Hound Dog True (8 page)

Moe having adventures. Fighting monsters.

How do you start a story like that?

THE ADVENTURES OF MOE
by Mattie Breen

Moe was in the washing machine, but he wasn't scared. He was going to have adventures. He was going to

MOE: HERO OF THE WASHING
machine
by Mattie Breen

Moe was the toughest button in all of Laundryville. Laundryville was full of lost nickels and buttons and bobby pins and gum wrappers and grocery lists and barrettes and small rocks and rubber bands and Popsicle sticks and

MOE VERSUS THE LINT
by Mattie Breen

Everyone feared The Lint. It Was hairy and it stuck to things, and all the lost items of Laundryville had a hard time sleeping because they Were afraid that The Lint Would sneak up on them in the night and sWalloW them. Moe the button mouse Was afraid, too, but he Was tired of not sleeping. He decided to fight back. Moe found a bobby pin. "This Will be my sWord," he said. Then he

"Then he what?" asks Quincy.

"I don't know," says Mattie, looking up from the page. Quincy's bag paper is covered with scribble-overs and cross-outs. "You didn't draw anything."

"I need a model." Quincy sighs. "I wish I knew where to find a mouse with a bobby-pin sword. Here." She hands Mattie a stick. "Stand like a brave mouse."

Mattie stands. She holds the stick. She tries to imagine herself mouselike. And brave.

"That's not right," says Quincy. She circles Mattie, tilting her head. Staring at her. Mattie wants to shrink to button size. Wishes maybe she was lost in a washing machine somewhere.

"Try poking the stick out," says Quincy. "Pretend you are fighting off The Lint."

Mattie lifts her arm.
I would not fight off The Lint,
she thinks.
I would drop this heavy stick and run.

"Lean into it. Bend."

Mattie bends.

"Not like that! Not folded over. Bend your knees! Lunge!"

Mattie tries to lunge.

"Like this!" says Quincy. Sharp, she picks up a stick of her own. Thrusts it at Mattie. "Get out of here, you Lint!" she yells.

"I'm not The Lint," says Mattie. She says it quiet, but firm. "I'm Moe."

"Oh yeah?" says Quincy. She hops closer, her sword just inches from Mattie's chest.

Too close.

Mattie smacks Quincy's sword away with her own.
Thwack!
She feels it vibrate in her hand.

Quincy squints. "Okay. You're Moe and I'm The Lint." She swings her stick back at Mattie's.
Thwack!

Mattie does not think. She thwacks back. "Take that, you Lint!"

"How about I'm Good Lint?" Quincy squints again. "Like, I ran away from The Lint Monster and joined forces with you, and now we're off to fight him?"

Mattie can still feel the sting in her palm from the last
thwack.
It would be good to have Quincy on her side.

"There he is!" Quincy points beyond Mattie, runs, sword high, to the edge of the trees. Mattie runs, too, swift and brave up to a stout oak covered in moss. Her heart pounds. "Take that!"
Thwack!
A chunk of moss sails through the air.

"And that!" hollers Quincy.

Mattie turns. Moss has sprung up on every rock and tree and limb, reaching out to grab them, reaching out—"Look out, Lint Girl!"

"I see it!" Quincy spins, her sword cutting fiercely through the air.
Thwack!

The Evil Lint is everywhere. Moe is brave.
Thwack! Thwack!

"Moe! Over here!" Lint Girl is snagged on a washing machine coil.

"I'll save you!" Moe runs hard and fast, leaping over soap puddles and climbing up water pipes. Lint Girl's cape is caught tight in the old machinery's rusty spiral.

"Pull me out!" she cries. Moe pulls, but the cape will not budge. Moe needs to use both hands—but to do so will mean setting down the sword. What if the Evil Lint Monster finds them? And worse, what if this is a trick? What if Lint Girl hasn't really turned good?

"Please!" cries Lint Girl. There is no time to worry. No time to think. Moe drops the bobby-pin sword and pulls. One by one, the strong threads of Lint Girl's cape snap, until finally she is free.

"Let's get out of here." Moe grabs the sword with one hand and Lint Girl's hand with the other. "RUN!" Over again through coils and wires, under pipes and round tubes they run, hearts pounding, panting, running running running, until they crash safe inside their soap dispenser home.

I
T IS
C
RYSTAL SWEET'S CAR,
really, that they smack against.

Mattie sinks to the grass, flops to her back. Quincy flops, too, breathes hard.

"I haven't played like that since I was a kid," says Quincy. Feels like Mattie should say the same thing. Except maybe Quincy would say,
You still are a kid,
so Mattie stays quiet.

For a three whole days or thirty seconds or half a lifetime, there is no sound but Quincy's breathing and Mattie's heart
thump thump thumping.

It is quiet.

And then it is quiet some more, and Mattie starts to think maybe it is too quiet. Maybe she is supposed to say something.

What is she supposed to say?

What would Uncle Potluck say?

"Uncle Potluck says when he talks to the moon, the moon talks back."

It is not the right thing to have said. Mattie knows as soon as she hears the words.

Quincy doesn't say anything. She just keeps on breathing, no doubt thinking she is too old for this silly little girl and her stories about buttons and moons that talk. No doubt thinking she was right to stay away yesterday.

"What does the moon say?" Quincy asks. It does not sound mean. Or like she thinks Mattie is a baby.

"I don't know," says Mattie.

"Have you tried it?"

"No," says Mattie. "I couldn't—Uncle Potluck said—" She tries remembering that night. "Uncle Potluck said, you have to trust the moon for the moon to trust you." The grass feels cooler now. Cold almost.

"What does that mean?" Quincy asks. "Trust the moon?"

Mattie shrugs. "I think maybe it's like telling a secret," she says. "I think you have to tell the moon something that matters and is secret, and then maybe the moon will tell you something back."

Quincy sits up. Squints down at Mattie.

She's going to tell Mattie she is stupid. Or babyish. Or that Uncle Potluck is pulling her leg.

"Okay," Quincy says.

Okay what?

Miss Sweet hollers then, hollers for Quincy to come inside. She's got something to show her.

"Tonight we'll sleep in the tent," Quincy says. "Tonight we'll tell the moon something and see what happens, okay?" She does not sound plunky. Not a bit.

"Quincy!" Miss Sweet hollers again.

"Okay?" says Quincy.

"Okay," says Mattie. What else can she say?

M
ATTIE STAYS THERE,
still, looking up at the sky. What does she have to say to the moon? What can she say with Quincy listening in?

Uncle Potluck would know exactly what to say. If he were up and walking around, Mattie would ask him to join them. Come out to the rise and call Miss Moon and tell her a story so wild and funny and interesting that Quincy Sweet would forget all about Mattie having to say anything.

Except Uncle Potluck is on the couch, resting. Keeping his leg straight. That's what the doctor said would be best. Rest and quiet and waiting until late next week for surgery to fix that traitorous knee.

What would Uncle Potluck say to the moon with Quincy Sweet listening?

Maybe he'd tell about that dog Stella. Or some other army story. Or about how Grandma Breen gave him his nickname. Mattie liked that story. Liked how five-year-old Robert stole his own birthday cake off the table, claiming a bear had come and tried to eat him, but he had convinced the bear to eat the cake instead. Grandma Breen could only laugh. "Boy's as unpredictable as a potluck supper," she said. He was Potluck after that.

Mattie wishes she had a story like that to tell.

Maybe she could tell one of Uncle Potluck's stories. Tell it like it was her own. Not the name story, of course. Or the Stella story. Or the one about taming circus lions with a harmonica. She doesn't know how to play a harmonica, and Quincy might matter-of-fact ask her to. Only story she has, really, is about Moe. And Quincy has already read that. Already sneak-read that, Mattie reminds herself.

She lies there, reminding herself. Doesn't move until she feels something brush against her cheek. The wind has caught up Quincy's drawing pages, has blown one of them to Mattie's shoulder.

The drawing is a mouse button—two holes through his belly—holding what looks like a spatula, though Mattie knows it is supposed to be a bobby pin. It is a better mouse than Mattie could draw, but different than she expected, too. She had expected it to be like a grown-up drawing and it is not.

Other pages are dancing in the windy yard, and Mattie dashes to catch them. One by the cornstalks. Another flapping around the stone rabbit. Another—the carrots—pinned against the side of Mama's friend tent. Mattie gathers the drawings up, brings them to the rock. Stacks the pages, sets her notebook down on top.

Another breeze and the notebook pages flutter, too. New beginnings for Moe flick to cafeteria notes and cleaning tips, then back again past Moe to a fresh page. Back and forth, back and forth, until they all blend together.

 

"Mattie," Mama calls from her upstairs window. "Mattie? Come put a sweater on. It's getting chilly."

The apple tree shade is slung low, covering Uncle Potluck's rock, stretching itself down to the garden, all the way to the kitchen door.

Inside the kitchen it's warm and steamy and smelling of tomatoes. It's a homey smell, and Mattie breathes it in as she tiptoes past the living room, where Uncle Potluck is sleeping. Holds it in, down the hallway and into her room.

She is so busy holding in that homey smell, she does not notice it at first. A long string, pushed through the ceiling hole, a tomato can tied to its end. Isn't till the string jiggles and the can—
tunk-tunk—
bangs against the bureau top that Mattie sees it.

A tin can telephone, same as Mama's brothers made when she was a girl.

Mattie exhales. Pulls the string taut, puts the can to her ear. It is cool and holds an empty ocean sound, swoosh swoosh
swoosh,
like a seashell. She holds the can to her mouth. "Hello?"

The can joggles in her hand, and Mattie fits it over her ear again, catches a voice midsentence. "—hear okay. Can you, Mattie?"

It is Mama.

"Yes," Mattie says, though she forgets to put the can to her mouth and has to say it again. She shifts the can to her ear. "—isn't working" she hears.

"Wait," Mama says. "When I'm done saying something, I'm going to say
done,
then I'll listen until you say
done,
okay?" Silence. "Done, I mean. Okay? Done."

Mattie puts the can to her mouth. "Okay," she says. "Done."

"Okay." Mama's voice sounds far away—farther than just upstairs—but Mattie can make out her words. "When I was a girl, it was so noisy in this house. Sometimes I felt like nobody was listening. You know?" she says. "Done."

Mattie nods. Says "uh-huh" into the can. "Done."

"I thought it was different for you. I always ask how you are and how your day was." Mattie feels the can pull in her hand. The string tightens. "But then Potluck pointed out that you don't answer. You say you're fine or you change the subject."

The can makes Mama's words fuzzy and hard to figure out. Even through the fuzz, Mattie hears a familiar tone. A tone she has heard when Mama's hands were piccolo-ing. A planning sound, a fixing sound, Mattie always thought. But now it just sounds sad.

"Anyway, Mattie," Mama says. "I have something I have to tell you ... done."

Done.

Even before Mama says it, Mattie knows it is done. It is all done. Feels her hand shaking, feels the can shaking against her cheek.

"We're moving," Mattie says. She moves the can to catch her words, says them before Mama has the chance. "We're moving," Mattie says again, and it comes to her full force why. "I hurt Uncle Potluck and I ruined everything. I hurt his knee and he can't work and we can't stay, and it is my fault."

Her hand shakes. Her legs shake, bend, lower her to sitting on her bed.

Not her bed.
The
bed.

Not her room. Not her house. Not her yard or rock or garden. None of it is hers. They are moving, and this is not her house.

The soup can tugs in her hand. Tugs. Tugs. Then the string goes slack.

Done.

"M
ATTIE,
" Mama says.

She is at the door of Mattie's bedroom—
the
bedroom—marching in, already talking. "We are not moving. I promised Potluck—"

"When he's better." Mattie says what she knows Mama is about to tell her. "When he's better, after his surgery, then we'll move."

"Not that either. I promised ... Your uncle made me promise we'd stick around at least until you're in high school. He said it was hard on you, all the moving."

Mama sits on the bed. "Mattie, each time we moved, it was for a reason. I could see things were going to get harder. Jobs that were going to go south or bosses that—it just seemed best to move on, you know? Best for both of us. But Potluck didn't think it was best for you. He thought—he said you were pretending everything was okay for my sake, and that I was pretending I didn't know you were pretending."

"Uncle Potluck said that?"

"Yes," says Mama. "And I
so
did not want to believe he was right. That's why I got you the diary."

Diary? What did her notebook have to do with moving?

"I figured you'd write in it and say you were fine and prove me right. Or not write in it and prove me right. Or write in it and prove Potluck right, I guess—but I wouldn't tell him so. Thing is, you wrote in it, but it didn't prove anything. You just wrote janitor stuff. And that button story. It didn't prove..."