15
“Okay, now listen, Toby.” I took him by the shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. Then I gave him a little shake just to make sure I had his attention.
“There might be a man back there with Willy.” I jerked my head in the direction of the old house.
Toby’s eyes got wide. “Who?” he said.
“A man named Mookie.”
“A man named Mookie?”
I nodded. “But it’s okay,” I said. “He’s nice. He gave Willy some sardines.”
“What’s he doing back there?
I shrugged. “Just, like, kinda living there, I guess.”
Toby glanced nervously at the house. “How’d he get in?”
“Not inside,” I said. “He’s living outside. Out in the back where Willy is.”
“You mean like a bum?”
I kept my hands on Toby’s shoulders and made him face me so he’d pay attention. “Look, Toby,” I said. “He’s liable to be gone. But just in case he’s there, don’t be scared, okay?”
“Okay.”
I dropped my hands from Toby’s shoulders and started toward the house.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Toby said, grabbing the back of my T-shirt. “How do you know about that man named Mookie?” He stamped his foot on the gravel road. “You came here without me.”
“I had to,” I said.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
I put my arm around him and gave him a little jiggle. “Look, Toby, I just did it without thinking ’cause I needed to see Willy. I’m sorry, okay?”
Toby looked down at his feet. I jiggled him again.
“Okay?” I said.
Finally, in a little tiny voice, he said, “Okay.”
“I won’t do it ever again.”
“Pinkie promise?” he said.
I crooked my pinkie at him. “Pinkie promise.”
We linked pinkies, then headed toward the house. I sure hoped Mookie was gone.
We hadn’t even got to the corner of the house before Willy started barking.
“It’s me,” I called out, “Georgina.”
“And Toby,” Toby called from behind me.
When I rounded the corner, the first thing I saw was that blue tarp. Underneath it, Mookie was stretched out on top of his sleeping bag, his hands folded on his stomach and his hat over his face.
From over on the back steps, Willy wiggled his whole body and let out a bark like he was saying hello.
Mookie didn’t move.
“Mookie,” I said kind of soft-like so I wouldn’t scare him.
Nothing.
“Mookie?” I said a little louder.
Still nothing.
“Is he dead?” Toby whispered.
Suddenly Mookie let out a snort and jumped, sending his hat flying and making me and Toby grab each other. Mookie slapped a hand over his heart and flopped back down on his sleeping bag.
“You like to scared the bessy bug outta me,” he said.
“I brought Willy some stuff to eat,” I said, wagging my paper bag in the air.
Mookie sat up and put his hat on. “Me and him’s been havin’ liver puddin’.”
I wrinkled my nose. “What’s that?”
“Liver puddin’?” Mookie rubbed his hand in a circle on his stomach. “Some good eatin’, that’s what. Right, Willy?”
Willy sat on the porch steps and lifted a paw.
Mookie chuckled. “That dog’s got good taste.” He nodded toward Toby. “Who’s he?”
“My brother, Toby.”
Mookie got up and held out his three-fingered hand toward Toby. I’d forgotten to warn Toby about that, but for once in his life, he didn’t act like a scaredy baby. He shook Mookie’s hand like he didn’t even notice those missing fingers.
“It’s a dern shame about that landlord of yours, ain’t it?” Mookie said to Toby.
Toby looked at me and then back at Mookie. “Yessir, it is.”
I felt relief flood over me. Toby wasn’t going to say something stupid like he usually did.
“I bet y’all sure do miss your little dog, don’t you?” Mookie said.
“We sure do,” I said.
Toby nodded. “Yessir, we do.”
Mookie rolled his sleeping bag up and stuffed it into the crate on the back of his bicycle. “Kinda hard to sleep around him, though, ain’t it?”
I looked over at Willy. He looked back at me with his shiny little eyes and his eyebrows lifted up like he was curious as anything to hear what I was going to say.
I shrugged. “Sometimes,” I said.
Mookie wiped a plastic coffee mug with his shirttail and put it into a burlap bag. “He snore like that all the time?” he said.
“Not all the time.”
Mookie chuckled and put a few more things inside his burlap bag. Then he tucked it into the crate beside the sleeping bag.
“Are you leaving?” I said. I sure hoped he was.
“Yep.”
Good, I thought. Now I could concentrate on what I had to do.
Mookie pushed his bike toward the path leading out to the road.
“What about that?” I said, pointing up at the blue tarp.
“Oh, I’ll be back,” he said.
Me and Toby watched him disappear around the corner of the house. A few seconds later, the sound of gravelly singing echoed through the woods and faded away.
“Is he a bum?” Toby said.
“I don’t know.” I sat on the step beside Willy and let him root around inside the paper bag. He pulled out a chunk of bagel and gobbled it down.
“I bet he is,” Toby said.
I stroked Willy’s head while he ate the rest of the scraps I had brought him. (Except a slice of tomato. He just sniffed that.)
“Don’t you think he’s a bum?” Toby said.
“How should I know?” I snapped.
“I don’t like him,” Toby said. “He smells.”
“So do you!” I hollered, making Willy jump off my lap and slink away like I’d just smacked him upside the head.
“So do you!” Toby hollered back.
Why was I being so mean to Toby? Maybe I figured if I was mean to Toby, I’d feel better about things. But I didn’t.
“Let’s go take Willy for a walk,” I said.
The next day, Mama made Toby stay at the coffee shop and do his homework over in the corner booth by the kitchen. He had whined and carried on, but it hadn’t done him a bit of good.
So now I was finally free to be by myself and figure things out. First, I had to visit Carmella and find out if she had gotten any money from her sister, Gertie.
I hurried up the sidewalk toward Whitmore Road. It seemed like the world had blossomed overnight. Bright pink azaleas. White dogwood. The air smelled sweet, like clover. I had the urge to take my shoes off and run barefoot across the soft green lawns. But I didn’t.
When I got to Carmella’s, I waited outside the gate. The yard was quiet. Not even any birds at the feeder. For a minute, I wished I could step back in time. Back to the day when Willy had come running around the side of the house, chasing that squirrel. Before I had done what I’d done. But I couldn’t, so I made my feet go up on the porch and my hand knock on the screen door.
“Who is it?” Carmella called from inside.
“It’s me. Georgina.”
I heard her wheezy breathing as she came to unlatch the screen.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
I looked down at the floor and said, “Did anybody find Willy?”
Carmella shook her head and sank into her ratty old chair. The TV was on with no sound. One of those shopping shows where some lady tries to get you to buy a great big ring that’s not even a real diamond. The lady wiggled her fingers around, making the fake diamond sparkle for the camera.
“What about Gertie?” I said.
Carmella shook her head again. “What am I going to do?” she said in this flat kind of voice that made me feel sort of scared.
I sat on the ottoman across from her. “What did Gertie say?”
“She says she hasn’t got the money, but I know good and well she does.” Carmella wiped her nose with her hand and stared at the TV. “She says I’m pathetic for getting all worked up over a dog.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking I’ll just go ahead and offer what I can.”
“How much is that?”
Carmella sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Fifty dollars, maybe?”
My stomach went thunk.
“But you put five hundred dollars on all those signs,” I said.
“I know.” Carmella blew her nose. “Maybe whoever finds Willy won’t care about money.” She stuffed the tissue into her pocket. “I sure wouldn’t,” she said. “Would you?”
I shrugged. “Um, well, sort of. I mean, not really, but …”
With every word that came out of my mouth, I felt like I was digging myself into a hole, and if I didn’t stop, I was going to be so far in I wouldn’t ever climb out.
Me and Carmella stared at the TV in silence. Now that lady was dangling a shiny gold necklace in front of the camera. Her bright red lips were moving, and I tried to imagine what she was saying. But my mind was such a mixed-up mess that instead of imagining her saying how wonderful that necklace was, I heard her saying, “Georgina Hayes, what in the world are you doing? Have you lost your mind? You bring that little dog back here this instant.”
I looked at Carmella and felt a stab. What in the world was I doing? Then suddenly Carmella leaned forward and said, “Will you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Will you and Toby go check those woods over there across the highway?”
“What woods?”
“Over yonder.” She waved her arm toward the main highway. Toward the gravel road. Toward the old house.
“You’ll probably think I’m plumb crazy,” she said, “but sometimes I think I hear Willy barking from over there.”
Thunk. There went my stomach again.
“Really?” I said.
“I drove around over that way yesterday,” she said. “But I thought maybe you and Toby could look, too.”
“Okay.”
“Course, I think I hear Willy scampering around this house, too,” Carmella said. “So I reckon it’s just my crazy old mind playing tricks on me.”
“Toby’s doing homework at my mama’s coffee shop,” I said. “But I’ll go look.”
Carmella smiled. “I sure do appreciate everything y’all have done for me.”
I shrugged. “That’s okay.” I started for the door. “Besides, maybe if we do find Willy, Gertie’ll change her mind and give us five hundred dollars.”
Carmella’s smile dropped, and she looked like I’d just told her the sky had turned purple.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Well, um, I mean, you know, the reward and all?”
“Oh.” Carmella looked down at her hands and twisted a button on her shirt. “I guess I thought you and Toby were helping me ’cause you wanted to.”
“We are,” I said. “I mean, we do want to. I just thought …”
“But I will certainly do my best to make sure you get paid for your kindness.” Carmella’s chin was puckering up and she wouldn’t look at me.
Dern, I thought. That hole I’d dug myself into was getting deeper by the minute.
16
As soon as I got to the house, I knew Mookie was back. First, I saw his bicycle propped against the bushes on the side. Then I caught a whiff of something cooking.
He looked up when I came around the corner.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Hey.” I went straight on over to Willy and gave him the bacon I’d brought.
“I’m glad you brought that,” Mookie said. “’Cause he’s been eyeing my Hoover gravy like he was gonna eat it all and then me, too.”
I squinted into the pan Mookie held over a small fire in a ring of rocks. A pale gray liquid bubbled and smoked in the pan.
“What is that?” I said.
“Hoover gravy,” Mookie said. “Want some?”
“No, thanks.”
I watched him dip a slice of bread into the watery liquid and eat it. Yuck.
“Where’s Toby?” Mookie said.
“Doing his homework with my mom.”
“Ain’t you got homework?”
I sat on the steps and pulled Willy into my lap. “A little.” I picked some burrs out of Willy’s fur. “But I don’t need help like Toby. He’s not very smart.”
Mookie sopped another piece of bread in the watery gravy. “Smart ain’t got a thing to do with school,” he said. “I never went past sixth grade, myself.” He ate the soggy bread, then added, “And I’m pretty smart.”
He licked his fingers. “Besides,” he said, “if you ask me, school’s about as useful as a trapdoor on a canoe.”
“You can’t get a job if you don’t go to school,” I said.
“Says who?”
“Says everybody.”
“I work every day of my life,” he said.
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
“Like where?” I said.
“Everywhere,” he repeated.
I frowned down at Willy and ran my finger over the velvety fur on his nose. Mookie was crazy. Why was I even talking to him?
“Then how come you live like a bum?” I said. I felt my face burn. I shouldn’t have said that.
But Mookie just laughed. “I said I worked. I didn’t say I got paid.”
“You work for free?”
“Sometimes.” He took the pan off the fire and scooped dirt over the flames.
“How come?” I said.
He tied the end of the bread bag in a knot, then leaned back against his rolled-up sleeping bag.
“Why not?” he said.
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Whatever I come across that needs to be done,” he said. “Might be fixing a roof. Might be painting. Might be digging ditches.” He wiggled his three-fingered hand at me. “Might even be fixing tractor engines,” he added.
“For free?”
“Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.” He took a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.
“But why would you do that stuff for free?”
“’Cause sometimes people need stuff done more than I need money,” he said.
That sounded crazy, but I didn’t say so. It looked to me like he could use some money.
Mookie took his baseball hat off and scratched his fuzzy gray hair. “Besides,” he said, “I got a motto. You wanna hear it?”
I shrugged.
“Sometimes the trail you leave behind you is more important than the path ahead of you.” He put his hat back on. “You got a motto?” he said.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
He stuck his finger in the gravy. “Okay, little fella,” he said to Willy. “It’s cool enough for you now.” He slid the pan toward the steps, and Willy ran down and lapped up the gravy. Clumps of gooey flour stuck to the bottom of the pan, and he licked them, too.
Then Mookie took me by surprise when he said, “Ain’t your mama found you a new place to live yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But she’s working on it.”
“You know, I saw the strangest thing today,” Mookie said. “I saw a little ole sign with a dog looked just like yours.”
I swear, when he said that, my heart sank right straight down to my feet.
“Like Willy?”
Mookie nodded. “Yep.”
I couldn’t even look at Mookie.
“And you know what was even stranger?” he said.
I swallowed hard and made myself say, “What?”
“That dog’s name was Willy, too.” Mookie grinned at me, flashing that gold tooth of his. “Ain’t that something?”
I looked down at Willy, still licking the pan. “Yessir,” I said, surprised at how my voice came out so low and shaky.
Mookie switched the toothpick over to the other side of his mouth and chewed on it.
I looked down at the ground and traced circles in the dirt with the toe of my shoe. I never thought I’d say it, but I wished I was back in our ratty old car, snuggled up in the backseat, hugging my pillow.
“I better go,” I said, giving Willy a quick pat on the head. “Bye now.”
I felt Mookie’s eyes on me as I walked toward the side of the house. Just as I was about to round the corner, he called out, “Hey, Georgina …”
I stopped.
“I got another motto,” he said. “You wanna hear it?” He didn’t even wait for me to answer.
“Sometimes,” he said, “the more you stir it, the worse it stinks.”
I turned and hurried up the path to the road.
When I got back to the car, I took out my purple notebook. I slouched down and propped my feet up on the dashboard. I opened to How to Steal a Dog.
April 25, I wrote. Step 7.
I stared out the window, tapping the pencil against my teeth. I looked down at the paper and wrote:
Remember I looked out the window again, then back at the paper.
I drew a box under the word Remember. Inside the box I wrote:
Sometimes, the more you stir it, the worse it stinks. Then I closed my notebook, climbed into the backseat, hugged my pillow, and waited for Mama and Toby.