At the Edge of the Haight

by Katherine Seligman

  “There are a lot of noises dogs don’t even hear,” she said.

  “He knows when I’m in danger.” I hugged his head. “He’s protecting my ears, which is more than your little man there would do.”

  Tiny was in a cage Fleet had made, a cardboard box covered in a plastic bag she’d dotted with air holes. She had twisted a paper clip into a collar, but she worried it might strangle him, so he wore it like a loose necklace. Fucking rat jewelry.

  One afternoon we stood outside the smoke shop watching Fleet pound on the guitar, with Tiny on her shoulder. A man holding hands with two little boys dropped five dollars and snapped a picture of his kids petting Tiny. Fleet bowed.

  Fleet was still playing when a lady from the shelter walked up and waved us all over. I thought she was there to tell us to keep it down, the cops were around the corner. But instead she pointed at the sky, where a black line of clouds squatted over the ocean, waiting to open overhead like an immense faucet. We needed to get inside before the storm broke. An atmospheric river, she said. It sounded like a mood that would wind itself up tight and then explode.

  The shelter beds were already full, but the city had set up an emergency center where we could stay. She said she’d help us sign up for it and give us free bus tokens. We looked at each other and didn’t have to say anything. There was no way we were doing that. It would be crowded with zombies. Get us together, all twisted in different ways, and you never knew what would happen. A river of rain, we would take our chances. Last year a guy called the Shepherd came in to the emergency center with a long wood pole covered in scraps of fur. Root kept barking at him, but he was there, same as us, to keep dry. “Sorry, man,” said Ash. “He has a lot to say but he doesn’t mean anything.” The guy ignored us. We took pads and blankets and slept as far away from him as we could. In the middle of the night he started smashing people with his pole and screaming how everyone was trying to steal from him. Wasn’t someone going to help him? The cops came, which made it worse. The guy quieted down while they were there, but then he started up again, with Root barking across the room. No one got any peace. There was no way I was going back there, no matter how bad the storm got.

  By late afternoon the sky went fast from soft gray to black. The first rain fell softly, kicking up the dust from the pavement, then laid it down like thick gravy. We sat in the doorway of the smoke shop until dinner. The food line was twice as long as the night before, mostly because of the storm, but also because it was roast chicken and biscuits, which always got swarmed. Fleet, Hope, Ash, and I got our plates, shoveled in the food, and left. It was raining hard by then, big slapping drops. When the smoke shop closed at midnight, Fleet and Hope decided to try to get back into the shelter. Hope grabbed Fleet’s arm and pulled her up. Fleet reached in her pocket and brought out a handful of wet bills.

  “All that work and, shit, this,” she said. “I was thinking we could find a room somewhere, but this would be like dropping a turd.”

  “I’ll take it.” Ash said and held out his hand.

  She shoved it back in her pocket and walked away, holding Tiny in a fold of her sweater. “The path less chosen,” Ash said.

  “What?” I was wrapped in two sweatshirts and still cold.

  “Robert Frost. I’d still be at City College except for all the self-righteous assholes.”

  Ash got in a funk sometimes, like everyone had turned against him. He went somewhere inside himself. He needed it all to make sense. I got that. There were times I wanted to put my arms around him, but I needed him too much for that. It would come with too much drama. Or a kid. Hope got knocked up three years ago, and went up north to have her kid, who lived with her parents. She called him my boy and my angel and carried a picture of him in her backpack, but she never went to see him, like it was enough to know he was in the world somewhere. I didn’t want any of that.

  The wind blasted wet trash down the sidewalk. A pair of plastic chopsticks clinked into the gutter. The doorway of the smoke shop was not going to keep us dry, even with Root stationed in front of us to block some of the rain. I felt bad using him like a shield. I had squeezed him into a sweatshirt, but he was shaking through it.

  We headed toward the Panhandle, a stretch of the park a few blocks away. I used to think the place got its name from the people who hung out on Haight Street grubbing for change, but they’d actually named it because of the shape, the handle of a pan attached to Golden Gate Park. Ash laughed at how I thought someone would name a park after panhandlers. He said it’s because I always thought everything had its beginning with me. I could say the same about him. He always took everything in a personal way, but then tried to pretend he didn’t care.

  .........................

  The Panhandle was empty when we got there. Even the ES EF crew was gone, chased off by the rain. They usually kept a guy at one end, watching, pretending to look at his phone. No one chopped down a bike or sold anything without him taking a cut. Sooner or later, he would come for you if you tried to do business on your own. He could sit in the middle of a pile of wheels, gears, and handlebars and the cops didn’t care. They walked by him and didn’t say anything.

  The wind roared through the eucalyptus trees. The tall narrow ones at either end of the Panhandle swayed and creaked. The grass was soaked, but the biggest tree was as thick as a building, the branches overhead almost a roof. We stood underneath while Ash opened his poncho and put it around me. Root leaned against my legs. I could smell the mint and honey of eucalyptus and feel the scratch of the bark through my sweatshirts. Standing against Ash made me feel safer. I wasn’t as cold. The only problem was going to be standing up all night. It was too wet to lie down.

  “Maybe we could take turns,” said Ash. “I’ll hold you up while you take a nap and then you can hold me up.”

  “Maybe we should tell ghost stories,” I said. I remembered nights at Karen and Chip’s when everyone in the girls’ room put blankets over their heads and I made up stories about slashers and no one could sleep. Ash said no thanks, the night was bad enough already.

  Up above us there was a loud crack and more creaking. I pushed myself tighter to Ash, hoping that would anchor me down. It was practically a hurricane on top of us. The tree tilted, then snapped back in place. There was another loud bang. I looked up at a branch above us, which was thrashing back and forth, scattering leaves.

  “You think it’ll hold?” I said.

  “It’s not going anywhere,” he said.

  We stood clutching each other. I was trying to talk myself down and think about being under the blanket at Karen and Chip’s or at the beach on a calm sunny day. I closed my eyes and concentrated, but the wind distracted me. I was still trying to push it out of my mind when I heard an explosion above us. Ash pushed me against the tree trunk and we both watched as the branch, bigger around than the two of us together, hurtled down. I could feel the edges scrape against me as it came to rest a few feet away. Root barked what sounded like a shrill scream and took off across the Panhandle.

  “Root!” I yelled, and started off after him, but Ash grabbed my arm.

  “He won’t go far,” Ash said. “You can’t go get him now.”

  The rain was coming at us sideways. I couldn’t see Root anymore. Inside, I was yelling at myself. Maddy, he is a dog, he knows how to take care of himself. But I wasn’t listening. He had already caused me so much trouble and now he was trying to get me killed. I was furious at him. The people at the animal shelter were right. How could I take care of him? I told myself I’d be better off letting him go. Maybe he’d find someone who wouldn’t let him go out in a storm. That’s probably where he was headed. My mind was skipping away. It was stupid to be out here, to think there was something special that was going to make us survive. This was it. Root knew.

  “Hey, let’s go,” said Ash, his arm around my shoulders. “Now.”

  I couldn’t resist him, since we were sashed together by his poncho. We hobbled and ran through puddl
es and crossed the dark empty street, back toward Haight Street, a two-headed drenched monster. Outside the shelter we banged on a metal side door with our fists.

  A man in a black windbreaker, walkie-talkie attached to his hip, opened the door and shined a flashlight at us. It didn’t take him long to see that we were soaked and miserable so he let us in, threw us two of the small, rough towels and said we could sleep in the hallway outside the kitchen.

  “If anyone asks, I didn’t let you in,” he said. “We’re full. Can’t take another body. Just be quiet in there. Lights are down and so are the phones.”

  Ash took off the poncho and we dried ourselves as much as we could. I sat down against the wall, shivering, and put my head on his shoulder. All I could think about was Root running off into the rain. Where would he go? Maybe he’d find his way back to the Panhandle. What would he do when he realized we weren’t there? When dogs warmed up to someone, didn’t they fall apart if that person left, or were we easy to replace? They only needed food, a dry bed and suddenly that was home. I was seized up thinking about that while Ash dozed off and then rearranged himself so he had his head in my lap. In the dim light coming in from the kitchen window, I could see people lined up for breakfast. The electricity was still off, which meant cold cereal and powdered milk, canned fruit cocktail. It also meant that everyone would be allowed to stay inside a few hours longer. It wasn’t like we could get to business outside.

  Ash and I found Fleet and Hope and tried to stand in line with them, but we moved to the back when someone started complaining about cutting. There was no point starting in with him, not after being up all night. Everyone was keyed up. Whatever we’d stashed behind at the park was soaked and probably trashed. There was not going to be anyone on the street. Tourists would stay away. No money was coming anyone’s way. The heavy rain was over but there was still a steady cold sprinkle that would keep us wet all day.

  “I can’t eat when Root’s out there, who knows where,” I said, pushing away a bowl of Corn Flakes.

  “I’ll eat it for you,” said Ash.

  I handed him my bowl and opened the side door where we’d entered. A lady with a drenched blanket wrapped around her shoulders and head was standing outside stamping her feet. I couldn’t tell if she was waiting to get in or just waiting. She looked at me, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply.

  Jax was alone on the corner in his wheelchair, halfway through a tall beer, another tucked in the pocket of his coat. He lived in a room above the liquor store but usually sat in front with his buddies, drinking until he sagged over in his chair and then someone would call the paramedics. He’d come back a few days later shaved and cleaned up and start all over again.

  “We almost got washed away this time,” he said, his voice coming from somewhere out of his long gray beard and matted hair. I hoped he wasn’t going to start in about the end of the world, how everything was leading to it.

  He finished his beer, put the bottle down and used his good foot to push himself over to where I was. The other sat in the footrest, curved inward. He’d told us that after the war he’d been a carpenter, making decent money, until he fell off a roof and broke his spine. If people thought it was the military that put him in the chair, let them, he said. The military had caused plenty of grief.

  “You made it through,” he said. “Where’s your friend?” I didn’t know if he was talking about Root or Ash, who liked to hang out with him. “I am going to get a sign. end of the world as we know it.”

  I told him how Root had run away from me in the Panhandle. “Have you seen him?” I said.

  “I saw a dog earlier on the street,” he said, reaching for the beer in his pocket and adjusting his bad leg. “Oh, hell, no I didn’t. But I wish I had. You look like you need good news.”

  chapter 10

  The Panhandle was a lake, tiny blades of grass poking up through the water. In the daylight, the fallen branch seemed bigger. The place where it had cracked was raw and bright. It looked painful, a broken leg, sticks of exposed bone and flesh.

  I could see Root wasn’t there, but it didn’t stop me. I called him and my voice was a shriek. I searched behind every tree, but there was only a guy sleeping on a piece of mushy cardboard. He looked freezing, soaked ass to ankles, but at least he’d covered his feet in plastic bags. I kept thinking Root might be hiding, pretending this was a game and waiting for me to throw a ball. He was a dog, with instincts, so he would find his way to me. That’s what I was telling myself. I had heard how dogs could get lost on the other side of the country and make it home, through their sense of smell. If that was true, I’d have to wait by the tree or by our sleeping spot until he appeared. Unless he was in trouble somewhere. I pictured him hurt, lying in the bushes, whimpering, waiting for me to find him, not knowing that I didn’t have instincts. I should have brought food for him.

  I squatted against the tree. People in the neighborhood started showing up with their dogs, tiptoeing through the water and mud and leaving quickly. No one wanted to stay slushing around in there. A woman walked by with two big Dobermans in matching red raincoats. One of them picked up his leg and squirted near my feet, like I was part of the tree. My boots were still wet from the night before, so it didn’t matter. The arcing stream of piss mostly missed me.

  “Oh, god, I’m sorry,” said the woman, her raincoat a lighter shade of red. “He always pees on this tree. He thinks it’s his tree.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “But I feel bad,” she said, putting her hand in her back pocket and holding out a $10 bill. “Why don’t you take this and go get some dry shoes when the Goodwill opens.”

  “What I really need is to find my dog,” I wanted to yell at her, but I took the cash and stuck it in my jeans. “Have you seen a black-and-white pit mix, weird eyes, running around anywhere?”

  “Where’d you lose him? “

  “Here,” I said patting the trunk. “At your dog’s tree, when that branch cracked off. He ran and now I don’t know where he is. It’s like he disappeared.”

  “It takes them so long to clean this stuff up,” she said, looking at the branch. “This is a hazard. Someone could trip and fall. They’d be liable. Half the time I’m scared to come here.”

  “Do you have a cell I could use to call the shelter downtown and see if they have him?” I said. “He’s kind of a regular there. It wouldn’t take long. A sec.”

  “I don’t know,” said the woman. “I’m weirdly picky about my phone. With everyone. But keep the money. I’m sorry about your shoes.”

  I stood up and faced her and she stepped back and clapped her hand over her pocket, which must have been where she kept her phone, just in case she got attacked by a homeless girl, wet, the kind of person who’d be hanging out in the rain waiting for a dog to pee on her shoes.

  “They usually do turn up,” she said. “You’d be surprised. Maybe someone is keeping him for you. It’s what I would do if I found a dog out here all alone.”

  I wanted to tell her that some of us here knew how to take care of our own selves. I’d have felt worse for Root if he was living with this lady, stuffed into a raincoat that made him look like a toy fire truck.

  “What if I find him? Where do I reach you?” she said.

  “Here,” I said. “His name’s Root.”

  “Does he have tags?” she said, a Doberman on either side like guardian statues. “Or a microchip? That would make him easier to trace.”

  “See you,” I said, and turned back toward the street.

  Ash, Fleet, and Hope were sitting outside the smoke shop, passing around a glass pipe.

  “There she is,” said Hope, who got even more talkative when she was high. “Where you been?”

  I waved away the pipe. It was not going to help right then. “Trying to find Root,” I said.

  “Well, hey to you too, girl,” said Hope. “Come sit. I got something to make you feel better.” She reached in her pocket and took out a half bottle of whiske
y. “I was thinking we could get warm and then divide up and find Root, if he hasn’t moved in with someone else. I mean, wouldn’t you, if you found a really good place? I am a living hunk of ice right now.”

  I took the bottle and the first sip almost made my throat close up going down and then burned every inch of the way to my stomach. In there, it kept burning. I remembered that I hadn’t eaten breakfast and gulped down another huge mouthful, waiting while it followed the same fevered path. My throat was numb and so was my head. I rested it on a parking meter and closed my eyes while the warmth spread around my body. My brain felt smoothed out, the tight squiggles loosened up. Root was out there somewhere waiting for me. I was sure of that now.

  Hope had her mouth around the pipe but she snorted, choking out a curl of smoke. “You’re looking kind of nuts,” she said.

  “Like you’re the one to call me out,” I said and turned back toward the Panhandle. If I had to stay there all day, another night, I’d do it. I’d stay all week. Root had probably spent the night in the cold, alone. I had to be where he could find me. I was feeling halfway between queasy and hungry when I heard a scream from across the street.

  “Maddy!” I looked up to Dave’s blue sedan across the street. “I have your dog!”

  Root sat in the front seat, looking fine, at least from the neck up. I touched the rolled-up window where his nose was making a wet splotch. He wiggled his body, trying to get to me, but it hit me that he looked happy sitting there. He’d found a new home. At least he was dry. Hope was right. Why would he want to jump out of the car and come with me? Dave had probably bribed him with steak and let him stay in front of a heater all night.

  “Get in,” said Dave, unlocking the door. Any doubt I had about Root’s loyalty disappeared as soon as I opened it. He leapt on me and started licking my face and whining, his tail whapping against the seat. I bent down and hugged him.