Spot and Smudge - Book One Read online

  Dan leaned back from the sink, keeping his soapy hands over the water. With a wag of his eyebrows he said, “He’s an eleven year old boy, I suspect he’ll be keeping his hands plenty busy soon enough.”

  Aila smiled, goosed Dan and said, “Well that apple didn’t roll far from the tree.”

  Dan flicked soapy water at her.

  Smiling into her cup of tea Mimi said, “Right, well the lad just needs something challenging to bring him out of his funk. Something to teach him daily responsibility. Something the wee boy can be proud of.”

  “And here it comes,” Dan said, “Something that wags maybe?”

  “Mum, we’ve been over and over this,” Aila said, “It’s just not a great idea.”

  Mimi stiffened a little and raised her hand like a bishop letting the congregation know the sermon was coming. “I agreed with your silly no-pets rule when you were living in Boston,” she said, “But if you’re living here on the South Shore we’re going to modify that rule. You know I’ll do most of the heavy lifting, and you can’t really stop me anyway.” She took a sip of tea and eyeballed them over the rim of her cup. Adding a final nod she said, “So there you go.”

  Aila laughed and spread out her hands in defeat. “Well if you put it like that,” she said, “Hey, I have an idea, let’s get Ben a puppy!”

  Mimi pulled her daughter in close from across the table and kissed her with an exaggerated smack squarely on the forehead. She sealed it with a pat on her shoulder as she rose to hand Dan her empty tea cup.

  Chapter 2

  “Fucking reeeediculous,” Jerry spat as she finished buttoning her jeans and pulled a wad of crumpled bills from the front compartment of her backpack. She straightened them, peeled off two of the hundreds and dropped them on the filthy counter along with the equally filthy ice scraper that had the woman’s restroom key attached to it.

  The lanky, vapid teen behind the counter dropped a new carton of cigarettes on the counter as he snatched up the bills. Jerry stuffed the carton into her ratty knapsack and pulled the drawstring closed. “I thought you friggin’ dudes on the res sold shit cheaper,” she said, “And your toilet’s backed up, sorry about that. Tacos for breakfast, in hindsight not such a great idea.”

  “We don’t charge taxes ma’am, but cigs are still a really expensive bad habit,” the bored teen said, not looking up from the register, “Sorry about that.”

  The kid was dead pale with burnt orange hair and a chin patch. Jerry figured he was not a member of any tribal nation, more like a member of the virgin nation, or the acne-meds-not-working nation. He dropped a twenty and the rest of Jerry’s change in front of her. “And we’re out of ones so I gotta give you quarters,” he said still not looking up, “Sorry about that.”

  “Wonderfuckingful,” Jerry said as she folded the twenty into her stack of hundreds, jammed them into the front pocket of her knapsack, and scooped up the handful of change.

  She slung the backpack and ambled out of the front door. Jerry had the kind of manly swagger that would put most of her country music stars to shame. After five days of constant driving, and an equally-constant pounding headache, her gait was even slower and more exaggerated. As she crossed the parking lot she tried to add up a hundred dollars of gas and the carton of cigarettes in her head and gave up. Fuck it, Jerry thought, The cash register had better be smarter than the fucktard behind the counter.

  “Shut the fuck up!” she barked as the dogs started up again when she yanked open the driver’s door of her van. She ignored the minivan at the pump next to her. It had open windows and held several small children, and two glaring parents. She pounded her fist on the side of the dirty van a few times in rapid succession. It caused a sheet of rust to drop out from the bottom of the van, and started a fresh round of whining and yelping from inside.

  On the last hit she dropped her handful of quarters. The falling coins hit the edge of the concrete pump stand and skittered away in all directions.

  “Fuck fuck fuck you fuckery fuckwad fuck!” she yelled as she slammed the pump handle into the tank and jammed the gas cap into the trigger to keep it pumping.

  Jerry unslung the knapsack and dropped it onto the pump stand. She yanked it open to hunt around inside the main compartment for the last open pack of cigarettes and her lighter. She pushed aside her makeup, tampons, baggie of weed with rolling papers, and several speeding tickets. Finally finding the dented pack at the bottom, she fired up the last smoke. She exhaled a long cloud at the gaping minivan kids, and another at the fresh round of dirty looks from their mom and dad.

  Jerry felt every one of her runs was worse than the last, and this one plain sucked. The fucking dogs had just not shut up the entire trip. Cigarettes had gotten to be friggin’ insane even at the casino, and the traffic through New Jersey and Connecticut was a bitch at any time of the day as summer was getting closer.

  “It’s almost not fucking worth it,” she said as she coughed, and then gaged, and then spat a chunky hunk of something dark at the tire of the minivan.

  She knew it was worth it, however. It was very worth it. It was recently very, very fucking worth it. As she tried to do the math in her head from this latest trip she itched under the shoulder of her vest, near the BITE ME tattoo.

  Selling rescue dogs they got for free from the high kill shelters down south to the stuck up New Englanders for a billion percent markup was fucking good. They had buttoned up the rescue-puppy-crazed, bleeding-heart, dog-worshiping democrats from Braintree to Providence to the Bourne Bridge, and the cape was next. Her pitch was finely tuned to pull at peoples P.E.T.A. heart strings. They had even found a way to crowbar a few extra hundred in ongoing donations from those who had already ponied up for the mutts. It was an easy sell as Jerry’s dogs were still a lot cheaper than those highway-robbery fucking purebreds. Her clients could also feel good knowing they snatched the little fucker from the southern hillbillies who treat dogs like, well, like dogs.

  So hell yes it was a good gig, and adding the new cash flow they had devised was even better. As the slogan for that muddy British crap ale her limp-dick husband drinks says, Brilliant. It sure beats the shit out of shaking her cans in those fucking nasty clubs in Providence.

  Jerry’s cell phone vibrated in her knapsack and ‘Save a horse, ride a cowboy’ started to play. She dug it out from the front pocket, looked at the caller id and hit answer. “What’s fucking wrong now, Aaron?” she said as she exhaled another stream of smoke at the staring dad in the minivan.

  For the past few months Aaron Cooper had been helping out around kennel as business had exploded. Aaron was big and strong and not all that bright but he had two qualities Jerry valued above all else; he looked good in and out of boxers, and could keep his talented seventeen year old mouth shut.

  Aaron whined in her ear, “Doug wants me to pile up these drums in the kennel but I’m not feeling it. He said to make sure they all fit but there’s no way unless I stack them way high and they say right on them to not stack them more than two high.”

  Jerry sighed and rubbed her temples for effect as if Aaron could see her, not that it would change the barren landscape that was his reasonably handsome face even if he could see her.

  “Well,” she said through clenched teeth, “Why the hell don’t you ask my husband what to do with the fucking barrels?” Jerry started to nibble on a fresh chip in her thumbnail which she did whenever she was spun up. All of her nails looked like rats had been at them but she painted what remained anyway.

  “Doug’s not here,” Aaron said, “and I gotta go help my dad with—”

  “Stack the fucking barrels Aaron,” Jerry spat before she hung up and jammed her phone back into her knapsack. She wondered why her husband wasn’t with Aaron, again.

  She hunted around in the bag for her little bottle of prescription grade Tylenol with Codeine and came up empty. Fucking great, she thought. The bottle must be loose in the van somewhere. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it, wh
ich was common as it was probably the last time she had a real ass-pounder of a headache.

  Jerry finished pumping and tossed her knapsack onto the passenger seat. She paused to stretch. She wasn’t looking forward to climbing back up into the noisy, hot, stinking van.

  With her fingers entwined she reached her hands high overhead while rising up on the balls of her feet. She bent backwards and pushed her hips out. Her short t-shirt rode up to expose the top of her thong, and the tattoo around her navel piercing.

  “Fuuuuuckapickle,” she said as she exhaled, straightened up, and locked eyes with the minivan dad. “What the fuck are you looking at?” Jerry asked.

  “Nothing darling,” he said with a smile as he touched the brim of his baseball cap, “You have a lovely day.”

  Jerry made a show of bringing up her hand to check her Harley Davidson wristwatch, and flicked out her middle finger.

  It should take her two hours to get home from the Connecticut casino. She tried to time her return trips to miss the worst of rush hour through Providence and around Boston. If she hustled a little she should breeze right through, provided she didn’t hit an accident, construction, or a bunch of early shit-fuck traffic.

  As Jerry pulled out of the gas station she didn’t look back. She didn’t see the minivan dad get out to corral his kids who were scurrying around to pick up her errant quarters. She didn’t see him noticing something near the pump stand, and stooping to pick it up. She just peeled out of the gas station, cutting off a horn-blaring semi as she sped away.

  Chapter 3

  Aaron dropped his cell phone into his pocket, adjusted his junk, and spat. He climbed onto the front-end loader tractor and did his best bitchy Jerry impersonation. “Stack the fucking barrels Aaron,” he said, bobbing his head from side to side, “Fuckadoodle doo.”

  He snatched his phone from his pocket again and double checked to make sure he had actually hung up. He made that mistake recently with Jerry and had paid dearly for it, including having to perform some extra services that he wasn’t really into. Whatever, he shrugged to himself as he put his phone away. They paid him okay, the drugs were good, and a blowjob now and again was worth eating a little butt for. He fired up the tractor and backed out of the main kennel before heading full speed back up the dirt road for another load of barrels.

  The thirty-two small, pristine white steel drums looked like miniature oil barrels. They barely came up to Aaron’s thighs, but had the same two flares circling their middles and a bolt ring securing their top covers. The drums were wrapped with yellow tape covered in fine print and official looking seals. The barrels were also stamped with warning labels from top to bottom. All of the labels were in Chinese, or maybe it was Arabic, Aaron didn’t know but they looked pretty serious and they had pictures of skulls and flames and overlapping circles on them. One graphic clearly showed not to stack the barrels more than two high.

  Doug had told him to use straps, only put two barrels in the front bucket at a time, and to go slow. That was taking way too long and Aaron had been able to balance five barrels in the front bucket and strap two more to the rear bucket. Doug was always bitching about doing shit this way or that way, and Aaron’s general rule was to cut everything Doug said in half. It freed him up to either fuck off and get high, or split early and add some hours to his timesheet. Doug never noticed. He wasn’t around much anyway, especially when Jerry was away.

  Aaron moved all of the drums to the kennel pretty quickly even though a few fell out when he took the corners too fast. They only creased a little, and he’d stacked those in the back.

  He stood back and admired his work. There was still enough room to get to the dog cages that lined both walls of the kennel, mostly. The dented barrels in the back were stacked at odd angles but he had finally gotten the towers to stop falling over after several attempts.

  He had to rush on the last load and the barrels near the front weren’t too neat, but he could clean it up tomorrow. Jerry would be getting in late and never notice, and with Doug’s recent schedule he might not come back to the kennels for a few days.

  “Fucking job well done,” Aaron said to himself as he lit a joint. He turned out the lights and yelled at the yapping dogs to shut the hell up before pulling the kennel doors closed and locking them.

  Chapter 4

  Her paws were bleeding between the pads and her shoulders were going numb. As she paused to sit up and stretch she licked at the blood. Even when she was healthy this would have been hard but lately she was so very tired. She had drifted in and out several times during her task.

  It wasn’t sleep, and it wasn’t restful or strength-gathering. It was a dark place where she kicked and yelped while struggling to swim through black mud.

  The nightmares were the worst part. When she was free she had frequent, wonderful dreams of warm days and food and shelter but they were now replaced by dark predators and pain. She was used to being hungry, and cold, but this was different. She had survived on far less food than she was given here, and in worse conditions, but even in the leanest of times she had always been alert and strong. Now she was shivering constantly and couldn’t nap like normal. She was ravenous but didn’t have the desire or the strength to eat.

  Normally she would enjoy just about anything the smorgasbord of the street provided and her body would process it with no issues but now she couldn’t keep anything down. She was thirsty but it hurt to drink. Her mess was not right, and not all of the blood on the bottom of the cage was from her paws.

  She carefully examined the cage door to see if she had made any progress. Maybe a little, just maybe. Hard to tell in the dim light.

  The latches on the cages were the kind that squeeze together, with pins going into the top and bottom of the cage shell. The top latch of the cage was still in place, but the bottom pin had come loose when the big human kid bashed that heavy thing into it.

  At first she had just thrown herself at the cage door, biting and scratching. Then she tried to just squeeze through and managed to get her nose firmly stuck until the nightmares came back and tortured her. When she woke again freeing herself had cost her a tooth and a nasty cut on her snout, and then she had collapsed again for a long while.

  She scratched at the door latch again and licked at it, helplessly, and then was mad at herself for the weak act. Being smart and being strong was the only way. The bottom of the cage door was the only way. She was sure it had given a little, and she was convinced it could be opened. Her efforts were working. They had to work.

  She had escaped from cages before and would get out of this one, too. Don’t stop, she told herself, Stick with it, you must keep going.

  She flopped back down onto the floor of the cage. She braced her back legs against the rear wall and used her whole body to push out on the bottom of the cage door with her front paws. Bolstered by whines and yaps of encouragement from those around her she pressed harder. The hinge and metal of the cage rhythmically complained with each shove. Push! She told herself, Push because you need to get out, Push because your babies need you.

  Chapter 5

  Early shit fuck traffic was just what Jerry hit, and her headache had started really thumping as she crawled along the highway through Providence. Of course the first really hot day of the year had to come when she was stuck in a sea of metal coffins. Even with the sun disappearing over the low skyline the dead air and exhaust fumes were oppressive. The air conditioning in the van only blew hot air. It was just another thing her ass-munching husband had procrastinated on like he always fucking did when it didn’t affect his daily comfort. The exhaust and heat weren’t the worst part. At highway speeds she normally wouldn’t smell anything from the dozens of cages in the back, but at this snail’s pace she caught every shit, fart, and vomit. The dogs were also hell bent on barking the entire fucking trip. The highway was a parking lot because some dipshit grease-ball from Federal Hill couldn’t keep his Caddy on the road through the famous death trap of the Pawtucket
curves, and then some gawker couldn’t keep from plowing into the other gawker in front of him on the other side of the highway. These backups spurred a handful of additional rear-enders that just compounded the shit show.

  The motorcycle staties were out in force with their puffed-thigh, high-waist uniforms, polished jack boots, and permanent scowls. She just loved the look and couldn’t decide if she would rather run one of them over or fuck him, but Jerry knew from firsthand experience that the Rhode Island State Patrol was not be messed with.

  She snorted as she stubbed out a butt and lit a fresh cigarette. “Fucking Providence,” she said.

  The sun finally set in her side window, the one with the missing visor. It didn’t bring much relief from the drilling pain behind her eyes, and Jerry looked over at her ratty knapsack. She wanted to take another stab at digging for the Tylenol but thought better of it in this bumper to bumper, shifting traffic. The insane drivers of Providence were just like the suicidal Boston idiots. As soon as Jerry let the car in front of her get more than half a length ahead they’d shove in without notice. “Congratu-fucking-lations,” she said to a shit box that had just cut her off, “You’re gonna beat me there by one second, fuckwad.”

  The van wasn’t the easiest thing to drive and the brakes were about as good as the air conditioning. She locked them up a few times, and although her finger and horn blast indicated it was the other guy’s fault it was just as often caused by her not paying attention when she was rubbing her throbbing temples.

  The knapsack was one of three things her mom had given her. The other two being their matching BITE ME tattoos, and an affinity for horrible men. It was an ugly knapsack to start with and was now tattered and stained and full of rips and holes but it had been through thick and thin with her. She had jumped out of windows with it, carried her folded-the-long-way dollars and stilettos in it, and transported things that would certainly get you sent to the Cranston Correctional Facility for a nice long fucking stay by those scowling staties.