Chet The Dog

Archive for September, 2013

Friend of the Month Reminder

“Thirty days hath … whoa! Time for the Friend of the Month reminder,” Spence says. “And what happened to ‘hath’ anyway?”

“Useth it if thou so wisheth,” Admin says. “Back to the reminder. Check the right of the screen. See Maddie and Ranger? They’re Chet’s September Friends of the Month. Their human companion sent in a photo to the Friends of Chet gallery, just as Buddy did today. Great pic, by the way. The random number generator – “

“East German Army surplus, circa 1956 – “

” – does the rest. Winner stays over there for the month and the winner’s human companion gets a signed and paw-printed – “

“And gold-plated*– “

” – copy of the latest Chet and Bernie novel, in this case The Sound and the Furry.”

“This could be you! Just send in a photo!”

*All 100% true, except for the gold-plated part. See below.

Welcome Buddy.

Chetspeak on Sunday

Bernie brought the other pipe in from the car, set the two pipes side by side on the kitchen counter. By that time, we had all the water mopped up and everything looked ship-shape, as Bernie put it, but wasn’t Little Jazz a sort of ship? Meaning how could it be car-shaped, or tree-shaped, or any other kind of shape? I puzzled over that and then I didn’t. All I knew for sure was that I was Chet-shaped. Good enough for me, amigo.

“Look pretty much identical to me,” Bernie said. “But one’s good and one’s a piece of crap, although that quote is hearsay from Duke, which is like piling crap on crap.”

I smelled no crap in the vicinity, none at all, which was actually kind of unusual. Piles of crap would not be something I’d miss. But I believed in Bernie. Crap had to be just around the corner.

– from The Sound and the Furry.

Welcome Amber.

The Engine That Drives the Story

“First,” Bernie said, pulling up to a roadside food truck – one of the greatest human inventions, in my opinion, right up there with cars and handcuffs, “let’s get you fed.” Sounded like a plan to me. And what if after I was done, he said, Second, let’s get you fed again?

Bernie went up to the guy in the food truck window.

“Got any steak?”

“Just the round, but it’s all cut up for the brochettes,” said the food truck guy. He wore beaded chains around his neck and was missing a whole bunch of teeth. Getting through life without all your teeth? Hard to imagine anything worse.

“I’ll take two pounds.”

“How’d you like that done?”

“Raw.”

The next thing I knew I was making quick work of the best steak I’d ever tasted and you can take that to the bank, except you couldn’t, the steak being gone. This took place outside the car, right off the paper wrapper, the food truck guy in the window smiling the whole time. After that, I lapped up a bowl of water and another, felt like me. I sat myself down in front of Bernie and waited.

“What?” he said. “What?”

He didn’t know I was waiting for him to say, Second, let’s get you fed again? That had been the plan, at least as I remembered it.

Then from the food truck guy came a big surprise. “I reckon he wants to do it all over again.”

“Can’t be,” Bernie said. “You saw what he just downed.”

“So how come he’s barking like that?”

Bernie gave me a look. “Could be anything. Cool it, Chet. Let’s go.”

We went. I tried to cool it but couldn’t for the longest time, on account of it couldn’t be anything! The food truck guy hit it on the nose, whatever that might mean, the human nose being mostly wrong in my experience, or not even in the picture. Finally Bernie said, “Chet! I can’t hear myself think!”

Uh-oh. Bernie’s thinking was one of the best things we had going for us at the Little Detective Agency, Bernie having come up with so many thoughts in our career that I couldn’t remember any. I got a grip.

“Whew,” said Bernie.

– from The Sound and the Furry.

Kitchens and Us

I’d seen worse. The kitchen, which was where we ended up, was kind of nice. It had one of those old stoves you sometimes see that stand on little feet, with space underneath, and in that space, would you believe it? Practically a whole strip of bacon, presently – but not for long, amigo – getting gnawed on by a nervous-eyed mouse. The little guy split in a hurry – and tried to abscond with the goods, abscond with the goods being cop talk for making off with the bacon. In the end, he barely absconded with himself. As for the bacon? Delish, and not really that old at all. Still plenty of crunch left, which is how we like our bacon, me and Bernie. This case, whatever it was about exactly, couldn’t have been going more smoothly.

– from The Sound and the Furry.

Welcome roadtripper.