Operation Dimwit

by Inman Majors

  Missy nodded stiffly to this and advanced a few tentative steps. She was now within eight feet of the cage. The Talk button remained engaged, for Penelope heard the Critter Catcher say: “Here’s them marshmallows we were talking about. Mm-mm good.”

  As he cooed this, he very lightly tossed two or three of the morsels to the side of the captive’s head. The skunk ever so briefly looked at them then resumed her relaxed posture of before. Things were going as smoothly as advertised and again the Critter Catcher nodded significantly at Missy. It was towel time. The signaling phrase was imminent. Penelope smiled. It was like watching The Crocodile Hunter but up close and personal. Missy was behind the skunk, off its left haunch, a mere two feet away.

  “I saw it twitch,” Missy whispered hoarsely over the radio.

  “What?” replied Penelope. “No it didn’t. Get the towel.”

  The Critter Catcher nodded and smiled brightly to Missy. Then he said: “Good night, Mrs. Skunk. I hope you sleep well.”

  Missy put the mouthpiece in front of her face and whispered: “It knows I’m here. I can tell. And I’m in the direct line of fire.”

  Staring intently at the tableau before her and whispering as quietly as she could, Penelope said, “Please quit talking.”

  The Critter Catcher was still smiling but now looked directly at Missy and repeated: “Good night, Mrs. Skunk. I hope you sleep well.”

  Missy said: “Dimwit trained them to recognize my scent, likely from stolen undergarments I didn’t know he took.”

  Penelope whispered: “Put down the walkie-talkie.”

  “I throw my panties all over the place. He probably has a whole stack of them that I didn’t know about. Look, I told you. She’s turning toward me.”

  Penelope realized she was witnessing a severe case of logorrhea. How else to explain the chatterbox performance before her? The skunk stirred and swiveled its head toward Missy. It snarled, but the gesture seemed perfunctory.

  The Critter Catcher said, very quietly, very soothingly: “Now don’t go and get yourself worked up, Mrs. Skunk. That’s just my friend, Miss Missy. Say Hey, Miss Missy, to our new friend here, Mrs. Skunk. Real peaceful like.”

  “Hey, Mrs. Skunk,” Missy said, taking a step back as she spoke.

  “Easy now,” said the CC. “Everybody just be easy.”

  Missy said into the walkie-talkie: “Skunks don’t see very well but they have an acute sense of smell. Look. She knows I’m here. My scent has been imprinted on her.”

  The skunk stood, wobbled a bit as if its legs were asleep, and turned to face the jabberbox. In a hushed tone, Penelope said: “Don’t. Say. Another. Word.”

  The trapped animal, uniquely beautiful as she might be, now hissed in an unladylike way and stomped her feet. Most menacing of all, she raised her tail. It was the Whisperer who was now in the line of fire.

  He looked at Missy and said, “Partner, Mrs. Skunk isn’t sleepy now. Be easy there. Don’t look in her eyes. I can soothe her again but it’s gonna take a minute. You stand as still as you can, and please don’t say another word.”

  Missy nodded catatonically in reply, then threw the towel at—but nowhere near—the agitated skunk in the cage. Following this, she ran for dear life toward the car.

  Penelope no longer had audio but she saw the following pantomime clearly: the CC moving his lips and smiling uneasily, the skunk hissing and scowling at the tan woman now in flight, a quick dance sequence of foot stomps, a raised tail quivering as if electrified, and then the Whisperer raising his arms like he was trying to avoid something.

  Then—as if hit by an invisible truck—he flew backwards to the ground.

  Just as he did, Missy darted into the car, slammed the door, and said,

  “I told you those skunks were trained.”

  25

  Penelope spared a quick, scornful look for her boss then turned her attention to the fallen trapper. He was immobile. The signature grey hat had flown clear and now sat forlornly on the ground well behind him. The skunk was still looking toward the car and hissing, its tail up and toward Buford King. Next to it lay the recently flung towel, looking as useless and helpless as the CC’s Stetson.

  “Is he dead?” Missy asked.

  Penelope gave her another look but didn’t deign to respond. She opened the door and was pummeled by skunk musk. “Are you okay, Mr. King?” she yelled.

  The Critter Catcher turned his head toward the sound of her voice but kept his hands over his face. “I’m all right. The little rascal got me in the eyes.”

  He offered a wry chuckle at this and Penelope said, “What can I do to help?”

  “Not a thing, my friend,” said the Skunk Whisperer in a faint but clear voice. “Stay in the car. This is a powerful funk and you want no part of it. I assure you of that. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as sunshine. Not the first time I’ve taken one in the eye. Occupational hazard, don’t you know? I’ll be along directly.”

  He removed his hands from his face now and Penelope could see him squinting and trying to open his eyes. He was still flat on his back.

  “Oh shit,” Missy said. “Was that my fault?”

  “Of course it was your fault,” Penelope snapped. “What did you think would happen when you threw that towel at the skunk and took off running?”

  For one of the few times in the short history of their relationship, Missy was at a loss for words. She gawped at the scene she’d just abandoned and then at the walkie-talkie she held in her hand. She shook her head side to side and said, “I thought it was just pissed at me. I never thought it would spray the Whisperer. I thought they were friends.”

  “She was trying to spray you, you idiot. Or she sprayed in reaction to you. Didn’t you see Mr. King standing right behind the skunk?”

  “I can’t remember. It’s all hazy. I vaguely remember him saying Good night, Mrs. Skunk. I hope you sleep well. But after that, it’s all a blur. I may have been hypnotized too. I was right in the path of the Whisperer’s charms.”

  “You weren’t hypnotized. You panicked. Now look what you’ve done.”

  Reluctantly, Missy forced herself to gaze at the downed man in the field.

  “Look,” she said. “He’s up. See, he’s going to be okay. A little spray can’t keep the Whisperer down.”

  It was true. The Critter Catcher had risen. One of his eyes was closed, the other opened at a squint. He seemed to be searching for his hat.

  Penelope opened the car door and yelled, “Your hat is right behind you, Mr. King.”

  He waved in acknowledgment and located his trademark chapeau. Penelope had shut the car door as quickly as she could, but the smell had gotten in just the same. It was getting stronger by the minute. In fact, inside or outside of the car made little difference in funk magnitude. It was a miasma of the first order. Missy was holding the neck of her dress over her nose and then pinching it. Penelope thought this the first reasonable thing she’d done and followed suit. Through cloth-pinched nose, Missy said, “Look, he’s going for the trap. What a total pro he is. What a professional. You have to admit he’s a professional.”

  Penelope felt no compulsion to talk. Then, changing her mind, she picked up the walkie-talkie on the seat beside her and said, as loudly as she could: “He is. And you’re a total dipshit.”

  Missy nodded sadly at this. In front of them, Buford King was talking to the skunk. Then he reached into his bag of marshmallows and offered a few more, though the original ones had gone uneaten. The skunk sniffed at one and glanced back and forth from the sweets to the car where Missy sat. Its interests were torn, Penelope could tell.

  The Critter Catcher never stopped talking, smiling and cajoling in a placating pantomime. The skunk ate a marshmallow. And then another. It turned completely from the car, looked at the old trapper, and lay back down on its haunches. The CC nodded, then groped blindly behind the cage until he found the towel. Once it was located, he draped
it delicately over the trap, gripped the cage handle through the towel, and made his stumbling approach toward the truck.

  Penelope looked at the disgraced trapper-in-training beside her and said, “There’s no way we’re letting him drive. He’s half blind.”

  Missy nodded in a humbled way and—grimacing—got out of the passenger door. Bravely, she released her pinched fingers and said, “Mr. King, we’re going to drive you home.”

  Zigzagging in an erratic way toward the Critter Mobile, the CC said, “That is unnecessary, my friend. I’ve been dosed worse than this plenty of times. This is nothing to the skunk and her kits I had to rouse out of the Smiths’ crawl space a few years back. They were on me like a pack of hornets and me with no quick way out! That was a tight one, I tell you.”

  Chuckling at the memory, he continued his uneven quest for the vehicle. His eyes poured water, and every few steps he paused to wipe them away with the sleeve of his Dickies shirt.

  Penelope got out of the car and briefly released her pinched nose before realizing the folly of the maneuver. She repinned and said in a nasally voice, “Mr. King, it’s Penelope. We insist on driving you home.”

  He turned his head toward the voice but never convincingly located her. He was smiling at the hood of the truck and said, “My vision should clear in an hour or so. I can just rest in the pickup till then. It’s a beautiful day. I don’t mind.”

  “We’re going to drive you,” Penelope said, walking toward him and motioning to her employer to do the same.

  “Well, if you insist,” said the Critter Catcher. “But can either of you drive a three-on-the-tree?”

  Missy shook her head to this, which was absolutely predictable. She probably never worked a clutch in her life, the sad suburbanite.

  “I learned to drive on one of those,” Penelope said. “I got you covered.”

  Buford King smiled approvingly. “I’ll ride in the bed of the truck with Little Miss Pretty here. It’s illegal to trap and move in the Old Dominion, but I can’t see what I’m doing, and I’m afraid I might gas half the county if I try it now. I reckon it will be all right and I won’t lose my license.”

  This contravening of wildlife statutes seemed to give him pause, but by then the ladies were next to him. Penelope nodded her employer forward and said, “Missy’s going to lead you to the truck.”

  The Critter Catcher locked arms with Missy, smiling and shuffling his feet to rebalance the cage he held in the opposite hand. The skunk was again hissing, and the sound through the towel was eerie and disarming. “Don’t mind her,” he said. “She won’t spray again. She’s just being sassy.”

  They were walking now, slowly, to the huffing soundtrack of a perturbed animal beside them. Missy’s eyes were watering, but she soldiered on. The stench was unreal—like rotten eggs electrocuted while floating in a water treatment plant—and Penelope had a throbbing headache.

  “I’m guessing the smell is pretty bad,” said the Critter Catcher. “Funny thing is, after all these years, my olfactory is shot. At least as it relates to skunks. I can’t smell a thing in that department.”

  Missy looked at Penelope with bugged eyes and mouthed, Oh my God.

  Penelope felt dizzy from the stench. It was like a fog of sulfur that had been run through all the doo that had ever found its way to the bottom of James’s shoes plus what Theo’s bag of unwashed clothes would smell like when he got home from camp. It was the worst odor she’d ever experienced and there was no second place.

  “It’s not that bad,” Penelope said.

  “I believe you are being polite, but thank you all the same,” said the trapper.

  By the time Missy led him to the truck, he was no longer attempting to open his eyes. He ran his free hand along the rail of the bed and said, “Home sweet home,” then lifted the cage over the side and set it down. The skunk nosed the towel a few times through the bars, as if testing it out, then hissed in a halfhearted manner.

  “I believe our friend has about wore herself out,” said the Whisperer. “And I will enjoy resting my legs for a spell, if I say so myself.”

  Eyes still closed, he placed both hands over the rail and hopped over, nimble as you please. Then he felt his way over the top of the cage before positioning himself beside it. His sat down with his back against the narcosis center.

  “I guess you’ll have to follow me in your car, so I can get back to the office,” Penelope said.

  Missy nodded in her defeated way, glanced once at the silent cage, and walked to her car.

  Penelope said: “Mr. King, I see the keys are in the ignition. Is there anything you need out of the cab before we take off?”

  “If you could load my pipe and light it for me, I would be much obliged. It is one of life’s great pleasures to ride in the back of a truck while smoking a pipe and I do not get the opportunity as often as I’d like.”

  Penelope retrieved the pipe, loaded it up from the pouch of Prince Albert on the seat, found the matches, and lit up in the smooth, compact style she’d learned from the HHR so many years ago. For a fleeting moment she smelled nothing but the nice oaky scent of burning tobacco. But when she pulled the pipe away, it was straight skunk once again. She wasn’t sure how an aroma could be tangible, but this one was. It had weight and mass. It was in her nose and mouth and eyes and hair. She spotted Missy in her own car, with the engine running, free from the narrow confines of stinkdom she now inhabited. It seemed a little unfair.

  “Thank you, my dear,” said Buford King, taking his pipe. “Not everyone knows how to start one and get it lit evenly all over. It takes a little patience, don’t you know. I am obliged. My house is on Monacan Lane, out past the dairy. You know your way?”

  “Yes sir,” Penelope said. “I know exactly where it is.”

  She couldn’t see any part of the skunk underneath the towel but could hear its restless pacing. The trapper heard, too, for he placed his non–pipe hand atop the cage and petted it softly several times. His eyes were still closed when he said: “We’re just going for a little ride, Mrs. Skunk. Nothing to fret about. Not a thing. And if you’re good, you might get you another marshmallow or two.”

  The skunk snuffled once to this and stopped pacing. Then, with a slight, metallic creak of the cage, it lay down.

  It was time to get this show on the road. Penelope hopped in, turned the ignition, and eased it—as tenderly and smoothly as the CC could have ever asked—into gear.

  The Critter Catcher had one eye half open when they arrived at his place, a quaint little frame house that backed up to George Washington State Park. Between house and woods were a barn, custom-built work shed, and roaming menagerie. Penelope spotted chickens, a pair of dogs, a barn cat with a litter of kittens, and a three-legged goat, which was trotting toward them.

  She got out to lower the tailgate and was met by a mother lode of skunk stink. Driving, the stench had been gag-inducing but mitigated. Here in the open, there was no escape. The dogs, who had started to greet them, turned tail and fled behind the barn at the first whiff of foul air. The chickens and cats scattered as well, except for one little tuxedo kitten, who pranced beside the approaching goat. They were either inured to the smell or so glad to see Mr. King they could live with it. The goat and kitten stood just beyond the truck door, appraising Penelope. With his woolly white beard and battered horns, the goat looked quite old.

  “That there is Dr. Longhair, professor emeritus,” said the CC as he scooted off the tailgate. “He is our resident philosopher, and also our justice of the peace. If you have any questions or concerns, he’s your man. Apparently his sniffer doesn’t work like it used to. Otherwise he’d have skedaddled with the rest of his gang. Isn’t that right, old friend?”

  Dr. Longhair knew that he was being discussed and bleated an official greeting. He turned his head when Missy’s car pulled in, kicking up gravel and dust in the driveway before skidding to a stop, then cocked his head in a way that indicated displeasure. A speeding infraction
had occurred, or perhaps just a disturbance of the peace. Whichever it was, he didn’t approve and jogged—more easily than you’d imagine—

  to stand before the driver’s door of Missy’s car. The tiny kitten bounded along in his wake. Missy started to get out, but her path was blocked. She rolled down her window and said, “Does this thing bite?”

  The CC smiled and said, “What teeth he has left would not cut butter.”

  Missy mustered a resigned smile and said, “Mr. King, I’m sorry I messed up back there and got you sprayed. I feel really bad about it.”

  The Critter Catcher held up a weathered hand to stop any further comment. “There is no need to apologize, my dear. You are not the first partner of mine to head for the hills at the sight of a raised tail. Those deimatic behaviors are not for the faint of heart. You were simply not prepared for them.”

  “I feel awful. How will you get rid of the smell?”

  “Well, luck is on my side. Darlene’s not back from the credit union, else I’d be running for my life to escape her rolling pin. I’m going to draw me a bath in the old clawfoot tub out in the barn that I keep for days like this when occupational hazard comes into play. Old-timers like me swear by a tomato juice, boiled potato, and chaga bath. Your modern scholars scoff at this home remedy, and they may have a point. But some traditions are worth keeping. Still, just to make sure Darlene will eventually let me in the house, I will also make an ointment of hydrogen peroxide, Palmolive dish soap, and baking soda. If neither of these remedies fix me up, you will find me sleeping this evening in the barn with Dr. Longhair and his friend, the curious kitten. I can’t smell a lick, so I can’t tell if you ladies got some residual juice or not. If you did, I’d try the scientific way first.”

  With one eye still shut, the Critter Catcher lifted the cage without a jostle. Setting it on the ground, he lifted one side of the towel up so that he could see the skunk. He dropped in a couple of marshmallows and said, “And how did you like your first ride in a pickup? It was quite an experience, wasn’t it, Mrs. Skunk?”