The Book of Harold

by Owen Egerton

  He had never been snow skiing—lost points.

  He wasn’t married—lost points.

  Harold didn’t have a job—lost points.

  At first he was a curiosity, then a joke, but after a while he became a threat. Beth Williamson was remarking on an article about plastic surgery, how it was safe and many younger women were having it done.

  “A bit like cutting off your ears so you won’t hear the thunder,” Harold said through a mouth of food.

  Beth’s expression looked as if she were smelling something south of foul.

  “With the stress of the market these days, we’re all going to need a little work done. Am I right?” Terry said. The room laughed, even Beth, and the game continued.

  “Anyone like dessert?” my wife asked.

  Later, I wandered into the living room. Pickles was there, a furry ball on the carpet by the leather chair. I expected him to wake up and shuffle off to a quieter place, but he didn’t budge.

  “Go on, out you go,” I told him. He still didn’t move. “Okay, Pickles, wake up,” I said and gave him a little kick. He shifted in one solid hunk and with a painful jab I realized that Pickles was not going to wake up. Not now, not ever.

  I thought about moving the dog or hiding it, but the men meandered in behind me. The women soon followed. None of them noticed anything. Which is good. Nothing ruins a party like a dead dog.

  “Anyone want a nightcap?” I asked, making my way to the bar. And the game continued.

  . . . I sure hope this summer isn’t as hot as . . . sixteen-year-old Wendy going to Europe alone? I think not. Of course cheerleading camp has taught her how to . . . hunt quail in Mexico. It has twice the adventure of hunting . . . Democrats! They don’t understand a working man’s. . .implants. I mean, they can’t be real . . .

  Talk away, keep it up. Never mind the dog. Everything is A-Okay.

  When I came back with drinks, I found Terry Williamson sitting in the leather chair next to Pickles’s corpse. He sat there smiling with his ruddy cheeks aglow. He casually dropped his hand to scratch behind Pickles’s ear. His fingers just brushed the dog’s skin when he yanked his hand away with a gasp. Only I saw him. He looked at me, just a tad horrified. But he said nothing. Keep the game going.

  I sat rubbing my hands. If they knew, they would cry. I wanted to cry, and I didn’t like the dog that much. Jennifer would be worst of all and the game would stop. I noticed Rebecca Klotter quietly whistling for the dog. “Rebecca,” I said. “Would you like another drink?”

  “No, thanks,” she said and continued with her cooing. A touch of doubt was sneaking into her whistled melody.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a drink, Rebecca?” She looked up. Our eyes met. Maybe it was my face that told her, maybe it was the fact that the dog hadn’t responded to any of her calls, maybe it was the fly that was crawling along the dog’s dry nose. Whatever it was, Rebecca now knew Pickles was no longer with us. I shook my head at her and glanced quickly at my wife. Rebecca nodded and leaned back in her chair. Keep the game going.

  . . . If I told her once I told her a hundred times, don’t . . . taste as good as the fat-free ones. The fatty ones always . . . get the girls. You have a means of support, a charming personality . . . an infected bladder. The doctor says it’s most likely due to . . . Pickles—

  It was my wife speaking.

  “Pickles loves to chase those squirrels. He even dreams about it. Watch him. Any minute now his little legs will start running in midair. It is so cute.”

  Rebecca looked at me. I looked at her. Terry looked at me. I looked at him. Then we all looked at the dog. Fourteen eyes fixated on the furry little body.

  No one talked, just watched, but the legs were not moving. If anything, they looked a little stiff. Rigor mortis must have been setting in. The seconds ticked by and the dog didn’t stir. Not a twitch or postmortem shudder. Nothing. Another fly landed on Pickles’s closed eye. Still nothing. Just when I was sure my wife and the others would catch on, Terry spoke up.

  “Oh, there it went. A little hop.” He slapped his knee.

  “He hopped?” my wife asked.

  “Oh, yeah. The dream squirrel must be up a dream tree.” We all laughed and quickly looked away from the corpse. If people in that room still thought the dog was alive, it was only because they were willing to be deceived. We continued chuckling at Terry’s little joke and kept our eyes up.

  I took a swallow of my drink. When I drew the glass away from my face, I saw Harold was staring at me.

  “A woman in Paris just killed her two children,” Harold said.

  “What?”

  “Since we finished dinner, two hundred and seven people have starved to death. The sun has risen on seven percent of the globe. At this moment, three blocks from here, a grandfather is describing what a whale looks like to his granddaughter. I’ve always been afraid of possums.”

  “Harold, what are you—”

  “A woman in Boston is using coal to sketch her husband’s face. My mother used to call me Huck. She loved Mark Twain. A man in Africa is being shot in the head for a crime he did not commit. He wants his daughter to know he’s innocent.”

  “Okay, let’s quit the dramatics.”

  “One hundred and four people are dying this minute. Two hundred and fifty-three are being born. Over seven billion people are alive and kicking. And that dog is dead.”

  “What?” my wife cried.

  “Ah, honey, he’s not. He’s fine,” I said. My wife fell to the floor and shook Pickles. I had been right about the rigor mortis. Beth moved to her side and put an arm around my wife’s shoulders.

  “That was heartless, Harold,” Terry said.

  “You’d rather her not know?”

  “Show some compassion, for Christ’s sake.”

  “That’s exactly whose sake I do it for,” Harold said.

  “Really? You speak for Christ?”

  “Of course I do. I am Christ.”

  Game over. Claim you’re the Messiah, the game ends. It’s so obvious they left it out of the rule book.

  “Look, Mr. Peeks,” said Beth from my wife’s side, “I find that kind of joke very offensive.”

  “It’s more offensive than that,” Harold said. “I wasn’t joking.”

  “I promise you, you are not Jesus.”

  “No, you’re right. I’m Harold,” he nodded. “But I am Christ, Son of God.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Terry said.

  “Things are fine, things are fine,” my wife said tearfully, still kneeling in front of Pickles’s body. “I’ll make coffee. Who wants coffee?”

  “You’re wasting time, and you’re wasting words,” Harold said. “How many hours have you spent together? You know nothing about each other. Beth, you’ve never told them about your first child. Rick, you’ve—”

  “How do you know . . .” Beth stuttered.

  “Now wait just one minute, this is inappropriate,” Rick said, rising to his feet.

  “No, this is what language is for. You’ve forgotten how to talk. How can you talk of anything real if you can’t mention that a dog is dead?” He turned to Jennifer. “I’m sorry about your loss. I’ll leave now.”

  “Yes,” said Rick. “I think that’s best.”

  My scowling guests, my weeping wife, Harold moving to leave—I started to snicker. It started small, a muffled chuckle, but it quickly grew into a loud, big belly laugh. Terry smiled, laughed a little himself and asked, “Was this some kind of practical joke, Blake?”

  “No,” I said. “The dog’s dead, and he says he’s the Son of God. No joke.” I was laughing so hard I had to stand and lean on my chair. I looked over at Harold with his cropped hair and round face, his big eyes and wrinkled clothes. Tears started welling in my eyes.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny, Blake,” Rebecca said. At first I couldn’t answer because of the laughing, but finally I squeezed out, “What if it’s true?”

  “Oh, please.”<
br />
  “I mean, look at him. That’s our savior?” I couldn’t stop my laughing. “And we’re all ready to crucify him because he said the dog is dead and ruined the party. Quick, get me a cross! We can do it right now. Who’s with me?” I was laughing and yelling.

  Husbands were putting jackets on wives, all glaring at me. My poor wife was apologizing and wiping away her tears, and I was still laughing. The more seriously they stared, the more I saw the absurdity. My guests were absurd, my wife was absurd, I was definitely absurd, and Harold was the most absurd of us all.

  I tried to follow my guests and wave goodbye, but I was laughing so much I stumbled and stepped on Pickles. He let out a bark.

  We all stopped and stared. I gave him a little kick to see if he would move. He didn’t. He was still dead. I started laughing again.

  Within two minutes everyone but Harold had left. My wife was shaking from embarrassment and grief. Harold took a step towards her and put a hand on her arm. My wife spun away. “Please go,” she said.

  He nodded.

  I stopped laughing and watched Harold walk out the door.

  My Prayer for Pickles

  I say a prayer for Pickles,

  First of the martyrs.

  First of the new saints.

  Good dog.

  I say a prayer for Pickles,

  Dog of the Disciple,

  Dog of the Destroyer.

  Poor dog.

  Say a prayer for Pickles.

  It Would Have Been Wiser to Say Nothing at All

  I was on the couch drinking a gin and tonic when my daughter crept through the front door.

  “You’re late,” I said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  I didn’t know if she was late or not. It just seemed like the right thing to say. Painfully predictable. She stood there for a moment and then moved for the stairs.

  “Don’t go in the garage, okay?” I said. She stopped and turned back to me.

  “Why?”

  “Just don’t.”

  “Where’s Pickles?” she asked.

  “In the garage.”

  She walked off. I could hear the door to the garage open. Pickles was laying in a cooler, covered in a pile of ice. I expected a scream or yelp from Tammy, but there was nothing. After a moment I heard the door click shut. When I looked up again she was standing in the foyer staring at me. I stared at my drink. From the corner of my eye I could see her. Tall for her age and thin. Angry. The way her arms hung heavy from her shoulders, an overstuffed purse dangling like a sandbag from one hand. Angry. The way her chin pointed to the floor. Angry. Even her perfume smelled angry. She didn’t say a word. Just stared.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” I said. I got up and went to join my sad wife in bed.

  My Daughter

  I should explain about Tammy. She once caught me drowning a cat. Not an adult cat. A kitten, a newborn with its eyes still closed. A nasty, rust-colored cat that my daughter predictably named Rusty Cat used to haunt our neighborhood. It had a litter of six deranged, scratching little beasts. I found them in our garage in a box behind my wife’s college bicycle. Feral things, not an hour out of the womb and already spitting away. Their mother, Rusty Cat, was still warm, but dead next to the litter. The kindest thing I could do for the kittens and the neighborhood was to drown the little bastards.

  I filled a bathroom sink with water, warm enough to feel like going back into the womb. I picked out one of them, placed it in the sink, and held it down. At first, it just lay there without moving. Then it struggled and scratched, but I was wearing gloves. After a minute or so, the fight was over and it was still. I picked it out of the sink, heavier now, and tossed it in a garbage bag. Then I moved on to the next kitten.

  Tammy came in just as I was finishing up the second to last. She screamed. I explained about going back into the womb and the closed eyes and the dead mother, and Tammy screamed again. Then she grabbed the last kitten, a rusty one like its mother, and ran. She was only seven at the time, but she outran me. Down the hall, through the kitchen, around the dinner table, and out the front door. I followed, hoping to explain that my intentions were kind, but I couldn’t find her. When I finally returned to the bathroom, the garbage bag and the dead kittens it held were gone. I didn’t find out where until the next morning. Five tiny graves now lay in the corner of our backyard, complete with miniature crosses. In a fit of self-righteousness, Tammy dubbed the surviving kitten MLK. It managed to endure thanks to blankets and milk bottles from my daughter, and it quickly grew to be as much of a disease-carrying menace as its mother.

  Tammy never forgave me. I think she judged everything I said or did from then on in light of that day’s events. If I made dinner, it was the Cat Killer making dinner. If I drove her to school, it was the Cat Killer driving her to school. If I gave her a gift, it was a gift from the Cat Killer. She wouldn’t even ask me for money. She would only ask her mother, as if perhaps my money had come directly from the evil profession of cat killing.

  Peter Doesn’t

  I don’t feel well. I’m dying. They stopped me from drowning, but my lungs soaked in enough water. So instead of two minutes, it will take two weeks.

  A young man named Peter visits the basement three times a day. I watch him carefully. He unlocks and locks the door. He brings me food and extra notepads. He has a serious face and gray eyes. The men who pulled me from the reservoir—who now peak at me through the window in the door—wear pastel sweaters and small silver pins in the shape of the number four. Today Peter wears a white buttoned shirt, well-starched.

  In the corner of the basement, near the easel, I found poster prints of masterpieces: Van Gogh, Gauguin.

  “Could you tape these posters to the wall?” I asked Peter.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Can I read the books?” I asked, though I’d already started.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I use the paints and easel?”

  “Anything. We don’t care.” He turned to leave.

  “Wait, will you take the TV away?”

  “I don’t even think it works.”

  “Of course it doesn’t. Will you please take it away?”

  Peter lugged the television up the stairs and out the door.

  “Thank you,” I said. He grunted. I don’t think he likes me.

  I have very little theology left in me, but I do know that God and Satan are at war in the televisions of America.

  Perfectly Folded

  The morning after our dinner party, I woke feeling panic like pebbles in my blood. I lay motionless in my bed, unable to think of a reason to rise. Jennifer called me downstairs for breakfast and I was thankful for the distraction. Jennifer and I ate eggs and toast in silence, the events of the previous night willfully ignored. Tammy was still asleep or hiding in her room.

  I checked on Pickles. He was still there, stiff under a thin cover of ice cubes. I loaded the cooler into the trunk of my car and dialed up our veterinarian. Closed. I called another. Closed. I called the humane society.

  “Oh, we’re closed for the weekend.”

  “But I’m talking to you.”

  “Yep, I’m here. But I’m not working.”

  “You’re just hanging out?”

  I added another handful of ice to the cooler and left it in the trunk.

  I fell onto the couch, clicked the remote three or four times before remembering that my television was as dead as my dog.

  The panic rumbled. There was nothing I had to do and nothing I wanted to do. Then it hit me: there’s always yard work. I gathered my tools like a warrior selecting weapons and set out to perfect my backyard. I cleaned the pool and fixed a loose fence board. For a time it felt good, like I was accomplishing something, doing my duty. I did a once-over on the riding lawn mower—zigzag, zigzag. But the grass on the left side seemed a little taller than the right side. So I rode over that side again. Now the right side looked higher. Another round. I missed a patch. I made a pat
ch. Another round. My shirt was drenched with sweat and pieces of cut grass were sticking to the back of my neck. Whenever I turned around, I found an uneven patch of grass and I’d attack it with the mower. In some spots the soil was beginning to show through. And then there were those five graves in the corner. Unsightly lumps much bigger than the kittens I had drowned. They must have grown under my lawn. Now they were full-sized cat corpses.

  What now? What now? What now? What now?

  “Honey,” Jennifer’s voice called from inside, “can you take Tammy to the mall?”

  Sweet deliverance.

  I gathered my angry daughter and a sulky friend and drove them to the mall.

  “You can just drop us off, Dad,” Tammy whined as I maneuvered into a parking space.

  “I’ve actually got some shopping to do.”

  “But Dad, look at you.”

  I looked at me. I was still dressed for yard work. Gym shorts, a white undershirt stained with rings of dried sweat and smears of soil and my worn out sneakers tearing at the seams.

  “I look fine.”

  The girls shot off, promising to call when they were ready to leave. I walked through the glass doors alone.

  Peace—clean, white-tiled hallways with towering ceilings that echoed happy chatter. With slow steps, I explored. Stores lining the hallway like side-chapels, genderless mannequins staring out like saints. Fountains and atriums, music floating from somewhere far above. It was beautiful.

  I stepped into a store called Safari. Immediately, a pretty young girl approached me and asked, “May I help you?”

  Someone wanted to help me. It struck me as if I’d never heard the phrase before.

  “There’s a sale on men’s shirts,” she said.

  Within twenty minutes, I walked away with a button-down blue cotton shirt, loose-fit khaki pants, and a black belt, all perfectly folded and packed into my very own Safari bag.

  Before long I found myself stepping into a store called The Stop. It had pastel columns and posters of fantastically sculpted men and women.