Larry & the Dog People

by J. Paul Henderson

  Tank was aware that he wasn’t the easiest person to live with, and he wasn’t. Out of necessity for the lives and well-being of the crews he’d been responsible for, and for the thousands of others depending on the crews’ performance, his manner had grown gruff and no-nonsense. He spoke his mind, didn’t pussyfoot around a subject to spare another’s feelings and despised pleasantries and small talk. He was unsociable and suspicious of likeable people, and completely distrustful of anyone who joined anything too easily. To his way of thinking there was little difference between those people who joined conga lines and the Germans who’d joined the Nazi Party. They were all jerks.

  In courtship and early marriage Tank would be accommodating, solicitous and in his own way loving. But once the bloom fell from the rose he became impossible to live with. He stopped making an effort, went out of his way to be disagreeable and if his wife didn’t like it, too bad: she knew where the door was. He’d come home on an evening and strip down to his vest and shorts, take a beer from the refrigerator and sit down in front of the television. He’d make no attempt at conversation and only grunt replies. Eventually the wife of the time would grow weary of his behaviour – as Tank had hoped she would – decide he was a slob and start divorce proceedings. Five years after moving to Washington Missy decided the same.

  If no longer in love with Tank at the time of their move, Missy was still enamoured by his standing and was acutely aware that, socially, life was always easier when part of a couple. Society embraced young single people but not older ones, who were often viewed by their peers with suspicion. People of their generation arranged dinner parties rather than mixers, and numbers were expected to be even and comprise only couples. For such occasions the marriage was convenient: Missy attended Tank’s functions and he accompanied her to hers. But as Tank became less willing to oblige his wife Missy started to make alternative arrangements and the relationship became one of formality: husband and wife in name only. By the time Larry made Tank’s acquaintance the relationship had taken on a different formality.

  ‘So when you say your wife’s gone, do you mean she’s dead?’ Larry asked his host.

  ‘I wish to God she was, Larry, because the damn alimony payments are killing me.’

  ‘The two of you are divorced then?’

  ‘Well, we’re not married and she’s not dead so I reckon we must be. Who’d have thought, eh?’

  ‘I suppose Helen and I were lucky,’ Larry said. ‘We never even had ups and downs.’

  Tank looked at him. ‘You’re telling me that there was no time in your marriage when one of you got an itch? And I’m talking here about one of those itches that just about drives you crazy and one you can’t scratch.’

  Larry thought about this. ‘There were times when Helen got yeast infections… and I once had athlete’s foot… but we just bought over-the-counter creams at the pharmacy and they cleared up in no time. Generally speaking it’s best not to scratch an itch. My experience is that scratching only makes it worse.’

  Tank shook his head and poured himself another whiskey. ‘You want another lemonade, Larry?’

  ‘I’d best not, Tank, but thanks. I try not to drink too much after the late afternoon or I end up having to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom. The doctor says it’s nothing to worry about, but I don’t like my sleep to be disturbed. Once my head hits the pillow I like it to stay there for at least seven hours.’

  ‘You ought to drink whiskey, then. Dehydrates the hell out of you, and if you drink enough of it you won’t have to piss till lunchtime.’

  There was a pause in the conversation and Larry was spurred to ask Tank another question. ‘Did your wife take the furniture with her when she left? I couldn’t help noticing that this is the only downstairs room that’s furnished.’

  ‘She did, and if she hadn’t I’d have burned it. It was God-awful stuff: far too fancy for my liking. The things I brought into the marriage I dragged in here and this is the only room I use. Everything’s to hand and it’s cheaper on the air-conditioning. I eat, sleep and live in this room and shit in the can. It’s enough for any man.’

  ‘But what happens if you have visitors?’ Larry asked.

  ‘I don’t have visitors. If any family comes to town they stay with my mother over in Arlington and I visit with them there and take Sherman with me.’

  ‘Does your wife miss Sherman?’

  ‘Hah! Sherman’s the reason she left me,’ Tank said. ‘She told me I had a choice to make: him or her, so I chose him. And there’s not a day gone by that I’ve regretted the decision.’

  The point came in Tank and Missy’s marriage when a straw would have broken its back, let alone a dog Sherman’s weight. To Missy’s way of thinking a marriage of convenience was one thing but dog hair in the house another matter entirely, and the night she and Tank watched Turner & Hooch on the television and Tank said that he wouldn’t mind having a dog like Hooch was the night she gave him the ultimatum. Two weeks later Tank returned home with a small Sherman (named after the World War II Medium Tank) on a leash. It was Tank’s way of asking her to leave, and the next day she packed a suitcase and left the house on R St for good. In her absence the gutters filled with leaves, the downpipe got blocked by a dead squirrel and the grass in the backyard grew tall. This reminded Tank…

  ‘How do you feel about gardening, Larry? I take care of the front lawn to keep the neighbours happy, but the backyard’s got a bit overgrown. The guy Missy hired stood around for too much of the time he was here and so I fired him and figured I’d get another gardener who charged less. Turns out that gardeners are hard to come by in Georgetown.’

  ‘Oh… um… I don’t think I have time for that, Tank. My days are pretty full as it is, and I’ve just been invited to give a paper at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in October and I’ll have to spend any free time I have preparing my speech.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, Larry, it was only a thought. I’ll get some illegal to do it and keep him off the books. Where are you staying when you go to Jerusalem?’

  ‘I think they’re arranging accommodation on campus for the duration of the conference, probably in a hall of residence, but I’m hoping to go a few days early and explore the Old City and maybe visit Masada. I’ll need a hotel for those days. Is there any particular one you’d recommend?’

  ‘Yes, the King David. If you’re only going to Jerusalem the one time then the King David is where you have to stay. I’ve got a brochure somewhere…’ He riffled through a stack of papers piled close to his chair but came up empty-handed. ‘It’s somewhere, Larry, but I don’t know where. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll dig it out when I have time and make a present of it to you. In my book one good deed deserves another and I owe you one for clearing the gutters. But after that we’re quits, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Larry said. ‘I must admit I’m excited about the trip. I’ve never been to Israel before but it’s a country I’ve been familiar with since I attended Sunday school as a boy. What are the people like?’

  ‘Plain rude if you ask me, but don’t quote me on that. I’m supposed to get on with everyone out there and if it gets back to the Israelis that I’ve been badmouthing them they might launch a strike on R St.’

  ‘I won’t say a word, Tank. You have my word. And I think I have a solution to your gardening problem. Why don’t you ask Wayne to take care of the backyard?’

  ‘Wayne? You mean the kid who hangs round the park?’

  Larry nodded.

  ‘You must be out of your mind, Larry. I don’t want that kid anywhere near my house! I’d take my chances with a Sandinista rather than hire him. The guy’s not wrapped tight.’

  ‘I know he comes across as a little strange, but my feeling is that his heart’s in the right place. I don’t know his full story, but it strikes me that he’s had a few hard knocks in life and his grammar’s suffered.
Once he learns to speak English properly…’

  ‘He’s in his damn thirties, Larry! He’s not going to change the way he speaks now and even if he did he’d still talk the same weird shit. Tell me, you ever heard the joke about the man who goes to the meat counter to buy kidleys?’ Larry admitted he hadn’t. ‘Okay, I’ll tell it to you then: a man goes to the meat counter and asks for a pound of kidleys. The butcher looks at him and says: kidleys? You mean kidneys, don’t you? And the guy replies: I said kidleys, diddle I? And that’s as far as you’ll get with Wayne! If you want my advice you’ll steer clear of the kid.’

  ‘But Laura thinks he’s nice.’

  ‘Laura collects driftwood. She’s got no quality control when it comes to people.’

  Larry was about to say something when a car pulled into the drive and Tank got up to see who it was. ‘What the hell’s she doing here?’ he said.

  Larry looked at his watch. ‘It’s time I was going, Tank. I’ll go and get Moses and leave you to your guest. It’s not your ex-wife, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s worse than that. It’s my mother.’

  It took Larry a while to separate the two dogs and get Moses back on his leash, and by the time he got to the front garden Tank was in a heated discussion with his mother, a fragile but stern-looking woman in her eighties. ‘Mom, how many times have I told you not to walk on the grass? That’s what the path’s for. I use the path, Larry here used the path and if I catch you walking on the grass again I’ll turn the damn sprinklers on you!’

  Larry gave a small cough to let Tank know he was there.

  ‘Larry, this is my mother. Mother this is Larry.’

  Larry held out his hand and the old lady accepted it hesitantly. ‘Your face looks familiar, young man,’ she said. ‘Are you the gardener?’

  ‘No, I’m a friend of your son’s, Mrs Newbold. I’ve just been cleaning his gutters.’

  ‘Larry’s an acquaintance,’ Tank corrected. ‘And he’s the one that threw the dead squirrel on my head. It was deliberate, Mom.’

  The old lady let go of Larry’s hand and scowled at him. ‘Well, really, young man!’ she said. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’

  She then turned to her smiling son. ‘Did he hurt you, Theodore?’

  Larry gathered the tools for Moses’ bath and laid them on the bathroom floor: a pH balanced coconut oil-based shampoo, cotton balls, a washcloth, a blow-dryer and some towels. First he brushed and combed Moses, placed a cotton ball in each ear and then lifted him into the bathtub. Once the dog settled he ran the water through the shower attachment until it was lukewarm and then started to wet Moses, careful to keep the water away from his head and especially his eyes and ears. Larry rubbed shampoo into the coat, made sure to rinse all the soap out of the fur and then wiped the dog’s face with a wet washcloth. He then lifted Moses out of the tub, gently rubbed him dry with a towel and finished the job by blow-drying the fur on a no heat setting.

  Throughout the bath, Larry talked to Moses.

  ‘You see, the way I see it Moses, Tank and I have a lot in common. He lives by himself and I live by myself and we both have dogs. He hasn’t got a wife and I don’t have a wife, but I don’t have a wife because Helen died and he doesn’t have a wife because Missy left him. I’d have hated it if Helen was alive and dating other men. I think that would have hurt more than her dying did. It doesn’t seem to bother Tank, but it would bother me. I think I must have loved Helen more then he loved Missy. And I’m not going to listen to him about Wayne, either. I think Wayne’s a nice young man. He’s polite and he calls me professor. I miss being called that. I don’t think I miss the department, though. I didn’t enjoy visiting it today. I thought I would but I didn’t, and I don’t like the man who’s teaching my course now. It’s not because he’s dropped the Desert Land Act from the syllabus, though. It’s because he’s not a nice man and he reminds me of the plastic surgeon who had Loop put down. I told you about Loop, didn’t I? He was my first dog, the one I got from the pound. It was after he died that I became friends with Laura. And that reminds me: there was a message on the answering machine from Laura when we got home today and she wants to take me out for dinner as a thank you for suggesting they play DVDs at the nursing home. We’re going to decide where to eat when we meet at the park on Saturday, but I’m thinking Mexican. I like Mexican food. It’s going to be just the two of us this time because Alice is going out of town on business and won’t be here to join us. That’s a pity, because I like Alice and I think she likes me, too. And that’s another thing: I’ve been invited to give a talk in Is…’ (Here Larry caught himself and remembered the confusion the word Israel caused Moses) ‘… a foreign country and I’ll be gone for a few days myself. But there’s no need for you to worry, Moses. I’ll make sure you’re well looked after while I’m gone.’

  In bed that night, his bladder emptied, Larry thought of who might take care of Moses while he was away. Laura and Alice would have been his first choice, but they had their hands full with Repo these days and it was unlikely Tank would agree to take Moses. There was Mike, of course, and Delores, but they lived in rented rooms and barely had space for their own dogs. He could take Moses to a kennel he supposed, but didn’t like the idea of doing that. There might be dogs there that didn’t like Basset Hounds and there was also a good chance that he’d get fleas or catch some other kind of dog disease that couldn’t be cured.

  And then the answer came to him. Why on earth hadn’t he thought of this before?

  6

  The Weird Kid

  By the time Tank arrived at the park that Saturday morning, Laura, Alice, Mike, Delores and Larry were already sitting at their preferred table. He unclipped Sherman’s leash and walked up to them.

  ‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘How the hell can a person who works in an ice-cream parlour not smile?’

  ‘It’s good to see you, too, Tank,’ Alice replied. ‘Are we well?’ She looked around the table. ‘I think we are, but it’s always nice to be asked.’

  ‘If you’re so concerned about people’s manners, Alice, then you should go to the ice-cream parlour on Wisconsin and lecture them on the subject. Have you ever been there?’ Alice indicated that she hadn’t and Tank continued. ‘They’ve got this photograph on the wall of the owner shaking hands with Obama and he’s got a smile on his face the size of a Mac truck. If the guy can smile at the President when he’s handing him a free ice-cream, the least he can do is tell his employees to smile at customers who are actually paying for ice-creams. I told the guy serving me that and he just shrugged! Told me to have a nice day and to come back soon. Fat fucking chance of that happening!

  ‘You know the curse on this town? It’s full employment! Used to be that stores only employed people who could put a smile on their face and act interested, but now, well now they take anyone they can get.’

  ‘A bit like the State Department, then,’ Alice said.

  Tank ignored the comment and turned his attention to the seating arrangement. Mike, Laura and Alice were sitting on one of the benches attached to the table, and Delores and Larry on the other. ‘Delores, why don’t you change places with Mike?’

  ‘Why do I have to move?’ Delores asked. ‘I was here first.’

  ‘Because you take up too much room and we need to balance the skin with the meat. The only way we can make this work is if you sit with Laura and Alice and I sit with Mike and Larry.’

  ‘You stay where you are Delores,’ Laura said. ‘It will be easier if Alice and I move to your side of the table and Larry sits here.’

  ‘That means I’ll have to move,’ Alice said, ‘and we were here second.’

  ‘I don’t mind standing,’ Larry said. ‘I could sit on the grass, if you like.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Laura said. ‘Now come on, Alice. Show some of those good manners you’ve been lecturing Tank about.’

>   As Mike had to stand to allow Alice room to swing her legs over the bench, the rearrangement of the seating positions resulted in the displacement of four people rather than the two that Tank’s plan would have required, and the complicated manoeuvre took three minutes.

  ‘Happy now?’ Delores asked Tank, once everyone was seated again.

  ‘Tank doesn’t do happy, do you, Tank?’ Alice said.

  ‘No, but I do satisfied, Alice, and this arrangement satisfies my ass. It’s been in need of a seat ever since it left home this morning.’

  Delores now took Tank to task. ‘I don’t think there was any call for that comment of yours about meat and skin. We all have meat on our bones – you as much as anyone.’

  ‘That’s very true, Delores,’ Tank said. ‘But there’s a difference between having meat on your bones and a herd of cattle.’

  Before Delores could respond Tank slapped a brochure on the table and slid it to the far end of the table where Larry was sitting. ‘That’s the information on the King David I promised you.’

  Conversation then turned to Larry’s forthcoming trip to Israel, which Larry was happy to talk about – especially the part that related to the Desert Land Act of 1877. It was Delores who interrupted him.

  ‘You’re going to miss the Blessing of the Animals, Larry. St Francis of Assisi Day falls on October 4th and you’ll be in Israel. What a pity. It would have been Moses’ first blessing too, because Mrs Eisler’s synagogue didn’t bless animals. I suppose it must be a Christian practice.’

  ‘There’s some cool rabbis out west who bless animals, Delores,’ Mike said, ‘but they’re few on the ground and they anoint them on the same day they commemorate the New Year for trees. Tu something or other.’