The Beagle Connection

By Erick Flaig

Beagles are time machines.
Jonathan Boyd has a vivid imagination that gets him into trouble. He frets about his buck teeth, and his parents hardly notice him. Next door, Nikita has noticed Jonathan, and decided that she wants to marry him. Their friendship will be tested as they deal with mysterious lights at an abandoned church, dark figures digging in the graveyard, and a robbery from sixty years earlier. They realize that Jonathan's amazing beagle holds the key to the mystery. Jonathan learns that if he wants other people to believe him, he has to be willing to believe them, too, and he gains the confidence to control his imagination and stop telling fibs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erick Flaig
• Release date: Sep 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465800169

Erick Flaig

Due to the sensitive nature of the novel, the author is currently in the Witless Protection Program.

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The Beagle Connection

Erick Flaig

Copyright 2010 by Erick Flaig

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Punished for Nothing...Nothing at All

Mom, I'm telling the truth!  I did see something in the woods.  It was big and black, and whatever it was, it sure had big feet.  It must have been a Bigfoot, and it isn't fair to punish me for telling the truth!

Jonathan Boyd, everyone we know knows you tell tall tales!  Samantha's tongue tangled itself.  She paused to straighten it. I'm tired of your lying.  You're grounded!

Mom, I'm not making it up!  I saw something!  Why are you grounding me?  It's not fair to punish me for nothing at all!

Jonathan, that's enough!  You're grounded.  End of story.  She spun away.  No computer, and stay in your room until supper time.

Jonathan flopped on his bed and held his breath.  He felt like his face turned blue.  He opened his eyes to check on his mother.

Samantha stomped her foot and flung her arms.  Oh, grow up!  And remember, no video games!  She stormed from the room.

Jonathan got up, clutching his nose, and looked in his mirror.  His face was not even a little bit blue; in fact, he thought it looked red.  He blew out his breath, and gasped a few times.  Jonathan's brain whirled and he complained to himself.  Mom's not fair.  She never is.  There could have been a Bigfoot in the woods behind the school.  After all, plenty of deer lived in the school woods, and no one would be surprised if a bear or two roamed there.  Why not a Bigfoot?  It was possible.  What harm had he done, warning his mother about the possibility of a Bigfoot lurking in the woods near the elementary school?

Coming home from a friend's house, he took a short cut through the woods.  He had glanced across a little open glade, and in the trees on the other side, he had seen the big black thing.  Right away, Jonathan had thought that it was a Bigfoot.  It looked a lot like the Bigfoot in the movie he'd seen on television the night before.

Jonathan collapsed back down, and grabbed his nose again.  He pinched it shut for a moment and gave it up.  He started to breathe again.  He sighed, deciding that nobody would come, because nobody cared.  His parents didn't care if he lay up on his bed and held his breath until he died.  Twelve years old, and dead as a doornail, he thought.  He sniffed a little.

He rolled out of his bed.  He was just grounded from his video games.  For lying, he told himself again, his brain lurching into gear and moving forward.  Lying.  The word punched him hard in the stomach.  If you lie, it makes you a liar, and nobody, but nobody, likes a liar.  Especially when they have buck teeth.  Nobody likes anyone with buck teeth anyway, and if they lie, why, that's just the icing on the cake.  Forget it.  Game over.  The end.  Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as telephone wire.

Jonathan spoke out loud.  More like teeth like a telephone wire.  Anyway, I'm not a liar.  I know I saw a Bigfoot up in those woods.  There could be a family of them.  Probably truckloads of them.  So many, they probably trip over each other.

Jonathan sat down at his computer desk.  I wonder if? he asked himself, and decided to err on the side of caution.  His mother might return and catch him on the computer.  Instead, he pulled a piece of paper from the printer tray and sketched a trap to catch a Bigfoot.  Catching one would prove his mother wrong, and he'd get his video games back.  The trap grew steadily more elaborate, and covered the sheet of paper entirely.  Jonathan could tell it was impossible not to catch a least one Bigfoot with such an awesome trap.

Jonathan Boyd!  His mother stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips.  Samantha Boyd was a petite, pretty woman who was proud of looking younger than her age.  She anticipated a day when a handsome, distinguished-looking man would mistake her for Jonathan's sister.  Her dream required a stranger, and they were rare in their small town.  In Walton, everyone knew each other, and no one made the mistake.

Jonathan jumped up from his plan.  His heart pounded in his chest like a frightened hamster; he had not heard her coming back down the hall.  The thick carpet swallowed footsteps between the kitchen and the bedrooms.  Samantha held up three fingers, each topped with a perfect, polished fingernail. 

Jonathan, I've called you to dinner three times.  I've told you at least sixty million times that when I call you, I want you to come.

Sorry, mom, I didn't hear you.

She tapped her foot.  Jonathan, I've had enough of your excuses!  Get to the kitchen at once, and then you can go straight to bed for the night.  She turned back down the hall.  Why is everything in this house always such a Hollywood production?

Jonathan got to his feet, glancing back down at his Bigfoot trap.  Now it looked puny and stupid to him.  In his mind, he saw it would never work.  The Bigfoot would escape and tear it to shreds.  Or the other ones would come and rescue it, and then sniff the pieces of the broken trap with their big ape-like noses, and then they would sniff around on the ground, and then they would follow my trail back to the house, and the next thing there would be just a literal mess of them, breaking in the window and dragging me out, and maybe they'd eat me, or make me their king or something.

Jonathan Boyd!  Four times now!  You just lost your stupid video games for another day!

Mom! he shouted.  I'm coming!  He crumbled up his plan and flipped it toward his wastebasket.  The paper bounced off the edge and rolled under his bed.  He dove after it, and sneezed from dust bunnies attacking his face.  From the corner of his eye, he saw a big bunny surge toward him.

Wow!  Jonathan backed out from under the bed, keeping the dust bunny in sight.  He rummaged on his desk.  He kept a flashlight handy, but it wasn't around the computer.  He searched in his top desk drawer, rooted around until he found the light, and pulled it out.  He flicked the plastic switch on as he spun around.

Jonathan! his mother stood in the doorway, shielding her eyes from the beam of light shining directly in her face.  Turn that thing off!

He clicked the switch and the beam vanished.

His mother snapped as sharply as the flashlight's switch.  What are you doing?

Jonathan's brain calculated quickly.  There's a mouse.  Under my bed.  I just saw it.

His mother made a face for an instant.  We don't have mice.  Stop fibbing and get your behind out to the table, now.  Your supper's cold, but you're still going to eat every bite of it.

Okay, mom, he sighed.  He placed the flashlight back on his desk and followed her, like a prisoner on his way to his execution.  There would probably be lima beans again.

In the kitchen, the large wooden table dominated the room, leaving only enough room between the table and the wall for a chair to slide.  Jonathan's father, Ted, sat at one end of the table, reading the newspaper.  It's about time, son, he said.  He folded the paper up and placed it on the counter against the wall, reaching over without getting up.  Everything in the kitchen, from the stove to the sink, to the refrigerator, to the country styled curtains and wall-hangings, could be reached from one chair or another.  I was about ready to start without you.

Jonathan slid into his chair as his mother sat down in hers.  His dinner did not look cold to him; steam still rose from the pile of pale lima beans that covered half the plate.

***

In the house next door to the Boyd home, a thin young girl crawled on her bedroom floor.  She wore her brother's cast-off jeans, and sneakers with blinking lights in the soles.  Nikita Gonzalez flipped up her bed skirt and slid under the bed to retrieve her binoculars.  She had a small shelf under the bed, close to the wall, where she kept things she didn't want anyone else to find.  Being ten years old and having an older brother made it hard to keep anything secret, but the little shelf did the trick.  It was big enough to hold her binoculars, her notebooks, some pens, about forty-five dollars in bills and change, and a can of Raid.

She crawled on her knees to her bedroom window and opened the Venetian blinds at the bottom to peak out over the sill.  Nikita pushed her dark hair back out of her face.  She had a clear view of the Boyd house next door.  The houses were identical, which meant she knew where each of the rooms in the house was located.  That made keeping track of Jonathan's whereabouts much easier for her.

Sitting just so, with the blinds just so, and peeking just so, she could just see into Jonathan Boyd's bedroom.  Her parents had punished her when they caught her doing what they called 'spying on the neighbors.'  After that experience, she had made the shelf out of a shoebox and super glued it under her bed.  Her parents didn't understand she was keeping tabs on her future husband.  What do you call it, if it's not spying? her mother had demanded, and Nikita had been too speechless to come up with an answer at the time.  A week later, she had figured out the answer, and kept it ready in case she was ever caught again.

Common sense, she reminded herself.  Common sense is all it is, if I'm going to be Mrs. Jonathan Boyd.

She settled into position to watch the window of the house next door.  It was uncomfortable, but Nikita knew spies did many uncomfortable things.  Keeping track of Jonathan was worth it.

***

Supper at the Boyd house lasted a long time.  Jonathan counted ten between each tick of the kitchen clock, and watched his parents eat.  He stared at his steamed lima beans.  He shuffled them with his fork, one at a time, trying to create the illusion that there were fewer of them on the plate.  Although not disappearing, they did change.  They grew cold.

If you're not going to eat those beans, his mother finally said, thirty-five minutes later, Put them in the pail for the dog.

Jonathan leaped up, grateful for his release from the death row of lima beans, and scraped his plate into the pail he kept by the back door.  The beagle did not eat scraps every night, but loved it when she got some.  Jonathan was sorry to surprise her with lima beans, but he'd seen her eat worse things.  Not much worse, he corrected