One Good Dog (28 page)

Adam stops by the apartment to leave the car, get Chance, and walk to the center, despite already being late. His pulse is still pronounced from the effects of his conversation with the investigator and he needs to slow it down, to force the twin facts of his sister’s untimely death and his father’s unlikely survival into some form of neutral territory, assign them someplace in his mind where they are harmless. He has to make the
basic facts lie down and be still. Instead, his mind cavorts with the unanswered questions.

Gina is in her shop, but Adam can’t tell her yet. He needs to digest this new truth on his own. He can’t speak out loud, can’t make the words come out in a way that will make sense to himself, much less to another. He needs time to adjust his entire concept of the past.

Adam latches the gate behind him, unsnaps the leash, and runs cold water into the dog’s bowl from the outside faucet. With a quick pat on the head, he leaves Chance to entertain himself for the next few hours. Chance lumbers over to his lean-to and flops down in the shade.

Ishmael is behind the steam table, ladling out the day’s soup. Adam grabs a clean apron and a paper toque and settles into serving the main course of pork chops and mashed potatoes. Everything looks gray to Adam, the chops, the gravy, even the soup. Shades of gray, like they say dogs see. Nothing is sharp.

“You okay, man?” Ishmael asks.

“Yeah.”

“You seen a ghost or somethin’?”

Adam shakes his head, tries to smile. “I’m okay.”

“You sick, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Not sick.”

“Sad.” Jupiter is standing in front of Adam. After so many weeks, it is a surprise to see the old man standing in front of him, his watch cap pulled low, his eyes flinty, and Adam notices for the first time how pale they are, not like looking into eyes at all, but into reflectionless mirrors. “Too bad.” Jupiter might be addressing them, or himself. His pale eyes flicker
from Adam to the plate, then to Ishmael. “So sad your dad.
Sad
is the loneliest word in the world.” Adam vaguely recalls that rhyming can be a symptom of some mental disturbance, but he doesn’t recall Jupe ever doing it before.

“You want gravy with that?” Ishmael slides the plate across the stainless-steel surface.

Jupe takes the plate, squinting at Adam. “Now you know. Now you know.”

Ishmael raises an eyebrow at Adam, mouths, “Woo. Woo.”

“At least he’s back.” Adam lifts the now-empty soup tray out of the steam table. At least he knows where Jupe is. One less disappearance to worry about.

I was alone in the backyard, tending to my nethers, waiting, hoping that the man in the hat would come out with a treat, wondering if something interesting might be on the docket for later. Maybe a ride in the car, a walk in the park.

“Hey, boy.”

I stopped my ablutions to stand and appraise my visitor. It was the man who once hung around with my former mentor. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, not here and not on the street. I sniffed the air. He smelled ripe—of the street, of the untamed, free life. I drew closer.

“Good boy.”

Two words of their noisy language that I knew, and agreed with. He wasn’t in the yard with me but standing outside the gate. I trotted closer, anxious to meet him, breathe in more nearly that sweet scent of street. Obligingly, he opened the gate. Then he walked away.

The gate swung itself three-quarters shut. Not enough to keep me in. I sat. I am a dog; I do not usually wrestle with the
ethics of trust and obedience except as they suit me. My man has trusted that I not jump out of his car if he leaves the windows open. I trust that he will feed me, scratch my belly. That’s about as far as I go. This open gate, this invitation to walk out onto the street like a free dog was like a gift from some bountiful deity. Who was I to say no? But I sat. Waited. I have no capacity to debate right and wrong, or the moral dilemmas of faithfulness. I had never been told to stay. Neither did I have any excuse to go.

I was waiting for a reason to push that open gate wider. And along he came, that mutt who loved to challenge me as long as he thought I was behind bars. Boy was he in for a surprise.

Adam has moved in a fog all afternoon. The last time he’d felt like this was after his episode at Dynamic, the light-headed feeling, the sense that his hands are attached to his wrists by thin threads, his feet blocks of stone. Adam goes through the motions of helping Rafe, of serving lunch, of running the dishwasher, of listening to Ishmael’s chant of “You want gravy with that?” over and over, until the five words hummed in his head like the catchphrase from a B movie or the chorus to a country-western tune. You Want
Gravy
wi’ That? Gravy. Wi’. That? What Do You Want? Ishmael even pushes a little rhythm to the words. Sing along now. Follow the bouncing ball. Where did that come from anyway? Funny how the references faded after a generation or two but the phrases lasted forever.

The last man has been served. The tables are nearly empty. Mike has folded up most of them, letting the stragglers bunch together at one, the other meant for the staff. Right now the smell of food is making Adam queasy. He’ll just skip it today.
Get his dog and go home. Big Bob will understand; sometimes a guy just isn’t hungry. But when the others grab their plates and cutlery, Adam finds himself joining them. If he goes home, he’ll just sit and think. At least the conversation here will provide a slight distraction; maybe he can even summon up the verve to add his two cents to the inevitable discussion about the Red Sox. Anything to avoid thinking about Pascal’s report. About Veronica. About the fact that his father is still alive and living within a scarce two miles of him. All this time. All this time she’s been dead and he’s been alive. It’s not that Adam’s ever thought about the old man being dead; it’s more that he’s cast him so far out of his life that he cannot conceive that his father still exists. The pain in his sternum twinges and Adam presses a hand against it.

Rafe drops onto the bench beside Adam. “I got some scraps for Chance. How come you didn’t bring him today?”

“I did. He’s out back.”

“No he ain’t.”

Adam extricates himself from the fixed bench, banging his knee against the table, nearly kicking Rafe in the process. “Are you sure?”

“Gate’s open, man. No dog.”

“Fuck.” Adam starts for the back door, and suddenly Jupe is in front of him.

“Excuse me.” Adam doesn’t want to touch the old man, but he’s desperate to get outside. “I need to get by.”
Some idiot has left the gate open.

“Now you know.” Jupe doesn’t move. “Now you know.”

Adam has been here for three hours, and he knows that he was careful with the U-bend latch. No one is supposed to come in by the back door, Big Bob’s rule, but someone did. Or
left that way. The staff are all here; he was the last one in. So which of the men slipped out, careless with the gate, careless with Chance? A panicked notion: His dog may have been on the loose for two hours by now. He could be miles away. Or dead from running in front of a car. Adam pictures Chance running, confused, dismayed. His former street dog panicked like anyone’s coddled purebred. Alone.

There is no time to lose, and this old man is in his way. Adam tries to get past Jupe, but Jupe is determined to be in his way and nimbly blocks Adam’s route.

“I said, now you know what it feels like.” Jupiter grins at Adam, grins and holds his Swiss Army knife at chest level, the blade extended. “Sad. Sad.”

“Whoa. Okay, Jupe. Hold on there.” Adam hears Big Bob, feels his bulk just behind him, a bulwark against this madness. “You need to put that down.”

It’s not a very big knife. Not a long blade, but the light touches it in such a way that it reflects a dull shine, an ancient patina, lovingly sharpened. The tip is tilted just so, like a woman’s smile. Adam steps back. Jupe follows, a pas de deux. Big Bob, Rafe, and Ishmael circle the dancers.

“You killed my dog.”

“No I didn’t. I just didn’t find your dog.”

“Don’t engage him, Adam. Just hold on.” Big Bob is slowly working his way around behind Jupe. “Mike’s calling for help.”

Jupe is more dangerous than a man who knows how to use a knife. He slashes wildly, pokes and thrusts the short blade with a jerky rhythm—up and down, from side to side. A manic sign of the cross. The sharp little blade is poking out of the handle like a serpent’s tongue.

Adam backs away. Jupe is too fast and too erratic for Big Bob or Rafe or Ishmael to attempt to knock the knife out of his hand. The group moves as one into the middle of the dining room, until Adam feels the bench of the emptied table behind his knees.

“Look, Charles,” Adam hopes that using the guy’s real name will shock him back into reason. “I’m sorry about your dog. I know how much he meant to you.”

“But you tried to foist a fake on me. You didn’t know what he meant to me. You think one dog is like another. Didn’t even look like Benny.”

“I do know what it’s like to lose someone you love. I do know. You can’t replace them. They aren’t interchangeable.”

“You promised me.”

“I shouldn’t have. I didn’t know it would be impossible to keep that promise.”

Jupe is suddenly still. His flinty, pale eyes are rimmed in pink, the sclera yellowish, and they bore right into Adam’s eyes, making him think that this isn’t a man they’re dealing with at all, but a demon. There is nothing human in those eyes.

Adam forces himself to stare into those eyes. “And now I want to go find my dog. Before it’s too late.”

Jupe’s right hand, the one with the knife in it, begins to relax. It’s like watching the demon leave a soul as the flinty look is replaced with confusion, with a mildness. An awakening. In the distance, a police car’s siren. Adam thinks that he can ask for the knife, that the demon is gone and Jupe, the man, can be disarmed. That maybe Jupiter has returned to being Charles. Adam puts out his hand, waggles his fingers as if encouraging a small animal to come to him. “Will you give that to me?”

Jupiter lunges.

Here I was, on my unexpected ramble, practically intoxicated with the world of street scents, enjoying my leashless freedom, and—wham—trouble. I was as naïve as a newcomer to the street life. My months on the end of a leash had dulled my instincts for self-preservation. For too long I’d been led around, not using my own brain, relying on a human to tell me where to go and how to get there.

After chasing off the poseur, I snuffled along the sidewalk of the neighborhood I had ended up in, a little disoriented, since I had paid no attention to landmarks while I chased the bastard off into traffic, so I was exploring what seemed to be new ground, which, I have to admit, was great fun. Until I hit on a scent that tickled the memory keys in my brain. I imaged the scent, searching for the visuals that would tell me what my nose was trying to. Cage. The filthy backyard redolent of feces. The scent of dried blood. I had somehow ended up on the street where I got my start. This was definitely not in the plan, so I raised my nose, trying to discern the scent of my
neighborhood—either the one I shared with the man or the one with the backyard—from the myriad threads that make up the world. Maybe that way? Was that the scent of the coffee place he likes to sit outside? Or that way? Do I smell the street men gathering? Nothing. Nothing I could get a line on.

I was well and truly lost. I’m dog enough to admit it. My fanciful thinking that I’d play a little hooky and be back in time for our walk home turned into being lost. Well, I may have been lost, but I wasn’t stupid. Retrace my steps. Logical, huh? But I’m a dog, a male, and one who had clearly challenged the other dogs in these neighborhoods in that I had announced myself on every post, hydrant, and rear tire. Every one of my own markers had been covered by someone else’s. And not the same someone. Eventually, I found myself right back on the same block of my former life.

“Looky here, dawg. You b’lieve it?” Since I’d been gone, the fine distinction between potential and corruption in these almost men had disappeared, and in its place, was sheer hostility. They reeked of it. They reeked of dog, of smoke, of malice. Of pizza and beer. Of the blood on their shoes. Of their own fear, which masked itself as anger. I hadn’t realized before that they were much like the dogs in their cellar, guided by forces outside their control. Victims of their breeding.

This time, there were four of them. The two I’d known, and two who were bigger, older, and distinctively powerful. Men.

I snarled, snapped, spun around, not wasting my breath on sound but putting it all into action. But I was surrounded. I ducked, made for the gap between legs covered in baggy jeans. The kick hurt; I stumbled. I had never used my teeth on a human before, but I wasn’t going to go down with a whimper.
But, of course, they knew how to handle a snapping dog. The last thing I remember is the quick grab of a rope around my muzzle, squeezing my jaws together, then nothing as one of them brained me with a break stick.

I awoke in a cage, my old cage. Deep in the corners, it still bore some trace of me. My parents were gone, replaced by another breeding pair. She eyed me with dull curiosity. He growled. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t about to get into a shouting match. I was just relieved to have my mouth open, and I drank from the shallow puddle of water in the bowl in the cage. Here I was again, right back where I’d started. I wondered how soon I’d be back in the pit.

Adam holds a large, thick square of absorbent material against his face, the ER staffer having taken away the kitchen towel that Rafe had given him to stanch the bleeding. Big Bob sits beside him in the waiting area, thumbing through a dated
Popular Mechanics
magazine and drumming his leg with sausage fingers. Adam had fought the idea of racing to the emergency room, wanting only to get out on the street and look for Chance. Every hour that goes by, and they have been here for over two, means it will be harder to find him. How far can a dog get? By the time Bob and Rafe had convinced Adam that he was well and truly injured, he was faint from the searing pain of a short-bladed slice in his face and was willingly led to Big Bob’s car.