Paws before dying

by Conant, Susan

  “Eleven twenty-four.”

  “So she has exactly six minutes,” I said.

  “So why’d you change the subject?”

  “I didn’t. Kimi’s with her.”

  “Relax,” Steve said. “So’s Jeff.”

  At quarter of twelve, Steve was mouthing excuses. At midnight, we started in on flat tires. At twelve-fifteen, we finally got to accidents. I hadn’t been so angry since the moment that Danny, one of my goldens, had danced out of the woods at Owls Head with a fat porcupine in his mouth. He kept tossing the damned thing up in the air and catching it, driving more and more quills deeper and deeper into his head, muzzle, mouth, and throat. In spite of the pain, he was delighted with himself. I was furious: How could he hurt himself like that when I loved him so much? What if we missed a quill and infection set in? What if one penetrated his brain? What if he died? Damn him for it. Damn Leah.

  “Okay, I’ve had it,” I said. “Now I get on the phone.”

  Leah and I had agreed that, within reason, she could go pretty much where she pleased. But she had to let me know where it was. And, I should add, we had both kept our parts of the bargain. That evening, for instance, she had dutifully left Emma’s phone number and address on the message pad by the kitchen phone. If I’d been less worried, I’d have hesitated to wake up Emma’s family in the middle of the night, but, in any case, it was Emma who answered. Leah and Jeff had left at ten-fifteen, she said solemnly.

  I believed her. “Did they, um, did they say anything about going somewhere else? McDonald’s or somewhere? Someone’s house?”

  Emma didn’t know. She had no idea. Next I tried Jeff’s number. An answering machine picked up. I left a message. Then I rang the number again a couple of times in the hope that the ringing would awaken or irk the Cohens, but they evidently slept through or ignored it, if they were home at all.

  Then I yelled at Steve. “Damn it all! This is my fault. She looks older than she is, and he seemed like such a responsible kid.”

  “He is a responsible kid,” said Steve. “That’s what’s frightening. He isn’t careless. It isn’t like either of them to do this for no good reason.”

  “Oh, shit. I keep imagining... Oh, hell. I mean, nightmares happen. Do you remember—when was it?—a car went into the Charles, and someone drowned? Someone was trapped. Steve, they would call. If they had a flat tire or the car broke down, they would call.”

  “Too much beer?”

  “Possibly,” I said. “I wouldn’t swear they don’t drink. But you know, I’d swear they wouldn’t drink and drive. I had a long, long talk with Leah about that, and I know she’d call me. Rita gave me this thing from Students Against Drunk Driving. It was when I first knew Leah was coming, and I was talking it over with Rita, about Leah using the car. And it’s sort of corny, but there’s this pledge you both sign. Anyway, Leah thought it was corny, and I thought it was corny, and we both signed it. And we joked about it, but we both meant it. Whatever it is, it isn’t that. But some drunk could’ve been driving another car. I feel sick.”

  “You would’ve heard. This number’s in her purse or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “You would’ve been called. Let’s not get so alarmed just yet.”

  “Christ! They could’ve gone anywhere.”

  “Holly, come on. Calm down.”

  “She’s not your niece!” She wasn’t mine, either, but Steve was kind enough not to .remind me that she was only a cousin.

  “I know,” he said. “Look, it’s been a long, hot day. It’s possible they fell asleep somewhere. Not at Emma’s, obviously. At Jeff's? In the car?”

  “Why would they...? I mean, they could come here.”

  “They wouldn’t be alone,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t care.”

  “They don’t necessarily know that. Do they?”

  “Maybe not. I can’t believe I was upset about the stupid sweater. I mean, here she is. She’s a wonderful kid. She’s cheerful. She has a beautiful disposition. She’s friendly, smart, sensitive. She reads Jane Austen. She studies for her SATs. She doesn’t do drugs. She’s a genius with dogs. And what do I do? I get livid because she’s generous, basically. You thought it was funny, but did I lighten up? No, not me. Steve, you don’t think I scared her away? That I made her afraid to come home?”

  “Not a chance,” he said. “There are kids who’d be afraid to come home after something like that, and there are people who’d make them afraid. But she’s not like that, and you aren’t-Forget it.”

  “So what do we do? Call the police?”

  “To report she’s an hour late?”

  “There is that.”

  What we did was a little hard on Rita, who’d gone to sleep hours earlier and had clients scheduled for the next morning, but who wrapped herself in a flowered silk robe and settled on the couch in my hot living room to listen for Leah herself, we hoped, or for the phone. Then Steve and I put Rowdy in the

  Bronco and drove to Newton. We followed the river, the route Leah and I always used, but we took it very slowly. The Charles looked oily-dark under the black sky, but nowhere between Cambridge and Newton were there the ambulances I feared. No Oldsmobile station wagon was being hauled out of the water. Officers of the Metropolitan District Commission were not blocking traffic on Storrow Drive to make way for tow trucks and rescue vans. On Soldiers Field Road across from Martignet-ti’s, a cruiser idled peacefully, a speed trap catching nothing. I pulled over, and Steve awoke the dozing trooper. Maybe no news should’ve felt like good news, but it didn’t. It felt like no news.

  In Newton Corner, I found a phone booth. Rita had heard nothing. The Cohens’ answering machine was still operating efficiently. Their street, Beechcliffe, appeared on the Newton map in my dog-show-tattered guide to the communities of eastern Massachusetts. It was only eight or ten blocks from Eliot Park and the Eliot Woods, but, as it turned out, close only on foot. Park Street was one-way the wrong way, and so were what seemed like the next ten turns we tried to make. We eventually ended up on a street I knew, the one that led past the park entrance. According to the map, that street led to another that led to Beechcliffe.

  But we never got that far.

  “Slow down,” Steve said when we were opposite the park entrance. “Pull over, would you? I want to take a quick look.”

  “Steve, they aren’t going to be there.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Were you ever a sixteen-year-old boy?”

  He hopped out, ambled into the field, then trotted back.

  “Drive in,” he said. “When you get out, leave the headlights on.”

  They shone on the Oldsmobile wagon. The window next to the driver’s seat was shattered. Most of the glass had fallen out. I couldn’t see Leah or Jeff or Kimi. I couldn’t see anyone but

  Steve.

  Chapter 25

  “LEAH? Jeff?” I bellowed, narrowing my eyes and peering into the blackness of the park. “Kimi, come! Honest to God, their driver’s licenses aren’t even valid after one. I don’t know how she thought she was going to get home, and his parents are just going to be thrilled to see what’s happened to the car. Leah!” Steve is more methodical than I am. While I’d been hollering and talking, he’d been tramping in slow, ever-widening circles around the station wagon, his head lowered. Then he stopped suddenly, dropped to the ground just beyond the range of the headlights, and said softly, “Holy shit.” He said it again before his emergency mode kicked in. “This is a serious head injury. Get an ambulance. Run to those houses over there. Break a door down if you have to. Get an ambulance.”

  “Leah?”

  “Jeff. Run, will you? Holly, run like hell.”

  I did. Impulse took me to the doors of the people I knew, first the heavy blond oak of the Donovans’ darkened Victorian, where I leaned on the bell, slammed an elaborate wrought-iron lion’s head knocker, and shouted, then the simpler aluminum combination screen door of the Brawleys’ Dutch Colonial, where the first-
floor lights were on. I rang the bell, pounded on the aluminum door frame, and was about to head for the front Windows and probably break one when a belligerent-looking, red-faced guy with a head of black curls opened both the door and his mouth.

  I didn’t wait for him to ask what the hell was going on, but shouted to Marcia Brawley, who appeared behind him with a group of other people who looked as if they’d shared drinks before dinner, wine with it, and brandy ever since. “Marcia, get an ambulance.” My breath was coming hard. “Across the street. Right away. Hurry up! And find a doctor fast. Wake someone up.”

  I turned tail, sprang down the walk and back across the street, and, with the bizarre sense of calm that emergencies induce, got into the Bronco and moved it so the headlights shone on Steve and Jeff, who was stretched out on his back. Even from inside the car, I could see the blood, but that icy practicality stayed with me. A fact came to me: Head wounds bleed. All head wounds bleed a lot, even minor ones. I also remembered that in the far back of the Bronco was a torn and dirty blanket I kept spreading out in a futile effort to protect the interior from dog fur. I got out of the driver’s seat, moved to the rear of the car, pushed a curious, nuzzling Rowdy aside and off the grubby, hairy blanket, and shut the tailgate. As I moved toward Steve and Jeff, some pointless urge made me shake the blanket in the air and fold it roughly, as if neatness could improve Jeff's chances of survival. Or maybe it seemed indecent to offer him a filthy shroud.

  When I reached them, I handed Steve the blanket, then knelt on the ground by Jeff. His whole head was bloody, those thick, dark-gold curls saturated, his face stained red, one cheek bruised purple. He looked about twelve years old, a gory, beaten angel. “Is he...?”

  “Alive,” Steve said quietly, spreading the blanket over Jeff. “They’re calling an ambulance, and I’ve got them looking for any doctors around here. It’s Newton. There’ve got to be ten doctors on the block. Is there anything...?”

  “Not a thing,” Steve said.

  “Then I’m looking for Leah.”

  “Not on your life,” he ordered me.

  “I have to. I’ll take Rowdy. We’ll start with the field. The tennis courts.” I hated to hear myself say the words.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said. “A cruiser’ll get here before the ambulance, and then I’ll...”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment of the Bronco, got Rowdy out of the back, snapped on his leash, and started searching and calling. A rapid, easy survey of the tennis courts and the field showed no sign of Leah or Kimi. I cursed myself for never training Rowdy to track. Like every other dog, he could pick up and follow a scent, but I had no way to tell him which scent mattered, which to seek, which to follow. For all my obedience-titled partner knew, I’d dropped my car keys or was after someone’s lost cat. The flat, open, grassy field was empty, I was sure, but Leah and Kimi, my beautiful cousin and my beautiful dog, could be lying in any of those clumps of shrubby vegetation surrounding it.

  Rowdy was no tracker. Even so, as I quickly traced the perimeter of the field, shining the flashlight’s beam into the blackness of the weeds, I gave him the full six feet of lead instead of calling him to heel. He didn’t understand that I was searching for our own pack, of course, but I trusted him to recognize the slightest sound or scent of his own. His big, wedge-shaped ears were erect but relaxed. Or was he perking them up? Furrowing his forehead? I kept moving the light from the bushes to his head. Were the ears starting to flatten? I’d call loudly for Leah and try to summon Kimi. Then I’d be silent, listening, giving Rowdy the silence he needed to hear the rush of air into lungs, the beat of familiar hearts.

  At the far end of the field, where the trail that Rowdy had taken with Steve and me and the other dogs led into the woods, those pretty wedge ears folded, his head dropped about a foot toward the ground, and his lovely white tail swayed over his back with a new beat.

  “Good boy,” I told him, although it seemed likely that he’d merely picked up our old route. Sled dogs like to retrace familiar paths. “Is this it? Let’s give it a try.”

  I grew up in Maine. If I’d been frightened of woods, I’d have died of heart failure before the age of five. But city woods are different from the Maine woods, which is exactly what makes city people uneasy about real wilderness. City people get nervous when they realize they’re alone in the woods. I get nervous >f I think I’m not. Trees don’t mug anyone. Wild animals—the occasional aberrant bear excepted—avoid people. What I don’t like about city woods is that with the exception of a few squirrels and raccoons, the wild animals are human.

  And these were city woods. The path we followed was narrow but heavily packed down. As we moved along it, I played the flashlight beam back and forth on either side. Here and there, beer cans reflected it back.

  “Leah!” I shouted. “Leah! Can you hear me? Kimi, come! Kimi, good girl! Come!” I whistled and clapped my hands, but the only response I got was the wagging of Rowdy’s tail and an extra bounce in his gait.

  I stopped and rested a sweaty palm on Rowdy’s back to keep him still while I listened for any nearby sound that might stand out against the dull background hum: the deadened whoosh of cars and trucks passing along the Mass. Pike, the vague, indistinguishable almost-nothing of thousands of air conditioners, refrigerators, and packed suburban freezers dutifully fighting the heat. Then a siren broke through the white noise and grew steadily louder; the ambulance or a heralding police cruiser was on its way.

  “Let’s go, boy,” I said quietly. Sweat was dribbling down my neck and back, and when I wiped a hand over my throat, I rubbed in dog fur. I took a couple of long strides ahead, but Rowdy lagged briefly to check something out, a gum wrapper, maybe, or the irresistibly fetid odor of something decaying under a bed of leaves. The flashlight, thanks be in equal parts to God, Eveready, and L. L. Bean, threw a bright, wide spot ahead of me.

  “Rowdy!” I smacked my lips. “Let’s go!”

  I tugged on his leash, and he trailed after me. I flashed the light back to assure myself that whatever had held his attention was something meaningless to me, then shot the beam ahead and ran it back and forth across the path. As if the bright spot were spontaneously halting its own movement, the light froze on a bit of white something that clung to a low branch. I yanked Rowdy ahead and reached for what turned out to be a clump of woolly dog fur, and not from just any dog. I held it to Rowdy’s nose and then dug my hand deeply and joyfully into the thick ruff around his powerful neck. Kimi had inadvertently left us a sign, a bit of undercoat on the tip of a branch about a foot and a half above the ground. She had walked or run by here. And if either of my dogs had lost that bit of undercoat on our Sunday walk, it seemed to me, the wind would have blown it from where it rested loosely on the tip of that branch.

  But of Leah, there was no sign. On Sunday, Kimi had performed her wild, circling dance of freedom in the open field-She could be doing an encore now, leaping and dashing through the woods, free of human restraint. And Leah could be lying anywhere, a yard or two from the trail. Or far away.

  But I thought not. The Brawleys had been home, and from the looks of their guests, the whole group had been there all evening. No one runs out in the middle of a dinner party to smash a car window, attack the driver, and do God knows what with a sixteen-year-old and a big dog, only to stroll back in and rejoin the guests for brandy. And I had a sense of where we were heading, such a strong, clear sense that I broke into a run.

  It’s dangerous to take a malamute running in the heat. I slowed to a jog, but Rowdy had caught my spirit and forged ahead, pulling as if he’d been trained for pack ice instead of the show ring.

  “Easy there,” I called to him. “Slow down.” Then I braced myself and made him halt for a few seconds while I ran the light over a triple fork in the path ahead. It seemed to me that the trail we wanted was the one to the right. Or straight ahead?

  “Which way, boy?” I asked confidently, but felt as though I might a
s well have flipped a coin. He hadn’t been taught to track. I’d meant to do it someday. I’d been busy. I’d been lazy. Rowdy’d choose a path for us, of course, but he might head us directly toward the backyard hutch of some family’s pet rabbits or take us to the nearest bitch in season.

  Even so, I let his lead go loose and tried to let him pick the trail on his own. Trouble reaching decisions? Forget those management courses. Get a malamute. Doubt never crosses a mal’s mind. Rowdy turned right. Did he smell something? Or had he merely read my mind? I didn’t know, but I followed him. Only a minute or two later, when I hauled him in, stopped briefly, and ran the light over the low branches ahead of us, I felt ashamed of having doubted him. Now that I was searching for them, the wisps of Kimi’s undercoat on the low branches were impossible to miss. We tore ahead.

  Our run ended sooner than I’d expected. Rowdy and I stood m a small clearing. The trail forked. One path climbed sharply uphill to our right, another wandered ahead. But to our left was a low, rough fieldstone wall overgrown with vines and weeds. A streetlamp shone nearby. We were directly across the street from Jack Engleman’s house.

  Chapter 26

  I once had a hundred-pound dog named Rafe who was afraid of thunder. At the first rumble, he’d start shaking and salivating. My presence was his only comfort. Whenever a storm hit during the night, he’d cannonball into my bed and quiver so powerfully that the mattress would vibrate. I’d dream I was sleeping in a cheap motel with a Magic Fingers and an endless supply of quarters. Rafe was also scared of elevators, garbage trucks, letter carriers, veterinarians, sirens, whistles, and bicycles. My anxiety, however slight, instantly communicated itself to my poor Rafe; any trivial worry of mine became Rafe’s terror.

  Rowdy was no Rafe, but their attitudes toward danger were equally senseless: Rafe feared everything, and Rowdy feared nothing. I don’t think he could even grasp the concept of fear. As we paused in that little clearing in the woods across from Jack’s house, for instance, he probably misinterpreted the tension in my body, the rapid beating of my heart, and the catches in my breath as signs of the joyous anticipation he always felt himself at the prospect of an imminent slash-and-tear dog fight.