Scott Spencer

by Man in the Woods (v5)

  The phone rings, Kate’s recently installed private line to which only Paul has the number. Her pulse quickens. He still has that effect on her. “Are you using your phone!” Kate asks, with unalloyed delight. The snazzy little Nokia was a present to him a few months ago, and since then it has seen little else but the inside of his glove compartment.

  “I’m a ways,” Paul says, his voice mixed with the hum of the road and the wind. Also, he doesn’t seem to be aiming his voice at the phone’s little triad of speaker holes. Kate feels a weirdly erotic twist of annoyance. He could very well be doing this on purpose, as a demonstration of the technology’s deficiencies. Yet the frequent but fleeting moments of irritation Kate feels around Paul are cool air that only oxygenates the fire.

  “Where exactly are you?” Kate says.

  “I’ll be there in a half hour or an hour, something in there,” Paul says. He never really answers the questions she asks. And how can he not know the difference between being thirty and sixty minutes away? It’s not as if he needs to make an allowance for traffic. There is no traffic at this hour. Does he intend to make a stop?

  “I’m supposed to be at an AA meeting at seven,” Kate says. “Will you be here in time for me to go?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul says.

  She waits for the explanation or the apology that should follow but it does not come. She’s always a little off-rhythm with him; it’s how they dance.

  “Well, I guess I’ll take Ruby with me,” Kate says.

  “Okay, but I’d like to see her. I’ve got a surprise for her.”

  “Really?”

  Not a sound from Paul’s end. Perhaps he has gone out of range. Kate waits for another few moments, and then, acknowledging the lost connection, hangs up her phone.

  Ruby has poured the contents of her backpack onto the floor and now paws through the jumble of books, notebooks, crumpled-up papers, pencils and pens and hair clips, looking for a juice box.

  “Paul’s coming home soon,” Kate says. “And he’s got a wonderful surprise for you.” She instantly regrets saying this. What if it’s not a wonderful surprise, what if it’s just a passing everyday surprise, like a toy ring from a vending machine, or a book of puzzles, and now, because it has been overhyped, Ruby will feel let down. Kate feels she has committed an act of social gracelessness reminiscent of what her ex-husband, Ruby’s long-absent father, used to do to her at dinner parties. He always managed to step on Kate’s best lines; he had an uncanny instinct for coughing or offering to refill someone’s wineglass just when Kate was getting to the punch line of a story. And if he wasn’t wrong-footing her like that, he was up to some alternate form of sabotage, like announcing to a table of guests, Oh, you’ve got to hear this, Kate has just had the most amazing experience of her life, and all eyes would be on her, and all she could do was tell her story about how the man who came to fix the refrigerator turned out to be an old patient of her father’s.

  Kate sits on the floor, and commences to put the cross on her daughter. “What are you doing?” Ruby asks, without looking up.

  “I’m putting the little cross on you, it looks so pretty.” Why do they have to make the fucking clasp so small? Kate says to herself. The circle she is trying to get the hook through is tiny, the size of an air bubble exhaled by a goldfish. There: at last.

  Ruby feels the cool slither of the chain on her neck, the infinitesimal weight of the cross itself as it drops onto the bib of her overalls, with barely more substance than a shadow.

  A couple of towns south of Leyden, Paul stops at a supermarket to get a bag of dog food, and a bowl for Shep to eat out of, in case Kate has views about a dog using her dinnerware. The strip mall is ringed by tall metal lampposts and bathed in enough bright silvery light to illuminate a night baseball game, yet the parking area is nearly bereft of cars—all this electricity and what it takes to make it, the utter mindless waste of it disgusts him.

  When Paul opens the door, Shep makes a move to jump out. “No, no, stop,” Paul says, grabbing at the dog’s collar. But Shep is determined to get out. He twists away from Paul and a moment later the dog is on the asphalt, his tail twirling around in that helicopter-ish way. “What are you doing, man, get back in the truck,” Paul says, hoping to strike a tone that is both commanding and reassuring.

  The dog turns its back on Paul and trots over to the nearest lamp pole. He lifts his leg. The light above illuminates the stream of urine that arcs out of him.

  “Good boy!” Paul says, “what a good dog you are.” Shep looks off into the distance, patiently waiting for his bladder to empty, and when he is finished he turns and trots back toward Paul. Paul gives him a pat on the head and the dog hops back into the truck. It is this that brings back the man in the woods with a stunning all-at-onceness. Because who had trained this dog to be so well-mannered if not that man? Paul stands there coping with this thought, and slowly, steadily, with the patience you need to sand down a slab of walnut until it is perfectly smooth, he applies the purifying abrasion of contrary reasoning: who but a terrorized, brutalized dog would hold its urine for such a long time without so much as a whimper of complaint?

  He walks across the parking lot toward the supermarket. It is the first time he has been away from the dog since leaving the woods. A dozen times at least he has told himself he needs to find a place to leave that dog. Even after he drove through Tarrytown and kept going right past the police station, not stopping, not slowing down, keeping his eyes locked on the road in front of him, even then he was thinking, If I am going to have a chance of really walking away from this, I need to get rid of this dog. But he could not think it through, he couldn’t figure out where he would bring the dog, where the dog would be safe. The dog had suffered enough, that much was clear. That one fact was true north. Paul could not beat a man to death for kicking the dog in the ribs and then just open the door of his truck and let the dog fend for itself.

  The dog is his witness, his confessor, he has seen it all and can still sit next to Paul, breathing with him, trusting him, the dog is the reason, the dog is what has been salvaged from the worst moment of Paul’s life, the dog is the bridge which Paul walks upon as he inches his way over the abyss, the dog is God spelled backward. Paul turns for another look at Shep, but can’t see him. The dog has drowned in the darkness of the truck’s cabin.

  The inside of the supermarket is a bright, throbbing riot of colors, but is nevertheless somewhat desolate. It is an immense store but there are only a half dozen or so shoppers, lonely, bedraggled-looking people in late middle age in no hurry to bring their groceries home. The piped-in music is string arrangements of Rod Stewart hits. Even in the best of circumstances, there is something disquieting about seeing so much food, fruit piled up like cannonballs, slabs of meat seething beneath airtight plastic wrap, whole aisles devoted to potato chips. On his way to the pet food aisle, Paul passes two elderly men whose carts have bumped up against each other. One of them has poet-laureate white hair with a yellowish tinge, like the keys of an old piano; the other is stooped, using his cart as an ad hoc walker. They are sharing a great laugh over something, and when the stooped man picks out an item from his basket—a small jar of tartar sauce—and shows it to his friend, their laughter increases. And the sound of those old men laughing plunges Paul into a sense of despair and remorse greater than anything he has felt since the fight in the woods. Just the sound of their voices makes his hand throb, his heart lurch drunkenly.

  “Something we can do for you, young man?” the white-haired fellow says to Paul.

  “Not that we will!” his stooped-over friend quips.

  Paul carries a fifty-pound sack of dry dog food slung over his shoulder; a month’s supply of kibble makes it seem as if life were predictable, that there are things you can plan on and measures you can take. When he pays at the checkout counter, the woman working the cash register looks at him strangely, and when he gives her the money he sees his hand: it is swollen and red. And his face, to
o, must tell some version of the story of what he has been through.

  Something must be done about this. Paul drives out of the parking lot with his left hand on the steering wheel and his right arm slung over the dog’s shoulders. He has owned a dog only once before in his life and that was King Richard, a golden retriever Paul’s mother bought from a local breeder the first Christmas after Matthew left Connecticut for New York. Paul and his sister were electrified with joy when their mother came home with the fat, honey-colored pup.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” Annabelle said, over and over, her hands clasped.

  The puppy seemed happy to be with children; it romped and panted and licked their hands—and bit their fingers, too, it couldn’t help itself, all that exuberance and passion to connect. But there was something wrong with the dog. When it rested it was unnervingly still and its eyes went dull, like some life-of-the-party drunk who, after regaling the table with his hilarious anecdotes, slumps into a melancholy stupor. Soon, the puppy was coughing, deep, wracking coughs, Paul couldn’t believe such an ominous sound could come out of something so soft and small. Like a bicycle horn bleating inside a bowl of oatmeal. By week’s end, the dog was dead, its eyes like smashed fuses, the tip of its little pickled tongue protruding from its mouth.

  “King!” Paul had called out, as if to rouse the puppy back to life.

  “Well that didn’t take very long,” his mother said, her voice flat, affectless; she had already entered that phase of her life in which misfortune was the norm.

  About fifteen miles from Kate’s house, Paul makes a series of turns and takes first a two-lane blacktop that leads to Victory Hill, a convalescent home for the aged, and a place Paul knows will suit his purposes. The nursing home, once the summer residence of a spice broker down in the city, who summered there with a series of short-lived wives in the early nineteenth century, is on a perch with a partial view of the river. But Paul’s destination is the employee parking lot, which is nearly empty and sheltered from view.

  “Okay, Shep, time to get out.” The dog has curled up on the seat, with his nose close to his hindquarters, and doesn’t wish to be disturbed. When Paul touches his mahogany-colored ear to roust him up, the dog doesn’t open his eyes but growls softly. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Paul says. This for some reason makes Shep’s eyes open—they are round as marbles and rimmed with red.

  “Wait right there,” Paul says and slides out of the driver’s side. The night air is dry, blade-sharp. Withered oak leaves, desiccated and crisp, blown by the wind, scurry across the parking lot like rats. Is anybody looking? Can anybody see? Paul turns up the collar of his leather jacket and opens the passenger side of the truck. Shep does not seem very interested in getting out but when Paul calls to him, the dog laboriously gets up, section by section, and when he is standing at last he gazes at Paul, as if hoping for some last-minute reprieve. “This is going to be fast,” Paul says, and there is something reassuring enough in his voice to induce the dog to hop down out of the truck’s warmth and onto the cold asphalt.

  Paul leads the dog, with his finger crooked around the dog’s metal choke collar. He doesn’t want to pull too hard on it and yank back sense memories of the rough treatment this dog has had to endure, but he wants Shep to mind him. He walks with him to where an old abandoned Comet is sitting, its tires flat, its windshield cracked, and commands the dog to sit. “You stay here.”

  He points at Shep and looks sternly at him, hoping to convey the importance of the order. Shep tilts his head to the left and opens his mouth, letting his long tongue unfurl and giving himself an unaccountably happy-go-lucky expression. Paul backs away, continuing to motion for the dog to stay put, and when he is halfway between the dog and the truck he turns and quickly walks over to his truck, opens the door, gets in, disengages the parking brake, puts it into gear, and runs it with some vigor into the closest large tree, which happens to be a red maple, judging by the diameter of its trunk. “Sorry,” Paul whispers to the tree as the front end of his truck strikes it. He braces himself and, in fact, is barely jostled by the impact, though he forgot to fasten his seat belt. He throws the truck into reverse; his headlights reveal a couple of gouges in the tree’s hide, but the red maple is a hardy tree, and Paul is sure it will barely be affected by the sudden laceration of its bark.

  What worries him more is if he has done enough damage to his truck to explain the bruises on his face and hands. He climbs out of the cab and checks the damage. Perfect. His spirits lift, unreasonably so, as if he has just solved every one of his problems. There is a large, deep dent along the left side of the front bumper, and the left headlight has a spiderweb of cracks over its entirety. Shep is at his side, leaning his weight against Paul’s leg. Paul reaches down and scratches behind the dog’s ears. “You see why I wanted you to get out of the truck,” Paul says to the dog, opening the passenger door for him.

  A half hour later, Paul takes the turn onto Kate’s long driveway. Locust trees, tall and bare, many of them dead but still standing, line either side of the curving quarter-mile. The house is an old Colonial farmhouse, built simply and in sections, the earliest part from 1766, with a subsequent addition from 1810, and another from 1890—the Victorian section, with dark pine built-ins, a carved marble mantel, and a wedding-cake ceiling.

  When Paul first came to this house he was looking for work. Kate had said, “I hear you’re the man to talk to about windows,” and ushered him in with a wave of her fingers. An electrical charge passed between them; it was a moment they relived together, months later. “The old owners put these crummy aluminum frames in and I want nice new windows,” Kate had said. “Maybe…” When she paused for a moment, Paul lowered his eyes, telling himself not to look quite so intently at her. She mentioned a brand of window often advertised in lifestyle magazines, usually with an illustration of a family sprawled out in a living room, husband, wife, daughter, Dalmatian, cozy and carefree, with a view of a winter wonderland through the double-paned glass.

  “This is a beautiful house,” Paul had said, “and it would be nice to have really great old windows. Those mass-manufactured ones? They’re okay, but not like the old ones. The old ones…” He closed his eyes, shook his head: there were no words with which he could describe the poignancy of the old glass.

  “So old glass,” she said. “Where do you find such a thing?”

  “Lady, I’ve got a truckload of just what you’re looking for. The problem is you’ve got new frames and sashes—the people before you didn’t care what they put up.” Paul had made this aside in a low voice, as if the previous owners might still be within earshot. “What I have to do is make all new frames and put the old glass in them. It’ll end up looking as if they’re the original windows, here forever, and if you want to save on your heating I could double-pane them, but I have to tell you it’s not going to be cheap. You might want to go with whatever they’ve got at Home Depot.”

  “No, no, I’d rather go with what you’re recommending,” Kate said.

  Paul smiled. He had a handsome man’s absence of vanity—he didn’t take very good care of himself. His bottom teeth were crossed, his fingernails were caked with dirt. “I have to tell you,” he said, “I’m very glad you’re going to do this. I happen to love this building.” He walked to the front of the house, patted the plaster near one of the windows he would now replace, as if to reassure the muted white walls that better days were ahead, and these offensive windows were going to be plucked out like thorns from the paw of a mighty lion.

  Now, Ruby stands at one of those shimmering windows as Paul swings his truck around the circular parking area in front of the house. She shields her eyes with her little starfish of a hand. The sight of a child disturbs his fragile equilibrium of remembering and not remembering. Her face, her smallness, her newness, triggers in Paul a sudden chaos of remorse. He begins to talk to the dog because it makes him feel better. “All right, here’s the drill. I’m going to go inside for a minute,
I’m going to talk to Ruby, and then we’re both going to come out here. Okay? Shep?” The dog does not seem to be listening. Something on his paw has captured his full attention and he is alternately licking and nibbling at the webbing between his blunt, black claws.

  Paul turns off the truck’s engine. Even this small change in reality is upsetting—the engine’s hum gone, the headlights extinguished. Everything must be just so for him to tolerate the memory of this afternoon. He is like a man carrying a load that is far heavier than he can manage but who has nevertheless found a way to hoist it up and stagger forward a few steps. If his balance is at all disturbed, the true weight of what he is carrying will assert itself, and the task will prove impossible. He slides out of the truck, feels the familiar crunch of the driveway’s stones. When he looks again at the window, Ruby is no longer standing there. A wedge of light falls onto the gravel. Ruby has opened the front door. She is in jeans and a lavender turtleneck.

  “Hi Paul,” she says. “Your truck looks beat up.”

  “And you look like a girl who might do very well with a surprise.” Paul is calmed by the jolly boom of his own voice. The role of father is a comfort to him, the powerful encompassing mask of it.

  “Do you have one?” Ruby says. The cold breeze whips her hair around. The light from the house illuminates the back of her; moonlight glistens on her teeth. Children should not be in the dark, Paul thinks. He sees her shiver and he hoists her up, brings her close. Her finger hovers above the bruise on the right side of his forehead. Her knees grip his rib cage.