Year of the Dog

by Shelby Hearon

  We’d got into some habits. He liked to sleep next to the wall; I liked to sleep on the outside. We’d be lying on our backs, touching at our shoulders, hipbones and feet, talking about his people, my dog, how little time I had left up here. And then, when we weren’t together, I’d miss that a lot. We slept with our outside arms over our heads, fingers hooked. And when I slept by myself, with the warmth and noises of dreaming Beulah on her blanket on the floor, and loud party sounds from up the street, I’d wake to find I had both arms overhead, clasped together in the warm breeze coming in the open window of my front room.

  The morning he made his announcement, we were sitting on the mat at his place, having waked and messed around, then had coffee and a bowl of blueberries and strawberries. While I pulled on panties and a t-shirt, he stood and fiddled at his computer in his shorts. Then, turning, he said, “Here they are.” His voice cracking with disbelief.

  I stood at his shoulder and stared at what he had on the screen and then at his face. Owen and Lucille Maarten. Their names, small photos, an address in New Hampshire. Two children. He, a teacher; she, a former teacher. I flung my arms around him. “You found them!” He had parents. He truly had parents. I squeezed him till my arms gave out.

  “Looks like it.” Klieg lights on his face. “I waited to tell you till it all fit together, till I could be positive. But it’s not only when they married and the names, but that this Lucille is the same age as the Lucille Freeman who had the baby. Me. I kind of went nuts, you know? Crazy and then half scared, changing my mind every other minute about contacting them. But then I just did it.”

  “Tell me everything.” I couldn’t stop staring the tiny digital images on the screen, the people who made him, the people who could have sent out a birth announcement with a little blue bow and a yellow Pooh bear. His parents.

  “I sent them a short message, telling them my name and giving my birth date. Saying I’d like to come see them if they didn’t mind; I’d like to let the other shoe drop. Was that the dumbest? The shoe drop. Christ. I might as well have said, I’d like to see how the cookie crumbles. But when you get in a state like that . . . I thought: If I don’t write right now I’ll never do it. So I dropped my shoe. Dumbfuck.” He folded his arms around his head and grinned.

  I pulled his arms down and let him bury his face on my shoulder, while I patted his back, thrilled and at the same time getting a cold stone in my stomach at the terrifying idea that maybe they wouldn’t answer him. Maybe even if he did have the right people, they might have put his being born, at what surely had been the wrong time for them, out of their minds and wanted to keep it that way.

  “How about we catch the ferry at Charlotte?” He sounded like the idea had just come to him. “They’re running again and there’s a French place on the New York side. We could have lunch and, you know, celebrate?”

  “The ferry?”

  “Hey, spring, cross the ice-free lake, blue sky—.”

  “A ferry experience for Big Dog?” I narrowed my eyes.

  He laughed. “No challenges today. She can stay in the car. She can take a maiden pee in New York State.”

  It was a pleasure to be a passenger on the two-lane road and not risk a wreck at the sight of the sudden spectacular view of the Adirondacks across the lake, blue in the front range, then purple, then lavender. The rolling valley a snowmelt green as we turned onto the familiar back road, passing Ten Stones Circle Road and Apple Orchard Lane with their fruit trees, horse farms, barns and fences. And on the porches and in the driveways, and out by the livestock or walking their persons: good dogs everywhere, enjoying the fine weather.

  It cheered me, to go back through Charlotte now that I had got to know the town and the country store and the people who lived here and helped the Judge. And now that I believed I knew, if not really the author, at least someone who might be the author. We passed but did not stop at The Old Red Brick Store, and I felt glad to see again the artist’s clock with the Woman in the Moon face and all the objects marking the hours which figured in the mysteries. And which now gave the time as half-past turtle.

  Curving down the steep road past the FERRY TO N.Y. STATE sign, James turned his head, looking giddy and still somewhat in shock, and said, “You have to go with me, if they come through. If I get to go meet them.”

  “Of course I will. You know I will. I want to meet them the same as you do. The only thing—I have to take Beulah to the puppy trials down in Massachusetts. You know I have to be available for that, and you know I’m going to die right on the spot, lie down flat on the ground and die, if she doesn’t make it. You know that.”

  “We can go after,” he said “If they let me come—.”

  At the water’s edge, college students lashed the ferry to the dock, and we drove on with five other cars, two vans, and a truck, plus four couples on foot. As soon as we pulled away from the shore, a wind whipping down from Canada hit us full force and the ride turned choppy. James opened his backpack and produced a sweater for me and a windbreaker for him. We checked on Beulah through the car window, then stood at the front of the ferry with the spray covering us and the wind rocking us as we headed for the state where James grew up.

  He had to lean in and raise his voice so I could hear over the motor noise. “Norma, the woman who raised me, had the whole story. She knew how Lucille had had to give me away, how she couldn’t keep me, being married to an abusive man who wasn’t my real father. Then how she married him, her lover, Owen Maarten, later. Right? Listen, Janey, do you think if they hadn’t wanted me to know someday they’d have told her? Norma? Who couldn’t do squat to earn a dime and didn’t have much interest in raising a kid? Don’t you see—they left me a trail.”

  I saw how much he so totally wanted them to be glad to hear from him and claim him, and to make amends for leaving him outside their family all these years. And my eyes stung not just from the wind blowing the churning water on my face. They had to want him; they had to.

  We drove off the ferry, up a rocky ramp, onto a neighborhood street—to discover that the French place he remembered had changed to a lakeside cafe that was called—the Vermont influence—Lakeside Cafe. Parking the car, I led Beulah to a secluded spot by a shrub near the curb and invited her to get busy. Then, deciding the cafe looked as if it would welcome her without a vest, we walked through the bright white and blue nautical interior, which had life preservers on the walls and the rocking feeling of being on floating piers, and sat with her at an outside table on the windblown deck. Putting her on the loose leash so she could stretch her legs, we each ordered a beer, and, damp and tired, left our menus unopened.

  “Here’s to—them,” James toasted, lifting his bottle, his face glassy with hope.

  “To them.” I clicked my bottle against his.

  “The last time I was in this cafe,” he said, his voice wobbly, “in the place it used to be, anyway, I was Jimmy Martin.”

  34

  MOM CALLED WITH hurt feelings, to say she hadn’t got a card, not to mention flowers, from her only daughter for Easter and her only daughter had not even asked about the annual Easter potluck lunch at First Methodist.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “It’s been—hectic. Mostly all I did the last month was get Beulah ready for her last Puppy Evaluation before the Training Trials.” I couldn’t go into the hydro-electric ordeal. I couldn’t mention anything about James’s hope that he had found real parents. And I guess it was the first time, or at least noticing it was the first, that there wasn’t much of anything at all I’d been doing that I could tell my folks about.

  “Uh, huh,” she said, not about to spend time on my dog. “Let me tell you, since you forgot to ask, about the ambrosia I fixed, as my contribution to potluck, which in some cases, I have to say, even for church people who ought to give the occasion some care, is too much luck and not enough pot. My ambrosia, as I don’t have to remind you, is a legend. I could have made twice as much and not brought home a spoon of it. Isn’t that
right, Talbot?”

  Daddy, on the other phone, agreed. “Your mother’s a legend.”

  “You get that instant pistachio pudding—which is not just on any shelf, let me tell you—the canned chunky pineapple and canned crushed pineapple, see you have different textures here, and shredded coconut, which you used to could get without sweeteners, but now you have to allow, and chopped pecans and those little marshmallows. I don’t like the colored ones. You stir in Reddi-wip, and then garnish it with maraschino cherries. I didn’t write you about that, honey, if you want the truth, on those nice water-color note cards you sent me, because I didn’t know how to spell maraschino.”

  Daddy chimed in, “Your mother is just saying that, the actual truth is she wanted to talk to our daughter, you, today. She had the blues, not hearing from you.”

  Mom admitted it. “We don’t hear from you and we don’t hear from you, and people are asking about you, and if you’re going to let Millie and the baby stay in that house that was yours, and what Curtis plans to do for you. And I have to say you haven’t shared this information with your own mother. Plus they had Danny’s christening in our very own church, now how many tongues do you think wagged over that?”

  “Mom.” Where my life was headed after Beulah went on to a blind person or didn’t, I hadn’t a clue about or even minimal interest in at this minute, with her standing by my chair, and both of us wanting to get out into the bright sun and romp about. Past that, I couldn’t get my mind around it. Maybe I’d sleep in my car or rent a room over the garage behind Curtis’s mom’s house. That would give the town something to talk about. “Mom, I don’t know.”

  Daddy coughed, to let me know he intended to get a word in. “Tell that boy of yours I enjoyed the photographs of the machines in the water-power plant. I bet they make a racket will take your head off, something that big. I put them up in the hardware on the bulletin, they’re of interest to customers. I put a little sign under them, YOUR RUN OF THE MILL TURBINES, because that’s a figure of speech, you see, but here they are doing that exact thing. I mean they used to. Run the mill.”

  “James will like hearing that,” I told him.

  “Well, sweetie, on that topic,” Mom said, “you could move that boy along a bit, somebody like that, a studious type, they need a little prod sometimes to get themselves to notice that a certain marriageable person is about to get away from them.”

  “He’s taking students abroad this summer, Mom.”

  “Well, we’ve got fall down here, remember. Tell him to come see our fall. Just because we don’t put it in the paper and call our leaves foliage.”

  35

  BEULAH AND I went to the Dog Park every afternoon now that spring had truly come. Old enough to understand that the umbilical leash meant she could frolic about with the other dogs, she made her own canine social on the newly-mowed hillside near the lakefront. Sometimes puppies came up to her, walking under her like a stepladder, the way she’d once done with bigger dogs. Today, in addition to the usual labs and shepherds, a collection of other dogs leapt in the air after their watermelon-slice Frisbees or played, as Beulah did, fetching yellow tennis balls—a wolfhound, a boxer, a Bernese Mountain Dog much like the one James had borrowed the afternoon we met, a corgi, a cairn terrier, a pair of Jack Russells. James had got an email from the woman, Lucille, that said: We would be glad to see you, James. And gave him a choice of two dates in May, both Saturdays. After getting me to promise that of course I’d go with him, that I wanted to be there when he met them, he accepted the later date—an afternoon which fell exactly a week after Beulah’s Companion Dog Trials. We could hardly talk about either event when we were together for being so anxious we were climbing out of our skins. Sometimes, we’d be walking downtown—musicians playing at both ends of Church Street, students in cutoffs and tees and headbands flocking together to celebrate the late sunset and signs of summer—holding hands, in a daze. I’d look at him and mimic somebody going nuts; he’d look at me and roll his eyes and stick out his tongue. Sometimes we leaned our foreheads together and groaned, “Uhhhhh.”

  Then, in a happy surprise, Aunt May called to say that now the warm weather had come, she wanted to make sure to see me before I left. “Janey, Kitty and I feared we would look up one day in May, and here it is in fact such a day, and find you had slipped out of town as swiftly as you slipped in. And I not too welcoming, I’m afraid, on your arrival. For various reclusive reasons, no doubt. At any rate, we do so want you to come for a last supper, please do not read anything religious in that unfortunate phrase, with us. Is this Friday too sudden for you?”

  “That would be wonderful,” I told her. “May I bring James?”

  Aunt May coughed. “I took the liberty of calling him when I could not reach you. He accepted at once and said he had news for us. I didn’t pry.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He does, but I’ll let him tell you.”

  “Certainly, you should.”

  Dressing up for Aunt May’s very welcome supper, with its prospect of good food and some much-needed talk, James trimmed his face-hair, left off his headgear, and put on his best blue-striped dress shirt, and sort-of-ironed khakis. I dug out a long cotton skirt, an old one, cut on the bias, a southern pale rose, and wore it with a pale new t-shirt, which felt festive as a ballgown after bluejeans all winter. And my clean hair rejoiced to blow about in the warm air, with nothing smashing it down. We brought a sack of fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, the stems still on. I tried to find a greengrocer in the market where I bought them, to ask him where they came from this time of year, fragrant as if fresh from the garden.

  The black locust in Aunt May’s yard had leafed out, though it did not yet have the thick white flowers which smelled like gardenias. I’d be gone when they were blooming. She had a large round iris bed in the front lawn, last seen buried in snow—purples, browns, golds, like a Japanese painting. I parked on the edge of the yard, off the street, and got out of the car with our sack of tomatoes and Beulah on her long leash. I had the idea we’d walk her down the street between the two cemeteries a bit, then let her find a spot to get busy, before closing her in the car.

  Aunt May stood on the front steps, and I stopped, leash in one hand, tomatoes in the other. I didn’t want her to think I meant to bring the dog inside. So I turned, deciding to put Beulah back in the car, just as James said, “Your aunt has a gun.” I couldn’t believe I heard him right.

  But indeed there stood Aunt May with what looked to be a pistol in her hand, pointing it at a dog. The dog—it was a Rottweiler—bending over something on the ground, pawing it. Kitty.

  I quickly pulled the leash from Beulah’s neck and told her to stay. “Don’t let her move, James. Stand with her.” Even as I spoke, I began to run across the lawn, doubling the heavy leather in my hand.

  Coming closer, I could see that Kitty must have tripped on a tree root—she lay facedown, cut peonies flung in all directions around her. The dog’s scissoring teeth tore at the shoulder of her cotton sweater as I came near. “Back,” I yelled at him. “Back, Fritz. BACK, FRITZ.” In my fear, punctuating my words by snapping the leather in the black attack dog’s face. I didn’t try to pull him off Kitty or look at her, afraid he would turn on her again. When he stopped, his small red eyes watching me, his front paws still on her, I advanced, slapping the ground in front of him with the doubled-up leash the way you saw lion trainers hit the ground with their whips to make the giant cats back up. All the while Kitty lay still, not making a whimper, not allowing herself to stir. Finally, when the dog, its panting mouth open, began to turn away and then run toward the trees at the back of the lot, I hurled the leash after him. Tearing off a sandal, I threw that at him, too.

  First I helped Kitty to her feet, locating her glasses and gathering the cut blooms, then I turned to see about Beulah. Stalwart, she stood motionless beside James, but her ears and tail were up, as if she longed to come to my side. I retrieved the leash and tossed it to him, so that he could put her
safely in the car, then walked Kitty to the front door where Aunt May stood, still holding the gun. “If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I’d have shot it,” she said, her hand steady.

  Inside, Kitty wiped her face, streaked with grass and dirt, a skinned spot on one temple, and accepted a glass of bourbon from Aunt May, who was still breathing heavily. Pulling off the torn sweater, the small woman poked at a tear in the sleeve of her light green dress, then, taking a sizeable swallow, she made a shaky smile and asked me, “However did you come up with Fritz?”

  By then James had come in and joined me on the wide sofa. I felt sick with relief that Kitty was all right, and, trying to slow my racing heart, explained, “Our dogs learn to answer to their names, that’s how you—get their attention. I thought maybe any name, just the tone of a name, would do it. I didn’t know what else to try.”

  Aunt May took my face in her cold hands. “How resourceful you were,” she said. “I should have shot it.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  “Come on, Bertie,” Kitty snapped, “put it in the story.”

  “In the story,” Aunt May raised her voice, “the hairdresser shoots the dog. And I have the job of defending her.”

  Kitty laughed and drained her glass.

  James and I stared at one another.

  “You?” he asked.

  Aunt May shrugged and sat down heavily. “You two must have guessed,” she said.

  “I thought it was Kitty. Boisvert . . . Greenwood,” I said.