Mystery Covers

I am sad. My brother passed away on Sunday. At the wake yesterday, I had such a flood of memories from our childhood adventures. I remember once riding our bikes over 60 miles to pick up some free puppies he read about in the newspaper. Even though I was in perfect shape, my legs felt stiff. It took us hours to get there. He always loved dogs, and my Dad had given away the last few we had. Here we were bycicling so far, trying to outwit the Miami traffic and heading to Homestead. Everytime that I would stop, he would egg me on, "Come on, we are almost there!" He was so smart and betwen us we could be called the childish version of "Lucy Ricardo", always coming up with the craziest ideas. This happened to be one of them. After hours of being cooked by the hot Florida sun, feeling sticky, our clothing drenched in sweat, we came to a halt. He was trying to figure out the address. He had called before, and gotten directions, but I was complaining I could not go on. His hand fumbling inside his pocket pulled out a nickel. Public telephones, which were a large population then, were a dime. Gus just marched up to a stranger, and asked him for a nickel. I sat on the curb, watching passersby, our bikes at parked position. Finally, his arms raised in victory, the needed nickel in his palm, he called my parents from the public telephone inside a booth. I coud hear him explaining to our strict Dad why we so far from home. I could taste the licking we would get upon our return. "Gus, please tell him to pick us up," I begged, "Forget the puppies. If we were meant to have them, we would have found the address." He looked at me with his big eyes that his daughter inherited, and said, "No, Rosa. We are going but we will wait for Daddy to go in the car." This appeased me tremendously. I was only eleven years old. He was ten. The heat was getting to me. We did not have any money with us, but somehow he talked the man behind the counter into letting us get two glasses of water. We drank these so fast that we spat som out. After what seemed to be an eternity, my Dad showed up in his green Chevy. He was trying to figure out where to put the bikes while we were trying to figure out what our punishment would be. My Dad was very quiet. He finally tied one bike on the roof of the car, and the other one went inside the trunk. My brother now pleaded our case to Dad. Now, with our father driving us to the place where our free puppies waited for us, we were smiling like cats who swallowed the mice. But as we knocked all sure of ourselves in the "free puppies" house, a strange man opened the door. My brother protectively moved his arm up in front of me. The first thing he said to me under his breath was, "I don't smell dogs here." "How strange," I thought,"what does Gus mean by that?" I stared at the man facing us wearing a tattered t shirt. He took my hand, and said, "Come on in." Gus removed the man's hand from mine, and with a very serious face, said, "You don't have any pippies here. I don't smell any dogs." The man laughed and said, "I will take you kids to where the dogs are. You are a smart young man." I did not like the way he was staring at me. It was like a perforating stare, the type people give you when they don't mean any good. Defensively, I pointed to my Dad's car. "Our Dad brought us. That's him parked outside. The mn laughed answering me, "You are too young to be such a little liar. Your brother told me you were riding your bikes here." "Well, guess what, Mr., there is a bike on top of that car, and another in the trunk. I don't know what you are up to, but we are leaving." We returned to the car, and on the way told a policeman about the man and the puppy ad, but the nice cop told us he could not arrest him because he had not done anything illegal. There was no proof the "free puppies" were a ruse to get children, and we were fine. He had not hurt us. We should just go home. My Dad was not too happy with this but drove us home. We were very quiet on the way back.