by Susan Wilson
Polly has long complained that the town considers its animal shelter extremely low on the scale of need against that of playgrounds and fire trucks and office personnel. “Tax office has plenty of paper, I can tell you that. Me, I have to buy my own or wait till the budget is passed. If I don’t anticipate a need, it has to wait maybe a whole year. And I didn’t figure on a broken washer.”
“When does the budget get passed?”
“Spring.”
“Oh.”
“I’m doing this on my own dime.” Polly shoves a massive armful of stinky towels into an empty washer. The Asian woman frowns, turns her back, and goes into her office. Shuts the door.
Polly slams the washer lid, remembers the detergent, opens it, dumps in half a box. She jams coins into the slots and rams the mechanism in. Turns. “Hey, I thought you left town.” Polly throws her arms around Ruby.
“How could I pass up the opportunity to read cards at the St. Sebastian’s Days?” Ruby extricates herself from Polly’s exuberance.
“To say nothing of the fact that the world’s best food is served there.”
“It will be nice not to have to think about what’s for dinner for a couple of days.”
“Are you back at the Dew Drop?”
“Not exactly.” Ruby tells Polly about her temporary campsite, waits to see if Polly is appalled, or jealous.
“You know, he’s one of the good ones. Nothing in his life has been anything close to a fair shake.”
Ruby instantly imagines self-inflicted losses. Bull has all the aspects of a man who has long ago lost control of his own life. And that generally means the loss of control over the lives of others. “What’s his story?”
Polly shifts in her seat. “His wife was killed when her brakes failed, and he was left with two young sons. One of them, Cooper, turned out okay. Cooper was our dog officer here a couple of years ago. He’s the one who arrested Don Boykin for animal cruelty. You know, Cynthia’s now ex-husband.”
“And Boy was the dog. Bull did tell me that.” More precisely, Boy told her about it. The taste of abject fear had filled her mouth, and with it the sensation of exquisite pain. She didn’t feel the pain in herself, but in her mind. She had run her hand down the length of the dog, along his flanks, and felt the lumpy scars of shotgun pellets. She had heard the blast of the double barrel in her ears, and endured in a touch the long weeks of suffering.
“Cooper suggested me for the ACO job when he left town to go back to the Boston PD as a K-9 officer.”
“And the other son?” This is the one she knows is gone, the one that throws Bull’s aura into a smudgy gray.
“The other son, Jimmy, well he was just bad news from the beginning. Jimmy was running drugs or something and ended up going through the ice on the lake trying to get away. Drowned.”
“Oh, that’s awful. Poor guy.”
“Between you and me, I think Bull’s better off without him; but that’s just me.”
With their laundry done, Ruby and Polly grab lunch and then head to the animal shelter with the basketful of clean blankets and towels. Polly has a couple of dogs in house, and asks Ruby to “take a look” and see if there are any clues she can give toward locating the animals’ owners.
The Hitchhiker seems reluctant to go into the building; she pulls back on the leash. Ruby scoops her up, presses her face against the dog’s head. “It’s okay, Hitch.”
“They are not happy in there.”
“They need to find their owners.”
“If you go in there, will I lose you?”
“Hitch, you belong to me, don’t worry. You won’t lose me.”
Inside the building Polly brings Ruby to where two dogs are in separate pens. One is a bulldog type, the other more of a terrier. “Where did they come from?”
“The big one was wandering around the state park; some picnickers called me. He was scaring the kids. The other one was rooting around garbage cans on Maple Ave.”
“They want to be together. I think they’re a pair.” Ruby squats in front of the cages. Presses one palm against one door, and the other palm against the other. Both dogs sniff and at the touch of their noses, she gets a good blast of connection. “Something happened to their person. He didn’t come home. They dug out of their pen, not for the first time. They sat in the driveway for a long time, and then forgot to wait.”
“Can they tell me their address?” Polly is only slightly joking.
“How long have they been here?”
“Just since yesterday.”
“So, hypothetically if their person had gone away and their dog sitter didn’t show up, then their person might not even know that they’re missing.”
“Hypothetically. Yes.”
“Or, if they were gone when the supposed caretaker arrived, he or she might have figured that the person took the dogs with him or her.”
“Again, hypothetically.”
“That’s the best I’ve got. What happens if no one comes to claim them?”
“We work with rescues to re-home.”
“How long before you do that?”
“We’ll give them a week, ten days if we don’t get crowded.”
Ruby pulls herself up to her feet. “I bet they get claimed sooner than that.”
“Psychic vibe?”
“No. Just a hopeful hunch.”
The Hitchhiker has discovered that being free in a place where all others are behind bars is energizing and she’s also discovered Polly’s store of treats. The dog presses her nose between the links in the kennel separating her from the other two dogs. “The treats are good. You should try some.”
The two dogs bark in plain language to get back.
Ruby pulls her van into the rectangle delineated by the traffic cones and slides open her door. She pops up the folding table, pulls the café curtains, adds an array of fairy lights, and pulls on her caftan. Loosens her hair. Ready for business.
The feast has wound down for the night. Ruby closes the van door, gets behind the wheel. Her cell phone is on the dashboard and she reaches for it. No texts, one email. She is really tired, and almost doesn’t look at the email but then does.
Hi, Ms. Heartwood. Yes, we do have an archive. As the records are not digitized, there is no way for me to take the time to go through them for you. You are welcome to visit.
Best regards,
B. Johnson
Office Administrator
Sacred Heart Convent and School
12
Ruby’s first impulse is to hit the road, point the Westie northwest, and book it toward the convent. Then she remembers that Joe Benini has been kind enough to allow her to work his carny at a fair price and she has too much integrity to simply drive away without a fare-thee-well. She’s no dope; Ruby knows that she’ll need Joe’s good graces another time, especially if she hooks up with the larger divisions of Benini Brothers Carnivals at the several big New England fairs this fall. No sense burning bridges to pursue something that has been moldering in a basement for decades. Her quest can wait another twenty-four hours. Besides, she’s made bank today and prudence will always overrule impatience. Ruby takes them back to Bull’s yard. One more night and she’ll be on her way.
Ruby feels the pressure of a small black nose against her elbow. It emerges from beneath the crook of her arm, followed by the raccoon mask and floppy ears of the Hitchhiker. Chocolate drop eyes meet hers. “What do you think?” Ruby isn’t sure exactly what she means by the question, but the look on the dog’s face suggests that she is, indeed, thinking about something.
“Happy here. Can we eat?”
“You can.” Ruby has enjoyed the fulsome offerings of St. Sebastian’s ladies’ guild. She’s packed three days’ worth of food into her little fridge. For the dog she pulls out the bag of kibble and a leftover meatball. Earlier in the day, a black-attired nearly toothless old woman, cottony white hair subdued by a headscarf, had pressed a baggie of broken meatballs into Ruby’s hand. “For t
he dog.” When Ruby tried to demur, she squinted. “You give me free fortune.”
“Deal. Come to my van when you get a chance.”
“No. Now.”
In her career, Ruby had encountered many a true believer who had no doubts at all about Ruby’s skills; no hesitation. “Okay. Palms up.”
The little lady’s hands were as soft as pigeon breasts, but the lines told of a hard life. Burns from decades of cooking; hardened fingertips from needle pricks working on traditional embroidery. A line that described great sadness early in life; another that suggested a lifestyle change was coming soon.
The woman’s face screwed up at that. “Yes. My children want me to go into a rest home.” She curled her lip. “Assisted living.” She said it like the words tasted foul. “They don’t want me to cook anymore.” The old lady dabbed at the corner of her eye with the edge of her apron. “Who am I if I don’t cook for my family? None of them can cook.”
“You are their matriarch. Their North Star.”
“My mother taught me to cook.” The hand in Ruby’s grew warm, as if the old woman had just taken her hand away from a hot skillet. Memories not her own flooded Ruby’s mind; at once the idea of mother-love forced her to close her eyes and grasp both the old woman’s hands.
“You lost your mother early in life, didn’t you?”
She nods. “I was a young bride, newly pregnant. She never saw her firstborn grandson.”
“What was her name?”
“Guiliana.”
“Did you name your son for her?”
“Julian.”
“She has loved him his whole life.” Ruby was sure of this. “What’s your name?”
“Josephina Bartolotta.”
“And your son named his after you.”
The old woman, Josephina, smiled in spite of herself. “Joey. He’s almost old enough to have his own child.”
They stood there like that, hand in hand for a moment. Silent. Josephina turned her hands over and looked at Ruby’s. “Is your mother still with you?”
“I have never had a mother.”
“So, no one taught you to cook?”
Ruby laughed. “No. But I manage. My daughter is by far the better cook because she decided to become one.”
“I think my problem is that I never had a daughter. Just sons. Daughters-in-law aren’t interested in keeping the old mama around. Not interested in learning how to cook properly. All vegan this and tofu that. How are my sons supposed to work all day on that kind of food?”
Ruby desperately wanted to be able to change the course of this lady’s future, but that wasn’t ever in her power. She wanted to catch the ear of one of her sons and say: Don’t you know you’re sentencing her to life imprisonment by asking her to give up cooking? What if you were told you could never golf again? She realized that she was making some assumptions based on the very Harmony Farms description of the daughters-in-law nutritional choices. But then again, half her job was to make assumptions, and most of the time she was spot on. “Children always think that they know best. They don’t understand that we’re not children, that we know what’s best for ourselves.” It was the case Ruby had made over and over to Sabine regarding her own preferred lifestyle. Her need to keep moving.
“You are the same age as my Julian. Wait till you turn ninety. Then you’ll see. They won’t let you say what’s best.”
What will Sabine say about this quest of hers?
Ruby Heartwood had traveled with the Carerra Carnival as they moved from New England curling toward the middle of the country. She was getting farther and farther from her origins and with each mile she began to convince herself that she was no longer of any interest to the authorities. She lied about her age and stuck to it, not that she was ever challenged. She thought that having the presumed custodianship of a group of adults, even adults as offbeat as carny folk, offered a modicum of protection from the law.
At first Ruby bunked in with the rest of the unattached women, sharing a tiny caravan towed behind a roustabout’s Hemi in which the four women rode. There was nothing more in the trailer than four bunks and a series of pegs to hang the bags with their clothes. Highway rest stops served for hygiene. Food. The three others were as varied in size and temperament as three women could be. Ruby thought of them as the Large, the Medium, and the Small. With herself trending toward the second smallest and certainly the youngest and always stuck in the middle of the backseat of the truck’s crew cab. They ran the kiddie games of chance, each hoping to move up to food vendor someday, selling fried dough and Italian sausages, cotton candy and overpriced sodas. As a group, they were pleasant enough to Ruby and were happy enough to let her take a shift encouraging over-sugared toddlers to take a “prize every time” chance at the magnetic fishing pole or one of the other games that guaranteed a kid would walk away with a noisemaker or a cheap plastic inflatable. Like Ruby, they were quiet about their origins, if voluble about most everything else, especially insults real or imagined from the carnival goers or the other women who fancied themselves above these single ladies by virtue of a husband or boyfriend in their campers.
When the Carerra Brothers Carnival set up in a cornfield on the outskirts of a middle-sized town in the Midwest, a newcomer joined the caravan. Ruby was scrubbing the outside walls of the cotton candy truck, scraping off the filth of road dust stuck to sugar dust when a massive state-of-the-art camper pulled onto the grounds towed by what looked like an off-the-showroom diesel truck all tricked out with decals suggesting the driver was still fighting the Civil War and was a rabid Steelers fan. By the way the roustabouts waved as the rig moved through what would become the midway by four o’clock this afternoon, Ruby could tell this was no stranger venturing by. The rig slipped past the cotton candy truck and Ruby got a good look at the driver rolling by, one arm hanging out the window, cigarette dangling between thumb and forefinger. Ruby thought he looked like Wolfman Jack. At least how he was portrayed in American Graffiti. He saw her and smiled, the same kind of smile a celebrity might have at being recognized, and Ruby, sticky with the filthy work she was doing, thought she’d die of embarrassment.
A magnetic sign was attached to the driver’s-side door: MADAME CELESTINE, PSYCHIC. Indeed, there was another person in the truck, and as they drove by a woman leaned across the wolfman and looked right at Ruby. “Stop.” The driver did as he was told, flicked the burning cigarette onto the corn stubble at Ruby’s feet. Shocked at the carelessness, she stepped on it.
“Come to see me tonight.”
Ruby had no chance to answer as the woman, presumably Madame Celestine, smacked the driver on the shoulder. “Go.”
Ruby emptied the bucket of nasty water onto the ground where the crushed cigarette lay.
Having enjoyed the meatball garnish to her regular kibble, the Hitchhiker licks her lips, then attends to her front paws, works her way south to her undercarriage. Ruby idly strokes the dog’s back, staring at the black words fashioned against the dull illumination of her cell phone screen. Ruby is surprised to find that the records from her birth year still exist. In some fatalistic, or perhaps pessimistic leaning, she had fairly convinced herself that this bit of ancient history would have long ago been burned with the day’s trash in the scary incinerator that lived out behind the school. She remembers the custodian dragging barrels out there as the last task of his day, tipping them into the maw; the foul-smelling smoke that issued from the chimney. As a little girl, in second grade, she conflated the election of a pope with the burning of trash. This thing about black smoke, white smoke. What came out of the school’s chimney was neither white nor black, just a foggy gray color and stinky.
And yet, no one saw the need to haul boxes of records out of the basement and heave them into the incinerator. Ruby laughs at her own train of thought. In this day and age, there was likely no incinerator anymore. No longer considered an environmentally sound practice. She pictures instead a dank basement with bankers’ boxes stacked one upon t
he other, sagging with moisture and furry with mold. She sighs at the anticipation of struggle. “What do you think? Should I really bother with this?” Ruby has taken to speaking to the dog, which feels better than talking to herself. At least it’s out loud and conversational, not the agitated mutterings of a half-mad crone. Sometimes she gets a little back and forth, but those times tend to be when eating or walking are involved. The dog doesn’t demand to have her explain the context of her ramblings, so as to be a help to her, rather than a living sounding board. She just cocks her head and expresses some hope that another meatball might appear.
“I guess that I was hoping that they’d have kept those records neatly filed in alphabetical order in a well-lit file room.”
“You can sniff around for what you want. Use your nose.”
In answer, Ruby boops the dog on her nose. “I think that your nose is like my psychic ability. A magical thing.”
The last day of the St. Sebastian’s festival starts off with fine weather, and by noontime the skies have darkened and most of the festival goers have bailed. The food is mostly leftovers anyway and the fireworks are canceled when a tornado watch is announced. The Hitchhiker has been restless and even got in the way during one of Ruby’s few sessions, slipping beneath the table and resting her chin on Ruby’s feet. All in all, a good time to tell Joe Benini she’s packing it up. His crew have already begun dismantling the rides.
The rain begins in earnest just as Ruby pulls out of St. Sebastian’s parking lot. It’s a monsoon-level cascade and her windshield wipers cannot keep up. Except that it is broad daylight, it reminds her of the night she met the Hitchhiker. The night she was graced. She is suddenly afraid that this new storm will take that grace from her. She pulls off the road and grabs the dog, lifting her onto her lap. She presses her forehead against the dog’s and whispers, “Talk to me.”
“This is scary. I don’t like thunder. We need to find shelter. Go to place with bed for us go inside.”