Now and Again (33 page)

Kelly thought he was joking, but the captain just eyed him in the steady way he had when he was being serious or when the joke went over his head. “Hey, man,” said Kelly. “We've got scientists 'n' shit, so we know those are stars, not the points of any swords.”

“We
had
scientists,” said the captain. “We had weapons inspectors. We had the biggest intelligence agency in the world. Anyway, I'm just saying that if they told us those stars were cosmic swords hurtling toward us ready to attack the earth, we'd man the rockets and blast the stars to smithereens.”

“If,” said Kelly. “If that's what they told us, I guess we would.”

“I'm just saying that we wouldn't know not to. I'm saying that once you believe certain things about the world, other things become possible, even inevitable.”

Kelly didn't say anything.

“I guess my point is that we all did stuff over there. We all did stuff we're proud of and we all did stuff we regret and maybe you don't get one without the other in this life. It was stubbornness and vanity that made me send that convoy…I wanted to finish the school. I wanted to be in charge and to think I could know what the best course of action was, given the circumstances. Danny's right about that—none of us knows shit.”

“We regret it, but that's only because we're back here. If we were over there, we'd do it all again.”

“Could be,” said Penn. “Could be you're right.”

The two men stood for a while contemplating the night sky before resuming their patrol. Kelly said, “The other thing I think about is if Pig Eye killed himself on purpose. The blast was going to get him whether or not Danny stopped the truck. So my question is, did he sacrifice his life for ours?”

“Knowing him, he probably thought he'd come through it just fine. He liked to imagine escape scenarios.”

Kelly laughed. “Yeah. He prided himself on that.”

They had circled around past the car parts shop. Penn went back inside, after which Kelly spent a little longer mourning Pig Eye and the other men and what he had always thought of as stars but now imagined were swords from a murderous extraterrestrial race. And then for some reason he was thinking there must be pretty girls in New Jersey, girls who wouldn't fall apart too easily when things got rough. He didn't know where to find them, but somewhere out there, the love of his life was standing in the moonlight wondering what was taking him so long to find her.

M
aggie pulled a map of Phoenix out of its cellophane pouch, and after consulting it, she headed north. The bus station was located next to a busy airport. Planes were skirling overhead, and cars rocketed in all directions on roads that hadn't been built with pedestrians in mind. When she finally succeeded in detaching herself from the airport's grip, it was the pedestrians who surged around her with nearly lethal force, who knocked into her as they chased after unruly children or shouted into their cell phones or waved placards in her face and hissed, “Why are we rescuing animals when so many babies are being killed?”

Oh, for heaven's sake, thought Maggie. Why can't people get along!

A red-faced woman thrust a pamphlet into her hand. A bearded man stood on the corner shouting, “Half the people entering an abortion clinic don't come out alive!” Someone else said, “Let the baby choose!” while across the street, an equally enthusiastic band of counterprotesters carried competing signs and shouted slogans of their own.

A smile is like a rainbow, Maggie told herself. So she smiled at the bearded man. She smiled at the red-faced woman. She smiled at a girl who rushed after her spouting a complicated story and causing a narrow miss with a panel van. “I'm sorry!” Maggie called out to the driver, who waved a fist at her. It didn't help that she hadn't slept in over a day. It didn't help to be sweaty and hungry and short of breath or that the heavy backpack was cutting into her shoulders and neck.

When a man in a Hawaiian shirt called out, “This way, this way,” she allowed herself to be swept up in a swarm of cheerful vacationers and into a large arena that smelled of freshly dug garden soil and sour beer and doughy concoctions frying in deep cauldrons of hydrogenated fat. Instead of asking to see her ticket, the ticket-taker opened the gate for her when her duffel caught on the turnstile. “Come on, come on,” he scolded. “You're holding up the line!”

Inside the building, people were crowded around a railing stuffing food into their mouths and cheering on a pack of frantic-looking dogs that were racing around a wide dirt track. Maggie bought a cheese sandwich and ate it as people holding winning tickets elbowed past her to a row of cashier windows. Then she wandered around in search of a restroom and found herself in front of a long, skirted table covered with glossy brochures.

“Do you want to adopt one of the dogs?” asked a large woman who straddled a stool that was pushed back from the table to accommodate her paunch. “This is our annual adopt-a-thon.”

“No, no, I can't,” said Maggie. “But why are they for sale?”

“They're not for sale,” said the woman. “They're free to a good home if you pay the veterinary charges and adoption fee and make a donation to the rescue center.”

Maggie picked up one of the brochures. Inside it were pictures of big-eyed dogs with bony faces and names like Little Bo's Majestic Queen. Apparently the dogs, which had been bred for speed, were not young enough or hungry enough for victory, and their owners didn't want them anymore. “I couldn't give it a good home,” she said, putting the brochure back on the table.

The woman handed her a thick stack of photographs. “The dogs are in cages now. I'm pretty sure you could give it a better home than that.”

“At least they're safe,” said Maggie.

“Actually, they're not. The ones that aren't adopted will be euthanized.”

Maggie riffled through the stack of photos she was holding. A dog's name was written in black marker across the bottom of each one. “Dancing Dinero,” Maggie read from the top card. “That's kind of a fancy name. What would you call him for short?”

“What about Dino? Dino is cute. But feel free to look through the entire stack. You might find a dog you like better.”

“I don't really like dogs,” said Maggie.

“That's like saying you don't like babies,” said the woman, but all Maggie could think of was Tomás. She pictured him trotting along the sidewalk behind her or scratching at the screen door, hoping to be let inside the house.

“We take credit cards,” said the woman. “And debit cards and, of course, cash.”

Maggie had a pocket full of rainy-day money, but taking the animal was out of the question. “I don't live in Phoenix,” she said. “I don't even have a place to stay.”

“Then you can really empathize with these dogs,” said the woman. “Imagine that you not only didn't have a place to stay, but that someone was waiting to haul you off and jab you with a lethal dose of pentobarbital if you couldn't find someone to take you in.”

Maggie was silent. The woman beamed out her disapproval from across the table, while Dino stared mournfully up at her from the photograph.

“I'll tell you what. If you adopt one of the dogs, I'll tell you where you can stay for free. You'll make back the adoption fee in just a night or two.”

When Maggie still didn't say anything, the woman said, “So Dino is the one you like?”

“Isn't it more important that the dog like me?” asked Maggie. “It wouldn't seem right to send him home with someone he isn't comfortable with.”

“Not that you're headed home,” said the woman. She rang a little bell that sat on the table in front of her and added, “The dogs are all very friendly. If they weren't friendly, they wouldn't be candidates for adoption.”

“What happens to the unfriendly dogs?” asked Maggie.

“Most of the dogs are friendly,” said the woman. “Really, almost all. But where is Peggy?” She rang the bell again, and this time a person with an oily ponytail and frizzy bangs entered the room holding a nylon leash. “It's been wonderful chatting with you,” said the large woman. “Now, if you'd like to meet Dino, I can have Peggy introduce you.”

Maggie followed Peggy through a door into a room lined with tiered rows of steel cages. As soon as the women entered, the dogs in the cages started to bark and pace back and forth in the tiny space allotted to them. Maggie was immediately reminded of the prison. “Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed. Suddenly it didn't seem right to leave Dino in a cage when she could so easily do for him what she might never be able to do for Tomás or George. She mentally added the vet bill to the adoption fee to the donation and came up with sixty-five dollars. Dino was a mere sixty-five dollars from being free—she couldn't turn her back on him now!

“Don't look straight at him,” instructed Peggy, handing her a bone-shaped biscuit. “He will interpret that as a threat.”

Maggie turned sideways and stretched out the hand that held the treat. “Hello, Dino,” she said, but just as Peggy was trying to coax the dog out of his cage, a logical corollary occurred to her: the same could be said of all the dogs incarcerated there. Sixty-five dollars would free each and every one of them, and there was nothing, really, to distinguish Dino from the rest of them except that his card had been on the top of the stack. What if some of the other dogs were more deserving? She should probably choose the one that was poking its nose out between the bars of the cage rather than slinking into a corner the way Dino was doing. Or the one that was happily wagging its tail. But then she stopped herself. She had already exhausted the subject of merit and rights in thinking about Tomás. A creature shouldn't have to earn its freedom, so being more or less deserving didn't come into it. Besides, what if Dino's card had been on top for a reason? But still she stood paralyzed by the grooming table, and only when Peggy called out, “Here he is!” did Maggie close her mind to further thought.

“Crouch down like this,” said Peggy, dropping to a squatting position. “And hold out your hand for him to sniff.”

The large woman trundled into the room with some paperwork for Maggie to sign. “The Catholic Charities is in an old church,” she said. “I've written down the address right here on your adoption agreement. If they don't have room for you tonight, at least you can get on their list for tomorrow. And here is a starter kit with some dog food, a complimentary water bowl, and, of course, a leash.”

Maggie squeezed the dog's things into her luggage and put the adoption papers into her pocket with the map. “I never thought of myself as a dog owner before,” she said.

“Guardian,” said the woman. “Owner isn't a word we like to use.”

D
ino lumbered along at Maggie's side as she walked north and then west into the setting sun. Whenever she passed a couple walking hand in hand, she wished Lyle were there to see the palm trees and the pretty red-tiled roofs and the line of muscled mountains that turned from pink to purple in the fading light. Now that the sun wasn't beating down from above, the source of heat seemed to be the sidewalk beneath her feet, and she wondered again if the earth was the living thing and if all of its creatures were merely parts of a larger organism. Every now and then Dino sat down, so Maggie would stop to catch her breath and consult the map before encouraging him forward with gentle tugs of the leash.

It was nearly dark when she found herself in front of an old stone church. The spires and arches and leaded windows set Maggie's heart to soaring until she remembered something her mother had said about how steeples were meant to strike fear into the hearts of wandering marauders by resembling giant swords. Even churches are weapons, she thought. When a security fixture mounted on an adjacent building came on, throwing daggers of light between the etched black branches of the trees that grew in the space between the buildings, she made her way up the pitted stone steps and tugged at the heavy door, but it was locked. “It will take more than that to foil our plan,” she said to Dino, who looked as if all of his plans had been foiled long ago.

She felt her way along a narrow path that led through a tangled garden, past a statue of Saint Francis and a dry fountain where concrete birds had come to drink, and then through a weedy plaza where the path abruptly ended. Maggie found herself facing a crumbling wall topped with a spiky iron fence. Just when she was about to retrace her steps, she noticed a small sign that was only visible because the security light was shining directly on it. The sign said
DELIVERIES AROUND BACK,
and an arrow pointed to a gap in the wall she hadn't noticed in the darkness. Maggie scrambled through the gap and found herself in a dank courtyard where a series of concrete steps led down to a grimy basement door.

Before trying the door handle, Maggie whispered, “If God wants me to find Sandra Day O'Connor, the door will open.” Dino took a step forward at the sound of her voice, but he jumped back again when the door sprang open. “If God wants me to free Tomás and George, there will be a place for us to sleep,” Maggie said to Dino as they slipped inside.

The church basement was windowless and dark, but as her eyes adjusted, Maggie could make out an opening, and through the opening, a narrow stairway led up to a landing where a small window allowed some of the security light to filter through. Just off the landing was the sacristy, complete with a tiny bathroom and running water, and through the sacristy, the sanctuary and long, narrow nave of the church. Maggie's footsteps rang out on the stones of the center aisle, and her heart nearly stopped when a cat jumped from a pew and hissed at her. Dino's ears pricked for an instant and then flopped back against his head. Maggie searched in vain for signs of the Catholic Charities, but except for the cat, the church appeared to be abandoned.

“This can't be right,” she said to Dino. “Unless we're in the wrong place, or unless the Catholic Charities has moved.”

Maggie's feet hurt. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since she had left home, and her heart sank at the idea of having to find another place to sleep. She sat on one of the pews and said a little prayer. Just as she said, “Amen,” it occurred to her that she was in the right place after all. Ever since getting off the bus, her moves had been anything but random: the protesters had frightened her into crossing the street; the tour guide had called, “This way, this way,” as if he had been waiting for her; the ticket-taker had opened the turnstile without asking for her ticket; the adoption lady had directed her to the church; the security light had come on just in time to illuminate the delivery sign; the sign had pointed the way to the door—a door that had opened almost by itself! Now her presence in the church seemed inevitable rather than inadvertent. She clasped her hands in front of her and whispered, “Thank you for watching over me, Lord. If you tell me what to do, I promise to do it as best I can.”

It was the first time in her life Maggie had made a promise to God and the first time she had felt him so near. As she waited, a little awed by the solemnity of the occasion, the tiredness lifted from her mind and body. She felt happy and hopeful and filled with certainty that she was exactly where she was supposed to be and doing exactly what she was supposed to do. “I won't rest until I free Tomás and George,” she whispered. Then she found some cushions and lap blankets in the choir stalls, poured some of the kibbles onto the stone floor, and filled the complimentary adopt-a-thon dish with water from the sacristy bathroom before settling herself and Dino for the night.

The next day, Maggie took Dino with her and sought out the attorney, who assured her he had once been an actor and knew exactly how to play these things. “Ha, ha!” he chortled when Maggie failed to respond. “It's just a little joke—never mind. But it's true that actors make great lawyers. Frankly, it's the secret of my success. Sometimes I feel sorry for my opponents, but not too sorry, of course—that was another little joke.”

Maggie had expected someone young and vigorous, but the man's hair was white and he leaned heavily on a gnarled stick. “Experience,” he said. “That's the thing you're paying me for.”