Read 18th Emergency for Free Online Page B

people, a hundred and eighteen of them, lifting his father and bearing him down the street with such speed that his father appeared to be on roller skates. His father got out of a lot of tight places that way, and the puzzlement of his father’s dream enemies as he slipped past them in this manner never failed to delight Mouse.
    Now that Mouse was older and had dreams of his own to remember, he thought that the dreams of the little people were just stories his father had made up to amuse him. Still, he wouldn’t mind right now, as big as he was, hearing another of those little people dreams.
    His mother returned with the thermometer and he said, “There are lots of illnesses that you don’t have fever with, Mom. Didn’t you ever hear of food poisoning?”
    “Put this in your mouth.”
    He had known it was hopeless, but he had kept the thermometer in his mouth, rubbing it with his tongue just in case the friction might somehow cause the mercury to rise.
    His mother waited by the table. Then she removed the thermometer and looked at it. “Normal. Get your books and go to school.”
    “Mom, I am sick.”
    “Go.”
    Slowly Mouse left the apartment and walked in the direction of school. He knew that he would have to be very late in order to miss Marv Hammerman, because Hammerman never went into the school until the last possible minute. He just lounged outside with his friends.
    The street was empty except for two ladies talking, and Garbage Dog who was standing by the ladies looking up at them. There was the faint aroma of bacon grease about one of the ladies. “Go on,” one of the ladies said, kicking at him.
    Garbage Dog moved back a few steps and continued to stand watching them. On his short legs he appeared to be lying down. Mouse remembered that he had once measured Garbage Dog’s legs as part of an arithmetic assignment about learning to use the ruler. Each student had had to measure ten things, and the first thing Mouse had measured was Garbage Dog’s legs. They were not quite three inches long.
    It had been an impressive way to start out the list of things he had measured. Garbage Dog’s legs—two and seven-eighths inches.
    At least half the people in the class had not believed that figure. “Hey, no dog’s got legs that short,” one boy had cried.
    “This one does.”
    “Two and seven-eighths inches?”
    “Yes, two and seven-eighths inches.”
    “That’s just that long.”
    “I know. Listen, I can bring this dog to class if you want me to, Miss Regent. I can catch him and we can—”
    “No, Benjie,” Miss Regent had said quickly, “I don’t think that will be necessary. Some dogs do have very short legs.”
    “But two and seven-eighths inches!” the boy had cried again, holding up his paper ruler. “That’s just that long.”
    Mouse knelt and scratched Garbage Dog behind the ears. He must have hit the spot where it really itched, because Garbage Dog leaned back, his nose pointing to the sky, and started making a moaning noise.
    “That feel good?” It was surprising, Mouse thought, that a dog like this who had never known soap or flea powder could smell so nice and fresh. It was a kind of dairy and dry leaves smell. “There? Is that where it itches?”
    The quiet of the street made Mouse think he was late enough. “I better go.” Still kneeling, he took out his pencil, wrote SCRATCH ME on a smooth spot on the sidewalk and drew a little arrow to Garbage Dog. Then he rose.
    As he walked, Hammerman came back into his mind. It seemed to Mouse that everything, everybody, had suddenly shrunk in importance, making Marv Hammerman a giant. Hammerman towered over the street in Mouse’s mind so that the buildings were toys around his ankles, and the pigeons that roosted on the roofs flew around Hammerman’s knees.
    Mouse walked slower and when he got to the school, it was deserted. The late bell was ringing. Mouse took the steps two at a time and then ran down the hall to his