Operation Stinky Read online

  Operation Stinky

  Clifford D. Simak

  Clifford D. Simak

  Operation Stinky

  I was sitting on the back stoop of my shack, waiting for them with the shotgun at my right hand and a bottle at my left, when the dogs began the ruckus.

  I took a quick swig from the bottle and lumbered to my feet. I grabbed a broom and went around the house.

  From the way that they were yapping, I knew the dogs had cornered one of the skunks again and those skunks were jittery enough from the jets without being pestered further.

  I walked through the place where the picket fence had fallen down and peered around the corner of the shack. It was getting dusk, but I could see three dogs circling the lilac thicket and from the sound of it, another had burrowed half-way into it. I knew that if I didn't put an end to it, all hell was bound to break loose.

  I tried to sneak up on them, but I kept stumbling over old tin cans and empty bottles and I decided then and there, come morning, I'd get that yard cleaned up. I had studied on doing before, but it seemed there always was some other thing to do.

  With all the racket I was making, the three dogs outside the thicket scooted off, but the one that had pushed into the lilac was having trouble backing out. I zeroed in on him and smacked him dead centre with the broom. The way he got out of there, well, he was one of those loose-skinned dogs and for a second, I swear, it looked like he was going to leave without his hide.

  He was yelping and howling and he came popping out like cork out of a bottle and he ran straight between my legs. I tried to keep my balance, but I stepped on an empty can and sat down undignified. The fall knocked the breath out of me and I seemed to have some trouble getting squared around so I could get on my feet again.

  While I was getting squared around, a skunk walked out of the lilac bush and came straight toward me. I tried to shoo him off, but he wouldn't shoo. He was waving his tail and he seemed happy to find me there and he walked right up and rubbed against me, purring very loudly.

  I didn't move a muscle. I didn't even bat my eyes. I figured if I didn't move, he might go away. The skunks had been living under the shack for the last three years or so and we got along fine but we had never been what you'd call real close. I'd left them alone and they'd left me alone and we both were satisfied.

  But this happy little critter apparently had made up his mind that I was a friend. Maybe he was just plumb grateful to me for running off the dogs.

  He walked around me, rubbing against me, and then he climbed up in my lap and put his feet against my chest and looked me in the face. I could feel his body vibrating with the purring noise that he was making.

  He kept standing there, with his feet against my chest, looking in my face, and his purring kept getting soft and loud, fast and slow. His ears stood straight up, like he expected me to purr back at him, and all the time his tail kept up its friendly waving.

  Finally I reached up a hand, very gingerly, and patted him on the head and he didn't seem to mind. I sat there quite a while patting him and him purring at me, and he still was friendly.

  So I took a chance and pushed him off my lap.

  After a couple of tries, I made it to my feet and walked around the shack, with the skunk following at my heels.

  I sat down on the stoop again and reached for the bottle and took a healthy swig, which I really needed after all I had been through, and while I had the bottle tilted, the jet shot across the treeline to the east and zoomed above my clearing and the whole place jumped a foot or two.

  I dropped the bottle and grabbed the gun, but the jet was gone before I got the barrel up.

  I put down the gun and did some steady cussing.

  I had told the colonel only the day before that if that jet ever flew that close above my shack again, I'd take a shot at it and I meant every word of it.

  "It don't seem right," I told him. "A man settles down and builds himself a shack and is living peaceable and contented and ain't bothering no one. Then the government comes in and builds an air base just a couple miles away and there ain't no peace no more, with them jets flying no more than stove-pipe high. Sometimes at night they bring a man plumb out of bed, standing to attention in the middle of the room, with his bare feet on the cold floor."

  The colonel had been real nice about it. He had pointed out how we had to have air bases, how our lives depended on the planes that operated out of them and how hard he was trying to arrange the flight patterns so they wouldn't upset folks who lived around the base.

  I had told him how the jets were stirring up the skunks and he hadn't laughed, but had been sympathetic, and he told me how, when he was a boy in Texas, he had trapped a lot of skunks. I explained that I wasn't trapping these skunks, but that they were, you might say, sort of living with me, and how I had become attached to them, how I'd lay awake at night and listen to them moving around underneath the shack and when I heard them, I knew I wasn't alone, but was sharing my home with others of God's creatures.

  But even so, he wouldn't promise that the jets would stop flying over my place and that was when I told him I'd take a shot at the next one that did.

  So he pulled a book out of his desk and read me a law that said it was illegal to shoot at any aircraft, but he didn't scare me none.

  So what happens when I lay for a jet? It passes over while I'm taking me a drink.

  I quit my cussing when I remembered the bottle, and when I thought of it, I could hear it gurgling. It had rolled underneath the steps and I couldn't get at it right away and I almost went mad listening to it gurgle.

  Finally I laid down on my belly and reached underneath the steps and got it, but it had gurgled dry. I tossed it out into the yard and sat down on the steps glum.

  The skunk came out of the darkness and climbed the stairs and sat down beside me. I reached out and patted him kind of absent-minded and he purred back at me. I stopped fretting about the bottle.

  "You sure are a funny skunk," I said. "I never knew skunks purred."

  We sat there for a while and I told him all about my trouble with the jets, the way a man will when there's nobody better around than an animal to do the listening, and sometimes even when there is.

  I wasn't afraid of him no more and I thought how fine it was that one of them had finally gotten friendly. I wondered if maybe, now that the ice was broken, some of them might not come in and live with me instead of living under the shack.

  Then I got to thinking what a story I'd have to tell the boys down at the tavern. Then I realized that no matter how much I swore to it, they wouldn't believe a word of what I said. So I decided to take the proof along.

  I picked up the friendly skunk and I said to it: "Come along. I want to show you to the boys."

  I bumped against a tree and got tangled up in an old piece of chicken wire out in the yard, but finally made it out front where I had Old Betsy parked.

  Betsy wasn't the newest or the best car ever made, but she was the most faithful that any man could want. Me and her had been through a lot together and we understood each other. We had a sort of bargain—I polished and fed her and she took me where I wanted to go and always brought me back. No reasonable man can ask more of a car than that.

  I patted her on the fender and said good evening to her, put the skunk in the front seat and climbed in myself.

  Betsy didn't want to start. She'd rather just stayed home. But I talked to her and babied her and she finally started, shaking and shivering and flapping her fenders.

  I eased her into gear and headed her out into the road.

  "Now take it easy," I told her. "The state coppers have got themselves a speed trap set up somewhere along this stretch and we don't want to take no chances."

/>   Betsy took it slow and gentle down to the tavern and I parked her there and tucked the skunk under my arm and went into the place.

  Charley was behind the bar and there were quite a lot of customers—Johnny Ashland and Skinny Patterson and Jack O'Neill and half-a-dozen others.

  I put the skunk on the bar and it started walking toward them, just like it was eager to make friends with them.

  They took one look and they made foxholes under chairs and tables. Charley grabbed a bottle by the neck and backed into a corner.

  "Asa," he yelled, "you take that thing out of here!"

  "It's all right," I told him. "It's a friendly cuss."

  "Friendly or not, get the hell out with it!"

  "Get it out!" yelled all the customers.

  I was plenty sore at them. Imagine being upset at a friendly skunk!

  But I could see I was getting nowhere, so I picked it up and took it out to Betsy. I found a gunny sack and made a nest and told it to stay right there, that I'd be right back.

  It took me longer than I had intended, for I had to tell my story and they asked a lot of questions and made a lot of jokes and they wouldn't let me buy, but kept them set up for me.

  When I went out, I had some trouble spotting Betsy and then I had to set a course to reach her. It took a little time, but after tacking back and forth before the wind, I finally got close enough in passing to reach out and grab her.

  I had trouble getting in because the door didn't work the way it should, and when I got in, I couldn't find the key. When I found it, I dropped it on the floor, and when I reached down to get it, I fell flat upon the seat. It was so comfortable there that I decided it was foolish to get up. I'd just spend the night there.

  While I was lying there, Betsy's engine started and I chuckled.

  Betsy was disgusted and was going home without me. That's the kind of car she was. Just like a wife'd act.

  She backed out and made a turn and headed for the road. At the road, she stopped and looked for other cars, then went out on the highway, heading straight for home.

  I wasn't worried any. I knew I could trust Betsy. We'd been through a lot together and she was intelligent, although I couldn't remember she'd ever gone home all by herself before.

  I lay there and thought about it and the wonder of it was, I told myself, that it hadn't happened long before.

  A man is as close to no machine as he is to his car. A man gets to understand his car and his car gets to understand him and after a time a real affection must grow up between them. So it seemed absolutely natural to me that the day had to come when a car could be trusted just the way a horse or dog is, and that a good car should be as loyal and faithful as any dog or horse.

  I lay there feeling happy and Betsy went head high down the road and turned in at the driveway.

  But we had no more than stopped when there was a squeal of brakes and I heard a car door open and someone jump out on the gravel.

  I tried to get up, but I was a bit slow about it and someone jerked the door open and reached in and grabbed me by the collar and hauled me out.

  The man wore the uniform of a state trooper and there was another trooper just a little way away and the police car there with its red light flashing. I wondered why I hadn't noticed it had been following us and then remembered I'd been lying down.

  "Who was driving that car?" barked the cop who holding me.

  Before I could answer, the other cop looked inside Betsy and jumped back about a dozen feet.

  "Slade!" he yelled. "There's a skunk in there!"

  "Don't tell me", said Slade, "that the skunk was drivin'."

  And the other one said, "At least the skunk is sober."

  "You leave that skunk alone!" I told them. "He's a friend o mine. He isn't bothering no one."

  I gave a jerk and Slade's hand slipped from my collar. I lunged for Betsy. My chest hit the seat and I grabbed the steering post and tried to pull myself inside.

  Betsy started up with a sudden roar and her wheels spun gravel that hit the police car like machine-gun fire. She lurched forward and crashed through the picket fence, curving into the road. She smashed into the lilac thicket and went through it.

  I was brushed off.

  I lay there, all tangled up with the smashed-down lilac and watched Betsy hit the road and keep on going. She done the best she could, I consoled myself. She had tried rescue me and it wasn't her fault that I had failed to hang onto her. Now she had to make a run for it herself. And she seemed to be doing pretty well. She sounded and went like she had the engine off a battleship inside her.

  The two state troopers jumped into their car and took pursuit and I settled down to figure out how to untangle myself from the lilac thicket.

  I finally managed it and went over to the front steps shack and sat down. I got to thinking about the fence, and decided it wasn't worth repairing. I might just as well give up and use what was left of it for kindling.

  And I wondered about Betsy and what might be happening to her, but I wasn't really worried. I was pretty sure she could take care of herself.

  I was right about that, for in a little while the state troopers came back again and parked in the driveway. They saw me sitting on the steps and came over to me.

  "Where's Betsy?" I asked them.

  "Betsy who?" Slade asked.

  "Betsy is the car," I said.

  Slade swore. "Got away. Travelling without lights at a hundred miles an hour. It'll smash into something, sure as hell."

  I shook my head at that. "Not Betsy. She knows all the roads for fifty miles around."

  Slade thought I was being smart. He grabbed me and jerked me to my feet. "You got a lot to explain." He shoved me at the other trooper and the other trooper caught me. "Toss him in the back seat, Ernie, and let's get going."

  Ernie didn't seem to be as sore as Slade. He said: "This way, Pop."

  Once they got me in the car, they didn't want to talk with me. Ernie rode in back with me and Slade drove. We hadn't gone a mile when I dozed off.

  When I woke up, we were just pulling into the parking area in front of the state police barracks. I got out and tried to walk, but one of them got on each side of me and practically dragged me along.

  We went into a sort of office with a desk, some chairs and a bench. A man sat behind the desk.

  "What you got there?" he asked.

  "Damned if I know," said Slade, all burned up. "You won't believe it, Captain."

  Ernie took me over to a chair and sat me down. "I'll get you some coffee, Pop. We want to talk with you. We have to get you sober."

  I thought that was nice of him.

  I drank a lot of coffee and I began to see a little better—things were in straight lines instead of going round in circles—things I could see, that is. It was different when I tried to think.

  Things that had seemed okay before now seemed mighty queer—like Betsy going home all by herself, for instance.

  Finally they took me over to the desk and the captain ask me a lot of questions about who I was and how old I was and where I lived, until eventually we got around to what was on their minds.

  I didn't hold back anything. I told them about the jets and the skunks and the talk I had with the colonel. I told them about the dogs and the friendly skunk and how Betsy had got disgusted with me and gone home by herself.

  "Tell me, Mr. Bayles," said the captain, "are you a mechanic? I know you told me you are a day labourer and work at anything that you can get. But I wonder if you might not tinker around in your spare time, working on your car."

  "Captain," I told him truthfully, "I wouldn't know which end of a wrench to grab hold of."

  "You never worked on Betsy, then?"

  "Just took good care of her."

  "Has anyone else ever worked on her?"

  "I wouldn't let no one lay a hand on her."

  "Then you can't explain how that car could possibly operate by itself?"

  "No, sir. Betsy is a smart ca
r, Captain…"

  "You're sure you weren't driving?"

  "I wasn't driving. I was just taking it easy while Betsy took me home."

  The captain threw down his pencil in disgust. "I give up!" He got up from the desk. "I'm going out and make some more coffee," he said to Slade. "You see what you can do.

  "There's one thing," Ernie said to Slade as the captain left. "The skunk…"

  "What about the skunk?"

  "Skunks don't wave their tails," said Ernie. "Skunks don't purr."

  "This skunk did," Slade said sarcastically. "This was a special skunk. This was a ring-tailed wonder of a skunk. Besides, the skunk hasn't got a thing to do with it. He was just out for a ride."

  "You boys haven't got a little nip?" I asked. I was feeling mighty low.

  "Sure," said Ernie. He went to a locker in one corner of the room and took out a bottle.

  Through the windows, I could see that the east was beginning to brighten. Dawn wasn't far away.

  The telephone rang. Slade picked it up.

  Ernie motioned to me and I walked across to where he stood by the locker. He handed me the bottle.

  "Take it easy, Pop," he advised me. "You don't want to hang one on again."

  I took it easy. About a tumbler and a half, I'd reckon.

  Slade hollered, "Hey!" at us.

  "What's going on?" asked Ernie.

  He took the bottle from me, not by force exactly, but almost.

  "A farmer found the car," said Slade. "It took a shot at his dog."

  "It took a what—a shot at his dog?" Ernie stuttered.

  "That's what the fellow says. Went out to get in the cows. Early. Going fishing and was anxious to get the morning chores done. Found what he thought was an abandoned car at the end of a lane."

  "And the shot?"

  "I'm coming to that. Dog ran up barking. The car shot out a spark—a big spark. It knocked the dog over. He got up and ran. Car shot out another spark. Caught him in the rump. Fellow says the pooch is blistered."

  Slade headed for the door. "Come on, the both of you."

  "We may need you, Pop," said Ernie.

  We ran and piled into the car.