What a Dog Knows

by Susan Wilson

  Sabine has arrived at work, selling advertising for the local weekly. “Gotta run.”

  “Sabine, do you think anyone related to us has bothered with a DNA test?”

  “Just do it. Even if it turns out that we have no curious living relatives.”

  Ruby has prepped the van for travel. All the loose objects, for instance, the half dozen squeaky toys scattered around, have been stowed. The bed put back into its bench seat configuration and the table put away. The cupboards are latched, the chemical toilet covered in its day wear. The Hitchhiker has assumed her shotgun position. It is only Boy who remains uncertain. His anxiety is palpable in the way he keeps yawning, the way his tail is down and tucked. The way that his eyes have been following Ruby as she’s performed her tasks. He’s standing in the middle of the yard, halfway between her van and the house.

  Polly called this morning to fill Ruby in on Bull’s status. Although there are more tests that the medical people want to perform, the initial diagnosis is an infection, most likely in his gallbladder. This almost sounds like good news. You can recover from gallbladder surgery. Antibiotics can perform miracle cures. Polly mentions hepatitis and it no longer sounds quite so encouraging.

  “Cooper says that he’ll be in the hospital for a while longer. A week or so. Depending on how tough the infection is. Where it is. If that’s what it is.”

  “What about the dog? What about Boy? Will Bull’s son come and stay here?”

  “No. It’s an easier drive to Worcester from where he lives. He’s going to go every day after work.”

  “Oh.” Thwarted once again, she thinks but doesn’t say.

  Polly must have heard the dismay in her voice. “Boy can stay at the shelter, guest of the town. Don’t worry about the dog if you’re set to go. There’s no need for you to wait around. He’ll be fine with me.”

  The heavy weight of being thwarted is lifted. “Polly, that’s great. Thank you. I know that Bull will be happy to know he’s with you.”

  So that’s that. Ruby opens the sliding door of the van. “Okay, Boy. Hop in.” A quick run to the shelter and merrily, merrily, off to Maine they go.

  Boy doesn’t move. The dog backs away, ears pinned against the side of his head, his humped posture is stiff, unyielding. He gives her a sideways look and Ruby, even without touching him, knows that he’s beside himself with fear.

  “Oh, sweetie, you’re just going to go visit Auntie Polly. She’ll give you treats and belly rubs.” Ruby approaches the dog, who goes even deeper into a cowering crouch. She gently places her hands on his head, hoping to communicate what she’s thinking.

  “No. No go. No go. I want my person now. If I go, he won’t find me.”

  “He’s sick, Boy. He needs to know that you are safe with Polly.”

  “Safe with you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Safe with you. Please stay.”

  All of this comes through her fingertips and into her mind like a thick white sheet of dread. Her sense of smell is clouded with the perfume of fear—rank and foul flavored. Sour. Bile rises up in her throat. She lets go of the dog.

  The Hitchhiker approaches with caution. A fearful dog is a dangerous dog. Just the tip of her white tail moves, her head is low, and she licks her chops acknowledging Boy’s apprehensions. Slowly she presses herself against his hunched body, rests her chin on his neck. She looks up at Ruby and the thoughts in her head are loud and clear. “We can’t leave him.”

  In tears, Ruby drops to the ground and both dogs climb into her lap, acknowledging with gratitude her capitulation.

  The table is opened up and her laptop is booted up. Ruby types a quick email to Joe Benini to let him know that she has been unavoidably delayed but not why. Will maybe be able to catch up in a few days, a week at most. Let me know where you are or will be. She is only aware of the qualifying “maybe” as she hits Send. She’s hardly ever this dithering. Ruby has always prided herself on her quick decision-making skills, her strength of resolve in the face of difficulties. Yet, ever since accidentally landing on the shore of this lakeside town, she’s been reduced to hesitancy. To dithering. To caring about other people and their doggoned dogs.

  Even though it’s during school hours, Ruby texts Doug to let him know she’s hanging around a bit more. Does the same for Sabine, with the addition of saying that, now that she seems to not be in a hurry, she’s buying the second level of the Family History Lab’s services and should shortly have the database available to her account. The website suggests setting up a family tree. Ha-ha. Ruby fiddles around and decides that she can work backward from Molly and Tom, Sabine, to herself.

  This little exercise reminds her of the year that Sabine, maybe fourth grade, possibly fifth, had been assigned to do a family tree. Considering that the neighborhood where they had ended up was hardly an example of suburban family stability, half the kids had stepparents; talk about a teacher being tone deaf. So, she and Sabine had created what Ruby laughingly called their artificial tree. Sabine was appalled at first, but then got into the fun of making up names, choosing outrageous combinations like Mariella Frizzella—great-grandmother—and Dibley Dubious—great-grandfather on the other side. Aurora Boreallian, a distant relative on her mother’s side. They’d never had quite so much fun doing homework. Even if Sabine was given a B for the drawing and a C for content, they couldn’t prove a thing.

  Ruby closes out that screen and notices that she now has a View All DNA Matches button on the dashboard. Oh boy.

  Boy, trusting in Ruby’s word, happily climbs into the van so that they can go get a few groceries. How the dog knows that she won’t just drop him off at the shelter, she doesn’t know, except that it is possible that the Hitchhiker has made him that promise in their language and will hold her to it. Ruby just doesn’t have it in her to break her word to this damaged, fragile dog. Through the cloud of his anxiety, as she has done before, Ruby caught a glimpse of the trauma that had turned a happy-go-lucky youngster into an emotional wreck. Cynthia Mann’s ex. The drunken brutality of anger. Buried in there, the scent of pond and duck.

  Ruby lets Boy sit in between the front seats, while the Hitchhiker assumes her usual position. Every time she shifts gears, she pats his head. He’s a little slobbery around the mouth, but Ruby looks at that as a good thing, he’s relaxed now. Now she’s the one with anxiety. The Makers Faire is still going on, but she hasn’t signed up for a spot. She could set up her van and do busking in the park, but the weather is predicted to be lousy this week. Already the clouds are thickening up and the taste of rain is in the air. The fact is, she needs to earn a few bucks right now. As wormy as it makes her feel, she hasn’t been able to pay Bull back, having to use the few dollars she’s managed to raise for her own subsistence. Despite his insistence that the money was a gift, she really wants to pay him back. Although, Ruby now thinks, maybe this business of taking care of Boy will be a fair trade. Ease her mind from this overwhelming sense of obligation. Obligation, like attachment, a state of being she avoids.

  She’s so judicious about using a credit card, but she’s stormed that barricade in paying for the DNA match button. And she’s about to use it in the Country Market. She needs, among other things, dog food.

  35

  Ruby drives slowly along Main Street. It is a relatively short drive, six uneven blocks, if that, anchored on one end by a bank and on the other by the library. In the middle, the park and the municipal parking lot. At this hour, a midmorning weekday, the town is fairly busy, mostly moms in Lululemon, holding Starbucks cups and pushing racing baby carriages, and women of a certain age, shopping bags hanging from angled elbows. Here a workman, there a pair of Mormon boys on their mission work, white shirts and black ties, backpacks perfectly aligned on their shoulders. Everyday people on their everyday errands. Are you my cousin? It makes her think of that sweet children’s book: Are You My Mother?

  Ruby opened up the DNA Matches tab on her computer and discovered that she has cousins
all over New England. Up into New York State and beyond, all the way to California and even in Hawaii. It was a knee-weakening moment, seeing those little marks that indicate someone shares a part of her, not just a trait, but possibly even a history. That maybe one of these markers shaped like little green trees leads to someone who can tell her what she wants to know. If she has the courage. The website suggests treading lightly in cases where there might be a potentially explosive—her word not theirs—family dynamic. Ruby is pretty certain that dropping herself and her mystery origins into some distant cousin’s life could be a delicate process and fraught with all manner of emotion. She has to choose her first contact wisely. In her mind, Ruby composes a possible message to an unknown, unsuspecting relative: My name is Ruby … no Mary Jones, I was dropped off at a convent orphanage in Canada fifty-five years ago. Know anything about a knocked-up teenager in the family? On either side of the border?

  As Ruby drives along the street, she finds herself looking at all the small businesses that line either side. Harmony Farms has managed to preserve most of the look of Main Street since the early twentieth century, in that the facades and doorways are mostly original or good reproductions. There are even a few buildings that date back to the nineteenth century, preserved by Harmony Farms’ twenty-first century discovery of how to be trendy. Ruby can fault Cynthia Mann for her attitude and snooty behavior, but she knows that Cynthia has long been a part of Harmony Farms’ revival. So, which one of these storefronts once held a head shop? A place where a middle-aged hippy prognosticator might have practiced her dark arts and advised poor Cynthia into picking a cruel a-hole for a husband? Ruby wishes that she could get a vibe, a feeling of connection, but so far, not so much. All she feels right now is the heavy head of Boy as it rests on her lap, making shifting gears a tad difficult.

  With so much whirling around in her mind and imagination, Ruby decides that she should just focus on the task at hand, getting in a few groceries for herself and the dogs. Sometimes there is great relief in thinking only about the quotidian.

  Elvin the proprietor is in his usual position, behind the meat case, chatting up the old boys. It seems odd not to see Bull there among the green pants and Carhartt jackets. When he’s not holding up the wall at Cumbie’s, he’s here jawing with his cronies. Assuming that none of them know what’s going on with Bull, Ruby approaches the group to fill them in. As Ruby has discovered, in the way of small towns, they know who she is, how she fits into Bull’s life: The lady with the Westfalia, parks it in Bull’s yard. Reads dogs’ minds or something. That’s Ruby Heartwood.

  “Oh jeez,” says Elvin.

  “That’s a shame,” says the nonagenarian of the group, Deke Wilkins.

  “Them cigarettes. I told him time and again. Gonna kill him,” says a guy whose name Ruby doesn’t know.

  As Ruby steps away from the group, she is struck with a thought. “Any of you gentlemen remember a kind of a hippy store in town, late seventies, early eighties?”

  “Like with incense and those ugly woven ponchos?”

  “Exactly. Except that this one had a psychic in the back, did people’s fortunes, tea leaves, that sort of thing.”

  Elvin sets a package of pork chops on the counter for a customer and then rejoins the group. “Like you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Deke, who was that who ran that weird little place over by Heralds? Long-haired guy, skinny as a rail. Always wishing you ‘peace, man’ even when you just walked by.” This from the guy whose name she doesn’t know. “Far out, man.” He does a credible hippy accent, although, thinking about it, Ruby believes he’s exactly the right age himself to have been of the counterculture.

  Elvin says, “Oh, yeah. Glen and Lucy Atkins’s kid. Antiwar protester. He ended up in real estate. Done well for himself. Why the question, Ruby?”

  “I’m trying to track down who that psychic might have been.” Ruby hopes she doesn’t sound foolish.

  Deke pulls a phone book out from behind the counter. Thumbs it open. “Here you go. Robert W. Atkins Real Estate. Huh, same location. Fifty-one Main. Go visit him.”

  And just like that, as easy as pie, Ruby is gifted with a breakthrough.

  The long-haired skinny-as-a-rail hippy has become a bald, stout man dressed in a blue blazer and beige chinos, a popped collar on his light blue polo shirt. He looks the image of a real estate salesman. Ruby realizes that she’s seen his image in advertising all over town so meeting him is almost like speaking to someone she knows.

  He is alone in his office, although there is a messy desk on the opposite corner from where he is sitting when Ruby comes in. Robert W. Atkins leaps to his feet at her entrance, hand already extended, as if he’s been waiting for her, and she thinks that maybe he has been expecting someone, just not her. “Robert Atkins, welcome. How can I help you today?” Ruby gets it then: This is his persona. He greets everyone this way. She likes him.

  Ruby introduces herself. “Well, this may seem a bit strange.…”

  “Please, have a seat.” Atkins gestures to a pair of comfortable-looking chairs set up in the window, a window that is plastered over with listings for homes and land in the area. As she sits, Ruby is startled to recognize the Dew Drop Inn as one of those listings.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Heartwood? We get all kinds of strange requests in here, so don’t feel shy.”

  “Was this once a head shop? A hippy store?”

  If he’s surprised, Atkins keeps it together. “Well, you might classify it as that. When I was younger, I did have a little store here, we sold some goods that might be considered a little outré. But it didn’t last long. I got my real estate license.” That is, entered the mainstream, Harmony Farms style.

  “While you had it, did you also have a woman here who read tea leaves?”

  Now Atkins sits back. Rubs his chin. “It’s been so long, but I did have someone come in from time to time to work for me. If she did that kind of thing, tea leaves, it was without my knowledge. I was a hippy but not interested in mysticism. I’m a Catholic.”

  “Well, it’s not necessarily mysticism, but it is fortune-telling. Do you remember her name?”

  “Wow. Gosh, I don’t think that I do. Why are you so curious?”

  Ruby stands up and hands Atkins one of her old business cards. Madame Ruby, Seer and Fortune-teller. Tea leaves, Tarot and Palms. “If you should think of her name, would you please give me a call?”

  Outside, Ruby feels such a weakness in her knees that she thinks she’s going to have to sit on one of those benches that bear Robert W. Atkins Real Estate advertising images. So close. So very close. Was it her imagination, her suggestibility, that she felt the presence of that other, long-ago psychic in that room? As clear as day, Ruby remembers the moment she knew that she was pregnant with a child conceived out of violence.

  She’d thrown up the meager breakfast she’d had, a cheap McDonald’s breakfast sandwich that had turned vile almost as soon as she’d choked it down. Since her sheltered orphanage life, she had been educated in the ways of the adult world and knew what a missed period and a vomited breakfast indicated. She sat down on the curb, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Still inside were her traveling companions, two of the girls from the carnival who had decided to hitchhike west to Las Vegas, try their luck at working casinos. Ruby foresaw a different kind of working life for them but kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t ready to travel alone just yet. That morning, in some town she can’t recall, the sky had turned a different color, a gauzy mauve, the air around her felt saturated with a novel hope. Against all logic, all sense, this new reality felt like magic, like inspiration, not the worst that could befall a young girl. This was her miracle. This was her chance to get it right. This was her chance to show her absent mystery mother how it could be done.

  Just as Ruby gets her van settled back into its space in Bull’s yard, her phone dings with an incoming text. Much to her surprise, it’s Doug, texting during a lull in his
meeting schedule. She guesses that the no cell phones during the day rule does not apply to school staff. Can I tell you that it doesn’t break my heart that you’re still in HF?

  That brings an unexpected warmth to Ruby’s cheeks. She’s not sure what to answer. If she should answer. But then she does. It’s not such a bad thing.

  Thumbs-up from Doug.

  What, are we fifteen? Communicating in emoticons?

  Considering that’s the age group I mostly hang out with … I speak emoticon pretty well. You should see my TikTok.

  What if you just dialed me?

  Can’t now, later this afternoon?

  LFTI

  ??

  Looking forward to it.

  Xo

  Ruby doesn’t hesitate, does her own xo. No hearts, no kissy face. Just a nice sign off between friends with a little skin-to-skin history.

  The dogs play for a bit in the yard and then Boy asks to go into the house. Ruby follows behind, mostly to make sure that he has fresh water in his bowl, and maybe to see if Bull’s washer works. Considering she’s only ever seen him dressed in the same or similar clothes—sweatshirt, workpants, ball cap—she’s a bit skeptical that he might even own such a thing. But with her current state of finances, she could use a free wash and dry, so she looks around. She’s in luck— tucked into a nook off the kitchen is a stacked washer and dryer, and, hallelujah, even a bag of detergent pods. Fabric softener. It seems odd to think of Bull as someone who thinks to buy fabric softener. How little we know one another until we peek into one another’s homes.

  Laundry started, Ruby finds herself tidying up the kitchen. She’s sure Bull won’t mind someone doing the dishes, wiping the counter, the table, the floor if she can find a mop. She won’t do enough to imply the place is a health hazard, but enough to feel comfortable maybe eating her lunch at the table instead of in the van. The rain has started in earnest and the van can feel dank and cold on such days. She’ll bring in her laptop and fiddle around with an opening paragraph in her query message that she will send out to selected green tree matches. Something benign. But compelling. Interesting, but not shocking. Casual, not pleading.