The Sixth Sense

by Jessie Haas

  Still hugging the dog, Phillip closed his eyes and let his breath go in an openmouthed sigh. He saw it going on and on. He saw himself carrying dog after dog to the incinerator. He thought perhaps he saw himself getting used to it. What are you going to do?

  “I’m going to save this one,” he said, thinking, Then, even if I do get used to it, maybe it will be all right.

  “Just this one,” he said.

  They worked hard to persuade him, Sharon and Dr. Rossi. They said how much exercise a greyhound needed, and that she probably wasn’t housebroken. She might chase small animals, they said, and what about that little cat of his?

  Thea! In his heart Phillip was cold with terror for her—Thea, his best friend. But it was already too late. He could only go forward and try very hard to make things work.

  And no matter how hard Sharon and Dr. Rossi tried, their bright eyes watched him, and they were glad when he didn’t yield. Dr. Rossi gave his dog a worm pill and some vitamins. Sharon told him about her own greyhound, and the eleven cats she had saved from the needle in the past three years. He put his dog in the run farthest from the incinerator, out of sight of the dead dogs, and went back to finish his morning’s work with a warm, choked feeling inside.

  Later it was different. When he took his dog out of the run on a borrowed leash and tried to get her to walk beside his bike, she was plainly frightened. She’d never seen anything like it before. Nor had she seen trucks rushing and rattling past her, garbage cans by mailboxes, houses and horses and garage doors surging open. She did not leap or whine, but she panted, with the corners of her mouth strained back in an ugly grin. Out here in the sunshine, he could see the unhealthy dullness of her hide. Worms, Sharon said. They feed them raw, rotting meat, she said. Phillip, wheeling his bike alongside a dog who whipped around in alarm every time a truck went by, began to feel he’d made a mistake.

  He didn’t want to admit that. He looked hard at the greyhound and said to himself, “She’s alive.” So she was not as attractive to him just now; at least she wasn’t lying on top of that heap of legs beside the incinerator.

  That was undeniable but didn’t make him happier. He began to think of shots and dog food, and the necessity to spay her. He thought of school coming up and how he would work after school, and then have homework. That left no time for long runs, and no time to train her; no time to get her used to Thea. Horrible scenes came up in his mind. He crushed them down by thinking what his mother would say, and of his father’s distress, that even a dog for his kid was so impossible.

  His heart felt heavy, literally heavy, and his shoulders stooped with carrying it. When he looked at the greyhound, he felt only pain. But it was too late now.… He could not think clearly, but he knew there was no going back to Dr. Rossi and her needle. The life in this dog meant too much to him, even if the dog herself did not. He’d taken his stand against mortality … oh, hell. Oh, hell.

  He wheeled his bike past the end of their street and the four streets beyond, heading for the mountain. Where the streets ended, he hid the bike in a bush and began climbing up a barely discernible scratch in the dirt that was the path. The greyhound panted behind him, claws scraping on the rocks. She walked awkwardly on this steep, uneven ground.

  They came now to his spot. A piece of the mountain had sheered away here, leaving a bare face of stone twenty feet high, with a heap of shale and rubble at the bottom. It was ringed by trees from which the grapevines hung as big as anacondas. You could swing on them; he hadn’t yet, but Kris had, the day she’d brought him here.

  That was three weeks ago, and so far as he knew, it was the best place around. Climb any higher and you couldn’t help seeing the little pastel houses, all laid out on their half-acre lots. Lower down, you started seeing the cars go by. Here was the only possible place to read Thoreau and think.

  Think. He sat on a rock, and the greyhound gingerly stretched herself on the shale beside him. She rested her muzzle on her long graceful paws, but her eyes remained open, following the flight of birds and rolling every once in a while toward Phillip.

  He stared at her, but he wasn’t thinking of her, nor of the three others who were dead, nor the dozens still to die. He wasn’t thinking of his lost home or his sick father. He was thinking of trains: hop on one, ride till it stops; hop off, catch another. He was thinking of country roads: just walk; at every crossroad take the fork that looks best.

  He was thinking that he’d never get anywhere. There wasn’t anywhere for him. And, anyway, he’d be smashed going through a tunnel, or murdered by a motorcycle gang, hit by a truck. He knew that the worst thing in the world can happen, has happened, will happen. No reason why not. Nothing to stop it.

  He was thinking how the needle went into the veins of the dogs’ legs, how quickly the dogs collapsed. Looking at the foreleg of the dog he had saved, he saw the very vein Dr. Rossi would have used. He reached out, and the dog raised her head to watch him. He put his fingers on the jumping pulse. He looked at the veins in the back of his hand, big and round, and then he turned the hand over to look at his wrist.

  He no longer knew what he was thinking.

  Perhaps it was a long time, perhaps a moment, before the dog broke in upon his state by turning her head downhill, pricking up her ears. Phillip closed one hand over the wrist at which he had been staring, and followed the dog’s gaze.

  Kris was coming up through the woods, in jeans and a butter-colored shirt. The sun was bright on her pale hair, and she moved so quietly that he did not yet hear her.

  It was extraordinary to see her coming. He could have cried. He wanted to rise up and hug her, press her to his aching chest. But they were not on such terms. He hugged his greyhound instead, for the second time, and laid his cheek for an instant on the smooth dome of her skull.

  Kris stepped into the clearing. She stopped and looked at them, saying nothing.

  Phillip saw her putting two and two together, knowing that today was his first day of work, perhaps remembering how he saved the mole, maybe knowing something about greyhound racing. She didn’t ask questions, just came slowly forward and extended her hand, index finger folded in the shape of a dog’s nose for the greyhound to sniff.

  The greyhound’s long nose twitched. She looked up, and the two regarded one another. They looked alike: tall and strong and racy; hunting creatures.

  “Why did your mother ever name you Kris?” he asked, thinking, but people aren’t called Artemis anymore!

  She looked swiftly at him, starting to smile at the strange question. But the smile slid away.

  “My mother doesn’t know anything about me!”

  Phillip gaped at her. He felt exceptionally strange, as if the world around him had been frozen and was now coming to life. He felt almost seasick, and very small. The three of them were so small under the bare cliff and the thick trees hung with grapevines.

  “What’s the matter? I thought you two got along OK.”

  “Oh—get along!” Kris looked off into the trees. “What’s getting along, anyway? It’s easy to get along with somebody who doesn’t pay any attention.”

  “I thought your father was the one.…”

  “Dad at least bothers to fight! Mum just tunes out—it’s like I’m not even real to her, like I’m one of her kindergarten kids. My mother turns me into nothing!”

  Phillip shook his head. Nobody could turn Kris into nothing, though she might feel that way for a time. But it would be sappy to say that. The best thing to do for Kris was to change the subject.

  “I saved this greyhound’s life,” he said, “and now I don’t know what to do with her.”

  The black look fell from Kris’s face, and she listened while he told the story, growing full of indignation, and proud of him. “Good for you!” she said, and shook his hand. Meanwhile her left hand lay quietly on the greyhound’s smooth skull, fitting perfectly.

  “I don’t think I can keep her,” Phillip said. “I’ll just take her home awhile and see if I c
an find somebody to take her. Somebody who doesn’t have cats.”

  “That lets out Aunt Mil,” said Kris. She had started to look excited but sobered again, eyes on the greyhound. “I’ll ask around—” Her voice suddenly shut off.

  Phillip saw her cheeks brighten, and a bold, proud, and challenging sparkle grow in her eyes.

  “I’ll take her.”

  “I thought your father wouldn’t allow pets.”

  “I don’t think,” said Kris, feeling her way accurately along the thought, as you feel along a fish bone with your tongue, “I don’t think he’d actually kill the dog, or take her to the Humane Society. I think he’d rather fight me about it, and I think I can win.”

  “This leash belongs to the clinic,” said Phillip, handing it over.

  “I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.” She was already starting off downhill, impatient for the confrontation. The greyhound rose and followed her, before the slack of the leash was taken up.

  Gratitude for you! thought Phillip, watching them go. He was alone again, and he felt cool and light. His heart still ached, but he almost liked the feeling. He was alive and growing.

  Far down the hill, beyond the dark lace curtain of tree trunks and big black grapevines, Kris in her yellow shirt turned in a patch of sunshine. She raised one hand in a wave like a salute. The greyhound turned against her leg to look back, too, panting a little.

  “Thanks!” Kris shouted to him. “Thanks!”

  TANGLEWOOD

  I AM HERE so my father can stay at the hotel and have sex with his girlfriend.

  To be just, Nancy is more than a girlfriend. They’ll probably marry soon, and then I’ll have to admit that I like her quite a lot.

  Nancy is extraordinarily beautiful, with long raven hair and sapphire eyes, the sort of cheekbones you see only on TV, and the tall leggy figure of a healthy model. And she’s nice, which complicates things. I like to think of her as a soap-opera homewrecker, cruel and calculating. Or I like to think, Anyone that beautiful has to be brainless!

  Not true. Nancy sometimes says, “I know this is difficult for you, Marcy.” But if I act like a shit to her, she doesn’t take it lying down. She gets mad; she says things she’s sorry for later, as anyone would. She makes it clear that this isn’t the easiest situation for her, either.

  Nancy knows how to tell a story so people listen, and she never forgets the punch line. She cooks wonderfully, but she’s not above take-out Chinese. She’s a talented potter who has made a living at it. She loves animals, she loves gardening, she loves my father. Altogether pretty hard to hate, though I’m trying.

  Actually she’s like my mother, which makes sense. I don’t see how he could help being knocked over by her beauty; and, getting to know her, it seems inevitable that he’d fall in love. He loves my mother, too, because of course she didn’t stop being beautiful, talented, and funny when Nancy appeared. She isn’t worn-out. If it would only work, I’m sure my father would prefer to have them both. I feel sorry for my father. I think he’s very innocent.

  My mother was innocent, too; pursuing her career—Paris one week, Mexico City the next—assuming matters at home would stand still until she had time to deal with them. They did, for a while. But my father, bored and lonely, went to that one party too many, and there was Nancy. So he innocently fell in love and told my mother, hoping for God knows what. Their divorce has been official for six months. They are still snarled together like a tangle of barbed wire.

  I was also innocent. They just happened to be my parents. It could have been anyone else, and I wish it was.

  Here I am, then, in the cellar-bedroom of a suburban sort of house in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts. We’re here for a week of Tanglewood, the summer music festival. There was only one room available in my father’s favorite hotel, so we were all going to sleep there, until I found the ad for this place. I said I wouldn’t mind staying by myself, and I don’t. I’m independent, like my mother, and I prefer to feel I’m not in anyone’s way.

  When we arrived, it was already dark. My eyes were dim from tiredness and staring at headlights. My father nosed the car into the driveway, still unsure even though the directions had all proved accurate. The yard light was on, and we could see the glow of a television in the living room. It was a mixed signal. Someone was expected, maybe us, but nobody hovered at the window waiting.

  We all got out, stretched, and together started up the walk to the front door, my father in the lead. Man, woman, and child—what a nice little family!

  But I was glad to have my father there taking charge, and even glad of Nancy’s presence. Her accepting silence seemed to assure me I’d be welcome in their hotel room, should this place prove unsuitable.

  We went up the cement walk between the stiff rows of yellow marigolds and red-hot salvia, ghastly in the yard light. My father knocked on a door that had three small windows descending across it like stairs. I waited behind him for a surprised face to appear.

  But no, this woman had been expecting us, and was even relieved. She was a stocky middle-aged woman; pleasant-looking in a plain way. She wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Her hair was cut in a silver bowl around her head. She had big teeth.

  “Hello,” she said. “You would be the Martins?”

  “Uh—yes,” said my father, in some confusion. “Uh—this is Marcy, who’ll be staying.”

  “Hello,” the woman said again. She advanced a hand for me to shake. “Vivian Bradley.” Her palm was pliable, pink, and firm. Vivian.

  She led us through the living room, where another woman of remarkably similar aspect sat watching TV, and downstairs to the cellar. She explained again, as she had over the phone, that this was once a small apartment where the former owner’s son had lived. Just a bedroom, kitchen, and bath …

  The kitchen, through which we were passing, was clean and bare, with a strange wooden platform in the middle of the floor. On the counter were half a dozen small, stainless-steel pails with hoods, all clean and gleaming; bottles; a collander; and a small wooden rack set in the sink with white cheesecloth draped over it.

  “Oh, one thing I should have mentioned,” said Vivian, preparing to open the bedroom door. “I bring the goats in here, six in the morning and six at night. I’ll try not to disturb you.”

  “Goats?” Nancy was incredulous, then delighted. “Of course, that’s a milking stand, isn’t it?”

  Vivian was surprised. “Yes, it is.” She was reassessing Nancy and willing to explain. “We never use this kitchen, and it just occurred to me how convenient and sanitary it would be.”

  “And warm!”

  “Oh, yes. It’s quite pleasant.” Vivian opened the bedroom door. “So … if you’re awake, Marcy, you can have a glass of fresh goat’s milk. Or I’ll bring down a cup of coffee and milk a few squirts into it; like cappuccino.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” breathed Nancy. I could see her half wishing they could stay here, instead of me.

  The bedroom was square, and nothing could conceal its cinder-block character. It was obviously a spare storeroom, with boxes piled in one corner, fishing poles, canes, and crutches leaning in another. Vivian showed me the half-full closet, where I could put my clothes, and how to work the shower, which would scald you if you didn’t know the trick. The phone was in the kitchen/milking parlor.

  My father brought in the suitcase and made sure I would be given breakfast, as well as goat-milk cappuccino. He gave me their number at the hotel, and he brought me close and kissed my forehead.

  “All right, Marcy?”

  “Yup.”

  “You know where to call me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we’ll see you around nine, then. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They left. I watched them up the stairs; my father thin and elegant, with a weird face like a battered alley cat’s; harsh, pitted skin and clear green eyes full of light. Nancy, tall, strong, raven-haired, beautiful, talking excitedly about the goats unti
l the door at the top of the stairs cut off her voice.

  Vivian offered me milk and cookies. I said no. Then she said not to hesitate if I needed anything but to come right up—thinking it odd, doubtless, that I should be abandoned here by my parents—and then she said good night.

  I’ve decided I’m not that thrilled about a parade of goats past my door at six in the morning. If Nancy thinks it’s so great, she should have stayed. I’m not thrilled with the cinder-block bedroom, or the stiff yellow marigolds lining the walk, or with Vivian. I’m going to brush my teeth, put on a nightgown, and call my mother collect. I hope she won’t say anything derogatory or untrue about Nancy, because I don’t feel up to being just.

  I went to bed in expectation of a disagreeable awakening, but this morning, due to the mysterious alchemy of sleep, I am a different person; a softer person, a person who has forgotten many complications. Under one blanket, lying on a pillow in the dim light, I hear muffled sounds beyond the door, footsteps and a friendly conversational voice. I don’t think the sounds awoke me. I’m just awake because I expected to be.

  A bare, square little room where nothing is mine, save the contents of one brown suitcase. Weak sunlight comes through the single rectangular window, high in the wall. The sounds, outdoors as well as in the kitchen, emphasize the quiet here. I narrowly miss thinking of my phone call.

  A clatter—hooves on linoleum. Suddenly the kitchen sounds empty. Voices in the yard … voices? I think some are animals.

  I stand on the bed to look out the window, but it faces the wrong way, toward the front walk, marigolds and salvia. The bathroom!

  There is no bathroom window.

  I’m walking slowly back to bed when I hear a scrabble, rush, and lunge, and a hushed voice cries, “Leah! Shhh!”

  Last night I was a blasé teenage shit, and by afternoon I’m sure I’ll be one again. But right now I’m putting on a bathrobe and going out to see this goat.

  She is piebald, big-bellied, hairy. Her udder is enormous: two huge, fat cones hanging close to the ground. She’s on the milking stand with her head between the front bars, eating grain; her tongue chases the kernels with an incredibly fast lipping sound. Like a lady lifting skirts out of the mud, she elevates her long flared ears.