Keepers ch-2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  I could still smell a trace of the musk oil with which she’d doused the card, the same musk she used to daub behind her ears and on her neck. It was still the sexiest aroma ever created. At least that’s what memory had me now believing.

  If I’d had any doubts about who’d sent the package, this card erased them.

  Beth was alive.

  I suddenly remembered a quote from the poet Oscar Wilde: “One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.” God, how true that was.

  Beth was alive.

  So much had already happened today that I couldn’t fully absorb the meaning of that, and so much was still happening that, for the time being, I didn’t have the time to absorb its meaning.

  I folded the envelope and was about to toss it among the other goodies when I felt something else inside, wedged into a corner at the bottom. I reached in and scratched away with my fingernail until the object came loose.

  I opened my hand and looked at what lay nestled in my palm.

  At first, nothing registered; there was only a vague – grabbing my shirt and pulling me toward him, blood seeping into the cotton of my shirt as I lifted the bowler and showed him that it was undamaged, looking into my eyes, his lips squirming in a mockery of communication, sounds that were a burlesque of language, but there was something there, something that drew him to me or me to him, and he turned his head ever so slightly to the right and I saw – impression of memory, a needling sense that this thing was supposed to mean something to me. I felt I should recognize it-perhaps the part of me that did recognize it hadn’t gotten to the light switch yet (No, not yet, but I’m making my way there, pal, you can count on that.)

  – but there was nothing.

  Wait, scratch that.

  There was something but it was ether for all the good it did.

  I stared at it for a few more moments, and then was suddenly so… weary. That’s the only word that even comes close to describing what overtook me. I was at once so exhausted and drained that the idea of making it to a chair or my bed was as fantastic to me as the Fountain of Youth must have seemed to the critics of Ponce de Leon. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to move again. It was the first time in years I’d felt so completely emptied and done.

  The stillness in my center was cold and without affection. I felt divided, alone, and dissociated from everything-surroundings, thoughts, sensations; even my body was just so much fodder, a too-fragile, too-temporary, carbon-based cosmic joke of dying cells and memories that would vanish into humus once it was placed into the ground and left as an offering upon which the elements could feast.

  (Mayday, Mayday, we’re losing contact with you, pal, can’t let that happen…)

  What brought me back was the soft, muffled whine of a ghost.

  The dog; I’d almost forgotten about the poor thing.

  FIVE

  Blanket in hand, I stood in the center of the house and waited for her to make another noise; she did, but there was no way to tell from which direction it was coming, so I went out the back door and began searching around the house, then the bushes surrounding my backyard, and finally, once again, the front.

  There was a fresh smear of blood on the bottom step of the front porch.

  She’d tried to crawl up to the door sometime while I was going through the package from Beth.

  I searched the periphery of house twice more; every so often I’d hear a weak and ragged breath and thought I had zeroed in on her hiding place, but each time I was certain I’d found her there was only a mass of absence with speckles of blood left behind. After nearly ten minutes of this-and no sounds from her-I noticed a few of my neighbors were trying not to be too obvious as they peeked out their windows at my odd behavior and bloody clothes. It occurred to me-Mr. Slow-on-the-Uptake-that it might be a good idea to change out of these clothes if I was going to continue skulking through the bushes in daylight… which was now waning fast, as was my energy and resolve.

  I called out for the dog a few times with no results, then started back inside to shower and get a change of clothes when I remembered the crawl space behind the trash cans at the back of the house. I hadn’t thought of that damn thing in ages.

  I made my way around and, sure enough, two of the trash cans had been pushed apart. I squatted in front of the opening, tilting my head at a nearimpossible angle to see if I could catch a glimpse of her. I couldn’t, so I put the blanket on top of the nearest can and crawled through the opening.

  A few years ago I had a major plumping mishap that resulted in my having to move into a hotel for a week while a team of overpriced-and-worth-every-damn-cent-of-it “septic professionals” (that’s what they asked to be called, don’t ask me, I just live here) tore out and then replaced nearly half the pipes in my house. Part of that involved ripping up a small section of floor between the downstairs bathroom and guest bedroom in order to run a separate flowline to the new emergency sump pump. Fun, fun, fun. To avoid ripping out any more flooring than absolutely necessary, they asked for and received my permission to dig a tunnel underneath my back porch, one that would run its entire length, starting underneath the guest bedroom and emerging in the back beside the steps.

  I was entering at the exit point. Crawling in from behind the trash cans, the ground was fairly level, but I knew about eight feet away there was sudden drop of nearly two feet which could take you by surprise and even cause injury if you didn’t know it was there. I hoped the dog hadn’t made it that far. The idea of having to pull her ass-first out of that little pit in the dark, in the mud, and with little more than three feet of width in which to do it, was not what I’d had in mind when I got out of bed this morning.

  I smelled her about six feet in.

  Digging into my pants pocket, I pulled out my cigarette lighter and struck up the flame.

  She lay three feet ahead of me, on her side. She had somehow managed to get herself three-quarters of the way turned around (so as to face the way out) before she collapsed.

  I whispered to her but she didn’t respond.

  Pulling forward with my elbows, I pushed the lighter up and out until I could see its flame reflected in her eyes.

  Her gaze was unfocused and glassy. Her sides no longer heaved. No sound at all came from her, save for the kneading of the maggots in her wound. If she wasn’t dead yet, she would be soon; minutes, possibly. Definitely within the next few hours.

  I felt immediately sick-not so much nausea as bile-flavored regret. If I hadn’t been so lost in the 70s nostalgia craze-in-a-box I might have caught her in the front yard and prevented her from ending up here in the damp, dismal darkness. And if I’d ignored my boss and fixed that door right then and there (See how easy it is to take a stroll down Amnesia Lane, pal? Why keep running away? Why not just take a deep breath and dive in, head-first?)

  – I keep telling you: Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

  “I’m so sorry, girl,” I whispered to the dog.

  She grunted.

  “Hello, you,” I said. “I didn’t think you were still with us.”

  This time she actually blinked, then raised her head a little and issued a soft whine. I could see the blood clotting in one of her nostrils and a layer of something once moist but now desiccated and bruise-hued coating her lips.

  Water.

  I couldn’t do anything else for her while she died, but I could get her something to drink. There was no way I’d be able to wrestle her from under the porch without hurting her worse or her tearing and biting the hell out me; even if I could manage it, so much time would be lost that she’d die in the car on the way to the vet’s.

  No, let her die here, with a cool drink on her tongue and someone near to mark the moment of her sleep.

  I began to reach toward her, thought better of it, then said: “I’ll be back in a few minutes, girl, okay? You just rest there, that’s right, rest. I’ll bring you something to drink.”

  I had to cra
wl out backward, so it took a minute or so. The farther away from her I got, the softer her whining became. The strange thing is, the softer her whines, the more they became the only sounds I could-or wanted-to hear.

  I found a large, clean mixing bowl and filled it to the rim with water and ice cubes, then scavenged some leftover steak from the refrigerator. Maybe she wanted a last meal, maybe not, but goddammit, if she was going to die underneath my porch she was going to have a choice about it.

  Back outside and crawling, this time with a flashlight to guide the way as I pushed the bowl of water and plate of food forward inch by muddy inch.

  She’d moved again, forward this time, about a foot and a half. The flashlight beam caught her eyes and turned them into a pair of small glowing embers. They moved left, right, then vanished for a few moments as she closed, then reopened them.

  “Here you go, girl. You hungry? Got’cha some water, nice and cold.”

  She pulled forward, using only her front paws. Her back legs were splayed behind her, limp and useless. The fur surrounding her eyes was drenched in thick, mucus-like tears. Even in agony she recognized a treat, knew that this was Something Special. I pushed the bowl and plate closer. She looked at my hand and growled, so I let go and pulled away as she lifted her head over the water bowl and tested it with her tongue. She remained like that for a moment, head dangling over the bowl, some of the water dripping from her mouth, breathing heavily.

  I remembered a scene from some movie one of the employees had been playing on the display monitors today: a little girl running away from home encounters a dog whose owner beats it mercilessly, then ties it to a pole in the backyard during a rainstorm. The girl waits for the owner to finish beating the dog and go back inside, and once she’s alone with the animal she unties the rope holding it in place and tells it to go, but it won’t. It looks at her in utter confusion as she tries to get it to leave, pulling at it, pushing at it, pleading with it to go, to get away, but it only sits there, staring with longing in its eyes at the house where its owner lives. “You can’t love him,” she weeps. “You can’t, you just can’t!”

  “Did you love them?” I whispered to the dog under my porch. “Did you sit in rainstorms and cry for them to bring you inside? Did you love the belt they used on you? Did you lick their hands when they were done?”

  Her ember eyes (brown with gold flecks, I saw for a moment), met mine and she started drinking the water in earnest. I moved the flashlight beam to see if I could make out what was etched on her collar tag but her head was too low.

  “I’ll do what I can for you, if you’ll let me.” I reached toward her again; this time, she lunged, snarling, jaws snapping. I jerked back and up and slammed the top of my skull against one of the pipes. The world went supernova before my eyes, and by the time the pain had fully registered I was staggering back to my feet behind the trash cans.

  Gripping my head, I dropped the flashlight and teetered against the largest can, knocking it over and falling on top of it. The supernova faded into the light of a single star rolling back and forth, back and forth, slowing as the universe imploded, slowing, then lay there glaring at me.

  I got to my knees and grabbed the flashlight, turned off the starlight, and stumbled back into the house. Maybe dogs preferred to die the same way as elephants; alone, in some private place with the darkness as their benign, final, best friend.

  My chest hitched and my throat constricted. God knows I wanted to cry for both her and the old man, but I couldn’t. Dad: Crying’s for girls, boy; Mom: Don’t let anyone see you like this, I’ll never hear the end of it from your father.

  Water.

  Beating down as hard as possible.

  Let her drink it; let it cleanse me.

  SIX

  Fifteen minutes later I stood in the kitchen dressed in clean clothes. The water had been hot to the point of inflicting damage. I’d scrubbed at my hands, arms, and chest until the skin was raw but even now I could still feel the old man’s blood on me. My flesh was tender and pink and still held a sheen from the water; I’d never looked as clean. But the blood was still there, somewhere under the skin, becoming a part of me, linking me to his image, the absurdity of his last moments, and to his corpse which now lay in some cold basement draining out into the corner holes of a silver table.

  I pulled the folding step stool out from the pantry and set it firmly in place, then climbed up and opened one of the highest cabinet doors, fishing around toward the back until I found the old and (for many years now) unused bottle of Johnny Walker Black. This was a masochistic little ritual I performed on those rare occasions when my nerves got the better of me despite my insisting otherwise: take out the temptation and stare it in the face and see if you’re still made of something.

  I am not one who believes that the best way to overcome temptation is to expunge its source from your universe, no; to me, temptation can only be overcome when it becomes boring, trivial, commonplace, and the best way to make it mundane is to always have it near and remind yourself that it’s near. Makes it easier to hold it in your grip and not caress it as you would the hand of a lover, take a good look at it and give it a good look at you, then smile to yourself because you’ve won and cache it away again until the next time your nerves don’t get the better of you.

  Don’t let anyone tell you that recovering alcoholics live well and happily never wanting a taste again; you never don’t want a drink, and eventually that becomes easier to deal with-it’s when you begin to think that the drink wants you that it’s time to dust off that sponsor’s number and put your pride in check.

  I looked at Johnny W., he looked at me, and pretty soon (despite the old man’s blood soaking deeper into my core) we decided we’d had enough of each other’s delightful company. He went his way, I went mine, and the folding step stool slipped back into its place wondering why in the hell I’d bothered it in the first place.

  I opted for a cup of hot chocolate. Powdered instant. Domestically, I have grown slightly complacent in my middle age. And why not? We’re born into a nearly ruined world, so the best we can do is make ourselves as comfortable as possible whenever we have the chance; the easier it is to do so, the better. Sometimes. Not always. Just sometimes.

  I wandered into the living room, sipping happily away at my yummy Swiss Miss, and began to reach for the phone to call the group home once more.

  Glancing out the front window, I saw the two black mastiffs sitting across the street, staring at my house.

  The Keepers are coming…

  The phone rang just as my hand touched the receiver, startling the living shit out of me.

  I dropped the hot chocolate, spilling some of it on my pants, cursed, then answered, listening as the anxious voice of the supervisor on the other end informed me that Carson was missing. I told them I was on my way and hung up.

  I looked back outside again.

  The dogs were gone.

  (Maybe they weren’t there in the first place, pal. Maybe they’re just flashes of memory. You remember those flashes, don’t you? The ones you’re always ignoring. The ones that the meds are supposed to help you understand and deal with. The ones you’ve spent half your goddamn life trying to convince yourself don’t exist, that it didn’t happen, that you-)

  “Get away from me!” I shouted, kicking the mug across the room where it shattered against the wall.

  I took several deep breaths, standing there with my eyes closed until I was certain I had control of things.

  There.

  All good now.

  All better.

  I was fine. I was fine. I was fine.

  There were no other dogs.

  No other memories.

  Nothing that would come sneaking out of the dark and take me by surprise.

  I grabbed my coat and headed out the door.

  SEVEN

  I became Carson’s legal guardian after his mother died from a heart condition that no one-including her, as it turned out-knew
she had. (“All these years, I thought it was just gas.”) My sister was a woman of singular grace who never let anything phase her; hangnails were met with the same dogged composure as broken bones. In all the toofew years she’d been in my life, I don’t think I ever once saw her panic. Even when she awoke after an emergency C-section to discover that her child had Down’s syndrome and that her peach of a husband had left her because he couldn’t handle it, she never allowed any setback or misfortune to best her. I loved her dearly and miss her every day.

  Carson spent three weeks every month at the group home; the fourth week-and all holidays-he spent with me. He wanted it that way, and so did I. After seven days, we started getting on each other’s nerves a bit, so one week a month was just the ticket for us. And I could visit or call him whenever I wanted… which I usually did somewhere around the middle of Week Three.

  He was never lonely. That was important to me.

  One of the things my nephew and I discovered we had in common was a love of comic books. Admittedly, I hadn’t really been involved in the comics scene since the heyday of Ghost Rider, Aquaman, and The Silver Surfer (though I have to admit to a shortlived renaissance during the early appearances of Sandman), but Carson didn’t care. Spider-Man united us. We were of one mind when it came to the Green Goblin (he was an annoying wuss), Doc Ock (dangerous, scary, and kind of cool), and Kingpin (very fat and rude but never turn your back on him, uh-uh). Carson always helped out at the Cedar Hill store on those weeks he stayed with me; he was my unofficial Comics Manager.

  One of our rituals whenever he stayed with me involved his hauling out his latest batch of comic book acquisitions and reading them to me. Another ritual involved our driving out toward Buckeye Lake for dinner at the I-70 truck stop, Carson’s favorite place to eat. (The food is surprisingly excellent.)