All About Max, page 4
The only thing was that he was used to aristocratic purebreds like Sir Launcelot and Lady Guinevere. They wouldn’t have dreamed of jumping all over you and covering your hands or face with dog slobber and goo. The running-away roller coaster stalled midway up the incline while Max thought this over.
“Down fellows!” said Moose.
The fellows didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word “down” until Moose finally grabbed the two of them by the scruff of their necks and reminded them what it meant.
“So do you like dogs, Max?” Moose now made it a question.
“What kind are they?” Max asked.
“Does that determine whether or not you’d like them?” asked Moose. His bright blue eyes were halfway between an amused twinkle and a dangerous challenging twinkle.
“I like all animals,” said Max, his chin up. “I...I rescued a kitten from being run over once. I...I won a gold medal for it.” He saw no reason to explain that he’d won it from his parents.
“Congratulations!” said Moose, his eyes definitely twinkling. “But in answer to your question, they are the Heinz brothers. The Heinz food company once upon a time had a slogan advertising fifty-seven varieties. So that’s what Moxie and Mojo are, just a couple of mutts. Did you have dogs, Max?”
“They were just one variety, Borzois,” said Max, who figured Moose wouldn’t even know what a Borzoi was.
“You hear that, fellows?” Moose said. “Borzois...Russian wolfhounds. Probably well trained at that. You’d better watch your manners.”
Moxie and Mojo just looked up at him adoringly with their tongues hanging out.
“They like walks in the woods. And if an old cemetery a hundred or two years old doesn’t creep you out, the fellows like to sniff around the old gravestones.” said Moose.
The fellows looked at Moose adoringly and flagged their tails.
Moose gave them both a scratch behind the ears. “So any time you feel like it, you can come on over and take them out.”
“Where will I be coming from?” asked Max. “I...I thought I was going to be living here.”
“What you see is all there is, and it’s barely enough room for me and the boys.” Moose replied. “Where you’ll be living is the big house.”
The big house! So Max would be living there after all, and not in some old room off the garage. The running-away roller coaster was definitely on its way up again.
“I thought you said it was just old people who lived there,” said Max.
“I didn’t say just,” replied Moose. “It’s where the Measley girls live as well, and I’m taking you to meet them right now.”
Girls! If Moose was calling them “girls”, might the Measley girls not be nice young ladies who could tell that Max was not just a distant cousin of a handyman living in garage, and there for “extra help” whatever that meant? Besides, it was such a large house, his room didn’t have to be anywhere near the old people, did it? It was a very good thing that he had won out over Binge and worn his Ballyhoo jacket. That ought to tell the “girls” something. Why, they might even want to adopt him!
After they had managed to escape Moxie and Mojo, jumping on them as they left Moose’s quarters, Max picked up one suitcase and went bumping and thumping across the driveway, until Moose snatched it from him and carried them both again as if they were filled with feathers.
They crossed the driveway in silence and arrived at steps leading down a few steps to a cellar door at the back of the building. Moose unlocked the door, but before opening it, he turned to Max.
“Keep your mouth shut as much as possible,” he said. “Let me do the talking, and for Pete’s sake, Max, don’t disagree with anything I say. Okay?”
“Oh, okay,” said Max, who had no intention of doing any such thing. He would certainly disagree if he didn’t like what Moose had to say.
He was going to let Ruby and Pearl, the Measley girls, know that it was Maximilian Pettigrew Westmorington Bassford Thorndike Finstersill Smith the Fifth, son of Maximilian Etc. Smith the Fourth, and a Ballyhoo boy with a gold medal for bravery in his blazer pocket, they were looking at, and not Max, the poor cousin of the handyman who lived in their garage.
That is EXACTLY what he was going to do!
Chapter VI
In which Max is introduced to the Measley girls, and makes the most of ruining further his already miserable new life.
M oose then led Max down the cellar hallway toward the stairs.
“My office, if you can call it that,” he said, pointing through an open door where Max saw a battered old oak desk covered with piles of papers, a tomato can filled with pens and pencils, and a telephone. Behind it was an old-fashioned oak desk chair, and another like it in front. On the wall was a bulletin board covered with papers tacked untidily to it. Everything looked as if it had been there and used for a very long time, and certainly very different from the office of Maximilian P.W.B.T.F. Fourth, or even the one belonging to Mr. Fitzbottom.
“This is where we hang out when we’re working elsewhere in the building,” Moose said. “That’s the workshop,” Moose said, pointing into another room filled with a tools and a worktable. “This is the laundry room, and ahead are the stairs we go up.”
“What’s in that room?” Max asked, pointed behind him to a door at the end of the passageway that looked as if it were made of steel, and locked with an enormous padlock.
“Not the foggiest,” said Moose. “Used to be just a more-or-less empty room collecting dust until the Measley’s took over. Then that padlock appeared. I haven’t been in it since.”
Just before they reached the stairs, there was another closed door with no lock at all, and it was there that Moose finally set down Max’s suitcases.
“Aren’t we taking those up to my room?” asked Max.
“This is your room,” said Moose, and opened the door.
Oh no, it isn’t! thought Max. Not this room in a cellar with an iron cot and a bed table with a small lamp and no shade on it, a wood chair with one arm missing, a chest of drawers with half its grey paint chipped off and a cracked mirror over it. On the wall were six nails which were the only “closet” the room provided. Moose gave Max a rueful grin. “Sorry about this, kid, but that’s the way it is. At least the window’s not so high you can’t look out and see the trees.”
“Bully!” thought Max. Was he supposed to jump up and down and clap his hands because he could see the trees from a dump like this?
“Anyway,” said Moose, attempting, but not quite managing, another grin, “you’ve got your own private bathroom next door.”
Considering the look of Max’s room, it didn’t take any brains to imagine what his “private bathroom next door” was going to look like. No wonder Moose couldn’t even produce a grin about it!
But then, Moose suddenly reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring full of keys. He unhooked two of the keys from the ring and held them out to Max.
“Here,” he said, “This key’s for you to get in the back door. This other one is a key to my place. Any time you want to come over, play a game of ball with the boys, and maybe take them for a walk, they’d love it. I saw how they took to you. Okay?”
Max knew that this was a very special favor. And just because he was where he was, he was still a Ballyhoo boy with manners.
“Thanks!” he said.
But no way, no how, was this going to remain Max’s room, or his “private bathroom” either. Big deal that he could look out a window and see the trees! He had every intention of living in some room upstairs where he didn’t have to strain his neck looking up to see the leaves, perhaps even a nice loft away from the old people that might remind him of his old penthouse room. But he would keep his mouth shut for now, especially after the kind thing Moose had just done, giving him the key to his place.
Anyway, Moose would find out soon enough how things stood with Max and the “girls” at Measley Manor. And after all, Moxie and Mojo were one reason he wasn’t making an immediate decision to run away. He’d need the key to go see the boys even if he was in his “penthouse” loft.
When they arrived at the top of the stairs they entered a very large entry hall with wide doors on either side. Through one Max saw tables laid for a meal. Through the other, he saw a television screen flickering, but there was nothing on the screen but snow. Seated in a circle facing the screen were ten chairs. Sitting in each was a very old, very wrinkled person, just the kind that gave Max the creeps. Every grey or white head was nodding, for they were all fast asleep.
“Aw, for Pete’s sake! Wait here, Max,” Moose said, and stomped across to the television set.
He turned a dial, and immediately a picture returned to the screen. Then he went to a chair and gently shook the shoulder of the occupant.
“Hey, wake up, Mrs. Dumpty, you’re missing your program!”
Mrs. Dumpty opened her eyes, gave Moose a big smile. She didn’t appear to realize that she’d even been asleep.
Moose then went to the next chair.
“Dr. Humpty, you’re missing your favorite program!”
Dr. Humpty opened his eyes, and smiled at Moose. He didn’t seem to realize he’d been asleep either.
Moose went from one chair to the other, gently shaking the shoulders of every occupant.
“Hey, open your eyes, Dr. Doodle!”
“Time to wake up, Officer Dickory!”
“You’re missing your show, Ms. Bo Peep!”
“Hey, up and at ‘em, Mr. Tweedle-Dee!”
“Okay now, open those eyes, Commander King Cole!”
“Didn’t realize you’ve been snoozing, eh, Mrs. Muffet?”
“Hey, you’re missing the best part of your favorite program, Coach Winkie!”
“Hi, Mrs. Diddle, you wouldn’t want to miss this show, would you?”
All ten were instantly so intent in watching the television set, they didn’t even seem to realize that they’d been asleep or that Moose had been there waking them up. He returned to Max shaking his head, with a rueful smile on his face.
Max was wondering meanwhile what all these curious names were, and where he seemed to have heard them before. Then it came to him. They all came out of his Mother Goose book, every one! These people must not only be old and wrinkled, but nutty as well, if they answered to these names.
“Okay, that’s done!” Moose said. “Let’s move on.”
“Why did you call those people those goofy names?” Max asked. “They aren’t their real names are they?”
“Of course not,” Moose said. “They put on a little Christmas show for a local kindergarten class a while ago, and acted out Mother Goose rhymes. They had so much fun doing it, they decided to adopt Mother Goose names. The Dolly’s, the former owners of Measley Manor, thought it was fun as well, so the names have stuck. They call themselves the “Mother Goose Gang.”
Max still thought it was loony whatever the reason for it. He didn’t think he’d have much to do with these wrinkled old dodo’s anyway, though, and the less the better. He didn’t even like the idea of living in this house with them should the Measley girls decide to adopt him. This was clearly a very big house, and he’d have to see that his room was as far away from theirs as possible. They had now reached a closed door at the back of the house.
“Brace yourself,” Moose said.
“Why?” asked Max.
“Just take my word for it, and do it,” Moose said, and knocked on the door.
The door opened slowly, and Max found his eyes glued to two women who could have passed for a pair of steel knitting needles. Their faces featured two identical sharp noses, two identical sharp chins, two pairs of identical sharp, narrow eyes over identical deadly pale cheeks. Their identical black hair was pulled back into identical black buns. The only difference between them was that one wore a large, glittering ruby pin at the neck of her black suit, the other one a deadly black pearl. The Measley girls, Miss Ruby Measley and Miss Pearl Measley, as their pins announced, were a pair of identical twins!
The moment Max saw them, the adoption idea went flying out the nearest Measley Manor window. The two stood for a moment, their narrow eyes studying Max from top to bottom and back up again several times.
“Is this the boy?” asked Ruby.
“He is, Miss Measley,” replied Moose.
“Doesn’t look like he’ll be much use,” said Pearl. “Show us your hands, boy.”
Moose gave the frozen Max a dig in the ribs. “Show them your hands, please.”
“’Please’ is not necessary,” snapped Ruby. “Do as you’re told, boy. Hold out your hands!”
Max held out his shaking hands.
“Not the back, boy, the front,” said Pearl.
Max turned his hands over.
“We thought you said he’d done laboring work, Moose. Those don’t look like a laborer’s hands to us, do they, Ruby?” said Pearl.
“Hmmmph!” snorted Ruby. “Never mind, they will soon enough. I presume you’ve told the boy what his duties are to be?”
“Not yet,” said Moose. “We only just got here.”
“Well then, no reason not to let him know now so there’s no mistake about it. Don’t you agree, Ruby?” said Pearl raising her eyebrows at her twin.
“Oh, absolutely, Pearl,” said Ruby. “He’s to be helping Snitch until Delilah returns. We presume you also haven’t told the boy that Snitch will be in charge. You’ll do exactly what Snitch tells you to. Do you get that, boy?”
Max was so paralyzed with fright, he was barely able to nod.
“What you’ll be doing, boy, is emptying trash from the rooms and the trash room, cleaning bathrooms, which includes toilets, and possibly helping Mrs. Fiddle in the kitchen. That’s to begin with. We’ll be considering further duties, of course, but in the meantime, you’ll do anything Snitch tells you to do. Anything at all! And see that you do, or Snitch will report it to us. Is that clearly understood, boy?”
Max somehow managed another nod.
“And don’t forget, Moose,” said Pearl. “The boy is not to be paid anything, as we agreed. Are you getting all this, boy?”
By now, Max’s throat so frozen, he was barely able even to breathe, much less manage to nod.
“By the way, Moose, what did you say this boy’s name is?” asked Ruby.
“It’s...” Moose began.
But before he could get out the name “Max”, Max’s throat suddenly unfroze just long enough for him to blurt out, “It’s...it’s Maximilian Pettigrew Westmorington Bassford Thorndike Finstersill Smith the Fifth.”
Toilets and trash! Never mind adopting him, there was no way in the world that Max was going to be in charge of toilets and trash, and being ordered about by someone name Snitch. The Measley girls had better know just who it was they were dealing with!
This outburst, however, was followed by a deadly silence. Then the Measley girls turned and looked at one another. Their eyebrows slithered up their foreheads.
“Is there something wrong with this boy, Moose?” asked Pearl.
“No, Miss Measley,” replied Moose. “That’s actually his name.”
“Not any more, it isn’t!” snapped Ruby. “He will answer to Max when needed. Is that clear, boy?”
Max nodded again. Oh yes! His big last stand had just collapsed into rubble, and it was very clear indeed!
Pearl’s eyes then traveled up and down Max from his polished shoes up past his Ballyhoo jacket.
“Is that all the clothes you have, boy?” she asked.
“N…n…no,” stammered Max.
“Well, you can get rid of these,” said Pearl. “You won’t be needing them here.”
But then Ruby dug Pearl in the ribs with a sharp elbow, and motioned her over to a far corner of the room. There the two of them held a whispered conference, and returned to Max and Moose.
“My sister and I have decided, boy, that you are to keep the jacket and the rest in perfect condition,” Pearl said. “We may want you to wear that uniform when we request it. When that time comes, you are to say ‘Yes, ma’am, Miss Measley’ or ‘No, ma’am, Miss Measley’ as required. We trust that you will remember this.”
Pearl hardly needed to add the words ‘or else’ to this order. Max was quite able to add them himself!
“You might as well introduce him to the kitchen now, Moose,” said Ruby. “And please advise Mrs. Fiddle that’s she’s late with our tea. This has been a very trying day, has it not, sister?”
“Very trying, indeed!” said Pearl
Then the two Measley girls fixed Max with a stare so sharp that had they really been a pair of steel knitting needles, the points would have gone right through him and come out the other side. They were making it very clear that Max was the reason for their trying day.
As he followed Moose to the Measley Manor kitchen what Max was thinking that with every twist and turn in his life since that terrible announcement made to him by Mr. Fitzbottom, he had been able to think of something that would come along and save him.
But this was it. This was the terrible end. Max’s roller coaster had hit rock bottom. He knew now there was but one thing left for him to do. He would absolutely, positively have to run away.
Where he would go and what he would to when he got there, didn’t matter. What could be worse than toilets, trash, working under somebody named Snitch, living in a room in the cellar, the cold-blooded Measley girls, a bunch of loony wrinkled old people with stupid Mother Goose names, and a handyman who probably hadn’t even graduated from kindergarten, much less grade school, even if he had been nice enough to give Max a key to his place to play with the boys.
Anything would better than all that. Anything!
Chapter VII
In which Max meets someone else who in all likelihood will do nothing to improve his future.
