Slim dug his hands into his pockets and looked up at the gray sky. “You reckon you could handle the feed run today so’s I can go into town and do a little last-minute shoppin’?”

  “Oh . . . I guess. ’Tis the season to be jolly and so forth.”

  Slim rocked up and down on his toes and kept looking up at the sky. “Well, that sure would be nice. It would be nicer yet if I had a little money to spend.”

  “Yeah, that money sure helps.”

  “Do you reckon . . . I thought maybe . . .”

  Loper grinned. “Oh. You don’t want a paycheck or anything, do you?”

  “Well . . .”

  Loper stuck two fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of green paper, folded in half. He handed it to Slim. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Just then, the front door opened and out came Little Alfred, Sally May and Loper’s four-year-old boy. He was all dressed up in his red chaps and vest to match, a big felt hat, and a new pair of four-buckle galoshes over his boots.

  All at once Loper’s eyes lit up, and he turned back to Slim. “Say, I’ve got a deal for you, Slim. Why don’t you take that boy with you and let him see the Sandy Clothes parade?”

  (There’s that name again.)

  Old Slim’s mouth dropped a couple of inches. “Well uh . . .”

  “He’s all dressed and ready to go. He won’t be any trouble.”

  “Well uh . . .”

  “He sure wants to go, but with me having to do all the feeding and everything . . .”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “I’d do your chores tonight, of course.”

  “Well, that might . . .”

  “And tomorrow, too.”

  “Tomorrow too, huh?”

  “He sure had his heart set on seeing that parade.”

  “I’ll bet he did. Oh, I reckon . . .”

  “Good deal!” Loper turned to the boy. “Alfred, Slim’s volunteered to take you into town to see the big parade. What do you think of that?”

  Alfred’s face blossomed into a smile and he let out a yell. Slim looked down at me and muttered, “This ain’t exactly what I had in mind for my day off.”

  Little Alfred raced down the sidewalk, flew out the gate, and stood at the door of Slim’s pickup. The boy was ready to go to town.

  Loper was all smiles. “Slim, you sure know how to make a boy happy.”

  “Yalp.”

  “Make him mind his manners.”

  “Yalp.”

  “See you around dark?”

  “If we ain’t in jail by then.”

  “Y’all have a big time.” Loper turned to go back into the house, but then he stopped and scowled into the palm of his hand. “How did this present get so wet?”

  “Snow, most likely.”

  Loper wiped his hand on his jeans and went back into the house.

  Chapter Three: A Head-On Collision

  Slim stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets and wandered out the gate to the pickup door, where Little Alfred was waiting. Slim’s lips were pooched out and he had a scowl on his face. He looked down at the boy.

  “Alfred, me and you need to reach an understanding right now. I want you to know that I’m pretty stern.” Alfred nodded his head. “And going to town with me ain’t likely to be as much fun as you might think.” Alfred nodded. “And I’ve got things to do and I can’t be chasing you around all day.”

  Alfred nodded. “I’ll be good, Swim.”

  “You can do anything you want, as long as you don’t move or make noise. I don’t have much patience with kids.”

  “Okay, Swim.”

  “And don’t forget,” he shook his finger in the boy’s face, “that I’m mean and gripey and no fun at all. And before you start asking for candy and gum and all that other stuff, the answer is NO.”

  “Okay, Swim.”

  “And the answer to everything else is NO.”

  “Okay, Swim.”

  “All right. Let’s go to town.”

  “Swim, can we take my doggies to town wiff us?”

  “Huh? DOGS? Them two dogs? Son, I wouldn’t take them dogs with me to a dog fight.”

  “They’ll be good.”

  “I’d be ashamed to be seen with ’em.”

  “I can play wiff my doggies while you shop.”

  “Absolutely, positively . . .” Slim’s gaze swung around to me. I whapped my tail in the snow and gave him my most innocent, best behaved look. “Come to think of it, that ain’t such a . . .” He turned his eyes on Mr. Ate-My-Bone, who was suddenly grinning and groveling and rolling around in the snow. “Well . . . maybe.”

  “Oh boy!”

  “But they’ll have to ride in the . . .”

  By then, Little Alfred had reached up and opened the pickup door. Taking this as my cue, I dashed out the gate and leaped up into the seat. Shucks, I was ready to go to town.

  Oh yes, and Mr. Greedy scrambled in too, and sat his little self down on the seat beside me. I gave him a withering glare.

  “You ate my bone.”

  “Was that yours?”

  “Of course it was mine, you dunce. That was my Christmas present from Slim.”

  “Oh. I thought you didn’t want it.”

  “Is that why you turned away from me and growled and slobbered and made all those disgusting sounds while you ate?”

  “No, I was hungry.”

  “I’ve never been so embarrassed. All I can say is that you have no pride.”

  “Yeah, but I sure got the bone.”

  “That tells us a lot about your morals and values, doesn’t it, Drover? You’d actually choose the momentary pleasure of a measly bone over the long-term satisfaction that comes from pride? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Oh, it might depend on the size of the bone.”

  I looked him in the eyes. “Drover, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you.”

  “Good, ’cause I don’t want to know.”

  “But for starters, let me say that you’re a slob.”

  “Thanks, Hank, and it was a great bone.”

  At that moment, Little Alfred piled in beside us and slammed the door. Slim walked around the front of the pickup, shaking his head and talking to himself.

  He got in, started the pickup, and off we went—up to the mailbox, turned left on the county road, and headed for town.

  He gripped the wheel in both hands and glared at the road ahead. Every now and then he’d let his eyes slip around to the three of us, perched there on the seat. He’d shake his head and say things under his breath that we couldn’t hear.

  When we crossed the third cattle guard on the way to town, he’d cheered up enough to say, “My first day off in two months and I get to baby-sit the boss’s kid and two ignert dogs!”

  Little Alfred sat in the seat between me and Mr. Bone Thief, with an arm throwed around each of us. “We’ll have fun, won’t we, Swim?”

  “Boy howdy.”

  What happened next is kind of scary, so take hold of something and I’ll try to describe it just as it happened. You ready? Okay, here we go.

  Suddenly there was a loud CRASH. The sound of broken glass. The squeal of brakes. Little Alfred screamed. Drover squeaked. Slim yelled, “Uh-oh, hang on, y’all!” I don’t know what I did or said, but very possibly I made an exclamation such as, “HUH?”

  The pickup lurched from one side of the road to the other, went into a skid, bounced into the north ditch, and finally came to a stop. Then . . . silence. An eerie, unearthly, throbbing silence.

  I ended up on the floorboard, with Drover on top of me and Little Alfred on top of him. “Drover, you’re smashing me.”

  “Oh my leg!”

  “Never mind your leg, you’re smashing me!”

  “What happened?”

  “Never mind what happened, YOU’RE SMASH­ING ME!”

  “I can’t move, I think I’m paralyzed!”

  It took a few seconds for my mind to clear. “Holy cats, Drover, we’ve had a wreck! It’s coming clear now: the squeal of brakes, the sound of broken glass. Lie still. I think you’re injured, possibly even paralyzed.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re still smashing me. Can you get off?”

  “How can I move if I’m paralyzed?”

  “I . . . that’s a good point. See if you can wiggle your nose.”

  “Okay. I tried.”

  “And?”

  “I can’t see the end of my nose. Oh my gosh, Hank, I think my nose is cut off!”

  “This is worse than I thought, but we mustn’t panic.”

  “Wouldn’t you panic if your nose was cut off?”

  “The nose is gone, Drover, kiss it good-bye.”

  “I can’t kiss it good-bye! My lips went with the nose!”

  “No, what I mean is, accept the loss and go on with your life. Life without a nose is better than no nose at all.”

  “What will everybody say?”

  “Oh, it won’t be so bad, Drover. They’ll probably say, ‘Hey, look at that stupid-looking dog without a nose.’ But you’ll get used to it.”

  “Ohhhhhhh!”

  “But the important thing right now is that YOU’RE SMASHING ME!”

  “Is that all you can say to a dog who’s been paralyzed and had his whole nose cut off?”

  My situation had just about reached the critical point when suddenly it corrected itself. Little Alfred crawled off of Drover, and that provided a miracle cure for his so-called paralysis.

  He moved, I scraped myself off the floorboard, and we found ourselves sitting face-to-face.

  “Well, Drover, just as I suspected, you were not paralyzed and your nose is still where it was before.”

  “No, I think it moved.”

  “‘It did not move, you are not hurt, and therefore it follows from simple logic that you were smashing me for no good reason. Shame on you.”

  Just then, Slim spoke. And in speaking, he revealed for the first time the cause of our terrible accident. “Holy smokes, we just got a buzzard through the windshield!”

  Four pairs of eyes turned toward a large feathered black THING lying in the seat. I sniffed it, checked it out, ran the sniffatory information through my data banks.

  I turned to Drover. “It appears that we hit a druzzard, Bover.”

  “What?”

  “I said, we hit a buzzard.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s what this dead buzzard is doing in the seat.”

  “Oh. I wondered. Gosh, is he really dead?”

  “Very dead, Drover, but better him than us.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t think so.”

  “Dead buzzards don’t think.”

  “Well, I guess it all worked out for the best.”

  “Exactly.”

  At that very moment, the dead buzzard flapped his wings and made a squawking noise, an indication that he wasn’t as dead as he had first appeared. His wing, which was very large and pow­erful, struck me squarely on the nose, causing me to sneeze.

  I sneezed.

  Drover stared at me. “Gosh, you must be allergic to dead buzzards.”

  “He isn’t dead, you moron.”

  “I thought you said he was.”

  “Never mind.”

  By that time, Slim had opened his door and gotten out. He brushed the pieces of windshield glass off his coat and pulled Little Alfred outside and brushed him off too. Drover and I crawled out and shook ourselves.

  Slim pushed his hat to the back of his head and looked in at the mess: the whole entire right side of the windshield was knocked out, the whole left side of the windshield was shattered and ready to fall out, the inside of the pickup was covered with what used to be the windshield, and a wounded buzzard was flopping around on the seat.

  Slim heaved a big sigh and looked up at the sky, from which snowflakes were falling. “How do I get into deals like this—on my day off and the day before Christmas? Hit a danged buzzard!” He turned to Little Alfred. “Are you okay, Button?”

  The boy nodded. “But the poor buzzood’s hurt.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s tough luck for the buzzard. My problem is that I’ve got to get to town and buy something for your momma and Miss Viola. Well . . . better clean up this mess and get back on the road.”

  He reached inside, gathered up the buzzard, set him down out in the pasture, and started sweeping the glass out of the pickup.

  Up to this point, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might know this particular buzzard. I mean, how many of us would claim to know a buzzard anyway? But then I heard a strange voice coming from somewhere in the sky above.

  And the voice said, “Oh my g-g-g-gosh, it’s P-p-p-pa!”

  Chapter Four: A Moral Dilemmon: What Do You Do with a Wounded Buzzard?

  As you may have already surmised, the voice I heard came from Junior the Buzzard.

  As you also may have surmised, the alleged buzzard who had flown through and destroyed the windshield of Slim’s pickup was Junior’s old man, Wallace.

  Whilst Slim was cleaning up the glass and feathers, Junior spiraled down from the sky and landed in the pasture beside his old man.

  “Oh P-p-pa, s-s-s-speak to me, speak to me! Are you h-h-hurt b-b-b-b-b-b-b . . . terrible?”

  Wallace was lying on his back, with his wings throwed out to the sides and his feet sticking up in the air. He lifted his head and blinked his eyes.

  “Are you the gatekeeper of this place?”

  “Uh . . . g-g-gate k-k-keeper?”

  “You studder just like my boy Junior.”

  “I a-am your b-b-boy J-j-j-junior.”

  The old man squinted at him. “No you ain’t. There’s some resemblance, but you ain’t Junior. He’s down below.”

  “D-d-down below w-w-w-what, P-p-pa?”

  “Down below, on earth. Do I have to pay to get in this place or is it free?”

  “W-w-which place are y-y-you t-t-talking about, P-p-pa?”

  “If you don’t know which place you’re at, who does? This here’s Buzzard Heaven and I want in, even if I have to pay.”

  “N-n-no, this a-a-ain’t B-b-buzzard H-heaven, P-p-pa.”

  “What! It ain’t . . . in that case, mister, I ain’t going in, and you ain’t got horses enough to drag me!”

  “B-b-but P-p-pa . . .”

  “Git away, don’t you touch me, you buzzard devil!”

  “B-b-but P-p-pa . . .”

  “Hyah! Sooey! Stand back, every one of you, before I have to tear this place apart!”

  At that point, Junior gave up trying to talk to the old man and started waddling around in circles, shaking his head and saying, “Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa! Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa!”

  Now, let me say right here that I’d never had much use for Old Man Wallace. He and I had run into each other on several occasions and he’d always struck me as a loud, overbearing, self-centered, unfriendly old buzzard.

  But Junior was a different kind of bird. For one thing, he liked to sing, and anybody who likes to sing can’t be entirely bad, even if he happens to be a buzzard. Junior had always treated me fair and square, and even though I didn’t approve 100 percent of his profession and eating habits, I couldn’t help liking him.

  And it appeared to me that right now, he needed a friend. I mean, any time you find two buzzards and they ain’t talking about food, something bad has happened. So I went over to him.

  “Junior, I saw the whole thing and I know you must be feeling pretty bad right now.”

  “Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa! Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa!”

  “Yes, he was a little slow on the take-off this morning and built a new window in that pickup there. It knocked him a little silly, appears to me.”

  “Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa! Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa!”

  Junior was still hopping around in circles, repeating that same “poor Pa” business, and I couldn’t see that it was doing either one of them much good.

  “Hold it, Junior. Quit hopping around and listen to me.” He quit. “You’ve got to get hold of yourself.”

  “B-b-but P-pa’s h-hurt b-b-b-bad and t-t-talking c-c-crazy, and I d-d-don’t know w-w-what to d-d-d-do.”

  “I know, Junior, that’s what I mean. You’ve got to think this thing through and take it a step at a time. Now in the first place, your old man’s had a wreck.”

  “I k-k-know.”

  “In the second place, he’s hurt pretty bad. And in the third place, he might not pull through.”

  “Oh, d-d-d-don’t s-say that! I w-w-wouldn’t k-know what to d-d-do if a-anything was to h-h-h-h-h-happen to P-p-pa!”

  “Yes, but you have to face it, Junior. It might come to that.”

  “Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa! Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa!”

  “Now don’t start that again. Hush up and listen.” I sat down and put a paw on his shoulder. “The cold hard facts of the matter are that if your old man was a cat, a dog, a rabbit, a deer, a duck, or almost anything but a buzzard, somebody would come along this road, see him out there in the snow, take him home, and nurse him back to health.

  “But Junior, there ain’t many people in this old world who are shopping around for a wounded buzzard to take home. That’s as plain as I can make it.”

  “Th-that’s p-pretty p-p-p-plain.”

  “Which means that your old man might not pull through.”

  “Oh m-m-my p-p-poor P-p-p-pa!”