BIG TROUBLE

Blustery Major Percy P. Stumpwirther stormed up to Sergeant Oakie who was about to hollar again into the loudspeaker. The major shouted, "you idiot, put that blasted horn down and kill the blinkers on those cars over there! This is a hush operation, a matter of national security. Do you want to wake up the entire neighborhood?"

Oakie faced off. "Listen here, Major, jest cuz y'all wear thet military monkey suit, y' cain't talk thet way to me! This here is a local deal too. Look, our best chopper is all busted up in thet orchard over there."

As a pair of official faces burned mad beet red, a limousine with flapping flags rumbled onto the scene. Two men dressed in black, one tall and skinny, the other short and fat stepped out of the vehicle. They flashed I.D. Everyone backed away. The men in black were the top-top, most secret-secret agents in the Federal government.

The agents took command.

A middle-aged daddy and a six year old girl stood in the doorway at the farm house. Their arms stuck straight up.

The men in black approached briskly to identify themselves as Agents-P and U. Agent-P was tall, Agent-U was short.

"You can put your hands down," said Agent-P.

"But you must come with us," said Agent-U.

"We must question you," said Agent-P.

"And do we have some important questions," said Agent-U.

In the limousine Daddy and Leah sat side-by-side. The car was moving. Situated across in the back compartment, the top-top, most secret-secret agents had been asking many questions. In fact Daddy had just finished a long explanation, and as usual Leah had become increasingly totally bored with questions and explanations.

Backing up a little, Daddy's long explanation had been in response to that basic question that one always seemed to get when dealing with top-top, most secret-secret agents, which is, "what have you been doing all day?" Therefore, this had become for Daddy an extremely earnest question and explanation. Because even though it is easy to remember the great adventures in one's life, it is impossibly hard to remember what has happened in the last, most recent day. It could be concluded that it is hard to figure out how life's great adventures might ever happen at all.

But Daddy had tried his best starting with waking up in the morning then getting dressed and taking out the garbage, and while Daddy had strained at his explanations the limousine just kept rolling down the road. It had taken about ten miles along the road before daddy got to the descriptions of nap-time stories; however, when he then mentioned, "story telling," both agents turned pale, made a big fuss and went, "ah ha."

And as usual such an "ah ha" has a way of stopping even the very best of explanations.

Agent-P reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a black book which he then handed to Agent-U. Engraved on the front page was the word, "LAW." Agent-U turned to page thirteen-thousand and then began to read page thirteen-thousand aloud which went, "article thirteen of Congressional Federal Law prohibits such depraved acts as 'story telling'."

Leah snapped to attention sticking up her neck. "That is stupid! There is no such thing as a law against story telling."

"There is now, little girl," snarled Agent-U.

Daddy was bewildered. He had dreamed such interesting and pleasant dreams that afternoon. He and his daughter had drifted deeply into the stories, but now they awakened into a spinning nightmare.

Daddy asked, "but what can the telling of stories ever harm?"

"It could harm national security," warned Agent-P.

"And that certainly did happen," added Agent-U.

"In what way," begged Daddy.

"We will get to that as soon as we reach the top-top, most secret-secret base," declared Agent-U.

"And that will be soon," added Agent-P.

The limousine wheeled up the mountain following confusing twisted roads. All the snakey curves started making Leah feel a little queasy. She whined,"my tummy feels bad. I think I'm getting carsick,"

"Carsick," sounded Agent-P. He turned to Agent-U, "quick, get out the book of regulations. Look up, 'carsick'."

Agent-U frantically flipped through the book when his own fat belly began to gurgle too.

Keenly observant Leah noticed Agent-U turning green and instantly decided that she didn't like these two agents very much. So she forgot her own carsickness and hatched an impish idea.

Leah blurted, "peanut butter and pickle sandwiches!"

Agent-U turned a darker sickly green.

"Sardines and whipped cream," she tantalized.

Agent-U lurched forward in his seat bending over.

"Boiled bugs and vinegar!"

It worked! A sudden explosive mess brought everything to a halt.

By the time the lizard green trucks arrived for "Operation,Clean-up" Leah and Daddy stood outside the stalled limousine catching a breath of fresh air. They were being guarded by the driver, Sergeant Slurk, a seedy looking soldier. In the distance Agent-P shouted angrily at Agent-U because Agent-U had up-chucked all over the compartment of the government car.

Aside Leah spoke flashing innocent big eyes, "it's too bad Mr. Agent-U got sick, huh, Daddy, but I think Mr. Agent-P is being rude; he shouldn't be so mean! After you can't help being carsick every once in awhile."

Daddy strained to hold in his laugh. He wrapped his arms around Leah's shoulders and cuddled closer. He began to say something when a military truck with coiled water hose pulled up to the limousine. Three soldiers dressed in lizardy khaki uniforms uncoiled the hose and spun valves. They blasted the nasty soiled passenger compartment with cleaning solvent.

In the background Agents-P and U were now being scolded by an officer. Agents-P and U frowned and stared at the ground. The military officer shouted bad words some of which were hard to understand, such words as, "incompetent" and "jeopardizing." Other words were just plain bad! Leah thought that this officer was lucky that his mom and dad were not nearby or he surely would be sent to bed or made to stand in the corner--or like the discipline daddy claimed he suffered when he was a boy to go suck on a piece of soap.

But that would take a lot of soap.

She turned to the driver, Slurk. He was lean faced and raw-boned with a hooked nose and hairy nostrils. "Where are you taking us," Leah asked. "I want to go back home!"

"Sorry," Slurk said, "it's against orders."

Leah rolled her eyes. "Well you shouldn't let people just order you around--bad for your self extinct!"

Slurk hissed, "little girl, this is the military. Like I said, I just take orders."

Leah rolled her eyes and sighed in disbelief.

Daddy leaned to interrupt. "Shhh," he whispered, "it won't do any good to talk to him that way. He doesn't understand."

Leah whispered back, "he should understand; he's a grownup." Silently she thought, why would anybody get a job where all you ever do is take orders? That seemed awful!

A puffy man whose uniform was draped with more dangley jewelry than the others approached the daddy and daughter. His veined face held anger. Leah didn't like him at all. She thought that he hadn't learned to control his mouth, and that wasn't good for a grownup either.

"You two come with me," barked the coarse man. He was terribly rude it seemed, and also lacked any noticeable manners. Leah sensed that this whole thing was a dumb game. She tagged along anyway. At least it wasn't boring.

The girl and her dad were then ordered to sit in the back of an ugly truck with two stiff sentries. The soldiers both had machine guns.

Leah didn't like guns--too noisy.

The lizard-man with the jewelry climbed on the softer seats up f ront by the driver. He shouted a bunch of commands using more bad words. Leah concluded that all these lizard-people nust have had terrible parents, because they seemed so rude and bad-mouthed. She decided that they all needed to go suck on a bar of soap.

Daddy seemed more worried than ever so Leah snuggled closely to him. Maybe she ought to have scolded Daddy for worrying but decided not. After all, she thought, this did seem like a big bunch of trouble, maybe the biggest bunch of all.

"Oh well," she muttered softly, "at least things couldn't get any worse."

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TEN