“They’re doing no such thing,” Rum said again around the gob of chewing gum in her mouth. “No one would put a dog in outer space, for crying out loud. What good’s a dog gonna be up there? Not like they can do experiments—”
“You aren’t listening to me, Rum. They can be experiments,” Trudy said. Her own gum sounded like a sharp gunshot as she chewed the air out of a bubble. “They’re going to see what happens to the dog, right? Next step, probably people. In space.” She lifted her hands into the gloomy air and wriggled her fingers, the silent explosion of a billion rockets. While provoking the others seemed like a thing that gave Trudy glee, there was more to it than that. I had seen the way she blushed when Norma looked at her. It was the same way Audrey blushed when Joel looked her way.
“God wouldn’t like a dog in space,” Norma muttered as she came up alongside me, like there was comfort in being closer. She jabbed her hands into her coat pockets like they were faces and she was punching them in. “If dogs were meant to go to space, they would already be there. God put them on the ground for a reason. Just like we’re on the ground. A reason.”
Rum’s shoulders bowed a little. Then, she turned around and walked backward, eyes on me all the while like I was the only known spot on a map. Her face was round and trusting, a cherub, dark hair hanging in glossy ringlets against her cheeks. “Lu, you tell me, they wouldn’t put a dog in space ... would they?”
Rum was a year younger than us, thirteen. She claimed she was a runaway from the Amish in Lancaster and while we weren’t sure how possible it was—we had never seen any black Amish—we couldn’t disprove it, and Norma had tried three times. I alone knew her name wasn’t Rum—it was Hannah Fisher, a thing she’d sworn me to silence about.
Rum didn’t have family anywhere local, that was for sure. She had lived at the children’s home with the nuns for a good bit now, but the world remained exceedingly strange for her; everything was horribly possible all at once because she didn’t know any better. Maybe shooting dogs into space was a thing.
I was the one she asked; even above the sisters at the school, she trusted my word, even though I was a writer, and skilled at making things up. Especially stories where people, dogs, and insects went into space on ships named Presley and Haley, and loved it there.
“They’re Russians, Rum,” I said. “No telling what they’d do.” I pictured my sister sitting with her unlit cigarette, remembered the flutter of her pulse in her throat as she sat and stared into the night. Joel wasn’t supposed to ...
Rum’s gaze swung back to Trudy. Waiting. Trudy nodded and stopped walking, to shift her pack into her hands where she could unzip it. Inside were crammed magazines, their paper and ink scent sharply filling the evening air. We each stopped in our tracks to wonder at what was in there. I felt some things would be certain: magazine covers of Elvis, newspaper clippings about Paul Anka, her transistor radio that she likely smuggled out.
“Sunday morning, going to shoot her straight into the stars,” Trudy said. “See here.” She might have been a librarian with the ease her fingers found across the magazine spines and edges, to pluck a rumpled newspaper free. Mars Bars wrappers crinkled in its wake.
Rum’s hand shot out to take the newspaper. Such things were still small miracles to her, she who claimed to have run away from her folks because she refused to be married. I supposed if people could catapult a dog into space, other people could try to marry off their child of a daughter. Amish were much like Russians in my head; as alien as the creatures I spent hours writing about.
The story about the dog was made suddenly worse with the unfurling of the newspaper. The dog had a name, an image, a set of bright eyes that one could get lost in. I refused to look overly long at the grainy image, but Rum couldn’t look away.
“Laika,” Rum read. “She was a stray!” Her eyes shot up to Trudy who only nodded again, justifiably smug now that she had produced newsprint evidence. Rum scoured the article, assuring us she would read only the germane bits, which seemed to be every word on the page. They were launching the dog into space on Sunday, to study the effects of space on a living creature.
Rum’s shoulders sank and she started to walk, eyes still riveted to the paper. I elbowed Trudy as she zipped her bag shut, but it was Norma’s voice that filled the long silence with reprimands as Rum walked away.
“Just a stray—still a creature of God, like Rum if you think about it long enough. Runaway, stray, not much different. What do they think’s going to happen to it? The dog, not Rum.”
“Nobody knows,” Trudy said, and they both fell back into step behind Rum. “That’s the point.”
I followed, but slower, because my mind was coming up with all sorts of things that could happen to that poor dog. Asphyxiation. Alien abduction. Rocket could fall into the moon or back into the ocean, gravity depending. Rocket could fall apart before it even left the launch pad and what of the dog then? Mostly, I wondered if we Americans would try to shoot the rocket down, thinking it was a bomb, thinking that we were going to blow them up before they could blow us up.
We walked in silence until Norma started singing “Sandman.” “Bum, bum, bum ...”
One by one, we chimed in. It was a song we practiced for no good reason—"because we could” didn’t seem to please our parents enough. They found us silly as we tried to harmonize the way the Chordettes did, but mostly we didn’t care. Singing to the mythical Sandman brought its own rewards, even if the lyrics were ridiculous. Trudy refused to sing beyond providing the “yeees?” when the Sandman finally appeared; said it was degrading to dream only of a man, which made Rum kick it up even higher.
“And lots of wavy hair like Lib-er-ace!” Rum fairly hollered as we walked ever toward the still-distant bridge in the growing dark.
The dog came out of nowhere. It was like the darkness peeled a part of itself away and lunged for Rum. Later, Trudy would say the dog didn’t want her singing, either, but mostly I think it was on account of her being loud and small, seemingly easy prey, but for we who closed in (after a good stretch of mindless shrieking, make no mistake).
Rum was on the ground before I knew what had happened, Trudy and Norma leaping back, stumbling into trees and each other. I stopped altogether, staring at the twist of dark forms in the growing dark of the woods. I couldn’t tell Rum from the animal at first, didn’t even know it was a dog until I swung my bag and caught it in the nose. It reeled back with a whine and I grabbed Rum by the arm, pulling her out of biting distance.
She was so still and quiet, especially in the wake of Trudy and Norma screaming at the dog. They chased it into the trees and I hauled Rum into my lap, trying to ignore the way my thighs shook, the way my hands were covered in blood from where Rum had been bitten.
"Ohjesusohjesusohjeeeesuss."
Rum was not given to prayer, despite being roped into a covenant school, nor was I. Oh, we all went to church every Sunday, and sat proper and listened to words that were supposed to encourage thought and reflection, but mostly we wanted to be tromping through the woods, setting up forts, brushing out each other’s hair, making firm denials that any of us were growing up ever. We were not curving in new places, we were not asking our mothers to buy us bras or feminine hygiene products and the world was still one long, continual summer afternoon where anything but these strange things was possible.
“Get your coat off,” I said and my voice was strangely thick, like I had been crying and yelling and I wouldn’t admit to either.
I helped peel Rum’s coat off to see the blood well up from her forearm. “Jesus Christ,” I bit out.
The screams in the woods grew more distant, the crash of undergrowth and fallen branches and who knew what else. I reached for my bag, the zipper hard to work with bloodied fingers, but eventually got it open. I grabbed the first thing I came to, rolled knee socks, white, splattered with purple polka dots. They were my favorite, a birthday gift from Audrey. I unbundled them and tied each one tight around Rum’s a
rm, paying no mind to the way she hollered.
“We are going back,” I said, and made to move away, to get her coat and my bag, but Rum caught me before I could do anything.
“We are not.”
I could picture a hundred things going wrong with Rum’s arm. It could get infected. It could bleed itself dry and wither right off at her elbow and when it dropped off, the dog that bit her would be there to pick it up in its awful maw and carry it away for dinner, for a toy, for a trophy.
“Makes no sense going back,” Rum said. “Just like it makes no sense to shoot a dog into the moon. Into space. Wherever she’s going.” Her voice dropped low and her fingers uncurled from my arm. “We’re not going back. Wrap my nightgown around my arm. Put my coat back on. They don’t need to know. I need to go.”
They would know, I thought, but I opened Rum’s bag, found her nightgown (butter yellow with a tiny pink ribbon rose at the neckline), and wrapped it around my socks which already bound her arm. We stuffed her into her coat with grunts and groans and by the time Trudy and Norma came back, breathless and sweaty, we had washed ourselves clean with the water from Rum’s canteen.
“Don’t know where it went,” Norma said. She bent over, hands on knees as she tried to breathe.
“Away is good enough,” Trudy said. She glanced at the sky, then back down to Rum. She laughed. “Maybe Laika’s spirit crawled into that dog, came to tell you she wants to go, huh?”
“Spirits don’t work that way—dogs don’t even have souls. Spirits certainly don’t crawl, what do they tell you in that church of yours,” Norma began, but Rum cut her off with a “bum, bum, bum, Mr. Sandman!”
Norma threw her hands up and stalked into the woods, back on the path we’d been keeping to as if there had never been a dog, a chase. Trudy hefted her own pack and gave me a wide smile before following her. I gave the still-singing Rum a hand up from the ground and we followed.
“German shepherd?” Norma asked once the singing had settled down, and the dark rose more firmly above us. We would have to stop soon. “Bloodhound? It was big. Smelled bad. Like it had been out here a long time. Saint Bernard?”
I hadn’t noticed any smell, but I hoped the dog hadn’t been sick. It was too easy to picture Rum getting sick, turning green or purple or some other hideous color as her body began to rot. Maybe she would turn into a dog and then there’d be no hiding it.
Behind us, I heard a sound like a dog walking through leaves. Crunch, crunch, pause, crunch, snuffle. I looked back, but it was too dark to see anything. I rooted in my bag until I came up with my flashlight, then shone it on the path behind us.
“What’s there?” Rum asked.
I had turned to walk backwards, still shining my light behind us. “Nothing,” I said, just as my light skimmed past a pair of eyes that lit up like small, exploding suns.
We screamed.
This only set the dog off, digging paws into the earth to charge us. God, it was huge. I wanted to brain it with my flashlight, but kept hold of it against all instincts shrieking otherwise. The light bounced through the trees as I ran; falling stars, ricocheting headlights, the sunlight in a wavering mirror.
“Into the trees!” I screamed. “Into the trees!”
The trees weren’t made for climbing, but we did our best with what we’d been given. The bark bit into my hands and knees, and by the time I’d gone as high as I could go, I’d wedged the flashlight in my shirt, in the slim strap of my bra where it crossed between my breasts. First thing it had been good for.
I pulled the light out and aimed it to the ground, searching for the beast. It was there, making circles around the trees. It was huge, didn’t look like a proper dog at all. Drool gleamed down its jaw, ceaseless as it stalked us. It didn’t bark, only cast its gaze upward, watching. Waiting.
I shone the light into the other trees, looking for the girls. I found them one by one, clinging as I did to a branch that seemed only just wide enough to not break right off. Rum’s eyes were wide with terror, Norma’s, too, but Trudy, she was laughing as she wrapped herself more tightly around the tree.
“Now there’s a dog that needs to be in space,” she said.
2. Gently Down the Stream
It was probably a Saint Bernard, but hard to say.
Come morning—a Saturday that was trying to rain, when we should have been in our own homes, having syrupy pancakes—Rum and I were still in the tree tops, the dog sleeping beneath us. It was possibly white at one time, but had been so long in the woods, it was now the color of the woods themselves, blotchy brown and gold and black. It had no collar, so no tag.
Rum was in the tree closest to me and she was the color of old, dried mud. She was shaking as she tried to hold on to the tree and maybe this wasn’t going to end well, but surely it had to end soon. I looked for Trudy and Norma, but saw no sign of them. Had they already climbed down? I looked back at the dog. Had it eaten them? A thing like that, you’d think we might have heard it.
“Rum, we need to climb down,” I said.
“There’s a ... There’s a dog down there, Lu.” She yawned and I could see how paper-dry her lips were.
“There is not a dog down there,” I said. I adjusted my bag, checked the flashlight in my bra, and began to climb down the tree. “There is a fairy trapped in the body of a dog—a fairy who doesn’t know any better than to plow into four girls who’re walking to the city to see the circus. What does she know about anything in that body?” I paused on the next too-thin branch, listening to it crackle. Rum hadn’t moved. “Let’s find out, Rum. Come on, climb down with me. Bet you can’t beat me.”
That was enough to get her moving. I exhaled and said nothing more as we moved down from the trees. No branches broke; I found if I moved fast enough, they just didn’t have time. When my feet touched the ground, the dog lifted its massive head to look at me, but didn’t move. Its eyes were chocolate brown, curious but not hostile like last night.
I moved toward Rum’s tree, to clasp her by a foot and help her down to the ground. Like my mother would have, I pressed a hand to her head, thinking I would be assaulted with a veritable book of information about what ailed her. No such book came, but I was certain she felt warmer than she should have, especially with the misting rain.
“Here.” I uncapped my canteen and handed it to her. She drank like she’d never had a sip of anything in her life. I wanted to unwrap her arm and take a look at it, but also didn’t, because that meant admitting we had a problem bigger than a dog possessed by a fairy.
“S’fairy?” she asked, wiping her hand over her mouth.
I nodded and looked at the dog. “Only explanation.” Of course there were a hundred others, though the dog didn’t look sick. I crouched down to study it and its ears perked forward, tail worming through the damp leaves. “Maybe she’s forgotten how to talk—given that drooling mouth, you can’t actually blame her ...”
There was an empty wrapper near one paw and the dog’s tongue lolled out, to curl around a tattered chunk of Mars Bar. Leaves came with it, but the dog didn’t seem to mind, swallowing everything in one gulp. The tail scrabbled in the leaves again, happy, eager, dog-like. I couldn’t quite convince myself it was a dog, all things considered.
Rum had crouched down beside me and tipped forward to her knees, to bend almost entirely to the ground as she studied the dog.
“Laika?” she whispered.
The dog’s entire body wriggled, but it made no move toward Rum. This was not Laika; it bore no resemblance to the dog in the paper. As Norma said, souls didn’t work that way and Laika was in Russia, getting ready to head to the stars. Whatever this was, it wasn’t that. This close, the dog did smell weird; syrup, shaving cream, and chocolate.
Rum whispered, “Free, free, a trip to Mars, for nine-hundred empty jars. Burma-Shave,” and reached a trembling hand out.
“Rum, I don’t think you should—”
The dog’s tongue spooled out again, this time around Rum’s ha
nd in a slobbery lick. Every part of me was poised to jump at her and haul her back, but the tongue withdrew without taking her hand off. The dog leaned forward and Rum scratched it between its eyes.
I stepped backward, into Trudy and Norma who had returned. Their arms were full of sticks and rocks, and I helped them clear a space to make a small fire. Norma ringed the rocks, I tented the sticks, and Trudy pulled a magazine and a lighter from her bag. She tore pages from the back of the magazine, carefully along the spine edge. Only the advertisements, though even this left the first couple of pages loose. She tucked them carefully away before setting fire to the pages balled under the sticks.
“Here.”
Norma offered up a bag of marshmallows. This kind of thing was tradition; when our parents let us go on a weekend, we were on our own for all things. While we had pocket money for food and circus admissions, we had packed a good many things we weren’t normally allowed to eat. Root beer and melted marshmallows for breakfast, for example. Trudy passed out bottles of Hires, but not even that was enough to get Rum to join us.
“Dog didn’t do anything when we climbed down,” Trudy said as she leaned a bottle of Hires against the log for Rum if she wanted. She then skewered a marshmallow on the end of a stick and held it into the flames. “Gave him a Mars Bar though, just in case.”
“Dogs shouldn’t eat candy,” Norma said.
“Well, he did eat it.” I glanced away from Rum and the dog, back to Norma with her strict set of rules and Trudy with her distinct lack of them. In the humid morning, Norma’s curls had turned into a brown cotton ball while Trudy’s pompadour curved almost flat against her skull.
“Found a cardboard box out there,” Norma said. “Flat, wet.”
No one said anything to that, but we were all thinking the same thing. That poor little dead boy the police had found, that no one stepped up to claim. Wrapped in a plaid blanket and just left there. Left in a box. Dead, dead, dead. I burned my tongue with my marshmallow and took a long swallow of root beer.
The Grand Tour: A Jackson’s Unreal Circus & Mobile Marmalade Collection Page 9