by Donna Ball
He stumbled out of the truck, almost knocking me into the boxwoods that lined the porch. “And you too, you worthless slut!” I reeled backward, both at the insult and at the danger posed when Lester, holding on to the door handle, swayed toward me. “You got no business nosing around my place, getting my boy locked up, when we ain’t never done a damn thing to you! Not a damn thing! Well, I’m here to teach that man of yours a lesson, and you too! I’m not afraid of no law, I’m not!”
I’m no fool, and unless one of my dogs is in danger, I have absolutely no problem resisting the urge to play the hero. When a crazy drunk tries to drive his truck through my house and then stands in my yard threatening me, I’m not in the least embarrassed to hightail it back inside and lock the door. And that’s exactly what I did until I heard the sound of sirens and saw the flash of blue and red lights four minutes later. By that time I had brought the dogs inside and locked them in the study, and had even taken a moment to find ammunition for my daddy’s deer rifle, just in case. I didn’t have occasion to load it, though. Lester was too drunk to climb back up the steps to the house, so he just stood out in the yard yelling at me until the police car, followed closely by an ambulance, pulled up beside him.
I pushed my feet into a pair of work boots and my arms into my coat sleeves, and I went out the back door and around to the front. By the time I got there the paramedics were leading Lester toward the open doors of the ambulance, and Mike Denson, one of the deputies who had drawn duty tonight and had therefore missed the party, was gazing up at the pickup truck that was half-on and half-off my porch, scratching his head.
“Quite a mess you got there, Miss Stockton,” he said.
“You could say that.” I thrust my hands into my coat pockets, shivering as I cast an uneasy glance over my shoulder toward Lester. The lights from the open ambulance flooded my lawn, and the paramedics were trying to get him to sit down so that they could examine his injuries.
“Lucky it didn’t go through the wall. Somebody could have been hurt.”
“Somebody could have been hurt anyway!” I objected incredulously.
“No doubt about that,” he agreed. “Doesn’t look like there was any structural damage, though, except to your steps. You want me to call a wrecker and get that thing out of here?”
“Yes!” And then, regretting my sharp tone, I added more reasonably. “Listen, Mike, whatever you do, don’t call the sheriff out on this. He’s at the Christmas party, and…”
Mike looked at me regretfully. “Sorry, Miss Stockton, you should have told the dispatcher. It’s pretty much protocol to let an officer know when a call comes in from a member of his family.”
“But I’m not his family!”
Mike just said again, “Sorry. Let me get the wrecker on its way out here and then you can tell me what happened, okay?”
Buck arrived just as I finished giving my report to Mike, followed closely by Uncle Roe and Aunt Mart. I hated that. Aunt Mart couldn’t hide her alarm when she saw the state of my porch and fussed over me like a hen with one chick even though it was clear I was unharmed. Uncle Roe was fascinated by the engineering aspect of the truck-on-the-porch situation, and Buck, after a brief, “You okay?” to me, went off to interrogate Lester.
“The trouble with this town is there’s too much drinking,” declared Aunt Mart with a scowl. “We were all a lot better off when we were a dry county.”
“Now, Martie,” said Uncle Roe, perhaps in light of the fact that he had just come from a party where at least three quarters of the sheriff’s department had had more than one beer, “you know it’s not the drink, it’s the drinker. Besides, people would just be going over the county line to buy their liquor if they couldn’t get it here, same as they’ve always done.”
I said, “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here, and leave the party, too.”
Aunt Mart gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “The party was over. And I certainly hope you don’t think we wouldn’t come out for something like this. What in the world was the matter with that man, anyway?”
I pushed my cold fingers through my hair and muttered, “Oh, he’s mad at Buck about something.”
Uncle Roe gave me a knowing look, and I responded defensively, “It’s not my fault his son is a petty thief and a pothead and chose to withhold information in a police investigation.”
Pothead, of course was a little strong, and so was petty thief. I’d been guilty of equal if not greater offenses in my youth, but the great advantage of adulthood is that the mistakes you make as a kid no longer count. Or at least they shouldn’t.
Still, I was feeling a little huffy as I finished, “Besides, I never would have gotten involved if it hadn’t been for the puppies. And it’s not my fault that Lester Stokes won’t spay his dog! I’m going to see what’s going on,” I finished uncomfortably and trudged across the yard.
The paramedics had cleaned up Lester’s face and put a strip of tape across the bridge of his nose, which was purple and misshapen and appeared to be broken. Apparently they’d given him some B-12 and oxygen as well, because he seemed a bit more sober than he had been the last time I’d seen him. He was sitting on the back of the ambulance with a cold pack pressed against his face, with Mike looming over him on one side and Buck on the other.
“So here’s what we’re going to do,” Buck was saying when I walked up. “We’re going to take you to the E.R. to get checked out, and from there you’re going directly to jail. The charges are reckless conduct, driving under the influence, making terroristic threats, vandalism, public endangerment…” he glanced at Mike. “Did I forget anything?”
“Failure to properly maintain a vehicle,” supplied Mike helpfully. “Busted taillight.”
Buck nodded and turned back to Lester. “And oh, yeah, assault with a deadly weapon. I hope you didn’t make any plans for Christmas.”
Lester’s head shot up. “What are you talking about, what deadly weapon? I didn’t assault nobody!”
“You tried to drive a two-ton pickup truck into a residence with the intent to harm the person inside.” I felt a little sick, just hearing Buck say that. “That’s assault with a deadly weapon and you’re looking at twenty years, my friend.”
I swallowed hard, and so did Lester. He said, “I told you, my foot slipped. I never meant to drive the truck in the house.”
Then he looked at me and his rheumy, swollen eyes looked a little desperate, if still defiant. “I never meant you no real harm, you gotta know that. If I had I wouldn’t’ve used a truck, and you wouldn’t be standing here.”
“Wrong answer,” Buck said coldly.
“You shouldn’t have come around messing with my family!” Lester said, now angry again. “You and that damn dog of yours—”
“You leave my dog out of this,” I said with a sudden lurch of alarm.
“You don’t mess with my family,” he repeated belligerently.
Buck looked at him with eyes like steel. “And you don’t mess with mine.”
He jerked his head toward Mike. “Read him his rights. Go with him to the hospital. Make sure he gets what he needs. And don’t screw this up. If he gets out of jail one day before his sentencing it’ll be your ass.”
“Yes, sir.”
Buck touched my shoulder and turned me away as Mike pulled Lester to his feet and put the cuffs on him. I felt my eyes well up because Buck had called me family, and then I was angry because I wasn’t his family and this was mostly his fault, anyway. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t let Cisco go pretending to be a drug dog.
Almost as though reading my mind he said, “Honey, I’m so sorry. I never should have let you get involved.”
“You didn’t ‘let’ me do anything,” I returned and stretched out my step to move away from his hand on my shoulder as we walked toward the house. The tow truck drivers were hooking up a chain to the back of Lester’s truck while Uncle Roe supervised, and there was a lot of shouting and chugging of engines.
“You’re not really going to charge him with assault with a deadly weapon are you?”
“I’m damn sure going to try,” he replied grimly. “We can’t have people thinking they can take out their grudges with the law on police officer’s families. Not for one minute.”
I stopped and turned to look at him. “I’m not,” I said distinctly, “your family.”
There were about a half-dozen different emotions that flickered across his eyes in that moment, and I couldn’t read any of them. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. Finally he said, “You know what I mean.” And started walking again.
“He had to put up his house to make Nick’s bail,” he said after a moment. “That’s probably what set him off. How much damage do you think you’ve got?”
“Go home, Buck,” I said.
He stared at me.
“You’re not on duty, the situation is under control, and you’ve got company.” My voice was tired. “Just…go home.”
His brows drew together slightly. “Are you mad at me about something?”
I sighed. “No. I’m not mad. You can be a jerk sometimes, but you can’t help it. All I want to do is go to bed.”
He turned away, still looking puzzled, and I couldn’t stop myself. I said, “How long is she staying?”
He looked back at me and had the grace to look uncomfortable. “The weekend.”
“Good night, Buck.”
I stood shivering in the yard with Aunt Mart while the ambulance pulled away and Buck’s car followed. The tow truck pulled Lester’s pickup off the porch with a great deal of creaking and grinding and left big scars across my driveway as it lumbered off. Uncle Roe examined the damage and declared it to be relatively mild.
“They just don’t build houses like this anymore,” he pronounced with satisfaction. “You’re going to have to get somebody out here to rebuild the steps, but then you’ll be good as new.”
Aunt Mart tried to persuade me to come home with them, but I assured her there was no need. I was fine.
She looked at me skeptically. “Are you sure? You don’t look fine.”
“I just don’t understand why people have to be so mean,” I said miserably, thrusting my hands deep into my coat pockets and suppressing another shiver. “I thought we had good neighbors. At the Christmas parade everyone was laughing and singing, and then somebody abandons a baby in the cold, and somebody else kills a man, and then somebody dumps a box of puppies by the side of the road, and then somebody tries to drive his truck through my house. It’s Christmas. It just doesn’t seem right.”
My aunt looked at me with eyes filled with compassion, and I thought she probably understood why I was really so sad. She hugged me hard, advised me to have a cup of warm milk and go straight to bed, and left with Uncle Roe.
I was so emotionally and physically exhausted that I didn’t even bother to put the girls in their crates. I didn’t take off my makeup or brush my teeth. I just shucked off my ruined red dress in the dark, left it lying in a puddle on the floor and crawled into bed with the covers pulled up over my ears, letting the tears leak out onto my pillow. Eventually I felt the featherlight weight of an Australian shepherd land on one side of my feet, and then on the other. I didn’t even bother to reprimand them.
But then the bed creaked with a heavier weight, and I pulled the quilt away from my face and looked over my shoulder. Cisco’s eyes, catching the reflection of ambient light, looked up at me balefully from the foot of the bed. He was lying flat on his belly, head down and paws out, as though he thought he could blend in with the covers. As I watched, he started to belly-crawl toward me.
“No dogs on the bed,” I said thickly.
He stopped dead, trying to make himself invisible.
I turned my head back to the pillow and closed my eyes.
Cisco inched his way alongside me until his head was beside mine on the pillow. I stretched out my arm around his shoulders and fell asleep with my face in his fur.
What the hell. It was Christmas.
If you are ever feeling lonely, blue or out-of-sorts at Christmastime, here’s what you do: put an ad in the paper and on the radio that says Golden retriever/lab mix puppies ready to come home for the holidays. 8 weeks old, all shots. Adorable balls of fluff! Small adoption fee. And leave your phone number. I guarantee you won’t have a minute to feel sorry for yourself until the last puppy leaves in the arms of its new Forever Mom or Dad.
As a general rule, our policy is not to adopt rescue dogs—particularly puppies—during the holidays. In the first place, people get such a sentimental notion about puppies under the Christmas tree with big red bows around their necks that they forget all about the puddles on the carpets, the chewed up furniture, and the standing out in the icy wind at two a.m. waiting for Puppy to finish his business. They make impulsive decisions that they would not have made any other time of the year. Secondly, the holidays are just too hectic around most households for a new dog or puppy to get the attention he needs, and a stressful environment like that is the worst possible way to welcome home a new member of the family. And of course we categorically discourage giving puppies as surprise gifts; very often the person who is surprised is the giver when their good intentions turn out to be completely unwelcome.
But rules were made to be broken, and Maude and I had decided that, with two weeks to go before Christmas and only three puppies to re-home, we would begin a screening process that would make sure all the puppies had homes by New Year’s Day. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing since.
I immediately eliminated any household with children under six. Puppies are not educational toys, and no mother of preschool children needs another responsibility on her to-take-care-of list. I also eliminated the frail, infirm, and those over eighty. These were going to be big dogs. I was left with a list of front-runners from whom Maude and I would choose who would be invited to come for a personal interview and to interact with the pups.
It was a brilliant Tuesday morning, with a sky so blue it practically hurt to look at it, and a rime of new snow on the high mountain peaks. My steps had been repaired and were awaiting the first day with temperatures above forty for paint. My kitchen smelled like coffee and the cinnamon rolls Maude had brought from the bakery in town, and a fire crackled in the wood stove—which was securely screened by a metal puppy gate, of course.
I sat on the kitchen floor and watched the puppies, temporarily released from their ex-pen, explore the big world of rag rugs, chair legs, and slippery polished floors. I defy anyone, no matter how sour he or she is feeling, to watch a puppy scramble to gain traction on a hardwood floor and not laugh out loud. Cisco lay beside me with his chin on the ground, determinedly pretending to ignore the puppies, even when one stopped by to chew on his tail or climb on his back. His eyes, however, never stopped following them around the room.
Maude sipped tea at the kitchen table and carefully went over the list I had made of prospective puppy parents. “Jason Comstock,” she said, striking through another name on the list. “Don’t bother. He’s only looking for a hunting dog.” It’s not that we had anything against hunting dogs, but our contract stipulated that the dogs we adopted must be pets only and live indoors.
I scooped up one of the little males who was trying to make a chew toy out of Cisco’s ear, and turned him in the other direction. “What about that guy from Worley? He says he owns a garage and could take the puppy to work with him.”
“Hmm.” Maude sipped her tea. “A garage is not the safest place for a puppy, is it? But we’ll see.”
The female puppy placed a shy paw on my thigh and I cradled her on my lap. Doc had pronounced her clear of any deadly contagion and put her vitamins and liquid antibiotics three times a day. She already looked better, but was half the size of her brothers and I suspected would always have a more reticent personality. Early handling and proper socialization would do a lot to build her confidence, but she was not going to be the easiest puppy to place.
“T
his young couple from Asheville looks promising,” Maude said. “But why would they want to come all the way down here to adopt a puppy?”
“They’re just visiting relatives for a few days,” I said. “That’s how they heard about us. The husband wanted to surprise his wife with a puppy for Christmas but I told him if he wanted to see the puppies both of them would have to come for the interview.”
“It looks as though we have a nice selection here. Why don’t you ring them up and ask them to pop round tomorrow morning. I can be here by nine or so.”
I was surprised. It didn’t take two of us to show a litter of puppies, and I had always handled this kind of thing by myself. “Since when do you not trust me to place a puppy?”
“Don’t be absurd.” She sipped her tea. “I should merely think that after what happened the other night you wouldn’t want to have strangers mucking about when you’re here alone.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or touched. “In the first place, I don’t need a babysitter. In the second place, it wasn’t a stranger who tried to drive his truck through my house, it was a neighbor. And in the third place—”
My cell phone rang.
“Unless it’s a retired veterinarian who also has a wall full of blue ribbons and is looking for a new dog to train to his OTCH, I think you can safely tell them we’ve placed the puppies.”
I got to my feet, cradling the female puppy in one arm. “It’s not a puppy call,” I said. “They come on the landline.” I found my cell phone on the kitchen counter and checked the caller ID. My heart actually skipped a beat and I quickly answered it.
“Hi,” I said. “Please notice that I not only answered my phone, I answered it on the second ring.”
But the voice on the other end did not belong to Miles.
“This is Melanie Young,” she said, in a very grown-up, businesslike tone. “You need to come get me.”
