Conversations with Saint Bernard

by Jim Kraus

  “But so much pain for such a good person. It doesn’t make sense. Never did. My wife was a wonderful person. She never hurt anyone. She cared for people. She was my opposite, actually. Why her—and not me? I would be the one deserving of punishment. Not her. She was blameless.”

  “George, we are to expect troubles,” Douglas said, pulling in air after each word, nearly, fighting for the ability to talk. “And none of us are blameless. Trust me. Every man has a dark heart. It is a broken world in which we live. Faith does not mean not having pain—it means having hope. I am closer to my God and to Eleanor than I have ever been.”

  George knelt by him, on the street.

  “Even with what you have? Even in your condition?”

  Douglas tried to shrug.

  “I am content. God will take me in his time. And in the meantime, I shall have faith and I shall enjoy this world as best I can.”

  George stared into his eyes.

  “I am telling the truth, George. It is what I can do.”

  George looked away, and back to the sea.

  “My uncle—another uncle, not the drunkard, but this one sober as a deacon,” Douglas said, as he took a deep breath, “he was a pious man, a man who knew God, and he often said the one thing that gives the devil the worst heartburn, and shows God’s power most plainly, is a believer who suffers through tribulations with joy.”

  Douglas coughed, then tried to raise himself up. George helped him as best he could.

  “Now, shall we take one more lap around the waterfront? And this time, let’s see how fast we can go. And please, do not worry about tickets. The chief of police in this wonderful town happens to be my first cousin on my mother’s side. And he owes me a considerable number of favors.”

  43

  Later in the day, when the evening was spread out against the sky—George, with Lewis by his side, sat in the RV, alone. George fiddled with his electronic tablet and the Skype application.

  “Something about the 150-year-old, foot-thick walls doesn’t make for a good connection, Lewis.”

  Lewis sniffed at the tablet and wuffed. He appeared to know what was coming: Alex.

  Eventually, George managed to make the two machines talk to each other and Alex’s face popped up in the frame.

  “Hello, Mr. Gibson.”

  “Hello, Alex.”

  Lewis began to wuff and dance and act uncharacteristically impatient. He smooshed his head against George’s thigh and climbed half-way up his lap, grinning and wuffing and whimpering.

  “Hey, Lewis!” Alex called out.

  Lewis sniffed at the screen, tried to peer around it to see where Alex was hiding, then proceeded to wuff and whimper and snort and whirr with gusto.

  “How are you? Are you being good? Do you like Charleston?”

  George would let a handful of questions pile up and then try to answer the group of them as Lewis would prefer them answered.

  “He loves Charleston, Alex. He says you should visit here. There are forts and old houses and ships and the ocean.”

  Lewis danced in place as Alex spoke, wuffing at the end of each sentence. Alex told Lewis all about his class and their recent field trip to Cape Ann Museum, and his book report and his decision to go out for the basketball team, and how each and every one of his friends asks about Lewis every day, and how Alex always tells them he’s having a great time, and how the doctor says he is doing so well the treatments may only take nine months, instead of all year, and how much he can’t wait to be able to play with Lewis again.

  After nearly five minutes of steady chatter, Alex drew a deep breath and stayed silent for a moment.

  George reached over and tapped at the tablet, thinking perhaps a slight tap would encourage it to work a little better.

  But Alex was silent for a reason.

  “Mr. Gibson?”

  “Yes, Alex?”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Well, not just me, but my friends as well. We’ve been thinking about Lewis.”

  Lewis grinned, wuffed, and looked up at George.

  “What about Lewis?”

  “Well, remember when you left with Lewis? Remember I told you that Lewis really likes hearing the truth?”

  “I do. And you were right. Lewis is a truth-seeker.”

  “Yeah, but it’s what we’ve been talking about. I’m not sure it’s the truth Lewis is after.”

  “What is it, Alex?” George replied, and he scratched his chin in obvious puzzlement. “It sure looks like it to me. And to the people we’ve met.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But Emma, she’s a friend who knows Lewis, she said Lewis isn’t after the truth. It’s just he likes to fix people. And she said the truth—or telling the truth—sometimes fixes people.”

  George looked at Alex closely, drawing his face close to the screen. Alex looked like he might be blushing, just a little.

  “So . . . Alex . . .” George said, and waited.

  “Yes?”

  “So . . . you like this Emma?”

  Now Alex did blush.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a little. But she’s right about Lewis. He just wants people to stop being broken. And I think people stay broken if they don’t tell the truth.”

  George rested his arm around Lewis’s shoulder.

  “Lewis, do you think Alex is right about this . . . and you?”

  Wuff. Wuff.

  And Lewis looked at the screen and offered his widest, most lopsided grin he could muster.

  “See, he said so,” Alex said and laughed. “He knows.”

  George grinned as he watched.

  “And it’s what it says in the Bible. And Emma should know. Her dad’s a preacher. She said it was in the Bible.”

  “What was in the Bible?”

  “She said it was something like . . . ‘If you know what’s true, then the truth will set you free.’ Or something like it.”

  Then, Lewis stood and wuffed loudly, several times.

  “I have to tell you, Alex, it sure seems Lewis understands English.”

  “Yeah, it does seem like it sometimes.”

  The three of them sat for a moment, still and silent.

  “Remember back before I got sick with allergies? I told the truth, Mr. Gibson. To my mom. About being sick. Lewis wanted me to do it. To tell my mom the truth. And now I’m getting better. And see, like Emma said, me telling the truth will get me and Lewis back together again. It’s what Lewis wants. He wants things to be fixed.”

  George took a deep breath.

  “Tell Emma she’s smart. And maybe she’s right.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  George leaned close to the screen and whispered, “Is she cute, Alex?”

  And this time, Alex did blush, full and scarlet, and Lewis grinned and wuffed his approval.

  * * *

  That night, George sat up in bed, the luxurious, nearly huge bed in the guest room of the Parkers’ mansion. He listened. From the harbor came a soft moan of a ship’s horn as it navigated the narrowing waterway. He heard a distant siren. The historic district, for the most part, remained quiet after dark. Lewis, at the foot of the bed, sleeping on a soft and thick towel—his preferred bedding material as of late—snored softly.

  George wiped his face and tried to clear the remnants of the recurring dream from his mind. Recurring, but no less traumatic—the dream had interrupted his sleep for the past several years.

  Ever since the day . . . and ever since she died.

  He usually lay back, stared at the ceiling, until sleep found him again.

  To sleep, perchance to dream . . . or not dream.

  He sighed and remained sitting.

  I know it is supposed to knit up the reveling ends of the day . . . but this isn’t it.

  He stared out the window. A freighter slipped past his sight, its red and green lights flickering in the thick humidity, on its way out to sea.

  George closed his eyes, and the wor
ds came back to him . . . words from his eleventh-grade English class, one of several Shakespearean soliloquies they could choose to memorize.

  George had picked this one, for no other reason than it was shorter than all the rest by a few lines. The words stayed with him all these years.

  To be, or not to be?—That is the question—

  Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

  The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

  Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

  And by opposing, end them?

  To die: to sleep—

  No more—and by a sleep to say we end

  The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

  That flesh is heir to— ‘tis a consummation

  Devoutly to be wish’d!

  To die, to sleep.

  To sleep: perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub.

  When George had memorized those words, less than one hundred, he’d had no idea of what poor Hamlet was talking about. It was only after Mrs. Sexton explained it to the class it had made any modicum of sense.

  “He’s talking about the ultimate sin,” she’d said, “of taking one’s own life. It appears Hamlet suffered from guilt-induced insomnia.”

  The first time the words had come back to George was at Hazel’s funeral. And they had seldom left him, nor diminished over the intervening years.

  “Just tell the truth and the truth shall set you free . . . my foot,” George said aloud. Lewis snorted, and George saw the crown of his head as he rose up to investigate the sound.

  “It’s nothing, Lewis. Just me muttering. Go back to sleep.”

  He heard Lewis sniff a few times, then heard an audible thud as he let his head drop back to the toweled bed on the floor.

  After a moment, George lay back as well and stared at the ceiling.

  Sleep will come.

  He closed his eyes.

  To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub.

  44

  Rain filled the day, a humid, almost horizontal rain, warm as bath water, thick as fog.

  In mid-afternoon, George took Lewis for a reluctant walk. The St. Bernard knew what lay in wait for him on his return: a thick, vigorous toweling—an activity Lewis saw no purpose in doing, and one only succeeding in aggravating both he and George.

  But George would not allow a wet Lewis into his RV, let alone back into a multi-million-dollar historic house. Even though both Eleanor and Douglas said a wet dog was of not great concern to them, George could not allow it.

  “I’m an engineer,” George repeated. “And engineers are keen on establishing and obeying rules. And this is one of the rules: no wet dogs in the house.”

  Eleanor had smiled at him the first time he’d insisted on drying Lewis off.

  “With our wet autumn this year, you will only succeed in provoking Lewis. Although I fail to see much of a difference between a provoked Lewis and the typical, genial Lewis,” Eleanor had stated.

  The only problem George found is the Parkers did not possess any “old” towels. Every towel, every absorbent fabric in the house, appeared either brand new or terribly historic.

  “But using a new towel is better than Lewis drenching a million-dollar Persian rug,” George explained.

  George had spent the morning playing three-handed bridge with Douglas and Eleanor, and the afternoon in the library, reading a biography of the Confederate General William Dorsey Pender—a devout Episcopalian, baptized before taking command and “my quest for glory in both the heavenly and earthly realms.”

  Before dinner, George packed up his few things and carried them into the RV. He planned on leaving in the morning. He and Lewis had been guests for more than two weeks, and even though, every day, both Douglas and Eleanor had said how much they were enjoying his company and how much fun Burby was having with Lewis, George knew it was soon time to leave. His original itinerary was already in shambles, and with Alex coming off his allergy treatment schedule early and ahead of the anticipated time, George would have to skip many of his original destinations and head, more or less, in a straight line toward the West Coast. It meant leaving the South and leaving the warmer weather, but not heading so far north they would actually encounter real winter.

  “I don’t mind a bit of cold, but I don’t want to drive in a deep freeze, either.”

  He did not inform anyone yet of his intentions. He found it difficult to disappoint people, and he was pretty sure his hosts might be disappointed with his departure. He was certain Irene would be disappointed.

  During these weeks, he and Irene had spent some time together, and George realized it was the longest he had been with any woman since the death of his wife.

  The growing intimacy, even if it was only a friendship-based intimacy, a conversational intimacy, made George grow nervous, anxious. Since Hazel’s death, he imagined himself as remaining alone for the rest of his life. He could not imagine trying to figure out the intricacies of another human being—especially another female human being.

  Once was hard enough, he thought to himself. I don’t think I would be up for a second time.

  The rain of the morning and afternoon had dissipated, leaving behind a thick veil of humidity, almost like rain itself, save for its downward movement.

  Irene stood from the dinner table.

  “George, let’s you and Lewis and I take a walk,” she said, her tone almost a command rather than an invitation, and everyone recognized as more bravado than shrill. Lewis obediently rose, stretched, and grinning, hurried toward the front door.

  George took the leash from the butler’s closet in the entryway where he stored it.

  I have to remember to get this before I leave tomorrow.

  “He doesn’t need a leash, does he, George? We’ve taken walks, you know, when you were napping, without a leash, and never once did he leave my side.”

  “I wasn’t napping. Just resting my eyes.”

  “Of course,” Irene said, smiling. “Napping is for senior citizens, right?”

  “Right,” George replied firmly.

  “So why is it you get the free senior citizen’s coffee at McDonald’s?”

  George pretended to glare at her and then grinned.

  “Because it’s free. And because I’m eligible. A quirk in the law. But those are the rules, Irene. I didn’t make them up. I just obey them.”

  The trio stepped out into the warm dark of the evening. George drew in a deep breath.

  “I love the smell of salt in the air. Reminds me of home.”

  And I will miss it when I leave.

  “Me, too,” Irene said, and Lewis wuffed in happy agreement.

  “Let’s walk toward the park,” Irene suggested, “so we can keep the water by our side.”

  The three of them walked slowly, from pool of light to pool of light, offered by the gas lanterns dotting the historic district. If one squinted, George thought, and ignored the cars, one could easily imagine being here after the war, when life was slower, less frenzied.

  Lewis walked a few feet in front of them, sniffing first to the left, then to the right, like a sailboat tacking into the wind. Except there was no wind this evening, not even a wisp. The sounds in the air became muted by the thick humidity, much like a snowfall mutes the sounds in a northern environment.

  Lewis tacked back to George and more or less ran into his thigh, almost causing him to stumble.

  Speak the truth, is what George heard, or rather, what he felt when he made contact with the large, intrusive canine.

  I sometimes grow weary of his instructions . . .

  Lewis bumped him again, and again George felt the call to truth.

  It will set you free.

  In the span of a quarter hour of slow strolling, they came to the White Point Gardens at the point of the triangular piece of land Charleston lay on, mostly surrounded by water and river.

  Lewis walked over to a bench and sat down next to it.

  “Looks l
ikes one of us wants to take a breather,” Irene said.

  They sat and looked out over the black water, only a few navigation lights visible on the route to the open sea.

  Lewis edged closer.

  Tell the truth.

  “Are you enjoying your stay in Charleston?” Irene asked. She was not one to appreciate silence and often just chattered along, as if narrating the activity.

  “I am,” George replied. “I have never been in such a wonderful house or had such gracious hosts. It has been a nice few weeks.”

  “I’m glad. I was pretty sure you and Douglas would hit it off. He needs companionship.”

  George was willing to let it be the end of the conversation.

  Irene was not.

  Neither was Lewis, apparently.

  Tell the truth.

  “So . . . is anything bothering you, George?” Irene asked. “Sometimes you seem . . . I don’t know . . . distant, I guess. Like you’re not exactly present. Like you’re thinking of something else. Something troubling.”

  I could say the same about you, Irene . . . but it’s none of my business now, is it?

  Lewis stood up and fidgeted some. Then he pushed his head against George’s leg, again.

  Tell the truth.

  George bent down and almost pushed his head away.

  “I thought maybe . . . you know . . . Douglas having ALS and me not knowing it’s what your wife had . . . I thought maybe you were in some way . . . maybe you were mad at me and maybe, you know, maybe you blamed me for bringing you . . . and maybe the memories came back and . . . I don’t know . . . maybe it made you feel bad. Dredged up something unpleasant. It’s not, is it, George? If it is, let me apologize for it.”

  George began shaking his head no, well before she was finished.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “So no bad memories?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, there are bad memories, but seeing Douglas, and watching him struggle . . . well, it didn’t do anything to make my memories come back to me. I mean . . . I remember well what happened to my wife . . . and I remember it often, so I don’t need any triggers. It wasn’t, Irene. Trust me.”

  Irene took his hand and squeezed it.

  “Well, good. I mean, not your unpleasant memories . . . but I’m glad I wasn’t the cause of them.”