Year of the Dog

by Shelby Hearon

  I wanted to yell at him, Do I look like I’m going to pay that, for half an apartment without a bedroom and a stall for a bath? But he narrowed his eyes like he didn’t have all day, and was locking up the look-see by the time I got the check written. I’d just barely moved my savings into a bank on Bank Street (things were so literal up here!), but figured it would clear. He tossed me two keys (front door, back door) and we signed one of those standard leases that must come by the ream from Staples.

  And that’s how I got a home for Beulah. A home with a grassy backyard bathroom spot for her, under a huge hardwood tree with sweet-smelling white flowers, and, in a neighboring yard, a larger spoor-crazed hardwood raining white lint on the lawn. At that time, early June, with a perfumed breeze and an almost warming sun, I didn’t of course foresee the matter of the Vermont winter.

  * * *

  The day my puppy was to be brought to me, I got up at sunrise, now five o’clock in the morning here in the north. Too psyched to sleep any longer on the lumpy ancient hideaway bed. I’d never spent all my time before with another living being, and it made me slightly panicked. You’d think marriage would be like that, but if you’ve been married you know that it isn’t. You are at work and he is at work, or maybe he’s off with his buddies and you’re looking at the Carolina summertime grass, wondering if you need to water or if the ragged remnants of some early tropical storm is going to do the job for you. You’re together at night—having supper, then he’s trying to make a deal and you’re talking to your mom, then you’re in bed and things are going smooth or they’re going rocky, then it’s morning and your head is on your work. But here I’d signed up for someone who I was going to have to keep with me all the time, hearing her noises, feeling her nose against my leg, rushing out the back door to take her down the open wooden stairs, brushing her soft pale coat and checking her ears, teaching her to listen for her name.

  I broke out in a cold sweat. Terrified at the idea of having someone else breathing in the same room with me night and day, I went down into the yard, barefoot, in the oversize t-shirt I slept in, figuring no one else would be awake, and stood under the tree. Practicing aloud, along with the early birds, “Get busy,” “Good dog,” “Good girl.”

  But when the Companion Dog lady knocked on my door hours later and the creamy little lab trotted inside, looking all around the strange room as if to say, “Where is my person, where is my person?” I forgot about my nerves. Getting down on my hands and knees, twenty-five-years old and never had a dog, I touched my nose to hers. “Hi,” I said, “Hi, Beulah.” Because they had already told me her name—explaining that the first letters of the names indicated the order of puppies and the litter from that year. The Companion, a pleasant woman named Betty, who donated her time, gave me the thick puppy manual, with every possible instruction on care and training, and her crate. And then the woman rubbed the puppy’s coat, handed me the leash—and left Beulah in my care. We stood looking at each other, her tail wagging, until, after a moment, breathing deeply, I lifted her in my arms and carried her, warm and wiggling and with a clearly beating heart, down the back stairs into her new flower-scented yard.

  Now, when we got home from the Dog Park and our meeting with the three-colored mountain dog and his person, she and I descended the open steps, and while she got busy, I stood thinking of what it might be nice to have for supper. I was missing southern food and wishing that instead of filling her water bowl and pouring out her chow, I could let her share my meal and then lick my plate, as I imagined ordinary dogs got to do.

  3

  MOM AND DADDY were the kind who kept up with anybody the least bit kin to anybody they knew in any way. Whenever I stopped by their house back home, I could count on hearing them catching up with the latest on some one of Mother’s friend Madge’s Alabama cousins, or the brand new wife of the oldest son of the man who owned Daddy’s hardware. So, naturally, because of this outlook, they’d assumed that the minute I got to Vermont my mom’s only living blood relative, her maternal aunt, Mayfield Mason, would be having me to supper all the time and doing my laundry, that she’d be finding me a mechanic and a medical doctor, that she’d call every day and want to take me shopping. But the truth was, I’d been in town over a month and hadn’t heard a word from her.

  It became clear to me that I was going to have to be the one to call on her, being the new person in town with time to spare, and realizing that there was no way the older woman would understand why I was using up my entire life savings to spend a year where I didn’t know a soul. Getting up my resolve the day after Beulah and I went on our outing to the Dog Park, I set out to find her house. Not thinking to phone ahead to ask when it might be convenient for me to drop by, not picking up some nice gift to present her with or even bringing a batch of homemade buttermilk biscuits to remind her of where she came from. Just tired of hearing Mom’s constant reminders that this aunt was the excuse she’d given everyone about why I’d picked Vermont for my sabbatical.

  While I dried my hair and my puppy had her breakfast, I reread the letter Mom wrote her aunt, and then the one she received in return—after having waited on pins and needles for a two full weeks.

  * * *

  Dear Aunt May,

  This is your only niece writing to you, to let you know that my daughter Janey will be visiting in your town for the year, seeing another part of the country and doing a little charity work involving dogs for blind people. I hope this letter paves the way for you to take an interest in her being in Burlington.

  I don’t know if you recall that she was until recently married to the Prentice boy, but since she did not take his name at the time, she’ll be going by Daniels. That may have been part of the problem, but who am I to say?

  While I am writing, I also want to thank you again for your good words and the generous spray of flowers when my mama, your sister, passed away. She was sorry to be out of touch with you.

  Thanks in advance from your only niece,

  Ida Jean Daniels

  P.S. Also I want to say I hope that Janey can meet your good friend Bert Greenwood, all of whose murder mysteries I personally have read.

  * * *

  Dear Ida Jean,

  What a surprise to hear from you, as I have quite lost touch with the family in recent years. Certainly, I will be glad to help Janey get settled as best I can, although I can’t imagine a capable young person her age having much need of the advice or company of a semi-retired librarian.

  With best wishes to you and Talbot,

  Aunt May

  * * *

  It took me a while to locate her house at the corner of Larch and Gum, at the end of a street with two fenced cemeteries, around the corner from a synagogue and a Quaker meeting house, since most of the streets in town were named for trees, and twice I turned the wrong way and found myself back by the university and the hospital.

  I pulled up on the grass of a deep lot, in front of a two-story brick house shaded by the same dark-barked tree with fragrant white blooms that sheltered Beulah’s bathroom. Locking her in the car, I told her to stay, gently pushing her down on the floor of the front seat where Companion Dogs were supposed to ride, and left the window cracked open wide enough for her to get a scent of the flowering trees. Would that be confusing?

  The woman at the door stood uncertainly, staring at me. My height, she had gray-brown hair with bangs, glasses, and wore loose jeans and old tennis shoes. “Yes?” she inquired, not unfriendly in her tone.

  “I’m Janey—.” I faltered. “Your niece? Ida Jean’s girl? I should have phoned to give you some warning. I was just out for a drive and I thought—.” I blushed or at least my face got hot. “I guess since I’ve been up north here I’ve forgotten my manners.”

  “Come in, won’t you?” The woman, who had to be Aunt May, studied me a minute, then stepped aside. “You’ve caught me in dungarees and sneakers, I’m afraid,” she said. She found us chairs in a room with old furniture and walls of boo
ks. “Did she write me you were coming, your mother? I’m sure she did.” She sighed and put her glasses on her head. “Are you getting settled then, here in Vermont?”

  I nodded. “I guess I thought you’d look like my grandmama. I mean not like Grandmama, but—.” I didn’t know how to say she didn’t look like family, and I’d expected that she would, that she’d be someone if I’d passed her on the street I’d have known she belonged to us.

  She considered. “You have my height,” she said. “My father, your great-grandfather, was a tall man. Though you have the hazel eyes and fair hair of my mother’s side.” Then she rose, as if we’d got too personal. “I was making tea. Will you drink it hot?”

  I told her yes, taking it as a good sign that she remembered that iced tea, usually sweetened to the gills, was the Carolina state drink. I fretted that maybe I shouldn’t have said what I did, remembering that Grandmama had got her nose out of joint about her sister who’d left the state and gone off to Vassar College and had never made a family of her own or kept up with the one God gave her. She used to say that May had been serious about someone while still a girl, but her dad put an end to it. In recent years, Mom got a thrill out of hearing that Aunt May had got herself a boyfriend, at her age, the Vermont mystery writer named Bert Greenwood, which put her somewhat back in favor with the family. Though we didn’t hear about it till the week of Grandmama’s funeral.

  Looking around the large room, I wondered how it would be to end up like this great-aunt, in your seventies in a northern climate between two mountain ranges, living alone. Librarians, like pharmacists, maybe, must be people who helped you out when you weren’t sure what to ask for or what to do with it when you got it. But was that enough?

  When Aunt May came back with two cups on a tray, I mentioned that I had my puppy-in-training in the car. “I think my mom wrote you I was raising one? I wonder, could I bring her in?”

  The tall woman in jeans looked out the wide bay window. “The dog. Yes, I believe Ida Jean did mention that. Perhaps—.” She clasped her large hands together. “Perhaps another time.”

  We had bitter brewed tea and I didn’t ask for lemon or use the cream but drank it straight, nearly the color of coffee. I talked about how early it grew light in the mornings this far north, and how late it stayed light in the evenings. How the summer days were so amazingly long I found myself wanting to take a dawn run along the lake or a late-night walk downtown. “Is it hard in the winter? Having it the other way?”

  “I’ve grown to like the contrast.” She sipped her tea.

  “I never had a dog before,” I told her, my mind on wishing I’d come dressed in something better than shorts and a tee, my hair just-washed and flying in all directions. “She’s just a puppy—.”

  “All dogs were once puppies,” she commented dryly.

  Silenced by her tone, I wondered what else I could talk about, if she had an interest in hearing what Mom was doing in Peachland or what in a general way was going on these days in our upland part of the state.

  But then Aunt May asked a nice question, as if she realized she’d sort of shut me up. “What made you decide to raise a dog during your year here, Janey?”

  And, grateful she’d asked about that instead of prying into the business of my splitting with Curtis, I told her the whole story about Mr. Haynes, the blind man who came into the pharmacy all the time because he couldn’t remember which shaped pill was for what ailment and needed reminding. How he always brought his guide with him, the big black lab he called Blind Dog. How I asked him about where had he got the dog and how did they place them with a blind person. And that he’d told me a great lady over in Greenville had raised the dog so it knew just what to do from day one, so he didn’t have to use his blind stick anymore. “I thought about that, because I saw him a lot and had grown fond of Blind Dog who always came in with him. And I figured if I was going to come way up here, and not have my work at the pharmacy for a spell—well, I wanted to at least be doing something for somebody.”

  “As I recall,” Aunt May said, “the Haynes family is black. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he is. And so is his dog.” And I laughed out loud, I couldn’t help myself, it was a southern joke.

  She smiled. “I haven’t heard the sound of Carolina for years.” Then, setting down her teacup, she took off her glasses to clean them, and that seemed a signal it was time to go.

  Outside, after glancing quickly toward the car to make sure Beulah hadn’t climbed up on the seat (the way a child or an ordinary dog would), I asked my great Aunt May the name of the towering tree with the rough bark and scented white flowers that I’d been living with but didn’t know.

  “That’s a black locust.” She seemed pleased I’d asked. “I like them a lot.” She gestured behind her. “These three are older than the house.” She stopped to pick a twig off the ground. “Perhaps you would like a tree book, Janey. Would you? I have a slew. Librarians seem to accumulate a world of reference books.”

  “I would,” I said. And, waiting in the windy air for her to bring it, felt grateful that now I’d have something to tell them at home about my visit to Mom’s remaining blood kin.

  4

  AFTER SUPPER, I dug my cell out of my tote bag and called Mom and Daddy. It was no secret they still had mixed feelings about my coming up here. Mom pretended to be chipper about it, how I needed to get away for a spell, but she kept on telling me all the gossip just as if I’d never left, not getting the idea that the whole reason I’d come up here was to get away from everybody like her minding everybody else’s business.

  Daddy couldn’t help being of two minds. On the one hand, he wanted what was best for his girl, on the other he didn’t warm to the idea of sending me off to a state which had just that spring declared civil unions legal. Whatever racism he’d inherited from his daddy had been rubbed away after thirty years of working at the hardware store, where, he liked to say, you could see who was doing the hard work and who wasn’t, and who built straight and who built crooked. But he still had a blind eye in the direction of people loving their own kind. “You watch out,” he’d said when I was packed and the car loaded for the drive, “up there anybody can marry anybody.”

  “I went to see Aunt May,” I told them. “She served hot tea, and gave me a book on trees.”

  “That’s her being a librarian,” Mom explained.

  “What? Her heating up the tea?” Daddy interrupted.

  I said, “I’m not sure she remembered that I was supposed to be up here—she seemed surprised to see me.”

  “Now don’t you go casting a stone about the treatment you got, hear? So many different apples fell off our family tree we could change our name to Newton. She’ll look after you.”

  “She didn’t like the idea of me bringing the puppy inside.”

  “Well, of course,” Mom nearly shouted, “she doesn’t want to have a dog in her house. Didn’t you listen to what I told you? Didn’t you read Bert Greenwood’s books which I sent you up there with two of? Those mysteries, every single one, has some kind of bad-dog event in the past of somebody, somebody deceased or maybe the suspect, and this judge always has to retire to his chambers to get over hearing about it, before solving the case. He sometimes has to have a glass of bourbon, and your daddy, who is on the other line listening in, says to ask you, Do they drink bourbon up there in Vermont, he thinks it’s only in the South.”

  I hadn’t read the books, which probably were still in the unpacked box in the trunk of the car. I remembered they were all set in a little town in Vermont, spelled like CHARlotte, the town in North Carolina, but pronounced CharLOTTE. They all had titles which sounded like something you’d heard before, which I guess was the point: Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte Ruse, The Prisoner of Charlotte. But if Bert Greenwood or anybody was living with Aunt May, I didn’t have an inkling of it.

  I had to admit to Mom that I hadn’t got around to reading the mysteries yet, but promised her I would soo
n. “I’ve been spending all my time with Beulah,” I explained, and patted my trusty puppy who, hearing her name, had padded over to stand beside me. Good girl.

  “Beulah?” Daddy’s voice broke in.

  “The dog, Talbot,” she said. “The dog.” Then, just when she’d shooed him off the line and I thought the call was over, Mom added in a whisper: “Hon, there’s some news you might not want to be hearing, so stop me if you’re going to get upset.”

  5

  I’D KNOWN MILLIE Dawson longer than I’d known Curtis. She had been a thorn in my side from grammar school through high school. At least that was my side of the story. She’d sat behind me in homeroom, and always had to ask the teacher if she could move in front of me so she could see the board or if I’d just remove my head. She was one of those girls that the rest of us had a jealousy just looking at: a waist about the diameter of my ankle bone, boobs like cup cakes, hair that bounced even when she sat still. Bitsy and limber and energetic, she could do the split and jumping jacks, and made me—a pretty good athlete actually—feel large and lumbering.

  She’d been wild in love with Curtis Prentice forever, and when, our senior year, he’d asked me to the senior all-night party instead, I didn’t have a guilty minute. I figured she could’ve had anybody in the state of South Carolina she wanted. I never spent an instant wondering if she cried herself to sleep when he started up with me, or if she ripped out my pictures in the yearbook. Instead, I floated six feet off the ground because I, good serious Janey Daniels, working part-time at the pharmacy after school, had taken Curtis Prentice, hunk, away from Millie Dawson.

  All of this I needed to remind myself about, having just heard from the town’s biggest rumor-spreader, Mom, that Millie had already been three months pregnant before I knew she’d stolen my one-time husband back.

  Whimpering enough to cause my wagging, padding, pale-faced puppy to settle down at my feet, on her tummy, paws forward, listening for her name, I tried to eat the plate of faux-Caesar salad with chicken I’d put together before the call home. Deciding lettuce didn’t do much for a squirrelly stomach, I added a cold bottle of Magic Hat beer.