Hound Dog True (6 page)

Miss Sweet smoothes her candy dress, looks like she can't tell whether being frosted is good or not. "Just having a little fun with my niece," she says, waving her hand at the car. Then she turns to look at Quincy—or where Quincy would be were she not ducking behind the car. "Should we ask Mattie along?" Mattie hears Miss Sweet say.

Miss Sweet's car is long down the driveway, long down the road, before Mattie feels the window screen on her face, smells the tin-can smell of it. She has been leaning into it, listening. She is still listening, even when Quincy and Miss Sweet are gone gone gone.

Could be any reason Quincy does not say yes, she tells herself. Doesn't have to be that she thinks Mattie is babyish or boring. Could be Quincy and Miss Sweet were going on a quick errand. Could be they were going to the store to get something private. Or maybe even they are out getting something for Mattie, though she can't think what that might be.

But when she gets to her bedroom, she knows that none of those things are the reason Quincy Sweet did not say yes.

Mattie's notebook is out on the bed.

Not tucked safe and secret under her pillow, but open on the bed, open to the words she had written last night, the words about Moe.

Mattie had put it away. She was sure she had put it away, safe under the pillow. In the morning, when she was getting dressed, she had even checked.

But there it is, out and open.

Poor Moe,
Quincy had said this morning, right after she had come out of Mattie's room.
Poor Moe.

Not
Darn it.
Not
That stinks.

Mattie pulls the stupid silver bracelet from her wrist. Rubs at the rust it has left on her skin.

Quincy Sweet read her notebook.

And she did not say yes.

S
HE KNOWS,
M
ATTIE THINKS.
Same as she thought with Star.
She knows.

Knows what, Mattie still cannot say. Not some horrible secret. There is not something
in
the stories. Just that there
are
stories. That they came from someplace inside of her. That they matter.

She knows,
Mattie thinks.
And she does not want to be my friend.

Out in the garden Uncle Potluck is singing about messages in bottles. About sending an SOS.

She should be with him. Out in the garden, helping. Not thinking about stupid things like stories and friends. Mattie swats the notebook closed, slaps it under the pillow, runs out of the room and down the hall and out into the garden.

"That you, Mattie Mae?" Uncle Potluck peers around a cornstalk.

"I came out to help," Mattie says.

"Can't say there is much to do out here right now. We're even down to the last of the corn. Tomorrow we'll have ourselves a big corn feast. Invite Crystal and Quincy. Tommy'll invite himself. That sound okay to you?"

No,
Mattie thinks.

Uncle Potluck pushes his hat back on his head. He wants to see her better, Mattie knows, but she turns her face down toward the garden dirt. "You sure there is nothing I can do to help?" she says.

"Well, there are a few stray weeds here and there. It would be a favor to me if you could rid the place of them."

Mattie nods fast. "Which ones are the weeds?"

"Follow me." Uncle Potluck leads her to the edge of the corn patch, points to a slender yellow blade of grass poking out of the soil. Kneels to pluck it out. Hoots.

Mattie kneels like Uncle Potluck does. Hoots, too.

"I admire your attention to detail, Mattie Mae, but unless you have a traitorous knee, that last part is optional." Uncle Potluck sits on the grass. "You go ahead and weed now. I'll supervise."

There isn't much to weed. She'll be done in two minutes. Maybe three. But Mattie does not want to be done. Does not want to think about anything but being a help to Uncle Potluck.

"How did your knee get traitorous?" she asks, hoping there will be a story behind it.

There is.

"Stella," Uncle Potluck says.

Uncle Potluck has had lots of girlfriends, Mattie knows. Made some of them mad, too. But she can't imagine him ever making one of them mad enough to bust his knee up.

"Stella, Stella, Stella," Uncle Potluck says. "Laziest dog in the United States Army."

"Dog?"

"Dog. Stella was one of a small squadron of pound dogs rescued from imminent demise, brought to Fort Kincade to train with me and my fellow MPs as trackers. It was an honor most of those dogs took seriously. All Stella wanted to take was a nap—there's another one infiltrating the carrot patch, see?"

Uncle Potluck points to a short, scrawny weed. It is nearly dead, but Mattie rushes to pluck it, anyway.

"It was suggested by my superiors that Stella's lack of initiative was a cry for increased training. I don't think I need to tell you that I was not at liberty to disregard the suggestion of my superiors. Instead, I disregarded that evening's weather forecast. Certain that Stella and I would conclude our training long before the predicted storm blew in, I doused a buddy of mine in Old Spice and sent him out to lay a trail in the nearby woods. Half an hour later he returned, telling me he had made a simple loop through the trees, one so obvious even an unmotivated hound like Stella could follow it.

"Now, the forecast storm was one of many we had endured that week, and the woods were muddy. At first Stella seemed to have caught the scent. After an hour of wandering, though, I was convinced she was lost. And, I am embarrassed to say, so was I. Which is when the storm blew in—complete with light show and sound effects."

"Lightning?" Mattie asks.

"And thunder, which I soon discovered was a particular fear of my hound dog colleague. One boom, and she bolted. I raced after her, slipping and sliding in the mud, barely keeping ahold on her leash when—
bangl—the
earth gave way and my right leg dropped deep into a gopher hole. My left leg, unaware of the situation, continued after Stella.

"I will spare you a description of the pain I then endured and the vocabularic offenses I thus unleashed, but I will tell you that with all my yelling and cursing, I also unleashed Stella, who tore off into the woods and—"

There is a buzzing sound, and Uncle Potluck pats his shirt pocket, searching for his cell phone.

Mattie finishes his sentence. "And that's how you got your traitorous knee."

Uncle Potluck hoots as he stands. "Custodial Arts," he says into the phone. "It's on my laptop," he says, heading for the house. "Just a minute."

Poor Uncle Potluck,
Mattie thinks. Just trying to help a dog and getting his knee busted. Poor Stella, too.

Mattie pulls a weed from the turnip row. Looks around for another. There are no more weeds to pull. Nothing she can do.

If she were Mama, she'd say the going had gotten tough. If she were Mama, she would get going.

But where is she supposed to go? She cannot follow Uncle Potluck. Cannot write in her notebook. Does not want to go back to her room or to the tent or to the rock on the rise. Instead, Mattie stands there, weeds in her hand, not going anywhere.

Not looking, not looking, not looking at the spot where Miss Sweet's car used to be.

L
ATER
M
ISS
S
WEET CALLS
from a restaurant.

She and Quincy are eating, she tells Uncle Potluck.

They are having an awesome time, she says.

She's going to skip work tonight, so Quincy won't need to sleep over.

"It's okay," Mattie says.

It is okay.

It will be good to sleep in her bed tonight because she is tired, and it is okay that Quincy isn't coming over after all.

That night Mattie puts her fingers tight around Miney.

"It's okay," she tells him.

She is careful not to twist.

She is careful not to twist for hours and hours.

And then it is morning.

I
T IS
T
HURSDAY.

"D-day," Uncle Potluck says. "Doorknob day."

Mattie is pushing the cleaning cart, listening to its wheels
cla-chunk, cla-chunk, cla-chunk
over the tile floor, following Uncle Potluck down the Mitchell P. Anderson Elementary hallway to the administrative office. The cart has a trash bin on it and a vacuum and slots for spray bottles and paper towels and things for dusting. The vacuum sits tall, so Mattie has to peek around it to see Uncle Potluck, and sometimes she can duck behind it so he can't see her—like when she needs to yawn, which she does every dozen
cla-chunks
or so. She peeks around again, just in time to see Uncle Potluck signal her to stop so he can salute the painting of Principal Bonnet.

This time Mattie salutes, too.

"Mattie Mae," Uncle Potluck says. "I'd like to request that you leave this one detail out of your otherwise impeccable account of our custodial endeavors. Should our fair principal find I have been saluting her visage, she may not take it in the spirit in which it is meant."

Mattie nods.

"And it seems like maybe I ought to be the only one doing the saluting, too. For propriety's sake."

She does not ask what
propriety
is. Does not want Uncle Potluck thinking there is still some custodial wisdom she does not understand.

Not today.

Today, she has decided, is the day. She will not wait until the weekend. Today she will work hard and do everything right, and at the end of the day, she will tell Uncle Potluck about her custodial apprentice plans.

And he will say that is a very good idea. That she should not bother with lunches and recesses and should stick to janitorial pursuits.

And it will all be okay.

Pay attention,
Mattie reminds herself.

"I know that you are a person who keeps her own counsel," Uncle Potluck is saying. "But I am glad to know you won't be recording my saluting for posterity—just in case your notebook should fall into the wrong hands."

Mattie does not think about the wrong hands. Thinks instead about Uncle Potluck's hands, watches them fish his key ring from his pocket, flip key after key till he finds the one for the administrative office.

The main door has a knob on it already. It's the inside doors that don't, Mattie sees. The principal's office door and the storage room door and the nurse's room door.

Mattie
cla- chunk
s the cart onto the administrative office carpet, parks it carefully by the reception desk, out of the way where nobody can bang into it. She and Uncle Potluck will clean in here after the doorknobs get put in. Vacuum, dust, do the windows.

Right now Uncle Potluck is hooting, kneeling outside the nurse's room door, opening his toolbox, readying for doorknob installation.

There's a couch in the nurse's room. Mattie can see it from her spot behind Uncle Potluck. She is not tired, she reminds herself.

"Shall we begin?" Uncle Potluck asks.

Mattie's notebook opens to the Moe page, but she flips it fast to a clean one. Writes down everything Uncle Potluck does.

Some of the doorknobs have stems out the back and some are flat. Mattie watches, writes down how Uncle Potluck pushes a stem knob through the doorknob hole and then fits a flat knob onto the other side. How he twists in three screws to secure it.

"Then what?" Mattie asks.

"Then there is one last step, Mattie Mae, for which I will need your expertise."

Mattie sets her notebook down. Wipes her palms on her shirt. "Ready," she says.

Uncle Potluck waves her into the nurse's room and shuts the door behind her.

Mattie stands there. Wonders exactly what her expertise is.

"Okay, now," Uncle Potluck says. "Open the door."

Mattie turns the knob. Pulls open the door.

Uncle Potluck smiles. "Accomplished with dexterity and finesse." Mattie does not smile.

Her expertise is opening a door?

Uncle Potluck's phone buzzes. Principal Bonnet needs him in the faculty lounge to answer questions about the floor-polishing schedule. "Yes," he says formal into it. "Of course."

"Mattie Mae, I have been called into service, but I shall return. Why don't you take this opportunity to lie down for a bit? You look fatigued."

"I could go with you," she says. "I could help."

"Rest," he says. "I am certain I can handle things on my own." Uncle Potluck leaves, pulling the nurse's room door half-closed behind him.

 

Mattie is certain he can handle things on his own, too. Can handle everything on his own. How is she supposed to show him how much he needs an apprentice if he can do everything fine without her help?

Past the half-closed door, Mattie spies the cleaning cart. She could clean, couldn't she? While Uncle Potluck is at his meeting? That would be a help.

Quick, Mattie goes to the vacuum, thumps it down to the carpet, unspools the cord, plugs it into the socket behind the administrative office door. Zoom-zips the vacuum under chairs, behind the reception desk, into Principal Bonnet's office, stretching to reach as far as the cord will let her.

Done.

Mattie looks back at her work.

The carpet looks exactly the same as it did before. She cannot tell that she has vacuumed at all. How will Uncle Potluck know what a help she has been?

Mattie leans back, clunking her tired head on Principal Bonnet's office door.

She could install the doorknobs! He would see that, for sure.

Mattie hauls Uncle Potluck's toolbox into the principal's office. Checks her notebook.

Stem knob through the hole. Flat knob on the back. Screws twisted in 1, 2... Mattie does what the notebook says, sliding the stem knob through the door hole, fitting the flat knob onto the other side. Pushes in a screw, turns it around until it is tight. If she hurries, she'll be finished before Uncle Potluck gets back.

He'll be proud of her. Will say,
Fine work
and
How will I get along without you once the school year commences?
That's when she'll tell him her plan.