A Third Chapter, Not Quite Finished Maybe

 

Hi This Is Lou

Jen was strutting along up there like she was on a mission from God.  She had these long spidery legs like a boy.  Her ponytail was almost swinging in complete circles!  That’s how crazy she was. The sun was in my eyes, and I was hungry.  She always said I was fat.  She treated me like I was retarded.  I was not fat, I had a waist and looked more like a woman than she did. Ha.  You can’t believe everything she tells you!

***

Someone had trained Buddy.  I wished I knew his real name. I bet it wasn’t Buddy.  Hopefully not King or Rex.  He stayed right at my left side.  Sometimes he would stuff his big black muzzle in my hand, reassuringly.  Sometimes he would glance back to make sure that Lou was still back there.  He would stop and I would stop and we would wait for her to catch up.  I knew she didn’t like walking very much. She was a tired looking small figure in funny clothes.  I loved her so much. Except for Buddy, she was it, all I had.

We had to cross a bridge over the river, and it was pretty steep. Our trip into Milltown was because we had to pick up our funny money.  The State gives unemployed people a little money.  It doesn’t look real.  It comes in little books.  To use a bill, you tear it out of the book.  If there is change due, we get it in old coins. They were still in circulation. There isn’t any record keeping really.  We weren’t important enough to keep track of much.  They hand these out at the Post Office.  Our names were on a list. We could buy a few things to carry home then.

The river is cleaner than it used to be.  There was no industry, left making it dirty. It was about thirty feet down to the water.  Looking over, we could see one guy fishing a little upstream. I was not sure that I would want to eat whatever he was catching.  I waved, Lou smiled.  We didn’t see many young guys.

Now the sidewalk began.  Power poles and streetlights. Stapled onto one of the power poles was large sheet of red paper with the word “NO” spray painted on it, in white.  We looked at each other and laughed.  NO, what? Might have had something to do with the news yesterday.

Next, we noticed stenciled words on the sidewalks.  Somebody had been making a trail of these stencils. They said “Follow Me” in more white spray paint.  We started to look for them all the way to the Post Office.  On every block, there were two or three of these stenciled messages. Things were starting to get interesting.  Who did this?

The Post Office was one street over from Main.  I went in and gave our names, leaving Lou outside leaning on the window, watching the street, hanging out with Buddy.  Walking back out, I carefully put our little books of funny money in the inside pocket of my pea coat.