The Dog That Talked to God

by Jim Kraus

  I stifled a laugh. We had one of those ladies in our neighborhood growing up. We avoided her house, even on Halloween.

  “I won’t. I promise. But two people, all at once, all the time, expecting to be entertained—I guess I’m just out of practice.”

  Labor Day proved to be a bust in Atlantic Beach. I had been told there would be one big party up and down the beach, all weekend long. The rain started Friday morning, and by Saturday fell horizontally. To make things worse, thunder and lightning boomed and flashed sporadically all three days. The rain kept coming, but it was warm. I almost liked warm rain. It felt like you were taking a shower.

  Thunder has a way of unsettling Rufus. At the first rolling boom, he runs to the front door first, then to the back, then, using his front paws, lifts himself up to stare out one of the windows. When it booms again, he heads off into the bedroom, coming out every few minutes—as if checking to make sure I am still there.

  I had nothing planned for the weekend, so I sat on my sofa, under a throw, reading old newspapers, magazines, and a stack of books I had gathered for just such a time, drinking coffee, and eating shortbread cookies—the real good ones from Scotland. Eventually, Rufus came out and joined me on the sofa, nestling in close to me, lifting his head in surprise at every lightning flash, his eyes darting from the window to me and back to the window as if I had been causing all the terrible commotion. I had explained to him last year what happened during a thunderstorm, but all The Weather Channel explanations in the world did not settle his nervousness. It did not matter that I assured him that he would be safe inside. He even stopped begging for shortbread, a clear sign of his nervousness.

  The weather settled down on Sunday. The air, because of all the nitrogen oxide released by the lightning bolts, smelled fresh and clean and wonderful, containing a thick layer of promise you could almost see.

  I leashed up Rufus and headed toward the downtown area. The beach would have been strewn with washed-up seaweed and jellyfish and the occasional dead fish from the storm. Rufus loved the smell of dead fish and would roll on top of them if I didn’t stop him. I learned that lesson the hard way, staring out to sea one day while Rufus coated himself in Eau de Dead Fish. Downtown would be safer. Despite the rain, a modicum of people walked about. Sandy Sandy’s was filled. I didn’t feel like coffee right now. We walked past the Rent-a-Scooter store. The “closed” sign hung on the front door. Rain is probably terrible for the scooter business. I looked in and saw the same row of polished scooters waiting for riders.

  I had promised myself that I would buy one. And with my literary/reporting prize, a raise had been promised. So the purchase wouldn’t cause a big dent in my finances—unless the scooters were really expensive. I had no idea how much they cost.

  “I’m coming back this week and I’m going to buy a scooter, Rufus. Remember when I told you that?”

  “I do. That’s okay with me.”

  Then he stopped.

  “I won’t have to ride on it, will I? They look dangerous to me. Do they have a helmet that fits a dog? I don’t think they do. Then it’s even less safe for me.”

  “No, Rufus, you will never have to ride on it.”

  “Okay. Then everything is okay.”

  As we strolled east, toward the ocean, I realized that I did feel better. Not fabulous. Not on top of the world. But I felt lighter. More free.

  Maybe my first steps back toward God were paying off.

  Yes, I know that sounds terrible. I know that God is not some sort of cosmic, celestial gumball machine that starts to pay off after you put in a quarter’s worth of praying. I knew that prayer and God do not work that way. And that’s not how I felt inside, in my heart. These first few days of me praying—well, none of my prayers would be featured on the religious television stations. I didn’t really know what to say at first. I still don’t. I said I was sorry for being silent for so long. I said I felt lost. I tried to explain how I felt—lost and abandoned. I said I blamed God for what happened. I didn’t hold back. I didn’t try to fill the prayer with thees and thous. I can’t say for sure that God had listened to the prayers of such a wayward one, but I can say for sure that it felt like he had listened. The dialogue was choppy and stilted and angry and contrite and apologetic and meandering and curt; it contained everything that I had held inside for all these years.

  I prayed aloud, at night, as we walked. Rufus heard, of course, but did not say anything.

  Except, at the end, when I stopped talking, he would add an emphatic “Amen.”

  His coda, his final word, felt so right—like he put the right postage on my awkward words, helping me know that the words were actually being heard by the Almighty, were actually being posted to their heavenly address.

  It took a dog.

  Go figure.

  Tuesday at noon is when I decided to walk over to Rent-a-Scooter. Rufus fussed and bounced and whined more than normal. In fact, he hardly ever asked to come with me during the day. But today, he all but insisted.

  So I leashed him up, and we set off.

  The bell sounded as the two of us entered the store. Rufus sniffed the air like he was on the CSI investigation team.

  “Hello. Welcome.”

  Viktor was as handsome as I remembered. Maybe more so. He had a touch of summer tan to him.

  “Hi. Remember me?”

  His face brightened and he greeted me with a wide smile.

  Why are the good ones off limits?

  “I do. Mary, right? The last name . . . starts with an . . . F. Right?”

  “You are correct. Mary Fassler.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “So do you have a scooter to sell? We talked about you selling a few scooters at the end of the season.”

  “Of course I remember that. People rent. Not many buy.”

  He pointed to the last four scooters in the line. “These four, I’ll sell. The blue one is probably the best one. Never had a problem with it. A few minor scratches here and there, but in the best shape of the four. Mechanically, it’s A-One. You like blue?”

  At that moment, the young girl I had seen at the shop some months earlier bounced out from the rear of the shop. She skidded to a stop when she saw us, her black hair a beehive halo around her face and shoulders. She stared at me, then really stared at Rufus. She looked up at her father.

  “There’s a dog in here,” she said.

  “Yes, Molly, that is definitely a dog,” Viktor answered, smiling.

  She looked at me, then back at her father.

  “Can I pet him?”

  Rufus had the gentlest of souls, but small children . . . well, they could give him a case of the willies. Sometimes. Not always. Once, back in Wheaton, when Rufus was younger, I had a visitor with a three-year-old son. I wasn’t watching, but I heard a bark, a loud snippy bark, and the little boy started to cry in surprise.

  At first, we thought Rufus had bit him—but he didn’t. He just barked. That’s what the little boy said. “He didn’t bite, Mommy. He just barked.”

  Later on, Rufus told me the child had pulled on his ear, and added, “A bark is better than a bite, right?”

  This little girl was older, and judging from her asking her father if she could pet him, better behaved.

  “You’ll be very gentle?” Viktor asked.

  The little girl nodded solemnly.

  “Is it okay, Miss Fassler?”

  “Sure. I think he’ll be fine.”

  The little girl took three very deliberate steps to Rufus’s side and knelt down beside him, looking as if she had practiced the movements. Slowly, she reached out, and patted his head, then began to stroke him down the neck onto his back. He actually nudged closer to her and looked up at her wide face, his eyes clear and kind and accepting.

  “So, do you like blue?”

  Viktor’s question snapped me back to the present.

  “Sure. I guess. I mean, I never really had a favorite color. But the blue one is very nice.”


  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the little girl reach around Rufus to hug him. With a hug, she might have been walking on thinner ice. But Rufus remained stoic and leaned into her as she hugged him. I could tell the hug remained loose, not tight, but soft and gentle and little-girl tender.

  “His name is Rufus,” I said.

  “And her name is Molly. I don’t think I introduced her before.”

  We watched the two of them for another moment.

  “The blue one will be fine. Is it the one that I rented?”

  Viktor thought for a moment.

  “I think it was. Did you like the way it handled? Fast enough for you?”

  I told him that it ran perfectly back then. I didn’t try to go very fast, but it went as fast as I needed it to go.

  “You can get it up to 60 miles an hour, but around here, you don’t need all that speed.”

  “I would be scared, I think, going that fast. But maybe when I get used to it.”

  “Maybe. Getting used to something new takes time. But you just keep at it. Then it becomes second nature.”

  “Sure. How much will it be? And when can I come to pick it up?”

  Viktor rubbed his chin, thinking. I could hear the rasp of his whiskered skin. He named a price, then said, “Friday. I’ll have it ready by Friday. New oil. Cleaned. Buffed. All the paperwork. Would that work for you?”

  “I’ll see you Friday, then.”

  As we walked away, from a half block away, Molly ran out onto the sidewalk and waved good-bye. Rufus turned as she did, making eye contact with the little black-haired girl.

  The Labor Day holiday meant a short week—except for the newspaper’s sportswriters. Guy Wilson and Todd Grossman were “as busy as two cats in a rocking chair factory.” That’s how Kistler Hibbs described them. Kistler Hibbs’s version made no sense and we all knew it, but it felt off-kilter yet deftly appropriate somehow. High school football had begun, and the Herald always did a feature on every local high school team in the county, complete with individual pictures of the players. I had nothing to do with any of it. And for that I was glad. As I mentioned before, sports is not my native language. I had been assigned to do a feature—a few weeks away—on how the wives of high school football coaches coped with the pressures of the game. I had been looking forward to that. It would be interesting.

  Friday afternoon, I excused myself early.

  Well, I didn’t actually ask if I could leave early. I had no deadlines, so I sort of got up, sidled out of the newsroom, and pretended to head to Starbucks down the street. Instead, I headed to my trusty Volvo, got in, and drove home.

  I would pick up my scooter today. In the back of my house stood a large shed, complete with a cement floor. It had white siding that matched the house, with a green door, so it wasn’t unattractive. I suspect that previous owners used it to store gardening equipment. Since I neither had any gardening equipment, nor planned on getting any, I could use it to store the scooter, out of the rain and out of sight. The shed had a large, very-secure-looking lock on it. No sense in tempting fate.

  I parked the car, and ran in to change into jeans. I didn’t think I had the élan to pull off riding a scooter in a skirt. I’m sure it could be done—just not done by me. I would hate to have it on my tombstone: “crashed while trying to hold her skirt down on a scooter.”

  The scooter store was only a few blocks away, so the walk would only take a few minutes. I planned on heading there by myself, but Rufus put up such a fuss, jumping and barking, actually barking loudly, and nosing at the door, that I relented finally, and took the leash off the peg in the back entryway. Once I had snapped on the leash, he settled down, as calm as a kitten.

  That doesn’t make sense either, as a metaphor. Kittens are not necessarily calm, are they? I think Kistler Hibbs and his nonsensical alliterations and metaphors had begun to corrupt my impeccable sensibilities.

  The day was fine, bright, warm, with only the slightest breeze to stir the leaves. If this was the beginning of autumn, I knew I would learn to love the winter here.

  My new scooter stood gleaming in the middle of the shop. Viktor must have waxed it, because it glistened in the sun. He greeted me with a warm “Hello.”

  I waved at him, then I asked him the question I had been meaning to ask him since the first time I saw him.

  “Why Viktor with a K? Is it a family name?”

  His pained yet cheerful smile indicated that it was not the first time he answered the question.

  “You’ll have to ask my parents. I did once and all my mother said is that she liked how it looked with K. I always thought it looked pretentious. I guess I could change it—but at this point in my life, I would have to relearn how to sign my name. And that seems like a lot of trouble.”

  I handed him the check—actually a cashier’s check. He didn’t ask for one, but I wanted to assure him that I had the money, and he wouldn’t have to call in the check to the bank or whatever people do to check checks these days.

  He handed me a thick packet. “Registration. Title. Owner’s manual. Service record. Bill of sale. Everything you need is in there.”

  Molly bounced out from the back of the shop.

  “Rufus,” she said, loudly, with great cheer. “You brought Rufus.” She hurried to his side, knelt down next to him, as before, and started petting him, just as gently and tenderly as she had done before.

  Then it dawned on me.

  “I don’t know what I could have been thinking. I can’t take the scooter now. I have Rufus with me.”

  Viktor realized it at the same time. “That’s right. I don’t think he would like the ride, would he?”

  “He would hate it. Well, I can walk him home, then come back. Will you still be open?”

  Viktor checked his watch.

  “Sure. But . . . you don’t have to do that. You take the scooter home. We’ll follow you to your house. I’ll take Rufus with us. It’s almost closing time anyhow.”

  “No. I couldn’t impose on you like that. You probably have to get home to dinner. Your wife will be worried.”

  Something dark crossed his face, just for a second, dark and foreboding.

  “No. No one will be waiting.”

  He must have seen the concern in my eyes, or anxiety, or whatever flashed in my mind. I would be horrible at poker.

  “My wife . . . I mean . . . she passed away four years ago. Molly’s sitter is a college girl and she’s gone back to school for the year. Molly doesn’t start school till next week, so she’s here with me.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Now I knew why all the people I told about my husband were silent.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally said, soft as I could. I don’t know if Molly was paying attention. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Viktor did not appear angry or upset or concerned—just resigned.

  “It’s okay. Really. It’s been four years.”

  We both were silent for a long moment. I could not tell you how long the silence lasted—even trying to remember it now. The time span is fuzzy, hazy, like a dense fog at the beach.

  I have to say something. I have to.

  “The same thing happened to me. Five years ago. My husband and my son. He was Molly’s age.”

  I looked over at the little black-haired girl and felt that tightness in my chest and the heat in my throat and the wetness in my eyes. I turned away and wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand. I hoped I did it so no one really noticed what I had done.

  “So . . . we both know how hard this can be, don’t we?” Viktor said, his words at a whisper, not because of sadness, but to keep them from his daughter.

  I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  Molly spun around and lay on her stomach, put her head in her hands, and peered up at Rufus. He lay down on his stomach and stared back at the small girl. Rufus never interacted that way with me.

  She was talking to him, her words only a whisper, her words only to be hea
rd by Rufus and Rufus alone. He would be trusted with her words and no one else.

  I sniffed loudly, then turned to him, with as big a smile as I could manage.

  “Are you okay to drive?” he asked.

  I sniffed again.

  “I am. This sort of moment is old hat. Hard for a second or two, then it passes.”

  “I know. You get better at it as time goes by. Like shifting gears, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly. Sometimes you have to do it in an instant. That’s when it’s hard.”

  We both looked at the dog and the girl, and then we looked at each other. Neither of us spoke for a while. Again, I don’t know how long we stared.

  “Here’s the key,” he said, breaking first.

  “I’ll drive slow. I live over on Robin. Halfway down the block.”

  “The little white Cape Cod with green shutters? The one that was just painted?”

  “Yes. I just moved here from near Chicago. Well, in April.”

  “I love that house. I’ve driven by it a couple of times. I like the picket fence.”

  I put the helmet on my head. I didn’t snap the chin strap. That made me look like I was wearing a deranged party hat. And I only lived a few blocks away.

  “Rufus, you will go with Molly and Viktor, okay? You’ll ride with them and they’ll take you to our house, okay?”

  I knew Rufus understood perfectly. He followed at Molly’s side, as they headed out to their red truck in the alley. Viktor pushed the scooter through the shop and outside for me. It started right away. I sat down and watched as Rufus slowly climbed up into the cab of the truck. Molly helped him at the last. It was a long stretch for a small dog, and Rufus could never really jump high. I heard the door slam, and I slowly pulled out and headed for the main street.

  I thought back to what Rufus said about being victorious. Is that what he meant?

  I dismissed it as crazy talk and made a long turn onto Robin, puttering along on my new scooter, happy. I pulled into my driveway and stopped at the back of the house. I switched off the engine, pulled the helmet off, then yanked the scooter up on its stand.