by Mark Harris
“Somebody’s been trying to tell us something right along,” said Lala. “We get a telephone call in the night now and then, the most recent last night, where a person barks.” She refrained from mentioning, however, the anonymous letter she had received from “Day Sleeper” some months ago, enclosing two newspaper clippings. Now Mr. Brown referred to himself as a “day sleeper.” Of course it was a common phrase. . . .
“Do you or don’t you really want to do anything?” Iris McCoy sharply asked Officer Phelps.
“It’s not that I don’t, ma’am,” he politely replied. “I have a dog myself.” So he said. He didn’t, actually, but he said he did, as a shopkeeper ratifies a product by saying, “I use it myself.”
“Harold will hit the ceiling if he doesn’t come back,” said Iris. His rage was likely to go hard upon Lala. In a way, of course, Iris thought, things were Lala’s fault. If Lala had remained fat she’d have been more attractive to Harold. A good fat wife would have distracted him from dogs. But Lala would reduce — she’d lost eighty-five pounds in twenty-three months. Harold loved fat girls — “more bounce to the ounce” he sometimes said.
“I’ll make a report of it, though,” said Officer Phelps, bringing his clipboard from his car. Brown saw that the officer’s neck was smooth and white. No doubt he had just had a haircut. My Very Dear Officer Phelps, he thought, I saw you commit three illegal acts of driving in a single recent evening, and I ask you . . . his eye catching Mr. Maxim’s garage where folks were voting. Bomb it, he thought. Phone first. Or he’d call out through his Life rolled like a megaphone, “Everyone in Maxim’s garage, clear out, here comes a bomb,” and hurl the bomb which he held in his other hand, which was, in fact, Luella’s tube of money wrapped in a deposit slip, secured with a rubber band. He slipped the money into his pocket.
“You should have a cat,” said Iris to her daughter. “Cats take care of themselves better than dogs.”
“Cats are quieter, too,” said Brown. “Your dog was somewhat of a barker, you must admit.”
“Did his barking bother you?” Officer Phelps asked Brown.
“It didn’t bother me,” said Brown, “no. But we could hear him barking fairly regularly.”
“Regularly, eh?” said Officer Phelps, writing down that word, and writing down the number of Lala’s house, too, and asking for certain basic information — name of the dog, kind of dog (“German Shepherd,” she said. “Thoroughbred?” he asked. “Why be redundant?” she said.), was the dog an habitual wanderer? “Let’s take a look around inside,” said Phelps.
“Oh no,” said Lala, “nothing’s picked up.”
“Let’s do as he says,” said Iris, for reasons of her own. She knew that nothing was to be gained inside. She suspected the officer merely wished to linger. “Won’t you come in, too?” Iris asked Brown.
They entered the house.
Would that the furnishing of Lala’s house (Harold’s house, really) were as lean as the previous sentence, but it was not. Harold’s house was heavy in its emphasis upon long stuffed sofas and immovable stuffed chairs based upon squat oaken stumps. Heavy objects thwarted thieves. Thick, dark, impervious drapes hung so heavily at the windows that from time to time they tore their supporting brackets from the walls.
“I was never here before,” said Brown. He recalled a previous owner, long since removed, whose small son ran recklessly into the street coming and going with Junie.
“I was never in yours either,” Lala frankly said.
To hell with them, thought Officer Phelps. Why should he run about trying to find the damn dog of people who lived in a house as oppressive as this? This furniture was all of a piece with barking dogs; such people lacked grace or courtesy. On the other hand, he wished to become better acquainted with Brown, as a means to becoming better acquainted with Luella, and then, too, there was Mrs. Ferne herself, who appeared perhaps to be, as one might say, “badge happy,” one of those girls crazy for policemen who sometimes even set their own dogs loose or invented other complaints in order to bring a policeman to the house. She’d stopped him on the street, hadn’t she? Or anyhow her pink robe had. Well, there’s no telling. Sometimes they lost their nerve, of course, or they kept their mothers close for protection. Gads but this mother was fat. Somebody down at the station was telling Phelps only the other day for gosh sake about this girl that wanted this cop to screw her with a gunbelt on. One received strange requests. Then somebody else was telling Phelps about this girl who wished to be tied up and bawled out by a policeman in full uniform, and the policeman obliged, too, stripping her naked and tying her up and bawling her out something awful for her bizarre perversions. She supplied the rope. He took the rope home and gave it to his wife for clothesline.
“Where do you live?” Lala asked, turning her attention to Phelps.
“We’re in the process of moving,” he replied, although he wasn’t. He lived with his father on Eureka Street, in the only house he had ever known.
“Are you buying or renting?” Brown asked without caring in the least. But Luella would ask. “Do you suppose that nice young officer is buying or renting?”
“We’re buying,” said Officer Phelps, “like everybody else, I guess,” shamefully lying to Mr. Brown, father or stepfather to Junie. To what end tell such a trivial lie to a man of “sophisticated moral code”? It was only because Officer Phelps was somewhat sheepish about admitting that he still lived with his father. He preferred to imply that he was married, that he and his bride were buying a house, and so forth.
“Do you know any of the people who work in classified advertising?” Lala asked Brown.
“Such as who?” Brown asked.
“A nice man took care of me,” said Lala. “I forget his name.”
“Took your ad for the dog?” Brown asked.
“He had a smooth voice,” said Lala.
“We have a lot of smooth-voiced men on the paper,” said Brown.
“The dog couldn’t be anywhere in the house could he?” Officer Phelps inquired. “Could he be in a closet or anything like that? We do find them there sometime. I’m sorry to say we also find children there sometime, too.”
“Let’s take a look around,” said Iris McCoy, leading the way.
“Oh, mother,” said Lala, “nothing’s picked up,” and she tried to dissuade her mother.
But Iris had taken a forceful initiative. Mounting the stairs, she shook the house, and Officer Phelps followed, and then Lala, too, observing the whiteness and the smoothness of the back of his neck, and thinking for one irresponsible moment how she might detain him — “I’m sure that there’s a prowler prowling in our cellar . . . we have neighbors up the street that neglect their son . . . Officer, come back later, I’m being kept by Harold in involuntary servitude in violation of the Whichever Amendment . . .” and what the fuck’s my mother doing in my husband’s dresser drawer, Lala wondered, pretending not to notice, although she could quite easily have summoned a policeman.
“You’ve sure got a plentiful supply of television sets,” said Officer Phelps.
“My husband goes for television in a big way,” said Lala.
“One in every room,” said Officer Phelps.
“Two in some,” said Lala.
“And they’re all color,” said Iris.
Officer Phelps opened closet doors. The extravagance of this house oppressed him. Look at this, for example, a shower curtain designed like an American flag. Look at this, electric toothbrushes in every bathroom. Terrific. Telephones in every room, including bathrooms, the kids’ own television in their own bedroom, their own telephone in their own bathroom. We never lived like this, he thought. Arrest them for flag desecration. Polaroid windows installed to reduce glare, they must think they’re living in an airplane. “Could he possibly have wandered up here from the yard?” he asked.
“Not really,” said Lala,
running ahead of him into her bedroom — the “master bedroom,” as it was called, a term she resented — to put the bed together before he came looking in there. Her mother stood with her back to Harold’s dresser, clutching her purse, standing guard; Iris had never trusted Lala alone anywhere near a bed with a young man under the same roof. “He’s all alone down there,” Lala said, pointing to the floor — pointing through the floor to Brown below.
“He’s a wonderful man,” said Officer Phelps. “His son and I were close friends.”
Downstairs, Brown was alone. Here he was. He had created this moment. If he had not — what shall we say? — liberated Paprika this moment would not have occurred, for Lala would not have detained Officer Phelps on the street. Why such massive drapes? How did his own house look from here? He looked out upon his own house, imagining himself, seeing himself as the Fernes saw him, his lawn poorly attended, his garage door trustfully raised, window shades unevenly drawn. It was an accessible house in need of paint. But I don’t keep sneakers on the TV, he thought. From this window he could assassinate himself, pop himself in the back of the head while turning the landing in the upper hallway. He had never seen his house from another house this way. He had never fired a gun, either, certainly not at himself from across the street from the Fernes’ window. People were voting in Mr. Maxim’s garage. Brown had voted there for years and years. He’d voted there for John F. Kennedy, soon shot in the back of the head from a window, and he’d vote today against McGinley, whose opponent’s name Brown scarcely knew. No matter whom he voted for he was always sorry afterward. He’d voted here for Truman and Johnson who went on to great things in the global-murder line. It was a failed system. At any rate, Brown had come to the end of it. Behind him they came down the stairs, all three, in the order they’d gone up — fat mother, earnest young officer, trim daughter. “Obviously no luck,” said Brown.
“The poor, poor girls,” said Iris, “I feel for them, though I hate the dog basically,” her eyes upon Harold’s bowling shoes on the television. But she couldn’t spirit away the bowling shoes as she’d spirited the binoculars from Harold’s dresser drawer. She’d pop a test question to dumb Harold: “Harold, my dear, what shoes did you bowl in?” She had appropriated the binoculars for Harold to peep with, and that was enough for one day. He peeped for fat women in high-rise apartments. She’d peep, too, she’d go along with Harold along whatever lines he took her, queer as he was, but a barrel of fun, too, dumb as an ox, couldn’t even read. She was teaching Harold to read these days, every Tuesday, and making good progress, too, considering the fact that she’d never taught anyone to read before, and never been anyone’s spiritual confessor before, either. Of course Harold hadn’t been entirely unable to read; he could read the words “Harold’s Fleet Rental” with ease, and that had been a starting point from which Iris had done well enough, she thought, for when Harold now saw letters in combination, such as “har,” “old,” “eet,” “ren,” or “tal,” he understood how they were intended to sound, and he was beginning to master them, reading all sorts of small messages — signs, posters, billboards, advertising exclamations, some newspaper headlines, and some short notes when plainly printed. All his life he had kept secret his inability to read. It was a marvel of dexterous concealment, and it only proved, as Iris told him, his cleverness.
“It’s always the children who are hurt,” said Brown. “I know he just strayed away, that’s all. He’ll come back. I have one of those feelings.”
“A dog doesn’t stray through a closed gate,” said Officer Phelps. “My opinion is that somebody let him out.”
Somebody who’s a day sleeper, Lala suspected, still turning over in her mind that little phrase, hearing it in Brown’s voice, and hearing in Brown’s voice, too, a certain anonymous letter received not long ago by My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner. A bit redundant, wasn’t it? A German Shepherd is a dog by definition. The envelope had been addressed to Harold, but Harold was too busy, too fatigued, to read his mail. In the case of this particular letter, Lala preserved him from it, retaining it for herself among her private papers in the attic, thousands of items of various sorts, for she was a bit of a pack-rat historian of herself and of her own past.
For several weeks, alarmed by the letter from “Day Sleeper,” Lala had kept a close watch over Paprika, remaining in his company as much as possible. Paprika was quiet then, for he was always quiet when close to his family. Gradually, however, her fear of the mysterious anonymous writer dissolved, and she spent less and less time with Paprika. She no longer brought him into the house, and he therefore returned to his old habits, his barking resuming and increasing, whereupon the Fernes began to receive (perhaps from the same “Day Sleeper”) telephone calls at night from someone barking, as a hint that Paprika was also barking, regardless of how insistent Harold was that Paprika never barked. “If we take him indoors he’ll stop barking,” Lala pleaded, but Harold refused, saying, “You don’t understand about dogs. A dog in the house goes soft. He gets fond of people.” Sometimes Lala said to herself, “Why not let Paprika sleep in the house and let Harold sleep outside?”
“Let’s all take a little ride,” said Officer Phelps, “and see what we can see in the way of straying dogs.”
“Let me go across the street and vote first,” said Brown.
“Vote later,” said Iris McCoy.
“Let me go and shave first,” said Brown. “I don’t feel right not shaving.”
“You don’t need a shave,” said Iris. She touched his chin. The touch will linger all day upon Brown’s chin.
“Do you sleep all day?” Lala asked Brown.
“Not all day,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, “I suppose there are people who do sleep all day. Day sleepers.”
“Meanwhile even if we don’t find anything scouting around,” said Officer Phelps, “you’ve got the ad going in the newspaper, and you’ve got Mr. Brown being so helpful. I must say it’s very neighborly. You don’t see enough of that any more.”
How absurd to be beginning his morning here in the back seat of a police car with Iris McCoy, mother of Mrs. Ferne! “Get up there on top of Solari where we can get a good view,” said Iris to Officer Phelps, as if he were a chauffeur.
“Sure thing,” said Officer Phelps. She was one of these take-charge women. But he didn’t mind. He enjoyed being taken charge of, he was content to be a slave, he loved it, let him be the lowest male subject in the kingdom of women, he’d settle for that. He drove down Nineteenth Street to Eureka, and up Eureka past his house. These streets were his, and he knew them well.
From the level atop Solari Hill they saw no dogs resembling Paprika. Down these slopes Junie often coasted on cardboard boxes. Brown must vote. He must not forget. If it was possible that McGinley, having murdered Junie, was now to become a ruler of men, then it was possible to think that all justice had failed. Boys sliding down hills on cardboard boxes are easy prey for warmakers, Congressmen, Chairmen of Draft Boards. He must bring Paprika home, for the sake of the Ferne girls. That was the trouble with crime when you weren’t a natural criminal; once you committed it you wished it recalled. For that reason Brown was fortunate that he never committed crimes, mainly thinking about them, carrying them through in his mind only. Here he was in the back seat of a police car, prisoner unshaved behind a grill. From the street it would certainly appear that he had been captured. He was being carried to his execution on Mount Davidson, where Abraham in his motorman’s cap almost went all the way with Isaac. He was notorious. Notice the female guard placed over him. Yes, you need a hefty lady for such a desperado. Off to his maker carrying a copy of Life, and in his pocket a tube of money. Brown felt, however, that he would certainly struggle against his executioner, for death was too final. As a boy, reading newspaper accounts of condemned persons, he knew how fortunate they were to know the moment of their end: 11:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 15. But he had
grown to doubt that God was waiting.
“I think the person disposed of him,” Lala was saying as they slowly toured the streets. “I can’t imagine the person coming and just opening the gate and letting him out. I believe he must have taken him somewhere and dumped him.”
“If he didn’t kill him then he might come back,” said Officer Phelps.
“You hear about dogs coming back from awfully long distances,” Brown said.
“Not if they’re dead,” said Lala.
“Bring ’em back alive Frank Buck,” said Brown.
“I didn’t know anybody remembered Frank Buck,” said Iris McCoy. “Frank Sinatra, too, there’s another.”
“You and I are the same vintage,” Brown said.
But not the same weight, thought Officer Phelps.
“Now he’s retired,” said Iris. “When I was a girl we swooned over him. I had a big photograph of him on the back of my closet door. Frankie, Frankie, speak to me.”
“Frank Buck?” asked Officer Phelps.
“God no,” said Iris. “Frankie Sinatra. Frank Buck kissed lions but Frankie Sinatra kissed girls. I can’t believe I never kissed him.” In her fantasies, as a girl, she had been seen on his arm in public places night after night — “we’re just good friends,” she was constantly telling the press.
“This is a male dog?” said Officer Phelps, turning his head slightly to the back of the car, to Iris, as if upon the question of male and female she were the ranking authority.
But it was Lala beside him who answered. “Yes, a male,” she said.
“Then he might have run off after — you know — a female in season,” said Officer Phelps.
