Just Bill

by Barry Knister

  “Where’s Chiffon?” The mister takes off his hat and holds it behind him.

  “Do dogs get colds?” Trust Fund stops before them. “I suppose they do. I got out her leash, I said, ‘Let’s go.’ That’s all it ever takes. She just looked at me and sneezed. ‘Okay,’ I told her. ‘Be that way.’”

  It is too much, he can’t wait longer. Bill pulls the mister. “Excuse us—” He trails after, dragged toward the streetlamp.

  The woman laughs. “I bet Bill rules the roost in your house. Such a nice dog.”

  “Not if you have to clean up after him.”

  “The storms? I know. Chiffon cries the whole time. But she’s good.”

  “Have you seen Glenda Gilmore?”

  “Actually, I called there tonight. I thought she might want to get out. She’s up in Cleveland, seeing to things. I don’t know if the cleaning woman’s reached her yet.”

  “Something’s wrong?”

  “You haven’t heard? Well, no, you wouldn’t, you have family staying. I just learned it myself, from the cleaning woman. She’s at the house hoping he’ll come back. The dog ran off today. Hotsie?”

  “Hotspur. Oh God. Glenda doesn’t need that now. We knew how upset he’s been. Border collies get so attached—”

  Finished now, Bill lifts his leg as the mister uses the plastic bag. Hotspur, he heard the word. And again. Still he pees. Where is the collie? Was the Gilmore woman out tonight walking him, are they walking right now? He looks up the street, but sees nothing. Bill lowers his leg, and he and the mister start back.

  “—torn all to pieces. She had to throw out slipcovers, he knocked over a piece of Stueben glass.”

  “They’re very high strung. They need a lot of exercise. Cliff used to give him that every day.”

  “Glenda would be devastated. First Cliff, then his dog.”

  “Oh I’m sure he’ll come back.” Trust Fund adjusts her bracelets. “He’s out on the town is all.”

  “I hope you’re right. When she first met Cliff, he already had Hotsie. She always said she had two husbands. One Englishman, one Scotsman.”

  Bill keeps looking, hoping Hotspur will step from darkness into the cone of bluish light humming down from the next streetlamp. He looks back to the house where the collie lives. No sign. Hearing the mister and missus making final sounds, he takes his place. The three now walk in silence. When Trust Fund’s shoes are gone, the missus is talking again.

  “I was looking at what?”

  “I suppose men like it.”

  “Like what? What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m saying. Men like the flashy type.”

  “What difference does it make? It’s her thing. She’s alone, it gives her pleasure. What’s the problem?”

  Whatever it means, Bill hears this a lot—What’s the problem. The mister’s voice always goes up at the end.

  “In the middle of the night, out for a walk. You’d think she was on her way to Mardi Gras.”

  Vinyl doesn’t answer right away. “You’re getting catty.” Bill’s ears mark the word. “First the dog, now the glitter queen, as you call her.”

  “I’m not leaving it alone about the dog. It’s too important.”

  No, Bill thinks. No Hotspur. Not tonight.

  Two days pass with more leaps into the pool. Bill makes them with special gusto, grateful to be forgiven by the boy. Ronald throws the ball, cheers when Bill hits the water. He braces on the deck, pulling the rope.

  And Ruby. She is very nice to him, using the brush on his back as he sits for her. This is one of the best things, the brush. The mister showed her how, Ruby kneeling next to Bill on the deck, smoothing the stiff bristles along his sides. But she isn’t allowed now to walk him. That’s over. And he is kept sometimes in the garage, hearing the baby inside. At least the mister has stopped using the lead. Bill does his best to do everything right, to not run ahead, or chase geckos. When other dogs and owners approach, he stays at Vinyl’s side.

  And then the son and his family are gone. The house is silent. Bill walks through the rooms, ears alert, still smelling them. No baby, or new wife talking in the kitchen to the missus. No chicken video or Cartoon Network. It’s almost too quiet. Over the last ten days he has come to like the action in the house, the extra walks and exercise.

  But all of it will happen soon again, at the lake. After the car trip. He doesn’t exactly know this from last summer, but has a sense of continuity based on the mister, and water. Not as people do, but it’s dimly present in his mind, without time sense but real enough. Odors bring it to him. When Vinyl makes a certain meal on the grill, the dog thinks of the Michigan beach, he doesn’t know why. They were all of them there—the son, Ronald and Ruby. But not the wife and baby. They are new. Or when the mister puts on one of the videos he made. He did this the day the family left. “Check yourself out, Bill—” Hearing his name as he drank water in the kitchen, the dog trotted out, finding Vinyl in the TV room. “That’s you—” he pointed the remote. It was him, on the screen. He didn’t recognize himself, but a dog was standing under trees, just behind the log house in Michigan, looking up and barking.

  QUIET YES, BUT a lot is going on. Suitcases lie open on the bed. Serving dishes the missus uses in both houses are being wrapped in newspaper and put in boxes. There are telephone calls and final visits from Donegal friends. Bill is no longer being allowed out after dinner. He whines until the missus scolds.

  For this reason, he doesn’t know Hotspur is dead.

  Glenda Gilmore, still in Cleveland, got the call from Graciella, her housekeeper. The woman was very apologetic. He just run out, I don’t got no chance to grab him, I real sorry, it just happen. Back the next morning, Glenda didn’t come directly from the Fort Myers airport. She drove Cliff’s Explorer straight from the airport to the beach, searching the route she and her husband had always taken with the dog. Then to Naples, north to Lowdermilk Park. Exhausted from the summer heat, she went to the house, changed clothes, and resumed her search. Now south to the last point of Naples public beach access, in Port Royal at 33rd Street. Then north. She asked at hotels and condo complexes, at chickee bars. People shook their heads. Two men offered to help her look if they could first buy her a drink. At Clam Pass, the afternoon heat dangerous in the dense mangrove swamp, instead of taking the tram to the beach, she walked the length of the boardwalk. Running her hand along the rail, Glenda looked down into the coiled hoops of mangrove roots. At the beach, she drank a bottle of Evian and asked everyone there. He’s black, she told them. With white markings on his chest and paws. Very friendly, you’d remember. She walked to the estuary and back, feeling lightheaded. Back in the parking lot, she sat a quarter of an hour in the Explorer, crying now, feeling sick and desperate. Then Vanderbilt Beach. There was so much beach in Naples, ten miles. Realizing then that there was no reason to think Hotspur hadn’t gone farther north, to Bonita Beach, she felt hopeless. She drove home, called the Naples police, the Collier County Sheriff’s Department—even the Lee County sheriff’s office, giving the description.

  Spreading mulch, Public Works landscapers found Hotspur on the Davis Boulevard median. Glenda had passed the body without seeing, talking to Cliff as she drove, asking what she should do. The dog had been struck by a car or pickup as he tried crossing, running for the beach where Cliff Gilmore was waiting with the Frisbee, in his shorts, standing in the lap of water, very tan and the hair on his arms pure white like the collie’s chest.

  All of this tumbled out of her on Madame’s lanai later that afternoon. You’re the only woman here who doesn’t treat me like a hooker, she said. Like a tramp. I’m so sorry, Madame said. People can be pointlessly mean.

  But Bill doesn’t know.

  Nor do Wolfi and Stanzi. Not that such self-absorbed dogs would remember. They are almost never allowed out, but the night the mister is loading the car, they waddle to a stop outside the Vinyls’ pool cage. Bill gets up and comes over. —It’s wrong, Wolfi s
ays, communicating with his narrow tail and sharp eyes. He is black with brown markings, and this somehow makes him look more forceful. Stanzi is a soft chestnut color. —Wrong, Wolfi repeats.

  —Where are the others? Emma? Hotspur?

  —We don’t go back, Stanzi says in Dog, ignoring the question. —We must be staying. We should leave by now. Something is wrong.

  —She’s right, Wolfi says —This heat, I don’t like it. I hear them talking, they say it’s like this all summer. It’s not like this where we go. We never stay here. We’re supposed to go in the plane, in the bag thing.

  —Like always, Stanzi says.

  —Our mister and the missus are fighting all day now. They don’t have us up for television—

  —They ignore us. They don’t play golf—

  —No cart rides, nothing, Wolfi says. —It’s wrong. What is it? Is something wrong here, too?

  —We’re leaving. Soon. They have the boxes and my crate.

  —What can we do? Stanzi asks. —It’s not right, we’re nervous.

  —She threw up this morning, Wolfi says. —In the laundry room. From nerves. The missus was crying, doing laundry. She never does laundry. Stanzi just threw up.

  It goes on like that, the two dachshunds repeating themselves, shifting and pacing outside the cage until their mister calls. —It’s not right, Stanzi says again. She turns away and the male follows. —This heat. I feel sick.

  Dachshunds are courageous, fearless even, given their size. But they don’t handle change well. That explains the friend of a grandchild who was nipped at a birthday party last year. Bill knows none of it. He wishes to see the other dogs. It’s part of his schedule, something he anticipates. He waits until after dark before giving up. He paws the closed glass doorwall, clicking his nails. The mister lets him in.

  He says nothing, looking down. For two days he’s been this way, stroking Bill’s head in the usual way. He does this now, silently. “All right, old timer, let’s go.” Bill trots through the house, waiting and ready when Vinyl opens the door.

  THE NEXT MORNING, he knows everything to do. There’s the walk, just a quick one to the end of the street before eating. He gulps his food as the missus puts away dishes and rattles silverware. They always take his bowls in the car, putting them down at rest stops and the motels that accept dogs. He hears his name mentioned. Each time the mister pats Bill, they look at each other. Something is wrong. Bill can tell from the eyes, even the smell, something acidic and different that has to do with how the missus is not talking this morning. All week they talked, voices rising in sharp exchanges he wished would end. Then nothing, like this.

  Otherwise, everything is the same. The mister goes all through the house rattling windows, checking controls on the wall. He turns off the hot water tank, puts down ant traps, then goes up on the ladder to lock the garage attic. The missus long ago emptied the refrigerator. The last thing the mister does is circle the exterior of the house, pulling down hurricane shutters over each window and door.

  At last they all go out the front. The mister slams the door, uses his key, then a remote to lower the last roll-down metal shutter. The missus is already seated when he steps to the back of the van. He opens the tailgate, the crate. “Okay, Bill—” Up and in he goes in a single motion, turning and lying down as the wire door is fastened shut. Where are the bowls? The mister always puts them in the cage. The tailgate comes down, and this, too, is confusing. The last thing is for the mister to turn the cage, facing front. A door slams. The motor starts. They are backing down the drive. Bill’s bulky body shifts as the van turns onto Donegal Boulevard. The tailgate window blinks and flashes with tops of trees. There are other turns, words spoken to the guard at the gatehouse. Bill is waiting for the hum and soft vibration of tires at highway speed, the lulling, sleepy limbo between stops—

  None of this happens. Lying in the crate, head erect, he remains alert. Not worried, curious. Like people, dogs have to adapt but are less well suited to it, more comfortable with routine, with mission and duty. But why worry? You’re with the mister, Bill thinks, swaying in the cage. The best mister, the ultimate good thing that makes the days one after another move ever farther from dreams that sometimes take the place of treed squirrels—the mill evil of overbred bitches and sick, undersized puppies removed from the litter. Then escape. In some sense, Bill does think of it. Gently swayed, in some sense he recalls the tics and chiggers sapping his strength, finally forcing choice, compelling him to decide that this one walking on the road, his smell, manner of movement, his daily passage and eyes make him the one to act on, the one to step from the pine forest and follow—

  They have stopped. The door slams on the mister’s side, not the missus’. It’s confusing. Time should pass, with the lull of the road at high speed. He doesn’t need a walk, it isn’t time to eat. The beach? When the tailgate opens, it isn’t the beach smell, but there are many odors, some of them alarming, familiar. The mister opens the crate and snaps on the lead.

  “Come on, old timer—” He hears them, balks and braces but is pulled down onto warm asphalt—other dogs. Wrong, he thinks, legs stiff, being dragged. Not a rest stop, not where we sleep. Instead, dogs, their smell of fear and fatigue, smells of bleach, medicine, food, feces—He sits down, still being dragged. “Don’t, Bill, come on, dog…”

  Someone is holding open a door. The smells blow out, full of barking and scents of big animals bred and trained to be angry. The vet’s? He hates going, this is like that but different. Worse. The floor inside feels cold. Cement, not tile like the vet—and no woman is coming to him saying, Hi there, Bill, before getting down to look in his eyes, using her voice to calm him—

  Someone else. As the mister holds the lead, someone else is putting a thing over Bill’s head, over his muzzle. Stronger than the mister, he is pulling now, dragging the powerful dog across the floor. Another door opens—the sound deafening. When it slams closed, still being dragged he tries to bay for the mister, thinks he can hear him through the chaos of barking. Crazed eyes glare at him from stacks of cages. Teeth flash. In other cages, dogs lie motionless, heads on the floor looking out without seeing. He is put in a crate the size of the mister’s but not the same—wire underfoot. Whining, trying to bark but prevented by the thing on his head, he watches the strange someone-else looking in at him. It is very bright. For an instant, where he is makes sense to him—from the sharp, yellow light in front of him, on the cement floor. The pool deck. No. This is no deck, this is just one thing. You know what it is, he thinks. You know everything about it. Why are you here? What have you done? The bad thing, herding the boy—but those things are so far back they can’t explain this. In the fetor of dog hysteria and defeat he can’t make sense of it.

  Nor can Fred Vinyl, already traveling north on the Interstate. Escaping, really. Doing eighty-five to be done with it, Vinyl wants to put distance between cause and effect. All he knows is that she insisted. The cradle business set her off. Silent behind the wheel, feeling hot even in the blast of cold hair blowing from the dashboard, he believes she has used it. Exploited one thing to accomplish a long-standing goal. Married forty-four years next January, he still cares for his wife in the growing-old manner of need and routine, the thought of which when young and first married seemed boring and defeated. Now it suits him. So, he yielded, holding out a while, but at some point coming to see it wouldn’t work, not this time, not for this thing.

  It’s a test, he decides. Something to do with obedience training.

  When the stranger comes back, he squats down and studies Bill for several seconds. “You’re a big dude, but your guy’s right. You’re a pussycat.”

  The voice sounds calm, not angry. The man opens the cage and takes off the muzzle. Bill whines. This one’s smell is all wrong, but you have to trust people. Small, big, men or women, children—that’s how it is. Even here, in this place that just now is bringing to life unwanted memories and feelings from his first awful year, Bill stretches his head
to be touched. This one scratches him under the chin, almost the right way. It’s reassuring, familiar. Except the smell—

  And noise. A cloud of sensations crowds in from all directions. It sets Bill barking. He tries to shove out of the cage. “No, you don’t, sport—” The man pushes the cage door shut against the dog’s weight, holds it there with his hip until the catch is in place, then leaves. Bark, Bill thinks. That’s what you do here. What else is there? So, he barks, filling his big chest over and over, the sound joining others.

  Loud and brittle in early-afternoon sun streaming through a skylight, the barking is not from pampered lap dogs meeting under a streetlamp as their owners debrief each other on the day’s golf or tennis game, this one’s cocktail party, that one’s grandchildren—the surgeries, the oxygen delivery man who always brings treats for dogs, the pretty pool girl all the wives voice sympathy for but actually prefer because she has a prosthetic leg.

  No. Here, along with dogs whose owners have died or gone to nursing homes, or dogs who just wandered away and will likely be collected soon, are dogs either given up in the right way, or dumped on roads and at rest stops, at gas stations. Some were inconveniences, dogs that on second thought seemed a bad idea. Others threatened children and postal workers. Some dogs here have sent people to the hospital. Not the thief trying to remove the wall safe in Mel’s Marine, or the one who forgot his bolt cutter when he dropped himself inside the chain-link fence at the BMW dealership—other people. People just out walking, people delivering fliers or pizzas—people who couldn’t know that the dog in the too-small yard or all-wrong one-bedroom apartment was bred and then trained to patrol a perimeter, a territory. People who weren’t known pack members.

  In their way, such dogs are no different from border collies or Labs or willful West Highland terriers digging for China in the garden. They are just fulfilling their mission, but a mission incompatible with circumstances. Such dogs belong on farms or ranches. Otherwise, their territories spread to include other yards and streets, even other neighborhoods. In the end, sometimes by owners as reluctant as Bill’s, they are brought here.