Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur (9 page)
Read Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur Online
Authors: Mordecai Richler
CHAPTER 19
acob Two-Two was certainly pleased to be home again. There was no doubt about that. But he wouldn’t eat. He hardly ever spoke. He wasn’t sleeping well. He had dark circles under his eyes. And if anybody so much as mentioned Dippy he burst into tears.
Poor pulverized Dippy hadn’t meant any harm. All he had wanted was a mate and a quiet life in the Rockies of B.C.
Then, only a week after Jacob Two-Two had come home, Perry Pleaser’s victory speech was shown on TV again.
“We can switch to another channel,” Jacob Two-Two’s mother said anxiously.
“No, I want to see it. I want to see it.”
What did Perry Pleaser mean, saying Jacob Two-Two had been kidnapped and that he had rescued him from the dragon’s claws? What a fibber. Wow! And why hadn’t he shown Dippy’s body on TV? I mean, he’s such a braggart, that Pleaser. What if there was no body? What if he was fibbing about that, just as he had lied about rescuing Jacob Two-Two? No, that was too much to hope for. Dippy’s dead.
Poor Dippy.
A month passed, then another month, Jacob Two-Two getting thinner and thinner, his parents grieving. Then one morning there was a very odd item in the newspaper.
Rocky Mountain Mystery
PIZZA PARLOR ROBBERIES IN KAMLOOPS B.C. KAMLOOPS, B.C.
– Last night somebody broke into a pizza parlor and took off with fifty all-dressed L’Abbondanzas. The cash register was left undisturbed. Nothing else was taken. This was the twentieth such L’Abbondanza
robbery in the Rockies over the past two months. Each robbery is followed by a baffling windstorm. The wind, residents claim, reeks of garlic sausage, green peppers, olives, and cheese. Sometimes it is filled with flying trees.
Police are puzzled, but they are continuing with their investigations and promise to capture the pizza parlor pilferers soon.
Two days later there was another disturbing news story out of B.C. Mountain climbers, scaling a peak in the Rockies, had decided to camp for the night on an enormous green boulder. But as they hammered in their tent pegs the boulder had suddenly cried “Ouch!” and then actually shaken off the climbers and tent. Interviewed by reporters, one of the climbers claimed that not only had the boulder moved, but also that it had two large blinking red eyes. But further questioning revealed that this poor climber had fallen on his head.
That very evening there was something even curiouser on the TV news. Paleontologists scaling a hitherto unexplored Rocky Mountain peak had been awakened in the middle of the night by a perfectly
appalling noise, seemingly coming from an adjoining peak. Had they not known better, they would have sworn that it sounded like two voices, one male and the other female, harmonizing. In fact, one of the paleontologists claimed that he could make out the words. According to him, they were:
Daisy
,
Daisy
,
give me your answer
,
do
,
I’m half crazy
,
all for the love of you
.
It won’t be a stylish marriage
,
I can’t afford a carriage
,
But you’ll look sweet
,
on the seat
,
Of a bicycle built for two
.
Jacob Two-Two, his eyes glued to the TV set, suddenly began to rock with laughter.
“Jacob,” his mother exclaimed, delighted, “are you feeling better?”
Everybody raced off to the kitchen to bring Jacob Two-Two his favorite foods.
“Good old Jake,” Daniel said.
“Hurray for my little brother,” Noah said.
“Am I ever relieved,” Emma said.
“Me too,” Marfa said.
But there was even more to come on TV the next morning. “Sssh,” Jacob Two-Two said, watchful.
Further investigation of the hitherto unexplored Rocky Mountain peak had revealed a huge winding trench dug in a hidden valley. Paleontologists were convinced that this was evidence of an earlier civilization, most likely Indian, maybe fifty thousand years old. It would, however, take them years of research to decipher the coded message of the winding trench, obviously an appeal to ancient gods, composed in a language no longer known to man. For if it was read in English it just didn’t make sense. It was gibberish. Then they showed a picture of the winding trench taken from a helicopter. The message looked like this:
Some dinosaur, Jacob Two-Two thought, laughing out loud again. Some dumb dinosaur. “Yippee for Dippy!” he cried out.
From Jacob Two-Two on the High Seas
By Cary Fagan, illustrated by Dušan Petričić
“‘What’s that out there?’ Cindy pointed past the rail of the ship. ‘There’s something there in the mist.’
Jacob could just make out the carved figurehead of a mermaid. ‘It’s a ship, it’s a ship!’ he cried. As it became more visible, Jacob could see that it was a very old ship, the kind with three tall masts and big sails. He could also see cannons – dozens of them – lined up along the ship’s side….”
First published by McClelland & Stewart, 1987
Published in this edition by Tundra Books, 2009
Text copyright © 1987 by Mordecai Richler
Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Dušan Petričić
Published in Canada by Tundra Books
75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9
Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York, P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 2008911578
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Richler, Mordecai, 1931-2001
Jacob Two-Two and the dinosaur / Mordecai Richler; illustrated by
Dušan Petričić.
eISBN: 978-1-77049-074-1
I. Petričić, Dušan II. Title.
PS8535.I38J24 2009 JC813′.54 C2008-908041-6
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
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