by Inman Majors
Grinning, Penelope took out her phone, punched in Missy’s number, then set the phone to Speaker mode. All the while, she maintained the binocular observation of her quarry.
The following things happened:
1. Missy’s hands stopped moving suddenly and stiffly, as if she’d just been hit with the Petrificus Totalus spell in Harry Potter.
2. She scowled at her purse, which was atop the steel cage.
3. Shaking her head with a frustrated air, she set the walkie-talkie atop that same steel cage and fiercely yanked open the purse.
4. She removed a cellular phone from the purse.
5. She looked at the phone.
6. She held the phone far away from her face as if in disbelief.
7. She glanced toward the office, squinting in a perturbed way.
8. She turned to the Critter Catcher and shook her head scornfully.
9. She mouthed the profane phrase for a male born to a member of the canine family.
10. She angrily pushed a button on her phone and said: “Didn’t you see my note?”
Still with binoculars trained on her boss and smiling as she rarely did on a Monday morning, Penelope said, “Yeah, I saw it.”
“Then why didn’t you use the Motorola as requested? I need to see if these things work over distance.”
“Listen, you can try to make it sound not ridiculous with this Motorola business. But it’s a walkie-talkie. And they’re stupid when you have cell phones.”
Missy now held the phone away from her face and looked at it frankly. She seemed to be weighing whether to speak her mind fully or take a discretionary route. She then stared back at the office with a quizzical tilting of head, as if, perhaps, she’d realized something.
“You’re looking at me through the binoculars, aren’t you?”
Penelope laughed. “Binoculars? I don’t see any binoculars?”
With the Critter Catcher smiling away beside her, Missy scratched the entirety of her face with a flicking middle finger. She said: “Just come down here for a second.”
Penelope stood with Missy before the Critter Catcher in a field colloquially known as the east quadrant.
“So, Miss Penelope,” said the Critter Catcher, “I was just explaining how the traps work to Miss Missy and where I’m going to place them. Like I told the boss, your residents will never even know they’re here. I’ll exercise the utmost discretion.”
Despite the Miss Missy moniker just thrown at her, Penelope’s boss now strode around the trap before them with a confident, irritating stride. Penelope could tell that she considered herself and Mr. King something of a team after the professional/personal episode, and
Penelope a distinctly junior partner.
“Are you sure four traps are enough?” Missy said, fondling the cage.
The skunk man chuckled at this. “If we need more, I got more. But four should be a nice number to start with. As you know, skunks are scavengers and will eat most anything.”
“Yes,” said Missy in a professorial tone. “I did know that.”
Penelope felt her mouth go slack at the bald-facedness of this lie.
“You’ve been doing your research,” said the Critter Catcher. “But I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered: these rascals have a sweet tooth. And they will travel many a mile for a tasty marshmallow. I’ll put a few of those in each trap for bait and that should do the trick. They’ve always been Jim Dandy before.”
“Sounds good,” Missy said, rattling the cage with her foot as if testing its trap-worthiness. “I think marshmallows are just what we need.”
The use of the plural pronoun was not lost on Penelope, and she smiled at the novice backwoodswoman before her. What a kiss-up.
“I have a question,” said Penelope. “What do you do when you catch the skunk? I mean, how do you keep from getting sprayed?”
At this, Missy quit her unseemly caressing of traps and sprinted to stand at Penelope’s side. It was as obvious as the tan on her face that she was envious of the question just posed. This was the crux of the matter, obviously, and the sort of thing that a professional trapper would love to discuss with amateurs.
“Oh, I just talk to em a little,” said the Critter Catcher.
“Talk to them?” Missy asked.
“Yeah. Just real gentle. Hey there, Mrs. Skunk. How are you today? Nice warm weather we’re having, isn’t it? I see that you’ve gotten yourself into a little jam. Why don’t we just see what we can do about that? How does that sound to you, Mrs. Skunk? You know. Just that sort of thing to get em nice and relaxed and show em you’re a friend.”
“So you never get sprayed?” Missy said in one long competitive rush of words, all but jumping into the Critter Catcher’s arms as she spoke.
“Oh, sure, sure,” said the skunk man chuckling. “Ever now and then Mr. or Mrs. Skunk is having a bad day and they just got to take it out on you. And once in a blue moon, I’ll startle em before I can gentle em up. So yes, a fellow who traps skunks has to expect to get the juice ever once in a while. That’s just occupational hazard.”
Missy had been eyeing her during this reply, yanking her head back and forth, trying to see if Penelope was intending to race and get the next question in before she could. Penelope grinned. What a little nutjob she was.
“And where do you take the skunks after they’re caught?” Missy asked.
“I send them off to Skunky Heaven.”
“Skunky Heaven?” Missy said. “Where’s that? Oh, I see. I see.”
“Virginia state law. Can’t trap and relocate an animal. Rabies.”
This aspect of the conversation seemed less pleasing to the Critter Catcher. When answering the question he’d gazed off into an uncertain middle distance, as if envisioning a Skunky Heaven with plenty of marshmallows and less sensitive human noses. The role of Grim Reaper was one he didn’t relish, Penelope could tell. Even habitually tone-deaf Missy caught on to this, for she asked her next question in a measured, respectful tone.
“And how do you send them off to Skunky Heaven?”
Still with that distracted look in his eyes, the trapper went to the truck and put his hand on the long box that ran behind the cab. “This is my own little gas chamber here. Carbon monoxide. Induced narcosis. It’s the most humane way. They never feel a thing.”
The humaneness of his reaperdom seemed to pluck him up considerably, for he let down the tailgate and lifted out cages, whistling a jaunty tune.
“If y’all have no more questions, I’ll get busy,” he said, and with a cage in each hand, he set off toward the woods.
When he was out of earshot, Missy said: “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what, Trapper John? Your encyclopedic knowledge of skunks? Yes, I did know they are scavengers. You are such a brownnoser.”
“Whatever. And before you correct me, little miss Dian Fossey, I don’t care. I know you’re proud of growing up where the red ferns grow and having birds eat out of your hands like everyone else in Hillsboro, but I’m not embarrassed that I know nothing about nature. Not
a bit. But I do know a trained skunk when I see one. And now a professional has confirmed that fact.”
“That wasn’t his professional opinion. It was his personal one. I still can’t believe you guessed that right.”
“Totally clutch,” Missy said, putting her hands together over her head and shaking them like a prizefighter who’s just been declared winner. “I read you like a book. Don’t ever play poker. That’s all I can say. And don’t be jealous just because the Skunk Whisperer agrees with me.”
“The what?”
“The Skunk Whisperer. You heard what he said. He talks to the skunks to relax them so they don’t spray him. It’s animal hypnosis. Oh, I’ve got Dimwit right where I want him now, and it’s winner take all for the fate of Rolling Acres!”
“You’re getting distracted by skunks. Or skunk, singular. If your goal is to get rid of Dimwit, focus on proving he’s a thief, not on som
e crackpot theory.”
“Listen, Ellie Mae. Until the Whisperer puts a dent in the skunk army, we can’t breach the hill to Dimwit’s place. It’s a two-part plan. This is phase one. The binoculars and walkie-talkies are for phase two, the stakeout and entering of Dimwit’s sarcophagus proper. I don’t see why this is so complicated to you.”
Penelope rolled her eyes and walked toward the office. She had actual work to do.
17
Penelope entered the office to find the bathroom door shut, which meant Dimwit had snuck in while she was away. He was definitely spying on them—she’d barely been gone twenty minutes.
As always, Penelope found it hard to focus on the tasks at hand when Dimwit was on the premises and going about his intimate business. And now, distracted, she worried about Theo. He’d be starting his second full day at camp and she’d have no idea how he was doing till Tuesday or Wednesday, and then only if he’d taken the time to write. If he’d been bitten by a rabid raccoon, surely she would have heard something. Right now, he was either placidly canoeing bucolic Lake Sycamore or being tied to an anthill like the fat kid in Lord of the Flies. There were other options, mostly involving injury and ointments, but these were the two that battled most fiercely in her imagination. Why did she think it would be relaxing to have him gone? Yes, she had freedom of movement. But freedom of mind? Not at all.
Feeling that a Starburst might be just the soothing tonic she needed, she reached in her desk drawer, hoping that the top piece would be strawberry or orange, anything but lemon, though as consolation prizes went, not a bad one.
Her reconciliation to a lemon Starburst proved theoretical, as there were no Starbursts of any hue to be found. The whole, shiny pack was missing. With the drawer yanked almost completely out, she paused in her mad shuffling of paper clips and pens to consider if she was losing her mind. Maybe, in her walkie-talkie discombobulation, she’d placed the pack in the drawer then removed it immediately after, wanting to keep them handy in case this skunk business demanded instant sugar countering.
The toilet flushed and she heard the squeak of Dimwit’s boots on tile. Leaping up, she raced to the reception area before Dimwit could make his getaway.
Dimwit exited and looked first toward the desk and then back toward Missy’s office. He didn’t spot Penelope, sitting alertly in the chair before the front door, until he’d clomped halfway across the room in his dirty boots.
“Hey Dewitt,” she said, as she did every day when he left. She couldn’t help herself. George had told her when she was a young girl that nice people say hello to everybody and she’d never been able to break the habit.
Dewitt’s typical response after being greeted was a stopping in tracks; a gaping of mouth; a bug-eyed perusal of her feet, legs, and all the rest; a second go at the feet; and, finally, a curt tipping of Yosemite Sam. These first four steps he now executed. He was en route to step five, when Penelope said, “Dewitt, do you have any gum on you?”
Yosemite Sam was stopped midnod by this, though he did continue to fire his gun and offer his middle digit to the world. Penelope was getting flipped off all over the place. Dewitt’s gape grew gapier.
“I have a bad taste in my mouth from breakfast,” Penelope continued, “and I’m completely out of gum.”
Dewitt shook Yosemite Sam side to side as a response.
“What about candy?” Penelope asked, standing up now and blocking the door. “Like a mint or something.”
Dewitt said “Naw” and made a tentative step to go around her. With a smile, Penelope mirrored his movement. They were four feet apart and looking eye to eye. Dewitt was a touch taller, but scrawny. His nose began to twitch as a rabbit’s does. He dug for a moment in his ear. He could be smelled from this distance. A spasm started in his cheek, just above the stubble. The hand that was in the ear moved to the curly chest hair that leaped from the top of his coveralls. He lingered here, curling and uncurling individual members of his hirsute tribe in a manner that looked comforting.
“Nothing at all?” said Penelope. “Not even a Starburst or something?”
This was the longest Dewitt had ever been detained in the office and his eyes went involuntarily to the windows, then to Missy’s office, as if searching for alternative means of escape.
“I ain’t got nothing like that.”
In the worst way possible, Penelope wanted to demand that he empty his pockets. Or better yet to frisk him herself if she could quickly find rubber gloves and one of those outfits that nuclear plant workers wear to prevent contamination. Even without the gear, she was sorely tempted. A half-empty pack of gum here, an individually wrapped peppermint there. Even the cute little yellow socks. She could live with the pilfering of those. But a Monday morning pack of Starburst? That was a bridge too far.
“I got to go,” Dewitt said.
“Where to?” Penelope said, fake-smiling in a way she hoped was obvious.
“I got some things to do up at my place.”
“You don’t have any candy up there, do you? I don’t want to make another trip to Seven-Eleven.”
She thought Dewitt blinked more than usual at the use of another but couldn’t be sure. An unmoored chest hair could have briefly gotten into his eye.
“I don’t truck with gum or candy. That stuff’s bad for your teeth.”
Penelope let that comment linger in the air for a while and continued to match the minuscule movements of Dewitt, left, then right. She thought by now he should have worked in a head fake and a quick counterstep to get the angle on her, but the extended human interaction seemed to have dulled his native survival skills.
“Surely you’ve got something in your house?”
“Nope.”
“Your car?”
“Naw.”
Penelope broadened her smile and stepped aside to let Dewitt pass. He opened the door and she peeked her head out behind him. “It’s such a beautiful day,” she said. “I may walk up to your place with you just to stretch my legs. You don’t mind, do you?”
Dimwit appeared to take this as the rhetorical question it was and headed down the steps. Penelope followed, her eyes scanning his multipocketed coveralls. One of those grimy zippers held the purloined Starburst.
Down the office steps, across the small parking lot, across Rolling Acres Way, and then they were at the foot of Dimwit’s gravel drive. Dimwit walked quickly, then sluggishly, then started up again in a burst, as if trying to get Penelope to walk either more in front of him or more behind, rather than right beside as she was. He seemed skittish about human proximity not of his own choosing. Luckily, Penelope was wearing her summer flats and was able to manage his changes of pace with no problem. She felt keen.
“Did you ever have actual feeders on these?” she asked, as they walked past the soiled Confederate flag and the Don’t Tread on Me banner.
“Momma did. Don’t care for birds. Too messy. Too noisy.”
“Where’d you get your flags?
“Internet.”
“Do you buy a lot of things on the Internet?”
Dimwit seemed to view this question as a touch intimate and offered no response. Penelope wasn’t sure exactly what her aim was, now that they were halfway up the drive, but she’d decided to see him to the door, come hell or high water. If Dimwit felt a little violated by her presence, then good. Turnabout was fair play.
They walked in silence, shoes crunching gravel. The air was still and the day had grown warm and close feeling. Behind them and to either side, lush greenery and things in bloom. But up here, only a few sad weeds and red clay. The riddle of the lunar landscape around his trailer was one for the ages. Maybe it was a septic issue and a million biological hazards lurked beneath her pretty tan flats. A rusty tire rim rose up out of the wasteland, looking as if it had started rolling down to freedom before losing all will to live. It was a lonely-looking tire. Her mind raced now, thinking of lip gloss and yellow socks that were likely in the run-down trailer they approached. Als
o dead bodies.
Dimwit stopped abruptly when they’d crested the hill. He said: “I ain’t got no candy for you. You’re wasting your time.”
His back was to the front door, which was padlocked, and he’d fished out a massive key ring from one of his inscrutable pockets. He held the ring tightly, as if afraid she might try to swipe it. She realized she was casing the joint.
“You’re not going to invite me in?” Penelope said, stepping toward the door.
“Ain’t got time to socialize.”
“Okay Dewitt. I’ll see you later.”
They stood there atop the hill, with Rolling Acres below, the mountains to the east, downtown Hillsboro to the west. She could see the bank building from here. Maybe that was why he’d cut down the trees. The view was pretty spectacular, as long as you didn’t actually look at his property. Dimwit didn’t turn toward his door and Penelope didn’t start down the hill. They were face-to-grim-face under the hot sun. He was not big on eye contact and Penelope knew she was making him uncomfortable. He rocked back and forth in his brogans and switched his keys to the other hand. Behind him was an ancient cement flowerpot filled with Sun Drop cans, some of which had spilled over the side and begun to pile all around it.
“We have recycling you know,” Penelope said.
Dimwit blinked three times but didn’t reply. The sun was in his face, not hers, and now his eyes began to water. A bead of sweat dripped from beneath the bird finger of Yosemite Sam, and Dewitt let it run across his forehead, along his sideburn, until it disappeared in the murky growth on his face.