The Carerra Brothers Carnival had one more stop before they headed to winter over in Florida, like migratory birds, or retired northerners. It was only mid-October, and they were far enough south that the air still held a summer feel to it. Sticky. Charged. Ruby is alone in the RV, washing the lunch dishes, when Buck bangs open the RV’s screen door and walks in. At over six feet and with a thick body builder frame, he fills the available space. His muscle shirt is drenched with sweat from the heavy lifting of setting up the rides. He is pungent and Ruby wrinkles her nose as he reaches above her head to take down a glass from the cupboard. Does she imagine that he leans closer to her than necessary?
Buck is back to living in the RV, his girlfriend of the season having given him the heave-ho upon discovering she could no longer tolerate his serial flirting with the other carny girls or the hot-to-trot carnival goers all dressed in their short shorts and flouncy midriff-baring tops. This has meant that Ruby has moved from the alcove bed to the couch, that her night is often interrupted by Buck coming in late or finding his way to the miniscule bathroom, where she can hear every sound he makes. She hopes that he finds a new girlfriend soon. She likes living with Madame Celestine, but Buck’s presence has altered the dynamic. She is no longer the favored child; she is back to being the boarder. Celestine dotes on her son and makes no apology for it. He is the son of her long-lost lover, her constant reminder of a short period of happiness in her life. Ruby is uncertain if the man died or if he, like so many of these carny types, just vanished.
“How’s it going, Ruby Tuesday?” Buck thinks it’s funny to call her that, humming a few bars of the Rolling Stones song. “Who could hang a name blah blah blah.”
“Fine.”
“Girl of few words, aren’t you, Ruby Tuesday?”
Ruby has watched the other girls enjoy Buck’s teasing, using it as an excuse to touch him, to go all Southern Belle, and giggle. It’s something Ruby views with disdain. She cannot see herself acting demur, acting like a brainless Barbie doll just to attract gross attention. What man falls for that anyway? At some point this year she turned fifteen, but Ruby feels more like she skipped right over youth and has landed in adulthood.
“My mom treating you okay?”
“Yeah. Good.”
“Teaching you a lot?” Buck reaches into the tiny fridge and pours himself a glass of milk. He leans against the counter where Ruby stands over the sink. His hip touches hers and she moves away. “You making her some good money?”
“I guess.”
His hip follows hers. He stinks of sweat and cigarettes. When his hip touches hers again she sees him as he will be in a few short years and it isn’t a pretty picture. Like some men, he has peaked too soon. Too early for his essential good looks to last. She sees in her vision a Buck who still thinks he’s beautiful when in fact he will be a caricature of what he is now. A man who will never get it that women not only don’t find him attractive, but he has slid into repulsiveness. As Ruby pulls the sink stopper and rinses her hands, she is filled with the certainty that his degradation from hunk to has-been will be the outward manifestation of a disturbed act. He will forfeit his beauty with his already extant inner ugliness.
And, already, she understands that she will be the instrument.
Ruby’s first impulse is to pack up her tent and blow town. There’s no way she’s going to give up her dog. Yes, her dog. It’s been weeks, most of the summer, and Ruby can’t imagine not having the companionship of the Hitchhiker. If she had a permanent address, she would even have gotten the dog a license. Maybe she can fudge things a bit and use Bull’s address to establish her residency. Lie a little. Something that Ruby is quite good at.
Polly’s hand on her arm keeps Ruby seated on the park bench. “Let’s just confirm things at the vet’s. Maybe she isn’t the dog they’re looking for.…”
“They lost her. They left her out on the street to fend for herself.” This is a rough interpretation of the story the dog herself told her. A story without words, only images and scents.
“Possibly. But the important thing is that you have taken good care of her. Maybe the breeder will let you keep her.” Polly’s tone is hardly convincing.
“You really believe that a breeder with a return stipulation will let an itinerant fortune-teller keep this dog?”
Polly doesn’t give Ruby an answer.
“All right. Better to be fully informed than operate out of ignorance.” Ruby stands up, lobs her crumpled paper bag into a trash receptacle. “But I’ve got to finish out the day here. I’ll meet you at, where?”
Polly gives Ruby the address of the local vet, Dr. Amanda Davios. “I’ll let her know that you’re coming. Right after two, okay?”
It feels like Polly has her hands around Ruby’s throat and is squeezing. “I’ll be there.”
Needless to say, Ruby can’t concentrate enough on her clients to get any kind of authentic read, so she spends the rest of the afternoon making stuff up, relying on forty years of telling fortunes, most of which are the psychic’s equivalent of “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” Yes, good luck will follow bad. Yes, the future object of your affection is just around the corner. No, don’t take that trip.
The Hitchhiker doesn’t retreat to her bed as usual but tucks herself up under Ruby’s floor-length caftan and on Ruby’s feet. Of course the dog knows something’s up. Something is not right. Ruby’s mind is filled with good-case scenarios and bad. Mostly bad. Even while running her forefinger along life lines, shuffling her deck of tarot cards, brewing tea, Ruby’s thoughts are running toward the “what ifs”: what if she just runs off? She certainly has a history of being successful doing that. Then again, what if the dog isn’t the one who’s gone missing? Would she then feel like a fugitive (again) and for no good reason? Should she get confirmation that the dog is the dog being sought and then run away? Ruby recognizes that she’s getting wound up. Why can’t she put her psychic powers to good use for herself and give herself some advice?
Ruby closes up shop before anyone else can approach her booth. As fast as she can, she folds the tent, packs up the table and the teapot. Shoves everything into the van without caring where it goes. She can straighten things up later. The dog is already inside, sitting upright on the bench seat, spaniel eyes following Ruby’s every move. She keeps yawning, a dog’s way of releasing anxiety. Is it Ruby making her anxious, or is it some canine intuition that she is vulnerable? That their partnership is vulnerable?
As soon as Ruby gets into the front seat, the dog hops onto the passenger seat, places her forepaws on the dashboard. Barks. It’s as if she’s urging Ruby to get going. Ruby’s hand actually trembles as she pokes the ignition key into the slot, missing it twice before inserting it. Twisting it. Hearing the rear engine grumble. Her heart is pounding and suddenly it feels exactly like it did in that moment so long ago when she picked up her schoolbag filled with socks and underwear and little else and ducked out the window and down the fire escape to run away from the convent.
No, this is more like that desperate moment when she slipped out of Madame Celestine’s trailer and took off into the night. A runaway again. And, this time, a thief.
How serious will this breeder be about recovering the Hitchhiker? Will she press charges, incite a manhunt? It’s one thing to be able to blend into a population alone; a distinctive, attention-attracting dog at her side might make that impossible. Ruby slips the van into neutral. Shuts it off. “Talk to me.” She gathers the dog onto her lap, presses her cheek against the dog’s skull. The little dog presses her muzzle against Ruby. The zizzing and vibrations start immediately. Clouds of flavor and scent; pine and red. The confused senses eventually coalesce into thoughts, pixels becoming images.
The first memory/image that comes to mind is that of the nice lady. She is different from everyone else I know, and I instinctively know not to jump on her. She is fragile. But very, very happy to have me in her house. I have not been a dog in a human house. I have been a dog in a crate going from one place to another until that day when we left the ring. I have a memory/image of the scent of that handler, that day. The scent of anger and disappointment. This day I get the scent of a new job. Although I am brushed, I am not groomed. There is a distinction. Although I am walked, I am not required to stack. The old woman teaches me new tricks. I learn to sit up and beg. Humiliating, perhaps for some, but I get a kick out of it. I listen endlessly to words that have no meaning to me, but understand that it is my job to take them in. My chief job, though, is to be with her. This does not have to be taught.
Having no sense of time, I can’t say how long we were together, long enough for several seasons to pass. Long enough for me to observe that there were changes with her that did not bode well. My nose identified internal problems, a subtle whiff of trouble against which I could not warn her. So, when she cried in the night, I simply pressed myself closer.
The second memory/image that is provoked out of my mind as Ruby holds me is the old woman, but her body is down where it shouldn’t be. We are there together for enough time to pass that I am pretty sure I will also die. My water bowl is empty. My food behind a door I cannot scratch open as hard as I try. I am humiliated in having to relieve myself on the rug in front of the back door. Moment by moment the air around me thickens with decay. The sounds that signal the passing of the days continue: the sound of the bus that takes the children from the neighborhood. The sound of it returning them. The sound of the mail dropping through the slot once a day. I bark, hoping that the mail carrier will understand that I’m not defending the house, which is what I was usually doing, but asking for help. The voices from the television endlessly repeating words I do not understand.
The third memory/image is of the front door opening, a voice calling, a shriek, and so much confusion that I don’t even greet these people. I stand aside until someone notices me. I can feel the rush of air behind me as my tail takes on a life of its own. But they don’t speak to me, shove me aside. In all my life I’ve never been ignored so thoroughly. I did the only thing I could do: I ran. I went in search of you.
If the story lacks clarity, which being constructed of the gossamer threads of senses and instincts, it does, it is still clear enough in Ruby’s mind that she weeps into the soft fur. She is filled with the illusion that she herself had been in that house, knew that woman, couldn’t comprehend her death and was trapped until unthinking, grieving children arrived and she made her escape. Ruby pulls her cheek away from the dog, wipes her eyes. The images shimmer and fade. The dog shifts on her lap and jumps across to the other seat. Shakes, sneezes.
It is a little after two o’clock. Ruby knows that Polly will text her in five minutes if she doesn’t show up at the vet’s office, which is less than half a mile away. Even taking her time packing up she would still have to work hard at being late. She wonders a little that Polly hadn’t specifically sought her out with this information, that it had been a—presumably—chance encounter at the Faire. Or maybe Ruby’s just reading a little too much into Polly wanting to have lunch before dropping a bomb on her friend. Friend. Okay, those have been few and far between in her life. It’s been one of the high points of this unscheduled sojourn in Harmony Farms. Not quite on the same scale as suddenly being able to read the minds of animals, but pretty nice.
“Okay. No sense running off if this is a false alarm.” But Ruby is certain that it is not.
The office of Amanda Davios, DVM, is an unassuming clapboard-sided one-story building painted white. Green shutters flank the picture window and a green and white-striped awning hangs over the double front door stenciled with the business name, Harmony Farms Veterinary Clinic. Polly’s truck is parked in the first space by the walkway and Ruby pulls her Westfalia alongside it. There are no other cars in the parking lot. There will be no wait. The Hitchhiker noses the ground, darts for the shrubbery planted alongside the pavement and adds her signature to the invisible collection there. She’s willing enough to go through the door, no hesitation; apparently she is not a dog who’s afraid of the vet. No cowering here, no anticipatory dread. It’s Ruby who has the heebie-jeebies, a dread of outcome.
“Ruby.” Polly sounds just a touch surprised to see Ruby walk through the door.
“Let’s get this over with.” Ruby has never been a crier. A weeper. But right now she feels on the verge of bursting into tears. She pushes the urge down, hands the leash to Polly because she doesn’t want to telegraph to the dog how upset she is. She needn’t have bothered. The dog plants her feet and Polly has to pick her up rather than drag her into the examination room. The Hitchhiker throws Ruby a baleful glance, her confusion writ large upon her face.
Dr. Davios takes the Hitchhiker from Polly. “What a pretty little girl you are.” She makes friends with the dog, all the while giving her a quick exam. “Spayed?”
Polly answers, “Don’t know for sure, but if she was a retired show dog, most likely.”
“So you really don’t know anything about her?”
Ruby thinks but doesn’t say, Enough. I know enough.
“I’m going on a tip that this might be a missing dog. We’re really only here to see if she’s got a chip. If the town would ever spring for a reader, I wouldn’t have to be a bother.”
“Oh, Polly, you’re no bother.” Dr. Davios grins. “The town would be wise to get a reader for you. I bill them. It adds up.”
Ruby wishes they’d stop talking. Get on with it. Is this how death row prisoners feel while the executioner chats up the warden?
The vet picks up the microchip reader and points it between the dog’s shoulders. The Hitchhiker and Ruby lock eyes. Ruby suddenly gets a whiff of roast beef, of cheese. The dog is imagining a reward at the end of this examination. A prize for being a good girl. And then the Hitchhiker reacts to Ruby’s own thinking. She begins to scramble on the slippery surface of the exam table, nearly launches herself off except that Dr. Davios is an experienced hand at keeping little dogs on the table. “Easy there, little one.” She nods. “Yep. Got a number.”
Ruby thinks she’s going to be sick.