There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 (21 page)

“Could have been a dry year,” John said as he plucked a cruller out of the box. “A cigarette butt and some dry weeds is all it takes sometimes. Rumor had it that a rival pipe company took a match to everything to drive our factory out of business. Is it hot in here?”

“I don’t feel warm,” Maye commented. “Probably all of this fire talk. But that sounds like quite a story. For such a small town, Spaulding is full of stories.”

“Yeah,” the plumber cop said, finally beginning to slow down after eating more than half the box—approximately 2,170 calories, 260 grams of carbs, including 125 grams of sugar, 119 grams of fat, and absolutely no protein value. In a moment or two, he would be riding the best sugar high money could buy, because even though Hoo Doo donuts were organic, a Hoo Doo donut without a substantial amount of sugar, albeit pesticide-free, would be a lonely, out-of-business, chapter 11 donut.

“Oh,” John professed, “I feel a little dizzy, but these donuts are so good. They are the best donuts. THE BEST DONUTS! Dude, like, you don’t even know! No WAY, they’re so good! So, now—wait, what did you say? Hee hee hee.”

“I said ‘Spaulding is full of stories,’” Maye repeated.

“It is,” John said, giggling, his face flushing a little as the charging wall of sugar entered his bloodstream. “I feel like I’m flying! Do you feel that? Hee hee hee. If I was a bird, I’d be a…scrub jay. So pretty. Pretty little scrub jay! No!
No
! I’d be a heron! I’d be a heron so this way I could still fish. How would I drive my boat, though, if I was a heron? Could wings drive? Oh, that’s funny. A heron driving a boat! Hee hee hee.
Dude
. Have you been there the whole time?”

Maye nodded. “Tell me some stories, John,” she coaxed. “Tell me some Spaulding stories.”

“In fourth grade I ate a Sloppy Joe too fast and threw it up all over my desk and it got all over my teacher’s shoes. We never ate Sloppy Joes again in school after that.”

“That’s funny.” She smiled. “How about another one? What about the story of Ruby Spicer?”

“She was pretty,” John slurred as he chewed. “Ruby Spicer was prettier than a scrub jay, but she was a spitfire. She left town, though. She had to, she didn’t have a choice. My dad, he gave me a dog he got from her. He liked her, said we needed to be nice to her. I love that dog, Rocky. He’s a good ole dog.”

“Rocky was the dog you had as a little boy?” Maye asked.

“No, no, no, nooooo,” John said, shaking his head somewhat sloppily. “He’s the dog I have now, a boxer. She breeds them out on that old farm she lives on. All alone. Not a friend in the world.”

“Really?” Maye said as she took the chocolate-glazed donut with rainbow sprinkles out of John’s limp, intoxicated fingers. “Really. Now drink your coffee, John. Drink it all up.”

“Okay, Mickey,” Maye coaxed as Gwen looked on. “Are you ready?”

Mickey looked at Maye with his soft brown eyes and thought, I don’t need to be playing a piano. I’m a dog. I should be messing with my nu-nu.

“Now, when the music comes on, put Mickey’s paws on the keys, say ‘Tinkle,’ and then give him a cookie,” the trainer instructed.

“‘Tinkle’?” Maye asked.

“Unless you use that command at home for Mickey’s personal business, this word is new to him,” Gwen explained. “It could mean anything.”

Maye figured she was right, and waited for Gwen’s cue.

The trainer nodded as she pushed the “play” button on her boom box, which was as big as something out of a Run-D.M.C. video, and they heard a roll of electronic drums, then the notes of what sounded like a Moog synthesizer. For some reason, Maye suddenly got the image of a dance-hall girl shimmying in a skirt of rags. “Tinkle!” Gwen shouted. “Tinkle!”

Maye placed Mickey’s paws on the keyboard, said, “Tinkle!” and then gave him a cookie, although now, for some unknown reason, she had in her mind the picture of a white-vested grinning pimp with a gold tooth.

“‘We are young!’” she heard an echoing voice sing. “‘Heartache to heartache we stand!’”

“Um, Gwen? Gwen?” Maye called loud enough to be heard over the blasting music, giving her the time-out sign. “Gwen, could we possibly teach Mickey to play piano to something other than ‘Love Is a Battlefield’?”

The trainer looked utterly defeated. “You don’t like that song?”

“Well, um,” Maye stuttered, “it’s, um, not that I don’t like it, but when I hear it, I’m transported back to 1983 and a redheaded mongrel of an adolescent with a whitehead the size of a nickel on the tip of his nose is attempting to shove his slug of a tongue down my throat as I am sitting in a swiveling bucket seat in the front of his dad’s Chevy van on the bad losing end of a double date while my best friend has basically completed a conjugal visit with her companion, who just got out of juvenile detention the week before for setting fire to an apartment building. Not the makings of a yearbook memory.”

“Oh,” Gwen said sadly. “Well, this is the only record I have.”

“Okay,” Maye said, trying to smile. “Maybe we can try another one next week.”

“No,” Gwen said, emphatically shaking her head. “I mean I only have this one. This is my only CD. I don’t have another one.”

Maye stopped for a moment. “You mean,
ever
?” she asked. “You don’t own another CD?”

“Well, I like this one,” Gwen said defensively. “There was no reason to get another one. I know all the words.”

Maye didn’t know what to say to a middle-aged woman whose entire musical universe revolved around Pat Benatar, but it was clear that Gwen probably hadn’t done too much dating in the eighties, otherwise her scars would have run as deep as Maye’s. Deep as a river, thick as an eager tongue.

“This is Pat Benatar’s
Greatest Hits
,” Gwen offered hopefully. “What about ‘Hell Is for Children’?”

Maye cringed inwardly and waved her hand. “‘Love Is a Battlefield’ will be fine,” she said, stretching her lips across her teeth in what was supposed to be a smile but looked more like she was getting a rabies shot. It couldn’t be helped—she remembered Pat Benatar having a dance-off with a pimp as she’s backed by a clan of fellow whores and hussies as they snap their fingers and shimmy their way out of a sex dungeon and arrive underneath a bridge near the docks, where they find freedom.

“We are strong!” Benatar insisted as Maye placed Mickey’s paws on the keyboard, told him to tinkle, and gave him a cookie. They did this for the remainder of the hour, while Gwen mouthed the words and shuffled her anvil-like weight from one leg to the other in what Maye presumed was an unnatural attempt at dance.

Mickey caught on quickly, as he always did when liver-flavored cookies were involved, and when Maye cued him with a howl, he would sing back as he “tinkled” on the keyboard, making him a four-legged and slightly hairier version of Barry Manilow getting down with a song about sex workers.

When the class was over, Maye waited as the rest of the dogs cleared out.

“Gwen, I was wondering if you might be able to help me with something,” she said as the trainer packed up her mammoth, circus-sized boom box.

“Sure,” the trainer said as she carefully removed the CD like it was evidence at a crime scene, laid it to rest in its little case, then snapped the case closed. “What do you need?”

“I was hoping that you might be familiar with dog breeders in the area. Do you happen to know anyone who breeds boxers?”

Gwen sucked in a torrent of air, clasped both hands to her mouth, and clearly squealed.

“Oh my goodness!” she gushed, appearing to be fighting back tears. “Really? Oh, that’s wonderful! A puppy! A baby puppy for Mickey! How wonderful! What great news! Look at you, you’re glowing already! Can I throw you a shower? We can have it right here in the store and get a puppy-shaped cake!”

“No, no,” Maye replied, waving her hand slightly. “It’s not for us, it’s…for a friend of Charlie’s at work. He was thinking about getting a boxer, and I thought you might know of someone in the area.”

“Oh,” the trainer replied as disappointment deflated her spine and she resumed her Charlie Brown posture. “Well, I do know of a fellow out by New River who has boxers.”

“Mmmm.” Maye squinted and shook her head. “Anyone else? I heard there might be a breeder out by Crawford Lake.”

“Oh, yes.” Gwen nodded, thinking. “Yes, I do remember a boxer lady out that way. From what I heard, she was a bit of a pistol. The fellow by New River is a much nicer man. And he has beautiful dogs.”

Maye had struck gold.

“Do you know how Charlie’s friend could get in touch with the Crawford Lake lady?” Maye asked. “A phone number, an address?”

“Oh, sure,” Gwen said as she wrapped her boom box cord in a precise pattern of tight, bundled eights. “We keep a list of certified breeders up at the Pet Station info desk. Let’s go and take a look.”

Maye and Mickey followed Gwen to the front of the store. Gwen flipped open the binder holding the list of breeders, and her eyes followed her finger as she scanned the names. “Ah! Here we go,” she said with a snap of her fingers. “This must be her: ‘Royal Loyal Boxers, the only friend you’ll ever need.’ Seventeen Crawford Lake Road, and here’s a phone number.”

Maye copied the information down feverishly, almost as if she was afraid it would evaporate suddenly.

I know where Ruby Spicer is! I have found her! Maye’s mind shot back and forth like a Ping Pong ball. I’m pretty sure I’ve found her. I think I’ve found her. I might have found her.

“Thank you so much Gwen,” Maye said as she stuffed the piece of paper into her purse. “You’ve been a tremendous help. Charlie’s friend will be so happy.”

“Well, I’m glad.” Gwen shrugged. “I’ll see you both next week!”

“No promises, no demands,” Maye said, and she winked.

Pat was right. Crawford Lake Road was not paved, and not only was it a bumpy dirt road, it was full of potholes that looked more like spots where meteors had bounced off the face of the earth the way a basketball inevitably rebounds off the head of the fat girl in freshman gym class. Maye’s forehead still stung with the slap of orange rubber every time she thought about it.

As Maye drove along, topping speeds of seven to ten miles an hour, the car rocked, dipped, and fell every couple of feet. She was grateful to have eaten more than an hour earlier, otherwise, she was sure, she would have succumbed to seasickness. Vomiting was not on her schedule today. Hopefully, unless she drove straight into a sinkhole—a real possibility—she was going to be face-to-face with Ruby Spicer in about ten gut-churning minutes.

If she could find her.

Once Maye had the phone number in her hand, she had grown gradually and strangely anxious. She’d surprised herself by letting the scribbled-on piece of paper soak in her purse for the rest of the day.

When Charlie came home that night, she had finally dug it out and handed it to him without a word. He’d looked at it, rolled his eyes, and shaken his head.

“No,” he’d commanded. “Absolutely not. We don’t need another dog, Maye. I agree that a dog band would be funny and they could perform at weddings and bar mitzvahs and we could retire, but no. Especially if this one played the drums, because I’m calling dibs on the drummer spot in Dog Band. I am the stick man.”

“Charlie, sometimes even the mere fact that you found your way home at night seems like a miracle to me,” Maye had said, shaking her head back. “You are an idiot. I don’t want another dog. This is the phone number of Ruby Spicer. She raises boxers.”

“The Queen of all Sewer Pipe Queens?” Charlie had asked. “The one you read about in the library? Wow. How did you get that?”

“I got the plumber high on donuts and exposed Mickey to repeated, three-minute shock treatments of Pat Benatar,” she had explained. “All skills taught in Journalism 101. Worked like magic. Imagine what I could have done had I let three women with bad perms give me a bath in a backyard. I could have ruled the world.”

“Wow,” Charlie had said. “I can’t believe you found her. That’s some detective work you did there, Columbo.”

“Well,” Maye had said, then paused. “I’m not exactly sure it is her—I mean, all of the pieces fit, but I don’t have one hundred percent confirmation that it’s Ruby Spicer. And after the fifth donut, the plumber was pretty wasted. He could have been making the whole thing up for all I know, or having sugar-related hallucinations.”

“So, did you call her?” Charlie had asked.

Maye had shaken her head. “I want it to be her. I wanted you to be here in case I was disappointed and it wasn’t her and I’d have to hand the pageant over to Rowena and Melissabeth after all on one of my tablecloth-eating fat rolls.”

Charlie had walked over to the phone, picked it up, and handed it to her. “I’ll stay right here,” he had promised.

So Maye had dialed the number with shaky, hesitant fingers, and on the fourth ring, the sleepy voice of a woman answered. Maye hadn’t asked for Ruby—since there was no name listed in the breeder’s directory, she hadn’t wanted to tip her off to anything other than being interested in a dog—and had simply inquired if Royal Loyal had any available boxers.

“Sure,” the woman had replied, yawning. “I have some available from the last litter.” She’d given Maye directions to “the farm,” told her to come out the following afternoon, and promptly hung up the phone.

Now, twenty miles out of town, with the directions in hand, Maye was closer to meeting the vanished Sewer Pipe Queen of Spaulding. Deep in the rain forest of the Cascade foothills, the western hemlock, cedar, and fir trees loomed high above the floor carpeted with ferns and huckleberry bushes and spotted with patches of sunlight that had pushed its way through the dense branches of the canopy. Moss clung to trunks and tree branches, and the farther Maye drove, the darker it seemed to get. She followed the curvy road that had begun to resemble more of a path as it wound deeper still into the woods until it finally opened onto a meadow, bright and clear and flooded with sun, fronted by an old gray farmhouse. As she got closer, Maye realized the house wasn’t actually gray but was weathered by the elements after most of the paint had flaked off of it and fluttered away, pulled by the wind.