Return of the Jed Read online

  Both of us turned toward the door when we heard the familiar creak. Please be for us, please be for us, please be—

  “Rivers,” the head poking through said. “Venga aqui, por favor.”

  “Rivers, that’s us,” Luke said. “But what did he say after that?”

  I wasn’t sure, but underneath the head was an index finger, curling in a “Come here” gesture.

  Dad stood up. “Let’s go, boys, and get this thing settled once and for all.”

  Envious stares followed us to the door. I wondered why the others were here. And if any of them had been caught with creatures suspected of being mythical.

  I followed the officer and Dad down a dank concrete hallway. The only sound was the echo of the agent’s heels clicking loudly, just like in movies where the heroes are headed toward a nasty fate.

  We passed a door on the left, one to the right, another to the left, again on the right. We stopped in front of the next one, a heavy metal door the same as the others. The officer twisted the knob and pushed. We followed him inside.

  Suddenly there was a light, cool breeze. I stepped through the doorway onto carpet. Soft, thick carpet. A fan hummed in the far corner. To the left was a large wooden desk inlaid with marble, and behind it a plush leather chair, into which the officer settled himself with a satisfied sigh.

  “Please, have a seat.” He gestured toward the couch, and the two comfy-looking chairs placed on either side. A large watercolor of a lovely beach scene was centered above the couch. On another wall, photos of desert vistas, smiling faces and pastel-colored street scenes competed for attention. A comforting light-blue hue colored the wall.

  It was all so—refreshing—and not just because it was at least twenty degrees cooler in here. I felt as if we had just stepped into Opposite Land. And there was an intriguing scent. I sniffed the air again. Was that the scent of hope?

  “Lavender,” the officer said, noticing my reaction. “Very calming. I change out the deodorizer every few weeks to keep everything smelling fresh.”

  “This is pretty surprising,” Dad said, easing into the chair as Luke and I stretched out on the couch. “I was almost expecting, I don’t know. Not this.”

  “A cell, perhaps?” the officer smiled. “Metal table, handcuffs, two-way mirror?”

  Absolutely, I thought. With chains on the wall, and a device with alligator clips and a crank to send jolts of electricity through the many vegetable smugglers until they confessed to attempting to bring down the government with foods rich in vitamins and minerals.

  “No, not really,” Dad said. “Just something a little sparser than this.”

  “If we had a larger budget, we’d have made the waiting room a bit nicer, maybe added a few plants, installed air conditioning,” the officer said. “The hallway could use softer lighting as well. But we don’t work in the waiting room or the hallway. We work in our offices, and that’s what should be inviting to our country’s guests.”

  He stood. “If you did not notice the nameplate on my desk,” (I had not) “or the college diploma behind me.” (I had not) “I am Antonio Aguilera, Republic of Mexico customs. Welcome to our amazing country.”

  Dad stood as well and gripped Officer Aguilera’s hand. “I’m Harry Rivers, and that is my son Jed—” I raised my hand— “and his friend Luke.” Luke waved.

  “Please, take a seat,” Officer Aguilera said. He opened the folder in front of him, brought the top page close to his eyes. “I understand we found in your possession a, hold on …”

  He reached into a side drawer and slid on a pair of wire-framed glasses. He stared again at the paper. “I am sure this can’t be right. But let’s start simply. You had an animal in your vehicle.”

  “Tread,” I said.

  “You had an animal in your tread?”

  “No. The animal is not an animal. He’s Tread. My dog. Our dog.”

  “A dog,” Officer Aguilera said. “Yes, that makes much more sense.”

  “More sense than what,” Dad asked.

  “I am sorry, but sometimes our agents get a little carried away,” Officer Aguilera said. “Bay leaves become marijuana. Baking soda is cocaine. It says here that—Tread, is it? —Tread is a chupacabra.”

  “No, he’s a dog,” I said.

  “Good, because we do have a very strict policy regarding chupacabras, even more strict than for fruits and vegetables.”

  “You don’t believe Tread—”

  “Of course not, do you think me a fool?” Officer Aguilera interrupted. “Chupacabras are hairless with sharp fangs and long claws, and they stink of goats.”

  I knew Tread gave off an unpleasant odor, but at least it wasn’t of goats.

  “And your dog smelled more of rotting meat than goats,” Aguilera continued.

  Yeah, that was it, especially when he was nervous or frightened. I Oozed, he stank.

  “He’s needed a bath for a while,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, for about a year,” Luke said.

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  Officer Aguilera put the paper on his desk and smoothed it out. He switched his gaze from Dad to Luke before settling on me, “It is not his smell I worry about.”

  “You should,” Luke said.

  “Shut it,” I said, maintaining eye contact with Officer Aguilera.

  “You seem nervous,” he said. “You are sweating profusely.”

  That’s not sweat, I wanted to say. “No, everything’s good. So what are you worried about?”

  He leaned back, folding his arms behind his head. “I’m sorry to tell you your dog had a slight accident. His lost his tail after we put him in a holding kennel.”

  “He WHAT!” I screamed, working up as much fake anger as I possibly could, my acting falling short of an Oscar, but better than a People’s Choice Award. Maybe Golden Globe-ish. “How could you possibly let that happen?”

  Officer Aguilera had no idea how much Tread loved to take off his tail and chew on it for a while. One of the benefits of being a zombie dog, having your favorite bone attached to you.

  “We let nothing happen. He’d been in a kennel for thirty minutes or so, and when we went to check on him, his tail no longer was in place.”

  “You have to take him to a vet!”

  “We thought of that, but he refused to give us his tail. He was gnawing on it. Like a bone. As if this was nothing new. He didn’t seem to be in any pain.”

  “That’s no excuse, he needs treatment,” I said, the urgency in my voice falling off a cliff.

  “This is what we’re going to do… ” Officer Aguilera straightened his arms and leaned forward. “We are going to keep your dog for a while. His, let us say, ‘unnaturalness’ concerns us. And if he proves to be the threat I think he is, he will be destroyed.”

  “No, you can’t—”

  “We most certainly can. You have the right to appeal to your U.S. consulate, which might be very interested in seeing the dog in question. They could have even more questions than I have. You have a decision to make.”

  He stood. “You are free to go. We have all your contact information from your forms and will be in touch as to our final determination.”

  Dad opened the door and walked out as if everything had come to an end.

  But it hadn’t. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter Nine

  I was sitting on bird poop, but I didn’t care. I promised Dad I’d stay in the light and within sight of our hotel room, and that limited my options to the bench just off the parking lot under a streetlamp that obviously was a very popular rest stop for the local winged community.

  Convincing Dad I needed some time alone was easy. He’d always been sympathetic, like the time Mom forced me to take off the Night of the Living Dead T-shirt I wanted to wear to sixth-grade graduation.

  “Just because you’re undead is no reason to flaunt it, especially at such an important occasion,” Mom had said.

&n
bsp; “Important occasion?” I argued. “I’m going from sixth to seventh grade. It’s like we’re celebrating basic math with cake and phony diplomas.”

  Dad stepped in. “Hon, he’s right. I can understand teachers marking the moment, since it means they’re getting rid of another bunch of attitude-filled sixth graders. But it is not so momentous that our child should not celebrate his heritage.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “my heritage,” emphasizing the last word even though I was not sure what it meant in the scheme of things. But it sounded important.

  And Dad showed up a few hours later when I was kicked out for wearing an inappropriate shirt, and I had a big smile on my face when I handed him my sixth-grade diploma.

  That was the part of my dad that agreed to get a hotel for a night, to visit customs the next day and plead our case. Luke was on board, since he equated “hotel” with “food delivered right to your room, and you can eat on the bed because someone else is going to clean the sheets.”

  Convincing Luke I needed to be alone took a call to room service. I slipped out when the tray was delivered, since all I’d ordered was fries, knowing how happy Luke would be.

  I sat alone with my thoughts. I didn’t count the million moths flitting in the lamp, filtering the light until it became a muddy gray by the time it reached the ground. Every now and then a car went by, and it only reminded me how much Tread loved to go for rides, sticking his head out the window, and I would take off his ears so they wouldn’t blow away, stuffing them in my pocket to reattach them later.

  I’d gone through a fire for Tread, risking my life (sort of) to get him out of the burning cafetorium. He returned the favor (sort of) by rescuing one of the kids who had worked so hard to make my life miserable. But what that kid was unable to do in a year, Mexico had done in just a few hours.

  Why did I ever agree to come? And why hadn’t I done more to keep Tread out of dog jail? Various escape fantasies ran through my head, most starting with distraction (pretty easy when you can easily sever your own limbs) and ending with a heroic dash into the desert where we would meet friendly English-speaking guides happy to escort us home.

  As I refined the one where I hurled my arm like a boomerang, knocking out a row of guards, my pocket buzzed.

  I took out my phone and did the impossible. I smiled, seeing the name on the screen.

  “Hey, Anna,” I said, masking my mood to the best of my abilities.

  “Jed, what’s wrong?” she said across the miles.

  “Either you are really good at reading me, or I totally suck at hiding how I’m feeling right now.”

  “I’d love to say it’s the first, but Luke called me. Said you guys were facing some tough times with Tread.”

  Just when I thought my best two-legged friend cared more about French fries than just about anything else, Luke actually did something sympathetic and caring. Pretty cool, even if he must have been abducted by aliens and replaced with a double who expressed emotions and needs not limited to hunger.

  “The customs agents confiscated him,” I said. “Seems they frown on beasts known to eat goats, suck souls, and steal children.”

  “But Tread eats kibble, sucks at staying in one piece, and steals hearts. Mine, at least.”

  That last part was the sweetest thing I’d heard in a long time. Anna always knew the right thing to say, even if I was too much of a guy sometimes to admit it.

  “So he’s in prison while we try to figure out what we need to do to get him out,” I said. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Start by telling me what happened,” Anna said. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  I filled her in, from the moment the officer spotted Tread to the conversation we’d had with Officer Aguilera. “And we had to wait in this room that smelled like the boys’ locker room for almost two hours. Cruel and inhumane, if you ask me.”

  “That does seem like a long time. Maybe they were just backed up.”

  “Or they were checking out Tread, thinking maybe he wasn’t a chupacabra. Tread didn’t help at all by losing his tail.”

  “Possibly, but Jed, no way they’re going to figure out his real condition?”

  “Condition?” I said, an edge to my voice. The C-word always set me off, because zombie-ness was the heart and soul of who I was. It was not a “condition.”

  “Not what I meant and you know it,” Anna said. “I used the word as a shortcut, but should have known better. Sorry.”

  “No worries. Sorry for the short fuse.”

  “If you lost your limbs as often as your temper over that word, we’d need a wagon to take you anywhere.”

  “Just as long as I don’t lose my head, right?”

  “Exactly. And you’re the only guy I know where it literally could happen.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that,” I said, smiling again. It felt good.

  “Jed, this will work itself out somehow, I just know it. You need to hang in there.”

  The sound of footsteps drew my gaze to the left. A shadow approached, becoming clearer as it entered the light. Cowboy boots. Jeans. A belt buckle that shone as if under a spotlight.

  “Anna, it’s getting late, I’ve got to go. Thanks for calling, I really appreciate it.”

  “Jed, remember, this too shall pass, OK? Take care of yourself.”

  I hung up before too many feelings showed through, focusing on the man who didn’t seem to be out for a casual stroll on a very warm evening.

  The light revealed a plaid shirt and Stetson, fitting every known cowboy stereotype but one.

  “Howdy, podner,” he said, completing the stereotype. “Mind if I take a load off?”

  My heart beat once, twice, my nerves on edge as this stranger plopped next to me before I could answer.

  “Howdy,” I choked out, hoping he might accept me if I spoke his language.

  “I don’t want to alarm you,” he said, even though it was already too late. “But if you just give me a few minutes, I think I can help you out of your little dilemma.”

  “My dilemma?” I said.

  “First, let’s exchange pleasantries as society demands,” he said, sticking out his hand. “I’m James O’Sullivan, and I’m as pleased as an elderly highway-crossing armadillo to meet you.”

  I shook his hand, no longer sure I spoke his language because I had no idea what he’d just said.

  “Jed,” I offered.

  “I can tell you’re nervous, and I don’t blame you, seeing a man appearing out the darkness like a greased possum coming out of knee-high corn.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s not stand on formalities. No need to call me Mr. O’Sullivan—”

  I wasn’t going to.

  “—‘cause most people call me Spike. Because I prefer it. Wish I had a story to go with it, but I don’t. Just like the name. Spike. Short and sweet. Just like me.”

  Unlike getting to the point, I thought.

  “But let’s get down to particulars, because you seem to be as jumpy as a bullfrog at a cricket race, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t.

  “What would you say if I told you a way you could get your chupacabra back?”

  As desperate as I was, I knew the best thing to do was stand up and walk away. But I didn’t.

  “Go on.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Let me get this straight,” Luke said. “This stranger comes out of nowhere, says he can get you your dog back, tells you how to break into doggy prison, and you just let him go with a, ‘Thanks, podner.’ Really?”

  “Why didn’t you ask that before we broke into doggy prison?” I spat. “You didn’t need much convincing.”

  That was true. Dad was in the shower when I got back to the hotel, giving me plenty of time to tell Luke about the plan to spring Tread.

  “I really liked the idea of going all secret agent, to tell you the truth. Until this.”
r />   We faced the iron bars keeping us from the ring of keys, one of those keys able to get us into Kennel 206, where Tread waited. But we still had to get past the padlock.

  Luke readjusted his grip on my arm, the one he’d ripped out a few minutes ago.

  “Two arms are better than one,” he said. “But maybe not in this case. I really thought I could reach the keys this way. But now maybe we need to leave. Your cowboy friend led us astray, podner.”

  Spike had offered the only chance I had of saving Tread. He’d handed me a solid plan, complete with a map. Luke and I had entered through an unlocked window and filled our arms with treats from the first closet on the right. We then threw treats into each kennel, as Spike had suggested, to keep the inmates quiet.

  It had all been perfect until now. Spike had neglected to mention the iron bars that stood between a successful jailbreak and us.

  “If you had doubts, why did you agree to join me?” I said.

  “I loved the idea of sneaking out, but even that wasn’t much fun. Your dad wasn’t much of a challenge.”

  That was true. With the hum of the air conditioner masking our escape, Dad didn’t even stir as we slipped out of the hotel room.

  “You also promised me your fries for the rest of our stay in Mexico,” Luke continued. “A suitable payment for breaking and entering. But why are you here? What’s your excuse?”

  “Desperation,” I snapped back. “You don’t have to be here. I do. You heard my dad when we left the customs office. We’d stay here one more day, and if we couldn’t get Tread, we had to leave because of Dad’s job.”

  “He also said we could call every day, and when they released Tread, we’d come and get him.”

  “Come on, Luke, you know Tread is never going to be released. His tail fell off! They know he’s not your usual dog. Was I wrong in trusting a complete stranger? Absolutely. But I also know this was the only chance I have and I took it. So shoot me.”

  “Wouldn’t do any good,” Luke said. “You’d get right back up. It’s the zombie in you.”

  “Darn straight,” I said, more determined than ever to spring Tread. I motioned to my arm in Luke’s hand. “Give it another shot. Nothing to lose.”