Beaver was sitting in his library reading a story when there was a knock on his door. It was Hare. “Oh, hello Hare,” said Beaver, “I was just…”
“You were reading a story in your library,” said Hare. “I know.”
“You do?”
“Yes, and then there was a knock on your door and you got up to answer it.”
“Oh come on,” said Beaver, “you yourself were the one who knocked.”
“That’s beside the point,” said Hare. “It might not have been me.”
“How can it be beside the point when as far as I can see,” said Beaver, peering around the front hall, “there isn’t a point anywhere around?”
“That’s beside the point too,” said Hare. “Do you remember the other day when you knew about something Raccoon said to me when you weren’t there?”
“I remember,” said Beaver, “that I explained to you that I was there, just not the same way you were.”
“There you go,” said Hare. “Exactly.”
“Exactly what?” said Beaver, who was beginning to wonder if Hare had eaten a bad carrot.
“Exactly the point,” said Hare.
“How is that a point?” asked Beaver. “Would you like to come in and sit down, Hare? Have a drink of water? Relax? Take some deep breaths?”
“The point is that I can do it too!” said Hare. “Look at this.” Hare showed Beaver a sheet of paper where someone with messy handwriting had written “Beaver was sitting in his library reading a story when there was a knock on his door. It was Hare.”
“Now do you get it?” said Hare. “I was there in the library earlier, so I know what you were doing.”
“Hare,” said Beaver, “when I’m at home, what do I do all the time?”
“I don’t know,” said Hare, “I haven’t written that down yet.”
“I have a library full of books,” said Beaver. “Why do you think that is?”
“Plot device?” asked Hare hopefully.
“I like to read them!” said Beaver. “So any time you knock on my door and I’m home to come answer it, it’s a pretty good guess that I was reading at the time.”
“Ha,” said Hare, “that doesn’t prove anything. You might not have been home when I knocked but I knew you would be.”
“If I wasn’t home,” said Beaver, “you would just come back later, bring your sheet of paper, and claim it was the first time you came.”
“This is the first time,” said Hare.
“Prove it,” said Beaver.
“Okay, turn that paper over,” said Hare.
Beaver turned the paper over, and read “Then Raccoon showed up and said ‘hello, Beaver. Hello, Hare.’”
A moment later, Raccoon appeared at Beaver’s door — which he hadn’t had a chance to close — and said “Hello, Beaver. “Hello, Hare.”
“Ha!” said Hare again. “See?”
“This,” said Beaver, “is just an elaborate trick, Hare. You could have just gone to Raccoon and said ‘let’s play a trick on Beaver; I’ll write down what he was probably doing, and then I’ll write down that you stopped by, and what you said. You just have to remember what you’re supposed to say.’”
“Hey,” said Raccoon, “how did you…”
“Ha!” said Beaver to Hare.
Hare scowled at Raccoon. “The first rule of tricks,” he said sternly, “is that you don’t talk about the trick.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Raccoon carelessly. “Now that we’ve gotten past that, though, let’s go do something fun.”
“I was doing something fun,” said Hare.
“I mean fun for everybody,” said Raccoon. “It’s a nice day, we could see if Otter is home and use his mudslide.”
“That does sound like fun,” said Hare. “Okay, let’s go. Beaver, are you coming?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” said Beaver.
Hare and Raccoon hurried off in the direction of Otter’s house. Beaver took out some papers and shook them gently as he stared into space at nothing in particular.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said to…well, someone. “You were expecting me to have written that whole scene, and that’s how I knew what Hare was up to. And you’re expecting that these…” He waved his bundle of papers, “have all the details. Ha ha ha,” he said, “this is just a list of books I want for my library. Look.”
He laid the papers down on the hallway table and pointed to the top of the first one, where somebody with neater handwriting than Hare — but still not terribly neat, really — were the words “Hare wrote down ‘Beaver was sitting in his library reading a story when there was a knock on his door. It was Hare.’”
“Hey,” said Beaver, doing a double take on the page. “That’s not right, this is…”
Beaver stopped. Scratched his head for a moment. Stared around his foyer. Frowned. Then he shrugged and hurried off to catch up with Hare and Raccoon. The papers slipped off the table and wafted onto the floor in a messy pile. The last line of the last page was just visible. It said “the last line of the last page was just visible.”
