Debbie Sue couldn’t keep up with all of Sandi’s animals either, but having three rescue dogs and an aged horse herself, she empathized with anyone who collected unwanted animals.
“Right. Sandi Walker,” Edwina replied. “She’s got a parakeet that needs a permanent home.”
“She rescued a parakeet? From where and what?”
“I think somebody died and left it homeless. Sandi says it knows a bunch of words and talks like a person. I’m gonna adopt it and give it to Vic as a present. He’ll love it and they can keep each other company while I’m not home.”
Vic Martin had never struck Debbie Sue as being a man who worried about being alone. Even if he did, he wasn’t home alone all that much. After retiring from a stellar Navy career, he had bought a big rig and was now a long-haul trucker. He traveled the highways of the whole USA, saying he wanted to see the country and meet the people he had risked his life protecting.
Debbie Sue had to ask, “And who’s gonna keep it company while Vic’s on the road?”
“Maybe I’ll bring it here to the shop. I could put a cute little cage right over there.” She pointed at the corner by the window. “I could paint it a pastel color to match the bird’s feathers and maybe put some flowers around it.
“Cool idea, Ed. It could see the outside and plot its escape. Or if it talks so well, maybe it could look over our shoulders and kibitz when we’re doing manicures.”
“I was thinking Vic might even take it in the truck with him. For company while he’s driving, you know?”
Chapter 2
Midland, Texas
The last thing Sandi Walker wanted on a blistering July day was a trashy alley. As a specialty pet food merchant and the owner of LaBarkery, the only gourmet pet food bakery in Midland, she demanded that the area around her shop’s back door be neat and clean. LaBarkery did not need an open invitation to bugs and vermin. Sandi had been known to rent a high-pressure hose and blast the alley. Her neighbors called her the “alley policeman.”
The other shop owners up and down the strip mall claimed to feel the same about the alley, including the owners of the mom-and-pop burger joint two doors away. The eatery was the largest contributor to the alley debris. So far, neither its owners nor their teenage employees had contributed much physical effort toward keeping the area clean.
To make matters worse, a few weeks back, the City of Midland had placed a dumpster directly across the alley from LaBarkery’s back door.
So after Sandi finished her lunch, she gathered her trash and stepped outside to face the alley.
If a garbage bomb had exploded, the area around the dumpster couldn’t have looked worse. Plastic bags that had never made it into the dumpster lay torn open, the contents scattered everywhere. A cloud of flies swarmed it. The stench made her hold her breath.
“Ooh noo,” she groaned.
The temperature hovered around a hundred, but what choice did she have but to pick up all of it? She squared her shoulders and marched back inside. She donned a mask, goggles and her heavy-duty rubber gloves, then dragged her own garbage can from beside her back door and began to pick up waste. Most of it had come from the burger joint. No big surprise there.
“I’m going to have another talk with those people,” she grumbled as she plopped stinking, sloppy hamburger leavings into the garbage can.
Just as she reached for a sack of discarded French fries, a large scruffy dog came from behind the dumpster and began to wolf down everything in sight. It was so thin its sides were sunken. It had been on the street a long time. She hadn’t seen an animal so starved since a weekend trip to Juarez with her friends. Down there, mongrels ran free, but they were timid and scared, slinking around with their tails tucked between their legs.
Common sense told her to give a stray dog a wide berth, but her heart went out to it. She had never been able to ignore an animal in need. For proof, six rescue cats, two large mixed-breed dogs, a barky miniature Schnauzer and a shivery, grumpy Chihuahua lived with her at home. Also two squawking Leghorn hens she called Sophie and Snow White, a Rhode Island Red hen named Anastasia and a dominating one-eyed Rhode Island Red rooster she had named Christian Grey. Add to that group, a recently acquired black-and-white gerbil and an opinionated African Grey parrot the SPCA had rescued from a biker sports bar after its owner passed on.
As she replaced the lid on the garbage can, she said to the stray, “Hey, sweetheart, are you friendly?”
Tucking its tail, the dog looked up at her with soulful brown eyes, but kept its distance, as if it feared a blow or some other cruel treatment. She felt a stab in her heart. “Aww, don’t be afraid, baby. I won’t hurt you.”
The dog inched toward her. It began to wag its tail and dance around. It was a male, she noticed. He wore a collar, but no tags. He belonged to someone. Had some jerk abandoned him? Left him to get by the best he could?
Sandi related all too well. Been there, done that. Not that long ago, she, too, had belonged to someone then been abandoned. A heaviness filled her chest.
The dog came to her carrying a burger patty in his mouth. He laid it at her feet and looked up, begging for her approval.
Been there and done that, too, she thought with disgust. Or at least, something like it. As if approval from an ass like Kenneth Coffman, her second ex-husband, was important.
“Oh, thank you, sweetie,” she said
