Notes from the Dog (6 page)

“We are losing Matthew to the macho crap-heads at the site,” Johanna told me a week after the start of our fund-raising campaign.

We were in the front yard, planting impatiens on either side of the front steps.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Last night at dinner all he talked about were ball-peen hammers and Phillips-head screwdrivers. I lost track of how many times he said ‘It is what it is,’ and I think we were”—she held up her thumb and forefinger millimeters apart—“this close to having him actually demonstrate how a ‘bathroom bottle’ functions.”

“You should talk,” Matthew said, suddenly appearing on the sidewalk as if out of thin air. “Did we not spend all Tuesday night discussing”—here he shut his eyes to think and recited—“snapdragons, Chinese
forget-me-nots, California poppies and Madagascar periwinkle? Yeah. Good times.”

He flopped on the ground and glared at the pots of impatiens.

“What happened at the site?”

“The boss brought his kid to work and I got stuck with him.”

“You mean you were ba—”

“I was
not
babysitting!”

“No, of course not. What were you doing?” Johanna asked kindly.

“Technically I’m a floater—I go wherever they need me—but today I was floating in a sea of potty.”

I smiled to myself. Now let’s see who has the wussiest summer job.

Before I could rib him, he went on, “He knows squat about aiming. And his mother sent him to work with a backpack full of marshmallow and cereal treats and he bounced around on a sugar high.”

He looked up at us from picking the calluses on his hands.

“Okay, so it was babysitting. But I didn’t get eight bucks an hour, I didn’t get a pizza delivered and I didn’t get to watch cable I can’t see at home.”

“That’s not all you do, right?” Johanna asked.

“I got to use the nail gun the other day and that was pretty awesome. I taped the safety lock and every time I pulled the trigger, the nails came out like bullets. I hit
a signpost thirty feet away.” He paused. “They don’t let me near the nail gun anymore.”

“But you know, Matthew,” I said, “I bet no other freshman worked on a construction site all summer. You can say, ‘I helped build that.’”

“Yeah. That’ll kill Mike Gray—he still makes fun of the birdhouse I built in industrial arts.”

“Hey! Can I have your birdhouse to hang in the tree over there? Mine turned out more like a bird shack that had been run over by a garbage truck.”

“Sure.” He was feeling magnanimous.

Johanna said, “We’re on the same page: I just ordered a bird feeder and a birdbath.”

Dylan barked.

“A doghouse,” we all said.

“Why didn’t we think of it before?” Johanna petted Dylan’s ears.

Matthew said, “I can take a look at the remnant and discard piles at work and we can slap something together.”

“You know what else I’d like?” Johanna asked. “Wind chimes to listen to as I fall asleep at night.”

“I can make those out of old spoons,” Matthew said.

We kept throwing ideas around. I was feeling great—everything was going well with the garden. I had the whole situation under control.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was deviating from Johanna’s plan.

She was working at the bookstore the next afternoon when I needed to go to the garden store. I went by myself and bought supplies, borrowing money from our grocery fund. How hard could it be? I’d been doing this for about a week and was probably a master gardener by now. I bought the carrot seeds I needed and then, because the grass had been looking a little patchy, some fertilizer and a spreader. I also grabbed a few tiki torches that would look cool near the back gate. When I got home, I loaded the spreader with the proper amount of fertilizer. Then, for good measure, I dumped in a double dose. Twice as much, twice as fast.

I did the entire yard. I still had fertilizer left over, so I ran over the backyard three more times.

I went in to take a shower and start on the books that had been stacking up by my bed.

The next morning when I opened the back door, the stench hit me like a brick in the face. I ran through the house to the front steps, where I could breathe fresh air. Matthew heard me coughing and gagging from his room upstairs and came down to check on me.

“You okay?”

“Come here.” We headed around the side of the house. Halfway around, he stopped. “Whoa. What
is
that?”

“I think there’s something wrong with that fertilizer. It was on sale and I bet they were trying to unload it because it had gone bad. Does fertilizer even
have
an expiration date?”

“If it doesn’t, it should.”

“My eyes are watering.”

“My lungs are burning.”

“That can’t be right.”

Matthew pulled his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose as he wiped his eyes. “How much did you use?”

“The whole bag. I figured if a little was good, a lot would be better and maybe, you know, speed things up.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“How do we undo it?”

“In science lab, Mr. Ferreri told me to dilute the problem when I added too much of something to an experiment. Maybe you can wash away some of the …”

“Reeking stench?”

“Yeah, can’t hurt to try.” He wished me luck and headed back upstairs—very quickly—to shower for work.

I got out every one of our hoses and attached them to the rotating sprinklers. Then I turned everything on full blast and went to sit on the steps with a book.

My third mistake.

“My boy, you’ve got to do something about Dylan,” Grandpa called.

I looked up from my book. I could see from the angle of the sun that I’d lost track of time. Grandpa was standing on the sidewalk, looking at Dylan, who
was covered in thick dripping mud. Dylan shook, sending globs of muck flying everywhere.

“Oh, no! The hoses are on!” I sprinted to the backyard.

A yard? No. A swamp.

I had completely flooded the backyard. The ground that I had tilled and hoed and raked and turned and fertilized was now a river of mud, oozing across the sidewalk and into the back alley.

The good news was that the stench of doom had lifted.

I finally read the fertilizer bag.

“Oh, no,” I groaned.

“What?” Grandpa peered over my shoulder.

“One of the fertilizer’s main ingredients is dehydrated steer waste, so when I added the water …”

Grandpa smiled.

“… I made a yardful of reconstituted cow poop.”

“Nothing like it for nutrients, my boy. You’ll have a field of green in no time.”

“I’m going to have to wait until the ground dries up and then go back to page one. I was all the way up to page twelve. All this time lost.”

“Not all lost; the impatiens near the front door look good and the, um, organic waste product didn’t seep toward either of the side yards. The rosebushes are safe.”

“But the backyard is worse than when I started.”

“You’re going to have to resod the yard if you want to see grass this summer.” Grandpa was studying the mud.

“I’m going to have to
plant grass
?” He nodded. “But I
had
grass, I
started
with grass, grass was the
one
thing that
was
growing in this yard before I began work.”

“Think of it as starting with a clean canvas.”

“Yeah. Okay. Onward. Oh, I meant to ask: How’s your painting class going?”

“Pretty good. Mind if I bring my gear over and paint the yard?”

“You want to paint mud?”

“I’ll be capturing the potential in its embryonic stage.”

“You’ll be painting mud, Grandpa.”

“So I will, son, so I will.”

“I could use the company.” I looked around the yard and sighed. How was I going to tell Johanna about this? I grabbed a book and sat on the front steps to wait for her while Grandpa went into the house to start supper.

Johanna didn’t get home until after dark so she took it surprisingly well. The moonlight didn’t capture the complete and utter horror—a backyard that was four inches deep in cow poop. Plus she’d been out with friends and I could smell beer when she hugged me hello on the front sidewalk. “Don’t stress about it, Finn.”

I had opened my mouth to answer when I smelled cookies.

I looked past Johanna and saw Karla Tracey standing two feet away.

A car idled, waiting for her, at the curb. I stopped breathing. Felt dizzy. Johanna turned and smiled at her.

“Hi.”

“You met my gran,” Karla said to me, pointing to the car. A gray-haired woman smiled and waved. “At the center,” Karla added, speaking now to Johanna. “She told me you were doing a triathlon to raise money for … I, um, wanted to make a donation and so we asked that lady at the activity center—Ruby, I think?—how to find you and she got your address from, um …” She stopped and held out an envelope to Johanna.

“Oh, honey, this is really kind of you …. What did you say your name was?” Johanna asked, knowing perfectly well what Karla’s name was. Then she poked me. At least, I
saw
her jab me in the arm with her finger, but I couldn’t
feel
it. I couldn’t feel my head.

“Oh, sorry. I’m Karla Tracey. I, uh, hope it helps, it’s not much, but … well, anyway, I have to get home now, Gran’s waiting. She told me you’re kind of, in a way, really, doing this for all women, I mean girls, or, you know—” She broke off and I could see her cheeks get red even in the light from the streetlamp. “Anyway, good luck.”

She hurried to the car.

I felt the blood return to my feet, and the whole breathing thing, which is not as involuntary as they’d have you believe, started up for me again.

“Yeah,” Johanna said, shaking her head, “I can see why you think you don’t have anything in common with that girl.” She started walking toward her front door. “If I close my eyes, it’s like listening to you.”

My father opened a letter one evening after work at the beginning of July. He and I were sitting on the back steps with Johanna and Dylan. Matthew had gone to dinner at his mom’s, and then to the movies with some girl he’d just met.

I was reading a note of my own. Dylan had shoved it into my hand when I came out to sit with Johanna and Dad.
You’re wrong about you and girls
.

“How did
this
happen?” Dad sounded appalled.

“What is it?” I shoved my note into my pocket.

“As of this past spring term, I seem to have fulfilled all of my obligations. I’m done with school.”

“And you didn’t know?” Johanna asked.

“No. I’ve been going to summer term for a month now. I wasn’t paying attention.” He looked embarrassed. “I’ve been taking classes for so long now that I guess I lost track of time.”

“That’s pretty cool, Dad.”

“It is, but I missed walking in commencement last month. I knew I should have read all those e-mails the registrar kept sending me.”

“We should have a party!” Johanna said.

“We’re not much for parties,” Dad said.

“Well, I am. My Auntie Bean always says you should never pass up the chance to throw a party.”

“Why do they call her Auntie Bean?” I asked.

“Anyone who can answer that question is dead. Auntie Bean is pretty old and we’ve always called her that and no one ever said why. You’ll love her, she’s a kick. And she makes the best cake.”

“Cake?” Dad asked. He’s got a wicked sweet tooth.

“Chocolate. You’ll die, it’s that good.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. My family throws parties at the drop of a hat. Or because it’s Thursday and we haven’t had a federally sanctioned day off for a while. It’ll be nice to get everyone together for an actual reason.”

“Do you …” Dad hesitated. “Do you think Fernanda will come?”

Johanna grinned. “She’s the first one I’ll call. Don’t worry about a thing; I’ll set everything up.” She waved as she hurried back to her house, pulling her cell phone from her jeans pocket.

Two days later, we had our first party. Ever.

My dad invited his professors and classmates and some people from the clinic where he works. Grandpa
brought some of his buddies, and of course, Matthew and Dylan and I were there.