“Look at you still alive. I wasn’t sure after the text you sent me this morning.” Kay’s eyes grew big as I approached. “Wow!” She exhaled. “Your boobs are enormous.”
“These aren’t my breasts.” I panted. “These are my displaced lungs.”
She nodded as if that made total sense to her.
“It’s wet out here. Why aren’t you under the tent where the ground is still dry?”
Twinkles stood nose to tent, twitching his head left then right as if trying to comprehend an algebra problem.
Meadow was pushing the flaps of her tent up and tying them off, so customers could come in.
“Little bit of a problem,” Kay said.
Meadow turned her head with a grimace.
Ruh roh.
“Things went awry, a tad bit.” Meadow held up her thumb and index finger as if measuring an inch width. “I’m sure they’ll all settle down and fall asleep or pass out very soon.”
They?
I swallowed, and my spit got caught in my throat. I think my heart had been shoved into my esophagus and that was the problem there. I pulled a kitchen rag from my pocket. I was using it to catch the drool that had nowhere to go.
“You see, this being the Celtic Festival and all.” Meadow swept an arm out to take in the rows of tents. “I believed that the local fairies would be coming to enjoy the fun.”
“Uh, huh,” Delight said, hands on hips, head held at a this-is-gonna-be-good tilt.
“I thought it would be nice if I provided the fairies with a gift.” She gestured toward the inside of her tent. “I would love to get the fairies’ blessing, so I do well selling my bowls.”
“The sacrificed tree bowls?” Kay asked, peeking into Meadow’s tent. I had caught her up on our interesting neighbor last night.
“Yes.” Meadow smiled as she flourished a hand to take in the bowls she had arranged.
They really were beautiful, magical even. I thought I might check the prices and see if I couldn’t get a small one as a gift for my dad.
Suddenly, there was scrambling, hissing, and shrieks coming from inside the Hooch tent.
I stilled. My gaze moved from Meadow to Kay to the tent and back to Kay. “Fairies?”
Delight grabbed hold of my arm. “Maybe it’s a leprechaun. That would be something, wouldn’t it? I’d catch him, I would. Make him take me to his cauldron of gold. I’d like to have me a big bucket of gold. If you help me, we can go halvsies.”
If she thought I could chase down a leprechaun, without free movement of my torso, while I turned blue from lack of oxygen, she was in for one heck of a letdown.
“No, not fairies. Some woodland creatures.” Meadow’s voice wavered.
“In my tent?” I reached for the canvas opening.
Meadow put her hand on mine to stop me. “You see, I was hoping to get on the good side of the fairies,” Meadow explained. “I had been harvesting my grapes and making my year’s supply of wine.”
I nodded.
“When you make wine, it’s fermented fruit,” Kay piped in. She raised and dropped her brow like she was passing me information that would help me solve the puzzle of what was happening in the tent.
As a bartender, I had a grasp on the making of alcohol. But I wasn’t finding the intersection of Meadow making her wine in her cave up at the Glenn, appeasing fairies, and…
Uh oh.
“You brought the mash down for a fairy supper,” I deadpanned.
Meadow nodded, her fingers intertwined and hanging in front of her like a supplicant.
As if on cue, the tent erupted with noise.
Screech!
Scrawl!
Yowl!
“Bark!” Twinkles responded, bowing like he wanted to play, his stubby tail waggling in the cold air.
I pointed toward the tent. “The animals ate it? They’re drunk?”
Meadow nodded.
Kay nodded.
Delight and I shook our heads.
I lifted the edge of the tent just a bit.
A fat skunk rolled out at my feet, blinked at the sun, and belly-crawled toward me.
I stepped back.
The skunk took a few more staggering steps toward me.
I stepped back. Twice.
The skunk ran forward under the side of my dress where I’d tucked some of the cloth under the bustier to keep the hem out of the mud. He spun around, reached his little paw up, grabbed the fabric, and yanked it down like a curtain.
There was a skunk between my legs.
I could feel him moving around under there. Finally, I felt him settle down, curling over my left foot and using my toes as a pillow.
I didn’t dare move.
I could hardly breathe.
Well, that had been true since Delight had zipped me into this get-up.
But still.
There was a skunk. Between. My. Legs.
A drunk skunk.
Hysteria would have bubbled up had it had any room to maneuver. So instead it churned around my bladder. I was afraid to squeeze my thighs together.
“Well that really stinks,” Kay said.
“Stop,” I hissed.
“Don’t worry about this. Seriously. It’s not a problem, even if the skunk is drunk, they’re really intelligent animals.” Kay grasped at both my hands, I thought it was in a bid to keep me steady and still.
“Yeah?” I asked hopefully.
“They have a lot of scents.”
I looked at her with disbelief. “You didn’t just say that.”
“Most of the skunks I know all got their diplomas from P.U.”
Meadow, Delight, and Twinkles were backing away quietly.
Twinkles was abandoning me. Wait, no, that was probably for the best. Keep going, Twinkles.
“I have a skunk under my skirt. How did this happen?” I asked, not even turning my head to catch sight of Meadow. “Why did this happen?” I didn’t actually think anyone could answer that for me. I was just dumbfounded. I have, in this life time, been on the receiving end of what often felt like a cosmic joke. But this wasn’t at all funny.
A skunk between my legs!
“I hope you’ll forgive me, but I was using your tent last night for my ritual. Since yours is emptier than mine, there was more room for dancing. Normally, I’d be out in the open, but it was sprinkling last night, and I didn’t want to get wet.”
“But…”
“I was burning sage to ward away the evil spirits, but it made your tent smell like pot. I thought that might end up being an issue for you, seeing as how you’re trying to sell whiskey and the ABC people might be by. So I opened the flaps up to air it out. I didn’t have the fairy offering in there. I promise. It was on a tray outside my tent. But since my flaps were tied down, the animals must have come in here. When I let the flaps back down last night, they must have been in here, asleep. Passed out. What have you. They all seemed to wake up with the dawn.”
“They?” My voice came out as a squeak.
Kay’s brows went up into her hair. She shook her head violently, then released one of my hands to signal shhhh.
“Racoons,” Meadow said. “Opossum, squirrels, a deer, uhm. On the bright side, none of the bears showed up.”
“Bears?”
“Yes, I was out following the tracks yesterday,” Meadow said. “There are bears all in those woods but none in your tent. That’s good news, right?”
“I have a drunk skunk between my legs using my foot as a pillow.” I pressed a hand against my abdomen, willing myself to pull deep yoga breaths down into my stomach, the only place with enough room for expansion.
“Are you okay?” Kay asked.
“I could use a little oxygen.” I turned my head and hissed over my shoulder to where I had heard Meadow’s voice. “Why didn’t you just lift the tent flaps and let them go back to their forest homes to sleep it off and survive their hangovers?”
“The animals are drunk and could run in front of cars and be
killed,” Meadow explained. “I already called animal control. They’re on their way.”
“On their way, quietly. Right?” I pointed down at my skirt. No need to freak out the skunk.
“I think someone needs to set up a perimeter to keep everyone at bay,” Kay said. “If this stink bomb goes off, this whole area is going to reek to high heaven, and no one is going to want to stay for the festival.”
“I’ll do that,” Delight said. “Well, no that’s too much of a job for one woman, see. So what I’m gonna do is go over and get the Beavers and the Golden Cocks and the police pipe and drums and all and ask them to find a way to keep everyone away from your skirt. ‘Cause no one should have to smell that. Especially me. Skunk funk don’t come out of a weave so good.” She patted at her huge mane of hair.
I wasn’t even going to ask her how she knew that.
10
Saturday Morning
The Celtic Festival
“I should be getting paid for this. It’s like I’m the bearded lady at an old-fashioned carnival show,” I whispered to Kay. She’d not left my side since Monsieur P.U. found his napping spot. She’d stood, holding my hands in solidarity.
Suddenly, I felt the skunk waddling around between my legs, brushing its soft tail against my skin, tickling me. I lifted part of my skirt, hoping it would wander on out and find some other dark place to sleep it off. But one blinking peek at the sunny day, he moved back under, reached out his paw and yanked my skirt back down, again.
The audience chuckled.
Now, the skunk tail was sticking out the back of my skirt, and I wasn’t about to try that again.
“Maybe if we played some music?” Kay suggested.
“How would that work?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I hear skunks like Fifty Scent.”
“Stop. Do you know how long ago Meadow called the Animal Control guys?”
“Hey, BJ, are you holding up okay?” Morgan’s voice drifted past the yellow plastic police line tape toward me. “I want you to know even if we’re at a safe distance and upwind of the situation, we are still paying attention to de tail.” He pointed at the back of my skirt.
“For heaven sake, what is wrong with you two. This is not funny!” I grumped under my breath.
“To be honest,” Polar Bear said. “It’s a little funny. We get this in Nova Scotia from time to time, only for us it’s drunken moose. They like to eat the fermented apples in the fall. We have this one moose, who got so drunk he got tangled up in a tree. The firefighters had to come out and chop off the tree limbs to get the poor guy unraveled.”
“What happened to the moose?” I asked.
“He slept it off in the garden, then wandered into the woods. The whole village could hear him bellyaching all day from his hangover. But he was right back to eating the apples that night.”
“Huh. You know, I need a cup of coffee. I need to change my clothes, so I can take in some air. I need to pee,” I whined. “I don’t think I can stand here all day until the skunk sleeps this off. Don’t you think I could just slowly step away?”
“Are you willing to risk it?” Kay asked. “Remember that time when my lab got skunked? We had to give him baths in canned tomatoes? Do you remember the smell?”
“It’s very nice of you to stand here with me,” I said.
“You’re right. It is,” Kay said, turning her head as the crowd parted. A man in a brown uniform with a cage in his hand moved toward us.
He caught my eye. “Skunk?” he asked softly.
I pointed down at my skirt.
He looked confused, and I felt my face flame red. Maybe no one told him that the skunk had found a dark place to sleep it off. Luckily, Connor had made his way over. He had Twinkles’s lead in his hand. Twinkles was sniffing at the guy’s cage.
I could see from his gestures that Connor was explaining the situation.
The animal control guy looked at the tent, looked at my skirt, and after his eyebrows fell back to a normal place on his face, a dopey grin spread wide. He walked quietly over to Kay and me.
“It’s okay,” he said to Kay. “I’ve got this. You may want to head out of range.”
Kay gave my hands one last squeeze before she said, “Good luck,” and moved over to stand near Polar Bear and Morgan.
“I’m Forest,” he said, putting down the cage.
“Of course you are.” My sarcasm popped from my mouth before I could rein it in.
“The good news is that skunks tend not to spray when they can’t see their target.”
“So you brought a little blindfold?”
He looked at me as if he was considering that strategy then scratched his brow. “My plan is to shove this cage under your skirt. I put some fruit in the back that should entice him out.”
“That’s not going to scare him?” I asked. “I don’t need him freaking out under there.”
“Nah, I’ll sing to him. Skunks find it very soothing.”
“I know.” I rolled my eyes. “Fifty-scent.”
“I haven’t tried that,” Forest said. “I usually pick something a little more soothing.” He reached into the cage and pulled out a baby blanket that he draped over the top and sides of the wires. He squatted down. He was looking at my skirt, the cage, my skirt, the cage. And finally, he looked up to catch my eye. Face pink, pulling at his ear. “I’ve never been in this situation before,” he said.
“Funnily enough, neither have I.”
He nodded and let a breath go. “I have to get the cage under your skirt, trying not to startle the skunk and certainly not giving him a target that he can see.”
“Right.”
“How about we do this, I’ll budge the cage up, and you lift your dress.”
“Good plan.”
Forest started singing Little Skunky Foo-foo under his breath.
Up went my skirt, and with a masterful hand, Forest slid the cage under. He tucked the edges of my skirt down on either side. “Now, we wait.” He came to standing.
Everyone watched for the magical moment when the drunk skunk would waddle his way into the cage, and Forest could be hailed the hero.
Nothing happened.
Monsieur P.U. still had his head resting on my foot.
Forest had made it all the way through his song. Now he was softly whistling a tune that I didn’t recognize. He had shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
“Does this usually take long?”
“Nah,” he said. “Well, I’ve never actually done a drunk skunk before. I can’t say that I’ve studied that much. Raccoons, though.” He reached up and scratched behind his head. “Raccoons like to get snockered on crab apples that are fermenting under the trees. We get call outs every year when folks see them staggering around. They think the raccoons have rabies. But no, they’re just disoriented. Drunk.”
“My friend over there, the big one, he says they get moose stuck in trees from the same thing up in Canada. Seems wildlife enjoys a good bender every now and again. So what happens to the raccoons? Do you capture them like this skunk?”
“Pretty much. They’d probably already be in the cage by now. Is the skunk passed out do you think?”
“Hard to tell,” I said.
Forest looked around the back of my skirt at the tail. “We’ll wait another few minutes.”
I nodded, wondering what would happen at that point.
“Did you know that Wombats poop cubes instead of round logs?”
“Oh?” I asked, wondering what that had to do with anything.
“I’m trying to distract you from your predicament.” Forest gave me a little smile.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, scientists have been studying their cubic poop and speculating about it.”
I nodded.
“They think that wombats poop in cubes, so they can stack them up for communication. The cube shape keeps the poop from, you know, rolling around and confusing their message.”
/> “Ah. I didn’t know there were any wombats around here.”
“No, they’re in Australia. I just find it interesting.”
“Very,” I said.
And just like that we seemed to run out of conversation.
From his place along the police tape, Morgan said, “You know, this isn’t the first time an animal has tried to go into a bar.”
Inside I yelled, “No!”
I thought the daggers I shot Morgan’s way, might have a shutting-up effect.
He started, “A horse walked into this bar and the bartender said−”
And everyone, as if on cue, called out, “why the long face?”
I closed my eyes and prayed for patience.
That’s when Kay said, “A Shetland pony walked into a bar, he had a few drinks, and pulled out a five-dollar bill. The bartender looked down at him. ‘Sorry, buddy, you’re a little short.’”
“A rattle snake slithered into a bar,” one of the cocks said, “and the bartender said, ‘What’s your poison?’”
Not to be outdone, Kay came back with, “Yeah? I was out one night when a snake slithered into a bar, and the bartender said, ‘I don’t serve your kind in here.’ ‘Why not?’ asked the snake. ‘Because you can’t hold your booze.’”
A general groan followed. Okay, not general, just me. But still. “That’s enough, please.”
“One more? Come on, I stood holding your hands, willing to be stink bombed alongside you,” Kay said. “It’s not an animal in a bar joke. I promise.”
I held up a finger to show her that I meant it when I said one.
“A mushroom walked into the bar, and the bartender said, ‘Sorry, I don’t serve your kind in here.’ ‘Why not?’ asked the mushroom. ‘I’m a fungi.’”
It was Kay’s absolute favorite joke. It cracked her up every single time she’s told it ever since she first told it when she was oh, about ten. And now was no different. She started laughing so hard that she teared up.
And that’s when the skunk started moving.
11
If You See Kay Jig Page 7
