After a minute, his eyes rolled up and his mouth fell open. He snorted a gulp of air, which roused him, made him close his mouth and struggle again.
Lorrie was at the back door holding a leash. When she saw him, she said, “Dear Lord, he’s not able to walk, is he?”
Evangeline let go of his nose and tried to lift him, but it was as if his legs had no bones. Lorrie was at his side, spraying each nostril a couple of times. And thank God, the bleeding slowed enough that the rag had a shot at keeping things under control.
“Good,” Lorrie said. “That’s good.” She handed Evangeline her car keys. “There’s a garbage bag and some towels in there. Line the backseat with the plastic, the towels on top. I’ll get him out there.”
Evangeline grabbed the keys and headed out. She had just finished laying down a thick layer of towels when she turned to see Lorrie, a woman who couldn’t weigh a hundred pounds, staggering toward the car carrying Rufus. Leaning back under his weight, she’d wrapped her arms around his chest, let his head and legs hang limp. Evangeline went to help, but Lorrie pushed past and flopped the dog into the backseat like a gunnysack.
“Get back there with him,” she said. “Keep pressure on his nose.”
“He doesn’t breathe when I do that.”
“He’ll breathe. Eventually.”
“Can I have the spray?”
Lorrie reached into her pocket and handed it to her. “Ask first. We don’t want to overdose him.”
Evangeline got in by Rufus’s head. Though her dress was ruined, she covered herself with a towel and set his head on her lap. She pressed the damp rag to his nose, careful not to block his mouth.
“Is a doctor always there?”
“I called. He’ll be there before us.”
As Lorrie pulled out of the drive, Evangeline stroked Rufus’s head. He couldn’t die. He needed to live for the baby, to help the baby get started in life. She kissed his forehead and whispered, “Don’t you die. Seriously, I mean it. Don’t you even think about it.”
* * *
—
WHEN THEY PULLED INTO THE GRAVEL LOT, the vet was waiting, smoking a cigarette in front of a low red building. He stubbed it out and sauntered over to help. Evangeline was furious. Wasn’t he acting a bit nonchalant? Was it even sanitary to smoke before seeing a patient? But when she saw him cradling Rufus’s head in the crook of his arm, heard him cooing, “That’s a good boy, we’ll get you fixed up,” she forgave him the cigarette, because his voice was soft and reassuring, almost musical, as if he knew precisely the rhythm and melody needed to save a dog from bleeding to death.
Inside, Lorrie and the vet lowered Rufus onto an aluminum table. Dr. Abrams—that was the name on his white jacket—asked Evangeline to hold Rufus’s head while he gently cleared a big clot, peered up his nose, and proceeded to “cauterize the vessels” with a tool that looked like a soldering iron. It was over in a minute, Rufus dry nosed, cleaned up, and lying peacefully on the table, more sleepy than alarmed now.
“I doubt he’s lost as much blood as it seemed,” Dr. Abrams said, “but I’d like to keep him overnight, give him a transfusion and some fluids.”
He spoke to Evangeline, and that surprised her. Adults rarely sought her permission, not even for things that involved her. She wanted to say, Yes, yes, of course, whatever it takes. Instead she flicked an anxious look at Lorrie.
Lorrie turned to the doctor. “Could you give us an estimate of what something like that would cost? I’ll try to call Isaac. He loves Rufus, but he’s an old dog. I’m guessing he doesn’t have many days left on this earth.”
Evangeline narrowed her eyes, wanting to hurt her for saying such a thing. But the adults were ignoring her now, and that was reassuring.
“There’s something else,” the vet said. “He’s got a tumor that’s invaded through the cartilage on both sides. I’m guessing he’s been doing a lot of mouth breathing.”
“It’s gotten really bad,” Evangeline said.
“He has no other airway. If you want him more comfortable, he’ll need surgery to debulk—reduce—the tumor. So he can breathe more easily. That wouldn’t be cheap, but this poor guy is suffering.”
“Is it cancer?” she asked, afraid to know.
“Good chance of it. Isaac brought him in a month ago for a breathing issue. I saw a small lesion. Not that bad, really. But now there’s a helluva mess. Benign masses don’t generally grow that fast.”
“Doctor,” Lorrie said, “could we leave Rufus here for a few hours? I’ll try to get by the school and have a talk with Isaac. Would you be able to take a call from him this morning?”
She was using her I’m-in-control voice, but Evangeline caught a tremor hidden in it. The vet said he’d make every effort to take Isaac’s call, and Lorrie turned to go. Evangeline, still splattered with blood, knelt before Rufus. She didn’t pet or talk to him. She avoided anything he might take as a good-bye, just squinted hard into his eyes: Don’t you even think about it!
She stood and walked out the door, swiping an arm across her face.
60
Judith once again buzzed me during class. I assumed things had taken a turn with Aunt Becky, but she told me a woman was waiting for me in the office.
I stopped short upon entering. Lorrie sat hunched in a corner chair. When she saw me, fear seized her features, but she stood, her jaw set in resolve. We borrowed Peter’s old office, closing the door behind us. I didn’t suggest we sit and neither did she, and so we stood, contained in the room. She kept her gaze averted, but I refused to break the silence. Eventually she met my eyes and said, “I’m sorry. For what I did last fall. For letting you suffer not knowing.”
She kept her gaze steady, wanting me to know it had taken everything in her to come to me and that she would allow me to injure her further if I needed to. She had left herself defenseless, so any cruelty I inflicted would make me a monster. But what did I care? I’d made myself a monster in February, and I saw no reason to change course.
“Is that why you’re here?” I said, stepping toward her, looming over her.
Her eyes teared, but she didn’t flinch. “Thank you for not going to the police. For letting Nells keep her moth—”
“Judith said there was some kind of emergency. Or was that another of your lies?” Even then I marveled at my cruelty, wondered if I’d adopted my son’s meanness as he had in some ways adopted mine.
Lorrie winced but quickly told me about Rufus, about Evangeline and the blood and the race to the vet in Chimacum. I felt ashamed for my treatment of her and angrier still that she’d induced this feeling in me.
“Dr. Abrams wants to keep Rufus overnight,” she said. “He’d like to talk with you about options, asked to have you call him as soon as you can.” She turned to leave.
“Lorrie,” I said.
She stopped but didn’t look at me.
I didn’t know if I wanted to berate her or thank her, but with the saying of her name something tight in me, a thick band that girded my chest, loosened.
When I managed nothing further, she gave that little nod of her head and left.
* * *
—
DR. ABRAMS ADVISED A “TOTAL RESECTION.” He wanted to split Rufus’s face down the middle and open it like a pair of hangar doors.
“Why not access through the nostrils?”
He huffed. “Do you have any idea how convoluted a dog’s sinuses are?”
I wanted to snap, Why such cruelty? Hasn’t Rufus suffered enough? But I knew that in Dr. Abrams’s world medical violence and medical heroism were often the same thing. If Rufus was to be spared, it would be up to me.
It should have been a simple matter. But I waffled. When I saw Rufus, I also saw my son. Only a few days before his death, Daniel had chased the dog. Rufus, his paws skittering on the floor, flicked looks of terrified glee
over his shoulder like the puppy he once was. Then the two rolled around, Daniel chanting, “Who’s a good dog? Who’s a good dog?” Given my son’s mysteries and hostilities in the last years, my desire to see that playful, fun boy was intense. At times, I thought I would torture the dog if it would grant me one more glimpse of Daniel.
Now, seeing Rufus struggling to breathe, I realized I’d stopped that vignette too soon. When Daniel was done roughhousing that day, he patted the dog’s head and bounded upstairs. Rufus, left in his old worn body, had whined a little, as if hoping Daniel would return, then stumbled to his feet and limped to his chair.
* * *
—
IN THE END, Dr. Abrams performed a biopsy. A few days later, he called to say it was cancer. “A resection might give him a few extra months,” he said. “Maybe as many as six, you never know. But with the lymph-node involvement and the complications of surgery in this area, there’s not much hope of a cure.”
Other options included experimental chemo and radiation at the veterinary school on the other side of the state, but all had painful side effects and none offered hope of long-term survival. Afterward I sat stiff-backed in my room, quieting my mind, trying to hold myself in the light that appeared at a distance, darted away like a fish when approached. An hour in, my mind lit with images of poor Rufus, monstrous, his head shaved, heavy black staples straining to hold his face together, his eyes watery with pain and accusation.
I told Evangeline of my feelings but let her know I would consider hers as well, that I recognized the bond that had developed between them. She nodded and went to her room, taking Rufus with her. An hour later she emerged, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. “Can the doctor help him breathe without hurting him?”
“He can go through his nostrils to open things up. That would help for a while.”
“Could we do that?”
“Of course.”
“Okay,” she said, avoiding my eyes, and left the room.
I called Dr. Abrams and made the request. “As long as you know this is solely palliative.” And that—providing comfort without false promises—was precisely what my heart wanted. I’d been through this before. The last time I saw my mother, she lay in a hospital bed enslaved to devices that pumped and drained, alarmed and scolded. Time and again, surgeons pursued her cancer, carved away at her, taking this and that. They left her gray-skinned and foreign, part machine and hardly human. I promise you, she would never have chosen it. She endured it for my father and me. So we could cling a little longer to unreasonable hope.
The only moment I saw my mother at peace in those last weeks was when three Friends gathered around her bed and sang of the ocean, sang of the One.
* * *
—
RUFUS WOULD DIE FROM HIS TUMOR, but I never considered putting him down. At times, as I witnessed his suffering, I wondered at my heart for allowing it. But then, animals know how to die. Once a fate is clear—and I believe it was as clear to Rufus as it was to me—they make choices to stay or to go. I’d put down pets in the past and may again someday, but Rufus was a singular being. My duty was to not interfere, to trust he had his reasons for staying or leaving.
The procedure went smoothly, and in a few days Rufus’s breathing had eased. The following Friday, Evangeline stayed overnight at Natalia’s. I was happy she had some semblance of normal adolescence, but when I got home to Rufus barely lifting his head and Evangeline gone, I felt a little lost.
Ever since I’d brought Evangeline back from George’s boat, the house had felt like a home again. And this was all the more obvious in her absence. I remembered Evangeline appearing in the salon, how she’d resisted those few steps, then acted as if they were no big deal. But those steps had made all the difference. Not only for me but for her. This way she could know, feel it deep in her bones, that she had made the choice to return.
In the mudroom, I pulled on a light jacket and headed outside, walked toward Lorrie’s lot. I’m not sure what I planned to do. Maybe knock on the door, invite her and Nells to dinner, pretend I hadn’t already destroyed whatever might have been salvaged.
Once again, I stood unseen in the border trees. In the early-evening dimness, the kitchen light was on. Lorrie was working at the stove, Nells chopping at the counter. Lorrie pulled a pan off the heat and went to her daughter, watched her a minute, then appeared to be giving instruction. Nells seemed angry, gesturing with her hands, but maybe not, because then they were laughing, clearly laughing. Lorrie placed a kiss at the nape of her daughter’s neck and returned to the stove.
Their intimacy and affection, their irritation and tenderness, lit that small kitchen, lit the entire house and yard. I felt the love between them even from that distance, and it broke my heart knowing what Evangeline would never have.
61
Day of My Death
A few days back, the sheriff took my truck. I didn’t ask to see a warrant. Turned out they didn’t have one, but I wouldn’t have wanted to act suspicious anyway. They said I wasn’t a suspect, but something in there might be helpful in finding Daniel. I acted all casual, said, “Sure, have at it.”
They found Daniel’s DNA, some flakes of skin, some hairs. It’d have been suspicious if they hadn’t, given he was in my truck all the time. They also found blood, but it was the deer blood I’d gone out of my way to smear around. None of Daniel’s. Which surprised me. I’d been careful with bags on my shoes and on the seat, but you’d think there’d have been a drop or two somewhere. Our locals probably bungled it. Not a lot of murders around here. But then, they don’t know there’s a murder yet. Just a boy who disappeared.
Here’s what shocked the hell out of me: When the call came yesterday giving me the all-clear, I was so upset you’d have thought they were going to string me up right then and there. After days of not sleeping, of sweating through my shirts, I’m told I can pick up my truck, they’re sorry for putting me through that, and I want to punch my fist through a fucking wall.
I kept thinking, When are those idiots going to find Daniel? How long is Mr. Balch going to have to suffer not knowing? Daniel’s mom too. The two of them were like zombies, skin sagging and gray, eyes looking like they’d been gouged out and fake ones glued in. I know it’s odd, me worrying about them like that, considering. But I was. I was thinking, What the fuck do I have to do now that the idiots have left it up to me?
Daniel’s parents weren’t the only ones who looked like crap. The last couple days when I showed up to search, someone would tell me I looked terrible, to go home and get some rest. They figured this thing was killing me. They were right about that. I was missing Daniel. He was the person I most wanted to talk to. He would have loved this story, the surprise of it: me killing him! Who’d ever have guessed? He would’ve had me tell it over and over. Then, at parties, he would’ve acted it out, leaping in the air, swinging that blade, embellishing the hell out of it. Not even mentioning I was at the scene. I’d stand off to the side, arms folded across my chest, sulking like I do. I’d call him an asshole and say I was the killer, not him, but no one would even notice I was there.
I would’ve given anything for that.
So yeah, I was dying, all right. Like I said, it’s the love that messes you up, and when it came to Daniel, I was fucked six ways from Sunday.
* * *
—
THIS MORNING—I GUESS TECHNICALLY it’s yesterday morning now—I drove back to the spot where it happened. I half expected someone to be tailing me. I would have been tailing me. But I don’t think anyone was. Not that it would’ve mattered. I got out and retraced the route we’d traveled on foot that night, jotting down distances and turns and trail markings to get the search team close.
I couldn’t bring myself to go the final quarter mile. Might not have been possible. I swear the firs and scrub had thickened in the past week, filled in like some fairy-tale bramble. The woods fell s
ilent at the last turn, as if all the creatures were watching me. Everywhere there were broken limbs and bushes trampled to hell. I almost wondered if Daniel had survived and torn his way out. Or if God had touched down, thrown his fury a good half mile across. But of course I had wreaked this damage as I tore crazed and blood-drenched from the scene.
The sulfurous odor of death wafted even here, so I piled a bunch of those snapped limbs as a marker and turned back. They had dogs. They’d find him easy enough.
I got home around noon. There wasn’t much I could do. I couldn’t bring Daniel back, couldn’t stick around for Mom or Nells or Red. Not a scenario I could figure where any of that worked out. But I could spare the Balches the wondering. I could spare the rest of them the pain of seeing me cuffed and dragged off, this short, skinny, pansy-assed white boy, put away for a good long time. I didn’t want them picturing what was happening to me in there. Because the idiots would figure it out. Eventually. Bones would be found, footprints discovered. They’d come knocking on my door. And that would do none of us any good.
And even if I did skate clear of this whole mess, that was the worst possibility of all, because then a guy would be roaming the streets of Port Furlong not knowing who he wanted to kill until he was covered in their blood. No way did I want a freak like that on the loose. Not with people I loved in his path.
I’d never done anything like this before, hadn’t so much as bruised my sister, but you don’t need to be a mystic to know where it came from and where it will lead. Like my dad says, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I’m evil. My dad wasn’t either. I buy what Mr. Balch said about evil being a force and all. But it does seem some people are prone to seizures of it, and I’m guessing my dad and I are ones.
In biology sometimes Mr. Balch would tell us about weird disorders, like tumors that make you lose your proprioception, that thing that lets you know where your body is in space. With a tumor like that, gravity really messes with you. You’re always falling down.
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