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  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Sampson said, glancing toward the kitchen. “Children don’t need candy for fuel. I—Misty, my niece, had the flu and couldn’t take me grocery shopping.”

  “I took the liberty already,” Grandma said, “when I noticed you were a little low. Bob’s got the cooler in his trunk. You can’t travel with this crowd and not bring food along. I bet even the little one could use a snack before we hang him out to fly.”

  Alice and Bob went out for the cooler, Jorge seemed happy outside with the birds and everyone else went back into the dining room. Wumpa-wumpa-wumpa. Cocoa’s tail against the side of the box greeted them as they walked into the room.

  Carefully, Mama picked up the little dog. Cocoa’s front leg hung straight down in her cast. Some hair had been shaved away on her behind. Keisha counted seven stitches.

  Mama turned Cocoa in such a way that there was no pressure on her wounds. Cocoa would have licked Mama, but she had to lick the air instead. Still, Keisha couldn’t believe her eyes. Mama didn’t like dogs very much. Or at least that’s what she said. Now she was cuddling Cocoa and making the little crooning noises she made to Paulo.

  Mrs. Sampson leaned in, peering at the incision. “It’s more a tear than a cut. Could this little dog have been in a fight?”

  “That’s something we’ll never know,” Daddy replied. “Maybe she crossed to the wrong side of the street into a bigger dog’s territory.”

  Mama kept crooning.

  Mrs. Sampson fingered the cast. “And what did you say this one was? A boy or a girl?”

  “A girl,” Daddy said.

  Mrs. Sampson patted the dog’s head. “What’s her name?”

  “We don’t name our patients, Mrs. Sampson.”

  “But, Fred, this is not our patient,” Mama corrected him. “Cocoa, I believe.”

  “Well, that would make sense,” Mrs. Sampson said. “Her fur looks like a cup of nice hot cocoa.”

  Alice and Big Bob “pardon me’d” their way past Cocoa’s admirers into the kitchen.

  “So, Bob,” Mama said as Big Bob returned to the dining room. “What will happen to this little one?”

  “Can’t say. Our other foster homes are full up. Half of the volunteers are on vacation. Cocoa’s going to need someone to watch this incision and—”

  “Someone with training, not just anyone,” Mrs. Sampson interrupted. She was still examining the wound.

  “Yes, exactly. And that someone’s going to have to put salve on her wounds and carry Cocoa outside for a while.”

  “Well, I’m a little old for that sort of thing,” Mrs. Sampson said.

  “She’s light as a feather,” Mama said, handing her over to Mrs. Sampson before the old woman could protest. “Not more than twelve pounds.”

  “Well.” Mrs. Sampson held the trembling little dog. “Well. She is a little thing.”

  “The sad part is,” Bob continued, “even if her leg heals up, she’s still going to have problems. That’s my guess, and I’m afraid we won’t find a home for her.”

  “You can’t get old without having problems. I’d like to see the old person who doesn’t,” Mrs. Sampson said.

  “Yes, well, we’ll take her back now. I can keep her overnight, but when I have to go to work—”

  “Maybe if the little crow finds its way, I could do the looking after. I don’t have good eyes, but my hands are still strong. And I can use the magnifying glass to put on the salve.”

  “That would be a mission of mercy, for sure,” Grandma said, coming in with a platter of cold cuts, cheese, lettuce, bread and juicy ripe sliced tomatoes. “And if you need some volunteers to run around with her when she gets her cast off, I can think of two named Razi and Keisha Carter.”

  Chapter 11

  Razi loved fires. Grandma Alice said he danced around them just like Rumpelstiltskin. It wasn’t legal to have a campfire in your backyard in the city, but you could have one in a fire pit. Two summers ago, the Carters dug a big hole in the side yard and lined it with stones. On special occasions, they got to roast s’mores outside, using sticks they cut from the box elder trees that grew in the alley.

  Tonight, in celebration of releasing the baby crow into the wild—and finding a nurse for Cocoa—Zack, Zeke, Razi, Keisha, Grandma and Big Bob were making s’mores. Paulo was sleeping in his crib with the baby monitor at the window, and Mama and Daddy had walked over to Genny’s Diner, home of the best frickled pickles and sweet daddy fries in Grand River.

  “Look who I found.” Big Bob rode into the yard on his old bike. He was a little out of breath because he was pedaling with Jorge on the seat. “We were researching the call of the red-breasted nuthatch this morning and we just so happened to enter ‘s’mores’ into the search engine. Wait until you see this.” Big Bob unzipped his backpack and started fishing around.

  “Jorge!” Razi ran over and hugged his new friend. “Do you still have my flower eraser?” Ever since Jorge rescued Razi from the “pig nose incident,” Razi loaned things to Jorge. That was one way Razi showed how much he liked someone. The other was to stand next to him, tug on his sleeve and whisper into his ear a lot.

  Jorge pulled the eraser out of his pocket. “I’ve only erased with it a little,” he said. “One drawing.”

  “Good.” Razi squeezed Jorge’s hand. “I’ll take it back now.” He fished around in his pocket. “But you can borrow my marble if you want.”

  Jorge took Razi’s marble. “A cat’s-eye. Thanks. I’ll give it back.”

  “Gentlemen, ladies, Jorge and I found some new technology we would like to introduce this evening to enhance the roasting experience. Alice, drumroll, please.”

  Grandma slapped her hands on her thighs. Jorge joined in, using his pointer and middle fingers as drumsticks on the trash can lid they used to cover the fire pit when it wasn’t being used. That felt more like a drumroll.

  Big Bob pulled a handful of wire coat hangers out of his backpack.

  “That’s it?” Zeke asked. “I thought it would be something you could plug in. Or at least something with batteries.”

  “Yeah, like a marshmallow rotisserie,” Zack added.

  “Oh, this is so much better. With these babies, you can control the burn. You are in ‘char’ of your own experience. Portable, reusable. No batteries required. Gentlemen, ladies, be prepared for a s’more beyond your wildest imagination.”

  Razi, Jorge and the Z-Team got into bending wires with Big Bob, but Keisha thought she would stick to her box elder branch.

  “Want me to make one for you, Keisha? I’m good at this.” Zack waved an unhooked-but-still-bent wire in Keisha’s face.

  Keisha’s answer was interrupted by a loud, stinky pickup truck pulling into the alley.

  “Jeez … what is that smell?” Zack waved his wire in front of his nose.

  “Smells like rotten eggs,” Zeke said.

  “That’s sulfur,” Big Bob told the boys. “Hopefully, he won’t stay long.”

  “It’s the Farleys’ daughter—Meghan—getting picked up by her new boyfriend. What is his name?” Grandma asked Keisha.

  “Keith!” Razi loved to have the right answer. “He gives out peppermints, but only if you’re with Mama or Daddy or Grandma.”

  “Keith. Right.” Grandma pulled on both ends of her wire to straighten it. “I keep telling him that sulfur smell probably means he needs a new muffler.”

  Keisha sniffed. There was something familiar about that smell.

  “Okay.” Big Bob was still instructing. “Jorge is going to hand out the marshmallows. Now, rule number one: Don’t poke the marshmallow all the way through.”

  “What if we want a double-decker?” Zack asked. “Two marshmallows.”

  “You have to do one at a time. This is gourmet. Right, Alice?”

  “Sure.” Grandma was rubbing her forehead. “I hope Keith picks her up and gets a move on.… That smell is giving me a headache.” Big Bob leaned over and put a marshmallow on the tip of Grandma’s wire.r />
  “Grandma, that smells like the community garden did when Mr. Peters reported the skunk. If the skunk didn’t make the smell at the community garden, who did?” Keisha asked as she tried to find the right position, not too close and not too far away from the flames. She sat on a little stump Daddy had cut and left by the pit for sitting.

  “Maybe Keith has a plot at the garden, too.…” Grandma was twirling her marshmallow stick with the same intensity that she rocked the swing on their back porch.

  “No.” Keisha turned her marshmallow slowly, thinking. “The smell was definitely coming from inside the shed.”

  “Well, if there’s any smell like that coming from that shed, we’d better check it out—”

  “Now pay close attention.” Big Bob interrupted Grandma with some last-minute s’mores instructions. “These babies use the conductive heat of the wire to cook your marshmallow outside and in.”

  “We know it wasn’t skunk spray,” Keisha said.

  Grandma kept up her twirling. “Well, it had to be something … Bob? Bob! I’m on fire over here! How’d that happen?”

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, Razi was finishing up his lost skunk posters, Mama was doing the breakfast dishes, Paulo was teething on a spoon dipped in honey and Daddy and Grandma were doing dinner prep.

  “Hey, bucko.” Daddy leaned over Razi’s drawing. “I don’t think that’s right. Keisha, is that how you spell skunk?”

  As the fourth-grade spelling bee champion at Langston Hughes Elementary, Keisha was called upon to settle any spelling issues in the Carter household.

  “Keisha said it rhymes with trunk!”

  “Well, you got the unk part right. It’s just that’s a k instead of a c.”

  “Cuh-cat.” Razi smacked his crayon on the table. “I already did six of them!”

  “But if you do this …” Keisha picked up the crayon and showed Razi how to draw a straight line that tickled the back of the c, making it look like a k. “You don’t have to erase a thing.”

  Razi laid all his posters on the table side by side. Then he took the crayon and, with great concentration, drew a straight line up against every c.

  “Excellent,” Grandma said. “Razi, you are a skunk artiste. Every one of these looks like Stinky out there. You even got the scar on his nose just right.”

  “No naming the animals, Grandma.” Mama had finished the dishes and was now sitting at the kitchen table sewing a patch on Razi’s jeans.

  “I wasn’t naming him. I was describing. But what would be the big deal if we did name him? He’s not wild.”

  “That’s only a hypothesis.”

  “Well, even if he was, he’ll never be wild again. His defense mechanism’s been disconnected.”

  “Which is precisely why we don’t want to become too familiar with him. We don’t have room for residents.” Mama made a knot and bit the thread.

  “Why you think I’d take kindly to a stinky little fur ball who eats garbage and steals my clothes, I don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s time to find the little fur ball a home. We’re heading out soon to the community garden to put up these signs. Keisha, run down and get the staple gun,” Daddy instructed.

  “Check out that smell at the community garden,” Grandma said. “There’s something rotten going on over there and we know it’s not a skunk with a loose shooter.”

  “Can I use the gun? Can I shoot the gun, Daddy?”

  Daddy picked up Razi so they could rub nose to nose. “Possibly,” he said. “Under very controlled conditions.”

  Daddy always gave Razi what Grandma called “the benefit of the doubt,” but Keisha wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. The staple gun was very strong. You could get hurt using it.

  The Carters agreed that Daddy, Razi and Keisha should go to the community garden. Grandma had a hair appointment and Mama needed to stay home to take care of the animals. When Daddy offered to take Paulo, Mama said she could feed the ducklings and clean the raccoon and skunk pens with a sleepy Paulo in his stroller.

  When the Carters arrived at the garden, they found Mr. Peters sitting on a stool, watering his tomatoes.

  Daddy shook Mr. Peters’s hand. “Fred Carter,” he said. “Carters’ Urban Rescue.”

  “Albert Peters. Is that your original artwork, young man?”

  “We’re doing a lost and find,” Razi said, holding out one of his flyers.

  “Ahhh.” Mr. Peters examined the flyers. “First we get rid of the skunk and now you want to bring it back again?”

  “No, Mr. Peters,” Keisha said. “We think the skunk is somebody’s pet.”

  “Holy tomato. Now I’ve heard everything.”

  “I’ve examined it, Albert,” Daddy said. “The skunk has been de-scented. That’s what people do to skunks in the pet trade.”

  “Well, if he was de-scented, how do you explain the smell around the garden shed? I’ve got to blame something.”

  “I think we’ve fallen victim to a logical fallacy,” Daddy said. “You saw a skunk and we all smelled the smell that has some of the same qualities as skunk odor, so we thought A + B = C: bad smell + skunk = skunk odor. But my wife, who has a very keen nose for animal smells, was not convinced from the beginning. And my daughter is a born detective. She smelled exhaust mixed with the smell of burning wood yesterday and was reminded of the smell here.”

  “So what you’re saying …” Mr. Peters stood up slowly. As Grandma would say, his thinker had shifted into high gear. “Even though the skunk is gone, the smell goes on and on, because … what made it is still here. And when you’re smelling gasoline and burning … goodness gracious, we might have something flammable on our hands.”

  Daddy and Keisha nodded. They’d already come to this conclusion.

  “My son’s in the fire department,” Mr. Peters said, “and he has told me more than once, when you have problems like this, you should let the professionals handle it.”

  “Do you really think we need the fire department?” Daddy asked. “For a smell?”

  “Daddy! Daddy! You said I wasn’t tall enough to put up the posters. Maybe the firemen will let us use their ladder.”

  “I don’t think they’d need to bring the fire truck,” Mr. Peters said. “Al’s the fire prevention officer. Maybe the emergency response vehicle.”

  “That’s even bigger!” Razi threw his hands up in the air and lost a couple of skunk flyers.

  “Razi!” Keisha chased after them. She had the feeling Razi didn’t know what an emergency response vehicle was.… She wasn’t sure herself, but she guessed maybe it was more the size of an ambulance.

  Mr. Peters pulled out his cell phone and pressed a button. “I have the fire department on speed dial,” he said, putting the phone to his ear.

  In no time at all, an SUV pulled up. Keisha was right. The emergency response vehicle was more like a normal-sized car or van. Razi might have been disappointed, but as it made its way down the garden lane—popping a couple of melons under its wide tires, yellow and green lights flashing—he shouted, “It’s like the circus!”

  “Why do I get the feeling that life with you is something of a circus?” Mr. Peters asked Daddy. “Want me to hold on to those flyers for a minute?”

  “That would be nice … while we check out this vehicle.” Daddy put Razi on his shoulders. The truck pulled up alongside the Peterses’ garden and a junior version of Mr. Peters rolled down the window. “Hey, Dad. You got a tomato emergency or what?”

  “Very funny. But be sure to take a few home with you to Dena. She loves my beefsteak beauties. Now, Al. Oh …” Mr. Peters remembered his manners. “I didn’t introduce you all. This is Albert Peters the Third. My son, Al.”

  Al got out of the truck. He looked very official with dark aviator sunglasses and GRFD embroidered on his shirt pocket. “Nice to meet you,” he said. And he shook everyone’s hand. Keisha made sure to look him in the eye and return Al’s handshake with a firm grip.

  “
Fred Carter. Actually, I’m a wildlife rehabilitator and we got called out here because of a problem with a skunk. We did find a skunk, but now we realize he couldn’t have caused the problem.”

  Al took off his glasses and sniffed the air. “Smells like sulfur,” he said. “It is a little like skunk smell.”

  “Yeah, but his stinker’s on the blink,” Mr. Peters said. “The skunk’s, I mean.”

  “This is my daughter, Keisha,” Daddy said. “She’s the one who put it together.”

  Daddy looked at Keisha. So did everyone else. He was expecting her to go on with the story. Razi had squirmed back down to the ground. Even he was looking at Keisha. What if they’d brought the fire department out for no reason?

  “I’m not sure this makes sense,” Keisha said. “But last night, when we were making s’mores in the fire pit, there was something about the smell of Keith’s truck and maybe the matches we used to get the fire going. It reminded me of the smell in the garden shed. And I remembered that the skunk file said that sometimes people said skunk spray smelled like sulfur or burned rubber.”

  “A lot of other unpleasant things, too,” Daddy added. “Rotting garbage, sewage—”

  “And then …” Mr. Peters Junior looked at Keisha. He wanted to hear the rest of the story.

  “And then,” she said, hugging Razi close so he wouldn’t launch into his own “and then” story. “I remembered that on the Fourth of July, Mama said the gardeners were picking up the papers from bottle rockets and firecrackers in their gardens. And then I remembered seeing some burned-up cherry bombs near the shed. And so when I told everything to Grandma Alice, she suggested we come back to see if the smell is still here because it might be dangerous.”

  “I thought we were going to put up the lost skunk flyers,” Razi said.

  “Of course we are. We’re multi-tasking.” Daddy took Razi’s hand. “I bet we could even find some late-bearing strawberries and, if we’re nice, get a taste.”

  “Well, you called the right place. I am the fire prevention officer. When amateurs start investigating these things, someone could end up hurt.”