Shovel, Laura, shovel for dwarves (apparently), me.
It’s like some kinda fucked-up American Gothic portrait, but with fewer pitchforks and more rappers. If there was a song for this chapter it would be the Golden Girls theme. But less douchey, and with a kick-ass drum solo in the middle. And the lyrics would be like “You would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say, ‘Thank you for helping me dig up my dead dog.’” That shit’s Grammy gold, y’all.
Several weeks later, a deliveryman came to the door with a package for me to sign for, and I was so excited because I thought it was a scarf I’d ordered, but then I opened it and realized it was a box of Barnaby Jones Pickles’s ashes. You’re really never prepared for packages like that. But really, you should be. Some days are good, and some days are bad, and some days are the days you get a dead dog in the mail. They can’t all be winners.
Later we disposed of some of Barnaby Jones Pickles’s ashes in the Devil’s Backbone where we live, because it’s apparently very haunted by Indians and Spanish monks, and I’d like to think it would be less horrifying if people drove up on the ghost of a lone Indian, grudgingly accompanied by a smiling pug who was just so damn happy to see you.
You’re welcome, Texas.
I’m Going to Need an Old Priest and a Young Priest
The following is a series of actual events pulled from my journal that led to me believe that our home was possessed by demons and/or built over an Indian burial ground. (Also, please note that the first part of this chapter actually happens just before the previous chapter, and the last part of it happens just after it. This could be viewed as “clunky and awkward,” but I prefer to think of it as “intellectually challenging and chronologically surreal. Like if Memento was a book. About dead dogs and vaginas and puppets made of squirrel corpses.” You can feel free to use that quote if you’re reviewing this chapter, or if you’re a student and your teacher asks you, “What was the author trying to say here?” That was it. That’s what I was trying to say. That and “Use condoms if you’re going to have sex, for God’s sake. There are a lot of skanks out there.” That’s not really covered in this book, but it’s still good advice.)
Let’s get started.
You know what would suck? If, after you moved, you suddenly remembered that you might have left a cigar box with a ten-year-old joint in your garage, and your husband doesn’t remember whether he saw it, and you don’t know whether the movers found it and packed it for you, and so now you may or may not have illegal drugs somewhere in your house. And you want to hire a drug dog to come sniff it out so that your kid doesn’t find the box one day, but you don’t know anyone who rents out drug dogs. And you kind of just want to call the cops to have them come find it, and you’ll just tell them that they can have it if they find it, but you don’t know whether they’ll arrest you or not, even though technically you’re just trying to rid yourself of illegal drugs. This is all hypothetical. It’s also the reason we’re losing the war on drugs. Also, is pot illegal if it’s expired? And how do you know whether it’s expired? These are all questions I’d ask the police if I weren’t so afraid to call them.
Holy shit, y’all. I just looked up and there was a fox in our yard. A fucking fox. I know this is no big deal to most people, but it kind of blows my mind that we live so far out in the country that there are actual foxen that live in our hills. Also, spell-check refuses to recognize the legitimacy of “foxen,” even though it is clearly a word. One ox, two oxen. One fox, two foxen. This is all basic linguistic stuff here.
Victor and I are having a huge argument about whether or not to feed the foxen. Victor says yes, because they’re adorable and—according to the neighbors—are quite tame. I say no, because we have a fat little pug who likes to frolic outside occasionally and I don’t want to see him eaten. I thought we were on the same page about the fox, but then Victor went and threw an apple at it. And I was all, “What the fuck? We don’t feed the foxen,” and he said, “I was throwing the apple at it to chase it away,” but Victor is a tremendous liar, and he didn’t go to pick up the apple, probably because he knows that foxen love apple cider. Also, everything I know about foxen I learned from Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was a great movie, but I suspect was not entirely fact-driven. This is probably all obvious even without the explanation.
Actual fox in my backyard. Looking for cider, I assume.