Baxter stood next to him for a moment, his tail thrashing wildly. And then the dog ran across the room, leaped through the open window, rushed past Mr. Cuzzo, and crossed the street to where John’s wife stood.
On his way to unlock the front door, John paused again before the photographs. The most recent of them seemed to be the one that showed Mrs. Prescott standing at the entrance of the house, on the top of the porch stairs. Baxter was next to her, standing on his hind legs, his strong front legs pushing against her thigh.
4
Florence Rapp, Mrs. Prescott’s daughter, was slumped heavily on the sofa in her mother’s parlor. Her legs were as neatly crossed as her bulky thighs would permit. She sipped from a large glass of whiskey and ice. She spoke with a lack of animation that seemed habitual; not the result of grief or strain. ‘Would you like to keep the dog? It seems fond of you.’
John Grafton looked questioningly at his wife. She wants the dog, he thought. She needs affection less complicated than mine; less demanding than the child’s will be.
‘You’re sure you don’t want it for yourself, Mrs. Rapp?’ Nancy asked.
‘No.’ Her answer was emphatic. She paused, as if deciding whether to explain her reasons. Finally, she merely said, ‘I don’t care for them.’ She might have been speaking of cockroaches.
‘I thought your mother told us you bred them,’ John said.
‘My husband does. It’s one of our differences.’
Probably one of many, Nancy thought, and then asked, ‘Is the breed good with children?’
‘Supposedly. They were bred as fighters originally, but they seem docile enough these days. Baxter has a flaw, but I don’t think it’s psychological.’
‘What is it?’ John asked.
‘His blue eyes. He’s an excellent specimen of bull terrierdom in almost every other respect, but the blue eyes would disqualify him in a show. It’s what’s called a genetic shadow—a trait that just appears from somewhere out of the past. So, what my husband hoped would be Champion Baxter’s Angel . . . by Lord Baxter out of Bright Angel . . . becomes merely Baxter and is condemned to pethood. In any case, I hope you’ll take him. I feel I owe you something. Mother might have been there for days if you hadn’t found her.’
‘Baxter should get the credit,’ John said.
‘Maybe we should have called him Lassie,’ Mrs. Rapp said into her nearly empty glass.
John smiled. ‘Well, Laddie, at least.’
Nancy was not smiling. ‘We’d very much like to have him.’
‘Done,’ said Mrs. Rapp. She slid an ice cube into her mouth and crunched it between gold-filled molars. Take the beast, she thought. Take the people, the houses, the trees. Have as many pregnancies and ideals as you can manage; you won’t save any of it. Something or someone will defeat you.
John stood up. There was no point in watching Mrs. Rapp get any drunker. ‘We should be going, I think.’ He didn’t see any reason either to offer sympathies, at least not for the death of her mother. Perhaps for some other, earlier loss. But he didn’t know what that might have been.
Nancy was next to him. ‘Let us know if there is anything we can do. We’ll keep an eye on the house.’
Mrs. Rapp’s heavy legs uncrossed involuntarily, and her head jerked back slightly. ‘We’ll sell it,’ she said.
‘And thank you for the dog,’ John said. ‘I think it will be happy with us.’
Mrs. Rapp said seriously, ‘It needs discipline.’
We all do, John thought.
The couple went to the door. The dog lay in the center of the room, looking from Mrs. Rapp to the couple. He was trembling.
‘Baxter,’ Nancy said. ‘Come along, Baxter. You have a new home.’
In the moment before the dog sprang towards the door he deposited on the intricately patterned old rug a small rivulet of urine. Only Mrs. Rapp noticed. After Baxter and the couple were gone she sat staring at the floor and watching the stain darken and spread.
Four
My pleasure increases endlessly. The woman has stopped going off with the man during the day, and she is with me almost constantly. She is attentive, and really quite intelligent. She has learned to feed me fresh, raw meat. She brings me large, mysterious bones, which I crack fiercely, feeling pride and pleasure in the strength of my teeth and jaws. She delights in touching me, and she has no secrets from me. We often lie on her bed in the warm afternoon, dozing and listening to the birds and insects.
The man is less interested in me, but he respects my skills. Sometimes at dusk, in the overgrown back yard, I capture a rat. I shake it, listening to its terrified squeals before I tighten my jaws and feel it go limp. I carry it to the back porch and lay it carefully before the door. The man sometimes praises me for my prowess, but I can sense his uneasiness. I continue the practice, however, sometimes presenting them with two or three little corpses, laid out neatly side by side. It helps the couple understand me.
I sometimes remember the old lady, but I never regret having interfered with her. I think of her fondly. She taught me that one should constantly try to improve one’s position in life. I think there are many of my kind who have never learned that lesson. I see them when the woman and I take our walks. I sense their boredom, and when they enviously try to sniff me I draw back my lips and show them my strong teeth. The most pitiable are those that wander alone, without the charm to have attracted even an old, dull-eyed person; without the cleverness to have chosen a devoted young couple, as I have. They live only for the moment.
Almost at will now I can think beyond the moment, and I understand that conditions change; that I must be able to control those changes. The young woman, for example, is changing. Her body is becoming thicker and thicker, and there is an added scent about her that I find unpleasant. It is almost as if she had the scent of two people.
I don’t understand it. But I no longer fear things that I don’t understand.
2
It was Saturday morning. John and Nancy were drinking coffee in the large, dark parlor. A breeze moved through the screened windows, bringing the aroma of freshly cut grass. The sound of a lawn-mower came from next door. Mr. Best, their large, dour black neighbour, had begun his weekend landscaping devotions.
Mr. Best resented the Graftons, and he despised their weed-clogged back yard. Sometimes during the week, sitting bored at his desk in his insurance office, he would think of the weed seeds drifting from the Graftons’ little meadow on to his velvety grass and meticulously planned flower borders.
Every person must have some pride, he thought. He had no idea what the Graftons took pride in. Certainly not in their own appearance or in the appearance of their possessions. Maybe they were proud of their thoughts or their feelings; or maybe just of their youth. He had never spoken to them.
‘We should do something about the back yard, John.’
‘Do what?’
‘Make it less . . . luxuriant. And get rid of some of the wildlife.’
‘Baxter wouldn’t approve.’
‘Baxter’s a dog.’
Nancy sat in the tattered Morris chair, resenting her discomfort. There was a time when she had thought of herself as a person who could be indifferent to discomfort, but now, late in her pregnancy, she knew she could only tolerate distress, not ignore it.
Baxter was deep in the process of digesting his breakfast. He lay with his lower jaw flat against the floor. He had opened his eyes briefly at the sound of his name.
‘I’ll build a pond in the yard,’ John said.
‘Sure, John.’
‘With a waterfall. You don’t have to mow a pond.’
‘You have to build it.’
‘We could have some water lilies. Monet.’
John had majored in art history, but he had been more interested in books than in paintings or sculpture. Names, dates and titles impressed him. He wrote long, accurately researched papers that were overwhelmingly lacking in significance. Whenever he visited a museum h
is hands swelled to the point of immobility. He had been told he could become a superior teacher.
He looked at Nancy. Pregnancy had affected her appearance in unexpected ways. Her fingers seemed shorter, although not thicker. Her face seemed thinner than before. There were distortions, but not of essential features. Exaggerations. A caricature. Who were the important caricaturists? He thought that the word itself was derived from an artist’s name: an Italian. That’s all he could remember about the subject. That part of him was gone. Instead there was an unruly yard to consider. It’s an improvement, he thought.
‘I’ll start it today,’ he said.
‘Start what?’ Nancy’s eyes had been closed.
‘The pond.’
‘Yes. That’s a good idea, darling.’
She was wrong.
3
From the moment John turned over the first clump of earth in the yard, he felt both an urgency and a distaste about the project. The soil was rich with decayed vegetation, fetid and wormy. Baxter joined in the digging, clawing frantically, scattering earth behind him, and pausing occasionally to sniff and examine an object he uncov-ered.
The pond became a matter of significance in the neighborhood. Faces appeared and lingered in windows that overlooked the Grafton yard. Mr. Cuzzo learned to pause in his daily walks at a point between houses, where he could see the excavation. People meeting on the street spoke no longer of Mrs. Prescott’s death, but of the young man who worked shirtless and sweating each evening until sunset.
Mr. Best would often be working in the yard next door; delicately pruning, smoothing, raking. John was afraid of black men. His fear was not the result of a complex prejudice. He supposed Mr. Best differed significantly from most white men only in the darkness of his skin. It was the darkness that John feared. He was intimidated in the same way he would have been by a black-skinned apple.
The two men began to speak, cautiously and infrequently, facing each other over their shared fence.
John would pause in his work to look at other back yards. They’re like the backs of minds, he thought. They reveal differing degrees of use and order: in one an old lady’s five-and-ten underclothes were drying on a slack line: knee-length pink drawers; knitted vests. In another a venerable pear-tree supported a small crop of inedible fruit. In Mr. Best’s there was brightness and symmetry.
Nancy watched the project from the back porch, her swollen body eased into an old cane-backed rocker. She was disturbed. At first she thought she merely resented losing so much of her husband’s time and attention.
But then one night she realized that the pond itself offended her. She had been unable to sleep, and had gone to the kitchen to warm some milk. Baxter followed her. While the milk heated she stood looking out of the window. The sharp-rocked waterfall and pool basin were nearly in their final form. In the bright moonlight the structure looked forbidding: a site for unpleasantness.
She saw a vague, pale form. It lingered at the edge of the pool’s basin briefly and then vanished. She assumed it had been Baxter. But then, startled, she felt the dog push against her leg, and she realized she had not let it out.
The milk had scalded.
The next day she dragged the rocking-chair from the back porch into the parlor. And from then until the pool was finished she spent her evenings sitting inside while her husband worked in the yard.
Baxter sat with her, going occasionally into the kitchen to sit before the screen door to watch her husband work. The dog, which seemed to have lost its original curiosity over the construction of the pool, was restless and nervous.
We’re all nervous, Nancy thought. It’s the baby. John claimed he was working on the pond so intently because he wanted it finished before the cold weather set in. But Nancy knew it was simple evasion. Her presence unsettled him. He could not accept this gross body, which was neither the woman he had loved nor the child he would love. He needed distraction until one became two.
Five
I am the bond between the man and the woman. Unlike me, they are unstable creatures. I go from one to the other, reassuring them, accepting the affection they no longer give easily to each other. And although my pleasure in being with them is less simple than it was originally, I don’t regret my choice. It is as if they had been waiting for a third party to complete their lives.
There are acts they no longer perform. They lie in the dark, the man smelling of fatigue, the woman of the illness that has changed her body. They do not touch and join. They sometimes murmur briefly, and they soon sleep.
The man realizes, as I do, that the earth has a mystery and power that cannot be found in houses. He has taught me about time. Together in the yard we uncover traces of those who lived before the houses existed. An odor of decay more pungent and complex than the odors of life; small bones; fragments of abandoned possessions; a concentration of the aroma that arose from the old woman as she lay on the landing of the stairs: the odor of death. It is an odor that pleases me.
The man has done a strange thing, though. He has covered the earth with stones and water. I don’t know why he should do such a thing. He has destroyed the growing things and has left me very little room to run in.
He doesn’t seem to fear water as I do. Each morning, in the room of the house that interests me least, he sprays himself with water, removing his distinctive, attractive scent and applying one that repels me. The woman is even more reckless than the man. Despite her illness, which has made her so awkward, she immerses her heavy body completely in water. It is one of her more foolish habits.
The woman’s illness is strange. She must be uncomfortable, yet she smiles and seems pleased in a self-concerned way. There is a new gentleness in her touch.
It comforts me to know that the man and woman do not possess the cleverness or strength I once imagined they had. They rely on me in many ways, and their affection for me is stronger than ever. I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with that.
2
Mr. Cuzzo paused and pushed aside a brown, fallen elm-leaf with his cane. It was a lavish use of energy for him, but he was celebrating the change of season. He had walked half a block without any involuntary pauses. He had stopped now only to look between the Grafton and Best houses at the pond. It was completed now, he supposed. Water spilled and collected, reflecting the sunlight. Something new on the block; something novel. And soon a child would be born. Mr. Cuzzo was not sure he approved. A neighborhood should produce only one generation; one set of structures; one set of passions and tragedies. There is no tragedy for us, he thought; just misfortune. Tragedy is for the young. We should not have to witness it.
He stood motionless, staring. Images registered dully: the gold of chrysanthemums in Mr. Best’s yard; the rust of leaves floating on the Graftons’ pond. And then Baxter appeared, his white form and quick movement confusing the old man momentarily. The dog stared across the street and began to bark.
Mr. Cuzzo turned away and continued haltingly down the street. ‘We should not have to witness it,’ he mumbled.
3
Long before he completed the pond, John found himself thinking what he had thought too often in his life: Why am I doing this? He wanted to be in the parlor with Nancy, but he felt it was more important to show her he was capable of facing the disagreeable. It was an ordeal that he endured; an ordeal to match her own.
And then it was finished. There was no announcement; he merely joined her in the parlor one night at the time he usually went out into the yard. Nancy was lying on the sofa, the profile of her body like a strange landscape. John sat on the floor and took her hand; kissed it.
‘I want it to be born in this house,’ she said.
‘Is that allowed?’
‘I’ve made arrangements.’
She had been seeing a doctor who had his offices near by in one of the neighborhood houses. John disapproved of him: weak-eyed, semi-retired, too comfortable with death. The midhusband, he called him.
‘Is it saf
e, Nancy?’
‘It’s right.’
She didn’t want her child to open its eyes to fluorescent light. ‘I’m healthy,’ she said.
She drew up the skirt of her loose dress and put her husband’s hand on her distended body. She felt his resistance, his reluctance to touch the shiny, taut flesh.
He looked away from her, trying to understand his fear. His eyes met the mysterious blue eyes of Baxter, who lay confidently at Nancy’s feet.
In the deepening shadows of the yard, water trickled over rocks into the dark pool.
Six
I have been betrayed. I lie in the dark garage, a filthy rug beneath me, freezing drafts blowing across my body. I no longer have a sense of the present. I constantly relive that disastrous day.
It began with the woman’s gasps. She lay on the bed, her face distorted, her hands clutching at the bedspread. I tried to comfort her, to lick her hand. But the man forced me from the room. It was the first time he had touched me in anger. I stood outside the closed door, listening to the woman’s cries and the man’s muted muttering.
And then the strangers arrived: a feeble man and a young woman wearing white shoes. They both smelled of pungent, lifeless substances. I challenged them, and once more my man touched me in anger. He forced me out into the back yard. I was frantic. I wanted to be with the woman. I resented the presence of the strangers. I began to call out to them. Soon the man was back, but instead of letting me in he leaned over and struck me. I felt the muscles of my chest tighten. My jaws opened. If he hadn’t withdrawn his hand I think I would have bitten him. He was making harsh, threatening noises. It occurred to me for the first time since the death of the old woman how vulnerable people are to attack. They are not to be feared. But in their moments of instability they are to be pitied. I made myself remember his previous devotion, and I overcame my anger.
Hell Hound Page 3