Easton, Tom - Real Men Don't Bark at Fire Hydrants

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REAL MEN DON'T BARK AT FIRE HYDRANTS
Tom Easton
Box 2724, RFD 2
Belfast, ME O4915
(2O7) 338-1O74
1. UFO Slime Devours Israel!
Mickey Gorgonzola sighed into the phone. "It's just a bit of fungus, Larry.
That's all it is."
While the man on the other end of the line insisted he was wrong, Mickey
rocked his head in his hand and thought, If only I were! He had wished that UFOs
were real ever since he first heard the term at the age of eight.
"What does Israel have to do with it, Larry?" Mickey asked emphatically
even though he knew better. "It's the Holy Land? Someone faxes Tits'n'Tats to
say he saw a UFO land, and he went out in the desert and found a dent in the
sand and a clot of mud with bits of twiggy stuff, and you believe him?" Mickey
wished he could believe.
Now it was Larry's turn to shout. When he obliged, Mickey winced and held
the phone away from his ear.
"What do you mean, I don't have to be insulting? So he sent that photo."
And Larry had faxed it to Mickey. "Have you forgotten what a scale bar means?
Right. That twiggy bit is a tenth of a millimeter long, it can't be anything
except a piece of soil fungus, and they used a scanning electron microscope to
take that photo."
He didn't have to wince this time, but it was still very clear that he
wasn't getting through. "Yeah, it's first cousin to a toadstool." The closest he
could hope Tittles and Tattles would come to the truth would be a headline
screaming: "THE TOADSTOOL FROM BEYOND THE SKY!!!"
He used a pencil to draw a Kilroy on the edge of the photo while Larry
confirmed his cynicism. When the other paused for breath, he said as gently as
he could, "It isn't real, Larry. If it was... Remember when NASA was getting
ready to put landers on the Moon? The Vikings on Mars? ... So I'll fill you in.
They put a lot of effort into sterilizing everything. They didn't want to take a
chance that something from Earth would get loose and multiply and become the
slime that ate a world. So maybe..."
And there was another headline: "UFO SLIME DEVOURS ISRAEL!!"
Larry would love that, wouldn't he?
"Yeah," he said. "Glad I could help. I'll bill you."
He hung up. He sighed again, more deeply and more loudly now that he
needn't worry about offending... No. He shook his head. Larry Castle was a
tabloid reporter. The only time he ever took offense was when a source clammed
up on him. His calloused hide made a rhino's butt look like a maiden's cheek.
Sometimes Mickey wished he could penetrate that hide a little more deeply.
Sometimes he wished he had never heard of UFOs.
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2. Real Men Don't Bark at Fire Hydrants
Mickey leaned over his laser printer to crank the filthy casement window
open. The September air was all he needed to clear the mustiness from both the
office and his head. Traffic noise engulfed him. Twenty feet below was the
steady flow of the city's populace on foot and bicycle, in cars and trucks and
city buses.
He was turning back toward the desk when something caught his eye.
A businessman, an executive by the look of his silvery sideburns, his
unwrinkled suit, and his glossy attache case, was striding purposefully toward
the fire hydrant across the street. He was wearing a ferocious scowl.
The executive stopped before the hydrant, opened his attache case on the
sidewalk, took off his suitcoat, and laid it in the case. Then he laid a yellow
legal pad on the sidewalk, knelt on it, leaned forward, and caught his weight on
his hands. He extended his neck toward the hydrant. Mickey thought he could
hear...
The phone rang. He swore, but he managed to pick it up before it could ring
a second time.
"Angela!" Angela Colby was his agent. He sat down once more. "Do you mind
if I call you back later? There's a man on the street outside, growling at a
fire hydrant... No, not a bum. Quite well dressed. Might even be one of your
colleagues..." His chuckle lasted only long enough for him to realize he was the
only one laughing.
While she talked, he tipped his chair and leaned toward the window. The
executive was still on his knees, but now he was jerking back and forth, his
mouth was abruptly opening and closing. The sound... "My God," he said. "He's
barking! What? At the fire hydrant. That man on the sidewalk. He's..."
He sighed much as he had for Larry Castle. "Yes, Angela... It's coming," he
said as soon as his agent paused for breath. "I know it's just a proposal. I
know I've been working on it for two weeks already."
He winced and tilted the phone away from his ear. "I want the advance as
much as you do. But you know you can't rush these things, Angela... No, that
barking idiot showed up for the first time just before your call."
The shirt-sleeved executive was still on his knees, still barking at the
fire hydrant. What was wrong with him? He couldn't possibly be normal, could he?
Normal people didn't do such things.
Although they did sometimes act quite strange.
He glanced at his computer. What he had accomplished in two weeks didn't
quite fill the screen. "You'll have it by next week. Cross my heart. That's a
promise."
As soon as he hung up the phone, he put his head in both hands. Next week,
he thought. He had less than a page. He needed at least ten.
Once that had been a day's work. But then he had realized that what he was
writing were nothing more than travel books for armchair explorers who preferred
a vicarious quest for bug-eyed aliens to one for the last of the Tasaday.
This one would be just like all the rest, and the very thought of writing
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it bored him to madness.
Though the quest itself had been as fascinating as ever.
It had begun last spring, when Larry Castle called to tell him that a
Russian stringer had reported that a hunter had shot down a 50-pound butter~fly
with a six-foot wingspread. Mickey had been skeptical--Mother Nature had laws
against bugs that big, after all. But when Larry asked him to investigate the
story for Tits'n'Tats, he had accepted the assignment. He had then spent the
month of July in the Komi Republic northeast of Moscow. Unfortunately, there had
been no sign of the stringer, the hunter, or trophy-sized butterflies, dead or
alive.
What he had found instead was the museum in Syktyvkar, the Komi capital,
and its permanent exhibit of paintings by UFO contactees. Several of the
paintings supposedly showed the giant butterflies, though they looked more like
a three-year-old's fingerpaint renditions of flowers without stems.
And two weeks before, when he had told Angela Colby the story and shown her
his photos, she had decided it would be his next book.
He stood up and leaned over his laser printer once more. The executive was
still there, still on his knees, still barking at the fire hydrant.
Mickey shook his head. How much longer could he keep it up?
As Mickey watched, someone finally slowed as if to join the few spectators.
He was a tall man, straight-backed and dignified despite the ragged overcoat
hanging from his shoulders and the battered top hat squashing his hair into a
fringe of gray curls. His wide mouth was stretched into a grin that struck
Mickey as just as goofy as the executive's barks.
When he reached the executive, the newcomer stopped, reached into a pocket
of his overcoat, and began to withdraw a rope hand over hand.
The rope coiled on the pavement between the newcomer and the still-barking
executive. It seemed endless, and within moments several more passersby stopped
to watch, their mouths half open like those of children watching a stage
magician.
When twenty feet of rope were on the ground, the newcomer fashioned a loop,
stood, and dropped the noose over the barking executive's head as if he were
leashing a dog.
Two of the onlookers laughed out loud.
The executive immediately leaped to his feet. He barked once more, a shrill
yip, threw off the noose, and glared at the other man. Then he put on his
suitcoat, tossed his legal pad into his attache case, picked up the case, and
stalked off.
The ragged newcomer shrugged elaborately, yapped once at the executive's
back, and winked at the onlookers. Then he undid the noose, returned the rope to
his pocket, and followed the executive down the street and around the corner.
"You wouldn't believe it, Kilroy!" The shepherd-beagle mix gaped his jaws
and rolled over on the rug so Mickey could scratch his belly.
"What wouldn't he believe?" The blonde in the kitchen doorway held a glass
of amber liquid in each hand.
"Rocky!" Mickey jumped to his feet, grinning. He hadn't expected to see
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Rochelle Forte for another hour. In a moment, his hands were on her sides and
their lips were meeting.
"Careful!"
"What do you mean, 'Careful!'?"
"Take your damned drink so I can beat you off!" But she was smiling as she
swore at him.
"I've got to take this guy outside," said Mickey.
"I already did."
"You got home real early then."
"I had a couple of cancellations for a change." Rocky was a clinical
psychologist with a private practice on the city's North Side. "So I've still
got some listening left. Tell Momma."
Mickey finally accepted the drink she was holding toward him. He took a
hefty swallow. Then he told her about the business executive who barked at fire
hydrants. He didn't say a word about the slow progress he was making on the
proposal.
Rocky sipped at her own drink. "Hmm."
"What do you think? In your considered, professional opinion, that is."
She laughed. "The guy's a nut."
"Is that all you can say? I could tell that much myself."
"Well, he doesn't sound depressed."
"But what is he? Schizophrenic?" Rocky didn't talk a lot about her work,
but she had told him a little. He knew schizophrenics were most likely to act
bizarre in public. He looked at his glass. It was already empty.
"I've never heard of anyone barking at fire hydrants." She stepped to one
side of the doorway and gestured toward the kitchen with her own glass. "The
bottle's on the counter."
"Mind-reader." He patted her hip as he passed. Kilroy followed him.
"Not quite. You're just predictable. And I'd have to talk with him for a
while before I could come up with a decent diagnosis. You know that."
He grunted in reply. "What're we doing for supper?"
Kilroy lifted his head and looked expectant. "Supper" was a word he knew.
The glowing red display of the clock on the table beside the bed said 2:43.
Only an occasional car interrupted the quiet of the street outside the building.
Further off, trucks rumbled and sirens whined.
Normal.
Nothing alarming. Nothing even strange or bizarre.
Then why had he awakened?
A cold nose touched his ear as Kilroy, alerted by the change in his
breathing, silently asked, "What's up, boss?"
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He wished he knew.
He moved a hand, patting, stroking. Rocky's bare hip and thigh and back
were where they always were, where they belonged, beside him, warm beneath the
covers. Her breath fluttered. There was no hint that she knew he was awake.
Kilroy chuffed, meaning, "Getting up, boss? Going out?"
"Shhh, boy," he whispered. "It's too early to water any..."
And then he had it. Hydrants. Barking.
He had never seen or heard of such a thing before in his life.
Neither had Rocky.
So people didn't do such things.
Did they?
People didn't.
Not even when they were insane.
As Sherlock Holmes once said, when you've eliminated the possible, whatever
remains, no matter how impossible it seems, must be the truth.
So if people didn't bark at fire hydrants.
Which they didn't.
And if that polished-looking business executive had indeed been barking at
a fire hydrant.
Which he had.
Then that polished-looking business executive could not be people.
Not human.
He had to be an alien.
A space alien.
A real one! At last!
Mickey Gorgonzola conscientiously reminded himself that a very large
"MAYBE" really did have to be attached to his conclusion.
But then he lay back on his pillow with a beatific smile on his face.
3. Sdrawkcab Gnis Ro
"What else could he be?" He lay in bed, arms crossed behind his head.
Kilroy stood beside the bed, his chin resting on the mattress, his tail wagging
like a demented metronome.
"A nut." Rocky grimaced as she yanked the brush through a tangle. She was
wearing nothing but panty-hose. "I told you that yesterday."
"People don't go nuts that way."
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"They go nuts in every way that you could possibly think of. And they keep
thinking up new ones."
He shook his head vigorously. "Come on. You didn't see the guy. He looked
utterly rational."
"He did?"
"You know what I mean. He wasn't drooling. His eyes weren't rolling." He
showed her what he meant and was rewarded by a flickering smile. "Of course, he
wasn't looking at..."
She threw the hairbrush at him.
He threw it back, rolled out of the bed, thumped Kilroy on the shoulders,
and pushed the dog out of the way. "Pretty soon, boy. Give me a minute. Maybe
I'll even take you with me today."
"There's scarcely enough room in that office for you."
He was rummaging in a drawer for socks and underwear. "We'll manage."
"And what're you going to do about this space alien of yours?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. Keep my eyes open, I suppose."
"And if you see him?"
"Ask, maybe?"
She snorted and pulled a blouse over her head.
When they reached the office, Kilroy flopped on the throw rug with a heavy
sigh. Mickey hung up his jacket, turned on his computer, called up the proposal
he was supposed to be working on, and stared at the screen. He typed a few
lines. Then he sighed as gustily as his dog.
"It's shit," he said. "All shit. Isn't it, Kilroy?"
The dog's tail thumped the floor.
"I'm glad you agree." He got out of his chair and leaned over the laser
printer. The window was as dirty as ever, the street as crowded.
Could there possibly be real, genuine space aliens at large among Earth's
natives? He had wished there could for as long as he had known anyone had ever
thought of the possibility. He had searched for them all his working life. He
had never found them. Not even one.
Neither had anyone else.
And as for space aliens out there in space... He thought they had to be
there, somewhere. But all the astronomers with their SETI radio antennae and
cartoony space probe messages had found no sign of them either.
Could the barking man really be what he yearned for? If so, where did he
come from? Why was he here? Were there more like him in the city or on Earth?
He ached to know the truth.
But there was no barking executive today. No double-parked flying saucers.
Just a squad car by the hydrant across the street. Two cops getting out.
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Two minutes later, Mickey opened his office door to find two dark blue
uniforms blocking the opening. Large "I {Heart} My Job" buttons covered all but
the edges of the name tags above their left breast pockets.
"Michael Gorgonzola?" asked the fat one. He stepped forward just enough to
force Mickey a step backwards, and the tiny office felt jammed as full of flesh
as a knackwurst. "The writer?" He sounded skeptical.
"Mickey."
Kilroy growled.
Mickey said, "Down, Kilroy," and the dog retreated to hide under the desk.
He did not stop growling.
The thin cop stepped up beside his partner, showed his teeth, and touched
the brim of his cap. "I read wunna yer books once."
"Shut up, Custer," said the other cop.
"Right, Abe." Custer's lips compressed into a thin line so wide his cheeks
bulged.
After a portentous pause, the fat cop extended a finger, studied it, and
finally pointed it at Mickey. "You're not in trouble."
"Yet," said Custer.
"Shaddap," said Abe.
"Right, Abe."
Kilroy growled louder.
"What are you two talking about?" asked Mickey.
"You're not in trouble yet," said Abe once more. "But you're getting close.
We're here to tell you to lay off."
"Off what?" Mickey gestured toward the computer screen. The book proposal
he had promised Angela was the only thing he was involved in at the moment.
There was nothing else to lay off. "That? It's a friggin' travel book! And I've
already done most of the research!"
Abe shook his head. "Just lay off."
"Is it the Komi region? The museum?" He stopped. Was something special
going on there? "Just who are you guys anyway?"
"Just lay off," said the fat cop.
"Or what?"
Custer giggled. "You won't like it."
"Shaddap."
"Right, Abe."
"But...!"
"You've been warned." The fat cop tapped his partner's shoulder with one
large hand and said, "Let's go." Simultaneously, the two men turned around and
stepped toward the narrow office doorway.
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Custer was trying to give the other room when Kilroy barked.
The thin cop leaped forward, and for a moment the two men were jammed
together in the doorway, unable to go either forward or back.
Someone in the hallway laughed.
"Idiot!" cried the fat cop as he slapped the top of Custer's head.
"Right, Abe." The thin cop retreated a step, shrugged apologetically, and
let his partner precede him through the door.
Mickey Gorgonzola was shaking his head and scratching Kilroy's muzzle when
someone said, "Oughta shut your door. Keep the riffraff out."
He grinned up at the newcomer standing in the doorway. "Hi, Bert. That was
you laughing?"
"They looked like something out of an old movie." Bert Camen was a head
taller than Mickey, though that head was nearly hairless except for a thick
mustache. He was also thinner, and a rolled beret jutted from one pocket of his
tweedy sportscoat.
"You should know." Bert was a film and stage critic for the city's largest
paper. They had known each other since college.
"So what's going on?"
Mickey shrugged. "I wish I knew."
"Didn't look like they had their hands out." Bert closed the office door,
stooped to pat Kilroy's shoulder, and squeezed past Mickey to sit on the edge of
the desk.
"It wasn't that," he said. "They were warning me off something."
"What?"
"They wouldn't say." Mickey pointed at the computer screen and explained
the proposal. "That's all I'm working on these days."
"How many days?" Bert sounded concerned; it was obvious from the screen
that Mickey had not been making rapid progress.
"I've been watching the street too."
A single bark sounded from somewhere beyond the window.
His friend leaned in that direction. "See anything interesting?"
"Some idiot was barking at the fire hydrant yesterday."
"Nobody there now."
"Rocky thought he was a nut."
"You didn't?"
"Ahh." Mickey waved a hand. "He sure wasn't normal. Normal people don't do
things like that."
Bert laughed and pointed at the computer screen. "Oh, I don't know."
"You know me. I'm wondering if he's a space alien."
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摘要：

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Tom%20Easton%20-%20Real%20Men%\20Don't%20Bark%20at%20Fire%20Hydrants.txtREALMENDON'TBARKATFIREHYDRANTSTomEastonBox2724,RFD2Belfast,MEO4915(2O7)338-1O741.UFOSlimeDevoursIsrael!MickeyGorgonzolasighedintothephone."It'sjustabitoffungus\,Larry.That'sallitis."Whil...

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