Watchers (73 page)
Saturday night he had eaten a little solid food, and all day Sunday he had nibbled at easily digestible vittles that the vet provided. He was drinking well, and the most encouraging sign of improvement was his insistence on going outside to make his toilet. He could not stay on his feet for long periods of time, and once in a while he wobbled and plopped backward on his butt; however, he did not bump into walls or walk in circles.
Yesterday, Nora had gone shopping and had returned with three Scrabble games. Now, Travis had separated the lettered tiles into twenty-six piles at one end of the surgery, where there was a lot of open floor space.
“We’re ready,” Jim Keene said. He was sitting on the floor with Travis, his legs drawn up under him Indian-style.
Pooka was lying at his master’s side, watching with baffled dark eyes.
Nora led Einstein back across the room to the Scrabble tiles. Taking his head in her hands, looking straight into his eyes, she said, “Okay, fur face. Let’s prove to Dr. Jim that you’re not just some pathetic lab animal involved in cancer tests. Let’s show him what you
really
are and prove to him what those nasty people really want you for.”
really
are and prove to him what those nasty people really want you for.”
She tried to believe that she saw the old awareness in the retriever’s dark gaze.
With evident nervousness and fear, Travis said, “Who asks the first question?”
“I will,” Nora said unhesitatingly. To Einstein, she said, “How’s the fiddle?”
They had told Jim Keene about the message that Travis had found the morning Einstein had been so very ill—FIDDLE BROKE—so the vet understood what Nora was asking.
Einstein blinked at her, then looked at the letters, blinked at her again, sniffed the letters, and she was getting a sick feeling in her stomach when, suddenly, he began to choose tiles and push them around with his nose.
FIDDLE JUST OUT OF TUNE.
Travis shuddered as if the dread he had contained was a powerful electric charge that had leaped out of him in an instant. He said, “Thank God, thank you, God,” and he laughed with delight.
“Holy shit,” Jim Keene said.
Pooka raised his head very high and pricked his ears, aware that something important was happening but not sure what it was.
Her heart swelling with relief and excitement and love, Nora returned the letters to their separate piles and said, “Einstein, who is your master? Tell us his name.”
The retriever looked at her, at Travis, then made a considered reply.
NO MASTER. FRIENDS.
Travis laughed. “By God, I’ll settle for that! No one can be his master, but anyone should be damned proud to be his friend.”
Funny—this proof of Einstein’s undamaged intellect made Travis laugh with delight, the first laughter of which he had been capable in days, but it made Nora weep with relief.
Jim Keene looked on in wide-eyed wonder, grinning stupidly. He said, “I feel like a child who’s sneaked downstairs on Christmas Eve and actually seen the real Santa Claus putting gifts under the tree.”
“My turn,” Travis said, sliding forward and putting a hand on Einstein’s head, patting him. “Jim just mentioned Christmas, and it’s not far away. Twenty days from now. So tell me, Einstein, what would you most like to have Santa bring you?”
Twice, Einstein started to line up the lettered tiles, but both times he had second thoughts and disarranged them. He tottered and thumped down on his butt, looked around sheepishly, saw that they were all expectant, got up again, and this time produced a three-word request for Santa.
MICKEY MOUSE VIDEOS.
They didn’t get to bed until two in the morning because Jim Keene was intoxicated, not drunk from beer or wine or whiskey but from sheer joy over Einstein’s intelligence. “Like a man’s, yes, but still the dog, still the dog, wonderfully like, yet wonderfully different from, a man’s thinking, based on what little I’ve seen.” But Jim did not press for more than a dozen examples of the dog’s wit, and he was the first to say that they must not tire their patient. Still, he was electrified, so excited he could barely contain himself. Travis would not have been too surprised if the vet had suddenly just exploded.
In the kitchen, Jim pleaded with them to retell stories about Einstein: the
Modern Bride
business in Solvang; the way he had taken it upon himself to add cold water to the first hot bath that Travis had given him; and many more. Jim actually retold some of the same stories himself, almost as if Travis and Nora had never heard them, but they were happy to indulge him.
Modern Bride
business in Solvang; the way he had taken it upon himself to add cold water to the first hot bath that Travis had given him; and many more. Jim actually retold some of the same stories himself, almost as if Travis and Nora had never heard them, but they were happy to indulge him.
With a flourish, he snatched the wanted flyer off the table, struck a kitchen match, and burned the sheet in the sink. He washed the ashes down the drain. “To hell with the small minds who’d keep a creature like that locked up to be poked and prodded and studied. They might’ve had the genius to make Einstein, but they don’t understand the meaning of what they themselves have done. They don’t understand the greatness of it, because if they did they wouldn’t want to cage him.”
At last, when Jim Keene reluctantly agreed that they were all in need of sleep, Travis carried Einstein (already sleeping) up to the guest room. They made a blanket-cushioned place for him on the floor next to the bed.
In the dark, under the covers, with Einstein’s soft snoring to comfort them, Travis and Nora held each other.
She said, “Everything’s going to be all right now.”
“There’s still some trouble coming,” he said. He felt as if Einstein’s recovery had weakened the curse of untimely death that had followed him all of his life. But he was not ready to hope that the curse had been banished altogether. The Outsider was still out there somewhere . . . coming.
chapter ten
On Tuesday afternoon, December 7, when they took Einstein home, Jim Keene was reluctant to let them go. He followed them out to the pickup and stood at the driver’s window, restating the treatment that must be continued for the next couple of weeks, reminding them that he wanted to see Einstein once a week for the rest of the month, and urging them to visit him not only for the dog’s medical care but for drinks, dinner, conversation.
Travis knew the vet was trying to say he wanted to remain a part of Einstein’s life, wanted to participate in the magic of it. “Jim, believe me, we’ll be back. And before Christmas, you’ll have to come out to our place, spend the day with us.”
“I’d like that.”
“So would we,” Travis said sincerely.
On the drive home, Nora held Einstein in her lap, wrapped in a blanket once more. He still did not have his old appetite, and he was weak. His immune system had taken severe punishment, so he would be more than usually susceptible to illness for a while. He was to be kept in the house as much as possible and pampered until he had regained his previous vigor— probably after the first of the year, according to Jim Keene.
The bruised and swollen sky bulged with saturated dark clouds. The Pacific Ocean was so hard and gray that it did not appear to be water but looked more like billions of shards and slabs of slate being continuously agitated by some geological upheaval in the earth below.
The bleak weather could not dampen their high spirits. Nora was beaming, and Travis found himself whistling. Einstein studied the scenery with great interest, clearly treasuring even the somber beauty of this nearly colorless winter day. Perhaps he had never expected to see the world outside Jim Keene’s office again, in which case even a sea of jumbled stone and a contusive sky were precious sights.
When they reached home, Travis left Nora in the pickup with the retriever and entered the house alone, by the back door, carrying the .38 pistol they kept in the truck. In the kitchen, where the lights had been on ever since their hasty departure last week, he immediately took an Uzi automatic pistol from its hiding place in a cabinet, and put the lighter gun aside. He proceeded cautiously from room to room, looking behind every large item of furniture and in every closet.
He saw no signs of burglary, and he expected none. This rural area was relatively crime-free. You could leave your door unlocked for days at a time without risking thieves who would take everything down to the wallpaper.
The Outsider, not a burglar, worried him.
The house was deserted.
Travis checked the barn, too, before driving the pickup inside, but it was also safe.
In the house, Nora put Einstein down and pulled the blanket off him. He tottered around the kitchen, sniffing at things. In the living room he looked at the cold fireplace and inspected his page-turning machine.
He returned to the kitchen pantry, clicked on the light with his foot pedal, and pawed letters out of the Lucite tubes.
HOME.
Stooping beside the dog, Travis said, “It’s sure good to be here, isn’t it?”
Einstein nuzzled Travis’s throat and licked his neck. The golden coat was fluffy and smelled clean because Jim Keene had given the dog a bath, in his surgery, under carefully controlled conditions. But as fluffy and fresh as he was, Einstein still did not look himself; he seemed tired, and he was thinner, too, having lost a few pounds in less than a week.
Pawing out more letters, Einstein spelled the same word again, as if to emphasize his pleasure: HOME.
Standing at the pantry door, Nora said, “Home is where the heart is, and there’s plenty of heart in this one. Hey, let’s have an early dinner and eat it in the living room while we run the videotape of
Mickey’s Christmas Carol.
Would you like that?”
Mickey’s Christmas Carol.
Would you like that?”
Einstein wagged his tail vigorously.
Travis said, “Do you think you could handle your favorite food—a few weenies for dinner?”
Einstein licked his chops. He dispensed more letters, with which he expressed his enthusiastic approval of Travis’s suggestion.
HOME IS WHERE THE WEENIES ARE.
When Travis woke in the middle of the night, Einstein was at the bedroom window, on his hind feet with his forepaws braced on the sill. He was barely visible in the second-hand glow of the night-light in the adjoining bathroom. The interior shutter was bolted over the window, so the dog had no view of the front yard. But perhaps, for getting a fix on The Outsider, sight was the sense on which he least depended.
“Something out there, boy?” Travis asked quietly, not wanting to wake Nora unnecessarily.
Einstein dropped from the window, padded to Travis’s side of the bed, and put his head up on the mattress.
Petting the dog, Travis whispered, “Is it coming?”
Replying with only a cryptic mewl, Einstein settled down on the floor beside the bed and went to sleep again.
In a few minutes, Travis slept, too.
He woke again near dawn to find Nora sitting on the edge of the bed, petting Einstein. “Go back to sleep,” she told Travis.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she whispered drowsily. “I woke up and saw him at the window, but it’s nothing. Go to sleep.”
He did manage to fall asleep a third time, but he dreamed that The Outsider had been smart enough to learn how to use tools during its six-month-long pursuit of Einstein and now, yellow eyes gleaming, it was smashing its way through the bedroom shutters with an ax.
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