Larry & the Dog People

by J. Paul Henderson

  ‘And talking of waifs and strays, where’s Mike?’ Tank asked. ‘I thought he’d have been here by now.’

  ‘He said he’d be late today,’ Alice said. ‘He’s standing in for the organist at the Latter-Day Lutheran Church and he has to practise the hymns for tomorrow’s service.’ She then turned to Larry. ‘That’s the church where Laura and I are hoping to get married next year.’

  ‘Well, many congratulations to you both,’ Larry said. ‘Helen and I got married in an Episcopal church. I’m not much of a believer myself, but Helen was. She liked going to church.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Come to think of it, it might have been the communion wine that started her drinking.’

  ‘You wouldn’t catch me drinking wine from a communion cup,’ Tank said. ‘I can’t think of anything less sanitary.’

  ‘Maybe you can’t, Tank, but have you ever in your life heard of anyone being rushed to hospital after taking communion?’ Alice asked.

  ‘No, but it takes time for a germ to incubate. Any fool knows that. You tell me that you’ve never heard of a person being rushed to hospital two to three weeks after a church service and maybe I’ll change my mind. I doubt you can, though.’

  ‘You’re impossible, just impossible. You’ll be lucky if we invite you to the wedding.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky if you find a minister prepared to marry two broads,’ Tank laughed.

  ‘Here he is! Here’s Mike,’ Delores said. ‘Mikey!’ she shouted. ‘Mikey, we’re over here!’

  A man who looked to have been airlifted from the 1960s sauntered towards them, wearing an orange T-shirt and blue bib overalls made from hemp. He was tall and slim, appeared to be in his forties and his long thick hair was tied back in a ponytail. The dog with him was a medium-sized black Chinese Shar-Pei, weighing about 50 pounds.

  ‘Larry, I’d like you to meet Mike Ergle,’ Delores said. ‘Mike, this is Larry MacCabe. He’s the one that got Mrs Eisler’s Basset Hound.’

  Larry held out his hand and Mike clasped it soul style. ‘Hey, Larry, what’s happening, man?’

  ‘Well, I made pancakes this morning,’ Larry replied, mistaking Mike’s greeting for a question, ‘and then I came to the park with Laura and Alice. Then I got chased by a wasp and a man fell out of a tree. I’ve only just got back to the table.’

  ‘That’s cosmic, man,’ Mike replied and then turned to the others. ‘Wayne fell out of a tree again?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s fine,’ Laura said.

  ‘Yeah, but how’s the tree? Is the tree fine? Those Osage oranges have been there for over 150 years. They’re not climbing frames and I’ve told him this. I told him that if he wanted to commune with trees then he should sit in their shade. That’s all The Buddha did, and no one loved trees more than that dude.’

  ‘Especially the rose apple and fig trees,’ Larry commented.

  Mike nodded and looked at Larry admiringly.

  ‘And what did old Wayne say to you when you told him that?’ Tank asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Mike said. ‘He just asked me if I had any mints.’

  ‘He asked me the same question,’ Larry said.

  ‘I’d have thought as a Buddhist you’d be more concerned with his welfare than that of a damned tree,’ Tank said.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Tank? I’m not a Buddhist, I’m a Buddhist Christian. How do you think I got the gig at the Lutheran church?’

  ‘I think trees are important to Wayne,’ Alice said. ‘I heard somewhere that he spent five years living in one when he was growing up.’

  ‘I told you that,’ Laura said, ‘and, if you remember – which you obviously don’t – I told you not to tell anyone! It was a confidence Wayne shared with me.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Laura, I didn’t realise. But if it was a confidence then you shouldn’t have told me. You know how hopeless I am at keeping secrets.’

  ‘Oh, I do. Until you announced to Larry that we were getting married next year, I thought we were keeping that a secret, too.’

  ‘Don’t worry about us, Laura, we won’t tell a soul,’ Delores said. ‘And I certainly won’t tell Petey: it would probably end up in one of his books. Which reminds me, I’m supposed to pick him up at Union Station in an hour.’

  She called to Button. ‘Come on, sweetie, come to Mama. Let’s go meet Daddy.’

  Even though Mike had just arrived, he said he had to split too, and that he’d just been making a pit stop. He was having problems with one of the hymns and needed to get it nailed. He gave Larry a hug, told him it had been a blast meeting him and then embraced Laura and Alice and put his arms as far round Delores as he could. He then bent down and kissed Tank on the top of his head.

  ‘Stop doing that!’ Tank shouted.

  ‘What am I supposed to do? You won’t hug me, man.’

  ‘I don’t hug anyone, you damned fool. Why can’t you just shake hands like men are supposed to? Larry’s going to go home thinking you’re a fruit.’

  Delores put Button into her large handbag and she and Mike left the park together. It was now just the four of them. Larry asked if Delores was married to Petey, but Tank said no, that Petey was a stick insect from New York who claimed to write books but made his living fixing other people’s computers. Laura asked Alice if they should invite Wayne for a meal one night and Alice said no, that she’d once seen him showering in the waterfront fountain and didn’t fancy the idea of him sitting on their cushions. Alice asked Tank why he’d been so hard on Delores that morning and Tank said it was because she and Laura hadn’t. Tank then wondered out loud – as it appeared he did every Saturday – why a man like Mike, who’d been born in the seventies, dressed and talked like a man who’d come into his own during the sixties.

  Alice left the table and threw a tennis ball for Repo, but came back three minutes later after it was clear that Repo no longer understood the game and it was her who had to retrieve the ball. Sherman followed her back to the table and sat by Tank’s feet. Moses, however, continued to run around the park, sniffing butts and wagging his tail. Larry was proud of him.

  At one o’clock two men started to divide the open area with a heavy net – something that always happened before a Little League game – and Repo found himself on the wrong side of the park and started to bark. Alice went to get him, attached his leash and then told Laura it was time for them to make tracks, and that she’d told Janet they’d call round that afternoon to view her new house and wanted to get it over and done with so they could spend the rest of the day together.

  ‘Do you want us to drop you off at your house, Larry?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Thanks for asking, Laura, but I don’t think there’s any need. I know where I am now and I’ll be able to find my own way back. It’s closer to where I live than I thought.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ Tank asked.

  ‘The other side of Wisconsin. On Dent Street NW.’

  ‘Dent St? That’s not far from where I live. If you don’t mind taking a short detour while I run some errands, we can walk back together.’

  Larry readily agreed, and Laura told him that he and Moses were welcome to join them in the park any Saturday.

  When Tank rose to his feet and stretched – the signal they should be on their way – Larry went to Moses and slipped the leash over his head. The two men left the park and headed south on 34th. They crossed Volta Place and P St, and then, after crossing O St, Larry told Tank that he wasn’t allowed to walk on 34th between O and N Streets. When an incredulous Tank asked him what kind of guff that was, Larry had no option but to tell him the story of the shopping trolley incident. Until today, it had been the last time he’d ventured into the West Village on foot.

  The date was 17 January 1998, a Saturday, and Larry and Helen had been returning from a lunchtime trumpet and organ recital at the Holy Trinity Church on 36th St. It had been Helen’s ide
a they go, but Larry’s that they walk there; the exercise would do them both good, he’d reasoned. The temperature that day was two below, but no precipitation was forecast and the sun was shining brightly. They’d donned thick overcoats, scarves and hats, and at Larry’s insistence worn woollen balaclavas and dark sunglasses.

  Just as they’d turned on to N St Larry noticed an abandoned shopping trolley, too close to The Tombs not to be the result of a student prank. (The Tombs was a popular drinking place for Georgetown students.) ‘Those students!’ he’d said to Helen. ‘I’d better sort this out before the university gets wind of it.’ There was a name on the trolley – Albright’s – and to Larry’s way of thinking it didn’t take a genius to figure out who it belonged to. ‘This is Madeleine Albright’s personal shopping trolley,’ he’d told Helen. ‘She used to be a professor at the university and I know where she lives. If we return it in person, I’ll be able to discuss the Balkan crisis with her. I wrote a seminar paper on the region when I was in graduate school and my reading of the situation is that Kosovo’s about to blow. I think she should know this.’

  Helen doubted that any person owned a shopping trolley and suggested that it probably belonged to a local grocery store. ‘There is no local grocery store,’ Larry replied, ‘and besides, Madeleine Albright is Secretary of State. A shopping trolley probably comes with the job.’ Helen gave way to her husband’s lack of common sense. As she thought most things in life were unimportant she wasn’t about to make an exception for a shopping trolley.

  Larry pushed the trolley along N St and turned left into 34th. Madeleine Albright’s house was a short way up on the left; a large red brick property with black shutters. The sidewalk outside the house was monitored, but the agent patrolling it was walking north at the time Larry and Helen entered the street and had his back turned to them. By the time he changed direction Helen was already standing at the front of the house and Larry in the process of manoeuvring the trolley up the path. Their heavily-disguised appearances immediately alarmed the agent: at worst these people were Serbian malcontents, and at best a couple of homeless derelicts up to no good.

  He spoke into his sleeve and then shouted for Larry and Helen to stop. The doors of an SUV parked on the opposite side of the street were flung open and two men jumped out pointing guns at Larry and Helen and telling them to hit the deck. Helen did, but Larry, unable to hear much of anything with his ears covered by the balaclava, continued his journey and was about to knock on the door when he was grabbed from behind, pinned to the ground and handcuffed.

  Larry’s explanation that he was returning Dr Albright’s shopping trolley and hoping to discuss the Balkan situation with her, was interpreted by the three agents as the ramblings of an escaped mental patient, and it was only after a delay of some thirty minutes that Larry’s credentials and identity were verified and he and Helen allowed to leave. (The encounter had, in fact, so weakened Helen that Larry had to push her home in the trolley, which was returned a month later, at his expense, to its rightful owners – a grocery store in the small town of Corunna, Indiana.) Their names, however, had been taken, security logs updated and warnings issued: if either of them ventured within two hundred yards of the property again, they would be arrested. The following week a restraining order dropped through Larry and Helen’s letterbox.

  ‘Albright left government years ago,’ Tank said. ‘She’s not protected by the secret service now. Besides, I work for the State Department. No one will hassle you if you’re with me.’

  They walked down N St and passed the Albright residence without incident. Larry’s blinking calmed and his voice returned. ‘What do you do at the State Department, Tank?’

  ‘I’m a janitor,’ Tank replied.

  ‘A janitor? You won’t believe this, but one of my best friends at the university is a janitor. Tell me, what kind of floor polish do you use? I always thought that Clive was using the wrong one.’

  Tank looked at him as though Larry were a piece of gum stuck to the sole of his shoe. ‘I’m not that kind of janitor, you dimwit! I clean up other people’s messes, not their damned floors. I’m a trouble-shooter.’

  They turned on to P St and headed for Wisconsin. Tank made stops at a dry cleaner’s and a pharmacy and left Sherman outside with Larry and Moses. They then walked up the busy thoroughfare and turned right when they got to R St. A short distance from Dumbarton Oaks – the location for the 1944 diplomatic talks that resulted in the UN Charter – Tank stopped at the entrance to a large detached house with a big sculpted tree in its yard.

  ‘I’d invite you in for coffee, Larry, but I’ve had enough of you for one day,’ Tank said.

  Larry looked at him alarmed. ‘I haven’t been talking too much, have I? Laura says I tend to do that.’

  Tank looked at him. ‘For a man of intellect you’re not the most perceptive of fellows, are you? You’d be a perfect fit for the State Department! No, you haven’t been talking too much. I was joking when I said that. But tell me, Larry, how are you with heights? Can you climb a ladder without falling off?’

  Larry said he could, that heights had never been a problem for him.

  ‘In that case I might have a job for you in the near future. Give me a number I can reach you on, will you?’

  Larry did, and then told Tank that ladders had been around since Mesolithic times and that one was depicted in a 10,000-year-old rock painting in Valencia, Spain: two people trying to reach a wild honeybee nest.

  ‘Okay, Larry, now you’re talking too much!’ Tank said.

  4

  The Waterfall Tuner

  Laura and Alice lived in an apartment building overlooking the Potomac. It was close to Washington Harbor, a complex of restaurants and more apartments, and within easy reach of Watergate and the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts. Across the street, and siding the river, was a landscaped area of lawn and plantings and a footpath that linked Georgetown to the central district of Washington. Their apartment was on the sixth of the building’s seven levels. It had two bedrooms, a large kitchen dining area and a lounge that opened on to a planted terrace. (It was from this terrace that Alice had seen Wayne showering in the waterfront fountain.)

  It was now Saturday evening. Laura and Alice had returned from their friend’s house an hour ago and were sitting in the lounge drinking cocktails. It was Laura who answered the phone.

  ‘It’s me, Laura – Delores. You know how I said I was getting as forgetful as Mrs Eisler? Well I must be, because the one thing I meant to tell you this morning was that the museum’s planning an exhibition on the Wabanaki Confederacy next month and there’ll be some Abenaki artefacts included… I thought you would be… Okay I’ll put you down for two. I’m going to check with Mike and Tank and see if they want tickets, but what about Larry? Do you think he’d be interested…? Okay, give me his number and I’ll call him… Petey? Yes, he’s here now. I’ve just prepared a salad for us… I know, nothing healthier. We’re just waiting for the pizza to arrive…’

  ‘That was Delores,’ Laura said. ‘We’ve been invited to an exhibition at the museum and she’s going to invite Larry. It was nice of her to think of him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Alice replied.

  ‘Look, why don’t you go and relax on the terrace while I make dinner? I know Janet can be a bit wearing.’

  Alice took Repo with her and lay down on one of the rattan recliners. She checked her phone for messages, updated her Facebook page and tweeted that she was sitting on a terrace overlooking the Potomac drinking a gin and tonic. It was then that something Delores had said in the park that morning started to turn in her mind, something about Laura being big-hearted and a beacon for lost souls. She knew very well that Laura had a big heart – she took that fact for granted. But why, she wondered, did her partner find it necessary to share it with others – the lost and the neglected – and not keep it for her alone? It always seemed t
hat Laura had a project on the go – if not rescuing bag ladies from the street then volunteering at soup kitchens – and now she’d brought Larry into their lives and had even suggested they invite Wayne for a meal. Were their lives always to be encumbered by the needy?

  Alice knew she was being selfish, but accepted that it was within her nature to be this way. She expected to be the nucleus of Laura’s life – of any life she shared – and not just one of several orbiting planets. For her it had always been this way. Alice had always been the centre of attention.

  She was born in the guest room of her grandparents’ house in Lebanon, Kansas; her birth premature and the location unintended. It was, however, an accident that forever coloured her life. If she’d been born at the Community Hospital in Junction City where the birth had been planned, then Alice would have been spared the knowledge that she’d been born at the centre of the United States. But her parents would never let her forget this. They told her over and again that she’d been born at the very centre of the nation, and therefore the world, and that minus the guiding star, the three wise men and the shepherds, her birth had been no less special than Jesus’.

  And to her parents, Alice was special. She was their only child, the heart of their universe and they turned every day of her life into a birthday. They showered her with clothes and presents, gave her a generous allowance and bought her a small Cadillac when she turned sixteen. Alice took these things for granted: this is what happened when you were born at the centre of the world. She never once longed for a brother or sister, feared in fact that the arrival of a sibling might take the limelight from her, and was happy to be an only child at the centre of every family photograph.

  Alice grew up in Junction City, a small town in Kansas located at the confluence of two rivers. It wasn’t long before she became the centre of its attention, too. The town was a social organism that lived and breathed high school football, its weekly moods defined by the outcome of the Friday night game. Monday morning quarterbacks would pore over the runs and passes, the tackles and the touchdowns. They would discuss the plays that went right and those that went wrong; dissect the coach’s tactics and hypothesise what they’d have done differently had they been in his place. But if at times they were critical of the coach and the players, not once did they speak ill of the team’s cheerleaders; and for the head cheerleader – Alice Manzoni – they had only praise.