Chessie Bites the Dust

We never realized what a heart Mom O. had for animals until the day Mark had to leave the warehouse to help Charlie bury his dog. After lunch, Van had phoned the office, hysterical as all get out. Mom O’Dell held the phone away from her ear so Van’s volume wouldn’t damage her hearing. We heard every detail of the conversation.

            “Now, Vandalia,” Mom O. said. “Calm down. I can’t make out a word you’re saying. Who is dead?”

            Van’s tone made us all wince. “Chessie is!” she said. “Charlie’s dog. He’s had her since he was sixteen and I swear, sometimes I think he loves her more’n me. Now she’s dead. Strangled and hanging over the chain link fence. Tell Charlie to get home right now. He’s gotta get her down before the kids wake from their nap!”

            To us, as soon as Van said the bit about strangled and hanging, Mom O. seemed to come perilously close to fainting dead away. Adam scooted his folding chair closer to her desk and patted her shoulder. Not a touchy feely gal, Mom tolerated it that day. Appeared to maybe even derive strength from it.

            Right before Mom O. spoke, she reached out and grabbed her blood pressure monitor. Latched onto it so tightly the skin on her age-spotty knuckles looked bleached.

            “You need to stay calm, Vandalia,” Mom said. “For the children. Now tell me, how exactly did the poor thing manage to choke itself?”

            Van’s huff was easy for us to hear. “She runs away all the da— dang time, Mom O.,” Van said. She paused a moment and when she resumed, her voice sounded slightly more collected. “She digs out under the fence. She busts through the gate. And here lately she’s taken to trying to climb over. So this morning, I tied her up. Inside the dog run.”

            Mom O. was now blinking non-stop, to try to staunch the flow of her tears, we’d surmise later. When a stream of snot began to creek toward her mouth, Adam plucked a tissue out of the box on the desk and dabbed at her face. She swatted him away.

            “Well, surely Chessie barked or howled or something,” Mom O. said.

            “But that’s the problem, Mom,” Van wailed. “She didn’t. Because . . . Because . . .”

            Mom O.’s steely eyebrows tangled together and her raisin eyes practically disappeared.           

            “Because why, Van?” Her words marched out individually and defined.

            Van didn’t answer right away. When she did, it sounded as if she was reading from a Hollywood script.

            “Oh, Mother O’Dell,” she began. Her voice was nearly impossible to make out at first. A wheedle really. “Do you remember what it was like? To have a house to care for? And animals? And babies? And a husband? And—” Her questions crescendoed and each item she added was imbued with more drama than the last.

            Mom O. cut her off, almost without moving her lips. “Get to the point, Van.”

            Our eyebrows lifted in unison as we heard Van draw a trembling breath.

            “Well,” she said, “at the beginning of summer when Chessie started staying outside the better part of the day, it occurred to me her howling might keep the kids from their naps, and you know they need their naps.”

            Mom yacked her free hand and rolled her eyes. “The point, Van,” she said. “The point.”

            “So last week I drove to the pet superstore up at the strip mall and bought a . . . bought a . . .” Van seemed to run out of gas about then.

            Mom O.’s gaze drilled a hole in the paneled wall over our heads. “A what, Van? What did you buy?”

            We leaned in to hear Van’s answer.

            “A barker breaker kit.”

            In one motion, Mom O. both stood and knocked her rolly chair to the ground. She gripped her considerable waist with one hand and clenched the phone with the other. Her eyes were squenched shut as if she was picturing the whole scene play out on her eyelids. After a minute, she transferred her free hand from her waist to her cheek. To scrape a tear away.

            “And this morning,” Mom said, “poor Chessie didn’t dare make a peep for fear she’d get the living daylights shocked out of her. That’s what you’re saying, Van, right? Right?”

            At that point the only thing coming from the phone was that blubbering racket girls make when a serious crying fit takes hold. Mom O. sneered and slammed the receiver into its cradle. Headed toward the warehouse door, her elbows pumping something fierce.

            “Mark!” she called from the doorway. “Charlie. Get over here. Now!” When she didn't get a response she ventured into the cool shadows of the warehouse.

            We followed close enough to hear her mutter. “Wouldn’t surprise me if that harlot was entertaining visitors of the male persuasion ‘round about the time Chessie choked. Wouldn’t surprise me a-tall.”

            We dropped back lest Mom O’Dell discover our proximity and aim her anger at us.

            “Her’s pissed,” Adam said as he shouldered the office door for us.
            "Her's most definitely pissed," Jason said as he reached for the treat bowl.

(This is an ongoing short story. If you'd like to read the whole thing, click here: "Vandalia and Charlie." That's where the saga starts.)

Saving Booger Hole

Francis, the gentle giant, was going to feed a cute little mouse to a mean old tarantula and it was my job to make sure it didn't happen.

I'm not sure why Frank got a tarantula.  It's not like you can cuddle one or anything.  Frank named the spider, Legs, 'cause he liked ZZ Top.  The mouse was a BOGO item--buy a tarantula, get its first meal free.

I was walking through the common room on my dorm floor when someone made an announcement.  "Frank's gonna feed a mouse to his tarantula tonight.  Who wants to watch?"

That's all I had to hear.  I left a trail of my econ textbook, a spiral notebook, two Bic pens, my gloves and coat in the hall.  I flung open the door to Frank's room.  He lowered the beer bottle that was en route to his lips.  One corner of his mouth went up.  He didn't say it, but it seemed like he was expecting me.

I put my hands on my hips and glared at him and his red-headed roommate.  "Where's the mouse?"

The guys looked at each other, then back at me.  Frank used his beer bottle to point to the other side of the room.  I walked over and sat down at his desk.  I looked at the cardboard pet box.  I could see a half dozen fiber optic-looking whiskers sticking out of one of the air holes.  I touched them and they retracted.  Then a little eraser pink nose poked out, all quivery.  I held my pointer finger a half inch away for him or her to sniff.

I picked the box up and held it close to my heart.  I walked around to the red head's desk and perched on top of it.  "How much?"

Frank squinted.  "How much what?"

"How much for the mouse?"

Frank shrugged.  "I don't know," he said.  "That probably would have fed him for a good month."

"Crickets 'til the end of the year," I said.

Frank shook his head.  "What?"

"I'll buy your stupid tarantula a bag of crickets every week 'til the end of the year in exchange for this little guy."  I tapped the top of the box.

When he didn't answer, I balanced the mouse house on my lap and held out my hand.  "Deal?"

Frank looked at the ceiling for a minute, then he held his hand out.  "Deal."  He took his time giving me back my hand.


The next day, Frank and I rode the elevator to the ninth floor after lunch.

"You want a ride to the pet store?" he said, before he turned right and I turned left, off the elevator.

I looked up at him and wrinkled my nose.  "What for?"

"You know . . . mouse food . . . crickets?"

"Oh.  Yeah.  I guess I do.  Let me get some money."

My monthly money from Dad was running low so I got Booger Hole a turtle bowl instead of a Habitrail.  I didn't get food.  I'd just bring him stuff up from the dining hall.  I bought him a little blue bowl to drink water out of 'cause I couldn't figure out how to attach a water bottle to the turtle bowl.


I named the mouse, Booger Hole, 'cause one of my brothers had told me about a bluegrass band called Booger Hole Revival.  When you revive something, isn't it like snatching it from the jaws of death?  Like Jesus did Lazarus?

Booger Hole was a silky, charcoal-colored mouse, the size of my thumb.  I could tell he was a boy  'cause . . . well, I could tell.  Even though he was super cute, Booger Hole turned out to be a pain in my butt.  He was forever peeing in my sweatshirt pockets and getting out of his turtle bowl.  He didn't seem to realize or appreciate what I'd done for him . . .  the way I'd purchased his redemption and all.  I loved him anyway.

Booger Hole  figured out early on how to come and go.  Every morning he was inside his bowl,  but there were  always little chocolate jimmy-looking mouse presents all over my desk.  I started putting a textbook on top with a sliver of a gap for him to get air.  Each of my textbooks wound up with a crescent moon-shaped hole on the side opposite the spine.  I didn't get cash back for used books that semester. 


On about our fourth trip to the pet store, Frank turned to me at the stoplight right before the Mileground. 

He looked at my knees instead of my eyes.  "Legs was scared of Booger." 

I looked over at him and huffed.  "Are you serious?"

Frank bent forward to look up at the light to see if it had changed.  "Yeah.  I put Booger in with him and he ran to the other side of the tank."

I didn't say anything.

Frank cleared his throat.  "You don't have to keep buying crickets . . . if you don't want to."

I looked out my window and shook my head.  "No.  A deal's a deal."


And then I killed him . . . Booger Hole.  School was out for summer and Booger Hole and I went home to Huntington.

One night I had one too many at the Varsity Club, and I made a bad choice at 2 in the morning.  After I brushed my teeth, I got Booger Hole out to play on my bed.  I passed out and when I woke up,  I felt like the Princess and the Pea.  What is that lump under me?  The lump was Booger Hole . . . dead, but still warm. 

I held him in my hand and sobbed, trying to wash my guilt away with tears.  I stroked  his little body with my pointer finger.  All his important stuff was smooshed to one side.  Like when the loaf of bread gets crushed by the gallon of milk in your grocery bag.

I never did tell Francis, the gentle giant, that Booger Hole got killed by a sleeping giant--me.  Sometimes I wonder, which way would Booger Hole have preferred to die?  Death by hairy tarantula, or death by tipsy giant . . .