by Jeff Beeman
It smells of the good death, which I have learned means no un-people. I open the blinds to let the last of the daylight in. With that done, I go check out the rest of the apartment. I first go into the kitchen and opened the small blinds. There is only one bedroom and it is here that I find her. She had died in bed. Her night stand is burdened with over-the-counter medicine they used during the first months when The Bad had reached our part of the county. The way her body had been laying on the bed, I think she met the good death in her sleep. She has now melted and become part of the bed, except for her bones. There is the body of a small animal that curled its self behind what might have been her knees. It has joined her into becoming part of the bed. I feel like it might have been a cat. Loyal and loving till the last moments. I am glad that they will be together from now on. No one should be lonely in this or the next place we go to when we stay dead. I go into the closet and bring out a big blanket and cover them so when I open the window blinds, it will not disturb them.
Finally, I make it back to the living room. The outside air is changing the smell of the apartment as rain starts to fall outside. I feel worse but Bouncy Bouncy and I are dry. I sit on the dusty couch and pick him up. With what is left of the light, I look him over again. He is still soggy and there are the pink and red marks. It takes me a moment to get up because my legs seem weak and stiff. Slowly I move to the kitchen. There I find a roll of paper towels. Moving back to the couch, I slowly sit and then unroll the first few layers of paper towels to get past the dusty sheets. Once that is done, I take my army canteen out of the back pack, dampen a handful of clean paper towels and begin to clean my bunny. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remove the stains. I keep trying but nothing is really working. Frustrated, I hold him up in what light have left. It is then I realize that this is coyote’s blood.
My bunny is covered in blood is all that I can think. I begin to rock back and forth, all the time looking at what I did to my bunny.
I am numb, yet begin to shake.
I am numb but my body feels like I do when I am afraid and want to run away but can’t.
I am numb and yet I am vibrating.
“My Bouncy Bouncy is covered in blood!” Like ice beginning to thaw, tears begin to flow. “BOUNCY BOUNCY IS COVERED IN BLOOD!!” I cry out to the gathering darkness. “I am sorry, Bouncy Bouncy” I keep wailing as darkness engulfs us. “I know Daddy, I promised not to cry but Bouncy Bouncy is covered in blood and I am tired. Daddy I am tired and don’t want to do this alone any more. Please come get us and take us with you and Momma!!! Please, I am sorry....I am so sorry....please don’t let us be alone anymore!!!! Please....Bouncy is covered in blood!!!!”
Another day has arrived. I wake up to rain sounds mixed with wind chimes. I hurt and feel empty. Bouncy Bouncy is my arms and we are covered in dust and are on the couch, in an apartment that belongs to a dead woman. I listen to the rain and the music that comes from the chimes. My legs and back hurt.
Stiffly I roll to a sitting position but pain makes me jump off the couch and painfully land on my knees. Gingerly I touch my backside to find my panties are torn and underneath them, what feels like a scab. Still holding on to Bouncy Bouncy, I get up. My legs are stiff and it hurts them and my backside to walk. I go to the front door, unlock both locks. Then I go outside and get my flash light. Using it to look around in the bathroom, I find rubbing alcohol still in date. Going back to the living room, I gently put Bouncy Bouncy on the couch after putting down some clean paper towels for him to sit on. Then I take off my panties. They are pretty torn up in the seat and there is some blood. It is about then I realize I peed on myself when the coyote had me. I’m too tired to really care or even feel embarrassed. Taking a handful of paper towels, I get them soggy with the rubbing alcohol. It takes a moment but I “man up” and apply the wet paper towels to where I think I am cut. I wish I had waited longer.
After a lot of pain, I think I have cleaned my cuts. I apply what first aid ointments I have and band aids. In “clean” clothes, I wait out the rain. I put a blanket I found in a storage bag in the closet onto the couch. I sleep a lot as I am feeling very tired and lulled by the steady rain fall and occasional wind chime songs.
Finally, the sun returns to a wet and cold world. I think it has been two days. I have slept so much I can’t really tell. Funny I never really felt hungry, so I still have a lot of what I brought left before touching what I found. The wind chimes seem to be cheerfully greeting the day and wishing us a safe trip. Since the ground is soft with mud, I will have to work my way past where I think the chimes are. I might just take them to help make the base more cheery. Before the leaving though, I lower the bedroom blinds and thank the dead woman for the use of the apartment.
As I walk along the covered walkway while pulling my wagon, I think I hope the chimes have butterflies like what my cousin had on her patio. I don’t have a lot of time to think about that part of the family a lot, because as I come around the corner to where the chimes are, I also blindly walk up to an un-person who is looking at the chimes. I am so startled that I gasp. The un-person turns their gray black streaked face and looks down with their small for their eye socket darkened eyes. Then it moans!
I backed up but tripped and painfully fell over the tongue of my wagon as the moaning horror begin to stalk me. Like a bolt from the blue, black fury swiftly flew over me. It was the blood monster. Instead of attacking me or trying to steal Bouncy Bouncy, it attacks the moaner by ramming its bulk against the chest of the un-person. The moaner doesn’t fall but it does lose its momentum which allows me to scramble up and get to my walking rod. The moaner is confused by the daylight so it can’t make up its mind who to attack but it is still moaning which will bring more moaners and make even statues become hunters. Moving quickly in a wide circle, I run at it with my walking rod held up over my head and aim for its chest. At the same time, the beast is attacking its pants leg. I hit it squarely in the chest with the end of my rod, just as the monster forces the un-persons leg up. It falls down moaning all the way to the patio wall, where a funny sound comes from it. Suddenly the moaner stops moaning and just sort of floats in position. In a short moment, I hear something squeak and then the un-person fall to a sitting position on the wet ground. A black goo trails down the patio wooden wall. I have seen that goo before. It is sort of their blood, I think. The beast growls but doesn’t attack it again. I poke it a few times, which caused it to follow and roll over on to its front. I can now see black goo dripping out of the lower part of the back of its head. Part of a nail point is sticking out of where the goo is bubbling out. Weird!
The beast is pacing and growling at the still moaner. This is the second time it has saved me. Though I was not going to let it near Bouncy Bouncy, I do owe it my life. Daddy and Momma always said I should thank someone when they did a kind thing, I guess that should go for the beast. I went back into the apartment, got the food/water bowl from the kitchen, washed it out and put some of my food and some of my water out for it. The beast wearily looks at me and then more and more at the food and water I am going leave for it. As I walk away with my wagon in tow, I can hear it go over and begin eating the couple of day’s worth of food I left for it.
Daddy always told me not to feed strays, lest they follow me home. Boy, was he right.
Chapter Four
Wash Day
First of all I am a cat person. Second of all I am afraid of big dogs. So here I am trying to learn how to live with the biggest dog I have ever met. I have been near dogs before. Some of our neighbors had some and my Girl Scout troop held a dog day fair at a Fort Worth dog park. It had been real fun. We made toys for the dogs and gone to various pet stores and vets to get stuff to go in the dog parents’ baskets. We were responsible for the activities and upkeep of the park during our fair. I had a lot of fun, especially with a basset hound named Rough. So I have been around dogs, just not like this dog. If we are both standing, I can rest my head on his back, not that I would want to,
as dirty and smelly as he is, but this does make him the biggest dog I have ever been around. The dog’s coat is not fully black as I once thought. He does have what looks like a tan patch of fur on his chest, under all the dirt and stuff. His eyes, though, bother me as they are so dark, they look black, similar to an un-person, just the right size for the eye socket. Also, he looks weird as if he has parts of smaller dogs replacing his original parts like his ears look too small to be on his head. They are just long enough to fold. His tail also looks too short but it is thick and strong. One of the few times he has wagged his tail, I was too close and it bashed into my leg. It felt like when Emily let the tree branch snap back at me during a Girl Scout camp. Though the tail didn’t raise a whelp like the tree branch had, it sure felt like it should have.
Also unlike cats who are tidy, well except when they cough up a fur ball, vomit half of what they ate earlier with wet food being the worst, or scattering cat litter everywhere, the dog does his private business everywhere. It took quite a few tries, but I was finally able to break into the janitor’s closet and get somethings to help clean and/or scoop up his business. Still, the base now smells bad. I haven’t figured out what to do with his pooh, so I have been putting it in desk trash cans and storing them in the third floor conference room. I have to hold my breath when I make a delivery because it is so bad in that room, even with just a few stored deposits. Because of his always doing his private business all over the place, at night I put him out of the fifth floor.
Of course this was after having to take down all the traps I had set up in that section of the building. It took a while but the dog can go from the ground floor all the way up the fifth safely. I have to admit, though, it makes the trip a lot faster, but I will only admit that to Bouncy Bouncy.
The only other big change is I had to put Jingles in a closet. The dog went ape when we first entered the base. “Went ape” is kind of a funny sentence. If used about me, that would make sense since some people say we are from a branch of the tree of life that monkeys and apes come from, but to use it for a dog is maybe wrong. Though saying he went wolf sounds completely different than what I meant. Luckily Bouncy Bouncy understands what I mean. Anyway, I had to use my flashlight, walking rod to eventually get Jingles into a closet. Neither Jingles nor the dog seem satisfied with the outcome but it was the best thing I could come up with at the time.
The phrase, “Eats like a horse” really fits the dog, and I should know because Momma and I spent a weekend at a horse camp during a mother/daughter Girl Scout retreat before she got so sick, and long before The Bad times. The food supplies are going down faster than when it was just Daddy and I.
It is going to take a lot more supply runs to keep us going. I have heard and read stories where hunters and their faithful dogs hunted and scavenged together. This dog just does his private business everywhere or just sits there looking at me as I do the daily base chores, which now includes taking care of his private business. Sometimes I will talk out loud. I seem to be doing that more now that the dog is in our lives. It is during one of these times that he will turn his head to the right like I am crazy for saying what I said. At least cats have the good manners of looking like they are asleep when they think you’re talking crazy.
After a couple of days, I finally feel the day has come, Wash Day! The last few days had been pretty warm as they will become around here. I know other places in the country have winter all season long but here in Texas, we can easily go from freezing and all bundled up, to sitting next to the pool in our swim clothes in a couple of days and vice versa. Well, it has been clear after the days of rain earlier, so I decide it is time to wash some clothes, Bouncy Bouncy, the dog, and myself. Though I have water here at the base, that is needed for drinking and there is no place to properly dry things without getting them dusty or smelling like the ashes from where I warm rocks and such.
No, the only proper place is Cheesy Park. The park’s real name is Chisholm Park but when I was younger, I couldn’t say the name right. It kept coming out as Cheesy, so Momma and Daddy decided our family would call it Cheesy Park. It is close enough to get to, set up wash camp, and get the job done and back before sun down, even adding the side trip. Also I have explored the homes right next to the park, so I know they are normally safe plus one has my wash day supplies. If there is a moaner wandering around, I will hear it and we can do the washing another day. The night before, I packed what I needed to take with me. Since it was an easy trip, I normally would have my utility belt, which I picked up on the way back to the base, a couple of snacks, water container, long bunch of wire and a bunch of stuff to wash but because of the side trip, I also planned to bring my backpack though it would be empty. The clothes to be washed go into an old jumbo trash bag. It is starting to look thin in spots. Looking at the “laundry bag”, I say out loud, “Looks like I need to get a new one from the supply house”. The dog just looks at me like he normally does, just sitting there and watching me work. Well I have a couple of surprises for him on the way back. I giggle to myself, which causes Mister Critic to just turn his head to the right like he does. With that done, I get my warm rocks, put Mister Stinky out of the fifth floor and prepare my nest for Bouncy Bouncy and me. Big day tomorrow.
We get started just as the sun rises. It is a good sign that this early in the morning, there is barely any steam from our breath. Since we are getting low on food supplies, I didn’t eat a breakfast, though my tummy growls at me to eat something. The dog is waiting for me and down we go to get the loaded wagon. We walk with me pulling the wagon down Central till we can make a left at East Harwood but I make sure to stay on the far left side. This corner is where the shopping center that has the grocery store where people were attacked by a hunting pack. I can see the large broken window easily from the street. That is all I am going to say about that spooky place.
We continue down Harwood until we come to Norwood drive. Funny how the streets have wood in them. Daddy once told me that Hurst meant wood, or maybe that it meant a bunch of trees. I thought about it as we walk to the park.
Finally, we made it as we walk through the park entrance. We go through the park to the back part where there is a long wooden fence. There is a section of the dividing wall that has fallen and gives access to the backyard of one of the homes. It is this home that I keep my washing supplies. The dog, Bouncy Bouncy and I enter the house/supply house. It looks like it was once a really a nice home, kind of like what I can remember of ours before we had to move to an apartment. Daddy said we had to let the house go so we could help pay to make Momma better. He did keep us close enough so I could still go to the old school. I sometimes think about the old house and wonder if the cats went back to see if we did. Suddenly I am pushed up and forward from something hitting my behind. I have to grab the kitchen counter to keep from falling. I spin and there is the dog. He is just sitting there looking back at me. I guess I had stopped too long and he is telling me he is bored. I sniffle back some sadness and get to work putting the past and thoughts like that back where they belong.
After loading the two big boiling pots, two smaller pots, two plastic gallon bottles, two chip bag clips, three large trash bags, golf putter, hair brush, grill, laundry soap and a shrinking bar of soap, I pull my wagon towards the swings area. This is where I have dug a fire pit to boil water. If I was stronger or if someone could help me, I could fill the big pots and take them to the fire pit. I tried once to fill a big pot with pond water. It is still there deep in the mud. Moving water from the pond to the pots is the most boring part of the day. The dog leaves me and does what he does a lot, doing his private business on things.
With the fire going and water waiting to boil, I go over to the closest set of swings. Here I set up my drying lines. Daddy told me once that this is how his momma used to dry clothes. I guess they hadn’t invented electricity yet back then. The dog has jumped into the pond and is swimming around. Good thing the park ducks have gone south or he would probably do hi
s business on them also. I know how to swim but never thought about swimming in the pond. The water doesn’t look clean enough. I prefer to swim in a pool like they used to have here or at my uncle’s home in Arlington.
Once the water is ready, I take some of the hot water out with the two smaller pots. Then using the golf putter, wash the clothes. This is really nothing more than just stirring them around in hot water and some laundry soap. The next step is to get the individual items out, carefully putting them on the clothes wire. If this was part of mini-golf, which is one of the things I miss, I would be a pro. Once they cool a little, I wring them out and then leave them to air dry. Next step is to wash Bouncy Bouncy. Using the tongs, I repeatedly dip and swirl him in the hot wash water. The stains from the dog are still there. I change tactics by cowgirl up. I hold him out of the water, blow on him five hard times and then start squeezing his stained torso with my right hand. I get two good squeezes before the pain makes me drop him into the pot. I dance and shake my hurt hand for a moment till I can get past the pain. Then I use the tongs to get him out again. I can only get one sorta squeeze in before I drop him again back into the wash. Tears swell up but I won’t cry. Instead I pull the bunny out of the water and use the chip clips to keep him on the drying wire, though it takes me a few tries. My right hand stings and hurts. Since I am going to be washing later, I go over to the pond and put my right hand in the cool water. It helps but as I do this, that dog comes over and shakes the water off himself all over me. I really miss my cats!
