Beware of Flight Attendant

by Cactus Moloney

  When Aunt June’s friends would come to visit the trailer home, I knew how many cats, dogs, and children they had. I knew what the visitor had for lunch, and what items they purchased at the grocery store to make for dinner. I knew if they washed their hands after going to the bathroom. I could smell the faint dribble of urine left in the crotch of their underwear and I knew if they suffered from disease. I like to bury my face in the space between their legs and inhale everything about them—to get to know them.

  I don’t have names for all the diseases, but I can tell when a person is sick.

  Cindy would use big words to describe the different odors revealed during my training: epilepsy, narcolepsy, malaria, and Parkinson’s disease. The scents most familiar to me were cancer and diabetes. Aunt June’s disease was diabetes. My friend Cindy taught me to sit next to Aunt June and paw her leg if I detected a change in her blood sugar levels.

  “You can smell odors at concentrations of parts per trillion,” Cindy explained to me. “They say it’s like smelling one rotten apple in two million barrels.”

  I loved apples.

  “It means you can smell real good!” She laughed.

  I was feeling constrained, sitting on my seat, trapped inside this rumbling machine. I could feel my tension building with the whine of the engine.

  A little boy, my height, went running down the aisle past me. I stretched my neck to follow him, peeking over the seat behind me to watch him disappear out of site.

  Pat…Pat…Pat.

  His little feet were hitting the floor of the plane, as he ran back up the aisle, passing me again.

  I wanted to smell more of him. I wanted my scratchy tongue to lick the boogers from his baby soft face. I love kids.

  I heard him running back, Pat…Pat…Pat.

  My white paws started to dance in my seat. Oh boy! He slowed as he approached Aunt June and myself.

  “Is dis yawh dwag?” He pointed at me, asking Aunt June.

  Cindy told me dogs could learn a vocabulary of up to one-hundred-and-fifty words. I knew many more words than she thought possible.

  I recognized Aunt June was thrilled to be speaking with the tiny person. Her heart beat faster—like my own.

  “Yes honey, Buster is my dog, my friend, and my helper,” Aunt June told the little boy proudly.

  “Can I pwet him?”

  I’m about to lose control with excitement. I know I shouldn’t show my immense enthusiasm—I need to act cool.

  “Sure, sweet thing...put your palm out and let him sniff you first,” she instructed.

  His hand was reaching towards me. I could taste him in the air. He was delicious.

  I have already inhaled his skin, but now with his sticky stink directly under my nose, I smell sweet candy, dirt, soap, baby diapers, Goldfish crackers, and boogers.

  “He likes to be petted behind the ears,” Aunt June tells the freckled face boy.

  “His eaws are hawd,” the little boy says, reaching behind my small-cropped ears to rub my giant bowling ball of a head.

  I felt his warm, sticky fingers catching on my fur.

  The nostalgia comforts me—before Aunt June and before Cindy I had human children to love—if I could only remember.

  The boy held a small toy plane in his hand. He raised is up and buzzed the little plane down, making a vroom sound through his teeth. He smiled at Aunt June and me.

  “Fanks!” He spit out, zooming his airplane away.

  My glowing amber eyes watched the small boy buzz off.

  Then I spotted the redheaded man across the aisle sitting stiffly. I inhaled his anxiety; the chemicals from this disorder covered his skin like a film. The man was suffering from a different kind of disease—an emotional one. He held a shiny cell phone in the palm of his hand, his fingers swiping and scrolling through the pictures, pushing heart shapes when he liked a shot. I understood him to be loving the pictures of smiling, strong people.

  The boy stomped several rows up the aisle to his mother. I could see the back of her head protruding from above the seat near the window. I had smelled her on him. The sour smell of crusted breast milk. Her oily hair had penetrated his striped shirt; from her having gone days without a shower. I smelled marijuana. I smelled baby powder. I smelled the baby.

  Aunt June pulled out a magazine from the pocket on the seat in front of her. It was the Freedom Magazines for the airline. Flipping through the pages, Aunt June held the pictures out in front of her, all the better to see.

  I took the opportunity to view the photos she held up. She flipped the pages to uncover people in nicely lit restaurants laughing, close images of gourmet food and wine, and then we studied a page that showed an ad for a hotel with an infinity swimming pool overlooking a beachscape.

  Time passed. The sound of the plane continued to grate on my nerves. Both the monotone buzz and the high-pitched jet engine penetrated deep into my eardrums, cracking my exterior composure. I started to pant again, trying to calm myself by looking out the round window on my left.

  18 Stewart Buckeye

  Buckeye's massive body encroached on the aisle way. His significant height was squeezed tightly between the economy section seats. He stood 6’4 in his size fourteen cowboy boots—his limbs were bursting out of the row. The man hunched his wide shoulders, trying to fit into the compact space, pulling his tattooed forearms onto his lap, attempting to shrink himself.

  Buckeye was the US Air Marshall assigned to keep an eye on Senator Mike Young on the return flight to Miami. Recently, the senator had been receiving death threats, following a controversial vote. It was common practice to keep the in-flight assignments top secret. Buckeye was sitting in the exit row, in the middle of the economy section. Nobody on board the flight knew he was an air marshal, not even the senator.

  At the ticket counter, the airline agent had given him the exit row upgrade after observing his considerable size.

  “I don’t think you would fit in a regular economy seat!” She had teased him.

  “Yes ma'am, that sounds just fine.”

  He was dressed in worn down Wranglers and dusty cowboy boots. He wore a Navajo designed turquoise eagle on his silver belt buckle, a gift from his now deceased father. His faded gray t-shirt hugged his muscles, while clinching the extra ten pounds he had gained around his waist; a birthday gift for turning forty-five. Buckeye’s dark kind eyes were shaded by a cream-colored Stetson cowboy hat.

  It was a fine spot to be in the middle of the plane. He could just see into the first-class section, with a clear view of the senator sitting in the aisle seat along the opposite side. He would have a direct line of sight to the politician until the flight attendant closed the dividing curtain. The senator appeared to be in rapt conversation with a clean-cut, dark haired man sitting behind him.

  Buckeye regarded the old lady, Aunt June, accompanied by her service dog, one seat in front of him, on the other side of the aisle. Buckeye heard the elderly woman introduce herself and the dog to the messy haired woman, who was later escorted off the plane due to an allergy to dogs. Federal law ensures access to air transportation on all carriers for all individuals with a service animal. It was an interesting switch from the normal cultural animal hierarchy—where humans rule and dogs drool.

  He had had several run-ins with the Staffordshire or American Pitbull breed during his years in law enforcement. Buckeye felt it was the owner, and how the dog was raised, that determined if the dog was aggressive or not. Buster was a bit frightening to look at with his larger than normal girth and cropped ears. Stewart supposed he was judging the dog based on its appearance, like people judged him for his tattoos and towering stature. He figured the dog probably had a fine disposition, seeing as a geriatric person was in charge. However, any strange dog was an unknown risk.

  He knew Pitbulls were responsible for more than half of all dog attack injuries in the United States. It was likely they got a bad rap from of the company that kept them. He visualized the stereotypical pit owner no
t as a sweet little old lady, but some skinny punk kid wearing baggy pants and a wife-beater tank top, high on tweak. After meeting the much-maligned Pitbull breed, he found they were usually friendly enough.

  The owners of the animals were a different story. Statistically, they were more likely to have criminal convictions for aggressive crimes, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, and infractions involving children and firearms. The dogs were originally bred as catch dogs for hunting and attacking large animals like wild boar. They were reared for pit fighting.

  Buckeye was more of a herder dog kind of guy. He liked the border collie and Australian shepherds, but he mostly connected with the devoted shorthaired cow dog—A.K.A. ankle biter—the blue heeler.

  Buckeye was raised on a cattle ranch in Southwest Colorado, through the Dolores River valley, and into the mountains along the West Fork dirt road. His family’s hundred-year-old, two-story log farmhouse was in the middle of a meadow, in the middle of four hundred acres of high mountain pine and aspen forest: surrounded by freshwater streams, natural hot springs, snow fed rivers and lakes.

  Next in line, his older brother decided to take over the family ranch. Stewart was left to join the military. Being a cowboy, it was easy for him to excel in the Navy: driven, athletic, tolerant, a perfect shot; he was a natural born killer.

  Between deployments, while serving as a Navy SEAL, he made his home in Thailand. Closing his eyes Stewart took in a deep breath, letting the wave of the memory surge over him. He was relaxing on a white sand beach, a short walk from his home, with his Thai girlfriend, Malee. He remembered her lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, barely clothed in a small, white crocheted bikini—bright against her dark skin. She was scooping handfuls of white sand, sifting it through her fingers over and over, sometimes picking out a microscopic shell to admire.

  Malee had speculated in a soft accented voice, “If I were stuck on an island and had to pick one person…hmm…definitely you Stewart.”

  He marveled at how animals could be treated so differently based on geography. It would be outrageous to expect the United Emirates Airlines to allow a dog to travel in the cabin. He had read in the teachings of Islam that the saliva of a dog is impure, and objects that come into contact with a dog’s saliva must be washed seven times. A dog flying with humans was as laughable as a pig flying first class. Everyone knows pigs can’t fly. He smiled.

  When he had lived in Thailand with Malee, they opted not to own a dog. The neighbors, however, a Dutch man who had married a local Thai woman, had a puppy. Buckeye noticed the dog shortly after the couple had brought it home. They would sit in the front yard with their two small children, throwing a chartreuse tennis ball for the fluffy pup. Its white shaggy mane hung in its face, shading its eyes like a sheepdog.

  Months passed before he noticed the dog's incessant barking. Its fur had formed black dreadlocks from spending its short life tied to a tree stump in the yard, with only a tipped over pan for water. Then the rain started. During the monsoons, he watched the dog howling under the torrential downpour. With no shelter and only a few feet of rope tethering it to a stump.

  Buckeye had sat on his front porch listening to the roar of the deluge against the metal roof and the sound of crying and barking coming from next door. He had had enough. Heading down the front steps of his home, he walked into the torrent completely drenching his t-shirt and jeans, taking large strides to the neighbor’s house on his bare feet. He let loose a barrage of pounding on the front door. The tall light-haired Dutch man answered the banging nonchalantly. He seemed confused by the large American visitor.

  “What is the plan with that dog?” Buckeye demanded the Dutch man, water running off his eyebrows and down his cheeks, forming freshwater tears.

  The Dutch man looked perplexed, “Nothing. What do you want with Bruce?”

  “I want you to untie Bruce and let him go, at least that way he can find himself some food,” Buckeye kept his voice level, spitting a loogie of tobacco onto the lawn.

  “I have tried,” the Dutch man said. “He always comes back, then jumps on my car to get my attention—scratching it!” The Dutch man pointed to his red Mercedes parked in the driveway. Buckeye didn’t see any scratches. “Do you want the dog?”

  Buckeye was in a predicament—exactly as he had feared. People who put their noses in another person's business...often get a nasty whiff. Bruce had become his problem when he knocked on the Dutch man’s door. If he left the dog tied to the tree it would live out a tortured existence during the monsoon season, before being saved from the relentless agony by starvation.

  He had no interest in having a dog but knew a German expat woman who had helped home stray dogs before. She lived nearby in Khao Lak. He told the Dutch man he was going to look into finding the dog a better home, returning to his house to call the German woman. She agreed to help.

  “Will you get the dog from your neighbor?” The woman asked him with a German accent. “Will you temporarily keep the dog while we look for candidates to home him?”

  This was what he had hoped to avoid, not wanting to become attached to the dog. He asked his girlfriend Malee if they should help the animal. She was stirring fish head soup over the outdoor burner, wearing itty-bitty shorts and a bikini top.

  “For sure, Stewart.”

  When Buckeye brought Bruce home, the German woman helped him shave the dreadlocked-darkened mats from his neglected body, leaving pink skin and bones. His beady black eyes spoke a million thanks. They decided it was best to keep Bruce in their fenced yard. The carport cover provided him with plenty of shelter.

  When Buckeye went outside, Bruce would follow him thrilled for the company, playfully biting at his hands and jumping up on his legs. Buckeye knew the dog hadn’t been around people, minus the months he was a puppy play toy. Bruce needed proper training. Buckeye wasn’t the guy for the job.

  The German woman called to let Buckeye know she had found a French expat woman expressing interest in meeting Bruce. When the two women arrived at the house, Bruce jumped at the French woman, biting down hard on the palm of her hand, penetrating the skin to leave a bloody mark.

  “I’m not interested in Bruce,” the French expat snapped at Buckeye.

  Malee’s four-year-old son wanted to know Bruce, but every time the boy went outside Bruce would jump on him, knocking him to the ground. He would bite at the child’s hands, scaring him and making him cry. Soon the boy was too afraid to go outside and play. It wasn’t like in the United States, where Buckeye could call Animal Control…or the Humane Society…or grab his gun.

  The German expat called again to say she wouldn’t be able to home Bruce and maybe Buckeye should investigate putting him down. He recognized this to be the compassionate thing to do. The vet would charge him two-hundred fifty US dollars to have the dog euthanized. Buckeye didn’t have the money. Bruce’s options had become limited. He didn’t want to drop the dog at the landfill to fight off other stray dogs.

  He shared his predicament with the small hunched over gardener, after he witnessed the man fighting off the pain-in-the-butt dog, while attempting to trim the grass and cut back the bougainvillea bushes. The stooped man said he knew someone who might be interested in the animal. The gardener returned excitedly the next day after finding a family who wanted to take Bruce.

  “Sir, this family want dog, but no want for pet,” the gardener explained. “Sir, they want to treat dog good. Feed dog food. Make fat. Bruce feed family, sir.”

  Buckeye’s brows furrowed as he realized what the man was telling him.

  “They want to eat Bruce,” Buckeye grimaced, spitting out the chew from behind his lower lip, dark juice splattering the sidewalk.

  “Yes, they treat him good,” the gardener smiled a toothless grin, ignoring Buckeye’s bubbling brown spit.

  Buckeye recognized that Bruce could feed a family…and then he tried to wrap his mind around the dog being a pet…and then a meal…all in one short conversation.


  Buckeye figured food was food: be it a cow, pig, chicken, squirrel, cat, horse or a dog. He grew up on a ranch.

  He thought about a prairie dog he had once shot for sport when he was a child.

  “God damn it, Stewart,” his father had reprimanded him. “You know these little guys mate for life.” To teach him a lesson about killing animals for target practice, his dad had made him skin the little dog and grill it over the campfire. Then eat it. The vision never left him. Not of the twisting dead prairie dog on a stick, but instead, the memory of the tiny dog’s mate. The female dog who kept poking her head out of their hole-for-a-home, searching with her beady black eyes for her missing partner. All the while Stewart was turning its little body over the fire’s flames.

  The Thai family came in a blue minivan and picked Bruce up later that day. That was the year before the Tsunami wiped out Khao Lak; in the end the little mutt Bruce would have died anyway…everyone else did.

  Buckeye was tugged from his thoughts as he watched the massive dog carefully pull itself up in the seat, cocking its head to look out the window. Several seats ahead of the dog, he observed a robust redheaded man bobbing his head into the aisle, apparently, he was thirsty and willing the beverage cart to move faster. The impatient man was dressed in khaki pants and short-sleeve, red polo shirt. Buckeye had seen a logo for Green Juice Protocol on the right breast pocket when the man had passed him to use the toilet earlier in the flight. His muscles bulged from the hems of the too tight sleeves. Buckeye noticed the way he had held back his shoulders over confidently—puffing out his chest—overcompensating.