by Bobbie Pyron
Mama nods. “I think you’re right. Jewel must have taught piano.” Mama rubs her thumb across the photograph. “What in the world happened to you?” she asks the Jewel in the photograph. “What’s your story?”
“What’s in that notebook?” I ask Mama.
She blinks and looks down at the small leather book in her hand. On the inside, in a neat hand, is written Jewel Knight. I realize I’ve never known what her last name is.
Mama flips slowly through the yellowed, stained pages. “Looks like it’s all kinds of things: addresses, dates, a few phone numbers.” She frowns as she goes deeper inside the little book. “Then it sort of becomes a diary.” She looks over at me. “This last part is hard to read. Worse than your handwriting.”
I hold out my hand. “Can I see?”
She’s right: the first part seems like an address book, except most of the addresses and even a lot of the phone numbers have been marked through or rubbed out. There’s also notes that anyone would write: Call Lexington Power and Light about bill; Meet June at Marston Drugstore; talk to Dr. Benson about new medication; take Baby to vet. My heart leaps. “Look, Mama,” I say, pointing, “she mentions Baby!”
I try to read the scribbly writing Mama couldn’t read. It just seems like random thoughts not really connected to each other. God is everywhere and in everyone! Why does June hate me? My mother’s name was Jenny and she could never save a penny. I turn the pages, reading more. On one page she wrote in big letters, “The Sun is my Mother.” On the next page, in handwriting so tiny I can barely make it out, she wrote “the world is killing me.” I don’t know why, but tears come to my eyes. It’s like, in these pages, I’m seeing a person fall apart. A person who, before, could smile and sit up tall and proud; a person who touched other people.
I flip through the last few pages she’d written on. Most of it, even I can’t read. All I can make out are single words—hospital, light, sad, EUPHORIA (I’ll have to look that one up), God, home, stars, pain, gone, WHY?
And then, on the very last page, just two words: Baby. World.
I close the book. Baby is Jewel’s whole world. And I’m sure she is his too.
I love that little dog. I’d do just about anything if he could be mine. But I have my family. The way I see it, Jewel needs Baby more than I do.
I look out the window. It’s started to snow again.
I swallow past a big burning knot in my throat. “We have to help them, Mama.”
29
Scent Trail
Skies clear.
Birds call back and forth,
fluffing their feathers against the cold.
Baby rises from behind the book drop and
shakes the wild night from his coat.
It is morning and,
he knows,
a new day.
He sniffs the air.
He puts his nose to the ground.
There,
just there,
the faint thread of a scent trail.
He remembers the smells of the day
he found his Jewel:
The spicy smell of a truck selling tacos.
The sweet, green smell of a shop filled with flowers.
The happy scents as they passed
children playing on a school playground.
The wet musk of a river,
a river that ran right beside the place
where he and Ree found Jewel.
Baby strikes out
following his nose,
ignoring everything else—
the bleating car horns,
the voices calling to him,
the thousand other smells—
as he goes from one scent marker to another,
truck
shop
school
until finally,
the smell of the river.
Just as snow begins to fall again,
Baby walks up to the front doors of
Mercy Memorial Hospital.
He takes one step.
The doors sweep open.
The smells rush out.
Memories of this place,
of finding Jewel,
of seeing her face,
of hearing her voice say his name
over and over,
and knowing that finally, finally
everything is as it should be,
these memories
pull him inside
as surely as
a fish on a line.
Bright lights.
Sharp smells sting Baby’s nose.
Shiny floors slip under his snow-crusted paws.
Baby tries to find the scent trail
to Jewel.
Up one hall, down another.
A man pushing a mop
calls out, “Hey! What you doing here?”
Baby crouches, then hears
a ding!
He remembers that sound,
races toward it
through sliding doors
into a small room,
almost as small as the place in the park
where he and Jewel lived.
Doors close.
The room moves.
Baby whimpers.
Where is Jewel?
Doors slide open and Baby leaps out
glad to be away from the moving room.
He searches with his nose for something familiar,
for something of Jewel.
There, just there.
He remembers!
He gallops down the hall.
The scent-memory grows stronger.
Then,
“There it is!”
Voices shouting.
Hands grabbing.
Arms waving.
His heart hammers in his chest.
All the little dog wants
is to be with Jewel.
A big woman in a uniform bends over him.
slips something around his neck.
Tight. Too tight!
Baby twists and jumps and flips
like a fish caught on a line.
A blanket is thrown over his head.
Dark.
He is lifted up
into
arms that smell like dogs and fear.
Baby is carried down the hall.
He howls his heartbreak as they pass
Jewel’s room.
30
Finding Baby
Daddy’s still at work. Mama and Dylan walked over to the library for afternoon story time. I really like going to that library, but I didn’t go. Right now, I have to take advantage of not being in school because of the snow and concentrate on finding Baby. I’ll sure be adding snow days to my grateful list tonight.
Karina and Daria sit cross-legged on my bed. I’m praying they don’t smell the pee accident Dylan had the other night.
Karina turns the silver key over and over in her hand. She holds it up to the light. “I’m pretty sure this is a locker key,” she says.
She looks at the engraving on the key. “CWS three, number twenty-five,” she reads out loud. “I’m not sure what CWS three stands for,” she says, “but twenty-five must be the locker number.”
“I wonder what’s in there?” I say.
Karina shrugs. She raises one dark eyebrow. “Who knows? Maybe nothing, or maybe something that will tell us more about her.”
“At least we know her last name is Knight,” Daria says. “That’s a big help.”
Daria frowns over Jewel’s small leather book. She’s writing something down on a piece of paper. She grabs the end of her thick black braid and chews on it. “The addresses in the book are from all over the place—Oregon, Denver, even Saint Louis—so I can’t tell where she lived before she and Baby ended up here.”
Dang.
“But,” she continues, holding up her pencil, “she does say that she has to call Lexington Power and Light.”
“Isn’t Lexington in Kentucky?” I ask.
“Let’s go down to the Resource Room,” Karina says. “If we’re lucky, one of the computers will be free.”
Luck is with us. Someone is just leaving a computer when we get there.
Daria logs on. She types in the word Lexington. We watch the screen. Daria worries the end of her braid while we wait, just like Mama does.
“Wow,” Karina says, shaking her head. “Who knew so many places are named Lexington?”
Double dang. Then an idea flickers in my brain like a firefly. “What if you search the name of the electric company?”
Daria’s fingers flash over the keyboard.
“Bingo!” she says with a grin. “Piper, you’re a genius. That electric company is in Lexington, Kentucky.”
Let me tell you, nobody has ever accused me of being a genius.
“That’s a long ways away from here. Almost as far as where we came from in Louisiana,” I say.
“Wonder why she came all this way?” Daria says.
“And how?” I add.
“Does she have family here or nearby?” Karina wonders aloud. “Could that be why she came here?”
“But then why would she and Baby be living in the park?” Daria says.
We stare at the computer screen like it’ll magically tell us more.
It doesn’t.
Just then, Karina’s mom pops her head into the room. “Oh, there you are,” she says. “I’ve been looking all over for you. The brownies have arrived. I need your help unloading the boxes.”
Firefly Gourmet Brownies!
We shut down the computer and follow Mrs. Bailey out to her old, beat-up Ford Fiesta, otherwise known as Henry.
We carry box after box of Buttercrunch Blondies, Raspberry Swirls, Choco-Lots, Mocha Mint, Peanut Butter Supremes, Caramel Dreams, and my favorite, Pistachio Surprise.
Just as I’m about to pick up the last few boxes, I hear someone breathing hard behind me.
I whirl around. It’s Ree and Ajax. Ree pants like she’s just run a marathon.
She bends over with her hands on her knees. Ajax licks her face.
“Lordy,” she mutters. “I got to give up the cigs.”
Finally, she straightens up and looks at me. I shiver at the look in her eyes: fear.
“It’s about Baby.”
My heart drops like a rock into a deep, dark well.
Ree tells us a story, an improbable (my new vocab word) story. Somehow, someway, Baby went all the way across the city and found the hospital where Jewel is. He almost found her too, but animal control found him first and took him away.
“Idiots!” Ree waves her arms like windmills and paces in tight circles. Ajax whimpers. People step into the street to avoid her. I don’t blame them.
“All he wanted was to find Jewel, and what do they do?” Ree demands.
Karina and Daria watch Ree, wide-eyed.
I can’t answer because my heart is one big knot in my throat.
“They lock him up like a common criminal and haul him away,” Ree spits. She jabs a finger in the air and says, “This is exactly why I hate people!”
“Where did they take him?” I manage to squeak.
“The so-called Humane Society,” Ree says.
“The pound,” Karina whispers.
My heart drops. I remember the pound in Cyprus Point. It was not exactly “humane.”
I grab Ree’s sleeve. She jerks her arm away. Ree does not like to be touched. “You’re going to get Baby out, aren’t you?” I ask.
Ree runs her hand across her face, then her shoulders slump. “I can’t.”
Now it’s my turn to wave my arms. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I can’t take Ajax on the bus, Piper.”
“But can’t Linda look after him?”
Ree snorts. “I haven’t seen Linda for a couple of days. I don’t know where she is. By the time I find her and catch a bus that goes to the east part of the city, the shelter will be closed. It closes at five.”
I didn’t think about that. I look at my watch: 4:15.
“But maybe—” I start.
“And even if I could somehow magically take Ajax on the bus, I won’t take him anywhere near that place. They hate street people with dogs. If they had their way—”
And she is off on another tear.
Just then, Mrs. Bailey comes out to move her car. She stops dead in her tracks and quickly takes in the scene on the sidewalk. Her eyes narrow, her fists punch into her hips. “What’s going on here?”
I take a deep breath and plunge into the story of Baby and Jewel. Toward the end of my telling, Mama and Dylan come back from the library.
Dylan waves at Ree. “Hi, lady,” he says with a big smile.
“Is this about Baby?” Mama asks.
When Mama hears about Baby finding his way back to the hospital and being taken away by animal control, she shakes her head. “Lord, lord.”
“What are we going to do, Mama?” I ask.
“I don’t know what we can do, Piper.”
“But they might kill him, Mama.”
“No!” Dylan wails. “They can’t kill Toto!”
Which starts Ajax howling and Ree cussing up a storm and Mama trying to quiet Dylan down.
“Everybody calm down!” Mrs. Bailey holds up her hands like she’s trying to stop a freight train.
“Now,” she says, pointing at Ree. “Did they tell you at the hospital which Humane Society they took this lady’s dog to?”
Ree nods. She pulls her sleeve up and shows the inside of her arm to Mrs. Bailey. “I wrote down the address.”
She nods. “Did you tell them that the dog belongs to a patient in their hospital?”
Ree shrugs. “I tried to, but, well, I got pretty upset and . . .” Her voice trails off.
Mrs. Bailey turns to Karina. “Go get my purse.”
She points again at Ree. “You, you’re coming with me so we can get this straightened out.”
Before Ree can go into all the reasons she can’t, I say, “Mrs. Bailey, I don’t think that would be the best idea.”
She studies Ree. “Probably not.” She eyes me for a second, then says, “You know the whole story, don’t you?”
I nod. “Pretty much.”
She looks at Mama. “Is it okay if I take Piper with me to the animal shelter? So she can explain the situation?”
Dylan jumps up and down. “Bring Toto here! He can live with us, right, Mama?”
I look at Mama too, hoping against hope.
Both Mama and Mrs. Bailey shake their heads. “Dogs aren’t allowed here, Piper,” Mama says.
“But he’s so little,” I say. “I bet no one would even notice him. I’d share all my food with him and—”
I see Mama set her jaw. “Absolutely not. If they found out we had a dog, we’d be right back out on the streets.”
I look at Mrs. Bailey with puppy-dog eyes. She sighs. “Your mother’s right, Piper.”
Karina comes out and hands her mother her purse.
Mrs. Bailey fishes out pen and paper. “Show me that address again.” She reads the address off Ree’s arm and writes it down on a piece of paper.
She snaps her purse shut. She looks at her watch. “Come on, Miss Piper,” she says, opening the passenger door of Henry. “We need to go on a fact-finding mission before that animal shelter closes.”
Suddenly, I remember something. “Hang on just a sec,” I say, and race to our room.
We go up one street and then down another. I see Jerry and his cat, Lucky, sitting in the doorway of an empty store. Some people in fancy clothes are smiling, talking to him and stroking Lucky.
A little farther on, I see a guy I recognize from the park and his two little dogs. The dogs are bundled up in coats. He’s holding a cardboard sign.
Mrs. B stops for a red light. She shakes her head and says, “I like dogs a lot too, and I guess I understand that th
ey’re all these folks have, but I just don’t think I’d give up living inside with a roof over my head for one.”
I think about something Linda told me the other day at the park when I was looking for Ree. I say to Mrs. B, “When people see them on the street with their dog or cat”—I want to make sure I include Lucky—“they aren’t just street people, they’re real people. Most everybody can relate to having a pet they love. Having their dog or cat helps them feel like they’re important, even if it’s just to their dog.” I think some more on what Linda said. I want to make Mrs. B understand. “Linda says everybody needs another heartbeat on their side.”
Mrs. Bailey nods. The light turns green. “You’ve given me something to think about, Piper.”
Finally, we pull into the parking lot of East Valley Humane Society. It’s not a dark little cinder-block building like the one in Cyprus Point. This one is big and has lots of windows. As soon as we get to the front door, though, I hear the howls and yelps and yips of desperate dogs. Is Baby’s one of those voices?
We walk into the brightly lit lobby. It’s clean but still smells a little like pee and Pine-Sol.
“What can I help you with?” a woman at the desk asks. She has blue streaks in her dark hair and a pierced nose.
“Do you have a little dog here you picked up from Mercy Memorial Hospital this morning?” Mrs. B asks.
The woman nods. “Oh yes. It’s not every day you get a call that a dog is running loose inside a hospital.” She frowns just a little. “Is he yours?”
“No,” Mrs. B says, “but we do know who he belongs to.”
“She’s a patient at Mercy Memorial,” I say. “He was trying to find her.”
“That’s sad,” she says. “Can you keep him until she gets out of the hospital?”
Mrs. B and I look at each other. Then she says, “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
The woman—her name tag says Tamara—studies us for just a minute too long. Does she see the frayed collar of Mrs. B’s coat and the purse strap held together by duct tape? Does she see the one room I share with my little brother and mother and father? Are we somehow branded as “homeless”?
Finally, she asks, “When will his owner be out of the hospital? Do you know?”
We shake our heads. “Soon,” I say, hopefully.
“And when she does get out of the hospital, do they have a home?”