The Heart of Dog

by Doranna Durgin

"Sorry."

  "Peter, this is important."

  I nodded.

  "Are you all right?"

  Obviously not. Obviously something had gone wrong here, but I wasn't about to tell her that. "Fine."

  "Do you want me to drive? You look funny."

  It would be better if she drove. She, at least, knew where we would be going.

  I got out of the driver's side and walked around the back. The station wagon was full of junk—toys, folded comic books, theology texts and a blanket. A child's safety seat had been installed behind the passenger seat. I hadn't noticed before.

  She was waiting for me at the passenger door. She kissed me, and I felt nothing. I should have felt something, right? This was my fantasy after all.

  "I didn't get it," she said and I heard the disappointment in her familiar voice. "The committee told me that I would be better off in some ivory tower, that a church had pragmatic concerns, and I was too intellectual for them. I guess they're trying to draw from outside the university neighborhood. They didn't like Pastor Wilkinson, despite his reputation as a scholar. No one warmed to him."

  She sighed, squared her shoulders, then walked toward the driver's side. I was supposed to soothe her, I knew, but I was at a disadvantage—I hadn't seen her in nearly a decade, and I couldn't remember her name.

  I slipped into the passenger seat, listening to the rhythm of her speech, making an occasional "uh-huh" or "mmm" in the pauses. The irony was that I didn't even like Twilight Zone stories. I always thought men who dealt with the devil were dumb, and I certainly had no respect for whiners like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life or Nicholas Cage in The Family Man.

  In fact, it looked like I had walked into a new version of the latter two films. A man, enjoying his single life, discovers he's isolated and finds contentment in domestic mess, a wife, some children (I glanced at the car seat behind me and shivered), and a dog.

  Always a dog.

  I would have wagered that Jimmy Stewart had a dog too, although I couldn't remember one. I tended to blank out dogs from movies.

  "…not right," she said, "asking you to go out of state, lose your job so that I can find mine. I could teach or write a few books. And then I could stay home with the kids."

  I looked at her. She had crows feet around her eyes, and gray dusted her hair. Sorrow and disappointment lined her face, but it still remained pleasant. I could get used to that face—if I could only remember her name.

  "It sounds like you're giving up," I said, because I knew that "mmm-mmm" would no longer cut it.

  She turned the car onto a side street. I had no idea how she knew where she was. The houses in this subdivision—obviously built thirty years before—looked the same as all the others.

  "No one wants a philosopher any more," she said as she turned the wheel again. She pulled into a driveway, and stopped so suddenly that I jerked against the seatbelt. "They either want someone who is positive about who she is and what she knows or they want the same old thing, a warm loving people-person who gives hugs and canned sermons on Christmas Eve."

  She opened the car door and stepped out. I stared inside the open garage. An ancient Volkswagen Rabbit hid inside, surrounded by two bright pink bicycles, with ribbons hanging off their handlebars. Matching helmets hung on the seats. Another bicycle, boy's style, built for speed, hung on the wall, next to skis that looked like they hadn't been used. A snowblower, a riding lawn mower, gardening equipment scattered along a tool bench.

  It looked like she—we?—had been here a long time.

  I unbuckled the seat belt, opened the door, and got out. The air was humid, and instantly I started to sweat. The front door opened and a dog bounded out. A sheep dog, like they use in the movies, only this one had tangled hair (no mats, though) and bows tied onto his tail.

  Pink bows.

  He barked as he came toward me, tail wagging, pink bows sailing in the breeze.

  I pressed against the car, wanting to get back inside, but knowing there wasn't enough time.

  "No!" I shouted at the creature that sent me here. "I won't do it!"

  Behind the dog came two little girls, maybe six, obviously twins. They looked like my cousins had at that age, just as willowy, just as determined.

  "I won't!" I shouted, not looking toward the sky because I had to keep my eye on that dog. "I'll be Ward Cleaver, but I won't have a damn dog. And you can't make me!"

  ~~~

  "Of course I can."

  The creature sounded so reasonable, up there on the boulder. The sun had vanished completely, but a thin silver light bathed everything. The creek looked beautiful, the water reflecting the light. The water babbled as it hurried past, as if reminding me that I would have been no better off had I fallen in there.

  I was so cold that I had turned numb. My clothes had caked on me, and my ankle ached.

  "No sense in making you more miserable than you already are." He turned toward me, this Puck-like creature, and I realized that the silver light was coming off his skin. He was the thing that glowed. I had never seen anything like it and because this was my hallucination, I was all right with that.

  I even found it slightly fascinating.

  "What are you doing here?" I asked. "Why did you come to me?"

  He was still crouched, hands dangling between his legs. He'd clearly been holding that position for hours, and it didn't seem to bother him. His legs seemed longer than they had before—or maybe I had just noticed them—and his arms were short. Like a grasshopper's.

  "Her name," he said, answering a question I hadn't asked and ignoring the one I had, "was Annabeth. What I want to know is how could a man as intelligent as you are miss the attraction? She is perhaps the only woman in your sphere who thinks like you do, about the larger issues, stretching her mind, and you refused to take note."

  I had noticed how she thought. I hadn't noticed much else, true enough. But she had been a student.

  A student with long brown hair and wide, almond shaped eyes. A student who wore a light perfume that reminded me of summer rainstorms. A student had clutched her Philosophy of Mathematics books as if they held the secret to the universe.

  It seemed a shame to marry her, force her into the 2.5 children mode, buy her a dog and a station wagon (probably because we had been unable to afford the now—obligatory mini-van), and live as if we were just like everyone else.

  He hopped to the edge of the boulder, peered at me, and blinked his round eyes. They had slits in the middle of the pupil, like cat's eyes.

  "So," he said, "you would have been Ward Cleaver if it weren't for the dog. Do dogs frighten you that much?"

  Unbidden, the stench of the Great Dane's breath filled my nostrils and I could almost sense the drool on my face. I shuddered, deep, racking, and it had less to do with the fading chill (fading. That was bad, wasn't it?) than it did with the memory of that monstrous dog.

  "I don't want one," I said stubbornly. "I never have."

  "Nor have you wanted a wife or a child or any human contact at all. How strange that all is." He leaned closer, extending his neck. Something brushed my face. Feelers. Soft, translucent, even in the silver light from his skin.

  "If you have magic," I said, "you can spell me out of here."

  His head retracted, the feelers gone. Only the sensation of their touch remained, burning against my benumbed cheeks. "You misunderstand the nature of our encounter. I give you choices. I do not make them."

  "Between dying here and living there? What kind of choice is that?"

  He scuttled farther from me, hunkered in the center of the boulder, and then grinned, Puck no longer. Now he was the Cheshire Cat—all teeth and attitude.

  "It's the usual choice. Most don't want anything else."

  "I'm not most," I said.

  "I should have known that when I realized you could see me." His smile faded. With his back foot, he reached up and scratched behind his wing. A hum, the cross between a violin and a sustained piano chord,
sounded faintly in the evening air.

  My cheeks were feeling flushed. In fact, I was growing warm.

  "I'll have to be more creative," he said, and for a moment, I thought I was the one who had spoken.

  My confusion was not good. Not good at all. I wondered if we both knew it or if there was only one of us. If there was only one, then of course we both knew the entire situation was not good, because he had to be a part of me.

  But if he wasn't—

  If he wasn't—

  ~~~

  Annabeth sat across from me, stirring a large ice coffee topped with whip cream. She was the girl I remembered, not the woman she would become. Her hair, long and brown, was tucked behind her ears, and her face was narrow—a young face, filled with promise, none of it fulfilled.

  The coffee shop smelled of roasting beans—a sign behind her claimed that the place roasted its own—and behind the counter, a coffee grinder roared. Conversation hummed around us—mostly young people, wearing that season's uniform of black leather and pale make-up.

  I recognized the shop. Far from campus, near the high school and the bad section of town. The kids here didn't carry books or homework. Instead, they hauled wads of money from their jacket pockets and traded tiny bags for cash.

  Annabeth looked uncomfortable. Her backpack hung over her knee, as if she was afraid someone would steal the books. Overhead, Ella Fitzgerald sang Cole Porter—the eerie song about Miss Otis, who regretted missing lunch, but didn't regret murder. I learned to love Fitzgerald in this place; I used to come alone, read a book, and spy on the parts of humanity I would never inhabit.

  Even though I wasn't cold, even though I clutched a warm mug of coffee between my hands, I knew I was still sitting in the mud near my house, imagining that a creature which was half human-half insect had control of my mind.

  "I've never been any place like this before," Annabeth said, and the words echoed in my memory.

  We had been here before—I had brought us here, at her request. Not that she wanted exotic coffee, but because she wanted a conversation someplace where we could be alone.

  I suspected then that she had been thinking of my house or my office, a place that was both intimate and personal, but I was conscious of the fact the differences in our status. Even though I didn't want any other faculty member to overhear what she had to say, I didn't want to risk being caught inviting a female student into my home.

  She looked over her shoulder. "I can't believe they're all in high school."

  The other kids did look too tough to be in school. I had suspected most of them weren't. Or I remembered suspecting it.

  I knew this conversation now. I had shoved it into the deepest recesses of my memory, but it was returning, with all of its despair and embarrassment (hers), and slowly dawning understanding (mine).

  On that afternoon, in a place filled with Goths, Annabeth—Ph.D. candidate and future theology student—propositioned me.

  I had turned her down.

  And now the creature on the rock was giving me a second chance to accept.

  "No," I said, not willing to go through the banality a second time. The small talk, the flushed moment where she spoke of her attraction, the way she had looked at me when she talked about how much she admired my mind.

  Annabeth frowned at me. "What?"

  "No." I looked up, like I had wanted to do when that sheepdog was running toward me. "I'm not changing my mind. I lied. No Ward Cleaver. No marriage. Not everyone needs 2.5 kids and a dog."

  Annabeth's face turned white. "I wasn't going to talk to you about marriage, I was—"

  ~~~

  And then I was back in the cold. A moon had risen overhead, its white light negating some of the silver flowing from my strange companion. An occasional throb from my ankle told me that my body still existed—although it existed in a strange half world where it was sometimes cold, mostly numb, and no longer feeling like my own.

  The creek burbled past, strains of Ella still echoing in my ears. I had made myself forget Annabeth because she had made me uncomfortable. That afternoon was not the best of my life.

  "I already made that decision," I said, sounding peevish. I never sounded peevish, but beneath my bravado, I was scared. A night was going by, and I was wet, cold and exposed. I had no idea how much longer I had before the life leached out of me, one degree at a time. "I don't know why you thought that was creative."

  The creature hadn't been looking at me although I hadn't realized it. When his head swiveled, I was startled. The front of his skull was shaped the same as the back of his skull. Only his glowing eyes—red now that complete darkness had fallen—marked the difference.

  "No dogs, you said." His voice rasped. I hadn't noticed that before. Or perhaps I was adding details, recreating him as I slipped deeper into delirium. "So I went back to a fork on the path. Allowed you yet another choice. Which, you claim, you would not take."

  "Had not taken," I said. "Will never take."

  His eyes widened, glowing beacons in the darkness.

  "See?" I said, the anger returning. "That's what I don't get. You wish-granters, all of you have such conservative tendencies. You seem to think alternate lifestyles are bad, that people should live one way and one way only. Don't you understand that It's a Wonderful Life is a movie about how to live with failure? It's message is to take what's offered and be content. The people who love that movie are people who fail to strive, who need some affirmation of their humdrum life."

  "You have a humdrum life," the creature said.

  "I have a life I like." Except for this part. The dying part. But I didn't know anyone who was looking forward to that. "I don't want a wife. I don't want to live in a suburb. I like it here."

  "In the mud," he said.

  I shook my head. "On my land."

  "Where you'd rather die than go back and start over."

  I crossed my arms, felt the swollen material of my jacket sleeves push against my chest. Some feeling was left then, but not much.

  Actually, dying of exposure wasn't a bad way to go—considering all of the other possibilities. I wasn't going to be hatcheted to death by one of my students, or shot by a jealous lover. I wasn't going to suffer through operation after operation trying to stem a wasting disease like cancer, and I wouldn't feel the sudden, sharp, breathless pain of a massive heart attack.

  "You're being difficult," he said, and it sounded as if he were angry at me for being content with my life.

  "No," I said. "You are. All I did was ask you for help out of this mud."

  "I am not here to help you." He said this slowly, patiently, as if he were speaking to a particularly dumb child. "Oddly enough, this is not about you."

  Then he blinked. The effect was eerie, like one of those slow motion nature videos of a reptile, watching its prey. The redness vanished for just a moment, only to reappear even more powerfully than before.

  "If it's not about me," I snapped, "what is it about?"

  His eyes closed again, and then his skin stopped sending its luminescent glow across the boulder. Even the moon seemed to have faded.

  Blackness grew…

  ~~~

  …and I realized it was rain, so thick and heavy on the windshield that I couldn't see the road. The headlights illuminated drops right in front of them and little else. I slowed, not knowing where I was.

  The car was old, familiar, the used BMW I bought as an indulgence in the early 1990s. I had sold it when I got tenure, splurging on a brand-new four-by-four, bright red, which suited my life in the Montana countryside.

  An NPR voice—chatty, deep and knowledgeable—tracked mid-term election results, reciting Congressional districts state by state—as a corner loomed ahead of me, suddenly clearer than the rest of the road.

  The rain was letting up just enough to let my headlights defeat the darkness. I saw the large white lump ahead in time to swerve around it.

  My back wheels skidded, and I spun, crossing lanes, circling madl
y, the car hydroplaning. I fought the spin, pumped the brake, and eventually, the wheels caught. I eased the car to the side of the road, and sat there, my heart beating so hard that I could barely catch my breath.

  Sweat ran down my face, even though I was still unnaturally cold. My fingers looked blue in the light from the dash.

  I had been through this before too. But there had been no woman beside me, no dog or children looming in my future. Just me, the car, and the deserted road—the highway coming off of Lolo Pass. I had been to Idaho for a seminar, and I mistakenly decided to drive home instead of staying the night.

  Tired, hungry, horrible weather. I had vowed, after this trip that I would be more cautious with myself and my life in the future.

  Obviously that took.

  I shivered, then wiped the sweat off my face. What point was the creature making now? I remembered sitting here, remembered putting the car in gear, remembered switching to an oldies station because I needed something to match the rhythm of my pounding heart.

  I knew how this night played out. I went home, slept, and woke with pulled muscles in my back. Then I went to my probabilities class to see how well they had done with the election results, not caring one way or another, and never bothering to do that lecture again.

  What would one swerving car, one near miss, have to do with a slid in the mud on a spring day?

  My brights were off. Sometimes I did that in heavy rains, finding the glare of the brights lessened visibility more than adding it. I flicked them on, and saw the thing in the road again, a white lump that looked like a matted rug.

  I hadn't seen the first time I went through this night—not after the spin. If I remembered correctly, I saved myself from the spin, rested a moment, and drove east to Missoula.

  Instead, I felt an obligation. If I didn't move that rug, someone else might not be as lucky as I was. Someone else might slam into a tree, hit a car in the opposite lane, or tumble down the embankment into heaven knew what lay below.

  It wasn't until I had gotten out of the car, pulled up the hood on my Gore-Tex, that I realized how cold I was. I shivered again, and felt the wet, even though my clothes beneath the Gore-Tex were dry. The rain had stopped, but the pine trees dripped on me, and the road was slick. I had nearly reached the carpet when I realized it wasn't a carpet at all.