Guinea Dog 3 by Patrick Jennings

Author:Patrick Jennings [Jennings, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60684-555-4
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Published: 2014-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

16. 2 guys + 2 dogs + 1 skiff = fun x 5 trillion.

Especially when the guys are Murphy and me and the dogs are Buddy and Fido.

Lurena stays with Pablo.

“I couldn’t get rid of her,” I say to Murph as I row. “She just sticks to me like glue. Like barnacles, more like. Lurena’s a barnacle.”

Murph laughs. “I’ll get her to come out in the skiff with me. She can even bring her cages. The more the—”

“It isn’t merrier to me to have Lurena around. It isn’t even merry. But I’m sure you’ll have a merry voyage with her and her rodents.”

He laughs again. I don’t know what he finds funny, but his laughing makes me laugh, too. He has that effect on people. It’s hard to stay grouchy around him, even when you want to.

He lies back, his arms bent at the elbows, his hands in the water.

“Ahhhhh!” he says. “This is the life, ain’t it, Tom?”

“It ain’t bad, Huck,” I answer. I read the book Tom Sawyer this year after Murph recommended it. He’s like Pablo: he likes old books. The characters in the book spoke funny, but I got used to it.

“We should just drift away forever,” he says. “Drift all the way downriver to Jamaica and lay in the sun all day, eating coconuts.”

“Sounds like heaven, Huck,” I say. “But this here’s a lake, not a river.”

“Well, it ain’t bad here, neither.”

“No, it ain’t.”

“Paddle us ’round the lake a couple times, will you, Tom? That’d be ever so kind of you.”

“It’d be my pleasure, Huckleberry.”

“Let me know if you spot any alligators or snappy turtles, and I’ll help you wrassle ’em.”

“Will do. Say, Huck, ain’t those ducks over there poisonous?”

Murph once tried to persuade me that a flock of poisonous ducks had landed in our town. I didn’t believe him, but I did go to our local lake with him, just to check. There were ducks on it, but they weren’t poisonous.

Murph sits up, shades his eyes. “Where, Tom?”

I point to a flock of ducks floating off, starboard side.

Fido, who’d been curled up in the hull with Buddy, napping, perks up. She rushes up onto my lap, sets her paws on the gunwale, barks, then dives into the lake and starts swimming in the direction of the ducks. The ducks quack and scatter.

“That’s a fine bird dog you got there, Tom.”

“Thanks, Huck.”

Buddy, seeing Fido jump overboard, gets to her feet and growls.

“Easy there, girl,” Huck … I mean Murphy … says. “Don’t rock the boat now …”

But Buddy does rock the boat. She rises up on her hind legs, sets her forepaws on the gunwale, and woofs a big woof. What a dog! Then her hind legs start scrambling around the hull, trying to find a foothold, and the boat starts rocking. Before Murph can tell her to sit, her paws slip off the gunwale, she falls hard onto her chest, the boat tips, Murph and I fall over sideways, and we capsize. The boat lands upside down over us.

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