Shaper

by Jessie Haas

  Gib smiled and tried to hide it, and Julia said, “When Louise is here, you play quietly!”

  “I don’t know how she does that,” Mom said.

  “You have to whisper!” Sky said. His eyes were round as blueberries. “So the bad guys don’t know you’re there!”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “I don’t know why I never thought of that! Julia, what do you want—”

  “I hide better than anybody,” Sky said. “Louise says the best ambushers know how to wait a long, long time. Sometimes they get itches and they don’t even scratch them, and they might have to cough, but they even cough quiet. See how quiet I can cough?”

  “Not even an ant could cough quieter,” Gib said. “The girl’s a genius.”

  She sure was! Chad could see, as if someone had drawn him a diagram, how Louise had trained Sky. Trained him and made him like it.

  “So what do you want for your birthday?” Mom asked.

  Julia flushed and frowned. “A gift certificate from the tack shop. Then I can pick.”

  She wanted something she didn’t dare ask for. Chad knew the signs. Probably something expensive. What she needed was training lessons. Chad was getting those, and Julia got to be with Louise, and it looked as if someone Up There had a sick sense of humor. Chad pushed back from the table.

  “Hey, Chad, what you up to?” Gib tilted his head to one side. His ponytail with its multiple bindings of elastic looped over his shoulder: picture of an open and accessible New Age dad.

  Chad shrugged and went upstairs. As he passed above them on the landing, he heard his parents’ hushed voices, talking about him again.

  “He just wants to be the center of attention!” Julia said loudly.

  All right! Chad thought. All right.

  When Julia went downstairs that evening, and the shower started, he slipped through the gap in their wall, into her room.

  For a long time now he’d only wanted Julia to go away. He didn’t want to bug her, or spy on her, or be anywhere near her. For more than six months he hadn’t been in here.

  It was a mess, of course. A bright, clashing heap of clothes covered half the floor, like an anthill. Books were stacked by the bed and in tall, slithery piles on the desk, and everywhere on the wall were horses.

  But something gave the room a hushed, dark feeling. It made Chad uneasy. He ducked back through the wall and stood listening. Yes, the shower still ran. He stepped through the gap again, eyes and ears wide.

  Dark. Cool. The chaos that was Julia was all over the floor, but on the walls …

  It was the posters. Riders in spotless white and gleaming black. Big, powerful horses, with the veins popped out on their necks and shoulders. What were they doing? They all looked compressed, not by outside force but by something within themselves, a great calm gathering of power that was like—What was it like?

  Like a tom turkey strutting. Like Jeep’s old horse when Tiger arrived and he swelled himself up and pranced around with his skimpy black tail streaming. Like Jeep himself walking into the fire station or onto the ballfield.

  There were quotes written on the wallboard beneath the posters: “Calm, forward, and straight”; “Anyone who loves his horse will be patient”; “No serious struggle should ever arise during the training of young horses.”

  Beneath a photo of Tiger was a long one that read: “Dressage … the gradual harmonious development of the horse’s physical and mental condition with the aim to achieve … a perfect understanding with its rider.… the horse obeys willingly and without hesitation.… The horse … does not need the visible aids of the rider. (… from the 1978 AHSA Rule-book).”

  Julia was as far from that as she could possibly be.

  A movement in the mirror caught Chad’s eyes. Himself, looking both lanky and knotted at the joints, as if much of him lay coiled there, waiting to expand. He was smiling. He hadn’t realized that. The corners of his mouth looked sharp and nervous and full of unpleasant relish. The smile vanished when he looked at it, not caring to be seen.

  He turned away from himself and spotted a catalog by the bed: plastic horse models. Julia used to get one for her birthday every year. They were amazingly lifelike. Back when he’d considered himself an artist, Chad had borrowed them occasionally to draw from. Unlike a real horse, they would stand still.

  He crouched to look. One was circled in green marker, a chestnut Morgan that looked like Tiger. This was it! This was what Julia wanted and didn’t dare ask for. Not too expensive, too babyish—

  The stairs creaked. He’d forgotten to listen! He took two long soft-footed steps across the room, and on the third came down on something sharp. He kept going, ducked through the gap, and was standing by his own desk when Julia’s bare feet went by. She flicked at his blanket, showing him she could look in any time she wanted, but the feet didn’t slow. She went on into her room and noticed nothing.

  CHAPTER

  14

  THURSDAY DAVID LET Queenie wander around his house. Whenever she accidentally came to Chad, she was clicked and treated. “It’s a start on getting her to come when called,” David said. “This isn’t the normal sequence I’d use, but we’re trying to kill three birds with one stone: teach you the concepts, teach me how to teach the concepts, and teach Queenie a few things that’ll make your life easier.”

  Chad felt a darkening within him, as swift, sudden, and precise as a cloud sailing across the face of the sun. “Would your life be easier—” David had begun to ask that first day at the rear of the crowded moving van. Chad had said no, and he’d been right. Nothing about training Queenie was making his life easier!

  He left early, before David was ready to have him go. If he got home while Louise was still there, maybe he could be part of things. He’d even play ambush, if that was what it took.

  From the driveway he heard the sound of voices. One was Julia’s, almost unrecognizable at this pitch. They were on the deck. Now where was Queenie? She could run ahead, announce him; that would be useful. But a chipmunk had insulted her from the stone wall, and she was trying to dig it out. Chad went into the yard where he could see them. They’d see him, too. Maybe Louise would look glad.

  Neither noticed. Their heads bent over a magazine. When Louise looked up, it was to speak to Julia, with a smile. They were friends. He’d seen Louise first, but Sky and Julia had her.

  Chad ducked under the deck and threaded between bicycles, garbage cans, and sections of woodpile till he was beneath them and could hear perfectly. It was simple justice that they weren’t talking about anything interesting. Was this one cool? Was this one cooler? Boys or bathing suits—Chad couldn’t tell.

  Out of the blue Julia asked, “So what is it like, having a trainer for a father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You have to know!”

  Louise said, “No. I’m just me. I’m not me and you, or me and somebody else. So how can I compare?”

  “Well, all right,” Julia said. “But what is it like? Do you think he treats you like a dog?” Some people would have laughed, saying that, but a sense of humor wasn’t built into Julia.

  Louise said, “It’s … nice. Daddy makes it easy for me to do what he wants. He makes sure that works for me, gets me what I want. So we’re both happy.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking!” Louise said. “Daddy gets me to do things, and it doesn’t feel like ‘making’ me. It feels like what I wanted to do, anyway.”

  “Is it a one-way street?” Julia sounded angry. “Or do you do it back?”

  “Oh yes! We’re both very manipulative!”

  “I’d say so!”

  “There’s Queenie,” Louise said, in a withdrawing voice. “Chad must be here. I’d better get back.”

  Their feet moved above him. Chad stepped closer to the foundation. He felt cold down his center, cold and slowed down like a frog on a frosty morning. We’re both very manipulative.

&n
bsp; Yes. That they were. From the moment he’d met them they’d gotten him to do things, things he’d thought he wanted to do, anyway. It hadn’t made him happy, though. All the others got what they wanted, and he walked down the hill every morning to train a dog he didn’t like.

  As David had always intended.

  The next morning the lawn with its patches of purple weed, the green dent of a driveway, the low house looking as if it had grown out of the lawn, didn’t seem magical anymore. Not good magic, anyway. More like the kind of place a lonely traveler might come upon unawares, knock on the door, as Chad knocked now, and be let in, as David let him in, and never come out from again.

  He followed David to the kitchen with his eyes wide open. In the bare middle room he squinted at the titles of the books, lined up in rows on the floor. On Behavior. Clicker Magic! Beyond Obedience. Don’t Shoot—

  What? His shocked eyes flinched away for a second.

  Don’t Shoot the Dog! That was actually the title of a book—no, two, a big paperback and a little one. Queenie’s tags jingled behind him. A chill settled between his shoulder blades. The book must have been there all along, but this was the first time he’d seen it. He’d been stupid. There’d be a price.

  Louise sat at the table, in a deeply plush terry-cloth bathrobe. Her face was sleepy-looking, her hair rumpled. Chad looked out the window, at the yard closed around by trees, and wished he could go away.

  But it was Louise who went. She gathered up her breakfast dishes and put them in the sink, and she went off upstairs. Hyperalert, Chad listened to her footsteps while David set up a lesson for him and Queenie. Louise came back downstairs, paused in the hallway, and then the door opened and shut. He and Queenie were alone with David.

  Who was saying, “You might want to consider changing her name.”

  Chad pushed some words out, hardly caring what they were. “Isn’t that bad luck?”

  “Her name is a cue, not her identity. And it’s a cue you guys have pretty much burned.”

  He was supposed to be curious but clueless now. He was supposed to say, “What do you mean?” So he did, thinking that David had to hear the dullness in his voice.

  But David said, “Burning a cue? It’s like keeping your finger on the on switch till you fry the electronics. By using it without actually getting her attention, you’ve turned her name into background noise. So a new name would help. But if you don’t like the idea, we can work on resensitizing—Is this a bad time for you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You seem distracted. Would you rather not—”

  “No,” Chad said. “Let’s get started.”

  “Does this work on people?” he asked later. It seemed like good timing. David was bent over his notebook, scribbling. He might answer without paying too much attention.

  But David looked full into Chad’s face. His eyes were bright and unreadable. “You mean, beyond what we did the first few days? Definitely yes! It can be used to your harm, and it can be used for your good.” He went into the next room and came back with the big paperback, Don’t Shoot the Dog! It bristled with bookmarks. David scanned the pages. “Here, and”—he checked in the index—“here.”

  Chad took the book gingerly, his fingers avoiding the title words. David had marked the story of a young woman who tamed her bossy husband and father-in-law: “The daughter formed a practice of responding minimally to commands and harsh remarks, while reinforcing with approval and affection any tendency by either man to be pleasant or thoughtful. In a year she had turned them into decent human beings. Now they greet her with smiles when she comes home and leap up—both of them—to help with the groceries.”

  Isn’t that nice! Decent human beings!

  David was writing in his notebook again. Where did this author talk about shooting dogs? Chad flipped through quickly but found nothing. David looked about to finish; he opened to the page he was supposed to read.

  Some sentences were underlined. “… it is easier to notice mistakes than to notice improvement.

  “… if you are calculating to shape someone’s behavior, it is very tempting to talk about it. And talking about it can ruin it … you better not brag about it later, either.”

  Chad looked up from the book. Queenie lay staring at him. Her eyes glowed; they connected with him. A week ago that never happened, and Chad would have believed it never could.

  For a moment he felt the way he had when he snuck Jeep’s beer once. The world seemed to float, or else he was floating, no thoughts in his head, just an unformed wondering, like a lazy question mark made of smoke.

  He looked reluctantly back at the underlined sentences: “… isn’t it possible to shape people to do horrible things? Yes, indeed.… Let the photographs of Patty Hearst, holding a machine gun in a bank robbery, be evidence. But while her captors did not need a book to tell them how to do that, would we not all be better defended against such events if we understood, each of us, how the laws of shaping work?”

  Chad found that he was nodding, slow and wide-eyed. Yes, that was what he needed to be: better defended.

  “Would you like to borrow that?” David asked. “I have several copies. It’s my bible.” He paused and sighed. “It’s so good that truthfully I wonder if I have anything to add.”

  Chad knew the right thing to say: “Your publisher must think so.” He took a breath to, but then he didn’t. The deflated look settled on David’s face. Chad felt that sharp-cornered smile on his mouth and with one hand smoothed it away.

  David said, “I tell myself there’s value in stating things a different way. Everybody learns differently. Maybe my words will click for someone who doesn’t get this. Don’t you think?”

  Chad just shrugged.

  David looked even more dispirited. “Guess it’s time to write your paycheck.” No invitation to have a bite of lunch, as on other days. Chad had done that. By not responding, he’d shaped David, backed him off, muted him.

  His laughter came as a silent snort, rocking him. A moment ago he’d been small and confused and in danger. Now he was the danger. He was in control. David might know shaping inside out, but even he was helpless to evade it, and he’d made a mistake. Showing Chad that book, he’d bragged. Without meaning to, he’d given the show away.

  Now he bent over the table, writing out Chad’s check. Chad gazed at his back. What next? This power should be used. He should get …

  The front door banged. Chad took half a step back from David as Louise came into the room, warm and glowing. He felt as if he’d been caught at something.

  “Daddy! Hi, Chad. Daddy, I just figured out what you can give Chad! For helping you with the stove!”

  “You don’t—” Chad’s interruption wasn’t loud enough. He might have power over David, but he was helpless with Louise; she wasn’t listening.

  “A door! They don’t have any doors in his house, not even on the bedrooms. Have a door, Chad! Be the first on your block!”

  He’d already reached for the check, and he felt it, thin between his thumb and forefinger, as he stared at her. Laughing at him. Laughing at his family. Here in their kitchen with its fourteen doors.

  He dropped the check. It fluttered toward the floor.

  “You can keep your damned doors!” he said, and walked out, snapping his fingers for Queenie.

  CHAPTER

  15

  IT HAPPENED SO quickly that all the rest of that day he needed to relive it.

  “You can keep your damned doors!” He said it under his breath, many times. Then he’d snap his fingers for Queenie, stride out, and hear behind him Louise’s scornful voice: “No, Daddy! Don’t call him! … No, Daddy! Don’t …”

  As if David could call him back. As if they still had any power over him—

  “No, Daddy!”

  All night the scene rattled in his head, in some strange area between dream and wakefulness. When morning came, he was exhausted, put his head under the pillow, and slept till noon.

  He
got up, made a sandwich, and hid in his room again. Gib was gardening, and anyone who passed without an obvious errand was apt to be drafted. In the next room he heard Julia moving, like an animal in an adjacent stall.

  Chad couldn’t stay still either. He paced and stretched, trying to make the feeling in his chest, the feeling like a hole, go away. On his desk was the book David had put into his hands, moments before everything blew up. Somehow it had made it all the way home with him, and now it gave Chad a little jolt, as if he’d discovered a bugging device, as if the book had given David the ability to listen to him here.

  Automatically his hand went to his pocket. He was carrying a clicker, too, a body wire.

  “No, Daddy! Don’t call him!”

  He knew this feeling: when he’d broken Helen’s red glass candy dish and hadn’t told; when he was four years old and he’d teased the old cat till she scratched him, and he’d told Mom he cut himself, and she couldn’t figure out how.

  But why should he feel guilty? It was them—

  “Sky! Sky!” Gib screamed, and Chad’s bones went liquid.

  Julia thumped onto the landing, pounded downstairs. “Oh no! Oh my God!”

  Chad went down the stairs hardly touching them, heading for the front door.

  Gib burst in with Sky in his arms. Sky was half crying, scared. Mom came up the cellar stairs looking just as scared, and Gib said quietly, “Rabid coon. Out by the garden.”

  “Did it get near him? Sky, did you touch anything?”

  “He was about fifteen feet away—”

  “Where’s Queenie?” Julia ran out onto the deck, and Chad followed. Old Yeller, he was thinking. He got rabies. He had to be shot.

  “She’s been vaccinated, right?”

  “Kids, don’t!”

  The voices behind him only half made sense, and below Queenie circled the coon.

  Chad knew at once that it wasn’t normal, though it didn’t foam at the mouth or rush madly. It just bumbled around. It was here in broad daylight where it shouldn’t be, and it crept in slow, stupid circles. That was the extent of its madness: that, and the sick sheen in its eyes, opaque and greenish when it turned its head their way.