Water Dogs

by Lewis Robinson

  Bennie sat down on the other side of Nixon and gently rubbed her ears, looking into her calm eyes.

  The seizures recurred for the next four years. They didn’t know how often she suffered them, but every month or so Bennie or Littlefield would see her stop in her tracks, shake, froth at the mouth, and lie down. The first time Gwen witnessed this, she ran into the kitchen, where her brothers were eating breakfast, and she asked them to help her carry the dog to the car so that she could take her to Dr. Guilford (this was back before Handelmann started the Esker Cove Animal Hospital and Shelter).

  Littlefield had said, “That’s not necessary.”

  “She’s convulsing!” cried Gwen. “Come and see. She’s not well.”

  When they got to the living room, Nixon was sniffing around the couch, looking for crumbs. Gwen knelt down and hugged her. “I guess she’s okay.”

  “She’s just hungry,” said Littlefield.

  “Do you know why she’d shake like that?” asked Gwen.

  “Like what?” asked Littlefield.

  “Like she’s in a trance. Like she’s completely out of it.”

  “I have no idea,” said Littlefield. “She’s an old girl.”

  Bennie had wanted to say something else, something about what had happened in the field by the technical college, but it was clear Littlefield felt otherwise. Bennie followed his brother’s lead, and the two never spoke about the origin of the seizures—to each other, or to anyone else.

  18

  On their way back from the pier, they stopped at the only gas pump on the island, outside Scandling’s Citgo (which sold bait in the summer and cigarettes, coffee, nutty bars, Donettes, and minature pecan pies in the winter). After putting a few gallons in the Skylark, Bennie went inside to pay. He opened his wallet but had no cash. He knew he’d had forty or fifty dollars when he and Helen returned from Tavis Falls, and he hadn’t spent any money since then. He glanced again inside the empty billfold. He knew Littlefield had taken it. Littlefield borrowed money at will, without asking—he considered everything of Bennie’s public domain. Sometimes he’d return money, too. This time, he’d cleaned out the wallet. Bennie couldn’t be sure when he’d taken it, but it had to have been in the last few days. The most troubling part was that he didn’t leave a note. As unpredictable as Littlefield could be, he always left notes, especially if he took money. Bennie returned to the car and asked Helen for a twenty, and as he went back inside to pay for the gas, he wasn’t angry. He started to think it might be a long time before he saw his brother again.

  Local kids built their bonfires on Kinney Beach, a seldom-used public park that faced the mainland, just down the road from the Manse. During the entire week after their trip to Riverneck Island, not long after dark each night, a snake of headlights jittered through the woods past the Manse down to the beach parking lot. It was state tournament time for the basketball and hockey teams at Musquacook Academy and Brunswick High. By eight o’clock they were lighting the bonfires, the lot was full, and cars were parked in the ditches, backed up for a quarter-mile.

  After coming back from Riverneck, Bennie brought Julian and Helen and Martha to the Manse—everyone had wanted to stay together. He’d forgotten that he’d been scheming since Gwen had arrived to find an occasion to have her meet Julian. They all stumbled into the house, frigid, their noses running, their clothes still wet. Helen made a beeline for the shower. They’d noticed smoke coming from the chimney as they approached the house, so Bennie and Julian and Martha rushed to the hearth. Gwen was taking a nap on the purple couch, sleeping off her hangover, but they didn’t spot her right away as they entered the room. Julian peeled off all of his layers, including his T-shirt and jeans, and he was doing jumping jacks in his Snoopy boxer shorts when Gwen awoke. Martha and Bennie were taking off their wet clothes, too. Gwen reached for her eyeglasses on the coffee table, put them on, blinked, and sat up.

  Martha spotted Gwen and said, “Gwennie!” Gwen wiped the drool on her chin with her forearm before standing to hug Martha with the sleeping bag wrapped around her waist. When the bag fell down to her ankles, she stepped out of it and jogged from the room in her underwear. She called over her shoulder, “I’m going to take a quick shower.”

  “Helen’s in there,” called Bennie.

  Gwen returned, all six feet of her, and for an endless second or two, Gwen and Julian were facing each other in their underwear, staring. “I think I met you a long time ago,” said Gwen.

  “Yeah, I think so,” said Julian. He stepped forward to shake her hand, but he slammed his toe against the rocking chair. “Son of a cock-sucking whore!” he yelled, grabbing his foot with both hands. After he hopped a lap around the chair, he let go of his foot and took Gwen’s hand. “Ouch,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  Gwen smiled, then padded back to the purple couch and slipped into her sleeping bag.

  Once they’d all warmed up, Helen cooked pasta and they sat at the kitchen table in candlelight. Julian poured himself a half glass of whiskey and drank it down, then poured himself some more. The screaming at the bonfires was loudest when they were first lighted. From the kitchen window they couldn’t see the fire itself, but they could see a glow above the trees, sparks arcing through the air. In high school, Bennie had gone to these rallies. Most of the kids took off their shirts and danced around the orange blaze, and the brave or drunk kids would swim, then come back to the fire, but all along, everyone would be screaming at full pitch. Every year Littlefield was one of the kids who swam. He wasn’t like the other swimmers, the heroes of the school, but he would swim anyway, and he yelled the fight songs as loudly as anyone. Inside the group the screaming filled their heads, filled their bodies, and the sound swirled with the heat coming off the fire. Nothing could be hotter, or louder, as they bounced up and down, screaming, feeling their eyelashes singe.

  As the kids at Kinney Beach began their screaming, everyone in the Manse ate quietly, making only the sounds of slurped noodles or the scrape of a knife on toasted bread. When the kids started the Water Dog fight song, Gwen said, “This one’s my favorite.” Bennie looked at Julian, shaking his head, as if to say these kids aren’t as loud as we were, but Julian was staring down into his tumbler, listening. It was a simple chant, a call and response:

  I know a Dog!

  I know a Dog!

  He wants to eat you!

  He wants to eat you!

  He’s very, very hungry!

  Very, very hungry!

  A big mean Water Dog!

  A big mean Water Dog!

  Fight, fight, win!

  Fight, fight, win!

  Bennie had heard the song almost every year since he was little, and during the last few years it made him feel homesick, even when he was sitting in the kitchen at the Manse. This time, it made him want to tell the kids to quiet down and grow up. Everyone at the table smiled faintly, the light from the candles flickering in their glassy eyes.

  After the fight song ended, the mood in the room was light, but Helen looked at Bennie in a particular way, the same way she’d been looking at him for the last few days. It was as though she was trying to convince him with her eyes to take charge of the situation in a more commanding way, though she also knew that there was very little he could do. He stood up and started washing dishes.

  Helen spoke up. She rested her forearms on the table and addressed the group: “So, are we just waiting for Littlefield to come back? Then what?”

  “I want to be in one spot for a while,” said Martha. “Ray will find me here … when he comes back.” Helen and Gwen nodded. “And when Littlefield gets here,” she continued, “maybe he’ll tell us more.”

  Julian stood up. “You guys, I can’t stick around. I’ve got too much to do. Sorry.” He grabbed his coat and headed for the door. Helen squinted at him skeptically. Bennie followed Julian and caught up to him just as he was stepping out into the snow.

  “Wait up.”

  “Ben,” Julia
n whispered. “I just can’t deal with it. What the fuck is going on? We all know he’s dead.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “This kind of shit happens, man. I can’t sit around and dream that it didn’t. Those girls are freaking me out.”

  “Just stick around, Julian. I need your help. I think Littlefield has taken off.”

  “Well, that’s fucking dumb of him. It’s just going to make him look more guilty.” He picked up a clump of snow, pressed it into a compact ball, and gunned it at the Skylark. “I’m out, Ben. I’ve got to leave.”

  When Bennie came back into the kitchen, Helen asked, “What’s his problem?”

  “He’s got to get to the restaurant, to check up on things,” said Bennie.

  19

  For the next three days, they went off-island each morning to search the snowfields near the quarry. They knew the state police had brought dogs in for the search when Bennie was in the hospital—but still, Martha kept saying there was a chance they’d missed something. Just because the police had stopped their search didn’t mean they’d scoured every inch of the woods.

  Bennie knew that Littlefield’s time away—while Helen and Gwen and Martha were searching the snowfields for clues, waiting for him to come back—was just making everyone more and more suspicious, and making it harder for everyone to believe looking in the woods for LaBrecque was worthwhile. They all knew that hearing from Littlefield was now more important than anything else.

  Still, after each visit to the snowfields, Bennie would check in with their various sources—Julian’s prep cook Hud Kenneally, Sherry Callahan at Rosie’s, the harbormaster Jake Riley (he was often too drunk to make much sense of), the warden at Cape Frederick, and whoever would pick up the phone at Skunk Gould’s trailer. Helen called Vin Thibideaux down at the police station, and she said he sounded sheepish when he talked to her; he told her they didn’t have any information about Ray’s whereabouts and that his missing motorcycle was still the best evidence that he’d gone back up to Canada. After each of these visits or calls, it became increasingly difficult to report back to Martha, to find a new way of saying nothing. They avoided talking about Littlefield or Ray by name. In the Manse they focused on other topics, like how Hud was doing at the restaurant now that he’d taken on more responsibilities in Helen’s absence. Sherry Callahan made for good conversation, too: her charm, the blunt way she had of insulting you. Martha trusted her to call them if Littlefield came into Rosie’s; even so, they wanted to call Sherry because it gave them something to do.

  Each day, Helen and Bennie walked down to Singer’s Cove. Even then, they didn’t talk about Littlefield or Ray or the snowfields. They parked the car and he followed her down the dark tunnel through the spruce woods, the floor of the forest still deep with snow, the smell of the ocean filtering through the branches, their needles, the lichen on the bark.

  One early evening after searching the snowfields, Helen and Bennie spent nearly an hour sitting in the snow above the rocks and sand, watching light fade from the sky. There was a bird that had been there since they’d arrived—it was standing in the shallows. It was stout, bigger than a seagull, and had sturdy legs. They watched it scout for fish, just ten yards from where they sat. When they were getting ready to leave, the thought struck Bennie.

  He whispered to Helen, “That’s a motherfucking … that’s a light blue heron.” He was sure of it. He wanted to jump up and cry out, but he didn’t want to scare away the bird. He pulled Helen in closer.

  She knew that Gwen and Bennie looked for them, that they’d been keeping an eye out for the bird for years. “Wow. Really?”

  Littlefield had told Bennie on several occasions that he’d never heard of the “light blue” variety of heron and that Coach had just made up the name. Bennie looked it up in the World Book and found no reference to light blue herons, and while he knew Coach was given to such pranks, he also knew the search for the light blue heron was not one of them. Coach may have gotten the name wrong, but the bird they looked for definitely existed—Coach had described it specifically and with reverence.

  The heron was standing in the sand. It had a long beak, white and blue-gray feathers, and a black tail, just as Coach had told them. It didn’t move much as it stared at the surface of the water. The small waves that spread on the sand, then retreated, didn’t bother it, and Bennie and Helen’s presence didn’t either. As the tide came in, it took a few steps closer. At dusk the cove turned dark blue, as though they were inside a big tent. They’d been there with the bird for nearly an hour. Bennie leaned in to Helen, closing his eyes, feeling her warm shoulder against his. After a few minutes, when he opened his eyes to the grays of Singer’s Cove, he expected the bird to have lighted from its spot in the shallows, but it was still waiting there in the near darkness.

  “You know, your friend Julian’s a real jerk. He really should be helping us.”

  “He’s got other things going on,” said Bennie. As soon as he spoke, he didn’t trust his own knee-jerk defense of Julian.

  “I don’t buy it. The restaurant is fine without him. He does nothing except drink and sit behind the bar. I think he’s just heartless. You’ve seen what a wreck Martha is.”

  “What do you expect him to do?”

  “Just what we’re all doing. He should be with us at the house. We should all stay together.”

  Bennie agreed with this.

  Helen continued, “I also wanted to say … I know these last few weeks have been incredibly hard for you, Bennie. You know, you’re not wrong to believe in your brother.”

  He felt angered by this—not at Helen, exactly, but at her need to say this out loud. “I don’t need you to tell me that,” he said.

  “Relax.”

  “It just seems like no one is talking straight with me. Like everyone believes Littlefield is evil but they can’t say it to my face.”

  “I don’t think he’s evil.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I barely know Littlefield.”

  “I can read between the lines.”

  “Jesus, Bennie, what do you want from me?”

  “Just let me believe what I believe.”

  “That’s what I just said. I want you to know you’re doing the right thing.”

  After sitting for a few more minutes, feeling less defensive, he took Helen’s hand. Even when they stood up to brush the snow off their pants, the heron didn’t move from its spot. They left while they could still find their way through the woods.

  Back at home, Gwen told Helen she’d gotten a few calls from the restaurant; nothing serious, but Hud Kenneally, the guy filling in as head cook, wanted to check in with her about how things were going. Helen was reluctant to return the call, so Bennie picked up the phone and dialed. He talked to Hud, who had plenty to say. When Bennie hung up, he said, “Yikes.”

  “What?” asked Helen. “What is it?”

  “It seems like Hud is really, really excited to be running the show while you’re away.”

  “Oh, God,” said Helen. “Just don’t tell me anything else.” She held her hands over her ears.

  “It sounds as though everything’s fine,” Bennie said, smiling. “He put up a New York Yankees banner behind the stoves. And he’s doing pigs in a blanket, corn dogs, and baba ghanoush appetizers. That’s all.” Hud had actually told him this.

  “You’re lying!” cried Helen, reaching across the couch, trying to grab Bennie around the waist. He hopped to the other side of the rocking chair. “Don’t worry,” he continued. “Free corn dogs after every Derek Jeter spring-training home run isn’t costing the restaurant too much.” She leapt over the couch and grabbed him as he tried to escape.

  They ended up on the couch, wrestling; she got the inside position and forklifted him onto the floor. He landed—thud!—on his elbow and hip. In his cast it took him a while to get back up, but when he did, he grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the couch. Her legs were ki
cking dangerously close to his crotch. “Uncle!” she yelled, but when he let her go, she shoved him hard and he landed on the floor again. He could tell she was worried she’d hurt him, so he faked a grimace, then grabbed one of her feet and tried to yank her down beside him, but she was well anchored and held her ground. Finally, she let him return to his seat on the purple couch, calmly. “Sounds like Julian’s really running a tight ship over there,” he said.

  Waiting, in the abstract, was something that seemed a lot easier to do than it actually was. On the third day they sat together in the living room, Bennie started to wish Coach was around to provide a game plan or enforce the rules. What rules they needed, he wasn’t sure, but Coach would have known. He would have known how to reach Littlefield. He would have known exactly what happened to Ray. He wasn’t delicate, or sensitive, but he probably would have known the right things to say to Martha, too.

  After Helen and Bennie’s wrestling match, they all ate and napped, off and on, for the next couple of hours. Whenever someone would finish a bottle of beer, Gwen added it to the long line by the fire. They were all awake—Martha in the rocking chair, staring at the bottles, Helen and Bennie down on the rug beside the fire, and Gwen sprawled out on the purple couch. The sun had gone down so it was dark in the room except for the light from the fire, but still, everyone’s face was in clear view, orange from the firelight. Helen put more logs on.

  Out of nowhere Gwen asked, “Hey, Martha, when did you meet Ray?” The question worried Bennie; he didn’t want her to say anything that she wasn’t ready to say. But Martha seemed almost relieved when she heard this. She looked down at her bottle of beer and smiled. She shifted her body in the rocking chair and told them that over the years she and Ray had crossed paths many times—they’d always known each other’s families—but the first occasion they spent time alone together was after they’d finished high school. Ten years ago. They were shocked by this. They’d never heard about Ray, but then again, most of what Bennie heard about Martha was what Littlefield told him, and even if Littlefield had heard about the existence of a boyfriend, he probably chose to ignore it.