Paws before dying

by Conant, Susan

  “Screw you, Mitch,” Dale said drunkenly. “Right. Go and suck up to the old man. And cut the crap about you always trying to help me, Mitch. In our whole life you never stood up for me once, not one time, not when I was a little kid, even. You remember Buddy, Mitch? You remember Buddy?” He stomped toward Mitch and loomed over him. His face and voice shared a raw, stupid intensity. “You stood up for me real good then, didn’t you?” I expected him to start sobbing, but instead of crying, he staggered across the room and tore another can of Mill#, Light from a six-pack that sat on top of two others on one of the orange tables. He popped open the can and upended it over his open mouth. He looked like an albino black Angus bottle-feeding itself.

  “Hey, Dale, lay off that,” said Mitch, wiping sweat off his neck.

  “Screw you, Mitch,” Dale mumbled.

  “There are things you gotta do, little brother,” said Mitch. “Always things I gotta do, right? I always gotta do them. Ever since Buddy, right? I’m always the one’s gotta do everything, right, Mitch?” He lurched back across the room and stared at Mitch. “’Cause everything’s always my fault around here, right?”

  Buddy? Some kid they’d grown up with? A fourth brother? If so, wouldn’t he have appeared on Edna’s family tree? I of all people should have guessed.

  “Dale,” Mitch said soberly, pulling his neck up high and straight, “I hate to be the one to break you the news, but Buddy would’ve ended up just like Kaiser, anyways.”

  So far, Willie had kept himself pretty much out of the fight except to nod and grunt occasional support for Mitch. Mostly, he’d been keeping an eye on Leah, whose body looked frozen and whose gaze was fixed ahead of her. But now he changed sides.

  “Mitch, shut up,” he said. “It wasn’t Dale that was mean to Buddy. It was you.”

  “Yeah,” said Dale, staggering to Willie and thumping him on the back. “And Mom and Dad didn’t do a goddamned thing but lay it all on me like always.” He sounded about eight years old. Then, to my amazement, he backed up a step and began shouting at Willie. “Yeah and after Buddy, and after they scream and yell if Kaiser sticks his nose in the house, she lets goddamned Righteous eat in the kitchen and sleep right in your bed, and does she give you that shit about fleas? Hell, no! Oh, no, ’cause it’s real different. It’s precious little Willie’s dog, right?”

  “Right,” Mitch said. “Nothing’s ever your fault, is it, Dale?”

  “Goddamn well not my fault,” agreed Dale, who seemed genuinely to have missed the point. “For Christ’s sake, Mitch! I only a kid.”

  “Dale, this isn’t Buddy we’re talking about,” Mitch insisted. Buddy’s history.”

  “Come on, Dale,” Willie added. “He’s right. We been over that a million times.”

  “Well, screw you!” Dale shouted. “Screw both you! Buddy’d still be alive, you know! He’d be old, but he’d still be alive! Screw the both of you! He’d still be alive!”

  “Yeah, and so would the Jew next door,” said Mitch. “That was an accident, and you know it,” Dale yelled, as if Rose’s death had been a puddle left on the floor by a puppy he’d forgotten to walk. “And it was all her own goddamned fault. I mean, it’s my dog, right? it’s my dog. It was none of her goddamned business. You know what she was trying to do? She was trying to take my dog away. If she’d kept her big Jew nose out of it, none of it would’ve happened.”

  Why are so many gentiles timid about saying Jew? Because we’ve heard slime like Dale Johnson cough it up and spit it out the way he did, and that’s the truth.

  But it didn’t bother Mitch. “Dale, when you do something that might or might not kill somebody, and it does, then it’s not an accident.”

  “And if you’d kept your nose out of my business,” Willie added coldly, “we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, lemme tell you what this little bitch thought, baby brother,” said Dale, glaring at Leah. “She thought you weren’t good enough for her.” He huffed himself up and added, “Nobody treats my little brother like that, going out with a goddamned Jew and treating my little brother like shit.” He grabbed a can of beer, opened it, downed it, and reached for another.

  “Dale, that’s enough,” Mitch ordered him. “There are things we gotta do. You gotta get out of here.”

  “Well, screw you, you bastard! You get outta here!” Dale shouted. Finding himself near a wall, he leaned on it.

  Mitch and Willie seemed to study one another. I expected them to come up with some plan that they’d try to sell to Dale, but they didn’t. Instead, Mitch turned on Willie and began laying blame on him, and Willie tried to defend himself.

  “If you’d kept your goddamned mouth shut,” Mitch was yelling at Willie, but Willie interrupted him.

  “If I’d kept my so-called goddamned mouth shut,” said Willie, “her and her aunt would’ve gone and got him locked up, and not just about Kaiser, either, Mitch. I had to tell him, Mitch, honest to God, like I told you, the aunt knows about Mrs. Engleman. I heard her tonight. She was asking about shock collars. And I heard Leah saying she got the pictures-Mitch, I had to tell him.”

  “Shit,” Dale said, “I’m not afraid of them. I already got them good.” He laughed and waved the black cylinder around.

  “Dale,” Mitch lectured him, “so her goddamned aunt’s got the pictures. What good’s that gonna do you?”

  “Yeah, Dale,” Willie added. “Nobody cares about the dog now. Dale, will you listen? I told you, she was asking about shock collars, and if you turn yourself in, all’s it is is manslaughter. But you gotta do it. You gotta get that it’s serious. Nobody cares about the dog anymore.”

  “Yeah,” Dale shouted painfully, “’cause it’s only my dog.”

  “Jesus, Willie,” Mitch said. “Would you lay off dogs?”

  “Yeah, lay off,” Dale said. “Goddamned well leave my dogs the hell alone. They’re my goddamned dogs, and nobody’s taking my goddamned dogs away from me.”

  “So take your goddamned dog with you,” Mitch said. “Nobody’s gonna miss him. Just get the hell out of here, and I’ll take care of the rest.” The rest. Leah. Kimi. “Dale, you gotta really get it. It’s over. It’s too late.”

  Mitch should have known better than to make any sudden moves, but he rose abruptly, took a couple of long strides toward Dale, and tried to snatch the black cylinder from Dale’s hand. Dale, though, was brawnier than Mitch and quicker than Mitch had anticipated. When he sidestepped, Mitch crashed into one of the coffee tables. Dale began laughing and waving the black cylinder around, then suddenly held it still and pointed it toward a corner of the room, a corner that was out of my view. His eyes brightened, and crazy as this may sound, his face softened in simple happiness. He pressed the button.

  Kimi’s yelps of pain rang in my ears. Leah began screaming and screaming. Rowdy, who’d been sitting still and keeping absolutely quiet, suddenly barged ahead of me, shoved open the door, and hurled himself into the room. Unsure of his intentions and my own, I followed. What happened next was, I think, the weirdest event in the whole nightmare.

  From the top of the flight of stairs came Edna’s voice. “Boys?” she called almost sweetly. “Boys? What’s going on down there?” She sounded like a den mother who’d caught her little scouts in the middle of a major pillow fight.

  The effect was sudden. All three of her sons held still and stayed quiet. Dale must have taken his finger off the button on the transmitter, because Kimi stopped yelping. Then, as if prompted by someone offstage, Mitch, Dale, and Willie all began laughing.

  “It’s nothing, Mom,” Mitch called. “Go to bed.”

  “Well, if you boys don’t settle down,” she scolded, “you’re going to wake up your father.”

  “Relax, Mom,” Dale called to her. “We’ve just caught a burglar is all. We’ve just caught a burglar!”

  At the top of the stairs, a door clicked shut.

  I’d used the distraction Edna offered to grab Rowdy’s collar and pull him wit
h me toward Kimi. Miss Malamute Power, who’d never once before seemed even slightly disconcerted by anything whatsoever, was shaking. Around her neck was a thick collar encased in heavy black electrician’s tape. The shock collars—oh, pardon me, electronic trainers—I’d seen before in the catalogs and ads hadn’t looked anything like this one. It was much thicker than any collar I’d ever seen before, heavy all the way around, and I was having trouble finding a buckle. Had he taped the collar on? My fingers groped, searching for a loose piece, something to pull. Before I found anything, Dale noticed me.

  He stared blearily at me, held up the transmitter, and grinned. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. I sat on the floor next to Kimi, lifted one hand rapidly upward in front of Rowdy’s nose to tell him to lie down, and then put a hand on each of my dogs. I slid the hand that rested on Kimi slowly under the tight, tight collar and felt for the plugs. There were two. I squeezed my fingers between those plugs and Kimi’s neck. I held still, waiting.

  Chapter 28

  DALE Johnson should have known better than to tease Edna about a burglar, and his brothers should have known better than to let him get away with it. All three should have realized that their mother had no sense of humor.

  The only person facing the stairs, I saw her before the others knew she’d come back. Edna, my savior, descended very quietly. Her feet appeared first. She wore grubby green terry-cloth slippers. Her calves were scrawny. A couple of inches of black lace nightie—black lace, you never can tell—dangled below a mustard-colored rayon robe. A flesh-toned hairnet covered most of her head. She was carrying a shotgun. I was sure it was a Browning, and I thought it was an A-500 like my father’s. He bought it because he has a streak of vanity, I suppose—the A-500 is one of the Buck Specials.

  Edna’s sons didn’t hear her because they’d resumed their quarrel. Mitch was arguing with both of the others and yelling at me to stay put. Mitch claimed that if Dale took off and disappeared for a while, everything could be handled, or so he told his brothers. None of them noticed Edna until she’d almost reached the bottom step. I’m not sure whether Willie or Mitch saw her first, but it was Dale, the closest to her and the one on his feet, who acted.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said gently. “Mom, gimme that. Hey, I was only kidding. There’s no burglar. Mom, gimme that.”

  He put his beer can and the transmitter on one of the tables, reached out, and took the Buck Special from her. She didn’t resist. Then she stood there with her arms hanging helplessly at her sides. She looked bewildered, but no more than the last time I’d seen her.

  Either the feel of the Browning or his mother’s presence, maybe both, renewed Dale’s energy. He started telling his brothers that he wasn’t going anywhere. Then he launched into a jumble of inarticulate, pained accusations. Most were about Buddy. None were directed to Edna, who was gazing around with mean, empty eyes. Dale was well into his tirade when a man I’d never seen before wove his way down the stairs. I didn’t know him, but the close atmosphere of the damp cellar reeked of his invisible companion, a guy named Jim Beam.

  Although the father and his sons all resembled one another, Mitchell Dale Johnson, Sr., looked most like an aged, wasted version of Dale. He had the same big-boned, wide build, but without the flesh and youth. His vague, bloodshot eyes said he was as drunk as Dale, too. His face and neck were a sickly, wrinkled yellow-gray. Gray-blond hair stood out from his head in strange waves, like the gelled and crimped coiffure of a very old woman. In freakish contrast to Edna and to his own disheveled drunkenness, though, he was fastidiously and expensively dressed in a red plaid Pendleton robe over white linen pajamas. His black leather bedroom slippers gleamed. He even wore socks.

  He was evidently just sober enough to have caught the gist of Dale’s rambling. “Shut your drunken trap about Buddy,” he ordered Dale. He slurred his words less than I’d expected. “Buddy was a useless piece of shit, like that goddamned thing you’ve got now. I shouldn’t’ve bothered to get him gassed. I should’ve wrung his neck myself.”

  Dale turned slowly toward his father. His face had lost the pleasure I’d seen when he’d been waving the transmitter around. In fact, the expression on his thick, lifeless features was completely flat; he didn’t have one. He calmly raised the shotgun, squeezed the trigger, and shot his father dead. With a Buck Special at a range of about three yards, the second shot was a little superfluous, but Dale evidently didn’t want to take any chances.

  Both blasts filled my ears with what felt like burning paraffin. The odor of blood and gun blended sickeningly with the reek of beer and Jim Beam. Most of what had been Mitchell Dale Johnson, Sr., was distributed in red, gray, and white spatters over the cellar stairs. I’m not squeamish, but I wish I hadn’t seen his feet. They still wore socks and those black leather slippers.

  Still carrying the gun, Dale finally took Mitch’s advice. He stalked out through the door to the garage. Seconds later, an engine started, and Mitch, who’d been trying to make Edna stop screaming, tore for the door in a rage. “That’s my Corvette!” he yelled. “He’s stealing my Corvette!”

  I took advantage of the chaos. With Rowdy’s lead in one sore hand and that deadly collar in the other, I stood up and nodded to Leah to follow me. As the four of us stumbled out to the garage, no one tried to stop us. Willie had taken over Edna, and he must have heard the sirens, anyway, and known it was over.

  When we got outside, two police cruisers blocked the street, and a third, doors open, headlights glaring, idled about halfway down the driveway. Mitch was standing at the bottom of the drive staring at the shattered windshield of his Corvette, which had never even reached the street. One cop was holding the Browning, and another two kept Dale upright between them. His hands were in cuffs. There was blood on his face, and he was screaming at the cops: “I’m bleeding! Look what you did! I’m bleeding! You bastards shot me! You shot me!”

  What choice did they have? Dale had been aiming the Buck Special directly at them. They had to defend themselves. The bullet had nicked his ear.

  Chapter 29

  “Ever,” Rita emphasized. “This was a family in which no one could ever leave home. That was one meaning of Mother’s symptom.”

  “Would you not call her Mother?” I said. “Her name is Edna.”

  “Sorry,” Rita said. “It’s kind of a professional tic.”

  Dale had been in custody for two days. Leah was at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital visiting Jeff, and Rita and I were sharing a dinner of take-out Chinese food in her kitchen.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “the agoraphobia was like a family banner she carried, a cross, if you will, and it was a heavy one. She made a big sacrifice to make sure everyone got the message: Don’t leave home. Her role was to act that rule out, to make it highly explicit. And, of course, the others supported her in it. They made it possible for her to make that contribution to the family.”

  “Doing the shopping.”

  “And everything else. And when the others leave home, go to work, where do they go?”

  “Home away from home. The family business. And the names, right? I mean, how many families are there where three People all have the same name?”

  “In itself,” Rita said, “it isn’t necessarily pathological, but in this context?”

  “Rita, you want to know the weirdest thing? After everything Dale did, it’s weird, but I feel sorry for him, because of Buddy. That’s what started it. You know, Jack Engleman knew about that? So did Rose. The incredible thing is that the dog, Buddy, Was supposed to be therapy for him. When Dale was whatever, seven or eight, he was already in trouble, and some counselor at school talked the parents into buying him a dog. As therapy, right? He was bullying the other kids around and getting in fights and stuff. And the dog was supposed to socialize him.”

  “Only nobody looked at the family,” Rita said.

  “Right. So these monsters get him the dog, but what do they do? They make him promise that he has to take total care o
f it. He’s a little kid, right? And he’s supposed to be a hundred percent responsible. So, naturally, he isn’t. He can’t be. He’s too young, and he’s a screwed up kid, anyway. So his doting parents decide that here’s the chance to give him a good lesson in responsibility, keeping his promises, all that. I heard this from Willie and Mitch, that night. Anyway, the parents take the dog to some shelter, and then they come home and tell Dale all about Buddy being gassed to death, and they actually tell him that it’s his punishment, because he didn’t keep his promise. Is that unbelievable?”

  “No,” Rita said sadly.

  “You mean you...?”

  “In my business, you’ve heard everything before,” Rita said. “When he talked about Buddy, honest to God, Rita, it was the only time he was real, in a way. The rest of the time, he was yelling and storming around and everything, but it felt hollow, I guess. And when he aimed at his father? And even when he shot him? His face was totally empty. Blank. He could’ve been aiming the remote control at a VCR. Except he definitely liked aiming that remote trainer at Kimi. He liked causing pain, all right.”

  “Giving what he got,” Rita said.

  “But when he talked about Buddy, there was real pain. You could hear it in his voice. He was like a little kid. It was as if it’d just happened.”

  “For him, it had,” Rita said. “That’s the point. It was always still happening, over and over again. Everyone was someone taking his dog away. Rose Engleman? And Leah? And you? You were all the same person, gassing his dog.”

  “That’s the other thing,” I said. “About the gas. His parents actually told him all about the gas chambers at the shelter or wherever it was. Shelter, right. And somehow he got it hooked up with the... the holocaust. I heard that from Kevin. I mean, the family were all anti-Semites, but apparently Dale—not when he was a little kid, but later—when he heard about the concentration camps and everything, he got sort of obsessed. But wouldn’t you think he’d have taken the side of the victims?” Rita shook her head. “Identification with the aggressor, it’s called,” she said. “The ones who did the gassing. The ones in control. The ones who cause pain. So he’s one of them. It’s the oldest story in the world, really. The abused become the abusers.”