by Weston Ochse
Everyone was an expert. There was no way Danny could listen and obey everyone. Even though they were grown-ups, he realized what they were saying were only recommendations. They never expected him to follow blindly. They, like Maxom, expected Danny to take what he liked best and find his own way. Whether or not the grass was cut in squares, circles or triangles, it truly didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that at the end of the day the grass was cut and Danny got paid.
Now, Danny searched The Land for Maxom. Most times, he could spot him, the slight blue quality of the man’s brightness separating him. Other times, he couldn’t tell any of the almost identical life pads apart. It was just so difficult. Maxom compared their differences to those of a roomful of bulbs all with slightly differing wattages.
Danny thought of searching over in Chattanooga proper, but that was off limits—Maxom had made Danny promise never to go there alone. The one time he’d hovered high enough to see the town, the illumination had almost blinded him. The town’s center was a great glowing circle. Firing off in several directions were lines of equally bright light. Like spokes of a great wheel, these disappeared over the horizon. It was a nexus Maxom had later told him, a place where the rivers of light joined, taking away the dead and rejuvenating the living.
Danny didn’t see Maxom, but he did spot another dog moving swiftly upon the community dock that was his favorite hangout. A pang of longing swept through him as he thought of all the hours of Marco Polo he was missing.
The dog was not alone. Two other lifepads were nearby, both human. Danny brightened. Maybe it was Tony or Doug or Clyde or Eddie. If it was one of his friends, Danny had some particular mischief in mind. Not only didn’t they know of his newfound ability, he doubted if they’d even considered the possibility.
Danny soared to the spot where the brightness of the dog’s life intersected The Land. He centered himself and merged into the duality, allowing himself a backseat to this canine ride. His vision immediately shifted to the three-dimensional black and white vision specific to the dog. There was some color in the dog’s vision, but the color represented no object. Rather, the swirls and tendril-like threads were the scents that tinted the world, an infinite maelstrom of chaotic color that allowed the canine a greater understanding of his environment. It’d taken Danny awhile to get used to it. The trick was to focus upon a single object, keeping others safely within his peripheral vision.
This time, like the other times when he first merged with a canine life pad, he struggled with the sensory overload. Sighting in on the dock beneath his feet, he concentrated. It took a moment, but he adjusted and soon, he was functioning fully as a four-legged, golden-haired Cocker Spaniel.
Danny felt a huge, round hairy object in his mouth. His feet were having trouble gripping the slick worn wood of the dock as he bolted the entire length towards a girl who was squatting with outstretched arms, beckoning him to hurry.
Danny felt a twinge of anxiety as his mind reacted to the very healthy, bikini-clad figure kneeling in front of him with outstretched arms, sun-tanned and beautiful. He’d seen her somewhere before, but couldn’t place her. Something about her voice…
Her long red hair lay against her skin, wet from a recent swim. Danny dropped the ball in her outstretched hand. She giggled. The dog wagged its tail. Danny added his own pleasure to the wag until the demonstrated happiness was nearly doubled. She called his name: Goldie. A silly, girl’s name for a dog, but he didn’t even mind it much. In fact, whenever she called the dog’s name, Danny felt a wave of pleasure course through his body.
He was having a great time. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any better she stood and hurled the ball back onto the shore. Reaching levels of elation he’d never dreamed possible the dog leapt into the air and shot back down the long dock. Within seconds, the ball was once again firmly gripped in his mouth. He held his head high and proud as he trotted across the wood. His mouth ached from the stretching. His paws were abused from the wood. But there was nothing that could stop him from playing with his master—there was nothing that could stop Danny from pleasing this girl.
Nothing except—
“Kimmie, come on and get back in the water,” came a voice Danny immediately recognized. The dog did as well and seemed to have the same feelings about Ernie as Danny did. The dog growled around the ball, the sound deeper and more guttural than the smallish dog should be able to make.
The girl ignored the boy’s call and again stretched out her arms, calling, “Goldie, Goldie. Come here boy.”
“Come on, sugar. Come in the water and join me. I got something for you.”
“I’ll bet you do,” muttered the girl, loud enough for only her and the dog to hear. She scrunched up her nose and scratched the dog behind the ear. She didn’t remove the ball though. Instead, she grabbed a bottle of lotion and began applying it to her chest and arms.
It was that motion that shocked Danny enough so the Dog dropped the ball. He remembered her now. In truth, he’d no idea how he’d forgotten her. How could he forget the magnificence of her single pink nipple poking through the wood of the dock.
“Kimmie!”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said over her shoulder. Finishing with her lotion, she grabbed a brush and began running it through her hair. “I don’t know why he’s so impatient, Goldie,” she said to the dog. “He’s just like a kid sometimes.”
No he isn’t. I’m a kid and I’d never treat you like that, Danny thought to himself hard enough to make the dog bark.
Kimmie laughed. “You agree, don’t you? You think he’s as childish as I do.”
He did agree with that, and this time, the dog barked at Danny’s directive.
“Well, you and me need to stick together, then. Okay?”
Danny felt a surge of warmth flow through the dog’s system that could only be pure love. The dog leapt into her arms and began licking her face and neck. Kimmie giggled. She protested, but did nothing to push the dog away from her. Instead she hugged the animal closer.
If this is what it’s like to be a dog, thought Danny, then I don’t want to be a boy.
The love was a purer sort than he’d ever felt before. Unfettered by his own emotions and ideas of what could or should be, the love was real and all for him.
“Jesus, Kimmie. I called and called. What the hell are you doing?” Ernie’s crew cut, brown-haired head appeared above the edge of the dock as he climbed the steel ladder. Next came his shoulders, linebacker broad, and covered with red acne.
His intrusion affected Kimmie like a switch. She let go of the dog and grabbed her hairbrush again. She became an automaton bringing it down through her hair repetitive and blank-staring, pretending not to have heard what was impossible for her not to hear.
Both Danny and the dog felt the loss of her attention. No sooner was the emotion stolen from them, however, then another replaced it. Where Kimmie’s love was an ethereal dream of kisses and heavy-breasted scents, this emotion promised to be a concrete nightmare of beatings and bites.
A dog’s remembrance of the day it was removed from its litter: four brothers, two sisters, they frolicked around each other as if all were different limbs of one creature. A special time where satisfaction could be found in the soft sustenance of his mother’s nipple, a place where he lay sucking until asleep. Then strange voices had intruded upon his family. Rough hands had pushed and prodded. His rear right leg was pulled as he was dragged away from his mother’s nipple.
A boy’s remembrance of his best friend Bergen in the hospital: Pallid skin covering the features of a comatose boy. Tubes and needles intruding into a body undeserving of the torture. Bergen’s mother and father weeping. Maxom’s tale of his bird’s-eye view of Greg and Ernie kicking and kicking and kicking the defenseless boy. The sounds of screams punctuated by laughter.
Danny and the dog felt each other’s emotions exponentially. Revenge and retribution, foreign ideas for the Cocker Spaniel were primed by Da
nny’s mind. Although the dog’s urge ended at the growl, that’s where Danny’s began. He allowed the dog to growl and added a portion of his own fury to it, making the sound loud and full of enough venom to make even Ernie pause in his ascension of the ladder.
Danny wanted to feel teeth in skin. He wanted to know what it was like to have the sharp canines pierce and seek blood—to cause pain. He felt the dog shuddering away from the idea, thousands of years of evolutionary training that man is best friend. Danny ignored the protestations and clamped down on the dog’s control. With a last bark, he launched the Cocker Spaniel at the young man.
Ernie was halfway up the ladder, his upper body already in view. He placed his hands on the dock to lever the rest of his body up—those were what Danny the Dog sought. He bit down hard. Revulsion surged through the dog. Ernie screamed. Danny tasted the coppery blood and relished the heat.
Suddenly he was airborne. Ass over head, he flew through the air. Barely missing the side of the dock, he hit the water hard—the force of the impact sending the air rushing from the dog’s lungs. He’d hit upside down and felt immediately disoriented.
He urged the dog to swim, but it ignored him. He felt the dog’s mind falling away from him, so Danny took control. Seeking the light, he fought the muscles and urged them to paddle towards it. But they were like clay and refused his call. He sent thought after thought after thought into the muscles, each a strict imperative to function. Just as it seemed hopeless, the muscles began to respond. Grudgingly, as if the dog would be happier on the bottom of the lake, rather than the surface, it began paddling.
It broke the surface of the water near the shore. Danny made the dog stagger onto the gritty sand, where they collapsed. He was exhausted. So much effort.
He sought inward for the dog’s spirit, hoping it was there, wondering where it had gone. He was dreadfully afraid it was dead—that he’d killed it. Finally, he found the spirit of the animal, cowering in a back corner of the animal’s mind amidst memories of thunderstorms and bicycle tires.
Danny urged the dog to come forth, but it refused. Somehow, it knew that a foreign soul had merged with it and was terrified. There was also another emotion. The animal felt ashamed. Biting the boy was something it would have never done. A small piece of the dog’s shame broke off and skewered Danny as he realized what he’d done to this animal. This dog’s existence was predicated upon the production and receipt of love, and Danny, in his need for revenge, had caused it to hate. By doing so, he’d changed its very nature. Danny had allowed his own emotional wants and needs to supercede those of the host creature. He’d possessed it like a demon and made it do terrible things.
A vision of a little girl’s tortured face came to mind as she cursed at the priest in The Exorcist-–green bile running from the corner of a mouth as she levitated above the bed. Danny was no different than the Legion that had entered that little girl.
No different at all.
He allowed himself to float free of the dog as he re-entered The Land. For the second time in so many weeks, Danny was ashamed. It was not an emotion he could get used to. More like a pain of the heart and mind, the only salve was time, and good deeds. Maybe if he did something for the animal, he could make himself feel better.
A voice, somewhere in the back of his mind asked a short simple question: Does that make it right?
CHAPTER 18
Saturday—June 30th
The Alexian Brother’s Retreat House
“I bet you’re wondering why you’re here.”
Simon ignored the obviously rhetorical question. A young family had pulled into the packed-sand parking lot in an old dishwater-gray station wagon. Mexican by the looks of them, the family’s hard times were clearly visible in the slump of their shoulders, the thread-worn garments and the crazy counter-balance of eternal optimism in four sets of brown eyes. Even the children seemed to be still, as if conservation of energy was a survival skill.
“We’ve spoken before on this subject, Simon. I honestly don’t know where I went wrong.”
Always willing to be a martyr. The foundation of Catholicism, thought Simon.
The wife was speaking with the husband, but through the closed window and the distance it was impossible to hear her. He read her body language enough to see her agitation. Within seconds the husband had thrown his hands into the air and herded the young boy and girl back into the car. He sped off, a plume of dust billowing and the tires squealed when they grabbed the asphalt road. He headed south towards Tombstone, probably looking for a drink to placate some recent error in judgement or forestall some future self-realization.
Simon had seen it a thousand times. The women always sought guidance from the Mother Mary. At each station of the cross they’d attempt to find themselves within the words, see past themselves and into the infinite that was faith. This faith they’d embrace until finally, when the husband returned happily numb from a few drinks, crying and apologetic, the women would accept them believing it was their prayers and a gentle God who had made it all happen.
Simon wasn’t sure he could take it any longer. We may not be perfect, but we are the answer, a Jesuit had said to him in St. Louis on a particularly bad day when three children had turned up over-dosed. It sounded like a bumper sticker or, more aptly, a sales pitch. The caveat was too perfect. It allowed for mistakes. Not just one or two, but an infinite number. The perfect vagueness of we are the answer was just too neat. Although the Jesuit had rattled the saying off as if he’d just created it, Simon knew it was the product of a Papal Commission. It had probably taken ten men several days to come up with the saying, lest he not forget the field testing and demographic studies.
“Brother Simon, I’m speaking to you. It’s common courtesy to pay attention.”
Simon turned and met Father Roy’s gaze. There were things he felt like saying to the old man, but he held his tongue. In the Army he’d learned the prudence of such a tactic. To display discontent meant a beating or some type of extra duty requiring rubber gloves and late night hours. So, as he normally did, Simon suppressed his urge to comment and waited. He didn’t have long.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“I have an idea.”
“I bet you do,” said Father Roy adjusting the old metal fan on the book shelf behind him so it blew against the back of his head. Once, several weeks ago, the Father had dropped a pen. In the process of bending to pick it up, the wind from the ill-positioned fan had lifted the man’s toupee. Simon still remembered the black hair flapping in the air like some flattened road kill come to life.
He couldn’t help but grin.
“You think this is funny, don’t you.”
“There’s nothing at all funny about this,” he said, losing his smile.
“I’m glad you realize that. Do you know that we’re responsible for that man’s medical bills now? I was informed of that this afternoon when the hospital administrator called. What were you thinking?”
“What man? Billy Bones? The hospital called?” Simon sat up straighter.
“Of course they did. When their patient just up and leaves without paying, they get real upset.”
Just up and leaves? How can someone at death’s door just up and leave? “Wait a minute.”
“No. You wait a minute. We had a deal, you and I. You were to do this outreach program and I was going to leave you alone. No getting into trouble. And I specifically told you not to bother that Evangelist over in the valley.” Father Roy took a moment to catch his breath. His face had turned licorice red. “Then not only do I get a call from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but I get a call from this Brother John. He say’s you’ve been bothering him. Is that right?”
The FBI called? Brother John called? Billy was missing? What the hell was going on? Too many things were happening at once and Simon felt totally lost.
“I can see by your hesitation that you understand my predicament. Simon. Simon. Simon,” said Father Roy, shaking his h
ead. “We both know why you’re here. This was your last stop. I think it’s time you called it quits. Knowing how stubborn you are, however, I’m going to call St. Louis and let them make the decision. Until then, you’re restricted to the Retreat House and its grounds. Do I make myself clear?”
Simon was too stunned at the developments to argue. Too much was happening, now. Too much by far. “The hospital, did they say how Billy was doing? I mean, did they say if he was going to live?”
Father Roy shook his head and pursed his lips. “You don’t get it, do you? It doesn’t matter anymore. You’re not going anywhere.”
* * *
Grounded!
Simon had been grounded by Father Roy as if the chunky old slab of piety was his real father. He might as well be, thought Simon. He slumped in the wooden chair that sat at the foot of his small bed.
Simon’s small window looked out upon old chicken wire fencing. Clumps of sagebrush had rolled up against it and become stuck, the same color as the papery carcass of an old tomato plant. Someone, sometime, had tried to tame this small portion of the desert. Might as well try and tame the wind, Simon thought. Certainly the desert was as immutable. Like the wind, it had a nature that was intricately linked to everything else. On the surface death was its only promise, but beneath and within were vast possibilities, like the mighty saguaro. For there to be something so titanically green, some type of eco-cooperation had to have occurred.
Cooperation was fine, but submission? To submit without the benefit of understanding was where Simon drew the line. In nature, each living thing knew how to survive in concert with the others. Even predators understood the concept of balance.
Not the military, though. There he’d spent years submitting to the whims of lesser men. Following the rules and orders of people merely because their rank was higher. Never mind common sense or intelligence or compassion. Those things were immeasurable, therefore not required.