Just a Dog by Gerard Michael Bauer Read Free Book Online Page B

doing it as a joke and I never thought anything bad would happen. I just thought Moe would get a bit of a fright and it would be funny. But it didn’t end up being funny.
    When Mister Mosely saw the scary mask and heard me growl, he got a fright all right, a giant one. He tried to stop dead on the spot but his long legs got all tangled up and he almost crashed over. Then he sort of swerved really fast to run away from me. I started to laugh because he looked sohilarious and because I’d fooled him so bad. But when Moe swerved to get away from me, he ran straight out on to the road.
    I was still laughing when the car hit him.

18 Mister Mosely and the Stupid Trick – the End
    I didn’t want to write any more of that story yesterday. It made me feel bad. But a story doesn’t go away or stop being true just because you stop telling it. So this is what happened next.
    Mister Mosely ran out on to the road and all of a sudden there was a car and there were tyres screeching and the car was thumping into Moe and he was yelping and rolling over and over and over. Then he sort of stopped and stayed still and everything went quiet. I couldn’t breathe and all my insides froze up.
    What I remember most is the burnt rubber smell from the tyres and the lady in the car just sitting there with her hands over her mouth and her face all white and Mister Mosely finallygetting up and limping down the road into our yard all sort of crumpled up and broken-looking. I stopped being frozen then. I threw my mask away and ran after him.
    Lucky for me, Dad was home early from job hunting. He must have heard the squealing from the tyres and everything because he came running down the driveway just when I was coming up. I tried to tell him about Mister Mosely but he just wanted to know if I was all right. When I told him I was, he squeezed me so tight I thought I’d bust for sure.
    Pretty soon the lady from the car was there too and she was really upset and saying how sorry she was and that she didn’t see Mister Mosely and how he ran right in front of her and there was no way she could stop in time. Dad kept telling her it was all right and that it wasn’t her fault but I could see she still felt pretty bad. Then we all started looking around for Moe but we couldn’t find him anywhere. He wasn’t in his bed on the porch and he wasn’t under the house and we couldn’t see him anywhere around the backyard.
    Where we found him was under the garage. He used to crawl under there on really hot days.Sometimes I went under there looking for lizards or ant lion nests. It was a pretty good place to hide too, but you couldn’t go that far under because the ground sloped up. If you went too far, you got all squashed under the floor and you’d bump your head all the time and get spider’s web stuck in your hair.
    It was dark under the garage but we spotted Moe when Dad saw his eyes shining a bit. We tried to reach him but he was too far back and he wouldn’t come when we called. There was only one way we could get Moe out of there. Dad had to back the car from the garage and rip up some of the floorboards with his crowbar.
    When enough of the floorboards were out Dad knelt down beside the hole and leaned right in and lifted Mister Mosely out. I didn’t think he would be strong enough to do that, but he did, even though his face went really red and sweaty and he swore a bit, but not very loud because the lady from the car was still there.
    While Dad was lifting him out Mister Mosely didn’t make any sound at all. He just shook like he was freezing to death. He was still shaking when Dad put him down on the floor of the garage. Helooked so bad. His legs were all twitchy and he had big bumps on him and there was all this blood on his side and big patches of hair on his legs and head were rubbed off. When I saw him I felt like I did the day I found Goblin on the bottom of his tank with all the