Look Here, Hercules (a short story) Read online

Look Here, Hercules

  A Short Story by Teri Kanefield

  Contains sample chapters from A Pocket Full of Gold and Michael’s Mighty Kick.

  Copyright © 2014 by Teri Kanefield

  All rights reserved.

  945 Taraval Street, #130

  San Francisco, CA 94116

  Table of Contents

  Look Here, Hercules

  Note from the Author

  A Pocket Full of Gold (sample chapter)

  Michael’s Mighty Kick (sample chapter)

 

  Look Here Hercules

  Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  A sound like a squirrel scratching came from just outside my window. I was in my room putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Now the sound was like a squirrel kicking the redwood fence—except squirrels don’t kick fences, and if a squirrel did, it wouldn’t be that loud.

  I sat up straighter and listened. Next I heard a whimper.

  I ran to my window to look.

  There, outside my window, was a tiny golden terrier mutt. I knew all about dog breeds because I had already read every book about dogs in our school library. I knew all about boxers and corgis and poodles. I knew how to train dogs, how to groom them, and what they liked to eat.

  I ran outside and around the back of the house. There was the little terrier, in the narrow strip of ground between our house and the fence, busily scratching in the dirt.

  He stopped and looked at me eagerly, with what appeared to be a smile. His eyes were so dark they were almost black.

  I knelt down and held out my hand. He sniffed his way to me. “Hey little dog,” I whispered. “How did you get into our yard?”

  Then I saw the hole under the fence, and the pile of dirt.

  The dog pressed closer to me. I scratched his head. He wiggled into my lap and licked my face.

  I fell instantly in love.

  He wasn’t wearing a collar. He had dust and burs in his fur.

  “If I tell mom you’re here, she’ll say I can’t keep you,” I told him.

  He wagged his tail.

  I have an older brother and an older sister. Let me tell you this. Being the youngest is the pits because you suffer for your older siblings’ mistakes. When I was just a baby, my brother, who was then eight, begged for a dog and got one. He promised to take care of the dog, but he didn’t. Mom had to do all the work. When my brother became a teenager and wanted nothing to do with the dog, Dad found a family out in the country willing to take him.

  Not long after that, my sister begged for a cat. Mom said, “If we let you have a cat, I’ll end up doing all the work.” Kathleen begged and promised to do the work. Kathleen got her cat, and you guessed it. She didn’t take care of it. Mom had to do all the work.

  When I begged for a dog, Mom said, “No. We have a cat. And I do all the work.”

  “I don’t want a silly cat that sleeps all day!” I said. “I want a dog that will run and play!”

  “Whenever we get pets,” she said, “I’m always the one who has to do all the work.”

  I begged and begged. She would not budge.

  Is that fair?

  She had another excuse for refusing. We travel too much, going to Grandma’s every summer, Uncle Isaac’s for Thanksgiving, Aunt Betsy’s for Easter. Our neighbors take care of the cat while we’re gone, but what would we do with a dog?

  Now here I was, holding a wiggling, eager, adorable little terrier.

  Well, I couldn’t just leave him outside to starve. I picked him up. He weighed about as much as a grapefruit. I tucked him inside my tee shirt—I was wearing my favorite shirt, the pink one that said, "I am here. What is your second wish?"

  Safely back in my bedroom with the door closed, I let the little dog sniff around. He eagerly explored every inch of my room.

  “Your name is Hercules,” I told him. He wagged his tail again.

  I figured a little dog should have a big name.

  After he finished exploring my room, he came up to me and panted. I thought, from the way he wagged his tail and sniffed at the ground, that he was hungry.

  I peeked into the hallway and listened. Mom was in the laundry room.

  I tried to put Hercules in the closet, but he resisted. “Look, here,” I whispered. “I can’t take you to the kitchen! You have to hide.”

  I shut him inside the closet, and ran to the kitchen. On the table was a bowl of cake batter, which meant Mom was coming back any minute. From the refrigerator, I grabbed my sister’s leftover hamburger and two hot dogs from the package.

  “Ashley!” Mom called out from the back of the house. “What is that noise?”

  “What noise?” I dashed back to my room and closed the door behind me. Hercules, in the closet, was whining and whimpering. I opened the closet door and gave him the half-chewed hamburger patty and the two hot dogs. He ate them in a few gobbles and panted happily.

  He then scampered up on my desk and scratched the pile of jigsaw pieces as if he wanted to dig. Puzzle pieces flew everywhere.

  “Look, here, Hercules!” I whispered fiercely. “You have to stay quiet!”

  “Ashley, are you talking to someone?” Mom called.

  “No, Mom! I’m singing.” Loudly I sang Because I’m Happy!

  Hercules chose that moment to make a puddle, right there in the middle of my floor. I groaned.

  From Mom’s retreating footsteps, I knew she was returning to the kitchen. I put Hercules back into the closet and ran to the bathroom for a towel. I must not have closed my bedroom door all the way, because just as I grabbed a towel from the closet, I heard the pitter-patter of Hercules’s toenails scampering down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  I draped the towel over my shoulder and ran after him.

  I was too late.

  He leapt from a chair to the kitchen table, and jumped right into the bowl of batter. He lapped at the batter with his tongue.

  Mom screamed.

  Hercules jumped down and gave his entire body a shake. Cake batter flew everywhere.

  Mom screamed again.

  I picked up Hercules, hugged him, and got cake batter all over my tee shirt. Hercules was trembling. “You’re scaring him!” I told Mom.

  “What is that thing?” Mom demanded, furious.

  Hercules whimpered.

  Kathleen came running into the kitchen. “Is that a squirrel?”

  “It’s a skinny little dog!” I cried. “I found him in our backyard! He dug under the fence!”

  Hercules struggled to free himself from my arms. I put him down on the floor. “Can I keep him please?” I begged. “I will do all the work! I swear!”

  “You can’t just keep a dog!” Mom said. “Who does he belong to?”

  “Nobody!” I said. “He doesn’t even have a collar.”

  Just then, Mom noticed the towel on my shoulder.

  “What’s that for?” she demanded.

  I hesitated.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Tell me.”

  “He made a puddle on my floor,” I admitted.

  As if on cue, Hercules picked up his back leg. I reached for him before he could make another mess, but I was too late. He made another puddle right there in the kitchen.

  “Look here!” Mom said.

  “I’ll clean it up!” I cried. “I promise! He’s mine! I love him! I named him Hercules!”

  Kathleen giggled. “Maybe you should have named him Puddles.”

  I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, then took Hercules to play in the back yard. I spent a happy afternoon playing fetch with him, trying hard to keep him out of trouble. Each time he start
ed to dig up the garden, or scratch in the gravel, I admonished him with, “Look here, Hercules!”

  Mom opened the door and said, “Ashley, get a shovel and fill in the hole that dog made.”

  Filling in the hole was hard because as soon as I shoveled some dirt into the hole, Hercules kicked it back out.

  “Look here—” I said.

  His ears perked up, and he ran to me.

  That was when I understood. He thought his name was Look Here.

  He put his nose into the dirt and dug with his paws. There was something navy blue in the dirt. I picked it up and saw that it was a dog collar. Hercules had an owner, and a different name. Shaking, I read the tag. His real name was Fluffy and his owner was Sharon. Her phone number was right there on the tag.

  I sat down, stunned. I wished the collar would disappear. I wished I’d never seen it. I scrunched the collar up in my fist. Tears stung my eyes. I would have to give Hercules back to Sharon.

  For one single, wicked moment I felt tempted to throw away the collar and pretend I never saw it.

  But that would be wrong. I couldn’t do it. Sadly, I said to Hercules, “We’d better show this to Mom.”

  I headed for the kitchen with Hercules trotting behind me.

  Mom was wiping down the counter. I stood in the doorway, tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “Ashley?” she demanded. “What’s the matter?”

  I held out the collar. “I found it under the fence,” I said. A sob rose in my chest.

  Mom read the tag. “We’ll have to call her, Ashley,” she said softly.

  “I know,” I said. She held me while I cried.

  Sharon lived in a small, neat clapboard house on the other side of the park. Mom and I stood on her porch. I held Hercules—or, rather, I should say that I held Fluffy. “Hercules is a much better name,” I whispered into his ear. He licked my face.

  Mom rang the doorbell.

  An elderly woman with snow-white hair and wire-rimmed glasses opened the door. “So you found Fluffy,” she said. “Come on in.”

  She gave the dog a stern look. I expected Hercules to greet her, but he stayed by my side. I expected her to reach out and hug him, but she kept her fists on her own hips, and said to Mom, “I’m so sorry. He keeps digging out of the backyard. I honestly don’t know what to do about it.”

  I perked up. “He keeps running away?” I asked.

  She turned and looked at me for what felt like a very long time. “Let’s all sit down,” she said.

  Mom and I sat on the couch. Sharon sat in a wing-backed chair. Hercules scampered around the room, then jumped into my lap, not Sharon’s.

  Sharon sighed and looked at me tenderly. “That dog wants to play all day. He digs out of my yard and tears up the neighbor’s garden. I haven’t even been able to housetrain him. Maybe I should have gotten an older dog.”

  My heart was suddenly thumping. I sat up straight. “Or a cat!”

  “A kitten would be just as a bad,” Mom said. “When Cassie was a kitten she never stopped running around the house, getting into everything, making one mess after another.”

  “I had a lovely cat for fifteen years,” Sharon said. “She sat right there, on that chair near the furnace. When I read the newspaper, she sat in my lap and purred.”

  “You should have a cat!” I told her. “A calm, grown-up cat! Then Hercules can live with us—”

  “Hercules?” Sharon asked.

  “I mean Fluffy! I’d play with him all the time. I’d keep him out of trouble!”

  Sharon smiled.

  Mom said, “Ashley! We travel too much. I told you that!”

  “I could take care of the dog while you’re gone,” Sharon said quickly. “That little dog would be so much happier living with a child.”

  I could hardly contain myself. “Mom! Please? I know how to housetrain him! I read all about it in a book in the library!”

  “Ashley,” Mom said, “look here—” instantly Hercules bounded into her lap, put his paws on her shoulders, and panted happily.

  “What the heck?” Mom said, startled.

  “He thinks his name is Look Here,” I explained.

  Sharon laughed. “I can imagine why!”

  Mom sighed deeply. Her shoulders drooped. I knew that meant yes.

  I patted my lap. “Here, Hercules,” I said, feeling that I would burst with happiness.

  My dog—my very own dog—leaped into my lap and licked my face.

  Note from the Author

  If you enjoyed reading Look Here, Hercules, you might also like some of my longer stories. Please keep reading for descriptions and sample chapters for A Pocket Full of Gold (a mystery set in the California Gold Rush) and Michael’s Mighty Kick (a soccer story) .

  A Pocket Full of Gold (sample chapter)

  Rebecca misses her Mama, who died four years ago. 

  When Papa gets engaged to Melody, Rebecca is thrilled. 

  Then Melody is jailed for theft—and Rebecca knows she didn’t do it.

  But who did? And who is trying to pin the crime on Melody?

  Rebecca must find out!