"Oh, that's very kind," Cindy said. "You needn't have done it."
"No trouble. It's left over from a wake a couple of weeks ago. The only work we had to do was to turn on the microwave." She laughed. "We have a huge family, and a lot of them are old. I keep this sort of thing ready all the time."
Bob hardly heard her stupid nattering. His skin felt hot, he began to hear and smell with even greater clarity than was now his exquisite norm. His whole body tingled, his muscles became like compressed steel. His breath got long and low, and came through his throat in growls he could not control. He was furious. That nattering woman, the gaping children, the superior sneer in the father's face—he wanted to hit somebody. How dare they put ideas of vets into Monica's head! He was damned if he was going to submit to an examination by some animal doctor.
He was a human being. In here, yes, but still a human being, with the rights and lordship of a human being. They would not treat him worse than any degenerate junkie, and put him in a cage for observation, and shoot him with a tranquilizer dart, and examine him on some dirty table covered with dog hair.
"I think it would be a good idea to take him to the vet," Monica said. "We could get a full X-ray series. Find out what's going on."
Mr. O'Neill was sampling some of his wife's baked beans. "A Bud'd sure go good with this."
A Bud! The bastard, that's my last Bud in that damn fridge!
"Sure." Cindy spoke casually. Who cared anyway, Bob wouldn't be drinking any more beer, right?
He snarled when he heard the pschtt of the can. "Damn! That dog's skittish."
"It's not a dog," Jodie said. "It's their dad."
"Jodie, I don't want you to say that. It's too embarrassing."
"Well, it is."
Mrs. O'Neill looked at Cindy helplessly while the father swilled Bob's beer.
The clock struck nine. "Mystery's on Channel Thirteen," Kevin sang out.
"We don't watch that highbrow dreck," O'Neill said.
Bob growled again, harder and not by accident. He wanted to watch Mystery, to sit on the couch between his wife and his son, with his damned Bud in his hand, and enjoy every minute of it.
"What do you do, Mr. O'Neill?" Cindy asked smoothly. "Are you in trucking or something?" Atta girl, atta girl, needle the moron!
"No, I teach philosophy, actually, at NYU."
Which philosophers did he teach? Bob wondered. Howard Cosell? Madonna?
Cindy gave up nothing. She simply shrugged. "Bob's an entrepreneur," she said smoothly. "He teaches big companies how to use small computers."
Wonderful woman! O'Neill squirmed. "I've always wanted to have my own business," he said, a whine entering his voice.
Bob decided to get rid of the O'Neills. He trotted over to the dining-room table, where O'Neill sat, beer in one hand, fork in the other, tasting the beans right out of the pot.
But when he tried to unleash a barrage of barking, all he could manage were silent gasps.
Was barking something canines learned, like walking on their hind legs? Surely it was instinctive.
He thought with horror: I don't have any canine instincts. I'm not a canine. I have no idea how to bark.
"Do you brush your dog's teeth?" O'Neill asked cheerfully.
"Why, no."
"Why does his breath smell of Crest, then?"
"Uh—maybe—he likes it! Yes, he eats it every chance he gets. Kevin! You must have left the top off the toothpaste again."
"No, Dad brushed his teeth right before—"
Kevin silenced himself, thank God, but the O'Neills all looked sharply at Bob.
"Their dad turned into a wolf," Jodie said again. "That's him."
"Oh, be quiet. Sometimes I think my daughter's a little addled," Mrs. O'Neill said.
"Merely intelligent and imaginative," the father said. "Unlike Spider here. Right, Spider?"
"Right, Dad. I'm fit only for basketball and then the grave."
If Bob couldn't bark—what other routines could dogs pull? Oh, yes, he vividly remembered a damnable Irish setter back when he was a kid. He knew exactly what to do.
Sitting down on his haunches, he prepared to wait. He stared up at O'Neill. Soon the man would get up out of the chair, and then Bob would do his deed. O'Neill was wearing a white cotton sweater and a nice pair of worsted pants. So much the better. Bob waited. When O'Neill met his eyes, he wagged his tail.
"Dog's a paraplegic, or what?"
"What do you mean? He's perfectly healthy."
"I've never seen an animal that bad at wagging its tail. He shakes his rear and just sort of hopes the tail will wiggle."
Cindy put her hand on his head. "I think he does very well, and he has a magnificent tail." Bob heard the sadness in her voice, and his heart was made very full. She was a real fighter, was this Cynthia he had married.
There came a great shuffling and creaking from O'Neill. "Well, we'd better get going. Don't want to miss the ten o'clock news. Channel Five's got the best sports." He laughed. "Also, I've got some papers to grade, if the cat didn't piss on them again." Another laugh, chair pushed back, man standing.
Bob leaped up on him, planting his forepaws on his chest and dragging them down, shredding the sweater and tearing the pants in about four places.
"Oh, Bob, no!" Cindy came, grabbed him around the neck just as he was rising for another pass. "Bob, what in the world are you doing?"
O'Neill lashed out, kicking Bob hard in the chest. The blow hurt and Bob involuntarily bit at the foot that tormented him.
With all her strength Cindy pulled back.
"That dog is crazy," O'Neill snarled. "Look at my clothes—and look at this shoe. Oh, shit, I'm bleeding. Broke the skin."
"It's their dad. You made him mad. He doesn't like you."
"Shut her up, Betty! Look at what it did to my foot!"
"I'll get a Band-Aid, Mr. O'Neill."
"Band-Aid, the hell. Now I'm going over to St. Vincent's. I've got to get a stitch." He tried to walk, hobbled, nearly fell. "Two or three stitches right in the ball of my foot. Betty, where's the car?"
"This side of the street, halfway up the block."
"At least it's not over on goddamn Mercer." He glared at Cindy. "I think you'd better look over your liability policy, girl."
Cindy went gray with rage. She detested sexual diminutives.
"Oh, now, John, you won't be doing anything like that. Come on, children, let's help Daddy get over to the emergency room."
Bob saw Cindy's hands on the baked beans. The O'Neills began to leave. Bob cringed. He knew exactly what was about to happen. The O'Neills went into the foyer, began waiting for the elevator. At that moment Cindy snapped. "You can take your damned baked beans and shove them you know where, boy!" With that she poured them over O'Neill. They were followed by the soup and the broccoli and then the door was slammed on the howling, food-covered O'Neills.
"You're harboring a rabid dog, you've assaulted me," O'Neill roared. "There will be revenge, girlie, there will be sweet revenge." Then, in a lower tone: "Stop eating that broccoli, you fool."
"Sorry, Dad."
The elevator took the O'Neills away. "Well, I guess I can write Jodie off as a friend," Kevin commented absently. He turned up Mystery, which he had been watching with the volume off.
"Oh, hell, now I've got the whole damn foyer to clean up."
Monica put her arm around Cindy. "I've got some nice Melozine in my purse."
"Tranquilizers give me anxiety attacks. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."
The two women cleaned up the mess, assisted by Kevin. Bob could easily have helped them by eating the beans off the floor, but he was damned if he was going to act like an animal. He went over, lay down on the couch, and watched Mystery with his muzzle on his paws.
Monica came and sat beside him. "I want to talk to you alone for a moment, Bob. I'm assuming that you can understand what I'm saying. Your actions tonight make it clear that your mind is unchanged. You're as o
dd as ever. First, I have some sort of an idea of what you have done. It's called hypnagogic transformation. You, of course, have accomplished a miraculous hypnagogic transformation. Among American Indians it is called shape-shifting and at best involves a certain amount of straightforward contortion. What you have done staggers the scientific mind. I always knew that you were a repressed, undeveloped genius of some sort. That you would choose to express your genius in this particular direction is naturally a surprise. But I must say something to you. Now listen to me. You are causing your family great suffering by what you have done. You must shift back. You must leave this utterly fantastic contortion and return to the human form. You can do it, you're in complete control of the situation. You and I know this, even though you yourself may not be willing to admit it. Bob, I beg of you, for the sake of a marvelous woman and a lovely little boy, return to them. Accept reality. You are a failure in life. A complete failure. But you are also a wonderful, surprisingly charismatic man. Your wife loves you to distraction. And that little boy—he adores his father. Please, for them, come back to us."
Outside the wind blew, sending a rattle of leaves against the window. Autumn was here. Time for the running of the deer, time for the gathering of nuts and the making of nests. The wind was wild, the wind was rich, the wind went where it went. Bob could see the high stars changing in their courses, could hear a rat scuttling along the roof across the street, could hear pigeons fluttering in their sleep. The owl that had been here earlier was now gone, but bats squeaked in the sky, dashing about after the last flies of summer.
He could not tell Monica how mistaken she was. His present form was as real and as immutable as his former one had been. Whatever had affected him had come and gone its merry way, leaving him as he now was.
"Am I reaching you, Bob?"
He tapped.
"Wait until you see what this absurd avoidance response is going to do to your family. You've sent a wonderful woman and a beautiful child to hell. So be it. I'm off to the hospital, where I intend to spend the rest of the night doing research. If I can find a way to force you out of this maneuver of yours, I'll do it. But I doubt that there's going to be a thing in the literature."
As she left, Bob disconsolately watched Lord Peter Wimsey dance through the intricacies of some mystery he couldn't identify.
"I'm going to bed, Mom."
"Good night, son. Maybe things will be better tomorrow."
"Tomorrow is another day, eh. That might not be entirely correct. Kafka—"
"Shut up about Kafka! I'm sick of hearing about Kafka."
"We're living the Metamorphosis."
"I don't care if we're living the Niebelungenlied, no more Kafka. At the moment I find it almost invincibly depressing. Now go to bed, I want to be alone with the remains of your father."
With a murmured "okay, Mom," he left the room. Soon the "Blue Danube" was drifting out his door.
"Turn it off! I never want to hear that again!" She sobbed, then rushed after him. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry. Please forgive your mother. It's been a pretty dismal day."
Bob could not cry. In fact, great emotion made him droop, loll his tongue, and stare. He watched as they prepared for bed.
"Can I stay with you, Mom?"
"Sure."
They climbed in bed together. They were beginning to respond to him just exactly as if he were a real dog. In a word, he was being ignored.
Cindy lay still, her mouth slightly open, Kevin in the crook of her arm.
Then the doorbell started. It was insistent, buzzing again and again.
Bob could do nothing but wait and watch. Cindy opened her eyes, gave a grunt of confusion, then turned over. The buzzer started up once more. She sat up in bed. "My God." With a hustle of covers she arose and went to the intercom. "Who? The police! Of course." She buzzed them in.
Bob paced, panting, which reduced his body heat—cold air across the tongue, a good, new sensation.
Then they were there, a whole foyer full of them, men smelling of cigarettes and oiled steel, of leather and sweat, tough men. "We got a dog complaint, ma'am."
"That bastard."
"He had twelve stitches. He lost a nerve in his foot. It'll be months before he walks. The dog's gotta go in for observation."
"No! That's completely impossible."
"Ma'am, the ASPCA truck is downstairs. It'll just be a week, he'll be treated well. You can visit him. It's no big deal."
"They're afraid of rabies?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Doesn't the rabies test involve dissecting the head of the animal?"
Bob shrank back into the coat closet, staring wildly.
"Ma'am, it's a matter of observation first. It won't come to no tests."
"But if it does?"
"Well, the test terminates the life of the animal. But if he might have rabies—"
"He doesn't have it! The worst he has is a slight case of the sniffles!"
"Well, it's put him in a kind of a bad mood."
"You can't take him. I'll have my vet look at him."
"No, ma'am. There's been a complaint filed. We have to take the dog."
"Where's your warrant? You can't even come in here without a warrant!"
"I hate these pet schticks. We don't need a warrant, ma'am. I'm going to tell the ASPCA guys to come up." He spoke into a handheld radio. The other cops fanned out into the living room, their bulky bodies filling it, casting black shadows from the single light that was on, the lamp that hung over the dining table.
Bob was so horrified that he couldn't move. He stood watching Cindy lose her battle with the police. She literally wrung her hands as she talked, and then three more men came in, dressed in khaki overalls, carrying a large cage between them.
"Come on, boy," one of them said, opening his face at Bob in a most insincere approximation of a grin.
The smells, though, told him a great deal. When the man spoke to him, an odor of tooth decay and old bacon grease came across the air. Bob took a step forward and it blossomed with acid, a stench like boiling wax and onions. The man was afraid of him—terrified. And full of hate.
Bob could not go with these people. They would kill him, he knew it certainly.
"What the fuck," the man burst out. "This ain't a dog!" His voice was high, his odor grainy with fear. "You got a fuckin' wolf here."
One of the other men in khaki spoke up. "Why didn't you say this was a wolf, lady?"
"I—I—"
"People think these things are pets. They're crazy. This is a dangerous animal, my men aren't going near it."
Two of the policemen had their hands on their pistols.
"Go back to the truck," the flushed man said to one of the others. "Get the dart gun."
Cindy gave a little cry. A flash of panic made Bob growl. It was short and sharp, almost a bark.
The head cop took off his cap. "Lady, why are you keeping a wolf? Don't you know this is illegal?"
"He's a—he's just a big husky."
"Back out," the chief ASPCA man said, "these things can cut you to ribbons in a second. Where the fuck's Louie with that dart gun?" He grabbed one of the radios. "Louie, for God's sake, its hackles are up!"
The police had their pistols out now, all of them. Behind the clutch of blue and khaki the elevator door opened. Bob bolted, racing down the hall toward the bedroom.
"I'm calling my lawyer," Cindy shouted. Who? Bob wondered. Stanford Shadbold, whom they hadn't paid in a year?
"Okay, guys, break out the net. Block the corridor. I'm going in." As Cindy started her frantic phone calling Bob raced back and forth from bathroom to closet. The smells of fear and rage coming from the men drove him to panic, that and the knowledge of what was coming. From the bed there came a groan, then young Kevin was sitting up. He stared, stupefied, as a man in khaki, wearing a fencing mask and heavy quilting on his chest, arms and legs, advanced. In his hands was a neat plastic gun. Bob tried to rush past him at the last moment, his heart full of hop
elessness, his body still determined to escape.
There was an awful, burning pain in his breast. He heard himself screaming, a doggy wail.
"Dad, Dad!"
"Shut up, kid. Okay, guys, he's going down."
The fire spread, an agony that turned him to wood. It hurt but he could neither move nor cry out. He lay on his side, stiff, while his wife yammered at answering services and the ASPCA team gathered him up in a stout nylon net.
They took Bob's burning, paralyzed body down the hall. His eyes had blurred but he could still smell the horrible odors of the men, the faint smells of other animals on the netting, the rancid butter of Cindy and Kevin's terror.
Shrieks followed him down the hall, their razor agony penetrating even the tranquilizer. He could not even struggle to help Cindy, he could do nothing but listen to her at the far edge of panic, making a sound beyond grief.
"What about the Bill of Rights?" Kevin screamed, running along behind his father, wearing nothing but a pair of underpants. "What about due process? You can't just wrap my dad up in a net! You can't do it, this is America."
One of the policemen enclosed Kevin in a hug. "Gonna be okay, son. You wait and see."
"Don't you do that! Don't you grab my boy like that!"
Then Bob was in the elevator. The door rattled closed. Cindy's bellowing and Kevin's rising, frantic voice receded.
The world receded. There remained only the burning pain at the center of his chest, where the needle had been embedded. There was that, there was the blur of lights as the net was carried through the lobby. Then the back of the truck, thick with the scent of animal despair, a urinous, rotted stench. One of the men played a harmonica, some Spanish tune. Bob drifted helplessly away, and the world went silent, and odorless, and black.
Chapter Eight
TOTAL OBLIVION ONLY LASTED A FEW MINUTES. HE WAS still in the back of the truck when he became aware that they were fitting a wire and leather muzzle over his head. Vaguely he could feel them doing it, could hear them grunt when the truck lurched. His body seethed as if it was filled with insects. Try as he might, he could not move.
He understood, though, that he was in a cage in the back of the truck, and another cage had been fitted over his head.
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