The 12 Dogs of Christmas (6 page)

Emma put the puppy into the big tube and was just climbing in after him, when she heard the door of the room slam, then Norman thumping around, and then old Scratch letting out a threatening yowl. “You caused me a lot of trouble, but you're not getting out of this one,” Norman said. Emma held the puppy tight and her breath still, hoping Norman would not think to look in the culverts. Unfortunately she could not stop scent, and soon old Scratch found them out. Norman's shaggy head appeared at the end of the culvert, grinning in triumph. “Look what I have, puppy,” he said, holding out his cat as a tempting treat. Emma tried to keep the puppy from running, but a cat is a cat, and puppies chase cats, and that's all there is to it. The puppy broke Emma's grip and soon found himself in Norman's welcoming, though not very loving, arms.

By the time Emma got herself out of the culvert and out of the shack, the Fearsome Machine was driving away, with Yeti locked into the dog cage and the puppy bouncing around in a dog net hanging off the back.

“Emma,” came a plea from behind her. She turned around and saw Mike hanging by his coat high on a hook on the wall inside the shack. “Get me down,” he said as he struggled like a worm. Had they not just lost their dogs to bug-face Melvin and Dogcatcher Doyle, it might have been a very funny sight.

11
Emma Undercover

Coach Cullimore had moved to Doverville several months before when he had gotten his job at the school, a job he knew he was lucky to have. Of the one hundred schools he had applied to, eighty-nine wrote back that they were no longer hiring due to the Depression, and ten wrote that they had already given their jobs to teachers with more experience. He had grown rather discouraged when he got the letter from Mrs. Walsh offering him the coaching job if he could also teach math. Although Maine was a state he had never thought he would want to live in, he snapped up the job, and now was very glad he did. Maine was beautiful, and he realized after a couple of months that he just might want to live there for the rest of his life. He was thinking that very thought as he was driving his car along the Old River Road looking for the Stevens farm.

“Excuse me,” he said to an attractive woman standing by a group of mailboxes on the road. “Can you tell me where 209 is?”

As that was her address, Cathy Stevens was a little suspicious of this stranger. “Who you looking for?”

“Mike Stevens. I'm Denton Cullimore from the school. Actually I'm looking for his mother, the, uh, the Dog Lady,” he said, trying to be an “in the know” member of the community.

Cathy, who had been in town getting newly arrived dogs from the train station and had just stopped to pick up her mail, said, “The Dog Lady? Now why would a respectable teacher want to meet that crazy woman?” “So it's true what they say about her in town?”

“Oh,” Cathy answered with a very serious look on her face, “much worse, I'm afraid.” She enjoyed “warning” the coach, whom Mike talked about incessantly. But since he said he wanted to meet Mrs. Stevens, she pointed out her farm, which was just behind him. The coach thanked this kind “stranger” and drove to the farm. Cathy waited a few minutes, and then followed him in her truck.

“So you're . . . ,” Coach began when Cathy got out of her truck and started to unload the dogs.

“Cathy Stevens, the ‘Crazy Dog Lady,'” she finished his sentence with a smile.

“Hey, I'm so sorry. I didn't . . .”

“You're not the first to think I lost my marbles. However, you are the first to want to meet me,” Cathy said, remembering back to the days when she flirted with boys.

“See, they put me in charge of the Christmas program, and—”

“You want me to play the piano.” Coach dropped his jaw a little. “Mikey mentioned it,” Cathy continued. “But I'm afraid I can't. As you can see,” she said, pointing to all the dogs, old and newly arrived, “this is a lot more than I bargained for. It's getting hard to keep up. But I can't bear the thought of even one of them going hungry. I just worry that I can't finish what I started.”

The coach looked at Cathy and realized that maybe she was crazy—but only in an insanely generous sort of way. And Coach admired that kind of crazy. “You need help,” he said feeling inspired. “I'll make a deal with you. You come play the piano for the program, and the kids and I will help you find food for the dogs.”

Cathy laughed off the suggestion at first, but the coach was insistent. Maybe everything Mike had been telling her was true. The coach certainly was the only other adult who had offered to help. She warmed at the thought of a new helper and friend.

“Let me think about it, okay?”

“Okay!” the coach said, filled with hope.

When Dolores had received the call from Cathy Stevens telling her that she would be happy to have Emma stay with her, Dolores heard two voices within her with two separate opinions. One said,
Good riddance,
you're well rid of the brat!
But another one said,
Ah, Dolores, you're going to miss her, aren't you?
Dolores was still not sure which one to listen to when Emma showed up after school to get her things. The one voice made her say to Emma, pointing to her shoes, “You are making a mess. Mud!” But the other voice made her say, “Look, sweetie, I got to thinking about you staying with Mrs. Stevens, and, well . . .”

“Can you still get me that job with the dogcatcher?” Emma did not mean to be rude and cut Dolores off— but she had a plan.

“Well, you certainly don't have to pay me if you're staying with Mrs. Stevens.”

“I
need
that job.”

Dolores was impressed. Emma did want to pay her own way in the world. “Well, okay. If I ask him, he will give you the job,” she said with a smile Emma had never seen before—and one that Emma hoped she would see more often.

Mike had been inconsolable about Yeti's capture, and Emma was just angry—angry enough to want to do something about it. But what could a kid do? Emma then decided she couldn't be a kid right now; she had to be an adventure hero for real. However, an adventure hero knows when she is outnumbered, and knows when it is time to go undercover. That's when Emma knew she had to ask Dolores to get her that job with the dogcatcher.

Emma started working that afternoon. Norman and bug-face Melvin had set up the city's new “dog pound” in an old abandoned buggy-whip factory. Its vast interior provided plenty of room for all the criminal dogs, which they kept in all manner of makeshift cages. They had covered the floor with hay to catch the dog “doody” that Norman hated so much, and they fed them very little, which kept them hungry, which Norman, for a particular reason, thought was a good thing. But it did mean that they whimpered a lot, and that got on Norman's nerves.

After Norman had told her what to do, which entailed a lot of lifting and carting and cleaning, he went into his “office,” a room in the back. Emma took the opportunity to look around. The sight of all the dogs, whimpering in cages, just about broke her heart. But she couldn't help them all. Right now she had to find Yeti and the puppy, for she had promised Mike she would. After searching what seemed like hundreds of cages, she finally came across the one that contained Yeti. And next to it was a small cage with the puppy in it. She petted them both and whispered, “Don't you worry. I'll get you all out of here soon.” She was just trying to figure out how to unlock the cages when, suddenly, a greasy-gloved hand grabbed her braids and pulled her away from the cages.

“I told Dolores that hiring a girl would be stupid,” Norman said into Emma's face, his hot, stinky breath making her cringe more than the pain of having her hair pulled. “But then I discovered that the girl was the dog-loving, trouble-making girl, and I thought that it would be good to have her right here with me, so I could keep my eye on her.” He pointed a grimy finger at her nose. “You remember that as far as I'm concerned, you're no better than another stray dog. Now get back to work!” Norman pushed Emma away from Yeti and the puppy, and the puppy growled at him, and Norman growled right back.

That night, Norman made Emma work late, and she got back to the Stevens farm after Mike had gone to bed, so she was not able to report on her undercover work. In the morning Mrs. Stevens didn't have the heart to wake her early, so she drove Mike to school, then drove back to get Emma.

At the school Coach Cullimore was giving it his all in rehearsing the kids in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” He plotted out their moves on a blackboard like he would football plays, and tried in his tone-deaf way to lead them in singing. Neither effort was succeeding—which Mrs. Stevens could plainly see as she and Emma entered the assembly hall. The coach did not see her enter, so it was the most pleasant of surprises when suddenly, instead of the off-key caterwauling he was leading, there was music, sweet music, as Mrs. Stevens started playing the piano, and the kids started singing in tune.

“That was great!” the coach said when the song had been successfully sung. “We have been saved by Mike's mom!” he announced to the kids with great relief.

Emma had made her way up to the stage, and Mike approached her anxiously. “Did you find Yeti?” Mike asked. Emma told him that she had, but she had not been able to rescue them. “But we have got to get them out of there!” Mike said loudly just as Coach was trying to organize one more go at the song.

“Em and Mike, come on, you're holding up the game.”

Mrs. Stevens started playing again, and Emma grabbed her cardboard partridge tree. “You got to get her out of there fast.” The conversation continued behind the cardboard.

“I will,” Emma assured.

“Promise?” Mike pleaded.

“I promise,” Emma declared like the stalwart adventure hero she was determined to be.

After the rehearsal, Coach stepped over to the piano. “See, I told you your piano playing would make all the difference.” Mrs. Stevens smiled at the compliment. “You know, it's really nice of you to help us out like this,” he continued. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome,” Mrs. Stevens said. “Anything to feed the dogs.”

Ah, yes, the dogs,
the coach thought.
How are we going
to help the dogs?

12
Caught!

In the few months he had been in Doverville, Coach had grown quite fond of his students. They were an enthusiastic bunch, but more importantly, they were a positive bunch. Times were hard, yet they kept up their spirits. Some of that is natural to children, but he was convinced that his kids were special. So, in order to solve the dog-feeding dilemma, he gathered his students at the Stevens farm and put a question to them.

“All right, kids, I have your math assignment. Now, you remember how to do story problems, right? You've got a basket with ten apples in it. You take two out. How many are left?”

“Eight,” one of the kids answered.

“Right. Well, now, just think dogs. How many do we have, Mikey?”

Mike started counting the dogs in the yard. “Okay, so we got . . . four Cocker Spaniels, ten Dalmatians, and seven Chihuahuas.” As he counted, Miranda, the smartest kid in the school, kept a running total. “We got five Retrievers and seven Boxers, five Basset Hounds, two black Labradors, and nine Lab puppies.” “And Max,” Mrs. Stevens said.

“And a Poodle in a doghouse,” Mike finished up, but then remembered something and turned to the coach. “And you have to count Yeti and the puppy, because Emma's going to get them back.”

Max was curious. There was so much going on outside of
the barn. He heard the voices of many children, but they
weren't quite the voices of play. There was something more
serious about their voices. Max started to leave his doghouse.
He so much wanted to see what was going on, but he
stopped. No! There was no voice of Mr. Whiteside; he would
only leave for the voice of Mr. Whiteside.

“Okay,” the coach said. “So how many kids, how many dogs, and how many meals for each of us to find?”

Miranda, after some swift calculations on an abacus, proudly announced the answer. “There are twenty-eight pupils, plus Coach Cullimore and Mrs. Stevens. There are fifty-two dogs, but you can't really count Yeti and the puppy until Emma actually brings them back. Each dog eats twice a day, so that means each of us must provide three and six-tenths meals per day.”

But exactly how were they to do that? Mrs. Stevens looked to Coach Cullimore; Coach Cullimore looked to the students; the students looked to Mrs. Stevens. No one had an answer—until Emma spoke up.

“Do you guys ever collect bacon grease around here?” They all looked at Emma, totally perplexed. “I used to collect cans of bacon grease from the neighbors once a week to sell to make soap.”

“Dogs can't live off bacon grease,” Mike rightly said. “No,” Emma said confidently because she knew the solution. “But they love table scraps—makes them think they're people. The sign says there are 887 people living in Doverville. If half that many gives us scraps, that's . . .”

“Four hundred fourty-four, rounded up,” Miranda announced.

“Uh, that's optimistic,” Mrs. Stevens cautioned.

“But even half that many . . .” Emma was determined.

“Two hundred twenty-three,” Miranda calculated.

That sounded a bit more realistic. “Well,” Coach said, “scraps are thrown out anyway.”

“I used to collect
a lot
of bacon grease,” Emma added.

“That's only seven and a half houses per person per week,” Miranda the math wiz said.

“How can you visit half a house?” Mike wanted to know.

Despite that, everyone was enthusiastic over the plan and was just signing up to do their bit, when they heard the warped
putt-putt
and rude backfires of the Fearsome Machine, which drove up fast and came to an abrupt stop.