Just Bill

by Barry Knister

  —That’s wrong. Never run.

  —Tell about the dachshunds, Chiffon calls.

  The poison is making Bill dizzy. He works again to stand.

  —Tell about the dachshunds, Chiffon says again.

  —They didn’t leave. Something happened. Stanzi says the other den is gone. Her missus cries like Glenda, but the mister didn’t die. She yells, Stanzi says. He doesn’t talk. We can see them.

  He wants to move, and now manages to stand. The dizziness and vomiting have made him think he will never get up if he lies down again. He pads across the deck. Passage in and out has widened the hole. He steps through, Luger behind. He lets the other dogs lead. Seeing Bill’s outline trailing after would surprise anyone who knows the dogs in this part of Donegal. Still tall, he is now gaunt. His backbone forms a ridge, ribs visible. The process of decline began last month and has speeded up from the poison. He understands something in the jungle rough caused it, because of the sensation in his paws. He stopped going, but the sickness is worse.

  One house, two. Twice the two dogs come back when he stops. Something is wrong, and they exercise a kind of deference, not because of Bill’s size but in response to the smell of sickness. They go on. When they pass the Yorkies’ lanai, Chiffon says, —They left. Before Emma.

  —They always go, Luger says. —They come and go. My master calls them snowbirds.

  By the time they reach the Telecoms’ cage, all three dogs are panting. They find Wolfi and Stanzi lying outside the doorwall. A lamp is on inside, the drapes drawn. When he sees them, Wolfi gets up and begins his duck-like waddle along the screen. Panting, Stanzi remains before the entrance. Her chestnut coat has a glossy sheen in the amber light passing through the drapes.

  —It’s bad, Wolfi says, coming. —What can we do? We’re small dogs, they forget now. They leave us out, they close the door. We bark, they don’t come. It’s bad.

  Still communicating in his own nervous way, the dachshund reaches them. Wolfi gives no sign of knowing Bill’s been gone. —We have to stay here now, he says. —All the time, in this heat. We’re not made for it, it’s no good. No airplane, no bag under the seat. The mister has no boat, we never go fishing. He won’t play golf. I miss the car, we just stay here every day. The missus throws things. It’s dangerous. Even before the storm, we stay under the bed.

  “JESUS CHRIST, YOU scared me!”

  He doesn’t get up for her. He can’t. The following morning he is back under the table. The pool girl kneels down. “Bill! What’re you doing there?” She watches him panting, smells him. “Where’s your people?” Vomit and feces mark the deck. “Aw, what’d you get into? Remember me? Brianna?”

  The dog always greeted her, wanting to play. If Vinyl didn’t hold him, he jumped in the pool when she started working, whining when he was pulled out as she added chemicals. Seeing his labored breathing, the way his bony ribs are pumping, she thinks he must be drinking from it. Brianna decides to hold off putting in the chlorine and bleach. She stands and finishes scrubbing the pool’s side tiles, looking over and talking in a soft voice he recognizes.

  An hour later, rolling thunder announces the afternoon shower. They occur almost daily during the summer. Soon, it’s raining, but Bill no longer cares. Under the table, he pants without stopping, whimpering reflexively. The dog has withdrawn. Sometime before the shower ends, two men from Animal Recovery come around the front of the house. Soaked through and shielding his eyes, one of them points. “There he is. He’s big. You never see a dog like that at a club.”

  “I know this one.” The other man opens the door. His scent—the molecular history of shelter dogs, medicine, disinfectant—all of it crowds forward as he approaches the table. Bill rises up, the table banging his back, riding his spine. He growls, making the eating sound.

  “Whoa.” The man, stops. The dog is shaking. As soon as the man steps back, Bill folds himself and lies panting.

  “Well, she said he was sick, but he’s still in there punching. Go get the dart gun.”

  In Lake City, the son comes at the end of July for a whole week. Both kids swarm him, dodge and tackle, demand he stand them on their heads. It heartens their stepmother. He swims with them, throws them screaming off the diving platform. They fish. Grandpa drives the runabout while his son, never much good at it, wobbles, but finally rises on water skis. Dragged then in life vests behind the boat, on inner tubes, Ruby and Ronald yell “Faster!”

  He takes them to miniature golf, to a carnival with rides in Cadillac. Then it’s time for him to go see to final details at the new house outside Philadelphia. Before he leaves, Ronald asks questions about his new school. The children’s mother has readily agreed that it makes more sense for Ronald and Ruby to attend school in Pennsylvania. She called them regularly all month, asking chatty questions about other children at the lake, their knitting, was the antibiotic working on Ronald’s ear infection, Bloomingdale’s was having a pre-school sale on kids’ parkas, would their step-mom please measure their chests and arm lengths. They would now be spending just weekends—every other—in Brooklyn Heights. It’s because of mom’s job, she explained. That, and being alone. Back and forth from Manhattan, it takes away all the time we would have together. She wants their sympathy, but is actually looking forward to the arrangement. When asked if the new plan sounded all right to her, Ruby was watching Shrek on the set in her grandparents’ bedroom, sprawled on a big bed made of logs. She shrugged and said “Whatever.” It was perfectly clear to her that ten-year-olds were too young to vote, that all they wanted from her was passive agreement. She gave it, and nothing more.

  Her father leaves in the morning. That evening, Ruby’s stepmother comes out on the porch with the baby. She sits and rocks, looking out on the lake. By prearrangement, Ronald has gone to town with his grandparents. The chair creaks. Ruby is not knitting tonight. She is stringing beads, making necklaces and bracelets. She said no to going to town, but now realizes this never happens, being left alone with her stepmother.

  “I lost something today, Ruby.”

  No, the two of them are never left this way. Why do it? They have nothing to say. She is always trying to get answers during meals. Or holds up magazines, asking, Would this color look good in your new room? What kind of bedspread is cool now? She has everything but Ruby, and will not get that. The girl strings more beads, wanting now to watch a video, one of the old favorites she is too old for but all at once wants to see. Winnie, or Elmo.

  “Or maybe I didn’t lose it,” her stepmother says. “Do you know what it was?” Ruby keeps working. Sometimes, if you just don’t answer, or say I’m concentrating, they leave you alone. “I think you do. I never take it off unless I go swimming. It’s the cold water, it shrinks my fingers. Did you hide it or throw it in the lake?”

  Ruby’s heart is pounding. A good girl but lost, she wants a video from before. She feels frightened. Not of her stepmother, whom she knows in fact to be generous and attentive in ways her own mother is not. She doesn’t even hate her. That’s what her stepmother told Dad two days before, in their bedroom, thinking the door was closed—she hates me.

  “Either way, Ruby, you have to understand something—”

  The chair rocks, the baby burps. Ruby strings beads without looking over, afraid now. You aren’t going to be punished, she thinks. Nothing ever works, nothing will change. “I love your father,” her stepmother says. “I love you, I love your brother, I love your grandparents. I even almost love your mother, don’t ask me why. I suppose because she’s charming in an off-the-wall way. And I love your new baby brother—”

  The rocker seems louder, supporting her stepmother, giving her strength. “I’m getting a new wedding band when we go back. If you take it, I’ll get another. It won’t matter, Ruby, I’m not going anywhere. However long it takes, you have to give me a chance.”

  Air conditioning keeps the dogs comfortable. It also helps reduce odor, something important to making a good impression on those who come
to look and, possibly, fill out the shelter’s adoption questionnaire. There are two rows of cages. The one for smaller dogs runs two high, smallest on top, bigger ones below.

  The second row holds large dogs. High-gloss green paint covers walls and crates, the same green on the floor. Skylights brighten the room during the morning. When they dim, the dogs begin to whine. All of them hate thunder. During electrical storms they bark and howl in a way that makes the more sensitive staff members feel helpless.

  One of them keeps putting off the inevitable. Obviously, Bill won’t survive. As with heartworm, the shelter vet has done blood work, deciding the cost of necessary medications argues against treatment. Bill’s run is over, he said. Too bad. But the girl in charge this week keeps bringing water and food. He doesn’t eat, but each time she looks in she feels a sense of guilt. It was she who chased a hat, talking on her cell phone to her boyfriend as half a dozen dogs ran from the pen. Three were recovered, one of them since adopted. They found the shepherd but not Bill, and a Dalmatian mix.

  “HE WAS ADOPTED.” The girl stops in front of the cage.

  “What happened? He ran away?”

  “The guy brought him back.”

  “Why?”

  “He thought he’d be a good watch dog. Because of his size. He got robbed with Bill in the house. He was sort of funny, he did this routine with Bill showing the thief where everything was.”

  The woman kneels and looks in. “Oh no.”

  “Yeah. But it’s nice of you to come see him.” The girl attendant has a strong impulse to confess what happened. She thinks better of it. “He should’ve been put down by now.”

  The woman keeps looking in. If Bill recognizes her, he gives no sign. He is skin and bones, his panting awful to her. “He can’t be saved?”

  The girl knows it’s wrong. The dog won’t survive, but she doesn’t want to euthanize him. No one will ever know what happened that day, but she knows. Like the Colonel and his drowned Yorkie, she does not want this dog put down on her watch.

  “Well—” she kneels next to the woman. “The vet says there is a treatment. His ears are infected. I think he also has parasites.” Yes, it’s wrong, but she adds, “You can never be sure, though.”

  Glenda fills out the form. Staff members in the office look at each other. They shrug and raise eyebrows. People who adopt dogs have a great many agendas. She starts to write the nominal check, but stops. “Could I see your vet? Could I pay for him to talk to me?”

  The vet has them bring Bill in. He shows her how to put the capsules in his mouth. The dog swallows as the vet holds his muzzle and strokes his neck. Then he uses the eardrops. Even dying, the dog pulls away. “This is always hard,” he says. “Sick or not, they hate it.” A second medicine to be put in water and food will treat parasites. A third may or may not counteract the chemical poisoning.

  She pays for them to bring him in a crate. She leads them west on Davis in Cliff’s Explorer. At the Donegal gatehouse, she explains that the van behind her is making a delivery. The gate rises. They take the route she has described, passing along a broad boulevard. The two shelter workers comment on the course’s beauty, the sweeping fairways that dip and angle in doglegs.

  At the house, they open the van and carry the crate between them, waiting as she unlocks the door. Inside, the two men stop in the foyer. “Where to?”

  It seems to confuse her. “I don’t know. Where do you think?”

  “Your dog, ma’am.”

  “Please take him up there—”

  They carry the crate through the house, past unkempt rooms. At the back they stop, looking at each other over the cage. The big room’s furniture has been pushed against the walls. Squared on the rug lies a woven mat marked with the stark, black and white symbol for yin and yang. Surrounding the mat, incense burners and joss sticks in slender holders rest next to empty glasses and bottles.

  “Here?”

  “Facing out, so he can see.”

  They lower it. She tips and thanks them, sees them to the door, thanks them again. When they’re gone, she comes back and kneels. She opens the crate door to see better. She goes in the kitchen, returning with a stainless steel dish of water. She gets down again and places it before the dog.

  It confuses him. Having given up, resembling shelter dogs that can never adjust to life with humans and will therefore never be adopted, Bill stares at the bowl without seeing. For the first time in three days, he thinks of something. A small, shiny brown dog lies panting outside a closed doorwall. It’s night, there are bugs. Light glistens on the dog’s back, a dachshund’s. She is looking at him with defeat, unwilling to get up and join the other dachshund walking to him, complaining in Dog about something.

  His last impression before being taken away. But the confusion comes from something else. Senses diminished, he still smells whatever it is. He knows it and the dog it belongs to. The smell comes from the bowl of water. Now, from the air outside the cage, more of Hotspur meets his nostrils. Bill can’t move, but knows Hotspur lives here, with the woman on all fours looking at him.

  THE THOUGHT OF giving the pills scares her. Every time she gets down to look at him, his head seems bigger, the jaws intimidating. When it comes time for the first pill, she gets down again. “Come on, Bill, please—”

  He won’t leave the crate. Frustrated after fifteen minutes of pleading, Glenda removes the water dish. She gets behind the cage and raises it. The dog half tumbles, half crawls out. Still partially inside when she comes around to him, he won’t look at her. Trembling, she kneels again and holds her hand in front of his nose. He seems not to notice. To give herself courage, she goes out to the garage and comes back tugging on a golf glove.

  She reviews what the vet showed her. Force open the mouth by squeezing, gently but firmly on both sides. Quickly toss in the pill and try to hold the muzzle closed. Sometimes it won’t work and he’ll spit it out, the vet said. If not, smooth the throat this way. On her first try, nerves get the better of her. She manages to get the mouth open, but fails with the pill. “Damn!” She picks it up, waits for her breathing to regulate, and tries again. With a healthy Bill, the process would be impossible for her. But Bill’s weakness and resignation work in her favor. She succeeds on the third try.

  It elates her. She feels a sense of accomplishment. No, she feels triumph, hope. It’s why you got him, she thinks. Learning from the pool girl about the big dog found outside a house closed for the season, she had known which it was. Hotsie liked him, she told the girl. They got along.

  That’s what they’re for, she thinks smoothing the dog’s throat. That’s what they do for you, Cliff said. They free you in a way. You can do this, Glenda tells herself. Still she smooths the dog’s throat, holding his heavy lower jaw. At least you can try.

  But it doesn’t look good. At five, she leaves and comes back with half a dozen kinds of dog food. Two are brands Hotspur liked, the other four recommended by the manager at Pet Warehouse. She goes to the kitchen, opens cans and bags and spoons or dumps all six in separate soup bowls. The bowls belong to the set of china given to her as a wedding gift by the director of the modeling agency she worked for. She puts the bowls in front of the open cage—Bill has gone back in. “Come on, do it for me. This matters. We’re doing the pills whether you like it or not. We’re doing the ears and worm stuff. We have to get tough, we have to get it together. Please help me.”

  She sits with him all evening, talking this way. Several times she leaves and comes back with chew toys and balls of Hotspur’s. She’s decided that the more such objects near him, the better. She greatly exaggerates the meaning of the dogs’ friendship. She convinces herself it will work the way close attachments sometimes bring about miracles on Animal Planet. She and Cliff watched the sentimental stories of rescues, crimes foiled by family pets. She would not admit it, but Glenda thinks in terms of Hotspur’s soul having returned, having reentered the house to keep vigil with her in a friend’s hour of need. Oddly, she has
no confidence in the notion of human souls, but would not see a contradiction.

  There is none, really. Dog and master are joined in her mind. She wants to believe, be redeemed, she wants to turn her own corner.

  Glenda makes up her mind about something. She stands and walks quickly down the hall. Turning into one of two spare bedrooms, almost immediately she steps out lugging a small TV. The cord trails after. “I don’t know what works. Who knows what works? I’m not telling and don’t you, either. This is an emergency, in emergencies what’s wrong with trying anything at all?”

  She balances the TV against her hip, resting it on a chair before reaching down to move food bowls. She picks up the television and lowers it to the floor in front of the crate. Satisfied, Glenda runs the cord to a wall socket and plugs it in. A grainy picture forms, a Seinfeld rerun. She steps to the big TV stand in front of her yoga mat, picks up a video, returns and inserts it in the small set before sitting on the floor next to Bill.

  “That’s at Naples beach. In January. We had that great two-week stretch. Just about perfect, low humidity. Then it got cold, but those two weeks. That’s me, Cliff had the camera. Oh watch this… Isn’t that amazing? You couldn’t fool Hotsie. You could try but you would never succeed. All right, this is funny—” Glenda laughs. “Right in there with college kids on spring break, stealing the ball. See there? Herding them.”

  Does any of it mean a thing to a poisoned Lab mix in a strange house? Probably not. But the smells here all make a kind of sense to him. Food, the collie. And if he doesn’t recognize Hotspur on the screen, he sees a dog. Muzzle between his paws, when a bark issues from the soundtrack, Bill corrects his ears.

  SHE BRINGS HER air mattress in from the lanai and stretches out on the floor. Pleading with him to eat, she heats up a chicken pot pie for herself. She eats in front of him, to set an example. If he wants human food, he’ll have it. Leftover steak, a slice of pizza she warms up in the microwave. She tries to remember what treats the collie liked. Hot dogs. She gets some from the freezer and needlessly boils them. Peanut butter. She spoons a dollop onto a cheese board.