The Trouble with Tuck by Theodore Taylor Page B

was.
    As soon as I arrived, I took Tuck's seven-foot leash and attached it to Daisy's collar, then attempted to make Tuck grasp the looped end in his teeth. He flatly refused to even open his mouth.
    Once I'd seen Dr. Tobin open Tuck's wide jaws quite easily by applying pressure at the very back, at the hinges. I put my fingers back there, and Tuck's mouthopened like a trap. Sticking the leash end in, I pushed his jaws together and held them a few seconds. Of course, he dropped the leash as soon as I took my hands away.
    Trying to be patient with him, I said, “All right, we'll start all over again.”
    We did the same routine a half dozen times daily for two or three days, and it turned out the same each time. Tuck stood there and opened his mouth, accepted the leash, and then dropped it right out. By Friday, I believe he thought it was a game we were playing, and much fun.
    Put the leash in!
    Drop the leash out!
    Friday was also the day that Luke accidentally discovered my secret training place. Something was wrong with his bike, and he decided to walk it through the park instead of going along the Wickenham curve. He came through a hole in the oleander hedge like a hawk searching for a rabbit, and there I was, holding Tuck's jaws closed on the leash.
    Pushing his bike up to me, my brother, having caught himself a criminal, said, “You're not supposed to be training those dogs.”
    I replied, “Luke, I'm only doing what I have to do, and don't you dare tell anyone.” Now that I was thirteen, I didn't let him push me around so much.
    “Aw, who cares?” he said, and went on his way.
    That night, just before dinner, when I was alone in the kitchen with my mother, she said, offhandedly, “I hear you're still training Tuck and Daisy.”
    Curse Luke anyway, I thought. I knew things about him that I hadn't told anyone. I knew things that could get him into so much trouble.
    “Are you?” she asked.
    What could I say? “Yep.”
    Eyeing me as if trying to make up her mind, she said, “I should be angry.”
    I just stood there, waiting for whatever was going to come—the firing squad or
A
for effort. It should have been the latter.
    She laughed softly. “Any luck?”
    I shook my head. “But I can't give up.”
    “Never be so definite about anything,” she said. “Okay, I won't tell your father, and I've told Luke to quit spying on you. But I'm giving you a firm deadline, Helen. Two weeks more, and then no more.”
    That was fair enough, and then I told her about my elephant idea.
    On a firm deadline now, with no time to waste, mid-morning of the next day I went over to see wise Mr. Ishihara at Ledbetter's. He was in the back storage room, which always had a dozen good pungent smells wafting around it. Boxes of fruit, burlap sacks of potatoes and car-rots, small mesh bags of onions, and coffee beans were in there; canned goods were stacked to the ceiling. Sawdust was on the floor.
    Bent over, using a small crowbar to open a wooden crate of lettuce from the Salinas Valley, Mr. Ishihara lis-tened to Tuck's latest unwillingness to cooperate.
    “He drops the leash out. He thinks it's a game,” I said.
    “Try rubbing some food on it.”
    I hadn't considered doing that.
    Mr. Ishihara straightened up suddenly. “Don't, on second thought. It's a bad idea, very messy, and he might chew on the leash.”
    Knowing Tuck, I figured that was a distinct possibility.
    Mr. Ishihara, pursing his expressive lips, wrinkling his smooth walnut forehead, examined me for a moment longer and then said, “I've told you about my cat, Ichi-ban, haven't I?”
    “Yes, you have.”
    “He likes to sleep on my dirty shirts. I think he likes to smell me.”
    My own dainty Rachel had never done that, to my knowledge.
    Picking up the opened lettuce crate by its ends, Mr. Ishihara continued, “Ichiban gives me an idea for Tuck. Suppose you put something of your own on the leash. Tuck can't see what it is, but he'll definitely smell it.”
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