by Susan Wilson
And so we four rolled out of that sickroom and through the kitchen and out the newly widened door to slide Rick down the ramp Keller had built to give him access to the backyard. Pax led the way, the rubber ball firmly between his teeth.
I know now that Pax had been a hero during the war. I didn’t know the story then; that would come later, as Keller and I became better acquainted. It was still too early to have begun asking those questions, questions about his service, about his experience. Keller’s and Pax’s, I mean. But that August afternoon, that dog became a bona fide hero in my eyes. He’d done what we hadn’t been able to do, break Rick out of his self-imposed confinement.
Rick and the dog stayed outside until even Pax was exhausted from the game. Rick kept tossing the ball for him, and I sat on the back steps, watching. I might have cried a little. With every throw, it became more like a pitch. Slow underhand became an overhand toss, evolved to a slider, a curve. A sinker. No fastball, but I think that was more because our small yard wouldn’t accommodate a long throw. As it was, Pax twice scaled the back fence to retrieve an inaccurate throw. With each pitch of his left arm, Rick’s right stump rose in an echo.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Sometimes Rick wakes up in the night, or out of a diurnal doze, thinking that he’s late for practice. It is so real, so immediate, that he imagines that his legs twitch and his right fingers are flexing. His heart beats, pumping blood through his veins as if he’s been running bases. Then the fear of being late for practice—he’s been late too many times; they’ll fine him—transforms itself into the greater fear that his reality won’t dissolve like a bad dream.
Francesca is so good to him, but even he can see that her patience is wearing thin. She wants him to accept his new dynamic and return to being the man she fell in love with. She’s told him, whispered it into his good ear. “You’re still the man I love. I fell in love with you for you, not because you’re a ballplayer. That’s like saying I only love you for your pitching. I’d have fallen in love with you even if you were a pipe fitter.” She nuzzled him on the cheek, the wrong side, the side with the skin grafts, the side that feels invisible, as he has no feeling in it. “Whatever that is.” She’d been in here an hour ago, coyly sitting on his lap, as if she might expect a response. He is loath to wrap the remains of his right arm around her in a quasi-hug. She kissed him, wanting something from him he cannot give. Rick wants desperately to desire his wife.
And the only thing he could say was, “I was a ballplayer. It was the only thing I ever wanted to be.” He keeps beating the same dead horse. He knows it and there doesn’t seem to be any way to prevent himself, to pretend that he’s getting over it, to put on a brave face, to convince himself that he’ll be fine. Instead, he’s begun to snap at every suggestion that he accept this turn of events. He’s a war hero, she says. Francesca doesn’t know that, far from being a hero, he was simply a fool.
She slid off his lap and asked him what he might want for dinner, chicken or hamburgers. The minx replaced by the hausfrau.
It’s nearly dark already. Francesca has replaced the blackout curtains with new white ones that allow the room to fill with daylight when Keller tilts the venetian blinds open every morning. Rick can watch the passage of time by the way the sunlight circles the perimeter of the room. Sometimes the metal blinds rattle in the late-afternoon breeze, chiming like a halyard on a flagpole and setting his teeth on edge. Rick can’t maneuver his chair close enough to the window to close them, and he wants Keller to train the dog to pull the cord to raise them so that they stop clanging.
* * *
“Interesting idea, but you know that you can always ask me to do it. That’s what I’m here for.” Keller has finished bathing him and now carefully adjusts the pajama top so that the long right sleeve is pinned back and won’t get tangled in the humiliating side rail of the bed. They’re afraid that he’ll roll out of bed like some little kid. You have to be able to flip yourself to roll out of a bed. You can’t flip out if half of you is deadweight.
“It would be nice not to have to depend on you. Or Francesca. Pax is so smart, and he likes working with me.” The list of tasks that the dog can now perform to ease Rick’s immobility has grown. He can now fetch a long list of items by name. It’s as if he’s memorizing vocabulary. He’s conquered the “Get it/Put it series of commands, and when Rick is enduring the sharp phantom pains in his missing arm, Pax stands rock steady as he clings to the dog’s nape. When the memory of pain eases, Pax licks Rick’s nose, as if to say, That’s that, then.
“Just try.”
“Okay. Let me figure out how to do it. I’ll come up with something.”
Pax is sitting, watching, his golden-brown eyes following Keller’s every movement; he’s licking his lips in anticipation of the next thing that will happen—the nightly walk. Keller will disappear for an hour with the dog, and it is then that Rick feels most betrayed. Even if Francesca comes in with her knitting or mending and they turn on the radio to listen to the news or a broadcast from Symphony Hall, he doesn’t relax until he hears the slam of the door and the dog comes back in to spend the rest of the evening with him. It isn’t so much the fact that Keller gets to walk the dog; it’s more that the dog is so happy to go with him. It’s foolish to be jealous of Pax’s attachment to Keller, but he is anyway. Pax was his dog, his rescued puppy, the boon companion of those happy, ignorant days before the war. Even before Francesca. How this dog can smile every time Keller reappears, really smile, a great happy canine chuckle coming out of his mouth, his eyes lit up, doing his puppyish happy dance, which once belonged only to him but is now being danced for this other man? Even if Keller has only been gone half an hour. What kind of experience forged this bond?
“What did you and Pax do, during the war, I mean?” Rick puts his hand out to stop Keller from sliding the chair to the bedside. “Scout, right?”
“Yeah. We were part of the advance team tasked with clearing out the enemy.”
Rick slides his hand down the dog’s side. Beneath his fingers he can feel a nub of scar tissue. “How did he get this?” It isn’t so much a question as a demand. As if Keller failed somehow to protect the dog while Pax was in his care.
“He took a bullet. He was fine.” Keller has his eyes on the dog, a liar’s avoidance.
Rick takes a deep breath. “And what happened to you?”
“Are we trading war stories now?” Keller grabs the wheelchair and muscles it over to the bed. It’s after ten o’clock, clearly past Rick’s bedtime.
“Yeah. Don’t you think it’s about time?”
“Nothing like what happened to you. Is that what you want me to say?”
Rick feels a hot blush rise on the good side of his face, and he absently wonders if both sides of his cheeks turn red or whether the smooth, shiny new skin stays waxy. “I just want to know what happened to my dog.”
“Our platoon came under fire.”
“And he was out front?”
“We were. In the woods, pretty deep forest. We’d spread out; Pax and I were on point position, as always. He did his job. He alerted us, real quiet, real accurate, and we got down. The Krauts didn’t know we had a dog, so they aimed high. We kept moving forward and, I don’t know, all hell broke loose. I got hit. Keller drops a hand on the dog’s head. “He defended me.”
Rick hears the catch in Keller’s voice. “Go on.”
“Last thing I remembered was him giving it to some Kraut. A day later, I woke up in a field hospital, absolutely panic-stricken, wondering where he was. What had happened to my dog.”
“My dog.”
“Your dog.” Keller takes his hand off Pax, aligns the chair, and removes the arm so he can lift Rick into the bed. “He’s one lucky dog. He was all right. My buddy Sully got him tended to right away. If they passed out medals to dogs, he’d have gotten the Purple Heart.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. Would rather have gotten a promotion.”
“He saved your life.”
“He did.” Keller settles the blankets, docks the wheelchair in the far corner, out of the way. “You want the light on for a while?”
“Leave it on. I may read.”
Pax, as he does every night at this time, gets into the basket that they’ve put in Rick’s room for him. He licks his nether parts, yawns, stands up, circles three times, and curls up. Rick knows that as soon as the dog senses he’s asleep, he’ll leave that cozy spot and search out Keller. Keller, whose life he saved.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Keller tries to be as considerate as he can be regarding Francesca and Rick’s privacy. He doesn’t eat supper with them unless asked. He takes his plate into his garage bedroom instead of eating alone at the kitchen table. He doesn’t want them to feel like they have to invite him to join them in the tight confines of Rick’s room, and if he’s sitting in the next room, it’s just too awkward for all of them. He’s a third wheel, for sure, but he’s not complaining. If Rick ever decides to come out of his room to eat, that may change. Three at a kitchen table is different. Still, he’s aware that he needs to allow them husband and wife time, time when they can feel unobserved, uninhibited. That’s another good reason to take long evening walks with Pax. Keller has signed up for an English class at Quincy College, so that will give them three afternoons a week without the presence of a star boarder in their house. Keller tries not to think about what kind of physical relationship Rick and Francesca may have. It’s none of his business. Besides, they’ve been married a long time, so maybe it’s not quite as important as it might have been. As important as it would be to him.
Betty Ann Carlin was his first. A quiet girl in his math class, completely unaware that she was very pretty behind those truly ugly spectacles. Clayton didn’t hold with a social life, so he and Betty Ann said they were staying after for extra help and instead took long walks along the beach, finding themselves nestled into the concavity of low dunes. Maybe if there hadn’t been a war, he’d have ended up marrying her; probably would have had to, the way they were going at it in the shelter of that cold sand. She never wrote to him, not even a Dear John.
Then there was the occasional war-destitute Italian girl willing to trade sexual favors for cigarettes and chocolate bars. Stateside, discharged and living with the Stantons, it’s been a long time, and Keller is finding himself thinking all too often of sex. He’s hoping that maybe he’ll meet a nice coed willing to take a chance on an older man. At twenty-three, he’s likely to be five years older than most of his incoming freshman classmates. Most of his fellow GIs will be attending the night classes, but with his odd little job, day classes make more sense. Rick needs him here at night to help him get ready for bed, to be available.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that Francesca isn’t that much older than he is. Maybe it’s part of being married to a man so much older; more likely, it’s the life they have ended up with that has forced an early maturity on her—the weight of it.
Lately, he and Francesca have found a nice balance, no longer shy with each other, more relaxed and working smoothly together. He reaches for the dishes in the cupboard before she asks; she tosses him the can opener before he’s got his hand on the dog food can. Once he has Rick settled for the night and she’s been in to say good night to him, sometimes, not always, but some evenings when the weather is nice, they slip out onto the back stoop to share a lager and smoke a cigarette. They talk of other things besides Rick—light conversation about the news or the nosy neighbor who is perplexed by their living situation; whether Francesca should look into one of those freezer plans; if he should take an accounting course or test the collegiate waters with English literature. He’s told her a bit about his past; she’s talked about life in a small Iowa town and coming to the big city to find love.
* * *
Francesca taps at the open garage door. “I’m going to walk down to the market. Is there anything you need?” The weather has turned a bit cooler and she’s wearing a sweater set he’s never seen before. It fits so well that it makes him look away.
“How’s Rick?” Keller closes his book, ready to do whatever might need doing.
“Fine. Pax is keeping him company. He said to tell you not to go in.” She brushes a fleck from the front of her sweater.
Something about that little unconscious brushing stirs him. “Do you want me to go for you? Stay here and relax, put your feet up.”
Francesca shakes her head no. “What, and read a French novel and eat bonbons?”
“If that’s what you want to do, sure.”
She taps a knuckle on the doorjamb. “Do you want to come?”
“I can carry the bags.”
“And help me figure out what to have for dinner. I’m fresh out of ideas.”
Keller has never eaten so well. Having gone from Depression-era make-do to institutional food to bachelor cooking and back to the institutional food of the army, he finds that home-cooked is something that amazes him pretty much every day, and when beef stew cycles back into the menu, he’s as happy to see it as the very first time she made it. Roast chicken, pot roast, all manner of Iowa country-girl fare. And she seems to do it all effortlessly. Every single day.
“I tell you what. I’ll cook tonight.” Keller grabs his jacket. “The chowder I promised.”
He is rewarded with her smile. A simple gift of a smile. The heady feeling of making Francesca happy travels through Keller’s body. He’s never made anyone happy before. He follows her out of the house, a silly grin on his face, and all he wants is to do it again.
“We should let Rick know we’re both out of the house.” The smile is gone. The weight that keeps Francesca grounded is recharged. The slight alleviation of that weight has evaporated in an instant. It is constant, this inelastic attachment of her responsibility to Rick.
“I’ll go in and talk with him. If he needs me to, I’ll stay. I can give you a list of what I’ll need to make chowder.” Magically, the smile comes back. He’s taking a task off her shoulders and all he wants is to keep doing that.
* * *
Rick doesn’t want him, waves him out of the room. Pax whines a little, knowing by Keller’s body language that outside is going to happen. But he doesn’t move from his place beside Rick. Keller unkindly thinks that it’s because Rick has his hand on the dog’s collar, but he knows that Pax won’t leave Rick’s side during the day unless one of them orders him to. It’s uncanny, this attachment. On the day that he arrived here with Pax on the end of his official K-9 Corps leash, Keller would have bet the farm that Pax would have chosen him over Rick. Now he’s not so sure. Francesca buckled on Pax’s old civilian collar, and that old expression “A dog can’t serve two masters” is proved wrong every day. Pax has figured out a way to do it. And it’s been both challenging and fun to train him to be of use to Rick. The issue with the venetian blinds was fixed when Keller attached the rubber ball to the cord. Now all Pax has to do is grab the ball and pull. The blinds go up. A quick jab to the right and they lock in place. That was the hardest part of the exercise, and after a number of crash landings, he finally got it right.
“We won’t be long.”
“Take your time, Kel. Pax is here.” Rick tugs gently on the dog’s nape, and Pax seems to grin.
“Are you sure…”
“Keller, knock it off. I can be trusted to stay put and not get into trouble. My catheter is clear; my chair is positioned right; you’ve talked me into the radio, so I can listen to WBZ news. I’ve had lunch, dessert, and I can reach this week’s Life magazine. Go out. Take Francesca and, for God’s sake, forget the store. Take her to the picture show.” Rick shifts his weight in the chair, half-lifting himself with his good left arm. “If the house catches fire, Pax will call it in.”
Keller throws his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. “Okay, okay.”
“And Keller. I mean it. She needs some fun. I know she doesn’t have any girlfriends around here, so y
ou’re it. Show her some fun, and I don’t mean just this afternoon.”
* * *
“He’s fine.”
“What did he say?” She’s put a hat on, a little lozenge of a thing that nestles among her curls. “Out with it.”
“He’d like me to make sure you have some fun. More fun than going to the grocery store. Like seeing a film.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, then gathers her handbag and shakes her head. “He’s being generous. He can’t be left for that long.”
Keller shuts the door behind them. “Francesca, he thinks we treat him like a baby. And you’re what we called in the war ‘collateral damage.’ He knows that you are as trapped by that wheelchair as he is.”
“I’m his wife. I want to be with him.”
“He knows that. But, don’t you see, maybe all this attention is overwhelming. Too much of a good thing.”
Francesca spins around to face Keller. “A good thing? It’s all we’re ever going to have.”
Keller shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “I’m sorry. I’ve said too much. It’s none of my business, except that he was adamant that I get you out of the house and show you some fun. That’s all. You’re all he has and he wants you to be happy.” Keller doesn’t offer his arm to Francesca; he keeps three feet away as they walk down the cracked sidewalk.
“That ship sailed, my friend. My happiness and his. All we can do now is take care of each other.” Abruptly, Francesca turns around and goes back to the house. Keller is left standing on the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets, wishing that he’d kept his mouth shut.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Pax rests his chin on Rick’s knees. He waits patiently until he senses Rick’s heartbeat slowing down. Some days they go through this exercise eighteen times, except, of course, the dog has no sense of counting. He just knows that Rick’s blood pressure is up and that the only way it will go down is if he stands or sits next to him, on his left side, as if aligning himself in a proper heel, and places his head in the man’s lap. To an outside observer, it would look like simple human/dog affection. No human could possibly detect the curative effect that the dog has on the man. Rick cannot feel the weight of the dog’s head in his lap, but he always knows when it’s there, even if his eyes are squeezed shut and his good hand is wiping away the tears that threaten his dignity.