Piper

by John E. Keegan

  “Oh, come on. Dad’s forgotten all about the wreck. Besides, he’s got the paper to worry about.” Willard grabbed his pants above the kneecaps and pulled them up, revealing a cuff of boney white shins. “If Carlisle sells it, he’ll be out of a job.”

  “That’d be good for Tom,” Willard said.

  Except for the fact it’d kill him, I thought.

  Later we took a walk with the dogs, except for Freeway who offered no protest when we left without him. There must have been a change in the weather coming because the clouds were racing past the moon in fast forward. The dogs spread out, sniffing the weeds along the sides of the road the same way Willard liked to comb the ground at the park for his treasures. They always seemed to know where Willard was though and never lagged far behind. Mrs. Churchill, the black and tan coonhound, zeroed in on what must have been a randy odor at the base of a telephone pole because several of the dogs joined her.

  “Must be one of the town bullies,” Willard said.

  Mrs. Churchill positioned her back end as close to the pole as she could, squatted, and peed. Then Billy doused it again. Finally, Paddy marched in, cocked his right leg, watered the pole, and pawed the grass, throwing little grass divots in the direction of the bully. Now it was their territory. Nobody messed with Willard’s gang.

  We ended up at the most spectacular piece of engineering in Stampede, the Carlisle Bridge, which resembled two German barmaids with enormous concrete legs balancing a steel span criss-crossed with vertical and diagonal bracing. At the center of the bridge we stopped and rested our arms on the railing, staring down at Commercial Street. It wasn’t a bridge over water; it was a bridge over land. You had to pass under the bridge to enter Stampede’s downtown from the west and there was a weathered signboard attached to the girder just below us that read: “Nathaniel S. Carlisle, 1878–1957.” He was John’s grandfather and considered the founder of Stampede, something else we had to know for the course in Washington State History, at least the version taught in our town. Dad had devised a way of remembering the years. Eighteen seventy-eight was the same year that Joseph Pulitzer bought the bankrupt St. Louis Dispatch for $2,500 and nineteen fifty-seven was the year Sputnik orbited the earth. Of course, that’s not what the Carlisle Bridge was remembered for by the rest of us. It was an attractive nuisance, a place for kids to drop boulders, old tires, burned out television sets, and once even a Frigidaire, onto the cars below. The Frigidaire missed its target, but the pavement was soft enough from the summer heat that the corner of it penetrated the pavement and left the refrigerator standing upright like a pillar of salt.

  “How’s my pal, Dirk, doing?” Willard said, letting go of one of the pebbles he’d picked up. Nobody could resist the fascination of gravity.

  “Pretty much the same.” Of course, that wasn’t the whole truth. The “Peter Poster” had etched itself into the collective memories of the student body, including those who’d never even seen it. The oral history of Stampede High would forever include the story of Dirk’s hand job in the boys’ can. The school district should have just erected a plaque commemorating the event so they wouldn’t have to keep painting over the graffiti people were putting on the stall. Colleen Waterston and I snuck in after school and read it ourselves. “What are you looking up here for? The joke’s between Dirk’s legs.” “Get a grip on yourself, Dirk.”

  One of the pebbles Willard flicked off the bridge hit a galvanized mop bucket near the curb and pinged. A pickup with one headlight approached from the east and, as a precaution, I reached over and covered the hand Willard had filled with pebbles. I didn’t want another run-in with the law so soon after the car wreck. He cleared his throat like he was going to launch a big goober instead.

  “Don’t you even think of it,” I said.

  He laughed and dropped the goober between the toes of his high-tops. “I may be foolish, but I’m not stupid,” he said, and I had to think about that one for a minute. It would have made just as much sense exactly in reverse. Dad would have called it a non-sequitur, but Willard was friendly with non-sequiturs. They were shortcuts through the red tape of otherwise inscrutable problems.

  “I’ll break you out of that nursing home, but not if you do something patently crazy.”

  He looked up at me and there was moisture in his eyes. “You’d do that?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have to get a job.” He always said that when he was feeling insecure. In his system of values, you didn’t put down a horse if it was still able to race.

  “I thought you had an offer.”

  He perked up. “Oh, yeah?”

  “The guy doing the street work over by the Caterpillar dealership.”

  “They called you?”

  “Willard! You were the one who told me.”

  There was silence while he rummaged around in his head for a clue as to what he’d told me about them wanting a skilled mechanic. The toe of his shoe pushed a flattened Coca Cola can up against the bridge span and turned it over, but the memory must have evaporated.

  The dogs finished their field work and collapsed onto the dusty asphalt next to us. I turned my back to the street below and looked up through the bracing to find the moon again. Someone had slowed down the weather because now the moon was hidden behind a stationary cloud in the shape of an enormous snail. Looking away from Stampede made me think of Rozene’s note and riding home in her car. Somehow she’d turned the awkwardness of that day into a private joke. Maybe I’d made a mistake in running from her so fast.

  A car I recognized passed under the bridge and pulled off onto the shoulder just past a crumpled-up beer carton. The headlights went off, but the motor was still idling as traces of exhaust chugged out the tailpipe and vaporized into the night. Through the rear window, I could see the outline of two people in the frontseat. The passenger’s silhouette moved over and merged with the driver’s. The brake light flared momentarily and went dark again. My stomach churned.

  “Who’s that?”

  How could I tell him it was Dad necking under the bridge like some commoner? As much as I wanted Dad to be like me, it unsettled me whenever he was. Maybe it was the disloyalty of his touching another woman so soon. “Nobody,” I said.

  About a week later Willard knocked on my bedroom door. He never came upstairs. I had to hand it to him; he’d adhered to that part of our pact.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said. He was barefoot, his pants were rolled up, and he looked like an older version of Huckleberry Finn who’d been crying.

  All I had on was a T-shirt so I told him to turn around while I got out of bed and pulled a pair of jeans on. He was shaky and wobbled the banister on the way downstairs. When we reached his room, there was blood all over the rocking horse bedspread that I’d used when I was a kid and Freeway lay in the middle of it.

  “Jesus, Willard! Have you called the vet?”

  Willard grabbed my forearm. There was panic in his eyes. “He hates the vet.”

  “But he’s”—I almost said dying—“sick.”

  I made Willard stay there while I went upstairs and looked up Payton Miller’s number. He was the large animal vet, but I knew I could trust him more than the fancy Dans who worked on the poodles and pussy cats at All the Best for Your Pets downtown. Payton Miller’s son, Martin, was in my class, a giant of a kid who resembled one of his dad’s patients. Dr. Miller just ahemmed in his deep bull voice as I told him the story over the phone and it was impossible to figure out what he was thinking. Their television was going in the background and I must have apologized at least six times for disturbing him at home.

  “That’s my job,” he said matter of factly, seeming to understand Willard’s reluctance to bring his dog into the vet. “Most of my consultations are house calls. With cows, it’s just easier.”

  I waited outside the house by the basement entrance for Dr. Miller to arrive. As I’d asked him to, he parked his four-wheeler in front of the neighbor’s, as a precaution in case Dad
came home. I watched Dr. Miller get out of his rig, reach back for his cowboy hat, then open the back door for a black leather tote bag. He saw me at the corner of the house, touched the brim of his hat, and cut across the neighbor’s lawn. He was wearing a rumpled vest that hung over his frame like an old shoe rag. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, revealing the muscled forearms of a Michelangelo sculpture. I guessed you’d have to be strong if some of your patients weighed a thousand pounds.

  Dr. Miller had to take off his hat and stoop to miss the header on the way down the basement stairs. Willard was on the bed with his arms wrapped softly around Freeway’s middle and at the sight of the vet Willard pulled him in tighter.

  “Got a sick one here, do you?” Dr. Miller said, as he unclasped his bag and pulled out a stethoscope.

  Pretty much working around Willard, he held the little suction cup in a spot on Freeway’s chest, stared off into space, then moved it and stared some more. It was as if he hadn’t even noticed the blood. He took out his penlight and checked each eye, holding the lids open with his thumb. I watched Dr. Miller’s face for a sign. He was older than his walk, his jowls sagged, and his eyes were baggy like he’d wept a lot, but he looked so determined. I imagined he’d stared death in the face more often than the average man in Stampede. Death was his adversary. With one hand palming the side of Freeway’s head, he used his other hand to push up into Freeway’s stomach like he was trying to shake hands with the kidneys. Then he sat down on the bed and patted Willard’s leg.

  “How long’s he been coughing up the blood?”

  Willard looked over at me for guidance and I shrugged my shoulders.

  “He’s suffering, Willard.”

  Willard buried his face against Freeway and Dr. Miller turned to me. “The humane thing is to put him to sleep.”

  Jesus, Doctor, don’t say that to me. I’m never … I can’t give you permission to do that. I pointed to Willard. “Tell him.”

  “He knows.”

  I put my hands over my face, wishing now we hadn’t kept the dog thing a secret from Dad. Willard always listened to Dad. How could I convince Willard to put Freeway down? This was the one the police had found in the plastic bag on the highway. His very life was a miracle. “Can’t you just let it happen naturally?” I said.

  “Everything’s come apart inside,” the vet said. “He’ll die a thousand times this way.”

  I wanted to run from the room and lose myself in one of my books. Why did Willard have to bring all his dogs over here anyway? Our house had had enough of death.

  “Let me take him down to the office.”

  “No!” Willard said. “He’s a home dog.”

  I looked over at Dr. Miller. “I told you.”

  Dr. Miller wrapped a blanket around Freeway and carried him up the stairs. Apparently scenting death, the other dogs made no attempt to override Willard’s gentle command and stayed in the bedroom. I followed with my hand gripped hard around the shredded handle of the vet’s bag. It was heavier than it looked and I wondered how he knew what to bring based upon my frantic description. Willard motioned Dr. Miller to set the dog down on the parking strip when we got outside. Freeway had trouble standing, but he managed to turn his back to us and pee a stream of blood that ran out of the grass and onto the edge of the sidewalk. Willard sobbed and started to crumple. Dr. Miller put his arm around Willard with one hand under the armpit to hold him up. Freeway gazed down the street like he wanted to take off on a venture the way he always had. I remembered Willard telling me, “Dogs live small and dream big.” This time, Freeway had to settle for folding up on the grass next to the puddle of blood.

  We did it in the backseat of the four-wheeler, with Freeway stretched across our laps, his head on Willard. The white pool of hair on the top of Freeway’s head flowed like a waterfall between his eyes, spreading to his nose and chest. He looked up at Willard, blinking, waiting for his next command. His eyes were soft and missing the old intensity that Willard told me he could hypnotize cattle with. Maybe he thought we were going to Ocean Shores to chase tennis balls on the beach, or take a hike up Mount Shuksan. Dogs loved cars. The car represented new frontiers.

  Dr. Miller attached a needle to a syringe filled with a purplish liquid, being careful to work from behind the bucket seat so neither Willard nor Freeway could see what was happening. Then he pulled a patterned blue handkerchief out of his pocket and draped it over the syringe before reaching back between the seats. “This won’t hurt you, boy.”

  I felt Willard brace himself and I found the hand closest to me and squeezed it as hard as I could when Dr. Miller inserted the needle into the big vein in Freeway’s front leg and slowly pushed the plunger down with his thumb. Dr. Miller bit his lower lip, making the syringe shorter and shorter under the hanky. I could smell something pungent. Willard was trembling so hard it made Freeway vibrate too. I kept thinking of Mom and wishing I’d been there to hold her, to squeeze her hand, to let her know she wasn’t alone. Willard shuddered and I realized how shaken he must have been by Mom’s death. Mom was his only child, the light of his life. He’d always said how glad he was his “Kitty” had stayed in Stampede. I’d never thought of Willard as sorrowful. He always seemed to be off in his own forgetful world, more worried about changing the oil in someone’s car. But Willard was a veteran of death too: his wife from a stroke, his bowling buddies from old age, his daughter, and God knew how many dogs. Instead of becoming calloused to it, each death had just gouged a deeper ditch across his heart.

  At the moment I saw Freeway’s face go lifeless, it felt like he was all of us.

  “He’s gone,” Dr. Miller said.

  At Willard’s request, we let Freeway spend one more night in his bed so that he could pet him in all the places he liked to be touched.

  After Dad left in the morning, I went out to the garage and found the shovel with the black electrician’s tape wrapped around the split handle and dug a grave in Mom’s tangled and abandoned garden. Dr. Miller said it was against the law to bury carcasses in town, but he agreed it was the best option under the circumstances. There was no way this dog was going to the rendering plant. Just below the topsoil I encountered rocks and had to use the pick, but I managed to make a pit about three feet deep. On his side and without a casket I thought he’d be down far enough.

  Willard and I carried Freeway up from the basement on one of the contoured sheets from my bed. The other dogs followed in a bedraggled funeral procession—the terrier, the pug, the mongrel, and the coonhound. Willard had suggested we put him on the bedspread that was already bloodied, but I would have none of that.

  “We’re not using garbage,” I told him.

  We rested him between a row of withered tomato vines and the unpicked rhubarb that had been flattened against the ground by the weather like wet newspaper. Freeway’s limbs were as stiff as chair spindles and the other dogs shied away from him. They seemed to know that something was going down because they positioned themselves at various distances away from the hole.

  Even Freeway’s hair had stiffened and it gave me the creeps to see his whole body move when I lifted his head and wrapped one of Mom’s blue silk scarves around his neck. Silk was a little feminine, but I thought he needed some color. Freeway had lived his whole life as a black and white. Willard put his motorman’s hat on Freeway at a jaunty angle, almost covering one eye. It was the same hat Willard had worn the day Dad brought him over to be my new housemate. Then he pulled a Pup-Peroni stick out of his pocket and wedged it between the toes of one of Freeway’s front paws like a stogie. It was something Freeway could dream about as he raced into his new frontier.

  Using the sheet as a sling, we stood on each side of the pit and lowered Freeway down, making sure his hat stayed on. I hated this part the worst. The hole made the separation so permanent. I tried to rationalize it by thinking of it as reincarnation. Freeway’s nutrients would fertilize next year’s rhubarb-strawberry pie and we’d all take a little bit of him in
and try to become as vigilant as he was in herding the ones he loved away from trouble. But it wasn’t working. The fact that Willard didn’t believe in an afterlife, even for humans, made it worse. “This is the whole show,” he’d told me once. There were tears leaking down both of my cheeks as I watched Freeway resting obediently at the bottom of the hole.

  Neither one of us were particularly religious, but we each agreed to say a prayer out loud. Willard was doing better than could be expected, which meant he was able to stand on his own power while I said mine. The way he swayed though, I thought he was going to just keel over into the pit with his dog. Then it was his turn.

  “You were a stray waiting to be found,” Willard said, choking on his words, “just like the rest of us. I wish … I could’ve been better to you. So many things I promised … and didn’t come through on, pal.” Death did that, I thought, made the survivors choke on their own guilt. For some reason, even though we knew no one was going to live forever, we all held back, waiting for just the right moment to spring something nice, to let them know how much they were appreciated. Then poof and there weren’t any more next times.

  I let Willard drop in the first shovelful, then he handed me the shovel and fell down on his knees. Mrs. Churchill waddled over to Willard and just stood there with her big ears drooping in respect. The first few shovelfuls dusted the top of him and I could still see Freeway’s shape as clearly as if he were resting on the mattress downstairs. I didn’t want to hear the dirt hitting him and started shoveling faster and faster until I was hyperventilating. When his shape had disappeared, I stopped and leaned on the shovel. The only sounds were Willard’s moans and Billy’s chews on a bone she must have buried for a rainy day.

  10

  We got through our first Thanksgiving without Mom. It was just Dad, Willard, and me. Dad had arranged for Marge to fix us a turkey with all the trimmings, but it just wasn’t the same without one or two of Mom’s experiments, which is what we called the cranberry cornbread, yam gravy and other recipes she’d introduce to stretch our taste buds. There was also no surprise guest. Mom couldn’t stand the idea of someone eating alone on Thanksgiving and always managed to find an art student or a teacher from school to join us. Once we had a Laotian man who was in some kind of trouble with the immigration authorities. Dad didn’t seem to mind sharing our table with strangers; in fact, he usually ended up asking most of the questions, but I knew he wouldn’t have ever initiated it.