Chapter Three
Three
But she was sleeping. And it turned out that spelunking would have to wait, because of the evil that drama improv had done to Miles’s MCL.
Dr. Arbuthnot was not available, the doctor’s nurse told Miles, after repeating his question to someone sitting next to her, receiving an answer, and then repeating the answer to Miles.
But if Doctor said to take it easy, not to push it, and Miles didn’t take it easy, then she was going to guess that Doctor would tell Miles to take it easy and not to push it, again.
Andrei, fortunately, was understanding when Miles called him to apologize. One needed two good knees to go exploring. And the fact was that in winter, with the hibernating bears, they would just be mapping entrances, not going deep inside the caves.
—
Instead, he stayed home.
Too bad, he thought, that the school play rehearsals were only weekly, and that he had to wait two weeks for the next meeting of the Jeremiah Wylkes Society.
Well, it gave him time to clean up the plaster and the insulation, and tape pages from an old draft of his dissertation over the damage to the wall, which the dog promptly demolished. But how else was he to fix it?
Then he remembered “Farm Candy Builds a Chicken Coop.”
So he spent some time watching more Farm Candy videos.
Helped Olive with her “My Survival Kit” school project, and Wesley with his profile on Sam, the school custodian, who, Miles realized with a shock of secret small-town pleasure, was Earl’s second cousin, and also in attendance that night at the Mountain Catch.
Wesley had accepted this first assignment grumblingly, having inherited his vision of journalism from Child Rebellion, which Miles now recalled involved a muckraking middle-school reporter.
“No offense,” said Wesley, “but is Sam newsworthy, really?”
He’d proposed a host of other stories, only to be stonewalled by the editors.
Why was the old math teacher fired?
Was it true that Threads, the upscale outdoor-clothing store, was spreading lice rumors to shut down the school tag sale?
What was going on behind the gates at the Pineridge Farm, just on the other side of Claymore? With its funny smells, high fence, and yellow smoke?
“I think,” said Miles, “you need to write the stories they assign to you.” And Sam was a great topic.
Sam, said Dr. I-Really-Shouldn’t-Tell-You-This Anita, had a basketball-sized umbilical hernia he referred to in the first-person plural and refused to have reduced.
And he was an avid birdwatcher—there was an angle!
That would easily take up a hundred words.
—
And, yes, he felt a little envy when Kate came back from skiing, cheeks flushed, so joyful. She was only teaching one course that semester, on Blake, and was going to the mountain almost daily. Like he had, in the days before his injury. How could he begrudge her?
Double-dance. Single-dance.
On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star. As Milton had written.
But he was happy for her; how could he not be happy for her? It was years since she’d been wheelchair-bound, but he remembered. And if he no longer had the snow, his life was full of thoughts of Shakespeare and the other world inside the earth.
—
For how, in the minds of the believers, did it work?
Did the tunnel bore straight down, and open up inside a sphere, like the inner surface of a giant tennis ball? Did the kingdoms look up toward a private Heaven? If so, how did they, and how did Jeremiah, stay there, on the ceiling? And not tumble upward, drawn by gravity, into the sky’s abyss?
Or did the spinning of the sphere itself retain them against the surface, like some fun-park centrifuge? If so, was there, in going down, a moment of transition? A place of turning, where descent from one world became ascent into another? When a going-down became a going-up?
Or was this all wrong? What if the earth was not a giant tennis ball, and more a sponge, riddled with wormholes, amphitheaters of different sizes, each holding its own kingdom, its own civilization?
Or nested planets, contained within one another?
Our ground their sky, lava-lighted. Our glowworms, their stars.
The seas, said some, poured swirling down under the North Pole and out again, beneath Antarctica.
Not that he believed any of it.
Heat, orbits, gravity—how? What rules?
In a certain kingdom, in a certain land.
Should he ask Wesley, with his cosmic notebooks? Wesley, builder of worlds?
—
Good afternoon, it’s two o’clock, and welcome to The Miscellaneous Minute, or, as we like to say, the only Minute that’s actually an Hour. This is Thursday, March 7, and I’m your host, Don Martel.
Today we are talking pets. I’m here with Reena Kapur of the Vermont SPCA, Mark Hamlin of Hamlin’s Groomers, and Missy Cochran of Naughty Naughty Discipline and Obedience in Oakfield. Everyone, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Don.
Thanks, Don.
Good to be here, Don.
I gotta say, I’m really looking forward to the show today, friends, because I secretly hate pets, and every time I do this show and listen to what people call in about, I just am filled with gratitude that I don’t have one. But, before we go there, I wanted to start out with a question for Missy.
Shoot, Don.
So…I’ve lived in the area for my whole life and must have driven past Naughty Naughty Discipline and Obedience hundreds of times, but it wasn’t until we were preparing the show that I realized that it was a pet school.
You’re not the first, Don.
Okay, makes me feel better. Must have some disappointed folks walking through your door.
It happens. We do our best to manage expectations—we put a big cartoon Snoopy on the door last year, and that’s helped some, though not entirely.
And you haven’t thought to change the name?
Sign cost fifteen grand, Don.
Got it. Well, I’ll do my best to get the word out. Speaking of which, we’ve got callers already, and I haven’t even given out the number. Let’s go to Toddette in Wilmington. Toddette’s got a question about a Bichon Frisé. Gonna be a good one. Toddette.
Hey, Don; hey, everybody. So the issue is with my pool.
Todd, you again! I knew that fake high-pitched voice. “Toddette” has got to be the worst made-up name I’ve ever heard. You can’t keep doing this, man. How many times do I have to tell you?
I’m sorry, Don, I had no choice!
Todd, I don’t want to start blocking your calls, but we’ve done it before. Done it with Karen in Burlington. Done it with Clarence in Windham. Done it with Eddie with the skin condition, who kept sending photos years after we did “Dermatology”…
Don, I’m desperate!
And—oops!—the call was dropped. Let’s go to Clyde in Readsboro. Clyde!
Oh, hey! I was just calling to see if you would take my call. You did!
That’s right, buddy. You got a question?
No, not really, but, wow, I can hear myself on the radio, right now. There’s a delay, but that’s me. Whoop! Whoop!
Hello, Pulitzer, here I come! Clyde in Readsboro, people! What’s going on today? Next one better be about pets, or I’m leaving. Bev in Corbury Junction. Bev, you’re on.
Hey, Don. So I have a question about breeding.
Family program, Bev.
Ha, you big lump. Still going at it. So my question—and I hope this doesn’t sound too strange—but I have an eight-year-old Siamese cat—Shirley, we call her, like Laverne and Shirley, remember?
Who can forget, Bev?
Well, about six months ago, she starts to plump up. And I’m thinking she just isn’t getting exercise, but she just got fatter and fatter, and last week we came home to find this spawn…
I’m guessing you mean kittens, but go on.
No, that’s the thing. I know what kittens look like, but these have beaks and little claws and feathers. Beaks and feathers on a cat. I’m freaked out, Don, because we have a parrot, and Shirley, she doesn’t get out, and I can’t say I watch them all the time…
Gettin’ spicy! Bev, let’s ask our experts. Reena?
Well, this is a first for me, but it does bring up the issue of getting your animals spayed and neutered. It’s safe, it’s easy, and, most of all, it makes sure that there is enough love to go around.
Sounds like plenty of love going around in Bev’s house—right, Bev?
Don, I feel terrible. We had a similar problem with my daughter, but we could have the talk with her. What do I do, just drown them?
Mark Hamlin?
Don, I’m a groomer.
Missy Cochran?
Got me. Bit too late for obedience training, sadly.
Hey, Bev? Not to get off-topic, but have you called in before? I’m getting vibes…Maybe “Coins and Stamps”? “Gardens”?
Called in a couple of times, Don. Hope that’s okay.
Of course, as many times as you like. Not to get too philosophical so early in the show, but I was talking to a buddy who runs a program out in Maine, and he was saying, You ever wonder, Don, if, at the end of the day, you only have a single listener?
And then I’m thinking: Could it be? Bev, what if it’s just you and me?
Over and over, caught in a loop of endless time? No other people, no other life?
…
Bev? Looks like we lost her. Well, maybe it means it is time to go to an email here.
This is from Marvin in Greensbury. He writes: Hi, Don, Thank you for your program, blah blah blah, compliment, compliment, you’re the best, blah, blah, blah, Don, you changed my life, blah blah…
Okay, here we go. I’ve got a German shepherd, beautiful dog, never any problems until December, when, all of a sudden, he starts digging everywhere—lawn, couch, carpet—it’s bad.
What changed? Is there anything that I can do?
Missy, can’t dodge this one, babe.
Happy to answer, Don. You know I’ve been hearing this all winter, all the obedience community is talking about it. Something strange is happening. It’s not normal. It’s like they know something that we don’t.