Chasing AllieCat

by Rebecca Fjelland Davis

  We had the cavalry! Or the infantry, I guess it was. But we didn’t have Allie, and we didn’t have Siren.

  Allie kissed Siren’s head and worked frantically to unbuckle the muzzle.

  Cecil yanked Allie by one arm and said, “Leave the dog be. He’ll be fine. He’ll come out of it in an hour or so. I said, get in the house.”

  “He’ll die if you leave him here with the muzzle on.”

  “He won’t die. I said, get in the house. Before the cops come. You love the damn dog more than your daddy?”

  “It’s too hot and he’s drugged. He can’t get enough air. He has to pant.”

  “Leave the muzzle on so he won’t bite when he wakes up. Now get in the damn house,” Cecil said through his teeth. “Leave him be.” They were indeed father and daughter.

  “I’m getting this off him first !” Allie’s voice rose higher and higher.

  “Get … in … the—”

  “No! Not ’til—”

  Siren thrashed violently.

  “He’s having a seizure or something!” This time Allie jerked away and got the buckle open, ripped the muzzle off Siren, but I could see the gray body twitching violently anyway, legs flailing. Siren lurched, legs stiff, and the spasms stopped. Then he went limp.

  “No! No! Siren! Siren! Look at me, Siren!”

  Cecil stood, staring down. Allie took Siren’s head in her hands. “Siren! Siren!” She touched his eyelid and got no response. She shook him. She leaned her head down to Siren’s chest and held it there for a moment. “No. No. Noooooo! Nooooo!” She sat up, still holding his head.

  “He’s dead.” She looked up at her father. “You.”

  Her voice was the same, level, deadly emotionless voice her father could use. “You. You killed my dog.”

  She laid Siren’s head gently on the ground and rose to her feet. “You killed my dog! You killed Siren!”

  Allie’s voice rose to a roar, and as quick as she’d grabbed the pool ball and hurled it at the rednecks, she whipped her bike pump from her back pocket and charged her father. She swung with all the might that planted that cue ball into the Last Chance paneling, and with all the might that could beat the pants off anybody climbing a hill on a bike, and with all her might, she brought her tire pump against her father’s face with a sickening crack.

  “You killed Siren, and you killed Father Malcolm, and you don’t get to take anything more away from me! You hear?”

  Cecil staggered, grabbed at his head and pulled the gun from his jeans. “Stop, Allie. Baby. Stop.” He was bleeding from the eye, and the pump opened a cut from his eye down his cheek. His nose wasn’t straight anymore, and trickled blood. Allie swung again, at his gun hand, connecting with the knuckles wrapped around the gun, and the gun went off in the air, the pistol’s crack blasting a hole into the trailer just below the roof. Smoke and debris flew. Allie swung again, both hands, like she had a bat, cracking the bike pump into his jaw, fast as lightning, and again at his gun hand.

  Then Cecil’s other arm snaked out and captured her against him, by the neck, trying to squeeze off her windpipe. “Stop it, you wildcat.”

  I didn’t remember moving, but I was on my feet, moving towards Allie.

  “Sadie! No!” Thomas’s voice barked from the shadows. “Cecil, let her go. Get your goddam hands up. Right now.”

  In front of me, Cecil waved his pistol toward the voice, saw me, and pointed the gun at me. Allie went crazy, fighting like a wildcat.

  Thomas stepped out of the shadows, and Cecil fired in Thomas’ direction.

  Another gunshot cracked in my eardrums. Cecil lurched forward, still holding Allie.

  A dark spot bloomed on Cecil’s shoulder. He tried to aim his pistol at Thomas, but his arm wasn’t working right, and the pistol went off far in front of Thomas’s feet.

  Then Cecil waved the gun in my direction, and Scout moved around me faster than he’d moved on Memorial Day, faster than anything that big should be able move. Cecil had a moment of confusion, riddled with pain, trying to aim again and facing a black-powder rifle on one side and a giant charging him on the other. He decided to shoot at the giant Scout, who was about to eclipse the moon in the sky as he tackled him.

  The gun went off at Scout as all three of them—Scout, Cecil, and Allie—hit the ground. The pistol flew out of Cecil’s hand.

  Scout held him down. Thomas came thundering over, and the muzzle of the black-powder rifle, in Thomas’s hands, was against Cecil’s temple. “Move again,” Thomas said, “and I’ll blow your head off. And I’d love to get to do it, so I’m hopin’ you move. Scout, you alive?”

  Scout grunted.

  Allie scrambled out from the pile over to Siren. Her wail was almost as loud as the gunshot. She sank to her knees and took Siren’s head in her lap, rocking back and forth in the dirt and weeds, rocking and rocking.

  She didn’t even look over her shoulder when she finally could speak enough to ask, “Scout, did he shoot you?”

  “Yup,” Scout said.

  “You going to be okay?”

  “Flesh wound,” he said. “Plenty of it here to hit, too. He couldn’t have missed.” He was trying to laugh, but his voice was pinched with pain.

  The mobile home door opened with a tinny squeak. A woman in a wrinkled aqua bathrobe and dark circles around her eyes leaned in the doorway. She peered into the dim yardlight and shielded her eyes with a pale, bony hand. “Wha—What was that?” she said. “Cecil? Honey? I heard guns.” Her black hair was streaked with gray and hung in a messy ponytail. “Allison? Is that you, honey? What happened?”

  She staggered out onto the top step, a skeleton in an bathrobe, and saw Scout’s body still pinning Cecil to the ground, Thomas standing over them both with a gun to her husband’s head, and she started screaming. “Who—Who are you? What are you doing to my husband? Did you shoot him?!” Then she let loose a full-bodied scream. “Cecil! Ohmygod, Cecil!”

  “Mom!” Allie screamed right back, and then her voice got quiet. “Mom. Dad started it.” She kept rocking Siren. Without looking up, she said, “Meet my mother.”

  Sirens wailed down the gravel street, coming toward us. I was getting used to that sound. And it was nothing new in LeHillier.

  THirty

  Siren

  July 4, continued

  After the police hauled Cecil away in one ambulance and Scout in another, Allie’s mom got hauled to detox.

  We went to the hospital, where Officer Rankin and another detective talked to us for over an hour.

  The pistol shell had lodged against Scout’s collarbone, so they took him in for emergency surgery to remove it. He’d have to stay at Immanuel-St. Joe’s for a couple days.

  Cecil had a deep flesh wound where the bullet from Thomas’s black-powder rifle had grazed his upper arm. “I’m a better shot than I thought,” Thomas said. “Couldn’t have asked to hit him in a better spot. Good thing Cecil didn’t know I can only load one bullet at a time. When I held the gun to his head, it was empty.”

  But the wound meant Cecil was on lock-down in the hospital.

  We brought Allie home with us from the police station in Thomas’s extended-cab pickup. I led her down to my cedar closet and she curled into a ball next to me on the roll-out bed. I wanted to put my hand on her shoulder, but I didn’t dare. I lay there, listening to her breathe.

  July 5

  Allie decided to bury Siren in the junk woods where we found Father Malcolm. We’d wrapped him in a sheet and left him in the garage overnight. Peapod wanted to get into the garage in the worst way, but I didn’t let him in. First thing in the morning, we went out to bury Siren. It was too hot to wait even one day, so we couldn’t wait for Scout.

  Allie carried Siren herself. She wrapped him in her quilt from the bike shop. He was heavy, and w
hen we’d brought him to Scout’s, he was like a rag doll. Now he was stiff and unwieldy, but she refused to let any of us carry him. We followed her, in an odd funeral procession: Allie with her awkward bundle of Siren; Peapod right behind her, sniffing at Siren; then me and Joe, each bearing a shovel; Megan, who insisted on helping; and Timmy, Stevie, and Thomas with three shovels.

  Allie laid Siren down by where we were going to dig. Peapod sniffed him all over, pawed at him, trying to wake him up, whined, and lay down right next to Siren’s body like they were two puppies from the same litter. Peapod didn’t budge or quit whimpering the whole time the four of us took turns digging.

  Buzzards circled above us, three of them, like graceful two-toned kites. When we were finally done, we had a five-foot-deep grave so nobody would ever dig him up.

  Only then, we looked up at the buzzards. “Damn things,” Thomas said, mopping his face with his hanky. “They’re pretty from down here.”

  “Funny, isn’t it,” I said, “that anything so ugly up close can be glorious from way down here?”

  “Hope heaven isn’t like that,” Joe said. He looked at me. “If there is one.”

  “Ha,” Thomas says. “I wouldn’t put my bets on it, either way.”

  Allie threw down her shovel and screamed toward the sky, “You can’t have him! You bastard buzzards! Go away! You can’t have him!”

  She scooped Siren up, climbed down into the grave, laid him down, snug in the quilt. She patted his head and his haunches one last time, bent over to kiss his nose, covered his nose with the quilt, and then climbed out of the hole.

  Thomas said, “Allie, sorry this is so hard.” I could tell he would have hugged her if he thought she’d let him, but it was obvious that he remembered the last time he tried to touch her. “It sucks to lose such a good friend.”

  Allie stared down into the hole. “Two friends in one day. Why is it the good ones get killed and the ones who do the hurting just keep on going?”

  “I’ll second that question,” Joe said.

  “No rhyme or reason that I can figure,” Thomas said.

  “Siren was the best dog in the world,” Allie said. She reached out and touched Peapod’s head. “No offense, buddy.”

  “They say,” Thomas said, “that a good life is six dogs long. We always outlive our good dogs.”

  “Maybe this is the price I gotta pay for having a great dog in my life for almost seven years.”

  When we started dropping shovelfuls of dirt on top of his body, Peapod watched, then sat up and started to howl. It was eerie. We stopped and stood, shovels poised, watching him howl. Peapod stopped the racket and looked at each of us—first me, then Joe, then Thomas. Then he got up and nosed Allie’s hand and whimpered. She sat down and wrapped her arms around him, buried her nose in his neck.

  We waited. Finally, Allie got to her feet and threw in another shovelful of dirt. We joined her, and Peapod started howling again and howled until we were done filling in the dirt and piling stones on top. We piled so many rocks on top that it would take a bulldozer to move them. Peapod howled the whole time.

  When we finished, Peapod went over to Allie, who let him lick the tears off her face.

  “This is good,” she said. “Peapod can visit him, and his ghost can chase rabbits and ground squirrels, and maybe keep out some of the morons who dump their junk in here.”

  “That would be a big job, even for a ghost dog,” Thomas said.

  All four of us walked back up the hill together, carrying our shovels. Peapod walked between Allie and me.

  “You cried again,” I said, wiping my own tears.

  “Yup,” she said. “You know, Sadie, this was the second time in twenty-four hours.”

  I nodded. “I know. But you barely even cried last night.”

  “Sometimes I’m too mad to cry.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to cry.” I reached over and squeezed her hand. She didn’t pull away. She squeezed back.

  Even more amazing, while we were walking, Joe reached over and put his arm around her shoulder. I expected her to pull away, but she didn’t. She let him almost hug her, and she almost hugged him back. And then she wiped snot on her T-shirt sleeve.

  Thirty-One

  Allie and Me

  July 5, continued

  After Siren’s funeral, Allie and I went for a walk down by the river with Peapod.

  We stopped and watched the sunlight dapple the water. We walked until we saw the chain-saw sign, water-logged off its nails, at the bottom of the tree.

  “What a moron,” Allie said, shaking her head. “Hey, Sadie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Thanks.” She looked at me, held my gaze. “For everything.”

  She stepped close and touched my shoulder. All I could think about was Joe asking me if she was a lesbian. Then she let me hug her. She hugged back and started to sob, slowly at first, and then harder and harder. I let her cry.

  I felt like I was distant from myself, watching this happen. I felt too young to be doing this much comforting, with death all around. This must be what it’s like in a war zone, I thought.

  Then she kissed my cheek. I didn’t kiss back.

  “Too bad you’re not into girls,” Allie whispered. “I really, really like you.”

  I pulled back a little. She moved back a half step, but still held me. I could see in her face that she was scared she’d gone too far.

  “Allie, I really, really like you, too. But not that way.”

  “I know. Sorry.” She dropped her arms.

  “No, no. It’s okay.” I grabbed both her hands. “You don’t have to be sorry. You’re the coolest girl I think I’ve ever met. If I was into girls, I would be into you! I told you before, most of the summer I’ve just wanted to be you.”

  “Ha! That’s a good one. Not anymore, I bet. Who’d want to be me now?”

  I grinned. “Well, it sure is more complicated than I thought before.”

  “That’s a nice way to say my life is all fucked up.”

  And we smiled at each other, a big deep smile. And I reached out and pulled her into another long hug. And she hugged back.

  That night, Allie camped out with me in CCC again. For a while, I felt weird about sleeping in the same bed with a lesbian, and I wondered if she would hit on me when she was half-asleep. I mean, I wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with a guy. But when I opened my eyes in the morning and she was still curled in a tight little ball on the other side of the double bed, I felt bad for even thinking it. Allie was Allie, and she didn’t want to screw up our friendship either.

  July 6

  The next morning, she went back to her baking job in North Mankato, and I went back to the Blue Ox, blending into the world of red checks and twenty-four-ounce steaks.

  Barb was cooking. “So,” she said when I handed her an order, “what’ve you been up to? You gotta tell me why you needed an extra day off. Or did you have a boring Fourth of July like I did?”

  I laughed. I didn’t know where to start, so I said, “It wasn’t boring, that’s for sure. I got third in my mountain bike race.”

  “Way to go.” She grinned at me.

  “Oh, and the priest died. And Allie’s dog died. And her dad got out of prison and got arrested again. And Thomas shot Allie’s dad. And Joe kissed me.” The least important detail of the day, it seemed now, but it was probably the one Barb would be most interested in. She stood there with her mouth open, staring at me.

  I just headed for my first table and let her wonder.

  AfterwardS ...

  Today: Staying Alive

  July 8

  Cecil Baker had his preliminary hearing on Friday. He’s in custody, held without bail. He pleaded not guilty, of course, but the evidence was overwhelming against him
. The trial is set for November. Joe and I will have to testify, along with Allie, of course, and Thomas, Scout, and Dr. Rathburn, so Joe will come back from Phoenix and I’ll have to come down from Minnetonka for it. The lawyer said he has no idea how long the trial will last. At least I’ll get to see Joe in November.

  No charges were filed against Thomas for shooting to wound Cecil Baker. The prosecuting attorneys wouldn’t touch the case. They said it was a no-brainer, even with Thomas and Scout on probation.

  Father Malcolm Dykstra’s funeral is tomorrow morning at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. Allie says we’re all going, and none of us dare argue with her.

  I go over to Scout’s Last Chance, to meet Joe and Allie for a bike ride. With Scout’s bar broom, I sweep away the last remnants of bottle rockets and firecrackers from the steps. Then Joe pulls up, leans his bike against the building, Peapod wags without getting up, and we sprawl in the shade on the front step with Peapod while we wait for Allie.

  Joe grins at me. “How ya doin’ after all this, Sadie-Sadie?”

  I smile back. “It feels good to just be.”

  Joe puts his hand on my knee. His touch sends a jolt of electricity through my legs and upward.

  I say, “I’m glad it’s over.”

  He looks into my eyes, like he can see all the way inside, and nods. “I feel about ten years older than I was six months ago, before John died.”

  I take his hand, the one that’s on my knee, and we both squeeze.

  “I sure am glad,” he says, “that if I had to go through all this, it was with you.”