Stepdog

by Nicole Galland

  What?

  “What?” I said, more calmly than I was thinking it.

  “I love Sara, but just because she’s my cousin doesn’t mean her interests here come first.”

  “Oh,” I said, alarmed. In fairness, she had warned me about that.

  “This is not about Sara. This is about Cody. Cody’s well-being comes first. Obviously.”

  Right, so he really was Sara’s kinsman, if he put the dog ahead of his own cousin. I nodded agreement but kept my mouth shut.

  “And more than that,” he continued, enjoying himself, “I need to get up to speed on you, my friend. I’m sure you can appreciate that this is all a lot to take on, and I need to be informed so I can act with integrity. So. Here’s what is going to happen. Earlier today, right after I got off the phone from Sara, I called Jonathan—”

  “You what?”

  “—and told him what he stood accused of, to hear his side of the story.”

  “You what?” I repeated. “Why? Did you think Sara was lying to you?”

  He held his hands out in a pacifying way. “No, sir, but a man’s got a right to clear his name. Just wanted to hear what he had to say for himself. He told me why he felt entitled to the dog, and explained how he went about getting her. I told him that his modus operandi was clever, but it was also rotten and underhanded. Now that I’ve heard his side of things, and Sara’s, too, I want to make sure I can endorse your being the dog’s rescuer.”

  I was incredulous. “What does that mean?”

  He was clearly entertaining himself. He was playing petty tyrant, and found the whole thing hilarious. “You might be a fine man, but at the moment I don’t know that, I only have Sara’s word and, nothing against Jonathan, or you, but Sara does not always make smart choices when it comes to her men. And let’s be honest, now: she married you so you could get a green card, she came clean to me about that. After, what, a week? Ten days? So obviously, no offense, but I need to see for myself that you pass muster.” A big, knowing, neighborly grin. “If not, I will send you packing, and I’ve already told Sara as much.”

  “I’m Sara’s husband, that should be enough!” I said. “What needs to happen here is that we go get the dog—and right now, before Jay disappears with her again. Why did you tell him I’m here?” I tried to stay cool, but it was fucking aggravating to learn I’d pushed myself hard to get here in stealth only to have my arrival heralded. “He’s probably left town already, we need to act now.”

  “No, sir, we’re not going anywhere tonight,” said Alex pleasantly. “My turf, my rules. I need to suss you out first.”

  “I just drove fourteen hours to get here for Sara’s sake. To fix a problem I freely admit is my fault. How much more do you really need to know about me?”

  “As I said, this is about the dog,” said Alex, firm but avuncular. “First I need to know if she’d be in good hands with you.”

  I was almost too tired to suppress the stream of invectives that wanted to come hurling out of my mouth. This was just pure and utter bollocks. “I’m taking her straight to Sara,” I said with deliberate calmness.

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” said Alex, cheerily. “No offense, but you haven’t really demonstrated to me that you’re worth a gnat’s gonads yet.”

  “We’ve got to get her, now that he knows I’m here!” I said angrily, and stood up. “We’ve got to get her now. He’ll disappear again!”

  Alex stayed seated and comfortably, almost smugly, said, “Already got that covered. Jonathan gave me his word as a gentleman not to leave town, and to meet us tomorrow at noon at the Clubhouse to settle matters.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. “And you believed him?”

  “He assured me he understands the consequences of fucking me over and not honoring his word, and he knows what a good shot I am.”

  That last bit shocked me; I’d forgot he’d been a soldier. “This is ridiculous,” I said to the ceiling. “Just tell me where he is. I’ll go on my own.”

  “My prospect Plugger is over at Jonathan’s cabin right now keeping watch on him, and Jonathan is fine with that.”

  “Your what?”

  “My junior associate. Also I’ve got my brothers for dozens of miles in every direction on alert. He makes a run for it overnight, he is asking to get his ribs crushed. For starters.”

  “Your brothers?”

  “My biker brothers,” said Alex seriously, looking every inch the accountant. (Caveat: the very large accountant.) “So he’s not going anywhere. Neither are we. Got it?” His toothpaste-advert smile was almost manic. He was cracking up over this scenario. It was all a joke to him, I was just his amusement for the evening, saving him from a boring night of watching the telly. “Might as well settle in.”

  I stubbornly stayed standing, but gave up arguing, since it was pointless. Suddenly the cacophony of frenzied yapping began again from behind a closed door down the hall. Alex stood, wandered over to the door, and opened it, his gaze cast downward. I looked as well, expecting scrappy, fiendish-looking little terriers. Instead, two bratwurst-shaped dogs came waddling with feverish speed out the door.

  I had not been expecting dachshunds, I admit. They were so quirky and cute, it was hard to reconcile them with the bloke who’d just casually said he’d shoot Jay if he didn’t keep his word. These two dachshunds, like most dachshunds, wore slightly concerned expressions. They trotted briskly past Alex as if they had no need of him now that he’d opened the door, and made a beeline for me.

  I temporarily, with effort, pushed aside my irritation with Alex. To demonstrate I was a dog person—as that seemed to be part of what he was looking for—I leaned down and offered each of the dachshunds the back of one hand. Their damp noses probed me, and then, having determined that I was a human, they looked up at me, wagged their whiplike tails, and barked approvingly. Cody, of course, would not have barked; she’d have flipped over onto her back and given me a hopeful, submissive look. I felt my diaphragm tense suddenly. I actually missed her.

  “They’re cute,” I said, hoping that was an appropriate term.

  “Why, thank you,” said Alex. He ambled to the kitchen sink and opened a cabinet above it. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s the two of us get better acquainted.” He took out a lidded mason jar, filled with a cloudy, light brown liquid. I could easily guess what that was. So. That’s how you proved what kind of man you were: You got plastered. I was Irish, so I knew all about that.

  “All right now,” said Alex happily. He placed the jar on the table. “And let’s get some munchies.” He turned to the humming white refrigerator with decorative magnets stuck on, opened it, and took out an oval plate on which was preset a variety of sliced cheeses, all colored variations of what is called “American cheese.” (That’s because no other nation will claim responsibility for it.) There were also other snack foods, mostly lots of chopped veggies, and hummus, and a serving of that American oxymoron “jumbo shrimp.” After Sara’s phone call, Alex must have gone out and shopped especially for my arrival. I felt oddly flattered, and very grateful that I’d soon have real food in my belly. Also: this gesture probably meant that he wanted to like me. So the game should be mine to lose.

  “There we are,” he said, setting the plate on the table. “I believe that should do us for a while.” He rubbed his hands together and planted himself in the creaky captain’s chair across from me.

  Soon as he sat, the dachshunds lost interest in me and scrambled back across the floor to him. They looked up, a matched set, and he patted his broad thighs. In perfect synchronicity they leapt up onto his lap, landing one per thigh. They gazed at him as if for permission and then—again in hilarious unison—flopped onto their sides between his body and the wooden arms of the chair, so that they were cradled, and also cradling him. Granted Cody was bigger, but I couldn’t imagine even Sara having her dog on her lap while she was eating.

  I looked at the food, grateful for the veggies and hummus. I didn’t know abo
ut that cheese, though. “Hey there, little cuties,” said Alex. He scratched each under its chin, and they both raised their heads to offer their necks. “Let’s get you guys taken care of first.” He reached over to the most fluorescent of the cheeses, tore the top square in half, then in half again, and offered a quarter of it each to the dogs, who licked their lips like starving orphans, eyes upraised solemnly. “There you go, snuggle bunnies.”

  For a moment I thought he was speaking a foreign language, saying something that just happened to sound like “snuggle” and “bunnies,” because “snuggle bunny” was not the kind of word I’d expect from a big boisterous man like Alex. But there he was, saying “snuggle bunnies.” To some dogs. This man was definitely related to Sara. If he was a softy with his dogs, then he was a softy, period. Probably in Iraq he’d had a desk job or something; stupid of me not to realize that sooner.

  “All right now,” said Alex, looking up. He reached for the moonshine. “Here’s a little homemade North Carolina truth serum to get the ball rolling. You’re probably not used to drinking out of a jar.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, eager to gab my way to charming him, “there was a pub in Dublin called the Diggers, beside a graveyard, and all the gravediggers would come in on break, for a pint, but then take the glasses back out to the graveyard with them and leave them there, and the pub owner got tired of his glasses always going missing, so he started using jam jars so it wouldn’t be so costly, and that became the vessel of choice and now we say we’re ‘goin’ for a jar.’”

  I’d said it all in one sentence because I had a feeling he would start talking over me if I didn’t. But it made me sound nervous. Then I realized that, in fairness, I was a little nervous. The man was waving moonshine under my nose and expecting me to drink it so he could get to know my character—I, who was such an unreliable character when I got lit. ’Course I was nervous. A bit.

  He pulled his chin in, interested in my anecdote. Briefly. “Really? I like that story. We’re going to share this jar. Made this batch myself.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Apple-pie flavored,” he added. “With cinnamon.”

  “Doubly wow,” I said. “But, sorry, I don’t drink.”

  If I had said, “I don’t breathe oxygen,” or “I don’t eat solid food,” he’d have given me about the same look. This explained why Jay had been agreeable to the arrangement. Jay knew I didn’t drink—hadn’t I said so in his very home? That wasn’t gospel, but still, he knew Alex would measure me in part by how much I could put away.

  “An Irishman who refuses to drink with his host?” Alex said with a delighted yet incredulous laugh. “Ha! I gotta tell you, brother, that’s just going to raise suspicions here, not relieve them any.” He was mightily amused by all of this.

  Fuck.

  I took a deep breath of both resignation and determination. But as I began to reach out for the jar, Alex pushed it aside. He stared at me for a moment with Sara’s intense green, dark-lashed, almond-shaped eyes. It was disorienting to see those eyes in such a different face. God, I missed her. I had to get her dog back safely. “Well, all right, then, sir,” he said. “We’ll ease our way in. You with me?”

  I nodded once. I bet Jay had already hightailed it out of town and how the fuck was I ever going to find him now?

  “This your first time in the South?” Alex asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, welcome. A lot of us are descended from a lot of you. Natural affinity. Which is interesting ’cuz there’s actually a lot in common historically, too.”

  “Is there?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What you guys call the Troubles over there in Northern Ireland? Just like the Civil War.”

  “Really?” I said in a neutral voice, pretty certain that was bollocks.

  “Oh, yeah. There are those who will tell you that the Civil War was all about slavery, but that’s just bullshit.”

  Oh, fuck.

  Chapter 20

  No, really,” he assured me, when I said nothing. “It’s bullshit. I use a simple pop quiz to prove it. I debate this in bars and I’ve changed a lot of minds.”

  I decided not to comment yet. This bloke was more complicated than I’d anticipated and I’d better play my cards close to the chest until I understood him better.

  “This is how the quiz works. First, I’ll throw ’em an easy one, like, what were the dates of the Civil War?’

  “Sixteen forty-two to 1651,” I said on reflex.

  He blinked, then laughed. “Ha! English Civil War, right? But you’re Irish.”

  “Born in England.”

  He nodded. “All right, you get a pass. The correct answer is 1861 to 1865. Which everyone knows, so that makes them feel cocky. And then I’ll ask: ‘True or false: prior to the Civil War, there were slaves in both the northern states and the southern states. Answer: true. Final question. The North cared so much about fighting a war to end slavery that in 1861, the North freed—multiple choice here—all of its slaves, some of its slaves, or none of its slaves.”

  At this moment, I noticed that the decorative magnets on the refrigerator depicted what looked like the Union Jack or the Saltire of Scotland. Confederate flags. It was the twenty-first century and the bloke had Confederate flags on his refrigerator.

  “The right answer,” said Alex, “is: none of the slaves. The North quote-unquote ‘went to war over slavery’ and felt so strongly about it that they freed none of their own slaves!”

  “So I s’pose it was about something other than slavery,” I said, pulling my gaze away from the magnets. I’d better play very close to the chest until I got a feel for him—Sara had not prepared me for a secessionist. “What was it about, then?”

  “So glad you asked! On the side of the Confederacy, there are literary references, from soldiers of all ranks, infantrymen to generals, saying that they’re going off to fight for independence, for freedom from a northern oppressor. You find very few references to ‘I’m fighting to preserve slavery.’ That just wasn’t there. For them it was all about freedom. Freedom from oppression.”

  Except for their slaves, for fuck’s sake, I wanted to say. But this bloke was a little alarming now, and I didn’t want to engage until I had a better sense of him. So all I said for now was, “But for the northerners, it must have been about slavery? I saw Lincoln—”

  He smirked. “The great myth is that Lincoln was a guy with a mission, but in fact, he stated in his inaugural address, in 1861, that he had no intent of ending slavery! You can Google that, it’s right there in the speech.”

  Well, good for him for evolving, then, I thought. Good for him, for changing and growing and learning to operate for the greater good and all that. But aloud, I just said, “Oh.”

  “See, it was a time when, really, you had two different societies, you had an agricultural South and a more industrial North.” He settled his large hands, one to either side of the jar, to represent the North and South. He did it in a way that suggested we were going to be here for a while. “They had grown apart economically and culturally, but they just happened legally to be this group of united states. It was a pretty dysfunctional situation, so the southern states started to secede, and you know what? Nobody in the North gave a shit. They didn’t care about maintaining the Union. In fact, they tried to institute a draft up north just to raise an army, and they had draft riots, because nobody wanted to fight. And that is how the Civil War became about slavery.” He reached for a piece of cheese.

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “The government in the North needed people to go to war,” he said, tearing the cheese in thirds and offering a piece to either dachshund. “To stop the secessionists. But they couldn’t find any actual issue that everyone could get behind—except fighting slavery.”

  Was this some kind of logical-reasoning test? Is that how he was going to “suss me out”? “If everyone could get behind that one thing,” I said, “doesn’t that make it, by definit
ion . . . the thing that they went to war for?”

  “You’re missing the point,” said Alex earnestly. “Slavery was an excuse, it wasn’t a cause. But the winners write the history books and that’s why it became ‘about’ slavery.” He used air quotes for “about,” a strip of orange cheese flopping between his left thumb and forefinger.

  “Ah,” I said. So it wasn’t a logical-reasoning test, it was what he actually believed.

  Alex tore the remaining bit of cheese in half and again made an offering to the dachshunds. “And even then,” he continued, taking a gulp of moonshine but not, thank God, pushing the jar toward me, “the North never had the passion the South had. Which is why the North got the shit kicked out it for the first three years of the war.” He reached for one of the shrimp. Food. Good idea. I began to shovel hummus into my mouth with a celery stick. “Because in terms of the staffing,” Alex continued, “when the United States Army split up, the South got all the good officers. They had almost no natural resources but they had a whole bunch of guys willing to fight for their rights, while the North had the resources, but nobody who actually wanted to fight a war.”

  “That’s ironic,” I said, “Given that, y’know, they won.” What was the polite way to mention that down here, anyhow? Express condolences?

  He made an exasperated sound. “The only reason the South didn’t win the Civil War is because Lee’s right-hand guy, Stonewall Jackson, was killed by friendly fire earlier on. If Stonewall Jackson hadn’t been killed, the South would have won the war. See, Gettysburg was an accident. Shouldn’t have happened.” He was warming to his subject as the drink warmed him. I could not believe how abruptly and intensely he had hijacked the conversation from anything relevant. “The South had been kicking the North’s butt. Lee felt they only needed one more victory on northern soil. Then the South would win the war—not as in taking over the North, but just that they’d be allowed to secede and finally throw off their oppressors.” Bright green eyes stared intensely into mine. “You’re Irish, so you can relate to that part, right?”