Never Cry Arp! and Other Great Adventures, page 9
The day of the big camping trip dawned bright and clear, a common ruse of Mother Nature to lure unsuspecting souls out into the wilds. The five of us piled into the ancient Muldoons sedan and set off for the mountains. Most of our camping gear, such as it was, balanced precariously atop the car. It was wrapped in a huge hay tarp, which was to serve as our tent. “Ain’t had a drop of rain in three months,” Mr. Muldoon had said. “Probably won’t need the tarp.” This statement would later be recalled and admitted as evidence in the case against Mr. Muldoon’s being physic.
“How you doin’ back there, Goombaw?” Mr. Muldoon said to Eddie’s grandmother. For some reason, everyone called her Goombaw.
“How you think I’m doin’?” Goombaw snapped back. “Wedged in between these two sweaty young-uns! I’m boilin’ in my own juice! This camping trip is the stupidest dang fool idear you ever come up with, Herbert! We’ll probably all get et by bears. Tell me, what about bears, Herbert?”
Yeah, I thought. What about bears?
“Ha ha ha ha,” Mr. Muldoon laughed. “You don’t have to worry about bears. They’re more afraid of humans than we are of them.”
Well, I thought, that’s certainly not true of all humans, particularly one that I know personally It’s probably not true of all bears either. But I kept these thoughts to myself, since Goombaw was doing a thorough job of grilling Mr. Muldoon on the subject. I could tell that the talk of bears was making Mrs. Muldoon nervous, not that she was the only one.
“Let’s change the subject, Goombaw,” she said.
“Oh, all right. How about mountain lions, Herbert?”
For the rest of the long, hot, dusty ride up to the huckleberry patches, Goombaw harangued Mr. Muldoon about every possible threat to our well-being, from bears to crazed woodcutters. By the time we reached our campsite, she had everyone in such a nervous state that we were almost afraid to get out of the car. Mr. Muldoon stepped out, swiveled his head about as though expecting an attack from any quarter, and then ordered us to help set up camp.
No level area for our tent was immediately apparent, but Crazy Eddie and I finally located one. It was down a steep bank and on the far side of a little creek. Mr. Muldoon, Eddie, and I dragged the bundle of camp gear down the bank and across a log to the little clearing in the brush and trees. In no time at all Mr. Muldoon had constructed a fine shelter out of the tarp. Eddie and I built a fire ring of rocks, and Mrs. Muldoon and Goombaw got a fire going and put coffee on to boil, apparently forgetting that the doctor had told Mr. Muldoon to cut down on his coffee drinking because of his nerves. Eddie and I sampled the fishing in the creek. All in all, the camping trip showed signs of becoming a pleasant experience. Then it got dark.
“I say keep a fire goin’ all night,” Goombaw advised. “It might help keep the bears off of us.”
“There ain’t no bears,” Mr. Muldoons said. “Now stop worrying about bears. Ha! Bears are more afraid of us than we are of them. Now, everybody get a good night’s sleep. We got a lot of huckleberries to pick tomorrow.” He stripped down to his long underwear and burrowed into the pile of quilts and blankets Mrs. Muldoon had arranged on the ground.
I pulled my threadbare blanket out of the gunnysack and spread it out in the dirt next to Goombaw.
“Good heavens, Patrick!” Mrs. Muldoon said. “Is that all you have to sleep in, that one little blanket? The nights can get pretty chilly up here in the mountains.”
“Oh, I’ve got more blankets in my sack,” I lied. “If it turns cold, I’ll just put some more on. But I sleep warm.”
As the night dragged on into its full depth, I lay there shivering in my blanket, studying with considerable interest the looming dark shapes the full moon revealed around our camp. Finally, Goombaw and the Muldoons ceased their thrashing about on the hard ground and began to emit the sounds of sleep. I jerked the fur coat out of the gunnysack and buttoned myself into its comforting warmth. I set a mental alarm to awaken me before the Muldoons, so I could conceal the coat before they caught sight of the hideous thing. Then I drifted off into fitful sleep.
“Wazzat?” Goombaw shouted in my ear.
Later, she claimed only to be having a nightmare, but, fortunately for us, she sounded the alarm just in time. In the silence that followed Goombaw’s shout, you could almost hear four pairs of eyelids popping open in the dark.
“A bear!” Goombaw shouted. “A bear’s got me!”
Since I was lying right next to Goombaw, this announcement aroused my curiosity no end. I tried to leap to my feet but, wrapped in the fur coat, could only manage to make it to all fours.
“Bear!” screamed Crazy Eddie. “Bear’s got Gooooo—!”
“Bear!” shrieked Mrs. Muldoon. “There it is!”
Goombaw made a horrible sound. I could make out the big round whites of her eyes fixed on me in the darkness, no doubt pleading wordlessly with me for help, but what could a small boy do against a bear?
“Holy bleep!” roared Mr. Muldoon. He lunged to his feet, knocking over the ridgepole and dropping the tarp on us and the bear. Figuring Goombaw already for a goner and myself next on the bear’s menu, I tore out from under the tarp just in time to see Mr. Muldoon trying to unstick an ax from the stump in which he had embedded it the night before. Even in the shadowy dimness of moonlight, I could see the look of surprise and horror wash over Mr. Muldoon’s face as I rushed toward him for protection. He emitted a strangled cry and rushed off through the woods on legs so wobbly it looked as if his knees had come unhinged. Under the circumstances, I could only surmise that the bear was close on my heels, and I raced off after Mr. Muldoon, unable to think of anything better to do. With his abrupt departure, Mr. Muldoon had clearly let it be known that now it was every man for himself.
Bounding over a log with the effortless ease that accompanies total panic, I came upon Mr. Muldoon peeling bark and limbs off a small tree. Since he was only four feet up the tree, I debated briefly whether to wait for him to gain altitude or to find my own tree. Then Mr. Muldoon caught sight of the bear closing fast on us. He sprang out of the tree and took off again, with me so close behind that I could have reached out and grabbed the snapping flap of his long underwear. The thought did occur to me to do so, because I was nearing exhaustion, and Mr. Muldoon could have towed me along with his underwear flap. Upon later reflection, however, I think it is well that I didn’t grab the flap, for it probably would have been a source of considerable embarrassment to both of us.
When I could run no more, I dropped to the ground, deciding I might as well let the bear eat me as run me to death. But the bear was gone. Perhaps he had taken a shortcut through the woods, hoping to cut me and Mr. Muldoon off at a pass. In any case, I never did get to see the bear, narrow as my escape had been. Sweltering in the fur coat, I took the thing off and stuffed it down a hollow stump, glad to be rid of the thing.
When I got back to camp, everyone was gone. I climbed up to the car, inside of which I found Eddie, his mother, and Goombaw, each more or less in one piece.
“Thank heavens,” cried Mrs. Muldoon. “We thought the bear had got you! Have you seen Mr. Muldoon?”
I said yes I had, not mentioning that I had seen even more of him than I cared to. Half an hour later, Mr. Muldoon scrambled up the bank to the car. Upon learning that everyone was intact, he explained how he had led the bear away from camp, at considerable risk to himself. I was surprised that he neglected to mention my role in leading the bear off, but didn’t think it my place to mention it.
“You got to keep a cool head during a bear attack,” Mr. Muldoon explained. “Panic and you’re done for.”
“Wheweee!” Goombaw said. “I smell skunk! Somebody step on a skunk in the dark?”
Then it started to rain. Hard.
TO MY YOUNGER READERS:
These are stories about some of my adventures as a young boy growing up in the mountains of Idaho. Many of you, perhaps, are engaged right now in similar adventures, which will provide you with a rich source for your own stories for many years to come. I hope that is the case. A person needs his or her own adventures and his or her own stories.
I receive a great many letters from boys and girls, many of whom ask if my stories are true. The answer is “Yes!” Oh sure, I have varnished, stretched, and embroidered the original experiences somewhat. But that doesn’t mean the stories aren’t true. Stories always have their own truth.
Most of my stories are written with children in mind, and I try never to write over their heads, which I judge to have elevations of anywhere between three and five feet. If you’re under three feet, you may occasionally have to stand on your tiptoes.
These stories have a simple purpose, and that is to make you laugh, even when you yourself sometimes feel like crying “Arp!”
Pat McManus
Clark Fork, Idaho
1995
ALSO BY PATRICK F. McMANUS
Kid Camping from Aaaaiii! to Zip
A Fine and Pleasant Misery
They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?
Never Sniff a Gift Fish
The Grasshopper Trap
Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs
The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw
Whatchagot Stew
(with Patricia “The Troll” McManus Gass)
Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink!
The Good Samaritan Strikes Again
How I Got This Way
Collection copyright © 1996 by Patrick F. McManus
All rights reserved.
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
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New York, New York 10010
www.henryholtchildrensbooks.com
Henry Holt® is a registered
trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
eISBN 9781466809475
First eBook Edition : January 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McManus, Patrick F
New Cry “Arp!”; and other great adventures /
Patrick F. McManus.
p. cm.
Contents: Skunk dog—The mountain—Reading sign—Kid brothers and their practical
applications—Never cry “Arp!”—Real ponies don’t go Oink!—Secret places—
A really nice blizzard—Cubs—Muldoon in love—Not long for this whirl—
The night the bear ate goombaw.
1. Outdoor life—Juvenile Fiction. 2. Children’s stories, American. 3. Humorous stories,
American. [1. Outdoor life—Fiction. 2. Humorous stories. 3. Short stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.M47876Ne 1996 [Fic]—dc20 95-39420
First Edition—1996
Patrick F. McManus, Never Cry "Arp!" and Other Great Adventures
