Tess came out to her grown children. Her two little grandchildren were born knowing that their Grannie heard motorcycles as jagged brown, streaked with battleship gray. If they spotted motorcycles, they cried, “Grannie cover your ears, the brown and silver are coming by!”
She knew that synesthesia had skipped her own children, but her grandchildren had a filtered down version and Tess gloried in it.
And now the new woman on the island, the animal control warden, was keeping Tess busier than she had been in years. Tess was drawn to things that didn’t fit; shoulders that had popped out of their sockets, vertebrae that had squiggled to one side, muscles that had tightened so much that they were unrecognizable, and people who didn’t fit, either in their own skin or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. She didn’t know if synesthesia accounted for it; she’d seen no evidence of that in on-line chatter from the synesthetes. But she was sure that Rocky did not fit.
Chapter 6
Lift with your knees, not your back. Rocky heard the old tape running through her head. She wondered why some tapes automatically turn on. Other well-worn messages too: be careful of eating fish, you could choke on a bone. She never ate fish without hearing her father’s voice, “Check for bones, this is bony fish.” Her father hadn’t eaten fish unless forced to and sat nervously glancing at his two children and his wife who flirted recklessly with death as they ate. He was Italian and without fear of Italian stereotype, preferred to eat pasta seven days a week. When things went well between Rocky’s parents, her mother gave him ziti when they ate fish. When they were in their bad spells, she slid a bony piece of fish onto his plate and turned her back.
Now Rocky wondered how she could lift with her knees and not her back. Someone had called in a complaint about a black lab sort of dog who had been scrounging the south beach for several days and was acting strange; drooling and limping, bobbing his head. Rocky dreaded the thought that he might have rabies. When she got the call, the dog was last seen by the Dumpster in back of Stan’s Seafood Diner.
“He could be sick. Eighty percent of all raccoons have rabies and he could have been bitten by a raccoon,” said Phil, who washed dishes at the diner.
How did people come up with these statistics? If eighty percent of all raccoons were rabid, then why weren’t they dead? This was the kind of question that she would have asked Bob, as if he were the encyclopedia of wildlife. She made a mental note to go back to the bookstore.
Rocky watched one large raccoon visit her garbage can nightly, wrestling with it, standing on its back legs, tipping the green plastic garbage can on its side. That raccoon had looked healthy enough. After cleaning up too much sticky, aromatic garbage from her walkway, she bought a bungee cord that finally raccoon-proofed the can. Her raccoon visitor didn’t have rabies; she was just hungry. Most of what humans do is not so different from what animals do; much of what we do is based on hunger, or the fear of being hungry, selecting a mate, and protecting our young. The guidebook of mammals said that raccoons, Procyon lotor, did not mate until late winter or early spring, so this gal was just beefing up for courtship.
Rocky stopped at the grocery store and bought a small package of low-grade ground beef. She drove the old truck up to the diner, hoping that the dog had not left already. As a dogcatcher, she learned how to make animal-catching easier. Bring food, squat on the ground, talk sweet, say “Good dog, what a good dog,” letting her voice rise slightly, moving slowly. And try not to appear vicious. In dog language, she wanted to show first the offering of food, then firmness and calm.
She pierced the plastic wrap around the meat with her truck keys and walked around the back of the building. She felt a sharp tingle in the early November air. Tonight would be hard on a sick dog outdoors.
She saw him scrunched next to a pile of wood covered by a bright blue tarp. She announced her arrival.
“There you are, good dog.” He lifted his head with a cloudy-eyed weariness. She crouched down about eight feet away.
“Come get some breakfast, buddy.” She held out the meat. His deep brown eyes focused on her and she thought for a moment that this was the look of great despair that she saw on people who were deep in mourning or in the throes of a major depression. She shook her head to unscramble her brain.
The dog tried to stand, and yelped when he put his weight on his front legs.
“OK, big boy. I’ll come to you. I’ll deliver breakfast.”
He lowered himself back down and accepted the meat that she placed right in front of his nose. For a moment his eyes softened. He sniffed the meat and gave it one lick. He looked too sick to eat. She rubbed his head after letting him smell her hand.
She reached over to the front leg that he was protecting and gingerly felt around.
“Oh, no.” Her hand stopped on something jutting out of his shoulder. She leaned over cautiously. He had a shaft sticking out of the front of his chest and she could feel the heat of the infection.
“Bend with your knees and not your back.” She couldn’t possibly pick up this dog without hurting him. She untied the blue tarp from a woodpile and went inside to get Phil. The two of them slid the dog onto the folded tarp and then they lifted him to the back of the truck. Rocky closed the camper shell and headed straight for the ferry landing. The first ferry of the day was getting ready to go to Portland and she knew Sam Reynolds would be on it. He was a vet with a practice in South Portland.
She reached the ferry as the crew was starting to latch the closing chain across the landing.
“Wait!” yelled Rocky as she jumped out of her truck. “You’ve got to let me on. I’ve got a dog that’s been hurt.” Then she scanned the deck for Sam and saw him, hugging a plastic coffee mug. She waved her arms at him. He lowered his mug and headed down the metal staircase. The ferry opened up and waited for Rocky. There was room for her truck and she pulled in beside the other pickup trucks, mostly carpenters going off island for the day. Sam opened up the back of the truck as Rocky described the injury.
“Let’s just wait until we get to my office. There’s not much I can do here,” he said. Sam felt the shoulder and the chest area. He unzipped his green jacket. “This is an arrow. He probably broke it off trying to get it out.” He got in the truck when they landed in Portland and she drove to Sam’s office. They backed the truck up to the front door. Within thirty minutes, Sam and his vet tech had the dog inside and hooked up to an IV.
“He’s being prepped for surgery. Nothing left for you to do here, Rocky. I can get a ride to my car in Portland. Why don’t you go back home and I’ll give you a call tonight.”
Sam and his wife kept one car parked at a friend’s house off island and one car exclusively for the island. Rocky knew that he would save the dog if he could. She had already taken a series of sick cats to him on his one morning per week that he had office hours on the island.
But instead of taking the next ferry back, she drove to Portland and parked the truck in a parking garage to get it off the street. She had breakfast, went to the library, read the newspaper, and used the library’s Internet to check email, none of which she answered.
She returned to Sam’s office in the middle of the afternoon. He rubbed his head as if searching for hair that he used to have, now only a memory of dark fuzz on the top of his head that he clipped short. Sam handed her the tag that had hung around the dog’s neck. It was a piece of octagonal aluminum, painted with yellow reflective paint.
“This would have been a lot more helpful if it had all the rabies information, and the local vet. But it probably helped the owner to see this guy at night. We went ahead and gave the dog a rabies shot along with enough antibiotics to clean out Boston Bay.”
Rocky tossed the dog tag in her hand. “How’s he doing?”
“Thought you’d never ask. Come on back. Be careful. He probably won’t remember you.”
Rocky knew if she were a dog she would run like crazy to get out of a vet’s office. The smells were awf
ul. Even her inadequate human nose could smell fear and pain, loneliness. Sam pushed open the new metal door to the recovery room where postoperative animals stayed. And it smelled like Bob.
The Lab was in the largest cage that they had and he was on his left side. The white bandage around his right front leg made Rocky wince. They had shaved off his fur right up past his shoulder. He lifted his head when Rocky knelt down. Sam opened the door wide. The dog thumped his tail once when Rocky put her hand near his nose.
“He’s well enough to sniff out a good-smelling woman.”
“Sam, you’re too young to be saying stuff like that and get away with it. Old-geezer vets can say things about how women smell and we excuse them and call them cute, old men. Even your lack of hair doesn’t put you into the geezer category.”
“That’s unfair.”
“You’ve been hanging around dogs and cats too long. Don’t start telling your clients how they smell.”
Sam was in his late thirties and had worked long enough so that all his student loans were paid off and he and his wife, Michelle, were finally feeling expansive. Business in the winter was slower with all the summer people gone, but this gave Sam time to flirt with the dog warden.
The dog gave a heave and tried to stand up. When his right leg hit the floor he yelped, but he stood up anyhow, dizzy from the anesthetic, keeping most of his weight on three legs. She remembered Bob telling her how Labs and golden retrievers will overcompensate; if they feel pain, they will grit their teeth and plow on, especially if it meant running or being with their people. She winced at his pain.
“You know they heal faster than we do. He’s a young, strong dog, probably four or five. In a couple of days, we’ll start looking for a foster home for him until we can locate the owner.” The dog turned his head and looked straight at Rocky.
“Be careful, he has just given you the look. When Labs give people the look, it is a powerful, mind-altering drug that makes you think you have been personally locked into a soul contract.”
“I’m not an easy mark. I just don’t like to see a good dog suffering. If you haven’t contacted the owners by the time he’s ready to be released, I can be the foster home until we find them.”
She stood up and wiped her hands on her thighs. This is what she and Bob would have done. “Or maybe I shouldn’t. I just remembered, he’ll be alone while I’m working…”
“That’s right. And while you’re out, he’ll be sleeping. Dogs would hate for this secret to get out, but they’re a lot like cats. They look for a good place to curl up and sleep.”
Rocky took a breath and shook the memory of past foster dogs away. “Yeah, yeah. Show me his meds. Or will he be done with meds by then?”
The conversation was making Rocky’s head go woozy. In the early days of their marriage, Rocky had assisted Bob in checking on animals that had to stay overnight. This was the longest time that she had spent in the back room of a vet clinic since Bob died. She walked over to a cool steel table, put her hands on the edge and leaned into it.
“Are you feeling okay? This dog is going to be fine, I’m not trying to stick you with a dying dog.” Sam sounded like he was trying to reassure her.
“You really are new at this, aren’t you?” Sam asked.
For a moment Rocky wanted to tell him that nothing was new, everything was new, that he should be careful because he and Michelle could have their world pulled out from under them by a drunk driver, a predestined heart attack, or lightning could strike and everything that he loved would be taken from him.
She pushed off from the table. “You’re right. I’m new at this.”
In two days, Rocky got the call that the dog was ready to be released.
“I’ve been out of town for a day. When you come get your dog, I want you to come and take a look at the arrow that I pulled out of him,” said Sam.
“He’s not my dog. I’m just sort of a canine rehab center for this guy. He belongs to somebody. He misses somebody.”
“Whatever you say. We close at noon today. Stop over then. You’ll need to bring your truck.”
Reserving a place for vehicles on the ferry was difficult for visitors to the island, especially during the season; full-time residents had a year-round pass. But Rocky discovered she had the additional power to make last-minute requests if she was on emergency business, as she had been with the Lab. And this time of year, there was a pleasing absence of vehicles loaded down with deck chairs, bikes, and beer.
Dr. Reynold’s clinic had a cat door and a dog door. The two sides of the clinic were delineated by the neutral zone of the receptionist’s island. Rocky paused a moment and went in the dog door.
Sam opened the door behind the examining room where all the supplies were kept. On the counter was the shaft and point of the arrow that he removed from the black dog.
“Did you notice anything about this arrow?” he asked her.
“I didn’t see it. I only saw the shaft of the arrow and I was honestly thinking a lot more about the dog. But you want to tell me something, so let’s jump to that part.”
He rolled the shaft around in his palm. “This entire arrow is handmade. Look at this,” he said, pointing his finger at the string around the arrowhead.
“This stuff that looks like string? This is made from tendons of a deer, wrapped around the shaft to attach the point. Probably used hide glue. Do you know how long it takes to make one of these? From start to finish? If you include the time it took to cut and dry the wood, and I’m told this is probably Osage, about three months. I know that if you go to the trouble of making one of these, you don’t shoot it at a dog. You go for the whole, pure experience. You want to shoot a deer, a turkey, a pheasant. Something is very wrong here.” He dropped the arrow into her hands.
“Does anyone on the island have this as a winter hobby, like rug braiding or bookbinding? You must know everyone,” said Rocky.
“I have never heard anyone brag or do a show and tell about making a bow and arrow the good old-fashioned way. And that’s the kind of thing someone would have to brag about.”
Rocky leapt through the obvious possibilities in her brain. “So this probably wasn’t the work of a child. This was an adult hobby. Have you ever seen a dog shot by an arrow before?”
“Not on the island, but it happens. That’s why I got on the Web when I took a good look at this thing. I found several places that specialize in this type of arrow; one in Minnesota and one in Nebraska.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The good news is that this is a strong animal, and he will heal without too much damage to the quality of his life. The surgery was messy. Had to remove some necrotic tissue, which was unfortunately muscle. I’d say he walked around with that arrow sticking out of him for maybe three days. No matter how bad he’s feeling now, he’s feeling better than he was.”
“Can I keep this?” she asked, holding up the remains of the arrow.
“It’s yours.”
Sam had already called the Portland police to let them know about the dog. He said they sounded unimpressed. They sent over an officer a few hours after Sam made the call and asked a few questions. They said it was probably the last of the tourists who thought the island was a good place to shoot, and the dog was in the wrong place. One of the Portland cops came over every morning, drove his car around the island and left on the next ferry.
Sam rode in the back with the dog while Rocky drove. The ferry was not crowded; late afternoon in November resulted in only a third of the ferry passengers. As they approached Rocky’s rental house, she suddenly saw it as Sam might see it. He and Michelle had just remodeled their house on the south side of the island. She wondered how she looked in Sam’s eyes, a woman in her thirties, living on the part-time salary of animal control warden, single, and living in one of the cottages that will only marginally make it through the winter. Sam’s khaki pants picked up dirt from the back of her truck as he slid out.
She hesitated to have Sam enter the little rental. She was
suddenly jealous of his life, the completeness of it, of his wife and kids. He and Michelle had two young children and the addition on their house, although delayed, was due to be done by December. Rocky had turned down several invitations for dinner with them.
“Let’s lift him down and see if he can make it in the house,” said Sam.
Sam wrapped his arms around the dog’s rib cage and Rocky lent support to the rear end. When they set him on the ground, he limped five feet away and squatted slightly as he let loose with a stream of urine.
“He’s not ready to stand on three legs yet,” Sam said.
The three of them made it up the wooden steps that led to her deck. She unlocked the door and urged the dog in. Sam looked around with the quick eye of a medical assessment. “I used to live in a place like this in college, except there were four of us and one guy never washed his own dishes and finally the rest of us wouldn’t wash his dishes either, so we all used paper plates. It looks like you’re a lot neater.”
No one else had been in the house, not even Tess. Just the cat, and she only stayed part of the time. Rocky had started to call her Peterson, after the guidebook.
Rocky listened to Sam’s voice, and although she didn’t hear his words as such, she was measuring the level of her rapid breathing, and noted that since her breathing was not increasing in pace, a panic attack was less likely and she would not have to face the consequences of gasping for air in front of Sam. She was a four on a ten-point scale of anxiety and she could ride this out. She hadn’t had another panic attack after the first one, two months after Bob died. And although the sound of another person breathing in her house was now reaching tolerable levels, the thought of Sam and Michelle seeing inside her house made her want to throw up. Her blood noticed the threat and picked up the pace and her heart rate quickened. There was always flight; she could run away into the tangle of vines and rhododendrons that formed a thick boundary between her and the beach road. There was fight; she could rage, make a scene, wait for the hapless man to make a wrong move and seize on the moment to hurl him out. Or freeze, like the rabbit, the deer, or the lizard and keep Sam in her sight as he left damp trails on her linoleum floor. Her ancient brain came forward like a crocodile, eyes bulging, peeking over the surface of the water.
Lost & Found With Bonus Excerpt Page 5