One Good Dog (12 page)

But for now, the storm kept us squeezed into the tunnel, our body heat protecting us all from the cold, which made the fat Labs a welcome addition for a while. A bite of snow, a quick pee, and we rearranged ourselves to snooze the day away.

My mentor lay back-to-back with me. Out of mild curiosity, I asked him where his man was.

I don’t know.

So he just wandered off?

I think he might have been captured.

By the men?

He went into a building and never came out.

The food building?

No, one he’s never gone into before. We’re not welcome in any building; that’s why we stay outside. Buildings aren’t for us. Besides, we might be captured if we go into a building. You should remember that, stay out of buildings unless they are empty.

I was surprised then to hear my mentor whine, a plaintive, lonely sound evocative of worry.

I don’t know where he is.

You’ll find him. After the storm.

He’s gone.

As I said, dogs are existentialists. We don’t understand the concepts of past or future. My mentor’s man might have been gone six days or three hours. In any event, my mentor was uncharacteristically mournful. I rolled over, aligning my back with his for his warmth. But all through the storm, I could feel him shuddering with anxiety.

By the time Adam makes it to the stoop of the center, he feels as though he is Shackleton reaching his destination. He half-expects seal stew on the menu today. Mike is outside, flailing impotently with a broom against the rising drifts on the steps. He looks at Adam, the angry psoriasis on his face rubbed red in the cold, but he’s smiling, the first time Adam has ever warranted a greeting from the notoriously silent man. “Welcome to Fort Street.”

“Thanks, Mike. How’d you get here?”

“I never left.”

“Wish I’d thought of that.” Adam claps a hand on Mike’s thickly padded shoulder and goes in.

There are more men in here than Adam has ever seen. Although lunch is an hour off, the dining room is open to accommodate the crowd and they sit at the cafeteria tables, still wearing their soaked jackets, unbuttoned or unzipped. It’s something that has long since stopped puzzling Adam. These men take no chances with personal items. The worst fight he’s
seen, and he’s witnessed quite a few, was when a Vietnam vet accused another vet of stealing his pocketknife. Claiming that the object in question was his own similar weapon, the accused hauled off and bashed his accuser in the face, drawing blood and inciting the group into cheering them on. Rafe and Big Bob had pulled the pair apart before the knife became part of the fight.

Knives, Adam has learned, are one of the most highly valued objects a homeless man can have. Protection, threat, a tool, a memento of childhood or war. They are also forbidden inside the center. Everyone knows that a blind eye is turned on pocketknives, like army-surplus store Swiss Army knives, but anything with a blade more than six inches long is immediately confiscated. The knives the men use in the dining room are stainless-steel table knives. This isn’t prison, but it is a safe house. Big Bob has rules.

Adam kicks the snow off his boots and pushes his way through the crowd to get to the kitchen. Rafe is there, bebopping to his iPod, skillet in hand, his toque jaunty on his shaven head and his jacket still clean. He glances up and sees Adam in the doorway. “Hey, bro, good of you to come early.”

“It’s a bitch out there.”

“We half-figured you’d bag it today. You a volunteer, man. No cause for life-threatenin’ action.”

Adam sags against the doorjamb. The effort of walking through the storm has tapped him out. His legs are quivering with the exertion. He’s still got his cheese crackers in his pocket, but somewhere along the route he lost his mug. Or maybe he left it at Gina’s A to Z Tropical Fish, where she braved the storm
for goldfish and parrots. And here’s Rafe, telling him that he didn’t have to come. For a split second, Adam thinks that he should be mad, that Big Bob should have called him to tell him that. Should have called and said to stay put. Told him to sit there and watch the storm on the television, keep warm, keep dry. A good manager makes sure his people are informed.

Then he thinks, Maybe he did call. He’s been walking to work since seven-thirty. The feeling of incipient anger passes. He hasn’t seen Ishmael, and the noise from the dining room is unusually loud. “No. I’m here. But I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee before I get started.” Rafe adjusts the heat under the skillet and walks to the cupboard. He takes down a mug for Adam and fills it from the Bunn coffeemaker. Adam slides onto a stool; the snow adhering to his jacket trickles onto Rafe’s clean floor.

“Here you go, man.”

Adam pulls off his wet hat and stuffs it into his pocket before taking the mug from Rafe. “Thanks.” Two sets of brown eyes meet, and Adam sees a flash of respect in the other man’s eyes. Adam quickly takes a sip of the strong coffee, the flush in his cheek partly the heat and partly wonder. He’s never seen respect without fear before.

Today there are women in the center. Fort Street has a sister center two blocks over, but the ferocity of the storm has blurred the divisions. No one cares which center they’re in, just happy they’re out of the storm. An unofficial attendance is taken by Big Bob as he wanders through the groups, greeting individuals, mentally tallying who is here and who isn’t. He’ll make a phone call soon to see if some of his people are seeking safety at the Alice Crandall Center. AC, as they call it, is named for its benefactress, the woman who had donated her Victorian
brownstone to the city for a shelter for battered, homeless, displaced women. AC is more radical than the Fort Street Center, but an amiable relationship exists between the two managers.

Adam is relieved to see Ishmael come in out of the storm; he’s been worried that he might have to serve all these guys alone and run steam trays, too. Like a dog, Ishmael shakes his head with its mass of dreadlocks, spraying the walls of the back hall with droplets. He tucks his dreads up under his toque and sits to change his boots for the shoes he’s brought in a plastic bag. Ishmael, too, looks at him with a smile. “You made it, man.”

What the fuck? Did everyone expect that he’d shirk his duty? Adam finds himself growing a little annoyed at the suggestion that he’s a wuss, a coward, a fair-weather volunteer. He’s fucking
walked
all the way here. Six blocks that might as well have been six miles, it took him so long.

He’s about to tell Ishmael to stuff it, when he feels Big Bob’s hand on his shoulder. “I tried to reach you.”

“I got an early start.” Adam shrugs. “I’m here.”

Big Bob squeezes Adam’s shoulder. Like that of a good teacher or a respected scoutmaster, this small manly sign of approval is clear and touches Adam in a place he’d long ago buried. It has been so long since anyone approved of him. He’d been compensated, rewarded for performance with bonuses. He’d enjoyed the claps on the back from upper management for achieving goals. Even once the applause of a roomful of executives for a PowerPoint presentation outlining an acquisition. They had cheered like pirates coming across a gold-laden barque.

The only approval Adam has lusted after for more than two decades is that of his father-in-law. Adam has grieved as
much for the withdrawal of Herb Carruthers’s esteem as for any other loss. Herb Carruthers had approved of Adam, had, as a sonless man, treated him like an heir. Sterling, Papa’s darling, had absorbed the lessons of her socially connected mother and, when Adam asked her to marry him, insisted that he get her father’s blessing.

Adam invited Herb to meet him at the Harvard Club. Both were greeted as members, one freshly made, the other a generation ago. Adam loved the club, loved that he was a welcome member, that he had earned the right to sit in this room, an equal among giants even at the age of twenty-six. Over a meal of grilled salmon, Adam carefully laid out his ambitious plans, constructing a vision of the future that his potential father-in-law would approve of. A highly attainable future, particularly with Carruthers’s influences, but Adam carefully avoided any presumption of expectation that, as a father-in-law, Carruthers would be of help. Instead, Adam affirmed that he envisioned a good life, one in which Sterling would enjoy all the rights and privileges of her class. The older man never raised his eyes off his plate, shoveling in the food like a longshoreman while Adam laid out his game plan. Finally, Adam paused, waiting for Carruthers to say something.

Plate cleaned, Carruthers sat back, wiped his mouth with his linen napkin, and belched. “That it?” Now his blue marble eyes met Adam’s, his pupils tiny pinpricks even in the soft light of the room. Predator’s eyes.

“I won’t disappoint you, sir.” Adam fretted that he’d come across as too pompous, or that Carruthers would detect in his speech the Dorchester of his adolescence, despite his carefully cultivated Harvard accent.

“One question.”

“Yes, sir.” Adam felt a little pull of anxiety, a shadow of fear that Carruthers might approve of him as a wunderkind but not as a prospective son-in-law. That Carruthers wouldn’t approve of him after all.

“Do you sail?”

Adam’s little pull of anxiety faded into warm relief. “No, sir.” An honest answer.

“You join my family, you’ll have to.” Herb Carruthers stood up and offered his hand to Adam. Done deal.

Big Bob’s hand on his shoulder squeezes a rough emotion out of Adam, a sense of what he has lacked most of his life: someone who genuinely approves of him.

“I should get to work.”

An hour later, Big Bob joins the men behind the steam tables. “I’m missing Jupe.” Ishmael ladles out a bowl of butternut squash soup, sprinkles a garnish of parsley on top, and slides it on a tray. “He’s weird about that dog. Maybe he won’t come in if his dog can’t.”

“I’m not stopping anybody today. Slicker is here with his dog. Course, she’s in his pocket, but he knows I know she’s here.” Big Bob drums his fingers on the metal counter. “No, he’s been acting a little off the meds lately. In fact, I don’t recall seeing him yesterday, either.”

Adam hefts a new tray of potatoes into the steam table. “Check the hospitals?”

“I usually start with the police. Okay, then. If anybody sees him …”

“We’ll give you a shout.” Ishmael fills another bowl.

Adam takes the soup bowl and places it on the ledge. “So, Jupe’s mentally ill?”

“We ain’t allowed to say, but if I was to make a guess, I’d say that he’s one of those brilliant guys whose mind kinda lets loose on ’im. Used to be some kinda professor at MIT or one of them colleges. Rocket science. That’s why they call him ‘Jupiter.’”

“I figured him for a vet.”

“Nah. Got those clothes outta the Army Navy Store. Lotsa guys wear ’em so they don’t get hassled. No, he’s a professor. You get him talkin’ about the stars and you get an earful.”

“You think he’s out there?”

“I hope not. Freezin’ to death ain’t pretty.”

“You think he’s not coming in because of his dog?”

“Could be.”

“Why would anyone sacrifice warmth and food for a dog?”

“Like them Katrina people refusin’ to get rescued ’cause they wouldn’t let ’em take their pets. That’s devotion, man.”

“That’s madness.”

“Maybe.” Ishmael ladles out the last of today’s soup and nods to Adam to remove the pot.

“I hope he gets in.”

“Me, too.”

Outside, the wind has picked up speed, making a steady high-pitched whistle against the corner of the building. Zephyrs spin down the deserted street. The lights blink, fade, regain strength, and Adam wonders about Gina and her tropical fish.

The snowstorm had lapsed into stillness by the wee hours of the next day. At full light, I awakened from a running dream and found men standing in front of our culvert. I don’t know why none of us heard or scented them. However, the snow packed all around the entrance to our makeshift den announced our presence in the space beneath the road loud and clear to them; they didn’t need noses or ears to find us. Those happy Labs had come and gone and come back, all the time leaving big sloppy footprints that just screamed, In here! I should have told them to beat it when I had the chance.

My first instinct, as with the others, was to book it. We turned to the other open end, but these were professionals, and we were trapped, men at both ends, standing in their big boots, poles and lines in their hands, even a dart gun.

The Labs came out, goofy and relieved to see men in charge. I hoped that maybe having recovered the missing pair, the authorities might cut the rest of us a little slack. Not so.

The wiry bitch made a run for it, feinting and ducking between long legs up to the knees in snow. The snow was her undoing; she couldn’t run on top of it, and she sank, yapping her disgruntlement. A hand scooped her up and boxed her effortlessly, the yapping muted but not over.

I looked at my mentor. His boxy head was lowered, his grinning mouth open and his teeth showing. He didn’t growl, but his lips quivered with warning. I suddenly realized that he was making a mistake. My single incarceration had taught me to play nice. He’d been inside before. He was legal; his tag said so. But for him, incarceration now, with his person missing, was unthinkable. His bold attachment to one man, a man more like us than like his own species, had prejudiced my mentor.

How will I find him? He won’t know where I am.
My mentor let out a thin whine, a plaintive, weak sound. Aware suddenly of his unseemly show of weakness, my mentor looped the whine into a full-bore growl. Hackles up, teeth bared. Take no prisoners.

They took us instead.

It was okay for me. It was the same shelter where I’d been for my rehab. The food was good, the inside warm and dry. Not exactly a spa, but not a bad place to spend a couple of days out of the weather. I didn’t plan to stay long.

I tried to tell my mentor this, but he didn’t get it. He was panicked, and nothing I said seemed to make him any more at ease. He just kept growling.