Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

Thad pulled the chair a bit closer to the bed. He looked down at Charlie and smiled a small smile. A moment passed and Charlie smiled an even smaller one back at him.

“Help’s on the way, boy,” he said. “You hangin’ in there for me?”

Charlie nodded the tiny nod.

“When you’re back to feelin’ good,” Thad said, “we’ll track down that herd, cut you out the finest l’il pinto pony on God’s green earth.”

Very slowly, Charlie closed his eyes.

Thad leaned closer toward him, his own eyes changing in a powerful way, hard to describe. “Still hangin’ in?” he said, his voice now kind of thick and throaty.

Charlie’s lips moved, but no sound came out. They moved again, and so softly, Charlie said, “Pinto pony.”

“Good boy,” Thad said.

The camera moved in closer on Charlie, lying still, and Lars started to raise his hand, like he was about to make that chopping motion and say cut, when all of a sudden Charlie’s hands moved, wrapping themselves around the cowboy hat and holding it to his chest. Thad’s eyes misted over. And then Charlie opened his own eyes. For an instant they seemed to see Thad, and then they didn’t. Charlie’s eyes went totally blank and lifeless-I knew that look from my job, had seen it too often-and… and stayed that way!

“Charlie!” Bernie shouted, and ran onto the set. Me right with him, of course. We’re a lot alike, as I may have mentioned before.

I have never in my whole life been so utterly humiliated,” Leda said.

We were in the parking area at the movie set, out behind the trailers and close to the two-lane blacktop leading back to the city, the Porsche and Leda’s minivan parked nose to nose. Good thing they weren’t moving, since there’d be a crack-up right away. Hey! What a strange thought! I gave myself a good scratching under the ear and returned to feeling normal.

Bernie glanced at the minivan. Charlie sat in the front passenger seat, eating trail mix from a little plastic container and gazing out at nothing in particular. I have things I could mention on the subject of trail mix, but this isn’t the time or the place, as humans say. Maybe just the time part-actually not sure how place fits in.

“For Christ sake,” Bernie said. “Who cares what those pretentious morons think?”

“Those pretentious morons, as you put it, are some of the most important people in the country,” Leda said.

Bernie blew some air through his lips, making a sound like peh.

“You’ve always been so transparent,” Leda said. “This is jealousy, pure and simple.”

“Jealous?” said Bernie. “Of who?”

“Lars, of course.”

Bernie laughed, not his normal laugh, which is one of the best sounds on earth, but harsher and more through his nose, if that makes any sense. “Why would I be jealous of that, that…”

“Can’t find the perfect put-down?” Leda said. “How unusual. But as for the question, you’re jealous because Lars has discovered a talent in your son that you were unaware of and wouldn’t have a clue what to do with in any case.”

Over in the minivan, Charlie had stopped eating and was watching his parents. Without thinking much about it-or anything, really-I sidled toward Charlie’s door. He glanced down at me through the open window. No makeup on his face now: he looked just fine. My tail started up, all on its own.

“That’s total crap,” Bernie said.

“This is exactly why the Europeans think of us the way they do,” Leda said.

“The Europeans?”

A new one on me, too.

“You still can’t grasp what happened, can you?” Leda said. “Your son is an artist, and not just in the making.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bernie said. “He’s a six-year-old kid, barely out of diapers.”

The minivan door opened. I climbed up into the car and sat on the floor in front of Charlie. First time in the minivan: it turned out to be nice and roomy. Also, some interesting food products lay under Charlie’s seat, out of sight, which meant a lot to humans when it came to finding things but little to me. The food products-remains of a tuna sandwich, a French fry or two, some corn chips-could wait. Right now what I wanted to do was push up gently against Charlie, so I did. He put his hand on the back of my neck. Bernie’s voice rose. Leda’s sharpened. They seemed to blow round and round the minivan like a big dust devil. You see dust devils out in the desert from time to time. I thought about dust devils and other desert things I knew, especially some nice little yellow flowers, the name escaping me at that moment. Charlie kept his hand on the back of my neck.

We drove home. Bernie was quiet just about the whole way. Then, as we turned onto Mesquite Road, he said, “Hope to hell Charlie didn’t hear that diaper crack.”

Oh, Bernie.

He banged the steering wheel. “They put him in a goddamn death scene without even telling me. Leda knew, oh, yeah. Why was that okay with her?”

I started panting, although I wasn’t thirsty, hadn’t been running. In fact, a nice bit of running sounded like just the thing at the moment.

We pulled into the driveway. Bernie stopped the car, switched off the engine but didn’t get out. He sat there. I panted.

“Turns out it wasn’t even in the script, that part where he opened his eyes and seemed to…” He went quiet. I heard the phone ringing in the house, but maybe Bernie didn’t, because he kept sitting there. “How did he know to do that? Now she’s going to twist his whole childhood around. To what end? Turn him into a Thad Perry?”

What was he talking about? I had no idea. I had no ideas at all. I searched back for my last idea. What had it been? Something nice, something about… yes! Running!

The next thing I knew, I was running. And not just running, but zooming, ears flattened straight back by my own wind. What a feeling, in the air most of the time, all paws off the ground, practically flying! There are many ways of zooming, but my favorite is the quick-cutting kind of zoom, darting this way and that, sometimes doubling right back on myself, claws digging deep in the ground, clods of earth flying high, and not just earth but grassy turf, too, which makes a sort of ripping sound, quite faint yet very satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain and no time anyway, no time to even think about the fact that we didn’t have a grass lawn, no way we could, not with the whole aquifer thing, and neither did the Parsons, in their case all about no longer being able to push the lawnmower, the only grass lawn being old man Heydrich’s on the other side. Zoom. Zip. Rip, rip, rip: had I ever made cuts this sharp and at this speed? Chet the “Chet! Chet! For God’s sake!”

Uh-oh. I hit the brakes and stopped on a dime-no dimes present, of course, although you couldn’t be sure, what with dimes being so small, unless I was getting that wrong, so complicated, human money-possibly taking out a flowery bush that stood on the boundary of our place and old man Heydrich’s, or perhaps slightly more on his side.

There’s a voice humans use for shouting and not shouting at the same time, a sort of muffled shout. Bernie used it now.

“Chet! Get over here.”

I gave myself a good shake, trotted over to Bernie. His cell phone rang. He answered, said something, clicked off, and then turned to me.

“Hop in.”

Back in the car? Why not? No reason, except that we hadn’t chowed down in what seemed like a long time. But then, from out of the blue, I got the idea we were headed to Max’s Memphis Ribs, my favorite restaurant in the whole valley. Those ribs! And when you’d eaten every speck of meat, there was still the whole bone in your future! What a business plan, as I may have mentioned before, but it’s important! Had Bernie mentioned anything about Max’s Memphis Ribs? Perhaps not, maybe meaning there was no reason to believe Max’s was on the schedule. I believed.