17. The Spray ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Across the gravel road from the new house were open fields, but a small group of trees broke the level line of the horizon. Robert yearned to investigate them yet felt constrained by the sense that he might be trespassing on neighbor Agnes Moore’s farm. He thought, “If I were to ask her permission to walk among the trees, she would wonder why I asked.” Accordingly, Robert kept denying himself the opportunity to visit the copse, until a day arrived when he could no longer resist indulging his curiosity.

Sneaking across the road, down through the shallow ditch, and over the freshly plowed surface of the field, Robert glanced from side to side. Neighbors could be seeing him, it seemed—when, in all likelihood, no one saw him. The nearest neighbors occupied farmhouses spread far apart along the road. Out of breath from the exertion of scurrying through plowed ground, Robert dashed through the verge of last year’s weedy growth and plunged into the darkness of the wooded area.

It was as circular as if measured by a surveyor. It sloped ever so gently toward the middle and may have been a ten-acre sinkhole or, at least, a damp saucer-shaped depression formed by an underground spring. The trees were a mixture of willows and cottonwoods. A few of the latter variety boasted enormous trunks. The limbs formed only a partial shade, as they were just leafing out. The tiny wildflowers called “spring beauties” carpeted the ground among the roots.

Then Robert chanced upon a circle of cardinal feathers. The red tufts fairly glowed among the willows. They may have been left by a farm cat, but they formed an exact circle with every feather perfectly placed! Robert felt a sense of awe. It was as if he were seeing a symbol intended for his eyes alone. What was its meaning?

Robert quietly withdrew. Long after his moment in the woods across the road, he regarded the spot from afar and considered it an example of the Creator’s attention to detail.  

When disking the earth, Robert occasionally glimpsed a red fox skipping home, its fluffy tail, almost as big as its body, flying behind and its dark legs flashing like a gentleman’s tall boots during Great Britain’s Regency Era. The white of its cheeks and chin only emphasized the fox’s slight grin, amused at its own cleverness, probably. In moments, the fox vanished amid the tangle of weeds wrapped around the trunks of the venerable hedge apple trees.

Once on an ominous night in the spring, Robert shook Spot’s leash, and he came running to go for a walk beyond the fenced yard.

Spot and Robert set out toward the north past the security of the house, barn, and outbuildings. They took the well-beaten path that the tractors took beside the fields. The wind came in long exhalations that could be heard far off before it could be felt. The air was chilled but not frozen. As Robert’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw small gray clouds scudding overhead. They appeared to be so low that he could touch them.

Now and then, Spot tugged on the leash, and Robert quickened his pace to keep up with him. Spot was having the time of his life, turning his head from side to side, sampling the smorgasbord of smells low to the ground. After a time, they reached the back of the farm. Spot wanted to explore the hedgerow, so Robert followed him as Spot trotted toward the gnarled trees.

Suddenly, they heard a growl. “Fox,” Robert thought. Instinctively, he grabbed Spot around his belly and lifted him to his chest. As the moon broke from behind clouds, Robert saw the ghostly white of the fox’s face staring from the underbrush. Robert backed slowly away. The fox began taking slow steps toward Robert and Spot. Just then, they heard a yipping and yelping that could only be from kits. Sure enough, four pups came tumbling out of the weeds to prance around the legs of their mother!

Robert kept backing up until he was in the center of the freshly plowed field. Keeping his balance was tricky, as the clods were tilted wherever the plowshares had left them. Growling continually, the mother fox followed Robert and Spot to a distance of perhaps thirty feet from her den. Abruptly, she whipped around and ran back among the trees, her cubs leaping and tumbling about her in what they perhaps perceived as a game.

Robert breathed a sigh of relief. Walking back to the house, he traversed a considerable distance before he thought it was safe to put Spot back on the ground.

Soon after Robert and Spot’s encounter with the foxes, Ida got up from the easy chair in front of the television, opened the door to the enclosed porch, and walked to the outside door to let Spot back in from his time in the yard. The terrier came running into the house. So did Ida.

“Joe, bring me the ketchup bottles from the box on the stairway while I grab the dog.”

“The new bottles?” Joe asked.

“Yes, the new ones!” Ida replied, lifting Spot from the sofa where he was rubbing himself on a blanket. She carried him into the bathroom.

Joe went to the door that stood above two stair steps at the far end of the kitchen. Behind the door were triangular stairs that turned sharply to the left to meet regular stairs leading to the second floor, half of which had been finished as a spare bedroom but which was used as an unheated storage area. Whenever Joe and Ida went grocery shopping, they stashed extra purchases on the triangular stairs behind the door. Joe reached into a cardboard box and lifted out two ketchup bottles. Having no idea why Ida wanted them but trusting her judgment when she called for them, Joe carried them toward the bathroom. He knocked on the door.

“You can come on in,” Ida said. “I’m giving Spot a bath.”

No sooner had Joe opened the bathroom door than he knew what had happened.

A skunk had sprayed Spot.

“I guess he cornered the skunk and didn’t know how skunks retaliate,” Joe said, trying to catch his breath. “What does the ketchup do?”

“I’ve always heard that, if you wash a dog in ketchup, it takes away the skunk odor,” Ida said, rinsing lather from Spot’s neck. “Either the skunk missed his eyes or Spot closed them in time.”

“I don’t think the skunk missed anything,” Joe said.

Ida twisted off the cap and, with the flat of her free hand, began smacking the neck of the first bottle held sideways with her other hand. After only a few smacks, ketchup rolled out onto Spot’s back.

“Pound and pound the ketchup bottle. First a little, then a lot’ll,” Joe said.

“When you strike the bottle on the side,” Ida explained, “the ketchup comes out faster than if you hold the bottle upside down and shake it.”

She massaged an entire bottle of ketchup into Spot’s short hair. She rinsed him off, ran the water down the drain, stopped the drain, brought up the water level again, and opened the second bottle, dispensing it and rubbing it into his fur for many minutes.

After she rinsed him, she shampooed him, rinsed again, and dried him with towels.

Joe had returned to the kitchen. Here came Spot on the run! He rubbed his head along the bottom of the sofa, jumped up, and rolled and rolled on the blanket.

“Pee-you!” Ida said, after she disposed of the towels in the galvanized washtub on the side porch.

She looked at Spot; then she looked at Joe.

“I don’t think the ketchup worked well enough,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Joe said.

Ida thought for a minute. “Joe, go down to the cellar and bring up a gallon of stewed tomatoes.”

Joe was happy to do as he was told because, as bad as the air outdoors smelled, the skunk odor was not as strong outside as it was inside the house.

Joe lifted the cellar door, which was on an angle near the fern bed that surrounded the tank holding the oil that heated the furnace. He disappeared into the dank cellar and soon emerged again with a big glass jar cradled in his left arm.

Meanwhile, Ida was washing Spot in the bathtub. As soon as she received the open bottle of stewed tomatoes that Joe handed her, she began sloshing them over the terrier. GLUG GLUG GLUG! The tomatoes rolled out.

“I hope you won’t mind my asking,” Joe said, “but how will the tomatoes go down the drain afterward?”

“Not easily, Joe,” Ida said. “Not easily! I’d already thought of that. I’ll scoop them out with a sieve and throw them outside.”

“I knew you’d have it all thought out,” Joe said.

Robert had been doing his homework in his room. He had heard the initial commotion, including his mother’s request for ketchup, and had paid no attention to it. Soon enough, though, he had begun to sense the sickening odor of skunk. He had hoped it was coming from outside. His hopes had sunk. He had heard enough of the ongoing conversation between his parents to know that Spot had been the target of a skunk.

The tomatoes were not totally effective, either.

Ida tried dish soap.

Eventually, she released Spot from the bathroom again. Ida was carrying an armload of towels destined for the washtub.

“Any luck?” Joe asked.

“No,” Ida sighed. “He still stinks. He’s better than he was, but he still stinks. I can’t wash him again without hurting his skin.”

She was right about the stink.

For the next few weeks, Spot exuded a skunk odor that was just about intolerable, and, for a year, whenever Robert pet the dog, a little more of the skunk stench was released somehow.         

About a month after the spraying incident, Mrs. Bowen came to visit Ida. Mrs. Bowen’s name was Irene—a name Ida never used, preferring to call her “Mrs. Bowen” at all times.

Mrs. Bowen sat on the sofa.

“When did a skunk spray your dog?” Mrs. Bowen asked.

Ida blushed. “Why?” Ida asked. “Can you smell it?”

Mrs. Bowen smiled. “How could I miss it?” she laughed. “It smells like you’ve been raising a skunk in here.”

Ida blushed a deeper shade of red.

“Let me guess,” Mrs. Bowen said. “You tried to take out the smell with tomatoes.”

“How did you know?” Ida asked, sinking limply into her easy chair.

“It’s what everybody says to do,” Mrs. Bowen answered. “It’s too bad you didn’t call me,” Mrs. Bowen said. “I could’ve set you straight. Judging by the smell, I’d say your dog was sprayed about a month ago. Well, it’s too late now. You should’ve used cider that’s turned to vinegar. That’s what takes out the smell of your skunk! ‘Tomatoes,’ everybody says. ‘Tomatoes, tomatoes!’ Phooey on your ol’ tomatoes! They don’t do any good, unless they’re pickled in vinegar. And cider that’s turned to vinegar works better than regular vinegar.”

“I wish I’d known,” Ida said.

“I wish you had, too,” Mrs. Bowen said, “‘cause that skunk has sure managed to stink up your house by spraying your dog.”

“May I get you a glass of iced tea?” Ida offered.

“Yes, you may, and I’ll take a clothespin for my nose, too.”

“Oh, my!” Ida lamented. “Is it really that bad?”

“No,” Mrs. Bowen said, shaking her head and chuckling. “It’s worse. Maybe we could bottle skunk spray and sell it to people who don’t like the smell of hogs. Our advertising could say, ‘Take a whiff of this, and the hogs won’t smell so bad.’”

“Joe says hogs smell like money,” Ida said.

“Beauty’s in the nose of the beholder,” Mrs. Bowen quipped.

“There’s more truth in that than meets the eye,” Ida retorted. “Let me get you that iced tea.”

“And the clothespin!” Mrs. Bowen called after Ida, who had gone to the refrigerator.

A few days later, Mary Akers stopped by for a chat. When Ida saw Mary’s car pull into the driveway, Ida grabbed the Glade aerosol spray and practically hosed down the sofa before stashing the spray can behind the letters on top of the dish cabinet.

“Hi!” Mary said. “I can’t stay long, but I wanted to stop by to tell you about the hotdogs at Kmart.”

Mary sniffed the air, while Ida tried hard not to look guilty.

“If I didn’t know better,” Mary said, “I’d say you just sprayed Glade to cover up—” Mary sniffed again. “To cover up skunk!”

“Mary, a skunk sprayed Spot, and I don’t know what to do,” Ida confessed.

Mary laughed so hard her sides hurt.

“I don’t think there’s enough Glade in your can to hide the skunk smell,” Mary finally said. “Did you try tomatoes?”

“Yes,” Ida said. “I wasted a perfectly good gallon of my stewed tomatoes.”

“How long ago did this happen?” Mary asked.

“A month ago,” Ida said.

“There may be nothing you can do but wait it out,” Mary suggested.

“That’s what I’ve been doing, but the smell lasts and lasts. It’s still coming out of Spot’s hide,” Ida said forlornly.

“Maybe the trick is to rub our noses with tomatoes!” Mary suddenly exclaimed brightly.

Ida laughed.

Spot was never sprayed by a skunk again. Joe wondered if Spot had encountered more skunks but had given them a wide berth.