Henry and Ribsy Read online

  “I’m afraid it is, Mr. Grumbie,” answered Henry.

  “I heard about Ribsy tearing the seat out of the garbageman’s overalls,” said Mr. Grumbie.

  Jeepers, thought Henry miserably, the story’s not only going around the neighborhood, it’s getting worse than it really was. Next thing, people would be saying Ribsy bit the garbageman. He explained what had really happened, and then Mr. Grumbie went in and closed all the windows that faced the Hugginses’ house.

  Henry grew more and more discouraged. On Thursday, after he had piled the garbage on top of the can and replaced the lid as well as he could, he got an apple box out of the garage, climbed up on it, and stepped carefully onto the lid. He stamped his feet a few times to work the garbage down into the can and then jumped up and down. It helped some but not much.

  On Friday Henry suggested to his mother that they buy a second garbage can, but she did not think this was a good idea. Then Henry decided to take the garbage out before dinner when the container was not so full. He distributed the milk cartons and carrot tops as well as he could on the heap and was jumping up and down on the lid when Robert and Scooter came up the driveway looking for him.

  “What are you doing up there?” Robert demanded, with one eye on Ribsy. “Look at it, Scooter! Did you ever see so much garbage?”

  “Pee-yew,” said Scooter, staying on the driveway well away from Ribsy, who was rolling on the grass to scratch his back.

  “Never mind the sound effects.” Henry jumped to the ground. It was all right for him to criticize his own garbage, but he didn’t want anyone else to do it. “Come on, let’s go out in front.”

  “Yes, let’s,” agreed Scooter. “Pee-yew.”

  Henry was about to suggest they all go over to the park. Then he decided he had better not take a chance on Ribsy’s behavior toward strangers. “Come on, let’s see who can walk farthest on his hands,” he said, to keep Scooter and Robert from talking about his troubles.

  While the three boys were busy trying to walk across the lawn on their hands, they heard a sudden clatter and crash from the backyard and promptly got on their feet.

  “Sounds like a garbage can to me,” said Scooter.

  Henry, who had known instantly what made the noise, was already on his way around the house with Ribsy at his heels. Scooter and Robert were close behind. Henry found the garbage can tipped on its side. The lid had rolled halfway across the backyard, and garbage was strewn all the way from the steps to the cherry tree. In the midst of the litter stood a collie and another big dog. A crust of bread hung from the collie’s mouth.

  The dogs started to run when they saw the boys. Ribsy chased them while Henry grabbed an old Woofies can and threw it after them. “You beat it,” he yelled. Then he looked at the mess and groaned. Garbage! He was sick and tired of it. He kicked at an eggshell and groaned again. It wasn’t worth fifteen cents a week. It wasn’t worth a hundred, or a thousand, or even a million dollars.

  Scooter and Robert held their noses. Then Scooter made a gagging noise and Robert copied him.

  “Aw, hey, fellows, cut it out.” Henry glared at his friends and pulled the can, still half full, upright. He looked around and sighed.

  “Well, I guess I better be going,” said Scooter. “I just remembered I’m supposed to go to the store for my mother.”

  “Me, too,” said Robert. “So long, Henry.”

  Some friends, thought Henry, and set to work. He was busy scooping up coffee grounds and mildewed pea pods when he heard his father’s car turn into the driveway.

  Mr. Huggins looked around the back yard. “Dogs?” he asked.

  “That collie and that other big dog down the street,” answered Henry.

  Mr. Huggins did not say anything. He found a shovel in the garage and went to work.

  “Uh…Dad,” began Henry. “The garbageman isn’t exactly a neighbor. Does his complaining about Ribsy mean I don’t get to go fishing with you?”

  “We’ll see what happens Monday before we decide,” answered his father. “Perhaps we can find out what made him act the way he did.”

  On Saturday Henry did not take the garbage out at all. When neither his mother nor his father reminded him, he guessed they must be as tired of garbage as he was.

  Sunday afternoon Robert and Scooter came over to see if anything new had happened to the garbage or to Ribsy.

  “Aw, fellows, forget it,” said Henry. Then he saw Beezus and her little sister Ramona coming down the street. Beezus’s real name was Beatrice, but Ramona called her Beezus and everyone else did, too. “Hi!” Henry was glad to be interrupted.

  “Hello, Henry. Did the garbageman ever take away your garbage?” Beezus asked.

  “He’ll take it tomorrow,” said Henry coldly. The way things got around on Klickitat Street!

  “Ramona, look out!” screamed Beezus. She rushed over to her little sister, who had a firm hold on Ribsy’s tail and was pulling as hard as she could. “He bites!” said Beezus. “He bit the garbageman.”

  “He did not bite the garbageman!” yelled Henry. “Don’t you dare say he did!”

  Ribsy looked around at Ramona. “Wuf,” he said mildly, and waited patiently while Beezus frantically pried Ramona’s fingers loose from his tail.

  “He didn’t bite when Ramona pulled his tail, did he?” Henry asked angrily.

  “No.” Beezus looked doubtfully at Ribsy. “But somebody told Mother he bit the garbageman.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Henry was thoroughly disgusted. This was too much.

  “Of course, you don’t know what Ribsy would have done if he had got at the garbageman,” observed Scooter.

  “You keep quiet.” Henry glared at Scooter. “The garbageman must have kicked him or something. Look at him. Does he look the least bit cross?”

  Beezus and the boys looked at Ribsy, who lay on the grass with a patient look on his face. Ramona was sitting on him. When she grabbed his ear, Ribsy looked at Henry as if to say, “Get her off me, won’t you?”

  “No, he doesn’t look a bit cross,” admitted Beezus, pulling her little sister away. “He seems to understand she’s little and doesn’t know any better.”

  Thinking secretly that Ramona did know better, Henry turned to Scooter. “Now are you satisfied?” he demanded.

  “Well…” Scooter was not easy to satisfy.

  Henry tried to think of something, anything, to change the subject. “Say, Scooter,” he said, “I wish you’d take a look at the horn on my bike. It’s been sounding funny lately.”

  “Sure,” said Scooter eagerly. If there was one thing he enjoyed, it was tinkering with a bicycle. “Where is it?”

  “In the garage,” answered Henry, and they all started down the driveway toward the open garage doors.

  As Scooter took hold of the handlebars and started to wheel the bicycle out of the garage, Ribsy began to growl deep in his throat. The hair stood up on his neck and he moved toward Scooter.

  Everyone stared at Ribsy. Scooter hastily dropped the bicycle on the driveway, and Ribsy stopped growling at once. He went to Henry and wagged his tail, waiting to be praised.

  “Hey, did you see that?” Henry shouted.

  “I sure did,” said Scooter. “He’s a vicious dog!”

  “He is not vicious. He was protecting my bike!” Henry was growing more excited. “He isn’t cross at all. He was just protecting my bike.”

  Scooter did not look convinced. “Don’t you see?” Henry went on. “That explains about the garbageman. Ribsy was protecting the garbage from the garbageman because he thought it was mine!”

  “He’s a watchdog,” agreed Beezus.

  “Sure,” said Henry eagerly. “It takes a smart dog to be a watchdog.”

  At this Robert and Scooter began to shout with laughter. “What a watchdog!” hooted Scooter.

  “Whoever heard of a dog guarding the garbage?” Robert doubled up with laughter.

  “Your valuable garbage,” shouted Scooter.

>   “Your precious garbage,” howled Robert.

  “Aw, cut it out,” said Henry sheepishly and began to laugh, partly because he thought it was funny but mostly from relief at proving that Ribsy was not a vicious dog. His fishing trip was still safe!

  Robert and Scooter whooped and pounded each other on the back. Ribsy, sensing that they were laughing at him, hung his head and slunk over to Henry, who hugged him and went on laughing.

  “Boy, oh, boy,” gasped Scooter. “I can just see the Hugginses’ backyard a year from now when it’s ten feet deep—”

  “In Henry’s very own valuable precious garbage,” finished Robert, and the boys whooped some more.

  Henry stopped laughing. The picture of his backyard ten feet deep in garbage was too terrible to think about.

  Mr. Huggins appeared in the kitchen door. “What’s all this about?” he asked, as he joined the group on the driveway. When he heard the story, he laughed, too. He snapped his fingers at Ribsy and when the dog bounded over to him, he slapped his side and said, “You’re a pretty good dog, aren’t you?” Ribsy wriggled with delight.

  Henry’s friends, knowing it must be nearly dinnertime, started to leave. “I’ll look at your horn tomorrow if you’ll get your bike out of the garage yourself,” promised Scooter.

  “Take good care of your garbage,” said Robert.

  “Aw, keep quiet,” answered Henry, and grinned. When the others were gone he turned to his father. “Say, Dad, about this garbage…”

  “What about it?” asked his father.

  “Well, we didn’t have any trouble with Ribsy protecting it from the garbage man when Mom took it out and I was wondering…” Henry paused and looked at his father.

  Mr. Huggins smiled. “Wondering what?”

  “Well, I was wondering if there wasn’t something else you would rather have me do for the extra fifteen cents than take out the garbage.”

  Mr. Huggins thought it over. “All right,” he said, “I’ll take out the garbage if you’ll clip around the edge of the lawn after I mow it each week.”

  It was Henry’s turn to think it over. Clipping the edge of the lawn was harder than taking out the garbage. It meant crawling around on his hands and knees for about an hour. Still, as far as Henry knew now, there was no possible way either he or Ribsy could get into trouble doing it. “OK, Dad,” he said. “It’s a deal!”

  “OK,” said Mr. Huggins. “But just to make sure, we’d better put Ribsy in the basement when we hear the garbageman coming.”

  “He won’t mind for a little while,” said Henry, giving the garbage can a good hard whack as he and his father went into the house.

  3

  Henry Gets a Haircut

  Henry was looking through the refrigerator for something to eat, something that wasn’t too hard and wasn’t too chewy, because he had two teeth so loose he could wiggle them with his tongue. They were upper teeth, one on either side of his four grown-up front teeth. Henry wanted to keep them three more days, so he would have something to show off to the other boys the first day of school.

  Ribsy pawed at the refrigerator door. “All right,” said Henry, “you’ve been pretty good about keeping out of trouble lately.” He tossed a piece of horse meat to him.

  Let’s see, thought Henry, poking first his loose right tooth and then his loose left tooth with his tongue, peanut butter is too sticky. I guess I’ll have some bread and apricot-pineapple jam.

  As he reached for the jam jar, Henry heard his mother come in the front door. “Hi, Mom,” he called.

  “Hi,” she answered, and entered the kitchen with her arms full of packages. “Wait till you see what I bought.”

  “What?” asked Henry. He wiggled first his right tooth and then his left tooth as he took a slice of bread out of the bread box.

  Mrs. Huggins dumped her packages on the draining board. “Electric clippers,” she announced. “The Colossal Drugstore was having a sale. Only six dollars and ninety-five cents, marked down from nine ninety-five.”

  “Clippers for what?” Henry asked, as he spread butter on the bread. He wiggled his left tooth. Hm-m, he thought, it’s a little bit looser than the right tooth.

  “Hair clippers, of course,” answered his mother.

  Henry stopped wiggling his teeth. “Clippers for whose hair?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Now, Henry,” said Mrs. Huggins soothingly, “I’m sure that with a little practice I can do just as good a job as the barber. And with the price of haircuts, think of the money we’ll save.”

  “Mom!” wailed Henry, clutching his hair. He didn’t want to save money. He wanted to save his hair. “Are you going to cut Dad’s hair, too?”

  Mrs. Huggins laughed as she unwrapped the clippers. “Your father’s hair is precious, now that it’s getting so thin on top. We can’t afford to take chances with it.”

  “My hair’s precious, too,” said Henry, deciding he wasn’t hungry after all. He handed Ribsy the bread and butter and watched him gulp it down. Then he leaned gloomily against the refrigerator and wiggled first his right tooth and then his left tooth. Jeepers, he thought, now what am I going to do?

  Mrs. Huggins took a sheet out of a drawer. “Henry, why do you keep making such awful faces?” she asked.

  “I’m not making faces,” said Henry. “I’m wiggling my loose teeth.”

  “Which teeth are loose?” Mrs. Huggins asked.

  Maybe she’ll forget about cutting my hair, thought Henry, as he went to his mother and bared his teeth. “Thee, thith and thith,” he lisped, as he wiggled first his right tooth and then his left tooth with his tongue.

  “They’re your canine teeth,” remarked Mrs. Huggins.

  “Canine?” repeated Henry, delighted that he was distracting his mother. “I thought canine meant dog.”

  “It does,” answered his mother. “The cuspids are called canine teeth, because they’re pointed like a dog’s teeth.”

  “Hey, teeth like a dog,” said Henry. He bared his teeth and growled at Ribsy.

  Then Mrs. Huggins said briskly, “Now, Henry, don’t try to change the subject. You sit on this chair and put this sheet around your neck and I’ll go to work.”

  “Right this minute?” Henry asked mournfully.

  “Right this minute,” said Mrs. Huggins. “Your hair is so scraggly on the back of your neck it looks like fringe.”

  “Mom,” wailed Henry, “you can’t do this to me.”

  “Now, Henry, don’t worry,” said his mother reassuringly. “On the way home I stopped and watched a barber cutting hair, so I know just how it’s done.”

  “Do you think Dad will want you to cut my hair?” Henry asked.

  “Oh, yes,” answered Mrs. Huggins. “I phoned him and talked it over with him before I bought the clippers. He thought it was a good idea.”

  I might have known they’d stick together, Henry thought miserably, as he slid down in the chair. Why can’t the phone ring or something?

  Mrs. Huggins plugged the clippers into the wall and turned on the switch. They chattered so furiously that Henry could not help ducking. Ribsy tucked his tail between his legs and hastily left the kitchen.

  Henry felt his mother’s hand on top of his head and heard the clippers at the back of his neck. Then he felt them touch his skin. “Ow,” he exclaimed, and pulled away. “They’re cold.”

  “Now, Henry, I haven’t even begun to clip,” said his mother.

  Henry gritted his teeth. The clippers touched the back of his neck and whizzed up his head. “Mom!” protested Henry, feeling the back of his head. “That’s too short.”

  “The clippers do cut awfully fast.” For the first time Mrs. Huggins sounded doubtful.

  Once more the clippers tickled Henry’s neck and chattered up the back of his head. “There,” said Mrs. Huggins. “I didn’t get it quite so close that time.”

  “But it’s supposed to match,” said Henry.

  “I’ll take a little off right here to even it up,�
�� said Mrs. Huggins.

  The clippers swooped down on Henry’s head. Then they whizzed up the back again. Just wait till the kids see this, thought Henry gloomily.

  “Hey, what’s going on in here?” It was Henry’s father. The clippers made so much noise that neither Henry nor his mother had heard him come in.

  “Dad,” wailed Henry, “look what Mom’s done to me.”

  “Hm-m,” said Mr. Huggins, “your hair looks as if the moths had got into it.”

  Mrs. Huggins began to laugh, but Henry did not think it was very funny. Who wanted to go around with moth-eaten hair? He slid farther down in his chair and scowled at the kitchen wall.

  “Here, let me try,” said Mr. Huggins. “I ought to know how to cut hair. I’ve watched the barber cut mine often enough.” He started the clippers chattering again.

  Henry sat up. Maybe his father would be better at cutting hair. He felt his right ear being folded down and heard the clippers whiz up the side of his head.

  “Oops!” said Mr. Huggins.

  “What do you mean, oops?” demanded Henry crossly.

  Instead of answering, Mr. Huggins put his hand under Henry’s chin, tipped his head back, and looked first at the right side and then at the left. He folded down Henry’s left ear and ran the clippers up the side of his head. Then he stepped back to look at the results. “Not too bad,” he observed.

  Henry groaned.

  “What’ll we do with the top?” asked Henry’s father. “Mow it?”

  “Dad!” yelled Henry.

  Mrs. Huggins giggled. Henry scowled.

  Mr. Huggins held a lock of Henry’s hair up with a comb and sheared the ends off with the clippers. “This isn’t so easy,” he said. “Your hair grows every which way back here.” He combed and clipped another lock and then another. “There,” he said at last, and turned off the clippers.

  Neither of Henry’s parents spoke.

  “Let me see.” Henry jerked off the sheet and ran to the mirror in his room. He stared, too horrified to speak. His hair was shorter on the left side than on the right. Both sides were rough and the top looked chewed. Henry ran his hands over the back of his head. He did not need to see it. He could tell what his father meant about moths. He could never go outdoors looking like this. He would have to stay in the house for weeks, even months, until his hair grew out.