The Dog That Whispered (15 page)

But there were no lights. And there was no food left. Thurman had eaten when Wilson left, but that was a long time ago, and much before he normally ate dinner, and now he wondered if that had not been an early half-dinner like he thought, but his entire evening meal, which if it were true would have disappointed him greatly.

He climbed up onto the soft thing by the front window and stared out. Cars drove past on the street—they always did that—but not one of them stopped and not one of them contained Wilson.

Then Thurman brightened a little.

Wilson had told him something before he left…something important.

Then Thurman smiled, and he placed his chin on the back of the soft thing by the window, so he could keep a watchful eye out for Wilson.

He softly whisper-growled to himself,
Emily
.

Gretna sat in the rocking chair near her television set and rocked slowly back and forth in a steady rhythm, nearly matching the pace of her breathing. She did not sit in that chair often. “Rockers are for old people,” she had once explained. “A rocking chair makes them think they are being active.”

The TV was on and muted, as usual. Some manner of police investigation show was on, the lead characters peering into microscopes and holding fuzz-filled tweezers up to the light.

Gretna disliked those shows.

“Nobody is that smart. Especially policemen.”

Gretna had developed a distrust of virtually all manner of authority figures over the years.

She had been unsettled all evening.

Of course, she knew that Wilson and Emily were out together this evening, but “not on a date,” her son had explained.

“I know what it is, even if they're not calling it a date,” Gretna said to herself. “I don't see the need to hide from the truth.”

Then she stopped rocking and began to worry, just a little. She closed her eyes.

“I know hiding from the truth. And so does Wilson.”

She rocked, then planted her feet on the ground and stopped.

“But Thurman doesn't lie. He doesn't hide from the truth. Does he?”

And she sat there for a long time, worrying about Wilson and his ability to face the truth, and was not willing herself to face certain truths as well.

“And I don't want to bother God with this. Since I've already asked him so many times. He doesn't want to hear me complain about it anymore.”

She started rocking again.

Then she stopped to smile, if only to herself.

“And that's why he sent Thurman to us.”

Thurman spent five minutes totally apoplectic upon Wilson's arrival back home, unable to curb his enthusiasm long enough to go outside to complete his necessary evening constitutional.

Wilson waited at the back door, the door half-open, Thurman bouncing and wiggling and yipping and nudging his head against his legs.

After a long, forced bout of remaining patient, Wilson pretended to close the door. Still, Thurman bounded about.

“I am not going to tell you a word about Emily until you go outside, Thurman.”

At that, Thurman snorted, appeared to take in a deep breath, and pulled himself together—at least together enough to run outside in a rush. He spent only a moment or two out there, not worried, for once, about locating the perfect spot and attempting to determine who else had visited the yard in the past few hours, a process that could take upwards of twenty minutes, on a good night.

A very cursory run around the perimeter of the yard was all Thurman required that night, and then he was back inside, bounding and half-jumping again. His half-jumps were characterized by him pushing off with his front paws, and he would balance a moment on his back legs, even taking a few steps. He looked like a semi-inebriated amateur stilt-walker, if there was such a character, teetering on two uncertain legs that were not accustomed to bearing the full weight and balance of an adult canine.

Wilson took off his sports coat and carefully placed it over the back of a kitchen chair. Then he switched on the electric kettle and found the jar of instant coffee in the pantry. He considered using the pod coffeemaker, but it took too long to warm up and he really wanted a third cup of coffee that evening, this one at home, in addition to the two he'd had at the restaurant.

Thurman snorked at his empty food dish while Wilson puttered about getting a spoon and cup.

“No more food, Thurman. You ate. Early, but you ate.”

Thurman growled,
Bunkum
.

That appeared to be one of his favorite words.

Wilson measured out the coffee, water, cream, and sugar and stirred it, standing next to the sink. Then he sat down at the chair closest to the counter.

Thurman stared at him, a most curious look on his face.

Move
, the dog growled.

“Thurman, I can sit at any chair in the kitchen. Just because I always sit over there, that doesn't mean I can't sit here on occasion.”

Thurman growled
Bunkum
again, then readjusted his spot so he had a clear look at Wilson's face. Then he grinned and waited.

“You really want to hear about tonight?”

Thurman wagged his head up and down.

“Before I begin, I simply want to say that this is ridiculous—me thinking you want me to talk to you. Like you understand.”

Thurman appeared at first confused, then hurt.

“But it seems to help, Thurman. I mean, it seems to help me. To talk about things. Talking out loud is different than just thinking. The words feel different when you say them out loud. The meanings change when you add sound to thoughts. And emotion. Thoughts stay relatively unemotional. At least in my head, they do. So…that's why I'm talking to you. Not because you are some super-sentient dog creature that really understands.”

Bunkum
.

“Well, regardless. Or as most of my students say, irregardless.”

Thurman smiled and waited.

“The play was fine…for Shakespeare. Never liked any of them. His plays, I mean. Pretentious, now. And a little elitist, if you ask me. The play was written for the masses, but now only the educated get him, the Bard. Or overeducated, I would say. But it was tolerable. They cut a lot out. Otherwise we would still be there. The actors were most energetic.”

Thurman nodded, attempting to appear sage and wise, but Wilson knew that he had no idea of what a play was, let alone a Shakespearean play.

He sipped at his coffee.

Thurman growled, some nonsense growl, as if he was impatient for the story to go on.

“She said she enjoyed it. Emily. I think she did. And then we went to the Elbow Room for food.”

Thurman perked up at the word “food.”

“No, I did not bring any home with me, Thurman. And besides, we just had a few appetizers. No bones in anything.”

Wilson turned and looked out the window for a moment.

“Now I remember why I sit over there. So I don't have a window at my back. Bad luck…but you don't know about bad luck, do you, Thurman. Bad luck and death and stray bullets and a split second between being alive and being not alive.”

Wilson stopped talking and closed his eyes for a long moment. Thurman sat, silent and still, and let the memory happen, and almost overtake Wilson. Wilson opened his eyes, a faraway, lost look in them for a second or two. Then he looked over to Thurman with a fading smile.

“I haven't thought of all this in…well, decades now. Having my back to an open window. In the dark.”

Thurman did not grow impatient. He just sat and listened.

The kitchen grew quiet, save for the rhythmic hum of the refrigerator.

“He killed himself.”

Thurman looked up. His eyes appeared to comprehend the words, a sad look edging onto Thurman's usually happy face.

“Emily's husband. He killed himself. After he got back.”

Thurman stood and walked to Wilson and put his head against his leg, then rested his chin just above his knee, his eyes focused on Wilson's face.

“She didn't say a lot more than that. I didn't ask. I said I understood—as much as anyone can, really. She nodded at that, and it looked like she was trying not to cry.”

Thurman rose up and placed his front paws on Wilson's thighs.

“I know, Thurman. No one can really know what that is like. And I don't. But then…well, I do. I know. How close it can come. How hard it is. To never feel normal again. To know that you will never find ‘normal' again. That's paralyzing, Thurman. You're always different. Broken. But no one can see. And no one can help.”

Wilson took a deep breath.

“Don't you see, Thurman? The fact that it's me…and her…that fact…that death, his death, will always be right in front of us. Because it's me and not someone else who never knew what all that is like firsthand. How could it not be? With what I saw and did and lived through. She would look at me and there would be a reflection of her dead husband in that. I could tell that she saw that in my eyes. What happened to me…back then. I didn't want her to see that, but she did. I know that she did.”

He put his hand on Thurman's head.

“I don't think I can do that to her, Thurman. I don't think I can do it to myself. I don't want to remember. It took too long to bury it all.”

He stood up and left the half-filled coffee cup on the table and walked toward the stairs.

“I just can't do it, Thurman. I can't.”

H
AZEL TRAVELED
west until she reached the ocean.

She loved the ocean, even in Oregon, where the seawater was only a step above frigid and the skies blustery most of the time and no one went swimming unless they were from Canada or wore a wetsuit.

She had vacationed there several times, in little hotels along the coast. The towns were small, the restaurants few, and the crowds minimal.

She considered it all so perfect.

And with the ocean in front of her, the sharp tang of salt and the scent of seaweed filling the car, she turned left, heading south, and would drive with the expanse of water on her right shoulder the whole way to California.

And with each mile she drove, with each mile more distant from Portland, she grew lighter, she felt more at ease. Leaving the town of her birth had not felt traumatic, not at all. Nor would it in the future, she imagined. She felt a momentary tug over leaving her mother's grave, but told herself quickly that her mother was not there, and there was no one to judge her for not visiting the cemetery a prescribed number of times.

“No one will miss me,” she said aloud as she drove through Waldport on the coast.

“Well, maybe there are a few people, but I can stay in touch with Facebook,” she said aloud as she drove through Coos Bay.

She stopped at Sharkbites Café for lunch and ate three fish tacos while staring out at the main street that ran through the small town. There was chatter and conversation all about her, and she didn't listen to any of it. She simply let the voices and the words and the laughter and the clatter of dishes and silverware flow over her, like a noise rainfall, not letting any of it penetrate, not hearing any specific word.

She felt immune, for that moment, from being connected.

As a child, and as a young woman, she often was at the edge of things, at the edge of a group, at the edge of a lunchtime gaggle of girls, at the edge of a school dance—not in the shadows, exactly, but not in the spotlight either.

And when that had happened in the past, standing alone on the fringe of something, there was a part of her that yearned to be closer to the circle, to be inside the circle, but that was not usually the case, or it happened very infrequently. And years ago she had given up on wanting that inclusion. It was not hard. She did not suffer because of it.

Being alone is not the same as being lonely
.

And now today she had deliberately placed herself adrift, floating free, much like a lost buoy would drift in the ocean, unanchored, letting the water carry her, not worried about where the end might be, where the final safe haven would be—or even if there was a safe harbor at the edge of the horizon.

It doesn't matter now. I'm free
.

Hazel smiled at the thought of the lost buoy. There was a small snug of a bittersweet feeling as well, but all of it, all her former unhappiness, her former feelings of estrangement, her sense of being alone…had vanished.

No, not vanished
, she thought.
But gone. I let them go. And they're gone. And I feel…

She paid her bill, left a generous tip, and walked out into a sunny afternoon, squinting and smiling.

I feel reborn
.

And she walked down the street to her Quest…

I love that name
.

…and started the engine, and headed south, toward golden California and then to the heat and the sand and the clarity of the desert city of Phoenix.

A phoenix gets reborn
, she thought.
And maybe that's what will happen there
.

She drove on, and after a few minutes a less pleasant thought came to mind.

But don't phoenixes have to crash and burn before being reborn?

She felt a chill.

I should have read more Roman mythology…way back then
.

Or was it Greek?

Gretna watched three weather reports on three different television channels, each relaying the same basic facts: warm temperatures and no chance of rain. She looked out her window several times and decided that for once, those overpaid script readers had been telling the truth.

She did not want to get caught in the rain.

She laced up her running shoes.

“They're running shoes?” she'd exclaimed when she bought them at the Payless shoe store across the river. Wilson had taken her there for the express purpose of finding a pair of cheap shoes. “I'm not planning on running,” she had sputtered, trying to unlace them.

The clerk had convinced her after several minutes that walking, not just running, in the shoes would be perfectly fine.

“Lots of people buy running shoes,” she said, “and they never run anywhere.”

Gretna had eyed the short salesperson sporting a nose ring with head-tilting suspicion.

“Why don't they call them walking shoes, then?” she asked.

The clerk smiled wearily. “We have lots of walking shoes, but all of them are more expensive. I don't know why,” she added preemptively.

So Gretna wore a pair of semi-high-tech running shoes anytime she went for a longer walk.

Today she had a long walk planned.

And had even called in advance of her journey, to make sure people would be where they were supposed to be when she got there…or rather, the person would be there.

She knew the way. After all, she had lived in this neighborhood all of her life, save for the few years spent in that horrific, blisteringly hot place—Florida.

“Pardon my French,” Gretna would sometimes add if she used harsher words when describing her exodus into the apparent retirement capital of the universe. “Never should have moved. Should have come back right away. Learned my lesson.”

Despite having grown up here, she looked at the local map she kept in a desk drawer. She wore her glasses and traced her route with a finger, naming each street that she would take to get there.

Other residents of the retirement complex had gotten lost walking around the block, completely baffled by how to get back to where they came from. Gretna did not want to become one of those enfeebled seniors who appeared confused over simple matters like directions.

She set off with a determined lift in her steps, estimating that the walk there would take perhaps twenty minutes, maybe less.

It took seventeen minutes.

She timed it so she could estimate the return trip.

Probably take ten minutes longer. Gas in the tank will be lower then
.

She saw him before he saw her.

His eyesight is probably going as well as everything else
.

She waved from half a block away and he did not respond.

She waited until she was at the bottom of the drive. Then she called out, in a gentle, welcoming voice.

“Pastor Killeen.”

His head bobbed up and he leaned forward, lifting himself slightly, painfully, from the cradle of his wheelchair.

“Gretna, is that you?”

She walked up to him and took his hand.

“It is. It's been a while.”

The old man nodded.

“I saw you with Thurman…When was that?”

“Over a month ago. Maybe longer.”

Pastor Killeen nodded again.

“And how is Thurman? And Wilson, of course.”

“They are both fine,” Gretna replied. “Thurman is doing better than Wilson, by the looks of things. But you probably guessed that.”

She grabbed a lawn chair that was leaning against the corner of the house and unfolded it, the legs screeching out a rusty complaint. The webbing appeared sturdy enough, but Gretna sat down carefully, making sure that she would not be deposited on the asphalt in an undignified heap.

“Dogs have the edge on humans, Gretna. They seem only to have the present—that is, the only thing they truly know is right now. Whatever happened to them in the past, painful or happy, doesn't follow them about like a boomerang, or as if some cloud of past mistakes hovers over us, always threatening to drench us in cold reality.”

Gretna smiled.

“Hey, that's good, Pastor Killeen. You should write that down. Write a book or something.”

“Thanks. But, no. My days of thinking that I can write a book have faded. Nowadays, if I can get one good idea out, I'm doing well.”

She laughed.

I think he meant that to be funny. Didn't he? It didn't sound like a complaint. But then, I was never that good at reading these religious people
.

They sat together in the warm sunlight, Pastor Killeen turning his face to the sun as if trying to absorb as much warmth as he could. Gretna sat and thought about her reason for being there today.

She finally broke the silence.

“I know I was not the best churchgoer,” she said, her tone as much explanatory as apologetic.

Pastor Killeen shrugged. It appeared that it took him some effort to do that—at least to make the shrug an obvious gesture and not simply a slight roll of his shoulder.

“I was cranky,” Gretna added.

“Faith comes in all sorts of packages, Gretna. I never minded different behaviors in people who came to church. At least they were there and could hear the truth.”

Gretna scowled at his insinuation that she was a “package,” but let it go.

“You're here on a mission, right? You have an issue, don't you?” Pastor Killeen asked, an empathetic tone to his question.

Gretna snorted. “Don't psychoanalyze me, you old goat. I'm not the problem.”

She tried to add a laugh at the end, as if she was pretending to bluster—which she wasn't—hoping it would be enough to mollify any umbrage that Pastor Killeen might have dredged up over her former criticisms, now years and years old.

“Okay, Gretna. I'm old enough to know what battles to pick. It's not you. Then who?”

She looked at him, then away, then stared at the black asphalt.

“It's Wilson.”

Pastor Killeen waited.

“I'm worried about him.”

Pastor Killeen waited.

“He's damaged.”

Pastor Killeen waited.

“Is he too damaged?”

Then Pastor Killeen spoke. His tone was soft, understanding, yet solid, as if this was not his first time dealing with people who had suffered and could not or would not let that suffering go, would not release the pain. Or could not.

“Has he talked about it? With you? Or with anyone?”

“No.”

Pastor Killeen waited.

“He talks to Thurman. That's what Thurman said. Or was trying to tell me. I think. Something about the past. I'm sure. Maybe Thurman isn't sure what war means. Dogs, even a dog like Thurman, do not understand everything, do they?”

If Pastor Killeen thought it odd, or peculiar, or alarming that Gretna had been in conversation with a dog, he made no mention of it.

“When did he come back…Wilson, I mean? How old was he when he returned?”

“Twenty-four.”

Pastor Killeen took a deep breath.

“I was there too, Gretna.”

She turned to him, obviously surprised.

“Where? You?”

“I was a chaplain in the Army. For eight years. I did three tours in Vietnam.”

She looked into his face, trying to see into his eyes, now a little cloudy, a little less penetrating than they had been when he stood in the pulpit.

“So you know? I mean, you understand?”

Pastor Killeen shrugged again.

“Maybe. No one really knows what another human goes through. Some soldiers can do things and simply box them up and never think on them again. Others can't. So they find ways to cope. By not getting close to anyone. By hiding behind alcohol or some other substance to self-medicate. By blaming others. No one likes pain. No one enjoys terror. Or horror.”

Gretna shook her head.

“Wilson doesn't blame anyone, I'm pretty sure of that. And he doesn't drink, more than a glass or two, once in a while, if that. In the beginning, maybe then. But that was a long time ago. Maybe he doesn't drink at all anymore.”

Pastor Killeen waited.

“But he is alone,” Gretna said, her voice now small and mouselike.

Pastor Killeen waited.

“He came back damaged,” she said. “I didn't know what to do. Then he went to school and became a professor and everything seemed fine. That's what I told myself.”

Pastor Killeen waited.

“But maybe it wasn't.”

Pastor Killeen nodded.

“Gretna, war is a terrible thing. Terrible. Horrific. Seeing people cut in two by bullets. Or firing those bullets that cut people in half. It squeezes on your soul. It is hard, Gretna. It is very hard.”

Gretna sniffed. She might have been fighting back a tear. She was not a woman who shed tears freely, or easily, or often.

“Is he too badly damaged? I don't have that much time left,” she said, her hands open to the sun. “I want him to be normal.”

“I know, Gretna. I know.”