by Terry Kay
He did not finish the oatmeal (he ate sparingly now, even when his daughters filled his table with bowls of soft food and pushed it before him with worried urging), and he took the bowl and crumbled a day-old biscuit into it and spooned bacon grease from a cup over the biscuit and oatmeal and blended it. He then took the bowl to the steps of the back porch and left it and went back inside the house and sat in his chair beside his desk. Sitting, he could not see through the window over his desk, but he thought he heard the dog pushing the bowl across the cement, and later, when he checked, the bowl was empty. We’ll see now, he thought. Maybe it’d go on and take up somewhere else, with some boy that would like to have a dog. If it didn’t, he’d have Noah come out with his gun.
He saw the dog again at noon, as he crossed the yard to the mailbox. The dog was standing in front of the barn, looking at him. “Uh-huh,” he said, nodding. “Uh-huh. Got brave, did you? Got you some food, and you think you’re here to stay. Shouldn’t’ve done it. Shouldn’t’ve fed you.” If the dog was not gone by nightfall, he’d call Noah. No use letting it hang around.
In the afternoon, Kate arrived to sweep the floors and change his bedsheets and he told her that he wanted Noah to come out with his gun later in the afternoon.
“Why, Daddy?” she asked.
“Got a dog hanging around out here,” he said. “Looks about starved. Looks sick. Noah can put it out of its misery.”
“What dog, Daddy? I haven’t seen a dog.”
“Well, it’s here,” he said. “Been around a few days, I’d guess. Saw it right after your mama’s funeral.”
“Funny that I wouldn’t see it,” Kate said. “Haven’t heard any barking, either. You’d think Red or one of Carrie’s dogs would bark if there was another dog around.”
“Now, why would I make up something like that?” he asked irritably. “It was on the back steps this morning, licking up some grease I’d spilled. I chased it off, but I saw it down by the barn later on.”
“Maybe it was just hungry,” Kate said quietly. She sounded very much like her mother.
“Well, it’ll just go on being hungry,” he said. “I’m not going to go feeding it.” The lie about not feeding the dog warmed him and he smiled.
“Funniest looking dog I ever saw,” he said. “Looked like an albino. First dog your mama and I had looked just like it. Only other dog I ever saw as white.”
“I’ll tell Noah,” Kate mumbled. “I’ll have him come out.” She added, “Don’t know how I could miss seeing a dog like that.”
Later, before sundown, Noah appeared with his hunting rifle in the crook of his arm and searched around the barns and in the pasture and fields, but he could not find the dog, and he left saying he would return the next day, but it was likely the dog had wandered off.
He said to Kate, “Your daddy must be seeing things. Can’t be a stray dog hanging around out there. The rest of the dogs around here would be pitching a fit. We’d know it.”
“Maybe he is,” Kate admitted. “Maybe without Mama around to talk to, he’s started imagining things. Things like that happen. I’ve read stories about it.”
The next day and the day after and the day after, the dog appeared each morning on the steps of the back porch to eat from his leftover breakfast, and during the day, when he was outside with his walker, he would see the dog around the barns or in the fields, and he would call Kate and demand that she come out and see for herself.
But the dog would not show itself when Kate arrived, and she began to call her brothers and sisters and tell them that their father was hallucinating.
“Maybe the dog’s hiding,” her sisters and brothers suggested.
“It’s not there,” Kate said defiantly. “I’ve looked all over. Noah went by this morning on his way to work to see if it was at the porch, like Daddy says it always is, but it wasn’t there.”
“Maybe you’re right,” her brothers and sisters said sadly.
On the fourth day, after first seeing the dog licking grease spots, and seeing it every day following, he took his own gun and loaded it and leaned it against the jamb of the door leading to the back porch and waited for the dog to come to the baited bowl. But the dog did not appear. He remembered that he had heard rifle shots in the woods the day before. Maybe somebody had seen the dog and shot it. Maybe Noah. No, not Noah. Noah would have called him. It didn’t matter. The dog was gone, and that was the end of it.
He sat for two hours at the kitchen table and stared out the window. That night, he wrote in his journal:
White Dog, the dog that nobody can see but me, did not show up today and I believe it must be dead or decided to find a better table to beg from. Old biscuits and bacon grease must not taste too good. Whatever happened, it’s better off. Being “slow of foot” as I am, I would find it hard to care for a dog that appears to be invisible to everybody but me. Cora and I had a dog that looked just like White Dog when we lived in Tampa, right after we were married. She also tried to hide from everybody but us. We found her on the side of the road when she was just a pup and Cora had me take her home with us. We called her Frosty, because she was white like frost. I don’t guess Cora ever loved another animal as much as Frosty. She used to tell me that Frosty followed after her when I was away at work. We kept Frosty until we moved back to the farm and our first child, Alma, was born. A few days after she arrived, Frosty disappeared. We could never find any trace of her. I always thought somebody picked her up and took her too far away to find her way back. It was another hot day. I don’t think it’ll ever rain again. I remember it was this way in 1954, when I was in the hospital with kidney stones and a slipped disc. It didn’t rain for weeks.
He closed the journal and placed it back in the desk drawer and sipped from his glass of homemade grape wine—sweet, barely fermented. Tampa, he thought. She had been so young then. And in awe of every new thing she could see and touch. The orange orchards. The sea. Shrimp. Lobster. Crab. The rented house on a paved street—their first house.
“It’s not very large.”
“It’s what I want. Exactly what I want.”
“We won’t be here long. Just until the job’s over.”
“Maybe you can find another job, and we can stay.”
“I don’t know. Hard to get jobs.”
And they had found the dog on the road, and she had taken the dog up into her arms and cuddled it and wept because the dog was hungry.
“I want to keep her.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she belongs to somebody around here.”
“Not out here. There’s no houses around.”
“I don’t know if they’ll let us keep a dog at the house.”
“We’ll find out. It’ll keep me company, with you gone all day.”
“She’s not big enough to be a watchdog.”
“I don’t need a watchdog. Just something to keep me company, to keep me from being so lonely.”
5
He did not put the bowl out for the dog the next morning, or the next, and he did not see the dog. He was convinced the dog had left or had died. Left, most likely. He studied the sky for a sign of buzzards circling in a whirlwind of wings over a dead animal, but he did not see any buzzards and he decided that his morning bowl of oatmeal and biscuits and grease had become uninteresting to the dog and it had left in search of a more benevolent giver.
The dog appeared again on a Sunday evening, at dusk. He saw it beside the barn, beneath the hedge of Ligustrum. He whistled softly, and the dog lifted its ears and tilted its head.
“Come on,” he called. “Come on. I got a biscuit in the kitchen.” He started toward the dog on his walker, and the dog retreated, crawling backward until it reached the corner of the barn, then turned and slipped away out of sight. He did not follow. “Go on,” he said angrily. “Get out of here.”
The following morning, he left the bowl on the steps and watched from the kitchen as the dog appeared from behind the wellhouse and took the food hungrily. “Th
ought you’d be back,” he said to himself. “Where you been?” He laughed quietly. “Don’t even know what kind of dog you are. Must be a bitch dog. Maybe you been off having a time.”
It was the morning that Neelie returned, as she had promised over his protests. He was at the kitchen sink, washing his breakfast bowl and cup, and he saw Arlie’s car on the road that circled the house. He moved as quickly as he could on his walker into his bedroom and to the window that looked out onto the front yard. He saw Neelie emerging from the car, swatting at her grandchildren who crowded the backseat. He could not understand her words, but he could hear her voice, crowing orders to Arlie and to the grandchildren, and then the car pulled away. He thought, God Almighty, she’s here for the day.
She did not knock at the door; she entered, calling his name: “Mr. Sam, Mr. Sam. It’s Neelie, come to help out. Where you at, Mr. Sam?”
“In here,” he answered. The door to his bedroom opened and Neelie stood in the doorway.
“You ain’t still in bed?” she asked.
“No. I been up.”
Neelie cackled a laugh. “Look at Neelie, standing here before a man’s bedroom. Lord, Jesus, Mr. Sam, I didn’t even knock. What if you was naked as the day you was borned?”
“I guess I’d of been naked,” he said matter-of-factly.
“God love us, Mr. Sam, we’d of both fell out laughing. Put me’n you together, we old as the world. Too old to be getting shamed.” A laugh rolled from her.
“I guess,” he said, hobbling toward her on his walker. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”
“Just woke up feeling like it,” Neelie said, stepping out of his way. “Neelie’s been feeling poorly, for sure. Had a touch of them summer chills, like one of your babies used to get—Junior, wadn’t it? Wadn’t he handsome as the day is long at the funeral? Neelie sure would like to hear him preach the gospel, Mr. Sam. Sure would like to hear Paul preach the gospel, too. Both fine preachers, I hear tell.”
He passed Neelie and went into the kitchen, and she followed, telling him that she had taken some medicine that Arlie had gotten her at the drugstore and the chill had passed in the night. He sat in a chair at the table, and Neelie sat opposite him.
“Old folks ought to stay in bed more’n young folks,” she said profoundly. “That’s when the fevers pass—in bed. Every time I get to feeling poorly now, I take to the bed, don’t matter what them grandbabies want or what Arlie says needs doing. I take to bed and tell them to shut their traps and give old Neelie her rest.”
“It helps,” he said in resignation.
“Young folks don’t know nothing. Jesus, Lord, I swear they don’t know nothing, Mr. Sam. They spoiled. You had you some breakfast?”
“Earlier,” he told her. “Had some oatmeal.”
“You got to eat, Mr. Sam. You got to, now. You got you any biscuits?”
“Had some left that Kate brought out.”
“Neelie’ll cook you some fresh ones. Ain’t no need to go eating old biscuits. Them girls ain’t been out here taking care of you, like they said they was?”
“They come out. Just about every day,” he replied.
“They better. They don’t, they have Neelie all over them, like a setting hen.”
“They do a good job,” he said. “Sometimes I wish they’d stay away more than they do.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” Neelie said emphatically. “Young folks worry you to death, you give them a chance. Every time you turn around, they all over the place. They don’t know nothing about letting a person have some peace.”
He nodded passively and stared out of the window. He knew it would be a hot day, too hot to work in his plot of pecan trees, but he knew he could not stay in the house and listen to Neelie. “How’s Arlie doing?” he asked.
Neelie shook her head sadly. “He’s gon’ lose that job he’s got over to the sawmill,” he said. “Been hanging around that trash from the Goldmine ridge—them Morris boys. Folks saying them boys is been stealing, but ain’t nobody know for sure. Said they was the ones that robbed that old couple over in Sardis a few days ago. Took all they cash money and some government checks they had. You got any cash money, Mr. Sam, you better hide it good. Keep you a shotgun by your bed, too.”
“They wouldn’t get much from me,” he said. “I just keep enough for groceries.”
“Well, you keep you a shotgun close by,” Neelie said again. “Them boys don’t care what you got or what you ain’t got. They’ll be thinking you got some insurance money after your wife die.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
Neelie pulled from her chair, exaggerating pain. “Well, let Neelie get started working around here,” she said. “Don’t you worry about eating them old biscuits, Mr. Sam. Neelie’ll cook you up some. Gon’ throw all them old ones out.”
“Just put them in a pan,” he said. “I’ll feed them to the dog.”
“What dog you got?” Neelie asked. “I ain’t seen no dogs.”
“One took up the last few days. I put some food out every morning.”
“Never seen so many stray dogs as what’s out this year,” Neelie said. “Don’t trust them stray dogs. They soon as bite you as look at you. I swear they would.”
“This one comes and goes.”
“I’ll put some biscuits aside,” Neelie said. “You just go on in your chair and get to resting. Neelie’s gon’ clean up this kitchen.” She looked at the table and cabinets and shook her head wearily. “Kitchen shows it when a man’s in it. Neelie’ll be cleaning all day in here.”
He smiled. Kate and Carrie had been out the night before, cleaning the kitchen. Except for his dishes in the sink, the kitchen was in perfect order. “You see the girls, you ought to say something about it,” he said. “When they come out, they don’t like to work in the kitchen.”
Neelie’s eyes flared in disgust. “I will,” she promised. “Them babies know better’n leave a kitchen looking like this.”
He left the house and went to his barn to work, building a shelf for storage. He did not need the shelf, but he had been a carpenter before becoming a nurseryman (his father and grandfather had also been carpenters) and he liked building things. Constructing the shelf, even if he had to tear it down and build it again, was preferable to the assault of Neelie’s voice and Neelie’s commands.
In mid-morning he saw Kate’s car stop in front of the house and Kate and Carrie, with two of Carrie’s children, rushed into the house. He laughed easily. He knew they had learned of Neelie’s presence—calling for him, he guessed—and Neelie had complained bitterly of the condition of the kitchen and had summoned both of them to help her and to receive her lecture for being negligent.
When he returned to the house at lunch, Neelie was sitting at the kitchen table watching as his daughters prepared his meal. She was talking in a shout: “You babies got to make sure he got enough food around here. Jesus, Lord, can’t have him eating oatmeal every time he gets hungry. And I couldn’t find the first piece of fatback. He’s used to having his peas and beans cooked with fatback. Your mama made sure that was the way it was done. Fatback gives it taste, babies. Don’t for the life of me know how them folks up north eat peas and beans without fatback cooked in. But they do. Millie went up there, up to Detroit, and when she come back, she went on about how I was using too much fatback, said they didn’t use none at all up north. Cooked up some beans like they do up in Detroit. Dogs wouldn’t touch them beans. Next time they’s a hog-killing, you babies got to put up some fatback for your daddy.”
His daughters were not talking. They worked, tight-lipped, putting the food for his lunch before Neelie.
“What’s all that food for?” he asked innocently.
“Neelie said you were hungry, almost starved,” Kate said evenly.
“No, not particularly,” he said. “What’re you doing out here?”
His daughters stared at him incredulously.
“They said they wanted to help out poor ol
d Neelie,” Neelie answered sweetly. “I told them they wadn’t no need. Told them Neelie could do it, but they come on anyhow. They sweet girls, Mr. Sam.”
His daughters stared at each other incredulously.
He examined the kitchen and nodded appreciatively. “You got the place looking good, Neelie,” he said.
“I been working at it, Mr. Sam. I sure have. But these babies been helping out some.”
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled. “They do all right when they get started.”
He smiled at his daughters and sat at the table.
“Where’s the salt, babies?” Neelie said. Then: “There it is. Right on the table. Been a snake it’d of bit me.”
“You eat yet, Neelie?” he asked, ignoring his daughters.
“I had me a bite, Mr. Sam. Neelie don’t need much. The fever took the hungry out of me.” She pulled herself wearily from the chair. “You go on and eat,” she said. “Believe I’ll go set a spell out on the front porch. Maybe they’s some air stirring out there. Get me a little rest before I start the washing.”
“We did the washing, Neelie,” Carrie said.
“Uh-huh. Well, honey, Neelie’ll look over the house. See if we left anything.” She hobbled away, through the kitchen, through the middle room and the living room, and to the front porch, her complaining voice trailing in her wake. His daughters did not move until they heard the living room door close.
“Daddy,” Kate said, controlling her anger, “do you know what we’ve been through?”
He sipped from the glass of iced tea. “Better’n you think,” he said.
“We just cleaned this kitchen last night.”
He tasted the creamed potatoes. The butter was rich in them. “What I thought, too,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know about Carrie, but I can’t just drop everything I’m doing everytime Neelie gets on her high horse,” Kate snapped.
“Me, neither,” Carrie said in a controlled whisper. “But, we do it. We always do. Every time.”