Safer (23 page)

Listening to her, I almost wonder why it took
me
so long to figure all this out. When Maya says it, it all sounds so obvious. And she’s not even finished.

“Did you know that, according to records on file at the Safer Places administrative office, last July marked the lowest number of active neighborhood association volunteers on roster at any time in the previous three- year period?”

I can’t say that I knew that, either.

“It’s a fact. How’s your beer?”

I look at my glass. “Not bad.”

She says, “I think I’ll order that one next.”

“That’s funny. I was looking at yours and thinking the same thing.”

“I guess we think alike.” She smiles. “You were telling me a story about Roger Mallory?”

I COULD HAVE BLAMED THE DOG.

Wes had been in a bad way since mid- September. Even before things went sour between Roger and me, I’d noticed that the dog’s gait had twisted and gone crooked, finally deteriorating to the point that he no longer accompanied Roger on his morning walks back into the woods.

Still, on more than one morning, I’d seen Wes follow Roger outside to get the newspaper, dragging his haunches as though his hind legs had quit on him. He’d lost control of his bowels by then, earning himself a bed and a space heater out in Roger’s garage. His bark had gone silent, and he’d begun losing teeth. By the time the leaves started falling, the neighborhood squirrels, rabbits, opossums, and raccoons had come to enjoy free passage where Tyrannosaurus Wes had once stood guard.

I’ve always heard that old dogs can sense when the end is
near. My own childhood pooch, a sweet- tempered mutt named Bruce Banner, had lived sixteen years before limping off one eve ning into the New Jersey woods, never to return.

But old Wes hadn’t given up yet. As the weather turned cool, he’d developed the habit of dragging himself after Roger’s Yukon whenever Roger backed out of the garage.

I’d wondered about that. Was the broken- down shepherd clinging to the same blood- bred instincts that made an untrained young herd dog prone to chase cars? Did the old dog recognize, in the sound of the truck’s engine, that his owner would be roaming farther afield than he could on foot? Or was the roar of the motor just too loud inside the garage?

No matter the reason, the result was the same nearly every time Roger left the house on wheels.

Step 1: Back out of the garage.

Step 2: Here comes Wes.

Step 3: Dog trips the invisible safety beam, causing the garage door to stop, change directions, and roll back up again.

Step 4: Stop truck, get Wes. Take him back in.

Step 5: Close the garage door from the inside.

Step 6: Reexit house through the front door.

Maybe two times out of every ten, Wes either failed to make the garage door before it closed to the ground, or he failed to rouse himself, period. Those occasions of respite left Roger free to go about his business without interruption.

I’d wondered about that, too.

Why not find some way of penning the dog in? Surely it wouldn’t take much. Did the 20 percent chance that Wes wouldn’t come scrabbling out of the darkness really make it worth going through the entire process the rest of the time?

Or was Roger clinging to the 80 percent? Maybe it encouraged him to see Wes hanging tough. Maybe Roger reserved, for the dog, the same optimism he apparently couldn’t spare his neighbors. Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to tether the old boy.

How did I know so much about Roger’s comings and goings, and whether Wes followed him or didn’t? I guess I must have been watching.

On a gray afternoon in November, Roger left the house in a hurry. I assumed that he must have been preoccupied, because he didn’t stop to wait for Wes, and it turned out to be one of the dog’s good days.

By the time Roger turned out of the circle and sped away down Sycamore Drive, Wes had dragged himself to the end of the driveway, gathered his hind legs beneath him, and begun hobbling down the street in pursuit.

It was an empty weekday in Sycamore Court. Sara was still on campus. The Sewards and the Firths were at work. The Firth twins were at day care, Brit was in school, and I’d seen Michael leaving for the restaurant when I’d returned from my last class of the day twenty minutes earlier.

So it was me and Wes against the world.

And my quarrel with Roger certainly didn’t extend to the dog. I grabbed my jacket, went to the kitchen, and got a few cubes of stew meat from the package I’d picked up at the butcher counter on my way home. Poor Wes had made it almost to the stone pillars at the mouth of the circle by the time I caught up with him. He’d collapsed onto his side and had laid his head on the ground.

“Hey there, buddy.” I gave him a scratch and stroked his dull coat. He thumped the sidewalk with his tail. “That’s a boy.” I stooped down and gathered him up in my arms. “Here we go.”

He was shockingly light for such a big guy. I could feel his knobby bones through his skin. I straightened and carried the dog back up the sidewalk. In Roger’s garage, I settled Wes in his bed and held out my hand. He couldn’t chew the stew meat, but I held it for him while he licked my palm and fingers.

A foul smell rose up, half sweet, half rancid. I looked down and noticed a glistening brown puddle on the sleeve of my jacket.

Wes had leaked. As soon as I noticed the mess—now feeling the warmth on my arm—the smell became overpowering. I had to look away to keep from gagging.

Wes stared up at me with sad, tired eyes, as if in apology.
This is what it comes down to,
he seemed to be saying.
One damned indignity after another.

I left the cubes of meat on the concrete floor where he could reach them. After a short search, I found a roll of black plastic garbage bags, tore one free, and slipped out of my reeking jacket as deftly as I could. I dropped the jacket in the bag and tied the top shut.

“Okay, buddy.” I gave the dog one last scratch between the ears. “You take it easy.”

Wes whined a little. Thumped his tail.

I ran the garage door down and went inside.

If you were to stand outside—by the swing set in the common, say—and compare our house with Roger’s, you’d probably see more differences than similarities.

Other than being made out of bricks, they don’t seem much alike to the eye. Roger expanded his second story at some point, and he’s built two or three additions onto the main level over the years. His chimney faces north, ours faces south. His windows have shutters, and his roof is shingled. Our windows are bare, and we have wood shakes.

But I’d noticed early on that our two houses must have been built around the same time, most likely by the same builder. If you look closely at Roger’s place, you can see, in the midst of his modified sprawl, that the basic architecture is actually the same as mine.

Our houses started out as mirror images of each other. The truth is, if you take away sixty- odd years of development, our
houses aren’t much different from the new homes going up in South Ponca, all of them starting out on bare lots, all seemingly cut from the same two or three plans.

I’d never actually been
inside
Roger’s house before that afternoon.

My intention hadn’t been to snoop. It started on my way to the front door, as I passed a shelf of wedding pictures. I stopped to ponder a much younger Roger: handsome, athletic, ready for anything the world had to dish out. Clair Mallory—formerly Clair Stockman, according to the framed invitation standing nearby—had been a pretty bride. Her eyes seemed full of sparkle. Her hair framed her face in glossy black spirals.

Before I knew it, I was moving around the living room, browsing photographs. A few faces from the wedding party could be found in snapshots of Roger posing with fellow officers from the force. I spotted his best man, assorted groomsmen, the father of the bride—all tuxedoed in one set of photos, uniformed in the other.

It felt uncomfortable to be wandering around in Roger’s house, and not just because I hadn’t been invited. The whole atmosphere reminded me of my grandmother’s old house in Cresskill, after my grandfather died: outdated, too quiet, too neat, not a throw pillow out of place.

But who
was
this guy? Roger Mallory. Who was he really?

There were no lingering smells from recent meals in Roger’s kitchen. The living room had a curious, unlived- in quality. Even the air in the place felt trapped and stale, or at least it seemed that way to me.

I found myself lingering in one corner, at a built- in bookcase filled with family snapshots. There were photos showing Roger and Clair in a hospital room, holding their new baby boy. Photos of the boy toddling around in a diaper and a cowboy hat. Growing into a dimple- cheeked kid.

There were photos of holidays, vacations, first days of school. Christmas presents unwrapped very near the spot where I stood. One photo showed Brandon Mallory at six or seven
years of age; he had a birthday hat on his shaggy mop head and a German shepherd puppy squirming in his arms. In the photo, Brandon Mallory is beaming at the camera. Puppy Wes is licking his face. Clair Mallory is laughing, caught half in and half out of the frame, one hand on her hip, the other touching her mouth.

My feud with Roger seemed profoundly silly just then. Of course it was unreasonable for Roger to think that he could dictate who lived in his circle. But then, by some measures, it was probably unreasonable to continue wasting food on an old dying dog.

Thinking back to that moment—remembering how I felt, looking at a single faded snapshot of everything Roger Mallory had lost—I know that I would have made an effort to change things between us if Wes hadn’t started barking.

I never blamed the dog.

AT FIRST, the barking confused me. It wasn’t much of a bark, more a series of whines, but it came from upstairs, not from the garage.

I went out and checked on Wes. He was asleep with his mouth open, dry tongue lolling. He pawed feebly at the air with one foreleg; I imagined him chasing the neighborhood rabbits and raccoons in his sleep. While I watched him, a thin whine gathered in his bony chest, releasing in a quick yip. I heard the sound in front of me and behind me at the same time.

I closed the door, went back into the house, and followed the sound upstairs to the second floor. The first door off the staircase was closed. On the door hung a faded Iowa Hawkeye football poster. I could tell by the crusty old adhesive marks that the poster had once been taped at the corners. It must have fallen down eventually and been tacked back up with pushpins.

I looked at the dark blue
Property of CFPD
sticker pasted to the door above the poster, right about chin level.
Brandon.

The door was locked. The game schedule printed on the Hawkeye poster was from eleven seasons ago.

Across the hall, the next door had the same dark blue property sticker, marked with the same young handwriting:
Mom and Dad.
Also locked.

I heard Wes growl once, then fall silent. I walked down the hall to a third door, pushed it open, and poked my head into the room.

Roger’s office. Bookshelves, file cabinets, stacks of papers. A cluttered bulletin board. Even a trash can with trash in it. So far, it was the only room in the house other than Wes’s corner of the garage that looked lived in.

Beneath the eastern slope of the roof sat a big old Leopold office desk. On the desk sat a computer, a stapler, a tape dispenser, a gooseneck lamp.

And a Graco brand baby monitor, obviously receiving transmissions from the garage.

I had to smile. One story below, Wes yipped again; on the monitor, the red signal lights ramped up and fell away.

I looked around. Beneath the western slope of the roof, there was a couch and a coffee table, a small television. It wasn’t unlike the reading nook I’d set up in my own office, except that Roger’s couch had a bedsheet draped over it, a pillow against one arm, an old patchwork quilt thrown over the back.

In the wrinkled bedding I could see that this wasn’t just Roger’s office. He slept in here.

I scanned the walls. There were diplomas from high school, college, the police academy. There was a shadow box displaying Roger’s badge and sergeant’s stripes on dark blue velvet. I saw a variety of civic service awards for the Safer Places Organization. A framed letter of commendation, signed by the governor. There were group photos of the classes that had graduated from the Citizens’ Academy Roger taught through the police department.
Photos of Roger in a suit, shaking hands with people who looked important.

And now I felt like a legitimate intruder.

I really had no right to be up here, and it was past time to go. Still feeling moved by the photographs I’d seen downstairs, I went over to Roger’s desk and sat down in his chair. I’d intended to leave him a short note:
Wes got out. Heard the monitor, came up to make sure all was well. Can we talk? Paul.

While looking for a piece of scrap paper to write on, I found my own credit card statement beneath the tape dispenser. For a minute, I couldn’t quite decide what I was looking at. I could see my name and address printed at the top. I could see that it was the statement I’d just paid.