Elvis and the Underdogs (12 page)

“You gotta keep him quiet,” Dino said. “We can't get caught walking around down here. It's bad enough we're down here, but having a dog down here would be worse. Why is he making so much noise?”

“I don't know, but let's hope it's not because he sees dead people.” I chuckled nervously at my own joke and petted Elvis like he suggested. His fur was silky smooth, and I had to admit it was working. I felt calmer. I also realized that where I heard Elvis talking, other people seemed to hear him barking or whining.

We walked into a large main room filled with steel drawers like you see on cop shows when they have to go to the morgue. The room was empty, but there were lots of long silver tables. There was also a half-eaten tray of food on one of the tables.

“Ew, if I worked in a morgue, I don't think I'd be bringing my tray back here to eat. Gross.”

“So, now that we're here, is there anything you want to do?” Dino asked.

“Do? Like what are my options?”

“I don't know. I figure kids are into creepy things. We could look at a dead body. We could guess which drawers are empty and which ones are full and then open them to see who was right. We could use a Sharpie and you can sign underneath one of these tables and say that Benji Barnsworth was here . . . but not dead.”

Dino's ideas were all interesting, but I wasn't sure if any were exactly right. I was pretty excited to be in the morgue. I was much less excited at the thought of seeing a real dead body. The smell down here alone was already starting to make me a little queasy. It smelled like a fake smell that people spray so that it won't smell like actual dead people.

Elvis walked over, cocked his head to one side, and stared at me hard.

“Sorry, but I'm trying to think of something to do down here. It's not every day I get to see a morgue. Who knows when I'll ever be in a morgue again? I mean, when I'm alive and can actually enjoy it a little.”

“I'm pretty sure that morgues are not on anyone's top ten lists of fun times, so I think this is pretty much as good as it gets. Seen it, done it, let's go,” said Elvis.

He was right about the morgue. All the cool things in a morgue probably involved seeing or touching a dead person, and if I did that now when I was ten, what would I have to look forward to when I was older? I decided that it'd be cool to get a picture of myself down here. Dino told me to hop on up on a table, and he'd take a picture of me playing dead. Now why didn't I think of that brilliant idea?

Dino picked me up and sat me down on a table, which was really cold, by the way, and I played dead. This was going to be the coolest picture ever. Dino took a few, and then I had a brainstorm. I asked Dino if he'd take a few pictures of me and Elvis together.

“Elvis, you get up on this table next to me and play dead too.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“Please.”

“Benjamin, I'm working. Remember our little talk? You apparently have the memory of a fruit fly. I don't like to play games when I'm working, and if I were going to play one, it wouldn't be playing dead.”

“I'm playing dead too. It's not like I'm asking you to do anything that I'm not doing. C'mon, it'll be fun, just try it. Hey, Dino, get the camera ready.”

“Yo, Benji, maybe he doesn't want to do it. And this table is probably too high for him to jump on, and I'm big and strong, but I'm not sure I'm big and strong enough to lift a two-thousand-pound dog onto a table. It isn't so easy for us big guys to . . .”

This next part I'm going to tell you like it happened in slow motion, even though it didn't. But if this were a movie, this part would definitely be in slow motion, because you'd have to see it that way to believe it.

I hadn't known Elvis all that long, but from what I gathered about his personality, all he had to do was hear someone say that he couldn't do something, like jump up onto an exam table in a morgue, and suddenly there was nothing stopping him from doing it. What I admire is that he's a dog of action and not of words. It's not like he got all flustered and was all, how dare you, and you take that back, and you did not just say that. Nope, Elvis calmly trotted in the other direction, paused, and then ran.

Here's the thing about massive dogs. They run faster than you think, and it's amazing to see all that hair flying. As my mom would say, it's like he was in a dog shampoo commercial. Now, the only thing even more amazing than seeing a dog that big run is seeing a dog that big jump. It's like watching a jumbo 747 plane take off. You just can't imagine that giant hunk of metal flying. With Elvis, when he sprang off his back paws, my brain went into overdrive. I thought, There's no way that giant hunk o' dog is gonna get in the air, but he did. He leaped up. Let me say this, these tables are at least four and a half feet tall. I needed Dino to boost me up onto it, because it was too tall and my arms are too weak. So seeing a dog jump that high was crazy cool.

Our mouths dropped open as he went up in the air. And it was even more dramatic for me, because it almost looked like he was going to land on top of me (which would definitely have crushed me and put me in a morgue drawer for real).

Now here's the catch. These tables were on wheels. And the wheels weren't locked when Elvis landed on the table. The force of a two-hundred-pound dog landing on a table with wheels after a running start propelled the table across the room like a runaway freight train. Dino and I screamed. And a split second later the table slammed into the far wall with a huge crash with Elvis on it. Somehow he still managed to stay on. Dino grabbed me off my table and ran over to check on Elvis.

“Holy moly! That was the most awesome thing I've ever seen! Are you okay?”

Elvis didn't reply. He just rolled onto his back, put his legs up in the air, and flopped his tongue out the side of his mouth, playing dead like a champ. Seriously, I don't think Tom Cruise could have done it any better himself. (My dad is a big Tom Cruise fan. I've seen
Top Gun
with him at least three times, and he's seen it at least ten more times than that. I'm also a big fan of
Mission Impossible
.)

Dino and I howled. We laughed so long and so hard my stomach hurt. It was the funniest thing ever. Dino took a bunch of pictures, and then he showed me what a toe tag is, which is sort of like the little ID tag with your name on it that you put on your backpack. Apparently, when you die, they put a tag like that on your toe so they don't lose you. We found some in a drawer and hung one on Elvis's back paw. The entire time he just lay there and played dead, and after a few minutes I got a little worried.

“You are playing, right?” I whispered.

His tail wagged a little for yes, but he didn't break from his acting scene. He even let me squeeze up on the table next to him, and we both played dead together, though I will say his “dead dog” looked far more impressive than my “dead Benji” pose.

As fun as it was to pose for the pictures, they were even funnier to look at. I begged Dino to make me some copies, but he told me that it was best to delete them all.

“What? But why?”

“Little dude, you may not understand this yet, but you have to trust me. I'm a thousand percent sure you do not want to tell your mom I took you to visit the morgue if you ever want to see me alive again. She would not approve, at all. And because of this, we need to get rid of all the evidence that we were ever down here. Besides, I'm pretty sure we broke all sorts of rules, and if it got back to the head of the hospital that a dog was down here, well, let's just say I could end up with a tag on my toe for real. Understand?”

“I guess so. But couldn't we just keep one or two?”

“Nope. I've learned that some things are best left as good memories. I don't want to lose my phone and have these pictures end up on the national nightly news.”

“But you'd be famous.”

“Maybe so, but I'd rather be famous for something cool I do as opposed to being murdered by your mom. I'm just saying, you never know what could happen. And it's better for all of us that we just enjoy them and then get rid of the evidence. Trust me. Okay?”

“But these are the first pictures I ever took with Elvis.”

“And where's he going? You can take more pictures with him later. C'mon, it's not like your mom won't be taking a million pictures of you and your new giant dog.”

“True.” Dino has actually seen quite a few of my mom's scrapbooks about me. His favorite series of pictures is “Benji's First Time Canoeing,” which shows me getting into a canoe, trying to paddle a canoe, losing the first paddle, losing the back-up paddle, trying to reach the paddle, and then finally flipping over the canoe. So there was no doubt there would soon be a leather-bound book labeled “Benji's First Dog.”

Besides, the last thing I wanted was for Dino to get in trouble because of me, and as I was having the best day of my entire life, I didn't want something bad to happen later to ruin the memory. We looked at every single picture one more time, and then he deleted them one by one.

I'm telling you, it was hands down the absolute most fun I've ever had in a morgue. Ever. When I got back to my room, I had a hard time falling asleep, mainly because the day had been so full of strange and wonderful things.

“Why aren't you asleep?” Elvis asked me.

It had become weirdly normal to hear a dog talk, but it's not so normal to hear a dog trying to whisper.

“How do you know I'm not asleep?”

“I can tell by your breathing, first off, and secondly you just confirmed it by answering my question.”

“I don't know—why aren't you asleep?”

“I don't know, but I could sleep if I wanted to sleep. I was waiting for you to fall asleep. And I was thinking about Taisy.”

“What about her?”

“Just that she reminds me of the daughter of Action Jaxin, my favorite trainer on the farm.”

“Are you talking about Lola Beth, the girl who was born premature like me?”

Elvis was surprised that I remembered her, but I explained I didn't know much, only that Dr. Helen saved her life when she was a baby the same way she saved mine. Elvis said that Lola Beth had some learning disabilities and had a very hard time learning to read. One of her therapists suggested she should try reading to a dog, because that would offer her a sense of purpose but at the same time she didn't have to worry about the dog judging her if she made any mistakes.

“I consider myself really lucky that out of the one hundred or so dogs on the farm, she picked me. It was great. Sometimes she'd fall asleep at night reading to me, so I got to sleep on her bed instead of going back out to the barn to sleep in my pen. She's the reason I know so much, because once she got better at reading, she wanted to read anything and everything. Anyway, Taisy and Lola Beth have a lot in common. They're both warm and sweet. But Taisy is much, much taller.”

“Taisy is much much taller than everyone,” I responded.

“Yeah, I like her. It makes sense that she's related to Dino. They're both so friendly. Technically, I'm not supposed to let anyone hug, pet, kiss, or baby-talk me when I'm working, but . . .”

“But she's so irresistible, you kind of can't help it?”

“Yes, that seems to be the issue at hand.”

“Well, seeing that you're not technically even my dog, then while you're here helping me out temporarily, I think we could let some things slide.”

“How kind of you. But I want you to understand I have all the training of a regular service dog, so you can fully count on me in the event of an emergency.”

“You mean to say if the school was on fire, you'd make sure to rescue me?”

“Absolutely. Right after I rescued Taisy.”

I burst out laughing. Elvis had finally made a joke. Well, he finally made a funny joke. “Good one, Elvis. Look, I like Taisy too. But I don't know her very well.”

“Isn't she in your class?”

“There are a lot of kids in my class. She's sporty, and if you haven't figured it out, I'm the opposite of sporty. And usually kids hang around other kids who are like them. Also, when you met her, she was totally different than she is at school. She's really intense in school. Everyone high-fives her in the hallways, even the teachers.”

“Well, she didn't seem surprised to see you in the waiting room.”

“Well, that's just because everyone at school knows that I'm in the hospital a lot.”

“How do they know that?”

I didn't really feel like getting into it, but I told him that I'm absent a lot for being sick, and when Ms. Blaine takes attendance and she calls out my name and I don't answer, you kind of can't help but notice. I also told him a little about my “episode” at school. The twins told me that even the junior high kids in their building were talking about it. It's not every day an ambulance shows up with flashing lights and a siren at our school.

“I'm really worried a video of it will appear on YouTube.”

“Well, if it's not there now, it probably won't show up.”

“That's not necessarily true. Someone might have caught it on video, but they didn't post it. If there's a video, I'm pretty sure Billy Thompson will track it down and post it if he can.”

“Billy Thompson? Who is that?”

“Oh, just this kid in school that I hate.”

“Benji, it's not proper to hate people.”

“Fine, he's a kid at school who is the bane of my existence and who I intensely dislike so much it makes my stomach hurt.”

“Okay, that's much better, and nice usage of the vocabulary word ‘bane.' But I wouldn't lose any sleep over this Billy person posting anything on the internet. There's no sense in worrying about things you can't control. Besides, you have a lot of people looking out for you, and if he does something improper like that, I'm sure your Mom will take care of it straight away, which means he's the one who should really be worried. I pride myself on being afraid of very little, but your Mom even makes me a little nervous.”