Chez Stinky

by Susan C. Daffron

  On her way back to the motel the day before, Kat had stopped at the local feed store for supplies. At the store, she purchased medium-size and giant dog harnesses, a sturdy leash, two plastic water bottles, and a small nylon saddle-horn bag that was probably supposed to be used for trail rides. That night, using a needle and thread from her travel sewing kit, she had attached the saddle bag to the medium-size harness.

  When Kat went out to the Tessa Hut, she was prepared. She had collected Chelsey from the basement without incident and tied her leash to a tree while she dealt with Tessa. Linus and Lori were milling around waiting for the walk to start.

  She called Linus over to her and put the giant dog harness on him and attached the loop end of the leash through the ring on the top of the harness. As usual, he was obliging and wagged his tail. “Your job is to be the boat anchor, Big Guy. I hope you’re up for this.” Linus wagged again, which Kat took as a ‘yes.’ He followed her to the doorway with the leash dragging behind him.

  Tessa started barking furiously as Kat approached her enclosure; she had begun the levitation routine and was bouncing behind the chain link fence. Kat gathered up her supplies and entered the enclosure. Tessa started to lunge at her, but paused briefly as if she remembered that this human didn’t like being jumped on. Instead, she jumped up around Kat, getting extremely close to her, but never actually touching her.

  Holding the harness out in front of her, Kat waited for the right moment and slipped the harness over Tessa’s head. Then she grabbed the dog firmly by the shoulders so she could affix the strap under her stomach. Tessa noticed the extra weight from the water bottles in the pockets of the bag, which slowed her jumping a bit. Kat took advantage of this momentary slowdown to clip a leash on the harness.

  She and Tessa went out the door and once again the dog started dragging Kat toward the forest. As she passed Linus, Kat grabbed the top of his harness. The weight of the giant dog combined with her own gave her enough ballast to stop Tessa’s forward momentum. Kat picked up the end of the leash that had been dragging from Linus’s harness and clipped it to Tessa’s. The two dogs were now attached to each other.

  Kat then unclipped her leash from Tessa so the two dogs would be free to walk together without her. She knew Linus wasn’t going anywhere and he weighed about three or four times as much as Tessa, so she wasn’t going anywhere without him. The big dog looked at Kat with a confused expression as Tessa whirled around him in gleeful exuberance.

  “It’s okay Linus. Your job is just to keep Tessa from running away. Feel free to run around. Tire her out. Please. I’ll be right here behind you.”

  Linus turned back and headed off toward the forest trail with Tessa by his side. The golden retriever was obviously thrilled to be able to go as fast as she wanted, since there was no longer some slowpoke human dragging her down. Kat followed behind with Lori and Chelsey. She laughed as the two harnessed dogs figured out how to work together as a team to deal with obstacles like trees. She was amazed how quickly they caught on, although she did have to untangle them a couple of times after they went on opposite sides of a tree. “Don’t do the George-of-the-Jungle thing, you guys,” she admonished. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Kat started playing a little game to help give Tessa the idea that coming when called could be fun. She whistled and Linus would stop, perk up his ears and come running back to her. Tessa had no choice but to follow. Then the pair would run ahead again along the trail. Now that she was able to run and was weighted down by the water bottles, Tessa finally was showing signs of fatigue.

  With the dogs occupied, Kat was able to relax and simply enjoy the experience of walking through the forest for the first time. She paused to notice the mingling of fragrances wafting through the trees. She recognized pine, wild roses, and the loamy smell of leaves decomposing in the rich, dark soil of the forest floor. Lori and Chelsey trotted along by her side, obviously just content to have a human around to take them on walks.

  After the walk, Kat was feeling proud of herself. When she had put Tessa back into her enclosure, the dog had curled up on the floor for a nap. It was unprecedented: the spaz dog was tired. The thrill of victory coursed through her body, but stopped at her stomach where it dissolved into a pang of hunger. She was out of most of the “road food” she had been eating at the Enchanted Moose and she was getting tired of subsisting on stale chips and Triscuits, anyway. All this walking through the forest made a girl hungry.

  Kat went back into the house and started investigating the kitchen. Although thankfully someone had cleaned out the refrigerator at some point, the cabinets were a different story. Behind the rustic tongue-and-groove cabinet doors lurked some seriously antiquated foodstuffs. Sorting through the contents quickly quelled her appetite. Some of the jars in the back of the cabinets looked like they might contain produce Abigail had canned the last time Kat had been here in the 70s. It also appeared that Abigail wasn’t bothered by details like dating her canned goods and the mysterious reddish-brown contents harbored underneath those rusty lids didn’t look appetizing.

  Death by botulism didn’t seem like a good way to go. A trip to the grocery store for food, cleaning supplies, and a giant box of Hefty bags was definitely in order. The thick layer of grayish-brown dust that coated everything would give a health inspector the shakes, and Kat wasn’t tempted to cook anything here until she had hosed down the kitchen. Maybe with a massive industrial power sprayer. In the short term, stopping by the deli for a sandwich was probably a good idea.

  After getting something to eat and acquiring most of the items on her ever-expanding grocery list in town, Kat returned to Chez Stinky to at least attack the surface filth. She donned a bandanna and put on one of Abigail’s old frilly aprons and a pair of rubber gloves. The outfit made her look like a cross between a bag lady and the star of some 50s advertisement for iron supplements. So much for her cute calico sundress and the sparkling clean white tile in her apartment kitchen. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed a scrubby sponge and set to work.

  Kat filled two large, black garbage bags with antique food products from the cabinets. It was like an archive of food-packaging history. She knew McCormick spices hadn’t had labels like these for decades. The Green Giant looked like he had a terminal disease; the logotype was sporting a decidedly chartreuse look on most of the cans. Figuring that the home canned goods were largely decomposed anyway, Kat took the jars outside. She dug a small hole and tried to close off her nose while she unscrewed the lids, dumped the contents, and covered them with dirt. The vegetables or whatever they were could return to the land. She put the empty jars in a box next to the spider shed, to be hosed out later. Maybe.

  Hours later, Kat was lying spread-eagle on the floor, admitting defeat. She’d been cleaning for hours and had barely made an impact on the powerful quantity of dirt and detritus. Looking up at the ceiling, she noticed the cobwebs artfully draped over the lamp fixtures, creating a tapestry of thin fibers that billowed in the breeze.

  She turned her head and looked down. Under the refrigerator was not just a warren of dust bunnies, but also a voluminous scary-looking dust dinosaur. That might explain why the motor made an odd woodpecker-like noise and the refrigerator wasn’t really particularly cold inside. The windows sported a film of dirt, which gave the sunlight streaming in a somewhat prismatic effect. At least the filtered light made it more difficult to see the blanket of dust all over everything.

  Kat sighed. Getting this place clean could take a whole lot longer than one day. Professional intervention might be required. It was worth the money to avoid this extreme level of cleaning activity.

  Kat jumped as her reverie was disturbed by a wet tongue slurping her ear. She sat up quickly and found herself face-to-face with Lori, who wagged her tail expectantly. “Hi, Lori. How did you get upstairs? You have a thing about ears, don’t you?” Lori looked pleased with herself; her happy panting expression made her seem as if she were smiling almost all the time.

 
Lori trotted over to one of the big black garbage bags, stuck her head in briefly, and snuffled around. She grabbed something out of the bag and ran down the stairs. Kat leaped up to run after her. Nothing in that bag could be considered fit for anyone’s consumption, human or canine.

  Lori made a beeline for the doggie door at the back of the hallway. She scampered outside, thoroughly thrilled with her new prize. Kat opened the door to follow her, but nothing was outside. The dog was fast, that was for sure. But from the right, there were incriminating shredding and scraping noises. Kat ran toward the sound and discovered Lori enthusiastically destroying a box of something that might have been crackers. Or pasta. Now it was mostly well-masticated cardboard pieces. The dog was certainly enjoying herself. Hopefully, Lori had a strong stomach.

  She picked up the pieces that surrounded the dog and said, “Lori, no. Stealing creepy old food really isn’t a good idea.” Lori didn’t move from her spot. She just wagged and smiled, watching Kat clean up the mess she’d made. She looked down at Lori. If a dog could look smug, this would be the look. Trying to muster up a more stern tone in the hope of sounding more convincing, she said, “Lori NO! This was bad. You were a bad girl.” Lori wagged again, stood up, and began trotting back toward the house.

  Kat ran after her and got to the door first. “No way, little dog. You are not going back for seconds. You can just stay outside.” Kat went inside and slammed the door behind her.

  As she closed the door, a cacophony of unpleasant noises arose from the other side. “RRR, ughghg, hack, BLAP.” She opened the door again and found Lori standing in front of a pile of something noxious and stinky. The dog was still smiling and looked even more pleased with herself.

  “Well, I guess you feel better now.”

  As Lori sniffed at her fantastic Technicolor creation, Kat took a moment to catch her breath and noticed Lori was looking increasingly interested in the pile. Too interested. Yuck! The dog might actually be disgusting enough to eat it again. Waving her hands to shoo Lori farther back out into the yard, she yelled, “NO! Lori NO!” Grabbing a shovel that was leaning on the house next to the back door, she carefully scooped up the pile and carried it over to a shrub, dug a small hole and buried it underneath the plant. Maybe it would work as fertilizer. Recycled, antique food, plant food, what’s the difference to shrubbery?

  After hours of cleaning, more dog walks and unpacking, later that afternoon Kat was ready for a nice, long, hot shower. She took off her sweat-stained clothes and stood in the bathroom with Murphee circling around her ankles, hoping for an early dinner.

  She twisted the knob to turn on the water; a sputtering noise came from the shower head, but no water emerged. After all the cleaning she’d done, Kat knew that the house did have a functioning well and access to water, at least in the kitchen. Having no shower was going to be beyond disappointing. She stood next to the bathtub and gazed up at the spigot, willing it to produce water. Nothing happened. Murphee stopped circling and looked up at her, wondering why she was just standing there.

  Kat whacked the shower knob with her fist in annoyance. The knob fell off and clattered into the bottom of the bathtub. Then with a giant whoosh, the shower head blew off the pipe, crashing into the bathtub in front of a massive rush of water. Murphee, who was opposed to water touching her delicate feline self, squalled a guttural “MEEEEYOOOWWWLLL” and leaped up onto the sink, away from the geyser’s flow. At the same time, Kat jumped backward, slipped on the tile, and landed with a thud on the hard floor. Soaked and now sporting a large painful bruise on her butt, she scrambled to her feet and fumbled through the rushing water, only to discover that she had no way to turn off the water without a pair of pliers.

  Water was gushing everywhere. Kat opened the door and ran down the stairs to the closet that had water-related devices in it. Standing naked and dripping water everywhere, she paused and pondered the various knobs and levers that worked the well, pressure tank, and hot water heater. Something must turn the water off, but she wasn’t sure what. Noticing a switch with a yellowed piece of paper labeled ‘well,’ she flipped the lever. The sound of rushing water upstairs subsided and Kat looked down to see Lori, Linus, and Chelsey standing in a circle around her. Chelsey had her head tilted to one side, as if to ask, “Why are you dripping all over my basement?”

  Kat started to shiver as she stood naked in front of the curious canine audience. She shook her head. How dumb is it to feel embarrassed about being naked in front of a dog? They’re DOGS. Lori helped out by slurping some water off her thigh. “Thanks, Lori. Maybe I’ll go upstairs now. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

  Being careful to close the gate to the basement behind her, Kat returned to the bathroom and picked up the shower head and the knob. In her haste to deal with the water, Kat hadn’t closed the bathroom door, and Murphee had disappeared. That probably wasn’t good, given all the other animals around that Murphee didn’t know and probably wouldn’t like. Ignoring that issue for the moment, Kat examined the knob. Some tiny but vitally important plastic part had broken off and the knob clearly wasn’t going to work again. She dropped it in the sink and turned the shower head around in her hands. She discovered that the ring that was supposed to hold it to the pipe was cracked and the inside of the nozzle was coated with what could only be described as crud. No wonder it didn’t work. She toweled herself off and put on some clean clothes so she could focus on the problem, rather than the cold and her nudity. In the kitchen, she found a butter knife and began chipping away corrosion and other drek from the shower nozzle.

  A feline shriek came from the bedroom. The noise evolved into sonic layers of hissing, squalling, and screeching that made it sound like at least one of the cats might be dying. Jumping up, Kat ran to the bedroom and found Murphee and another cat (maybe Dolly Mae?) rolling on the floor, making gruesome noises that seemed impossible for such small animals to generate.

  Running back to the bathroom, she grabbed one of the soaked towels and threw it on the swirling pile of felines. The two cats separated and Dolly Mae scurried away from Kat. Murphee went to hide under the bed. Grabbing Murphee, Kat took the unhappy feline and the shower head back to the bathroom and slammed the door.

  Most of the crud was out of the nozzle, so Kat attempted to screw it back onto the pipe. It promptly fell off and clattered into the bathtub again. Clearly, she was going to have to find some tools somewhere to turn the water back off in the shower, much less turn on the water to the house. Fixing the shower needed to happen sooner rather than later. A spider scampered across the floor. Kat reached over, picked up one of her Keds, and whomped the frisky arachnid. Don’t mess with me.

  A phone rang and Kat followed the sound to the kitchen and picked up the handset on the harvest-gold rotary-dial wall phone. “Hello.”

  “Kat? Is that you? You sound odd. This is Larry Lowell.”

  “Hi, Larry. I’ve had a long day, and I’m tired. Plus, I think this phone was manufactured before I was born. Possibly by Alexander Graham Bell himself. And if it’s like most things here, it probably doesn’t work right.”

  “Have you been having difficulties? I’m sorry to hear that. I tried calling you at the Enchanted Moose, but they said you had checked out. So I tried this number.”

  “Yes. I’m staying here now, but it’s more complicated than I thought it would be. You probably don’t want to know the details.”

  Larry cleared his throat slightly. “I’m calling to see if you’ve considered the idea of having dinner. Would tomorrow evening work for you?”

  The idea of not cooking food on the scary stove at Chez Stinky, even for one night, held a lot of appeal for Kat. “Yes, I’d like that, but I need to get the shower fixed. Also, Bud seems to have left a large hole in the wall here. Do you know if he’s coming back to repair it?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have not heard from Mr. Fowler. I’ll make reservations and give you a call tomorrow.”

  “Okay, I guess I have to call Bud. Talk
to you tomorrow.”

  Kat hung up the phone and considered the possibility that maybe Larry was asking her on a real date. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she did know it was going to be exceedingly difficult to make herself look pretty without running water.

  After the shower debacle, Kat was somewhat afraid to make dinner. It was one thing to get soaked, it was another to potentially set herself on fire. A cold sandwich sounded safer than facing the propane stove which, given the blackened areas on the stove top and around the oven door, clearly had an inflammatory history.

  As Kat sat down at the kitchen table with a sandwich, she looked over at the hole in the wall that Bud and his trusty saw Martha had created. A slight scrabbling noise arose from down deep within the cavern behind the drywall. Visions of rodents of every possible size ambled through her mind. Squirrels, possums, rats, mice, shrews. Oh my. The possibilities were many and none of them were appealing. Kat continued to chew her sandwich. Were bats technically rodents? What about marmots? What the heck is a marmot anyway? Questions to be asked.

  The noise seemed to be getting louder. She didn’t want to act like the totally clichéd image of a woman standing on a chair screaming about a tiny mouse. She may be gutless, but she wasn’t that gutless. Time to suck it up and see what lurked in the wall.

  She grabbed a flashlight and a chair and brought them over to the wall. After getting up on the chair, she shined the light down into the gap between the drywall and the wood framing of the wall. Peering down, she was greeted by two eyes glowing up at her from below. Kat straightened and shook her head as her mind tried to assimilate what she’d just seen. What was that?

  Kat looked again, moving the light around to see if she could determine a shape. Judging by the ears on the head, it looked like it might be a cat. Uh oh.