walls, but the walls have to be pretty thin, in my experience.”
“So, what, we stick it to the outside of the house, hear what’s inside?”
Lawrence shook his head. “No, I don’t think it would be strong enough to work through an outside wall. But I’m wondering…”
“What?”
“If we got one or two of these into the kitchen…”
“Lawrence,” I said, exasperated. “Were you listening two seconds ago? That’s where the dogs stay. You’re not going to get into that kitchen with those dogs there. And besides, there are six people living in that house. Maybe, just maybe, if I got to know May Wickens better…No, even though she wants to get herself and her son away, that doesn’t mean she’d be willing to plant a bug on her own father, and it’s pretty hard to get near her anyway, her dad’s watching her pretty closely.”
“What if,” Lawrence said, “we could use the dogs?”
“Huh?” I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“The dogs are our biggest problem. Why not make them part of the solution?”
“I still don’t get you. What, we hook them up with a Dog Cam? Like on Letterman? Sure, why don’t you do that. I’m sure they’d hold still while you rigged them up.”
Lawrence shook his head. “Nothing that obvious. What if we got some of these little guys”-he held the button- sized mike up between his thumb and index finger-“into the dogs?”
I smiled. “You’re kidding me.”
“I’ve never tried something like this before, but what the hey, it might be worth a shot. We give the dogs something to eat, we shove the mikes into the food, hope they swallow them whole. Dogs go lie down in the kitchen, bugs in their tummy, we listen in.”
“You’re serious.”
Lawrence smiled. “I’ve never been more so.”
I couldn’t conceal my admiration. “You know, at this very moment, I find you very hot.”
Lawrence studied the mike in his hand. “I’ve told you before, you’re not my type.”
“How many of these are you going to need? How many do you have?”
“I’ve got a half dozen of them. We get some Alpo, slip it into bowls and set it over the fence, they’re bound to sniff it out. We hide the mikes in the dog food, we might get lucky.”
“You know,” I said, “I can get something those dogs like better than Alpo.”
It took me a while to find the fish guts burial ground in the dark, but when the trees opened up and my flashlight caught the cottage shutter on the forest floor and the pile of dirt with a shovel already sticking out of it, I whispered to Lawrence, “Welcome to my new job.”
We’d found two metal galvanized pails back in the open garage that was attached to the workshed, tucked in behind Dad’s souped-up lawn tractor. I flipped the shutter off the hole, and about two feet down a layer of dirt covered the last load I’d dumped in. I’d gone first to the can of fish guts down by the lake, but recalled that I had emptied it earlier in the day, and when I lifted off the lid I saw there was nothing in it but a single filleted perch. It had been, evidently, a lousy fishing day at Denny’s Cabins. Not hard to understand, given that we’d lost one guest fleeing a bear, and Bob was probably too traumatized to do anything but sit in his cabin. Betty and Hank Wrigley just weren’t able to pick up the slack.
I yanked the shovel out of the dirt pile and drove it into the top layer of dirt. There was a soft, squooshy noise. I brought up a couple shovels full of dirt, then the main event.
“Oh my God,” Lawrence said as I displayed for him the array of guts and fins and scales and eyeballs on the shovel blade. “That is, without a doubt, just about the most horrible mess I have ever seen in my entire life, except for maybe
“Hold out the buckets.”
“Fuck no. I’ll set them down here. You fill ’ em up. I think I’ll just wander over there and vomit.”
The guts slid off the shovel and into the first pail.
“You’re telling me these dogs love this stuff?”
“Like candy,” I said.
I worked the shovel into the hole again, got a load for the second bucket, and dumped it in.
“Alpo would’ve worked fine,” Lawrence said. “And it wouldn’t have stunk anywhere near as bad.”
“This stuff’ll slide right down their throats like Jell-O,” I said. “They won’t even have to chew it.”
“I really don’t feel well,” Lawrence said.
“Drop the mikes in.”
Lawrence tossed one into each bucket.
“They expensive?” I asked.
“Don’t even ask.”
“And you say they’re moisture resistant?”
“Supposed to be. Although I doubt the prototypes were ever subjected to this kind of test.”
“If it works, how long do you think they’ll be useful?” I asked.
In the moonlight, I could see Lawrence shrug. “How long’s it take for something to go through a dog?”
“Twelve hours maybe? I hate to tell you, but the Wickenses don’t strike me as stoop-and-scoop people. You’re not gonna be getting these back.”
“Your loss. I was going to give them to you.”
Once I had a couple of inches in guts in each pail, I shoved the shovel blade back into the dirt pile. Lawrence was being so squeamish, I didn’t bother to ask him to grab the pails.
“Let’s go feed our puppies,” I said. “Do you think you could manage to throw some dirt over those exposed guts and drag the shutter back over the hole?”
“Uh, no thanks,” said Lawrence. “I don’t mind offering my detection services for free, but there are limits to what I’ll do.”
I decided I could deal with the hole later and led Lawrence through the trees toward the wire fence that surrounded the farmhouse. The house sat about thirty yards away, and we were looking at it from the side. It looked peaceful and ominous at the same time. Lights were on downstairs and up, and even from here, you could hear the soft sounds of people talking inside. The barn, off to the right, was a black square on a black canvas, large and foreboding. The only outside light was over the door on the front porch to our left.
“What if the dogs aren’t outside to eat this shit?” I said.
“They gotta let them out at some point before they all go to bed,” Lawrence figured.
We’d also brought along a wire coat hanger that I’d untwisted so I had a long hook with which to lower the pails over the fence. Carefully, I set them into position without letting them tip over. Lawrence and I moved a few feet back from the fence, stood there in the quiet night, and stared at the house.
“Come on,” Lawrence said under his breath. “Let those bastards out.”
Every minute or so, a light wind would come up, and the smell of fish guts would waft our way.
After five minutes of staring at the house, I said, “It’s going to take me a while to get my head around this thing with Dad, and Orville. You think you know everything, then you realize you don’t know shit. My mother, she was a good person.”
“I’ll bet she was.”
“But she kept secrets her whole life.”
“That’s what people do,” Lawrence said.
I thought about that. “Even you?”
In the moonlight, I could see the corners of his mouth go up a notch. “Especially me. My dad, he never knew my full story.”
I remembered my visit to the hospital, when Lawrence lay near death in the intensive care ward, and the chat I’d had with his sister Letitia. “Your sister made mention of that. She gave me the sense that you kept your secret from your father not so much to protect yourself as to spare him.”
“He was a good man,” Lawrence said. “He just wouldn’t have understood. I’m who I am. I don’t expect the whole world to change to suit me.” Lawrence squinted. “Door’s opening.”
I trained my eyes on the farmhouse. The porch door swung open, a woman’s voice. Charlene, I thought.
