The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus

by Allan Gurganus

  LaTonya alerts me, “Vern, it her, okay. She back, but she looking real shook.” I rush out, tell them she’s my niece and I’ll handle our own family mess. Good thing Vanderlip was off chasing Dillard’s formal-wear shoplifters into Day at the Beach Tanning Parlor. As I bend down to help, poor child says, “I hitched halfway home, but they’re too churchy to take in no bad girl like me. This old lady outside Ahoskie picked me up, carried me to her house, but she kept trying and get in the bathtub with me. Vernon, it got to where it was almost kind of weird. But right along, I kept thinking I’ve just got to get back to Vern and them pups. —But, am hurtin’ some.”

  She stares right up at me, her face dead-white, emergency. Then I see as how her jeans are soaked clear through; her waters had done broke. If I knew little, she knew less. At least I had the delivery of eight hundred pups and kittens under my belt. In the valley of the blind …

  LaTonya, knowing my tendency with strays, tried to warn me. She stands behind the gal, shaking her head no. And I understand LaTonya’s right. So I tell the child, “We need us a hospital, girl. This one’s beyond even me, glad as I am you’re home.” Then that child sandwiches both her little paws around one slab of mine. Gal says louder than ever she has spoke before, “Got no in-surance. My folks is probably already told the police I’m missing. Be a world of trouble if I step into a ER. I don’t want to get you into no bad fix on my ’count. Us not being kin, doctors’d send you off anyways. But I couldn’t stand for this to happen among strangers, Vern. Please. See? with Warren away, I done come clear back to you for this. Please—I’m strong.”

  Well, when somebody’s chosen you, however much you might want 911? you are, well, you’re … chose.

  So while Vanderlip is scaring naked folks in tanning beds, LaTonya and me get her back into our storeroom. A trail of water on linoleum.

  Hiding from Security, LaTonya, a big CSI fan, mops up evidence. The DNA, whathaveyou, it all tells a story.

  Right off, I run to my beloved Internet. Vernon Googles keywords “baby” “human,” “delivery of.” Kept the printout folded in my back-pocket all that busy day.

  Things stayed pretty hectic sales-wise, it being Christmas Eve and ever’thing. We do 39.3 percent of our business after Thanksgiving. Yes, Vanderlip goes rushing everywhere, grilling everybody about where she’s got to.

  Man never knew we’d lock her safe back here with us, behind stacked bags of every Hartz Mountain Canary product.

  So. —So, yeah, it was right at a year ago tonight, about this exact same minute, see? First I send LaTonya home to her four kids. Then I move my Camaro clear down to the Hardee’s lot toward Old Raleigh Road and hike back, huffing. If Vanderlip had seen my ’67 cherry-red nearby, he’d of barged into my shop with cops, social services and his own crazed finger-wagging preacher, probably.

  For once, I lock my store from inside. Turned out all the lights except aquariums’. Now, I tell you, the sounds of a pet shop is easier to notice in the dark. Fish tanks’ bubbling becomes like ticking clocks, a sweet background—calming. Lights off, you can even hear our reptiles move their own sand. Around one a.m., her and me perked up and felt a bit afraid when the mall’s great outside metal doors slammed shut then echoed everywhere like inside a whole castle.

  My girl kept trying not to scream. By then her jeans were off and I had our store’s every space-heater putting pink light to all the sides of her. I tell her, “Just us chickens. Don’t hold back none now.” Well, then she flat lets rip.

  Shrieks echo across a sleeping mall, bouncing off each glassy storefront. This place will feel forever more alive for that, for me.

  She screams in waves and rows, and I called down into the heat from her breath and body, a little stove. I found a way to coach her, “We’re getting there! You can! You can! You are, girl!” I see now—every creature must be valuable if each birth takes this much work.

  It was not no holiday night-off. But I guess I might call this the most testing, flattering thing that’s ever once been asked of ole Vernon here. To be so trusted, and on Christmas Eve and hid with her among our animals!

  Then it got so sudden, and even the top of the head looked like a human head, because it was, it was one. Somehow it got out whole, we got it out. Amazing that she’d hung around my mall and drew me a bit forward, found me. I cut the cord with my highest-end dog nail-clippers (but brand-new, plus sterilized). Amazing that, when the time was right, she had hitched clear back to be with me here, and that I could get down there and pull and coax and catch it—then hold its ankles up like it was some lizardy pet but slapping into it the air that made it go human.

  I had saved back one tartan-plaid Burberry cashmere dog jacket, softest thing in the store beside birds, and our most expensive. I wrapped her child in that and laid it in the mother’s arms.

  By the end, she says, small, but meaning it—“This here’s the first real thing I ever done, and you was with me ever’ step, sweet Vern.”

  I goes just, “Thanks.”

  Well, it was a male one—I mean, it was a boy.

  Oh, he was a pretty little thing. Black hair spread out like damp feathers. But of course I would call him pretty. I would, as his—whatever—as her substitute, as at least a fairly good pet store manager. Then I did something foolish, but it felt great. I let out all the puppies and kittens, ones that had not been sold in time? And it did not take them long to drift back here and find where all this new mewing was coming from. My best African gray flew over to perch on a pegboard partition and look down at her and the babe and asked, “Eww, what did they do to your hair!” Well, she cracked up.

  Yeah, was just last Christmas Eve, lit by saltwater tanks, behind the staff lounge in my dark belov-ed pet store, in a mall with just us three, and other animals surrounding us, locked up tight from the outside-in, together.

  The baby dogs and cats could smell her built-up milk, hoping it would fountain out soon, first real mother’s milk. And the excitement of her scent and the blood and this slick new little life, it made them crazy with the kind of joy and jumpiness I’d never seen, not in all my years of retail here.

  Of course, I couldn’t keep her and him hiding in my storeroom forever. Even I knew that. And she didn’t think it right, her staying long at my place without us being married or nothing. Oh, I understood. But she’d have forever been safer-than-safe living life with Vernon here. Whatever she wanted, I’d of dealt with it, really. Even being an ample person, what with eleven-hundred-square-feet, I had plenty of room for little folks like them.

  Finally, I did get the parents’ phone number out of her. Called them. Told them she’d had a son, named both for Warren and for her father, which would make that boy the fourth. And there came a stillness and the mother finally said, “How are they?”

  I drove them both to the Raleigh airport in my Camaro, waxed perfect. I got as near the gate as the person without a ticket can go nowdays. And, just before the X-ray machine, she turns back, tells me she will make “Vernon” an extra middle name of his, which was … quite the Christmas gift.

  Sometimes her mom still sends me pictures of this ideal baby. I sure save every attachment.

  Just did what anybody would have, really. Still, I’ve taken his best baby picture and—well, he’s my screen-saver now.

  Oh man. Sorry. Blubbering here. Can be such a pushover. And a big ol’ boy like me, too.

  But hey, this time the year, could be—getting a little sentimental’s legal, right? You been s’ nice to talk to, really. Yeah, well that was last December twenty-fourth. And, I guess I’d have to say it was—of all Vernon’s Christmases—his most … per-sonal.

  You got to get on the road, I see that in your face…. Kirsten, precious, can I settle up the tab for me and my newest friend here? You kept us real well-supplied.

  What? No, Kirsten. Not this many, not for free! Naw, Vernon cannot “accept.” You give others way too much, girl. —Well, but … well, just looks like I’m going to have to snea
k you and your twins something extra up ahead. Their birthday’s March eleventh, I believe?

  Guess I’d best be speeding home, too. Snooze me fourteen hours straight. Holiday emotions this big, they wear out even a plus-sized person. Hey, good luck on that highway, getting where your folks’re all expecting you tomorrow.

  Imagine Kirsten not letting me pay for any of our many eggnogs! Old family recipe, made with hand-grated nutmeg in her own home-blender.

  Oh, I know folks say I tend to be a fool for Christmas. But, I swear, once a year, maybe we should all just go ahead and admit it:

  Ain’t people wonderful!

  FETCH

  SOMETHING IS THROWN. We retrieve it, without quite knowing why.

  If you’d been on that blue-pebbled beach (and today, of course, you are) you would’ve seen which drenched creature survived it, and by how much.

  This spit of rock juts into the Atlantic. Currents fight separate battles along its either side. April in Maine is really January anywhere else. The waves, jade-black, still look sludged with cold. Thirty floating gulls—born into this—appear miserable anyway.

  Last night’s nor’easter left this quay littered with the worst of what’s man-made. Against stone-gray, torn plastics show all the colors found on flags. Yellow nautical roping binds a splintered ping-pong table, its net still taut. Most of one young oak has been blown here roots-intact. A car pulls right onto the beach. Swimming seabirds shift. Whatever drama’s coming matters as their latest chance at food.

  Lost on gulls: this being a Swedish station wagon, bone-white—so new its back-window shows a scratched-at dealer’s sticker. Under radials, pebbles grind like molars testing molars.

  The driver clambers out, lanky, scanning. He seems at ease with this bleak spot, half glad for violent wind. Sandy hair, parted like a schoolboy’s, gets flung back to front then front to back till, laughing, he rakes it free of his eyes. Handsomeness has outlived early freckles. Stepping to the passenger’s side, he pockets a massive key ring. Its weight hints at boats, other cars, two homes, maybe three.

  Despite superior care—he’s nonetheless gone forty-five. His shape is as yet straight up and down. There’s something gallant if tested in how he aids the woman standing. She rises, stretches, as attractive as he, if darker. Full mouth, long nose, her movements imply a dancer’s history. Her beaten-gold choker, its matching cuff-bracelet, demand appraisal. But the neck and wrist look somehow whittled, thinner now than even fashion might require.

  His right arm supporting her left, the man half-pulls her across slicker rocks toward surf. His pale hair whipping, he helps steady this old woman somehow his same age. She moves like a person needing sleep. He stage-manages her climb uphill toward a spot they seem to recognize and like.

  In motion, you catch his recent habit of subtly offering just enough energy to always catch her. Without seeming to cling. Facing horizon, the pair arranges itself, cornering the pivot of each luff. They rest now, staring out.

  She keeps balanced on her left leg, while rubbing, favoring the right. Wind pushes her hair straight back, makes the cheekbones, so recently chic, look dire. But she just nods. Her eyes, as if blind, shut over half-a-smile.

  Terns and gulls, in search of snacks, now flap ashore.

  Strobes of sun start then fail, return, lose interest. Having squired her to this highest spot, he points toward a jet-dark eddy last night’s undertow carved. The few swimming gulls avoid this clouded channel. One tern’s orange beak scissors up a glint of sea-colored minnow.

  The man is glancing toward their car, seeming worried as for some child left there; she holds on to him a minute longer. Their clothes, the most careful of careless natural fabrics, press back snapping along limbs. Her short dress shows legs now so thin the knees look swollen.

  A gale arrives direct from the Canaries. This pair lean forward, almost welcoming such strain. It seems they’ve come here for a test more visible—if less treacherous—than recent inland ones. Clutching each other tighter, in the din of surf crashing against rock, they say nothing. Maybe they’re too showily prosperous to have let the rites and woes of childbirth impede their style. Even out here, they seem used to being stared at. But, now alone together, mussed, they each act opulently off-duty.

  Till lately, they must’ve looked younger than their years. Now they move at a pace more understated, somehow resigned.

  He leaves her, goes padding toward the car, wary over stones. Boyish white wrists V-out beside him, balancing. She waits uphill, arms wrapped around herself. One palm smooths her throat, resting on its collar of beaten gold. Is this item ancient-Greek or by some designer we will hear from soon? The thing’s simplicity makes a claim about its beauty and, till recently, hers.

  The way both people have just opened to this elemental place, the way they’ve grinned at its sewage scents and steady battering, makes you feel they know and somehow claim the spot. Maybe they’ve been coming here for years.

  He unlatches the back of their station wagon while studying her. Feeling observed uphill she twists his way, lifts a hand to reassure. The bracelet wobbles. Even in repose at half-speed this woman inhabits a daunting force. For all the beauty left her, she might be someone with more imitator-admirers than close friends.

  From the wagon’s rear, he pulls forth something alive. Given the wind’s factory-whistle howl, considering the surf flume and sucking sounds, hearing human speech will be impossible today. This might help explain the pair’s relief.

  With something more of eagerness than he has shown in leading her, he coaxes forth a heavy squirming thing. After hoisting it, the man detaches onto stones what is surely too big to be a baby, too heavy for the old frail lady it resembles.

  Wrapped within a collector’s Indian blanket, shaking itself awake, one ancient and quite fat black Labrador dog sniffs around itself. The creature has a podgy instant grandeur like the aged widow Queen Victoria. All black silhouette, its comic plumpness seems to comment on the couple’s thinness. The man settles his animal—from the look of it, a neutered male—careful of its footing among loose stones. The dog appears so glad of his whereabouts, he tries, chin-up, eyes squinted, to entirely circle himself. The tail is fat and bent and jocular in sudden whipping. Before the creature fully finds his legs, such motions lurch toward a dance that nearly topples him. His red collar is, along with that startled oak-leaf green, the plastic trash, her distant gold, the rare brightness on this gray beach.

  One black tail flopping side to side seems the single witty thing out here. The man smiles down his pleasure. Above the dog’s silver muzzle, eyes narrow, accepting customary praise. Amber eyes are set somewhat too close together. This gives the beast a look of scholastical absentmindedness. His roly-poly bounding is unrestrained. Overt with pure response, he seems everything his smart and loving owners cannot, would never, be.

  If they’ve just begun suspecting they are no longer young, they might love the dog for not yet knowing he is old.

  From the stone perch, she bows, then pats one thigh, summoning her animal. The man steadies a barrel-bodied creature her way. He lifts its collar, helping maneuver the Lab around these first few boulders. Soon the old dog finds his natural trot. Still, stones prove unsettled. The beast half falls while going mainly forward. As he fixes on her, the dog’s whole head and neck make involuntary swivels. At last he trudges huffing smack into her right palm held open for his nose and tongue.

  The pet is soon inhaling dead fish and the iron smell of Greenland; he blinks as if offering the horizon his own rubber-faced tourist greeting. As usual, his jester’s timing makes her laugh.

  Stacked in the station wagon downhill, overnight-luggage, good French bags of optimistically small denominations. The kind you’d take to a hospital only for some procedure “exploratory.”

  Today and in everything that follows, in this couple’s farewell to a well-known hook of land, in their relation to the dog and one another—something new and weighted is revealed. Usual mot
ions slow now. You sense—in this last rite of driving onto the rock peninsula—some tacit farewell. It seems they are about to deposit their dog with his favorite grad-student-sitter before speeding straight to Freeport, some small plane bound toward Mass. General. To the best—certainly the best—oncologist on earth. No one—but the gulls, two terns and you—will see them strolling-limping here today.

  Strong winds cause each to twist aside while keeping necks locked, heads raised. United, the three scuff toward the sickled point. Smells alternate: rock salt, spoiled celery, tonic water, dead birds. They’ve come here for something. Their walking proves challenged by wind but goes easier along the elevated center of this mineral path into the ocean. Clouds throw moving blue-gold scallops that go noon-to-evening with odd suddenness. Daylight itself seems the likeliest retraction. This spot looks either desolate or beautiful. It assumes whatever mood you bring here with you.

  Though the three are regularly beaten side-to-side by northeast wind, the Lab lowers his weight and simply drags forward. The couple lock arms. Approaching any incline, the man, automatic, grabs their dog’s bright collar, steadying. As this group proceeds, the woman’s limp reveals itself. Being here, maybe she’s given up pretending to look well. Maintaining inland appearances must sometimes seem, especially for a person this naturally visible, half-taxing as disease itself.

  The old dog, released, bounders ahead. Purposeful, porpoise-like in forward lunging, he goes at-sniff half-tottering across each slicked stone. A born clown, he seems to love his role, judging from how he keeps glancing back at them. Every twelve feet or so, he’ll pause, check. He’s waiting approval of his bumbling route while keeping tabs on theirs. He is, as in his younger days, still guarding them, though time has changed the terms without his noticing.

  Smiling, the two separately study him. Each seems to savor his sense of avid always-forward life. This morning the Lab’s springy front-legs, some extra glitter in his eyes, recall his better days. Does he sense how ill she is? Is he playing his game extra-hard today for love of them? Or might their present exhaustion make him appear—by contrast—even more the pup they were unexpectedly given, then came to adore and now sort of worship?