Red Dog, Red Dog

by Patrick Lane

  When is Eddy coming home?

  And he told her.

  Things seemed to constrict around her, the air, the light above her shrinking to the size of a burned marble, the tub with its curtain, the tin medicine chest, its mirror, and he tried to reach to where she was, but he couldn’t find the way in.

  She followed him into the kitchen. You go and bring your brother home, she said, staring at him, her words clear and cold.

  Marilyn, at the kitchen table, asked: Is it your brother?

  He looked at her. Yes, he said, Marilyn huddling back in her chair, the dog at her feet, the sound of it eating, and Tom stepped wide and went out the door.

  He got in the truck and drove, the trees rolling their black limbs out of the tail of the storm, the road a clutter of needles and broken branches. He stared into the shadows beyond his lights, a thin rain beginning again, speckling the windshield and him drowning.

  Weiner Reeves stood at the bottom of the ramp, opened the basement doors, and Tom went in. There were polished steel sinks along the counter by the wall, faucets hanging over them, a black hose coiled like a lasso, looped over the handle of what had to be a pump beside a drain in the middle of the floor, and beside it a table on wheels. On it was what looked like a makeup kit, the kind women used, and other things that Tom didn’t want to think about. Weiner stood there, jumpy, wringing his hands as he told him how his mother and father were away in Grand Forks, but they’d be back tomorrow. Tom asked him who’d brought Eddy there, and Weiner told him the body had come with the ambulance, Don Sparrow driving it, and a corporal in a police car who’d followed the body in.

  Not Sergeant Stanley.

  It was Dave Gillespie, Weiner said, Tom just staring at him. You know Dave.

  Tom waited, Weiner going on, saying how he’d been meaning to phone out to the house, but Dave, the corporal, had said the police were looking after that part, that they were the ones who’d be doing the calling to the Starks. Anyways, Weiner said, they told me not to tell anyone about Eddy being dead and all.

  Weiner raised up on his toes and told Tom how he was real sorry about Eddy getting himself dead, and how the police had said it was a bad accident and all. At least, that’s what the corporal told me, said Weiner. He said the Studebaker was a complete write-off.

  Where’s my brother?

  Weiner walked over to what looked like a cooler in the back wall. It was the same as one he’d seen at Jim Garofalo’s. Weiner lifted the steel handle, opening the door, a light coming on inside.

  Tom went to the gurney sitting there in the cold on its black wheels. His brother was under a kind of rubber sheet, and he lifted the corner of it up. Eddy’s head lay crooked on a plastic pillow, his face caked with dry blood, flakes of glass glittering in his red hair.

  Weiner stood back as Tom pushed the gurney out of the cooler. Where are you going with him? Weiner asked, coming behind, their feet sounding wet on the grey linoleum, Tom trundling it to the truck, one of the wheels rattling on the cement. Weiner told Tom he wasn’t supposed to be taking the body away, that his father always made people sign papers before they ever got one, and the police too. That they, for sure, weren’t going to like him taking the body away like he was. Weiner pleaded with Tom, saying how he was going to get into trouble if this went on.

  Tom grabbed him. You don’t know who took Eddy away, he said. This never happened.

  I won’t say a word, Weiner said, even as Tom knew he would, that he’d tell the police whatever they asked, Stanley or Gillespie or whoever else wanted to know, but Tom didn’t care what Weiner said or did now. He saw him slip some white pills into his mouth, his throat moving as he swallowed them, then he said, he, for sure, wasn’t going to tell anyone. Tom paid no attention then, as Weiner, stupid, tried to help him get Eddy off the gurney and into the front seat. Tom made him hold Eddy upright until he got around to the other side and sat behind the wheel. Weiner closed the truck door and scurried away. As Tom backed the truck up the ramp and turned toward home, Eddy slumped to the side, his head against the window, as if he was sleeping there.

  He wanted to wake his brother up and ask him exactly how he’d driven the Coldstream Road. He could see each hill, each valley bottom, the hairpin turns, the poplar trees past Lavington that obscured the one bad corner, and the different bridges across the creek, the cliffs above the deep gully near Lumby, every place a car could go wrong, the police following close behind, red lights flashing, going too fast, the brakes, or not the brakes, the gas pedal then, the car leaving the road, flying through the air.

  Blood is blood and sometimes never gone.

  He could see the turn onto Ranch Road in the distance, and he was suddenly twelve years old again, walking home from school, Eddy pulling alongside him in a car he’d stolen. They drove together down the back roads at the foot of the mountain, the car careening around corners, Tom holding on as they slewed from side to side, yelling at his brother, telling him to slow down, asking again and again where they were going. Where are we going, Eddy? Then they rode wild over the bridge at Cheater Creek, and, with a howl, Eddy cut the wheel hard, taking a sharp turn into the blind side-road, grass and branches ripping at the car’s belly, a deer startling and running frantically ahead of them. Eddy gunned the car a moment and the deer, crazy with fright, leaped off into a tangle of brush.

  Finally, they stopped in front of the old shack where Father had taught them to shoot a few years before when Tom would have been kneeling at the edge of the trees, the old Lee-Enfield rifle heavy in his young arms as he aimed it at the crude target his father had drawn with chalk on the wall.

  He and Eddy got out, and he stood by the back fender as Eddy opened the trunk and dragged out a five-gallon can. Eddy told him to open the passenger door, and when he did, Eddy tilted the can sideways, the purple farm gas chugging onto the seat and floor. The gas lay pooled in the leg space under the glove compartment, his brother trailing the spout over to the driver’s side, the gas spilling out. Then he hefted the can, carrying what was left to the trunk. He emptied the rest of the gas there, fumes around him in a shimmer of blue and gold, and Tom, as if in a spell, moved away slowly to the edge of the clearing.

  His brother closed the car door, and, taking a folder of matches from his pocket, struck one and held it to the red tips of the others. The folder flared and he quickly tossed it through the open window, turning to run, taking only a few short steps before the gasoline exploded, the force of it driving him face-first into the dirt, smoke and flame billowing from the car.

  Tom stumbled across the clearing toward his brother when the trunk exploded, the gas bursting out, the trunk lid flying up and the fenders above the tires shearing out like crooked blades. Eddy had crawled a foot or two, no more, the back of his shirt starting to smoulder. Then the back end of the car lifted up, the gas tank exploding, the car falling back on its burning tires like an animal held by a chain. Smoke boiled out of the windows and trunk, the shack behind the car on fire now, the old wood engulfed in flame, the images being eaten, the bullet holes Tom and Eddy had put in, erased in the fire. Alders and poplars reared back, their yellow leaves shrivelling, the fretted bells of their branches blossoming into torches. A single tongue of flame touched Eddy’s ankle and Tom grabbed his brother by the arms, dragging him to safety where the road entered the clearing, Tom urging him to go a little faster, leading him back to Cheater Creek. There he made Eddy lie down in the rivulets, cold water soaking up into his shirt and pants. The creek slid along the skin on the backs of his legs, cooling the burns, while Eddy lay there, defiant, a grin on his face.

  The house rode toward him now, faint lights in the gloom, his brother beside him, someone he’d looked to and watched for. What he had left was who he was, himself, alone now, driving down Ranch Road to where the three of them had lived.

  The headlights glanced off the side of the house, Marilyn standing at the kitchen window, arms crossed, looking out. He turned off the motor, and Mother came do
wn the porch steps then, pulling on the door of the truck.

  Eddy, she said, and Tom leaned across his brother and lifted the lock, the door swinging open, Mother staggering back, her hand hooked in the handle, and then she clambered into the truck.

  Tom got out, his brother fallen over by the steering wheel, and Mother, her arms around his neck, tried to lift him up.

  Marilyn came out of the house then, the dog beside her, and he called to her to come and help as he untangled his mother’s hands and pulled her out, turning her away from the truck. Mother twisted in his arms, her body unyielding as she struggled. He tightened his arms around her.

  Don’t, he said, Mother sagging then against him.

  He let her go, and she turned around, her face utterly naked, her eyes telling him to do something so that all this could be undone. She peered at him from her thin eyes as if she’d only now recognized who he was.

  Are you all right? Tom said, and she raised her arm and slapped him in the face. When he didn’t move, she raised her hand again, Marilyn yelling at them to stop, that it was enough.

  The last clouds butted against the mountain, the blade of the moon bright in the sky. His mother stood there, her hands at her sides, as if unsure what to do next. She seemed pathetic to him now, and he wondered how he could ever have been afraid of her.

  Go inside the house, he said.

  Marilyn made a move toward him, but he shook his head. Mother turned and Marilyn went with her, walking to the light coming from the kitchen, passing from him through the door.

  After a moment, Marilyn came back out onto the porch. She called to the dog, then asked Tom if he’d seen it. Tom said he hadn’t, and she turned and walked back in.

  He lifted his brother from the truck, stumbling as he took the weight, and carried him to the house. As he came up the steps, Marilyn was at the screen door, saying he should take Eddy to his mother’s room. She rubbed her wrist against her eye, seeming to him to be somehow lost. She let him go ahead, Tom turning sideways in the doorway, taking the body through, and down the hall to the room at the end.

  Mother’s bed was swimming with red fishes, and for a moment he thought he’d gone mad, and then he saw she’d torn down the shower curtain in the bathroom, spreading it on top of the quilt. When he hesitated, she told him to lie Eddy on the bed and he did, his brother’s knees bent awkwardly. She placed her hand on Eddy’s shoulder as if to her he was a child hurt in a game he’d played too hard.

  Tom looked at her, a small woman standing beside her dead son. He leaned over to straighten his brother’s body.

  Haven’t you done enough, she said.

  What have I done?

  You tell that Marilyn girl to throw some wood into the stove and get the water in the kettle hot. There’s nothing here for you to take care of, she said.

  He turned to Marilyn, who was standing just outside the door, and when he said her name, she nodded and went down the hall.

  Tom stayed where he was, his mother putting on an apron, suddenly busy, pushing back her sleeves, no hesitation in her now, as if this was something she was destined to do. Her hands undid his brother’s buttons, moving down to Eddy’s waist, pulling his shirt out of his pants, and spreading it open. He watched her take a pair of scissors from the drawer in the bedside table and cut the sleeves open from wrist to neck, then she peeled the shirt from him and stripped it away. His brother’s skin glistened like old wax through the dry blood on his face, his caved-in chest, bruises and cuts among the freckles on his shoulders and face, and the other, older bruises lying like shadows on his arms and in the cups of his elbows.

  His face is all bloody, she said, as if distracted. I don’t even know what time it is.

  He looked away, leaving the room. He went to the front door, opened it, and walked out to the road, the huge limbs of the old fir tree stretching above him, which he had once climbed to wait for his brother to come home. From where he was standing, he could see his mother through the bars on the bedroom window. She was leaning over, Marilyn beside her, holding out a dish pan, Mother dipping a cloth in and then wringing it out, her hands disappearing, her arms moving, and then her hands lifting, dipping the cloth in the water again in a simple ceremony of grief.

  A dog barked somewhere out in the orchard. The sound echoed in him, the night suddenly quiet, and then the dog barked again. He turned and walked around the back of the house and down the path. He called to the dog, but there was no answering bark.

  The creek before him was a silver wand. In a tiny pool left behind by the rain, a water-strider dimpled on its diminished sea, everything that had supported it slowly vanishing as it strode within the limits of the puddle. He looked over at the path and saw the marks of his boots filling in, bits of clay crumbling, stems of grass bending back over the scars, seed heads dribbling next year’s roots onto the disturbed earth. A Spadefoot toad, refusing to believe the coming cold, had found a hole where a stone had been thrown out by an iron wheel. The toad squatted low, blinkered in dampness, its mottled throat silent, its golden eyes staring over the water-strider’s pool to the creek flowing past the orchard.

  He remembered how once his father had told him that he’d kept a magpie in a willow cage when he was a boy back on the farm, his pet, his wild bird tamed, its tongue slit with a razor so it could talk. He told him that the morning he left home forever he’d set the magpie free, but the bird had followed him for miles with his name on its split tongue until later that day it disappeared for good. Tom had always wondered how long a bird like that could live in the wilderness. He knew the other magpies would kill it when it came to them for comfort, its call a human cry, the smell of Father on its feathers.

  He thought of the men down by the railroad tracks at night, sitting in front of their small fires, sufficient to themselves in the flickering light, him beside them, listening as they talked about where they’d been, drawn to their lives, his own somewhere else, forgotten in the hours. A few nights later he’d return, but those men would be gone, the fire pit still warm, empty bean cans and bottles lying in the ashes. He’d sit there, thinking of them in the gondola cars of a freight train, leaning on the iron walls, staring out at the passing cities and towns, as they rode into the night.

  There were the times years ago when he’d crouch in the mouth of the cave up Cheater Creek, a snared grouse he’d cooked beside him, cooled on a flat rock, his pup sleeping, full of breast meat, stolen milk, and eggs. He built careful fires, hoping the smell of smoke and the glow of the flames wouldn’t give him away. It was always Eddy who found him, Eddy who brought him back.

  He heard a slight sound now, an animal coming through the brush by the creek, and he saw the red dog come out of the willows. It stopped by the water-strider’s pool, looking at him for a second or two, as if curious who he was, why he was there. Hey dog, he said. But it just lapped at the water briefly, and went on by. He began walking, the dog moving on its steady paws past the house, and on up to the road. It stopped, turning for a moment to see if he was following, then lifted its head and coursed the light wind coming out of the north. Tom felt a nameless thing inside him, and he took a breath and then another.

  The dog crossed over the road and passed under the barbed wire on the other side of the ditch, moving out into the ploughed field, padding between two deep furrows, heading toward Black Rock, the far lakes, and the valley beyond.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I especially wish to express gratitude to my editor, Ellen Seligman, who was so inspiring during the last stages of my six-year-long journey with this book. Her support, her insights, and her tireless care helped this novel to find its final shape. Also at McClelland & Stewart, thanks to Jenny Bradshaw, for her sharp eye, and to Morgan Grady-Smith, for her astute comments. My thanks as well to my agent Dean Cooke, and Suzanne Brandreth, and to the Canada Council and the B.C. Arts Council for their support during the writing of this novel.

  I wish to give a nod to the presence of Friedrich Nietzsc
he and Grace Metalious, and to the authors of the Book of Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Job from the King James Bible.

  Lastly, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my wife, Lorna Crozier, who suffered the years of my writing this novel with tolerance, patience, and grace. My heart goes out to her.

  Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Lane

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher–or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency–is an infringement of the copyright law.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Lane, Patrick, 1939-

  Red dog, red dog / Patrick Lane.

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-207-5

  I. Title.

  PS8523.A53R43 2008 C813'.54 C2008-900888-X

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

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