Nop's Trials

by Donald McCaig

  At Grady Gumm’s, his understanding had been useless. At the rodeo, his understanding had made him take on an impossible job, trusting for relief that never came.

  The dog pound had been stupefying fear.

  He remembered Bit O’ Scot’s fluffy, impudent tail and that image finally put him to sleep.

  Hours later, a key rattled in the lock. Nop was on his feet, fully awake. Someone behind the key: bad. Susanna snored and tossed. Nop could smell the bad outside the door. The man eased his key against the tumblers and Nop growled pretty loud.

  Froze.

  Nop growled again. The key slipped back out of the lock and someone swore under his breath and footsteps went off looking for an easier victim.

  Nop didn’t go back to sleep again that night. Across the doorway he lay with his nose between his paws and waited. This was his work. He was not very certain of anything, but he knew work.

  At dawn, Susanna woke because it was the time cops usually asked her to move on. She lay on the bed with her hands under her head staring at the ceiling, enjoying the luxury of a fed body and two skimpy blankets.

  It was never completely quiet at the Belvedere and it wasn’t quiet now. Some of the street people were up and moving out. Some of the night people were stumbling home. The Belvedere’s rest room was the most ill-smelling place Nop had ever been and he’d sniffed his share of feces and dead meat. When Susanna laid him down before her stall, he waited without demur. The smell was very bad. It was making him hysterical and he was glad when she was finished.

  She tossed the room key on the desk and the desk clerk tightened his lips and his two pals pulled in their feet and sat like two schoolboys on the red couch.

  “Don’t come back here with that dog,” he said.

  Susanna tossed her head. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in this dump. I’m gonna go out and get a good job.” She didn’t look back.

  The House of Naomi didn’t open its doors until eight, so she and Nop sat outside among her shopping bags, sharing a cup of takeout coffee (double sugar, double cream). Nop liked it quite a bit.

  The House of Naomi was a women’s shelter, run by private charities. It offered counseling, long-term residence in a clean dormitory and, ultimately, a job-referral service. It had just twenty-four beds.

  Every women’s shelter in America has to turn away applicants and if the House of Naomi accepted only the most promising women for its program, who could blame them?

  A street-cleaning machine broomed the gutters. Nop growled.

  People marched past on their way to work: attaché cases, lunchboxes, crisp clothing, shiny shoes, severely tailored suits.

  “That’ll be me, doggy. Every morning, down at the old bus stop. Same time every morning. Exact change—I’ll have it ready in my hand. I’ll take my seat and I’ll unfold my newspaper and read the news and the sale ads, too. ‘Hummm. Maybe I’ll get a new coverlet for my bed. My, there’s a special on a coffee service.’ Ridin’ the bus downtown to my job. From my apartment to my job and, in the evening, back again. Oh, I wouldn’t want a fancy place. Nothin’ too grand. Just a studio apartment without too many cockroaches and only one key to the front door. You’ll have all the canned dog-food you can eat.”

  The shelter’s staff was arriving now. Susanna smiled her best smile at everyone who climbed the stoop and when one woman said “Good morning,” Susanna followed her right inside, shopping bags, dog and all.

  A sign advised all APPLICANTS. WAIT HERE PLEASE and Susanna took a chair in what had been the front parlor when the building had been a family home. Cheerful paint covered all the walls and the window seats and speckled the glass in the Edwardian bow windows.

  Plastic chairs filled the waiting room like a bus station or airline terminal. Drawings and amateurish watercolors were taped to the walls with Scotch tape.

  Susanna waited, very nervous. Surely if the House had a vacancy, this room would be full of women. Surely she was too old. She wondered if they ever took women with bad teeth. Her teeth were horrible. She had to admit it herself, how ugly they were. Nop put his nose on her foot. Absently, she petted him. “Well, we’re here anyway.”

  She heard voices in the rear of the house. Must have been a swell house once. This whole neighborhood must have been pretty ritzy. Just look at it now! She smelled food. Coffee? Burned bacon? The clink of cutlery, a swinging door bumped open and the chatter of voices sounded pretty happy, all of them. Her stomach grumbled. That’s the trouble with eating one big meal like last night—you stretch your stomach and are twice as hungry the next day.

  A woman strode toward her, hand outstretched. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Chrissy Holt. I handle admissions at the House.”

  Nop’s eyes moved but his body stayed perfectly still.

  Susanna Cunningham heaved to her feet. She almost forgot her name. She almost introduced herself as Susie Q but remembered in the nick of time. “Susanna Cunningham,” she mumbled.

  The woman’s smile was big enough but didn’t mean anything personal. “Will you follow me? You can leave your things—they’ll be safe here.”

  Susanna examined the younger woman carefully, storing up details: blond hair brushed back and secured with a band—wedding ring and engagement ring. Susanna wished she still had her ring but something had happened to it. Stolen? Pawned? She felt like a child. The woman wore glasses with upswept frames, like elf eyes. Perfect makeup. Perfect teeth. Nop touched his bare nose to Susanna’s ankle and the sudden cold broke her fear. “Yeah. You got a good face,” she said. “Stay here. Stay here, good doggy.”

  Down the hallway, made a turn, paused at an office where a sullen youth was wielding a broom. “You’re not finished, Leon?”

  “No’m.”

  “I suppose I can use Miss Coolidge’s office. I do hope you’ll speed it up.”

  Leon didn’t say a word. He swept a sweep. The admissions lady made an irritated face, just like Susanna couldn’t see it. That is a bad sign. When people don’t think you can see them, they can’t see you.

  The admissions lady jerked drawers, searching for forms.

  Susanna, in a yellow plastic chair before the desk, wished she were somewhere else.

  “There! That’ll do it.” Again the bright smile. The woman uncapped a ballpoint. “Susanna Cunningham. Is that a Mrs. or a Miss?”

  “Oh, it’s Mrs. I don’t have no wedding ring, but I’m a married woman, all right.”

  She wrote it down.

  “History of employment?”

  She wrote it down.

  There were questions about drugs. “No ma’am. I never used ’em.”

  Questions about alcohol. “I used to take a glass of port, sometimes, when we had a big dinner, you know, Thanksgiving or Christmas, before my Jack took sick, but I never took no strong drink besides that.”

  “Never?”

  “No ma’am. I never liked the smell of it.”

  She asked a good many questions about alcohol and Susanna answered them all honestly. She said she’d never been a drunk and she’d never sold her body either. The woman seemed quite interested in alcohol but indifferent to whether she’d sold her body or not.

  The woman’s smile held more warmth now. “Tell me something about yourself, Mrs. Cunningham. You don’t have to hurry. Just use your own words.”

  Susanna didn’t get it. She’d heard the words but just didn’t understand. “Wait a minute,” she said. She hurried out of the room, back to the parlor where she’d left her precious envelope. Nop stood up and stretched. She squeezed his furry head. “Wish me luck, doggy,” she said. “Wish me luck.”

  She poked her envelope at the admissions lady. “Take them,” she said. “It’s all there. Social Security, marriage certificate, all of ’em.”

  The woman held the envelope but didn’t look inside. “Papers can help us, Mrs. Cunningham, but they’re not the whole picture. They don’t help me get to know you. Please, tell me what you hope the House of Naomi can do for you.” />
  “You can put me up.”

  The woman’s expression didn’t change for good or evil. Susanna knew she’d been too blunt. She took a deep breath. She wasn’t used to this kind of conversation. “Mrs. Holt, I’m fifty-three years old and I been without a home for three years. My husband, he’s in the VA and he’ll never be coming out and maybe it ain’t such a bad thing he won’t. I got a high-school diploma, in the commercial arts, and I used to be a whiz at the typewriter. ’Course that was when I was a kid so I don’t know how many words I’d be able to do today. I was still at home with my parents when I met Jack, you see, but I got my diploma before I’d marry him. I been confused.”

  The woman cut in: “Any history of institutionalization?”

  “No ma’am. I’m not nuts, I’m just poor. But I been ‘confused,’ you know how a person gets.”

  The admissions lady showed no sign that she ever got confused or that anyone in her circle ever got confused.

  Susanna hurried on, “I been living best I could on the SSI check, just one day at a time, winter, summer, spring. The other day I kind of woke up and I wasn’t confused so much anymore and I said to myself, ‘Susie … Susanna, you better take hold of yourself or you’re gonna die out here on the street and nothin’ to show for your life but regrets.’ So I figured I’d come to you. I know you got the counseling and I know you got the job training. If you don’t have no room in your House, then I’ll stay on the street and just come in for the training but, lady, I got to have something more’n I got.”

  The eyes behind the upturned elfin eyeglasses looked at her for the longest time. Very slowly she nodded. “Well, Susanna,” she said, “I think we’ll take a chance on you.”

  Susanna’s heart stopped. A chill spread from her forehead through her cheeks, from the pin bones of her shoulders to her fingertips. Though she’d asked, she hadn’t really expected anything. Hope can kill you faster than any criminal can. “I …” she said. “I … thank … job.”

  The admissions lady rubbed her hands briskly. “You’re in luck today,” she said. “We rarely have openings, but just last night one of our women left the shelter. Went to Missouri, actually. Her daughter has a home in Springfield and they’ve been corresponding.” She clapped her hands. “Peggy’s bed is empty and Susanna can have it.” She picked up the envelope. “We’ll need to get your SSI transferred to us so I’ll need your papers.” She performed legerdemain and made the papers disappear. “We won’t rush into the counseling. We’ll just introduce you around and make you comfortable. Have you had breakfast?”

  Susanna didn’t trust her speech. She shook her head no.

  “I could use a cup of tea myself. After breakfast we’ll get you some fresh clothes. I hope we have something that’ll fit.”

  And she ushered Susanna right through the swinging door into a big room full of women, old and young. There would be many marvels to explore here but none so marvelous as seeing women conversing with each other, neither ashamed nor afraid.

  “You’ll get your tray over there. Mrs. Johnson? Is the kitchen still serving?”

  Assured that it was, the two women stepped right over to the kitchen window and there were good smells and large brown plastic trays and the cook was asking her how did she like her eggs?

  The admissions lady poured a cup of water from an aluminum tureen and dunked her tea bag. “We don’t allow pets here at the shelter,” she said. “I do hope you understand.”

  Eggs. Susanna had to decide what kind of eggs she wanted. She couldn’t let herself get confused. “He’s my friend!” she blurted.

  “A pat of margarine for your toast? Grapefruit juice or orange juice?”

  “I don’t … whatever you’re having.”

  “I already had breakfast, Susanna. We’ll find the dog a good home. I’ll have Leon take him. You won’t have to say good-bye. It’ll be easier that way.”

  The cook wanted to know how Susanna liked her eggs. “Scrambled? Scrambled eggs be all right?”

  “Yes. Please. The orange juice, please. Please.”

  “Susanna, where would you like to sit?” The admissions lady gestured to the whole wide world of a room.

  So many women. So many empty chairs. But no space for her dog no matter how small he made himself. A tear splashed on her plastic tray. “Wherever you want me to sit would be fine,” Susanna whispered.

  ELEVEN

  The Village of Lost Dogs

  DOGS WANTED: Strays, mean and unwanted. Will pick up. No charge. Chip Ralston, Elite Kennels, Goshen, Oh.

  FREE TO GOOD HOME: AKC Female Cocker Spaniel. 6 yrs. Spayed and all shots. Loves children. Relocating. 864-5679 after 6.

  The White Truck came to the lot behind Shakey’s Pizza Tuesdays and Fridays. It was Nop’s bad luck today was Friday.

  The city dog pound didn’t give you zip for a dog, Leon knew that. The White Truck didn’t give you much, but more than zip. When Mrs. Holt told Leon to take the bag lady’s mutt to the pound right away, Leon started thinking “White Truck” and about the fifty dollars he hoped to get for the dog.

  Dog didn’t want to go with Leon. He lifted his lip and growled way back in his throat like he meant to have Leon for his next meal. Dog fluffed up to about twice his natural size and got down on his feet, like he was gathering himself for a spring and growled. It took Mrs. Holt to catch hold of the dog. Dog had seen her and the bag lady talking friendly so he mistook Holt for a friend of his and let her come up and pet his head and get a couple fingers under his collar so he couldn’t bite. Then Leon came back into the room and dragged the dog outside, out where the radio cab was waiting. Held that sucker in the air so he couldn’t get hardly no air and his eyes popped out of his head and his tongue hung out but he was still growlin’ like he meant to have himself a slice of throat meat. Leon beat the dog—smacked it hard but the dog wasn’t gonna learn his lesson. Dog thought he was tougher than Leon—a grown man. Dog thought he was really something.

  The cabbie took one look at the snarling, drooling animal and shut the trunk lid.

  “That dog’ll tear things to pieces back there,” he said. “There’s wiring that runs through the trunk and the gas pipe too. I don’t want no crazy rabid dog biting things in there.”

  “How the hell I gonna carry him?” Leon demanded.

  “Man, that’s your problem. You think of a way so he don’t tear up my cab and you and him can ride. Otherwise …” He shrugged.

  Leon sat in the back with both feet on the dog and the choke chain snugged up tight, so that his shoes shoved the dog into the floorboards and the collar pulled the opposite and the dog’s breathing got thin. He commenced to choke so Leon let off a little pressure. “You just lay still,” he said. “Man in a White Truck waitin’ for you. You and him gonna have a fine time.”

  The White Truck was a one-ton Ford F-350 with dual wheels and a box body. A ’78; it already had two hundred thousand miles on it. The box was white, the cab was white. It had the usual line of running lights and, on each side, a six-inch ventilating grate high and forward. No lettering on the door and no lettering on the body either.

  The lot had belonged to “Joe The Motorist’s Friend” until Joe closed up shop. The realtor who handled the empty store let the White Truck park for twenty bucks a week.

  A skinny man sat on a kitchen stool behind the truck’s rear doors. His hair was cut short, in a neat crew cut. He wore a translucent green polyester shirt and a string tie, anchored by a five-dollar gold piece.

  When Leon’s cab stopped, Skinny got off his stool and threw the rear doors open. Inside, the truck was wall-to-wall cages. Cages with oak doors and dogs’ faces pressed against the gratings. Big dogs’ faces, little dogs’ faces—their snouts, tongues, ears.

  Leon walked stooped over so it wouldn’t look like he was choking the bag lady’s dog. Skinny thumped a cage, smartly, to drive the dogs back, grabbed Nop and hurled him inside with a smooth, practiced motion. He relatched the cage. He left a narrow crac
k open for ventilation when he closed the truck’s outer doors.

  “Twenty dollars,” Skinny said.

  Leon winced. “Twenty dollars ain’t much. That’s a good dog there, worth forty dollars easy.”

  “Dog’s been bit. Half his ear gone. Ain’t many people looking for a lopped-eared black-and-white dog with no papers. Twenty.”

  “I hate to take that for this dog,” Leon said. “This dog’s a family pet.”

  “He looked like he was, the way you were holding him. Twenty dollars is twenty more’n you had before.”

  Leon reached for the bill.

  Skinny retracted it. “I generally get somebody to sign me a bill of sale.” He furnished a printed pad. Skinny had already written the date in the space labeled DATE and “Cincinnati” under TOWN OF PURCHASE. He’d written “mongrel” in the place labeled BREED. “Just sign at the bottom.”

  Leon signed the book, “Joe Louis.” The man gave up the crisp new money without examining the signature. Perched on his stool: “If you happen to run across any nice Cocker Spaniels, we got a contract for them. I’ll give forty dollars for any female Cocker in good health.”

  Leon got back in his cab and went away.

  Nop shared his cage with a dozen other dogs. A young Irish Setter lay up front near him. A Pomeranian huddled in the farthest part of the cage whimpering and scratching the mesh. There were many other dogs—and a few cats—in the truck, but Nop couldn’t see them through the plywood walls and floors.

  The truck bed was splotched with droppings. The dogs had tried to keep their mess in one small area but some hadn’t been able.

  The inside of the oak gates were gnawed white, and all the black paint had been chipped off the wire mesh by the teeth of many, many dogs.

  The crazy Pomeranian cried and whimpered. A sinking feeling came over Nop like a poisonous fog. He had lost everything.

  The Irish Setter had worried brown eyes. Young dog—younger than Nop. Timidly, he asked, “Dost thou have a master?”