Dead Dogs and Englishmen (14 page)

Friday nights always seemed
hotter than other nights. Maybe I was tired by Fridays. Or maybe it was because Fridays led to a weekend where I didn't have a whole lot planned. I don't know why Friday nights were different, but I was miserable. When I was married to Jackson there was always something to do—drinks with another professor and his wife; an appearance by one of the Hopwood authors and then taking her back to the Michigan League, to her room and maybe talking until dawn. Sometimes the writers stayed with us. If they had big egos and I was in for a four-hour drunken treatise on the depth of their work, their time at “Princeton” (always said with an affected air)—the evening was a chore. If the writer only got a little drunk and had stories to share—that was a good night. If the writer was British and wanted to sit, with fingers tented under his chin, pontificating on the terrible state of literature in America, I left him to Jackson. If the writer was interesting, actually liked people—and even let a few of Jack's best students come over for a dose of wisdom—those were my favorite times. Now I couldn't tell a Friday night from any other night—except that they were always hotter, or colder, or wetter, depending on the season, than other nights.

I watched Sorrow dig a hole in the dirt and lie down against the cool earth. I wished I were lucky enough to be a dog and could lie down against the earth. Instead I lay on a chaise on the deck, put a cold wet rag on my head, drank a lot of the iced tea I'd made earlier which wasn't too iced any more, stared out at Willow Lake, and thought about nothing much.

Until a voice beside the deck sent me leaping about three feet, straight up, out of my chaise.

“Didn't mean to scare you, Emily.”

Harry stood down on the brick walk, his old, colorless eyes peering at me through the railing.

I invited him up, offered a glass of warm iced tea, and waited while he looked out at the lake, up at the sky, around at the woods—taking stock of where he was. “Came to talk to you about this dead dog thing what's goin' on.”

“Words getting around?”

He nodded. “Lotsa folks worryin'. Don't know if you or Dolly heard but there's animals coming up missing. Heard it was happenin' from way north of here to down almost to Cadillac.”

I relaxed back in my chair. “Dolly didn't say anything …”

“Well, mostly people thought their dog just ran off. You don't call the police about a thing like that. Even Old Mrs. Wilkie, up to Mancelona, was sayin'—when I ran into her at the feed store—that her cat just up and left.”

He nodded a few times as if getting his mind going. “Then some of us started talkin' and it seems like there's way too many just to wander away. I mean, we was countin' there at the feed and seed and it was like ten animals we know of.”

“What do you think's happening?”

He shrugged, his old suit jacket bunching way up behind his neck. “Can't say we came up with anything. Thought maybe you'd know. I mean, with this dead dog over on Old Farm Road. You and Dolly solve that one yet?”

I had to admit we didn't have a clue about the dog. But I told him about the dead woman being a Mexican agent and that the migrant workers up here were scared because dead dogs had been thrown in their yards.

Harry only shook his head. “What's this world comin' to, Emily? I ask you. All the farmer's want to do is get their crops in and get ready for next year. Now here's this awful thing goin' on.” He gave me a sorrowful look. “If I knew one damned bit that would help, I'd even tell Dolly about it.”

“Do you think these missing animals are connected in any way with the murdered Mexican agent?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Sure hope the two of you women clear it up pretty soon.”

I agreed as Sorrow pulled himself from his dirt hole and came up the steps to lay his head in Harry's lap.

Harry gave me a worried look. His grizzled face wrinkled so his eyebrows met his nose. His thin lips worked at each other. “You know, Emily. You got yerself mixed up in this stuff now. Stories are right there in the paper with your name attached to 'em.”

I waited. There had to be more.

“You think about your dog, here? I mean, if there's something bad going on and they're stealin' animals, you ever think maybe they'd come for Sorrow?”

“I'm only a reporter.”

He shook his head. “Folks up here know how you and the deputy work together. Word gets around.”

“It seems like some kind of Mexican thing …”

He shook his head. “Doubt it. You know, evil's evil, no matter where you're from. I'd maybe think about it.”

The thought chilled me. I still had the picture in my head of that dead dog laying out in that hot field and wasn't going to shake it anytime soon. My face must have told Harry how the thought frightened me.

“You want, I could take him over to my house. Keep him right there in the kennel with my dogs.”

I thought a moment, picturing Harry's wire-fenced kennel with a pack of mean dogs he used as watch dogs. I shook my head and thanked him but said I'd get Sorrow away from there if I thought he was in danger. Harry stood, nodded a few times, walked down the steps, and was gone without a good-bye or any other word. He'd delivered his warning. His job was done. I could sense the relief he left behind him.

_____

What I did have to do that evening—hot or not hot—was read the chapters of Hawke's work. I was getting together with Dolly and Jeffrey the next day. Who knew where I'd end up with that pair, or how much of Saturday I'd have to read? Sunday morning at nine I was seeing Cecil. This evening was all the time I had to concentrate on that poor little kid locked in a basement while his mother entertained her boyfriend—who owned a dog named Freddy—upstairs.

For writing like Cecil Hawke's you had to steel your head against images people wouldn't want lodged there. I steeled myself—it was just a job. As they said in the Godfather movies:
it's business.
Nothing to do with me. Not like reading true crime. I could separate myself from a dark basement and a bleeding little boy.

I took the manuscript from the envelope. I got myself a yellow pad to write on. I got myself a red pen. I sat down in the living room—with two fans going—and began to read.

_____

The manuscript said Chapter Two, but there was no connection to the chapter I'd read earlier. The boy—or who I thought had to be the same boy—was now a teenager. There was no basement, no dog, nothing from the first chapter.

He stepped into the street and waved at Mrs. O'Riley, out on the stoop watching for neighbors to complain about. The old woman waved back. Her face lighted with a broad smile when she saw him—her favorite among the teenage boys on the street. He knew because she told him so. “Yer my very favorite around here, Tommy,” she would say to him and pinch his cheek. Then she would ask about his mother, remarking she hadn't seen her lately and he would tell her again how his mother was in a sanitarium, getting over the TB she'd caught. “Could be years,” he would tell Mrs. O'Riley again and shake his head. He knew how to look sorrowful, even force a tear from one eye. It was a neat trick that came in handy, especially with nosy, old ladies.

I wrote on my pad: connection between chapters? Transitions?

I read on. The boy walked to a fruit stand at the corner of the street where he filled his pockets with apples and ran off before anyone noticed. His next stop was the market where he stole an air freshener and candy bars. Then he was back home, eating a candy bar while sitting on the kitchen floor. He had to kick newspapers and empty cans away to find a place. When he finished the candy he tore the cover from the air freshener, opened the basement door while holding his nose, then slammed the door shut.

The good thing about the story was that I was catching on. He'd killed his mother or she'd died somehow and he didn't want to have to leave his house. The bad thing was that the story was making me sick. This boy, this ‘Tommy,' was obviously deranged. I didn't like stories where kids were killers. I didn't think the public much liked stories where kids were killers. Maybe I was wrong. It wasn't what I would write, but there were all kinds of books out there. Still, I made a note to tell Cecil this could be a hard sell.

I went back to reading, going carefully over each sentence, marking misspellings and problems with grammar. I pointed out a couple of lapses in logic—where one sentence didn't quite connect to the sentence that came before. Then came the worst—I had to begin to think of something to say about the work—so far—as a whole.

I wrote down: great promise. I wrote: structure off a little but the writing is good.

I put that away and read the next chapter.

The boy had someone staying with him at the house, a girl he met after school one day. She came up to him with her hand out, a grimy mitten with dirty fingers clutching at him. Since he was lonely, he brought her home and explained about his sick mother and not wanting the social services taking him from the house. She was astonished that he kept such a secret but smiled and agreed that the two of them could do just fine without adults interfering with what they wanted to do.

“Won't this be fun fer the two of us?” Her small, freckled face beamed at him. “Not like what I ran away from, my mum and her boyfriend treatin' me like junk. We'll be playing at keepin' house.” She stopped a minute and thought. “But don't you go gettin' no funny ideas. I may be thirteen but I've seen more than you can ever guess.”

Robin fell back into what had been Tommy's mother's chair, let her legs hang out front and her arms clutch at the soft arms. “It ain't bad, ya know, Tommy. Maybe the smell in here. I think you should be takin' out the garbage. But the rest. I'm with you.”

I read on. The two played loud music and tore up furniture when they felt like it. I wondered if I was reading a modern
Lord of the Flies.
Would these kids create a new world in this odd house of theirs? Would they sink to animal-like behavior? And where was his mother's body? I doubted very much that she was in a sanitarium. Dead. Walled up. But the smell—I wasn't born yesterday. Of course the mother had to be dead in that basement. If this new girl found out, would she turn on our Tommy? Probably not, I thought, and read on. If nothing else, Cecil had my interest.

Next chapter and Robin was gone. Tommy was alone in the house again, sweeping up the cans and papers and cardboard boxes. He scrubbed the floor. He picked up rugs and stuffed them into the washer. He washed dishes and scrubbed the stove, cleaned out the empty refrigerator. When the house was spotless, he set another air freshener on the top step of the basement stairs.

Now I was really creeped out, which was a good thing for Hawke's book, I supposed. He was getting to me. I had a morbid desire to keep going, figure out what the boy was doing and what was coming next. It wasn't the usual feeling I got reading a well-written book, more like I wanted to have my mind washed out and forget I'd put such things into it. I wouldn't be telling this to Cecil Hawke. I'd say I found his writing compelling and that while it wasn't the kind of thing I usually read, I still found it interesting.

Good enough. Enough of an ego stroke to keep the job. Not really a lie.

Next chapter: the boy was unlocking the door to his house. He seemed grown now. A young man named Nelson was with him on the front steps. Nelson was a nineteen-year-old from Australia, come to England to make his fortune. They stole beer together, were close pals when the chapter began, went into the house and sat at the kitchen table, drinking as they made plans to rob Mrs. O'Riley, Tommy's nosy, talkative neighbor. Tommy'd heard Mrs. O'Riley had gold jewelry her husband gave her years ago. Nelson said the old bitch didn't need it, not at her age.
Serves her right if we did her in.
And then he looked at Tommy slyly, watching to see his response to the idea of murder.

Wow, I thought. A murder per chapter. The guy'd overdone it. I'd have to tell him as much.

Our Tommy, now quite the criminal, knew a man who would take the gold off their hands. Nelson was excited by the prospect of cash in his pocket and went over and over the plans with Tommy
. “And if the old bitch finds us in there, she'll call the cops, ya know. I wouldn't like that. I've got a criminal record already. You think you can do what we'd have to do to shut her up?”

Tommy laughs but Nelson wants a blood oath. They cut the palm of one hand, mingle their blood, and agree they're ready to take on the old woman and any other old women who get in their way.

Tommy thinks of the two of them as invincible. If a boy can kill, he tells himself in his bed that night, if he is afraid of nothing, he can rule the world.

I read on, hoping for a redeeming quality to surface before Mrs. O'Riley got murdered for her gold. I came across nothing. The robbery took place though Mrs. O'Riley was not home and so lived on. Not because of a change of heart in either of the boys, but because she was at the doctor's and the waiting room was full that day, which she came home complaining bitterly about to the neighbor who'd taken her, only to find her house ransacked and her precious jewelry gone.