The Kingdom of Dog

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “Don’t count on it,” Rick said, and raised the empty pitcher toward the waitress.

  11 – Weekend Reflections

  Saturday morning was cold and overcast. I woke early and mobilized for some much-needed house maintenance,which included mopping the kitchen floor and vacuuming the living room.

  I had never been much of a housekeeper; it was one of Mary’s biggest complaints about me when we were married. I just didn’t see the things she did—the tiny specks on the kitchen counter, the mold in the shower.

  But with Rochester, I couldn’t help seeing the spots on the tile floor, or the fine golden hairs that piled up in the corners. I couldn’t count on Mary to vacuum or dust, and I couldn’t afford a maid, so I had to clean up after myself and Rochester. Mary would have been so proud.

  Or not. The last I heard from her she had remarried, a business executive even more successful than she was, and she had achieved her fondest wish: she had given birth to a child.

  The thing is, that had been my wish, too—for us to have a child. But that wasn’t to be, and I had Rochester instead. At forty-three I thought I might marry again, but I doubted I would have children.

  Thinking of Mary made me melancholy, and the mindless work of cleaning the house gave my brain free reign to reconsider my past. Though I knew I shouldn’t, I opened up my laptop after I finished vacuuming and Googled “Mary Levitan.”

  Mary had taken my last name when we married—her own was long and Polish and had too few vowels. As far as I knew, she’d kept Levitan after her new marriage, though I couldn’t imagine why.

  I got over 450 results, including her accounts on Twitter, Linked In, Facebook and My Space. Rochester came over to where I sat at the kitchen table and nuzzled my leg, but I pushed him away. I clicked on Mary’s Facebook page, and read, “People who aren't friends with Mary see only some of her profile information. If you know Mary personally, send her a message or add her as a friend.”

  I recognized her profile picture. It was one I had taken, nearly three years before, when we discovered she was pregnant for the second time. Her blonde curls spilled around her face, which glowed like a Renaissance Madonna.

  Why was she using that picture? I wondered. Did she think of me when she saw it? Or did she remember our unborn daughter? We had been thinking of names the day Mary miscarried. I liked Melissa, while Mary preferred Rachel.

  Melissa Levitan. Rachel Levitan. Rachel Melissa Levitan.

  Rochester nudged me more insistently, and barked once.

  “I know,” I said, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. “I shouldn’t be doing this. I have a new life. I have a job, and friends, and you. I need to put the past behind me. Right?”

  He shook his head once, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth.

  I shut down the laptop and went back to dusting my books. Old books and new books, poetry, novels, short story collections and non-fiction. Old textbooks and dictionaries and dozens of reference books, like rhyming dictionaries and lists of Greek and Latin word roots and anthologies of deathless prose. The books spilled over the bookcases and piled up on the floor in every place I lived. When Mary sold our house in Silicon Valley, while I was in prison, she had stored them all in a storage unit. I paid a king’s ransom to have them shipped to Pennsylvania, and it took me a couple of months in the townhouse before I had them all unpacked.

  Tony Rinaldi called just as I was sneezing from all the dust. I held the phone away from my face and sneezed a couple of times before I could say hello.

  “You aren’t developing a cocaine habit, are you, Steve?” Tony Rinaldi asked.

  “No, just dusting. Any news on the case?”

  “We’ve cleared Norah Leedom,” he said. “Thought you’d want to know.”

  “That’s great. But where does that leave you?”

  “We talked to Bob Moran yesterday afternoon. He admits to being outside arguing with Dagorian. Says he went up to the man just as Mrs. Leedom was leaving. So that puts her in the clear.”

  “Is Moran your suspect now?”

  “Can’t say. Right now we’re still investigating.”

  “Well, thanks for letting me know about Norah. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  “Easy for you to say,” he said.

  Rochester and I went for a long walk Saturday afternoon, just as dusk was falling. It was cold, but there was no wind, and we walked through River Bend and down to the Delaware River. The cars on River Road had their headlights on, all of them going somewhere—maybe up to New Hope for dinner, or out to the movies, or just to hang out with friends.

  I wondered if I’d ever get my life together enough to start dating again, maybe meet a woman to marry. I could feel like I was getting there—having this full-time job at Eastern was a good start.

  I didn’t see how Mary had been able to jump so quickly into a new marriage after ours fell apart. Had she been planning to divorce me for a long time before my incarceration accelerated her plans? I hadn’t been exactly happy with her, but I hadn’t been thinking of divorce either.

  Rochester tugged on his leash. “You want to go home, boy?” I asked. “Want your bowl food?”

  In response he tugged again, and we walked home in the gathering dark. After dinner I put turned on a dog show on the TV in my bedroom, and Rochester hopped up to join me, curling up against the pillow next to me. “Hey, give me some room,” I said, pushing against his golden flank. “This is my bed, after all.”

  He didn’t budge, so I scooted over. I tried to get him to pay attention to the golden retriever when the sporting group came up for judging, but he preferred to snooze. The story of my life at that point—my only Saturday night companion a dozy dog.

  Sunday morning I tried to sleep in, but Rochester came up to my bed and breathed in my face. When I covered my head with the blanket, he put his paws up on the side of the bed and nudged me. “Fine. You want to go out. We’ll go. But it’s going to be a short walk because we’re hiking this afternoon.”

  I dressed for the weather, in long johns, jeans, heavy socks and boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt with the Eastern logo on it. On top of that I layered a sweater, a scarf, sheepskin-lined leather gloves, a down parka and a wooly hat. Rochester wore his fur coat, as usual.

  The morning was crisp and bright, though bitter cold. We did a quick circuit around the neighborhood so Rochester could do his business and then hurried home. I swear it took me longer to dress than it did for us to walk.

  I carb-loaded, wolfing down chocolate chip pancakes, and then sprawled on the sofa reading the paper and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. Just before noon, Rick pulled up in my driveway and beeped the horn of his truck.

  Rochester went wild. I called Rick’s cell as I scrambled for my clothes. “Why doesn’t the gate ever call to tell me you’re here?”

  “I’m the police, dude. I just flash the badge.”

  “Well, I need a couple of minutes to put on my layers, dude. I’m sending Rochester out.”

  I opened the front door as I was pulling on my sweater, and Rochester rushed outside. Rick was standing by the back of the truck with the gate down, and Rascal was peeing on my rose bush. I closed the door and left them to their frolic while I finished dressing.

  By the time I climbed into Rick’s truck, the dogs were curled up in the back, nestled into a couple of old comforters he had thrown there. “I know you grew up here,” Rick said. “I was there. So how come you need so many layers?”

  He was wearing a heavy wool pea coat over a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans. No scarf, no gloves, no hat. “You lose as much as fifty percent of your body heat through your head, you know,” I said.

  “Wimp.”

  “Moron.”

  “Speaking of morons, I had a date with Kelly Kazakis last night.”

  “She must be dumb, to go out with you.”

  He shook his head. “I think all her brain power goes to staying upright with those big hooters threatening to tip her o
ver,” he said. “She’s not much for conversation but she’s sure fun in bed.”

  “Too bad she doesn’t have a sister. I could use some of that kind of fun myself.”

  “Then go on a date, dimwit. Aren’t there any eligible females at the college over the age of consent?”

  “They’re all either teenagers or ready for the graveyard,” I said. “I do work with this one girl, Sally. But she’s only twenty-five. Do you realize I was entering college the year she was born? Made me feel like a dinosaur.”

  “The year we were both born.” Rick pulled into the parking lot for Bowman’s Hill nature preserve, and we let the dogs out of the back. They jumped down and raced around, chasing each other to see who could be the first to pee on something.

  There were only a couple of other cars in the lot, and it looked like everyone else was at the nature center. We threaded our way up the winding road that climbed up to the top of the hill, the dogs circling around us, racing ahead and then coming back. Most of the snow was gone, just a few hollows between trees and the occasional covering at the top of a pine tree, like a misplaced Christmas decoration.

  When Rick and I were kids, we used to come up to the park and the tower on school field trips. Back then, we believed that the tower had been used by George Washington’s troops as a lookout post—but as an adult I learned it had been built during the Depression to commemorate Washington’s trip across the Delaware at Washington’s Crossing, just below us.

  “I’m worried that Tony Rinaldi is going off in the wrong direction suspecting Norah Leedom,” I said when we were about halfway up the trail. I held up one gloved hand. “Despite what you think about ex-wives. I just don’t see her killing somebody. She’s a poet, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Ezra Pound,” Rick said. “Poet. Traitor. Locked up for years.”

  “God save me from a cop who knows literature.”

  “You have a reason why you don’t think she did it? Beyond her being a poet and all.”

  “It seems like she still loved him.”

  “And nobody ever kills someone they love.”

  “And she’s smart,” I said, ignoring his wisecrack. “Why take so many risks and kill him at the launch party? She could have gotten to him in so many other ways. I think it had to be somebody who didn’t normally have a reason to associate with Joe.”

  “Or it could be somebody from the college,” Rick said. “People are always saying how professors get really vicious.”

  “They make cutting comments at faculty meetings, not cut throats.”

  By the time we climbed all the way up to the tower, the dogs were tired. They curled up together at the edge of the fieldstone tower. “You want to climb up?” Rick asked.

  “Elevator,” I said. “We’ve still got to walk all the way back down to the truck.”

  When we were on field trips, the school buses would pull up right at the tower, and all the kids would pile out. There was no elevator back then, so we’d climb the curving staircase, peering out through the slits in the walls, then crowd into the observation deck at the top.

  Now there was an elevator, which my aching feet were happy to take advantage of. We stepped out on to the deck and the vista was magnificent—we could see all the way to Trenton to the south, the Lambertville and Route 202 bridges to the north.

  “So much of this land is just like it was when Washington came through here,” Rick said. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded. “You think people back then had the same problems we have today?”

  “Can’t see George complaining to Martha about the way she’s been looking at Tom Jefferson,” Rick said. “Or John Adams telling John Quincy to stay off the Xbox and get some exercise. But people have been jealous as long as they’ve been human, they’ve been stealing stuff and hurting other people and committing rape and murder and everything else the commandments told us not to.”

  “Spoken like a cop,” I said.

  “We are who we are.”

  Walking down the curving staircase, peering occasionally through the slit windows at the green, brown and occasionally white landscape of the park, I wondered about that. Was I doomed to be who I was for the rest of my life? And was that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  The dogs jumped up when we emerged from the tower, welcoming us as if we’d been gone for years. They raced around in circles, jumped on us, barked and rolled around in the patches of snow just beyond the tower. I had the urge to join them, lying on my back and making a snow angel. But my grown-up self knew the consequences—I’d get snow down my back, get my pants wet, probably catch a cold. So I just clapped my hands and pointed toward the open back of Rick’s truck, and called my dog to me.

  12 – An Offer He Can’t Refuse

  Monday morning, the campus was crowded once again as students, returned from winter break, scurried from dorms to classes. I ran into President Babson as Rochester and I were walking into Fields Hall. “I want to see everything that’s been printed about Joe’s death,” Babson said. “Put a file together for me to read. Get it to me by the end of the day.”

  I had just walked into my office when Rinaldi called. “Thanks for the tip on that guy who kept sending the letters to Eastern. We found him yesterday and brought him in for questioning. He really had it in for Dagorian, and the college. He hasn’t admitted to the killing, but he has no alibi. We’re going to keep working on him.”

  That was good news. I sent a quick email to the President and to Mike, though I cautioned that we would have to wait for an official statement from the police before we could comment to the press.

  With the weight of Joe’s murder off my mind, I began to look through a folder of newspaper and magazine clippings Dezhanne had assembled for me. Publications being what they are, it often takes months to assemble a complete file, but I read through the articles I had and Xeroxed copies for Babson.

  The murder always made the headlines, and the first several paragraphs of each story read like a medical examiner’s report. But in almost every case, the article continued with a brief summary of Eastern’s history, culled from the press kit I had prepared. The details of the campaign followed, and the overall exposure for the college and the campaign was greater than I could have hoped for.

  I went down to President Babson’s office just before noon to give him my preliminary report.

  “You’ve done a good job, Steve,” Babson said. “Without your groundwork there would have been no benefit to Eastern. I’ll look these over. Thank you.”

  As I walked back into my office, the phone was ringing. “Steve, I’m glad I reached you. It’s Lucas Roosevelt.”

  Lucas was the chair of the English department. I would be forever grateful to him for hiring me as an adjunct instructor when I returned to Bucks County and no one else was willing to take a chance on hiring a paroled felon.

  “What’s up, Lucas? Did you have a good winter break?”

  “I did, but one of our adjuncts didn’t. Perpetua Kaufmann. Did you ever meet her?”

  “I’m sure I’d remember her if I did. Her name makes her sound like a Jewish nun.”

  “You wouldn’t be far from the mark,” he said. “She was a nun, a long time ago. Then she left the convent, taught English in El Salvador, and married a psychiatrist who was working for a human rights organization. I don’t remember which one. I’m sure I used to know.”

  Lucas had a tendency to ramble from topic to topic. Behind his back, his students called him The Wandering Jew.

  I looked at the pile of papers on my desk as Lucas continued to witter on about Perpetua Kaufman. “Sorry, Lucas, but is there a point to this?” I finally asked.

  “Oh, dear, I’ve done it again. Lost my train of thought. Poor Perpetua. Had a faulty space heater and died of carbon monoxide poisoning over the winter break.”

  “And you want me to …” I paused. “Write a biography of her or something?”

  “Oh, no, I was hoping you could take over
one of her classes. She was teaching professional and technical writing on Mondays and Wednesdays at three.”

  “I’m working full time in the alumni relations office, Lucas. I don’t think I can get away.”

  “I already cleared it with John William Babson,” Lucas said. “You’d be doing me, the English department, and Eastern College a great favor if you could pick this class up.”

  “When you put it that way.” I didn’t bother to finish by saying, “I can’t exactly refuse,” but that’s what I was thinking.

  “Excellent. Candace has the text and a copy of the syllabus for you,” he said, referring to the department secretary, the perpetually sour Candace “Don’t call me Candy” Kane. “Must dash. Thanks ever so.”

  He hung up before I could protest. I shrugged, pulled on my coat, and walked over to Blair Hall, the home of the English department. I found Candace at her desk, surrounded by spider plants in clay pots. She’s a Wiccan whose love for the natural world exceeds any tiny bit of affection she might harbor for humans. She was a slim blonde in her forties, wearing an incongruous pink sweater with a smiling snowman on it.

  “Here’s the book,” she said, handing me a spiral-bound handbook. “And the syllabus, the course roster, and a copy our department policies regarding adjunct staff. Fill out pages 1-25 and include copies of your undergraduate and graduate transcripts. You’ll have to go online and take the sexual harassment tutorial, register for a staff ID card, and go to the campus safety department for a temporary parking permit.”

  “Candace, I taught here all last year. I’ve already done all this.”

  She looked up at me. It was like I’d said I was from the planet Al’Teresha, and my people taught using fish skins and wooden dice. “Oh,” she said.

  I looked at the syllabus. “This class meets today?”

  She took back all the paperwork except the syllabus and the roster. “You won’t be needing any of this, then,” she said.

  “Candace. Today?”