Velocities

by Kathe Koja

  • • •

  Outside there were two trucks, a black pickup so shiny it looked lacquered, and a crusty maroon SUV. Anne pulled behind the pickup, turned off the ignition, sat as the air conditioning faded and the car grew warm, then hot. On the seat beside her was a brand-new red leash and a red harness sized for a puppy. She left them there and headed for the kennels.

  Spotless cages, clean gleaming steel, sixteen cages and six adult dogs, no sign of the puppy. None of the dogs barked when she entered, but they all looked at her, bright black eyes, white-muff muzzles, toast-colored ears cocked to her footsteps.

  Kait? she called into that quiet, and like a cannon, like a row of cannons, the dogs began to bark, hoarsely, furiously, chest-deep booms to turn her on her heel, send her scurrying back outside like a felon—

  Hey there, wait! Hey!

  A man, older man in filthy jeans and a stained T-shirt, KAITLAND KENNELS in black, the woodcut campfire dog. White hair, no smile. Who’re you? Why you botherin’ my dogs?

  I’m looking for Kait, she said, breathless. I was here yesterday, and she— The puppy—

  What puppy?

  The puppy she gave me. He’s missing, he—

  What puppy? he said again as another man appeared, baggy shorts and a red tank top, leading a puppy on a frayed blue leash, and That’s him! she cried, dropping to her knees to reach for the puppy who wiggled joyfully under her touch, wagging his tiny tail. Oh thank God, I thought he was lost, I— He must have heard the dogs, he must have come back to find his mother—

  Both the men looked at her, then at each other. Ma’am, the man in the tank top said, I’m not sure what you mean. This is my dog.

  No, no, he’s mine, I brought him home yesterday. Her voice sounded high and tinny with relief, like helium. The pup’s fur was soft and plush under her fingers. But he ran away.

  The men looked at each other again, the white-haired man shook his head. You’re mistaken.

  No, you don’t understand! Ask Kait. She gave him to me, she even gave me that leash—

  You go on, the older man said, and the tank top man said, Thanks, Josh, and bent to scoop the puppy away, Anne reaching for him, crying, No, no, ask Kait, she’ll tell you! Until Missus, the older man said, sharp, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playin’ here but unless you got papers or a receipt you better—

  But Kait—

  —take it down the road.

  The tank top man tucked the puppy close to his chest, opened the pickup door. Come on, Sass, he said, quietly. Good girl, come on.

  Why are you doing this to me? Anne asked the man, expecting no answer; already she felt tears in her throat, tears of defeat, already she was turning back to her car, hot and unbearable, the little leash and harness on the seat. The dogs starting barking, six dogs sounding like sixty, watchdogs, as she flung the car into reverse and almost hit the SUV, flung it into drive—

  —and there in the kennel doorway, sunglasses and red sneakers, hair in a black braid, was Kait: grinning, was she grinning? or just showing her teeth? As Kait! Anne cried, and slammed the brakes so hard the airbag popped, punching her back in her seat; when she finally struggled free of the car, the girl had gone.

  • • •

  All set? the mail clerk asked, smiling his sympathetic beige smile. Got everything you need?

  Yes, Anne said. Thank you. From outside the impatient horn, Anne’s car but Lindsay drove it as if it were a rental. She had picked it up from the dealership in Stovepipe, towed there from the kennels, Anne weeping as she called AAA; the white-haired man had refused to speak to her, or even to let her wait inside, out of the sun. Kait never reappeared.

  Oh hey, the mail clerk said. I been meaning to ask, did you ever get that dog? From Kaitland Kennels?

  Yes, Anne said. Her chest still ached from the airbag, a hard, hollow feeling. But she—she died.

  Oh that’s a shame! I’m so sorry. Anne said nothing, staring at the counter, at her hands on the counter. Finally, Well have a good trip, then, anyway, the mail clerk said. Take care.

  Thank you, she said again, knowing it was not a trip, knowing she would not be back. You too.

  In the car Lindsay clicked the radio up a notch, some howling Tex-Mex harmony; the air swam with smoke. She tapped the green triangle hanging from the rearview mirror—tree-shaped air-freshener, fake pine reek—and Christ, Lindsay said, the whole car smells like dog, they’ll have to power-clean it before they can sell it. Anyway you won’t get much. No offense, but you look kind of terrible, Annie. What’s been happening in that mausoleum, anyway?

  Anne put on her sunglasses, new sunglasses, desert brown. Nothing, she said. On the way to the airport they had to pass Kaitland Kennels. The radio was much too loud for her to hear any barking. The campfire dog, she noticed, stared straight ahead at the road.

  ROAD TRIP

  “Look for a storefront,” the woman in the gas station tells you. Older woman, older than you anyway, yellow GO GATORS! T-shirt, skinny elbows planted on the counter and “Oaktree and Madison, it’s in a little strip mall, next to a Cigarette King. Says BCI on the window, but the louver-blinds are always shut.” Lights then puffs on her own cigarette, cigarette queen smiling at you through the smoke. She’s not going to say anything else, so there’s nothing to do but go back into daylight, strong sunlight and the heat of the car’s front seat, it’s cooking like an oven and it isn’t even noon. How can people live in a climate like this? Why did you even come?

  Okay. In a strip mall, Okay. Pass a drugstore, discount store, various restaurants (The Oasis, Redd Robbin’s), the Home Improvement Barn; trolling and craning through the traffic and the heat, through the secret crawl of sweat on your back, sour elixir of salt and light. The thickets of skepticism, the forests of desire, oh sure, as you trawl down Madison, looking for Oaktree, looking for a strip mall and BCI on the window, the louver-blinds are always shut, what for? So no one can see what they do in there? So no one can see you, doing what no rational person would or should do, committing the cardinal sin of stupidity and need? Gonna wade in the Jordan, wade in the Jordan, let the waters break over my head—

  —and there it is, Cigarette King, way over on the opposite side of the road so you have to pass it to turn around, pass it and keep going, your mind advises, the part that still can reason, the part ungripped by pain: the pain that never passes, that never wavers or abates, that wakes you dry-eyed in the night until you have to get out of bed and walk, walk, walk it down—because you can’t drink it down, not anymore, right? Even when you get out of rehab? Even when they give you back your car?

  Where are we going?

  Nowhere, baby. Just for a ride.

  —and the dog in the back seat, don’t forget the dog, tail wagging and—

  There’s a parking space right by the door, left just for you. The letters on the window are plain and nondescript, BCI, Before Christ Incorporated, Bullshit Created Inside, it can mean whatever you want it to mean, it can be whatever you need it to be, isn’t that what that woman had said? The herbalist, spiritualist, whatever the hell she was, she was Elizabeth’s idea but you were the one she spoke to: They’ll be able to help you, her hand warm on your arm, was she coming on to you or what? with Elizabeth right there, Elizabeth who could hardly bear to look at you, Elizabeth who was turning to stone right before your very eyes, so All right, you said, because there was nothing else you could say, nothing else to do but buy the goddamned plane ticket, take the time off from work and What will you tell them? in the bed, in the morning, her face turned like a bas-relief towards the window, gray skies and weeping rain. At work, I mean? How will you get the time off to—

  I already told them, you said, a lie meant to soothe her, the whole thing was meant to soothe her, wasn’t it? make her look at you, come back to you again? because without her there was nothing left and no one, nothing living but th
e pain, and so you lied and left, just another in a chain of lies laundered by noble intent, like sticking drug money in the poorbox, does that make it better? does it even matter? And why are you sitting out here like this, in the car, in the sun, in the fist of the heat? Are you stalling? Are you frightened? Of what?

  They’ll be able to help you, they who? but the spiritualist-herbalist had been less than precise about that: a healing group, she had called them, without specifying exactly what was done to whom and how this healing might be accomplished. Maybe just getting on the plane had done it, maybe you could turn around and go home right now, tell Elizabeth another lie, she must be used to them by now, right? It was wonderful, honey, I went right into the light—no, that’s what you do when you’re dead, right?

  Where are we going?

  Nowhere, baby. Just for a ride.

  Two women come out of the cigarette store, glance at you, keep walking: will they go into BCI, too? but instead they step into the dry cleaner’s, come out carrying suits, men’s suits dark in swathing plastic, suitable for funerals; Elizabeth wore white. Mass of the Angels. Who even believes this shit? Her? You? Anybody? Are you going to sit here all day?

  Go in. Go on.

  Air conditioning, a dry refrigerator smell; for a moment you just breathe in, cool air like a circulating gas, like anesthetic. Not a big space, but adequate: folding chairs stacked on a dolly, a card table with a phone and a CD player, posters on the walls, anonymous sunsets and waterfalls, nothing overtly religious, thank God and—

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice, it makes you jump: she sees, she smiles and “Hello,” again; she’s young, twenties maybe, slim and blonde, that pure white-blonde like Elizabeth, like—”Are you here for the service?”

  Yes.

  “You’re a little early,” kindly, “but that’s fine. Would you like to read some of our literature while you wait?”

  No; but you do, a hand stuck out automatically like on the street, flyers for this or that, save twenty percent, save the whales, save yourself, and the “literature” she gives you is as bland as the posters, just a lot of low-key new-ageish crap about the soul, restoring the soul, it could be an advertisement for a facelift or a spa . . . so maybe this won’t be so bad, you think, sitting back in the folding chair, maybe this won’t be much of anything and you can get right back in the rental car and head for the airport, maybe even get home tonight, home to lie beside Elizabeth and—

  “Sir? Could you—” from the blonde, smiling, struggling with the dolly’s release and Here, you say, hands atop hers on the catch, her hands are so small. Here, let me.

  As you help her free the chairs a small tone sounds—ping!—a digital doorbell and here come two more supplicants: a man your age and a very old woman, oxygen tether and terrible bright eyes; she gives you the once-over as you stand there with the blonde, and “Well hello,” the blonde says, “how are you?” as you keep setting out chairs, joined now by the old woman’s caretaker? son? until thirty chairs are lined in three neat rows.

  And all the while the door keeps pinging, people keep coming in, why so many people in the middle of a workday? Mostly women, mostly middle-aged but there are a few young ones, and even, most dreadfully, a couple of kids, a boy and a girl, but fortunately they’re both dark and fat and sullen, they sit kicking the backs of the chairs and each other as their mother? no, grandmother, keeps hissing at them to hush.

  “She started it, she—”

  “You hush!”

  And then the music begins, tinkling windchime piano, and “We welcome you all here,” says the blonde, in a louder, more professional voice. “We’re so glad you can be with us today. We’re going to start with a song, ‘Love is the Light We Follow’ ” and off they go, most of them seem to know the words; is this a radio-type song or church or what? You don’t sing, of course, you listen, listen because you can’t help it, because it keeps your mind off what you came here to do—

  —which is what? Ask forgiveness? weep healing tears? dump all your guilt like a steaming load of shit and float away redeemed? I wish I was dead, you said a hundred times to Elizabeth, said it as she held you and cried, said it until I wish you were too, with her hand over her eyes, mouth drawn down like a stroke victim’s; after that you never said it again but How do you think it is for me? you wanted to say, walking the floor with the pain, monster baby no one else could see, how’d you like to be in my shoes with nothing but memory for companion, nothing but the sun and the non-smell of vodka, the dog in the back seat wagging his tail, she wriggling in the booster seat because its straps were bugging her, making her fuss and whine so, You can be a big girl, you said, remember? Be a big girl up front with the seatbelt—which of course she loved, up front with Daddy, with the non-smell of vodka, with the dog in the back—

  barking and barking

  crying

  —and the scatter of bottle glass gleaming in the sun, bottle glass and safety glass and your teeth—remember?—your own teeth mixed up with the glass, and you were sorting through it, somehow thinking if you could find your teeth everything would be all right—

  —as “Love is the light we follow / Love is the dream we need / Love is the new tomorrow / Love is the flowering seed”—jesus who writes this crap? and look at them all singing along like it was Mozart, what are they here for anyway? And the laugh rises in your chest, black metastasizing laugh, because what would they do if you started shouting, calling it out like some mad MC, anybody here with cancer? How about MS? emphysema? leukemia? AIDS? What’s the matter with you, little girl, little dark girl with the big fat stomach, is it you or your brother or your grandma who needs help?

  “Let’s pray,” and it’s a new voice, a woman’s voice: sweet as honey and soft as smoke, a voice so compelling you crane your head to see her face: but she’s nondescript, fortyish, in oversized glasses, brown pageboy and brown blouse, with her mouth shut you’d never notice her at all.

  But “Let’s pray,” with such seductive power, such insistence that you let the woman on your right, one of the younger ones, take your hand as you reach for the person on your left, the man with the oxygen-mother, it feels strange to hold a man’s hand. The minister held your hand, remember? until you told him to stop, took your hand away, hugged it against your body as Elizabeth moaned—

  don’t touch me don’t touch me—

  “We ask for healing. We ask for solace. We ask for what is broken to be made whole,” says the woman with the voice, an incredibly sexy voice if you don’t look at the dumpy face, what would it be like to make love to a voice like that? and “We ask for healing,” the woman says again, so close now you start, is she talking to you? No, to the oxygen-woman, those bright bird-eyes closing as the woman takes her hands, bird-claw, liver-spotted hands, strokes and kisses them, ugh—but the old woman is crying, and the son is crying and “Be healed, Virginia,” the woman with the voice says, the words one long caress; how does she know her name? Are they repeat visitors, regulars? and does that mean whatever this is doesn’t work, you have to keep coming back? You’re not coming back. “You want to be healed, don’t you?”

  Simple as that, huh? as the old woman weeps, and coughs, the oxygen line trembling like a scuba diver’s, going deeper and deeper, but for you the disappointment is like a gust of clean air, is that all this is going to be? Just like watching a TV evangelist, just a lot of blow-dried histrionics, but what else did you expect? She’ll come to you next, take your hand, murmur some crap in that sexy voice and then you can—

  —but she passes you entirely, heads for the grandma and the kids, ah Christ it would have to be the kids, and “Praise Jesus,” says the grandma; if you turn your head a little—and you do—you can see her tears, too, long clear lines on that round, dark face. “Make him whole.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Shawn?” the woman asks the boy; and now that voice is a mother’s, a sweet teacher�
�s, the teacher you most want to please, and “I got asthma,” says the boy, his gaze all trust, his hand in hers. “I can’t breathe good when I play.”

  “What do you like to play?” as the song on the CD changes, something about going home, when I go home, and “Soccer,” says the boy. “Soccer and—”

  “Basketball,” the girl breaks in, not to be left out; she takes the woman’s other hand. “He don’t play very good, though. I always—”

  “Be healed, Shawn. You want to be healed, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” says the boy—and then screams, just like that, screams and bucks like he’s just been shot, and the grandmother cries out as if she felt the bullet too—and you jerk away from all of it, stumbling into the son next to you who stares at you like What’s your problem? as the boy shrieks again, a teakettle cry that sinks to a wheeze then becomes a whimper; but now he’s smiling, the grandmother is smiling, the girl stares avidly at them both, and “Better,” says the woman with the voice; it’s not at all a question; she knows. “Better now.”

  And then it’s onto the next one, and the next and the next: younger woman touching her breast, older woman with crippled hands, an old man with “cancer liver,” he says, with a deaf man’s flat high volume, “I got cancer liver,” and “You want to be healed?” she asks them all, as if she’s checking it out with them first, making sure, sharp salesperson bringing the mark in on the sale, which is what you want to think, what you do think—except for that smell in the air, a definite smell like thunderstorms, ozone, except for the little boy, Shawn, whose eyes are glowing, he keeps taking deep breaths and letting them out, in and out, and two steps from you the old lady with the oxygen tether has slipped it from her nose, a woman in a faded blue tube top is saying, “I can feel it! I can feel it!” to the fat friend beside her who’s clutching her arm; everything stinks of ozone and there’s sweat on the back of your neck, sweat though the room is chilly, sweat though you don’t believe because this is not real, this is not real, who does she think she is anyway? Billy Graham? Jesus Christ? because some things just can’t be healed, no matter what she says in that seductress voice, no matter what you or Elizabeth or anyone else may want or long or pray for: because time runs only forward, life runs into death and stops, stops like a brick wall crumbling from the impact, stops like a body flung into the air—