Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Blasts Off! Read online

Mrs. McClosky stood on her front steps, holding on desperately to the railing, and called out in her eight-thousand-year-old voice, “Down, Lemon Drop! Leave Cornelius alone!”

  Lemon Drop didn’t even give her a second look.

  He was too busy drowning me with slobber.

  I could feel my eyes start to bulge out of my head, which is actually sort of an interesting feeling, except for the part that involves being choked to death. Just as little white dots started floating in front of my eyes, Mrs. McClosky whipped a tennis ball at Lemon Drop, who immediately started looking around to see who was up for a game of catch.

  For an approximately eight-thousand-year-old woman, Mrs. McClosky has a pretty good arm.

  I slowly stood up, rubbing my neck.

  “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry, Atticus,” Mrs. McClosky called from her steps. “I was just about to take Lemon Drop for a walk, and he got away from me. Normally I pay a dog walker, but the young man who was helping me quit unexpectedly yesterday. That Tilda Fergus offered him seven dollars an hour to walk her Scottish terrier, Perky. Really, Ulysses, life is so unfair sometimes.”

  Before I could say anything, Lemon Drop dropped a slobber-soaked tennis ball at my feet.

  “You want me to touch that?” I asked him.

  Lemon Drop nodded.

  “Did you just nod?”

  Lemon Drop nodded again.

  “He’s a very intelligent dog,” Mrs. McClosky called. “They say Labradors aren’t smart, but they just haven’t met my Lemon Drop.”

  In my many scientific pursuits I have never developed much of an interest in animal psychology. Maybe that’s because my mom is allergic to dogs, and I’m allergic to cats, and amphibians of all sorts give Lyle the creeps.

  Which is to say, I have not had much hands-on experience with our four-legged and finned and webbed-toed friends.

  But you have to admit, a dog who can nod is a pretty interesting scientific specimen.

  Mrs. McClosky began tottering toward me. “You wouldn’t happen to want an after-school job, would you, Barnabus? I need someone to walk Lemon Drop every afternoon for an hour. I can pay you six dollars.”

  “A week?”

  “A day,” Mrs. McClosky said. “My grandson comes over on the weekends to help out, so I would only need you to walk Lemon Drop Monday through Friday.”

  So, $6 a day, five days a week. That was $30 a week, or $120 a month.

  Not enough for Space Camp, but definitely a start.

  “I’d be happy to do it,” I said, leaning over and picking up the slobbered-on tennis ball.

  A slobbered-on tennis ball is one of the grosser things you can pick up with your bare hands, in case you were wondering.

  But for six dollars an hour I’d learn to live with it.

  chapter four

  “You’re getting a dog? Awesome!”

  Ben was lying on my bedroom floor eating two-year-old graham sticks from an open pack he’d found under my dresser.

  You will always find something to eat in my room. Pretzels, chips, gummy worms, crackers—you name it, I’ve got it somewhere, usually under my bed or in my top desk drawer.

  Freshness is not guaranteed.

  “I’m not getting a dog,” I said. “I have a job walking a dog. To be precise, I have a job walking Lemon Drop, the biggest Labrador retriever known to humankind.”

  “My dad had a Saint Bernard growing up,” Ben told me, popping one last graham stick in his mouth before sitting up.

  “He said it was as big as a truck. And when he shook his head—you know, like if a fly was bugging him?—slobber would fly out five feet in every direction.”

  “Why do dogs slobber so much?” I asked, scientifically curious. “I mean, what’s up with their saliva glands?”

  Ben thought about this for a second. “But have you ever noticed little dogs don’t really slobber very much? It’s like they’re too hyper to slobber.”

  I have noticed since Ben and I have been best friends that he doesn’t make many scientific observations, but when he does, they are always interesting and worth investigating.

  “Let’s get Sarah to Google it,” I said, jumping up from my bed. “There’s got to be an answer to dog slobber.”

  Sarah P. Fortemeyer is my babysitter. More specifically, she is the Babysitter from Outer Space, only not the good kind.

  However, she is the only person in the house from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m. who has access to my mom’s computer and permission to go online.

  “You want me to Google ‘slobber’?” Sarah was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a Teenage Girl Space Alien magazine and talking on her cell phone at the same time. “They want me to Google ‘slobber,’” she said into the phone. After a pause she said, “Yeah, I know, but I need the money and his little sister is really nice.”

  She made a few more remarks into the phone that I was pretty sure weren’t compliments about me and Ben, and then headed for my mom’s computer, which was on the counter next to the fridge.

  “You probably need to be more scientifically specific than just ‘slobber,’” I told her. “You probably need to put something like ‘dog saliva.’”

  Sarah logged on to the Internet, brought up the Google page, typed in the phrase “dog saliva,” then hit enter. “Hey, here’s something about dog saliva being a wonder drug,” she said after a second, finally sounding interested. “Some kids are doing a science fair project about it. They think it might kill bacteria.”

  I felt automatically jealous that someone who wasn’t me had come up with such a scientifically amazing science fair topic.

  “Oooh, and here’s something about how dog saliva might be cleaner than human saliva.”

  “I’ve heard that before!” Ben exclaimed. “It’s better to be kissed by a dog than by a human because you’ll get more germs from the human.”

  “But what about the amount of saliva produced?” I asked.

  “Hmmm,” Sarah said, scrolling down the page. “Oh, hey, here’s something. It says that dogs that eat dry food produce more-watery saliva than dogs that eat meat. Meat-eating dogs have more-mucusy saliva.”

  You could tell by the expression on her face that all of the sudden Sarah Fortemeyer wasn’t that interested in dog saliva anymore.

  Ben, on the other hand, was fascinated.

  “Yeah, that makes perfect sense! Because think about it, it’s sort of like humans, like when we eat crackers? Or when we eat a hamburger. You definitely have different spit after a hamburger than after a cracker.”

  He turned to me. “You’ve got to admit it, Mac, that would make an interesting science fair topic for next year.”

  Ben and I made a volcano for the fourth-grade science fair. We got an honorable mention. It was one of the greatest scientific disappointments of my life, although my mom keeps telling me the important thing is that Ben and I did our best.

  It is that sort of attitude that could cause a person to go his whole life and never win a Nobel Prize in Physics.

  Sarah continued to scroll, but she was shaking her head. “I’m not finding anything about quantities of dog saliva,” she said. “Mostly what’s here is about bacteria in dog saliva or else how some people are allergic to dog saliva.”

  I was disappointed but not defeated.

  I had not yet begun to research dog slobber.

  And now with Lemon Drop, I had a subject right around the corner.

  That’s when it hit me: not only did I have a job, I also had a walking, nodding, slobbering science lab at my disposal.

  Science lab.

  Science Lab.

  Lemon Drop the Science Lab.

  As in Lab rador retriever?

  I started laughing so hard that Sarah P. Fortemeyer had to get me a glass of water and Ben smacked me on the back about a hundred times.

  Boy, sometimes I crack myself up.

  chapter five

  Aretha was less interested in dog slobber and more interested in the fact that Lemon Drop could n
od his head yes.

  “That is a very unusual trait in a Canis familiaris,” she told me from across the cafeteria aisle during lunch period on Monday. In the fourth grade it is against the law for boys and girls to sit together in the cafeteria. You can talk on the playground, but there is something about eating together that rubs people the wrong way. The punishment for breaking the law is a lifetime of other kids saying, “Oh, Mac and Aretha are going to get married,” or, “Where’s your girlfriend Aretha, Mac?” So I sit at a boys’ table, and Aretha sits at the girls’ table next to it, and we have conversations without actually looking at each other.

  “Yeah, I know,” I told her, pulling off the crust of my tuna fish sandwich. “I did a bunch of research this weekend, and even though there’s lots of documentation about how dogs are really smart, I couldn’t find anything about dogs nodding their head for yes.”

  Aretha blew some air through her straw. “Add that to the fact that Labrador retrievers aren’t supposed to be very bright.”

  “That’s misinformation,” I informed her. “I found this list of the smartest dogs, and Labs were, like, number eight out of, like, eighty breeds. They are completely underestimated, intelligence-wise.”

  “I stand corrected,” Aretha said. “My apologies to Labrador retrievers everywhere.”

  “The problem is, I don’t even know how to start running experiments about Lemon Drop’s intelligence. I was thinking that it would be better to focus on slobber. I mean, it’s just easier to run experiments on, for one thing—”

  “And for another thing, we could film it.” Ben plopped down next to me, dropping his yellow tray on the table and spilling his milk everywhere. “I just had a fantastizoid idea standing in line. I’ve got a video camera, right?”

  I nodded. Ben’s dad gave him a digital camcorder for becoming our class’s vice president. He was hoping Ben would drop his dream of being the world’s greatest comic-book artist and become a visual media whiz instead.

  “So all the sudden it came to me: Let’s document the life of Lemon Drop. Either we end up making some great discovery about dog slobber, or else we can sell our documentary to the Animal Channel or Disney. They love dog stuff. Any way you look at it, we make big bucks. You can go to Space Camp, and I can go to the annual World Comic Book Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii.”

  Ben got a dreamy look on his face. His dream has always been to go to Hawaii and learn to surf. He feels that surfing should be part of every genius comicbook artist’s lifestyle.

  From the corner of my eye I could see Aretha get an excited look on her face, which meant her brain was running full steam ahead. “We’ll build a multimedia website,” she suddenly exclaimed, practically hopping up and down in her seat. “We’ll upload digital footage of Lemon Drop, post charts and graphs, even run experiments on his saliva. It will be magnificent.”

  She actually turned and looked straight at me, risking a lifetime of ridicule from our peers. “I’m going to get a badge out of this. Maybe two, maybe three.”

  Aretha’s goal is to be the most successful Girl Scout that Woodbrook Elementary School has ever produced. She has only been a Girl Scout for two and a half months, but I’m pretty sure she’s already halfway there. So far she has gotten badges for making penicillin (with my help), starting a community garden in her neighborhood, rock climbing, auto repair, cooking, and creating her own blog (“Because I Say So, by Aretha Timmons”), which she updates daily. If there is a badge for being elected president of the United States before you turn ten, Aretha will probably get that one too.

  I crunched on a baby carrot, wondering if Ben’s idea would actually work. I had never heard of fourth-grade filmmakers before. On top of that, it was hard to believe anyone would be that interested in watching a movie about Lemon Drop slobbering.

  On the other hand, I’d never figured out why people liked to watch movies about other people kissing each other and holding hands.

  I mean, who can explain the public’s viewing tastes?

  And what if we made a great scientific documentary and got rich from it? What if we came up with some great discovery about dog slobber? I’d be able to go to Space Camp, maybe for the entire summer, not just over spring break. In my backpack I had the Space Camp brochure I’d downloaded from the website. It was all there: spaceship simulators, rocket launches, robotics, life on a space station. By the end of just one week I’d practically be a certified astronaut.

  I pounded Ben on the back. “Let’s do it!”

  Aretha high-fived the air. “Yes!”

  Ben grinned. “This is going to be awesome.”

  chapter six

  This afternoon Sarah P. Fortemeyer drove me and my little sister, Margaret, to the library, which she always does on Mondays after I get home from school. Normally it is one of the highlights of my week. Mrs. Zelinski, the children’s librarian, always has at least one great science book recommendation for me.

  But today I wanted to get to my dog-walking job and start making important scientific discoveries about Lemon Drop. I had already come up with two experiments I wanted to try:

  1. Collect at least three samples of saliva. The first sample would be collected midway through our walk, by which time Lemon Drop should have worked up a mouthful of slobber. The second sample would be collected after Lemon Drop and I had played five minutes of slobberball, and the third one would be taken after Lemon Drop drank from his water dish. I would collect each sample in a different vial (or olive jars I’d taken from the recycling bin, whichever was more handy) and then view them through the microscope my dad had given me for my birthday. I would examine the samples to see which one was the stringiest, which one was the wateriest, and which one was just the plain grossest.

  2. Test Lemon Drop’s slobber for chemical reactions. What would happen if I mixed slobber with vinegar? With baking soda? Would it fizz? Was it possible to make slobber blow up? Would certain chemicals cause slobber to change colors? Was it possible that my mom would finally let me buy a chemistry set to test slobber’s chemical properties if I explained to her the importance of slobber science and how I would probably make great scientific breakthroughs if I just had the right tools to work with? Probably not. But it was worth a try.

  I think experiments are the coolest part of being a scientist. And for the first time I was realizing that making up your own experiments is extra cool. If you can’t find any research on why dogs slobber so much, you do your own research. Nobody can stop you. Nobody can say, “No, you can’t do that.”

  That is a rare event in the life of a nine-year-old boy.

  When we walked into the children’s section of the library, Mrs. Zelinski noticed me right away. “I have an amazing book for you, Mac,” she told me, reaching under her desk and pulling something out. “Just got it today, and as soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘This is a book for Mac MacGuire.’”

  She handed the book to me. I couldn’t believe it: The title was Mars Comes to Earth: Experiments for Kids. I immediately took a seat at my favorite table and started reading. I skipped over a bunch of the introductory junk and zoomed through the pages, looking for experiments where stuff exploded.

  It turns out that Mars is not a particularly explosive planet.

  After reading the book for about ten minutes, I started to see that in some ways Mars was a sort of quiet planet. It’s not like you’re going to hop over there and find a lot of activities going on. In fact, the big thing in Mars exploration, according to Mars Comes to Earth, is seeing if you can find tiny little bits of bacteria that would prove maybe life exists on Mars, or that at least it existed at some point in Martian history.

  The good thing about being a scientist is that after you get over the disappointment that nothing is going to explode, you can still get pretty interested in a scientific topic. I mean, all of the sudden I actually started to care about whether or not microscopic bacteria lived on Mars. It became this automatic big thing with me.

  I found two
experiments I was going to start right away:

  1. The “Is There Life on Mars?” experiment. What you do is take three jars and fill each one about halfway with sand. Then you put two teaspoons of baking powder in one jar, two teaspoons of salt in the next jar, and two teaspoons of yeast in the third jar (don’t forget to label the jars). You refrigerate the jars overnight so they get cold like Mars, and the next day you add warm sugar water to each jar and see what reaction you get. If you get a slow, steady reaction, then you know there’s life in the jar. This is like the experiments the Viking 2 probe did on Martian soil.

  2. The “Why Is Mars Red?” experiment. You need more sand, some steel wool, and a pair of gloves, since steel wool can be sharp. You pour the sand into a pan, cut up the steel wool and mix it with the sand. Then you pour water over the sand and steel wool, enough to cover everything. You leave the pan somewhere where your two-year-old sister won’t knock the whole thing over, and every day you check it to see what color it turns to.

  I walked up to the desk and handed Mrs. Z. the book and my card. “I’ll take it,” I told her.

  “I thought you would,” she replied. While she was checking out the book, she asked, “So, what interesting projects are you up to these days, Mac?”

  I think it’s possible that Mrs. Z. herself is a scientist disguised as a mild-mannered librarian. I have noticed she takes a special interest in my scientific work.

  This is not true of all the adults I have met in my lifetime.

  I told her about Space Camp, and I told her about the Lemon Drop experiments. Mrs. Z. nodded as she listened. “You know, I think they used to send dogs into space,” she told me. “The Soviets definitely did, way back at the beginning of the space programs.”

  I tried to imagine living in a space shuttle with Lemon Drop. I imagined big blobs of drool in the antigravity atmosphere, floating around like little lost planets.