Dog Have Mercy

by Neil S. Plakcy

  He looked up at me. “Say, Mark and I have a crack of dawn flight out of Philly on Sunday morning. Would you mind if we brought Brody over Saturday night? After he’s been fed and walked? He usually zonks out by then anyway. And he sleeps through the night.”

  I’d never imagined that the puppy wouldn’t. But then, by the time I got Rochester he was a year old, long since house-broken and leash-trained. “And he’s potty-trained, right?” I asked, realizing I should have checked that before I agreed to host him.

  Joey looked offended. “He’s eight months old,” he said. “He used the piddle pads for the first couple of weeks after I got him, but he’s been going outside for months now.” He laughed. “For a while, I had this sign up in my kitchen, ‘this workplace has been accident free for X days,’ and I changed the number every day Brody was doing fine. Eventually I was able to dump the sign.”

  “You expect anybody working here tomorrow?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “All the subs will be gone. I might come up for a few hours to keep going on these pews. I can make sure the place is all locked up when I leave.”

  “Sweet,” I said. “I’ll have time to puppy-proof the house.”

  “You don’t already have it that way?”

  I shook my head. “Rochester’s always been pretty well-behaved. If he grabs something, it’s because he’s trying to send me a message.”

  I leaned down and scratched behind the dog’s ears, and he yawned.

  Joey raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, a message like, ‘you shouldn’t have left that where I can chew it.’”

  I wasn’t going to explain Rochester’s uncanny nose for crime, the way he was able to dig up clues that helped Rick bring bad guys to justice. You either believe in that kind of thing, or you don’t. I did, and so did Lili, and Rick was becoming a convert.

  I looked around. “Why is it so cold in here? Isn’t there heat?”

  “The electricians are still installing the HVAC system,” Joey said. “Right now we’ve been making do with salamanders.”

  That was a gruesome thought. “What do you do, burn them?” I asked. “I hope they’re already dead.”

  “Not the lizards,” Joey said. “A salamander is a portable kerosene-fueled heater. We use them a lot on construction sites in the winter, as long as there’s good ventilation.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re not burning lizards. I have enough trouble trying to keep Rochester from eating dead ones.”

  “Tell me about it,” Joey said. “Brody’s a canine garbage machine. He picks up rocks, mulch, dead leaves, pretty much anything he can wrap his mouth around.”

  “You’re not making the prospect of dog-sitting him look appealing,” I said.

  “Rochester will keep him in line, I’m sure,” Joey said.

  At the sound of his name, my dog scrambled to his feet, his toenails clicking against the stone, and we walked back to the office. At three-thirty Joey came in and said that he wanted to close up for the holidays, if I didn’t mind. I helped him do a walk-through, making sure everything was secured for the two-week break, that all the water lines were shut down and all the buildings were locked up.

  When I got home, there were two fragrant trays of lasagna cooling on the counter. “I hope one of those is for us,” I said, as I kissed Lili’s cheek.

  She pushed aside an auburn curl that had come out of her loose ponytail. “You think I would tantalize you like that?” she said, smiling.

  “I am sure you are capable of many things.” I leaned down and took a deep breath of meat, cheese and mushrooms. “As well as being an awesome cook.”

  I was trying to stop feeding Rochester people food, though it was an uphill battle. At dinner I ended up giving him a few nibbles of ground beef from my plate. As long as he expressed his appreciation by wagging his tail, Lili didn’t mind.

  After we finished we set the menorah in the sink so that the candles could continue to burn without danger of falling over and igniting something. Then we drove to Edith’s Cape Cod house in the Lakes. We parked in front of the house and Rochester left a message for the neighborhood dogs that he’d passed by.

  A skinny, nervous Haitian girl in her late teens or early twenties answered our knock. “Hi,” Lili said, and introduced us. “We’re here to see Edith.”

  The girl, whose name was Staylene, was clearly frightened of Rochester. “Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite,” I said. “And Edith specially asked us to bring him.”

  Edith’s house was compact and cozy, with the living room to the right, and where others might have placed a dining room table, she had installed a baby grand piano – the very one where I had endured three years of lessons as a kid. Beyond it was her cheery yellow kitchen, decorated with framed music memorabilia – concert programs, autographed promotional shots of famous pianists, and her own photos of concert halls around the world, where she had traveled with her late husband.

  We handed the lasagna and cake to Staylene, who took it toward the kitchen. Lili, Rochester and I turned left, toward Edith’s bedroom. We found her sitting propped up in a double bed, surrounded by pink pillows. Opera music was playing softly in the background.

  Staylene had teased out Edith’s white hair for her and applied a bit of blush to her cheeks, so she looked a lot healthier than she had in the nursing home. Rochester paced over to the bed and lifted his nose to sniff her outstretched hand. “Hello my darling,” she said to him. “How nice of you all to come and visit me.” She turned to the radio by the bed and shut the music down. “It was so wonderful to see you at Crossing Manor, too.”

  “It’s great to see you looking so well. How’s the hip?”

  “It’s surprisingly good,” she said. “I had some arthritis there, and cartilage damage, so it was always painful in cold weather. But with the new hip, that pain is all gone. I’m coping with getting back to my activity level.”

  Lili sat on the bed beside Edith. “We brought you the lasagna I promised, and some leftover carrot cake that Tamsen Morgan made for us.”

  “She’s such a sweet girl,” Edith said. “I remember when she and her sister Hannah were girls, running around the Meeting House. They seemed so full of joy. And then to lose her husband that way….” She shook her head. “Is she still seeing Detective Stemper?”

  I sat on the floor beside Rochester, who kept his head near Edith’s hand. “She is. They appear to be getting along well.”

  We talked for a few minutes. “I’m glad you got out of Crossing Manor,” I said. “Another one of the people we met when we came to see you passed away.”

  “I saw that in the paper,” she said. “He was an awfully nice fellow, Mr. Pappas. He still lived in his family’s house on Lakefront Drive, you know, and sometimes I saw him when I was out walking. I was surprised because his Crohn’s seemed to be in remission and he was planning to go home soon.”

  “Do you think there’s anything suspicious about two deaths in such a short time?” I asked.

  “Suspicious? Not at all. So many of the people at Crossing Manor were very ill, dear. For most of them, it’s the last place they’ll live. I was fortunate that I was just there for rehab. They took good care of me, and the social worker helped me arrange to have a physical therapist come to the house for the next few weeks.” She paused. “The only person there who disturbed me was that young girl. Allison.”

  “Really? She seemed very nice,” Lili said.

  “I’ve known hundreds of young people over the years,” Edith said. “Sweet children like Tamsen and Hannah, curious boys like Steve here. Spoiled brats and prodigies. So believe me when I tell you there’s something not quite right about Allison.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to put a finger on it. On the surface, she’s very solicitous. Always has a smile on her face, no matter what anyone asks her to do. But I got the sense that she has a very dark place inside her.”

  “I thought it was odd that she told us she had to s
top being a candy striper at the hospital,” Lili asked. “Did she ever tell you why?”

  “She said she didn’t get along with one of the nurses,” Edith said. “And she had this almost morbid fascination with what was wrong with people, which might have upset some of the patients. I remember she talked to Mr. Pappas about his Crohn’s Disease several times and it was almost like she relished him having a tough prognosis.”

  “I admire a teenager who’s willing to give up her free time to help others,” I said. “Though I did find her tongue piercing creepy and sometimes it was hard to understand her. But you know, teenagers are always trying to find ways to express themselves.”

  Edith yawned, and Lili stood up. “We’ll leave you to get your rest,” she said. “I hope you enjoy the lasagna.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I will, dear,” Edith said. She thanked us again for coming, and petted Rochester goodbye.

  “Now, you be careful,” I said to Edith as I stopped by her bedroom door. “No more accidents, all right?”

  “I’ll do my best,” she said.

  7 – My Child

  Friday morning I tried to sleep in, enjoying the start of a long vacation, but Rochester wanted to go for his walk. I stumbled into my sweat pants, long-sleeved T-shirt, woolen socks and running shoes. Added a sweater, scarf, hat and gloves, and then I was ready to go. I left Lili asleep in bed and followed Rochester downstairs. He leapt the last couple of steps, his toenails scrabbling on the tile floor as he landed. Before we walked out, I peeled back the bandage and checked his paw, and it looked like the nail bed had healed. That meant I could stop the povidone iodine baths, though I knew he had to finish the whole course of antibiotic pills.

  It was cold and clear. The deciduous trees of River Bend had long since lost their leaves, though the occasional pine or spruce still displayed coats of rich, dark green branches. I waved at a couple of neighbors who passed us on their way to work, feeling mildly guilty that I wasn’t going up to Friar Lake. But Joey had already closed the place up, I reasoned, and either Rochester or I would probably muck something up.

  When we returned, I fed Rochester, gave him his pill, and made a pair of cheese and mushroom omelets. Lili came downstairs as I was sliding them onto plates. “Smells delicious,” she said.

  I ushered her to the table and served her breakfast, accompanied by slices of eggy challah bread and a glass of orange juice. We read the papers, and then I left her to clean up and went back upstairs. I read in bed for a while, Rochester sprawled at the foot of the bed, then slid back beneath the covers for a mid-morning nap.

  When I woke to Rochester’s hot breath in my face, I took him out for a quick pee, then hurried back inside to the warmth of the house. He and I played, then he napped and I read for the rest of the afternoon. That night Lili and I lit the candles again, and the glow of the menorah continued to grow. I was glad that we had resurrected that tradition; it was one of those things that make a house a home, and the townhouse on Sarajevo Court had begun to seem much more like a home since Lili had moved in.

  I had been nervous at first, because Lili and I hadn’t known each other for long, and because we’d both grown accustomed to living on our own. But aside from disagreements about clutter (Lili was pro, I was con) and other small aggravations, we were getting along very well.

  Saturday morning after breakfast, I thought about the lonely people at Crossing Manor who had so appreciated the chance to have a furry, golden visitor. Despite the uneasy feeling the place gave me, I thought I ought to go back at least once more. “I might take Rochester back to the nursing home today for a quick visit,” I said to Lili. “With the holidays coming, I’m sure some of those people are feeling lonely.”

  “I’ll let you guys go on your own,” Lili said. “I want to work on those photos I took of Jerry Cheseboro and finish the outline for my photojournalism course. I can’t enjoy the vacation with that hanging over me.”

  The same teenager, Allison, was in the lobby when Rochester and I walked in, playing cards with an elderly man. Instead of the scrubs she’d worn before, she was in a turtleneck sweater and torn jeans. “Your friend already went home,” she said. “Mrs. Passis.”

  For a moment I had to concentrate on what she’d said, because her tongue piercing made her mumble on certain words. The more I thought about it, it was probably her piercings that had upset Edith—they bothered me, and I had a lot more experience of people her age through my work at Eastern.

  “I know. We saw her the other night. I thought maybe we could say hi to some of the other patients.”

  Rochester sat beside me, behaving sweetly as he had before, though I noticed he was careful to stay on the other side of me from Allison. I remembered how he’d only been interested in what was in her pocket the last time we’d visited, not in making friends with her, and what Edith had said about her. She seemed like an ordinary teenager to me, but I trusted my dog’s instincts.

  Allison smiled. “I wish there were more people like you. Some of these patients have nobody else, and they don’t have much of a life here.” She looked at the old man, so thin I could see his bones through his skin, who had clear tubes running from his nostrils to a portable oxygen tank. “Unlike Mr. Watnik, who’s a whiz at gin rummy.” She picked a card, and then put down three queens in a lay.

  I resisted the urge to suggest she might think differently when she got to be their age. Mr. Watnik had nothing laid out in front of him, but he picked a card and then spread out four twos and three sevens. He smiled a toothless grin and said, “Gin!”

  “Oh, you,” Allison said to him. Then she looked up at me. “Do you want me to walk you guys down to the lounge?”

  “No, we can find our way,” I said. I stopped at the reception desk and signed in, and then Rochester tugged me down the hall. Allison might have been somewhat callow, I thought, but she was spending her Saturday morning playing cards with an old man, and that meant she had to have a heart.

  Rochester and I walked around the room, talking again with Mr. MacRae, the janitor at my elementary school, and with Mrs. Curry, the paraplegic woman who had been at Crossing Manor for years. We also met Mrs. Vinci, who spoke with the harsh, guttural accent of a lower-income New York upbringing.

  “My kids brought me down here,” she said. “Me, I woulda stayed in Brooklyn, but they got a fancy house out here and said it ain’t right I should be up there.” Her hair was a salt-and-pepper gray, cropped short like a boy’s, and her face was crisscrossed with deep wrinkles.

  The woman beside her, Mrs. Divaram, was a plump, dark-skinned East Indian woman with a lilting accent, wearing an intricate red sari. “I am telling you to be grateful you have your children close by,” she said. “My son lives in California with his second wife, who does not like me. So he pays to keep me far away. I have not seen my grandchildren in many years.”

  All those I spoke with were delighted to let Rochester sniff their fingers, to stroke his soft fur and whisper sweet endearments to him. Allison came in and said, “There’s one more patient who would like to see Rochester, but he’s in his room. Would you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  “His name is Mr. Fictura, but I calls him Mr. Fistula because he’s a pain in the ass,” she said. “Maybe Rochester can sweeten him up.”

  Mr. Fictura was a wizened old man who reminded me of Gollum in The Hobbit. “I always had dogs before I got stuck in here,” he said, as Rochester walked up to be petted. “Picked up a ton of dogshit. But dogs are like everybody else. They die and leave you.”

  Well, that was a cheery sentiment, I thought. “But while they’re with you, they provide unconditional love,” I said.

  “For what that’s worth.” He pulled his hand back. “You can go now.”

  “He doesn’t seem that bad,” I said to Allison as she led us back to the front door.

  “He yells a lot at the nurses and the aides and he refuses to go for therapy. But I guess they can’t kick him out as long as he pays his
bills.”

  “I’m sure it’s hard to be in his position,” I said. I shook her hand and promised we would come back again another time.

  When we got home, Lili was still busy with her course outline, and Rochester and I sat downstairs. “Guess we ought to do some puppy-proofing, boy,” I said to him. “What kind of trouble do you think Brody can get into?”

  He yawned and sprawled on the floor, clearly not interested in helping. I walked around the house, removing breakables and chewables from lower shelves, coiling up unused electrical cords and the cables for various electronic devices. In the kitchen, I made sure all the food was pushed back on the counter far enough to avoid an inquisitive puppy’s nose and tongue. By the time I finished, Lili had given up on her course and joined us in the living room, and we spent the afternoon relaxing and reading.

  It was close to eight o’clock that night when the gate guard called to announce Joey and Mark. A few minutes later Rochester began to bark and rushed to the front door.

  The puppy led the way into our house – always a bad sign, in my opinion. Dogs are pack animals, and they need to know that their human is their leader. Though I did let Rochester pull sometimes when we walked, he and I had an agreement. He knew that I was in charge in the important ways, that I’d always protect him and feed him and love him, and he could relax and just be a dog. Rick had the same deal with Rascal, but I’d seen a lot of spoiled dogs who thought they were in charge, and who fretted and barked when their humans were out of their sight.

  Mark and Joey followed, bearing piles of stuff – Brody’s bed, a collection of his favorite toys, water and food bowls, and a bag of the puppy version of the chow Rochester ate. I thought Joey made a good physical match for Mark; he was almost Mark’s height of six-six, but broader in the shoulders. I was glad that I’d fixed them up.

  “Joey and Mark are like you,” Lili said, when she saw all the gear. “Puppy-whipped.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  As Rochester and Brody chased each other around the downstairs, Joey handed me a typed sheet of everything I never wanted to know about Brody, including his middle name, Baggins. “Your dog is a hobbit?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.