Nameless

by Sam Starbuck

  Well, aside from me, nobody's fooled for an instant, are they?

  It's easy to see in hindsight, but at the time all the things that make it obvious were obscured by everyday life: other worries, other peoples' opinions, things that seemed bigger at the time and aren't even very memorable now. There are plenty of people who wouldn't believe such a thing was even possible. It's not hard to deduce that I didn't want to know. I never made the connection. Call me an idiot if you want, but it's true.

  Business was sluggish in January. With the snow heavy on the ground and no school in session for the first part of the month I didn't see – nor did I expect to see – much of Lucas. The weather was, after all, the reason that the cottage at The Pines had stood empty for so many winters. It was a long trek in by snowshoe, impossible by car, and the sort of people who owned snowmobiles were not the sort of people who found our little village very interesting.

  The mystery dog, however, was around all the time. A few days after New Year's I encountered him begging for scraps of the hot apple tarts the cafe was selling, being spoiled by half a dozen small children and one or two of their chaperons.

  "Do you happen to know whose he is?" I asked the boy, who was apparently helping to mind the younger children.

  "Nope," the boy answered. "They're going to be annoyed when he throws up apple all over, though. He must've had eight or nine helpings by now."

  I gave the dog an absent pat with one hand, gently maneuvered two children out of my way, and continued on to the cafe. Certainly the dog couldn't be a stray. Where would he have strayed from without dying of cold, and where could he be sleeping at night? Unless he'd learned how to let himself into my shop, and even then I'd only kept fires downstairs in the early evening, putting them out when I went to bed.

  It snowed a lot that month, not the incapacitating storm-blitz from earlier but steady, light spells on a regular basis. Towards the end of January the snow had finally built up to intolerable levels on my front porch, and I decided it was time to clear it off before the entire structure caved under the weight. The dog, who seemed to spend a lot of time there, was pleased by this turn of events. He danced around the handle of the shovel while I worked and chased after the snow I flung into the yard below, snarling and biting at it playfully.

  "You're going to need a new porch soon," Paula told me, leaning against the recently-cleared railing as I scraped snow up off the scarred and weathered wood.

  "I think it has about two more winters left," I said, stopping to lean on the shovel.

  "Why wait till you have to replace it, though? Come springtime, I'll put it in for you myself if you want."

  "Not that the vision of you and power tools isn't overwhelming to the senses, Paula, but I don't know yet. I might try building one myself. I'll buy the lumber from you, anyway," I said.

  "Do you want it done right, or do you want to lose a finger?" she asked. "Seriously, by the way, is he your dog?"

  "He's not my dog," I said, fending off the dog's playful advances on the shovel. "I don't know whose dog he is."

  "We know every dog in town, I'm pretty sure, and I don't know who owns him. He seems to like you. You might not have a choice."

  "I don't need a dog."

  "Nobody needs a dog, Christopher," she said, hauling him back with one arm around his throat and scruffing his head affectionately. "Besides, he needs a collar."

  "Put a collar on him, his owners'll probably call you and complain."

  "Good, they can pay for all the scrambled eggs the cafe keeps feeding him. If they exist."

  "He can't just be a stray," I said, kicking little piles of snow through the porch railing. "He's too clean. Besides, where's he going to sleep in this weather and not freeze to death, if he hasn't got somewhere to go?"

  "You sound like you're trying to convince yourself. "

  I whistled and he broke away from Paula, pulling so hard against her arms that she tumbled to the ground.

  "Good dog, Nameless," I said, patting his head. Paula called me a filthy name and pushed herself up.

  "See?" she said, as she brushed snow off her clothes. "You've named him."

  "I call him Nameless. By definition, I have given him a lack of a name."

  "Not true. You call him that, so it's his name."

  "But it describes the state of not having a name," I said.

  "You can be as fancy as you want about it, city boy, but you call him something and he answers to it, that's a name," she said. "Isn't that right, Nameless?"

  He lifted his muzzle and howled, auwh auwh woo. Paula gave me a smug look.

  "Well, I'm not buying him a collar," I said. "I'm not going to be arrested for attempted dognapping."

  "Suit yourself, I'm sure," Paula said, and then added, "Cranky."

  "I'm not cranky!"

  "Cranky Christopher!"

  I threatened her with the shovel and she ran down the steps, laughing. "Don't sic your dog on me!"

  "Go sell some hammers!"

  She walked off, swaggering a little until the snowball I threw hit her in the back of the head. Then she yelped and flung one back, which gave her enough cover to escape across the street.

  I left the shovel against the wall of the shop and came to stand at the top of the steps, leaning against a post. Nameless inched his way around my legs until he was curled up with his head just below my hip, shoulder pressed up to my thigh, so I gave in to the inevitable and rubbed him behind the ears with my fingertips. A couple of children, on their way home from school, waved at us as they passed. Another dog trotted by – Laurie-from-the-hotel's dog, I think – and growled briefly. Nameless laid his ears back against his head, and the dog continued onwards.

  A wave of dizziness caught me off-guard just as I was about to pick up the shovel again, and I gripped the support-post tightly. A second later came the familiar feeling of panic – the too-fast beat of my heart and then arrhythmia as it tried to regulate itself. It was bad, almost as bad as it had been at Halloween, and the world tilted and spun as my chest constricted painfully. Nameless whined and nudged me with his muzzle. I was going to collapse on my own front porch --

  Then my vision began to clear and the sickening spin of the world settled back into stillness. My heart had caught a rhythm again and my pulse was fast but steady in my ears.

  I took a few deep breaths as my heart slowed. The cold air made my throat ache.

  "I'm fine," I said, slowly releasing the post. My fingers throbbed where the edges of it had bit into them as I held myself upright. "Inside, I think, for me. I'm fine. Run along," I added, sweeping my hand in an arc towards the street. Nameless obediently stood and thumped down the steps, swatting me with his tail as he passed.

  When Lucas walked in ten minutes later and seemed more attentive than usual, I didn't give it a second thought.

  ***

  Towards mid-February, the days began to get a little warmer and I started taking walks in the morning, when I wouldn't have had many customers anyway. Once in a while I went out to The Pines to see Lucas, but more often I just made an erratic loop through the town, passing the church and then the high school, through the residential streets, across the road down to the train tracks and then up the main street, back to Dusk Books. Sometimes Nameless tagged along, or we met while I was walking and he gave up whatever canine errand he'd been on to escort me.

  I'd noticed that he was a loner among the dogs of Low Ferry. They mostly ran wild during the day, an odd pack of village pets, hunting dogs, herders, and the kind of scruffy mutts that are so good at patrolling the outlying farms. I didn't think anything of it, however, until I encountered Nameless trying, and failing, to make friends.

  The other dog was a smart, solid-built retriever belonging to one of the schoolteachers. Nameless had just come out of a side street and loped over to say hello; as soon as he got within five feet of the retriever, there were bared-teeth and flattened ears. Nameless, undaunted, inched forward, only to jerk back when the oth
er dog snapped at him.

  "Hey!" I called, and both dogs looked up at me. "Break it up!"

  Nameless twitched his ears as far forward as they could go and started to run past the retriever, but another snarl and a snap sent him scuffling backwards. He was large enough that he probably could have subdued the other dog with a well-placed snap of his jaws, but for whatever reason he wouldn't.

  "Manners," I said, getting close enough to nudge the retriever with my knee. He snapped again, more out of instinct than any real desire to hurt me, then looked abashed and sidled past, out into the street. With a last backward look and his hackles still raised, he sauntered off.

  I crouched and held out my hand, palm down, and Nameless nosed it briefly before allowing me to rub the soft fuzz on the crown of his head.

  "Not very popular, are you?" I asked. He butted against my fingers. "Can't win 'em all, I guess."

  He followed me back to Dusk Books after that. We passed three more dogs on the way, and each time they barked at him from their yards or crossed the street to avoid us both.

  "Hi!" the boy called breathlessly from my front steps, when we returned. "Hi, Nameless!"

  "Afternoon," I said. "It's cold out to be stalking me."

  "I just wanted some comic books," the boy answered, as I opened the door.

  "You could have gone inside, in the warm."

  "You weren't here."

  "As if that's ever stopped anyone," I answered, picking up a slip of paper on the counter.

  Christopher,

  Needed change for a customer.

  Left ten dollars, took all your ones

  and most of your quarters.

  Carmen

  "Poetry," I added, pointing it out to the boy. He grinned and went to the comic-book rack. Nameless nudged him in the small of the back, and he obediently stroked the dog's shoulders as he examined the rack. "Maybe you should adopt him," I said.

  "He's not the kind of dog you adopt," the boy replied, without turning around. "He does the adopting."

  "He seems well-kept."

  "Should be. They're always brushing him in the hardware store. He gets by all right."

  "Dogs are pack animals, though. Strange to see one without a pack," I said. Before he could reply, one of his friends put his head in and yelled for him to hurry up. He sighed, laid a stack of comics on the counter, and paid with the last of his credit from the wood-delivery. Nameless gave me a look, ambled past the counter, and followed the boy out the door.

  ***

  It was another few days before Lucas came into the village again, snowshoes on his back and carrying a bag of masks over his other shoulder. We ran into each other, me coming out of the hardware store and him idling down the street.

  "Looking for somewhere to sell them," he said, lifting the top flap of the bag to show me the jumble of faces underneath. I saw two pale Noh masks in among the gaudy colors. "My shelves were filling up. Time to cull the collection again."

  "Would you like me to sell some?" I asked, lifting out a fanciful papier-mâché mask with a silver cross-hatch design on it.

  "If you'd like," he answered shyly. "You don't have to."

  "They'll look good in the shop," I replied. "Come walk with me – haven't seen much of you lately. Getting along all right?"

  "More or less," he answered.

  "Lonely, out at The Pines?"

  "You know me, I don't get that lonely. Just..." he rubbed his chin thoughtfully as we walked. "I'm trying to see things differently, and it's – well, it's not what I expected."

  "Surprised you see much of anything, out there."

  "It's not so bad," he said with a smile. "I keep busy. You remember the students I had in December? They've stayed on."

  "How does the boy like that?"

  "He's not happy about it, but he isn't throwing fits. Even if they're both girls."

  I laughed. "Give him a few years."

  "He's already older than he ought to be. I think it bothers him. The teachers don't know what to do with him anymore."

  I glanced sidelong at him. His head was bowed, eyes fixed on the ground as they so often were.

  "You must know what it's like," I said.

  "Being young and smart? Sure," he said.

  "Bet your teachers didn't know what to do with you either."

  "They were fine," he answered, still looking down. "My parents didn't. They used to think I was slinking off to smoke cigarettes and have sex."

  "Were you?"

  He glanced up at me and smiled – small but mischievous. "No. I was making masks in the school art room. I'm not sure which they would have preferred. The masks creep them out."

  "Want some lunch?" I asked, stopping at the corner before we could cross the street to my shop.

  "Sure. It'll give me time to dry off before I track mud all over your shop. Besides, I need to talk to you about something."

  "All right," I said, leading the way to the cafe. When we entered, he picked a booth near the back instead of my usual window-table, and I peered through the kitchen hatch at Carmen.

  "Hiya!" she said.

  "The service here is terrible," I replied.

  "Watch it! I'll set my fiancée on you."

  "Yes, Carmen, we all know you're getting married," I drawled.

  "Anyway, what'll it be?"

  "Lucas!" I called.

  He looked at me, startled. "Uh, hamburger please."

  I turned back to Carmen. "Hamburger, no pickles, fries, chicken salad sandwich on toast – make that two fries."

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. "You boys want to split a shake?"

  "Don't start trouble, Trouble," I replied, and went back to sit down. "So. You wanted to talk."

  "Yeah..." he cut his eyes away nervously. "After last time we...had one of those talks, I thought maybe it'd be better in town. We might shout less."

  "If I remember, I did most of the shouting last time," I said.

  "I didn't mean – "

  "It's fine. I'm sorry. I was only worried about you..." I trailed off, because what he'd actually said had only just caught up with me. "Uh. Is this about...that?" I asked.

  He couldn't do it. I understand now why he couldn't; he couldn't say the words. Sometimes we can't. Even when they don't sound like madness.

  "Things aren't the way I thought they would be," he said finally. "I see that now and I'll get used to it, I'm sure I will...Christ." He rubbed his forehead. "Maybe we shouldn't talk in public anyhow. Thank you," he added shyly to Carmen as she set down our water glasses.

  He was uncomfortable with the silence, I could see that. He looked anxiously for something to talk about and, in his nervousness, came up blank.

  "What do you think would sell best in the shop?" I asked, nodding at the bag of masks by his feet. "I can sell them on consignment, or if you want I'll buy them for credit."

  "I'll pick some out, I guess." He looked uncomfortable.

  "You don't have to. Business between friends can get a little awkward."