Chapters (42)
It’s so still, so quiet that Henry hears cartilage creak as his fingers flex back into a fist.
“Come on, doggie.” The man tries whistling, but only shoots a putrid gust past thin, brittle lips.
Then, in spite of all suspicion, a dachshund’s head materializes under the tailgate of Henry’s truck. The dog doesn’t obey the man’s thigh slaps and calls, instead scampers toward the service road. The man darts after it. His pants are so loose and weighed down that he has to hook his fingers into the rear belt loops, turning his silhouette into some handcuffed fugitive, waddle-jogging around the parking lot.
Henry climbs into the pickup, asks Junior if he’s all right, if he was scared. The boy says yes, then no. He doesn’t budge, locked in an upright fetal position. Henry pulls the truck up to room 8 but leaves a three-car-wide gap between them and the Mustang. When he slips the backpack straps onto Junior’s shoulders, he sees the nape of the boy’s neck is shining with sweat. Is he that sick, or had he been that scared?
Opening the door to room 8, he leans down to the boy’s ear. “We’re here,” he says in as comforting a tone he can muster. “I’m right here.”
And so is the small-faced stranger, who, through raspy breaths, now greets them.
“Hey there, neighbors.” He’s cradling the dachshund awkwardly, like a child struggling under a load of firewood.
Henry presses Junior into room 8 and closes the door without stepping in himself. He turns around, holstering a fist in his front pocket. “What do you want, huh?”
“Question is what do you want.” The man winks, then wiggles two paws into a sad mambo. “She for sale.”
The dog is belly up, hind legs spread, and she is clearly a he.
“We’re good.”
“You sure? Purebred and housebroken. A steal for an even Benny.”
Henry crosses his arms. He refuses to go in with Junior until this sleazy dogmonger has shut himself into room 9 for the night. “I said we’re good.”
“How’s about eighty?”
“No.”
“Fifty.”
“No.”
“Twenty?”
Henry says goodnight, but makes no movement toward door 8. The dogmonger’s mouth stretches to share a clenched-tooth smile, a canine capped in gold. “Fair enough. Case you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
The door to room 9 opens and unleashes a surge of sound: a TV on full blast, pounding through a breaking news sound bite, sliced with woofs and whinnies. The dogmonger has to kick his way past three wet snouts to shut the door behind him.
Before entering 8, Henry doubles back to the truck for his duffel bag, holding a Goodwill suit that’d cost more to dry clean than purchase. In it he tosses Junior’s present, wrapped in coarse brown paper one seam sealed by a row of yellow smiley-face stickers.