The Dog That Whispered (10 page)

W
EDNESDAYS WERE
Wilson's late-start days at the university. And his first class today was even later. He had given his first class, a graduate short-story-writing class, the day off to work on their final projects—a complete short story (of at least seven pages) that they would submit to various journals and magazines for possible publication.

In the past, one or two students with actual writing ability would get picked up for publication right away, and a few others of the more middling skills would find an audience in more arcane, smaller university “literary” publications, while the majority of students would simply get rejection notices.

Most of these rejections would be chalked up by those writers who had been rejected as grievous errors made by shortsighted and elitist editors who wouldn't know good writing if they tripped over it.

Wilson knew that to be untrue, but he no longer felt the need to set everyone straight, no longer felt the need to burst dreams and make students wonder why they had spent thousands of dollars on a graduate education.

The publishing world will take care of that
, he told himself,
and it doesn't need me to protect it from inept and immature writers
.

Today, during a wonderful late spring morning, with a warm breeze and the first full greening of the maple tree and its welcome shield between his house and the insufferably cheerful Heasleys, Wilson luxuriated in spending most of the morning in the kitchen, with his electronic tablet and multiple cups of coffee as he read through an entire issue of the
Pittsburgh Press
, the formerly preeminent Pittsburgh newspaper, now published only online.

Thurman wandered into the kitchen several times that morning, mumbling to himself, looking up at Wilson, tilting his head, snorting on occasion, all in an effort, Wilson surmised, to get his attention.

Up until now, Wilson had resisted the dog's efforts.

The last time, Thurman walked away, back toward his bed in the den, mumbling
Boring
to himself over and over.

Thurman seemed to latch on to words, Wilson discovered, and repeat them over and over, as if in an effort to memorize them, or memorize how they sounded or how they were formed in a dog's mouth.

Around 11:30, Wilson heard Thurman get up, stretch and yawn loudly, shake himself awake, his ears doing their usual flapping against the top of his head, then with methodic, careful steps amble back into the kitchen.

Wilson thought he saw a more resolute look on Thurman's face, as if this would be the time he was successful in rousing the seated person to do…something. Go for a walk. Maybe make lunch. Maybe share his lunch.

Thurman seemed to stop at that idea—or at least Wilson thought he was stopping at that idea.

Hungry
.

Wilson shook his head back at the dog.

“You had breakfast. The Internet says that dogs should only eat twice a day.”

Thurman appeared hurt.

Bunkum
.

Wilson shrugged.

“Maybe so, but that's the truth I'm going with.”

Thurman sat down, a little deflated. Perhaps a little peeved as well.

Then Wilson stood up, the chair squealing just a bit on the tile floor of the kitchen. Wilson had replaced the rose-motif linoleum decades ago with a very sturdy dark slate tile.

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

At this, Thurman lit up, bounced to all fours, did his back-end-moving-first cha-cha dance, pranced, and jumped with the joyful enthusiasm of a newborn goat.

“Okay. Once around the block.”

They got to the front door.

“Leash or no leash?”

Thurman looked up, and appeared to give the options some thought.

No leash
, he grumbled, grinning.

Since Wilson and Thurman had been going for walks, Thurman was nothing short of a miracle dog on a leash, never pulling, never straining, never trying to run ahead of Wilson's pace. A few weeks prior, Wilson had experimented with Thurman off the leash, and he'd behaved the same as on it. Walking without a leash was easier for Wilson. He did not enjoy being tethered together, being tied to someone or something else. It felt so constricting.

“All right. No leash. But no chasing things. No running into the street. Okay?”

Thurman looked up, still grinning.

Okay
, he growled.
Walkie-walkie-walkie
.

And they set off, Thurman all but prancing at Wilson's side, head butting his leg every few paces, growling happily, not really saying anything, but Wilson could tell that the dog was in a good mood.

And Wilson was in a similar mood.

That doesn't happen all that often. To have a living creature here with me, and for me to be evenly modulated and almost happy. It has been a long time
.

Thurman bounced and sniffed and growled his greeting to a bevy of pigeons clutching onto a set of overhead wires.

They must not have understood “dog,” because instead of chirping back, they all turned their eyes to Thurman, making sure that this was not one of those dogs that could climb trees—or fly.

The two walked on to the end of the block and turned to the north.

Midway down the block, Thurman stopped and looked to his left. Actually it was more than a look. It was as if Thurman was pointing, ready to go retrieving, following the millennia-long instinctual path of all retrievers.

Wilson turned to look.

At the top of the driveway was a figure in a wheelchair.

Thurman barked, then turned back to Wilson.

Wilson did not want to stop, did not want to engage in any conversation, but Thurman appeared so earnest, so wanting.

“Go ahead,” Wilson said softly.

Then he looked up and waved.

“He wants to say hello, Dr. Killeen. He won't bite. At least he hasn't so far.”

Thurman was already at the top of the drive as Wilson finished, and he bounced around the wheelchair, growling happily, sniffing, and grinning.

Dr. Killeen leaned forward as best he could and extended his right hand. Even from the street, Wilson could see the tremors. Thurman stopped and let the man put his hand on his head. He began to stroke the dog and Thurman growled his happy, contented growl.

Wilson walked up and stopped a few feet away.

“Thurman, right? That's his name, right?” Dr. Killeen said.

Wilson nodded.

“You've got a good memory.”

Dr. Killeen grinned.

“It may be the only thing that still works. And I'm not so sure some days.”

Wilson nodded.

“You and me both.”

“I saw your mother again a few days ago. Walking Thurman.”

“She had him for all of two weeks and she still considers him to be her dog, I guess.”

Thurman bounced and growled,
That's right
.

But Dr. Killeen did not appear to understand him.

Must be like developing an ear for a foreign language
, Wilson thought.

Dr. Killeen drew his jacket closer around his chest, despite the fact that the temperature was in the mid-seventies. Wilson was not sure exactly what condition or disease or malady Dr. Killeen had. All he knew for certain was that he had been in a wheelchair for at least ten years, maybe more. He had retired from full-time pastoral work at the large Presbyterian church in Shadyside a few years before his…infirmity appeared. Wilson's mother had attended his church for a long stretch following her husband's death, and she had told Wilson that she liked the teaching and preaching, disliked the music. Gretna Steele did not suffer through many services where “something was off-kilter.”

“The music sounds like medieval caterwauling,” she'd said.

Wilson himself had never attended.

“And Emily Gold was with her,” Dr. Killeen said. “That was nice to see.”

Wilson did not show his surprise, but he was surprised.

“You know Emily?”

“I do. Not as well as I knew her husband. I mean, I knew them both. But more her husband.”

Thurman paced down the driveway and then back again, sniffing virtually every square inch of the bushes that lined one side.

“He was in the military, wasn't he?”

Dr. Killeen nodded.

“Special Forces. An officer. I forget which rank. Served several tours of duty in the Middle East. Maybe in Afghanistan as well.”

Wilson listened and remained silent. He simply did not know how much to probe, how much to let happen, how much people were willing or able to tell others. So as a matter of course, he seldom asked follow-up questions, questions his mother would have had no problem in asking and re-asking until she was satisfied. Wilson guessed that it was because he'd lived with the ambiguity and uncertainty of his past, he could accept both in his daily life now.

“He's dead, you know.”

Wilson nodded as Thurman padded up to them, his tongue lolling out to one side, appearing like a deranged participant in some manner of frat-house bender during spring break. At least that was the image that flashed in Wilson's thoughts.

“I do. Well, my mother said she was a widow. I guess that means the same thing.”

Dr. Killeen nodded.

“It was one of the most painful experiences in my work as a pastor.”

Wilson reached down and patted Thurman, having absolutely no idea if he should ask further questions or simply look like a sympathetic listener.

“He came back to the States damaged. Not physically. But something broke. He couldn't readjust. And I couldn't help him. I tried. We tried. Emily. Me. And others.”

Dr. Killeen raised his left hand to push an errant wisp of hair off his forehead. His hand trembled the entire time and it appeared to Wilson that it took a great effort just to raise it up.

Then Dr. Killeen looked up at Wilson.

“You know what that's like, don't you, Dr. Steele? Coming back from a war.”

Wilson stepped back. In the span of a second, his heart lurched and sped up, and he could feel a bead of sweat at the back of his neck.

“Maybe,” he finally said. His voice was less than a whisper. “Maybe.”

Dr. Killeen offered a weary smile in return, as if he had heard such equivocations before, as if he knew the certain futility of pressing the issue, then he looked at Thurman. “Thurman, look at me.”

Thurman did as he was asked, staring at the old man with a focused intensity that only dogs could exhibit.

“You tell him, Thurman. It has been too long. It's time.”

Thurman appeared to nod, looked back at Wilson with a look of great compassion, then back to the old man.

He growled.

Wilson knew he said,
I will
.

But Wilson knew that only he and Thurman heard it.

Hazel walked down the street to her car, feeling lighter and more unfettered than she had ever felt in her adult life.

Maybe it was like this when I was a little girl. Maybe
.

She got her car keys out of her pocket.

But I don't remember it. Not really. Not this way
.

She paid the parking fee with a twenty-dollar bill and drove toward town. The safe-deposit key was in her right pocket. She could feel the ridges. It was a most comfortable feeling.

She retrieved her stock certificates and asked to see Mr. Hild.

I guess I have a personal banker now
.

Mr. Hild was all smiles when he escorted her to his desk.

“I didn't expect to see you so soon,” he said.

Hazel wanted to shrug but thought that shrugging was not a proper way to deal with financial matters.

Instead, she laid the envelope on his desk.

“I want to sell it.”

Mr. Hild raised an eyebrow.

“The stock, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

Hazel had been sure, almost since finding out that she was now middle-class wealthy. It had not been a difficult choice. In truth, she had discovered that making a million-dollar decision was easier than making a choice of breakfast at Denny's.

“Yes.”

Mr. Hild waited a moment, as if the waiting was a personal banker sort of behavior to ensure that clients were telling the truth.

“If I hold on to some of it, then I'll worry about it. I'll keep asking myself if it's time to sell or not. And that's not a problem I want to have. I wasn't worried before I knew that I had it, and I don't want to be worried now.”

Mr. Hild nodded gravely, if one could nod with a grave attitude.

“I understand.”

“I want you to sell it for me. You said no fee, right?”

“That is correct. However, it would be our hope that you may keep some of that money here at our bank. But there would be no restrictions to our offer.”

Hazel found herself smiling.

“I will keep most of it here,” she said.

“Thank you,” he replied, his relief most evident in his thanks.