Read Online Driving Minnie's Piano by Lesley Choyce - Free Book Online Page B

she
said.
    “The smell will go away after
a while,” I said confidently, trying to prevent family panic. “Get
ready for school.”
    “I'm getting out of this house
now,” she replied and raced off to her room to get
dressed.
    I gave up on sleep, got up and
had a bowl of granola and a cup of tea with my unhappy
wife.
    “I'll look under the house
before I go. Maybe I can do something.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don't know. I'll tell the
skunk to go somewhere else.”
    “Great.”
    Just then, Pamela ran past us
out the door. She was holding her nose. “I can't stand it,” she
screamed and ran off down the driveway, looking for fresh air and
heading for the bus to school.
    “The entire house smells like
skunk,” my wife said. She was taking this very
personally.
    “It's not that bad,” I said.
Despite the cold, the skunk odour had become overpowering. “Call
someone later. Maybe there's some kind of machine that gets rid of
the smell.”

    I did poke around outside in
the dim early morning light just to make it seem like I was doing
something about the problem. But there was nothing to be seen by
peering into the crawl space. Near the north end of my house - from
under the living room and bedroom - the aroma of skunk was powerful
enough to render a person unconscious. The skunk and cat war had
happened under there, and I wasn't about to get down on my hands
and knees and poke my head between the lose stones in the old
foundation only to come face to face with the creature with the
smelliest weapon on earth. I backed away slowly.
    On the away to the airport I
felt guilty that I had left my wife with a problem: a skunk under
the house that might decide to cut loose again and a house that
smelled like skunk in every room. Nonetheless, I breathed a little
easier. I would deal with the problem when I came back home. I
would do the honourable thing: catch the darn skunk in a live trap
and have someone with a truck help me take him somewhere far away.
I was pretty sure I didn't want the skunk actually in my car even
for a short drive.
    At the airport, I checked in
and waited for my plane, sitting alone by the windows, looking out
on the bleak winter runway, thinking unkind thoughts about wild
creatures who took up residence under my old farmhouse. It seemed
unfair. Me, the guy who was always kind to animals. Why would
nature try to do such a nasty thing to me and my
family?
    My flight was called. I stood
in line, entered the plane and proceeded down the aisle towards my
seat, 21F. The plane was already three-quarters filled. I was one
of the last passengers on. As I walked down the narrow aisle, my
early-morning, fuzzy brain registered the fact that people were
looking up at me, heads were turning my way as I shuffled forward.
Some passengers were scrunching up their faces.
    I stuffed my coat into the
upper compartment and sat down. There was a kind of low churn of
muffled voices in the quiet plane. And then I heard someone say
outright to someone else, “Do you smell something that smells like
. . . skunk?”
    It seemed impossible. But
within seconds everyone on the plane was sniffing the air and
uttering sounds of dissatisfaction. The door to the plane was
closed just then and that must have made things worse, because the
passengers sniffed some more and then began to talk about it. The
entire inside of the plane smelled like skunk and everyone knew
it.
    A man across the aisle leaned
over towards me and said, “What do you think this smell is all
about?”
    “I don't know,” I lied. I
hadn't noticed that I had carried the skunk smell with me - on my
clothes, on me - out of my house, all the way to the airport and
now, here in the closed cylinder of the plane, the smell was
ominously pervasive.
    I realized I had two choices.
I could stand up and announce that the skunk smell was me. Or keep
my mouth shut and not say a thing.
    Now in most situations, I am
an honest, forthright person. If I've done something wrong, I