Bow Wow

by Spencer Quinn

“Get to the point,” Grammy said.

  “You’ll never guess,” said Lem. “I rented out Bayou Girl for a New Year’s Eve cruise. Fireworks, champagne, all you can eat, music—six grand, cash in advance and on the barrelhead.”

  “But we don’t do New Year’s Eve cruises,” Birdie said. “We don’t do any party cruises at all.”

  Lem laughed. “Which is how come I said she’d never guess.” His phone buzzed. Still laughing, he pulled a phone out of his pocket and squinted at the screen. His laughter faded away. “Hmm,” he said. “Text from Snoozy. Wants me to come get ’im.” Lem looked up. “Guess my time as your employee is done. Feels like we’re just gettin’ started, don’t it, ma’am?”

  Grammy smiled. Hey! That didn’t happen often. Her teeth, although kind of yellow, were all there, and nicely shaped, to my way of thinking. “It does,” she said.

  “Been a pleasure, ma’am. Love dealin’ with the public—talkin’ about the innocent retail public. Not like the wholesalers in the crawfish business, nickel-and-dimers every last one.”

  “I do some wholesaling in the crawfish business,” Grammy said, her smile vanishing real quick.

  “And I always say,” Lem hurried on, “there’s only one decent wholesaler in the crawfish business, and that’s old lady—and that’s Miz Gaux.” He held out his hand. They shook.

  “Where are you picking him up?” Grammy said.

  “Snoozy? Down near Baie LaRouche. Place called Shakey’s Shakes.”

  “Haven’t been there in thirty years,” Grammy said.

  “Shakey’s Shakes?” Birdie said. “Can I go, Grammy? They’re supposed to have the best shakes in the whole state. I’ll bring you one.”

  “Whether you can go or not depends on Lem.”

  “Be a pleasure,” said Lem.

  “Strawberry,” Grammy said.

  This was hard to follow. Bottom line? We were splitting. Although my name may not have come up, it didn’t matter. Where Birdie goes, I go.

  Lem’s pickup wasn’t the most dinged you see in these parts, but close. He and Birdie climbed in—Lem using his hands to give his limpy leg some help—and I hopped onto the pickup bed in back. Nothing like riding in the back of a pickup! We were barely on the road when another pickup went by, also with one of my kind in the back. A she, as it happened—we know that from just the tiniest whiff in my world. We barked at each other furiously, she and I, even though she looked sort of nice to me, and I’m sure I looked the same to her. Or even better! So what was with all the angry barking? You’re asking the wrong dude.

  Meanwhile, the back window of the cab was open, and I could hear Birdie and Lem talking up front.

  “Wanna hear a story about your daddy?” Lem was saying. “From back when I coached him in Pee Wee football?”

  What had I heard about that? Something or other: Lem had been a football star way, way back, long before the bad leg and all the barrooms. And Birdie hadn’t known her daddy, so anytime someone had a story about him, she was all ears. Not really, of course, her ears being on the small side, and beautifully shaped. When it comes to hearing, they don’t work very well, true for every human I’d ever met. And let’s not even start on their noses. What are they for? Sniff, sniff. Do you smell smoke, honey? And meanwhile, the house is burning down around them!

  “Yeah,” Birdie said. “Sure.”

  “He was probably right around your age,” Lem said. “How old are you again?”

  “Going on twelve.”

  “Twelve, huh? Yeah, your daddy was right about that. Pee Wee As. He grew into a big, strong man, as maybe you know, but back then he was small, not much bigger than you.”

  “No?”

  “Nope. But strong for his size. So guess what position he played?”

  “Wide receiver?”

  “Center. Smack-dab in the middle of the mayhem up front. And on defense he was the noseguard, same thing.”

  “Didn’t he get pushed around?”

  “Everybody gets pushed around in football. It’s them that push back and don’t stop pushing back who are the real players. But that’s not the story. Back then things weren’t so … what would you say? Integrated, maybe? Weren’t so integrated in these parts.”

  “Integrated?”

  “Like you and your pal. What’s her name?”

  “Nola.”

  “Yeah. Back then that woulda been kinda unusual. On that Pee Wee A team—state champs—we had just the one black kid, J. B. A little guy, not even as big as your daddy, fast and shifty. But the star of the team was the quarterback, name I won’t say, since he’s still around. Big and strong, already man-size. And he had a thing about J. B. Just wouldn’t stop. Not when I was around, you understand—it was sneakier. Then one day it did stop, just like that.” Lem snapped his fingers. “Know how come?”

  “No.”

  “Because—this was from the janitor, who happened to be passing by the locker room after practice—your daddy walked right on up to that great big star of the team, looked him in the eye, and said, ‘That’s enough with J. B. It’s over.’ And it was.”

  I couldn’t see Birdie’s face at that moment, only the back of her head, her neck, her square shoulders. She was sitting up very straight and very still.

  All our countryside is pretty low, but now we were driving through the lowest I’d seen. The land around us got more and more watery, and finally, through a gap in the trees up ahead, it disappeared completely, and there was nothing except endless blue. We made a turn, drove through a very small town, worn-out-looking and not nearly as nice as St. Roch. Down on the docks, a big commotion seemed to be going on. A bunch of dudes were shouting at each other, waving their arms. One or two had boat hooks in their hands, nasty hooks that slashed through the air above the heads of the angry men.

  “What’s going on?” Birdie said.

  “Nothin’ good,” said Lem. He drove on, through some woods at the edge of town, and stopped in front of a strange building. It was shaped like a tall glass, with a flat roof and a giant sort of straw poking through.

  “Shakey’s Shakes,” Lem said. We got out—me hopping, as you probably guessed—and went inside. I was first somehow, even though I paused on the way to lift my leg against a small bush, a bush where others of my kind had done a lot of leg-lifting—some of it very recent, judging by the freshness of the smells.

  There were different smells inside—chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, raspberry, caramel, cherry, cream, and those were just some. I left out bananas, for one thing. Wow! I loved it already. Shakey’s Shakes had some tables and chairs, all empty. The only person there was a big woman behind the counter. She wore a white cap and a white uniform, and had a frosty scoop in her hand.

  “Welcome to Shakey’s Shakes,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Shakey. What’ll it be?”

  “Any idea what’s happening down at the dock?” Lem said.

  Mrs. Shakey frowned. “Darn bounty’s got all the watermen stirred up. There’s some that thinks they own personal stretches of the Gulf all to themselves. How’s any good gonna come out of this?”

  “I hear you.” Lem glanced around. “Supposed to be meeting someone. Gentleman name of Snoozy LaChance.”

  “Don’t know him,” said Mrs. Shakey.

  “Little shorter than me. Younger, too,” said Lem. “Thinner.”

  Mrs. Shakey shook her head.

  “He’s got lots of tattoos on his arms,” Birdie said. “All fish.”

  “Different fish or the same?” Mrs. Shakey said.

  “All different,” said Birdie.

  “Sounds like an interesting type,” Mrs. Shakey said. “But he hasn’t been here. I’d notice something like that.”

  “We’ll wait,” Lem said. He and Birdie ordered shakes.

  “And how about our four-footed friend?” Mrs. Shakey said. I waited to find out who that might be. “Just so happens,” she went on, “I bake doggy biscuits on the side.”

  Who’s luckier than me? No-body, baby
. No-body. We sat at a table—me on the floor, the humans in chairs, our usual procedure—and had a nice quiet time, Birdie and Lem with their shakes and me with the best biscuit of my life, and then another, and possibly one more after that.

  Lem took out his phone. “Shoot him a text.” We waited some more. “Typical,” Lem said after checking his phone and checking it again. “All LaChances are on their own time of course—point of pride—but Snoozy’s …”

  “… in his own century?” Birdie said.

  Lem laughed. “Remind me to tell him that. In his own century!” That started him up on laughing again, and he was still at it when two little kids—younger than Birdie—came in, the girl with a fishing pole, the boy with a net. Mrs. Shakey looked at them in surprise.

  “Back so soon?” she said.

  “There was yelling, Ma,” said the girl.

  “Yelling?”

  “Men yelling,” said the boy. “And maybe a gunshot.”

  “A firecracker,” the girl said.

  “Gunshot,” said the boy.

  They pushed and shoved.

  WE STOOD OUTSIDE SHAKEY’S SHAKES: Mrs. Shakey, her two kids, Lem, Birdie, and me. One of the kids pointed down a path that led into some scrubby woods. “Thataway,” he said.

  “Near the dock?” Mrs. Shakey asked.

  “Past it,” said the kid.

  “Firecracker,” said the girl.

  The kids glared at each other.

  “Snap out of it!” said Mrs. Shakey.

  One of the kids said something smart and Mrs. Shakey said something about “upside the head,” but I never found out what came next, because we were already on the trail, me in the lead, picking up the scents of the two kids, followed by Birdie and then Lem, limping along in the rear.

  “Are we still in the parish?” Birdie said as we entered the scrubby woods.

  “Think so,” said Lem. “Why?”

  “Maybe we should call the sheriff.”

  “To report a possible gunshot in the middle of nowhere? Folks called in stuff like that around these parts, the sheriff would be doin’ nothin’ else.”

  We walked on. I heard waves breaking gently not far away and smelled the sea.

  “Does Snoozy have a gun?” Birdie said.

  “Does he own a gun?” Lem said. “Expect so. But he wouldn’t be carrying, if that’s what you mean. Guns are something that forgetful types might leave behind in the wrong place, lead to unpleasant complications. Snoozy knows his limitations.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Actually, no. He’s a LaChance, after all.”

  Were they talking about Snoozy? That was interesting, because a third human scent had started mixing in with the scents of Mrs. Shakey’s kids. The smell of a human male, with hints of barbecue sauce, beer, ink, and a kind of cologne maybe called Mr. Manly, that Grammy couldn’t stand. Only one person I knew had that very special smell: Snoozy. How fresh was it? Not quite as fresh as the smell of the kids, but certainly from today. Night changes the smell of everything, a fun fact you maybe didn’t know, and the old smell never quite comes back.

  Up ahead, the way was blocked by mangroves—don’t ever try to make your way through a mangrove tangle—but the path curved, and all at once we were on a beach. Not a beach, if what you mean by a beach is a soft, sandy strand. What we had here was a little patch of mud and weeds, with mangrove barriers on both sides. Leading out into the water from this weedy mud patch of a beach was a dock—if two rotten old boards held together here and there with duct tape could be called a dock. These boards, floating on the water, extended a surprisingly long way out.

  “Hmm,” Lem said.

  “The kids said the yelling came from past the dock,” Birdie said. “But past the dock is all those mangroves.”

  “Right,” said Lem. “So maybe somebody should walk on out to the end of this here dock and take a look-see. Someone light, to my way of thinking, on account of the workmanship being on the rickety side.”

  Birdie looked down at me. We made eye contact. I love making eye contact with Birdie. I concentrated hard, making my best eye contact ever. “You stay here, Bowser. I’ll be right back. There’s a good boy.”

  She stepped out onto the dock. I stepped out right behind her. Had she just told me something? I tried to remember what it might have been. Something about being a good boy? Nothing else came to me, but I didn’t spend much time on it because I was busy getting ahead of Birdie, our procedure always having me first, as I’m sure you know by now. Not an easy thing to do, on such a narrow dock, but ol’ Bowser can be pretty dazzling when it comes to footwork, and no one fell in the drink. At least not completely in, if completely in means getting your head wet.

  Me and Birdie, both of our heads nice and dry, stood at the end of the ramshackle dock, out on salt water—no missing that smell, probably even detectable by humans. The dock rose and fell in a gentle way, like it was resting on the chest of some huge, breathing thing. Birdie turned to scan the shoreline past where the dock began. After not too far, the mangroves suddenly opened up, and we saw another muddy and weedy beach. Something grayish lay on the beach, not moving.

  “Lem?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s another beach.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just past those mangroves.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “With something on it.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “I don’t know. It’s … it’s not moving, Lem.”

  Lem bent down and rolled up his pant legs. He waded out into the water, slow and limping. We went back to the start of the dock, stepped into the water, and caught up to him. First it was very shallow and I was mostly walking. The bottom was mucky, sucking at my paws, and with the occasional sharp thing poking through. Then it got deeper and I swam—much better, keeping some space between me and the bottom. Lem was up to just past his knees, and Birdie to her waist. They were very quiet, not saying anything. The water made rippling sounds around us. Otherwise, no sound at all—kind of strange, like we were all alone in the world.

  We passed the last gnarly mangrove roots, which came right out of the water, just another annoying thing about mangroves—shouldn’t roots stay down in the ground, not bothering anybody?—and came to the second beach. Right away I picked up the scent of death—not long-ago death, or death a few days old, which is the worst, but recent death, more than a day and less than two. And now we got a closer look at the grayish figure on the beach.

  “Oh my god,” said Lem.

  “Snoozy?” Birdie said, and she covered her mouth.

  Lem began to run, a painful-looking hobbling run, but then he slowed down.

  “Just a fish,” he said. “Whew.”

  I’m a big fan of humans, don’t get me wrong, but they can be a little … slow at times. For example, I’d known from the get-go not only that this figure, sprawled in a curving shape, was not alive, but also that it was not a person. In fact, a fish of some sort. If you can’t pick up the dead fish scent, what can you smell?

  We stood around this fish—not even the size of a human adult, more like the size of one of Mrs. Shakey’s kids.

  “A shark?” Birdie said.

  “Yup.”

  “Not … not Mr. Nice Guy?”

  “Huh?” said Lem, looking at her in surprise.

  “Um, just the name we have for the shark—the one that all the fuss is about, if it’s real. The shark, I mean.”

  She’d lost me. The shark lying in front of us was real, no doubt about it.

  “This here’s no maneater,” Lem said. “Not a bull shark at all—what we got is a nurse shark. See those two thingies—barbels, they call ’em—between the nostrils? That’s the giveaway. There’s nurse sharks all over the Gulf, but they ain’t no threat to fish nor fowl.”

  “No threat to fish?” Birdie said. “What do they eat?”

  “Well, fish,” said Lem. “But not in a threatening way, if you get what I me
an.”

  “Um,” said Birdie. She gazed down at the dead shark. “Hey! What’s that?” She pointed at … at what looked like a small hole, round and red, midway between the shark’s eyes, which were open but dull and lightless.

  Lem bent down. “Bullet hole.” He shook his head.

  “Someone just shot it and left it here?” Birdie said. “Is that what the kids heard?”

  “Can’t think of no other explanation—although how that coulda happened on the beach …” Lem turned and looked out on the water. At that very moment, a pirogue came put-putting from behind the mangroves, a pirogue being a small open boat we have in these parts, and put-putting on account of the tininess of the outboard motor. Sitting in the stern, one hand on the control stick, was an old guy with thick, snowy-white hair and a nose that reminded me of an eagle that had once landed on the roof of Gaux Family Fish and Bait. I hadn’t relaxed until that bird had taken off and disappeared in the blue.

  The old man cut the engine and let the boat coast on up to the beach. He climbed out—grunting a little but moving pretty well for such an ancient dude, kind of how Grammy moved, in fact. He walked toward us, his feet bare and nicely shaped, to my way of thinking. Then he gazed at each one of us in turn, including me. That’s something I’ve noticed about humans: Some include me and some don’t.

  He gestured with his chin at the shark. “I’m assuming none of you had anything to do with this.”

  Lem shook his head. “We just got here.” He indicated the direction we’d come from. “Kid back there thought maybe he’d heard a shot, so we come out to investigate. And …” He knelt and pointed out the bullet hole. “Which turned out to be true—hearing the shot, I mean.”

  The old man glanced at the shark. “When was this shot fired?”

  “Don’t know, exactly,” Lem said. “But not too long ago.”

  With his eagle nose—even eagle face, actually, the face of an old eagle-human type—this man looked impatient to begin with, but now he ramped it up. “Today? Are you talking about today?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. We stopped for shakes and then—”

  The old man made a slicing movement with his hand. “Then the supposed shot had nothing to do with what happened to this shark. It should be clear to even the untrained eye that death occurred at least a day ago, possibly two or three.” Hey! This old dude and I were … of one mind? Is that the expression? Something about it bothered me. I did not want to share a mind with anybody, certainly not him. Birdie, maybe.