Earnest

by Kristin von Kreisler

  Again and again Jeff threw, and Earnest, tirelessly eager, charged into the harbor and fetched. He wagged his tail hard enough to light up Seattle for a week. His joyful face said, Hurrah! My favorite game! I have Jeff all to myself!

  Only Anna had been able to lure Earnest from his obsessive compulsion for retrieving when she’d sat and watched him and Jeff on this very beach. Once in a while, she got up and snatched one end of Earnest’s stick. Gripping the other in his mouth, he hung on like the fish hooked in The Old Man and the Sea as Anna dragged him around, his paws skidding through the sand. His flapping ears exclaimed, Oh, wow! How great is this! He never let loose of the stick till she did.

  A pleasant memory, but to hell with her, Jeff thought as Earnest plopped the stick in front of him again. He wondered at Anna’s ability to sneak into his mind, boot him out of the present, and drag him back to the past as surely as she’d dragged Earnest around the beach. Jeff would not allow it. He shoved her out of his thoughts and threw Earnest’s stick with extra force. Earnest swam out to get it.

  After what felt like one-hundred-and-thirty-seven-thousand throws, Jeff’s arm began to tire—far sooner than Earnest’s determined legs. “What do you say, Buddy? How about a Granny Smith apple?”

  That temptation alone might not have enticed Earnest from the game. But when Jeff turned around and walked to the picnic table, Earnest responsibly followed. He dropped the stick as Jeff handed him an apple slice. Though not so gleeful about it as in the past, Earnest looked pleased about the crunch.

  “I wish we could be together every day. All I want is to make you happy.” Jeff handed him another piece. “On Monday you’re going to have to go back to Anna. You know that, don’t you?”

  Earnest munched his apple. He raised the top of his ears and cocked his head the way he did when he was listening.

  “I hate that I can’t have you with me all the time. But that’s the way it is. I couldn’t stop this horrible arrangement.”

  Earnest cocked his head to the other side. His eyes looked sad. I love you, man.

  “I love you. I want you to know that,” Jeff said.

  Earnest’s expression matched his name—serious, honorable, sincere. He looked so vulnerable that Jeff could not continue. He swallowed against the lump gathering in his throat. His heart felt like every beat took effort.

  CHAPTER 25

  With a serving spoon, Anna scraped out her pumpkin’s pulp and seeds. She emptied them on newspapers spread over her counter, around which she, Joy, and Lauren perched on stools. Tonight they were combining their monthly financial meeting and annual carving party. As house treasurer, Anna officially began:

  “Our October finances are grim. We all know our individual savings accounts to buy this house have taken a dive. But now we also have to worry about our stash for expenses. It’s down to zero. Halloween decorations wiped us out.”

  “Our whole kitty’s gone? That’s it?” Lauren’s carefully plucked eyebrows rose toward the ceiling.

  “That’s it,” Anna said.

  “What about Christmas decorations? I don’t have a whole lot of money to put in. My sales are pathetic,” Joy grumbled.

  “Your regulars will flock to you for Christmas presents,” Anna said.

  “If they don’t, I’m doomed. I’ll close,” Joy said.

  “And then what? How will you eat?” Lauren asked.

  Joy shrugged as if food were a minor matter. “I’ll finish Wild Savage Love.”

  Lauren, who had a degree in English literature, drew zigzag lines across her pumpkin’s face for future teeth. “Joy and I have been working on her plot,” she told Anna. “I keep telling her that John and Penelope have to escape before Murdon sells them into slavery.”

  “Where are they now?” Anna asked.

  “In Tunis. Murdon’s ship just landed, but they’re still in the brig. The slave market’s a block away. They can hear the moans and screams of desperate captives. Penelope is freaking out,” Joy said.

  “That’s sad,” Anna said.

  “Exactly. You’re supposed to grieve for them,” Joy said. “Slavery’s going to drag out the suspense. John and Penelope have to suffer for a while.”

  “Maybe they’ve suffered enough. How would you feel if you’d been kidnapped and locked up for months on a foul, nasty slave ship?” Anna emptied another scoop of pumpkin on the newspaper.

  “I like happy endings,” Lauren said.

  “Give John and Penelope time. After they’re sold, they’ll find each other again. Birds will tweet,” Joy said.

  Lauren stuck a paring knife into the edge of what would be a tooth. “Joy, what are you carving?”

  “Leonardo DiCaprio.”

  “How could that possibly be Leonardo DiCaprio?” Lauren asked.

  Joy turned her pumpkin around to show his eyes, nose, and sexy grin. “In case you need enlightenment, this is a goatee.” She’d drawn it and his eyebrows with a black felt-tip pen.

  “Oh, I get it.” Lauren carved another tooth. “My pumpkin’s Hannibal Lecter.” From a black tote bag, Lauren pulled out a tennis shoe and the lower third of a jeans leg stuffed with cotton. “These are going to stick out of his mouth. He’s already eaten the rest of the body.”

  “Pretty scary,” Joy said.

  “Mine’s not.” Anna, who’d been concentrating on her pumpkin, showed them the leaves and flowers she’d drawn on it. No face.

  “You don’t have your heart in it,” Lauren said.

  “Too much to worry about right now,” Anna said.

  “What besides this house and money?” Lauren asked.

  “Isn’t that enough?” Joy asked.

  “I’m worried about Earnest. Look how thin he is. His ribs are sticking out,” Anna said.

  When Earnest heard his name, he opened one eye. He cocked an ear. Clearly, he’d been eavesdropping because he rose from his lily pad and walked to the counter.

  Anna reached down and petted his shoulder. “I can get him to take a few bites of broiled chicken, but forget kibble.”

  “He’s upset. His life has changed,” Lauren said.

  As if on cue, Earnest stared at the floor like all his friends had come down with ague and keeled over dead, and he was alone. His tail sagged at half-mast. He turned despondency into an art form.

  “Maybe he’ll perk up tomorrow. He loves Halloween. He thinks every trick-or-treater has come to visit him,” Anna said.

  “Is he going to be a bumblebee again this year?” Joy asked.

  “A zebra. I wanted him to be a unicorn, but all I could afford was black paint for his stripes,” Anna said.

  When she reached down to pet Earnest again, he walked away as if he didn’t care what he was going to be disguised as. Zebra schmeebra, said his posture’s droop. He flattened back his ears and hunched his shoulders. If his heart had been a piece of paper, “bummer” would have been written on it.

  At 4:00 p.m. on Halloween, Gamble’s merchants turned the downtown into a trick-or-treater’s mecca. In front of stores, they handed out candy to passing crowds. At intersections, Rotary Club volunteers in iridescent vests directed traffic. The organist at Grace Congregational Church played spooky music that floated through the air from speakers hidden in the steeple.

  Everyone wore costumes, including dogs, who were often disguised as bats, tigers, and sharks. Anna’s economic straits had driven her to turn her last year’s princess dress and crown into a fairy godmother outfit. For a magic wand, she’d bought a dowel, and on the end she’d glued a silver star. In her pocket was fairy-dust glitter she intended to throw on children.

  At three forty-five Anna poured bags of 3 Musketeers, Mars bars, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups into black wicker baskets. As she carried them to the porch, a small pain flashed above her eyebrow. Her grueling day had caught up with her. Since breakfast, she’d had no time to sit down.

  More people than expected had wanted Halloween flowers, and she’d almost run out of ceramic pumpkin vases an
d the tiny metal spiders she stuck on gold and orange mums. Also in demand had been her “Boo Bouquet,” which included ghosts she’d stayed up making till 3:00 a.m. with four-inch squares of sheets. She’d stuffed their heads with cotton, tied white string around their necks, and stuck them from wire among roses and carnations.

  Earlier today Anna had given an extra ghost to Tommy, age ten. It was a reward for writing the October poem for Lauren’s community poetry post—about Igor, the Venus flytrap, who after the fire had replaced the unfortunate Fang.

  MY FRIEND IGOR

  by Tommy

  Igor is a plant who loves to eat.

  He catches flies to be his meat.

  His hungry jaws stay open wide

  Till a bug begins to come inside.

  Then, SNAP! Igor has caught his lunch.

  The bug is now a tasty crunch.

  On the porch, Anna handed Lauren and Joy their candy baskets. Lauren had turned her little black cocktail dress into a witch’s costume, applied black lipstick and nail polish, and put on a pointed hat that made her a scary seven feet tall. Joy wore a sexy gypsy outfit—a low-cut peasant blouse with a tiered skirt, and a gold scarf, knotted above her left ear.

  Earnest seemed to have decided to be a misanthropic zebra. He clumped to the corner next to the front door and lay down under long cobweb wisps and man-sized ghosts, which hung from the beadboard ceiling. He ignored children streaming down the sidewalk: three girls disguised as bottles of mayo, mustard, and ketchup. A boy dressed as a mouse with his mother, a cat. A jellyfish carrying a clear plastic umbrella from which hung Saran Wrap strips for tentacles. A flock of angels left over from Christmas pageants.

  Tommy arrived as an orange felt traffic cone, and Sam, his golden retriever, wore a George Washington wig that his mother had found in Gamble Playhouse’s costume bin.

  “Earnest, come here,” Anna called. “It’s your best friend, Tommy. Say hello.”

  Usually, Earnest bounded over and licked Tommy’s face, but tonight he struggled to his feet as if lying on the porch had exhausted him. He plodded over to Tommy, whose face he couldn’t lick anyway because it was mostly hidden behind orange felt.

  “Is he sick?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t think so. But lately he’s not been himself,” Anna said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll visit him tomorrow.”

  “You do that. He’d like it.” As Tommy turned to leave, Anna waved her magic wand and tossed fairy dust on him. “Any particular wish?”

  “That Earnest would feel better,” Tommy said.

  Wrenching words. From the mouths of babes. “That’s my wish too.”

  As Tommy made his way back down the crowded sidewalk to Rainier, Anna glanced across the street. In front of Sawyer’s Restaurant, Jeff was hurrying along in a parka and blue muffler, his eyes as straight ahead as a Marine’s in parade formation. Doubtless, Jeff had just arrived from work and was headed to his apartment. Also doubtless, he intended to avoid Anna—because he looked like his neck might break if he turned his head.

  Tonight’s Jeff contrasted sharply to the Jeff she’d loved last Halloween. With relish, he had thrown himself into haunting the house and scaring the children. He’d cut out cardboard gravestones, painted “RIP” on them, and lined them up in the front yard. On the porch he placed coffins he’d made out of wooden crates from Hall’s Imports down the street. Jeff recorded scary noises and screwed colored lightbulbs into upstairs lamps. From a Seattle party store, he rented a fog machine.

  When the big night came, thanks to Jeff, red and orange lightning flashed in upstairs rooms, and wails and screeches pierced the dark. Fog billowed out the windows and front door. Occasionally, Jeff leaned from a window above the porch, shone a flashlight under his chin, and laughed, “Heh-Heh-Heh!” Then he dangled a plastic skeleton by the neck a nd cackled like a deranged chicken. He shrieked and rattled his Honda’s snow chains. Some of the kids had been too afraid to come to the porch, so Lauren had handed out candy on the street by her community poetry post.

  The memory of that happy night warmed Anna. But the warmth lasted only a moment before the mediation’s fight over Earnest invaded her mind. For the last ten days she’d brooded about Jeff ’s aggression, his unfair usurping of her dog.

  Anna quickly stepped in front of Earnest to block his view. If he saw Jeff, he’d dash across the street to him, and she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing Earnest missed him.

  Anna patted Earnest’s stripes. “Good boy. Good zebra.”

  Pain flashed again above her eyebrow.

  CHAPTER 26

  With the latest Gamble Crier, Jeff fanned the broiling steak’s aroma toward Earnest, who was sprawled on his side across from the oven door.

  “Sniff, Earnest, sniff. How good can it get?” Fan, fan.

  The smell wafted straight toward his nose, which Jeff wanted to quiver with excitement. But Earnest’s nose stayed resting on the floor like a wet coal lump rescued from a snowman’s eye.

  “This steak is for you, Earnest. The whole thing. You don’t have to share a bite.” Jeff fanned again. “I’ve seen you lunge after a measly sliver, and now you’ll have twelve ounces! You like steak better than cheese!”

  Jeff might as well have been hawking Styrofoam. Earnest did not raise his head. His listless gaze explained his position: I am not hungry. I have important moping to do. To emphasize that point, he moaned, a discouraged rumble from deep inside his chest.

  Jeff also felt discouraged. “Okay. Maybe you’ll feel better about it when it’s in your bowl.”

  He broiled the steak to medium rare, which was supposed to extract from Earnest whines and anticipatory leaps around the kitchen. But in disappointing silence, Jeff cut the meat into tempting bite-sized pieces, set them on a plate, and put them into Mr. Ripley’s refrigerator, where duct tape held up shelves inside the door. While waiting for the steak to cool, Jeff opened the Gamble Crier he’d been fanning and reread an op-ed piece he’d skimmed in Thrifty Market an hour before. The editor’s sentiment wasn’t any better the second time. “What a misguided jerk,” Jeff mumbled to himself.

  Now that Grabowski had put his sign in front of Mrs. Blackmore’s house, Cedar Place’s permit applications were public knowledge. And biased, provincial Gamble citizens, such as the editor, were already sniping at the project. The town did not need a big commercial building, said his op-ed piece, and more would surely follow. “Developers are only out for profit. Next thing we know they’ll want to build a Walmart here. We can’t sit back and let them ruin our small town,” he said.

  The narrow-minded editor would lead the charge against Cedar Place. He’d print readers’ letters against the project and toss those in favor into his trash. Opposition loomed, and it unsettled Jeff. It was another thing he couldn’t control, like the Gamble permit process and Lincoln Purcell’s mediation.

  To hell with it. He folded the Crier into a lopsided square. Intending to deposit it on his closet’s newspaper pile, he walked into his hot-pink living room and, as usual, shuddered at the damned color. As he passed his oak drafting table, so out of place in the pink brothel he called home, his eyes went to the right front leg.

  A foot from the floor was a ring of chewed wood, wet with saliva. Splinters, like bits of toothpicks, were scattered on the rug. The leg looked like a beaver had been gnawing it for dam purposes but had not yet finished the job.

  There was only one beaver-like animal in the apartment, and he was in the kitchen. He’d assaulted the leg when Jeff had left him for fifteen minutes to buy his steak. Earnest had struck at lightning speed, then innocently settled on his kitchen bed as if he’d never heard of a drafting table. He must be protesting something. Or mad at Jeff. Or scared to be left alone in the apartment. What is wrong with him?!

  Separation anxiety, that’s what.

  Earnest’s sensitivity had gotten the best of him. Once a stable, secure companion, he’d bec
ome erratic and temperamental. He’d given in to neurosis and acted out his fears. Maybe he was afraid of being abandoned again, or maybe sudden change had upset him. As Jeff and Anna’s former family rock, he was unused to being handed back and forth. Jeff could not be mad at him. Anna was the one to blame.

  Damn. When will this mess end?

  Jeff tossed the Gamble Crier on Mr. Ripley’s red-and-brown plaid sofa and went back to the kitchen. Earnest did not look at Jeff or raise his head. He did not seem inclined to apologize for his destructive act, either. He might not even have remembered it now that he was busy attending to gloom.

  Unsure what to do for him, Jeff turned to the steak. “Okay, Earnest. You ready for some rapture?”

  He took the steak out of the refrigerator and felt the pieces, warm enough to be delicious, but not too hot for Earnest’s mouth. Jeff poured them into Earnest’s white ceramic bowl and set it in front of him, like he was King Farouk, who ate a hundred oysters in one sitting.

  “Service with a smile. You don’t have to stand up to eat!” Jeff said. “I’ve heard of starving dogs in Afghanistan who’d kill for one bite of steak, and you’ve got at least fifteen here.”

  With all his heart, Jeff wanted Earnest to be a gleeful glutton again. Jeff wanted Earnest to dive at the bowl, gulp down the steak, and look up at him with Oliver Twist’s entreating eyes, begging, Please, sir, I want some more. Jeff wanted Earnest to get back to his old self.

  Earnest rolled over to his sphinx position. At first he looked at the steak as if it were a personal affront, but then the smell coaxed him into nibbling pieces. But he did not inhale them, as Jeff had hoped. Nor did he finish the feast. You can’t make me happy with food, said his chin as he set it on his front paws to mark the end of dinner.

  “Do you eat at Anna’s? Are you only sad with me? Would you rather be with her?” Jeff asked. Or was Earnest an equal opportunity dog who spread the worry around to both of them? Jeff would talk with her about it—if they were speaking to each other. Tonight was the first time since Mad Dog’s letter that he wished they were.