Dead and Doggone

by Dead

  won't do it."

  "Of course not."

  He shrugged. "A lot of people, especially old-timers, do it all the time. People want it sometimes.

  They live in small apartments, and the landlords are going to evict them if the dog makes noise. If

  it's the only way to keep the dog. . ."

  "It's grotesque."

  "There's too much risk. Especially aspiration."

  "I hate the whole idea."

  "Sometimes the scar tissue re-forms a sort of fold."

  "And the bark comes back?"

  He nodded. "A hoarse bark."

  "Not that howl, though. How am I going to tell my father?"

  "Don't," he said gently. "We don't know for sure. Don't tell him unless you have to."

  At eleven, after Steve left, Kevin showed up at my back door. As I've said, I'd suspected him of

  having a crush on me, although I couldn't see any sign of it then. He was red in the face and cold in

  the voice.

  "Don't touch a thing in Shane's apartment," he said. "And don't make any plans for this

  afternoon. You will be deposed at three o'clock."

  "And I was just getting used to the throne," I said. If puns are bad enough, they usually win him over, but that one failed.

  "Be there."

  He handed me a plain white envelope and loped off toward Fresh Pond, where he trains for the

  Boston Marathon. I admire him. If it weren't for dogs, my running muscles would have atrophied

  within a couple of years of my birth. I might never even have bothered learning to walk at all.

  Before I had a chance to open the envelope, my father's van pulled in. Clyde was still denned up

  at the back of the crate, and I still didn't know whether he had a voice left. The front windows of the

  Bronco were both open a crack, and I'd eased open the tailgate and sneaked a bowl of water and

  one of Eukanuba laced with grated Cheddar into the back near the crate, but I couldn't see any sign

  that Clyde had touched them.

  "What kind of shape's he in?" my father greeted me.

  If Rowdy had been outside, Buck might have said hello to him.

  "He won't come out of the crate. I got a pretty good look at him, and I think he's mostly okay.

  Physically. But he crawled into the crate, and he won't come out. In the back of my car. As soon as I

  get near him, he snaps at me. And he means business."

  Buck nodded.

  "I got some food and water in," I continued, "but I don't think he's touched them. I even tried a

  doughnut, and that didn't work. I didn't want to try anything else. He's scared almost to death, I

  think. I'm sure he'd have bitten me."

  At two-thirty, when I left for the police station in his van, Buck was still patiently sitting in the

  driver's seat of the Bronco. He'd read the Sunday Globe, including an account of the previous

  evening's events, six or eight back issues of Dog's Life, and a year's worth of New England

  Obedience News and Northeast Canine Companion. In between, he'd been singing. "Clementine."

  "America the Beautiful." And, yes, the torment of my childhood, "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly."

  After dark, when I returned, he was still there.

  "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," he was singing.

  "How's it going?" I asked softly.

  "Fine. At the end of the Marines' Hymn, I make my move. Out of the front seat."

  "Is the crate shut?" It wasn't.

  I checked on them about every half hour throughout the evening. Buck's voice sounded

  increasingly hoarse, but at ten, he was stretched out on the floor next to the crate.

  "I don't suppose you'd consider putting your feet instead of your face next to the door of the

  crate," I said. "Prosthetic feet are easier to come by than a prosthetic head."

  "Ye of little faith," he whispered.

  If Clyde had howled, I'd have heard him. I didn't ask whether he'd whined or yipped. Sometime

  in the night, Buck came into the house, used the bathroom, and made noise in the kitchen. At five

  in the morning, I found him asleep in the back of the Bronco. Clyde was still in the crate, but his

  nose was sticking out. By seven, Buck had one hand in front of Clyde's nose, not one inch from

  those teeth.

  "It's like taming a wild animal," I said to Steve when he called.

  "You want me to bring something over?" he offered. "A mild sedative? It won't do him any harm.

  Anything they gave him is out of his system by now."

  "Buck needs to do this himself. Thanks."

  It took him the rest of the day. At dusk, they both climbed out of the Bronco, and Buck led Clyde

  slowly toward the van. Just then, a cruiser tore down Concord A venue, siren wailing. Clyde lifted

  his great head to the sky and answered its wail with that same howl that had always given me

  shivers. My father was too busy watching Clyde to notice my face. They got into the van and drove

  off.

  Why was Clyde spared? I think maybe because he was silent already, too terrified to make a

  sound. Buck would probably know, but I've never told him what almost happened to Clyde. What

  did happen was hard enough for Buck. Clyde, who used to go everywhere with my father, hasn't left

  Owls Head since then. Buck won't admit it, but Clyde has never been the same since. Buck doesn't

  trust him anymore, not around other people.

  That evening, during a hard rain, after we made sure Kevin wasn't home, Rita and I took my

  master key and let ourselves into the third-floor apartment. David Shane was still in the hospital.

  "What's he still there for?” Rita asked. "You didn't shoot him. Or did you?”

  "I didn't," I said. "I should have."

  "So why's he there? What's the problem?"

  "Submissive urination," I said.

  Windy had spotted allover everything, but since Rita had been feeding her and taking her out

  now and then, she was fine. With Windy temporarily locked in the bathroom, the two of us shoved,

  hauled, tugged, and dragged the white leather couch down the back stairs, out the door, and onto

  the sidewalk, where some lucky trash-picker would snatch it up before morning.

  "This is acting out," Rita said as we stood in my kitchen drying our sopping hair on dish towels.

  "It's going to cost me an extra year of analysis."

  "So don't tell your analyst."

  "I have to."

  "You don't have to do anything. Besides, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just a creative eviction

  notice. I'm the landlord. I'm entitled."

  "I'm not."

  "You didn't see that place, Rita. If you had, you'd realize there's nothing to feel guilty about. And

  could you honestly live here with him on the third floor? Are you going to move? I have to get rid of

  him. Honest to God, Rita, I was such a fool. Everybody else knew what a vapid louse he was. Kevin.

  Matt Gerson. My father. Everybody but me. You know what I've been wondering?"

  "What the hell you were doing exposing yourself to such risk."

  "No."

  "What it meant that you took that gun, a gift from your father. No? If this is about dogs, I don't

  want to hear it."

  "You're a therapist. You have to listen."

  "I'm not your therapist. I'm your tenant."

  "You're my friend."

  "Spit it out."

  "Look, Rita, I've been examining my conscience, and here's what I've seen. Every dog I've ever had has been beautiful. I have not owned one ugly dog or even one ordinary dog. I've probably

  owned the most beautiful dogs in the world. And what I've been th
inking is that it's so superficial. I

  treat them like decorations. And that's more or less how I reacted to Shane. I liked looking at him.

  He flattered me. He got me to talk. I didn't really take in anything about him. For example, if I

  hadn't been such a fool, I'd have noticed something about the couch and also the Mercedes. It has

  real leather upholstery, you know. The man wasn't happy unless he was sitting on dead animals.

  That should've told me something. So what does all of it say about me? Look, suppose Rowdy

  suddenly turned into an ordinary dog. Or what if Vinnie had? Now, she was a really beautiful bitch.

  You remember her."

  "Holly? Look, sometimes reality is the best medicine. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but

  Vinnie looked exactly like every other golden retriever."

  "She did not!"

  "And you know what else? Rowdy looks like a thousand other malamutes. He can't turn ordinary-

  looking. He already is."

  "How can you say that! Look at him!"

  He was asleep on the kitchen floor, stretched out to his full, glorious length, his body strong and

  compact, his coat thick, dense, coarse, and not too long, his head broad, his ears flawless wedges,

  his muzzle neither long and pointed nor stubby, his legs heavily boned and muscled, in other

  words, exactly the way the standard of the breed says an Alaskan malamute is supposed to be. The

  standard is an ideal, an abstract portrait of the perfect dog. My perfect dog.

  "How would you like me to say that Groucho is ordinary?” I added.

  "He is ordinary. Except to me. You saw this jerk, Shane, and you got seduced by his good looks.

  So he told you your hair was pretty or something. He didn't tell you to quit talking about dogs. He

  didn't say he was sick of hearing about your father. Big deal. So it's superficial. It's ordinary. We're

  all ordinary. Welcome to the human race."

  -29-

  Some of us are less ordinary than others. Take the rich. Scott Fitzgerald was right. The very rich

  really are different from you and me. They are extraordinarily naive. It's a luxury they can afford.

  Take Mimi. Nothing I could say would persuade her that my sole object, right from the beginning,

  had been to recover a lost dog.

  We sat in one of the rooms I'd been in at the fund-raiser, a magnified living room with four

  couches, each with matching upholstered chairs and a polished coffee table. Pretty wooden chairs.

  Side tables. Standing lamps. Are knickknacks in bad taste? There weren't any unless you count the

  candle- sticks with long tapers on the mantles above the fireplaces and, on the tables, those

  extravagantly perishable knickknacks, baskets of out-of-season flowers, blue delphiniums, yellow

  lilies, white baby's breath with their stems embedded in Oasis masked by swathes of sphagnum

  moss.

  I'd just taken a seat on one of the couches when Zip ran in and urinated on the rug.

  "Damn," Mimi said. "The problem is, she likes you. It happens when she's overexuberant."

  Positive reframing, Rita calls it. If a guy spits on you, he washed your face.

  "It's your rug."

  Mimi made no move at all to clean up after Zip. Someone else would do it. Her tail between her

  legs, Zip quivered and shook, pawed at me, then fell onto the floor in a shivering, neurotic mass

  that should never have been bred. Go right ahead. Buy from a pet shop.

  "I feel as though I owe you some explanation," Mimi said.

  "Not really." I smiled.

  She was sitting in an upholstered wing-back chair that matched the blue flowered pattern of the

  couch. If I'd been invited to drop in for lunch with Mrs. Bush, Millie, and the pups, I'd have tried to

  buy a duplicate of the suit she wore, but I probably wouldn't have been able to pay for it. It was dark

  green, and under the jacket was a cowl-necked white sweater knitted from some blend of exotic

  fibers. I wanted to ask her where she donated her clothes after she wore them once.

  "He had me completely fooled, you know," she said. "I was totally taken in."

  "I never thought you knew. I mean, I'm sure you had no idea at all what he was up to. No one

  thinks that."

  "I'd like to tell you about it, if you don't mind. It's on my conscience, so to speak."

  "If you want," I said. "You know, I don't hold it against you."

  "I appreciate that." She leaned back in the chair and folded her hands in her lap, ever Ron's

  perfect lady. "I appreciate everything you've done."

  I shrugged. "I had to get my father's dog back. Everything else was an accident, sort of. It wasn't

  anything more than sort of a combination of bad luck and good luck."

  She smiled one of those almost expressionless smiles and patted the air with one hand, gesturing

  me to put a lid on what she misinterpreted as false modesty, I guess.

  "This has been a very difficult time for me." Her articulation was, as always, clean, and her voice

  strong. "Among other things, I have set myself the task of doing what I can to make reparations for

  my part in this, however unintended it was. I harbored a criminal."

  "Look, you supported the ordinance long before you had a clue about what was going on with

  him. You've done more to promote that than anybody else. If you're feeling guilty, think about that.

  The rest of us are the ones who should feel guilty for not doing everything we could."

  "Thank you. But I've had to realize that I exercised extremely poor judgment, to say the least, and

  with terrible consequences."

  "Come on! He took advantage of you."

  "That's true. But that's not all of it. And, of course, I do recognize that I wasn't alone in showing

  poor judgment. Some of it was Ed's responsibility, too. In effect, we let the man make fools of both

  of us." Her hands were folded on her lap again. She looked perfectly composed.

  "I think you're blaming yourself too much," I said. "Practically everyone else was taken in, too."

  As I'd been by David Shane.

  "That's just it!" she said, sitting forward and making a fist with one hand. "And he really was so

  wonderfully capable. He seemed completely reliable. And I see now that Ed and I both

  romanticized him. We thought he was a child of nature, I suppose. He seemed unspoiled." She

  sounded momentarily bitter. "And he was unbelievably useful! He literally could do anything."

  "And would."

  "Yes." She paused. "I see what you mean. One doesn't imagine the existence of people like that,

  people without limits. One assumes that the boundaries are there, as they are for oneself. We all

  did. Libby certainly did, too. He could be very, very seductive."

  "Your husband never had any questions about him? He never wondered about anything?"

  Zip got up and shook her way over to me. I rubbed her silly head.

  "Oh, he had a few. . . Well, they were nothing more than minor gripes, really. Ed would complain

  that he'd use my car too often." Her car, the green station wagon with the barrier in the back. “And

  when we first had him here, Ed had to speak to him a couple of times about cleaning himself up.

  Taking a shower. That sort of thing. But I'm sure he did it tactfully. So, no. So far as I know, Ed

  trusted him completely. We both did."

  “And when your husband died, you had no suspicions at all?"

  "Why would I? I found the kit myself, right here in this house. I knew what it was. You know what

  a kit is?"

  "Epinephrine."

  Zip
was staring up pathetically at Mimi and raking her skirt with a forepaw.

  "With a syringe," Mimi said. "And Ed always made light of the problem. He pooh-poohed it. You

  know, that's one of the reasons I never dreamed. . . Because here we're only a block away from the

  Mt. Auburn emergency room, and he didn't like the idea of the kit because if it's not used just so, it

  can cause gangrene. Zip, do stop it."

  "So you thought that was why he left the kit here?"

  "Oh, he didn't leave it deliberately, no. Logically, he understood. But, afterward, I thought that,

  unconsciously, it must have been that fear, in combination with how he hated to be fussed over. He

  didn't want to be treated like an invalid. That was another thing, of course. Like every other man,

  he hated the idea of looking weak. So, afterward, I thought, well, of course, there he was,

  participating in this male rite, roughing it in the north woods and so forth. He loved that. He lived

  for those fishing and hunting trips. And naturally, he didn't want to seem like some big baby."

  "It must have made sense."

  "Believe me, it did. And, of course, Reggie Cox was right there! And it never occurred to me to

  doubt a single thing he said. So I thought I knew exactly what had happened. He told me all about

  it, of course. And I was devastated. But Reggie seemed like a godsend. Afterward, I was afraid to

  stay in the house alone, without a man, and there he was, when he drove the car home. Also I felt

  responsible. I thought he must be afraid that it meant losing his job. So he stayed."

  "And at the show?"

  "I can only say that I must have taken his presence for granted. Lately, of course, if he wasn't

  right there, he was with Libby, and I never minded. On the contrary, I was happy to see them both

  find a relationship. I thought they were good for each other." She sighed. "And, in a way, I thought

  it was cute, somehow. That's why he was at the show, of course, because of Libby. As their romance

  unfolded, he began to spend more and more time with her. It wasn't part of his job to be there."

  "So that's why he hadn't run into Sissy before."

  She nodded. "He knew nothing about showing dogs. He knew nothing about handling. He had no

  interest, really. But, of course, he seemed to have that wonderful way with dogs."