Hound Dog True (4 page)

"She cut up these grocery bags for me to draw on." Quincy pushes her fingers around in the box and pulls out something that looks like chalk. "They're okay. I can use white on them, which you can't do with regular paper. Besides, I'll only be here a couple of days. I'm going home after my brother's operation is done. He's not going to die, you know."

"I know," Mattie says. She doesn't know any such thing, really, but something about the way Quincy talks makes Mattie feel like she ought to.

"It's just a regular operation for his hernia."

Mattie feels herself blush. She's not sure what a hernia is, but it seems like if you had one, you wouldn't want people knowing about it. Like warts or a bad report card.

Mattie waits for Quincy to say more, but Quincy doesn't. The carrot stack blocks Mattie's view of Quincy's drawing, but she hears the rough of her chalk on the store bags. Hears Uncle Potluck inside clanging kitchen pots, too. Hears a talk-show lady on Miss Sweet's TV telling people to live their dreams and giving them a free electric ice cream maker to take home.

A truck rumbles by on the dirt road out front.

Birds tease in the trees.

Quincy keeps on silent-drawing.

What is Mattie supposed to do now?

Doesn't seem right to leave. Not with Quincy saying what she just did about her brother. Mattie could pretend she has to go to the bathroom, but she'd have to come back after and then maybe Quincy'd be done drawing carrots and start asking more questions. Better to save the bathroom for when she really needs it.

If she lays her notebook flat on the rock, probably Quincy won't see Mattie's writing over the carrot stack, just like she can't see Quincy's drawing.

Mattie puts her thoughts back on custodial wisdom. The trash company comes on Tuesdays and Fridays. She remembers the man with the arm tattoos who Uncle Potluck introduced as Chuck Canteloni, King of Garbage, and how Chuck Canteloni had said if ever he found a Queen of Garbage he would be content.

Was that custodial wisdom? Mattie writes it down, just in case. Sticks to just imagining what sort of crown a Queen of Garbage would wear and what their palace might be like. Pictures a Royal Garbage Wedding, too—pictures it so hard she can almost smell the garbage truck, see a
JUST MARRIED
sign hanging off the back. Pictures a garbage reception. Dancing. Wedding guests in tattered dresses, one of them dabbing a tissue to her eyes, saying how it just proves there's someone out there for everyone.

 

"Girls!" Uncle Potluck stands on the porch, banging a pot lid with a spoon. "Time to carry in the carrots, please."

Mattie looks up, surprised, almost, to find she is not at the garbage wedding. Surprised, almost, to find herself at the rock and Quincy Sweet there looking up, too.

The apple tree shadow is long on the grass, and Mama's car is in the drive. When did Mama get home?

Quincy Sweet blinks. She is smiling a straight-across smile.

Mattie thinks Quincy will talk then, but she doesn't. Doesn't ask questions, either. Just closes her toolbox.

Mattie closes her notebook, too. Grabs the carrots by their tops. The quiet keeps on. Feels like it would break something to talk now, Mattie thinks. Wonders if Quincy thinks so, too.

Down they go, down the rise, toward the house together, carrying carrots.

"W
ANT TO SAY WHY NOT?
" Mama asks.

"My stomach hurts," says Mattie. It is not a lie. Her stomach does hurt. Has hurt ever since Mama said again maybe Quincy could come for a sleepover.

Mattie puts down her fork. Ducks her chin. Feels Mama watching her. It is a new thing, this watching, new since they've been at Uncle Potluck's. Mama watching like she's trying to read Mattie's thoughts. If Mama knew Mattie's scaredy-cat thoughts, she'd be disappointed, probably.

So Mattie thinks instead about janitorial safety. About cleaning solutions and how putting two different kinds together can seem like you'd make one super-cleaning kind, but really it can make poison. How you could be cleaning, thinking you're making everything better, and then—just by breathing—you'd be dead.

Mattie keeps thinking this, hoping Mama will move to some other topic, but her eyes stay on Mattie. It's Uncle Potluck who shifts Mama's look, asking how her new job is going.

"It's good," Mama says, finally. "I felt comfortable right away. It helps to have worked at a hospital before—not like my first job at St. Andrew's. Did I ever tell you about that, Potluck?"

Mattie has not heard about it, either.

"It was when I was pregnant, right after I moved out—just before you came back from the army. Anyway, it was my first real office job, and I was worried I'd make a mistake and mess things up. That whole first day I said about three words, I was so scared."

Mama scared? Mattie can't even picture it. Imagines a room full of doctors and nurses and ringing telephones, but soon as Mama drops into the scene, she's charging through it, answering phones, fixing patients. Doctors and nurses rush around begging Mama for help.

"That night, I watched that old TV show
ER.
Everyone on that show was so strong and smart. The next day I played pretend—l ike we used to when we were little, Potluck. I pretended I was one of those
ER
characters." Mama laughs at herself, takes a swig of iced tea. Mattie stays quiet, wanting Mama to tell on.

"I stood straight and talked tough and wrinkled my forehead to show I was thinking about things. And what do you know? After about a week of pretending, people were thinking that I was strong and smart."

"You are," Mattie says, but right then Mama pops out of her seat and clatters the dishes over to the sink, and Mattie is not sure she has heard. Mama hops to the telephone when it rings, too, but Uncle Potluck is closer. Answers, saying, "Hello, Crystal" and "We were just finishing" and "Now, we were just talking about that," which Mattie knows is him getting ready to tell Miss Sweet that Quincy can't do a sleepover because of his niece who is pretending to have a stomachache.

The drawing time with Quincy had been fine, but as soon as they got to the kitchen, Quincy had started in peeling ten times as many carrots as Mattie could. Talking, too, telling Uncle Potluck about the Fourth of July. Telling him how her daddy, Duey Sweet of Sweet's Trucking, stayed late at the baseball game and needed a designated driver and how when he got home, her mother, who Quincy called Nicolette instead of Mom or Mama or Ma or something, how Nicolette made Duey sleep outside in his canoe with only a plastic tarp for a blanket.

Didn't sound upset about it, either. Quincy had a way of talking—flat and dull, like stones dropping
plunk, plunk
in a puddle. Matter-of-fact, Mama called it.

Mattie had looked it up soon as Quincy left.

Matter-of-fact. Relating to or adhering to facts. Literal. Straightforward or unemotional.

What would it be like to be that way? To tell a story
plunk, plunk, plunk,
not caring what people think?

Just like Mama pretending to be an
ER
person, Mattie tries on being matter-of-fact. Sits tall in her kitchen chair, puts a
plunk
in her voice. "She can come," Mattie hears herself say.

"What's that?" Uncle Potluck looks at Mattie. He heard, too.

"For a sleepover," says Mama, grinning. "Mattie said Quincy can come for a sleepover tonight."

Uncle Potluck's eyebrows send a
you sure?
to Mattie, but Mama is already saying, "Good girl," and it is too late, too late, too late to say she is not.

U
NCLE
P
OTLUCK GOES OUTSIDE
to gather the last of the tomatoes from the garden.

Mattie should help.

She should.

But instead, she sneaks to her room. If she puts on her pajamas now, before Quincy gets here, she can change in private. Won't have to worry if she ought to be wearing a bra already or if her underwear looks too baby or if there's something else she doesn't even know to worry about just yet.

She buttons her pajama top.

Eenie.

Meenie.

Miney.

"Poor Moe."

Outside, she can hear Miss Sweet's laugh cracking like glass, Uncle Tommy's motorcycle roaring up the gravel drive. It is dark enough outside for the trees to turn shadow. For the moon to hang small and cautious above them.

"Hello, Moon," Mattie says. Listens for a reply.

Nothing.

Probably she needs to be outside.

She would be, too, if it wasn't for that Quincy Sweet. Be out at the rock ledge with Uncle Potluck listening for Miss Moon. Instead, Mattie will be inside listening to Quincy plunking out stuff that should be private. Expecting, probably, that Mattie will do the same.

A door bangs shut over at Miss Sweet's.

Mattie tiptoes into the hallway. It is dark enough that she can stay there, just outside the kitchen, and not be seen. Soon, too soon, she hears Quincy Sweet plunking outside and the
goodbye
blast of Miss Sweet's car horn. Uncle Potluck opens the door then, and Mama comes in, Quincy following, Uncle Tommy following behind that—visiting like he sometimes does, straight from work and still in his firefighter uniform, asking if there's anything left from supper.

Mattie stacks one bare foot on top of the other. Crosses her arms around herself. She shouldn't have changed. Pajamas aren't much different from naked if everybody else around is in regular clothes. She should change back, she thinks, but when she moves, Quincy spots her.

"Hello, Mattie," plunks Quincy.

Mama waves her into the kitchen.

Everyone is waiting. Mattie does not need to see their faces to know they are watching. How far does she need to walk into the kitchen for them to stop? One step? Two? Maybe she can go to where Uncle Potluck is sitting. Hide her pajama'd self behind his chair.

Mattie breathes deep.

Nobody is really looking at her, anyway. Isn't that what Mama says? People are too busy thinking about themselves to notice much about a ten-year-old girl?

One step. Two. Quick all the way to Uncle Potluck's chair.

"Hello, Quincy," Mattie says.

Mama was right. People have their own things to worry about. Nobody even notices her pajamas.

"You missed a button," says Quincy.

B
EFORE SHE LEFT
for her hospital shift, Crystal Sweet thanked Uncle Potluck for watching Quincy, but he is not watching Quincy. He and Mama and Uncle Tommy are playing cards in the kitchen, and Quincy is in the living room watching Mattie. Staring at Mattie, feels like.

She has her own pajamas on now, Quincy does, but they are not regular pajamas. Not baby pajamas with matching tops and bottoms and mouse-shaped buttons. Quincy Sweet is wearing a T-shirt, big, with
SWEET'S TRUCKING
printed on it, and a pair of bike shorts. She has long teenager-looking legs, which, even though she has her own sleeping bag that she could be sitting on, she has stretched out long on Mattie's sleeping bag. Mattie is folded up at the pillow end, her legs hugged up to her chest. She can feel her pajama buttons pressing against her thigh.

Eenie.

Meenie.

Miney.

Poor Moe.

"Who is Moe?" asks Quincy.

Mattie blinks. "What?"

"You said
Poor Moe.
Who is Moe?"

She said
Poor Moe?
Out loud?

Matter-of-fact, Mattie reminds herself. Unemotional.

"Moe is nobody," she plunks, or tries to. She does not sound "I don't care," like Quincy Sweet. She sounds like a little kid playing robot. Mattie tries again. "Nothing, I mean. A button. The missing button from my pajamas." Mattie pokes her pinkie through Moe's empty hole.

"I saw that," says Quincy.

Mattie waits for Quincy to say something else.

Quincy doesn't say anything else.

Just waits.

And waits.

Mattie is supposed to say something.

"I named each of these buttons," she says.
Stupid. Baby.
"When I was little, that is. A long time ago."

Quincy is still waiting. "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, and Moe," Mattie says. "Except Moe fell off." This does not sound unemotional. "I don't care, though," she says.

"If you don't care, how come you said
Poor Moe?
" says Quincy.

How come?
"Habit."

"So you say it all the time?"

Mattie looks to the kitchen, sending silent messages to Uncle Potluck.
Ask us if we want popcorn,
she thinks.
Tell us to come play cards. Say the house is on fire and we need to evacuate.

Uncle Tommy slams his cards to the table. "You're in deep now," he tells Uncle Potluck.

"I don't say it all the time," Mattie says.

"Habits are things you do all the time," Quincy says. "Like my dad smokes all the time. Even in the bathroom. And my mom makes the sign of the cross every time an ambulance goes by. She doesn't believe in God anymore, but she crosses anyway. It's a habit from when she went to Catholic school."

Mattie nods. She has done it again, that Quincy Sweet. Secrets about bathroom smoking and God, all plunked out matter-of-fact. Mattie tries again to match her voice to Quincy's.

"I used to say it all the time, I mean."

"Why?"

"Because..." Mattie thinks about Moe. Where he is and why he's there. But Quincy is staring.

"It's dumb," says Mattie. "It's just a thing I say. Like some people say
Darn!
or
That stinks!
I say
Poor Moe!
You know, um,
Poor Moe! I stubbed my toe!
Or
Poor Moe! I wish I didn't have school today!
Like that."

"Yeah?" Quincy squints at Mattie. Tilts her head.

Mattie swallows. "Yeah."

There's a clock in the living room. It's behind Mattie and she can't see it, but she hears it now, loud as gunshots.
Tock Tock Tock Tock.
Finally Quincy speaks.

"How old
are
you?"