But I’m going to.…
Anyway, there was our house with its big chimney and porch with columns and the red sandstone flags that made a pavement through the lawn between the shade trees and stopped by the board fence that Poppa and I had whitewashed. And there was the sunlight just going over the mountains. And the smell of smoke. The entire farm except for the big house seemed like it was on fire, the barn and lumber house and school house. I was behind a big tree, and I could see every little detail of everything it seemed, and even though I wish I couldn’t, I remember it all—I remember the rotten trunk of a cherry tree that was just beside me, I remember the white fungus growing on its grey bark; and I remember the smell of the woods and the smell of the smoke, and the screaming, although as I think about it I still want to close my eyes, but I didn’t, although I wish I did because two men came riding out from the back of the house; and they were hooting and shouting and laughing like they were drunk or probably crazy; and they were both wearing cheap butternut coats and pants and those funny-looking Federal hats that had enough fittings on them to make a copper kettle. One had a pine torch, and he was leaning low on the side of his horse, almost falling out of his saddle, to touch that torch to everything he fancied. The other was just riding behind him, pulling along two other horses.
“C’mon outa there,” shouted the one with the torch. “Gonna get hot, an’ it’s our turn, ya greedy fucks.”
And the house started smoking. He had started the fire in the back of the house, and suddenly I could see flames licking the roof, and I could hear terrible cracking noises like bones were being broken or something, and then someone ran out of the house and shot the horse right out from under the soldier with the torch, and someone else came out of the house, and he was pulling Mother, and she was naked and full of blood, and I wondered where was Poppa, where was Poppa, I remember thinking that over and over like a song, and I was watching when I should have been running right out there and killing them, burning them and shooting those sonovabitches, but then the soldier that had been pulling Mother just dropped her outside the door on the porch. She wasn’t making any noise, but I saw her move, and then the soldier whose horse was shot out from under him ran over to the porch, and all the men started fighting with each other, and they fell right over Mother, and I heard a keening, a noise like Jimmadasin would’ve made, and I realised I was hearing myself, hearing the inside of my head, and I blinked, that’s all it was, I blinked, and then one of the men must have dragged Mother off the porch and onto pavement, and he was on top of her and his pants were down, and another one, another one was looking straight at me. I know he saw me. He must’ve. He just.…
…Looked right at me, and I didn’t move, and I didn’t breathe, and then he looked away like he never saw me, and I remember thinking then that I was invisible, like air or like a tree in a huge forest.
And then he was gone, as if he had disappeared, and so had the other men, but maybe it was me, maybe I just went blind or something because all I remember from then on, for I don’t know how long I was watching that man hurting my mother, I was remembering nice things and terrible things, as if I had escaped from that tree and the time and what I was seeing and was only seeing things in my mind.
I had to go in and save Mother I had to find Father, for the house was burning, burning, catching fire in a hundred places, and I could feel the heat, but I was thinking remembering couldn’t move touching the bark, feeling the slimy moss remembering remembering how at the start of spring Poppa and I always made piles of brush and dead leaves and vegetation, anything else burnable that we could gather in our fields. Then Poppa would check that the wind was just right, so that the fire didn’t get out of control, and then with a pine torch he’d light those piles, poking them here and there with a long pole, going from one pile to another, while I ran around gathering everything that would burn to keep the hungry fires going and I remembered and remembered so well I could see it right before me, so well that I could blank out what was happening right in front of me, and I saw me and Ishrael Moble and three of his darkie children that Poppa had borrowed from Arthur Allen who owned the next farm down the road from us, and Ishrael was ploughing a furrow around our field of broom sedge, and when he was done Poppa would light the sedge on the windward side, and it would blaze like a sonovabitch, and Ishrael and his kids and me and Poppa would beat out the fire with green cedar branches whenever it escaped over the furrow, and once it did and we lost a rail fence and burned a field and—
They were gone.
I found myself standing on the edge of the woods, holding my breath, being invisible, looking at the house burning, feeling the heat on my face like waves coming over me, and I had seen everything, I knew that I had seen what the men did, what they did to my mother, and I could see mother there yet, lying on the red sandstone flags, and I just ran across the lawn to her. It was as if I had just gotten here. Like I hadn’t been watching, hadn’t been invisible, hadn’t held my breath for…how long? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Uncle Randolph says it’s impossible to hold your breath longer than a minute, but I know I could have held it forever that day.
I heard that keening and knew I was making strange noises and sobbing and crying, but as soon as I knelt beside Mother I saw that she was staring off and not blinking. But it wasn’t even so much that. It was like she had been turned into a doll or something. She looked like porcelain, like all the stuff had gone out of her, and I knew she was dead.
Poppa.…
I tried to go into the house, but the fire was bad inside, and so I came out and dragged Mother away from the house, but I saw that it was hopeless, that everything was hopeless, because I knew that Poppa had been in the house and was killed too.
It was when I was guarding Mother that I saw the dog. It came running from the direction of the meat house, where I figured it had gotten in. It was the biggest dog I ever saw, more like the size of a horse, and its coat was as black and sleek and shiny as the big crow perched on top of the smoking ruins of the Big House. That dog smelled terrible of dampness and burning, and it was running right toward me with its mouth open. Its eyes were on fire. They were big as saucers and looked like balls of fire.
No one is ever going to tell me that dog wasn’t real, because I saw it, and like before, when the men burned down the house, I became invisible. I kneeled there beside Mother like I was frozen. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t make a sound. And that dog stopped so near to me that I could smell its sour-rotten breath and its damp, sweaty fur. And I could feel the heat of it, and it seemed to just fill me up the same way Mother did when she’d pull the covers up to my chin and kiss me good-night and talk about Jesus.
It sniffed at Mother, looked at me a real long time like it was putting thoughts in my head, and then it ran off to the edge of the woods where it watched me with its eyes that were burning in the dark because it had gotten dark while I had been sitting there with Mother. It kept watching me and waiting to see what I was going to do, and I stayed with Mother while the house burned. I held her hand, which was like ice, and I felt something fill me up again like I was a bucket and hot lard was being poured into it, and I wasn’t angry or sad anymore because all at once everything seemed right and perfect, and I knew exactly what I had to do. It was like I was having one of those visions Aunt Hanna was always telling me about because it came to me all of a sudden that it was up to me to kill everybody who’d killed Mother and Poppa, and that it didn’t make much difference who it was. It was the spirit dog that put that thought in my head, I swear, ’cause I could feel the spirit inside me, breathing right inside my chest until I understood it all; and then when I turned around the spirit dog was still there, watching me with those burning eyes and calling me to him with my own thoughts.
Calling me to go back to Kernstown field, which was filled with muskets and caps and cartridges.
I’d gather them up to do my own killing.
For Mother.
For Poppa.
<
br /> For everyone.
Until the spirit dog and me had evened things up, and then we’d just probably.…
…Disappear.
LITTLE DOGGEREL, by Robert Reginald [Poem]
Little Dog,
In repose:
Innocent.
Sweetly snore,
Little Dog.
Little Dog,
Chasing wind:
Dynamo.
Dash…run…play,
Little Dog.
Little Dog,
Chewing bone:
Contented.
Find your wa,
Little Dog.
Little Dog,
In a dream:
Twitchingly.
Did you see…?
“Katy”-did!
A PILGRIM, by Robert W. Chambers
I.
The servants had gathered in the front hall to inspect the new arrival—cook, kitchen-maid, butler, flanked on the right by parlor-maids, on the left by a footman and a small buttons.
The new arrival was a snow-white bull-terrier, alert, ardent, quivering in expectation of a welcome among these strangers, madly wagging his whip-like tail in passionate silence.
When the mistress of the house at last came down the great stone stairway, the servants fell back in a semi-circle, leaving her face to face with the white bull-terrier.
“So that is the dog!” she said, in faint astonishment. A respectful murmur of assent corroborated her conclusion.
The dog’s eyes met hers; she turned to the servants with a perplexed gesture.
“Is the brougham at the door?” asked the young mistress of the house.
The footman signified that it was.
“Then tell Phelan to come here at once.”
Phelan, the coachman, arrived, large, rosy, freshly-shaven, admirably correct.
“Phelan,” said the young mistress, “look at that dog.”
The coachman promptly fixed his eyes on the wagging bull-terrier. In spite of his decorous gravity, a smile of distinct pleasure slowly spread over his square, pink face until it became a subdued simper.
“Is that a well-bred dog, Phelan?” demanded the young mistress.
“It is, ma’am,” replied Phelan, promptly.
“Very well bred?”
“Very, ma’am.”
“Dangerous?”
“In a fight, ma’am.” Stifled enthusiasm swelled the veins in the coachman’s forehead. Triumphant paeans of praise for the bull-terrier trembled upon his lips; but he stood rigid, correct, a martyr to his perfect training.
“Say what you wish to say, Phelan,” prompted the young mistress, with a hasty glance at the dog.
“Thanky, ma’am.… The bull is the finest I ever laid eyes on.… He hasn’t a blemish, ma’am; and the three years of him doubled will leave him three years to his prime, ma’am.… And there’s never another bull, nor a screw-tail, nor cross, be it mastiff or fox or whippet, ma’am, that can loose the holt o’ thim twin jaws.… Beg pardon, ma’am, I know the dog.”
“You mean that you have seen that dog before?”
“Yes, ma’am; he won his class from a pup at the Garden. That is ‘His Highness,’ ma’am, Mr. Langham’s champion three-year.”
She had already stooped to caress the silent, eager dog—timidly, because she had never before owned a dog—but at the mention of his master’s name she drew back sharply and stood erect.
“Never fear, ma’am,” said the coachman, eagerly; “he won’t bite, ma’am—”
“Mr. Langham’s dog?” she repeated, coldly; and then, without another glance at either the dog or the coachman, she turned to the front door; buttons swung it wide with infantile dignity; a moment later she was in her brougham, with Phelan on the box and the rigid footman expectant at the window.
II.
Seated in a corner of her brougham, she saw the world pass on flashing wheels along the asphalt; she saw the April sunshine slanting across brown-stone mansions and the glass-fronted façades of shops…she looked without seeing.
So Langham had sent her his dog! In the first year of her widowhood she had first met Langham; she was then twenty-one. In the second year of her widowhood Langham had offered himself, and, with the declaration on his lips, had seen the utter hopelessness of his offer. They had not met since then. And now, in the third year of her widowhood, he offered her his dog!
She had at first intended to keep the dog. Knowing nothing of animals, discouraged from all sporting fads by a husband who himself was devoted to animals dedicated to sport, she had quietly acquiesced in her husband’s dictum that “horse-women and dog-women made a man ill!”—and so dismissed any idea she might have entertained towards the harboring of the four-footed.
A miserable consciousness smote her: why had she allowed the memory of her husband to fade so amazingly in these last two months of early spring? Of late, when she wished to fix her thoughts upon her late husband and to conjure his face before her closed eyes, she found that the mental apparition came with more and more difficulty.
Sitting in a corner of her brougham, the sharp rhythm of her horses’ hoofs tuning her thoughts, she quietly endeavored to raise that cherished mental specter, but could not, until by hazard she remembered the portrait of her husband hanging in the smoking-room.
But instantly she strove to put that away; the portrait was by Sargent, a portrait she had always disliked, because the great painter had painted an expression into her husband’s face which she had never seen there. An aged and unbearable aunt of hers had declared that Sargent painted beneath the surface; she resented the suggestion, because what she read beneath the surface of her husband’s portrait sent hot blood into her face.
Thinking of these things, she saw the spring sunshine gilding the gray branches of the park trees. Here and there elms spread tinted with green; chestnuts and maples were already in the full glory of new leaves; the leafless twisted tangles of wisteria hung thick with scented purple bloom; everywhere the scarlet blossoms of the Japanese quince glowed on naked shrubs, bedded in green lawns.
Her husband had loved the country.… There was one spot in the world which he had loved above all others—the Sagamore Angling Club. She had never been there. But she meant to go. Probably tomorrow.… And before she went she must send that dog back to Langham.
At the cathedral she signaled to stop, and sent the brougham back, saying she would walk home. And the first man she met was Langham.
III.
There was nothing extraordinary in it. His club was there on the corner, and it was exactly his hour for the club.
“It is so very fortunate…for me,” he said. “I did want to see you.… I am going north tomorrow.”
“Of course it’s about the dog,” she said, pleasantly.
He laughed. “I am so glad that you will accept him—”
“But I can’t,” she said; “and thank you so much for asking me.”
For a moment his expression touched her, but she could not permit expressions of men’s faces to arouse her compunction, so she turned her eyes resolutely ahead towards the spire of the marble church.
He walked beside her in silence.
“I also am going north tomorrow,” she said, politely.
He did not answer.
Every day since her widowhood, every day for three years, she had decided to make that pilgrimage…sometime. And now, crossing Union Square on that lovely afternoon late in April, she knew that the time had come. Not that there was any reason for haste.… At the vague thought, her brown eyes rested a moment on the tall young man beside her.…
Yes…she would go…tomorrow.
A vender of violets shuffled up beside them; Langham picked up a dewy bundle of blossoms, and their perfume seemed to saturate the air till it tasted on the tongue.
She shook her head. “No, no, please; the fragrance is too heavy.…”
“Won’t you accept them?” he inquired, bluntly.
Again she sh
ook her head; there was indecision in the smile, assent in the gesture. However, he perceived neither.
She took a short step forward. The wind whipped the fountain jet, and a fanlike cloud of spray drifted off across the asphalt. Then they moved on together.
Presently she said, quietly, “I believe I will carry a bunch of those violets”—and she waited for him to go back through the fountain spray, find the peddler, and rummage among the perfumed heaps in the basket. “Because,” she added, cheerfully, as he returned with the flowers, “I am going to the East Tenth Street Mission, and I meant to take some flowers, anyway.”
“If you would keep that cluster and let me send the whole basket to your mission—” he began.
But she had already started on across the wet pavement.
“I did not know you were going to give my flowers to those cripples,” he said, keeping pace with her.
“Do you mind?” she asked, but she had not meant to say that, and she walked a little more quickly to escape the quick reply.
“I want to ask you something,” he said, after a moment’s brisk walking. “I wish—if you don’t mind—I wish you would walk around the square with me—just once—”
“Certainly not,” she said; “and now you will say good-bye—because you are going away, you say.” She had stopped at the Fourth Avenue edge of the square. “So good-bye, and thank you for the beautiful dog, and for the violets.”
“But you won’t keep the dog, and you won’t keep the violets,” he said; “and, besides, if you are going north—”
The Dog Megapack Page 63
