Larry & the Dog People

by J. Paul Henderson

  Alice was the epitome of girl-next-door goodness. She had long blonde hair, a pretty face and a smile that lit up the neighbourhood. She was also naturally athletic and no one could do jumps, motions and tumbles better than her or stand more assured at the top of a pyramid. The pompoms came alive in her hands and the chants she led brought the crowd to its feet: Hey, Junction City, Get Down, Get Mean, Help the Jaguars Kill the Other Team. ‘That girl’s got it all,’ one man in the crowd once said to another. ‘Hell, if I was twenty years younger I’d be taking her to a parking area…’ The other man interrupted him. ‘That’s my daughter you’re talking about, buddy!’

  But at high school Alice did have it all. She was the girl other girls wanted to be. She wore the coolest clothes, got invited to all the parties and had the hottest dates. Accolades were sprinkled on her like confetti – the girl most likely to succeed, the girl with the most school spirit, the girl with the most winning smile – and it was no surprise when, at the end of her senior year, she was elected Prom Queen. It was also no surprise that Chip Nelson, the Jaguars’ star quarterback and Alice’s boyfriend, was chosen Prom King. It was the natural union.

  Chip Nelson was the quintessential American male. He was rugged in looks, square in the jaw and had broad shoulders; he ate turnips and the eyes of fish and could throw a ball eighty yards. He expected to marry Alice and Alice expected to marry him. But no expectations were higher than those of Junction City. The town rooted for their relationship, held its breath when Chip left for Wichita State on a football scholarship and only exhaled after he broke his arm in two places and returned to work at his father’s car dealership.

  Alice meanwhile had remained in Junction City. She liked doing rather than theorising, and had no interest in going to college. Her strength, she believed, was people pleasing and her weakness money. By the time Chip returned she’d been selling real estate for a year and been voted employee of the month three times. Their relationship, strained by absence and a two-hour commute, revived, and two years later Chip phoned her at the office and told her to look into the sky. Alice did and saw a small plane trailing a banner: Alice, will you marry me? Rightly, she presumed it was Chip doing the asking.

  Alice hadn’t been the only one to see the banner: the whole of Junction City had seen it and they expected her to say yes. And so she did. Alice, after all, was a people pleaser. They married shortly after her twenty-first birthday and moved into an apartment she’d been unable to sell. It was only a matter of weeks, however, before she realised that she’d fallen in love with the idea of marriage rather than Chip himself and been deceived by the small town’s expectations. What she also hadn’t expected to realise quite so quickly was that she preferred the company of women to men, and this was something that only dawned on her after the sink got blocked.

  ‘And before then you had no idea?’ Laura once asked her. ‘I had a suspicion,’ Alice replied, ‘but I thought I was just going through a phase all girls went through. And it wasn’t as if it was something you could talk about in Junction City. Remember, this was small-town Middle America. People who grew up there were supposed to get married and have kids.’

  The sink in question was the kitchen sink. Chip had tried to unblock the clog with first a plunger and then a chemical drain cleaner, but when the obstruction remained he left Alice to find a plumber. She checked the listings and called a company that prided itself on technical excellence and competitive price. She arranged to meet the plumber at the apartment the following lunchtime and was surprised when a young woman knocked on the door dressed in overalls and carrying a toolbox.

  The girl’s name was Charlie, short for Charlotte. She had short peroxide hair, hands like bricks and was about six years older than Alice. She gave the sink a cursory examination and then pulled a flexible augur from her toolbox. ‘It’s what we call a plumber’s snake,’ she told Alice, who was hovering over her shoulder and taking more interest in a sink than she ever had done before. Once the blockage was cleared and the water again draining, Alice insisted on making Charlie a sandwich. There was something about the plumber that mesmerised her. After the topics of indoor plumbing and sandwiches were exhausted, the conversation turned to more intimate matters. Charlie told Alice she was gay, Alice speculated to Charlie that she might be gay and then, to settle matters, they continued the conversation in the bedroom. What happened there is uncertain, but when the door opened and Alice walked out she was a new woman – or a dyke, as Chip was wont to phrase the metamorphosis.

  Alice moved out of the apartment the following week and moved in with Charlie, who lived in a perfectly-plumbed house in Fort Myers. The rest was history. Alice and Charlie stayed together for no more than three months. It was a relationship of transition, but one that confirmed Alice’s sexuality. Her parents, as ever, were accepting of their daughter’s choice, but for the sake of Chip’s injured masculinity and future car sales, Alice moved to the more open and forgiving city of Minneapolis. There, on the strength of her personality and business background, she was hired as a recruitment consultant.

  Life for Alice was never the same after she left Junction City. There she’d been a big fish in a small pond, the Queen Bee of a pocket-sized colony where the name Alice Manzoni had counted for something. In the wider world she was just another person, a smaller cog in a more faceless machine. But Alice never forgot that she’d been born at the centre of the world or had, for a time, been at the centre of Junction City’s small world, and the conviction that her rightful place in life was at its centre stayed.

  Several relationships and two agencies later Alice moved to Washington and met Laura. They fell in love and bought an apartment with a terrace overlooking the Potomac River and there, one evening, Alice remembered something Delores had said in the park that morning, something about… ‘Dinner’s about ten minutes away,’ Laura said, joining her on the terrace. And then, noticing the forlorn look on Alice’s face, took hold of her hand. ‘What’s wrong, hon?’

  The question Larry was asking Moses at that moment was less tendentious, more a wondering out loud why dogs behaved the way they did. ‘If I went around sniffing people’s butts I’d get punched in the face or taken to jail. I’m not suggesting you shake paws with your friends, but have you ever considered rubbing noses? That’s what Eskimos do and it works for them. I wonder if…’

  The phone on the kitchen wall started to ring and interrupted Larry’s train of thought, if indeed there had been one. The telephone rang so rarely these days that his first thought was that the oven timer was malfunctioning. It was Delores inviting him to a future exhibition at the museum. ‘The whole gang’s going to be there, Larry… Now? Just finishing dinner… Apple pie and ice cream… I know. You can’t expect to keep healthy if you don’t eat fruit…’

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ Larry said to Moses when he returned to the lounge. ‘It looks like we were a hit at the park. I’m in a gang, now. Wait till I tell Helen this!’

  Until that moment Larry hadn’t been certain how their visit to the park had gone. He knew Moses had made a good impression – Moses always did – but was less decided if he had. He thought he’d acquitted himself well enough, but in light of Laura’s previous comments wasn’t sure if he was the right person to judge the situation. On the downside he’d arrived with a syrup stain on his shirt, been attacked by a wasp and been caught eating sand, but on the upside hadn’t talked too much – and that was the important thing! In truth, he’d never had the opportunity or even the desire. Larry was a person who enjoyed meat-and-two-vegetable conversations. He liked talking about things and imparting knowledge and was troubled by discussions involving controversy and demanding opinion. The free-for-all arguments of the morning had alarmed him, especially when Tank and Delores had tried to drag him to their sides, but he’d resisted – or Laura had resisted for him – and he’d managed to offend no one.

  Now that Delores had called and invited him to a
n exhibition, he revisited the day and left it feeling more optimistic. Laura had told him he could join them at the park any Saturday of the week, Tank had told him he could climb his ladders and Mike had described their meeting as a blast. And then, of course, there was Wayne. After the initial surprise had worn off, Larry had enjoyed the young man’s conversation, and Wayne had certainly been impressed that he’d been talking to a professor. Next time he went to the park he’d take a bag of mints with him. That would please Wayne. But first he needed to bring Helen up to speed.

  Oak Hill Cemetery was a large, historic burial ground dotted with sarcophagi, obelisks and statues. It was the resting place for the Jim Morrisons of yesteryear – politicians, military men, diplomats and philanthropists – and covered an area of some twenty acres. It was only a short distance from Dent St and Larry and Helen had walked there often, wandering its paths and hilly terraces, reading the gravestone plaques and sitting on its benches.

  Helen had visited Oak Hill purely for its landscape and had never once expressed a desire to be buried there – or anywhere, for that matter. Indeed she’d told Larry on more than one occasion that if she died before him, he could wrap her body in a blanket and dump it in the recycling bin. (If Helen had taken little interest in life, she’d registered even less concern for death.) That her remains would be interred in the wall of Willow Columbarium – a granite structure just beyond the cemetery’s arched bridge – had never once crossed her mind and neither had it crossed Larry’s, who was unaware at the time of her death that the Columbarium even existed. Fortunately the funeral director knew of its construction – it was his business to know these things – and, with tact, he’d broached the subject of cremation with Larry. The burial plots, he explained, had been taken and filled years ago and the only ticket into Oak Hill these days was incineration. ‘And there’s no better resting place for the wife of an esteemed Georgetown academic, Professor MacCabe. This is where Helen deserves to be. And think of the convenience: you could be there in fifteen minutes and see her any day of the week.’

  And in the months that followed his wife’s death Larry went there often. He was under no illusion that Helen could hear his words or that anything remained of her save a few pounds of ashes, but he still took solace from his visits. He’d stand in front of her twenty-four-inch allocation and talk to the stone wall for hours on end. He saw nothing unusual in this behaviour and neither, for that matter, did those who knew him: the brick walls he’d talked to over the years. Moreover, if talking to a collection of limestone blocks was good enough for the Jews, then who was to say that talking to an assortment of small granite boulders was any less befitting. (In all likelihood, the Jews would have been chanting devotions at the Wailing Wall rather than recounting the day’s trolley shop and, instead of squeezing crumpled supermarket receipts into its crevices, would have wedged small prayer slips.)

  When Larry set off for Oak Hill with Moses the following Wednesday it had been more than two months since he’d visited the Columbarium. On that visit he’d told Helen how Dr Young had arranged to have Loop put down and left him with three bags of unopened pet food that the supermarket might not allow him to return. In death, as in life, Helen had said nothing, but at least the visit allowed Larry to get things off his chest. He now felt guilty for not visiting her since and telling her the good news in his life. And, today, there was so much good news to tell!

  Larry had barely walked through the cemetery gates before a member of the grounds staff stopped him and pointed to a notice: No Dogs and Bicycles. Larry had been completely unaware of the rule. He apologised to the man and suggested to Moses they go for a walk in Montrose Park, the open area adjacent to the cemetery. Both dogs and bicycles were welcomed in the park, but for a variety of reasons explained by a prominently placed notice, all dogs had to be kept on a leash: loose dogs bit people, got lost and scared and injured wildlife. (It had always baffled Larry why grey squirrels populated Oak Hill and only black squirrels inhabited Montrose; it was as if an invisible fence separated the two species.)

  Moses had no reason to believe that this park was any different from the park he’d been in on Saturday (not that he’d have known the day) and strained at the leash. There was a world of adventure here, dogs to sniff and black squirrels to chase; why, he wondered, was he being kept on a rein today of all days? Larry sensed Moses’ frustration and decided to cut the walk short and head to Volta.

  It was towards lunchtime when they arrived at the park and no other dogs were present. Two nannies were sitting at one of the picnic tables eating bagged lunches and occasionally glancing at the toddlers in their strollers. Larry let Moses off the leash and the dog ran to the table. One of the young girls, a Filipino, patted Moses and gave him a piece of meat from her sandwich. The other girl, however, moved slightly away and pulled one of the strollers closer to her. Larry was about to join them when he heard a voice call his name: ‘Larry! Professor Larry!’

  Larry turned and saw Wayne standing on a table close to the hedge dividing the park from the outdoor swimming pool and flapping his arms like an aircraft ground handler. Larry checked his pocket to make sure the mints were there and started towards him. Wayne stopped waving, took a step backwards and toppled from the table as gracelessly as he’d fallen from the tree. By the time Larry reached him he was back on his feet brushing the grass from his arm.

  ‘Dagnabbit, Larry: I tumbled again! Did you see me? There ain’t no telling when I’m going to be right way up or wrong way down. It’s one of them mysteries no one can solve, like the Bermuda Triangle. You heard of that, Lar… I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can call you Larry no more. You’re too old for me to call you by your first name and people will be thinking I’m disrespectful. I’ll call you Professor. No one can say that ain’t respectful.’

  Larry was always happy to be called Professor and used the title whenever possible: on official documents, billing accounts and in all correspondence. ‘I’ll be happy to answer to Professor, Wayne, and if you like I could address you as Mr Trout.’

  ‘Ain’t no need for that, Professor. Only people calling me that is doctors, and I don’t like doctors much. Ask too many nosey questions for my liking. Do you go to doctors?’

  ‘Now and again. Usually when my throat gets sore. I don’t know why, but it dries up more than most people’s.’

  ‘Mints is good for that, Professor. Mints is good for everything.’

  Larry was reminded of the packet of mints in his pocket and offered one to Wayne.

  ‘That’s kind of you, Professor. Mind if I take two? Wednesday’s my big day.’

  When Larry asked him what he meant by that, Wayne told him that this was the day the Current came out – the free newspaper that served the communities of Georgetown, Burleith and Glover Park. It was his job to deliver the paper; throw the plastic-wrapped tubes into yards or push them through the letter boxes of houses that didn’t have yards.

  ‘This is why I’ve got the cart,’ Wayne said. ‘It’s easier if I put the papers in a cart. Most people put them in a bag but I lose balance when I do that and so I don’t. What you doing today, Professor?’

  ‘Well, I was intending to visit Helen,’ Larry answered, ‘but it seems I’m not allowed to visit her with Moses. I’m not allowed to cycle there either.’

  ‘Who’s Helen? Is Helen your girlfriend? Is she afraid of dogs and bikes?’

  ‘No, Helen’s my wife, Wayne. A man my age doesn’t have girlfriends,’ he laughed.

  ‘Well if she’s your wife why do you have to go visit her? Don’t she live with you? I thought husbands and wives lived together.’

  Larry explained the situation: how Helen was dead and now interred in the wall of Oak Hill’s Willow Columbarium.

  ‘You ever talk to Helen?’ Wayne asked.

  ‘I do!’ Larry replied. ‘I talk to her all the time.’

  ‘I talk to dead people, too,’
Wayne said. ‘Not so many as I used to since Kevin started scaring them off. Doctors tell me it’s wrong but I don’t see nothing wrong with it. I think dead people like being talked to. Dead people get lonely.’

  ‘My feelings exactly,’ Larry replied, pleased at last to be talking to someone who understood.

  ‘You waiting for the Dog People?’

  ‘I think they’ll be at work today, Wayne. Apart from me they all have jobs. I think they just come here on a Saturday.’

  ‘Some of them come by themselves in the week, but it’s usually late in the afternoon and right before dinner. If I didn’t had papers to deliver I’d stay and talk with you, but I have and so I cain’t. I get paid good money for delivering papers, Professor. I’ll think of you though. When I’m sucking that mint you give me, I’ll think of you. Might be you’ll hear me thinking. I make a lot of noise when I think.’

  Wayne retrieved his cart from behind the hedge and headed for Wisconsin, the drop-off point for the newspapers. Larry sat there for a while pondering. Surprisingly, considering the nature of their conversation, the only thing that troubled him was Wayne’s use of the past tense – didn’t had. Many of the students he’d taught at the university had been from overseas countries where English was, if anything, a second language and he couldn’t help but wonder why Wayne’s command of the language was so much poorer than theirs. It appeared that Wayne had been failed by the same educational system that had allowed him to triumph, and in the moment, and on its behalf, he was moved to make atonement. As Mentor had guided Telemachus and Henry Higgins Eliza Doolittle, he, Larry MacCabe, would take Wayne Trout under his wing and school him in the ways of the English language.