The Trouble with Tuck Read online

  “How about Little John?” my mother suggested.

  Father laughed. “He'll be anything but little.”

  Having accomplished their mission, the bestowing of an animal upon me for reasons unknown, my mother and father went on into the house, but I stayed outside for almost an hour, playing with the pup in the damp grass. His legs were so short that his near-bursting belly dragged across the blades. I tumbled him about, letting him chew on my fingers and shoes.

  Once, I held him up at arm's length and examined him in detail. I could swear, even now, that he had a very real smile on his tiny face.

  And if there was anything better to hold than a pup, I didn't know what it was. I put him up to my shoulder, against my neck, and his warm tongue swabbed the lobe of my ear. His new fur was like velvet.

  A love affair began that hour.

  I went to the garage and found an old towel that Stan used when he washed my mother's station wagon. I dragged the growling pup around the yard, his pin teeth locked on the cloth. If he missed his mother and litter-mates, he didn't show it that early evening.

  Luke came home first, after playing soccer.

  “Whose pup?” He was always abrupt.

  Luke had a good-boned face, like my mother, and straight, shining teeth, and didn't need to wear glasses.

  “Mine,” I answered in kind.

  “Who gave him to you?”

  “Mom and Dad.”

  “Why?” Luke should have been a lawyer.

  How should I know why? I often got exasperated with Luke, and he with me.

  “Because they wanted to.”

  “Hey, he's cute.”

  It didn't take a qualified genius to see that.

  Luke dropped down on his hands and knees, tussled the pup for a few minutes, and then went on into the house to take a shower.

  Then Stan came pumping up on his bike. He bagged groceries after school at the supermart over on Beverly.

  “When did you get the pup?” Being older than Luke, he was nicer than Luke.

  “This afternoon.”

  “Where'd it come from?”

  “Mom and Dad.”

  “It's not your birthday, is it?”

  “No.” I wouldn't be ten for another five months.

  Stan shrugged and then knelt down to play with “Nameless,” yelling and laughing when one of the sharp teeth clamped on his finger. Almost six feet tall, Stan always intimidated me, just by patting me on the head. He, too, had straight, shining teeth, and he got love notes from girls in junior high. I knew. I'd read them. Stan went on into the house.

  I stayed outside until darkness began to lower over the Santa Monica Mountains and the air became chill. Then I lifted the newest member of the Ogden family and pro-ceeded into the kitchen, somehow feeling different than when I'd awakened in the morning. I now owned some-thing that was living and breathing.

  My father had brought home formula food from the kennel, and after licking the bowl clean, the little dog, exhausted from the afternoon's events, found a place on the linoleum near the oven's side exhaust and went to sleep. On request from my mother, I awakened him immediately to take him outside for a squatting session. Then I put him down again by the oven.

  At dinner, the name game began once more.

  Stan, with his mouth full of squash, suggested I call him Friar Tuck, from Robin Hood.

  I looked over at Maid Marian's infant son, who'd just awakened. He didn't resemble Friar Tuck, who was old and fat.

  I said, “No.”

  “How about Mack, Junior? After his father?” my own father suggested.

  I don't like “junior” names, human or canine.

  Stan said, “Hah, hah, how about Mack Truck?”

  Luke, whose mouth was also full of food, as usual, said, “Call him Poopy. That's what he's doing now.”

  I looked over and jumped up from the table.

  By bedtime, the new canine member of the Ogden clan was officially christened Friar Tuck Golden Boy, after my mother pointed out that I didn't need to call him Friar unless I wanted to. Tuck, we all agreed, was a suitable and noble name, without getting fancy.

  After being awakened for his formal christening, he was soon asleep once more, this time in my old playpen, dragged out from the garage and carpeted with newspapers. The playpen was placed in my room, near my bed, and my father put a windup clock and a hot-water bottle in it for the prescribed ticking sound and warmth, although Tuck still hadn't yowled for Maid Marian.

  My mother, who was not one of those fussy nervous housekeepers but did jealously guard her rugs and furniture, made it plain that housebreaking would start the next day. But she had no objections about Tuck staying in my room.

  Just before I switched off the light, I said to my new roommate, who was showing a great talent for sleeping, “I'm so glad you're here.”

  Looking back, I see it was the start of a “new” me.

  4

  By the time Friar Tuck Golden Boy was three months old, he was completely housebroken, and the playpen had been put back into storage, awaiting chance visitors with babies or, way down the line, grandchildren.

  Because he'd become “civilized,” Tuck was now a per-manent night resident in my room, and although I main-tained to everyone that he slept strictly on my bedside rug, there wasn't a single night that I couldn't feel his weight at the end of my bed, often a cozy lump over my feet. He was my security in the darkness, my knight of the night.

  One black, scary hour, during a rare thunderstorm over Los Angeles, with lightning cracking and great rumbles of thunder shaking the house, I let him sneak under the covers with me. No, I won't lie. He was invited under many times, especially when I'd had a bad day. I know that many other people do this, and just ignore the fleas, as I did.

  Tuck had his bad days too. He made ribbons of an expensive Norwegian wool sweater that my mother had put out to dry in the shade. He also ripped out some of her best plants. But these are normal puppy happenings, and anyone with a right mind would understand them.

  By now, the Dudley pink was confirmed and had enlarged to cover about half of his nose, making it mottled black and pink. Though it wasn't a shocking pink, it was pinkish enough, and Tuck could never be entered in one of those ritzy dog shows and win ribbons. That bothered me not at all.

  Something else had been confirmed. That tiny smile I thought I'd seen on his face as a pup, like the smile of a baby with gas pains, was also enlarged and really there. A friendly human face approaching Tuck was rewarded with a genuine smile and sometimes a dancing of front paws.

  Soon we were a team, the dog with the Dudley nose and wide smile and dancing feet, and unglamorous me. I couldn't wait to come home from school each day, knowing that we'd go off somewhere together—often to the park, or to a friend's house, or just for a long walk around the blocks that bordered our own. During the school hours, when no one was at home, he stayed peacefully in our yard with the pestering doves, hemmed in by the fence. He hadn't learned to jump it yet.

  Already he'd begun to develop certain habits—sleeping in special places indoors and out; awakening me each morning in a special way, putting a paw against me and shoving. If I didn't respond, he'd go into the next room and arouse my mother. He had located the cookie jar in the kitchen and sat before it expectantly as soon as I came home from school. We'd each eat a cookie, and then off we'd go into the wide, wide world of fire hydrants and bushes.

  On coming back from the park, we'd usually stop by Ledbetter's, the independent grocery store in the small Rosemont Street shopping center near us. We'd visit Mr. Isoroku Ishihara, who had charge of the vegetable coun-ters that were rolled out to the sidewalks each day. Ledbetter's was known for its fresh fruits and vegetables, arranged like green and red and purple works of art in the bins. Mr. Ishihara, a small man with crisp gray shining hair and skin the color of polished walnuts, always had something nice to say about Friar Tuck.

  “My, how he's growing.”

  “He
's thirty pounds now.”

  “You must use a good shampoo on his coat, Helen. It gleams.”

  “I use my own.” My relationship with Tuck was always very personal.

  Mr. Ishihara would laugh and dig under his lettuce bin for a dog biscuit. He fed all the neighborhood hounds. His own pet was an old alley cat named Ichiban, which means Number One in Japanese.

  After visiting Ledbetter's, Tuck and I would continue on home, whistling the tune of the day. There was one L.A. station, KFWB, that always played the hits, and I'd listen almost every afternoon, sprawled out on my bedroom floor. Rock and roll was just coming in, as was Elvis Presley.

  At home, I often talked to Tuck, telling him things I'd never tell anyone else. Sometimes I read to him, but he usually frustrated me by going to sleep.

  I remember taking The Adventures of Robin Hood down from one of the long shelves in the den and reading to him Friar Tuck's first speech of the book, when King Richard came to Sherwood Forest:

  “ ‘Take care whom thou pushest against!’ cried a great, burly friar. ‘Wouldst thou dig thine elbows into me, sirrah? By'r Lady of the Fountain, if thou dost not treat me with more deference, I will crack thy knave's pate for thee …’” I paused.

  “That was you,” I said to my roommate, but he'd gone off to sleep, curled up like a bear cub.

  When Tuck was six months old and weighed upward of fifty pounds, whatever my mother and father had plotted must have been working because one night my father said, “You've certainly done wonders since you got that dog.”

  I was very pleased.

  Of course, I thought he was talking about all the training I'd been doing, how Tuck had learned to heel and stay and play catch. But that wasn't what my father was talking about at all, I soon learned.

  One afternoon, when we were alone, having lunch out after we'd gone shopping, my mother said, “Helen, you seem confident for the first time in your life. I can see it even in the way you walk.”

  “How did it happen to me?” I asked, really wondering how.

  She laughed. “Well, we think it's Tuck. We have no other explanation.”

  I hadn't thought about it. Yet it was all happening naturally. Yes, some chemical had mixed, thanks to Tuck, and I was blossoming at last, I guess. I could almost feel it. I was ten by now. The psychologist could go pound sand.

  Even Stan and Luke had something to say about it, though grudgingly. “She doesn't whistle half as much since she got that dog,” Stan said at the breakfast table.

  My mother sighed. “Can't you say something besides ‘she’? Helen is here at the table—in the flesh!”

  “Oh, Mom, her.” He pointed.

  Luke said, “Tuck takes her mind off her mouth.”

  I wanted to smack both of them but never had the courage to try.

  When Tuck was nine months old, just before school let out for the summer, I could see how he would look for the rest of his life. By then, he was powerfully built, with a wide chest and well-sprung ribs and loins that were heavy and solid. His hindquarters were muscular, and his legs straight from shoulder to ground, with heavy bones. His paws were compact and thickly padded, toes perfectly arched and hocks well bent. His dense short coat appeared to have been dipped in twenty-four-karat yellow gold.

  However, as much beauty as there was in his supple body, it was Tuck's head that caused people on the street to stop us and marvel. I felt so proud of him. He carried that massive head, even as a young dog, with the air of a lion. And his tail never drooped. It was always up, like a yellow flag.

  There's another picture up on my childhood wall. My father shot that one at the beach when Tuck was ten months old. I'd thrown a ball, and Tuck was photo-graphed leaping straight up in the air, catching it, all four feet off the ground, like one of those circus dogs, though I never taught Tuck to do tricks. That was below his dignity.

  He did his own tricks, anyway. About that time, Tuck began to steal things from me and hide them. A shoe. A sock. A belt.

  At the clinic for Tuck's rabies shot, I asked Dr. Tobin why he was doing it. The doctor laughed and said, “Because he loves you. He only has so many ways to show you. Taking your things to keep near him is one of the ways.”

  Stealing? I forgave him.

  In September, when Tuck was one year old, he showed his devotion in another way, and I became indebted to him for life.

  We went along to the park one late foggy morning, and as usual I let him off the leash just as we reached the wide entrance. Montclair Park, which covers almost five hun-dred acres, with a small lake in the center, has many shade trees, and I'm sure Tuck managed to lift his leg to most of them at one time or another.

  I was always content simply to walk along behind him wherever he went. Usually he'd look back every now and then to see that I was still there. I never had any worry about him running away, though he was becoming more and more independent when I wasn't around. He could easily leap our backyard fence now.

  But on this particular morning, the fog was very heavy, and I soon lost sight of Tuck, who was busily going from bush to tree. One thing I knew was that he could always find me.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared a slim man in a light blue jacket, khaki pants, and a baseball cap. He smiled at me and said, “Hi, little girl.”

  My heart began to thump.

  I didn't see anyone else around. In good weather, there were always older people sitting on the benches or sprawled out on the grass, reading or talking. Kids went through the park on bikes. Mothers pushed baby strollers along the walks. Often, there were workmen around, trimming the bushes or cutting the grass or emptying trash.

  Today, not a soul.

  I didn't like the way this man was looking at me, either, with a funny wet grin on his narrow face. His eyes were bright—too bright. I'll never forget his thin face. It was like a wedge.

  He asked, “Where ya goin’?”

  Not answering him, I started to walk very fast, and he followed, into the dense fog.

  Starting to run, I heard him running behind me, through the swirling mist. I desperately yelled for Tuck. No sooner did I do that than the man caught up with me, grabbed me, and put a hand over my mouth.

  I remember that I tried to pull his hand away by jerking at his wrist, but he had me tight around the neck in the crook of his arm, as well as around the waist. I was helpless, and he seemed to drop to one knee. He ripped at my dress.

  At that moment, there was a roar and an explosion of gold that jarred me loose from his arms.

  Tuck had hit the man from behind, leaping on his back, jaws wide.

  There was a wild tangle, and the man screamed, trying to push the big dog away. With Tuck snarling and biting and the man screaming, the sound was terrible, and I crawled off, feeling sick.

  All of it stopping as suddenly as it had begun, Tuck soon came over to me, flecks of blood around his nose and in the yellow hair on his chest. I saw the man get up and run off into the mist, bent over, holding his shoulder and neck. He wasn't moaning or anything. His base-ball cap was still on the ground.

  Then I stood up, shaking all over, my heart still thudding, and hooked the leash into the ring on Tuck's collar, and we hurried out of the park. I was not whistling.

  I knew what had almost happened to me, knew what that man had intended to do, and Tuck was a hero around our house that night and forever after.

  Thankfully, I never saw the man in the blue jacket and khaki pants in Montclair Park again.

  5

  If there was ever any doubt whatsoever about the special status of Friar Tuck Golden Boy at 911 West Chelten-ham, no matter what he did or didn't do, the doubt was removed the following summer when Tuck was nearly two years old.

  On a July morning, with the temperature climbing toward a hundred, I went to Steffie Pyle's house about a half mile away, to swim and just goof around. Though I'd joined Stan and Luke and my mother in campaigning for a pool, regretfully there was none in our backyard, so Steffie invite
d me over regularly during the summer and early fall.

  Both the same age and suffering from equal injustices of nature, we'd been good friends for a long time. Steffie was also cursed with silver braces on her teeth and glasses on her nose. She had even more freckles than I did, and where I was skinny she tended toward fat. We sometimes compared notes and wondered how we could have such pretty mothers and still look as though we came from the zoo. Maybe our fathers had done it to us.

  Steff's father had been on the diving team in college, and the board at their pool had a lot of spring. It was fun to jump up and down on it, get tossed high into the air, then do a bottom-buster into the water.

  I was doing just that, springing maybe three or four feet into the air, trying to go even higher, when I lost my balance, missing the end of the board with my feet but hitting the back of my head on it. Everything went black.

  What happened right after that was told, and retold, first by Mrs. Pyle, then by Steff, then by a lot of other people, and finally by the costar of it all—me.

  When she saw me go underwater and not come up, Steff seemed to be paralyzed except for her vocal chords, which was fortunate. She could see me down on the blue pool bottom, looking asleep or dead, but somehow poor Steff couldn't move. She was a frozen ninny there by the pool, just screaming.

  According to Mrs. Pyle, who was in an upstairs bedroom when it all happened, she heard this high, long insane scream, an “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” as if Steff had caught her thumb in a car door. When Mrs. Pyle heard it, knowing we were at the pool, she ran down the steps, through the dining room and kitchen, and out the door.

  But by that time a smart dog named F. T. Golden Boy had already dived into the water, swum down to the bottom, put his jaws around my upper left arm, and paddled to the surface.

  Mrs. Pyle jumped into the water with all her clothes on and relieved Tuck of his unconscious burden—me.