The Big Question. John R. Erickson

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      Maybe you’ve already guessed her name. Miss Viola. Around sundown, she paid us a visit and she was carrying a plate of baked goodies wrapped in red paper and tied with a green bow.

      When Slim threw open the door and saw her standing there, his jaw dropped and he stared at her with bug eyes. You know what? So did I. I mean, you talk about a beautiful sight! She wore a long denim dress that reached to the tops of her red roper boots, and she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and tied with a red ribbon and . . .

      I don’t know how to put this, but there was something about her face—the clear blue eyes, the radiance of her smile. It was as though someone had turned on the lights in a dungeon. She just lit the place up, and all we could do was gawk at her. Even Drover gawked. He’d spent the past half-hour moaning about his stolen turkey neck, but when Viola appeared at the door, his mouth fell open, his eyes bugged out, and he stared right along with me and Slim.

      Fellers, just because you spend your time hanging out in a bachelor shack doesn’t mean you’re in love with Ugly. When something beautiful walks into the room, you know it, and it takes your breath away.

      So, with open mouths and wide eyes, we stared at her in unison, two dogs and a bachelor cowboy. The seconds passed and when no one spoke, she finally said, “Well, Merry Christmas. Did I come at a bad time?”

      Slim swallowed so hard, his Adam’s apple bounced around. He blinked his eyes and mumbled, “Bad time? Oh, no ma’am, it’s a good time. I was just…cleaning up the house.”

      Oh brother, that was a whopper of a lie! Him, cleaning the house? Ha.

      He pushed open the screen door and she stepped inside. At that point…well, what’s a dog supposed to do? I shot across the room and met her at the…whatever you call it, the “threshold,” I suppose, and there I went into a program we call “Exuberant Leaps and Groans.”

      It’s not an easy program to pull off, and a lot of your ordinary mutts won’t even attempt it. It consists of hops, leaps, dives, and groans of delight. The timing on those groans is pretty crucial. If you try to groan at the very moment you’re leaping, it’ll come out as a grunt and that kills the emotional so-forth of the presentation. You might get by with grunting over a cowboy, but grunting over a lady is exactly wrong. Never grunt over a lady.

      Whilst I was doing Leaps and Groans, Drover did his own little routine. He didn’t have the ambition to do good leaps, so he scrambled in circles and squeaked. It was kind of pathetic, to tell you the truth, but I guess he was doing his best.

      But back to my Leaps and Groans, there was one part of the presentation that you probably didn’t notice. See, I didn’t throw myself into her embrace, and fellers, that took some iron discipline, because every cell and fiber of my body was telling me to dive right into the middle of her arms. I held back because…well, the last time I leaped into her embrace, she fell over backwards and landed on the floor, and Slim had harsh words to say about that.

      So, this time, I gave her an amazing display of leaping. And as you might expect, she was impressed. Delighted. Blown away. She laughed and said, “My goodness, Hank, you’re very athletic.”

      Athletic? Hey, I was just getting warmed up. Wait until she saw Part Two. I raced down the long dark hallway to Slim’s bedroom, did a one-eighty in front of his bed, sprinted back into the living room, did another one-eighty and two Joyous Leaps, raced into the kitchen, did a…

      Actually, I slipped on the linoleum floor and had a pretty bad collision with a chair, but I made an amazing recovery, streaked back into the living room, and did five Straight-up Hops and three groans, right there in front of her.