Water Dogs

by Lewis Robinson

  He swam a breaststroke toward Nixon, which seemed to take too long, and when he reached the dog, she was still intent on bringing the buoy back to shore but was low in the water now, just keeping her nose above the surface. When Coach reached her, he ripped the buoy out of her mouth, jerking her head to the side. He threw the buoy overhand behind her, and she weakly started to U-turn again, to fetch the buoy once more—Bennie loved her for this—but Coach grabbed her collar and redirected her toward land. Once they were on course, he didn’t need to hold on to her. They swam side by side. For all her diligence, she, like most dogs, didn’t dwell on the past. Her owner was swimming beside her, and she had no ball in her mouth. She kept swimming.

  Ten yards away, Gwen started cheering them on. “Almost home, almost home! Let’s get some, soldier! Here we go, here we go!” Eleanor was silent, gripping the collar of her coat. Nixon and Coach were barely making progress. Coach’s stroke had switched to a kind of dog paddle, and his eyes looked unfocused, though his lips were pursed tightly together. Bennie saw the look of one of his mother’s patients in those eyes—intent, but lost. Just after they’d started cheering, a wave came over Coach’s head, and when it passed, he was gone.

  They lurched as a family toward the water, but Littlefield was the first to remove his parka. Eleanor held back Bennie, who grabbed Gwen. Eleanor made a few whining noises, holding on to Bennie and Gwen and watching Littlefield, who charged into the waves and was still able to stand when he reached Coach. Then Littlefield was stumbling back up the rocks with his naked father in his arms—Coach’s large turnip-colored body, stark white and wet, his brown hair matted against his head by salt water. His eyes were open and still held that look—as though he knew something crucial was missing. He was coughing meekly, which seemed a good sign. And he wasn’t shaking; he wasn’t moving much at all.

  Bennie took hold of him, too, from the other side and helped Littlefield carry him up the rocks. Eleanor had taken her coat off and had wrapped it around Coach’s waist. Gwen had taken hers off and put it around his chest, under his armpits. They assumed this would warm him up, but when they reached the bushes, Coach wasn’t responding to anything they did or said.

  Even so, his wife spoke to him. “We’re taking you to the hospital,” she said.

  Under normal circumstances, being carried would not have been acceptable to Coach. And going to the hospital would be out of the question. But he said nothing.

  “You’re sick right now, William,” Eleanor continued.

  When they got him to the Vista Cruiser, they stretched him out in the backseat and their mother lay beside him. Littlefield started the car. Their mother was hugging Coach in the backseat while the kids took off more of their clothes and covered their parents.

  In the midst of this Gwen looked up and said, “Where’s Nixon?”

  Littlefield hopped out. Bennie had just taken off his sweater and was wrapping it around Coach’s shoulders when Littlefield grabbed him by the shirt collar and twisted the cotton in his fists. He said, “You drive the car. You know how to get to the hospital. Once you get him inside, come back for me and Nixon.”

  Eleanor was hugging Coach, rubbing his arms and his back. Bennie didn’t have a license, but he followed Littlefield’s instructions. He put the Vista Cruiser into gear and lurched out onto the main road. He knew the basics from the handful of times Coach let him drive on the island. He’d never used a directional signal. They were passing streets he recognized, but everything looked new and large from the driver’s side. Within minutes they were gliding to a stop in front of the hospital. A scrawny man in a bathrobe smoking a cigarette stood by the front doors. “I’ll get out of your way,” he said.

  Coach was unable to walk—he was barely conscious—but he still managed to seem angry. His eyebrows were wet, and his hair, which was usually parted neatly, looked like marsh grass, matted down. Bennie opened the back door of the Vista Cruiser and hooked his arms under Coach’s armpits to pull him out. Gwen grabbed his legs. They carried him until their mother brought a wheelchair. His calves and his arms were cold and heavy. Gwen went back to the Vista Cruiser to get the armful of clothes they’d draped over him in the car, and she covered him up again.

  As soon as Eleanor rolled Coach through the hospital doors, Bennie climbed back into the Vista Cruiser and with one hand on top of the steering wheel he shifted into gear.

  On the access road to Cape Fred, Bennie saw them—they were on the shoulder, Littlefield stooped over Nixon. The dog was on her side. Bennie sped up, and when he got to them, he stomped on the brakes, skidding in the gravel. Littlefield picked Nixon up in his arms and said, “Door,” so Bennie hopped out and ran around to the other side of the car. He let them into the backseat.

  Once Bennie closed the door, he sprinted back around to the driver’s side, Littlefield yelling, “Go! Go! Go!”

  Bennie cranked the wheel and the Vista Cruiser spun in a neat circle, dipping just slightly into the shoulder before straightening out. “Where?” he shouted.

  “Home,” said Littlefield. “I’ve got the stuff to help her back there.”

  In the backseat, she was panting. Bennie didn’t want to ask Littlefield any questions. He didn’t want to know how bad off Nixon was. Somehow Littlefield had diagnosed the dog and knew what needed to be done.

  When they got to the Manse, Littlefield wouldn’t let Bennie into the barn while he worked on Nixon, so Bennie stood just outside the tall wooden doors in the cold. He asked, “How’s it going?” and heard a quiet, muffled “Fine” from inside.

  It was just after dark when an unfamiliar car pulled into the driveway. The headlights blinded Bennie, who was still leaning against the barn. The car doors slammed. Then Eleanor and Gwen were walking on either side of Coach, all three of them moving slowly. When they reached the barn door, the car pulled back out of the driveway.

  “Where’s your brother?” said Coach.

  “He’s in the barn with Nixon,” said Bennie.

  “Is the dog okay?” asked Coach.

  “I don’t know.”

  Littlefield called through the doors. “She’ll be fine.”

  “Aren’t you cold in there?” asked Eleanor.

  “I’m fine,” said Littlefield.

  “I’m cold,” said Bennie.

  “You have enough light?” asked Eleanor.

  “It’s fine,” said Littlefield.

  Bennie asked, “Are you all right, Coach?”

  “Those doctors are a bunch of assholes,” he said. “Every one of them, except your mother.”

  “She’s a psychologist,” said Gwen.

  Littlefield continued to shout through the doors. He said, “They put you in the tub, Coach?” Gwen and Bennie and Littlefield had all been in the hot tub at the hospital, which they used for hypothermic lobstermen—when their mother worked shifts at the hospital, she’d let them get in if it wasn’t being used.

  “Yeah, they put me in the tub. But I could have done that at home,” he said.

  “We were scared,” said Gwen.

  “Next time, ask me,” he said.

  “You were catatonic,” said Eleanor.

  “Well, next time you’ll know—don’t take me to the goddamn hospital.” His voice was hoarse and strained. His face was blanched. He could tell he’d hurt Gwen’s feelings, so he said, “Gwen, it’s not your fault.” Then he looked at the barn doors and raised his voice again. “Come out here, William.”

  Littlefield unlatched the lock. He opened one of the barn’s tall doors just enough to stick his head through. “I need you to sterilize some instruments, Bennie,” he said, passing through the crack his Swiss army knife and two small flathead screwdrivers. “Just boil them in water for a few minutes. That should do it.”

  “Is the dog okay?” asked Coach.

  “She’s stable,” he said. “Just in case, I’m getting her on some mechanical ventilation.”

  “For Christ’s sake, William,” said Coach. “If the dog�
�s okay, the dog’s okay.”

  “I might need to manually inflate the lungs, Coach,” he said.

  When Coach walked toward the barn doors, Littlefield shut them, and they could hear him fumbling with the lock.

  “Open up right now,” said Coach.

  “It’s just a joke,” said Littlefield. “Take it easy.”

  “Open the door!” bellowed Coach.

  The lock clicked. Littlefield pushed the door open a few inches. Coach grabbed the edges of both doors and flung them open. Littlefield had dragged one of Coach’s workbenches over to the warm stove and to the side of the workbench he’d clipped a lamp, which was casting a pool of light over Nixon, lying in a wicker laundry basket. She was panting, and when she saw Coach, she hopped out of the basket and ran toward the door. It was warm inside the barn. Bennie looked at his brother and saw that he did actually look concerned. Not about the dog, probably, but about Coach. He’d wanted to be alone. His eyes were red from crying. Bennie hadn’t liked being locked outside the barn, but now it made more sense.

  “This dog does not need an operation,” said Coach.

  “Man, it’s warm in here,” said Gwen. “I can’t believe you locked Bennie out in the cold.”

  “All right, all right,” said Eleanor. “Let’s get everyone in the house.”

  Nixon jumped up and put her front paws on Coach’s waist. “Good girl,” said Coach.

  Littlefield walked back toward the stove, shut its flue, and turned off the light. “The dog’s just as tough as you, Coach.”

  It was just a month later that Coach died; he was only fifty-one. Eleanor said it was his heart. “His heart let him down,” she said. He’d been in the backyard building a shed for the lawn mower. Littlefield was with him when he died. The family was blindsided of course—it didn’t seem possible that no one would ever hear his voice again, never see him walk into the kitchen early in the morning, rubbing the back of his neck. The boys and Gwen took a break from biathlon. Littlefield spent more and more time away from the Manse working odd jobs—construction and painting and boatyard work—and less time at school. Gwen gave up the drums and started acting in plays. Bennie felt the hours of the day washing over him as if he were impervious to the whims of the world. He saw that his brother was feeling the same way, but they didn’t talk about it; they stayed silent. He felt strangely close to his brother then. It was important for Bennie to see Littlefield arrive back from work each day, to see that he was safe.

  After Bennie and Gwen had finished high school, their mother moved up to the town of Clover Lake, into a small but well-built colonial on fifty acres, beside the lake. It was Coach’s family that was from Meadow Island—he’d grown up in a three-room house at the center of the island, without any views of the ocean. She’d liked living on the island, but after he died she felt claustrophobic, and she knew it would be difficult to stay tied to the community without Coach. She got the sense people resented her wealth and that she was from Massachusetts. Bennie knew it didn’t help that she was judgmental about the way locals polluted the harbor and developed the land—she was outspoken about this, and it didn’t win her many friends. In the end, it seemed, she felt good about leaving the house to her children, letting them take care of it, as long as she could visit once in a while. Littlefield tried to skip town whenever this happened.

  For a while, Bennie continued to keep track of the Somerset Marauder. No one ever caught him. He had a few close calls with the authorities, but he always ended up outfoxing them, and Bennie convinced himself to adopt his father’s position. He started rooting for the thief, hoping he’d continue his dominance, elude the cops. Soon, though, the Marauder stopped burglarizing and the southward trend was halted. He never made it to the Manse—he didn’t even reach their county—and the newspapers discontinued their stories.

  6

  Bennie slept for much of the next day. The man in charge of his care, Dr. Miner, had a pinched face but round, kind gray eyes. He’d said leaving the hospital and heading home would be as exhausting as running a marathon. Bennie assumed this comment applied to older patients, but for the first few days back on the island he rarely left his bed or the purple couch in the living room. He dreamt of running races in his cast, with his crutches; after each race ended, another starting gun fired. He wondered if his fatigue had come mostly from the drugs they’d given him in the hospital. In one of the marathon dreams, he was running against dogs, huskies, their paws thundering against the snowpack.

  For the first day after Littlefield flushed his painkillers down the toilet, Bennie was okay if he didn’t move, but he hated how everything felt, sharp and scratchy and newly awake. The pain was the least of his worries. He stopped drifting around in his head. He got bored. His legs became restless. The world felt drab and pointless. In bed he ran through his memories of falling—especially the instant he landed, before his head hit the ice—and he tried to work backwards from there, trying to guess how he might have contributed to LaBrecque’s disappearance. Littlefield had said he and LaBrecque and Julian were chasing each other on the north side of the quarry, and the others—Boak and Shaw—were on the south side. It seemed unlikely that LaBrecque had fallen into the quarry if he and Littlefield were headed in the direction of Roderick’s farm, but maybe Littlefield had lost track of LaBrecque sooner than he’d thought.

  Between his naps, Gwen came in with a bowl of steaming potato soup on a plastic tray. Ronald stayed up on Bennie’s bed when Gwen wasn’t walking or feeding him. With Gwen back at the Manse, Bennie was aware of how the place looked; the disintegrating plumbing, leaks cracking the plaster in the ceiling, all the windowsills covered with dust and dead flies. Bennie knew Gwen didn’t like that he and Littlefield were letting the family house fall apart, but she kept quiet while he was still recovering from his fall. No one had repaired the hole in the living room or patched the gap in the eaves where the raccoon had originally gained entry.

  Their mother called from Florida, where she spent three weeks every winter, on Sanibel Island in a house she shared with her cousin Linnea. Gwen had left the phone next to Bennie’s bed when she drove to the supermarket, so he answered it. Their mother wasn’t always away on Bennie’s and Gwen’s birthdays, but the fares had been good—though a few hundred dollars here and there didn’t make much difference to her.

  She never said hello when she called. This time, she said, “Is this true? Did you fall?”

  “I fell, Mom. But I’m fine. The paper didn’t tell the whole story.” He was still half asleep.

  “The paper? There was something in the paper? All I know is what Dora Thompson told me. Why haven’t any of you called me?”

  “Mrs. Thompson called you? In Florida?”

  “Honestly, Benjamin—are you okay?”

  “I need to rest, Mom. That’s all.”

  “Do you still have insurance? I’m coming home.”

  “Yes, I have insurance. You don’t need to come home. It’s fine. Come back when you were planning on coming back.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dora Thompson said you might have broken your neck.”

  Mrs. Thompson was a Meadow Island neighbor—they rarely saw her, but she was a prodigious gatherer of information about other people’s lives. Eleanor asked Bennie where he’d been treated (Bennie was surprised Mrs. Thompson hadn’t told her) and he said the Adventist. She sighed, and he reminded her he’d fallen in Keep’s Quarry, and Mid-coast, the hospital that had employed her for years, was farther away. (He refrained from telling her that he’d been unconscious and that they’d been driven into town by a logging truck.)

  He told her there was no way the fall could have broken his neck—this of course was a lie—and then he said he was exhausted. She was glad to hear Gwen had flown in and was helping. She was due back in a few weeks, and she told Bennie she would come straight to the house. “That’ll be perfect,” he said, tired and annoyed by her worry. He knew she didn�
��t want to interrupt her Florida vacation.

  “But there’s a boy who’s missing, still?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Dora Thompson.”

  “He’s missing, but he might never have been lost.”

  “That makes no sense, Benjamin.”

  “He might have just left town.”

  “Well, I hope he’s okay. Just imagine how his mother is doing. Now, Benjamin: I’ve just sent off a case of oranges and grapefruit. It should be arriving in three or four days. If it doesn’t, let me know, and I’ll talk to the man I bought them from.”

  “I’ll look out for them, Mom,” he said. When he hung up, he was still annoyed, but also oddly relieved to be back in touch with her.

  And then he drifted off again. Sleep afforded him something that his waking life didn’t. He loved the way his dreams presented situations and interaction that could be both chaotic and unpredictable but that somehow seemed to make perfect sense.

  On the third day after leaving the hospital, he no longer felt like lying on the couch. The stillness of the house was making him fidgety. He wanted to shake his head clear, he wanted to stop feeling tired, and he figured that going to the animal hospital and seeing his boss, Handelmann, would help. Most of the pain had subsided, and he wasn’t so glum anymore. When Littlefield had first called Bennie in the hospital, he’d told him he was filling in for him at the shelter, so it wasn’t as though Bennie needed to get back to work immediately. Still, he wanted to touch base with his boss. He was sure Handelmann would have some petty complaints about Littlefield.

  He felt the need to see Helen, too—they’d left messages for each other, but it wasn’t until that third day that he actually felt presentable. He no longer felt embarrassed about telling her he loved her, even though it was ridiculously premature. He guessed she understood he was loopy from the drugs. He didn’t even care if they had another conversation about paintball. He knew, though, that the topic would be less fun if he was still in obvious discomfort—a victim of war games idiocy—so even though he was wearing a cast, he wanted to be up and around, healthy-seeming, before he saw her.