They were still asleep when Charley Boyd called from the shelter. “I think I know who shot your dog,” he said. “I found the collar in his truck, shot right through. I told Little Sugar, the girl who works here. I guess she can be trusted. We are keeping this strictly under our hats. I need to see the dog to see if the collar fits. How’s she doing?”
“He’s a male dog. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. Look, I can’t leave here. Will you drive down here and let me try it on him?”
“I don’t want to bring him in. Not that it isn’t nice. It’s the best-run shelter I’ve ever seen. I just don’t want to upset him.”
“Okay. Stay in the car. I’ll be watching for you. I’ll come out. When will you come?”
“Right away. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” William got up and stretched his arms. Then he went into the kitchen and took all the pills at once. Then he drank a glass of Gatorade, then he ate a piece of bread. Then he started his breathing exercises and he kept them up while he loaded Dan in the car and drove down to the shelter. Charley came running out and they fit the collar around Dan’s neck. It was a perfect fit. “He said he lost the dog three days ago. Then he said he lost it two weeks ago. He said he was off working and left the dog with the neighbors. I called his boss. They said he’s only worked three days in the last two weeks. So, what do you want to do? Press charges? Sue for custody? Or just lay low and let it pass? He’s just trying to make an alibi so no one will know he shot the dog.”
“I don’t want any commotion. I just want to live a quiet life.”
“What do you do for a living?” Charley waited. “I forgot what you said you did.”
“I’m studying the intelligence of animals,” William answered. The chemicals were starting to work on the lining of his stomach. It was time to smother them in some pasta. “I need to go eat dinner, Charley. Thank you for doing all this for Dan.” He suspects, William decided. I’m too thin. Too little hair. Too sad. He suspects.
But he does not know. William smiled his best smile. The smile that had won him rooms full of good-looking men in the days when that sort of thing was still in play. Men so handsome and polished and refined and accomplished they would never notice that Charley Boyd even existed. “You are a real human being, Charley. You saved this dog from death. You should be proud of that every day in your life. And you made me happy because I like having him in my home. He’s a spectacular dog. He’s one of the best dogs I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s not the first one I saved.” Charley was beaming. He backed out of William’s car and came around and stood by the open window. “We’ll just keep all this under our hats and see what develops. How about that?”
“You did what?” Sally Sue was saying. “You lost my dog. You let my dog run away. He wouldn’t run away. He never ran away a single time in his life. You gave him away or took him somewhere. You’re not fooling me, Copey.”
“Let me talk to the kids.”
“No. I’m not going to. Get a court order if you want. I’m not letting them even remember what you did to the twins. If they talk to you, they’ll think about it.”
“Jesus Christ, Sally Sue. You’ve gone nuts down there in Kentucky. This is me, Copey Culp. Your husband. The one that’s been sweating every day for years to earn your board and keep.”
“You better find that dog, Copey,” Sally Sue said. “Bobby’s stuttering. That’s what you did to him. We’re having to take him to Nashville to a doctor. You made him stutter, Copey. You’re not getting within a mile of him. Arthur will kill you if you come down here. You’d better start believing that.”
Copey hung up the phone and decided to go down to the pool hall and shoot some pool. If he was going to be a bachelor he might as well start enjoying a bachelor’s life. The pool hall in Harrisburg is next door to the old ice cream parlor, now a new ice cream parlor specializing in frozen yogurt and shaved-ice cones. Usually only people who had lived in Harrisburg all their lives patronized the old shops off the square, but William had discovered them on one of his walks with Dan and that’s where he was headed now.
Copey parked the truck by the courthouse and got out and started tucking in his shirt. Dan spotted him half a block away. Dan didn’t hold Copey responsible for the shot. Copey had been there but there was nothing in the shock of the gun that had a direct relation to Copey. Copey had never been good to him but he had never done anything more threatening than throw him out of the house and once into a lake. Dan was glad to see Copey. It reminded him of Sally Sue and the kids and the way they would roll around the floor with him. Dan moved a few feet in front of William, something he never did unless William said, Away.
William watched Copey. Everything about Copey spelled trouble. I don’t like it, William decided and turned and began to walk back the way that he had come. But Copey had seen them now. Had seen the dog with its limp and its neck pressed to one side for eternity. He was putting it together but William turned and walked away and Dan went with him. In three minutes they were out of sight.
I must be wrong, Copey thought. No dog could have lived through that. But he wasn’t there. There wasn’t a bone. The collar was there and the dog was not. That fellow could have found him. It could happen. It might.
Copey went into the pool hall and bought a beer and found an old acquaintance and they began to shoot some pool. It worried him. Like a rock in his shoe. He kept seeing that dog start toward him and the man turn around and the two of them walking away. The thin man and the lopsided dog walking off down East Street as if they knew where they were going. “Who’s this Charley Boyd guy who’s running the pound now?” Copey asked. “Where’d he come from? I went down there to report my lost dog and he wasn’t much help. Acted like he had some kind of attitude.”
“The what?” his friend asked. “Runs what? Talk up, Copey, so I can understand what you’re saying.”
William had decided upon a plan. Get up at six, walk Dan for fifty minutes. Come home, eat breakfast, teach Dan language for an hour, then take the worst six pills and ride it out until noon. Then do exercises with weights, then read all afternoon. Eat, take the rest of the medications. By nine at night he’d be feeling good enough to work until midnight. William had sent for his cameras. He was photographing Dan learning things. It will be a book, William decided. A beautiful book called The Wonder Dog, no, The Survivor. With a photograph of a gun somewhere. Just a gun lying in the woods, broken. A shell beside it. No, don’t get fancy.
He reached down, found the dog’s head, began to massage the scalp and neck. “So far we are learning my language,” he told the dog. “When we are finished with forty words, or phrases, I will begin to learn yours. I am learning it right now. There, there it is, the muscle we want to stretch. Yes, an accident occurred and changed your life. One changed mine. We have no choice. We can live or die. It’s our only choice. This is all there is. This is all we have. It is a lot, Angel. You will teach me your joy at walking down across the fields, your joy at sun, your joy at squirrels, your joy at food. I was the cutest thing that ever walked into a bar on Chartres Street. You ask them. I had this baby blue silk shirt I used to tuck into my chinos. No socks. And this virus used our fun to invade our bodies. So what? So the fuck what?” William was crying now. Massaging the dog’s neck and crying hard hot tears into his fur.
The phone was ringing. It was Charley Boyd. “I’ve been working on this case,” he said. “Can I come over and talk to you about it?”
“When do you want to come?”
“How about noon?”
“Sure. Fine. Come on.” William got up and began to straighten the house. Not that it was messy in any way. But he wanted it perfect. He looked at the clock and revised his medication schedule. He took the two most important ones and drank eight ounces of papaya juice and took Dan out and walked it off.
By noon he was waiting, wearing a blue and white checked shirt he had bought in Paris and enough makeup to cover the brea
king out on his forehead. Dan had been brushed and combed and was waiting by the door. “We are expecting a guest,” William said to him. “You will be the first dog in town to have that in your vocabulary.”
Charley figured out that William was gay as soon as he was seated. No straight man could make a house look this good. Well, that just convinced Charley he should be in school so he could join the district attorney’s office.
“I’ve been asking around town and I found out about this guy I think shot him. His name’s Copey Culp and the tag is in his name. We’ve got him nailed. The point is, what do we do about it? His wife left him and went to Kentucky. It was the kids’ dog. We might prosecute Copey but the wife might want the dog back. I’ve got to tell the police but I thought I ought to talk to you first. I know you’re real attached to him.”
“Let’s call his wife and ask her about it. If she left him, she’s probably mad at him. You don’t think she shot him, do you?”
“No, she left about the same time it happened. I don’t know if we can find her without the police getting in on it.”
“I can find her. I have a friend who can find anyone. What’s her name?”
“Sally Sue Anderson was her name. Now Sally Sue Culp. She’s in Kentucky with her folks. I know a girl who knows her. She isn’t sure but she thinks the town is Lexington.”
William got on the phone. He called the library at the University of Illinois and spoke to his friend. In ten minutes he had Sally Sue’s parents’ name and was talking to Sally Sue on the phone.
“I hate to say this,” he told her, “but we think your husband shot your dog. Is that possible?”
“My God. Of course. That’s why he won’t bring it here. He shot Dan?”
“Dan’s okay. We got him fixed up. You called him Dan?”
“It was already his name. I got him from a guy in the movies. He’s a very valuable dog. He was raised by Elizabeth Taylor. His father is owned by Michael Jackson. Well, we aren’t sure of that. He’s the best dog I ever saw in my life. Copey shot him?”
“We’re pretty sure he did. Do you want him back? I hope not, because we’re nursing him. His muscle is still not well. He’s going to limp. Listen, Mrs. Culp. I think you better talk to Charley Boyd. He’s the one who runs the animal shelter. I’m giving him the phone.”
Charley got on the phone and talked to her and told her the rest of what they knew. “Put the guy back on. The one who has him,” she said.
“Mr. Hagedorn?” she began. “I’m at my mom’s with four kids. I couldn’t take him now even if he wasn’t hurt. I have to start work next week in Nashville. It’s a two-hour commute. So if you want to keep him awhile, you can. I want to tell you about how I got him sometime. Did you ever see that movie called Jesse’s Girl? That was the movie. This guy who drove the truck with the dead horses for battle scenes was the one who had him. When he was in Hollywood he delivered newspapers to movie stars. There’s a long history in that dog.”
“I’ll call you every Sunday and let you know how he’s getting along.”
“I’m going to have someone shoot Copey, is what I’m going to do,” she added. “Every Sunday afternoon go shoot Copey, is what you can do for me.”
“Let me talk to her,” Charley said. “We need some papers on this.”
Much later that night William lay in his bed looking out the window at the spring stars. Dan was on top of the covers, his head on William’s leg. The window was open. It was a nice night for that time of year, warmer than it should be. The nausea was coming and going but William had decided to just accept it and try to put his mind in the stars. “I’d like to get some shots of you at night,” he was saying. “Just a shadow against the sky. Or maybe on a rise like a wolf. Oh, you don’t like that? You reject your ancestry? All right. No wolf photographs then.” The wave of nausea passed and William began to fall asleep. His brain shut the doors to Hades and began to open upon some scenes a man could bear to watch. Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson at Neverland on a sunny day. A litter of puppies. Elizabeth falls to her knees and begins to cuddle the puppies against her breasts. She is wearing a pale pink cashmere sweater. Michael kneels beside her. He is wearing a uniform with epaulets. He takes off the jacket and puts it beside the puppies. Dan crawls over and lies down upon the silken lining of the jacket. Michael and Elizabeth begin to laugh.
Dan moved his big warm body closer to William’s legs. He heard the earth’s core and the blood coursing through William’s veins and the distant call of a mourning dove. It was dark and warm in the room and he was safe. He closed his eyes and saw a line of newspapers on a sunny street. They were waiting for him. When he woke he would deliver them to their people.
An Ancient Rain Forest, or, Anything for Art
We were stuffed into the MG for four hours. The prize-winning poet, the Mormon she had vowed to save, and myself, a would-be poet trying to get away from my family. It was my dream come true. Being near the poet Simone Travist. Getting to talk to her about poetry, maybe even getting her to say she liked my poems. I had decided to become a poet after reading Simone’s poems. She spoke to the soul within my soul. She had looked inside my head and said the things I never dared to say. Now, unbelievable as it might seem, I was in the back of a borrowed MG on the way to tour the rain forest with my idol.
An ancient rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula, the last one of its kind in the world. Then, at the last minute, Simone had invited the Mormon to come along on the trip. “Just think, Rhoda,” she said to me. “It’s our chance to save thousands of women. This Mormon is very influential in Salt Lake City. She is a direct descendant of Joseph Smith. If we free her, she will free others. I dreamed of it last night. Thousands of women in a burning barn and we saved them.”
“I was in your dream?”
“You were indeed. You were an integral part of my dream. I’m going to turn the dream into a poem. You will be in it. I might even use your name.”
“My God. I’m honored. I don’t know what to say.”
So now the Mormon was riding shotgun and I was stuffed into the small backseat. Simone was lecturing as she drove. “We love men. We aren’t saying that men aren’t nice or good to screw. Many of them are well intentioned, gentle, hardworking, and kind. But we still have a right not to be subservient to them. We are tired of always being the ones to run houses. It’s boring work, repetitious. Women have other drives and talents and ambitions. They need to exercise those drives. They need to have a life outside the home. Abortion is about young girls finding out their full personalities before they are stuck in a rut being mothers. It’s about timing.”
“I’ve had two abortions,” I lied. “I have three children and I had two abortions and I’m as happy as I can be. What’s the big fuss about? It’s just a piece of tissue. No different than using a rubber.”
“Well.” Simone set her lips into a line. Only the night before she had told me about her abortion. Now, just because the Mormon was here, she was acting like I’d said too much, stepped over a line.
I hated the Mormon. I wanted to shock her. I wanted to throw her out of the car so I could talk to Simone about my poems.
The Mormon’s name was Mary Anne. She had told us about her ancestors having three wives and how much the children hated each other. She had told us about her years running a halfway house for girls who got in trouble. She told us how they cried for the babies who were taken from them whether they liked it or not. She told us about the girls who came back year after year begging for information about their babies. It was this recurring heartbreak that had caused her to sign up for the writing conference and travel to Washington State to meet Simone and talk to her.
“You can have a great influence on the women of your place,” Simone was saying. “Think what an opportunity you have. Joseph Smith was the spiritual leader of the group. Anything you say will be listened to. Anything you do will be noticed.”
“My husband was for me coming,” Mary Anne said. “He w
asn’t born into the Faith. His family only joined when he was twelve. He’s not as hot on it as he once was. We have to give them so much money. We have to pay tithing.”
“Would he renounce it? Is there enough money to live in another state?”
“Oh, not renounce it. I’m a Mormon. I believe in it. Not the old ways, but the new ways.”
“I’m an atheist,” I said from the backseat. If you can call a place designed to keep luggage a seat. “I’ve been an atheist from the day I was born. One religion is as bad as another. They’re all about control. Control, control, control. For God’s sake, Simone. I’m about to die back here. Can we stop and let me walk around?”
“I could take a turn back there,” Mary Anne offered.
“You wouldn’t fit,” I answered, and it was true. She weighed about a hundred and fifty and was five feet eight inches tall.
“I would get back there if my back would let me,” Simone said, but of course I couldn’t let her do that. After all, she was sixty years old, although she looked and acted like a girl. I struggled to bring my legs into a different position. We were on a two-lane blacktop road surrounded by tall trees. We were in the middle of nowhere.
“Well, for Christ’s sake, stop.”
Simone brought the MG to a stop at a wide place in the road and we all got out and stood by the car. “How can you believe that crap?” I asked, shaking out my legs, tucking my plaid shirt into my jeans. I had been starving for weeks before flying to Washington State to meet Simone at the conference. I was as thin as I get. I loved it. Being able to stuff a plaid shirt into blue jeans and still look good. I wasn’t having much fun at the conference, but at least Simone had been reading my poetry. At least I had finally met some real writers even if they did turn out to have feet of clay.
The Courts of Love Page 28