by Pete Nelson
PaulGus: Maybe it’s too soon to be trying this. I can keep going but I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to do. Why don’t we just give it a rest for a while?
PaulGus: Okay then.
He shut the computer off.
In the fifties horror movie, there’d be a good scientist gesticulating thoughtfully with his pipe as he pondered the big questions, and maybe a comely female research assistant in a white lab coat who carried a purse, even on the surface of Mars, and of course a team of army generals who wanted to drop an atom bomb on the brain in the bell jar, when the tap of a small hammer would suffice. Paul felt alone.
He hoped no one was expecting too much from him.
9
Darwin Schmarwin
This magazine article,” Paul said, looking up from his research on Nature for Morons, “says that dogs don’t know why they bark.”
“Says who?” Stella asked, looking up from where she lay by the radiator.
“Says this dog-evolution expert from Hampshire College,” Paul said. “He’s like the world’s leading expert on canid behavior and he says that dogs just bark.”
“That could be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Stella said. “When someone’s at the door and I go to the door to bark, what does he think I’m saying?”
“Well, I know, but — ”
“When my bowl is empty and I’m standing at my bowl, barking, does he think I’m standing there asking for a weather report?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Paul said. “Let me finish reading this.”
Outside, a clap of thunder shook the sky. Stella did not like the sound of it, not at all. She’d heard of too many dogs who’d been struck by lightning, some of them lying in their own beds, indoors. It could travel down telephone lines and television cables and leap out at you and burn you. Some thunderclaps, she’d heard, were so strong that the sound alone could knock your house down. Some of what she’d heard was exaggerated, sure, but there was simply too much anecdotal evidence to discount it all. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t like thunder.
“It says here,” Paul read, trying to distract her, “that they compared the DNA of wolves and dogs and that the difference was a single haplotype, meaning that you and wolves are virtually identical, genetically.”
But Stella wasn’t listening — lightning lit the room. She silently counted, “One-a-Snausage, two-a-Snausage, three-a-Snausage …” When the thunder came, it came as a steady rumble that rattled her to the core. She looked at Paul but knew that there was nothing he could do about it. She tried to slow her breathing.
“You wanna come up on the couch?” Paul offered. “Come on up.”
She pushed her front end up and then paused, waiting for the feeling to come around in her hindquarters. Her front end was still strong enough that if she walked herself forward, the hind part usually followed. She placed a paw on the couch cushion and waited. Paul reached over and lifted her up onto the couch. She laid her head against his thigh. He tickled the skin on her belly. For a moment she forgot about the storm raging outside.
“This is really interesting,” Paul said, reading on. “This guy says that working dogs, breeds that either herd or guard sheep, are the most highly evolved of all the dog breeds. ‘Indeed, it is useful to understand the behavior of adult dogs in terms of wolf pup behavior.’ It’s called paedomorphism — ”
“Huh?” she said.
“— ‘Meaning the adult of one species retains the juvenile characteristics of another,’ ” he read. “ ‘The adult dog barks, just as the wolf pup barks, but adult wolves don’t bark. Wolf pups, like adult dogs, will stay put in one place and wait to be fed, whereas adult wolves will do neither. Pups, like dogs, have the ability to bond with other species, a behavior adult wolves quickly outgrow, relating upon maturation only to conspecifics, one reason they tend to make poor house pets even when they’re supposedly tame.’ So when a border collie herds sheep, it says here, it will perform behaviors instinctively, doing things that are hardwired into its brain, because they’re the same behaviors that wolves use to stalk and kill deer or elk. It’s like dogs have been given incomplete genetic wolf instructions, because if they had the whole set of instructions, they’d kill and eat the sheep.”
“Well, look,” Stella said, lifting her leg when Paul scratched a particularly sensitive spot. “I’m sure this professor is a smart guy and all that, and he probably means well, but don’t you find what he’s saying to be just a bit … lobocentric?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it’s always wolf this and wolf that,” she said. “Comparing us to wolves. I get tired of it. It’s ludicrous.”
“How is it ludicrous?” Paul asked. “Wolves live in more complex societies than dogs do. Wolves fend for themselves in the wild. They can hunt down and kill an elk. Could you do that?”
“Why would I want to?”
“But could you?”
“You’re missing the point, Paul,” Stella said. “I don’t have to. The answer is literally under your nose and you can’t even see it.”
“Meaning what?”
“Just that the implication is that dogs couldn’t cut it as wolves. Like we’re too stupid to hunt down elk or deer or whatever, like we’re failed wolves.”
“More or less,” Paul said.
“Maybe I don’t understand it,” Stella said, “but when you explained evolution to me, you said the fittest individuals breed more successfully than less fit individuals.”
“Right.”
“So whoever is fittest has the highest population.”
“Correct.”
“Well, then,” Stella said, “how many wolves would you say there are alive in the world today? Ballpark figure.”
“The article says a hundred fifty thousand.”
“Good,” she said. “It’s a hundred fifty thousand. Now, how many dogs are there? In the whole world, how many? How many just in this country, how many dogs?”
“Well,” Paul said, “I’m not sure.”
“Sixty million, in this country alone,” Stella said. “So if there are, globally, say a hundred million dogs, a low estimate, and a hundred fifty thousand wolves, then who wins? Who’s the fittest? Who’s the most highly evolved? According to Darwin’s own definition?”
“Dogs.”
“I rest my case,” she said. “What’s it doing outside right now? It’s raining. And where are the wolves? Out there in the rain. And where am I? In here, on the couch, warm and dry. I have food in my dish. I don’t have to spend any of my time wondering where the next meal is coming from. So am I a failed wolf, or is a wolf a failed dog?”
“Well …”
“There’s really no comparison. They’re big and mean and they eat deer. Not impressed.”
Just then a brilliant flash of lightning lit the sky, the brightest so far. He covered Stella’s ears with his hands, but the thunder followed immediately, a colossal, booming explosion that rocked the house to its very foundation, followed by several aftershocks, and it didn’t matter that Paul’s hands blocked some of the sound, because Stella felt the percussion in her very bones and perceived the sudden drop in air pressure following the thunder as a kind of suffocating vacuum. Her heart raced. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“God, I don’t like this, Paul, please,” she said, “I can’t take much more of this, I really can’t …”
Then another flash, and an even louder thunderclap.
“There, there,” Paul said, stroking and soothing his dog as best he could. “It’s okay. It’s all right. It’s all over now. Just calm down …”
“Easy for you to say ‘calm down,’ ” she said.
“Everything is okay,” he said, scratching her behind the ears and on the soft part of her belly. It felt to him as if she’d lost another pound or two. “I think you have one or two wolf genes left, or you wouldn’t be afraid of thunder. Remember what you were just saying? You live indoors. You don’t have
to be afraid of thunder.”
“That’s true, but thirty thousand years ago when we moved indoors with you, you were still living in caves. Caves can’t catch fire. Houses burn down all the time.”
10
Virtual Canoe Trip
He was sore after the first time he ran, but the second time was easier than the first, and the third time was easier than the second. His goal was to run fifteen miles a week. His unspoken goal was to beat his brother in a race … someday. To keep track of his mileage, he ran on the Smith College Tartan Track, which was easier on his legs than running in the street. He made the foolish mistake, one day, of trying to time himself in a hundred-yard dash, a race he’d run in 10.5 seconds in high school. Allowing for age, atrophy, and disuse, he told himself he’d be satisfied if he could run it in under 20 seconds now. He tried to convince himself that his watch had somehow malfunctioned when he clocked himself at an appalling 38 seconds — either that or a hundred yards was longer than it used to be.
HOWEVER MUCH HIS muscles ached, he thought of his father and reminded himself that he was lucky he could move at all. Beverly had sent Paul an old photograph of himself and his father, taken after the two of them had finished a game of catch, the shadows of daylight savings time long at twilight, their faces painted orange by the fading sun’s holy light, the two of them wearing matching Twins caps they’d bought at Metropolitan Stadium. Paul was struck by how young his father was in the picture, his strong shoulders and broad chest. If Harrold had ever had a moment of self-doubt in his life, Paul was unaware of it. Looking at the picture, Paul tried to put himself in his father’s shoes. He couldn’t.
He decided, one day after a run, to try again with his father. He’d hoped for immediate results, instant gratification, but perhaps it would be more a marathon than a sprint. He’d seen Karen in a restaurant earlier, having lunch with her sister and her sister’s kids, Molly and Kevin. The encounter had left him depressed. It was one thing to have an ex-wife; it was another to have ex-nieces and ex-nephews. Nobody’d warned him about that. He used to play Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land with them on the rug. Now they were strangers, or he was. He couldn’t even say hello and left quickly before they saw him. It was more weird than tragic. If he couldn’t alter his own sorry state, maybe he could alter somebody else’s.
PaulGus: Good morning. Or I guess I should say good afternoon. Are you ready to try to have a little conversation?
PaulGus: Just use the mouse to click Yes or No when I ask you a question.
PaulGus: Are you ready?
He needed to be patient. He was wary of saying anything too challenging.
PaulGus: I was watching a game between the Twins and the Red Sox the other day on ESPN. Did you see it?
PaulGus: They did a story on Harmon Killebrew. Apparently he’s flat broke. That’s sad, don’t you think?
PaulGus: Killebrew had over 8,000 career at bats and not one bunt. I always liked that about him. No matter what the situation, he had the green light to swing for the fences. Did you like that about him too?
PaulGus: Wonder if that has anything to do with why he’s broke. You remember Harmon Killebrew, right?
He was of the theory that men invented sports to give them something to talk about other than their feelings. Women played sports, sure, but had they ever invented one? No need. He couldn’t think of anything more likely to draw his father out. He pictured Harrold lying in bed, staring blankly at the computer screen. Was he confused? Scared? Angry? When Paul put himself in Harrold’s shoes and tried to imagine what Harrold might be feeling, his best guess was that Harrold felt utterly and absolutely useless. “Useless” was not something Harrold was familiar with. Paul was aware that perhaps he was projecting his own interpretation. “Useless” was exactly how Paul had felt after his divorce. Worthless and of no value to anyone.
He allowed that perhaps he’d been using the wrong approach. The speech therapist had told Paul he should feel free to challenge his father and push him a little bit. He considered taking a more aggressive position, but how? Hectoring was out, ditto badgering, cajoling, or scolding. There was always whining, but that was hard to do online.
PaulGus: Look — let me just be honest. Maybe you think that you don’t need this, but I need this. I really need to talk to you. You could just sit there and not respond, but I need you to meet me halfway. I’m sorry if you find this difficult or confusing, but you really have to try. People need you to come back. Not just me. Your family needs you. Your wife needs you.
PaulGus: I know it’s hard. You can make mistakes. I just need you to try. Okay? Are you ready?
There was a long pause. Paul waited.
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: Excellent! Thank you. That’s good. I’m guessing you must be feeling a bit lost.
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: I wouldn’t presume to know how you feel, but I do know what it’s like to feel lost. In my marriage, for instance. Take my ex-wife, please. That’s a joke.
HarrGus: YES
He felt oddly confessional. Why not? What was there to lose? The fact was, he’d always wanted to talk to his father about his failed marriage, not that there was anything anybody could have done. When he’d told his parents divorce was looming, they hadn’t asked any questions, avoiding a touchy subject, no doubt. Paul had wondered how much they would understand anyway. His parents never fought about anything, though that didn’t mean they agreed all the time. His mother held her opinions close and was infinitely amenable. It was a similar capacity for selflessness that had attracted him to Karen, her readiness to put others first. In the marriage, that “selflessness” evolved into an implacable resentfulness, an anger traceable (he’d theorized) to her position in her family birth order, the youngest of eight kids. Karen said she felt secondary, unimportant, convinced that his career meant more to him than she did, as did his friends, television, drinking, baseball, doughnuts, fishing … “I don’t rank you — you do that to yourself,” he’d argued. How could someone not believe you loved them, when all you knew, in your own heart, maybe the only thing you were truly clear on, was that you loved them? More to the point, how could you argue somebody into loving you? It didn’t work that way.
PaulGus: Sometimes I think women accuse men of being unable to talk about our feelings when we say things they don’t want to hear. Suddenly we “just don’t understand.” I used to think, “Hey, I understand perfectly — I just don’t agree with you.”
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: I don’t think I ever saw Karen disagree with her female friends about ANYTHING. Seriously. So if you disagree, you must not be listening because obviously, if I heard what she said, I’d agree with her. What sense does that make? None whatsoever.
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: Or she’d be clearly angry and sulking and when I’d say, “Is something bothering you?” she’d say, “No.” Or she’d shut down and not say anything, and I’d ask her if she was all right and she’d say she was, but I knew she wasn’t. What am I supposed to do? Respect the walls she put up, or break through them? It’s so confusing. You can’t listen to or agree with a mixed message. You’re just screwed.
HarrGus: YES
It wasn’t exactly a conversation, more like venting to a captive audience. He’d worked as a bartender back in graduate school and had witnessed men pissing and moaning about women and marriage. It didn’t seem like too much to ask, even though men of Paul’s father’s generation weren’t expected to be expressive about their emotions. You didn’t talk about hardships or problems, because talking wasn’t going to change anything and just kept things alive that needed to go away.
PaulGus: I wish I could hear your thoughts. You’re one of the smartest people I know. Too bad we can’t sit around a campfire and pass a bottle of Jack Daniel’s back and forth. I always thought it would be fun to go camping one more time.
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: Do you remember when we went to Indian Guides?
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: Your name was Big Bear and my name was Little Bear. Am I remembering that right?
HarrGus: YES.
PaulGus: It was so politically incorrect. Just short of putting on minstrel shows. I don’t imagine Native American fathers and sons ever gave themselves white Anglo-Saxon Protestant names and pretended they were living in the suburbs.
HarrGus: NO
Paul’s intention was to make his father laugh. Yet he realized he was using humor to veer away from the very intimacy he was seeking, a bad habit Karen had pointed out to him on several occasions. “See?” he thought. “Was too listening.”
PaulGus: I can’t imagine how confusing it must be for you. Do you understand you’ve had a stroke?
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: I know this is hard for you. I really appreciate that you’re trying. Actually, I’m in a piss-poor mood right now. The woman I’ve been seeing is going out with another guy tonight and I’m home alone. Bummer, eh?
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: Not that I have any right to complain. My problems don’t begin to compare with yours.
PaulGus: I hope this gets easier and easier for you. There are still people who need you. I need you. I need to be able to talk to you. I’ve wanted to tell you that all my life.
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: I wish I could just call you.
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: So how about them Twins? Won’t be the same without Kirby Puckett, will they?
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: All right, then. Ursa Minor, logging off.
11
Forward or Back?
On the first truly warm day of spring, a bright, clear Saturday morning, Paul went for his longest run so far, over three miles, out past the community garden on the edge of town on Burts Pit Road, which everybody called Bird Spit Road. He was hoping to dispel his bad mood. He’d invited Tamsen up for the weekend, only to learn she was flying to Nantucket with Stephen to celebrate his divorce’s becoming final. Paul wanted to tell her how lousy that made him feel, though being unpleasant would only push her farther away — you don’t get love by acting unlovable. She’d apologized and invited him to visit her the following weekend, and he’d said yes, but it was hard not to think of her and Stephen, feeding each other clam chowder by candlelight.