by Leyna Krow
“Just so you know, we’re not supposed to bring pets in the office,” she says. “Unless maybe if they’re service animals. Is that a service animal?”
You tell her no, it’s not a service animal.
“Then I’m pretty sure it’s not allowed,” she says.
You tell her you hardly think it matters now.
She looks to the door, clearly hoping for someone else to appear with whom she can confer about the animal issue. Then she looks back to you.
“Is it a dog?” she asks.
You shake your head. She leans over, hands on her knees, as if she has suddenly decided the animal requires very careful scrutiny. You find you no longer want her to leave. You enjoy having this power over her—the power of owning something she can’t identify. Though to be fair, you have yet to identify it either.
“Is it a wombat?” Gretchen asks.
“No,” you say. “I think those only live in Australia.”
“It looks like a wombat.”
You shrug and reach down to scratch the soft place behind the animal’s ear. It responds with a satisfied grunt.
“He likes it,” Gretchen says, her voice softening.
“You can try if you want,” you offer.
Gretchen looks to you, then back to the animal.
“No,” she says. “No, that’s all right.”
She straightens up, brushing her hands against the front of her skirt, as if she’s just discovered it covered in something unpleasant.
“Well...” she says.
“Well,” you say.
“You keep in touch now,” she says. “Don’t be a stranger, you hear?”
“I’ll have Steve from security come help you with your boxes,” she adds.
Then she leaves.
When Steve from security arrives, he makes no mention of the animal, just walks around it as if it were a piece of furniture. You, in turn, pay as little attention as possible to Steve from security.
At home, you find the animal follows you out of the car and up the driveway without the aid of cheese. You open the front door and stand to the side, hand outstretched. “I suppose you can come in if you want,” you say to the animal. It accepts this offer with neither enthusiasm nor trepidation. It simply shuffles inside as if it’s been crossing your threshold every afternoon for years. It pads across your hardwood floors to the rug in front of your TV, sniffs, turns around once and lies down. This is its spot. This is where it belongs.
This is also where you belong. You’ve lived in this modest house at the edge of town for most of your adult life. You own it outright and it’s one of the few possessions you take real pride in. You like the open yard, the woods that run behind the house and to one side, the quiet and stillness of the place—an oasis just for you. Even with the new subdivision across the road, the land around your house still feels untamed, the way the woods creep right up to the edge of the street, like you or your neighbors could just fall into them and never be seen or heard from again.
You decide the time has come to give the animal a name. You first consider names that make reference to its bulk, like Mungo, Thor, Tank, or, in the more ironic vein, Tiny, Slim, or Mouse. Ultimately, you settle on Walter, after your grandfather. This is actually the name you had been planning on giving your son, were you to have a son, but it seems you have reached a point in your life where the son-having boat has pretty much sailed. So no sense hanging on to a perfectly good name.
Although you’ve bestowed the animal with a boy’s name, you’re not one hundred percent certain it’s actually male. It never rolls onto its back (preferring instead to sleep on its stomach with arms and legs splayed out), or offers any other way for you to easily check. You don’t want to press the issue. So you simply assume the animal is a boy because you like saying “Good boy.” Much more satisfying than the alliterative, yet halting “Good girl.”
Once you’ve given Walter his name, you feel he ought to have other things a pet might have as well. At a strip-mall pet store, you browse for a while before settling on a retractable leash and collar set that says XL on its tag and claims to be suitable for dogs up to 120 pounds. You suspect Walter may weigh more than this, but it will have to do. You also pick out a bag of rawhide chew sticks and a big orange rubber ball that squeaks when squeezed.
You don’t know if Walter will be interested in playing fetch with you, but you figure it can’t hurt to try.
The teenage girl working the cash register fondles your oversized purchases and smiles.
“What kind of dog do you have?” she asks.
“A Saint Bernard,” you say, although if Walter were a dog, which you remain certain he is not, he would be closer to a Labrador. A Labrador mixed with a porcupine and a bison.
“Ooooooooh!” the girl squeals. “Those are my favorite! They’re so cuddly. What’s its name?”
“Walter,” you say.
“That’s a good name for a dog. I hope he likes his new toys,” she says, handing you your bags.
You nod and smile back at her, satisfied in your abilities as a namer and caretaker of large creatures.
Outside the store, you stop to look at a bulletin board covered with fliers for free puppies, dog walkers, and animal training services. You notice also a number of posters for missing pets: cats and one small dog. The addresses are mostly from the subdivision across the road from you. Sad, you think. But this is what happens when people crowd themselves in to previously unpeopled places. The wild and the domesticated clash.
Walter, as it turns out, has no interest in fetch. Back home, in the yard, you wave the toy in front of his face and squeak the squeaker. He doesn’t respond. You throw the toy across the yard. He watches it bounce twice and come to rest under some bushes, but makes no move to retrieve it. You don’t take this personally.
His reaction to your other purchases is more favorable. You fit the collar around his bulky neck and when you attach the leash and tug gently, he stands and allows himself to be led in slow circles around the yard. Every few steps, you offer a reassuring “Good boy.” He matches your stride and doesn’t pull or stop abruptly. From then on, you lead him on walks through the woods behind your house each day. During these walks, you think about how you should be looking for work, how it is wrong to spend your days so free and unoccupied and unproductive. You watch as Walter sniffs and grunts with interest at his surroundings, and take pleasure in his company. You try to think of something, career-wise, that you might enjoy just as much and come up empty. The world of human work holds little appeal for you. You decide the problem is that you are perhaps more animal at heart.
The woman who comes to your door one afternoon looks concerned. She holds her hands behind her back and you can tell she is trying to sound casual. She is sharply dressed in heels, pleated slacks, a snug-fitting sweater, and her hair pulled back in a high ponytail. She doesn’t look religious so you assume she has come to ask if you are registered to vote. But when she gets past her pleasantries, you see it’s something else entirely.
“I live down the street,” she says, pointing to the subdivision. “I’m going around the neighborhood to let people know about an issue that’s come up.”
She waits for you to nod and when you do she continues.
“My family and several other families have lost cats in recent weeks. We’re worried there’s something in the area that’s hunting around here. Coyotes, maybe. So we’re going door-to-door to warn other pet owners to keep their animals in at night. Do you have pets?”
“Yes,” you say.
You see the woman look past you, scanning your living room. You tell her you appreciate the information and are sorry for her loss. You ask what her cat looks like.
“Sometimes they just wander off into the woods,” you say, gesturing toward your yard, “and then turn up a few days later. I’ll keep an eye out for it.”
The cat is gray, the woman says. “But I doubt...”
Something has caught her att
ention. Behind you, you can feel Walter moving around. The woman’s eyes grow wide.
“Is your dog part wolf?” she asks. “Yes,” you say because it is no less correct than it would be to say “no.” “I’ll keep an eye out for your cat,” you say again. The woman nods, thanks you quickly but politely, turns, and then is gone, back down your porch steps and across the street, back to her own side.
You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t considered the possibility that Walter is responsible for the disappearing pets. When you’re at home, he’s inside with you or out in the yard. But you don’t know what he does while you’re gone. You leave the back door open so he can go out when he likes. You simply choose to assume, since he is always on your property when you return, that he stays there. But this may not be the case. This is likely not the case.
“Walter,” you say, your hands on your hips in angry-housewife-position, “did you eat that nice woman’s cat?”
Hearing his name, Walter looks up at you. You know he hasn’t understood your question. Obviously. Still, there’s something in his eyes, or in the way he cocks his head, that suggests comprehension. You smile in spite of yourself and are immediately ashamed. If Walter is guilty here, then you, as his owner, must also be. You do not want to be complicit in the death of cats. But there is a feeling of shared conspiracy you find satisfying.
That night you have a dream where you and Walter are hunters. Together, you roam the neighborhood, looking for prey. Except, there is no neighborhood. The subdivision is gone and your house stands alone at the end of the road, the way it did when you first moved in. But the people are still there. All through the woods, women wearing heels, pleated slacks, and snug-fitting sweaters, their hair pulled back in high ponytails—just like the woman who came to your door—walk with great purpose. They are unloading groceries from sport utility vehicles, getting their children ready for school, ironing more snug-fitting sweaters. Even without their homes, they look smug and content, bolstered by their sense of rightness in doing and owning the same things as everyone else around them. They take no notice of you. In the dream, you become disoriented in the maze of suburban women among the trees. You’ve lost sight of Walter, but somewhere in the distance you hear him howl—a high, tinny sound the real Walter never makes. You follow the sound and find him digging frantically at a hillside burrow. You pull him back by his collar and reach for whatever he’s after. It’s a mammal of some sort—not quite a cat, not quite a rodent—and when you pick it up, it is soft like a cotton ball and weighs almost nothing. “Walter, we can’t eat this,” you say, but then Walter howls again and you feel your hands close around the small creature, crushing it.
You wake with a sense of unease.
You sit out on the deck in the morning light with your notepad and start another list. This one is called “Ways to Make Sure Walter Stays in the Yard.” You don’t come up with anything. You sketch the cotton ball animal from your dream. In your drawing it is alert and fluffy and not crushed. You add this sketch to the fridge with the other.
The next day, you see Gretchen in the grocery store and although she looks straight at you, she doesn’t acknowledge you. You’ve never liked Gretchen, but still, this deliberate avoidance irritates you. If the roles were reversed, you would at least be civil. You would at least wave and mouth “hello.” You wonder, as you shop, what it would take to force Gretchen’s attention. Some sort of public scene? If you had Walter with you, she wouldn’t have been able to pretend she couldn’t see you. She would have stared, just like your last day at the office.
You’re aware you could simply go up to her and say “hi,” and of course she would respond, even pretend to be happy to see you. But, again, you don’t like Gretchen. So why bother?
Back home, you feel anxious, jittery. You try to convince yourself you aren’t upset about Gretchen, but it’s a lie. You decide you need to take a walk and clear your head. You find Walter asleep in his usual spot in the living room. You attach the leash to his collar and gently pull.
“Let’s go,” you say, and Walter stands and follows.
This time though, instead of going through the backyard, you lead Walter out the front door and across the street. Here, you can walk into the woods to the left or you can zigzag into the subdivision and meander among the prefab houses, manicured lawns, identical green mailboxes. You pick the subdivision.
Even with all this new stimuli, Walter is content on his leash, as always. He walks by your side and sniffs at things as you pass—trees, shrubs, children’s toys left out in yards. He doesn’t pull. “Good boy,” you tell him from time to time. “Walter’s a good boy.”
The subdivision is nothing like in your dream. You knew this, of course. You’ve been here before, many times. Still, some part of you expects to see the identical women in their pleaded slacks and high ponytails walking with purpose to and from their identical SUVs parked in each and every driveway, their eyes clear, their expressions self-satisfied. Instead, the neighborhood seems all but abandoned. There are few cars on the street and most homes have their shades drawn. This makes sense—it’s early afternoon on a weekday. Most people are not at home early afternoon on weekdays.
You walk several blocks before you finally see another person. Two people. A woman and a little boy playing in a yard on the opposite side of the street. As you approach, the woman lifts her hand as if to wave to you—this is, after all, a friendly place, a neighborly place—but then puts it to her mouth instead. She is looking at Walter. She reaches out and pulls the little boy close to her body. She doesn’t say anything. Just holds her son and stares, as if she’s unsure what to make of you and whatever it is you’ve got at the end of the leash.
You decide you are pleased by this reaction.
The next day, you go for another walk through the subdivision. There are a few more people out this time. No one waves, but one man does point. On telephone poles, you take note of missing animal posters, more than you saw at the pet store. Every block seems to have a different one—pictures of kids holding kittens, small dogs curled in dog beds, one red-eyed ferret. You look to Walter and try to tell if he is familiar with these streets, or excited, filled with bloodlust perhaps. But he appears to be none of these things. Walter, in your opinion, is simply not a lustful or excitable creature.
Walks through the subdivision become part of your daily routine. You try to go at the same time each afternoon, so people can look for you if they want to look for you. Although, for the most part, no one acknowledges you. Once, an elderly woman sitting on the front porch of a house calls to Walter. “Here pretty kitty! Come here!” You lead Walter to the house and wait while the woman pets his long back and scratches under his chin. She doesn’t say anything to you and the next day she isn’t there.
Otherwise, it’s the neighborhood’s children who are most brazen, and even they keep their distance. They have a uniform, prefab quality about them, just like the homes they live in. They ride by you in packs, on shining BMX bikes, sandy hair tucked under florescent helmets. They circle the block you’re walking on so they can pass by again and stare. But they never stop, never speak.
You come to see walking Walter through the subdivision as a job of sorts. It’s a daily task that you cannot miss. You aren’t quite sure why this is, but it’s certainly a more rewarding activity than any real job you’ve ever held. You’re outside, you’re spending time with a good friend, you’re getting exercise. And then, of course, you have to assume people in the subdivision have come to expect you at a certain time each afternoon. If you did not walk Walter through their neighborhood at that time, then what? You feel they need this reminder, whatever it is you and Walter are reminding them of. Perhaps only a reminder that you’ve got something they don’t—something big, and maybe something bad. Maybe something wild.
At night, you read, or watch TV, or sketch. You continue to add your drawings to the refrigerator door and a scene develops—a forest surrounding a small house with fanta
stical creatures peeking in from the edges. The original sketch of Walter is at the very center. Everything circles out from him and in the drawing, he, too, looks fantastical, an image not really of this world.
The real Walter keeps you company and when you go to bed, you leave the back door open so he can go out whenever he pleases. You tell yourself you do this so he doesn’t have to wake you when he needs to relieve himself. One night, you get up and look around the house for him and can’t find him, but then another night you get up and he’s in his favorite spot on the living room floor, so you tell yourself that other time was a fluke or just your imagination.
One night there’s a knock at your door and when you go to open it, no one is there, but you can hear the giggling of kids nearby.
One night there’s a knock at your door and when you open it no one is there and you hear absolutely nothing.
In the morning, you find a flier in your mailbox for a missing cat. The picture is of an obese tabby with “HAVE YOU SEEN ME?” in handwritten letters across the top. You wonder if every house on the street got one, or if this flier is just for you.
Another morning you find a different note, hand-written. “In the future, all dogs bite,” it says. Though you don’t know what it means, exactly, you are intrigued by the sentiment. You add it to the refrigerator door as though it were a title for the scene of your drawings.
Not long after that, something new happens. You’ve taken a long, looping afternoon walk through the subdivision and are on your way back toward home when Walter tugs against you on his leash. It’s not a hard tug and it’s not a persistent tug. Still, it’s out of character. As long as you’ve been walking Walter through the woods and the neighborhood, he’s never pulled on the leash, never tried to dictate where you go.
You assume he is tugging now because he wants to walk more. He knows from routine that you are heading home and doesn’t want to go. But you’re tired. You’re ready to be in your house, or out on the back deck, enjoying your solitude and idleness. He tugs once more.