“Come on, Mick,” she said. “It’s you and me now.”
The dog jumped into her car without hesitation. His trust overwhelmed her. She remembered her father telling her about the Judas goat—a goat kept at a slaughterhouse to trick sheep into entering the killing room.
“I won’t betray you,” she said to the dog soothingly. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed having a dog.
She thought Mick would be immense when he was fully grown. He smelled bad. He sat on his haunches in the back seat, drooling on the cushion. When large trucks passed, he jerked his head around and snapped at the window. Annie drove around the edges of the city, counting the times she saw the word “Peach.” She loved to drive. She realized she was talking excitedly to the dog about things the dog didn’t understand. She actually said to him, “Atlanta is the home of Gone with the Wind.” And “Beware of religions that have water slides”—a bumper sticker she saw.
He behaved better in the car than in the condo. He explored restlessly, then hid for two hours under the bed. He ripped up an ancient copy of Time with the ayatollah on the cover. He wolfed down anything she offered him—kibble, canned turkey, bits of fish from a frozen diet dinner. She gave him a chocolate-chip cookie, then remembered something she had read about chocolate being fatal to dogs. She wasn’t sure. Outside, Mick explored the small yard, digging under a bush and anointing the azaleas. He barked at all the cars entering and leaving the parking lot. Sometimes he seemed to be meditating, sitting upright and motionless with his eyes closed.
At midnight Annie shared a couple of boiled eggs with Mick, and they watched Bette Davis in The Great Lie. Annie wished Wes would call back. She imagined telling him Scott had drowned. Or joined the Air Force. Tumbleweeds of dog hair had drifted up against the baseboards in the hall. She wondered if Clayton Scoville was allergic to dogs. She tried to imagine the lawyer. A handsome, unattached guy rolling recklessly down the Zambezi in a bright yellow raft with a rollicking group of people—all pink-cheeked and footloose, flirting their way through the tentside gourmet meals prepared for them each evening. He was probably a jerk, she thought.
During the night she heard Mick’s toenails on the parquet of the foyer, then heard him scratching at the carpet, probably at the spot he had sniffed persistently since his arrival. His senses were so different from hers, his perceptions total mysteries to her. She could look at the dog and the moisture dotting the sponge of his nose like fresh rain and then feel a kind of pleasure she hadn’t felt since high school. In the morning she called her father with the news about the dog. “Now you’re cooking,” he said.
At work on Wednesday, Annie paid Wes a hundred and fifty dollars for the Rolling Stones tickets, even though he protested that she didn’t have to buy both of them. Actually, she intended to bill Andrew for Scott’s ticket. It was only fair, she thought.
During the evening she observed Wes’s calm efficiency while directing the waiters, checking on supplies, absently stroking the sticky ficus as he made friendly small talk with the clientele. She saw him standing by the dish station in deep conversation with Theresa, who always split for the bus stop as soon as she was off, anxious to get home to her kids. Theresa’s teenage boy had to appear in juvenile court on a shoplifting charge, and Wes listened sympathetically. Sometimes Annie thought Wes was a slick operator, and sometimes she thought he was as innocently sincere as one of those religious fanatics waiting for the Rapture—except that in his case the Rapture was the Stones concert. Which made it O.K., she thought, her heart pounding.
As they were closing up later, she impulsively invited him over to meet her dog.
“What if Scott catches us at your place?”
“He won’t,” she said.
He followed her in his car. As she drove, she was aware of his lights in the rearview mirror, as if they were spotlights exposing her life. He whistled in admiration when they entered the condo. “I didn’t know you were rich, Annie. Boy oh boy, will you marry me?”
“I couldn’t afford this place even if I get to switch to cocktailing,” she said, laughing. “It’s just temporary—a friend of a friend.”
Mick was barking. When she let him in through the kitchen, he leaped on her joyously, his nose cool against her cheek and his tail thumping the wall. But when Wes entered the kitchen, Mick backed into a corner, cowering.
“He shouldn’t do that,” Wes said, with concern.
“He’s kind of shy,” Annie explained. “He hides under the bed a lot.”
She gave Mick a scrap of steak she had brought from the restaurant, but she had to hold the molded-foam carry-out box of scraps high out of his reach. He leaped for it a couple of times. So she set it on top of the refrigerator. He circled the kitchen, his claws scraping the tile.
“He’ll control you if you don’t start training him,” Wes warned. “Giving him that scrap just encouraged his bad behavior.”
Annie bristled at Wes’s schoolteacher tone. “Well, he likes me just fine,” she said, wrapping her arms around the dog. Mick nuzzled her hand and she stroked him gently.
“He could turn out to be a fear-biter,” said Wes.
“Do you want a Coke or something?” Annie said impatiently. “I don’t have any beer and I don’t drink anything hard.”
Mick was still jumping on her, so she fed him a bowl of dry food along with the remaining steak scraps. While eating, he growled and eyed Wes. Annie put Mick outside when he had finished.
“Do you want a boiled egg?’ she asked Wes.
“No, thanks. A Coke’s fine.” Wes was studying a bookshelf.
“I always have a Coke and a boiled egg after work. I don’t know why. A habit, I guess.” She decided not to eat an egg in front of him. She scattered a bag of tortilla chips into a bowl and set it on the coffee table.
“I saw all these books about sports and thought there might be something about dogs,” Wes said.
“No. I already looked. The guy who owns this is real outdoorsy, but I don’t think he’s the type to tie himself down with a dog.”
To get Wes off the subject, Annie played a Stones tape and asked him about his family. They sat in the living room on the vast leather boomerang couch. He rotated his Coke glass on its coaster as he talked. He said, “I’m the middle child of five and the first one in my family ever to go to college. My brother’s at Auburn now. We weren’t poor, but we had to budget. Daddy works for the state, and Mama works at the J. C. Penney’s at the new mall in my hometown? They’re better off now than they ever were, but they don’t know how to take it easy.” Wes settled comfortably into the leather and crunched a handful of chips. He continued, “Mama had a pretty hard time when she was growing up. She always said they were so poor they didn’t pay attention.” He smiled and dug into the bowl again. “I never knew what she meant, but I guess it was her way of saying they didn’t have time for anything but work. When she sent me off to college, there was this look on her face, like I was going to move into another world and turn my back on her. So now, even though I work in a fancy restaurant, I call her and Daddy twice a week. I always send birthday cards and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards. I’ll never forget that look on her face.” He smiled. “It’s funny what families go through, how involved it is.”
His voice was like cotton, clean and absorbent. Annie was aware of her dog barking, of the late hour, of the bump of the bass on the song that was playing. Wes kept talking. She didn’t know what to say when he paused, signaling her turn at a confidence. She felt her way along slowly, talking vaguely about childhood feelings, her ambitions, her take on Atlanta (“like one of those World’s Fairs”). She admired the way a slight curl on his hairline didn’t want to conform to his precise, expensive-looking haircut. She heard a car pull in next door, then the storm of barking.
“Excuse me, I’d better do something.” Annie let Mick in carefully, holding his collar. Immediately, he hid behind the corner easy chair.
Wes stood up to go. “You know
, Annie, they’re saying at work that you’re a spy from corporate,” he said, facing her.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said, fumbling with the glasses and coasters. Heart in proverbial throat, she’d say to Andrew.
“I don’t know if that’s true, and I won’t ask you, but generally speaking it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a company can’t trust its own employees and has to send in outsiders to check up on them. It’s like Russia.”
“Not anymore,” she reminded him. She went on, babbling. “I know what you mean. It’s getting hard to know who to trust anymore. People everywhere saying they’re sincere, and they seem sincere, but at the same time they’re living a bold-faced lie.”
“You mean a bald-faced lie.”
“I thought it was bold-faced? Like a headline.”
Wes was yawning. He rattled his car keys in the pocket of the blue windbreaker he was wearing. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said, turning the doorknob. “Anyway, I think you need to work with that dog a lot. It’ll be a challenge.”
“I do need to learn more about dogs,” she said, yawning back at him. She wondered if yawning was contagious with dogs and decided to try it with Mick later.
After Wes had gone, Mick paced through the room, sniffing. He lifted his leg against the couch where Wes had been sitting.
“Bad dog!” Annie yelled. When she returned from the kitchen with some paper towels, she saw Mick with the lawyer’s fur-lined cap, which had somehow gotten out of the closet. She lunged at the dog, crying, “Drop that, Mick! No, Mick!”
Mick ripped an earflap from the hat. When she tried to take it from him, he growled possessively. She retrieved the cap, but he kept the earflap.
She dropped to the floor and cradled the dog’s head. “O.K., Mick,” she said. “It’s time for a heart-to-heart.”
She located Andrew on his car phone.
“What do I do now? I think I blew it.”
“Hold tight,” said Andrew. “I may fly you out pretty soon.”
“O.K. This is too confusing. I’m ready for a change.”
“Good girl.”
“What about my dog?”
“Why did you get a dog, anyway?”
“Because I wanted a dog.”
“What kind of dog?”
“A German shepherd mix.”
“Good dogs.”
“Andrew?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t say ‘good girl.’ It sounds like ‘good dog.’ ”
“Right.” He paused and she could hear a car horn on his line.
“I’ve got a car,” she said. “Do I have to fly—with the dog?”
“You could drive. Fine. Annie? I’m sorry about this. It’s not your fault. I think word got out somewhere else. But this is part of it, you see.” His voice was exuberant, punctuated with traffic sounds. “You did your job. Now we know somebody’s on the lookout. They’re nervous. Something’s going on.”
“Well, I know I didn’t let on. Maybe somebody saw me scribbling a poem on a napkin and thought I was taking notes on them.”
“Why would you write a poem?”
“Same reason I wanted a dog.”
“Funny. O.K., Annie. Get a good night’s sleep. Contact me tomorrow night after work, and we’ll decide what to do next. I’m thinking Birmingham. Either that or Little Rock.”
Annie was thinking the Riviera. Or the Zambezi. She imagined hitting the road with Mick. The dog seemed to like riding in the car, and she saw the two of them adventuring together, a team—like the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Lewis and Clark. Harry and Sally? She couldn’t remember many adventure duos, but she was sure there were plenty. She wondered if she should stay in this kind of work. Wes had thrown her. She had been trying to perform the job she was hired to do, and her parents, after all, had sent her to college so she could get a good-paying job. But they thought that majoring in hotel management meant she could start running a hotel the day after graduation.
When she let Mick outside later, he began barking immediately. She grabbed his collar and told him to stop, but he barked harder. She couldn’t get him to yawn when she did, either. He whimpered, then pawed the ground in an embarrassed way. A car horn sounded, and he slammed against the fence, barks flying out of his throat like a water pipe bursting.
Before work the next day, Annie stopped at the public library to get some books on dog care and training. Wes was right about her dog. She had a nut case for a pet. She had left Mick in the yard, barking his head off. She didn’t know how high he could leap, or what neighbor might poison him. By next week, she could be far from Atlanta. She would have to mail the books back.
She checked out half a dozen dog books—obedience, nutrition, canine history, even a guide to the sure-fire way monks train German shepherds. Later in the restroom, Annie noticed a woman standing next to a pallet she had made in the corner. She was listening to a small radio through earphones. Suddenly the woman thrust her hand into Annie’s face. Annie saw the broken nails, polished bright orange. The hand was chapped. Annie flinched.
“Got any spare change?” the woman was saying.
Annie dug into her purse and found a handful of coins. The woman dropped the money into the side pocket of a tote bag bearing an art museum logo. She was perhaps in her forties, with uncombed shaggy hair and several layers of shirts and vests. Her aqua pants, splotched with brown stains, were stuffed down into shiny red rubber boots.
“Hey, you, get offa my cloud,” the woman muttered in a thin singsong voice. “It’s all you hear. The Rolling fucking Stones will make more money in one night than my mama made in a lifetime.”
“You want a ticket?” Annie said impulsively. “I’ve got an extra ticket.” She set down her books and plunged her hand into her purse, unzipping the compartment where she had stowed the tickets.
The woman laughed sarcastically. “Well, let’s see. I don’t have anything on my social calendar, and I’m not going on a Caribbean cruise this year. I must have money to burn.”
“No, I mean, I’ll give it to you. I’m not a scalper. I’ll just give it to you.”
The woman studied the writing on the ticket, her mouth moving silently, her face expressionless.
“Just pretend you won a prize,” Annie said, backing away and leaving the restroom. Instead of waiting for the elevator, she ran down the stairway two flights to the exit, pausing to show the library books to a guard. She was confused about what she had done. By the time she reached her car, it occurred to her that the woman might just sell the ticket and buy drugs. Annie tried to imagine who might show up in the seat next to hers. It was like anticipating a blind date. It was an interesting thought—one that stopped her for a moment in the act of pointing her key at the ignition. She realized an important fact she hadn’t mentioned to Andrew. She couldn’t leave Atlanta until she had seen the Stones. And she wouldn’t. So what if he fired her.
At work Wes was painstakingly swabbing the ficus tree with cotton balls soaked in alcohol. “Every damn leaf,” he said proudly. “I came in early to do this and I’m almost finished.”
“The tree looks great,” she said, amazed that anybody would go to such lengths. Wes seemed joyful as he stood back and surveyed the gleaming tree—the life he’d saved.
“You seem nervous,” he said.
“Really? Oh, I guess I am. I guess I wasn’t prepared for the big city, after all.” She told him about the woman in the library. “I gave her my extra ticket. Scott’s not going.”
“Good for you,” Wes said as he shifted the tree back into its accustomed spot. He collected the cotton balls and wadded them into the business section of the morning paper. He wiped his hands on a napkin.
“Do you want to go eat after work?” he asked. “I know this barbecue place. It’s just a hole in the wall, but the barbecue is out of this world. They’ve got practically a whole cow on a big table. You pull the meat off with tongs and put it on a piece of refrigerator cardboard and they
weigh it. It’s your basic meat-and-slaw place, but it’s better than this wimpy French stuff we serve here.”
Annie stared at Wes. Enthusiasm was running out of him like the bubbly fountain outside, with its atmospheric lights that operated even in the daylight.
“It’s my apology,” he said. “I wasn’t too nice last night.”
“That’s O.K.”
“Let’s go eat and I won’t say a word about your dog—or your boyfriend.”
“I got some dog books,” she said. She gazed out the window at the traffic. “What in the world is refrigerator cardboard?”
Wes was giving some answer, an effusive description that she half heard, intending to store it and savor it later. People were getting off work, and the sidewalks were a blur of similarly dressed business people—shadowy, layered images interweaving like a flock of birds swirling together. Her eyes zeroed in on the only spot of brilliant color in the scene—a woman’s yellow basketball shoes, the color rising and falling, boats chopping at the gray waves.
Three-Wheeler
Checking the dirt-streaked window, Mary saw the little boys slipping around through the woods again. They were sneaking from tree to tree, hiding. Today they had their rifles with them.
She let her pottery wheel die and stomped outside. The boys were brothers, and they lived two houses down the road. Their small white house appeared to be barricaded, with its hedge of oil drums and chicken crates.
“What are you boys up to now?” she said, rubbing her clayey hands with an old dish towel. They beamed at her with calculated innocence.
“Do you need us to kill you some snakes?” the older one, Jeb, said, fixing her with a sly Humphrey Bogart gaze. He was about ten.
“No. What do you want to kill my snakes for?”
“They might get in your clubhouse,” the smaller one said. His name was Abe. He was freckled like an old blue-enameled dishpan.
Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail Page 9