Water Dogs (8 page)

Without turning around, Coach said, “You read the paper this
morning? He’s still out there.” The ice crystals on the window beside Bennie were curved white ferns, and through them he caught glimpses of the plowed snowbanks beside the road. They were driving through the tundra; everything in the world was dead or sleeping. Bennie looked up and caught Coach’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he said, “You hear me?”

Bennie didn’t respond, not right away, but Coach could see him smiling.

“ ‘Out there’? What do you mean, ‘out there’?” said Littlefield. “Those guys on Deer Isle—didn’t they get him?”

“Well, they screwed up,” said Coach. “He’s loose. They lost track of him.”

Littlefield coughed out a laugh.

“You think this is funny?” asked Gwen. “This guy’s going to get us.”

“He won’t
get
us,” said Littlefield. “He doesn’t
get
people. The worst he could do is steal our shit. That’s what he does—he’s a thief.” Littlefield had recently gotten his driver’s license, but when they traveled as a family, Coach always drove.

“Oh, he’ll get us, all right,” said Coach. “And he’ll send the proceeds to Portland.” He put his blinker on a quarter-mile from the exit, and when they finally turned off the highway, he glided to a stop at the end of the ramp.

“Stop that, William,” said Eleanor. “Stop that right now.”

That year had been a good one for Gwen and Littlefield and Bennie, biathlon-wise—they were interested in the training (not just to appease Coach) and they were becoming proficient skiers and even better target shooters. Gwen and Bennie were tall for fourteen—Bennie was still shorter than his twin sister by a few inches, then—and despite their awkwardness, Coach was making minor adjustments (pole placement, ski kick, wax, breathing) to help them put it all together. Littlefield, at sixteen, with strong legs, was starting to win races.

Coach went on, “They were taking him to the police, those guys
who found him—they were clammers, and they were looking for attention. They made a big deal about how they’d caught the guy, but then they got into some kind of accident,” he said. “I think they panicked. They didn’t report it until they were sure they couldn’t find him.”

“Clammers,” said Littlefield, cracking his knuckles. “How screwed up is that. What a bunch of amateurs.”

“He’s a battler,” said Coach.

“You’re still
rooting
for this criminal?” said Eleanor.

“He’s an expert,” said Coach. “He’s the best at what he does. He made the clammers look like assholes!”

“Stop, William. The man defecates in the houses he ransacks,” said Eleanor, and this was true. The paper hadn’t reported it, but Coach had heard the rumor. The pooping was an old form of humiliation, a longstanding tradition among house thieves in Maine. A windowsill turd, a reminder of the thief’s dominance. This thrilled Bennie and Gwen and Littlefield, of course, and Coach knew it did; he wouldn’t refer to it directly, but he would praise the thief, forcing his wife to bring it up as a counterargument. It worked every time.

“Wouldn’t that be righteous if he shit somewhere in the Manse? In the Manse, instead of all the other houses to choose from?” said Littlefield.

“And then he could come in and slice me up, too,” said Gwen, in a calm voice. “And steal my stuff.” Besides the nightmares, she also had trouble falling asleep at night, when too often there was a fluttering inside her head. She’d wake up screaming, which would wake them all up—and as they were falling back to sleep, eventually, Gwen would get up and sit at her desk, practice her drums. She used a drum pad, so it was relatively quiet, but you could still hear the sticks beating against the rubber:
thumpity, thumpity, thumpity, thumpity
.

“Honey, don’t say that,” said Eleanor. “That’s an awful thing to say.”

“Coach likes him,” Gwen said. “He wants the guy to poop in the Manse, to steal our stuff, to slice me up into little—”

Their mother turned around in her seat and shot a look back at them. Gwen was lying down again, out of view. “No more of this. Don’t say things like that. That’s just not true.”

“Don’t worry, Gwen. I’d take care of him if he broke into the Manse,” said Littlefield. He bounced in his seat. “I’d take him down with my bare hands. I have to say, though, that’s pretty badass, the shitting. I should do that in the next race we go to, after a win.” His biathlon jersey was rolled up to his shoulder, and when he saw that Bennie was looking over the seat at him, he flexed. His arms looked like Bennie’s arms, pale and hairless, but when he flexed it looked as though he’d slipped an ostrich egg under the skin. When he stopped bouncing and flexing he put his fingers through his hair, spiking it up.

“We don’t lock the Manse,” Bennie said. “It wouldn’t take much for him to break in.”

“He hasn’t robbed any houses anywhere near us,” said their mother.

“Yeah, but he’s moving toward us,” said Gwen. “He’s going by county. Penobscot, Waldo, Knox, Lincoln. Lincoln, right? Lincoln was where they caught him. A few poops each time. That’s what they’ve been saying, right?”

“From now on, you may not watch the news,” said their mother. “No more news. None.” Then she turned to Coach. “Why bring this up?”

“He’s an expert,” repeated Coach. “He’s a master at his craft. He brings it to the First Church of Christ, Scientist.”

“He’s a friggin’ house robber,” said Littlefield. “Watch what happens when he gets to our island. Watch what happens when he runs into the likes of me.”

“Enough,” said their mother.

“Is he religious?” Bennie asked. No one responded.

“Hey, ass-muncher,” said Littlefield. “Why the hell would he be religious?”

“Language!” said Eleanor.

“He gives the stuff to the First Church of Christ, Scientist,” said Bennie.

“Oh,” said Littlefield. “Yeah.”

When they pulled past the crumbling brown sign for Cape Frederick and into the empty parking lot, Nixon started dancing in the backseat, wriggling and slapping the plastic inside of the car with her tail. Littlefield opened his door and she climbed over him, and the family watched her click across the pavement in the direction of the ocean, then bound through the brush to the rocks. They got out and followed her. Catching that first look at the huge view of ocean, Bennie felt heroic, a ship captain exploring new territory, but quickly enough he looked down at all the brittle, wind-beaten brush, like the frayed ends of nylon rope, and the endless shale, common in their part of the state, rocks that looked bored by the repetition of it all. He kept a tennis ball in the pocket of his coat to throw for Nixon.

Already Gwen was pointing to spots along the water’s edge in the distance and asking, “Is that one?”

Coach squinted and said, “Nope.”

They were looking for light blue herons, a rare bird—though Coach claimed to have seen one on several occasions. He said they were smaller than great blue herons, bulkier and craftier, better fishermen. Gwen didn’t know what they looked like, but she was vigilant whenever they went to Cape Fred—even in wintertime, when she knew they wouldn’t be there and looked for them only out of habit. In private Littlefield told Gwen and Bennie that he suspected Coach was bullshitting them, that there was no such bird.

Eleanor kept her arms folded on her chest and her knitted purple hat pulled down just above her eyes. She was still annoyed by the conversation in the car. On most of these excursions to Cape Fred she brought her bulky black camera, which hung around her neck. She almost never took pictures.

Bennie had always wanted to shadow his mother at the hospital
when she went in to do her rounds, but she claimed it wouldn’t be appropriate. He found ways to be privy to her work by other means. If one of them got hurt at home, she would patch them up; she sewed stitches in Littlefield’s knee once, and she always knew which injuries were serious and which were not. She was a therapist and a school counselor, but she’d gone to medical school. She hadn’t gotten her medical degree, not quite—instead of a psychiatry residency, she got a social work degree. Whenever Bennie was in town with his mother and they’d cross paths with someone she wouldn’t introduce to him, he knew the person was a regular client, or someone she’d treated in the hospital. This was an unmistakable tipoff; she was too polite to forgo introductions. When she wasn’t counseling at Musquacook Academy she worked on the psychiatric wing at the hospital, and most of these patients looked like normal people, but occasionally Bennie and she would come across someone with sharp, clear eyes who would mutter a few words about the leaves in their yard, and Bennie would be electrified by what was being hidden from him.

Coach looked out at the water and said, “Now,
that
is one hell of an ocean.” Eleanor exhaled. Then she said, “It’s too cold today.” Bennie was throwing the ball for Nixon but the others were just standing and staring at the water, like hunters waiting for a moose to rise from the bog.

This memory came back to Bennie so often in dreams that it arrived in a kind of shorthand: his mother’s weary expression, Gwen’s pink wrists sticking out from the cuffs of her jacket, Coach and Littlefield standing side by side in their spectator parkas (the kind that covers your ass and encourages you to stuff your hands in the front pockets).

There were thin wisps of sea smoke on the water and a layer of mist just above the dark blue expanse, but otherwise the view was as sharp as it usually was in winter—no islands on the horizon. Cape Frederick curled out to the south, and though its tip was five miles away, Bennie could see snow on the rocks there, and the crisp outline of trees. Otherwise, water dominated the view—a dark blue blanket, nearly black.

They all called Nixon a “prize dog,” their euphemism for a dog blessed with enthusiasm but lacking intelligence. Coach had gone north to buy her from a breeder in Millinocket who specialized in Labrador retrievers—Nixon was an easy choice, he said, though Bennie wondered about this. She was fat but still youthfully strong and vigorous, an excellent swimmer, a heroic eater. As a fetcher of tennis balls, she was unstoppable. Sometimes the boys would take her out to the un-mowed field by the technical college; they’d put a Nerf football in her mouth and she’d know to run. They’d chase after her, diving at her thick brown body to tackle her, and when she’d fall, slamming hard against the ground, she’d bounce right back up, not knowing the rules of football; she’d keep thundering along, not anticipating the next tackle, thinking only about getting the ball to a safe place where she could chew it. Secretly, Bennie knew Nixon suffered from the high expectations Coach put on her; before he’d married Eleanor he had a Brittany spaniel named Ike who loved to hunt. (Now Littlefield’s dog Ronald was modeled after Ike, though Littlefield would not admit this.)

Throwing the ball for her at Cape Fred, Bennie always started with short tosses, warm-ups, getting Nixon wet and accustomed to the exercise. She was an expert at staying on task, and there was something about her dark chestnut-colored hair that suggested stubbornness.

After the warm-ups Bennie threw the ball as far out into the ocean as he could. It fell through the sea smoke to a spot just beyond the single lobster buoy within their sight. The buoy had probably been swept in by a storm—few men set traps during winter, and if they did, they set them in deeper water. Nixon galloped down the shale, then bounded into the waves, swimming with a noticeable wake despite the windy chop, toward the place where the ball had splashed. Her fat made her buoyant, and she was powerful enough that her back stayed well above the surface of the water when she swam at full strength.

As Nixon made her steady way toward the ball, Bennie watched her closely, thinking it was amazing that this animal,
their
animal, who
slept on the old purple couch and never barked when strangers came to the door, didn’t hesitate to brave the icy water in mid-March.

Nixon must not have seen the ball through the sea smoke, because she went right for the red buoy and bit into it. Bennie was pleased the dog believed him strong enough to throw a lobster pot thirty yards offshore. He found it odd and charming that Nixon was attempting to retrieve the buoy. He was proud of her.

Gwen laughed. “Look at her! How did she fit that thing in her mouth?”

“Good girl,” said Littlefield. “Thatta girl, Nixon. Good dog.”

Nixon was swimming at her usual rate, full speed. She’d spun a tight U-turn and was swimming back toward shore now, with the red buoy in her mouth. There must have been some slack in the line, because her body made a clear wake, the kind a lobster boat might make, only smaller. But when the line tightened up, the wake stopped.

“Now, we’ve all heard of a shithouse rat,” said Littlefield. “Well, that right there is a shithouse dog. That dog is as nuts as Gwen. Maybe more nuts.” Then he raised his voice. “Good dog, Nixon, good dog.”

“William, that’s cruel,” said their mother.

“You don’t think Nixon’s crazy?” said Littlefield, jabbing a finger out toward the dog, who was snorting at the seawater. “Look at that.”

“Apologize to your sister,” said Coach.

“A shithouse dog,” said Gwen. “I like that. That’s exactly what Nixon is.”

Eleanor didn’t go along with the cheering. She still had her arms folded on her chest and even with her wool hat pulled down, deep lines showed on her forehead. She said, “I don’t like this at all—she’s going to hurt herself.”

Coach was staring at the dog, sternly.

Littlefield said, “Well, it’s Bennie’s fault. Why’d you throw it all the way out there, ass-muncher?”

“She’s swum farther before,” he said, but he wasn’t sure she had. Then he added, “I wasn’t aiming for the buoy.”

“She’ll be fine,” said Gwen. “She’ll figure it out.” Gwen would do this sometimes—invest her own intelligence in people or animals with lesser gifts. Then Gwen said something that made everyone feel even more uneasy. “She’s a prize dog—she’ll be fine.”

Nixon was bearing down. They saw her clearly: a brown seal in the waves, highlighted by the cherry red buoy, which must have been attached to a stray metal lobster trap—perhaps unattended for weeks, perhaps full of crabs and urchins and sculpin and lobsters, with bricks built into its sides to help it stay on the bottom. Even so, it seemed as though she was covering ground, dragging the heavy trap several yards across the rocky ocean floor. After a few minutes, though, she really didn’t seem any closer, and her head was lower in the water. They watched as a tall, thick swell passed over her—a wave that she normally would have risen with, but the tether held her under. After the wave passed, her head and the buoy were in view again. She snorted, loudly enough that the whole family could hear.