Raising Rufus (13 page)

“You can come out now,” Audrey called, and Mr. Eckhart, who had been hiding behind a tree at the edge of the woods, stepped forward.

“Okay, Peter,” he said to himself as he approached stiffly. “You can wake up any old time now. Any…old…time.”

“What should we do?” Audrey asked.

“Do?…Oh. Do. Um…okay. First, everybody just stay calm, and don't panic. What am I talking about?
I'm
panicking.” He tried to peek through the crack between the barn doors. “Lord almighty! This is the…the greatest find in the
history
of—”

“Please, we have to get him out of here!” Martin almost shouted. “People are gonna come!”

“Okay. All right. Just give me a second here.” Mr. Eckhart paced around, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing the back of his neck, repeatedly blowing out big gusts of air. Finally, he stepped up to Audrey. “Okay! Here's the deal. Give me the pictures.”

She pulled the folded-up photos from her back pocket and handed them to him.

“Okay,” he said, still a bit breathlessly. “Now, uh…what?” Martin and Audrey resisted the urge to roll their eyes, and Mr. Eckhart seemed to pick up on their impatience. “Okay!” he said, decisively. “I'll run these over to the U and talk to some people. Assuming they don't lock me up in a rubber room, maybe I can arrange something. Think you can hold out here for a while?”

“I guess so,” said Martin.

“Super. Super-duper.”

Mr. Eckhart started on his way, then turned back to shake each of their hands. He seemed to want to say something, but no words came out. He looked like a little kid at Christmas.

Finally, he turned and hustled off across the yard, emitting an exhilarated little
whoop!
along the way.

Martin and Audrey just stood there, wondering what to do next. He was feeling a bit uneasy, but it was a relief that at least they'd taken a first step.

“I've gotta get home,” Audrey said. “Jade's gonna have a fit.”

“I'll walk you.”

They barely said a word to each other on the way to her house. But Martin knew she was thinking the same thing he was: one way or the other, their world was about to change.

M
artin took his time on the way back to his house. He was afraid of what might be going on there now, or would be soon, and he didn't want to face it just yet. So he walked really slowly, took a detour on Craig Street, and stopped in Hauser Park to watch a line of ants snaking their way up a tree trunk.

Then he saw a police car drive by. He wasn't sure, but the driver looked a lot like Sheriff Grimes—and sitting next to him was a kid who looked a whole
heck
of a lot like Donald. And they were heading straight toward the Tinkers' house.

As though hurled out of a giant slingshot, Martin took off after them. He knew there wasn't much chance of catching up to them, and he had no idea what he would do if he did anyway, but he somehow knew he had to get home
fast.

It was a good four blocks of running, and by the time he got near his house he was plenty winded. He could see the squad car parked on the street in front, and Sheriff Grimes was headed up the walk to the front door.

Martin felt like maybe he should yell or something to distract him, but right then his mom's car appeared from the other direction and pulled into the driveway. He stood and watched from a neighbor's yard, panting like an overheated St. Bernard, as she got out and headed toward the front steps. Sheriff Grimes greeted her there, and they exchanged a few words. Martin couldn't hear what they were saying, but even though the sheriff looked calm and friendly, Mrs. Tinker definitely seemed concerned by what he was telling her. Finally, she opened the door, and they went in the house.

Martin stood there for a few seconds, wondering what to do next. Then he noticed that the squad car seemed to be empty. He stepped over and peeked in the back window, then the front. Suddenly, Donald's head popped up from below.

“Agh!”
they both shouted at the same time.

“What are you doing here?” Martin snapped. “What did you tell him?”

“What do you think? You're a crazy freak with a giant tricycle tops!”

“He's a tyrann— Never
mind…
”

His heart sinking fast, Martin looked over at the house. Through the window, he could see Sheriff Grimes trying to explain something to his mom, who was looking back at him as though he had just stepped out of a Martian landing craft. She gestured for him to wait there, and went out into the kitchen.

Martin knew where she was going: out to the barn to look for him.

“I'd run if I were you,” Donald croaked. “You're in deep doo-doo now, Huckleberry.” He slid back down out of view. Martin had no idea what he was hiding from, but right now he couldn't dwell on how much of an idiot Donald was.

He saw a pickup truck approaching, and recognized it right away. His dad! Martin ducked behind a tree and peeked around as the truck pulled in the driveway and parked behind his mom's car. Sheriff Grimes opened the front door of the house and called to Mr. Tinker as he got out and headed up the walk.

“Hey there, Gordo!”

“What's the rap, Frank? I paid my taxes.” Unlike Mrs. Tinker, he didn't seem all that concerned to see the sheriff in his house.

“No big deal, my friend. Just checking something out here, eh?”

Once they had gone inside, Martin emerged from behind the tree. But he still had no plan. All the ideas that came into his head were bad ones. He looked over at the police car and saw the top half of Donald's prickly head peeking nervously out the window toward the house.

Deciding he needed to act now and think it through later, Martin took off around the side of the house, heading straight for the backyard. Maybe, by some miracle, he could still get Rufus out of the barn cellar before they discovered him.

As he was about to pass by an open living room window, he heard his dad and the sheriff talking inside. Ducking down to stay out of view, he stopped to listen.

Mr. Tinker laughed. “You can't be serious.”

“Yeah, yeah, you know how kids are,” said Sheriff Grimes. “Probably just some goofball prank. I'm just doing my job, eh?”

“Marty's a bit of a square peg, I'll give you that. But that'd be way out in left field, even for him.”

He laughed again, which might have bugged Martin at another time, but right now he barely gave it a thought. He continued along the side of the house to the gate leading into the backyard—and froze when he looked across to the far end of the yard and saw his mom coming out of the barn workshop, through the side door.

She didn't look especially rattled; obviously she hadn't ventured around to the far end and seen the cinder blocks piled in front of the lower-level doors. So, figuring there was still a shot at keeping her in the dark, he raced toward her.

“Mom! Hi!” he called in a chipper voice. “Looking for me?”

“Martin, what is going on with you and the Grimes boy?”

She didn't sound the least bit chipper.

“Grimes?”

“He told the sheriff you had—”

With his usual terrible timing, Rufus poked his head right up to a cellar window. Martin's mom caught a tiny glimpse as he dropped back out of view.

“What have you got down there?” She went over to the window and stooped down, trying to see inside. “Martin, are you keeping an animal in there?” Her face was practically right up against the glass.

“Animal? Well, um…well, if by ‘animal' you mean, like—”

Suddenly, Rufus appeared again, right on the other side of the glass from Mrs. Tinker's face. A thick pink tongue shot out between two rows of glistening teeth and slapped right against the pane, just an inch and a half from her nose.

With a monstrous gasp, she launched herself backward, landing flat on her butt.

Martin sucked in a lungful of air, his hands flying to the top of his head. “Ohhhhhhh, wow…”

His mom scrambled back on all fours like a panicked crab, emitting terrified little grunts. She seemed to want to scream, but her vocal cords must have seized up like a twisted garden hose, because nothing came out.

With quick little hops from one foot to the other, Martin started talking, hoping for the best. “Okay, he's kinda big, he looks scary and all, but he's really just a big puppy dog, y'know, this big, nice…nice, um…Mom?…Mom, wait!”

She had managed to find her feet and was running toward the house.

Martin looked over at the cellar window. “Rufus!” he growled through gritted teeth.

With nothing to guide him now but desperation, he ran around the corner to the back of the barn, slipping and sliding down the slope to the lower-level doors, and yanked away a cinder block. Maybe they could just make a break for it into the woods. But before he could pick up a second block, he heard the agitated voices of his dad, his mom, and the sheriff approaching fast from the house.

Ditching the quick-escape plan, Martin clambered back up the slope and raced around to the side door leading into his lab. As he rushed in and sprinted across the barn floor toward the trapdoor, he could hear the three of them arriving outside.

“Annie,
what
is going
on
?” said the sheriff.

“In there!” she rasped. “In there in there!”

“What!”
said Mr. Tinker.

Martin threw open the trapdoor and dropped down to the cellar floor in three quick bounds, skipping over most of the steps. He spotted Rufus in a corner and rushed over, throwing his arms protectively around as much of the big guy as he could hold.

Just above them, Sheriff Grimes's face appeared in a recessed window. He squinted. “What am I looking for?”

“Just look!” Mrs. Tinker squawked from behind him.

Rufus tensed up, and Martin held on tight, whispering urgently but reassuringly.

“We're gonna keep calm now, okay? It might get a little crazy, but we'll make it through if you just stay cool, all right? You can do that,
right
?”

“Ah geez, who put these…” It was his dad's voice, and it sounded somehow closer than the others. Martin froze, listening, trying to figure out what was going on out there.

It was strangely silent—all he could hear was the deep huffing of Rufus's breath. Then there was a faint
thunk
outside. Then came another, then another. The cinder blocks! His dad was tossing them away from the lower doors.

Martin jumped up.

His mom had apparently heard the same sound. “Oh, no…. Oh, no!” he heard her yell, running around from the side to the back of the barn. “No, Gordy! Don't open it!”

“Huh?”

A crack of light appeared between the doors, and in a flash, Rufus bounded across the room.

“Rufus, no!” Martin exclaimed in a whisper-shout.

Bam!
The burly dino crashed into the doors, knocking them partway open.

“Jumping catfish!” Sheriff Grimes blurted out, and through the narrow opening Martin could see his parents and the sheriff leap back from the doors like startled house cats. Mrs. Tinker let out a terrified howl and ran in the other direction.

“What in the bloody blazes is
that
?” Martin's dad shouted as Rufus kept banging against the doors, trying to bull his way through the crack, teeth-first.

There were just a few cinder blocks left at the base of the doors keeping him from pushing all the way through to freedom. But they were inching forward under his repeated charges.
Bam!…Bam!

Martin leaped over and wrapped himself around Rufus's tail, trying to pull him back. But Rufus was too big, too strong, and too determined to get out to pay any attention to him at all.

The doors kept inching open. Martin could see his dad through the crack, standing there with an otherworldly expression on his face, while his mom watched from way back, her eyes like full moons. “Stay back, Ann,” he said urgently. “Go in the house.”

“Right, let's go,” she said, edging away. “Gordy, Frank, come on!”

The two men just stood there, frozen, like they had no clue which way to go.

Then, suddenly, Mr. Tinker lowered his shoulder and hurled himself right at the double doors.
Wham!
He pushed against Rufus with everything he had, trying to get the door shut again.

The shock of being abruptly knocked back set something off in Rufus, and he pushed back angrily, teeth snapping and claws slashing through the opening, growling like a junkyard Rottweiler.

Mrs. Tinker was aghast. “Gordy, no! Just run!”

“You gonna help me out here, Frank?” Mr. Tinker barked at the sheriff, who snapped out of his stupor and jumped in to help. The two of them pushed as hard as they could, while doing their best to avoid those flying claws and teeth.

In the scuffle, Rufus's tail jerked hard and Martin got tossed into a pile of cardboard boxes. As he watched the struggle, he realized he hadn't ever seen his big pet quite so riled up, and for the first time he wondered if maybe there was something more to
Rufus—something
more dangerous—than he'd realized before. He had never felt so helpless in his life.

Finally, Mr. Tinker and the sheriff succeeded in getting Rufus back in and shutting the doors. Rufus kept growling and banging, but Martin could hear the cinder blocks getting stacked quickly back in place until the barrier was secure again.

Martin clambered out of the boxes and tried to grab hold of Rufus. “Shhhhh! Easy! Easy!” But Rufus was still all worked up, and in no mood to be comforted. Martin rushed over and put his ear up against the double doors.

He could hear his dad and the sheriff trying to catch their breath.

“Gordon,” Sheriff Grimes said matter-of-factly, “if I was actually awake just now, and not in the middle of some whacked-out dream, I would say you've got a dinosaur in your barn.”

“Don't be dense, Frank. Dinosaurs are extinct.”

“Yeah? Then what would
you
call that thing?”

There was an excruciating silence. Martin bit down hard, fearing the worst was about to come. Then he heard his dad walking away, back toward the house.