Dog on the Cross

by Aaron Gwyn

  He saw Wisnat very seldom over the next few years, but he would occasionally spy Megan on the street. The woman, it seemed, had undergone various changes: her skin much rougher than it used to be, almost leathern. Apparently, she spent her days in a tanning bed, wore makeup even more heavily than the last time Jansen had seen her at the bar. He would watch her go down the street, recede among the awnings and parking meters, unable to decide whether she looked happy or merely resigned.

  Jansen could not pronounce judgment for he’d undergone a number of changes himself. That spring he put his bar up for sale and had little trouble getting rid of it. He felt, after all he’d been through, he needed time to recoup. But, although he altered his schedule and spent much of his time alone, he did not seem to be making progress toward recovery. He began taking long walks in which he would contemplate the events of the preceding year, trying to determine at what point he’d gone wrong, what potholed, gravel road he’d steered down to find the bridge out and the way back filled with insuperable barricades. At first he took his strolls in the country but soon switched to the sidewalks of Perser, starting just around evening when the streets were abandoned and the businesses closed, continuing, sometimes, late into the night.

  There were aspects of the situation he could never understand. Why, for instance, when Megan had begun growing facial hair she did not choose to treat the problem medically. He realized what a blow such a thing must have been to a person with an ego as frail as Megan’s, but were there not cosmetic remedies that would have made her right again? He’d seen ads for epilators and hair removal creams, an assortment of products she might have tried before succumbing to the barber. Perhaps, he thought, she’d tried some of these. Perhaps the chemicals that removed hair were less effective than those that claimed to grow it.

  There were other things about the circumstances that Jansen failed to comprehend, but his walks were helpful in this regard. They led him, in due time, past the barbershop, and one night he made a discovery that seemed to bring things sharply into focus. He returned the next week at the same hour, saw that what he’d stumbled on was something akin to a ritual, and whether or not it was for the two who participated in it, it soon became so for Jansen: every Saturday and Wednesday for years to come.

  Moving down the sidewalk just after ten, the street-lamps brightly lit, summer bugs or autumn leaves or winter flakes flitting about their bulbs, Jansen would come upon Main and follow it down to where Wisnat made his living, the same quaint shop with the plate-glass windows looking onto the street, the barber pole stationary now, the window shades drawn. There would be a warm yellow light coming from the edge of the blinds, and if one stood at just the right angle, one could make out what was happening inside without the slightest risk of being detected.

  It was here that Jansen discovered what years of reflection had proven powerless to reveal. Here that he realized gay described his behavior better than most appellations. Here he understood that the love he bore Wisnat was inescapable, that suffering an existence of insult and desire was not the worst thing that could occur; that life, without love, without even the false hope of love, had very little left to it.

  And now that he realizes this, is he better off for the knowledge? Has the epiphany fostered a clearer sense of self in this man who stands outside the barbershop with his face pressed against glass, watching past his blurred reflection, as he had from the backseats of teenage cars, Wisnat—the barber’s expression strangely ecstatic these days as he looks to the woman reclining in the chair below him, covered in a long sheet, perhaps even naked beneath it. The former bartender watches with a yearning that seems to match the barber’s rapture, watches as the man takes foam from the dispenser and removes the washcloth from Megan’s face, her skin warm and red, steaming slightly in the summer air. The foam goes onto her cheeks, Wisnat working it carefully in, and then the razor, just as careful, moving gently across her face—smiling, Jansen supposes, though he cannot tell this either. It feels wonderful, Jansen can remember, moving a little closer, closing his eyes to better imagine the sensation, the sound. It was the sound he had not forgotten, that which remained etched on his memory, a sound like something being scraped away, a noise he’d associated, at one time, with being cleansed, washed, as a child at the altar, of his sins. And though he cannot hear it through the glass, can hear nothing but the wind or swell of cicadas, he knows the sound as he knows the voice of the man who produces it. The crystalline noise of those smooth, clean, strokes. That scraping of the razor, like fingernails on glass.

  THE OFFERING

  An image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying, shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker? Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly: how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is dust, which are crushed before the moth? They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without regarding it. Doth not their excellency which is in them go away? They die, even without wisdom.

  —JOB 4:16 – 21

  HER SURGEON HAD explained this procedure would take five hours—one to make the incision and remove the lamina, another to extract the disk, three more to position the bone grafts, fasten the vertebrae with pins and screws. When Kathy began to awaken, struggle against the blur of vision and sound, she saw white brilliance and a ring of figures brightly clothed, supposing, at the age of fifty-one, she’d expired on the operating table and ascended to her reward. Warmth overcame her and then elation, an assurance, as in those hymns she sang in church, that there was indeed a celestial paradise, and her voice, unparalleled in the congregations of Oklahoma, would attain its chosen place.

  It was out of respect for this calling that she’d flatly refused her pastor’s prompting to think toward secular venues. She sang, she informed him, as a type of ministry, and a performance of Wagner or Strauss would jeopardize the one gift she could offer. Her husband and daughter had argued against this, but now, as the bright forms encircling her grew clearer, she knew she had acted properly: her compensation would be great and the next face she saw, that of her Savior. Even as the notion suggested itself, a set of kindly features emerged from the radiance and drew close, a voice speaking in calm and measured tones, telling her not to worry, that everything would be okay.

  “Mrs. Olaf,” it said, “you shouldn’t try and talk.”

  But Kathy tried regardless, the smile stretching the right half of her face beginning gradually to lower, the nurse providing details of her stroke.

  WHAT, UPON AWAKENING, had seemed five hours was in truth a monthlong coma. During the laminectomy, Kathy’s blood pressure had risen, and there was clotting just below her knee. The doctors had not understood what was happening until the anesthesia wore away and their patient lay unresponsive, her face vacant, eyes fixed to the wall. Through the years to follow, she would gather only the vaguest impressions of this time—a stretch in which dream bled to waking, color to speech, one afternoon a figure standing at the foot of the bed grasping her shin, asking could she feel this, and what about now?

  But when Kathy did awaken, she did so fully, and the doctors were pleased to find that there was no damage to the brain, none to liver or kidney function, very little to the CNS. The left side of her body had been affected, but her recovery in this regard was just short of miraculous. A few days and she was drafting letters; within a week she was walking; after a month she was released from the hospital altogether. The stroke seemed now to involve only her larynx, her tongue and esophagus, most notably, her voice.

  For the most, Kathy was able to suppress the terror such an affliction might have caused. The doctors said, given her progress in other areas, she could expect the complete return of vocal ability and in the meantime encouraged her to consult a speech therapist, which she did several times a week. Each morning she would awaken to find something else restored to her, another skill recovered. The left side of he
r face grew taut; she ceased to drag her foot; her penmanship continued to develop, then attained, almost, the precision of type. She kept pen and legal paper with her at all times, conversing, in this way, with her daughter and husband. Strangely, she found relationships with her family were strengthened, and viewing it as a temporary state of affairs, Kathy began to experiment. She left mischievous notes on her husband’s pillow, scribbled reminders to her daughter, scolding her for a chore left undone, sneaking Post-its into her cereal box or bag of chips. On weekends, she would sit at her desk and write long letters to her mother and sisters, receive replies just as lengthy, speaking of matters they had not been able to discuss. In many ways, the silence that she viewed as a thing to be overcome had fostered a peculiar kind of intimacy. Driving home from the market one day, she realized that the anxiety attacks that had once forced her to carry Valium seemed to have vanished.

  And yet there were nights she went to bed and an apprehension would vibrate in her chest, a flow of acid to her stomach, shortness of breath—the thought she might never again form words, let alone perform. She pushed this away, for the idea held a taint of blasphemy: she was chosen to bring song to the world, and this is what she would do; as long as she was alive, this is what she would offer. How could it even be otherwise?

  Time passed. Eight months. Nine. Kathy awoke on a Monday morning with feeling in her tongue and throat. Her doctor removed the tube from her stomach through which she took food and put her on a liquid diet, then on solids. She was able for the first time to swallow and chew. At the table one evening, just before dessert, Kathy suddenly cleared her throat. There were a few moments of absolute silence, daughter and husband staring. They blinked several times, began slowly to clap.

  Then came the one-year anniversary of her stroke, and in a weekly meeting with her therapist, the man informed Kathy that her speech might not return. She sat for a while, then nodded, went to her car and drove home. Walking inside, she stood a few minutes in the hallway, scanning the room—dining table and ottoman, recliner and venetian blinds, slats of sunlight dividing the carpet into a checkerwork of shadow. Her husband and daughter were not yet home, and there was, she noticed, a palpable silence, an absence that seemed to vacuum sound into it, to become, in some way, its negative. Blood rushed in her ears. Motes swirled in the afternoon light. When her husband pulled into the drive, Kathy was aware she had begun, after a fashion, to scream—hands clenched, nails cutting into her palms, no sound but the force of air across her teeth, the quiet hum of the refrigerator, the scarcely perceptible ticking of an antique clock.

  SHE BEGAN TO FLOOD her environment with sound. There were the gospel tapes she played on her morning drive, the headphones in her office at work. She had a radio installed in the shower, a waterproof component that on most days was capable of nothing but static. Kathy listened to it regardless, steam beading the shower door, the water turned hot, aimed at her throat.

  She became a compulsive watcher of television, she became a lover of malls. Even the Pentecostal church she had attended for the last twenty-seven years seemed far too quiet, the prayer service close to unbearable, and one night, unable to sleep, she saw a program wherein charismatics pranced in the aisles while a preacher stood singing above them, accompanied by an electric band. Kathy observed this with great attention. She fetched the remote from between two cushions, turned up the volume.

  One afternoon, her husband—a squat man with thinning hair and glasses that slid incessantly down the bridge of his nose—arrived home late and, with a self-congratulatory smile, sat a cage in front of her, wrapped in silver paper, tied with a bow. Beside it was a smaller, rectangular package, likewise wrapped. Halfheartedly, Kathy reached from where she lay and undid the ribbon. Behind chrome bars, she saw a parrot—green and yellow—shifting from one leg to the other.

  Kathy picked up her pen, scratched quickly at the tablet, held it toward Chris.

  What the hell is that?

  “Parrot,” her husband told her. “You can teach it to talk.”

  Kathy stared at him a moment. She wrote the word how.

  Chris smiled. Pointed. “Open the other,” he said.

  She did so and discovered, inside a padded cardboard box, a device roughly the size and shape of a book, though not nearly as thick. It was dark gray and had a speaker at one end. On its surface was a keypad, a small digital screen. Instinctively, Kathy moved a hand along its side, flipped a switch, and brought the screen to life, bright green letters asking her to enter a name.

  “I got it at that store we went to over in Shawnee,” Chris said. “The one with the wheelchairs?”

  Kathy sat staring at the mechanism. She looked up at her husband.

  “It’s called a talker. They make them for people who lose their voice.” Chris sank both hands in his pockets, began to rattle change. “I know you’re going to get everything back, but for right now I thought it’d be nice not to have to write all the time.”

  Kathy forced her mouth into half a smile.

  “Wouldn’t it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well,” Chris said, sitting on the couch beside her, “they told me I could take it back if you don’t want it. You might at least give it a shot.”

  Kathy looked back to the apparatus on her lap. She typed her name into the keypad, pressed firmly the button marked ENTER.

  Ello, Kathy, the machine welcomed, metallic and harsh, a voice she’d almost come to expect.

  SHE HAD HESITATED at first to even turn it on, to hear the device pronounce again those words and syllables that ought to have been coming from her. It found a place on the kitchen table beneath a stack of bills and flyers. One morning, she saw her daughter employing it as a coaster. There was a permanent ring on its display from her glass of orange juice.

  It was the parrot that occasioned the machine’s initial use. Kathy, after taking the week off, was lying on the couch watching television and, from the corner of her eye, the bird rocking nervously on its perch. When the program went to commercial, Kathy hit MUTE and turned her full attention to the parrot. She thought it peculiar the way the bird’s eyes—glassy and dark—did not permit the expressiveness one associates with the eyes of a dog or cat. There was a vacancy to them, as if someone had taken a drill and bored holes in the creature’s face.

  Still watching the bird, she got up, walked quickly over, and retrieved the machine out from under the catalogs and issues of The Perser Chronicle. She brought it to the couch, sat down, flipped the switch at its side. When the screen came up, she typed a phrase and pressed ENTER.

  The bird stared at her blankly, shifting its feet. It cocked its head to one side and let out a brief croak.

  Kathy retyped her message; did so again; was still doing this when Chris entered from the garage, stood next to the piano, and quietly observed the proceedings. He had just opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, when the bird, in guttural replication of the machine, uttered one of the words she’d been typing for close to an hour now. Kathy jerked her head toward her husband and smiled. She once again entered the phrase, and this time the bird repeated it in full.

  Over the next week, Kathy would work with the parrot an hour each day. It was the first progress she’d enjoyed in quite some time, and though she pondered the reasons God would bestow such a gift on the bird and not on her, she hoped to make a good showing. Perhaps, she thought, it was a test. Maybe she would be rewarded for her selflessness, for considering God’s grandeur and not her own. It was with this in mind that she sat down one afternoon when her husband and daughter were out shopping, pulled the machine onto her lap, and typed Jesus is Lord.

  The parrot did not hesitate. In a voice that resembled, to an alarming degree, the machine’s, the bird spoke loudly back to her the name Jesus.

  It was harsher-sounding than she would have liked, but Kathy was pleased with her success. Nodding excitedly to her pupil, she retyped the message.

  The bird looked at her, craning i
ts neck. “Jesus,” it shrieked.

  Kathy continued typing and the bird continued repeating the name. She had been able to accomplish “pretty bird” and “who’s that” and even “Chris and Kathy,” but for some reason the parrot would not consent to follow “Jesus” with anything but the slight shuffling of its feet.

  Kathy tried for a few more hours but could get nothing else from the bird, and by the time her husband and daughter arrived, she was weary to the point of tears. She stood, walked over to Chris, and put her arms around him.

  “Hey,” her husband asked, “are you all right?”

  “Jesus,” the bird interrupted.

  Chris turned to look at the cage. The parrot rocked on its perch. “Jesus,” it screeched.

  “When you teach it to do that?” said Chris.

  Kathy shook her head, made several indecipherable gestures.

  Her husband laughed nervously. “Sounds like it’s cussing. Like it dropped a hammer on its foot.”

  Their daughter, a pale-skinned teenager with a shapeless body and eyes that resembled in many ways the bird’s, went to the cage, stuck a finger in between the bars, and attempted to stroke the creature’s head. The bird inched to the far side of its perch, flapped several times its wings. “Jesus,” it said, and with that sank its beak into the young woman’s hand.

  The parrot continued its blasphemous monologue through dinner and intermittently over the course of the evening, and that night even when they put the sheet over its cage and turned out the lights, its metallic voice would cry out, muffled a bit but piercing nonetheless. The bird had just seemed to calm itself, and Chris was on the edge of dozing when his wife broke down and began to cry hysterically. He eased over, took her head on his shoulder, and held her against his chest, beginning to whisper. But try as he might, his wife did not seem receptive to comfort, and eventually he began to grow upset himself. He scooted slowly back to his side of the bed and lay there, listening to her weep.