But as we got out of the car, I was struck by just how ridiculous the situation was. Here we were, a skinny rich old lady and a fat broke young one, sneaking down the alley in a very bad part of town, armed with bacon to the rescue of a Maltese. Plus, I was nervous. And sometimes when I’m nervous I giggle uncontrollably.
Viv closed her door carefully and I did the same, but the laughter was already bubbling up in me. Viv ducked low and edged down the alley sideways, a move which added considerably to the ridiculous factor. She scurried over to a Dumpster, and I clapped my hand over my mouth.
Have you ever noticed, though, that the harder you try not to laugh, the harder you laugh? I jogged over next to Viv and tried to restrict myself to the silent kind of giggles, but I must admit, a little snort did escape me. I clapped the other hand over my mouth and pushed down as hard as I could. Luckily, Viv didn’t notice; she was busy moving down the alley like she was on a freaking SWAT maneuver. I was full out laughing now, weak with it, barely able to breathe, but I did my best to keep up. It was no use, though. Viv was two houses down before she looked back and saw I was lumbering drunkenly down the alley far behind her.
She went rigid, then threw her hands up in exasperation. This, unfortunately, was my complete undoing. I let out a sound that was half shriek and half guffaw, and all loud. I clamped my hands tight over my mouth, but they were no help. (…over my mouth, but it was too late!)
Viv stalked back down the alley toward me, her fists clenched. She looked, to my fevered state, like an outraged Chihuahua just before it launches into full-on, bark-your-fool-head-off-and-attack mode.
I bent double, laughing so loud now I was certain Joyce herself was wondering what was so funny.
“What! Are! You! Doing!” Viv hissed as she stomped up to me.
I held my hand up weakly. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “Oh God. I can’t – I’m sorry!” Then I was off again, wheezing and choking.
Viv stomped in helpless little circles around me, vibrating with anger. Frankly, this didn’t help. I clenched my lips together and tried to pull it together.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you insane!?”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath, letting it out in a shuddery giggle. I wiped tears from my eyes. “I’m done, I think.” I really didn’t think I was, but I had to say something. And oh man. I really needed to pee now. I tried to remember the Kegel exercises I’d read about in Flo’s Mature Woman magazine. “Oh, my gosh. That was so funny.”
“What?” Viv stomped her feet. “What was so funny? You’re going to get us shot!” Her head whipped up and she looked over my shoulder. “See!” she hissed.
I spun around, certain I was about to feel a bullet between my shoulder blades. “What?”
Viv grabbed my arm and pulled me down into a crouch. “The light just came on over that back door. Crap!” She crouched lower. “They just opened the door.”
She took off down the alley at a remarkably fast crab-walk. I lumbered after her, still kind of giggling under my breath, even as the thought of a pistol cocked and aimed that very second at my backside made me want to squeal in alarm.
We reached Joyce’s house, breathing hard, looking frequently back down the alley behind us. I heard a big dog bark, but otherwise things grew quiet again quickly.
“This is their house, right?” Viv said as she neared the back gate. “Yeah, I recognize that piece of crap Nova in the driveway. Can you imagine? A Nova. Damn, this thing is locked. We’re going to have to climb over.”
Have I mentioned that Viv is, like, eighty-something? And I’m not quite thirty. And yet, she’s in so much better shape than I am. You would think she’d worry about breaking a hip or something, but she stuck her feet in the holes of that chain link fence and was over in less than five seconds. I, on the other hand, tried to stuff my fat foot into one of the holes and it barely went in an inch. When I put my entire weight on it to lift myself, my foot slipped out and I plunged back down with a heavy thunk.
“Oh, hell,” I said.
“Hurry up,” Viv said.
“I’m hurrying.” I planted my foot again, bracing my hands on the metal bar at the top of the gate and pushing as hard as I could. It would help, probably, if I could put down the extra forty pounds of fat I was carrying around, but, alas, that would have to wait for another day.
My face grew hot and I couldn’t breathe, but I pushed myself up and over that fence. I swung my leg over, and my pants promptly caught in the pointy wires at the top of the fence. I pitched forward and fell to the ground. But at least I was on the right side. I still had to pee, though.
“You okay?” Viv asked, but it was clearly for form’s sake only. “Hey, look at this.” She laughed.
I stood and brushed the dead grass of my pants. Ten feet from where we’d climbed over, the fence leaned in, then went missing altogether. Half of Joyce’s yard and into the neighbor’s was completely open to the alley.
“Now that is funny,” Viv said.
I grumbled and rubbed the scratch on the inside of my leg where the fence had poked me. I had to admit I was cheered by the knowledge that I didn’t have to climb back over the fence to make my getaway.
Viv wasted no time finding a place to crouch beside a short storage building in the backyard. I hunkered beside her, senses on full alert, breathless with the exertion of getting there.
Viv pulled the recorder from her bag and studied the back of the house. “Okay,” she said solemnly. “They’re in there.”
All I saw was a dark house. “How can you tell?”
“Well, I assume they’re in there. And we’re gonna do this.”
She was nervous, I realized, and talking herself up. That made me nervous. Viv was the most reckless, impetuous person I knew. If she was nervous maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.
But before I could say as much, she was up and halfway across the yard with the recorder. She stooped over the concrete square that was the back porch, pushed a button on the recorder, and ran back to me. On the way, though, she tripped over something and stumbled.
“Oh, crud!” she said as she limped and dropped down beside me. “Oh, damn! Oh, seven layers of chocolate frosted what-the-hell!” She rocked back and forth, her arms wrapped around her bony shin. “I think I broke my leg.”
“You did not!” There was absolutely no scenario that contained both a) Viv with a broken leg and b)me getting home without being shot or arrested. So…no. I would allow no broken bones. “You just sit there and rest. I’ll handle the bacon fan.”
Already the recorded dog was starting to yip. I popped the lid off the bacon and fished the fan from Viv’s bag. After fiddling with it a second, I found the button that made it whir. With the tub of bacon in one hand and the fan behind it, I aimed bacon fumes toward the back door and waited for this miracle plan of VIv’s to unfold. The world was silent for a few seconds, save for the yapping dog and the thin buzz of the fan.
“Hey,” said my bladder at that moment. “Remember me?”
I shifted and told it to hush. I had once held my bladder for fourteen hours. Granted, I was in the drunk tank with several very scary looking women, and the potty was kind of out there for everyone to see, but still. I knew for a fact that if I needed to, I could have a bladder of steel.
“Is that right?” my bladder said mockingly.
A light popped on in the house. My bladder seized up.
“Uh-oh,” Viv said.
I couldn’t breathe. Turning on the lights would make it much easier for them to see that Bitsy was in the house. It seemed somewhat wrong to pray for success in what was undoubtedly an illegal venture. So I prayed for mercy.
The light on Joyce’s back porch switched on and Viv clutched at my arm. “Should we run?”
It was too late to run. The door swung open and a giant of a man stood under the half circle of light. He had a gun, maybe the same gun Joyce had held that afternoon. “What the hell is goin’ on out here?”<
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He glared straight at us, then shifted to take in the rest of the yard. I realized that he couldn’t see us, but that only brought a slight measure of relief since the only thing that stood between us and visibility was about twenty feet of bare yard. I was torn between scooting further back and remaining frozen, for fear that any movement would catch his eye.
I felt a whiff of a breeze in my hair. I turned my head and was confused for a moment, because the entire world went instantly black. And smelled funny. Then something shifted and I realized that the world just looked like it had gone black. In actuality, I was staring into the side of a ginormous black dog.
The mammoth dog leaned gingerly past me and chuffed at the bacon.
Viv screamed. An ear-piercing, blood curdling scream that echoed throughout the entire neighborhood.
I jumped and saw approximately eighty-seven dogs in the yard around us. Okay, eight. Eight dogs, maybe ten. But ten dogs of varying size and breed, hyper-focused on the half pound of cooked bacon I held – that was intimidating.
“Who’s out there?” Paul Bunyan roared. And, again, with the friggin’ pistol cocking. Except it seemed even louder in the dead of night.
“Let’s go,” Viv said. She tossed the hobo bag at me and headed for the fence.
Good Lord, that old lady could run. I jumped up and tried to follow after her, but my mind was overloaded with several conflicting goals at once: getting the heck out of there, not moving for fear that I would catch Joyce’s man’s eye, trying not to trip over dogs, wondering if any of them were willing to rip my throat out for the bacon, and, of course, hanging on to bladder control. I wobbled back and forth in indecision, then the phrase “She who hesitates is shot” sprang unbidden into my mind. With a keening wail, I took off for the fence as fast as I could.
I tripped twice before I got to the fence, but both times my fall was broken by a helpful canine. I consider it one of my major accomplishments in life that I didn’t pee on any of us.
I gripped the bag, bowl and fan, and ran with all my might down the alley toward the car, but I couldn’t keep up with Viv.
She had jumped in and started the engine already when I rounded the corner with all the dogs jumping on me. The Caddy was rolling down the street when I reached for the door.
“Viv! My God, don’t leave me here!”
“Get in, then!”
Her bravado was complete gone.
I didn’t have any bravado to lose – I’d never had any, only faith in bacon. Shocked to learn that bacon had proven to be more of a liability than an asset. I kicked futilely at all the dogs circling and snapping at my feet, trying to get the door open. “Back! Get back!”
A spotted mix snapped at me and I screamed. “Viv! Help me!”
“For the love of Pete, get rid of the bacon!”
I looked down at the bowl still clutched in my hand. I hadn’t even thought about getting rid of it. With a spurt of regret, I tossed it as hard as I could back down the alley. It was a light bowl, though, and didn’t go far.
At that moment, the mountain man from Joyce’s back porch rounded the corner. He was in worse shape than I was, but he was fueled by anger. He took one look at me and roared.
“Get in the frigging car!” Viv yelled. “Or I’m leaving without you.”
I turned to do just that when I saw a blur of fluffy white out of the corner of my eye. Bitsy was scrambling in the melee for her share of the bacon. “Bitsy!” I scooped her up and ran to the car. I slid into the seat and grabbed for the door as Viv roared down the street.
I almost fell out when she rounded the corner but finally got the door closed when we pulled onto the main street.
“That was awful!” Viv said.
I nodded my head in agreement. I was breathing too hard to speak.
Bitsy jumped across the seat into Viv’s lap.
“Holy—“ Viv screamed and the car swerved into the curb. We bounced down the sidewalk for a few yards, Viv screaming curse words, while I got Bitsy off her lap and grabbed the wheel to get us back on the road.
“What the hell!” Viv said. “You got her?”
Again I nodded, fairly sure my heart was going to burst. I collapsed back into the seat.
“You did it!” Viv raised her hand for a high-five.
I hit it weakly. “I did it.”
Bitsy stepped delicately around my lap, sniffing my pants for any sign of leftover bacon.
“Sorry,” I said. “Your bacon is long gone by now.”
I lifted her and looked at her. Normally her topknot was a neat little bow at the top of her head, but now dirty, matted hair flopped in her face. I scooped it back and looked into her eyes. She looked bored. Possibly resentful about the bacon.
“I can’t believe we actually got her,” Viv said.
I couldn’t help but notice how quickly you had become we.
“I’m pretty sure it’s her,” I said.
“What? Crap! Did we get the wrong frigging dog?”
I brushed the dog’s hair back some more. “I’m not sure. She may just be dirty.” I lifted her and looked at her stomach. “She is a she, and she’s a Maltese.” She had the same thin bony frame that most Maltese had. It was probably my imagination that this one’s muzzle was a bit longer, not quite as turned-up as Bitsy’s. “I’m pretty sure, though. Yeah, it’s her. Probably.”
Viv chewed her lip and continued to drive.
We rode in silence for a while; then finally Viv said, “Look. It’s a dog. All dogs need a home.”
“Right. And it probably is her.” I couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t even snapped at me. The Bitsy I knew would have at least made the gesture. But maybe she was just glad to see me, after all the trauma. Dogs had a sixth sense, right? Maybe she’d tuned into the fact that I was there to help her. That was why she was not quite so…mean. Gratitude.
“So…”
“So,” I repeated. “I’m not going back to double-check that we got the right dog.”
Viv sagged in relief. “Me either.”
I kept checking the rearview mirror to make sure we weren’t being chased by cops or large angry men, but it appeared we’d made a clean getaway. As the reality that we’d accomplished our mission began to sink in, exhaustion took over.
“Let’s just take her home.”
“Great idea.”
It was only when we got there that I remembered we were going to a funeral home in the middle of the night. Okay, it was around 11:15, but still. It was dark. And it was a funeral home.
“Let me do the talking,” Viv said as we walked up the dark sidewalk. The old hearse-in-the-box was lit with a soft yellow glow, and the Hell Horse eyed us.
I scooted closer to Viv. “You keep saying that.”
“And here we are, at the conclusion of another successful mission,” she said. “So I must be on to something.”
I didn’t point out that this was in fact only our second “mission” and we were successful because I’d grabbed the dog at the last second while she’d been ready to run off and leave us both. Or that I was only about 85 percent certain this was, in fact, a successful mission at all.
We had to ring the bell three times before lights finally came on inside. I stood with my back to the wall so I could keep an eye on that horse. “Bitsy” rested lazily in my arms and I tried not to think about how a dog that had been kidnapped and was being returned to its home would probably be slightly more animated.
Mrs. Braswell opened the door in her robe and let out a squeal that would have waked up that lump on the table in her museum. “Bitsy! You got her.”
I handed her the dog quickly.
“It’s definitely her,” Viv said. “No doubt about it.”
“Oh, my baby, my baby!” She clutched the dog to her and showered kissed all over her head. “You poor thing! You must have been so frightened.”
“She appears to be in good health, but she was likely traumatized by the ordeal,” Viv said. “Don’
t be surprised if she acts out of character for the next few weeks. Maybe longer.” She looked at me with a raised eyebrow as if to say, “See. I told you to let me do the talking.”
I nodded slightly, impressed. Even if it wasn’t the real Bitsy, within a few weeks these two would bond, and everything would be back to normal. And I would be out of debt. Again.
“I’ll have to bring her in first thing in the morning, Salem, for a bath and a trim. She looks awful.” She squeezed her tighter and the dog squirmed.
“We’ll fix her right up,” I said. “Get her back to normal.”
“I’ll bet they’ve been feeding you all kinds of junk food and didn’t brush you once. You poor baby.” She reached out and put a hand on Viv’s arm. “I can’t thank you two enough. I was so afraid I’d never see her again. Those awful people.”
“Your happiness is all the thanks we need. And the reward money, of course.”
“Of course. I’ll get it right now.”
She returned within seconds with an envelope full of cash. Viv took it like she did that kind of thing all the time.
“Thank you so much,” Viv said. “Listen, I don’t want to go into too much detail about what we had to go through to get Bitsy back – professional confidentiality, you know – but I have to say, I’m really glad we were able to get her back at all. That woman – Joyce, was it? – there’s something not right about her. I mean, besides the obvious character flaws of kidnapping. Some of the things she said, they just didn’t make sense. Did you notice anything like that when she was working here?”
Mrs. Braswell wrinkled her brow. “Well, now that you mention it. She did seem a little off at times. Making all kinds of wild accusations about Bitsy.”
“Exactly. I mean, I’m no psychologist, but I think she has some kind of…of obsession with Bitsy. While we were there, she called three other dogs Bitsy, too. One in the neighbor’s yard and two mutts that passed by on the street.”
The Power of Bacon (A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery Short Story) Page 3