Reflections on the Eighth Week of Fall – Dogs, the Election, and Characters from My Country Life

Polling Place

    Straddling the bench in the middle of the vet’s waiting room Friday afternoon, I plunked a notebook on top of the pet carrier wedged between Spence and me. I peeked at George, pouting and curled as small as possible in the far corner of the carrier, then pulled out a green pen. While we waited for a technician to draw George’s blood, get the test results, and give us enough supplies for subcutaneous fluid treatments until George’s next test, I could organize my election blog. Pen poised, I mentally reviewed scenes.

    Scene one occurred last August when I visited the Under Cover Girls, my friend Peggie’s sewing group. They make quilts for charity. I’d set my sewing machine between Peggie and Nancy, the head auditor for French Creek Township. Peggie’s innocent 9:00 a.m. question, “Do you like math,” should have warned me. While she sewed seams and snipped threads, she said that working with Nancy made auditing the township books easy and fun. By lunchtime, Peggie had brainwashed me into taking her French Creek Township auditor job.

    The following day at the tea party for two hosted by my son, scene two, Charlie laughed at my vignette of Peggie’s sewing group brainwashing. He suggested using the Under Cover Girls for detectives in an auditor mystery. Then he bounced in his chair and waved both fists. “You can hide the body in one of the cars on Bruce Swogger’s lot. It’s right across from where you’ll be working. Drive the car away to dispose of the corpse–the messy part of the story.”

    Twiddling the green pen, I shifted my weight on the vet’s bench. What thread would tie the election saga scenes together?

    “Hey, what’s the name of your dog?”

    My eyes jerked from the blank paper on the carrier, big enough for a small dog because George once rivaled Garfield the Cat in size, to a five-foot man with a Jack Russell Terrier. The man’s long white hair, scruffy gray beard, and sprightly step made him a great candidate for Santa’s head elf.

    Staring at the block game on his cell phone, Spence answered before I did. “That’s George. He’s a cat.”

    The man bent and peered through the carrier’s holes. “He looks just like a dog. A handsome dog.”

    The man’s terrier sniffed my outreached hand then edged between his master and the carrier. Tail wagging, the terrier positioned his nose by a hole and sniffed.

    George stood, stared, then put his nose close to the intruding dog nose.

    “Don’t scare the kitty, King.” The man yanked the leash to pull the terrier away. “He likes cats.”

    Spence paused his cell phone game. “I bet King’s good at chasing groundhogs.”

    “Oh, yeah. You should see him in my backyard. He tears after everything.”

    King pulled his leash, and the man followed.

    Spence moved close to me, cupped his hand behind my ear, and whispered, “He’s crazy. I’m loving him.”

    Each time I focused on the blank paper, King stood on his hind legs and stretched his front paws towards another person, pet, or worker in the waiting room. The man, as out going as his terrier, never sat. His conversations informed everyone.

    King needed a rabies shot.

    Gracie, the cocker spaniel, had bladder stones.

    Brent, a wolfhound-terrier mix, loved boarding with the other animals.

    And Paul, the Shih Tzu, needed a follow-up for his injured eye.

    A technician wearing a scrub top decorated with Dr.Seuss characters, too distracting for me to glance at her name tag, carried George off for his blood test.

    Another technician opened an exam room door and called, “King.”

    Walking with King to the exam room, the man reminded me of the woman walking into the polling place–both were the same height.

    Tuesday, we’d chatted with neighbor Barb at the registration table in the back room of Milledgeville Community Christian Church. She had questions. “How are your cats, and how do you like your solar panels?”

    The short woman, who’d come in behind us, said, “Where do you live? On West Creek where Spencer Wells and his wife Priscilla used to stay?”

    Walking to the voting machine, I left Spence explaining those were his parents. I voted, and he learned the woman had the same last name as a township supervisor candidate. I’d voted for him because Peggie had said, “When he was a supervisor, our roads were in a lot better shape.”

Sample Ballot

    Gripping the green pen with determination, I balanced the notebook on my lap and wrote election day.

    A man sat by the window, and a toy poodle settled between his feet. The man bent and petted the dog. “What’s the matter, Riley? You’re shaking.”

    I added local vs national to the paper, and the man said, “Oooooooooooh.”

    I glanced his way.

    A clear puddle oozed away from the shaking dog, and a technician called “Riley.”

    The man scooped up his poodle, walked around the puddle, and stopped at the exam room door. “I’ve got to clean up my dog’s pee.”

    The technician waved Riley’s folder. “Don’t worry. Someone will clean it for you.”

    The puddle widened, as if forming a swamp, and crept to the edge of the mat by the bench.

    Coming around the reception counter, a woman in a butterfly scrub top, again the fabric distracted me so I didn’t check her name tag, carried a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle to the puddle.

    The puddle spread under the mat.

    She ripped off a yard of towels, dropped them onto the puddle, and pushed them around with her foot. “I don’t want anyone slipping on this.” She dropped and swiped four times. Then she knelt and hand wiped the pee under the mat. Carrying a skinnier roll of towels and the unused spray bottle, she left.

    Spence looked up from his game. “Who’d think such a little dog could have so much in him?”

    I tapped the green pen on my paper. So far I had anecdotes. I needed some statistics for the blog.

    In scene sixteen, maybe seventeen, on cold Wednesday afternoon, Spence and I studied the four inch wide strip of paper tacked to the church’s back door. Eight of one hundred twenty-four voters had written in names for auditor. Four wrote “Janet Wells,” one wrote “Janet Elaine Wells, that had to be Spence’s vote, and the other three split two to one for a male and female with the “Emich” surname. None of the votes was mine. I’d manage fine without the job.

    Wind flapped the list while we checked other races. Neighbor Sandy won tax collector unopposed, Barb lost inspector of elections, and the supervisor candidate, not known for keeping the roads in good condition, won.

    A beeping U-haul truck backed to the door, and we scooted out of the way.

     A man jumped out of the passenger side and hustled to the church door with a key in his hand.

   The driver walked around the truck, opened the back, and pulled out a dolly.

Spence said, “Good timing. We just finished studying the results.”

    “We’re not going to take that list,” the key man said opening the church door. “We’re here for the voting machines.”

    Using the green pen, I wrote auditor stats on my list.

    The Seuss shirted technician brought George back in his carrier. “Are you going to wait for the results?”

    I put the pen on the carrier. “Yes. We need to figure out how many fluid bags, tubes, and needles to buy before George’s next visit.”

    She nodded and walked away. Setting the notebook beside the pen, I studied the page.

      election day

      local vs. national

      auditor stats

Sheesh. Boring. I didn’t want to break Kurt Vonnegut’s first rule for writing fiction–don’t waste the time of a stranger.

    “I lost,” Spence said staring at his phone. “But I made a new record, seventy-six thousand, eight hundred eighty-eight.”

    Spence started a new block game, George fell asleep, and I glared at the paper.

    Spence halted his finger exercise. “What’s wrong, Babe?”

    “I’m having trouble organizing my election blog. It’s boring. ”

    He chuckled. “Write about the vet’s.”

    The Seuss shirted technician brought a bag of supplies. “Give George fluids twice a week and bring him back in thirty days.”

    Driving George and Spence home, I said, “I could write about Riley and the peeing poodle. That’s more interesting than a Republican township victory versus the national Democratic win.”

    “I was kidding.” Spence reached his arm behind his seat–probably to wiggle his fingers at George. “Write about winning your first election.”

    Write about winning an election I didn’t care if I won? Hard to generate enthusiasm for that.

    Back home, Emma growled at George because he smelled like vet disinfectant, and an email from Charlie waited in my inbox.

    “So after your triumphal first novella about the dead body found in the boot of a Swogger automotive, here is your next plot… a bunch of rich investors swoop in to attempt to buy the Milledgevile Community Christian worship center and turn it into a luxury B&B. Mayhem (and bodies) ensure. Also, probably a few dead animals.”

    I opened a document labeled “blog try 1.” Threading characters through the election and our dog day at the vet’s might work. After all, characters are the threads that tie together the fabrics of my country life.

Voting Results