It’s a shelter, a good one. Vinyl called around to be sure. There was no question of anyone at Donegal taking the dog. Why ask? Even knowing better, some residents were still intimidated when Bill rounded the corner. So, an animal rescue shelter. It’s not a bad place, of its kind. But to Bill, barking hard in the strange crate, it comes too close to the past. The sound of it, the powerful odors cause him to lose control, defecating and peeing there in the box, something unthinkable in his own crate, empty and rattling in the back of the van as the Vinyls drive north in silence.
DURING THE AFTERNOON, people interested in adoption come to see the dogs. A couple stops to look in. “He’s a barker, isn’t he?” the woman says.
“We just got him. He’ll settle down.”
“What’s his name?”
“Just Bill.”
“Bill.”
“The owner said it had to do with a song.”
The woman keeps looking in. Her husband has moved on to the next cage. “That’s not very inspired,” she says. “I’d name a dog like that King or Titan.”
“He’s big, but his bio looks good.”
“Or Czar Nicholas. Something appropriate.”
“He belonged to a couple on a golf course.”
“You’re kidding. We live on a golf course. They’d never let anyone keep a dog like that. I bet that’s why they had to give him up.”
She moves on. Some time later, a different stranger brings food. It’s not his kind, but the bowl is Bill’s. The water dish, too. It confuses and elates him to eat and drink in this strange place from his own heavy stone bowls. The mister brought them from the lake, to replace the stainless steel bowls Bill kept tipping over.
The skylight softens. More people come. A woman interested only in “something that likes airplanes” shuffles down and back with a walker. Then another couple. “We want a real dog,” the man says stopping. “Like that. None of these little toy deals.”
“‘We.’ You mean ‘I.’ We have a new baby, now he wants a dog. It’s psychological, isn’t it? Do you see that happening? People have a baby and the man all at once wants a dog? I’d like to know.”
“Actually,” says the stranger who brought the food, “yes, we do. That one’s a nice dog. He was well treated and trained, but he’s probably not for you. He tipped over a cradle.”
It grows dark. A light bulb shines somewhere, but before him it is blue, from the moon. He can see eyes opposite, hear dogs sigh. It’s a test, he keeps thinking. Obedience training. But it’s time for the walk now. He’ll be here for that, he wouldn’t forget that, he never forgets. That’s our way, Bill thinks. That’s what we do, every night. Then we go back in the van. If there’s a storm, they won’t leave this time, they’ll stay and everything they want from the best dog—that’s what I’ll be.
“WE JUST CROSSED the state line. We’re in Georgia now. How long do you plan to keep the silent treatment going?”
Vinyl doesn’t answer. At the last stop, he removed the noisy crate and left it behind a gas station.
“We have to eat. Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you going to talk to me the whole way?”
When he still doesn’t answer, she reaches down to the bag of CDs. It’s how she’s dealt with the trip, filling up the silence. She straightens in her seat. They have already listened to the complete Golden Oldies anthology—five disks—and the first part of a Patricia Cornwell novel. The missus found the story boring and stopped it north of Gainesville.
“How long are you intending to punish me?”
“I’ll talk to you when I’m good and ready.”
Usually, they share the driving, alternating in two-hour shifts. Today he is doing it all. Somehow, it’s a matter of honor, male pride. He agreed to do something wrong, he betrayed a trust. The longer they’ve been on the road, the more convinced he’s become that his mistake reveals a profound falling off from his true self. At some point he thought of Cliff Gilmore. He felt ashamed, cowardly. Cliff would never have done it, Vinyl thought.
He has not actually felt old to himself until now. Older, yes. He is old. Let them talk all they want about this new diet, that vitamin supplement—sixty-eight is old. He pops Advil tablets like they’re peanuts, stuffs himself with oat and wheat bran. His prostate must be the size of a muskmelon. But he has not actually felt old until now. It’s Bill, he thinks. You betrayed him.
“We’ll get something else.” His wife says this in her kindest voice. “I understand, Fred. I really do. I know a dog’s important to you. But this was just not meant to be. We’ll get something smaller. A bichon.”
“So you can decorate it? Trick it out with little hats?”
After a moment, she turns away, looking out her side window.
Time passes. Days. Dogs have no strong sense of it, but the light comes and goes. More people visit. He is allowed out in a fenced yard for exercise. Once, a rottweiler, abandoned at a convenience store attacked him. Hardly knowing what he did, Bill fought back until someone came with a pole, a loop on the end, and dragged the rottweiler away.
Beyond the yard’s high cyclone fencing he sees other buildings, utility sheds. Heavy equipment comes and goes. On the far side of the buildings he can see undergrowth. It looks no different from the jungle rough on the far side of the eleventh fairway. He starts eating, the food different but good. Still he lunges each mouthful into his throat, gulping until the bowl is empty before lapping water.
People adopt some of the dogs. Other dogs, either too old or vicious are taken out and don’t come back.
—Do you understand?
This Dog message comes from eyes in the cage opposite. They are clear and intelligent, belonging to a German shepherd. Hit by a passing car on 41, he’s a purebred, not abandoned, just unlucky. Hobbled but ambulatory, he requires surgery that neither the city of Naples nor Collier County can afford. Nor, so far, any potential foster family.
—Do you understand?
—What?
—You think he’s coming back. The dog shifts his muzzle to see Bill better.
—Tonight. Tomorrow. You believe that.
Bill does not want to communicate about it with the other dog. He turns away and lies facing the back of the crate. Whatever time means, a lot has gone by. What he now fears is that whatever happened to Cliff Gilmore has happened to the mister. No, impossible. He’s fine, Bill thinks. This is part of a class, some special exercise. It should be over by now, but the mister’s not here. It happened once before, Bill can’t know when. Here in Florida. Vinyl had an angioplasty, and spent two days at the Cleveland Clinic. Those two nights, Cliff Gilmore walked Bill with Hotspur. Then the mister came back. He clapped in the pool, the missus going inside, closing the doorwall to protect her clothes.
Restive, accustomed to more exercise, he works his way around in the cage. When he settles again, there are the intelligent eyes.
—I’m not defeated. The shepherd stands and shakes himself. —I’m not a dog that gives up. Some here quit. They stop eating, sleep all the time. Shepherds aren’t like that. They go until they drop. But I know humans.
—What do you want? Bill gets up. The ridge of his spine presses the top of the crate. —I like you. What do you want?
—I like you, too. The shepherd’s eyes and noble head express this meaning.
—There’s shepherd in you. Not much but some.
—He’ll come. There are other dogs where he’s taking me. Where we live. Maybe you can come, too.
—You live here now. You still don’t understand.
The journey home to Michigan takes either two or three days, depending on how they feel. This trip they make in two.
Vinyl didn’t talk to his wife until dinner that first night on the road. Sipping his rob roy before the meal, he watched her looking out on the dining room, seeking any alternative to facing him. With the simple pragmatism that characterizes long marriages—that is, the mutual acceptance of deeply flawed human nature—he felt more than thought how muc
h he still cared for his wife, still liked to look at her and hear her voice. So, he brought up neutral topics—chores waiting for them when they got home. Bedding she always aired, landscaping for him. Always there are lots of leaves to tend to, half rotten after the winter snow and spring rains. Seeing her relief and eagerness to talk, he decided to let it go. Perhaps she’s right, he thought, and ordered another rob roy. Little kids, babies. She could be right.
But late the following afternoon, bumping along the shaded dirt road to their place, dark with leafy hardwood summer foliage, the mister caught himself looking in the rearview for the dog. When they reached their property, he braked to a stop outside the pole barn. He’d had it built when they bought the house, a big shiny shed of corrugated steel to house the riding mower, the cars and boats. They opened the gate and followed the walkway, he used his key. Everything was where it belonged, a big log house smelling of sap. He walked then to the end of the property, to check the guest cabin. The lake looked higher than last year. That would be good for boating. The service had come and put in the dock, rolling it down the grassy slope.
So, in the following days he does his best. He repairs a broken water line in the irrigation system, gets out a ladder and cleans the gutters. His wife comes out to watch, for safety’s sake. He cuts the grass, rolling and swaying in the seat, a ride similar to golf carts. He spreads fertilizer, grills. Life lived without Bill is life as it was before the dog. Workable. The first weekend, a former business partner comes to visit. While the wives go scouring the antique shops and yard sales near Cadillac, the men fish. On the lake they talk about friends who have died, the stock market, notorious clients from the past. The mister doesn’t bring up the dog, glad his friend never came during Bill’s time.
So, life goes on. Persists. But it’s not the same. Against his will one afternoon, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on the greensward facing the lake, he understands something modestly profound. He had known it before, but not thought about it. It was the dog’s vitality he most valued and now misses. Just that, his simple, direct, pull-out-the-stops approach to everything. You’re no baby boomer, he thinks, remembering the dog jumping off the diving platform. No all-organic crap or vitamin supplements to help you live to a hundred. Bill was your tonic.
Odd, how his thoughts wander. Sex, for instance. With the new drug (nothing bogus about that, he thinks), the mister still has a token sex life. Notwithstanding the annoyingly coy ads on TV, the stuff does work. As much as anything, though, having sex for both of them these days serves mostly to confirm it’s still possible, that they’re still in the game.
What’s that got to do with Bill? As he almost never does (selling vinyl siding to builders made him well-to-do, not reflective), he sticks with the question. The size of him, for one thing. That was part of it. Bill is a man’s dog. Being able to manage him had been a source of pride. Not that it was ever a problem. Never. The mister shakes his head in confirmation. But if you aren’t really driven any longer by testosterone, what remains—you could say what now represents getting it up—is vitality. Being ready for things. Being ready to say hell yes, let’s do it, whatever “it” might be, whatever you might otherwise have cancelled or begged off on, asking for a rain check.
The dog gave you more of that, he thinks. Whether it’s fair or true he doesn’t know, but this conviction leads Vinyl to a second thought. She was jealous of him, he thinks. Your wife was jealous of a damn dog. Jealous, too, of other women, younger ones, or those with better figures—especially those younger. Glenda Gilmore, for instance. All that fake sympathy for her at the club, when in fact his wife and almost every woman on the property believe Glenda married Cliff just for money. So what? he thinks, not seeing the lake. What if it’s true? Whose business is it?
Still, resenting someone who looks that good, a former model with whom you can’t hope to compete in that way—that, too, is understandable. But a dog? A big old mutt? He believes it, though. That night at dinner he is quiet, eating his pork chops and sweet potato, saying nothing. Good or bad, he always compliments his wife’s cooking. When he fails to, she tries different topics. He answers, but hardly moves his mouth.
She knows what it is, and eats then in silence. But by the end of the meal, she has managed to convince herself he is coming down with something.
Shitfire, that’s one big dog.”
The stranger sounds young, but has on a cap like the mister’s. His face is close to the cage and he is drinking from a cup. Coffee. The mister drinks it in the morning, before the walk. The other man at his side, the stranger who is no longer strange, just wrong, is laughing at whatever the younger man says. The young man stays bent at the waist, looking in.
“I don’t want a mean dog. Just a good loud one. It’s high crime where I am, you get your break-ins, that stuff. I just thought a good big dog might do the trick.”
“This one would definitely make someone think twice.”
“That’s it, that’s just what I’m talking about. All these pit bulls in here, that’s plain nuts if you ask me. People say they’re all right. Shoot, I figure a pit bull, you’re looking at a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“We get a lot of them. It’s too bad. They have a place, but not in most people’s backyards.”
Still the young man keeps looking at him. When this goes on too long, it makes Bill nervous. He turns away and lies facing the back of the crate. “Guess he don’t like me.”
“They don’t like too much eye contact. This one’s friendly. His owner gave him up before going back up north.”
“Huh. A Yankee dog.”
“He lived on a golf course.”
“Hell, they wouldn’t let some vicious killer dog on one of these courses down here.” The other man laughs again. “No, they wouldn’t, that’s a fact.” The two walk away, not down the row of cages but back through the door where the attendants stay. When he settles again, facing the bright cone of light shining down from the ceiling, the shepherd is looking at him.
—You’re leaving. That one’s taking you.
—How do you know?
—He stayed at your cage. He stopped looking.
—Do I go back to the golf course? I know that word, I hear it a lot.
—Maybe. This one does something with plastic pipe. Smell it? My owner used that pipe. He did something with it under the sink, in the kitchen. It took a long time, he got angry.
The shepherd is right, on both counts. Dewey Hartman uses a lot of PVC pipe in his work—he installs the circulation systems for swimming pools. Before leaving the shelter, he fills out the paperwork for dog adoption. The next day, he comes back.
—What did I tell you? The shepherd says this with his eyes. Always serious and vigilant, he looks across at Bill with longing.
The man who feeds Bill leads him out on a leash made of chain. Dewey is there with a pickup truck. A crate rests in back. When a hand slaps the truck bed, Bill understands. He jumps up and goes inside.
“Hell, look at that.” The young man fastens the door. “Like he knows the whole show.”
“He’s crate-trained.”
“I forgot to ask. Is he housebroke?”
“That, too. He might not respond right away, but the owner said Bill had some training. Heel, stay, come, lie down. He said the dog’s very anxious to please.”
The young man looks in again. After a moment, he shakes hands with the attendant, then slams the tailgate. As the truck begins to move, Bill works to keep his balance. The truck bounces more than the van. And it’s hot. But to be outside again, away from the kennel—free air fills his lungs. The myriad, rich effects of land and air come to him, rushing, flooding. Soon, he settles down, enjoying the ride.
Two miles east of Collier Boulevard, Dewey turns off Davis, onto a short street of small houses. He pulls in the drive of his rental and brings the truck to a stop. Out and around to the back, he quickly lowers the tailgate. At the shelter, the dog jumped up on his own. He went right in
side the crate, borrowed from Dewey’s brother. It made the new mister feel good.
“So here we are, Bill.” He looks in. “This is my crib.”
Crib, cradle. He doesn’t remember words the way Emma can, but familiar sounds make him prick up his ears. The crate door opens. “Well, come on, bubba, this is it—” He jumps down and runs to the fence. Lifting his leg, he marks, then roams, sniffing and urinating as he moves along the cyclone fence. It’s a big yard for the size of the house, the shelter requiring fenced yards as a condition of adoption. The young man is laughing. “That’s it, Bill, you stake it out. Some clown come in here last month and stole my lawn mower. Right where you are now, give that an extra shot. A nice one from Sears. Hell, I take off ten minutes to Taco Bell, I come back, no more mower. Ain’t gonna happen this time, right, Bill? No way.”
It gets better. The big yard suits him. There are two live oaks at the back, big ones, and lemon and orange trees the landlady planted. But the small house feels cramped to such a big dog. At least Dewey knows enough to move things that might get broken. The shelter gave him Bill’s food and water bowls. He feeds the dog right. But he is not big on walks. Leaving for work early, he leaves Bill in the yard, until a neighbor complains the dog barks. After that, Dewey lets Bill out, then shuts him up. He comes back at noon to eat lunch while the dog is outside. Every few days, he gets the shovel and cleans up.
The new mister has friends at work, other young men who come to the house. They watch sports on Dewey’s big TV and drink beer (the mister did this, but at the club, whistling as they walked home). They always go outside and throw the ball in the yard, clapping and cheering as Bill trots back with it, panting but tireless. Or, they take him out in the road and throw it very far. That’s best. Once, the new mister and his friends take him to a big park for Frisbee. Hotspur, he thinks, jumping and catching the thing. Maybe he and Cliff are at the beach.
Just Bill Page 8
