Listen! (9780062213358)

by Tolan, Stephanie S.

  “You may not! That dog doesn’t need any extra people to contend with. Bring the milk!”

  When Mrs. Davis and the children go into the house, Charley calls to Sadie, “You want to go for a walk?”

  Before she has a chance to fend the dog off with her walking stick, there are new red-orange paw prints on the front of her shirt.

  Charley looks for the wild dog and sees that he’s back in the woods across the road. “I’m not making any promises,” she tells the dog. “Except this one. If you come around the lake with Sadie and me now, I’ll give you some food. That’s all.” A slant of sunlight through the trees catches the gold of his fur, and he twitches his ears. But he doesn’t move.

  “Let’s go,” Charley calls to Sadie. “Let’s walk!”

  Sadie barks and runs ahead toward where the road ends at the kudzu-covered slope down to the power line right-of-way. Charley uses the bottom of her T-shirt to wipe the sweat from her face, and starts limping after her. As if she understands the plan, Sadie turns onto the narrow trail that winds down the steep hill next to the last house on the south side of the lake, Crazy Sherman’s log cabin, with its odd collection of sculptures made from bits of rusted junk.

  Limping, Charley follows. At first she is glad to get off the road, where walking on the gravel keeps twisting her ankle and knee, sending jolts of pain through her leg. But the trail, narrow and uneven underfoot, isn’t much better. It is crisscrossed with kudzu vines, like an obstacle course of trip wires.

  Halfway down she turns to see if the wild dog is following, and her foot catches on a vine. She has to grab for a sapling and stab her stick into the dirt to keep from falling down the hill.

  As she pulls herself upright, she catches a glimpse of the wild dog slipping in between the trees up near the road. He is following.

  3

  The Woods Trail

  Gritting her teeth against the pain and keeping her walking stick ahead of her to slow her progress, Charley manages to get down the rest of the hill. At the bottom the trail levels out and crosses the embankment that separates Hawk Pond, the first of two feeder ponds, from the lake.

  The trail here is easy walking compared to the hill Charley has just come down and the even steeper hill she’ll have to climb on the other side. She is just thinking how grateful she is for this when she notices that the greenery crowding the trail on both sides is dark and shiny and three-leaved. Someone has been keeping the trail open, but just barely. Poison ivy is pushing in toward her bare arms and legs.

  There’s more poison ivy out here than kudzu and barbed-wire vine and honeysuckle put together.

  Charley catches her breath and stops. No. She does not want this voice, this clear and unmistakable voice, in her head. This is what she has been afraid of, why she doesn’t walk this trail.

  It is too late not to have heard it. She is here at the wild end of the lake, right in the middle of her mother’s world. Here, where her mother used to come day after day, season after season, year after year, to take the nature photographs that made her famous—the photographs that eventually took her away forever. Charley shakes her head, as if she can shake memory away.

  Focus, she tells herself firmly. Pay attention to this moment, to the reason you are here. Nothing else. Since the day her father, his face gray, turned from the telephone to tell her about the plane crash in the Brazilian rainforest, Charley has worked at closing down the past. She has gotten very good at it.

  Ahead of her, Sadie is standing chest deep in the pond, drinking. Charley looks around for the wild dog. He is nowhere to be seen. This is crazy, she thinks. Just crazy. If it weren’t for the wild dog, she would never have come here, stirred up memories, raised her mother’s voice in her mind. She swallows hard a couple of times around the sharpness in her throat, and then begins moving carefully forward, concentrating on staying in the very middle of the trail, using her walking stick to fend off the poison ivy that seems to be reaching out at her. She will have to remember to wash really well when she gets home and hope for the best.

  When she reaches the end of the ivy patch, she crosses the water trickling into a foot-wide crack in the old concrete spillway between pond and lake, and stands for a moment facing the hill ahead of her. She needs to rest before tackling it. A tree has fallen into the pond, dragging up a mass of red dirt where its roots broke free of the hillside. The roots reach out toward the trail. She grabs one and pulls herself up the first steep rise, pushing with her stick. Then she manages to clamber onto the wide trunk that stretches like a bench toward the water and she sits, aware of the throbbing in her leg, doing her best to keep her mind on this moment.

  It is no good. She is looking across the water as her mother used to, camera poised, waiting for a heron to come stalking through the reeds, a kingfisher to settle on a branch over the water, or the pond’s resident muskrat to come out of his den beneath the embankment. Even now a photograph of that muskrat, nose barely breaking the water’s surface, early sunlight glinting on the ripples that v out behind, hangs on the wall of the lake room. The day of the funeral, Charley took every single one of her mother’s photographs down from the walls of her room. But her father left others up all over the house. She has learned to live among them without seeing them.

  She shifts her gaze away from the pond and sees the wild dog at the other side of the poison ivy patch, about to come through. He catches her looking at him and stops. He looks like what he is—a starving, frightened, probably abused dog. There is nothing beautiful, nothing magical about him. What has she been thinking?

  Sadie comes up out of the pond, shakes water all over Charley. Then she runs back through the ivy to pounce on the wild dog. The two of them tussle briefly, and Sadie comes running back.

  The wild dog doesn’t come with her. He is standing up the far hill now, sheltered by the trees. Charley remembers she has promised him food. She doesn’t break promises. Anyway, she is already here, has already shaken the memories loose. She will rest till her leg is ready to climb this hill, and then she will keep her concentration carefully on each step she takes all the way home. She can. She will.

  Sadie has already gone ahead up the trail. “Come on!” she calls to the wild dog. At the sound of her voice, he vanishes into the shadows again. If this dog can’t stand her looking at him, can’t stand the sound of her voice, Charley thinks, she won’t be able to save him anyway, won’t be able to give him a home.

  “Suit yourself!” she yells at him. I don’t want him, she tells herself as she slides off the fallen tree and starts up the hill. This is the steepest part of the trail, more cliff than hill, in spite of the trees and shrubs growing from between the rocks. She has to use both hands here, one for her walking stick, the other to hold onto saplings, roots, branches—anything to drag herself upward and keep her from slipping back.

  When the trail levels off along a ridge about two thirds of the way up the hill, the walking becomes easier again. Possible, at least. She has just managed to get over a gully that has carved a nearly three-foot gap in the trail when she looks up and sees a tree, leaning low over the path. The Limbo Tree.

  She stops, her mother’s voice in her head again. Jack be limbo, Jack be quick. Jack jump over limbo stick. She can almost see her mother now, setting her equipment on the ground, bending backward, doing the limbo under the tree. Memory rushes in—herself so little she could walk upright under this tree. And then the day she discovered she’d grown enough to have to bend herself backward the way her mother did. The day her mother took a picture of her doing the limbo for the first time.

  Charley shakes her head again. Nothing but a downed tree, she tells herself. One of hundreds of trees Hurricane Hugo and its tornadoes toppled all around Eagle Lake. It’s just one that happened to get its topmost branches caught among the standing trees so that it didn’t fall all the way to the ground. That’s all.

  The tree is leaning closer to the ground than she remembers. Or maybe in these two years she has
grown that much taller. Its bark is falling off in chunks, and the tree itself is disintegrating. There are bits of dark, rotted wood littering the trail.

  Sadie comes thundering back down the trail as if she wants to know why Charley has stopped. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Charley tells her. Then, slowly and deliberately, she bends forward—forward, not back—to duck under the tree.

  4

  Feeding

  Twice more along the trail, Charley has to stop and rest, once on a boulder and the other time on a tree stump. She hasn’t seen the wild dog since Hawk Pond, she thinks as she sits on the stump. So she’s been saved from herself. She doesn’t have to keep her promise if he doesn’t come with her to get fed. Sadie can swim home, and Charley will take the can of dog food back to Mrs. Davis the next time (weeks and weeks from now) she feels like walking all the way around the lake.

  No sooner has she thought this than she catches a glimpse of movement and sees a red-gold form slip quickly across the trail back along the ridge she has just walked. If she hadn’t stopped to rest, she’d never have known he was still there. Somehow he can move through the woods with no sound at all.

  Sadie is another story, charging around in the dead leaves, splashing into the water to take a swim when the trail winds down near the lake, coming back to shake on Charley, then rolling on the ground to dry herself. Charley could have closed her eyes anytime on the walk and known exactly where Sadie was. Besides that, no raccoon or muskrat, no fox or beaver with half a brain would show its face within a mile of Sadie.

  This is why she has never had a dog. Nature photography requires patience and stillness. Quiet. Nothing chasing animals away.

  But there is no one doing nature photography anymore. She can have a dog now if she wants.

  When she and Sadie come down out of the woods and cross the embankment at Heron Pond, the smaller of the two ponds, half-choked with cattails, Charley hasn’t seen the wild dog again. But she knows now that not seeing him doesn’t mean that he isn’t around somewhere, among the trees, keeping pace with them.

  She is picking her way across the Heron Pond spillway on broken chunks of concrete, listening to the cheerful sound of the waterfall where the water slides over a tumble of boulders on its way to the lake, when Sadie runs past her, splashing her with mud and water. It feels so good on her hot, sticky skin that she wishes she could climb down and sit under the waterfall, letting it wash away the sweat and grime. What she wants more, though, is to get home, wash the poison ivy off, take a pain pill, and lie down for a while.

  At last she emerges from among the trees onto the broad swathe of trail that is the sewer line access for the housing developments up beyond the woods that surround Eagle Lake. Every couple of years the utilities people come with a truck and mow down the poison ivy and blackberry brambles, the honeysuckle and sweet gum saplings that grow so fast and thick that they practically choke off the trail between cuttings. She follows it across a tiny creek and up the last slope to the chain that stretches across the end of Eagle Lake Drive. The chain is low enough to step over.

  Jasmine and Bernie, the two German shepherds who live at the last house on the north side of the lake, bark at Sadie from their pen down near the water as she goes by. Sadie stays well away. Jasmine, the younger shepherd, sometimes attacks other female dogs, so Mr. Garrison, their owner, keeps them penned while he’s at work.

  When Charley gets home, Sadie is with her, but the wild dog is not. As she starts down the driveway toward the house, she hears Jasmine and Bernie barking again. A minute later the wild dog comes down the road, shoulders hunched, nose up, sniffing for danger. He really does look like a coyote, Charley thinks. Rangy and wild. As she watches him, braving the open road to follow them, his eyes meet hers for a moment. Again there is that feeling like an electrical current between them. Coyote. She thinks the word toward him as if she were saying it out loud. That’s your name. Coyote.

  She makes her way down the driveway, up the ramp, and through the sliding door into the dining room. The vacuum cleaner is running in her father’s bedroom. Sarita, her eternal jigsaw puzzle abandoned on its table by the windows overlooking the lake, is working. “Sarita!” she yells, not sure she can be heard. “I’m back.”

  The vacuum stops. “You okay?”

  “Yeah!” It isn’t true, but as long as she isn’t actually dead, she’s okay enough for Sarita. Charley figures she’s just another chore for this woman her father pays to run the household. Like the laundry or a room that needs vacuuming.

  She takes the can of dog food into the kitchen and opens it, then gets out a heavy serving bowl. Hurrying, she spoons out the food—cube-shaped chunks of meat with gravy—and goes to see if the dog is still out there. If Sadie starts for home, Coyote will surely follow her. It takes her a minute to spot him across the road, almost in the woods, standing and watching the house.

  She sets the bowl on the buffet and opens the sliding door. Then, stick in one hand, bowl in the other, she steps out onto the ramp. Instantly the dog disappears into the woods. Charley can hear Sadie swimming for home, making big splashes with her front paws the way she always does. “Lunchtime!” Charley calls to the wild dog she can’t see anymore. “Come and get it!”

  She limps out to the end of the drive and sets the bowl down where the cement meets the gravel. “Lunchtime!” she calls again. Charley steps back from the food and waits for the dog to come out. He doesn’t. So she turns around and goes back to the house. When she gets to the ramp, she turns to watch. Still the dog doesn’t come out. Finally she goes all the way back inside and closes the sliding door. She moves to the dining room window to watch.

  Sarita, tall and lean as a heron in her faded blue jeans and navy T-shirt, comes down the hall from the bedroom. “What’s up?”

  There is no way to know what Sarita would think of having a dog in the house. She is as communicative as a statue. But it isn’t Sarita Charley has to convince; it is her father. Charley motions Sarita to the narrow window by the front door. “Watch. Out on the drive.”

  The dog comes out of the woods and stands for a moment looking toward the house. Then he crouches low to the ground and begins to creep up on the food dish, as if it might be booby-trapped. He sniffs at it quickly, then backs away. He looks to his right, his left, and over his shoulder, sniffs again, then begins creeping forward, his tail tightly tucked between his legs. He wants the food, Charley can see. Really wants it. But he seems terrified of it, too.

  Finally, standing as far back from the bowl as he possibly can, he stretches his neck to reach the food. He wolfs a couple of bites and then backs up to check all around again, muscles tensed and ready to run.

  “That’s the stray from the other side of the lake,” Sarita says.

  “How’d you know about him?”

  “Saw him a couple of times up by the mailboxes. Scooted off when he saw me, though. Scruffy-lookin’ thing.”

  The dog goes on eating, gulping quickly, stopping every couple of mouthfuls to check for danger. When he finishes, he slips back into the woods.

  “Mrs. Davis says nobody can get near that dog,” Sarita says.

  “Nobody can.”

  “So how come you’re feeding him?”

  “Because he’s hungry.” It is more than that, she knows. But Charley can’t explain it even to herself. “I’m thinking maybe he could come live with us.”

  “Huh!” Sarita says, and runs a hand over her fine frizz of gray hair. “What’s your father going to say?”

  “I don’t know.” Whatever he says, Charley thinks, surprised at how strongly she feels, suddenly, she will find a way to have this dog in her life.

  5

  Night

  Charley is in bed, watching television, when her father gets home and comes to her room to say good night. “You don’t know anything about training dogs,” he says when she asks him about Coyote. “Taming a wild one is no way to start. You have no idea what’s happened to that dog, what scar
s he has. A professional trainer probably couldn’t turn a dog like that into a pet.”

  He doesn’t understand, Charley thinks. She isn’t exactly sure she does. She wants Coyote in her life, but she does not want a pet.

  “If you really want a dog, we could get you a puppy, an animal that doesn’t have any history to overcome. Even that wouldn’t be easy. A puppy needs lots of attention.” Her father leans against her doorframe and frowns. His face is thinner than it used to be. And less certain. “On the other hand, training a pup would give you something to do this summer, something to focus on and get you out of the house—if you think you’re up to it. We’d have to get some dog training books—”

  “I don’t want a puppy!” Charley says. “I want this dog. If he doesn’t come live with us, he’s going to die. Whether he dies in the woods or at the shelter, he’s going to die.” There is no point trying to explain the connection she feels with this dog.

  Paul Morgan loosens his tie and sighs. Death is not a subject they talk about. Charley crosses her arms on her chest and looks him straight in the eye. “This dog will give me something to do this summer, too.”

  She watches his face change. He has made up his mind. “All right. But if he shows the slightest sign of being dangerous, the deal’s off.”

  “Mrs. Davis says he’s a sweetie. She’s right. You can see it in his eyes. He’s just scared of people.”

  “A scared dog is a dangerous dog.”

  “How could he be dangerous? He won’t come close enough to a human being to bite.”

  “You really think you can tame him?”

  “Yes.” Charley puts more certainty in her voice than she feels. “Feeding him is a start.”

  Her father becomes all business now, settling into the mode that makes him most comfortable. “All right, then. You and Sarita can go pick up some supplies tomorrow. Training books. Food. Dish. Collar. Leash.” He ticks them off on his fingers.

  Charley thinks about the golden dog on a leash. “I don’t think we need a leash yet.”