Talk about feeling like a failure. Lee suddenly desperately wished he’d taken up weight lifting instead of wasting all those years breaking stupid, idiotic records. “I can’t move, Ron. It’s taking all my strength … just to hang on to this rope.” He thought he could hear her crying.
“Are there spiders down here?” she whimpered.
Get outta here! Lee wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that Rhonda Tough-As-Toenails Ronaldson would be afraid of a spider!
“No,” he answered.
“How do you know?” Her voice was trembling now.
“Because,” he fibbed, “spiders stop breathing in elevations lower than ground level.” Lee squeezed his eyes shut, hoping she’d buy something that lame. “We learned that in science last year.”
Rhonda was quiet for a minute, then: “Daddy?”
“What?”
“My head hurts.”
“You’ve probably got a concussion,” called Lee. “You were out cold for a few minutes there.” He could hear her sobbing now, and he knew she was going to be furious with herself for blubbering in front of him.
“Don’t worry, Ron, we’re going to get help. I promise.”
Lee called Santiago to his side. “Santi,” he said, “do you think you can do something for me, girl?” Lee dipped his head and knocked his baseball cap off with his knee. “Get it, girl,” he said in his “go fetch!” tone of voice. Santiago understood. She picked up the hat in her mouth and brought it back to Lee. Lee lifted one of his feet and gently pushed Santiago away. “Take it to Mom or Agnes, Santi. Mom or Agnes. Give them the hat and bring them back here. You can do it, girl. Take it to Mom or Agnes.”
Mom. Agnes. The Ladies of the Kitchen. Their very names brought a swift picture into Santiago’s mind of a full dish of water and an overflowing bowl of food. Santi was thirsty. She was hungry. Okay! She’d take the cap to Mom, and check out the bowls while she was at it. Santiago took off across the field.
“Good girl, Santi, good girl!! Bring Mom back!”
Lee tried to relax the rock-tense muscles in his shoulders and wondered what he’d done to deserve this. “Comedy, tragedy, cliff-hanger,” he mumbled. “When’s this movie gonna make up its mind what it wants to be?”
“What’d you say?” called Rhonda.
“Ever imagine your life’s an ongoing movie?” he said.
“Huh?”
“Frig, I dunno … do you ever think you hear a director’s voice shouting inside your head?”
“Do I look like a weirdo-loser to you?”
Lee thought about the exclusive “weirdo-loser club” he belonged to and wondered if he minded being its only member. He sighed and watched Santi until she was nothing more than a speck on the horizon. No, he didn’t think he minded.
“… to be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else …”
– e . e. cummings
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
To err is human, to forgive, canine.
Anon
You think dogs will not be in heaven?
I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson
READY TO SHOOT THE “BOY / DOG” SEQUENCE
CAMERA THREE, A CLOSE-UP ON LEE’S STRAINING MUSCLES
CAMERA FOUR, LOTS OF LOW-TO-THE-GROUND CAMERA WORK
FOR A DOG’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD READY? AND … ROLL
Lee’s words echoed in Santiago’s head—bring Mom back, bring Mom back. She stopped just long enough to smell something interesting near the side of the road—big mistake. Cat pee. Very nasty. Santiago trotted on—bring Mom back, bring Mom back— she caught sight of the offending cat up a tree, but didn’t bother to stop and bark; she had more important things to do—bring Mom back, bring Mom back …
AND … CUT TO BOY
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
– Albert Einstein
An hour had passed now, and Lee’s back and arms were starting to cramp. Rhonda had stopped crying, but Lee worried about her silence.
“Talk to me, Ron,” he said. “Is the pain really bad?”
“I don’t feel like yakkin’,” she said. “I’m tired. I just want to go to slee …” He could hear her voice trailing off into dreamland. Dreamland?!
“Rhonda!” he shouted. “Don’t go to sleep!”
“Cheez … don’t have a hairy fit,” she grumbled. “I’ll keep you company when I wake up.”
“You don’t get it,” said Lee. “You’ve got a concussion! You’re not supposed to sleep with a concussion!”
“Just for a few minutes, Lee …”
“No, Rhonda!”
“My name’s not Rhonda,” she hissed. Lee scrunched his eyes and shook his head. What was that he was thinking a while back? Something about liking Rhonda exactly the way she was? Must have been a brain fart.
“Rhonda … I mean, Ron. You can slip into a coma if you fall asleep with a concussion. Haven’t you ever watched Rescue Rangers?”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” she said irritably. “Keep me awake, then. Tell me about something. Ouch!”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“How the heck am I supposed to know? I’m the one with the concussion, ’member?”
Lee sighed. He wracked his brain for something to talk about. He wasn’t a great conversationalist at the best of times, but with Rhonda, of all people?
“Did you know that Albert Einstein played the violin?” he said, finally.
“Yeah?” Lee thought he detected a spark of interest in Rhonda’s voice.
“Yeah. He said that if he wasn’t a physicist, he would have liked to be a musician.”
“You making that up?”
“Nope.” Lee shifted his back to stop the rope from cutting into his shoulder. As he did, the rope scraped the rim of the well and sent a rock down on Rhonda.
“Hey, watch it!”
“Sorry,” said Lee. Then: “Ron, why didn’t you ever tell me you play the violin?”
“Shut up,” she said. “Tell me something else.”
“What?”
“How the heck am I supposed to know? I’m the one with the concuss—”
“Yeah, yeah,” interrupted Lee, and he tried to pick his brain for something else that might interest her, but it was as if they spoke a different language half the time.
“Parlay-vous Frances?” he asked.
“Huh?”
CUT TO MUTT
Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in?
I think that is how dogs spend their lives.
– Sue Murphy
Santiago dropped Lee’s baseball cap on the ground in order to snap up a Chicken Gui Ku ball on the ground outside of the Wong Numba Café. Ten minutes later, a kid with nothing better to do than pop wheelies in the parking lot got off his bike, picked up the cap, and popped it on his head. By then Santiago was a block away, trying to remember what it was she was supposed to tell Mom …
AND BACK TO BOY …
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
– Robert Frost
Three hours now, and Lee was beginning to wonder if this day would ever end. His butt was sound asleep and snoring, even if Rhonda wasn’t. And a numb bum was the least of his worries. The rope was still cutting a rut into his aching shoulder and cramping his hand. And even that wasn’t the worst of it. He was running out of topics to entertain Rhonda. Lee was grateful when she came up with a question of her own.
“Why’d you give Santiago that stupid name, anyway?”
“I told you, my dad named her after the old man in The Old Man and the Sea.”
“So what was so great about this guy that he had to go naming your girl dog after him?”
Lee thought about it. “Do you know the story?” he asked. “As if. You think I go around reading Hemingway? Ouch! My leg
!!” Lee grimaced with Rhonda’s pain. He knew she needed distracting.
“It’s about an old man,” he began.
“Duh, no kidding,” said Rhonda.
Lee ignored her. “He’s an old fisherman in Cuba who’s gone eighty-four days in a row without catching a single fish. And he lives in a shack, and his wife is dead, and he uses newspaper to cover the bedsprings because he doesn’t have money for a mattress.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear this story,” said Rhonda.
“And here’s the kicker, Ron; he’s got just about nothing, but he’s happy. And hopeful. Every day he goes out in his boat and thinks, today’s the day I’m gonna catch a fish.”
“And does he?” asked Rhonda.
“Eighty-fifth day,” said Lee, “he goes out in his small boat and sails way out past all the other fishermen. And he catches him a fish.”
“The end,” interrupted Rhonda.
“Nope. This is no ordinary fish story, Ron. The thing weighs fifteen hundred pounds, and it’s longer than his boat. It’s the biggest darn thing he’s ever laid eyes on.”
“And he brings the fish home,” said Rhonda, “and he sells it for a million bucks, and buys a king-size bed and lives happily ever after. The end.”
“Who’s telling this story?” said Lee, starting to get irritated. “Now, have a little patience Rhonda, and I’ll tell you what—”
“My name’s not Rhonda.”
Lee squeezed his eyes shut again and counted to ten. He wondered if Santiago had made it home yet.
CUT TO DOG
Santiago relied on her nose to play the “hot and cold game” to get her home. She didn’t recognize the street she was on— Lee had never brought her this way before—but her nose told her which way to go. “Cold,” it whispered whenever she took a wrong turn, and “Hot” when she started trotting in the right direction. Santiago stopped to pee by the base of a tree—so many trees, so little time—and turned down a street that made her nose icy. She turned left at the next intersection and knew she was hot on the trail again.
Even though she couldn’t recall exactly why, Santiago felt particularly happy this afternoon as she trotted down the boulevard—except for one thing: There was something niggling at the back of her mind like an annoying flea—a little voice telling her she’d forgotten something. Was she supposed to tell Mom something? But the next tree called out to Santiago to leave her mark behind, and as she whizzed, the annoying flea jumped straight out of her mind.
AND BACK TO LEE
ROLL 'EM
“You see, Ron,” said Lee, “the fish was so huge and powerful that once it got caught on the end of the old man’s rope, it started dragging the boat out to sea instead of the old man dragging it back to shore. There’s just no way he could pull the fish in. But the old guy hung onto that rope with all his might, and refused to let go.”
Without letting go, Lee flexed the stiff fingers of his hands, one at a time. “So anyway …” Lee stopped. “You still awake, Ron?”
“Yeah,” she said, trying to sound bored, but Lee knew he had her hooked.
“For four whole days,” continued Lee, “the old guy had a tug-of-war with that fish. It was like some kind of crazy marathon. He had to eat raw tuna to stay strong, and his hands were a bloody mush from hanging onto the rope for so long, and every muscle in his body ached.”
“Didn’t he ever hear the saying: ‘Enough’s enough’?”
Lee ignored her again. “And you wanna know the weirdest part?”—he didn’t give her a chance to answer—“The weirdest part is that as much as he wanted to kill that fish, he loved it as well. He loved it like a brother. And he loved the moon and stars like brothers, even though the nights were long and painful.”
Rhonda made fake gagging sounds at the bottom of the well. “‘The moon and the stars were his brothers.’ Lee, I think you’ve been reading too many romance novels.”
Lee smiled to himself. “Could be, Ron; could well be.”
“Lee,” he heard her say a moment later, “do you think Santiago is on her way back yet? Do you think she understood?”
CUT TO DOG
Some days you’re the dog, some days you’re the hydrant.
– Anon
Santiago understood perfectly well that squirrels were way too fast to even think about chasing, but they were such irritating little wackos. Always bragging, always teasing—Hey, dog-chow breath, better watch out or you’ll trip on your tongue!—that’s why Santi just had to stop and give that bushy-tailed pest, chittering away on the fence, a good old-fashioned scare. She was fast enough to at least do that. But before Santi had even finished thinking it, the squirrel had hightailed it to the top of a tall tree and sat laughing down at her.
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement.
– Snoopy
That’s the secret to life … replace one worry with another …
– Charlie Brown
Lee’s hands hurt so bad, it almost made him forget that anything else in the world existed. Including Rhonda (whenever she’d rest her trap for more than a minute straight—jeez, was it really me who told her not to go to sleep?).
“How’d you get that stupid name, anyhow?”
Lee bristled. “Shadup! Lee is a perfectly …”
“Not that name,” said Rhonda. “I’m talking about the stupid one: McGillicuddy. Stupid!”
Lee gave a weary shake of the head. “And I suppose you chose Ronaldson as your last name?”
Lee imagined Rhonda giving her nose an upward swipe— buying herself just enough time to figure a composed response. “No, dopey,” she spat, “but if I could choose, I sure as HECK wouldn’t have chosen old fuddy duddy McGillicuddy.”
“I’ll have you know,” said Lee, “that there’s no other name I’d rather have. Did you know that the late, great Connie Mack had the very same last name? Well … before the name-change, that is.”
“NOW, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!” Rhonda chucked a loose stone at the side of the well. “I’d change my name to Mack too if I had to suffer McGillicuddy! Takes a girl to be able to figure something like that out.”
“Sorry, toe-brain,” sang Lee, “but Connie is a man’s name. Not only was he a super-duper professional baseball player, but he was also a legendary major league manager who—”
Lee scowled at the “PPFFFT!” sound that seemed to echo to him from the well. “Baseball, shmaseba—”
Lee cut in. “AND … he held the unbeaten RECORD for most wins …” Suddenly he saw the hopelessness of communicating anything of importance to Rhonda Ronaldson, and gave up. Unfortunately, Lee was able to imagine all too well her Huge-Hairy-Deal smirk. He imagined her eyeballs stuck to the ceiling of her lids right about now.
“So what happened to the old guy, anyways?” asked Rhonda.
“Connie Mack?” said Lee.
“As if!” said Rhonda. “I’m talking about the old dude and the fish. Did he have some kind of miracle happen to him or somethin’? That’s gonna bug my butt royally, if he had a miracle. I hate it in books when … are you listening to me, Daddy?”
Lee hadn’t been listening. He was too busy worrying about the cramp in his right hand. He needed so badly to let go of the rope, even for just a second, but he knew he couldn’t.
“Daddy?”
“What? Oh. Yeah. What do you want?”
“I said, what happened to the old fart, ’cause, like, if you’re going to tell me he—”
“You wouldn’t want to know, Ron,” said Lee.
“Hey, come on, you can’t just—”
“Trust me,” he said. “You just wouldn’t want to know what happened next.”
“Well, I’m not going to beg you, if that’s what you think.” He could tell she was ticked.
Lee let ten minutes go by before asking her if she was still awake. She didn’t answer, but soon he could hear her
chucking pebbles at the side of the well. He wondered what was going through her mind. It was a while before she spoke.
“It’s because I’m not ready, if you must know,” said Rhonda.
“Huh?” Rhonda was constantly coming up with weird things out of the blue, and expecting him to follow.
“You asked why I keep my violin a secret,” she said. “It’s because I’m not ready, and tough beans to anyone who doesn’t like it. I don’t want anyone getting the stupid idea that they know me till I’m ready to be known.”
“Okay,” said Lee.
But Rhonda had more to say.
“Like, imagine you were trying to write the most fantastic story in the world, and for months you put your whole heart and soul into it. And you wrote and rewrote the darned thing, and even though you were far from being finished, you could tell it was getting better and better. And then, imagine that some pea-brain idiot came along one day and stole one of your old, crappy, rough copies from the trash can and read it. Wouldn’t you just want to tear their eyeballs out?”
Lee was getting the distinct feeling that either Rhonda, or girls in general, had a different way of thinking about things.
“The point is,” said Rhonda, “I’m pretty much a rough copy right now, and I don’t want anyone trying to read me. Till I’m ready. Do you get my drift?”
Silence. He could hear her sigh.
“Man,” said Lee, “all I know is that all my life, all I’ve ever wanted was to be half as good at anything as you are at the violin. If I had one-tenth of your talent, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops.”
“You’re nuts, Lee.”
The McGillicuddy Book of Personal Records Page 11