Woof Read online

  “How weird would that be?” said Des.

  “Why?” said Birdie.

  “Who wants some old bat around all the time?”

  Birdie’s eyes got that hard look—rare, but there was no missing it when it did come. “Just tell us where to find her and we’ll get out of your hair,” she said.

  Des rubbed his messy red hair, made it messier. “It’s summer and you’re doing a project?”

  “Multimedia,” Nola said.

  Des nodded. “That’s the way to go, all right. My aunt lives over at Sunrise Acres.”

  “The old folks’ home?” Nola said.

  “Assisted living,” said Des.

  “Thanks,” Nola said. “We’ll give you a credit.” We started to move away.

  “Cool,” said Des.

  “Is he a dweeb or a dork?” Nola said as we crossed back over the bridge.

  “Des?” said Birdie. “That’s a tough one.”

  Down below the bridge, a big red-and-black boat was moving slowly away from town, toward what looked like open water in the far distance. We stopped for a look.

  “That’s Fun ’n Games,” Birdie said. “It was tied up at the town dock yesterday.”

  “Wow,” said Nola.

  “Sixty feet long,” Birdie said. “You can run it from up in that tuna tower, read the bottom like a book. Probably has a range of six hundred miles—take you all the way from here to Galveston.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Birdie shrugged.

  “Bet you’ll be a shrimp boat captain when you grow up,” Nola said.

  “Grammy says there won’t be any shrimp left by then.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  At that moment a man stepped out of the cabin of Fun ’n Games and glanced up at us, a big suntanned man wearing a straw hat with a feather in the band. He doffed his hat—hey, one of those shaved-head dudes, always an entertaining sight—and gave us a smile. What an interesting face! Like two faces in one! What a complicated thought that was! Where had it come from? I’d amazed myself, kind of nice, although I wouldn’t have wanted to make a habit of it.

  But back to these two faces of the dude on Fun ’n Games. The bottom part, around the mouth, was real friendly. Had I ever seen a bigger smile, or human teeth that sparkled so bright? The dude looked like he was about to break into laughter any moment now. That was until you checked out the top half of his face, namely the eyes. They weren’t in a laughing mood, not one little bit, or even a smiling mood. Instead they were in a watching mood, unblinking and real careful. Not only that, but those eyes seemed to be taking particular interest in me, like … like maybe he knew me from somewhere.

  “Nice pooch you got there, girls,” he called up to us.

  “Thanks,” Birdie called down to him. “And good luck!”

  The man shifted one of the controls and Fun ’n Games came to a stop, white water frothing up at the stern. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “Good luck on the water,” Birdie said. “Aren’t you going fishing?”

  There was a pause, and then the man did laugh after all, a sort of crowlike laughter I wished he’d kept to himself. “Yeah,” he said, “you could say that.” He turned, pushed the control lever forward, and Fun ’n Games surged away with a deep roar. Left behind was a smell I knew, pretty faint, but you don’t forget the smell of a dude you’ve gone toe-to-toe with, and I’d gone toe-to-toe with that big red-and-white dude. Loco, if I was remembering right.

  “That’s it?” Birdie said.

  “Yup,” said Nola. “Sunrise Acres.”

  Sunrise Acres was the building in front of us? That was my takeaway. It was several stories high, bare concrete with greenish trim—kind of the color of the slime that clung to the edge of the bayou—with a circular drive and a single tree out front, leafless at the moment. On one side, a strip mall; on the other, a gas station.

  “Full of old people?” Birdie said.

  “Yup.”

  Birdie gave a little shiver.

  “Don’t let it get to you,” Nola said. “By the time we’re that old they’ll have figured out a way for no one to age past, say, twenty-two.”

  “Make it eleven,” said Birdie.

  “You’d want to stay this age forever?” Nola said.

  “Give me a reason why not.”

  Whatever that was about, it made Nola go quiet. She was still quiet as we entered Sunrise Acres. A woman sat at a desk in the lobby, gazing into the little screen of her phone.

  “Help you, ladies?” she said, looking up.

  “We’re here to see Maybelline Peckham,” Nola said.

  “Maybelline Peckham? Don’t think she’s ever had a visitor, not since I’ve been here.”

  “That’s why we came,” Nola said. “School project. We, ah, bring highly trained service dogs to comfort lonely old folks.”

  The woman’s gaze went to me. “That’s a highly trained service dog?”

  I yawned my very biggest yawn, no particular reason in mind. The woman shrank back. Some humans are hard to understand and she was shaping up to be that type.

  “His name’s Bowser,” Birdie said.

  “He’s won many prizes,” Nola said. “Best behaved, for example.”

  “Hmm,” said the woman, “guess it’s all right, then. No one should be without visitors. Just sign in and I’ll take you up.”

  She rose and headed toward an elevator bank, while the girls wrote in a book. I heard Birdie whisper, “You’re a great liar.” And Nola whispered back, “I’ve seen my sister in action.”

  I’d once lived in an elevator building the gang liked, so I had no problems with elevators. If the motion made you puke, you puked and got on with it, no harm done. This particular ride hardly lasted long enough for me to feel the first vague signs of pukiness. We stepped out, walked down a hall, and came to a door. The woman knocked.

  “Ms. Peckham? You awake, honey?”

  “No” came a surprisingly loud voice, not friendly.

  “Got some visitors from the school program here to see you.”

  “Go away.”

  “They’ve got a service dog with them, Ms. Peckham. A prizewinner.”

  Silence. Then: “Named what?”

  “Uh, the prize?”

  “Why would I care about any stupid prize? I’m talking about the dog.”

  “Bowser, ma’am,” Birdie called. “His name’s Bowser.”

  Silence. It went on for a bit and then the door swung open.

  I’D NEVER SEEN A WOMAN LIKE MAYBELLINE Peckham, if that was who I was seeing as we entered the room at Sunrise Acres—you can’t always trust me for details like this. She was so old! Way older than Grammy, for example. She smelled like a stack of dusty yellowed newspapers and had bright orange hair, the color of rust in strong sunlight. Her teeth? Brownish and crooked. But her eyes, very dark and still, were kind of nice. They looked much younger than the rest of her, so I tried not to look at the rest of her. She stood in the doorway, small and quite straight for someone leaning on a walker, and wearing a silk robe the color of her hair, silk being a smell you can’t miss.

  The woman from the desk glanced past her. “You didn’t eat your lunch, honey,” she said.

  “Sue me,” said Maybelline Peckham.

  This particular uneaten lunch was something I’d already spotted—spotted first with my nose, if that makes any sense. It lay on a TV tray beside an easy chair and consisted of tea and custard, both of little interest to me, and a ham sandwich. Another story entirely.

  “Uh,” said the woman, “here are the kids I mentioned, um …”

  “Birdie.”

  “Nola.”

  Maybelline didn’t look at the girls. Her eyes were on me. “And this fine specimen is Bowser?” she said.

  Ah! She was the brainy type of human.

  “Will you look at that tail go,” Maybelline said. “Like to drag him up in the air and fly him away.”

  No telling what tha
t was about, but understanding everything in life is just not possible. I had the good sense to give up on that from the get-go.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” said the woman from the desk, backing out of the room and closing the door.

  “Take a seat, kids,” Maybelline said, stumping over toward the easy chair.

  Birdie sat on a little shelf by the window, Nola on a footstool that matched the easy chair, and Maybelline—with a groan and some loud cracking of her knees—in the easy chair itself.

  “Had dogs practically all my life, till I came to this establishment. Know what the problem is? Their life spans don’t match up with ours. ’Course, who’d of guessed I’d be this ancient?”

  “How old are you, ma’am?” Nola said.

  “Never you mind. Don’t you know not to ask a lady’s age?” Maybelline turned to me, patted the arm of her chair. “Come here, Bowser. Don’t be shy.”

  Shy? Me? That was a good one. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to be any closer to the dusty old-newspaper smell.

  Maybelline reached for the ham sandwich, tore off a little piece of ham, held it up. “Would this change your mind?”

  Totally. Completely. In every way possible and then some. I tried not to spring over to her in one long bound, but maybe didn’t try hard enough. She fed me that little piece of ham straight from her hand, the way the very best kind of humans do.

  “Famished, huh?” she said. “And look how skinny you are! They don’t feed you so good, huh?” Maybelline glared at Birdie.

  “Well,” said Birdie, “the thing is—”

  “And what’s this school program anyways?” Maybelline glanced out the window. “Isn’t it summer? No school in summer, unless there’s been big changes they’re hiding from me.”

  “Actually,” said Nola, “school programs continue in—”

  “Sounds like bull pucky to me! Pure, one hundred percent bull pucky!” Maybelline tore off another piece of ham sandwich and fed it to me. We couldn’t have been getting along any better. This visit—whatever it was about—was a total success so far.

  “We, uh, understand you were a taxidermier,” Birdie said.

  “Taxidermier? Taxidermier? I can’t believe I heard that! Maybe, please the Lord, I didn’t.” Maybelline took some sort of plastic disc out of her ear, gave it a shake, stuck it back in.

  “Your nephew Des—” Nola began.

  “Des? That cretin? He’s no nephew of mine.”

  “But he—” said Birdie.

  “Grand-nephew, nephew twice removed—something or other, but distant. Let it be distant.”

  “Right,” Nola said.

  Birdie cleared her throat. “Your distant relative Des said you were the best tax—”

  “Taxidermist! Taxidermist! Taxidermist is the word. Don’t they teach you anything in school? What’s the capital of South Dakota?”

  “Fargo?” said Birdie.

  “Sioux City?” said Nola.

  Maybelline gazed at Nola, then at Birdie, finally at nothing at all. “We’re doomed,” she said, closing her eyes. She took a deep breath, followed by some shallower ones. Birdie and Nola exchanged a look. Maybelline began to snore.

  “Oh, no,” Birdie said, lowering her voice.

  “It’s not Sioux City?” said Nola.

  “Ms. Peckham? Ms. Peckham?”

  Maybelline snored on. The TV table with the remains of the ham sandwich was pretty much right in front of my face. No one was saying, “Bowser, do not make a play for that ham sandwich.” What else could that mean but Go get it, big guy!

  “BOWSER!” Birdie said. “Did you see what he just did?”

  “Wow!” said Nola. “That was so quick! He really is—”

  I never got to hear what I really was because at that moment Maybelline opened her eyes. They no longer looked younger than the rest of her, older if anything, all watery and confused. She glanced around, blinking.

  “You—you all still here?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Nola, “but we can—”

  “It must be late.” Maybelline turned toward the window. “But it’s so bright.” She shook her head. That made her orange hair, the whole curly mass of it, kind of slide off to one side. Underneath, her head was pretty much bald. “I … I had bad dreams. So many, flying by, bad and worse.”

  “We won’t bother you any—” Birdie began.

  “I’m thirsty,” Maybelline said. She licked her lips, her tongue cracked and whitish.

  Birdie rose. “How about some of your tea?”

  Maybelline nodded. Her hair slipped a little more. “That would be nice.”

  Birdie came toward the TV table, poured some tea, and held out the cup. Maybelline reached out for it, but her hands were suddenly shaky. Birdie didn’t say anything, just moved the cup up to Maybelline’s lips. The skin on Birdie’s fingers looked so perfect, just glowing against the background of Maybelline’s old, old face. Maybelline sipped at the tea. While Maybelline was sipping, Birdie’s free hand made a quick blurry motion and all at once Maybelline’s hair was back in its right place, nice and straight.

  “Ah, that’s better,” Maybelline said. “What’s your name again?”

  “Birdie.”

  “That tells me nothing. Last name?”

  “Gaux.”

  “Gaux,” said Maybelline, sitting back in her chair. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You’re Claire Gaux’s granddaughter?”

  “Yes,” Birdie said.

  “Claire?” said Nola. “I didn’t know that—what a nice name!”

  Maybelline turned to her. “I never said the Gaux were nice. They most definitely are not. They have quality! Where did ‘nice’ ever get anybody? For example, three men went to war. A strong man, a bad man, and … and a nice man. The nice man didn’t come back.” She went silent.

  “Three men from St. Roch?” Nola said.

  “Most certainly!” Maybelline’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Isn’t this place in St. Roch?”

  “What place?” said Nola.

  Maybelline gestured around the room. “This … this waiting room.”

  “Waiting room?” Nola said.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Maybelline.

  “You’re right about St. Roch, ma’am,” Birdie said. “That’s where we are.”

  “Patron saint of dogs,” Maybelline said, then glanced around in a frantic sort of way. “Where’s Bowser?”

  “Right by the bed,” Birdie said.

  Maybelline looked my way, calmed right down. “Enjoying a comfy rest, my handsome friend?” she said. “Come over here and let momma feed you some more of this lovely ham.” She turned to the TV tray. “Where’s my sandwich? Did I already give you the whole thing? I don’t recall giving you the whole …”

  Her voice faded away. I ambled on over there. Was more ham in my future? You could always hope, and I always did.

  “What a good boy,” she said. I sat within easy reach. She gave me a pat, the boniest pat I’d ever received, but still very welcome. “Three men from St. Roch,” she said, looking down at me. “The strong one was Maurice Gaux. The—”

  “Maurice Gaux?” said Birdie. “My great-grandfather?”

  “Correct, but don’t interrupt. The bad one was Frank Straker, great-uncle of that—that person who now owns the fishing emporium. The one who didn’t come back … ah, what’s the point? You wait and you wait and—”

  “Who didn’t come back?” Nola said.

  “Dan Phelps didn’t come back, that’s who.”

  “Who’s Dan Phelps?” Birdie said.

  “Who was Dan Phelps,” said Maybelline. “I told you he didn’t come back. That doesn’t mean he up and decided to stay in France.”

  “This is about World War II?” Birdie said.

  “What else, for pity’s sake? The point is Dan Phelps was my … my boss. He taught me everything I knew.”

  “About what?” said Nola.

  “Ha!” For a moment—how weird was this?�
��she stopped smelling of old newspapers, smelled like a younger person. “But let’s just keep this to taxidermy,” she said, and the old-newspaper smell came flowing back. “Dan Phelps had a taxidermy shop in Lafayette back before the war. He was the best taxidermist in the state of Louisiana, bar none. Do I have to explain what a taxidermist is?”

  “Someone who stuffs dead animals?” Nola said.

  “And fish!” said Birdie.

  Maybelline smacked her hand on the chair arm. “It’s not about stuffing any darn thing! It’s about recapturing the perfect moment in a creature’s life.”

  “But it’s a life the hunter or fisherman just ended,” Birdie said.

  Who wouldn’t love Birdie? Don’t know why I thought that then, but I did. Maybelline gave Birdie a long look. “Which was how come Dan was never deep-down happy, if you must know. But it’s also what made him an artist at what he did.” Maybelline reached for her teacup, had a shaky sip.

  “What about Black Jack?” Birdie said.

  “Black Jack? Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “The prize marlin. The one my great-grandfather caught when he came back from the war.”

  “A long time ago,” said Maybelline.

  “So … so you don’t remember stuffing it?” Birdie said.

  “You don’t stuff a fish like that,” Maybelline said. “Far too delicate. You rebuild it from the ground up. When you’re done there’s almost nothing of the real fish left. Trade secret. Don’t breathe a word.”

  “So you remember working on Black Jack?” Birdie said.

  “Just fetch me my memory book out of that there bottom drawer and I’ll show you the why of things.”

  Nola went to the desk, brought back a nice-smelling leather-bound book—leather-bound books being the only kind of any interest to me. Maybelline opened it, turned a page or two, the girls standing behind her and looking over her shoulder.

  “This here’s Dan Phelps in his uniform before the war,” Maybelline said.

  “He had a nice smile,” said Birdie.

  “Right you are,” Maybelline said.

  “Whoa—is that you?” said Nola.

  “Why wouldn’t it be me?”

  “Because … uh, nothing.”