The Dogs of Christmas

by W. Bruce Cameron

  He almost groaned at how easy it was. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  They walked out to his truck. He cleared his throat. “It’s such a nice day, want to grab lunch at the golf club?”

  “Sure.”

  They sat on the balcony at the club, which was open to the public. He ordered a burger and so did she, which made him feel that they had a lot in common. The aspens had fought back against the ice storm and were gradually paling yellow, so it was back to looking like a normal autumn day, warm and glorious.

  “Supposed to be like this all week,” Kerri said, reading his mind. He liked how she could do that. “So, you still fired? No appeal?”

  “Yeah. Yes. But I’ll get another job soon,” Josh stated firmly. He didn’t want to come across as some jobless guy who wouldn’t be able to pay for their food.

  “You’re just so calm about it. Not an emotional guy,” Kerri observed.

  “No, I…” Josh didn’t like the idea that she would think he was some robot without feelings. “That isn’t true, at all. I have lots of feelings about stuff.”

  “Really? Like what kind of stuff?”

  “You know,” he replied uncomfortably. “Emotional stuff.”

  Kerri laughed, her teeth flashing at him. “Fine, name one.”

  “Name one what?”

  “Time you were emotional. Like when … no, you tell me.”

  He wondered what she’d been about to say. “So, like…” She waited while he tried to force something to come out of his mouth. Did he want to tell her that Lucy nursing the puppies warmed his heart and that he was spending hours of his days sitting and watching it like a TV show? Well, but that wasn’t a feeling, really. Anger was a feeling, but even he was smart enough to know that women didn’t exactly treasure anger in a man. Sad was a feeling—he’d bet that was the kind of emotional stuff she was looking for.

  She was watching him and he felt a rising panic. Lots of stuff made him sad, like … like … “The tree,” he blurted.

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe you should tell me just a little more,” she encouraged.

  He told her about the proud old ponderosa pine that had been felled by the ice storm. How he always wound blue lights around it for Christmas. How cutting that tree into pieces had moved him deeply. He didn’t say he cried, but he confessed to feeling really sad. That was emotional, right? “I just remember that tree from when I was a kid. And now it’s gone.”

  “So, wait, that’s the house you grew up in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you like, inherit it from your parents?”

  “No, both of my parents are still alive. My dad lives in England and has a whole new family. His son, my step-brother, is twelve years younger than I am—just turned sixteen. Then there’s a ten-year-old and eight-year-old twins, all girls. I don’t see them very often. Like, it’s been since just after the twins were born. England is a long way.” And it’s not my family, not really, Josh didn’t add.

  “Wow.” Kerri glanced up, smiling, as the waitress set their plates down in front of them. Josh could look at that smile all day long.

  “My mom lives in Florida and it’s the opposite,” Josh continued. “Her husband is retired, and his son, who is also my stepbrother, is in his forties, almost twice my age. They don’t budge from their condo, so if I want to visit I have to go there.”

  “So how did you wind up with the house?”

  “At first my dad hung on to it—there was always this idea that he’d come back to visit all the time, back to see his kids, I mean. But London’s so far, you know, it was harder to make it work than he’d thought it would be. Then we put most of our stuff in storage and tried to rent it, but that was pretty hit-or-miss. I was supposed to look after the place for a percentage of the rent, though I was away at school, so that plan didn’t go so well, either. Then after college I got a programming job in Golden.”

  “Right down the hill,” Kerrie observed.

  “Exactly. Property values had dropped, and Dad said if I took over the payments, I could have the place, so…” Josh shrugged.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “That we did the paperwork? I guess maybe four years ago.”

  “And your sister is…”

  “Janice, yeah. Portland, Maine. Husband, two kids, boys. When I talk to her she’s always going to soccer or hockey or something. I get up there even less. We weren’t close growing up.”

  “It’s just really interesting that you bought the house you grew up in. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has done that.”

  “Yeah…” Josh shrugged, feeling like he ought to explain himself to her even though he couldn’t really explain himself to himself. Instead he changed the subject. “And how about you, did you grow up here?”

  “Here, in the mountains? No, but down in Denver. I always wanted to live here and then one day I just moved. My mom’s in rehab right now, which is a good thing that we all hope works this time. I was a little surprise that came along during a time when she wasn’t in rehab, so she sort of lost track of who the dad might be.” Kerri regarded him archly, as if challenging him to judge her for her background. But he just couldn’t stop gazing at those blue eyes of hers, and gradually a bit of pink burned its way onto her cheeks.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry about your mom. I mean, it must be hard.”

  “Sure. But life is hard, right? I mean, we’ve all had to endure stuff at some point. You can’t escape it, it’s part of being human.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Speaking of that,” Kerri continued slowly. She swirled her spoon in her iced tea, focused on the tinkling ice, then raised her eyes to his.

  “Yeah?”

  “Amanda,” she said softly. Kerri’s eyes were warm with sympathy.

  Okay, here it comes. Josh nodded, ready to talk about it.

  “How did she die?”

  EIGHT

  Having Kerri ask how Amanda died was oddly as if Josh had just heard that Amanda did die. His stomach gave a kick and turned cold.

  And why did she even wind up with that impression? He tried to think of what he might have said to imply such a thing. Could his expression really have been so mournful when Kerri had asked him about the blonde in the photograph that Kerri could only conclude Amanda was dead?

  He flashed back to the awkward and insufferable night at the Little Bear Saloon, when he’d given Ryan his phone number. Did Ryan think Amanda was dead? Was that why he said that Josh was “lucky”?

  Kerri was watching him intently, and he had the sense that she was close to reaching out to touch his hand. “Uh, she’s not.”

  Kerri’s face showed noncomprehension.

  “Dead,” Josh elaborated. “Amanda’s not dead.”

  Kerri blinked. “Oh.” She sat up, considering this, and then regarded him sharply. “So she’s coming back?”

  God, what a question. “I mean,” he started, sorting through his thoughts, “It’s more like she’s…” He shrugged.

  “You said she was your girlfriend,” Kerri stated, sounding like a prosecutor at trial. “Is she your girlfriend?”

  “We were together for four years.”

  “So you broke up? How long ago?”

  “Like, the morning of April tenth.”

  Kerri’s laugh was humorless. “The morning of April tenth; do you remember what time?” She held up her hand. “Don’t answer that.”

  “Of course I don’t remember the time,” Josh protested.

  “You were living together? In your place?”

  Josh nodded.

  “And she moved out, and you kept this shrine to her? Who does that?”

  “A shrine? It’s not a shrine. Look, wouldn’t it be childish to throw all her pictures away, just because we broke up? We’re still friends.”

  “She live here?”

  “Here in Evergreen? No, she moved to Fort Collins.”

  “Which is maybe tw
o hours away, right? How often do you go up for a visit?”

  “I haven’t.” Josh looked out onto the golf course, watching without seeing as two men walked by with their clubs.

  “She go up there because of a man?” Kerri’s voice had lost its sharp edge.

  Josh nodded, swallowing.

  “Then, Josh, no, it’s not childish. Your girlfriend and you broke up and now she’s with someone else. You put her pictures in a cardboard box because it’s over, you don’t keep them all over the place, you don’t keep her perfume in your bathroom cabinet, you don’t sleep in the bedroom down the hall instead of the room you shared because you can’t bear it—you move on.”

  Josh gazed back at her. For some reason her face was flushed and her eyes wide, as if they were having a fight or something. “You looked in my bathroom cabinet?”

  Her hand briefly touched her mouth. “Oh.” She lowered her eyes to her food. “Yeah, sorry. I just … right, look, I seem to have a talent for finding men with substance abuse issues, maybe because my mom made me blind to it. And I met you and I thought finally here’s a normal guy instead of someone all emotionally damaged, or an addict, or both. But I needed to check because usually the first I find out about it is one day I stumble upon all these pills—prescription, of course, all with prescriptions.” Her mouth twisted as a bitter memory came and went. “So I just thought I’d cut to the chase. I get that it was wrong and everything.”

  A small smile twitched onto Josh’s lips. A talent for finding men, she’d said. He liked the way she’d put that, like he was a man that she had found.

  “Sorry. I know it’s not my business,” she apologized.

  He felt pretty good about the whole conversation, needing only to clear up one misunderstanding. “And the reason I don’t sleep in my parents’ room is just because I like to sleep in my room, where I grew up,” he explained. “I like opening my eyes and seeing the dent I put in the ceiling with a Star Wars saber, and looking out at the same trees.”

  This sounded perfectly reasonable to Josh, but she was looking oddly at him. “What?” he finally asked.

  “I’m just thinking I can’t imagine having such a wonderful childhood that I’d want to relive any part of it,” Kerri said simply.

  Now Josh wanted to reach out and touch her hand. Before he could act on the impulse, she pulled it away and looked at her watch. “I need to go.” Kerri signaled to the waitress.

  “Um…” Josh just didn’t want this to be over yet. “Want to walk around the lake? It’s such a pretty day. Just, like, for a few minutes?” he suggested desperately.

  “Fine,” Kerri agreed, shrugging like it was nothing.

  The waitress set the bill in front of Kerri and Josh grabbed it as if snatching a pistol away from a child. “Thanks for lunch,” Kerri said, smiling.

  Evergreen Lake would have been called a pond in most other states, but in water-starved Colorado, if you couldn’t empty it with a bucket, it was a lake. Enthusiasts fished and canoed the forty acres of cold water, and only a local ordinance kept people from running power boats on the thing. A barely perceptible breeze was enough to stir the sun’s reflection into dancing sparkles as they walked the path encircling the green water, Josh keeping his pace slow to make the time last as long as possible. They talked about the puppies, which as far as Josh was concerned was better than discussing Amanda but not nearly as interesting as this idea that Kerri had a talent for “finding” the wrong sort of men but that, in Josh, she had not.

  Josh had met Amanda as a set-up, a have I got a girl for you thing that his friends Wayne and Leigh put together. Josh remembered driving over to his friends’ house, full of dread, knowing the night would be the worst on record. Leigh thought that just because she made Wayne happy, Josh only needed a girl and then he’d be happy, too. She’d brushed away Josh’s protests that he already was happy: he didn’t have a girlfriend, so, in Leigh’s mind, he must be miserable.

  Leigh seemed to have an endless supply of friends for whom Josh would be perfect (and vice versa), though previous attempts had missed perfection by a considerable measure.

  Amanda was standing by the fireplace in the small living room, talking to Wayne in a forced-casual fashion, as if they hadn’t all been waiting tensely for Josh to pull in the driveway. Josh entered the house carrying a bottle of wine and was giving Leigh a glare, trying to frown the manic enthusiasm from her face, when Amanda turned around and Josh’s heart froze in his chest.

  That’s how Josh knew how to meet women: Leigh would find them and Wayne would say his wife was driving him crazy and that Josh needed to come over for dinner so Leigh would shut up about it. The girl would be at the fireplace and would hit perfection one hundred percent with a single glance.

  What Josh didn’t know how to do was turn this wonderful afternoon into the start of something more. He must have appeared pretty weak to Kerri with his sad tale of being dumped by another woman and having his heart broken by a tree; how was he supposed to repair the damage and get it to the point where they went on a date?

  “Now I really, really have to get back to the shelter,” Kerri finally announced. Josh hid his look of disappointment and they reversed direction. Okay, back at the truck, Josh decided. He’d open the door for her, so they’d be pretty close, and he’d ask her out to dinner. Or coffee, would dinner be too aggressive? They’d had lunch, but with her giving him all kinds of advice about the puppies, now it felt less like a date and more like a meeting, or something.

  “No, don’t bathe them, Lucy is keeping them clean, don’t worry,” Kerri was saying as they approached the vehicle. Why couldn’t Josh think of anything to ask about except dog stuff? “Great day,” he observed, not for the first time that afternoon. There, that was it: dogs and the weather. That’s all he was capable of discussing. He would never have another girlfriend in his life. Why go on a date with Josh Michaels? It was easier just to stay home with your dog and watch the weather channel.

  He’d parked a little close to the utility pole, and he fretted now over what that would mean. If he tried to get between her and the pole, he’d be crowding her, but if he stood on the other side of the pole it might block the whole conversation, which was going to be tough enough as it was since he still had no idea what he was going to say.

  “Hey, the door on your side can be a little tricky, I’ll get it for you,” Josh told her as they crunched across the gravel. He’d meant to make the offer but it was too early, they were still forty feet from the pickup. The part about the door being sticky wasn’t even true—he’d tossed that in at the last second and had no idea why.

  “Works for me,” Kerri agreed breezily, oblivious to his inner conflict.

  He was silent, waiting for his moment. He pulled out his key and aimed it at his truck as if it were a flashlight guiding them in. Then he lunged ahead, opening the door. She smiled at him. Good. Now.

  He glanced past the utility pole and, when he saw what was there by a park bench, the shock hit him as if one of the wires from overhead had fallen and hit him with a thousand volts. When he realized she might catch him staring, he yanked his eyes away.

  “You okay?” Kerri asked curiously.

  Not trusting himself to speak, Josh merely nodded. He shut her door and went around the truck and got in, his pulse hammering him. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.

  But, of course, it was.

  They didn’t talk much on the drive back to the shelter, though he could feel Kerri appraising him with her warm blue eyes as he concentrated on the road. He worked on keeping his face blank so she wouldn’t see how upset he was. Gone was any consideration of asking Kerri for a date, or doing anything, really, except dropping her off and getting back to his dogs.

  He was a little slow to get out to open her door and she managed it herself, sliding out with a quick smile.

  “Thanks for lunch!” she repeated brightly, standing with the passenger door open.

  Josh nodded a bit numbly,
his heart still pounding.

  “Right, then,” she said, still smiling, though a flicker of something like doubt crossed through her eyes.

  Josh waited until Kerri was back inside the shelter before turning the truck around and heading back to the parking lot. It was like scratching an itch you knew you shouldn’t—he needed another look. He drove past slowly, gazing with sick despair. There. Standing by the bench, talking agitatedly with another man. Blond hair, scraggly beard.

  Ryan.

  Josh kept driving, past the clubhouse, up into the canyon, finally turning around when he realized there was no point continuing in the wrong direction. Ryan and the other man had left by the time Josh’s truck cruised past again.

  He was sick to his stomach as he drove home. “Hey, dogs!” he sang out with false gaiety when he walked in the front door. He could hear the puppies squeaking as he walked down the hallway to check on them, and Lucy thumped her tail, though they were feeding so she didn’t get up.

  “How you doing, Lucy? You okay?” Josh knelt next to her and ran his hand over her head and she gave him the smallest lick. The fur under her ears was so soft, he loved to stroke her there. “Such a good mommy, such a good, good dog, Lucy. Lucy, the good, good dog,” Josh crooned. He felt better, holding her.

  He watched her feed her little blind puppies for a few minutes, and it was as if he could feel that connection between mother and young, the flow of milk, of love, of life.

  Why hadn’t anyone ever told him about this, about having a dog? That it made every moment more important, that it somehow brought the best stuff to the surface of the day?

  Josh sighed and stood. He went into his living room and looked through his window out at the thermometer, he went to the freezer to pull out a dinner, he emptied the trash—anything to avoid contemplating this new development.

  Ryan was back. From France.

  Now what?

  NINE

  The puppies’ eyes weren’t even open yet. They were helpless, virtually immobile, completely dependent on Lucy for sustenance. They needed their mommy. If Ryan came and got Lucy, the little puppies would die. From what little Josh knew of him, that sounded exactly like what Ryan would do, take Lucy away without thought of what it would mean to the babies.