Dog Tales

by Jack Dann

  It had bothered her, his quitting the agency; he could understand that. Still, he wanted her to be happy, because he expected to be surer of what he wanted to do by the end of the summer. She was looking at him steadily now. He cast about for something to offer her that would interest her and change the mood between them. Then he remembered the scene he had witnessed earlier that evening. He told her about the man and his dogs, and this did raise her eyebrows.

  “Do you remember the real estate agent telling us anything about him?” she asked. “I don’t.”

  Malcolm, searching through his memory, did recall that the agent had mentioned a custodian they could call on if there were any problems. At the time he had let it pass, because he couldn’t imagine either agent or custodian really caring. Now he realized how dependent he and Virginia were out here if it came to things like broken plumbing or bad wiring, and the custodian’s importance altered accordingly. “I guess he’s the caretaker,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “It makes sense—all this property has got to be worth something. If they didn’t have someone here, people would just carry stuff away or come and camp or something.”

  “I suppose they would. I guess the owners let him live here rent-free, and with those dogs he must do a good job.”

  “He’ll get to keep it for a while, too,” Malcolm said. “Whoever started to build here was a good ten years ahead of himself. I can’t see anybody buying into these places until things have gotten completely jammed up closer to New York.”

  “So, he’s holding the fort,” Virginia said, leaning casually over the table to put a dish down before him. She glanced over his shoulder toward the living-room window, widened her eyes, and automatically touched the neckline of her housecoat, and then snorted at herself.

  “Look, he can’t possibly see in here,” Malcolm said. “The living room, yes, but to look in here he’d have to be standing in the far corner of his yard. And he’s back inside his house.” He turned his head to look, and it was indeed true, except that one of the dogs was standing at that corner looking toward their house, eyes glittering. Then its head seemed to melt into a new shape, and it was looking down the road. It pivoted, moved a few steps away from the fence, turned, soared, landed in the street, and set off. Then, a moment later, it came back down the street running side by side with its companion, whose jaws were lightly pressed together around the rolled-over neck of a small paper bag. The dogs trotted together companionably and briskly, their flanks rubbing against one another, and when they were a few steps from the fence they leaped over it in unison and continued across the lawn until they were out of Malcolm’s range of vision.

  “For heaven’s sake! He lives all alone with those dogs!” Virginia said.

  Malcolm turned quickly back to her. “How do you come to think that?”

  “Well, it’s pretty plain. You saw what they were doing out there just now. They’re his servants. He can’t get around himself, so they run errands for him. If he had a wife, she would do it.”

  “You learned all that already?”

  “Did you notice how happy they were?” Virginia asked. “There was no need for that other dog to go meet its friend. But it wanted to. They can’t be anything but happy.” Then she looked at Malcolm, and he saw the old, studying reserve coming back into her eyes.

  “For Pete’s sake! They’re only dogs—what do they know about anything?” Malcolm said.

  “They know about happiness,” Virginia said. “They know what they do in life.”

  Malcolm lay awake for a long time that night. He started by thinking about how good the summer was going to be, living here and working, and then he thought about the agency and about why he didn’t seem to have the kind of shrewd, limited intuition that let a man do advertising work easily. At about four in the morning he wondered if perhaps he wasn’t frightened, and had been frightened for a long time. None of this kind of thinking was new to him, and he knew that it would take him until late afternoon the following day to reach the point where he was feeling pretty good about himself.

  When Virginia tried to wake him early the next morning, he asked her to please leave him alone. At two in the afternoon, she brought him a cup of coffee and shook his shoulder. After a while, he walked out to the kitchen in his pajama pants and found that she had scrambled up some eggs for the two of them.

  “What are your plans for the day?” Virginia said when he had finished eating.

  He looked up. “Why?”

  “Well, while you were sleeping, I put all your art things in the front bedroom. I think it’ll make a good studio. With all your gear in there now, you can be pretty well set up by this evening.”

  At times she was so abrupt that she shocked him. It upset him that she might have been thinking that he wasn’t planning to do anything at all today. “Look,” he said, “you know I like to get the feel of a new thing.”

  “I know that. I didn’t set anything up in there. I’m no artist. I just moved it all in.”

  When Malcolm had sat for a while without speaking, Virginia cleared away their plates and cups and went into the bedroom. She came out wearing a dress, and she had combed her hair and put on lipstick. “Well, you do what you want to,” she said. “I’m going to go across the street and introduce myself.”

  A flash of irritability hit him, but then he said, “If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll get dressed and go with you. We might as well both meet him.”

  He got up and went back to the bedroom for a T-shirt and blue jeans and a pair of loafers. He could feel himself beginning to react to pressure. Pressure always made him bind up; it looked to him as if Virginia had already shot the day for him.

  They were standing at the fence, on the narrow strip of lawn between it and the row of whitewashed stones, and nothing was happening. Malcolm saw that although there was a gate in the fence, there was no break in the little grass border opposite it. And there was no front walk. The lawn was lush and all one piece, as if the house had been lowered onto it by helicopter. He began to look closely at the ground just inside the fence, and when he saw the regular pockmarks of the man’s crutches, he was comforted.

  “Do you see any kind of bell or anything?” Virginia asked.

  “No.”

  “You’d think the dogs would bark.”

  “I’d just as soon they didn’t.”

  “Will you look?” she said, fingering the gate latch. “The paint’s hardly scuffed. I’ll bet he hasn’t been out of his yard all summer.” Her touch rattled the gate lightly, and at that the two dogs came out from behind the house. One of them stopped, turned, and went back. The other dog came and stood by the fence, close enough for them to hear its breathing, and watched them with its head cocked alertly.

  The front door of the house opened. At the doorway there was a wink of metal crutches, and then the man came out and stood on his front steps. When he had satisfied himself as to who they were, he nodded, smiled, and came toward them. The other dog walked beside him. Malcolm noticed that the dog at the fence did not distract himself by looking back at his master.

  The man moved swiftly, crossing the ground with nimble swings of his body. His trouble seemed to be not in the spine, but in the legs themselves, for he was trying to help himself along with them. It could not be called walking, but it could not be called total helplessness either.

  Although the man seemed to be in his late fifties, he had not gone to seed any more than his property had. He was wiry and clean-boned, and the skin on his face was tough and tanned. Around his small blue eyes and at the corners of this thin lips were many fine, deep-etched wrinkles. His yellowish-white hair was brushed straight back from his temples in the classic British military manner. And he even had a slight mustache. He was wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, which seemed a little warm for this kind of day, and a light flannel pale-gray shirt with a pale-blue bow tie. He stopped at the fence, rested his elbows on the crutches, and held out a firm
hand with short nails the color of old bones.

  “How do you do,” he said pleasantly, his manner polished and well-bred. “I have been looking forward to meeting my new neighbors. I am Colonel Ritchey.” The dogs stood motionless, one to each side of him, their sharp black faces pointing outward.

  “How do you do,” Virginia said. “We are Malcolm and Virginia Lawrence.”

  “I’m very happy to meet you,” Colonel Ritchey said. “I was prepared to believe Cortelyou would fail to provide anyone this season.”

  Virginia was smiling. “What beautiful dogs,” she said. “I was watching them last night.”

  “Yes. Their names are Max and Moritz. I’m very proud of them.”

  As they prattled on, exchanging pleasantries, Malcolm wondered why the Colonel had referred to Cortelyou, the real estate agent, as a provider. There was something familiar, too, about the colonel.

  Virginia said, “You’re the famous Colonel Ritchey.”

  Indeed he was. Malcolm now realized, remembering the big magazine series that had appeared with the release of the movie several years before.

  Colonel Ritchey smiled with no trace of embarrassment. “I am the famous Colonel Ritchey, but you’ll notice I certainly don’t look much like that charming fellow in the motion picture.”

  “What in hell are you doing here?” Malcolm asked.

  Ritchey turned his attention to him. “One has to live somewhere, you know.”

  Virginia said immediately, “I was watching the dogs last night, and they seemed to do very well for you. I imagine it’s pleasant having them to rely on.”

  “Yes, it is, indeed. They’re quite good to me. Max and Moritz. But it is much better with people here now. I had begun to be quite disappointed in Cortelyou.”

  Malcolm began to wonder whether the agent would have had the brass to call Ritchey a custodian if the colonel had been within earshot.

  “Come in, please,” the colonel was saying. The gate latch resisted him momentarily, but he rapped it sharply with the heel of one palm and then lifted it. “Don’t be concerned about Max and Moritz—they never do anything they’re not told.”

  “Oh, I’m not the least bit worried about them,” Virginia said.

  “Ah, to some extent you should have been,” the colonel said. “Dobermans are not to be casually trusted, you know. It takes many months before one can be at all confident in dealing with them.”

  “But you trained them yourself, didn’t you?” Virginia said.

  “Yes, I did,” Colonel Ritchey said, with a pleased smile. “From imported pups.” The voice in which he now spoke to the dogs was forceful, but as calm as his manner had been to Virginia. “Kennel,” he said, and Max and Moritz stopped looking at Malcolm and Virginia and smoothly turned away.

  The colonel’s living room, which was as neat as a sample, contained beautifully cared for, somewhat old-fashioned furniture. The couch, with its needlepoint upholstery and carved framing, was the sort of thing Malcolm would have expected in a lady’s living room. Angling out from one wall was a Morris chair, placed so that a man might relax and gaze across the street or, with a turn of his head, rest his eyes on the distant lights of New York. Oil paintings in heavy gilded frames depicted landscapes, great eye-stretching vistas of rolling, open country. The furniture in the room seemed sparse to Malcolm until it occurred to him that the colonel needed extra clearance to get around in and had no particular need to keep additional chairs for visitors.

  “Please do sit down,” the colonel said. “I shall fetch some tea to refresh us.”

  When he had left the room, Virginia said, “Of all people! Neighborly, too.”

  Malcolm nodded. “Charming,” he said.

  The colonel entered holding a silver tray perfectly steady, its edges grasped between his thumbs and forefingers, his other fingers curled around each of the projecting black-rubber handgrips of his crutches. He brought tea on the tray and, of all things, homemade cookies. “I must apologize for the tea service,” he said, “but it seems to be the only one I have.”

  When the colonel offered the tray, Malcolm saw that the utensils were made of the common sort of sheet metal used to manufacture food cans. Looking down now into his cup, he saw it had been enameled over its original tinplate, and he realized that the whole thing had been made literally from a tin can. The teapot—handle, spout, vented lid, and all—was the same. “Be damned—you made this for yourself at the prison camp, didn’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did, yes. I was really quite proud of my handiwork at the time, and it still serves. Somehow, living as I do, I’ve never brought myself to replace it. It’s amazing, the fuddy-duddy skills one needs in a camp and how important they become to one. I find myself repainting these poor objects periodically and still taking as much smug pleasure in it as I did when that attitude was quite necessary. One is allowed to do these things in my position, you know. But I do hope my ersatz Spode isn’t uncomfortably hot in your fingers.”

  Virginia smiled. “Well, of course, it’s trying to be.” Malcolm was amazed. He hadn’t thought Virginia still remembered how to act so coquettish. She hadn’t grown apart from the girl who’d always attracted a lot of attention at other people’s gallery openings; she had simply put that part of herself away somewhere else.

  Colonel Ritchey’s blue eyes were twinkling in response. He turned to Malcolm. “I must say, it will be delightful to share this summer with someone as charming as Mrs. Lawrence.”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said, preoccupied now with the cup, which was distressing his fingers with both heat and sharp edges. “At least, I’ve always been well satisfied with her,” he added.

  “I’ve been noticing the inscription here,” Virginia said quickly, indicating the meticulous freehand engraving on the tea tray. She read out loud, “ ‘To Colonel David N. Ritchey, R.M.E., from his fellow officers at Oflag XXXIb, on the occasion of their liberation, May 14, 1945. Had he not been there to lead them, many would not have been present to share of this heartfelt token.’ ” Virginia’s eyes shone, as she looked up at the colonel. “They must all have been very fond of you.”

  “Not all,” the colonel said, with a slight smile. “I was senior officer over a very mixed bag. Mostly younger officers gathered from every conceivable branch. No followers at all—just budding leaders, all personally responsible for having surrendered once already, some apathetic, others desperate. Some useful, some not. It was my job to weld them into a disciplined, responsive body, to choose whom we must keep safe and who was best suited to keeping the Jerries on the jump. And we were in, of course, from the time of Dunkirk to the last days of the war, with the strategic situation in the camp constantly changing in various ways. All most of them understood was tactics—when they understood at all.”

  The colonel grimaced briefly, then smiled again. “The tray was presented by the survivors, of course. They’d had a tame Jerry pinch it out of the commandant’s sideboard a few days earlier, in plenty of time to get the inscription on. But even the inscription hints that not all survived.”

  “It wasn’t really like the movie, was it?” Virginia said.

  “No, and yet—” Ritchey shrugged, as if remembering a time when he had accommodated someone on a matter of small importance. “That was a question of dramatic values, you must realize, and the need to tell an interesting and exciting story in terms recognizable to a civilian audience. Many of the incidents in the motion picture are literally true—they simply didn’t happen in the context shown. The Christmas tunnel was quite real, obviously. I did promise the men I’d get at least one of them home for Christmas if they’d pitch in and dig it. But it wasn’t a serious promise, and they knew it wasn’t. Unlike the motion picture actor, I was not being fervent; I was being ironic.

  “It was late in the war. An intelligent man’s natural desire would be to avoid risk and wait for liberation. A great many of them felt exactly that way. In fact, many of them had turned civilian in their own minds
and were talking about their careers outside, their families—all that sort of thing. So by couching in sarcasm trite words about Christmas tunnels, I was reminding them what and where they still were. The tactic worked quite well. Through devices of that sort, I was able to keep them from going to seed and coming out no use to anyone.” The colonel’s expression grew absent. “Some of them called me ‘The Shrew,’ ” he murmured. “That was in the movie, too, but they were all shown smiling when they said it.”

  “But it was your duty to hold them all together any way you could,” Virginia said encouragingly.

  Ritchey’s face twisted into a spasm of tension so fierce that there might have been strychnine in his tea. But it was gone at once. “Oh, yes, yes, I held them together. But the expenditure of energy was enormous. And demeaning. It ought not to have made any difference that we were cut off from higher authority. If we had all still been home, there was not a man among the prisoners who would have dared not jump to my simplest command. But in the camp they could shilly-shally and evade; they could settle down into little private ambitions. People will do that. People will not hold true to common purposes unless they are shown discipline.” The colonel’s uncompromising glance went from Virginia to Malcolm. “It’s no good telling people what they ought to do. The only surety is in being in a position to tell people what they must do.”

  “Get some armed guards to back you up. That the idea, Colonel? Get permission from the Germans to set up your own machine-gun towers inside the camp?” Malcolm liked working things out to the point of absurdity.