Hound Dog True (5 page)

U
NCLE POTLUCK SAYS
they can watch a movie, and when Quincy asks, "What do you want to watch?" and Mattie says, "I don't care," it is the first time that night Mattie's words sound solid and flat,
plunk plunk plunk,
like for true she does not care. But in her head there are other words. Wobbly ones she wishes she could say.

I'm sorry, Moe.

So Mattie waits.

She waits through two bowls of popcorn and one movie and Quincy snoring quiet
swee swee swee
three hundred times. Uncle Tommy driving away on his motorcycle and Uncle Potluck humming "Taps" and Mama saying
Good night.
Waits until she is sure that everyone is sleeping.

Then Mattie sneaks to her room.

Finds her notebook.

Writes the truth.

MOE
by Mattie Breen

Once there lived a button named Moe. Moe Was a mouse-shaped button. He Was stitched to some pajamas With strong thread.

The pajamas belonged to a girl. She Was not strong. Sometimes at night she Worried. When she Worried, she twisted Moe on his thread until she fell asleep.

Moe did not mind.

One night the girl could not fall asleep. The girl Worried and Worried. She tWisted Moe for a long time.

The next day, the pajamas Went to the Laundromat.

Moe was in a washing machine. Water flooded in. The other clothes pulled and tugged at him, and Moe's strong thread snapped.

Then everything started spinning, and Moe got washed away into the tubes and wires of the washing machine. It was dark and noisy.

Moe was alone.

He didn't yell for help. He knew he would never be heard.

Moe was lost forever.

M
ATTIE POKES AT A PANCAKE,
feels her eyelids window-shading up and down. Yawns.

She got up early, dressing in private before Quincy woke. Now Quincy is up, too, changing in Mattie's room, while Miss Sweet sits here at the kitchen table, telling Mama yes on more coffee, saying soon as Quincy gets dressed they'll be out of Mama's hair, asking
Where is Potluck and what is his deal, anyway?

"He never talks to me," says Miss Sweet.

"Potluck?" says Mama. "You've got to be kidding."

Miss Sweet swats the air with her hand. Her fingernails are long and purple. "Well, he talks. I mean, whatever. He just doesn't
say
anything. Do you know what he told me yesterday?" Crystal Sweet asks Mama.

Mattie perks up. Maybe Uncle Potluck said something about Mattie helping him at the school.

"He said he met a psychic in the army who taught him how to tell a person's future by the way she eats corn on the cob."

It is not about Mattie. But she cannot help but be interested, wondering what her corncob would say if somebody fortune-told it.

"What did you say to him?" Mama asks Miss Sweet.

"I told him I didn't like corn."

Mama laughs. "I'm sorry, Crystal."

"Potluck laughed, too," says Miss Sweet. She puts on a pouty face.

"More sugar?" Mama asks, and Miss Sweet puts her regular face back on, spoons sugar from the jar.

"You'd think that girl was getting ready for prom, it is taking her so long," Miss Sweet says, not seeing Quincy walk up behind her. Quincy's hair is braided in two and hangs long over her shoulders. She looks younger, Mattie thinks. Like a teenager in a school play pretending to be a kid.

"What's prom?" Quincy asks.

"What's
prom?
" Miss Sweet barks a laugh. "What's prom? Only one of the biggest days of your life!" Miss Sweet puts her hands on Quincy's shoulders to guide her out the door.

"I have pictures," she says.

"I'll show you," she says.

"This will be awesome," she says.

Quincy does not say it will be awesome. "Poor Moe" is what Quincy says.

Poor Moe? Takes Mattie's sleepy head till after the door shuts to figure it out.
Darn,
Quincy means.
That stinks.

Mama empties Miss Sweet's cup into the sink. "Poor Moe?" she asks.

Mattie does not want to say
That stinks
to Mama. Does not want to tell her what happened to Moe, either, since she never has before. She would have had to explain about Star. Explain how just thinking that word
og-ree
could keep Mattie up all night twisting Moe on his thread. Mama'd be disappointed to have a daughter who worried so much. Who wasn't as strong as she was. Who couldn't get tough when the going did.

So Mattie had waited, hoping she'd never have to tell her. Like she is waiting now.

Sure enough, Mama hops to her own answer. "You two want to have a secret code, that's fine with me. My friends and I used to have one, too. We had to with all these boys around." Mama sweeps her eyes from one side of the room to the other. Mattie knows Mama is seeing it like it used to be, her brothers, Sonny, Roy, Tommy, and Potluck, filling every chair and corner.

"My friends and I used to camp out in the backyard for our sleepovers. Once the boys drilled that hole in my ceiling, they could spy on us, so the tent was the only safe place to go," Mama says. "You'd like that, too, wouldn't you? A bunch of friends, all crammed in a tent together, staying up all night, sharing secrets."

Mattie tries thinking of a whole tent of friends. Sees a tent zipped near to bursting with girls. Is so busy seeing this, almost misses seeing Mama's piccolo fingers until Mama has dashed down the cellar stairs. Mattie can hear boxes sliding on the cement floor, cupboards creaking open. A clunking sound. "Mattie! Come help!"

Mattie comes to help, and Mama hands her one end of a sack. Once she and Mama get it up the stairs and outside to the lawn, Mama unzips it. Inside is a wrinkled-up nylon bundle, plus some poles and rope and plastic stakes. "My old tent," she says.

She snaps the tent up fast, not even stopping to get a proper hammer, banging the tent stakes
smack smack smack
into the grass with the heel of her shoe. Finds Mattie a garden rock for doing the same.

There's a flicker of tags on the tent seam. Each tag has a warning on it, a stick man showing all the things you shouldn't do with tents, like put them up on cliffs or light fires inside them or get them tangled in electrical wires. Mama had said the tent had been her only safe place. Sure was different for a stick man.

"Too bad your first friend at this house won't be going to your school," Mama says.

At first Mattie doesn't know what Mama means. Then she does. Mama means Quincy.

Mama thinks Quincy Sweet is Mattie's friend.

I
T ISN'T UNTIL
M
RS.
D
IAZ
-S
MITH
calls Uncle Potluck's office saying the drinking fountain outside her classroom has sprung a leak that Mattie realizes she has forgotten it. She had been so busy tent-staking and wondering if Mama was right about Quincy being a friend that when Uncle Potluck said it was time to go to work, she forgot to fetch her notebook from its hiding place under her pillow.

She will have to pay extra attention today. Have to remember everything and write it in her notebook when they get home.

"Grab that bucket off the shelf, will you, Mattie Mae?" Uncle Potluck says.

When going to investigate a leak, bring a bucket,
Mattie tells herself. She can remember that.

Down the hallway of Mitchell P. Anderson Elementary they go, Uncle Potluck humming and Mattie imagining what sort of leak they might find. Maybe it would be a big one, a floodlike one, with desks bobbing on waves and books soaked to pulp and Mrs. Diaz-Smith islanded up on a swivel chair clutching her telephone, waiting for Uncle Potluck to rescue her.

You'd get to postpone school for a leak like that.

When they get to the fountain, though, Mattie only spots a couple of splashes on the floor tile, and Mrs. Diaz-Smith isn't even in her classroom. She has left a note saying she's at a recess safety meeting.

"You look disappointed, Mattie Mae." Uncle Potluck hoots as he bends his traitorous knee. He wipes away the splashes, lies down under the fountain to look up at the pipes. "Best to fix things when they're small, before they get too big for fixing."

Fix things before they get too big for fixing.
She'll write that down, too.

"Want to give this your janitorial scrutiny?"

Mattie lies down next to Uncle Potluck and looks up at the pipes. On the bottom of the big elbow pipe there is a skinny, silver bracelet-looking thing. It has beads of water clinging to it. Mattie guesses this is where the leak is.

"Top-notch janitorial instincts," Uncle Potluck says. "Now, slide out."

He fits a red pipe wrench around a bolt and turns it tight. "First," Uncle Potluck says, "we shut off the water source. Then—hand me the bucket, would you, please?"

Mattie slides the bucket over to Uncle Potluck, who places it under the elbow pipe.

Shut off water. Bucket under pipe.

"Then we drain whatever is left," Uncle Potluck turns a small nut and loosens the silver pipe bracelet. A splash of water lands in the bucket, along with a few black bits that look like dead worms. "There we have it. Washer deterioration," Uncle Potluck declares.

"What kind of deterioration?"

"Washer. Rubber rings that keep the water sealed off from the pipe joints. These pipes are a little larger than most, so I keep a special washer supply—you'll find a bag of them in the toolbox. A new one of these, too." Uncle Potluck hands Mattie the silver pipe bracelet. Probably it belongs in the trash, but Mattie slips it on her wrist.
Washer deterioration.

The washers come in a bag of ten, but Uncle Potluck only takes one. Gives the rest back to Mattie.

They're pretty stretchy, the washers are, and she slips one onto her wrist, where it bumps and bounces against the pipe bracelet.

It looks pretty. Like one of those friendship bracelets that some girls wear. Mattie puts a second washer on, and then a third and a fourth, until all nine washers are stacked halfway to her elbow.

What would it be like having as many friends as that?

"An elegant look," Uncle Potluck says.

Mattie feels herself red up. What kind of custodial apprentice sits around pretending she has an armload of friends when she is supposed to be learning about fountain leaks?

"I was watching ... I—"

"You know, Miss Custodial America wore just such a set of accessories during the talent portion of the 2008 competition. She was a plunger juggler."

"A what?"

"Plunger juggler. Could keep five of them in the air at once."

Mattie grins. "You're joking, right?"

"While singing 'Don't Stop Believin',' if I remember correctly."

Now Mattie is laughing. "She did not."

Uncle Potluck raises his hand like he's swearing to something. "Hound dog true," he says. "It was the unplugged version of the song, of course." He tries staying serious, but a grin cracks across his face, too.

"Those washers will need to go back to Authorized Personnel, I'm afraid." Uncle Potluck sets the pipe wrench back in his toolbox. "They are still fit for duty and are the property of Mitchell P. Anderson Elementary."

Mattie rolls the washers down her arm, one after another. They aren't really friendship bracelets, she reminds herself.

She reaches to take off the pipe bracelet, too, but Uncle Potluck stops her. "I believe you have earned that one."

The pipe bracelet has pretty spots at the edges. Mattie hadn't noticed them before, when she had all the washers on, too.

"It's a fine-looking bangle, Mattie Mae. Could be one is all you need. For now, anyway."

Mattie does not know if it counts as custodial wisdom, but she knows she will write it down when she gets home.

Could be one is all you need.

"H
OME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN.
" Uncle Potluck turns the pickup onto the gravel drive, and Mattie cannot help looking. Looking past the tent. Looking to the rock. Looking to see if Quincy Sweet is up there waiting for her.

She is not.

Which is good, Mattie tells herself, turning the bracelet around her wrist.

It is good that Quincy does not come running out of Miss Sweet's house when Uncle Potluck parks. Does not rush up to the truck door saying,
I was waiting for you.
Or,
I was so bored without you.
Or even,
Poor Moe, it was a long day.

Good because Mattie has custodial wisdom to write down. Good, too, because she has not figured out yet what would be right to say back.

The sun is warm and there is a breeze. She'll take her notebook to the rock. And then if Quincy Sweet does feel like coming over and saying hello, she'll see Mattie busy writing, like yesterday, and maybe just start drawing and they won't have to talk at all—or not until Mattie is warmed up to it, anyway.

Mattie heads inside to get her notebook, passes Mama's friend tent and the stone rabbit and Uncle Potluck, who has made his way to the garden. Isn't till she's in the house, door shut behind her, that she hears another door open—Crystal Sweet's door.

She doesn't mean to look, but she does. Turns to look out the kitchen window to see if Quincy Sweet is coming over. Does not see Quincy Sweet coming over at all. Sees her blurring away, dashing to the far side of Crystal's car, ducking behind it.

Hears the
thwack thwack
of a car door handle. "Crystal!" she hears Quincy holler. "It's locked!"

A breath later Miss Sweet tiptoes out in sparkly shoes, her hair tornadoed up on her head, ringlets dancing. She has purpled up her eyes with shadow and swapped her cinnamon lipstick for a cotton-candy shade that matches her dress.

"Hey, Potluck," Miss Sweet sings.

"Don't you look frosted?" Uncle Potluck says.