Lawn Boy(64)

“Where’s your mommy and daddy?” I asked.

“My daddy is in Pensacola with that whore Loretta,” she said. “And my mommy is at T.J Maxx.”

“Does she know where you are?”

“She lets me wait at the pet store.”

“What’s your name, sweetie?” said Andrew.

“Waverly,” she said.

“Well, Waverly, you don’t want to wait at this particular pet store, because they get their puppies from a puppy mill.”

“What’s a puppy mill?” Waverly asked.

“A puppy mill is a terrible place,” said Andrew. “It’s a place where little puppies die of neglect and starvation.”

“Oh,” she said, visibly unnerved.

In my opinion, Waverly didn’t need any more convincing. I think she was ready to boycott the place, I really do. But Andrew was too impassioned to notice. And I couldn’t really blame him. Finally, somebody was listening! This is how you made change happen!

“Some puppy mills,” he explained, “are littered with piles of dead, partially eaten dogs, stuffed in corners and hanging from rafters. And in some puppy mills, starving adult dogs eat their newborn puppies.”

Around now, Waverly’s face muscles started twitching visibly, and her chin began to quaver. I nudged Andrew, but he was in the zone.

“One miller stuffed five Rottweiler puppies into a birdcage and left them to starve. Except that they kept growing, anyway. And eventually they were too large to be extracted from the cage, and they had to be euthanized through the bars.”

I think it was about at this point that Waverly began to hyperventilate. But Andrew was on fire.

“When the females are no longer fertile, they’re left to starve, and their bodies are fed to—”

I would describe it as a screech, the sound Waverly made. Or maybe part screech, part squeal. Have you ever stepped on a puppy’s tail? Like that, but sustained—really sustained. It was goddamn unsettling. Only when shoppers started converging on us from all directions did Andrew realize he’d miscalculated.

“What have you done to that child?” demanded the lady from the travel agency, having charged out the door.

“Hey now!” said a fat guy in front of the vacuum repair.

“Yo!” cried a nearby tweaker in a filthy Ravens cap.

People were now rushing out of T.J. Maxx and the hair salon to see what all the fuss was about. Still screeching like a banshee, fists clenched, Waverly clutched her arms tightly to her chest. Setting our picket signs aside, we did our best to deal with the situation. Lots of shushing and considerable shoulder patting. But Waverly couldn’t be reached. She was a human teakettle.

It took five minutes to finally calm her down and disarm the gathering mob. It took another ten minutes to locate the mother, who was summoned from T.J Maxx, a sallow-faced woman with skin like mangy camel hide and two missing teeth. Honestly, she seemed to be the least concerned party involved, until she recognized the opportunity to make herself the center of attention, whereupon she yelled at Andrew and me, calling us “freaks” and “molesters.” She said we were no better than fucking Clint and that dirty whore Loretta, down in Florida. But apparently her outrage wasn’t very convincing. Even the sketcher cut us some slack.

“That skeez should not be a mom, yo,” he said, scratching his stubbly face. “Hey, you got two bucks?”

So maybe the protest wasn’t a huge success. Andrew meant well, I know he did. Maybe he didn’t exercise his best judgment in a delicate situation. But in my opinion, he took the setback harder than he should have. After we left the pet store, we walked down Silverdale Way, dragging our picket signs to a grubby little pho place in a different strip mall. The restaurant was maybe two hundred square feet and might have benefited from dimmer light. I didn’t want to assume Andrew was buying, so I just ordered a spring roll, because I only had four bucks and three of them were in quarters. Andrew ordered me the works, anyway, and insisted on paying. He was classy that way.

The instant the waitress left, he turned mopey, and I guess I couldn’t blame him.

“Who am I kidding, Michael? I’m a phony. All my lists are bullshit. All my talk, all my posturing, all my big ideals. No wonder my father’s ashamed of me and my mother’s embarrassed of me.”

“Dude, that’s not true. You’re an inspiration.”

“Michael, I traumatized that little girl. I ate a hot dog at the Walmart protest! I’m a complete hypocrite! Look at me: I wear leather shoes. I bank at Wells Fargo. I’ve never even had a dog. Who am I to decry puppy mills?”

“You’re somebody trying to make a difference.”

“I’m nobody trying to make a difference.”

“You’re a librarian. A librarian is a public treasure, a respected community resource. A goddamn saint in my book!”

“No, Michael, I’m a substitute library assistant. I don’t have a degree. I got that job off the bulletin board. I shelve books. On Thursdays they let me put the flag up and take it down if I’m working. I’m basically a lackey.”

“Well, at least you’re trying.”

“Am I? Oh, Michael, it’s vanity, that’s all. Like these stupid braces. I just want to look good, so I can feel better about myself and convince other people I’m somehow better than what I am or, even worse, better than what they are. I’m shallow, Michael, you may as well know it before we go any further. In fact, there are a lot of things you should know before we go further.”