No Animals We Could Name

by Ted Sanders

  I go after Dorlene. I say her name. I nearly catch her, a dozen yards down the mown path, but then I see how slow she’s moving, and I fall in behind her. She plucks long stems from the weeds as she goes—looping them around her hand and heaving back bodily till they snap. She pulls off three or four stalks of that thin weedy stuff that looks like wheat up top, a drooping horse tail, and she turns to walk backward, gathering the stalks in one hand, watching them and me. I imagine her face is rapt with mischief, devilish. Then real quick she slides the other hand up the stalks, popping the seeds loose with her thumb like an explosion, like fireworks.

  “Boo!” she says. The seeds shower down around her. She lets the stripped stalks fall and turns back, walking on.

  She’s trying to make me think she knows who spooked who, I can see that—I think I can—and I don’t appreciate it much because that’s not how it is. It’s that things are complicated. “It’s not like that,” I tell her.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I’m certain I don’t, but David—I’d rather us not overestimate the importance of the occasion.”

  I chew on that. I go on following. “Well,” I say, “that’s good advice I didn’t need.”

  After a few silent steps she laughs, her voice pealing out over the lawn, coming from everywhere—not a snide laugh, I’d bet my life not, but a laugh of delight. And I guess I’ve said the thing that has made it all right. I laugh with her, still following, and our laughing spreads around us like a thing I’m wading through. I sink myself in this queer relief that doesn’t have a name and I think we’ll go back to the house and it’ll be fine.

  And then movement catches my eye. Out in the dark we were considering just a minute ago. The sight makes me stop, makes my head snap and my heart dive but it isn’t Triti at all, of course it isn’t. It’s Lord Jim. His great white shape sails slow through the long grass straight toward us. He moves like a planet. I know he sees me.

  I move forward again, lengthening my step, my pulse suddenly pounding. “Dorlene,” I say again, coming up beside her. She’s stopped laughing. I know she can’t see the dog—the grass along the path is too high—but without a word she reaches up and slips her tiny hand into mine. She smiles up at me. She walks us on—or maybe I do it myself, I don’t know. All I know is that the two of us and the dog are angling in toward each other. He’ll emerge from the grass on Dorlene’s side. And I can’t tell you what this does to me, this moment, this triangle—me seeing the dog and her not, her making this gesture in just this instant, the bend of her back, the shape and pull of her tiny hand from below, the great dog limping through the tiger-long grass to meet us. I can see his eyes now. I squeeze Dorlene’s hand, very gently, thinking how wrongly placed her thumb is, how wrong it has to be. She squeezes me back as best she can, a pinch. The dog’s approach has grown so loud that I can’t figure how she doesn’t hear it. She takes in a breath to speak.

  And then he arrives. He steps out of the weeds and into the mown path, practically into Dorlene’s face, and there it is—the sight I’d imagined earlier. We all three stop. Dorlene turns to wood. Her hand leaves mine. Jim’s monstrous, the kind of dog whose size makes you a little breathless whether you feel the twinge of fear or not. He looms over Dorlene by several inches, looking like some great steer or something—I don’t know, like an impossible bear or some terrible beast. His head alone is practically the size of Dorlene’s whole torso. He stands there, huffing, giving Dorlene his glassy, sideways gaze. It’s pretty clear from where I stand that it’s Dorlene who’s brought him to a halt. I wait for something to happen, and when nothing immediately does I recognize that I’m waiting for Dorlene to make some move. To speak or act. But she is as frozen as a fencepost. Jim just huffs and huffs, his head bobbing slightly.

  I step around between Jim and Dorlene. I don’t know what I’m doing. I say Jim’s name. I lean in and take his head in my hands. His jowls are coarse and wet and cold, and holding his head is like holding a huge and dense wad of damp, forgotten rags. It smells like that, too, something hot and thick and alive with filth. He goes on huffing and rolls his eyes away from me, past me.

  I’ve no more got him than a swimmer has the sea. I can’t think of anything to say to him so I just keep greeting him, saying his name, saying, “Hey, Jim, what’s up? Hey, Jim. Hey, hey,” and trying to look him in the eye. He doesn’t pull away, but he bucks and rolls his head in my hands. He’s not letting me block his view of Dorlene. And I don’t know how I feel it, but I sense something curdling up in him, some energy or intent gathering, maybe made even worse by the harassment I’m handing out. My balls huddle together. I slide my hand through the yeti fur on his neck, feeling for his collar. I dig with my fingers. I scratch down to the skin before I admit to myself that the collar isn’t there.

  Panic vomits up inside me. Jim rears back hard and wrenches himself free, thin bundles of white hair coming loose between my fingers. He surges forward, bulling me aside. A slug of gruff sound rumbles up out of his throat, a deep and jowly half-bark, like a shovelful of rocks hitting the ground. He chucks this sound at Dorlene and steps right up against her, stiff-legged. He tucks his jaw against his chest, lowering his snout to snuffle loudly and alertly around her neck. I can’t even see Dorlene behind his bulk. I reach for the dog. I am still saying his name—Jim, hey, Jim, Jim.

  And then I’m not the only one. Triti’s here, suddenly present, trotting heavy and low and calling the dog’s name and pounding her hands together between her knees. She looks like an animal herself. I think she will slow but she doesn’t—an instant after I’m even aware she’s here she’s up into the dog’s shoulder, shoving him aside with a strength that’s only partly muscle. The dog barrels into my knees, knocking me back. Jim actually turns and snaps at Triti as they stumble by me, but she grabs him by the scruff the way you’d grab a cat, and somehow she leverages him to the ground, her momentum carrying them both into the long grass and down. In the darkness, in the weeds, she’s just a dark shape over the big shining body of the dog but I can hear her talking to him still, her tone light and conversational, at utter odds with what she’s just done—she sounds as though she’s making plans to take him to a movie he might enjoy, or asking him how his day was. He’s only down for a second, torquing gracelessly to his feet again like a horse, but once he’s up he just stands there. Triti is right with him.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, lifting her voice. “She’s freaking him out.”

  I’ve forgotten Dorlene, but she’s gone nowhere. I step over to her and crouch down in front of her. She doesn’t see me. She breathes the tiniest shallow breaths, each one swift and thimble-sized but far apart, like a dying fish. “Dorlene,” I say. “Are you okay?” She’s made fists deep into the fabric of her dress, so that the hem of it is daintily raised, as though she were about to walk through wet. I catch the acrid scent that’s steaming off her—she’s pissed herself. I reach out and grip her gently by the back of her neck, embarassed by the violent size of my hand. Her neck is slick, and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s the dog’s saliva. “Dorlene. Hey. Dorlene.”

  Her breath goes quiet. She looks down at her feet. Her hands slowly loosen and she wipes at her throat, her neck, her chest. She ducks her way out from under my touch and starts to walk away, her legs stiff and awkward because of the pee. It makes her look more doll-like than ever. She heads toward the cars, tottering slow, not looking back, and I swear a little disfigured bolt of laughter threatens to punch its way out of me as I watch her go. My stomach buckles as I choke it down.

  Triti has her eyes on me. Her frown is deep and old.

  “She needs help,” I tell her. “Girl help. I think she wet herself.”

  “I need to get the dog away first. Come with me.” She says that, but then she doesn’t actually need me. It makes me think there’s something I’m supposed to be doing that I’m not as she claps in the dog’s face and walks backward,
calling him. He follows her—not eager, never eager, but inevitable—like some great toy boat on a string. I glance up the slope for Dorlene but don’t see her. I follow Triti as she leads the dog to the corncrib with its slotted walls, around to the door. She steps right inside, sliding apart in the origami shadows of the place. She keeps calling Jim’s name from in there. The dog hesitates at the threshold, swinging his mammoth head back in my direction, but at last he steps through. Triti pops back out and closes the rickety door behind him. She lifts the door on its hinges a bit and wedges it tight. I figure Jim will object, that he will just plow his way out, but of course he doesn’t. This is the dog everyone knows, even me: he walks to the door and stands there, sideways, his white mass cut into stripes by the wide horizontal slits in the walls. I see his eye, bobbing slightly as he pants. Otherwise he doesn’t move.

  We stand there a minute. Dorlene’s long gone and I can hardly see Triti. She is caught in a shadow. I can see her arms, mostly, just her arms. And so I can’t tell exactly where she’s looking when she says: “This is what you get.”

  Opinion of Person

  THE CAT WAS INTO THE CURTAINS; HIS GODDAMN CLAWS were pricking and popping. Even from the bed, Julie could see the new little starholes he was making in the cloth. The fabric swung as Rory’s shadow twitched, high up between the sheers and drapes where he was hanging. Julie waited for him to fall. “You’ll die, you dumb animal,” she said.

  Julie listened for sounds further out in the apartment. The clock said 9:17, which meant, probably, that Ed would already be gone. The air over the bed was freezing and thin. Julie lifted the hem of the blanket, pressed it against her lip, made it the world’s largest mustache. She held it there, breathed in through her mouth, out through her nose. The cat’s damn claws pricked and snagged.

  Water ran in the bathroom. Shad was awake. He belched sonorously, shut the water off, said, to himself, “Shad, you fuck,” and the medicine cabinet opened and closed. Julie listened close through several quiet seconds and then startled at the sudden plunge of piss into the toilet. Rory fell down from the long window, landing heavily on the floor, his feet gathering and mincing, prissy little things. He meowed like answers were owed him.

  Julie rolled onto her face beneath the blanket, spread her legs and elbows, opened her eyes into the sheets and listened to the sound of Shad peeing. Right now, she thought, his cock is in his hand. He peed and peed. If only she’d been counting. Shad said, plenty loud enough for her to hear, “Oh my Christ.” Such a heavy sound he made, and why was that true—that a man’s piss always sounded so heavy? Their streams were so thin. When Ed peed it was precise, braided almost, arcing into the water.

  “My pee has no arc,” she said into the sheets, and she smelled them and thought of Ed’s long, thin cock, with its own arc, long and thin especially when it was hard, and pale—a strange animal bone. All of him so smooth and nearly hairless, so eager and certain. The toilet flushed. Rory ran from the room.

  Julie got up and put on a pair of Ed’s boxers, yesterday’s shirt. Her boobs were freezing. She checked their sag with her hands, hefting and dropping them, feeling the sad little peas of her huddled nipples with her thumbs. She thought briefly of a bra and decided she could go without. She stepped onto the floor vent, but the air coming out was vacantly cold, the product of some strange cycle the furnace here had. Ed’s socks were laid out on the grate, flat and crisp.

  She lifted her chin and called out, loud, “Is Ed gone?”

  Shad’s big voice barreled back, like he was the walls. “He is.”

  “Are you dressed?”

  There was a long pause. She could hear the TV talking low. Shad said, “I am.”

  Julie went down the hall. Shad stood out there in the living room with his back to her, nearly filling the space between the couch and the wall. He wore tentish tan shorts and a long red shirt. He was watching a preacher on TV.

  “Hey,” Julie said.

  “Christians,” Shad said flatly, gesturing with the remote. He didn’t turn around. The preacher talked into his microphone, marched across a big black stage, a phone number beneath him on the screen.

  Julie went to the bathroom. It stank of damp air and boy products—cloying and vigorously ambiguous scents. She checked the toilet seat before she sat down. She left water running in the sink while she peed, and while she peed, she bent and watched herself go, holding her pubic hair down with her hand. She peed until she became aware that she was counting, and when she got to eleven she cut off her stream. She held that muscle, felt it quiver, tried to feel, again, what it was connected to and where. She held it until she could imagine she no longer needed to pee, and then she let it go again. A queer little twinge of pain passed as her pee fell again, rudely, in a shower.

  Afterward, she pulled up her panties, Ed’s boxers. She didn’t wash her hands. She watched her arms as she put her hair up in the mirror.

  Shad was still standing in the same place, watching the preacher on TV. He said, “Who answers if you call that number?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Those phones are somewhere. People answer.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, Shad.”

  He lifted a thick arm at the TV. “Christians, sure. But I mean besides Christians. I mean who by name. It would be someone. It would be what someone was doing, right that second. It’s strange.”

  “Very strange,” Julie said. She was so fucking freezing. Her nipples were so hard they felt like little injuries. She cupped them, felt them sink into the soft sag of her breasts.

  “Bruce, Mary Ellen, Connie,” said Shad. “Earl.”

  “Call them,” Julie said. “Was Ed late for work?”

  “I don’t know. Did you hear back about the thing? The job?”

  Julie sighed. “It’s Sunday.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “It’s the weekend.”

  Shad nodded. “I can see you in the TV.”

  Julie looked down at herself. She flexed her hands, drew her arms in closer around her body. “Well, I’m freezing, what do you expect? I’m just freezing. Why is it so goddamn cold in here?”

  The TV preacher had his hand on the shoulder of a little girl planted on the stage. He leaned over her, looked out at the audience. “This is God’s house, right here,” he said to them.

  “I can’t see you that well, Julie,” said Shad.

  Julie went into the kitchen, drank orange juice from the carton, listened to TV sounds rolling in through the breakfast-bar window. Rory the cat sat on the counter, licking the wooden handle of a knife that was sunk deep into a whole pineapple. His eyes were closed. The pineapple rocked.

  “Hey,” she said to the cat. “Ffft.”

  “Connie is short for Constance, did you know that?” Shad said from the other room.

  “Yeah, people know that, Shad.”

  “There’s no name like that for men, you know?’

  “Constantine,” she said. She took a big drink of orange juice, let it sit in her mouth. She waited for a burning sensation. Maybe if she left the orange juice in her mouth long enough, it would burn a hole out down through the entire soft bottom of her jaw. That would be a shock. What would you do for such a person, or think? She imagined the breeze coming in through there. She watched the stupid cat and she waited for her mouth to begin to burn, but all that happened was the opposite of burning. Her mouth acclimating to the juice, or the juice to her. She held it.

  “Conrad,” said Shad from the other room.

  Rory worked his tongue hard, up near the base of the knife’s handle, where it was close against the pineapple’s skin. He had his head turned almost upside down, one little paw up off the counter, bobbing in time with his licks. She could hear his soft licks, hated them. She couldn’t tell how much of the blade was bared down there. The pineapple thudded and rustled as it rocked. Julie opened her mouth. She could feel the juice pooling, lapping against her bottom lip.

  “Rory,” she tried to say, but it
came out “Woewee.” She moved closer to the counter. The stupid cat was giving her an ear, but he just licked and licked. She stood right over him. She’d make sure she got some on the back of his head—he’d hate that. What a curse to be made so fussy but to be given no hands. She leaned over him and spat.

  Rory instantly became a cartoon—he seemed to start to scramble even before the juice hit him, maybe from the sound squirting stupidly from her. He hit the floor skittering, out of there, a dark patch down his back.

  Julie wiped her chin, cleaned up the dribbles of juice on the counter, the floor. She wiped the handle of the knife, dabbed the pineapple dry. She turned the pineapple around to see if the tip of the knife came out the other side, but couldn’t see it. She ran her finger over the spot, wondering with a thrill if she would be pricked.

  She took the orange juice carton into the living room. Shad had his body folded and slumped complexly into one corner of the couch. She took the other end. A man on TV talked about bicycling in Prague.

  Shad had a little smudge of white stuff in the corner of his mouth. Julie didn’t tell him—because he would care, but only barely. The big red shirt he wore was one she’d never seen, tight and long and red, with yellow print on the front, like the top half of a pair of long johns, or more like a nightshirt, meant to go to the knees. It was long enough for him—like a regular shirt—but it wasn’t wide enough. The yellow on the front was a dog’s head, like a Goofy or a Pluto head, stenciled on, cheap and peeling. The dog had his head sticking out of a yellow circle, and his square teeth were out, and around his mouth bent lines made it look like he had a hold on the shirt in his teeth, but it only sort of did, and in big curving yellow letters over the dog it said FETCH-N-WARE.

  “Where’d you get that shirt?” Julie said.

  “Ed,” said Shad, staring at the TV.

  “I’ve never seen it before.”