Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Fetzer’

We Get Productive

I opened my eyes, at the same time hearing the last fading of a sound like whimpering. Who could have made that? I looked around, saw I was in Fetzer’s gallery. No one there but Bernie and Fetzer, so it must have been Fetzer. 

“Come on, boy – work to do,” Bernie said.

I was up in a flash. I gave myself a real good shake, the kind that sets off a rippling in my coat, front to back. In moments we were out of there and back in the Porsche, me in the shotgun seat.

“Can’t believe how productive that was,” Bernie said.

Whatever that meant, it sounded good to me. I’d had one of those real deep naps and was rarin’ to go.

Nightmare At Fetzer’s Gallery

The javelina led me down into a gully and then came a surprise. It suddenly turned on me and grew much bigger, as big as an elephant. I know elephants from Animal Planet – we watch it a lot, me and Bernie. At the same time, it stopped smelling like a javelina. I picked up that somewhat toady but with slight fishness added smell: snake. Uh-oh. What was going on? The huge snake-smelling javelina snarled at me and came forward. I barked my head off, but it kept coming. I bumped into solid wall. Nowhere to go. The javelina showed me its tusks, long as swords and dripping with blood. 

“Chet? Hey – you having a bad dream, boy?

Scoring A Milk Bone

“Is it possible Chet wants another milk bone?” said Arnold Fetzer. “He’s awfully close to that drawer.”

“I wouldn’t bet against it,” Bernie said. 

And in no time at all I had another milk bone! I took it to a nice quiet space under a table and got to work. 

“You were telling us about Ezra Printz, Hollywood flack,” Bernie said.

Fetzer nodded. “Just as long as you didn’t get it from me.”

“That’s a deal, as long as nothing ends up in court.”

“In court?” said Fetzer. “Is there any possibility of that happening?”

“There’s the possibility of that happening every day you wake up,” Bernie said.

There was? I’ve only been to court once. I was Exhibit A. Not sure what that is, exactly, but it meant I had to walk across the room – with some uniformed guy, not Bernie – and on a leash. The leash is something I can do if I really, really have to, and afterward Bernie gave me a Polish sausage. Never had one before or since, but it did look like a pole, except much shorter, and tasted great. Exhibit B was a .44 Magnum I’m dug up out of some perp’s flower bed. He’s probably still wearing an orange jump suit at Central State. I think all that’s in Thereby Hangs A Tail. 

I polished off the milk bone. Where were we?

RIP Ukulele Master

“You had nothing to do with anything, you say,” Bernie said to Fetzer. “Can’t get more comprehensive than that.” Fetzer blinked. Bernie can do that to people, make them blink just by saying things. As for what he’d just said, don’t come to me. 

Bernie glanced around the shop. His gaze went to a newspaper lying open on a table. He stiffened. Uh-oh. Something was up. He moved to the table, picked up the paper. His eyes moved back and forth. Human eyes do that when they’re reading. There’s something machine-like about it that bothers me. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but humans can be machine-like at times. Maybe we’ll get to that later. But right now Bernie was saying, “Oh, no – John King died.”

Fetzer’s bushy white eyebrows rose. “You’re a ukulele player?” he said.

“Not like him,” Bernie said. “I just mess around a little.”

“No one was like him,” Fetzer said. There was a silence, the kind of silence that happens when humans are thinking. “Maybe we can work something out,” Fetzer said.