He shifted his attention to Ted Trapper, his other neighbor, and saw how that mild-mannered accountant was using the expensive pressure washer he’d recently bought and had bragged about to divest his deck of moss and other green eyesores. Then Ted caught sight of one of his precious garden gnomes, wavered a moment, then applied the high-powered tool on the gnome. Immediately the gnome exploded into a thousand pieces, and Ted’s anguishedcry could probably be heard all through the neighborhood. Tex committed the moment to memory, to brighten up an otherwise dull day, and the only regret he felt, as he gave Ted a jolly wave, was that he hadn’t caught the scene on video.
He proceeded down the stairs and into the kitchen, and his daughter Odelia, who’d popped in to borrow some eggs, must have noticed that dear old dad was in one of his moods again, and came over to give him a rub on the back. “Everything all right, Dad?”
“I’m losing my hair,’” he grumbled as he looked in the fridge for those strawberries Vesta had mentioned. “Soon I’ll be bald, and who knows what else life has in store for me.”
Odelia couldn’t suppress a smile, and seeing it reminded Tex that he was being a total grump. “I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “It’s just that getting old sucks, you know.”
“I know, Dad,” said Odelia indulgently, smiling with all the radiance of youth.
“Ted is cleaning his gnomes,” he said, abruptly changing the subject. “He bought himself one of those pressure washers—the most expensive one he could find at Costco’s—and he decided to try it on those damn gnomes of his. Of course it immediately fell apart. I could have told him, if he’d listen, but of course Ted always knows better.” The thought of Ted’s face crumpling tickled his funny bone once more, and so it was with a slight diminution of grumpiness that he poured himself a cup of hot black coffee and sat down to enjoy a hearty breakfast. “By the way, Max and Dooley are playing out by that old car wreck. You better tell them to stay away from there. They might hurt themselves.”
“Max and Dooley are always careful. They’ll be fine.”
He shrugged. In the Poole household the cats were mainly the womens’ concern. With no less than four cats divided between the two households, they were very well endowed with representatives of the feline species, and mostly Tex didn’t mind. The only thing he did mind was the hair. Even now, as he ladled a spoon of strawberry yogurt into his mouth, he suddenlynoticed a white hair adorning the main strawberry, ready to be ingested by this unsuspecting human. With a shake of the head, he plucked it out and wondered how much cat hair he’d swallowed in his life as a consequence of having to share home and hearth with those cats. And as he glanced over to Harriet and Brutus, who were eating their fill at their respective bowls, he suddenly found himself wondering why it was that cats never got bald. And now that he thought about it, dogs were the same way. “Honey?” he said, deciding to ask the expert. “Have you ever seen a bald cat?”
“No, I can’t say that I have,” said Marge, who was reading something on her phone.
“Dad, you really shouldn’t worry about losing your hair,” said Odelia, who was standing behind him, and was inspecting the crown of his head with deft fingers.
“I told him exactly the same thing,” said Marge, “but he doesn’t believe me.”
But Tex was too busy following up on this most recent brainstorm he’d just experienced. So cats and dogs didn’t lose their hair—ever? Not even when they got old and entered their senior years? It was definitely something he needed to follow up on.
“You have a tiny birthmark here, Dad,” said Odelia. “In the shape of a butterfly. So cute.”
“He has?” asked Marge, as she came to stand next to her daughter to join the inspection. “Oh, you’re right. Can you imagine I’ve been married to your father for twenty-five years and I’ve never seen this before?”
“What’s going on?” asked Vesta, who’d come stomping down the stairs and now joined the merriment. “What’s so interesting?”
“Tex has a birthmark in the shape of a butterfly,” said Marge.
“What do you know?” said Vesta as she also took a gander at the strange phenomenon.
“This is the first time I’ve seen this.”
“Of course it is. Before now, Tex’s hair was so thick and luxuriant you couldn’t see through the thicket. But now that he’s going bald all kinds of stuff will be showing up.”
Tex looked up sharply at this, causing Marge to yank at a small tuft of hair.“See?” he said. “Your mother is seeing it, too. Iam losing my hair.”
“Of course you’re losing your hair,” said Vesta, who never beat about the bush or spared a person’s feelings if she could help it. “You’re getting old, sonny boy. Soon you’ll have a nice billiard ball for a head, and then all of those weird spots will become visible to the whole world.” She grinned at her daughter. “I can’t wait to see what else comes floating to the surface. He probably has a whole collection of weird spots. Spots in all different colors and shapes. Bumps, too.”
Tex uttered an unhappy groan, the thought of going completely bald affecting him powerfully, as it does most men.
“Ma, don’t say such things,” said Marge reproachfully.
“Why not? It’s the truth. Better to rip off that band-aid than to coddle.”
“Don’t listen to Ma, honey,” said Marge soothingly as she placed a tender kiss on the top of his head. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Oh, I don’t? Of all the men I know only two still have a full head of hair, and those are Dick Bernstein and Rock Horowitz, and the only reason for that is…” She hesitated when she caught Tex’s feverish and intent look.
“Yes?” he said. “What’s the reason they still have a full head of hair?”
“I’m sorry,” said Vesta, and snapped her lips closed and shook her head.
“Tell me!” Tex cried.
“I can’t! I promised them not to divulge their secret, and I may be many things but I’m not a tattletale,” said the woman who was probably the biggest tattletale in town.
Tex felt a powerful urge to throttle his mother-in-law, but years of training had taught him to practice restraint, so he let the moment pass, and soon he was calm again.
“Don’t listen to Gran, Dad,” said Odelia, also placing a loving kiss on the top of her dad’s head. “You’re not going bald.”
And as Vesta popped a piece of bread in the toaster and Odelia left with her eggs, and Marge resumed reading on her phone, Tex found his eyes once again drifting down to Harriet and Brutus, who were now licking themselves, as they usually did once they’d eaten their fill. And that’s when he made up his mind: he would discover the secret to the perfectly healthy head of hair, and he would crack that secret code. Whatever it took.
3
After our discovery we hurried home to share this bit of news with Odelia, and hopefully get a full investigation going into the origin of those bones, which, I was almost certain, had once belonged to a human being.
“What do you think happened to that person, Max?” asked Dooley.
“Murdered,” said Fifi decidedly. “As a dog, I have a superior sense of smell, and I’ll tell you right now that this whole thing smells to murder for sure.”
“It could be that the person simply died,” I said. “Not every person who dies is murdered, Fifi.”
“I know, but what human would go out to that field and die? There are better places.”
“You talk as if a person can simply pick and choose where they’re going to die,” I countered. “Death tends to sneak up on a person, Fifi. It doesn’t follow orders.”