There wasn't anything Hogan liked better than sitting on his porch, relaxing with his dog and a glass of something cold, but today he was thinking of swearing off the porch for good. It must be jinxed or something; every time he sat down and got comfortable, something ranging from mundane, like the telephone ringing, to catastrophic would occur.
This time appeared to be the latter situation, Hogan mused in the back of his mind, as he ran up the stairs of his house.
He heard the shrill, piercing scream that had startled him off his porch swing shatter the silence once more, but the sound was louder now that he was getting closer to Lizzy's room.
They'd learned a few weeks ago that Lizzy, while very small and not very threatening, had a scream that was louder than a fire whistle when she got upset. The first time they'd heard it had been when a certain stuffed bunny of hers was unable to be found before it was time for lights-out. They had also learned that Lizzy was indeed smarter than they gave her credit for, as she would not accept a squash with ears drawn on it as a substitute.
Opening the door to her room, Hogan was greeted with a strange sight: Lizzy was sitting on her bed, her curly red hair sticking up at all angles, making it look like she had stuck her finger in an electrical outlet. For a few moments, he hoped that this hadn't been the case.
What was more concerning, however, was that Lizzy's usually happy face was flushed and streaked with tears. Newkirk, who was standing behind her with what looked like the dog's flea comb, looked like he was a few minutes from waterworks himself.
"What in the world is going on in here?"
"Lizzy...she got honey in 'er hair," said Newkirk, putting down the flea comb. "I tried to wash it out, but nothing's working!"
"How did this happen?" asked Hogan, feeling a sudden longing for the peace and quiet of Stalag 13.
"I don't know. She wanted some on her toast, I turned around, and…"
"Don't you know never to turn your back on the enemy?" said Hogan, only partly kidding. He made his way closer to the other side of Lizzy's bed to get a better look at her tangled mass of hair.
Hogan held out his hand for Newkirk to give him the comb, then, like someone sneaking up on a live bomb, gingerly grabbed a lock of sticky hair and tried his hand at gently, ever so gently, teasing the strands apart…
Lizzy let out a scream that he was certain could be heard across several time zones.
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Riiiing.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Carter? Is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me. Who's this?"
"Your mother. Come on, Andrew, it's me."
"Newkirk?"
"Yes."
"Oh, hey, buddy, how you been?"
"Oh, fine. Not much changed since I saw you yesterday, you know."
"Do you want me to put Lucy on the telephone?"
"...Yes."
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"There, that should do it," proclaimed Lucy Carter, rinsing the last of the soap out of Lizzy's hair. A soaking in olive oil, hot water, and a thorough shampooing later, Lizzy's honeyed hair was free of its stickiness.
"It probably hurt her more because she had some tangles in her hair," she continued, reaching for a towel to dry the little girl off. "How often do your brush her hair?"
"Once or twice a week," answered Newkirk, looking like he desperately hoped that would be the right answer. "I don't like to do it often...she really hates it, you know."
"That's because it hurts because you don't do it often enough," replied Lucy, helping Lizzy off the kitchen counter where she had been seated for her emergency honey removal bath.
"I'll do it everyday, then."
"Good," said Lucy, smiling. "And you've been remembering to brush her teeth?"
"Yes."
"Twice a day?"
"That's right."
"Good. You're really getting the hang of it. Before you know it, you'll only be frantically calling my house once a week."
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"And then Bruno found a bird that looked like it might have been the kind that don't fly, but we went up to it and it flew away, so it could fly. I found a pebble that's shaped like a heart, too. It was next to a stone that looked like a potato but I left that one because a lot of the rocks look like potatoes. Why don't birds have eyebrows?"
"I don't even know why humans have eyebrows."
"Oh. Well, I think eyebrows are there so when you're sleeping and you have to scratch your forehead you can feel the eyebrows and that's how you know not to go any further because you'd scratch your eyes, and birds don't have hands so they don't have to worry about scratching their eyes. That's why they don't have eyebrows."
The jinx on the porch didn't matter now, Hogan thought, as he sat on Lizzy's bed brushing her hair - he had found something better. He and Newkirk took turns with brushing it now; Newkirk did it in the morning, and Hogan did it at night, both of them not wanting a repeat of the Honey Incident any time soon.
He liked that, when he brushed Lizzy's hair, she always regaled him with a commentary of her day, which was always interspersed with her funny musings and questions. He was always pleasantly surprised with how insightful she was for such a little kid.
She might require more maintenance than a B-17, he thought, but as the days went by, it was starting to not feel quite so much like work anymore.