One Good Dog

by Susan Wilson

  Ishmael raises an eyebrow at Adam, mouths, “Woo. Woo.”

  “At least he’s back.” Adam lifts the now-empty soup tray out of the steam table. At least he knows where Jupe is. One less disappearance to worry about.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  I was alone in the backyard, tending to my nethers, waiting, hoping that the man in the hat would come out with a treat, wondering if something interesting might be on the docket for later. Maybe a ride in the car, a walk in the park.

  “Hey, boy.”

  I stopped my ablutions to stand and appraise my visitor. It was the man who once hung around with my former mentor. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, not here and not on the street. I sniffed the air. He smelled ripe—of the street, of the untamed, free life. I drew closer.

  “Good boy.”

  Two words of their noisy language that I knew, and agreed with. He wasn’t in the yard with me but standing outside the gate. I trotted closer, anxious to meet him, breathe in more nearly that sweet scent of street. Obligingly, he opened the gate. Then he walked away.

  The gate swung itself three-quarters shut. Not enough to keep me in. I sat. I am a dog; I do not usually wrestle with the ethics of trust and obedience except as they suit me. My man has trusted that I not jump out of his car if he leaves the windows open. I trust that he will feed me, scratch my belly. That’s about as far as I go. This open gate, this invitation to walk out onto the street like a free dog was like a gift from some bountiful deity. Who was I to say no? But I sat. Waited. I have no capacity to debate right and wrong, or the moral dilemmas of faithfulness. I had never been told to stay. Neither did I have any excuse to go.

  I was waiting for a reason to push that open gate wider. And along he came, that mutt who loved to challenge me as long as he thought I was behind bars. Boy was he in for a surprise.

  Chapter Fifty

  Adam has moved in a fog all afternoon. The last time he’d felt like this was after his episode at Dynamic, the light-headed feeling, the sense that his hands are attached to his wrists by thin threads, his feet blocks of stone. Adam goes through the motions of helping Rafe, of serving lunch, of running the dishwasher, of listening to Ishmael’s chant of “You want gravy with that?” over and over, until the five words hummed in his head like the catchphrase from a B movie or the chorus to a country-western tune. You Want Gravy wi’ That? Gravy. Wi’. That? What Do You Want? Ishmael even pushes a little rhythm to the words. Sing along now. Follow the bouncing ball. Where did that come from anyway? Funny how the references faded after a generation or two but the phrases lasted forever.

  The last man has been served. The tables are nearly empty. Mike has folded up most of them, letting the stragglers bunch together at one, the other meant for the staff. Right now the smell of food is making Adam queasy. He’ll just skip it today. Get his dog and go home. Big Bob will understand; sometimes a guy just isn’t hungry. But when the others grab their plates and cutlery, Adam finds himself joining them. If he goes home, he’ll just sit and think. At least the conversation here will provide a slight distraction; maybe he can even summon up the verve to add his two cents to the inevitable discussion about the Red Sox. Anything to avoid thinking about Pascal’s report. About Veronica. About the fact that his father is still alive and living within a scarce two miles of him. All this time. All this time she’s been dead and he’s been alive. It’s not that Adam’s ever thought about the old man being dead; it’s more that he’s cast him so far out of his life that he cannot conceive that his father still exists. The pain in his sternum twinges and Adam presses a hand against it.

  Rafe drops onto the bench beside Adam. “I got some scraps for Chance. How come you didn’t bring him today?”

  “I did. He’s out back.”

  “No he ain’t.”

  Adam extricates himself from the fixed bench, banging his knee against the table, nearly kicking Rafe in the process. “Are you sure?”

  “Gate’s open, man. No dog.”

  “Fuck.” Adam starts for the back door, and suddenly Jupe is in front of him.

  “Excuse me.” Adam doesn’t want to touch the old man, but he’s desperate to get outside. “I need to get by.” Some idiot has left the gate open.

  “Now you know.” Jupe doesn’t move. “Now you know.”

  Adam has been here for three hours, and he knows that he was careful with the U-bend latch. No one is supposed to come in by the back door, Big Bob’s rule, but someone did. Or left that way. The staff are all here; he was the last one in. So which of the men slipped out, careless with the gate, careless with Chance? A panicked notion: His dog may have been on the loose for two hours by now. He could be miles away. Or dead from running in front of a car. Adam pictures Chance running, confused, dismayed. His former street dog panicked like anyone’s coddled purebred. Alone.

  There is no time to lose, and this old man is in his way. Adam tries to get past Jupe, but Jupe is determined to be in his way and nimbly blocks Adam’s route.

  “I said, now you know what it feels like.” Jupiter grins at Adam, grins and holds his Swiss Army knife at chest level, the blade extended. “Sad. Sad.”

  “Whoa. Okay, Jupe. Hold on there.” Adam hears Big Bob, feels his bulk just behind him, a bulwark against this madness. “You need to put that down.”

  It’s not a very big knife. Not a long blade, but the light touches it in such a way that it reflects a dull shine, an ancient patina, lovingly sharpened. The tip is tilted just so, like a woman’s smile. Adam steps back. Jupe follows, a pas de deux. Big Bob, Rafe, and Ishmael circle the dancers.

  “You killed my dog.”

  “No I didn’t. I just didn’t find your dog.”

  “Don’t engage him, Adam. Just hold on.” Big Bob is slowly working his way around behind Jupe. “Mike’s calling for help.”

  Jupe is more dangerous than a man who knows how to use a knife. He slashes wildly, pokes and thrusts the short blade with a jerky rhythm—up and down, from side to side. A manic sign of the cross. The sharp little blade is poking out of the handle like a serpent’s tongue.

  Adam backs away. Jupe is too fast and too erratic for Big Bob or Rafe or Ishmael to attempt to knock the knife out of his hand. The group moves as one into the middle of the dining room, until Adam feels the bench of the emptied table behind his knees.

  “Look, Charles,” Adam hopes that using the guy’s real name will shock him back into reason. “I’m sorry about your dog. I know how much he meant to you.”

  “But you tried to foist a fake on me. You didn’t know what he meant to me. You think one dog is like another. Didn’t even look like Benny.”

  “I do know what it’s like to lose someone you love. I do know. You can’t replace them. They aren’t interchangeable.”

  “You promised me.”

  “I shouldn’t have. I didn’t know it would be impossible to keep that promise.”

  Jupe is suddenly still. His flinty, pale eyes are rimmed in pink, the sclera yellowish, and they bore right into Adam’s eyes, making him think that this isn’t a man they’re dealing with at all, but a demon. There is nothing human in those eyes.

  Adam forces himself to stare into those eyes. “And now I want to go find my dog. Before it’s too late.”

  Jupe’s right hand, the one with the knife in it, begins to relax. It’s like watching the demon leave a soul as the flinty look is replaced with confusion, with a mildness. An awakening. In the distance, a police car’s siren. Adam thinks that he can ask for the knife, that the demon is gone and Jupe, the man, can be disarmed. That maybe Jupiter has returned to being Charles. Adam puts out his hand, waggles his fingers as if encouraging a small animal to come to him. “Will you give that to me?”

  Jupiter lunges.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Here I was, on my unexpected ramble, practically intoxicated with the world of street scents, enjoying my leashless freedom, and—wham—trouble. I was as naïve as a newcomer to the street life. My months
on the end of a leash had dulled my instincts for self-preservation. For too long I’d been led around, not using my own brain, relying on a human to tell me where to go and how to get there.

  After chasing off the poseur, I snuffled along the sidewalk of the neighborhood I had ended up in, a little disoriented, since I had paid no attention to landmarks while I chased the bastard off into traffic, so I was exploring what seemed to be new ground, which, I have to admit, was great fun. Until I hit on a scent that tickled the memory keys in my brain. I imaged the scent, searching for the visuals that would tell me what my nose was trying to. Cage. The filthy backyard redolent of feces. The scent of dried blood. I had somehow ended up on the street where I got my start. This was definitely not in the plan, so I raised my nose, trying to discern the scent of my neighborhood—either the one I shared with the man or the one with the backyard—from the myriad threads that make up the world. Maybe that way? Was that the scent of the coffee place he likes to sit outside? Or that way? Do I smell the street men gathering? Nothing. Nothing I could get a line on.

  I was well and truly lost. I’m dog enough to admit it. My fanciful thinking that I’d play a little hooky and be back in time for our walk home turned into being lost. Well, I may have been lost, but I wasn’t stupid. Retrace my steps. Logical, huh? But I’m a dog, a male, and one who had clearly challenged the other dogs in these neighborhoods in that I had announced myself on every post, hydrant, and rear tire. Every one of my own markers had been covered by someone else’s. And not the same someone. Eventually, I found myself right back on the same block of my former life.

  “Looky here, dawg. You b’lieve it?” Since I’d been gone, the fine distinction between potential and corruption in these almost men had disappeared, and in its place, was sheer hostility. They reeked of it. They reeked of dog, of smoke, of malice. Of pizza and beer. Of the blood on their shoes. Of their own fear, which masked itself as anger. I hadn’t realized before that they were much like the dogs in their cellar, guided by forces outside their control. Victims of their breeding.

  This time, there were four of them. The two I’d known, and two who were bigger, older, and distinctively powerful. Men.

  I snarled, snapped, spun around, not wasting my breath on sound but putting it all into action. But I was surrounded. I ducked, made for the gap between legs covered in baggy jeans. The kick hurt; I stumbled. I had never used my teeth on a human before, but I wasn’t going to go down with a whimper. But, of course, they knew how to handle a snapping dog. The last thing I remember is the quick grab of a rope around my muzzle, squeezing my jaws together, then nothing as one of them brained me with a break stick.

  I awoke in a cage, my old cage. Deep in the corners, it still bore some trace of me. My parents were gone, replaced by another breeding pair. She eyed me with dull curiosity. He growled. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t about to get into a shouting match. I was just relieved to have my mouth open, and I drank from the shallow puddle of water in the bowl in the cage. Here I was again, right back where I’d started. I wondered how soon I’d be back in the pit.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Adam holds a large, thick square of absorbent material against his face, the ER staffer having taken away the kitchen towel that Rafe had given him to stanch the bleeding. Big Bob sits beside him in the waiting area, thumbing through a dated Popular Mechanics magazine and drumming his leg with sausage fingers. Adam had fought the idea of racing to the emergency room, wanting only to get out on the street and look for Chance. Every hour that goes by, and they have been here for over two, means it will be harder to find him. How far can a dog get? By the time Bob and Rafe had convinced Adam that he was well and truly injured, he was faint from the searing pain of a short-bladed slice in his face and was willingly led to Big Bob’s car.

  Adam gingerly pulls the pad away from his cheek. Has it stopped bleeding? He turns his head to see Big Bob, and feels a fresh drizzle of blood. He’ll give them ten more minutes and then he’s going to leave, despite his blood-soaked shirt and bleeding face. He’s got to find Chance.

  “You don’t have to stay.”

  “’Course I do. You got hurt on my watch.”

  “I’m fine. You should go home.” Ten minutes, as soon as he can convince Big Bob to leave, he’ll bolt. “Really. Go.” He can see Big Bob’s temptation to get out of this depressing place, to go home, versus his good nature working against that temptation. Adam pushes. “Face wounds bleed worse than serious wounds. I’ll be all right.”

  “You have anyone to call? Anyone who can come get you?”

  “I’ll grab a cab.”

  “Adam, I’m not going to let you do that.”

  “I need to find Chance.”

  “You need to get stitched. The dog’s fine.”

  “Gina. Gina DeMarco.” Give Bob a name and then get him out of here.

  “Okay. What’s her number?” Bob, ignoring the NO CELL PHONE USE sign, pulls out his Nokia.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not a close friend?”

  A slight dizziness, as if he is standing on the roof of a tall building and looking down. “A neighbor.”

  “Listed?”

  “Try DeMarco’s A to Z Tropical Fish.”

  Bob’s massive hand fondles his cell phone and he speaks first to an automated voice, then to a real person. “Okay.”

  A nurse scowls at Big Bob and he walks outside to make the call. She then beckons Adam.

  Gina is sitting by herself in the waiting area when he comes out. Her hand goes to her own cheek in spontaneous reaction to the sight of him, face swathed in bandage and surgical tape, bloody shirt and pants. “Oh sweet Jesus, what happened?”

  “Chance is gone. He got out. I need to go look for him. Now.” Adam shoves his discharge papers into his back pocket and grabs Gina’s hand. “It’s almost dark. Can we please start looking?” Adam has inadvertently made a good choice in giving Bob Gina’s name. Of all the people he knows, she is the only one who understands his frantic desire to drive around the mean streets of Boston with half of his face numb, looking for a half-eared pit bull.

  They drive in slow squares, block by block, radiating outward from the Fort Street Center. As they drive, Adam talks. “It’s all tied together; Jupe’s attack and Chance’s disappearance are two sides of the same coin. Because I failed to find Benny. No, not my failure to find Benny. It was my lack of understanding as to how much the dog meant to the man, that one dog is not like the next. I just didn’t get it, and the poor guy has been mourning—” Adam’s voice catches with a sudden and powerful dismay.

  Gina takes her right hand off the wheel to place it over Adam’s. “We’ll find him. There are plenty of good ways to locate lost dogs. We’ll keep looking until we do.”

  As dark descends, making the search well nigh impossible, the lidocaine begins to wear off and suddenly Adam’s face feels like he is being seared with a hot poker. The pain distorts his thinking, overwhelms him, and he lets Gina take him home. As they make the corner, he prays that his brindled dog will be sitting on the steps, Lassie Come Home. There is nothing there. No dog waiting for him.

  Adam dreams of Sophie, of his hand on her face, but somehow it is he who feels the pain of the slap. He wakes. He is given only a split second before the pain and worry return.

  His face aches with the seventeen stitches that form a neat crescent from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth on the left side of his face. He knows that he is lucky. Jupe’s blade missed his eye and didn’t penetrate through his cheek. The slice is deep, but his plastic surgeon has promised that he’ll look piratical, not disfigured.

  The hollow space under his ribs aches with emptiness.

  Deep in his heart, Adam fears that Chance’s fate is going to be the same as Benny’s. His breed will be his demise. The prejudice toward his type: the automatic death sentence for animals like him in some cities. A dog can wander a long way, and he may be well away from the Animal Advocate shelter,
which has his photo and his description and his tag number. Adam deeply regrets not getting around to microchipping him. Even though there is a better than even chance that no shelter would bother to run a reader over a brindled, half-eared, scarred pit bull.

  The hollow place is filled with panic. He keeps losing those he loves. Veronica. Ariel. Now Chance. He presses on his sternum, willing the panic to subside. The panic begins to diminish. He is breathing too hard for someone sitting in a chair. He concentrates on slowing it down. He’s back where he started. Alone. The leash hanging on the door mocks him, tells him that he was soft and stupid to let emotional well-being be dependent upon the presence of a mere animal. Animals die; they disappear. Veronica disappeared. She died.

  The bolus of grief may be for Veronica; it may be for Chance. It is indistinguishable, these two losses, and he feels guilty about that. He should mourn his sister more, but it is the dog he misses. He is alone again.

  Alone with the thought that his father, his abandoning father, lives two miles away.

  Adam wasn’t even ten when he last saw the man who had turned him over to the state. The visits had winnowed down to once a year, usually in the fall, so that returning to school, usually a new school, became synonymous with being made to dress in too-short dress pants and a short-sleeved dress shirt. A tie would be clipped at his throat. A knock, or sometimes the doorbell. This last time Adam had shot up so much in the previous year that he nearly reached his father’s chin. They were almost eye-to-eye, a fact that clearly startled his father. “You’ve grown some.” Adam couldn’t read the look in his father’s face. Was it concern or pride? His father wore a gray jacket, like the kind mechanics wear. He smelled of cigarettes, his fingertips stained with nicotine; his hair was still dark, slicked back, giving him a wolfish profile.