Scents and Sensibility (29 page)

No. I did not move off. Somehow I'd forgotten all about the chain. What does it say about a chained-up dude who forgets he's chained up? I had no idea, wished that such a bothersome question had never occurred to me.

I twisted around, got myself a good look at the chain, a thick-linked chain no one could gnaw through. But, as humans say, there's more than one way to skin a cat. I've never seen it done even one way, personally, and you're welcome to try. Just be warned that cats have a quickness you're not going to believe, and the skin that gets skinned will most likely be yours.

No time for cats at the moment. I took a step or two forward, felt the chain stretching out behind me and rising off the ground. Then I began to pull, pull hard, harder, my hardest. In my mind, I heard Bernie.
Show 'em what you got, big guy.
Oh, I will, Bernie, I will. Can you see me? I'm pulling harder than my hardest now, ramping up to pull even harder than that, and ever harder than that, and—

CRASH! From back in the hut came a crashing sound with a lot of boom mixed in, a sound that reminded me of a mine cave-in that Bernie and I had seen in an up-close and personal way. I went flying past the trough, landing hard, which made my achy body achier. Who cared about that? Not me, amigo. I picked myself up, turned, and saw Shooter racing out of the hut, or rather what was left of it. And was he yelping or what? Scared out of his little mind: a gratifying sight. As was the present state of the hut, the back wall in heaps of loose stones, the roof fallen in, and only the side wall still standing, although even as I watched, that side wall started falling apart as well.

Shooter ran yelping around me, kind of beside his little self. I took a few steps down the hill, not headed anywhere special, but just because I could do it. Free! I was free, and if, as I slowly realized from the dull clanking sound, the chain still seemed to be attached to my collar, so what? I walked around in a little circle, doubling back on the chain, which had a bolt attached to the last link, a bolt that must have been sunk into the wall of the hut and had now come loose. A whole lot of work had gone into keeping me from being free. That made my freedom all the sweeter! Did I feel tip-top? Maybe not, but good enough, amigo.

I gazed beyond the silhouette of the distant mountain—blacker than the night—toward the faint pink glow of the Valley sky. Then I turned to Shooter, now doing some vigorous scratching behind his ear, and gave him one of my low rumbly barks. This one meant: time to head for home, little fella. I started down the hill, dragging the chain behind me. Normally that wouldn't have slowed me down the slightest bit, but I wasn't quite normal. Somewhat achy, yes, and more than that: hungry. When had I last eaten? I was trying to remember when it struck me that Shooter didn't seem to be by my side. I looked back up the hill and there he was, not far from the water trough, scratching behind his other ear. I gave him another low rumbly bark. He left off scratching for a moment, stared at me in a blank sort of way, and went back to scratching. Was leaving Shooter up here on the hill to fend for himself in the cards? It was not. I climbed back up and made a few gentle attempts at getting his attention, all of them failures. I took a less gentle approach. After that we started making our way down the hill, me leading and Shooter following, although he did most of his following from in front. My less gentle approach had taken something out of me, kind of strange.

•  •  •

We walked down the hill, turned away from the two-humped hill, the golden tent, now totally dark, and the gigantic cactus man, and started across open desert. The chain clunked along behind me, sometimes catching on a stone or a bush in a very annoying way, forcing me to tug at it on a night when I didn't seem to have many tugs in me. Meanwhile, Shooter was doing a lot of prancing and zigzagging in the moonlight, mixed in with sniffing under rocks where he had no business sniffing, not with snake scent so strong in the air. I plodded on—hate to put it that way, but it's true—giving him the odd growl or low rumbly bark, totally ignored each and every time.

The strange fires I'd spotted from up at the hut drew closer, scattered across the desert floor. How many? More than two, less than one of those huge numbers humans mention, like gazillion. The breeze was in our faces, a cool breeze carrying scents of wood smoke, pot smoke, and burgers. I tried to pick up the pace and after what seemed like not too long, caught up to Shooter. He was wriggling around on his back, moonlight gleaming in his eyes. I closed in and gave him a look. He sprang up, shook off some dust, most of it in my face, and we moved on.

Up ahead a dry wash appeared, cutting across our path. We went down into it, crossed over, and came up the far side, where a huge gate rose in the night, two tall wooden posts with a metal banner, hung with guitars, joining them at the top. Shooter and I walked through this gate and moved toward a circle of tall saguaros, some standing, others lying on the ground beside recently dug holes—recently dug holes smelling faintly moist, even out here—their roots wrapped in burlap. A sort of walkway marked by two rows of white stones led through the saguaro circle to the gate, as though this was the fancy entrance to something or other. Before I could take it any further, I noticed a big camper parked in the shadows.

I went over and sniffed around the camper. Somehow Shooter was already there, busy laying his mark on one of the wheels. A good idea, no arguing against that, but it meant now I had to lay my mark on top of his, and I wasn't sure I had anything to mark with, having been so thirsty for so long. I raised my leg and, yes, laid my mark on top of Shooter's. Nothing you'd call a strong and commanding spurt, more like a dribble, but something, at least. I was digging down for more when a man spoke inside the camper.

“You hear rain?”

“Huh? Don't rain here. What's the matter with you?”

“Thought I heard rain.”

“Go to sleep, for chrissake. We gotta have them goddamn plants in the ground by eight sharp.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why the whole thing?”

“What whole thing?”

“In a circle. All that.”

“Symbolism. Cactus Man's all about symbolism.”

“Huh?”

“Just go to sleep.”

Silence.

And then: “If it's rainin', those holes'll get all messed up.”

After that came snoring. I moved away from the camper. And what was this? Shooter sidling back over to the wheel and raising his leg? Like he was going to lay his mark on top of mine? Who did he think he was? I hurried back as best I could what with the chain and not quite being at full strength, and gave him a bump to remember. He tumbled away, scrambled up, and trotted off—actually in the direction I wanted him to go—his tail wagging happily in the moonlight, like everything was breaking his way. I followed him. Whoa! That wasn't it at all. Change it to I moved in his footsteps, but in the lead.

Up ahead I caught sight of one of those fires I'd seen from above. It was burning near a tall flat-faced rock. Human shadows moved on that rock, and as we closed in I saw a familiar nighttime desert scene: humans sitting around a campfire. The smells of pot and burgers grew stronger, also booze and cocaine. Shooter ran on ahead, maybe not the best idea, and I was trying to ramp up my own speed when the chain caught on something behind me. I circled back, got myself untangled, looked for Shooter and found him poised in the darkness just beyond the campfire light, one paw raised in a hesitating sort of way. I caught up with him and hesitated myself.

What we had here were a bunch of youngish humans, men and women, wearing not much in the way of clothing—nothing at all if you ignored what they had on their heads. Not so easy to do, since they were all wearing antlers, some of them really huge. We stayed put, me and Shooter, watching these antler-wearing naked humans smoke and drink and talk, mostly about black holes and what would happen if you fell in. I myself had been in more than one black hole and knew that what happens is you claw your way up, but they were having trouble figuring that out. All in all, a scary sight. The only good thing about it was the platter of freshly cooked burgers set on a cooler at the edge of the light. A man and a woman lay on their backs on either side of the cooler, gazing up at the sky.

“All the black spaces between the stars are the holes?” the woman said.

“Pretty much,” said the man.

Neither of them showed the slightest interest in the burgers, although they could have reached over and grabbed a couple without even bothering to sit.

“So we'd be falling up to the sky?” the woman said.

“According to Einstein,” said the man.

“Wow,” said the woman.

Which was around when I noticed that Shooter had changed his position a bit, now stood on his hind legs, his front paws resting on the edge of the cooler. Whoa! But whoa didn't seem to be in the little fella's game plan. With a quick sort of head jab, he snatched a burger off the top of the stack and darted into the shadows. What was I waiting for? This wasn't like me at all. I moved in on the cooler—

“I hear, like, chains dragging across the desert floor.”

“That's what we've come to cut loose from, babe.”

“Cool.”

—and snapped up pretty much the whole stack. They were cooked right through, which always shows burgers at their best, in my opinion.

•  •  •

My strength started coming back, like a real big dude waking up inside me. On the other hand—a human expression you hear every day—Shooter seemed to be weakening. I was leading from in front now and had to turn back more than once to prod him along. “If we had three hands, we'd think differently,” Bernie says, a scary idea in many ways. I thought about Bernie as we headed in the direction of that pink glow, thoughts like
Bernie!
and
Bernie!
The pink glow came no closer, but I'd been around long enough to know that was just a trick of the wide open spaces.

We went down into a narrow canyon, now beyond all the campfires except for one, a very small fire at the base of a small tree, mostly just a glow with a flame or two flickering up. I wasn't hungry anymore—a little pukey, if anything—and had no desire to see more antlered humans, but because of the narrowness of the canyon, we had to pass close to the fire, in fact to the very edge of its light. A man and a woman sat by this campfire. No antlers, fully clothed: I thought things were looking up until I noticed that the man was loading a revolver: the rounds glinted as they clicked into the chamber.

“Shh,” said the woman, her voice low. “Do you hear something out there?” She turned toward the man. Her face had been shadowed by the brim of a cowboy hat she wore but now I saw it clear: a hard face surrounded by lots of soft blond hair, a face I knew. It was Dee Branch. Right away I thought of our slashed tires. True, Dee hadn't done the actual slashing, but she'd been the wheelman on the escape, and that made her a something or other in the eyes of the law. I don't forget things like that.

The man rose, real quick, flicking the chamber closed. He was a little longhaired dude with lots of ink on his arms. I knew him, too, of course: Billy Parsons. In the firelight I could see that his face looked a lot like his mom's, if old Mrs. Parsons was his mom, just a guess on my part; plus he didn't look exactly like her—more like his mom on an unhappy day. Also, old Mrs. Parsons didn't have a snakehead tattoo on her cheek; I was glad of that. Billy and Dee peered into the night, although with no hope of spotting us, human vision being pretty much useless in the dark.

This was a confusing moment. Wasn't the whole case about finding Billy? And now I'd found him! Chet the Jet! Found him, yes, but what next? Was it possible to somehow corral him and drag him back to Bernie? Or would it be better to go get Bernie and bring him here? I was leaning in that direction, especially in light of that revolver in Billy's hand, when Shooter chose that moment to give himself a good shake. His ears flapped with a sound like gunshots in the quiet of the night.

B
illy—one of those speedy little guys—dropped down on one knee, squinting into the darkness, the gun up and pointed in Shooter's general direction. Dee was just as speedy, maybe more so. She whipped out a gun of her own from somewhere, rolled away from the fire, and froze in excellent firing position, a move I've seen Bernie do to good effect more than once. This was looking like what Bernie calls a live-to-fight-another-day scenario, meaning our move was to back silently away into the night and then hightail it. The problem we had was Shooter's unfamiliarity with Bernie's advice. He trotted forward toward the fire.

“Hey,” said Dee, rising and putting her gun away. “It's a puppy.”

Billy rose, too, the revolver still in his hand, but now pointed down, which was how I like to see weapons, except for ours.

“Look how cute!” Dee said. “C'mere, cutie pie.”

Was there any chance “cutie pie” meant me? A good one, I thought, and stepped into the light. Dee and Billy both stepped the other way.

“Whoa,” Billy said. “This one's a huge version of the puppy.”

Dee's eyes narrowed. “Recognize him?”

“Recog—?” Billy began. And then: “The dog who took down the twins?”

“And belongs to that detective buddy of your parents.”

Their guns came up again, pointed not at me and Shooter, but into the darkness, sweeping back and forth like they were afraid of someone—who, I didn't know. Plus there was no one out there; the breeze was blowing from that direction, totally scentless when it came to humans. Billy knelt, fished around in a backpack, found a flashlight. He switched it on and the two of them walked into the darkness, aiming the beam here and there. I sat and waited. Shooter went over to where Dee and Billy had been sitting and sniffed the ground.