Best Friends

by Samantha Glen

  Michael and Steven made themselves comfortable as Charity poured iced tea for everyone. “Glad you’re here, Sharon, and you Maia,” Michael said.

  An awkward pause settled among them as they sipped the mint-freshened cooler. Charity studied Michael’s face. “So,” she drawled in the silence, “what have the powers that be decided?”

  Michael stretched his legs and steepled his long fingers. “First thing is, we’re incorporating Best Friends under its own charter,” he began.

  He talked steadily for a half-hour. As she listened, Maia alternately stroked her cats and peeked in the numerology book she carried everywhere. Sharon fixed Michael with the unblinking stare of the owls she so loved. Charity was a picture of languid curiosity as she closed her eyes and rested wheat blond hair against the tasseled cushion behind her head. Michael finished and waited for the women’s reactions.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Charity Rennie said with a smile that would disarm Attila the Hun. “You’re suggesting we give up our comfortable abodes and our own rescue operations—which are going quite nicely, I might add—to live in a Spartan cell at The Village, in between sitting at a table outside a supermarket in some godforsaken, polluted city, asking people who, for the most part, don’t want to be bothered, to support an endeavor they’ve never heard of, in a place of which they have only the vaguest notion, and let us not forget,” Charity paused for breath, “all for which we don’t get a brass nickel. Am I correct?”

  “Spartan, yes,” Michael said, thinking of the spare, clean rooms at The Village. “But then, Charity dear, you could make Alcatraz cozy, and you’re absolutely correct on every point.”

  Charity sighed deeply. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “August fifth is a very auspicious day to incorporate,” Maia Astor interjected with mock seriousness. “You did say you thought John would do Best Friends’ charter on August fifth, didn’t you?”

  “That’s the date we’re shooting for, why?”

  Maia slid a thumb under a paragraph in her numerology book. “You add the numbers for August five, 1991, and they come out to five—a very good omen for this year.”

  Michael did the math in his head. “I make it six.”

  Maia frowned, then giggled. “Then you’ll just have to incorporate a day earlier.”

  Sharon was thoughtful. “Would it be possible to have a bird sanctuary?”

  “Would you come then?”

  With the fluidity of a dancer, Charity rose out of her chair. She took center stage, wringing her hands with practiced remorse. “My dear, dear friends,” she began with funereal solemnity, “I know you’ve traveled far. Still, I regret to tell you it was a wasted journey.”

  Michael closed his eyes, waiting for the verbal blow.

  “Maia, Sharon, and I discussed the situation and decided that the idea of being heroines on a sinking ship was rather appealing.”

  Michael re-ran her last words. Slowly it dawned on him what the actress had said. “You mean . . . ?”

  Charity lifted her chin and gazed out of the window. “It is a far, far better thing we do this day than we have ever done. . . .”

  Steven snorted with laughter. Michael grinned. “You are too much, lady. By the way, you’re mixing your characters.”

  “I am?” Charity murmured innocently.

  “Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth wrings her hands; Dickens’s Sidney Carton makes the speech from A Tale of Two Cities, and it’s captains on a sinking ship.”

  Charity bestowed her famous Cheshire cat smile. “I rather prefer heroines myself. But you got the message? We didn’t even consider bailing, Michael. Besides it’s getting too damn hot down here. We’ll hit Utah, with cats—ASAP.”

  “If you’d already made up your minds . . . ?” Michael asked.

  “Why did we have you make the trip?” Charity pirouetted prettily. “Hadn’t seen your nutty face for a while, silly. Why do you think?”

  In a less dramatic fashion, Anne and Cyrus Mejia affirmed their commitment. “It’s on the road again, I guess,” was how Anne summed it up.

  Steven and Michael had arrived at the red brick house in Denver, tired, yet heartened from their meetings in Phoenix. Michael was even more cheered when he saw Estelle Munro’s sweet face. Michael always felt uplifted when he saw Estelle. She seemed to be surrounded by a pure light of goodness. He was not unaware that men, women, and children also seemed to recognize her clarity of spirit and responded in kind. For some reason Michael felt humbled before Estelle.

  She eased awkwardly out of her armchair to greet him when he came into the room. “Don’t get up, Estelle,” Michael pleaded, closing the gap between them. A smile illuminated the angelic face as she sank back down and shifted her leg restraints into a more comfortable position.

  Estelle had spent most of her youth in an iron lung since being stricken with polio at the age of two. How paradoxical that the young woman had the power to heal with her presence!

  Michael hugged her close. “Are you with us?”

  “I’ve been wanting to come to Angel Canyon for so long,” she murmured. “But you needed people who were capable of hard, physical work. That wasn’t me, Michael.” She smiled. “But you’re going to need someone to run an office, and that’s what I’d like to do someday. Meanwhile I can table. I can tell our story. It will really make me feel part of everything.”

  “You’ve always been part of everything,” Michael assured.

  Over dinner, John Christopher’s son, Matthias, couldn’t stop talking about the secondhand IBM 386 computer he had gotten from a college mate. The dark-haired young man had the reasoned intelligence of his father, and the same piercing blue eyes that saw right through you.

  Michael remembered John telling once how nine-year-old Matthias had scrambled up onto a stage in San Antonio and earnestly delivered a lecture on the future of technology. “And he’s totally self-taught,” John related in awe.

  Michael and Steven listened to the student. Each knew what the other was thinking. Matthias Fripp would be absolutely invaluable in setting up a membership data base and organizing their records—and he was one of the family to boot. Steven nodded imperceptibly. Michael fired the first salvo. “Instead of spending a year in India, we could really use you at Best Friends.”

  Steven proffered the carrot of buddies the same age. “Judah Nasr and David Maloney are in the canyon helping with the animals.”

  “Cool,” Matthias responded.

  As simply as that the deal was done, and the next morning Michael and Steven were on their way back home.

  One by one the wagons were closing the circle. Now all that was left was to make their forays into an indifferent world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Whatever It Takes

  Summer’s lazy heat brought the remaining faithful into the fold. Silva Lorraine was the last to make her way to the canyon, arriving on Independence Day in time for Nathania Gartman’s Cajun beans and rice. Over dinner, the group filled her in on the new operation. A skeleton crew would stay at the sanctuary to take care of the animals. Everyone else would table for two or three weeks, return to the canyon for a few days’ rest, then go out again.

  Charity had taken it upon herself to call hotels in targeted areas. In a voice of milk and honey, she pled their case. “So if you have any rooms that are going vacant that you could donate for the animals, we would be oh so grateful.”

  The positive responses the actress received amazed everyone.

  “We could never in a million years afford to stay in some of these places,” Jana exclaimed in wonder as Charity rattled off the names of top hotels in a dozen cities.

  “You’ve been keeping this incredible news to yourself?” Diana could hardly believe it.

  Charity’s Cheshire cat satisfaction was in full force as she basked in the glory of her triumphs. “I wanted to wait until we were all together,” she said demurely. “I do so love a full house.”

 
; The smiles in the room almost matched her own.

  Goldilocks, as always, had claimed pride of place next to Francis. Throughout the evening the golden-eyed dog fixated on the newcomer. Goldilocks stared from Francis to Silva, from Silva to Francis, getting increasingly agitated when neither understood her low whines. Finally the little terri-poo could stand it no longer. She bounded from the warmth of her person’s thigh over to the new woman in town, snuffling her ankles, whimpering, until Silva, smiling, picked her up.

  But Goldilocks wasn’t satisfied. She squirmed out of Silva’s arms and bounded back to Francis, then back to Silva, for all the world like a yo-yo on a string.

  “Are we missing something here? Or do the rest of us have bad breath?” Charity inquired archly as the dog resisted all other efforts to pet her.

  “She’s making a nuisance of herself tonight,” Francis said. “Ignore her, Silva.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Silva protested, nuzzling the soft, chubby body. “She’s darling.”

  “She obviously reciprocates the feeling,” Diana observed.

  Francis looked from Goldilocks to the Englishwoman to whom his shadow had deserted. “Since that dog goes everywhere with me, maybe you and I should team up for L.A,” he suggested to Silva.

  It was near midnight before they had talked through all decisions and destinations. By week’s end, the people of Best Friends would scatter to major metropolises west of the Rockies. Early mornings would find them ensconced in front of supermarkets or department stores. “Hello,” they would smile at the shoppers. “Are you an animal lover?”

  If a passerby showed interest they would offer a simple brochure Michael and Steven had put together showing the awesome beauty of the canyon, stories and pictures of animals at play—all the good news from the sanctuary.

  Late evenings, the tired pilgrims would report back to John Christopher with the amount they might deposit the next day so he’d know what bills he could pay.

  “It’s important: get names, addresses, and telephone numbers,” Michael reminded as everyone straggled to bed.

  Charity Rennie clicked her heels and saluted smartly. “Yes, sir, Mr. Mountain, sir,” she said as she marched out of the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Revelation

  For the permanent staff of the sanctuary, sleep was a precious commodity. They dragged awake at dawn and fell into bed long after the moon had taken residence in the clear night sky.

  Despite the long hours, as summer chilled to winter, Michael noted Faith was smiling again, happy to devote herself to the day’s routines: prepare individual meals for 600 dogs; clean the areas of 600 hundred dogs; play, pet, walk, and talk to 600 dogs. Faith Maloney was taking back her life, reveling once more in being Big Mama to her beloved charges.

  She still fretted over their constant scrambling to pay the bills. Like one of her dogs with a bone, she worried endlessly to Michael her fears for the animals if Best Friends didn’t prevail. But this particular November morning, he detected a different tension in her voice. “I just heard from Frank Crowe,” she announced as soon as he picked up the phone.

  Michael couldn’t make out right away whether Faith was elated or distraught. Frank Crowe was the animal control officer in charge of education for Salt Lake City. Faith and the officer had established a relationship after Best Friends had taken in a problem snapping turtle from Frank’s petting zoo.

  “Frank just got a call from Alpo,” Faith elaborated.

  “The dog food people?”

  “Who else?” Faith laughed. “Michael, listen to this. There’s sixty tons of dog food sitting in Salt Lake. It was en route to Japan from Alpo’s distribution center in Nebraska but—Frank doesn’t know why—the contract was canceled. Frank said Alpo needs to unload the whole shipment.”

  “Why don’t they just resell here in the U.S.?”

  “I asked the same question. You know what Frank told me? The Japanese allegedly love pink, so Alpo only manufactures pink dog food for that market.”

  “Did you say sixty tons?” Michael was still trying to get his mind around that much free food.

  “Yes, and it’s all in thirteen-ounce cans. Frank’s given a lot away already, but there’s still twenty-four tons left—about twenty thousand dollars’ worth, he said.”

  Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of pink dog food. What did American dogs care what the color was? What did Best Friends care? Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of free food. Mixed with dry it would feed Dogtown for six months.

  “There’s one snag, Michael.” Faith’s euphoria faded. “We’ve got to get it in the next ten days.”

  “No problem, Faith. We can store it in the caves.”

  “You don’t understand. We’ve got to pay the freight—two thousand dollars.”

  She didn’t have to draw him a road map. The last time Michael spoke to John, they didn’t have $200 to spare, never mind $2,000.

  “Tell Frank we’ll take it.”

  “Michael?”

  “Tell him, yes, Faith.”

  Michael would say later that he didn’t have time to think. The people who had asked to be put on their mailing list so far numbered exactly 420 stalwart souls. Yet when he hung up on Faith, Michael knew only one thing to do. He sat in front of his computer and let the words flow. . . .

  Dear—,

  I just got a call from Faith over at Dogtown. The people at Alpo will donate 24 tons of food which will take care of our dogs for the next six months.

  The only catch is that we’ve got to come up with $2,000 for the shipping. Right now we don’t have $2,000. But if only half of you can send just $10 we can load up the truck.

  We could really use this free food right now, and it will really make the animals’ Thanksgiving. It might make yours too!

  Love from all of us,

  Michael Mountain

  Michael stared at the letter. What possessed him to write to people he had never met and ask for money? It was one thing to talk to someone face to face, quite another to solicit through the mail.

  He was aware of a presence behind him and turned. Mommy the cat was in her usual place on top of the oven. It had been a natural name to give the feral black creature who had dropped six kittens under his trailer the year before.

  Mommy, it appeared, had grown tired of fending for herself. She adopted Michael’s stove as her permanent habitat and from that day forward was the silent chronicler of all his actions.

  “What do you think?” Michael asked. “Is it okay?”

  Copper eyes bored into his. Michael imagined he sensed a silent purr.

  “I guess that’s a yes, then?”

  The letter went out that afternoon.

  Exactly six days later the miracle happened—Faith always declared that “it was so a miracle.” The mailbag for Best Friends was suddenly heavy with envelopes: brown envelopes, blue envelopes, creamy envelopes that wafted the sweet smell of money. Michael and Steven sat at The Village in stunned silence as they read each note.

  Dear Best Friends: How nice you didn’t tell me that all the animals would die a horrible death if I didn’t send in my $10. Here’s $25. I hope it helps.

  Dear Best Friends: I remember telling Silva and Francis about the trouble I was having with my dog, Mac. They gave me better advice than my vet. Hope this $50 helps get that food.

  Dear Best Friends: I told that nice woman, Anne, I’d like to visit this summer. I can only afford $5 right now, but God bless you for what you’re doing. Could I help feed the dogs if I come?

  Letter after letter along the same lines. It was a whole new experience for Michael and Steven. “We have the freight,” Michael announced quietly as the afternoon shadows darkened the room.

  “And a lot of goodwill,” Steven observed.

  “Especially that,” Michael said and went to talk to Tomato.

  The orange and white kitten had grown into a gregarious creature that shared dominant cat status in the TLC Club with por
tly Benton, he of the lame orchestra leg and one eye. Tomato immediately arched his back to be picked up when Michael entered the room.

  “You all have a lot of guardian angels out there, little one,” Michael said, making the cat comfortable in the crook of his arm. Tomato sneezed in Michael’s face, lest he forget to whom he was talking, then proceeded to nuzzle his person’s cheek in compensation.

  Michael hardly noticed, so intent was he with sharing his thoughts. “I’m going to write each one of those beautiful people a personal letter and tell them not only did they help get our free food, but there’s a little left in the kitty. What do you think?”

  Tomato squealed his agreement.

  Michael had to take a walk a week later when he opened the first letter in reply to his thank-you—it wouldn’t do for anyone to see tears in his eyes.

  Dear Best Friends: You are the first organization to whom I’ve donated that’s ever sent me a thank-you without asking for more money at the same time. I am so glad you’re getting the food for the dogs. Here’s another $100. Make sure they never go hungry. P.S. Let me know what you’re doing from time to time. You never know, I might be in your neck of the woods one day.

  “The people out there are telling us what they want,” Michael said to Steven over a lunch of brown rice and broccoli. “They like to be kept in touch, and more than anything to feel they’re appreciated.” He gazed through the window that afforded the view of their paradise. “We will survive, Steven. Then we’ll show the world what a little kindness can do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tabling

  The rain clouds that had threatened since noon finally delivered: a sudden mercurial deluge that within minutes turned the gutters of Los Angeles into rushing street rivers. It was only 4:00, much too early to pack up for the day; however, in the months he and Silva had made the city their territory, Francis had come to understand a lot about its citizens.