Mark, There's a Beagle in My Bedroom!

by Michael Ciardi

For those native to the Garden State, spotting an aluminum-plated diner alongside a highway was as common as observing a traffic light at an intersection. It shouldn’t have surprised Kip that Mark selected such a communal location as the second drop zone. In reality, it was a jerkwater truck stop just off Route 80. Swampland surrounded the greasy spoon on three of its sides, but it seemed conveniently reserved for the big rigs parked in its gravel lot at all hours on any given day. This camper-sized dwelling’s red roof reminded Kip of a childhood haunt, where he often shared French fries and brown gravy with his father in an old Silk City Diner in Roxbury, New Jersey.

  “I just got déjà vu,” Kip said as he pulled the Beetle into a parking spot next to a semi-trailer truck, replete with naked-lady-shaped mud flaps.

  “Well, don’t give it to me,” Bruce said. “I don’t think I’ve had all my shots.”

  “Seriously, this reminds of a place I used to go with my dad when I was a kid. It was called Tom’s Diner. I was there on the morning Cindy Lauper filmed a music video back in the 80’s.”

  “Nice, but let’s not wax nostalgic just yet,” Bruce advised.

  “What? You don’t like her song Time After Time?”

  “Hearing it one time was enough for a lifetime.”

  “You’re not the romantic type, are you?”

  “Kip, I’d lick my own nut sack if I had one. I’m not replacing Fabio for Harlequin fiction covers either. Does that sum it up for ya?”

  “I guess it does.”

  Sunlight smeared its imprint into the morning clouds, and most of the early morning truckers were primed for their coffee and runny eggs. A neon-framed shingle buzzed like a bug zapper on top of the eatery. The sign read: BIG RED’S DINER. Kip referred to the markings on the map to make sure he had the right location. Of course, there wasn’t too much of a chance of a chain of such restaurants existing in this region.

  “Well, it looks like this is the right spot,” Kip declared. “For a place that’s swamped, Big Red’s doesn’t look too busy this morning.” Kip humor was sometimes more off base than a shortstop on a football field.

  Bruce poked his snout out the car’s open window and sniffed the air. It smelled like a combination of melted butter and hamburger grease. The beagle intuitively licked his chops, but he still had reservations about getting out of the car.

  “I love the smell of lard in the morning,” Bruce sneered.

  “You must be starved. I’m kind of hungry myself,” Kip debated. He then remembered the money stashed in the dossier. “We’ve got enough cash to get some food.”

  “Don’t quote me, but I don’t think they’ll serve my kind in there.”

  “No problem. I’ll get the grub and bring it out to you.” Kip then recalled that Mark specifically suggested that Bruce only eat dry food, which pretty much excluded most entrees on a diner’s menu. “Uh, I’m not sure what a dog eats that’ll be healthy from here though.”

  “Are you pulling my chain? Do I look like the Subway guy to you? I’ll take a double cheeseburger and fries, hold the onion.”

  Kip grabbed a twenty-dollar bill from the envelope and stuffed it in his pirate pants. He then realized that he wasn’t exactly dressed to blend in with the flannel and blue jean crowd that awaited him inside of Big Red’s.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Kip thought.

  “What are you so worried about?”

  “Look at me, Bruce. I’m dressed like one of the Wiggles. Those guys in there won’t know what to make of me.”

  Bruce never claimed to be diplomatic, but he couldn’t pass up a chance to scarf down an artery-clogging pound of red meat without employing some tact. “Kip, if dressing like a pirate is good enough for Depp, it’s good enough for you. The way I see it, although we’re deep enough in the sticks to roast smores by a campfire, those boys in there don’t know a marshmallow from a graham cracker.”

  “I’m trying to ignore you now, okay?”

  “Well, unless you start hearing Dueling Banjos and run into a mountain man in suspenders, you’ve got no reason to clench your butt cheeks.”

  “What, are you Ned Beatty’s agent all of a sudden?”

  “Just get me my burger, or you’ll be squealing like a pig too.”

  Kip opened the car door, shaking his head in wonder. “Where did I ever find you?” he asked the beagle as he exited the car.

  “In your bedroom, remember?”

  “Yeah,” Kip replied. He closed the car door and straightened the ruffles on his oversized shirt. “I just keep thinking this is a bad dream that I can’t wake up from.”

  Bruce smiled as only a beagle could. He then scratched at his pelt before he said, “Get some extra ketchup while you’re in there, too.”

  “Anything else, your majesty?”

  “Nah,” Bruce said. He then changed his voice to sound like a southern man straight out of the backwoods of Georgia. “But when they start demanding some secret service, show them your pertty mouth.”

  “In case you didn’t know,” Kip said, “you’re a royal pain in my ass.”

  “If you see John Voight tied to a tree, run for the hills or you’ll find out what a pain in the bleep really feels like,” Bruce advised.

  Kip learned that sometimes it was best to say nothing; this was one of those occasions. He ambled in the front entrance like the Stranger swinging open a saloon’s doors. If this was indeed the backdrop to a spaghetti western, Kip suddenly felt like the lone meatball. The three bumpkins hunkered around a counter and leered at him as if he let in a rank wind. Big Red’s interior appeared exactly as he remembered Tom’s Diner. Two guys, who looked more like defensive linesmen than truckers, squatted on stools; another older man sat in a vinyl-covered booth. The grill’s greasy fumes lingering in the air felt thick enough to wear as a sunscreen.

  Another ursine-sized figure labored behind the counter encapsulated in a plume of sausage smoke. His face and arms were layered with more red hair than an orangutan. In one hand he held a spatula; in the other a cigar stub smoldered. By process of elimination, Kip figured that this fellow must’ve been the owner.

  “Hey, buddy,” the lummox bellowed at Kip, “Did yer ship come in yet?”

  Kip anticipated at least one rude comment at his expense, but it could’ve been worse. He just nodded politely at the yokel with an 80’s haircut, before approaching the counter. The man in the apron and football jersey with the number 47, lumbered over to him, trying to withhold his sarcasm, but that was slipperier than a film of oil plastered on his wart-clustered nose.

  “How you doing? You must be Big Red, huh?” Kip asked.

  “I’m doin’ dandy, but I’m not Big Red,” the big man clarified.

  “Oh, I just assumed….”

  “Me name’s Wrigley, like the gum. If yer lookin’ for BR, he’s sittin’ right behind ya.” The beefy fry cook motioned to the most diminutive man on the premises. He was as hairless as an iguana, hunched over like Quasimodo fixing a sink, and wearing a discolored Chicago Cubs baseball cap. Big Red looked like he was chewed up and spit out by the jaws of decrepitude back when “Mr. Cub” was still playing shortstop.

  “That’s Big Red?” Kip asked in disbelief. “Well, you know what they say about a book and its cover, right?”

  “I don’t reckon I does,” Wrigley replied.

  The fact that these men were in northern New Jersey yet speaking in a broken southern dialect confused Kip, but it was a topic he broached with a little credent humor.

  “Do you fellows live down by the bayou?”

  “Na, Weez all livin’ straight,” answered the dumbest of the four men.

  “It’s a might early for Hallows Eve, ain’t it, mister?” another man in dungarees asked. He faked a smile that looked like a picket fence hit by a backhoe.

  “It’s a long story,” Kip said, pivoting toward Wrigley. “Can I just order some food?”

  The crimson-bearded cook crammed his cigarette in his mouth and scratched a boil festeri
ng on the side of his neck. “That’s what they pay me fer,” he uttered. Kip almost begged the guy to slip a pair of plastic gloves on before handling his food, but such a request would’ve surely merited a string of insults from the other patrons.

  “A couple of cheeseburgers and two orders of fries should do it,” Kip said. “I’ll take it to go.”

  “I bet ya will,” the straggly-haired trucker murmured while slurping from a mug of coffee.

  Kip pretended not to hear the oaf. It was a general rule of common sense to avoid bickering with a fellow who had fewer teeth than a hobo with gingivitis. Such men had nothing to lose. Waiting for Wrigley to finish frying the burgers seemed more drawn out than watching a kettle of water boil in muted sunlight. Kip was getting anxious as the truckers encircled him like buzzards hovering over fresh road kill.

  As Wrigley grilled the burgers, Kip took a casual glance at the man’s left forearm. The cook had a remarkably detailed tattoo of a famous actor in a white tuxedo from the 1970s. “Hey,” Kip questioned, “I don’t mean to pry, but is that a tattoo of Herve Villechaize?”

  Wrigley glanced at his own arm and shrugged his shoulders. “Beats the yoke at of me. I woke up with it one morning after drinkin’ too much tequila in Tijuana.”

  “A tattoo of Tattoo,” Kip said. “Clever, if intentional. Who was the artist?”

  “Jist some fella named Roarke. That’s all I’s can recount.”

  “Yer not from ’round these parts, are ya, boy?” Big Red asked from his stooped position. He appeared to be untangling a wad of fishing line on the tabletop.

  “I grew up in Morris County,” Kip said. “Maybe about thirty minutes from here. You know where Succasunna is?”

  “Suck a what?” Wrigley asked from behind the sizzling grill.

  “Never mind,” Kip said. “It’s just a small town.”

  The mullet-headed trucker snickered hoarsely and said to Wrigley, “I believe he told ya to suck on something, Wrigs.”

  Kip chuckled nervously, “Oh, come on. I would never say that,” he said. Wrigley had been known to hack gobs of sour spittle into people’s food when they burrowed under his skin, but he decided to give Kip some leeway in this instance.

  “Ya traveling here to visit yer folks?” Wrigley asked as he flipped the searing burgers with his spatula.

  “Not exactly,” Kip replied.

  “Eatin’ for two, boy?” Big Red interjected.

  “Nope. It’s just for my dog and me. We’re on a road trip, so to speak.”

  “What kinda dawg?” the hillbilly asked.

  “Just a beagle.”

  “Where ya headin’?”

  Kip wasn’t sure how much information to divulge to a random posse of soiled truckers, but he guessed that saying any more than what he already volunteered was way too gratuitous. “Oh, you know how these sort of excursions go. You just hop on the road and keep driving until something tickles your fancy.”

  “I haven’t had my fancy tickled since my wife ran off with the Maytag man,” one of the bumpkins grunted. Kip almost acknowledged the man’s disgust, but then reconsidered. He remained quiet until Wrigley finished his order and stuffed the chow in a brown paper bag.

  “That’ll be twelve-fifty,” Wrigley said, holding out a gritty palm, which had the circumference and texture of the Bambino’s baseball mitt. “We only take cash here.”

  “Smells great,” Kip chimed. “I never realized how much I missed junk food until I stopped eating it all the time.” Kip reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty. He flicked the bill on the counter beside his order. Wrigley levied the money and grinned like a Catholic schoolboy with mirrored shoes.

  “Ya travelin’ folks always tip real nice,” Wrigley declared. “Much obliged.”

  If Kip thought to ask for change, he altered his tune faster than a defective piano. “No problem. I like to keep the locals in business whenever I can.”

  “Yer a downright hospitable man,” Big Red noted.

  Kip picked up the bag from the counter, but when he turned toward the exit, he noticed the two behemoths blocking his path. They had their arms crossed in front of their bodies and suddenly appeared as unmovable as Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain. Big Red set his fishing string on the table and glowed with an aura of satisfaction.

  “Hubba and Bubba don’t want ya to go jist yet,” Big Red said.

  “Sorry,” Kip said, while awkwardly trying to squeeze past the brutes. It was then that he noticed scar tissue between the thumb and index fingers on their hands. “I’d love to stay, but the highway beckons. Besides, my dog’s sort of hungry.”

  Hubba, the one with a hairstyle like Billy Ray Cyrus in the early 90s, gripped Kip’s shoulder with the force of a vise. “I reckon it’s best if ya sit down next to BR,” he advised. Kip got the immediate impression that Hubba encountered the word ‘no’ less often than Raquel Welch in her prime.

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble. Can I just leave, please?”

  Bubba laughed wickedly, because that’s what big, ugly goons did when confronting those whom they could squash like gnats on a windshield.

  “Ya best talk with BR,” Bubba grimaced. His teeth looked like the character Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me, minus the metal. At closer range, this hulk had more pits in his face than low-grade watermelon. Kip figured he had two options: either sit as directed or get pounded submissively into the booth with Big Red. He chose the latter.

  After Kip slid in the booth across from the arch-backed proprietor, he smelled a faint odor of cinnamon tobacco. Big Red kept a Styrofoam cup half full of tobacco juice on the table. Every so often he’d squirt the brown spittle between his tawny teeth like a cobra spewing venom at its prey. In this case, he glared at Kip as if he was a mongoose.

  “Ya sure don’t make a good spy gussied up like a dang pirate,” Big Red criticized.

  “Mr. Red, I’m not sure exactly what you want, but I’m kind of in a rush.”

  “And I’m kinda not givin’ a possum’s shit ’bout yer predicament,” BR said.

  “Do you normally hold your customers hostage?” Kip exercised a little suppressed sarcasm with this question, but Hubba answered it earnestly.

  “Weez bury the ones we don’t take a liking to out back ’neath the willows.”

  “Me and my boys speak a might gruff at times,” admitted BR. “Ye’ll have to pardon our crude etiquette.” By now, Kip had already distinguished that Big Red shared the same hand wound as Hubba and Bubba. Wrigley, no doubt, had also been branded with a microchip. He wobbled out from behind the counter, hauling what appeared to be three hundred pounds of red wool on his back. He stood behind the other men and pressed up against the door, serving as a goalie in the off chance that Kip attempted an act of valor.

  “The way we hears it,” Wrigley said to Kip, “there’s a hefty bounty on yer head. Weez keep a scanner back by the grill. Not too many buckaroos roamin’ ’round these here parts. Ya stick out like a prickly weed in a freshly mulched garden.”

  “You mean ‘buccaneer’, not ‘buckaroo’. A buckaroo is a cowboy.” Kip corrected his new adversary. “ Do I look like a cowboy to you?”

  “Ye kinda did when ya ambled on in here, lookin’ like Shame or somt-in.”

  “It’s Shane, not ‘shame’.” Kip almost asked Wrigley as if he grew up in a cave, but that might’ve hit closer to the mark than he intended.

  Wrigley popped his plump knuckles by squeezing his hands together. “Don’t be cuttin’ wise with me. If I says yer a buckaroo, then that’s what ye’ll be.”

  “Best not to git Wrigs miffed,” Hubba warned Kip. “Last fella who got ’em riled a’nuff ended up passin’ a cue ball from his tail end up.”

  Note to self, Kip thought: Don’t get Wrigley’s dander up and politely refuse all requests to shoot a game of pool.

  “You still haven’t told me what you want?” Kip questioned. The diner’s noise level dipped into a hush while Big Red motioned to the fishing string on the tabl
e.

  “Weez like to make this as peaceful as we can fer ya,” BR explained. The oldster then told Bubba to fetch the string. “So that weez don’t have any problems, I need fer ya to put yer hands together like yer prayin’. Bubba’s gonna tie yer wrists snug.”

  Kip hadn’t negotiated anything more important than the sale of a waterbed for most of his life. He suddenly recognized the importance of dabbling in the art of persuasion. “Listen to me, BR,” he said. “Whatever you’re being promised by the people who tagged you, they’re lying. I’m on your side. That’s why they want to stop me.”

  By this point, Bubba had already clutched the fishing line from the table and leaned down to secure Kip’s hands. Naturally, Kip resisted and refused to place his open palms together, as BR instructed.

  “Ya better pray real good, boy,” Bubba hissed. A line of drool dribbled between his cracked teeth as he wound the nylon string around Kip’s wrists. Suddenly, Kip heard the twanged strands of whistled music in his ears, but the broken jukebox in the corner of the diner wasn’t playing any tunes. Instead, Bruce sat outside the door on the diner’s steps. The beagle nudged his snout up against the glass door as he whistled “Guitar Boogie” Smith’s banjo cords.

  If Kip was hoping for deliverance, he was about to receive some.

  Chapter 21