“My girlfriend.” It was the first time he’d said the word, claimed ownership.
“She is mute?”
He shook his head. “No. She’s had a terrible shock.”
“Take her home and put her to bed. Tomorrow, call the orthopedist on this card and make an appointment. I’ll write you a prescription for the pain pills. She wouldn’t let us give her a shot, but in a few hours she will be feeling quite differently, let me assure you.” She smiled and pressed his hand. “You can trust me on this.”
Hank wrote another check. He bought the crutches they insisted she would need, put the icepacks and hospital forms into the Penney’s bag. An orderly wheeled Chloe to the Honda.
Over the tops of dark cars in the parking lot, the halogen glow of lights illuminated the outbuildings, county animal shelter among them. He debated. Chloe wasn’t talking; she was hugging her arms to her sides and staring down at the floor. Did that mean they’d taken the dog? Sons of bitches, breaking her ankle and letting her sit there untended—had they gone and shot her dog? Hannah wasn’t exactly shy when it came to intruders.
“I have to ask about Hannah.”
She started to cry.
“Did they take her?”
She shook her head no. “Ran.”
It was eight-thirty now, long past the shelter’s hours. Surely they didn’t leave animals untended. There had to be a kennel attendant.
“You wait in the car,” he told her.
There was a slot outside for dropping off animals—just like mail—but these letters were delivered to only one place and didn’t leave the building. The smell of disinfectant volleyed with a thick undercurrent of urine. Mournful howls of trapped canines rang in an unearthly chorus. Hank rapped hard at the door. Surely someone was there, but no one came to answer it. He took a dry cleaner’s receipt from his billfold and wrote down his name, address, phone numbers at home and work and a description of Hannah. White German Shepherd mix. Black spot on left ear. Red collar with tags. About eight years old. Will fetch aluminum cans. Don’t kill this dog, he wrote, then underlined it. I will pay all fines. Underlined that twice. He stuck it between the front doors of the building, but he didn’t think it would help. One look at those snarling jaws and the collar would be conveniently “lost,” and for the first time in her life Hannah would be moved to the head of the class. He thought about later, after some time had passed, adopting a puppy, but knew without asking that Chloe would never go for it.
Back in the car, he grasped her shoulders. “We’ll find her. Tomorrow we’ll hit every shelter in the county.”
Fresh tears. Hank held on. At the very least, this seemed like an improvement on the terrible silence.
At his insistence she took a pain pill in the parking lot of the drugstore, washed down with a sip of Seven-up. By the time they reached his place, she was slumped against his shoulder, groggy. He parked in his slot, studied her for awhile, noting the inconsolably beautiful face that emerged from the haggard one. Women could do that; sometimes through the deepest grief they emerged looking regal and proud. Jackie Kennedy, after Dallas. Every news photo he’d ever seen of Coretta King. He had a picture of his mother that always beguiled him—she was dressed in a black sheath, standing on the side of a road, her hands on his small shoulders—it had been taken in the Badlands. From the date on the back of the photo he concluded that Annie had only been dead a few months, yet here was his mother looking hauntingly beautiful, presumably pulled together enough to go on a vacation.
He left the crutches in the car; they could get them in the morning. He helped her out of the car and carried her to the condo. It was late, but it was also Friday night, and he could feel the eyes of his neighbors peering out from their kitchen windows.
Carrying Chloe up the stairs to his bedroom, he had to stop and rest twice. “Lord, how much do you weigh?”
“One thirty, when I’m in fighting trim. Probably one twenty now.”
“Must be the cast.”
She roused enough to ask him a few questions. “How much did it cost, Hank? How much was the bail?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I want to know how much I owe you.”
“I’ll take it out of your hide.”
“Where are we?”
“My place.”
“I wish I could see more of it. My eyes won’t stay open. I never should have taken that pill.”
“You can see it tomorrow. Actually, it’s kind of a wreck right now. Beer cans all over the place. Lingerie, dirty magazines.”
She struggled in his arms. “What?”
“I was trying to make you laugh. Go to sleep.”
He laid her down in his bed, on top of teal blue sheets he’d gotten on sale two years ago, and put a throw pillow under her cast. Place the injured limb above the heart, as per Red Cross instructions. The fiberglass was off-white, still warm as it cured into the hardness that would heal the one, two, three fractures; her bruised toes peeking out the end were dirty and smeared with plaster bits. He wet a washcloth and cleaned them off gently, set the cloth down on the nightstand, and watched her settle into his bed.
“You want a drink of water? Anything?”
“Just the last day and a half back.”
“I’m sorry, baby.”
She gave a dry laugh. “I’ve never been anybody’s baby.”
“Well, tonight you’re mine. Think you can sleep now?”
“Probably.”
She shut her brown eyes and turned her face from him, but not before he caught sight of fresh tears glistening in the corners of her eyelids. She was here, in his bed. Something he’d wanted, argued for, and now gotten. But at what price? He wondered if he should call the restaurant, the stables she referred to. Tomorrow. He’d do everything tomorrow. Find a lost dog. A substitute teacher for her riding lessons. A Kelly Girl waitress, if there were such an animal, whatever it took. Get her a lawyer.
She cried out in her sleep, and he took her hands in his. “You’re okay, Chloe. You’re here with me.”
Her hand slid from his as she fell back into sleep. There in the dark of the room he’d grown to ignore, he felt his universe execute a groaning shift off its axis. Her presence altered everything—caused the Joseph Cornell prints to appear cluttered and pretentious, the Eadweard Muybridge photos to reduce themselves to stilted assessments of human grace. His John LeCarré books sat thick and dull on his bookshelves, alphabetical by title, looking as pompous as rhetoric on long-dead subjects. He had, in sequence, every issue of Parabola since the late seventies, but in truth he couldn’t recall what lay between their covers. He wondered if she would stay for awhile, or possibly longer. He had never imagined such a thing possible before; sharing these quarters with a woman, this woman. On impulse, he knelt alongside the bed and gently pressed his face to her chest. He could hear her heart, beating steadily through the screaming yellow fleece, a survivor’s heart, right there beneath the breast he had held in his hand a few weeks ago. Now he cupped it gently, felt ashamed at himself for doing such a thing while she slept. He knew he should get up, eat something, go sleep on the couch, for Christ’s sake, let her alone after the last twenty-four hours, but just like that first night, seeing the owl outside the window at her place when he hadn’t wanted to move for fear it would disappear, he stayed where he was. When he was a kid and saw rainbows reflecting through the kitchen window at his grandmother’s, he would signal her to come over and the two of them would stand there and watch until the Arizona sun shifted and the colors raced away, set free in the dry mountain air. Sundogs, she had called them. Spirit puppies whose territory bridged earth and heaven. Dust motes, his father said, when Hank tried to explain the phenomenon to him. Either way, they existed, and Hank had developed a lifelong fascination with the naming of things, fearful that if he did not do so, did not call what he loved to himself in a specific and finite way, did not hold it, he would lose everything.
CHAPTER
14
Hank tried but couldn’t name another teacher he knew, male or female, who would be out there in the dirt, a trash sack tied around a broken ankle, leaning on a cane and barking orders to students less than twenty-four hours after getting out of jail. Following arrest, he’d expect to find his colleagues in any number of places—Santa Anita, betting on maiden two-year-olds, or rinsing their troubles in the El Torito Grill bar, scouting up a decent lawyer. Chloe’s singular concession was allowing him to drive her to these second-rate stables, a decision she seemed to base upon expediency, nothing more, since during the raid her truck had been impounded along with everything else.
“Take some time off,” he urged her. “You don’t have to prove any thing.”
“Hell, I already missed a whole day of work,” she said. “The way things are going, does it look like I can afford to miss any more?” She had on a pair of his ancient Levi’s—Think about it, Hank, why go and wreck a new pair?—he’d cut down the seam to allow for the passage of the cast. She was wearing one of his T-shirts, the infamous yellow sweatshirt over that, and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail by the rubber band from the morning newspaper. Whatever unpleasantness the night held, it had been postponed; now was a new day and business as usual.
The sturdy lesson horses weren’t much to look at. When you came right down to it, horses resembled camels once the thoroughbred sheen was removed. Unkempt and ordinary, her camels behaved themselves in the corral—working arena, she’d informed him—moving in a circle, nose to tail, cantering when asked, chastised if they didn’t, taking turns hopping the shabby painted jumps as if they lived to please the woman who stood in the center. She possessed authority here. He leaned his elbows against the wobbly chest-high fence. Peeling flakes of amber paint and graying wood stuck to his shirtsleeves. He kept his mouth shut. If he passed this test, she might allow him to feed her a hamburger at noon. Then again, best not count on it.
Young women in skin-tight riding pants passed through leading horses, sporting buckets and sacks of carrots. The March weather held up, sunny but cool. In a few weeks it would be vernal equinox, and the sun would move over the equator, shifting winds and blowing current pressures away. Over the tops of oaks he had a clear view of Saddleback and blue sky broken only by a few power lines. He’d hiked out here years ago. One of the canyons had a waterfall that ran when they got decent rain. Back in Modjeska Canyon, there was a viewing station, where dozens of hummingbirds came to feed from red glass bottles the rangers hung from trees. He’d taken his mother there, maybe fifteen years back, so she could sit and watch her favorite birds up close. Now highway traffic emitted a constant hum, muted only by the stand of oak trees that separated the stables from the highway. When the county supervisors got their way, a freeway would replace the winding two-way road, the commuters would have a straight shot from Mission Viejo to Orange, and the stables would be a memory.
Kit Wedler was Chloe’s stable brat this Saturday, running bridles and saddles in and out of the tack shed with surprising speed. When Chloe introduced Hank to her, the chubby redhead looked him up, down, and sideways, taking inventory.
“Hank’s a friend,” Chloe’d said.
Kit dismissed that notion with a terse “Right.”
Which meant she thought they were fucking, which they were, which was none of her business. Hank considered taking out his wallet to show her his California Teacher’s Credit Union identification. Listen, young lady, I have an account here, I’m not some cowboy opportunist with his eye on your teacher’s jeans. Kit possessed that bullshit-proof demeanor of youth. If he had sported Oxford robes and four dozen sheepskins, she would have still answered, “Right.” He was after her teacher’s ass; he was a stranger here.
He watched her fill buckets from the faucet on the small deck outside the storeroom and office. “Want a hand?”
“And watch you pop your first blister? Give me a royal break.”
He raised his hands. “Mercy. I just asked to help.”
“Do I look like I need help?” She went back to her chores, racing from the trash cans full of grain, cussing like a seasoned barmaid at skittering mice, measuring out coffee cans full of various feed with her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth. Like the horses, she worked as if driven. She was horse crazy—this, penance for some adolescent sin. Maybe Chloe gave her extra lessons in exchange for the chores. A Black Beauty scenario, soon to be displaced by some awkward teenage boy with acne. Childish as it was, it chafed—Chloe allowed Kit to exclaim over her injury and to drape her in hugs—he was expected to remain detached and anonymous. He paid her bail, drove her places. He stood at the railing and wished he smoked cigarettes. He’d ridden horses at his grandmother’s, an old pinto pony named Chances, loaned to her for the summer by a friend on the reservation. Mornings he’d saddle up and wander until the sun got too hot, when the willful pony would turn and trot home, fueled by his own laziness. He wished he had paid closer attention at summer camp when he endured his weeks of riding lessons, instead of looking forward to riflery and canoeing. He didn’t know one saddle from the other. The straps and buckles were many and mysterious. If Kit had agreed to his offer she would have had to spend precious time reeducating him. She was leading two horses up from the pasture now, striped lead ropes clenched in her chubby hands. With that red hair and pout, she reminded him of a cranky sprite, one capable of nasty magic. He turned back to watch Chloe.
When a thin black cowboy offered her the cane she now leaned on, he too gave Hank the eye. Hey, I bailed her out, he wanted to say. I donated the jeans. That’s also my trash sack, a premium Hefty, not some cheap generic, in case anybody’s wondering.
A curly-coated mutt and what looked like a spotted dingo nosed around his ankles. Since his question in the car, they hadn’t spoken out loud about Hannah. Chloe’d wept in the night, but wouldn’t talk about it when the sun rose.
“Desmond Morris believes that a lost dog will circle widely until he finds a familiar scent,” Hank said over orange juice that morning.
“Desmond Morris. He work at the college, too?”
“No, he’s a writer. He’s written a number of books on behavior.”
“You’ve read a lot of books. Have you ever had a dog?”
“When I was a kid. A rotten beagle who ate my oil paints and left technicolor droppings all over the yard for a week.”
That had made her smile. Chloe wasn’t up to hoping, but he stacked his chips next to Morris. Perhaps Hannah was circling even now above the hills behind the stable, through the many canyons and old trails that had for the moment escaped development. Probably there were creeks she knew of where she could at least get clean water. An old dog didn’t stand much of a chance against mountain lions or off-road vehicles. He pictured her in the middle of nowhere, amassing a pile of aluminum cans, waiting for Chloe to return to praise her.
He hiked up the slight hill through the breezeway stalls and went to the pay phone outside the barn office. With a pocketful of change, he called information to get the numbers of the animal shelters between here and Irvine. He pressed the buttons and gave his spiel three times. “White German Shepherd with a spotted, torn ear. Collar and tags. Answers to Hannah, doesn’t like strangers.”
The shelters were a washout. The few who halfway promised to keep an eye out also informed them that the personnel turnover was faster than a major league spitball, so don’t go getting your hopes up. By the midafternoon lull, Hank noticed Chloe had bitten her nails down to the quick.
“Here’s an idea,” he said. “Let’s run past Hughville and take a look. Maybe she came back.”
“I’m ass deep in alligators already, Hank. I don’t want to piss the police off any more than I already have.”
“We can just drive by.”
“I don’t want to get in any more trouble.”
“Don’t you want to collect your things?”
“There wasn’t that much there. Besides, they’re ruined.”
&n
bsp; “Chloe, did you really hit that policeman?”
She lit a cigarette borrowed from one of the stablehands. “He was a fucking Boy Scout dressed in a cop costume.”
“Whom you hit.”
“Anyone who goes after my animals without provocation is asking to have his ass quartered.”
“Open or closed fist?”
“I don’t remember. Why?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” But he was worried about the consequences in the courtroom. That tough face, held together by the wobbling cotter pin of swear words worked on him, but how would a courtroom full of strangers feel? “You could stay in the car.”
“I’m telling you, she wouldn’t be there.” Chloe folded her arms across her chest and stared out at nothing. “She’s miles away by now. I know Hannah.” She left him and went to greet the next batch of students, lifting the cane to wave hello.
It was Saturday morning, when he’d normally finish the Times and grade a few papers, but this Saturday morning he’d helped her wash with a new bar of Irish Spring and a washcloth he’d bought only because it came with the set of charcoal gray bath towels. She leaned over the basin, naked and unembarrassed, lathering herself, limbs, breasts, crotch, anyplace she could reach. He did her back and helped her sponge off. “Can I wear some of your underwear?” she’d asked, and he went digging through his dresser drawers for shrunken T-shirts and briefs with halfway decent elastic. If Esquire was running out of ideas to make their models look sexy, here was one angle they could certainly implement with a measure of success. She bent over the counter and brushed her teeth. Chloe, seeing him behind her in the mirror, turned and laughed, her mouth outlined in foamy ice blue Crest. “For Christ’s sake, Hank, take a breath! How am I going to get downstairs if you pass out on me?” Then, softer, “It doesn’t take much to get your motor started, does it?”
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