by Clea Simon
“Okay, it’s on your head.”
I opened the latch on Lily’s cage. “Come on, girl. Time for walkies.” Whatever peace she’d acquired in sleep vanished as her head came up, too quick. Startled. “Come on.”
I didn’t want to flinch, not in front of Albert. I only hoped he couldn’t tell I was grinding my teeth. Lily climbed to her feet and shook the sleep from her body. And as soon as she’d lifted her head, the memories had come flooding back. Something sweet, something acrid. The incredible tug of love. “Let go! Let go! Let go!”
“Poor girl, come here.” I steeled myself against it. I had to. There was too much pain. I could hear Albert’s muttered curses as I opened my arms and took the big dog into my embrace. There was a lot of dog to Lily, and most of her muscle, all tensed up. I held her close, reaching around to pull her to me, despite her yells. Did she still think she could rescue her master? Did she still want to run to him? Her head leaning up against my shoulder, still shivering, rattled with the pain. The longing.
Longing? Damn, I missed that ferret now. Frank might look ratty, but that small hunter had more wit about him than most of the people in this town. I’d have to come up with an excuse for Albert, a reason to get Frank back in here—or me back at Albert’s house. I grimaced at the thought. For now, I needed time alone with Lily. Time to find out what she saw, maybe even who she saw.
“We’re going out, Albert.” I clipped the leash to her collar and grabbed my bag. Her poor, cropped tail gave a brief wag and I felt my throat closing up. This wasn’t a bad dog. Far from it. “So you can clean up in here.”
He watched us go, a strange smile on his greasy face. “They’re still going to kill that dog, you know,” he called after us as I pushed open the back fire door. “They just won’t need its head.”
***
Ignoring Albert, we stepped into the sunshine. The dog run, such as it was, was a small, enclosed yard. A few clumps of grass survived in the hard dirt, but otherwise the only relieving feature was a small concrete basin, half birdbath, half trough. Lily turned toward that, and I gently pulled her away. If she was going to have any kind of a life, or be of any use to me, she needed clean water and fresh air, and I knew where to take her.
Beauville, like many towns here in the hills, was built along a river. At one point, it had powered mills. Wood, textiles. I’d zoned out of too much of my school days to remember. Nowadays the waterway’s prime economic value was as a tourist attraction. We didn’t have any covered bridges. But we did have hiking trails aplenty, now that the city people had discovered us, and access to the river was well marked from what passed for Beauville’s downtown. In spring, we got the kayakers, running the snow-fueled rapids. In summer, sometimes it was deep enough for a canoe. In fall, leaf peepers took their overpriced picnics down to its banks, blissfully unaware that its waters were probably too acidic for anything but the occasional deformed catfish.
Didn’t matter. It wasn’t fish or fowl I was after today, and I picked up our pace as we threaded through the edge of town to the thin strip of woods that runs along the river. I didn’t know if the average person on the street would recognize Lily, but I didn’t want to take the chance. From what Tracy Horlick had said, it sounded like the town had weighed in, and found Lily guilty. I thought otherwise, but I needed time to get to the truth. The river path might just give me the leverage to find it. Pre-foliage season we’d probably have the trail along the bank to ourselves, and both Lily and I needed the space to breathe.
As soon as we got off the paved sidewalks I knew I’d made the right move. Pit bulls need to run—several miles a day if possible—and Lily craved air as much as exercise. She looked up at me, those huge eyes soft and grateful. I didn’t even need to see them, though. In the shelter, I’d felt her panic, now frozen with exhaustion into a kind of loop. Charles’ face, his hands, his voice, but all muted, as if the pain were too great to let them in. Now I sensed a loosening. A hint of relaxation and normalcy. A bird broke from the underbrush, and Lily turned. Some small animal, readying for winter, scurried through the leaves and dived into the perpetual blanket of mulch that kept the earth moist and fragrant. Out in the water, improbably and much to my surprise, something broke the surface, grabbed a skimming insect and dived down. The world was alive, and Lily was opening to it.
It isn’t often that I enjoy this power, this so-called gift. I want my privacy. I’d prefer to have my mind be my own. Right now, feeling what she felt, hearing and smelling the richness of nature around me was a beautiful thing. Or would be, if people didn’t intrude. I let out more leash. What with one thing and another, I didn’t dare let Lily off her lead. But she felt the slack and, with a moment’s hesitation, took it. Running up the bank to sniff at—yes—a rabbit hole. Toward the gnarled base of an ancient beech: I got a mental image, flipping by at lightning speed, of the thirteen other dogs who had visited this spot. We jogged for a while along the dirt path, for the sheer joy of stretching our legs. Half hour later, when we came to the picnic grounds, deserted on this cool day, I felt sweaty, but refreshed. I pulled a folding dish out of my bag and used my water bottle to fill it, saving some of the water for myself. We both drank. We both gazed down at the river as it eddied around the rocks. We were at peace together. Somewhere, a mockingbird sang. With a deep breath, I readied my questions.
“Lily?” I spoke out loud, as I had during our training sessions. With most animals, it seems I can hear their thoughts, but I’m never sure how far it goes the other way. Maybe they’re just better at blocking out what they don’t want to hear. Maybe I’ll learn that, too, in time. “Lily, girl, can we talk a bit?”
She looked up at me. Her cropped tail thwacked against the dirt in acknowledgment. She knew my voice, knew the tone meant something good at any rate. I lowered myself off the picnic table’s built-in bench to sit in the dirt beside her and wondered how to proceed.
“This is going to be hard.” I put my hand on the back of her head, partly to ease communication but largely to comfort her. Her heavy tail—what there was of it—slapped the ground again, two, three times.
“Can you tell me about Charles?” Blankness. She was watching the water. Looking for that bubble to appear again. Trying to get a scent under the rich leaf mulch, and I realized once again how much I didn’t know. Did Lily have a name for her person? Could she understand my question at all? I tried to conjure up my former client’s face. He was tall and skinny, rather than slim. Every inch a geek, but a sweet one. I tried to build a mental image. Charles standing in the living room. Charles as he would appear from Lily’s crate. His curly hair, a little too long, backlit by the sun coming in through the big back window. I imagined his jeans, worn at the knee. The MIT sweatshirt—and suddenly I remembered it as I’d last seen it, black and sticky with blood. Lily started, and I grabbed her collar, whispering to her to calm us both down.
“I’m sorry, girl. I’m sorry.”
But my blunder had done the trick. Memories came flooding out now, the hungry fish forgotten. Charles. His hands, again, on her collar. Gentle. Then his voice, loud. Was he yelling in anger or fear? What were his words? But the memories were coming too fast for me to examine. Charles’ hands raised, fingers spread. Bloody. Charles on the floor. That smell, that smell—sweet and acrid and hypnotically strong. A feeling like longing, like desperation, like despair. Hope draining away. Charles, Charles, Charles.
I couldn’t take it. I pulled my hand from the dog’s back and stood up. I walked away, stumbling. I felt sick, woozy. Sweaty again, even as the afternoon turned raw. No wonder Lily had blocked this out, let an eternal present take over. This was too much, too strong. I leaned forward, hands on knees, to breathe, and as I did, a thought took me. Where was Lily during all this? Why hadn’t she defended her person?
“Lily?” She wasn’t responding. Frozen there, shivering now, her open eyes staring into space. I returned back to her and prepared myself for the shock. “Where were you, Lily? Where were you
when all this happened?”
Nothing, and so I gingerly reached over. Her back was shaking, the short fur along her neck on edge, like a cat’s. I repeated my question and leaned over, placing my face against her warm body.
The rush of images continued, joined now by her silent cry: Let go! Let go! Let go! But something was different. I closed my eyes, breathing in the warm dog scent, rich and musty, trying not to let that sweet death stench overwhelm me. What was it?
Then I saw, through Lily’s eyes. She had focused entirely on Charles. Had watched him yell, had watched him pushed back. Had watched him fall, had watched him bleed. But some of the scent—some element of that horrible sweet stench—had been there from the start. Before the fall, before the blood. And the scene that played through Lily’s mind, like some infernal tape loop—was drenched in longing. A yearning for—what? I focused in, but all I could see was framed through bars. Lily had been in her crate, helpless to stop tragedy. Helpless as she lost the only home she knew.
CHAPTER NINE
“And so that’s your big breakthrough? The dog’s homesick?”
I’d woken Wallis on my return. I hadn’t meant to, but she’s a light sleeper for a cat, and I’d figured I might as well get her feedback. I should have expected her to be pissed off as she stretched to her full length along the back of my sofa.
I shrugged. “I guess not. I did get confirmation that she was crated when it happened.”
“Wonderful guard dog he had there.” She jumped down to the seat and began kneading. I realized I had only about five minutes before she resumed her nap, so I didn’t try to explain the intensity of what I’d felt. The horrible, sad ache. Lily whining, a low despairing sound. Home, home, home, she’d cried. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t give that to her, not anymore.
Wallis must have picked up on some of that. “By the way, that infant you brought home?” She glanced up at me to make sure she had my attention again. “I think she’s retarded.”
The kitten. I’d get to her later. “She’s very young, Wallis. I’m sorry to dump her on you like that. And, well, Wallis, I’m wondering if you can help me here?” A blatant appeal to her vanity, but she cocked an ear, so I continued. “Lily doesn’t think like you or I do.” I was laying it on thick. “I mean, I don’t seem to be able to ask her questions. She doesn’t seem to understand that I want to see who was there. Who killed Charles.” I swallowed, hard. Maybe I didn’t want to see that either.
“You don’t. You’ve got some sense.” Wallis was still kneading, but at least she was looking at me.
“You’re right. But I need to find out. I mean, pit bulls have a lot of hound in them, right? So what she’s smelling must mean something.”
“Blood smells the same to all of us.” Wallis had turned back to her pillow. I was losing her.
“But there was something else. Something sweet.” I tried to conjure up the memory as I’d experienced it, second hand. Lily’s strongest recollections were scent: the strong metallic and, yes, vaguely cloying smell of blood. Something else, too. Rich and fruity, almost flowery. Sweet.
“What is this ‘sweet’ you’re talking about?” The pillow properly prepared, Wallis lay down.
I could’ve kicked myself. Cats don’t taste sweet. I fumbled for a translation. “Tasty, good. Not savory, though. More like fresh fruit or candy. Like Petromalt?”
I got a quick hit of revulsion.
“But you like Petromalt.”
“No, I find it…interesting.” I heard her voice fading. “The texture….”
“Wallis, do you have any idea what Lily could have meant?”
“She’s a dog, for Christ’s sake. She could have been smelling her own waste.” She must have felt my exasperation, because she roused herself for one more thought. “What you said: flowers, food. Maybe something dead.” Then she was out.
It’s no use trying to force a cat to communicate. Even when you can talk to them, you can’t compel them to pay attention. And so I went in search of the tiny orange kitten I’d brought home the night before. Wallis had a point. I’d set the kitten up with her own food and water dishes, knowing how fastidious Wallis can be, and shown her the litterbox. But then I’d collapsed into my own bed. No wonder my elderly tabby was miffed.
“Where is—” Nope, no point in asking. Even if Wallis were awake, she had made her point. I needed to leave her alone for a bit, so I went in search of the kitten.
“Kitty? Kitty cat?” It had been so long since I called out to a feline as if it were just an animal, but I wasn’t sure how else to connect. I’d gotten her weak cry last night, but I didn’t know if she could hear me. “Kitty?”
As I climbed the stairs, I felt a vague stirring. Something was up there. “Kitty?”
Nothing on the bed, but thinking of last night, I opened the closet. Something was in there, something afraid. “Kitty?”
I sensed rather than felt the response. A shuffling, a crouching down as if the small creature could make herself smaller. My old house doesn’t have a light in the closet, but that hint of movement was enough. I pulled out the basket where I throw my dirty laundry. Underneath a worn T-shirt, I saw two blue eyes.
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” She backed away from me, too small or too scared to even hiss. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Nobody’s saying you did, kitty.” I said the words out loud, trying to keep my voice and thought soft, my curiosity in check. “You’re safe here, kitty.” I held out a finger for her to sniff, then gently scooped the frightened cat out of the basket. At least she hadn’t used it for a litterbox.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!”
I had to smile. “No, kitty, you were very good. Now how about some food. And then we’ll check out that litterbox again, see if you might want to use it.” I trusted Wallis not to bully the poor animal, but I couldn’t count on how scary my big tabby might seem to this little one. Nor, come to think of it, how young this kitten might be. I’d seen her dig into a can of wet food last night, so I knew she was weaned. She’d have been box trained by her mother, probably.
I opened a new can for her and watched her eat. Wallis would give me hell for that, I knew. For years, before she and I began talking, I’d kept her on a strict diet of one can a day, and she’d been an adult, too. Well, my plus-size tabby was asleep, and I had a kitten to console. When I carried her over to the mud room, she got right in, and did her business. One worry taken care of.
“There you go.” I had questions, but the best way to get answers would be to put her small mind at ease. “I can see that you’re a good girl.”
The kitten looked up at me. I could’ve sworn she was puzzled by my response. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” There was something else going on here that I wasn’t getting. “I didn’t.”
“What is it, kitten?” I picked her up with one hand. Quite a change from Wallis. But she turned from me. “Do you have a name, little girl?”
“I didn’t do anything.” With that final iteration, she turned around twice, tucked her nose in her tail and fell asleep in my lap. Leaving me to wonder if this small animal had been taken from its mother too soon or been otherwise traumatized. And also, incidentally, how I could extract myself without disturbing her.
***
I needn’t have worried overmuch. The kitten barely stirred when I lifted her onto the sofa and left her to get myself dressed. Happy’s. I’d been in once or twice since my return, checking out my options along with the bourbon. There hadn’t been many, as I recalled, and I’d ended up drinking in silence, finally settling on a bottle at home. Wallis made her feelings known about that, but since she had a thing for catnip we’d found our way to a truce.
The bar looked a lot smaller than it had when I was growing up. It had been there forever, stuck on the end of our main street like a punctuation point. As a kid, I’d not paid it much mind. Maybe my dad had gone in there. He’d left before I’d become too clear on his habits. My mother pretended it
didn’t exist, walking by its brick front with her nose up so high I always expected her to trip. There was parking in back; even in Beauville, downtown can get crowded. But she never parked there, preferring instead to walk a block down, even when it was raining.
Happy’s wasn’t the only place in town that sold booze. You could even get a highball at the diner. But no place else was strictly for drinking. Or, if the rumors were to be believed, drinking and cards. Most nights after Happy locked the front door, he left the back open, people said. All-night games for big money drew out-of-towners long before we had the jogging paths.
I should have hated the place. I vaguely recalled my parents fighting about it. Once, some dishes had been thrown, and I don’t think it was the booze or the women that had started it.
But by the time I was in high school, the little bar had the allure of the forbidden. Nothing showed through its one dark window, and the sounds when the heavy door pushed open called to me. Laughter, the tinny noise of a jukebox. Smoke. A dozen times I’d gone in, the summer after I graduated. I don’t think my fake ID fooled anyone. Half the town knew my mother; the other half had known my dad, more closely than I liked. Maybe it was that everyone knew I was leaving. Going away to college and the big city. Maybe they felt that earned me entry. That’s when I’d discovered how small the old bar really was: six tables, maybe seven. A dark wooden bar scored and notched from years of fights and burning butts; a row of booths along the back wall. I’d had one or two adventures in that parking lot, too, that summer. Nothing to write home about, but enough to take some of the mystique off the place. I’d left town with no regrets.
Coming up on it now, it looked almost homey. That same heavy door, the varnish worn off in spots, still separated the quiet street from the revelers within. The same neon sign still beckoned. The cloud of smoke that greeted me could have been the same as well, for all I could tell. State law says “no smoking,” but nobody ever minded it at Happy’s. So maybe it was the cold, clean air that came in with me, or the fact that I let out some of the accumulated cloud, that explained why the looks I got weren’t the friendliest.
