"I didn't know you were published, Uncle Tim," Dean tried, sounding ingratiating even to himself. Frankly, he felt as unsettled as the old Victorian manse. Dean Vogel had never been the type to sit in silence with another person, content to occupy the same space without filling it with so much pointless chatter. But the words Baswell required of him... he wasn't ready speak. He wasn't sure he'd ever be ready.
Dr. Baswell raised his eyebrows as if to reply—Here it comes, Dean thought—then, unsurprisingly, said nothing.
Dean cracked his neck around, craning to look at the ceiling, the mottled, fractured yellow-brown of water stains. It reminded him of a warning image on a cigarette pack of the inside of a smoker's lung.
Strange objects occupied shelves and tables, along the same lines as the prezzies Dean had been given as a child. Prezzies—there was a strange expression. Like baby-talk. Seemingly out of character for Baswell, and an English phrase, too, though Dean was sure his dad had said the man was Scottish. In one bottle, a ship with torn and tattered sails stood against a painted background of a raging sea; in another, a pig or sheep (dog?) fetus floated in a viscous yellow liquid. A small replica cannon, made out of lead by the look, lay between them. Another shelf was dedicated to medical antiques: astringents and snake oils and rusted tools, and a white model head with dotted lines like cuts of meat, the inscription PHRENOLOGY by L. N. Fowler on its base. Dean finally settled his gaze on an old glass-framed map placed prominently at the end of the sofa, its sketches of bearded mariners, monsters, and cherubs creating the winds from their breath, along with many legends in florid script, such as HERE BE DRAGONS.
He stretched out his legs. The calves were sore. Calf—it's a calf fetus, he thought, looking at the jar. While he stretched, he stared at the map, following the contours of the land with his eyes, as they'd once followed along the ground from the backseat of the Vogel family Volkswagen when he was a boy, imagining himself out there, running alongside the car. The threaded texture of the paper (or was it cloth?), the torn corners, as if it had been well-used. But more and more his eyes returned to those words, and the creatures surrounding them in the water.
HERE BE DRAGONS.
A crack in the ocean floor.
Uncharted waters.
Is that supposed to be a metaphor? he wondered, and then gave Dr. Baswell an anxious look, suddenly certain he'd spoken the words aloud. The psychologist made no indication anything had been said, only sat there, fingers tented, the left—sinister—leg crossed over the right. Breathing. Watching.
HERE BE DRAGONS.
Beware of dog.
Beware of Doc.
Dean laughed aloud. Dr. Baswell rose a challenging eyebrow, yet remained silent.
Beethoven's 9th nearly made Dean jump from his chair. He settled back, gripping the armrests. The old clock chimed off two, and as Dr. Baswell rose from his chair, smiling now, Dean breathed a sigh of relief. The hour had passed. His hand was hugged. "Will I see you next week, Dean?"
"That's it?"
Baswell twitched his head to the side, bushy eyebrows raised as if to say, You expected more? He gave Dean a small, somewhat apologetic smile from one corner of his mouth. "That's it."
Dean stood, feeling confused. "You know, if I was paying for this, I'd be pretty peed-off right now."
"Then be glad you're not paying," Dr. Baswell said. "Next week?"
Dean shrugged. "Sure. I mean, what the heck, right?"
He had no intention of returning. That he showed up on Uncle Tim's front porch the following Wednesday, and would make a serious breakthrough only four weeks into his weekly sessions, came as a surprise to them both.
HE SAW HER on the Monday following: Catherine Priest, his first, and longest, crush.
She was at the checkout in the IGA, not in front of the counter, as he might have expected, but behind it, bagging groceries for an elderly woman. Of all the people from Dark Pines Elementary he'd expected to grow up and leave this town, Catherine Priest had been the most likely in his eyes. Yet here she was, a checkout clerk at the Hometown Proud, asking for a price check on Fancy Feast.
Dean spotted her the moment he stepped in, and stopped in the doorway, staring. She looked exactly the same, save a few streaks of gray in her auburn hair, the fine lines around her eyes and bracketing her smile. Aside from the braces he'd last seen her wearing, with their springy elastics, making her suck the occasional bit of spittle from the sides of her mouth, the smile was exactly how he remembered it. More memories drifted in on a warm, fragrant breeze from the flower counter: watching her tuck her hair behind her ear to take a drink from the water fountain; following half a block or so behind her on the way to school, willing himself to catch up to her and say something, yet never daring; sitting with her on the Ferris Wheel at the Spring Fair at her behest when they were 13, Catherine stealing out to take his hand as they neared the summit, and when the ride stopped for a breathtaking minute, overlooking all the lighted streets and homes of Dark Pines, she had planted a kiss on his cheek—and young, shy Dean had stolen away, his cheeks flushed, once they'd gotten safely back down to earth.
No wonder I tried so hard to forget this place, he thought. Everything here reminds me of how much of a doofus I was.
And Pat Cleary. Don't forget about him.
"'Scuse me, bucko," came an old man's voice, startling him from his self-pity. He stepped aside to let the man shuffle on his wheeled rocker into the store. Dean couldn't bring himself to follow.
What had he come in here for again, anyway? Eggs, milk, cereal, canned gravy, liquid Drano... He could get those things anywhere.
And just walk out of here with my tail between my legs? Sack up, Dean.
He stepped through the turnstile, watching Catherine smile and wave at the departing elderly lady. Then she was turning toward him, and Dean's heart picked up a beat. Before he could stop himself, he was slipping down an aisle behind a tower of toilet paper, one hand squeezing the Charmin as he peered around it.
Now what? Keep on avoiding her until she goes on break? This is ridiculous.
Aggravating was what it was. It wasn't like he couldn't talk to women; he'd slept with maybe two dozen since he'd left behind that painfully shy boy he'd been in Dark Pines. It was girls Dean could never talk to, and despite being in her 30s like himself, looking at the adult Catherine brought back the girl she'd been with total clarity. The boy had never been far behind her.
I've regressed. Won't Uncle Tim be proud?
He looked around himself: cleaning supplies, paper towels, light bulbs, mops and deodorizers. At the far end, the shelves opened up on the meat section. At least he was in the right aisle.
HERE BE DRANO.
"Can I help you with something, sir?"
Dean spun on the soles of his sneakers—squikkk!
And there she was. Somehow she'd gotten behind him without him hearing her, was standing less than two feet away, looking up at him with her dazzling green eyes and warm smile. She'd tied her hair back with a Kelly green scrunchie, just like the ones she used to wear when they were kids. Dean's breath caught—
"D-Drano?" he stuttered.
For a moment, it didn't seem as if Catherine had bought his cover: she stared into his eyes, her smile never faltering. Finally, she gave a slight, skeptical squint and said, "Drano? It's right there down the aisle." She pointed toward it, fingers so pale and slender, just as they'd been when they were children, when she'd taken his hand in hers, the nails perfectly plain.
"Thanks," Dean said, and since he'd stumbled into a plan of action, he carried it out. If he'd been able to continue doing so in the military, he wouldn't be where he was now: unemployed, living with his parents, seeing a shrink, and running away from old friends in the cleaning aisle at the local grocery store. He slunk past plush walls of paper towels, and rows of particolored detergents and bathroom deodorizers, shoulders slumping the further he walked from her.
"Dean Vogel!" came an excited male voice in front of
him, followed by a hearty chuckle he seemed to vaguely recognize.
From behind him, he expected Catherine to say, "Dean? My Dean Vogel?" As he approached the balding, short and stocky man, the woman he'd left behind said nothing in return. He chanced a glance over his shoulder, and saw she had gone back to her post. She'd probably only come over because she'd seen him from the corner of her eye and thought he might be trouble—or in it.
Am I in trouble? Who the hell is this loser, anyway?
The man in the gray three-piece suit laughed, jittery and somewhat mischievous, Woody Woodpeckereqsue, and Dean remembered the laugh immediately. Under the fat, the patchy stubble and male pattern-baldness, where once there had been a thick mound of shaggy black hair, the face was unmistakable.
Dean let out a despairing sigh. "Eugene Evans."
"Gene. But yeah, hey! How the hell are you, man?" He approached, extending a small, manicured hand. Eugene Evans had been a hotheaded little shit in Dark Pines Elementary. Not only had he and Dean not been friends, Eugene had once tried—
But that was then. Now, here, Gene Evans was trying for friendly. But where there was Eugene, Patrick and Joel had never been far behind... until the day it had happened, when everything had changed.
Remember the dog, Dean-o? Holy Jesus, you remember, don't you? Out back of Catherine's old house.
Dean forced himself to stick out a hand. Gene Evans squeezed it with all the might his homunculus fingers could muster. "I see they've got you pushing pencils," he said in a passable Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. Dean remembered that Eugene used to quote Arnie movies just about all the time, shouting out "get your ass to Mars!" in the halls at school, or when he got really mad half-joking about how was going to kill you last, while always calling you "Sully." If he liked you, he'd tell you to stick with him "if you vant to live." This quote about pencils was from Predator, the expectation being that Dean should play along, voicing a quote from the same movie, or another. But since Eugene had spoiled his chance encounter with Catherine Priest—at least that was how Dean would remember it, with any luck—he wasn't in the mood to play.
"Yeah, hey, Gene. How are ya?"
Gene froze, unable to comprehend the breach of protocol, incapable of computing the next conversational path, like a T-1000 model Terminator that hadn't been fully programmed. Then he shook his head slightly and said, "I always knew—" and his voice shifted back to Arnie's— "you'd be bach!"
Dean faked a chuckle, irritated that Eugene Evans, who'd helped while Joel Suskin and Patrick Cleary had tried to kill him outside Catherine Priest's house on a brisk winter morning in 1992, was not only being friendly, but had the balls to voice assumptions about Dean's ability to leave Dark Pines and stay gone.
"Yeah, well, you know me," he said.
Gene searched Dean's eyes, trying to decipher the emotion behind it. "Man, we should totally catch up, have a drink or two. Come out to the coast, have a few laughs, am I right?" He laughed himself, as if to demonstrate.
"Isn't that Bruce Willis?"
Gene's mouth opened. He wriggled his head around uncomfortably. "So listen, I really gotta run, it was great to see you," with a hand on Dean's arm, "but I gotta say, before I go..." Gene glanced around nervously. "Patty Cleary knows you're in town. He called me up out of the blue a couple nights ago—drunk as shit, of course. I haven't talked to that guy since... well, you know. And he calls me up like we're still good buddies. He woke up my kids."
"What did he want, Eugene?"
Gene's lips tightened at the sound of his full name. "He wants to kill you, Dean. Still. I mean, do you fucking believe that? The guy's living in the fuck—" The elderly man shuffled up alongside him, reached for the paper towels, gave them a squeeze, and moved on without them. Gene kept his voice hushed. "He's living in the past. He's obsessed with that—" His eyes widened (In fright? Dean wondered), and he swallowed something acrid. "I'm real sorry about what went down that day, man. We were just dumb little kids, Joel and me. But Patrick..."
"Water under the bridge," Dean said.
"Seriously?" He seemed genuinely pleased—and why wouldn't he? He'd just been forgiven attempted murder.
"Seriously."
"Gee, that's—that's just great, Dean. Dean-o." A goofy smile spread across his fleshy face and he patted Dean's arm again twice, excitedly. "I'm serious about that drink, too. Look me up." He began to move away, thought better of it. He held Dean's gaze in his beady little eyes. "And be careful, man. That Patrick... he's an animal." His eyes bugged out of his head again, he let out a jumpy laugh—almost a cackle—and scurried off toward the checkouts.
Catherine had disappeared by the time Dean reached the counter with his groceries—off on break according to her replacement, a bored teenage girl with smiley faces painted on her nails. It took some time shopping to build up his courage to finally talk to her—telling himself he wasn't that shy little kid anymore, that he'd popped his cherry a long time ago, he was a goddamn man and he'd been to war, for fuck's sake—only to miss her by seconds.
An invite to his middle school reunion was among the mail on the kitchen table when he returned home with the groceries. "'You are cordially invited,'" he said, smirking. Like it was a wedding. He wondered if Patrick Cleary would show his face. It could give him a chance to talk to Catherine, but with all the bad memories, Dean wasn't sure he'd even go.
The telephone began to ring. Dean threw the invitation into the trash and answered the call.
"YOU KNOW, SOMEONE called me the other day about a dog program."
Second session. Dean had discovered the way to progress through these hours more quickly was to talk. At the very least, it seemed to engage Dr. Baswell. The man sitting across from him was still nothing like the ersatz uncle from Dean's childhood: the adventurer who'd regaled him with tales of camel herds crossing the desert, of giant mosquitos on the Amazon River, of men who'd had very little contact with the Western world and still wore khakis, smoked cigarettes and brandished AK-47s. He wasn't that Tim Baswell, but at least this man seemed human.
"A—dog program? Oh. A comfort animal."
"Yeah. They give you this dog to care for. It's supposed to help keep your mind occupied, give you something to take care of, to feed and love. I guess."
"And you said...?"
"I don't like dogs. That's what I said."
Dr. Baswell seemed to find this interesting. He scratched in his pad. Dean had heard many therapists didn't like to use pads these days, that it distracted the patient—or client, in Baswell's case. If Baswell thought it might hinder Dean's progress, it didn't show.
"What's that you're writing," Dean wondered aloud.
"I'm not writing, Dean."
Dean pushed up in his chair. "Looks like a whole lot of chicken scratching to me," he said with a teasing grin.
Baswell didn't reply, just kept scratching away with his pen on the paper. Dean sat back, irked. His eyes fell on the map. HERE BE—
He looked away in spite. You're not gonna trigger some fucking revelation by ignoring me, Uncle Tim.
After nearly a minute, Beethoven's clock ticking off the seconds, Baswell gave a pleased little smile and turned the pad to face his client. Dean thought about turning away from it, about not giving Baswell the satisfaction, but he knew Baswell would see the action as childish. Regressive. He'd had enough of that for one week. He turned to look.
Baswell hadn't been writing, after all. He'd been drawing. "What is that?"
"It's you. As a miniature schnauzer."
Surprised, Dean snorted a laugh. "You serious?" He stood and crossed to where Baswell was seated, took the pad from the man when it was offered. It was actually a pretty good likeness—the eyes were right, the hair he wore slicked back and parted down the left side, but the rest was all schnauzer. With the floppy ears, the long, smooth beard and mutton chops, he looked a bit like some crotchety old Scotsman. Duff McGruff, or something.
"That's pretty good," he said, returning to
his seat. "Though, you know, I woulda drawn myself as a German Shepherd." The leather grumbled as he sat.
Dr. Baswell gave the sketch a look, shrugged slightly, then returned the pad to his desk. "What made you bring that up?"
"What?"
"About the dog program?"
"Huh? Oh. It was just weird, that's all."
"How so?"
"Like, how did they get my number?"
"I suspect they were contacted by the Armed Forces, as I'd been."
Dean nodded. "Yeah, that—you might be right. I never thought of that. Anyway, that's not what's weird. I saw Catherine the other day."
"Catherine?"
"This girl I loved, growing up. Stood her up on a pedestal."
"Unrequited?"
"Big time. You don't make out with the Venus de Milo, right? She just stands there, being perfect."
"Venus?"
"Catherine."
"And this has to do with—"
"I'm getting there. So, I get home from the grocery store—that's where I saw her, Catherine—and the telephone's ringing in the house. Mom and Dad are out toodling in the garden. That's something they do now: toodling. Everything's a toodle. So I throw the groceries down on the counter and grab the phone." Dean sucked in a big gulp of air. In his rush to get the story out, he'd forgotten to breathe. He'd also forgotten about the invitation.
"Take your time, Dean."
"Thanks. So I pick up the phone and it's that dog program, asking me do I want a comfort dog. I was so startled, I didn't even think about it. I told them I don't like dogs and I hung up. I like dogs, I was just freaked out they'd called right then. It's like, you know when you think about a song and it's the next thing on the radio? Like Synchronicity."
"You know Jung?" Uncle Tim, drawn out for a moment, smiled.
"Jung—oh... Actually, I meant the Police song. I was singing it in my head the day I came back home, and when I turned on my old boombox—couldn't believe the thing still worked, even with the batteries all gummed up like they were—there's Synchronicity in the tape deck, with 'Synchronicity I' sittin' on pause for fifteen years. But sure, Jung's good, too."
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