Homebodies Page 3

  She slowed down as she passed one of the garbage trucks, nose in the ditch, an archaic green dinosaur dipping down for a drink on its last journey to extinction. There were bags of garbage strewn around the bed of the truck of all types, black lawn bags, green industrial bags, even the kind of little trash liners she used in the kitchen, and all the bags were duct taped together in several places and ripped in others. The back of the truck, heaped with garbage still, emanated a sweet, rotten smell that saturated the air, overwhelming even with her windows rolled all the way up.

  She hit the gas and tried to out run the stench. She always did this, and it never worked. The smell followed her no matter how fast she drove. She’d heard somewhere that repeating the same action and expecting different results was the definition of insanity, but she was pretty sure that the person who thought of that had never been sandwiched between those two particular stinks before.

  There was a chain-link fence around the dump, so it did nothing to contain the foulness, especially on a hot day. Emily pulled through the small gate, and the gate officer smacked a dry, bloody hand against the glass of his guardhouse as she drove through.

  She wasn’t exactly sure why the waste department would keep paying a guard to watch an open gate, when they couldn’t figure out how to put drivers in the garbage trucks, but considering all the other local government absurdities, the guard seemed like the most innocuous mistake.

  She waved, smiled in the special one hundred percent plastic way people simile when they don’t give a damn. It wasn’t his fault his bosses were idiots.

  She backed into an open space, then covered her face with a hospital mask and a pink bandanna to try and block out some of the smell before she opened the door and circled around the SUV to get the garbage from the back. The double layer of nostril protection did not help. The smell was already in her nose and would probably be there until she went home to take a bath and gorge herself on good smelling body wash and scented candles.

  She wrapped the tops of the plastic garbage bags around her hands and began walking up the path to the edge of the garbage piles. The path, lined with more black garbage bags like the ones in the back of the abandoned truck, always made her extra nauseous. They were still duct tapped in several places, and there was no reason she could think of to tape garbage bags together just to hold more garbage.

  The whole place made her angry, and she clenched her fist tight around the plastic bag of her own garbage. Every now and then, she caught a quick jerk of movement from one of the bags. Walking past them felt like having several small heart attacks about every ten feet. She could only assume that rats had long since gnawed their way inside and created happy little rat homes for themselves. As she walked on, there was a breeze that hurled the rancid air and shook the plastic of the bags anywhere they were loose. It almost looked as if one of them rolled to follow her, the intruder in the land of eternal fetor and rat crap.

  She quickened her pace; the soles of her shoes thumping, sometimes squishing on the dirt, until she reached a reasonable place to throw her bags. She pitched them to the top of the pile; the bag clattered and rolled down a little but settled without blocking the path, and the job was done. Then all she wanted to do was to race her gag reflex home and see which of them made it first.

  If it wasn’t for the distinct sound of something crunching a little further up the path, she would have jogged back to the car and sped all the way home, road cones be damned, but an argument broke out between rational judgement, her primal instinct, and morbid curiosity. Even if she could figure out what the sound was, she probably didn’t want to know. There was no reasonable outcome that ended well in her current location, and her eyes were beginning to burn and water from the grossness. She could practically see the stink rising around her, but curiosity was victorious. She held her breath and rounded a trash pile, her hand instinctively slipping around the handle of the small gun she’d slipped into her front pocket for the ride.

  It was a dog. She was both relieved and surprised. It was laying on its stomach next to one of the duct taped garbage bags, which it had shredded open to get breakfast. Part of the rancid meat was still in the bag, but the dog chewed contentedly on the bone, breaking it apart a little at a time with its teeth.

  It had the kind of ears that flopped down to either side of its head, and its fur was a pretty shade of yellow, except in some places where it was matted with red and black.

  It noticed her but didn’t stop chewing until she tried to call for it. She deliberated about this for some time while trying not to puke. It looked like the kind of dog that might want to cuddle, but also might want to eat her face off. She decided she wasn’t willing to yell and risk startling the dog and instead, clicked her tongue against her cheek. The dog acknowledged her by looking up from its bone and tilting its head slightly.

  She slipped off the small backpack Todd made her carry everywhere, unzipped it searching for some kind of dog appropriate lure, and found an old bag still half full of unfinished jerky. There wasn’t much of it left, but she stuck her hand toward the dog in what she hoped looked like a friendly offering. The dog got up immediately and trotted over; its nimble paws far better suited to climbing garbage heaps than Emily’s sneakers. The dog swallowed the jerky in almost one bite, and she let it finish the rest of the bag before sticking out her empty hand again in a different kind of offering. The dog shoved its large head into her hand and allowed her to scratch it behind its floppy ears. Its fur felt a little sticky and gross, like it hadn’t had a bath and had been rolling in garbage for quite a while.

  “Hi. . .” She looked beneath the dog for the required dog gender check “. . .boy. Hi baby. You all alone?”

  She rolled her eyes at herself. It sounded like she was trying to pick up a date in a bar almost as much as trying to talk to a dog in the dump.

  The dog wore a pale blue collar that had faded with the sun and frayed badly at the edges, but there were no tags attached to the collar that could have helped her identify the owner. From the state of its fur, she guessed it had been loose quite some time. She couldn’t remember seeing fliers anywhere for a missing dog. From his eagerness, she figured he had been lonely quite some time too. Even as strangers they had that much in common aside from smelling like a portable toilet housed in deepest level of hell.

  The dog lifted its head and sniffed the air, then growled like he had decided to rip her face off after all. She felt his fur stand up under her fingers before holding up hands in what she hoped translated to surrender. “I’m sorry!”

  The dog looked at her in clear exasperation as he climbed a little up the heap where he waited, staring back at her, and then staring into the dump, and then staring at her, and then staring at the dump, and finally walking back down the pile to her, then back up the pile while looking at her.

  When she realized she was supposed to follow, she felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry.” She whispered cautiously. “I don’t speak dog.” Emily climbed up on hands and knees to crouch behind the dog, sinking into the heap. She felt her jeans soaking with something wet and smelly, but she scanned the dump beside the panting dog, trying to follow its nervous gaze. At first, she saw nothing, and she reached up to tell the dog so by rubbing the back of his neck. His fur was still at attention, so she looked again.

  This time she saw it, something moving, far away, at least half the length of the dump. “It’s just someone else dropping off the garbage.”

  The dog was unrelenting. The longer she watched, the clearer it was why the dog had such interest. She watched as whatever it was climbed a garbage heap with all the agility of the dog, only on two legs. It grabbed a bag and tossed it down the garbage hill. Too much coordination, it, he, she guessed from his height, was like her, human. She sighed at the stupidity of her own thought. Everyone was human, but this guy. . .

  She allowed herself to sink lower into the garbage pile, and watched the man moving through the dump. He was very tall, with spindly
legs that made him look like a clothed spider and had black hair.

  There was a moment when she was excited to tell Todd something as interesting as seeing a man throwing garbage, right up till the moment she thought that Todd might never let her leave the house again. There only so many places she could go and even a trip to the dump was something other than the walls of their house. Worse, he might think she was getting sick again. Todd was never going to believe her; this strange man was an impossible thing. He was Bigfoot, or Chupacabra. He was the Loch Ness Monster of the city dump.

  And monsters, even impossible ones, were terrifying. She backed slowly down the garbage pile, careful not to make any sound that might draw the stranger’s attention. The minute her sneakers hit the dirt she barreled for the SUV, the dog sprinting beside her. She dashed past the terrible black, wriggling bags and onto the pavement, threw open the driver’s side door, and skid to an unplanned halt. In the split second the door was open, the dog had leapt past her into the passenger seat, getting everything on him all over the upholstery.

  “No, Dog.” She hissed. “Get down.”

  The dog must have misheard; or she was still very bad at talking to dogs. He sat down instead and stared at her with his eyebrows raised. Emily looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the stranger. She couldn’t see him anymore; she doubted he’d even noticed her. There probably wasn’t any immediate danger.

  She could go around to the passenger door, put the dog out onto the pavement, and head home. But the entire time she was considering she had enough time to do that, she was also thinking that the dog was pretty cute, and she was lonely, and he was lonely, and just as afraid of that strange man as she was. “Fine.” She grumbled quietly. “But Todd isn’t going to like it.”

  Despite an overwhelming gagging feeling and a pounding heart from the jaunt back to the car, Emily grinned at the face she imagined Todd would make when he walked in that evening. “Good. Good dog.”

  The dog stared impatiently out the front window. She climbed in, slammed the door, and pulled from the parking lot. The guard at the gate waved again, but she was scratching the dog’s ears and didn’t bother to wave back.

  5

  “Good boy.” Emily cooed at the dog. She’d had to carry him through the house. The carpets were light and both of them were filthy, but her shoes weren’t quite as dire as the state of the dog’s paws. He was large, and she was not exactly a professional heavy doggy lifter. He also didn’t take well to the idea of being carried and squirmed so much going up the stairs she was sure they were both going to end up back at the bottom again in a pile.

  Once she got him in the tub, he seemed to recognize bath time as something familiar, harmless, and necessary. He stood quite still in the water and let Emily cover him in shampoo. She didn’t have any dog shampoo, so she used her own. At least he would have ultra-hydration and body control.

  After the third douse of shampoo and all over scrubbing, it was clear that whatever grossness he’d run through at the dump was never going to be entirely clean. Parts of his yellow fur would be permanently stained red and black, particularly around his mouth, which was more difficult to wash. “I’m sorry boy. I tried. I think you’re just going to have to stay red.”

  The dog looked up at her, dripped, panted happily, and smelled like it had just gotten back from a long vacation in Hawaii.

  “I’ll call you Red.” She rubbed his wet head behind the ears with one hand while she drained the horrible grey bath water. He seemed to enjoy the rub down with a fluffy green towel and didn’t bother to do the stereotypical full body boogie she’d been expecting. “Red.” She said firmly. The dog looked at her with what she could only assume was some measure of approval.

  She had about two hours until Todd got home, and she spent part of the time waiting showing Red around. She took him out to the garden. He loved it as much as she did. He darted back and forth on the grass like someone had lit his tail on fire, and it took a while for him to slow down enough for her to show him a place beside the house where he could use the bathroom. She was glad they had another thing in common and promised she would make Todd build him a doggy door, so he could come in and out as he pleased as long as he didn’t bark or growl at Mr. Johnson. She also whispered to him that Mr. Johnson was always naked, but that was mainly conversational since Red would never be expected to peer over the fence.

  She also took him inside and showed him the sofa, and which place was Todd’s so Red could be sure to lay in Todd’s spot as often as possible. After Red gave her a hopeful look, she encouraged him to jump up on the couch and sat down beside him. It took a few minutes for his guilt to wear off, and she suspected he’d never been allowed on furniture before. After a few tight circles, he finally laid down, flopped his still damp head in her lap, and was content to lay there and be petted.

  The contentment she felt from this snuggle time was potent. She felt lighter, or was that happiness? Maybe feeling happy was enough to make her think she was happy, and she stayed that way for a full hour until she had to get up and start making dinner.

  Dogs apparently were not the cure for crappy, irritable cooking, whatever other problems he might solve. Red didn’t follow her into the kitchen, and she thought he must have been tired from being outside alone for so long because he fell into such a deep sleep she could hear him snoring in the other room.

  She watched the clock, which was shaped like a cow, because everything in the kitchen was cow. She had cow salt and pepper shakers, cow hot plates, cow dishrags and wash cloths, a cow cookie jar, about fifty little useless little porcelain cows sitting on the back of the counter, one that dispensed toothpicks from the udders, and one that dispensed brown, root beer flavored jelly beans out its butt when she tugged on its tail. There was also a cow piggy bank, which she’d mainly purchased for the irony.

  Todd was as punctual as ever and came into the kitchen to kiss her on the forehead. She smiled and said nothing but hello. That should have been his first clue that something weird was about to occur. She never just smiled and said hello without wanting to whap him with a wooden spoon. Todd was oblivious and walked into the other room as he always did.

  She was stifling giggles with her hands even before Todd shouted at her. “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s a dog, Todd.” She called back fighting to keep the laughter out of her voice and smiling so hard it hurt her cheeks.

  “I know it’s a dog.” He shouted, a cannon of annoyance. “What’s it doing in the house?”

  She put a hand over her mouth again and composed herself before she shut off the stove and went to stand in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. “Resting.”

  “No.” Todd said in a tone so fatherly it aged him forty years. She could practically see his nose hairs turning grey. “We aren’t keeping it.”

  “No.” She said with equal firmness. “We aren’t. I am. It’s my dog, his name is Red, and you will get over it, dear.”

  He blinked at her for a moment at first surprised at her insistence, then awash with confusion as he glanced over his shoulder at the dog. “But it’s yellow.”

  “Yeah. Most of him. Anyway, he matches the formal room, so obviously I have to keep him.”

  Todd was so dumbfounded his eyes were partially crossed. “But it’s yellow;” he annunciated the last word at her as if he might be ready to spell it for her also.

  “It’s my dog. I’ll call him what I want. He likes it.”

  “How do you know what he likes?”

  She huffed in exasperation. “Here, Red.” Red almost instantly bounded into the Kitchen with his tail wagging. “Red, this is Todd. Todd meet Red.”

  To their mutual surprise, Red held up a paw for him to shake. She could only smile, as Todd bent down to accept the offered paw with all the awkwardness of a man who didn’t want to be incredibly rude. The paw turned out to be little more than a carefully planned ploy to get Todd to bend down. As soon as it was in range, R
ed licked Todd’s face.

  Todd drew back looking slightly like the Hulk, in that his face had turned green and he gagged so hard that the veins stuck out in his neck. “Christ. What the hell has it been eating?”

  “Don’t say ‘it’ like he’s some kind of monster. He is a he. I found him at the dump. I would assume he’s been eating rotten meat and garbage. It’ll probably clear up eventually.”

  Todd looked in imminent danger of puking on the kitchen floor. It felt like the right time to tell him dinner was ready. She handed Todd one of the three plates she prepared, and then set another on the floor for Red, who ate with a frenzy.

  “You’re letting him eat off our plates?”

  “Well yeah. What else would I do? I can’t just throw it on the floor.”

  Todd slathered on his best fatherly simper, a mixture of scolding and sweet. “Em, we can’t keep it. We can’t afford the extra mouth to feed, especially if you’re going to feed him what we eat.”

  “The human food is only temporary, until I get some proper dog food. Besides, we throw away more than enough to feed him, and most of that is what I don’t eat.”

  He looked like he wanted to do more scolding, or screaming, she wasn’t sure which. In the end, Todd just looked down at his plate. “What is this anyway?”

  She chewed her lip uncomfortably. “Uhm. Chicken.”

  Todd raised an eyebrow. “It looks like pork again.”

  “I’ll say its pork if that’s what you’d rather eat.” She realized it wasn’t a complaint exactly, but she really wished Todd would just eat and not make her tell him what it was every day. It was such a strange necessity, that information, like he expected her to poison him or secretly serve him her own finger.