Little Klein Read online

  LeRoy started barking all over again, bounding in circles around the boys.

  “Wash the dog,” she called from the kitchen window at last. “Then we’ll see.”

  “But . . .” Little Klein headed for the door.

  “There are times,” Mother Klein said as she put a sheet of drawing paper in front of him, “when your brothers have things, do things, that you don’t have and do. And you’ll do and have things they won’t. The dog is one of those things. But I’m not saying we’re keeping him. In fact we can’t keep him. Here,” she continued from the living room, where she fiddled with the radio, “let’s see if we can find a ball game. Or maybe Captain Midnight is on. What do you suppose that old Ivan Shark is up to this time?”

  “What good’s the radio when there’s a live dog outside?” Little Klein moaned.

  Little Klein slumped over the table. He felt as big as his brothers. When would his body catch up? When would he have that growth spurt his father had promised? He grabbed a pencil and drew himself as tall as the page, with a dog at his side. Around them were soaring stalks of corn, the farm Little Klein dreamed of operating. He drew in miniature farmhands, the Bigs, each smaller than the tractor far off in the field. Stanley Klein, his soon-to-visit father, was there, too, the same size as the Bigs. They were all looking up at Little Klein and his dog, smiling.

  Little Klein jumped when the screen door announced Mother Klein’s departure. He flipped his paper over and ran outside.

  “That dog looks like your homely uncle LeRoy, may he rest in peace,” Mother Klein was saying as the Bigs wrestled LeRoy into position for a rinse. “Whether or not he stays, his name is LeRoy.” LeRoy woofed his approval.

  “Ma!” the boys groaned. Just then the hose took an unplanned twirl, its pressure shooting water over all the Kleins, around and around until Little Klein dived onto it, taming the beast. Mother Klein turned off the hose and called, “Step away from the mud! Step back before you’re all dirtier than when you started. Come inside and dry off.” She turned and went inside and the Bigs sloshed after her, but Little Klein lagged back. He stood facing the wet mass of fur.

  “You’re a different brown now,” he said.

  “Woof,” replied LeRoy. Then that soggy lump quaked. It shivered and twitched. The dog lowered his head and shimmied his middle, shook his rump, and let his tail swing free, releasing streams of gleaming droplets into the bright air.

  Little Klein stepped toward LeRoy, his bare toes sinking into the mud. This time LeRoy didn’t jump or jostle. He allowed boy fingers to comb his coat and tickle his ears. He sniffed all over his boy, lingering over the aromas caught up in the fine net of hair. Yes, this was his boy all right. LeRoy turned and sauntered away with the satisfaction of knowing his boy would be there when he returned.

  Little Klein ran after him, but LeRoy picked up speed, turned the corner, and was gone. Little Klein dashed into the house to round up his brothers.

  “For the love of Pete,” Mother said. “Matthew! Mark! Luke! Get back here.” But the big boys were gone, too.

  Little Klein started to follow, but Mother held him back.

  “Leave it to your brothers,” she said. “Besides, I’m not saying we’re going to keep him. In fact we can’t keep him. We’ll just see.”

  Mother set to hanging sheets on the line and singing. Little Klein climbed up the tree to watch his brothers until they were out of sight. When Mother answered Mrs. Warren’s toodle-oo to help turn on her new oven, Little Klein slipped out of the yard and started running as fast as his short legs would take him after his brothers, after LeRoy.

  The Bigs, not ones to run unless necessary, had slowed to a walk as soon as they were out of Mother Klein’s sight, so it wasn’t long before he had their curly heads in his view.

  “Guys!” he shouted. “Guys!” But Little Klein’s voice, a trumpet in his own head, was still a mere reed to the rest of the world’s ears. So Little Klein stopped running. He filled up his chest and he whistled.

  Three Bigs stopped mid-step, turned, and bellowed, “Little Klein!”

  “Hey!” said Little, running up to his brothers.

  “Does Ma know you’re here?” asked Matthew.

  “Well . . .”

  “Oooh,” said Luke, “you’re in trouble!”

  “Which means we’re in trouble,” Mark added.

  Matthew picked up Little Klein and handed him to Luke. “First the dog and now him. You take him back home. We’ll go find the dog.”

  “Hey!” cried Little Klein. “Put me down!”

  “Aw, why me?” said Luke, but before he could protest further, Matthew and Mark were around the bend and out of sight. Luke threw Little Klein over his shoulder, cussing with every step toward home.

  Blood trickled to Little Klein’s head, which bounced upside down against Luke’s back, his feet kicking desperately on the other side. “Put me down!” he yelled. “Let me come along! Put me down!”

  Luke slowed a bit, but still Little Klein rode captive.

  “I’m nine! Let me walk!” He pummeled Luke’s back with his fists. Still Luke walked on, ignorant of the high thin voice behind him. For a while Little Klein rode quietly. Then his captor unwittingly showed him the key to his release. Luke reached back with one hand and hitched up his pants. Underwear, big Big Klein underwear, only an arm’s length away. Little Klein stretched out his left arm. Jiminy! He was swinging just out of reach. Little Klein wriggled himself a little farther over Luke’s shoulder and stretched again. This time he could touch the waistband but could not get enough grip to yank upward in one swift motion.

  Little Klein scooted himself again. His head, now purple with pumping blood, was part of the seventy-five percent of his body hovering over Luke’s back. He reached, he grabbed, he had a fistful of waistband, then “Ahhh, ahhh, achoo” sneezed hay-feverish Luke, and Little Klein’s feet sailed straight over his brother’s head, behind his head, below his head. Then, still holding the fistful of waistband, Little Klein was on the ground beneath a howling, cussing, red-faced Big Klein.

  After much detangling, some cursory checking of Little Klein’s bones, and private adjusting of Luke’s undergarments, it was decided:

  “You’re walking the rest of the way by yourself. I’m going back to the guys, and don’t even think about following me.”

  Luke took off at a long-legged pace, leaving his brother in a wake of dust.

  “Better be quick about it, too,” he called over his shoulder. “Mean Emma Brown lives around here. She’d sooner squash you than look at you.”

  Little Klein looked around quickly. Mean Emma Brown was supposed to be in Luke’s class at school, but word was she’d been kicked out for hitting the teacher or stealing the principal’s Hudson or beating up a senior. What he knew for sure was that she wasn’t a town kid and her parents were dead, or she’d thrown them off a boat, or because she was ugly they’d left her with her grandpa, who didn’t speak English. Little listened for heavy footsteps or yelling, but only the wind through the cottonwoods called him.

  He picked his smarting self off the ground and felt a large lump grow in his throat. This was not what having a dog was supposed to be like. His dog was supposed to be his best friend, fetch things for him, sleep in his bed every night. He’d imagined himself roaming the bluffs by himself, Harold the Brave, a large and fierce canine by his side. He’d escaped the yard, caught up with the boys, and was going to rescue the dog. Yet his arms still hung like thin ropes and all his hand-me-down pants were cut off and hemmed. He still needed the bathroom light left on at night. What if all those teeth and that barking were just one more way to prove he was a baby? What if the Bigs only played with Little Klein because Ma made them? Probably a dog would be way more fun to take around than a little brother. Maybe he wasn’t a real Klein at all. Little Klein took his shriveling pride and scurried himself back toward home.

  He didn’t have to run far. A ribbon of dust announced Mother Klein furiously pedaling
her bicycle in the direction of the river, head down, hands tight on the handlebars, so focused on the road ahead that she nearly passed Little Klein waving at her from the side of the road.

  Mother Klein reversed her right foot hard, jumping off her bicycle before it had fully ground to a halt.

  “Mercy me,” she said. “What on earth are you doing way out here?”

  “I . . .” Little Klein started, pushing himself away.

  “One minute you’re there; the next you’ve blown away.”

  Mother Klein, with Little Klein drooping over the front handlebars, turned and pedaled home in determined silence. Priscilla Warren was waiting by the garage when they returned.

  “You found him!” she cried.

  “Yes,” Mother Klein answered curtly as she pushed her bike into the garage.

  “Wherever was he? I was telling —”

  “Have you checked your meatloaf?” Mother Klein inquired of her nosy neighbor as she led Little Klein to the house.

  “I . . . well, let’s see . . .”

  An introvert by nature, LeRoy needed some alone time after the excitement of his first eventful morning with his family. He loped along the alleys that led out of Lena. He inhaled the world’s aroma. Trash cans, cat pee, oil from leaky engines. This gave way to dusty brush and sweet wildflowers and the dark damp smell of molding leaves and rotting logs. He slowed down as he smelled the water and his own familiar scent that marked the site of his midday rests.

  LeRoy rolled in the dirt and grass. He lifted his leg on a tree, then scratched his back against its bark. Once he got over the humiliation of having his scent washed out of him in the backyard and smelled like himself again, LeRoy lay down, closed his eyes, and slept. His dreams tumbled with yelling boys, singing mothers, and bowls and bowls of stew.

  When he woke, LeRoy wandered the riverbank, enjoying his solitude and at the same time anticipating returning to his boys. Today he wandered farther than usual. He ran for a while with another dog. They wrestled and played until the other dog got too personal and LeRoy nipped him, ending their camaraderie. As he returned to his napping place, LeRoy saw the Bigs sitting on a branch overhanging the river.

  “This was the spot we found him. I was sure he’d be here,” said Matthew.

  “No,” said Luke. “Little didn’t run this far. I think he tripped over the dog back there.”

  “Well . . . we tried,” Mark said. “We almost had a dog. It’s a stray. . . . It doesn’t want to be found. Nothing more we can do.” He stood up.

  “LeRoy,” sniffed Luke. “Why’d she hafta pick a name like that? It’s not even from the Bible.”

  “Neither is Harold,” added Mark.

  “LeRoy,” Luke scoffed.

  “LeRoy,” they all muttered together as they walked the balance beam of the branch toward shore.

  His boys! They were calling him! LeRoy barked wildly. The boys yelled and tottered and one after another they fell off the branch and into the water. They came up howling and wet and draped themselves back over the branch like soggy laundry while LeRoy yapped and shook all over in anticipation of their next antic.

  “Told you he’d be here,” Matthew cried.

  LeRoy yapped some more. He pranced onto the branch, promptly stepping on Mark’s hands, launching him back into the drink.

  “Hey!”

  Then LeRoy skittered toward Luke, who dropped into the water before LeRoy could reach him. This left LeRoy sliding on the wet bark, skidding snout first into Matthew’s curly head, and in they went, fur and shirt, anchors aweigh, straight to the sandy bottom, then bobbed back up to the shallow surface.

  Most dogs, dropped into a lake, a pond, a river, start paddling with all four legs, running underwater. Either LeRoy was born without this instinct or it had been scared out of him in puppyhood. LeRoy bobbed and LeRoy sank.

  Bob, yelp, sink. Bob, yelp, sink.

  Finally Luke waded out and pulled LeRoy to shore, where he coughed out water and minnows and a leaf.

  “Darn,” said Matthew as the trio huddled over the quivering animal. “We finally get us a dog and this scaredy puss is it? Skinny, too.” He picked up LeRoy like an overgrown baby and started walking.

  “We can fatten him up,” said Luke.

  “What about Dad?” worried Mark.

  “Hafta cure him of the willies,” said Matthew. “I’m not walking around with no sissy dog.”

  “Woof!” LeRoy barked from the bottom of his belly, so loud that Matthew dropped him.

  “Now, that’s what I’m talking about, boy.”

  Ninety-one years earlier in a German forest, a sturdy oak was felled. Its trunk was sliced into boards. The boards were cut into lengths, then hammered into large boxes, which would transport the possessions of families sailing to new lives across the ocean. One of those boxes, called a trunk like its mother, was painted red on the inside and adorned on the outside with fancy scrolled figures: KLEIN 1858. It was with the boards of this trunk that the Big Kleins constructed a home for the dog that appeared to be destined to spend his nights outside.

  “Why can’t LeRoy sleep inside?” pleaded Little Klein. “I’d sleep better with LeRoy by my bed. He’d guard me from nightmares. We could build a tree house with those boards instead. I could see things from up there. I’d be out of your way.”

  “Dogs belong outside,” Mother Klein answered for the fourth time that day. “He’s happier outside, believe me. And you are just fine in your bed. Your father will be home in exactly two and a half weeks and he can’t tolerate dogs at all, much less inside dogs. I can’t believe we’re keeping him this long as it is. Besides, who would call the moon if he weren’t out here howling? Now, get out of the way of your brothers.”

  “I’d rather have a tree house.” Little Klein scratched LeRoy’s ears before clambering up the tree with the hammer he’d swiped from their pile. He added it to a stash he was building in a bag hung in the dense limbs. He climbed back down to LeRoy, waiting patiently at the bottom of the tree. “Let’s see if we can help,” he said.

  “Hey,” cried Matthew as they approached, “keep the dog away. He’s going to mess everything up!”

  “Sweetheart,” Mother Klein cooed to Little Klein, “too many cooks in the kitchen and all that. Why don’t you . . .”

  But he and LeRoy didn’t wait to hear her suggestion. They took a walk around the block, stopping for every new neighborhood smell, and when they got back, not much progress had been made.

  “You’re going to have to work faster than that if you want to give the dog a roof before winter,” prodded Mother Klein.

  “But it’s only June,” said Luke.

  “What’s Dad going to say?” fretted Mark.

  “Numbskulls!” Matthew taunted. “Come on. Is anyone going to help me?”

  “I’ll help,” said Little Klein.

  “Not you,” said Matthew. “You’re not strong enough.”

  “Am so,” Little Klein insisted. “Right, LeRoy?”

  The Klein Boys were not used to physical labor or teamwork. “Nitwit!” was the curse of the day, and Mother Klein was fairly certain she’d have to eventually go out and just build that house herself. Other people’s boys seemed to be capable — problem solvers, even. But her boys were soft from years of pampering.

  Mark at least had a mind for assembly and repair — fixing neighborhood bicycles, radios, wagons, or most anything else that had come apart. But these skills gave him ideas for putting the doghouse together. He sat on the back step and sketched a plan while Matthew directed Luke to hold boards as he hammered.

  “You’re doing it wrong,” Mark called from the top step.

  “Clamp it!” Matthew and Luke retorted at once. Mark shrugged and kept working. Little Klein and LeRoy watched from the bottom step.

  “Are you putting the red side in or out?”

  “In,” said Matthew at the same time Luke said, “Out.” They glared at each other and continued working in silence.

&n
bsp; “Okay, we’re ready to nail the side boards together,” Matthew said at last. “Mark, help us out here.”

  “You’re doing it wrong,” Mark said again.

  “Hold on!” Luke interrupted before Mark could stir up further debate. “We aren’t going to put the red part on the inside of the house, are we? Turn the side around.”

  “He’s going to look like a sissy dog with the painted side facing out,” Matthew argued.

  “Luke’s right,” said Mark. “Red would look better on the outside. Turn it around.”

  Matthew’s face flushed. His younger brothers were not supposed to disagree with him. He stood up. He tried again. “Inside.”

  “Outside.”

  “Inside,” Little Klein called.

  “Clamp it!” all three Bigs shouted up at him, and then the shoving began. Shoving led to tripping, which led to a hearty wrestle with Little Klein cheering on whoever was on top at the moment and LeRoy barking furiously.

  “Nail!” screamed Luke. He held up his arm, a nail protruding from his meaty biceps. LeRoy bounded to the injured boy, only to be swatted away.

  “I win!” shouted Mark, who happened to be on top, injury being the automatic end to any match.

  “Oh no,” said Matthew, “I had you in a headlock. Little Klein, you call it.”

  “Well,” said Little Klein, enjoying his moment of attention, “it depends . . .”

  Luke yanked the nail from his arm and held his shirt over the bleeding part. “Ma!” he called, heading inside. “Need a bandage here.”

  “You see,” Little Klein continued, “Mark was on top, but then Matthew got him in a headlock, and technically —”

  “Just call it, Little Klein!” Matthew growled.

  “LeRoy, you’re with me, right?” Little Klein coaxed, nodding to LeRoy, who yapped back at him.

  “Little Klein!” Matthew stomped toward him.

  “Mark,” ruled Little Klein quickly.

  “Man alive!” Mark exclaimed. “I beat Matthew!” He held out his hand to Matthew. “Shake?” But Matthew had already turned back to his hammer.