He smiled to himself. “I hope not. The season’s just started.”
I said nothing, just stood there waiting.
He sighed. “In a group?”
“Just Allison and Nolan and me.” I pointed to where Nolan Chapman and Allison Lehman and some other fast twitch guys were still lunging and pushing against walls.
“All right. To the Tiki Hut and back. Okay? Stay to-gether and whatever you do, don’t stop for cocktails.” I half laughed with him. I’d seen what people looked like after Tiki Hut Scorpion Bowls. They were usually puky. And handcuffed if they tried to get into a car, thanks to Sheriff McGarry.
“Got it. No cocktails,” I said.
I jogged around the track, trying to make it look as though I was headed toward Nolan Chapman and Allison Lehman while I was actually running past them. When I was on the opposite corner of the field, and Ranger Dave had his head down studying a stopwatch, I ducked out the gate and onto the Santiam River Road. And then I sprinted like a buck till I was out of sight.
At least there was no danger of my getting tanked, because the Tiki Hut was not my destination.
Much as I hated to admit it, Gretchen was right about one thing: I had no method. I was just stumbling along, hoping I’d trip over something. So today I thought I’d try a different approach. I began at the mouth of the river, where the blue-white water churned and frothed before becoming the placid oily surface of Detroit Lake. I’d found Karen upstream from here, so I didn’t expect to find anything. I just wanted to have something to chart, proof of where I’d been. See, Gretchen? I’ve covered this. I can be systematic.
Combing this part of the river was much slower than above the inn, because this stretch had houses along it. Not many, but enough that I didn’t feel comfortable tramping through backyards. Sometimes I did it anyway.
I’ll know what I’m looking for when I find it. Maybe there was something of Karen’s still ensnared, circling the current. Did she have shoes on when I pulled her out of the river? A hair bow? I couldn’t remember. I just wanted something that the river had kept, something that left a trace. Here. Karen was here. But it wasn’t just traces of Karen I was looking for—it had to be Karen combined with something else, a larger footprint, a casually dropped match. Something that would ignite the whole town and light the way to what really happened.
Alas, as the sky went from gray to indigo, I came to the sad conclusion that the river was still harboring its secrets. I found traces of pollution but nothing to light the way. Just empty cold medicine wrappers, one Happy Meal toy, a smashed and rusted can of Bud Light, and something that looked like a purple plastic zucchini.
I was between yards, in a section of land that was huge and weepy with old growth, when I heard thrashing in the bushes and caught sight of something large and brown that looked like Tomás’ poncho.
“How did you find me?” I called.
No response from the bushes. Just more thrashing.
A cold current of fear shot through me. “Tomás?” I tried again.
That brought about a noise. Not speech. This was low and rumbly and sent tremors to the ground under my feet. Definitely not Tomás. Tomás didn’t growl.
I froze. Out from tall grass and horsetail ferns stepped the biggest hellhound I had ever seen in my life. It was the color of mud and its head was the size of a watermelon. It curled its lips back in a snarl.
Some of my friends love big dogs, always saying what was there to be afraid of, that most of them were giant cupcakes. I was definitely not a big-dog person. Thor was as large a dog as I’d been around, and this beast had a hundred pounds on Thor easily. Second, Sheriff McGarry once showed me this impressive red and puckery scar on her calf from where a rottweiler had dug into her when she was investigating a domestic disturbance.
There was nothing domestic about this canine. No collar, no leash, just a length of rope looped around its neck, its end trailing off into the bushes. He was head-to-toe mud and worse. Red showed through brown. He had multiple scratches and his ears looked like Shredded Wheat. Mud seemed to be the only thing holding this beast together.
And the smell. Hoo-wee! It was as though he’d been rolling in, then eating, a week-old skunk carcass.
We faced off, the beast snarling but not leaping at me, and me definitely not doing what my entire body told me to do, which was turn around and run.
“Hello?” I called hesitantly. “Will someone please come get your dog?”
No response from anyone other than the animal, who snarled louder.
I had no idea how this was going to turn out. I did know that if this creature managed to knock me down I’d have to cover my face and hope that the bites wouldn’t disfigure me. Those were some wicked-looking jaws. And there were ropes of something gelatinous hanging from its snout. I couldn’t tell if it was foam or really thick drool.
And that was when I started counting its ribs. One two three four five… the outlines of them were all clearly visible beneath the hide. When was the last time this animal had eaten? Six seven eight…
“Are you hungry?” I ventured.
No reaction. Hackles were still standing straight up on its back. He still didn’t move.
I rifled through the pockets in my shorts and found a cell phone and a banana-flavored PowerBar. Slowly, I drew it out and peeled back the wrapper.
I held it out to him. “Dinner?”
The beast stared at me. Grrrrr…
“Treats?” I tried again.
No response, but at least he still didn’t lunge. Come on, Ronnie. Mom would know how to make this sound appealing. “Yummy yummy treat. Definitely doesn’t taste like banana-flavored asbestos.”
The dog bellowed and I took one giant step back.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, waving the PowerBar around. “I’ve just never had a dog, okay? And this move out here. It’s been really hard. I lost a lot and there’s no one I can talk to about it.”
I wasn’t paying attention to the dog now. Out here in the middle of nowhere, I felt like I could complain and no one would hear me. So I gave myself permission to have a good whine. “I miss midnight movies,” I began. “I miss Starbucks. I miss all-ages shows at the Crystal Ballroom. And guidance counselors. Good ones. Man, don’t get me started on that. You know, I actually tried to go to one of the counselors at Hoodoo High to talk about which safety college I should apply to? I thought, maybe St. Olaf. That one in Minnesota? They have a great choir. And do you know what that guidance counselor said? She said, ‘We just got some information about St. Olaf last week and we threw it away. We never send anyone to St. Olaf. What about U of O?’ Can you imagine? Me at U of O? She meant well, I guess. She was thinking about the track program. But come on. U of O is huge. I mean: what about class size? What about liberal arts?”
In front of me, the animal was silent. Was it my imagination or had it cocked its head? It was almost as though it was studying me.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” I continued. “You know what the worst of it is?”
I paused for a reaction but none came.
“I sometimes forget that Karen isn’t coming back. I’ll be still for a second and think: she’ll come by later and we’ll share a cream cheese brownie and go exploring. And then I remember that she’s gone and it just hammers me, because when Karen was around I didn’t feel so alone.”
I sank to my knees. I had lost the face-off. The dog could pounce now, savage me, scar me for life, and I didn’t care. I probably wouldn’t even feel a thing. I put my head in my hands. “Come on now, boy,” I whispered. “Bring the rain.”
I sat there, empty, and waited for an attack.
It didn’t come. After a while, I heard a snuffling sound and looked up. The empty wrapper on the ground told me the dog had woofed the PowerBar, and was now nosing me in the head and arms as though I were a tasty treat, and I let him. I jerked my head up and looked in his eyes. Close up, they were soft and brown, almost gentle. Then, while I was t
rying to figure out what to do next, his tongue darted out and drenched my whole face in a disgusting, slobbery kiss.
“Gross! I even had my mouth open.” I wiped the saliva off my face with the back of my sleeve. I sniffed the air. In close range, the smell was even worse.
I stood up slowly and took in the length of him. His hackles were down and he was wagging his rump where a tail should have been. We were comrades now—all because he knew either from my words or my smell that I was the one creature in the Santiam National Forest who was probably as miserable as he was.
What now? Hesitantly, I grasped the rope around his neck and yanked the other end, which was still somewhere in the horsetail ferns. With one good tug it slithered free. It was short, ending in something big and dirty and rusted that looked like a railroad spike. I glanced from the hellhound, along the short rope, to the spike, and back. I thought I could piece together what had happened. Someone had kept this beast on a short chain and he’d broken free with sheer muscle power. Maybe I could find the owner and the owner would put him right back. On a short chain. Without food.
No. That was absolutely the wrong thing to do. But what was the right thing? Ranger Dave would know. I took the cell out of my pocket, called him, and explained the situation. He growled. “Jesus, Ronnie. How could you do that? I turned around and you were gone but Allison and Nolan were still here. How was I going to explain this to your parents?”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
I heard him breathe heavily into the mouthpiece. “All right. Come out to the road, I’ll find you.”
The animal and I galumphed along together, me keeping a loose grip on his rope. I knew that if he charged someone there was nothing I could do. But I held on anyway because I liked the illusion of control. He seemed to as well, first forging ahead and then looking back to make sure I was following. Come on, slowpoke.
When we got to the road, Ranger Dave was already there in his US Forest Service SUV. He opened the passenger door. “Get in,” he said. His tone was terse. I encouraged the critter into the backseat and got into the front. I didn’t say anything. I’d never seen Ranger Dave mad before, and it scared me.
“Call your dad right now,” he said as he eased the car out onto the highway. “Tell them we’re going to the vet. Tell them about the dog. Don’t mention where you found it, okay? Just say it wandered onto the track.”
I muttered a thanks and said something about making it up to him. His disappointment filled the car as much as the 150-pound dog in the backseat.
“Damn straight you will,” he said. “You can’t keep wandering off like that. It’s dangerous.”
“So I’m told,” I said.
He wagged a finger at me. “Don’t get smug, missy. We’ve got to find a way to curb your recklessness.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked.
“I don’t know right now. But believe me. There will be consequences.” He sniffed the air. “Pee-yew! Have you looked for dog tags?”
“No tags,” I said quickly. This beast belonged to someone before, but that someone had forfeited him.
Ranger Dave just nodded and cracked the back window hoping to dissipate the stench, and the dog spent the ride with his disgusting snoot in the open air, looking mournful.
At the vet’s office in Salem they took charge and knocked the dog out with a short-acting anesthetic so they could stitch up his ears and clean out the deep cuts. While we waited, Ranger Dave paced the parking lot talking on his cell, presumably with the Humane Society or Animal Control. I didn’t listen but figured he was trying to rig it so he could adopt the hound and let it convalesce at the ranger station.
At last the vet himself emerged, a guy with a gray moustache wearing scrubs with cartoon puppies and kittens on them. He was holding the dog on a leash. It was one of the funniest sights I’d ever seen because the beast was wearing some kind of inverted lampshade on his head and kept running into walls. Step, step, bonk! Step, step, bonk!
“Here you go, young lady,” the vet said, handing me both the leash and a bag that said “Salem Veterinary Associates” on it. “Food dish. Canned food so she’ll put on weight. We gave her her shots. You’re really lucky. You’ve got yourself a fine girl under all that muck. Looks to be a purebred mastiff.”
I stood there openmouthed, holding the leash in one hand and the bag in the other while she sat on my feet and swatted good-naturedly at me with her front paw.
“Ronnie,” Ranger Dave said. “She wants you to pet her.”
No no no. This was all wrong. She wasn’t mine. I wasn’t a dog person. I was especially not a mastiff person. A mastiff with ragged ears and, let’s face it, a really foul smell. There didn’t seem to be a centimeter on her hide that wasn’t shaved, or stitched, or gross, or all three at the same time. I didn’t want to pet her. I wanted her out of my life. I’d already done my part, hadn’t I? I’d rescued her from starvation.
I turned to Ranger Dave. “This is just for the ride home, right? You’ll take care of her, won’t you?”
“Not me,” he said, and smiled an impish smile. And I understood. I stared down into the dog’s face—her face—and knew that I was looking at the big hairy snout of my con-sequences. Ranger Dave hadn’t been on the phone with the Humane Society. He’d been on the phone with my parents who had decided it was a fine idea for me to have a pet.
My mood didn’t improve on the car ride home, either, because the oaf wouldn’t stay in the back seat. She would creep up on silent paws to where I was riding shotgun, and try to plunk herself into my lap. She seemed to think that if she was really slow and quiet, I wouldn’t notice her. It didn’t work for two reasons: 1) she wasn’t dainty, and 2) that lampshade kept getting in the way. I pushed her back twice, furious each time. As far as I was concerned, she was just one more thing anchoring me to a life I didn’t want.
By the third time I gave up trying to push her out of my lap. It was easier letting her have her way. I arrived at the inn cradling 150 pounds of muddy, stinky dog.
Mom and Dad were enjoying hot buttered rums on the front porch, safe and dry under the eaves with an outdoor heater pointed at their legs. Mom picked up a tray from the railing.
As soon as I opened the car door, the dog hopped out and careened up the front steps (walk walk bonk! Walk walk bonk!). Mom stood up and whipped the linen napkin off the tray. It was piled high, volcano-style, with grilled sausages and carmelized onions. The smell made me salivate worse than the dog, and I realized how hungry I was.
Then she plunked the tray on the ground, and I understood that, once again, the food wasn’t for me.
“Now let’s see. These have chicken, apple, and cumin, and those are andouille, and these are chorizo…”
It didn’t matter. The dog put her head down and they were gone in one massive slurp. Then she looked up, belched, shook her head, and the slobber went winging all over the porch. I thought for sure that now Mom would be disgusted, mutter a few phrases about health code violations, and make us find the dog some other home. But she just laughed. It was more than a laugh, it was actually a cackle. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Mom cackle. It took ten years from her lined face.
“Are you sure this one’s okay?” Dad said to Ranger Dave. “Couldn’t we start with something smaller?”
“This is exactly the right one,” he said, and Dad didn’t question him further. Ranger Dave knew his critters.
Mom sniffed the air. “Too bad about the aroma,” she said. “Do we have to wait until the stitches come out until we can bathe her?”
But then a funny thing happened. It was like in horror movies when halfway through the film you stop sympathizing with the heroine and start sympathizing with the serial killer. When Mom made that comment about her pungent bouquet, this beast with the brindled schnoz of death stopped being a beast, and became my beast. And I couldn’t have anyone dissing my beast.
“She’s not so bad,” I said. “She smells just like a petun
ia.”
With that, Dad opened the front door and Petunia herself trotted right in, proprietarily, as though she’d lived here forever.
15
Petunia wasn’t the only consequence of my recklessness. I was also grounded from using the family car for two weeks, which meant Dad had to drop off Tomás and me at school, then pick us up after practice, like in kindergarten.
That first afternoon of chauffeurage, Tomás and I were camped out in front of the gym while the fast twitch kids were still stacking hurtles. They gave me all kinds of grief when Dad pulled up in his SUV with Petunia painting the back window in slobber. “Look, Ronnie. Your daddy’s here,” Nolan Chapman said.
“Hi, Tomás,” Allison Lehman said with a sly little wave. Tomás acknowledged her with a thrust of his chin, and continued his slow lurch to the car.
“This sucks,” I hissed to him. “How come my stock has gone down and yours has gone up?”
Tomás paused with his fingers wrapped around the door handle. His brow was a “v” shape of concentration. Then after what seemed a half hour, he turned to where Nolan was, and slowly, deliberately, flipped him off.
“That better?” he said as he crammed himself into the shotgun seat.
“Yes,” I said. And surprisingly, it was.
Even before I sat down Petunia was crawling into my lap and thrusting her snoot into my face. I managed to get an arm up to block her but her lampshade scratched it. When I pulled away to inspect the damage she zoomed in for a full-face slurp.
“What does Ranger Dave say about dog breath?”
“Live with it,” Dad barked.
When we walked through the front door of the inn, I hung up my dripping rain jacket and dropped Petunia’s leash. Dad stopped me with an “Uh-uh-uh, Veronica. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Washing my hands then prepping?” It’s what I did most afternoons. I figured after I’d been so grievously busted I would be chopping cilantro for the rest of my life.
Dad leaned over and picked up Petunia’s leash, giving the end to me. “First you need to walk your dog. Do you have your mace?” Now this was more like the old Dad. He knew, even without my telling him, that I had no idea where my mace was. I’d lost track of it as soon as Sheriff McGarry gave it to me.
The River Page 9
