Pranks for the Memories

It is an ordinary afternoon at Whit's End until the malt goes wrong. Patrick O'Ryan has been trying all day to finish a joke about two hunters and a dog that walks across the top of a lake, and he has just reached the punchline when Whit sets a chocolate strawberry banana malted in front of Tom Riley. Tom has not had one in years. He takes a swallow, and the look on his face is not the look of a man enjoying his favorite drink. Someone, it turns out, has emptied a packet of yeast into the malt container. When Whit reaches for the squirt bottle to clean up the mess, that has been tampered with too, and a moment later Whit is wearing most of it.

There is a practical joker at Whit's End, and it does not take long to find him. Curt Stevens owns up cheerfully and braces for a lecture, but Whit does not give him one. Practical jokes are fine, Whit says, as long as they are not cruel and nobody gets hurt. Tom offers a warning instead of a scolding: pranks tend to be retaliatory. Pull one on somebody and sooner or later that somebody will want to return the favor. Curt is not worried in the slightest. He knows every prank there is, he says, which means he can spot one coming a mile off, and nobody in Odyssey is better at this than Curt Stevens. Whit says he believes him, and offers a handshake to prove it. Curt demands to inspect the hand first and finds a joy buzzer hidden in Whit's palm.

Meanwhile, Lucy has been creeping along the floor behind the counter, keeping out of sight. Curt's birthday falls on Sunday, and she wants Whit's help making it special without Curt catching wind of it. Sometimes Curt is a pain, she admits, but he is a good friend. Tom volunteers his empty barn for an old-fashioned hoedown with hay rides, rope swings, ice cream and all the apples anyone can eat, and Connie adds the finishing touch: hold it Saturday, tell everyone else three o'clock, and tell Curt four. After Lucy hurries off to plan, Whit and Tom look at each other and start laughing. A boy who has just been warned that pranks come back around is about to receive a mysterious invitation to a party at a barn he never visits. They decide to let the whole thing play itself out - not helping it along, but not stopping it either.

Curt does exactly what they expect. The invitation strikes him as far too convenient, and Patrick, who knows nothing about any of it, cheerfully assures him that the best jokes come from the place you least expect and that the best defense is a good offense. So on Saturday morning Curt slips into Tom's barn at ten o'clock, finds a keg of molasses, plenty of rope, and a floor covered in chicken feathers, and rigs the lot to come down on his unsuspecting victims the moment he releases the ropes. Tom spots him crossing the back field and telephones Whit. The two men agree it is time to intervene, and Whit calls Connie and Lucy in to explain a slight change of plans.

And so Curt stands at the back of the barn holding his ropes. Ten to three. Three twenty-five. Three forty-five. Four ten. Nobody comes. When Tom's generator finally shuts off, Curt decides to stretch toward a crack in the door for a look outside, which is how he ends up wearing his own molasses and every feather in the barn. Tom and Whit find him there and observe that it is the biggest chicken they have ever seen, or possibly a turkey. The hoedown, they tell him, has been cancelled. Curt will be scrubbing the floor tomorrow, once the molasses has dried hard, and he announces that he is never pulling another practical joke as long as he lives. Whit offers to shake on it. The joy buzzer is still there.

Then Tom sends the sticky, feathered, thoroughly embarrassed birthday boy through the farmhouse door, where every friend he has is waiting to shout surprise. His birthday is not until tomorrow, Curt protests. Connie tells him that is what makes it such a surprise.