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RANCHO AND THE BULLDOG (i'll try to divide out chapters later, sorry...) I was on the phone with the guy at the CD store, and I think he told me he loved me. I was calling to get the status of my CD order. I ordered the Rap-A-Lot records ten-year compilation CD and it was supposed to take two weeks to come in. Five weeks later, I'm on the phone with the guy, and I ask the status of my order. "Let me look for your slip," he says. I hear him shuffling through papers and eating a hoagie or maybe a turkey and chipotle mayonnaise on sourdough. There's a great deli next door and no doubt this guy gets sandwiches there every day for lunch. He's making wet, slurpy, munching sounds, breathing snottily through his nose and somehow rifling papers at the same time. I hear a plop as a blob of dressing or maybe a tomato falls on one of the papers, then "oh, shit-bob" and the crumpling of a defiled order slip. Finally deli sandwich boy is back on the horn. "Sir?" he waits for me to reply, but I don't know that, so I sit patiently. "Sir???" he almost shouts, and I can tell that there's food stuck in his teeth and clinging to his gums. "Yeah." "It looks like it will probably be another week, two. That purtiklar title is on back-order at the warehouse in Texas. It'll be another week...two." "I ordered it March third. They said two weeks, three. It's been five weeks, six. Are you sure it's coming?" I was kind of mocking his vocal style and rhythm, plugging my nose with my thumb and forefinger. I think it escaped his notice. "Sorry sir, these things go on back-order from time to time... ... ... (Very long pause here…judging from the glug, glug, I think he drank from a glass of soda) and it's unfortunately beyond our controls." "Will the manager be in later?" "Bobby(i) will be in tonight five to eight." "I'll see Bobby(i) then." "Love ya, bye." the dealer of CD's replied. I didn't know what to make of it. He said it all jumbled up and quick-like, but I don't think I could have misunderstood him. Weird. When I thought about Bobby(i), the manager, I pictured an ex-military bruiser or a gym teacher type female, either one with a crew cut, and I didn't like it. However, I wanted my CD, or at most a bit of...justice I guess. I knew it was a no-win situation, but, as sandwich boy said, it was beyond my control at this point. I left work and it was really hot outside. It was hard to breathe, instant headache hot. I got in my car and my Meatloaf cassette had melted onto the dashboard. It emitted a crazed chemical burn smell that would bring me back to this day every time I ran my defroster. I scraped it up a little with a map and threw all this into a trashcan cooking nearby. I missed old Meatloaf already. Doggone sun. Traffic was terrible on all of the roads I wanted to be on. I sat and listened to the radio, and didn't like what any of the stations were playing. The fan under my hood made an angry noise, like it was overworked. I stopped at a stop sign next to a woman in some sort of German convertible. She looked at me and hated me for no reason. She turned up her radio and rolled up her windows, even though her car had no roof. I don't know what I did to make her so mad. The light turned and she floored it, her wide rear tires squealed a bit then took hold, her rear end slid my way, and then jumped forward. Suddenly there was a gunshot crack, loud and too close. I jumped and whimpered a little. It was one of the fancy lady's back tires exploding. I saw what looked like smoke and shrapnel, but was really just pressurized air and tire. Rubber, dust, and bits of tire flew outward from her wheel well. The car lurched to the right and the front tire popped sliding sideways over the curb. She was drunk or tired, and finally hit the brakes as she crashed through a hedge and into a stone wall in front of the Comfort Inn. She wasn't traveling very fast at that point, so she saved her fancy make-up from a good smudging on the steering wheel by a few inches. I hadn't even moved yet. I decided to get off the main roads and took the next left. Soon I was in the paint peeling neighborhoods. The unmowed yards and starving dogs neighborhood. An old pair of Adidas hung from the wires overhead. There were three kids playing catch near the street with a dodge ball probably filched from a nearby community center. As I drove past, a kid on the passenger side threw it over my hood to a kid on the driver side. This kids hands were about two sizes too big for his body. He bobbled the ball and knocked it in through my window. The ball struck the side of my cheek, bounced down to the steering wheel and then to my passenger seat. I decided to keep it. The boys were spitting mad, and I had to run the next two stoplights before they gave up chasing me and teaching me the latest profanities. I drove on, mapping my route to the CD store in my head so that I wouldn't have to take any main roads whatsoever. If I planned it right I would come out of an alley into the back parking lot of the store, the route of least possible human contact. Meatloaf came on the radio and I got happy. I drove and tapped out the beat on my steering wheel. Top of the wheel was tri-toms, bottom was bass, and center was cymbals. I tapped away. There was a drum crescendo and the cymbals crashed out a tune on my horn. Suddenly there was a popping whoosh. My left hand was driven back into my face by the airbag; my eyes closed out of instinct and then were stuck that way by a fine white powder. My left hand careened into my face just below my right eye, gouging the skin and then digging into my eye socket and making me see white stars on that side. I had the sense to take my foot off the gas, but I didn't hit the brake. My car coasted into another and came to a crashing halt. It's a good thing my seat belt was there for me, because my air bag was not. The Meatloaf song ended, so I turned off the radio, and then my car's engine. There was powder everywhere, finer than flour, and I could barely see or breathe. I grabbed my new dodge ball and got out of the car. The CD store was closing in about 2 hours and was about two miles away. I'd have to try to hitch a ride, and in a hurry. I looked carefully behind for the previous owners of the dodge ball and began my walk. My finger traced the raised letters on the side of the ball. "Gym Monkey," they read. I walked for about six blocks before a car stopped to pick me up. At least I thought they had stopped to pick me up. "Hey, where'd you get that ball?" asked the passenger, confrontational like. I didn't miss a beat "The Gym Monkey outlet at the mall in Cedar Run." The passenger had brown hair bleached blond, I could tell by his eyebrows. Currently his eyebrows were lowered and confused looking. He wore a white ribbed tank top of the sort referred to commonly as a wife beater. He also wore baggy blue jeans and looked like about a billion other people I've seen. He had a Slurpee in his hand, maybe cherry flavor. "Gym Monkey outlet, huh?" he sounded kind of dumb. I felt sorry for him and his confusion. "Yep." The two teens drove on. Their car had been rear ended pretty bad, and the paint that had wiped off on it, like when you kiss a couple of ice cream cones together, was exactly the shade of my car. I couldn't believe the Gym Monkey Outlet thing had worked. I walked two more blocks before a middle-aged guy stopped for me. He drove a dark blue Lincoln. It had tan leather seats cooled by the air conditioning and feeling like heaven. He'd never heard of the CD Store I was headed to, but he could take me as far as 5th and Ivy. He was wearing an expensive sport coat over a polyester shirt on top, bright blue soccer shorts on bottom. This would maybe have concerned me if I weren't nestled into heavenly cool leather seats. It was like climbing into the fridge and taking a seat in a tub of Country Crock margarine spread. He was listening to some cool 80's tunes on the radio, the Cars, I think. It was kind of relaxing. He reached over and touched my face below my eye. A trickle of blood led down from where my finger had gouged it earlier. Something about it seemed weird, not effeminate, but maybe genuinely concerned or extremely confused. I winced, and he brought his hand back and looked at the blood on it. "Been in some trouble?" he asked. He wasn't accusing or threatening, just curious. I was a little creeped out by the touch. It wasn't a come-on, I didn't think. I'd seen those before. It was more like he loved the blood, wanted to seduce it. "Little car trouble." I answered. I think he could tell I was getting standoffish. He tilted his body a bit to the side, away from me. I settled the Gym Monkey ball solidly on my lap, and was comforted by this inflatable barrier between the man and me. "Car trouble that made you bleeeeeed?" he asked. You know what? I was now officially very creeped out. He said the word bleed like a hungry zombie in a B movie. A slow, Vincent Price, Transylvanian accent. I wanted out, but demanding to be let off immediately seemed a bit cliché, a little more of the B movie fodder. I would brave the last mile or so to Ivy. The driver bit his nail and sucked his fingertip. It took me a minute to realize it was the one he'd dabbed a bit of my blood up with. I took a minute to reply. "I hit something. Airbag. Car won't drive, because I punctured my radiator." I didn't know if I really had punctured my radiator. It sounded right. I had absolutely no idea what I hit, so it was a fine thing he didn't ask me. A familiar high school song came on the radio. It was unmistakably the Red Hot Chili Peppers, saucy guitar and gividdawaynow! The man started angrily tapping his foot on the gas pedal. The Continental surged forward, slowed, forward, slowed; the front end bobbing like it was on hydraulic lifters. I was scared, and even more scared when I looked over and saw the chubby man in his fifties was quietly crying, making "woo" noises to the beat. "He killed my daughter, you know," the driver said muddily, "drowned in my own pool. Cold to the cold blooded." He pointed at me for emphasis. "Cold to the cold blooded." This wasn't the right thing to say, but I didn't know what that was. "Anthony Creavitz, that's who! The lead damn singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that's who." I hadn't asked, but the crying man had taken it upon himself to tell me. He pulled over to the side of the road to kill me and leave me for dead. "I guess you better go." He said. I didn't know why he was kicking me out, but I believed him, I'd better go. "Anthony
Kiedis, man." I said stupidly. I wanted to help him get justice
if that's what he needed. He reached in the glove box, presumably
to get a gun and shoot me, but came out with a deck of playing
cards. They were Bicycle brand with the strange, stoned designs
on the back. On the box was a sticker, printed on an ink jet printer
and smeared from handling. It said the following: "I used to use matchbooks, but they get thrown away." I nodded my head as if it all made perfect sense. I was once again clueless as to the right thing to say. I thanked him for the playing cards and the ride and he drove away. I walked on, toward the CD store, trying to ignore the hungry rumble beginning to travel around in my stomach. I walked past the Amigos Y Famiglia Restaurante and felt dizzy from the smell of chimichangas and tamales. My stomach sounded like a wounded Chihuahua. Shit. I was real hungry. I walked into the restaurant and there were three customers and one worker. I ordered the special taco quickie platter and giggled to myself about the connotation of that, while the handsome taco man went to make my food. I looked at the couple sitting in the corner under a picture of a very jolly and Hispanic-looking Jesus walking on the water. They looked quite blotto, and there were three empty pitchers of what used to be something on the table before them. Something that had been mixed with chunks of pineapple and apple and orange, probably wine. The chunks of fruit sat stained at the bottom of the three dirty pitchers and the couple leaned on the wall and sang something in Spanish to the tune of "Kumbaya". I looked to the other corner and saw a man who looked like a black bulldog, face kind of mashed and smashed and with what looked like a smile but was really his mouth trying to pick itself back up again. He looked up at me with yellow eyes, stained like the fake wine fruit, and belched. He had made it about three-fourths of the way through a burrito the size of a large cat, and looked panicked as to what to do with himself from this point forward. He also had a cracked plastic pitcher of wine and fruit, and I made up my mind that I, too, must have some of this popular house drink. Taco man came back with my order. I hadn't asked for my food to go, but the tacos were wrapped in foil so wrinkled it looked thrice used. The salsa verde dip was in a small, plastic solo cup with foil for a lid. The fresh nacho chips were in a little paper sack that would hold fries at an Americano joint. All of this was safely stowed in a bag that proclaimed "Jacky Mart, the Food Store". He'd gone through so much trouble; it would have to be to go now. I asked for some of the fruity wine by pointing at the pitcher in front of the bulldog. He nodded, and poured me a pitcher from a huge pot sitting just behind him. He totaled my order in his head, and I gave him my cash. The ball went under my arm, the bag in that hand and the pitcher in the other. I had already opened the out door with my foot when the taco man showed up over my left shoulder like a ghost. "Sir", the taco man had no trace of an accent, why should he, "the sangria pitchers are not for take out orders." The pitcher was in such a poor state of repair that this problem hadn't occurred to me before. "I... uhhh, I just, well..." I sounded dumb, but was proud of myself for opening the door on my own with my hands full and all, and this had just completely caught me off-guard. Bulldog man suddenly forgot the quarter-cat burrito festering in front of him and turned to look at us. "Rancho, man, just sell the kid the pitcher, man. He's got places to be, already been in a car accident, and the CD store closes in twenty, man. Sell him that pitcher." I was so astounded by the man's good idea that I didn't notice the Miss-Cleo-read-your-past-trick the guy had pulled. I actually wouldn't fully recognize the bizarre nature of the man's comments until almost an hour later. I had switched to deal mode now. "Yah, what about that? Can I buy the pitcher?" I refused to looked down at the yellowed transparent plastic, the brownish bubble where the pitcher had been burnt, the cracks in the handle that were at that very moment abrading the meat of my palm into burger. I was in deal mode and couldn't trifle with any small imperfections with my intended prey. "How much do you intend to pay?" I didn't like how the deal was progressing, but I pulled the remaining two dollars I had left out of my pocket and showed them to Rancho. "No way that's enough, man, no way." He said. He sounded kind of sad about it. Here I was, feeling bad for him. "Rancho," the bulldog was right there again, I was starting to like this guy, "how much you gonna charge the kid? The pitcher is used." Rancho had been behaving like he didn't know that this scarred, partially melted pitcher was anything less than the Holy Grail. He seemed to reconsider. "Okay kiddo, give me a buck, okay?" Rancho said. He didn't sound gypped and he didn't even take my last buck. I was pretty impressed with Rancho; he might not be all bad after all. I gave him the crumpled bill and walked out with my food. I had to get on the ball or there was no way I'd have my CD in hand tonight. It had to be tonight. I juggled and my arms shook, as I struggled not to spill my cheap sangria wine or lose the Gym Monkey. I carefully ate my delicious tacos, stopping from time to time to dribble some homemade salsa, dip chips, or get a better angle on my pitcher of sangria. The wine was going straight to my head, and I was still miles from the CD store and my precious CD. I was dropping chips and slopping taco sauce and salsa down the front of my button down Stafford work shirt. I got to the corner of Fulton and Division and headed right, finishing my wine and handing the empty pitcher to a homeless man sitting near the corner cradling a cigar box. I was a bit dizzy and talkative. "You can get a buck for that, like Rancho did." I told him. He looked at me blankly and I decided to take it for grateful admiration. I walked on, thirsty, talkative, and numb about the head. A man walked by dressed in the largest flannel lumberjack shirt I have ever seen. He was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, and the shirt hung well below his knees. The sleeves were rolled up so his dirty hands could peek out, like raw sausage dropped in dirt, the rolls were thick and round, giving his forearms a boosted Popeye look. He may have been wearing short pants underneath, or maybe none at all. I didn't want to know. I thought if he belted the huge lumberjack shirt it would be much more flattering to his figure, but I didn't say so. The folds of the shirt covered for a moment the Tupperware dish the man carried. It was roughly two sandwich sized, square, dirty, scarred, and a bit misshapen. There was a Post-It note attached to the top of the container with clear packing tape, and someone had written "Not alien fetuses" on it with black marker. Somehow I didn't think that the lumberjack had written it. I had the sudden urge to give him one of my tacos, and I did. I handed him the food and we still hadn't said anything to one another. He took the corn-shelled delicacy in his massive sausage hand, which shook as he raised it to his mouth. He turned his head sideways, and took a bite. "They're not alien fetuses." he said. "I know," I replied, and I meant it. This seemed the most natural exchange in the world. He finished his taco in about three seconds, wiped his hands on his huge flannel tent of a shirt, and took the lid off of the alien fetuses. They looked like peaches in light syrup, but a bit more curled. They had tiny, curled up, peaceful dead faces. They looked comfortable. He picked one out and ate it, a tiny string of syrup shining on his lower lip. I told myself it was a peach, it was only a peach, but I winced visibly when I heard his teeth separating the flesh, the meat, whatever you call the body of a peach. I didn't know what to do, or what to say to this strange lumber cutter who had taken my taco with some sort of mind control trick. "Want to come to the CD store?" I asked. I didn't know I was going to ask him that. If I didn't recognize the voice as my own I would have sworn someone else had asked him. "Sure" he replied. His voice told me he was expecting me to ask. His voice told me he knew for a fact that it was going to rain at 3:19 tomorrow afternoon, and what was really meant by the theory of relativity. I was beginning to like this man who looked like a strange homeless clown. Nose red as if he was drunk or cold, hair in an afro-like cloud around his head. His voice was melodic, like a flute or a recorder. Wind through a specially tuned pipe. This homeless man's voice was that of a father or a preacher or a teacher who could never be wrong. A warm blanket. He was coming with me. He looked at cigar box man and told him something with his bright, crackly, ice water eyes. I continued toward the CD store, and the man in the flannel tarp followed me. A warm wind started up and went in circles around us with trash and leaves and the smell of mold. I walked on and let my mind circle with it. I got to the CD store and it was dark inside. It was still open, though. There was no cage on the front door, and there was the feel of eyes from inside. I stopped for thirty seconds or an hour, and then went in. Bobbi was at the register eating noodles from a cardboard container. It was Bobbi, not Bobby, and she was short haired, blonde, and muscular. A weight lifter, like I thought. She put down her noodle fork and looked at me. There was heavy metal sitar music playing through the stereo, and the friend I had talked to on the phone earlier was on a stepladder in the corner, hanging CD's from the ceiling with fishing line in. He knew I was there, but wouldn't look in my direction. He ignored me on purpose and it was obvious. I walked up to the counter and my feet squooshed in the wet carpet. Someone had either spilled a whole lot of something, or tried to clean the filthy stuff. I made it to the rough-hewn, wood counter. It was studded with old staples from concert posters and community flyers, looking like it would poke you if you let it. I told Bobbi what was up. I ordered a CD. It was the Rap-A-Lot Records 10 Year collection. It was the finest rap recording ever released. It had been six months, or something, Bobbi. I needed that CD, as a matter of personal happiness, and no one else had been able to order it for me. Was it in? Please? My sentences were chopped and mussed. I could feel a tiny muscle under my right eye twitching uncontrollably. "Hold on, let me check." Bobbi said. She had a voice pitched higher than I had imagined, and I could see her back in high school. She was a cheerleader, someone's happy daughter, and then she got hurt. She left the counter, left her noodles, and went in the back to look for my CD. I was excited. I nervously ate my last taco as she looked for my CD, and then started work on the rest of the nachos. I tapped my fingers on the counter and made a beat for the sitar music. My friend was still on the ladder, still ignoring me, and ignored even harder when the lumberjack decided to come in and join us. He opened the door and I didn't jump, but the chime that was triggered by the door in the back room did. It sounded like an electronic cowbell back there, and startled me deeply. I stopped tapping my finger, then started again, faster than before. The log cutter went to the jazz section and began examining CD's carefully, as if for germs. When Bobbi came back, she tried not to look at him even harder than the boy on the ladder. I didn't know what to think with all of the intense dishonesty going on here. Both of the CD store employees obviously knew the man was here, yet both seemed intent on concentrating him into nonexistence. The dull black case of my CD shone from Bobbi's lean hand. It was so good to see it that I felt I had waited twenty years. "Thanks" I said. It sounded hollow, but I didn't know what else to say. I turned the case over and found a note taped to the bottom. It was on a plain yellow Post-It, just like the one on the lumberjack's Tupperware. It said this: "The Lumberjack cannot be trusted. He REALLY IS from another planet. He will kill you, he needs to harvest certain parts of your body and soul for his own profit." It was written sloppily in red ballpoint. As I read it, the lumberjack read it in my face. Somehow he knew he'd been betrayed. He walked over to the counter, kitty-corner from where I stood. He seemed to have swelled. He was intimidating, and Bobbi moved closer to me, trying to get away from him. He reached over and took the Post-It from the case. He scrunched it up and threw it at Bobbi, and for some reason I looked to the friend on the ladder. He was still pretending to take no notice, looking the other way, but he knew what was going on. The lumberjack pointed his index finger at Bobbi's head and she went to sleep. Instantly. She fell to the floor with a "CLUMP" and a cracking of joints and a flapping of arms. Again for some reason I wasn't surprised by this turn of events. I was happy to have my CD and I was ashamed to be fixated on that, it was all I could think of. I got the feeling the lumberjack didn't want me to think of anything else. I was a cow on the ramp of the slaughterhouse. I actually leaned over the counter toward the imposing figure of the man. My friend in the corner had stopped hanging CD's and walked slowly up the aisle, toward me. I glanced his way and didn't like what I saw. His face was thin and feral. It seemed to stretch outward hungrily, coming to a point at the nose. His eyes seemed much too close together. Flannel man raised his hand. I knew he would. As his index finger leveled on me like a pistol, I heard a bit of static in my head. The man was tuning into my frequency, his voice, the voice of his mind, waxed and waned in my head, echoing, talking to itself, overlapping with old phrases and thoughts. He locked in, and his arm jerked a little as if shocked. "GO TO SLEEP. TAKE A NAP. TAKE A LOAD OFF, JACK," a million references to the same thought echoed back and forth between my ears. Spoken in a slow, low-pitched singsong. My head lowered on my shoulders so fast I heard a crack amplified through my skull. I should have fallen, but stood for a moment, numb, somewhere else. Then I sunk backward and the CD clerk caught me. The voice got clearer. "Andy, take him through the back. Get him to the van." So this was Andy. Andy did as he was told. He dragged me back through a room cluttered with old posters and boxes. I didn't feel my shoe slip off my left foot, but I saw it lying next to a box marked "clear sleeves". It made me sad to see it there, I wondered if I'd get it back. I didn't feel the gray soapy water soaking the back of my pants, but it did. Andy jerked me around as he shouldered the door open, and then we were in the alley. It smelled like old trash, more mold, and something burning. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to see, and think. I fought to stay conscious as he lay me down on the ground, letting my head fall the last couple of inches to the greasy asphalt. I heard Andy unlock the back doors, then open them. He grabbed me under my arms and grunted as he dragged me up into the back of the van. The other shoe fell as my feet grated over the edge of the door. The floor of the van would have been extremely uncomfortable if I'd had much feeling in my body. As it was, I felt the cold and damp as if someone was describing it to me, the grooves in the floor cut into someone else's back, as the doors slammed shut. Somewhere wind chimes played music in a familiar tune, a piano joined them, and it reminded me of being in the cradle as a tiny child. It reminded me of sleeping all day in terry footie pajamas, listening to adults make goo goo noises at me. I think I was ready to die. I didn't care what was next. Both front doors opened and closed within seconds of each other. I could tell which one was the lumberjack because of the deeper sound of it. It sounded like the door should have broken on its hinges, or the window should have cracked. The lumberjack had too much power. I could feel it coming off of him like opening an oven door. He was getting ready for something. The motor started, gunning so loudly it would have hurt my ears, if I had feelings. The van moved forward, and my old body jostled back and forth, my old head lolled around like I'd lost my neck bones. The bullets tore through the van with strange metallic "tang" noises before I heard the roar of the gun outside. A bullet went over my right side sounding like a robotic hornet and had just enough left to lodge in the lumberjack's shoulder. He made a deep "Unh" noise in his throat and covered the wound with his huge dirty hand. My eyes had opened stickily at approximately the time the bullet was lodging near Jack's left scapula. I thought about sitting up, I was feeling so much better, but then didn't. The weasley kid behind the wheel punched the accelerator, and the roar of the nasty old engine drowned out the sound of the remaining shots. Voices did manage to rise above the roar, somehow. It took me a moment to realize they were in my head. "Stop the van, Col, now. It doesn't have to go this way." So it was Col, not Jack. "You shot me. I have a bullet in my shoulder. It's going to go this way." Col seemed a little flustered. I got the feeling he was used to being in complete control. I could feel his energy rushing over me like wind, concentrating through the bullet holes, the rust holes, the cracks of the doors to seek out footing in the minds of our pursuers. I heard snatches of his mental ramblings. "Back off," and "Get lost," silly, clichéd, tough guy phrases. "Kill you," "End you," "Get you," as he seemed to get more desperate. A bullet found the left rear tire and it exploded. The other tire shrieked as it lost traction and the van spun to the left and smashed into the brick wall of the nearest building. The top corner of the van bounced off this wall, rebounded, and rolled back around, sending the van onto its side. It seemed to slide on the asphalt for a mile. As the van rolled over, I was bounced along the floor and onto the side that was now on bottom. My nose smashed into the floor as I settled to the wall of the van and sent an electric jolt of red pain through my head. Suddenly I could move again. "Don't move. Don't move," in my head. It took me a minute to realize it wasn't my own voice. I moved anyway, sat up on the side of the van, and then cowered as someone jumped up above my head. The running step sounded just like thunder, and I instinctively moved further into the back of my metal prison, away from where the steps were headed. A soft tinkling as the safety glass of the driver's window, shattered but still in it's frame, was kicked in, then three shots. I looked down at weasel boy lying crookedly across Col on the passenger door and watched their bodies twitch as the bullets tore into them. Without thinking about it I pulled the handle of the upper rear door and pushed it open, thinking it must weigh about as much as two of me. I slipped through the door, barely keeping it from closing on my foot. A Cadillac sedan sat just behind the remains of the van. It was an older model, gunmetal gray with a bit of rust here and there, and roughly the size of a barn. It took me a minute to recognize the bulldog man from the restaurant. He looked like he wasn't surprised to see me here. Rancho jumped down from the van and looked at me appraisingly. "Let's go, kid." Rancho's voice was low and husky. I felt so grateful to him I had tears in my eyes. I followed him around the passenger side of the Caddy and got in the back. My shoes were on the floor mat, neatly arranged as if by a personal valet. My Gym Monkey ball was on the opposite floor mat, and for some reason I was very, very glad to see it. On the seat above my ball, the little paper sleeve of tortilla chips and cup of salsa. On a napkin. I didn't know where they'd found the time to get all my stuff for me, but they were my two new best friends, Rancho and the Bulldog. The Dog put the big car in reverse and we coolly slid backward as sirens wailed in the distance. I put on my shoes, and Rancho turned up the radio. It was my CD, and it sounded simply magical. The Dog tapped his fingers on the shiny steering wheel, to the beat.
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