buy a lot at once, because he knew it wouldn't keep long and he didn't want to raise suspicions by storing it in the fridge. So there would probably have to be many trips to the market.

More and more thoughts like that came into Martin's head as he hopped on his bike and started for home. But all that thinking took his mind off his steering, and at the edge of the parking lot he ran into a curb and took a wicked header over the handlebars. Luckily he landed on a patch of soft grass and avoided any serious bodily damage. But the bike wasn't as lucky: the chain had been knocked clean off the gears.

“Oh, no,” he grumbled as he checked it out, worrying more about the delay to Rufus's breakfast than the needed repair job.

“You okay, Martin?” The voice was familiar, but Martin was still a bit surprised to see his science teacher, Mr. Eckhart, approaching.

“Oh, hi. Yeah, I'm fine.”

“Little mechanical malfunction there?”

“Can it be fixed?”

“Let's have a look.”

As Mr. Eckhart put down his bag of groceries and got to work on the chain, Martin started thinking again. Maybe this would be a good time to clear up a few nagging questions.

“Mr. Eckhart, do you know a lot about animals?”

“Well, that's what they told me when they gave me my zoology degree. I guess I'll take their word for it.”

“Zoology? I thought you were just, like, a general science person.”

“Nah, I just teach you guys science to pay the bills while I work on my master's degree. Hope that doesn't disappoint you.”

“No…. So…what kind of lizard has three toes—well, four, counting a little one in the back—and walks on two legs?”

“I give up. What kind?”

“No, it's a real question.”

Mr. Eckhart looked at him with an arched eyebrow. “Okay, none of the above. Lizards have five toes and walk on four legs.”

Martin spent a moment processing that. “So if a lizard has three toes and walks on two legs, that means he's a mutant?”

“Could be. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Well, what you're describing sounds more like a bird than a lizard.”

“Bird…?”

“Yep. Or a dinosaur. There y'go. How's that?” He put the bike upright—chain back on, good as new. Martin hardly noticed.

“But dinosaurs are extinct.”

“That is correct. Well, unless you count Barney.”

He looked to Martin for a reaction, but he didn't get a chuckle, or even a smile. A thought was forming in Martin's head, and the joke didn't get through at all.

“Hello?” Mr. Eckhart said. “Unless you count
Barney.
”

Martin suddenly got a burst of energy. “Thanks!”

He jumped on the bike and raced off down the street, leaving his teacher standing there, his hands coated with grease, his face a picture of bewilderment.

All the way home, one outlandish thought rattled around in Martin's head.
A dinosaur?
The thought had occurred to him before, of course, but he had always dismissed it right off the bat. After all, there had been no dinosaurs for sixty-five million years. But then again…?

When he got to the house he dropped his bike in the front yard and raced up to his bedroom. No need for a trip to the library this time; he remembered a book his mom had given him for his ninth birthday. It took only a short search to find it under some junk in the back of the closet:
All Things Dinosaur.

In a flash he was off to the barn, stopping only long enough to throw open the fridge and grab a leftover Ultraburger from Royal Castle. He figured if Rufus was going to be chowing down on hamburger, well, then he would too.

He brought his reptilian friend up from his downstairs lair and lifted him onto the workbench. Even though he was only three days old, he already seemed heavier to Martin, and maybe an inch or two longer. “Don't eat it all at once,” he said as he tore the plastic off the package of beef. “We have to make it last.” As Martin expected he would, Rufus went right after the meat like a hungry puppy.

Digging into his own cold burger, Martin opened the dinosaur book and got down to business.

But it didn't take long for him to start thinking this whole project might not have been such a hot idea. The book had pictures and descriptions of all kinds of dinosaurs, but none of them looked at all like Rufus.

HADROSAURUS.
Approximately nine feet in height, this dinosaur stood upright on its hind legs and had short forelimbs. Its most distinctive feature was its broad snout, shaped like a duck's bill…

Short forelimbs, okay. But there was no danger of anyone mistaking Rufus for a duck.

CAMPTOSAURUS.
Camptosaurus had a thick body, and the juveniles often walked on two legs. With its sharp, toothless beak, it most likely fed on leaves, small branches, and tall grasses.

A beak? Leaves and grasses? Nope…nothing like
this
thing. Martin thought about it as he absently watched Rufus polish off the last of the raw hamburger.

Every time there was something in a picture or a caption that seemed like a match, there was something else that canceled it out. After twenty minutes of flipping through the book, Martin was starting to lose enthusiasm. “This is stupid,” he grumbled. “Dinosaurs are
gone.
You're just a freaky lizard.” He lifted the remaining half of his Ultraburger up to his mouth—and was startled when Rufus suddenly leaped up and chomped down on it, barely missing Martin's pinky.

“Hey!” he exclaimed as he watched Rufus twitch and tug, trying to tear off a piece of beef while hanging in midair by the grip of his tiny teeth. “That's mine!”

A corner of the bun gave way and Rufus dropped onto the tabletop with nothing to show for his sudden attack. But now he was all worked up, and he thrashed and squealed so annoyingly that Martin's resistance quickly wore down.

“Okay, okay! One piece.”

He broke off a chunk of the burger meat and held it out toward Rufus, who snapped it away and dug right in.