What a Dog Knows

by Susan Wilson

  * * *

  I really enjoyed the trip to the place where the scent of toys and food and chews and toys and food and chews is so exciting, I almost forgot myself and pulled hard on the new leash and harness. Almost pulled my Ruby off her feet in a rush to find the right toy and chew and food. And treats! Life is good. I do not think anymore about what was. Only about what is.

  * * *

  A bright-as-dawn full moon lances through the space between the half-drawn curtains, waking Ruby. In the shadows she sees the shape of a woman. She knows that it’s a woman, and that it’s a phantom because Ruby also knows that she’s dreaming. The woman-shape rises, floats, reaches out and touches Ruby’s face. Leans down and kisses her. A mother’s kiss. Ruby sobs and wakes herself up. The dog is there, looking at the shadow space where the phantom woman had appeared in the dream. As loud as words, Ruby hears the Hitchhiker’s thoughts as the dog looks back at her. “Don’t fret. She’ll come again.”

  The taste of the dream lingers into the morning. Ruby has never been an interpreter of dreams as much as of cards or palms, but she knows that some dreams are messages that should be heeded. The question, of course, is what that message might be. Was her absent mother trying to reach out from beyond? And another question would be, beyond what? Ruby really doesn’t know if her mother exists in this world or the next, except that Sabine has never suggested that the woman who would be her grandmother was anything but still in this world. Not once has she sensed a revenant shadowing Ruby. They talked about it, years ago. Ruby had asked if Sabine would consider reaching out and trying to contact the nameless, faceless woman. “What makes you think she’s passed?” Sabine had said. “If she has, she’s not hovering around you.” She was still young and had no idea how painful those words were. Ruby had never asked again.

  It was more the kiss, the ultimate maternal gesture, that kept the sense of warmth, of safety, of a certain coziness, percolating through Ruby’s body all morning. Almost the same kind of coziness, security, and pleasure she finds herself enjoying when the Hitchhiker is settled on her lap. “You aren’t my mother, are you? Come back to life as a dog?”

  “No. I am not a mother. I would like to know yours.”

  “So would I. So would I.”

  Cynthia Mann resembles nothing so much as a grasshopper as she strides across the grassy area toward Ruby who, on this second Saturday of the Farmers’ Market and Makers Faire, is standing patiently in line at the taco truck. Cynthia’s green Wellington Hunter boots, waxed jacket, and khaki pants scream out for a pith helmet to complete the look. Stress sometimes brings out the best in Ruby’s abilities and suddenly she is smitten with conflicting auras. She sees Cynthia’s lime green aura of an outsized self-importance and beneath it, the grayer, grimmer aura of insecurity and old rage.

  Ruby has had a good morning, reading four humans and two dogs. Whereas she had fudged the human fortunes a bit, it was easy as pie to read the two dogs. One was willing to quit chewing on furniture if she understood better which things she was allowed to chew on (Ruby suggested more rubber toys), and the other, a sad little terrier, believed that his person was never going to come back every single time she went out the door. Ruby counseled finding a good trainer to help with that. Now she’s just looking for a good lunch.

  Cynthia puts herself between Ruby and the person in front of her. “I thought that I had made it abundantly clear that you can’t rent space here.” There is nothing of the faux friendly look on her face this time, her upper lip is fighting against the dermo-filler and threatening to crumble into lines. Twin dots of red sit just above the hollows of her cheeks. “We’ll happily refund your money.”

  “I think not.” Ruby steps around Cynthia, moves one step closer to the taco truck window. She’s not going to give in and she’s not going to miss out on a nice food truck lunch because this woman, who, yes, seems to have a little spittle in the corner of her mouth, wants her gone. Ruby is all too used to the prejudices of the skeptic against the psychic professional. “But I’m happy to do your cards next Saturday. Or, perhaps your dog’s.” Dang, now Ruby’s committed herself to another week in Harmony Farms.

  “I would never!” Cynthia again puts herself between Ruby and the person next in line. “And I certainly do not have a dog.” She says this as if she’d been accused of a cardinal sin. As if the idea of having a dog is tantamount to admitting a drug habit. “You are a fraud and a charlatan.”

  “So you say. I am a practitioner of the gentle art of reading cards and tea leaves. Not the Antichrist.” No, that was the accusation so many years ago. The one that set her on the road toward her own unknowable future.

  “It’s the Devil in her.”

  “Nonsense, Sister. It’s a teenage girl acting out.” The Monsignor set his teacup down on the polished surface of Mother Superior’s desk. He ignores the flash of annoyance in the older woman’s eye. She knows her place. He addresses the younger nun who has brought this complaint to them. “Little Mary Jones, rebelling against authority. She’s always been different.”

  The younger nun, Sister Clothilde, closes her eyes, squeezing them shut so tightly that the priest thinks that she’s fighting a rebellious spirit of her own. “She divines, Father. She sees things that haven’t happened. She told her classmate Jeannie that she would soon hear from a distant family member. Things like that get a child’s hopes up.”

  “And, indeed, Jeannie’s deceased mother’s sister did come.” Mother Superior slides a sheet of paper beneath the teacup. “She took her.”

  The third nun in the room, Sister Margaret, chimes in, “Surely Mary Jones heard something; she’s a listener. You find her skulking in the hallway when she should be in class. She probably overheard Sister Nanette talking too loudly about Jeannie’s situation. Took it upon herself to tell the child.”

  “Perhaps.” Sister Clothilde folds her arms across her midsection, tucks her hands into her sleeves. “But how do you explain Mary Jones predicting poor Sister Anne’s cancer?”

  Mary Jones had touched the old nun’s face, an invasion and yet a tenderness the sister hadn’t ever experienced. A warmth had come to her cheeks and she couldn’t say if it had been the child’s hands or her own heat. “I’m sorry you’re sick,” Mary Jones had said.

  “But I’m not.”

  “You are.” The girl had burst into tears. Sister Anne was a favorite among the girls, known for fairness and generosity with sweets.

  “Having a sensitivity isn’t the same as being in league with the Devil.” Monsignor LaPierre shrugs, reaches for another cookie from the plate on Mother Superior’s desk. “Send her to me.”

  6

  “I’m sorry, but Ms. Mann has said I shouldn’t rent you space.” The essential oils purveyor’s brows are dragged south in an effort to communicate her Hippy Chick deep empathy for Ruby’s being thrown out of the Faire. “I really can’t…” She lets the thought drift.

  “Is this private property?”

  “Uh, no. Town property.”

  “Public space?”

  “I guess so.”

  Ruby is making this up as she goes along, but Emily—the Hippy Chick’s actual name, although Ariel would suit her better—seems gullible enough to bite. “Then she can’t exclude me. I can set up my tent on the edge of the park and not pay a fee. I’d rather pay and do this the right way.”

  “She’ll kill me.”

  “Or not.”

  On Monday morning, Ruby will see about getting a proper busker’s license from the town office. There is precedent; she’s dropped a buck into the open guitar case of the guy who busks in the library park. The other evening there was a string trio playing for tips in front of the post office. Ruby will use her aforesaid foresight to go to the town hall when Selectperson Mann will likely not be in the building. With that license in hand, she has the legal right to perform for tips. And if one thinks of palm reading as a performance—which, admittedly, it is most of the time—and the customary tip is twenty
or twenty-five bucks, well, put that in your pipe and smoke it, Miz Select Mann.

  As she heads back to her tent for the last two hours of the Faire, Ruby really has to ask herself why she is so determined to stay put when her whole life has been based on the determination to get away. What is it about Cynthia Mann that gets her back up? The Hitchhiker is truffling for spilled popcorn, dropped bits of doughnut. She’s sporting a new green collar with a matching leash so, at the very least, Cynthia can’t say anything about the dog. Back at the tent, Ruby closes the flap, eats her lunch, and then calls the dog over. With the Hitchhiker’s head in her lap, her hands cupping the small skull, Ruby asks: “What do you think about that angry lady?”

  The scent of dark gray fills Ruby’s mind. Ruby lets the moment grow until she pictures an amalgam of guilt and sorrow with an overlay of ego.

  “So, she’s carrying a lot of baggage, then?”

  “I don’t know what that means. She bites because she needs to. No one likes her.”

  It isn’t clear whether the dog means humans or canines. Both maybe. She lets go of the dog and clears the table, uses a wet wipe to clean her hands and then opens the flap of her tent. She takes up her knitting. Back in business.

  Back in the day, in her carnival life, Ruby sometimes paid a roustabout to act as a shill, paying him a sawbuck to act like he was getting his fortune told, drawing the curious closer. Now she has the dog, who is a magnet, attracting oohing and aahing young and old, who just seem compelled to give the little dog a hug and a cuddle. It’s only a moment before the conversation turns to a reading.

  By the time the last client takes the plunge, Ruby’s only managed a couple of rows on the sweater.

  “Please, take a seat.” As always, Ruby directs her clients to the seat on the south side of the table. The north side is hers. She gives her client a professional scan, pulling what details she can from appearance, level of anxiety, and expression. Dressed in Saturday chic of skinny jeans and a drape-y T-shirt, the woman—maybe early thirties, maybe a tad over—has a massive handbag, the kind that eliminates the need for a suitcase on weekend getaways. She sets it down on the grass at her feet and immediately a tiny head pops out. Ruby’s first thought is that she had inadvertently attracted a Kardashian to her tent. It has a furry face, silvery fur blended with a color Ruby could only describe as a mauve-brown. Two brown button eyes gaze up at her from the bag with intention. It sneezes. Without thinking, Ruby bends down and pats the little critter gently on the dome of its skull. Instantly, she feels the tingle of connection.

  “Your dog does not like being in that bag. She feels embarrassed. No, more like humiliated. She says that she doesn’t like being treated like a stuffed toy.”

  “What?” The woman’s professionally designed eyebrows shoot up. “What?”

  “Sorry, let me pour the tea.”

  “No, go on, tell me more.” The woman fishes the tiny dog, a Chihuahua perhaps, out of her bag. “What’s she thinking?” She looks both avid and a little relieved. “She’s been grumpy lately. Maybe you can help.”

  Twenty minutes later, the woman is smiling broadly, and the dog is wagging her tail. As her client hands a twenty-dollar bill to Ruby, she says, “I have loads of friends who would be interested in getting their dogs read. Would you be interested?”

  Ruby has never been one to avoid the signs. A sure sign that she’s meant to stay where she is for the moment.

  “Yes.” She takes the woman’s twenty. “Let me give you my card.”

  Mary Jones has been called to see the Monsignor in his office. There are only two reasons for a girl to be summoned. The first, rarest, is because a relative willing to take her has been found, or a willing set of adoptive parents has chosen her. The second, most common, is that the girl in question is to be punished for something beyond the jurisdiction of the nuns. Back talk, cheating, even theft are dealt with at the lower levels. By the women. To be sent to the man in charge, a girl has to have done something egregious, vile. Sinful.

  At the end of the hallway, opposite the Monsignor’s office, is a statue of Christ. It stands nearly life-size and was a gift from the family of a former Mother Superior on her elevation. Carved of wood, more cigar store Indian than work of art, it’s been at the school since the end of the last century, and the paint of its sandaled foot has been worn off by generations of girls touching it for luck or hope or even faith. Mary—Ruby—notices only the drops of thick red paint that signify the bleeding Sacred Heart. If this man could be so mistreated, what hope does she have? He, at least, had a father, God.

  Real fear dries her mouth, her tongue sticks to the roof of it. She can hear her own heart, its percussive thumps growing louder and almost painful. The hallway telescopes out, then retracts, and her feet in their donation bin Keds squeak as she makes her slow way to the opposite end of the corridor. The smell of Butcher’s Wax and snuffed candles. Her intestines cramp. Mary Jones pauses, leans a hand against the wall. Yesterday she had told Sister Gertrude that she was sorry for her loss. The old nun exuded the aura of one in mourning, and as Mary has always been fond of the old woman, it seemed wrong not to acknowledge her grief. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your brother.”

  “What about him? What do you know?”

  Mary Jones turned and fled. Afraid both of the power of her vision and how dangerous it was.

  In the second before Sister Gertrude could snatch Mary Jones’s braid and haul her back to explain herself, the nun was called to the Mother’s office.

  Mary was in the stairwell when she looked out to see the street door open and Sister Gertrude leave the convent, getting into a car. As if sensing that Mary was looking down, the nun, face crumpled with true grief, raised her eyes to seek out Mary’s. With slow deliberation, Sister Gertrude made the Sign of the Cross and kissed her crucifix.

  7

  It was such a good Saturday that Ruby has reserved what she is now thinking of as “her room” for another week. Ravi, the owner/operator of the Dew Drop Inn, is clearly pleased and even offers to take the surcharge for the Hitchhiker off the tab. For her part, the Hitchhiker has behaved impeccably.

  After arranging for her busker’s license at the town hall—well before Cynthia Mann might drop into the selectperson’s office—Ruby heads to the Country Market to pick up a few groceries. The restaurants in Harmony Farms tend toward the overpriced.

  Ruby is wandering the short aisles of the Country Market with a basket dangling from her arm; in it a box of cereal, a quart of two percent milk, a bag of kibble, and a small box of medium-size Milk-Bones. She’s been in here often enough that the little store has become familiar to her; she can find most everything, but she’s damned if the canned fruit isn’t eluding her. Once in a while, Ruby gets a hankering for the only kind of fruit she knew when she was a little girl in the convent orphanage. She remembers the giant no. 10 cans of Del Monte fruit cocktail or pears or, her favorite, the peaches. Soft, sweet, and thick with syrup. One would expect the canned peaches to be near the canned vegetables but they’re not. Elvin, the elderly proprietor of the market, is jawing with a couple of work pants–wearing, flannel-shirted locals sucking down paper cups of coffee from his limited—but cheap—coffee bar. One of them is Bull. They guffaw and all three of them end up coughing, laughing, coughing. Har har hack. Har har hack. “Shoulda seen the look on his face.” Ruby suspects that half of their stories end up with that phrase. After years of living among old carnies, she’s familiar with the dynamics of old men and their stories. Well, she won’t interrupt their confab, so she trots toward the single attended checkout station where a teenage girl in an uneven bob with fuchsia highlights stares blankly out into space and chews contemplatively on a wad of gum, punctuating her mastication with snaps every few seconds.

  “Can you tell me where I can find the canned fruit?”

  “Umm, like, over there.” The girl points at an end cap with canned pumpkin, well in advance of the season, and other pie
fruits.

  “No, like peach slices, in syrup.” Maybe, in this suburban Mecca, kids don’t eat canned fruit.

  “Aisle four.” A short but well-endowed woman of a certain age, filling out the contours of a dark green uniform, comes up to Ruby. “Between the flour and the maple syrup. Don’t ask. Country Market is stocked with no rhyme or reason.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you Ruby?”

  “I am.” Ruby is a little surprised to be identified. She’s dressed in jeans and a striped tee, not her caftan; her hair is tidy in a normal everyday twist. “Are you Polly?” No tricks, the woman does have a badge with her name, Polly Schaeffer, pinned to her ample chest. The Harmony Farms assistant animal control officer. “How’d you know me?”

  “It’s my job to know every dog in town and yours is waiting for you very patiently outside. Process of elimination, you’re the only one with dog food in your basket. Plus, you do have that nice tag on her with your name and number.”

  “Nice work.” Ruby can only admire Polly’s deductive powers as well as her delivery.

  “Hey, ladies, how’re my two favorite girls?” Bull Harrison, aged adolescent.

  Ruby and Polly share a look and Ruby knows that she’s got a new friend.

  “Ruby reads dog minds.”

  “Really?” Polly doesn’t look skeptical, she looks interested. “You’re an animal communicator?”

  “So far only dogs, but yes. I guess that’s what you call what I do.”

  “Can they tell you who their owners are if they’re lost?”

  “Maybe not by name. But I get images, like with my pal out there. I know,” and Ruby air quotes the word, “that her former owner died. What she can’t tell me is if she ran away or if they dropped her off in the country figuring, as cute as she is, she’d find a new home.”