The Dog That Whispered (20 page)

She leaned back in the couch, and within minutes she fell asleep, watching the silent weather, holding the remote in her right hand.

After only a few months of residency at the retirement complex, Gretna had realized an important truth: If you really want someone to talk to, find a person in a wheelchair.

“They can't get away,” she explained once. “They have to listen to you.”

That afternoon, after a lunch of a tuna salad sandwich and tomato soup, Gretna spotted Lucille in the main lobby, staring out one of the front windows, brightly silhouetted in the brilliant spring sunshine.

“Maybe she's having a good day,” Gretna said to herself as she made her way over to her. She scrabbled an upholstered chair closer to the window and the wheelchair. When she sat down with a loud huff, only then did Lucille take notice.

“Hello,” Lucille said, smiling, and then her smile waned and she appeared just a squosh uncomfortable.

“Gretna,” Gretna said, a little louder than she normally spoke. “Gretna. I know your daughter-in-law.”

Lucille brightened and nodded with enthusiasm.

“With the dog. With…used to have a dog. Furby. No, that's not it. Thurby? No. Thurman. Right? Used to have Thurman.”

“That's right. I did have Thurman the dog. He lives with my son, Wilson, now.”

Lucille nodded again and put her fingers to her chin.

“He is a good boy, isn't he?”

“He is,” Gretna replied, not knowing to whom Lucille was referring—but regardless, they were both good boys.

“And how is Emily?” Lucille asked.

Gretna was pretty sure than she did not know that her daughter-in-law had gone on a date with Wilson.

“She's good, Lucille. I saw her here with you yesterday.”

At that, Lucille brightened.

“Oh, yes. She was. Such a lovely person.”

Lucille folded her hands in her lap. In one hand, she held a handkerchief, the corner poking out like a rabbit's nose from an earthen hole. Gretna could see that the edges were done in a delicate lace.

I must have a whole drawer full of the same handkerchief. I should use them. I know Wilson will just throw them away after I'm gone
.

Gretna blinked hard, several times, as if to clear those thoughts from her mind, and to bring her back to the subject that originally brought her to Lucille's side that afternoon.

Gretna adjusted her chair, tugging at the arm, trying to lift it over a rift in the carpet, saying mean things to it when it balked—all so she could face Lucille while she talked. She sat down with another huff, this one louder than the first.

I guess I could have moved the wheelchair instead. That would have been simpler
.

“Lucille,” she began, her question plotted out even before lunch, “have you ever been surprised by God?”

Lucille tilted her head, like a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle, then smiled broadly. “I'm seventy-eight. I'm surprised every day I wake up and am not dead.”

Obviously, Gretna wanted a more serious answer.

“No, that's not what I mean. I know what you mean, but not like that. Not like that surprise.”

Lucille appeared deep in thought.

“Then like how?”

“Well, you know Thurman, right?”

Lucille smiled.

“He's a good boy.”

“Well, Thurman told me that I was supposed to be ready for a surprise.”

“Thurman?”

“Yes. Thurman.”

Slowly, Lucille made an odd face of acceptance.

“Okay.”

“And I told God that I was okay with that,” Gretna continued. “But I don't know what sort of surprise I'm supposed to be ready for, or looking for.”

Lucille offered a thinking frown, then replied, “Maybe you'll win the lottery.”

“That would be a surprise all right, since I don't buy lottery tickets. Every time the jackpot gets to a gazillion dollars I tell myself I should buy one, but I don't think I know what store sells them.”

Lucille appeared most assured. “Giant Eagle sells them.”

“They do?”

“I think they do. I think I have seen signs for them.”

“Do you buy them?” Gretna asked.

Lucille shook her head dramatically. “No, my granddaughter said I wasn't allowed to. She said they have terrible odds and prey on poor people who don't have any hope.”

Gretna accepted that and then asked, “Lucille, do you like having a granddaughter?”

Lucille squinched her face tightly. “I guess I do. She seems to have a lot of rules, though. I thought young people were all supposed to be hippies or beatniks or something and not wear bras or shoes and grow beards.”

“I guess they aren't,” Gretna replied.

“No, they are not,” Lucille replied.

Both women fell silent and stared out the window at two older women walking outside, in the real world, on the sidewalk, probably heading to lunch or tea or shopping at the Giant Eagle, perhaps.

Lucille spoke without turning. “You know you're supposed to be surprised by surprises, Gretna. Otherwise they wouldn't be them. A surprise, I mean. I think you should just let surprises happen and not try to worry them into your life. Because then, well maybe then they won't come and surprise you.”

Gretna looked over at Emily's mother-in-law and wondered if she was having a good day or a bad day.

So far, she couldn't tell.

Wilson sat at the kitchen table facing a small stack of ten-page descriptive essays from one of the three undergraduate courses he was teaching that semester. He preferred graduate courses, but when feeling charitable, he often felt that if he could make corrections early enough in a student's academic career, he might be able to prevent them from pursuing a writing degree if they were untalented, or nudge them to a more productive focus if they had glimmers of talent.

This class had a few promising students, a few not quite so talented but earnest students, more who were simply earnest, and a depressing few just occupying classroom space.

He clicked his red pen several times, and reluctantly pulled the first one off the stack and placed it in front of him.

Before he began to read, he tilted his head and listened.

It was Thurman. He was dancing, sort of, doing his version of a canine dance.

Wilson listened, leaning toward the family room, straining to hear.

Thurman's nails were clicking on the wood floor in the den, and he was mutter-growling something over and over to himself.

Wilson soon translated Thurman's mutterings.

Think. Think. Think
.

Thurman was repeating that word over and over as he danced about. Wilson could imagine the dog's back hips swaying, his back paws moving fast, trying to overtake his front paws, going to the left, first, then sliding back and trying the right side.

Think. Think. Think
.

Wilson knew Thurman was probably expecting, or thinking, that for sure he would be listening. He smiled, a weary, forgiving, amused smile.

“Thurman?” he called out, his voice not much louder than normal conversation.

The clackering stopped, the noise that nails made when skittering on wood stopped, then slowly started again, more sedately, and Thurman entered the kitchen, his face a mask of uncertainty.

Think?
he growled, posing the word as a question.

“I am, Thurman. Yes, I am thinking.”

Thurman looked up, smiled, and waited, as if making sure that Wilson was telling the truth.

“I am thinking, Thurman. I also have work to do. So…”

Thurman nodded. Then he appeared to want to change the subject.

Swim?
he growled.

Wilson offered a weary smile in return.

“Maybe later.”

Thurman frowned, then nodded, more to himself than to Wilson, and turned back to the family room. Once he was out of sight, the quick-paced clackering of the dog's nails started up again.

Think. Think. Think
.

After a moment, he altered the words of his mantra.

Swim. Swim. Swim
.

T
HE
D
ESERT
S
KIES
M
OBILE
H
OME
P
ARK
lay well outside of Phoenix, well beyond the standard residential areas and the standard strip malls and the standard four-corners-filled-with-four-fast-food-restaurants.

“This is like almost in the middle of the desert,” Hazel said as she approached the main entrance. “The website said, ‘Palm trees and views of the mountains.'”

As she slowed to make the turn, she glanced about.

“Mountains? Maybe if you stand on your roof.”

She drove slowly, trying to make sense of the numbering system of the flat parcels of land, each small lot with a mobile home unit perched upon it.

“But it is very clean and tidy.”

She rounded a corner.

“And it does have palm trees.”

As she faced a long, narrow stretch of black asphalt, the heat was already shimmering at ten in the morning.

“And it is hot. Really hot.”

She slowed even more, not because she needed to watch the lot numbers, but because a golf cart piloted by an older lady—a much older lady—wearing a thick sweater and a diaphanous pastel-colored scarf wrapped over her carefully coiffed hair and tied under her chin was in front of her Quest, puttering along at a very sedate nine miles an hour.

Or nine miles an hour according to the Quest.

Well up ahead, she spotted the number 12 on a small driveway, and it seemed to take another nine minutes to get there, Hazel unwilling to honk her horn, not knowing if honking was permitted, or if passing a golf cart was allowed at the Desert Skies. The extra time allowed her to take several deep breaths and to attempt to settle her nerves, which had been in a complicated jangle ever since she pulled off the main road.

“This will probably be a dead end,” she said, steeling herself. “And that will be okay. I didn't know anything about him before, and my life was fine. If I don't know anything more, my life will still be fine.”

She pulled off to the side of the narrow street, making sure there was more than enough room for golf carts to pass—two abreast, if the morning commute grew hectic.

She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror of the Quest. Her face, she thought, had grown more relaxed on this short journey. Even though she had many, many doubts and questions and uncertainties, she still felt more at ease, more at peace, and less stressed than she had ever felt in her prior life.

“Funny how having nothing to do, really, and no schedules, can make things more comfortable. Sort of. Kind of. Maybe.”

She got out of the Quest and gulped, the hot air hitting her like a lead fist covered by an oven mitt, and she gasped again, trying to find a breath that did not feel like it was beginning the process of cooking her lungs.

As she walked around the car, the screen door of the mobile home banged open. A scrawny older man stepped out, his legs appearing to swim in his khakis, and his Hawaiian shirt probably two sizes too large. But his gray hair, what was left of it, was neatly trimmed. He wore oversized glasses, as if unwilling or unable to tolerate any uncorrected eyesight at the sides of his field of vision.

“You Hazel?”

“I am. We talked yesterday evening. You're Woody, right? Mr. Atherton, I mean.”

He nodded.

“It's just Woody. You got your picture?”

“I do.”

“Then come on in. It's already hot enough out here to roast a lizard—and I mean that in the literal sense.”

Hazel followed him inside and felt as if she were stepping back into 1970. The wallpaper was a paisley riot of green and white with shiny metallic accents. The sofa was off-white. The kitchen, right next to the living room, was filled with white Formica counters and blond wood cabinets. Most of the lighting was provided by round translucent globes hanging from the ceiling.

But it was neat. Very neat. Nothing out of place, though it did smell slightly of fish and coffee.

“You can sit there,” he said, pointing at the sofa. “I got the pictures in the other bedroom. Didn't want to leave them out and clutter up the place.”

On the walls were a few framed military decorations: a folded American flag in a triangular wooden box, a porcelain eagle captured as if in flight on a shelf above an old-style television set.

Woody returned carrying a battered cardboard box with
PHOTOS/VIETNAM
written on it in black marker.

“I went through all my pictures after I saw your post on Facebook,” Woody said. “I had to use the computer in the rec center here since my computer went on the fritz. I studied the picture. Still have a good memory for faces. Not much else, I guess, but faces I know.”

Hazel might have asked why he hadn't gotten his computer fixed, or printed a copy of the Facebook post, or asked for a copy to be mailed to him—but she didn't.

He must have his reasons. And I'm here now, so what difference would it make?

He opened up the box and pulled out two black-and-white snapshots, each tinged with a sepia tone at the edges, indicating their age.

“Used to take pictures all the time back then,” Woody said with a hint of wistfulness in his words. “The guys in our photo unit would develop them for me for free, so I kept snapping away. I guess I shoulda taken more.”

The first picture showed two soldiers standing side by side in a tropical setting, palm trees in the background. Both young men, boys, most likely, made the “V” sign with their free hands. In their other hands they each held a rifle, the butt end against their thighs. One soldier wore a helmet, cocked at a rakish angle. The other wore a cloth cap with a wide brim.

Hazel held the photo close to her face. Then she brought up her photo of her mother and the unknown soldier and alternated looking at one and then the other.

“I sort of see a resemblance, but not all that much,” she said, a little regret in her voice.

“Yeah,” Woody agreed. “That one was a little of a stretch. But sometimes the mind plays tricks on you, telling you that things are there when they're not, telling you that the wind moving the bush in front of you is just the wind and not the VC. So, you know, better to have a second opinion than to trust a first impression. You know what I mean?”

Hazel did not truly know what he meant. Well, she sort of did, but not really. She had no knowledge of thinking that a moving palm frond was a person with a weapon wanting to kill you first. But she did understand being confused and wanting clarification.

So she nodded.

“I do. I do indeed.”

The second picture was of another young man, this one looking more gaunt and serious than the previous soldiers, standing in the open doorframe of some sort of helicopter, his hand resting on a machine gun, or some sort of large lethal-looking weapon, with a long barrel. The soldier's face was half-hidden in shadow.

The soldier was not smiling, but simply staring straight ahead, an absence of emotion showing, a blankness about his features, as he appeared to gaze at an object a thousand yards distant.

She had seen faces like that before, in books about war and battle, as if the men had vision, but had lost the ability to focus.

“This could be him,” she said after comparing the two photographs. “It really looks like him.”

“I thought so too,” Woody said. “I looked at a couple hundred other photos, but that one was the closest match.”

Hazel's heart began to race just a little, as if she was about to open the door on some new chapter in her life.

“Did you know him?” she asked, still staring at the man behind the gun.

“Not really. I mean kinda. Sort of,” Woody said. “I remember him always wearing a shirt with a panther on it. The T-shirts were from the University of Pittsburgh. I guess they're called the Panthers. I remember him saying he was going to school there, then to teach and write books, after all the killing was over.”

Killing? Killing?

Hazel did not say a word for a moment, and then another. She knew that wars could be brutal events, with death and all that, but never really considered, never fully embraced the possibility that the young man with her mother could have pulled the trigger of some gun and taken another person's life.

Woody's eyes wavered. He nodded, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

“No one wants to think somebody they know killed some other person. It ain't natural. I know. I know. I was lucky. Spent all my time on base. Was a corpsman. I saw plenty of death and busted-up buddies—but I never pulled a trigger.”

Hazel stared at both photos and let silence fill the trailer.

“I still have nightmares. About what I saw. Somebody dying right next to you ain't nothing you ever forget. When it happens over and over, well, then you get the night shakes. Never leaves you, you know? Never.”

Woody looked away, looked out the small window at the patch of very blue, very hot sky beyond, then wiped at his face with his hand. It made a small raspy noise of old skin scraping against stubble.

“Never gets easier, you know. Never.”

Hazel wiped away the tear on her cheek as well.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Atherton. I am.”

“Woody. Just Woody.”

She nodded.

“And it ain't that bad. I mean, I don't have it that bad. Some bad memories. But I came back with everything I went over there with. Not like some guys who came back busted up and crippled. I ain't complaining. Could be worse. Could be a lot worse.”

Hazel had simply not imagined this turn of events as she thought about the “what-ifs.” Instead, she imagined finding a name and an address and then blissfully going on a quest to solve a small mystery in her life. But now, she realized, that might not be a reality that could actually, eventually turn out to be real.

After what seemed like a very, very long time, she managed to eke out a question in a small nut-brown mouse voice.

“Do you remember his name?”

Woody turned to her.

“I ain't sure exactly. Pretty sure. Steel, I think. Last name, of course. Might be with an extra ‘e' on the end. Don't think I ever knew his first name.”

“Steele?”

Woody shrugged.

“Yeah. But he never signed up for reunion news of the 25th. Ain't on any register that I have. A lot of vets, well, they don't want to remember, so they ain't signing up for reunions and newsletters and all that. Some guys who saw combat do. But not many, I think.”

Hazel stared at the picture.

“Steele.”

Woody nodded.

“If I was you, I would check with that university. Maybe they have a record or something. Or make up some story for the Vet Department in Washington that you're related or something—but that bunch of crooks in Washington probably don't give a rat's…you know, about anything ‘cept their jobs.”

“University of Pittsburgh,” Hazel repeated, as if committing it to memory, although it was not a fact that would be easy to forget, like a phone number or a zip code.

“Yeah, start there. They probably have a department for vets or something. That's where I would go first.”

Hazel found herself nodding.

“Woody, can I ask a huge favor?” she said, holding the old photo at face level. “Can I take this to get xeroxed or something? I would like to show it to him…if I find him.”

Woody's face grew dark, then brightened.

“The computer in the rec center here. I think they got some sort of scanner thing. Could you do that? I…just don't want to let this get away, you know. I mean, this was one of the guys who went home, as far as I know. I want to keep that close, okay?” His voice wavered as he finished.

“Sure. I can do that. Will you ride with me to the center? Show me where it's at? And maybe I can take you to lunch?”

Woody took a deep breath and offered a weary, resigned smile, a half-smile.

“I can do that. Let me get my shoes. They got a real good deal at Denny's down the street. And I get a senior's discount, so I'll be a cheap date,” he said, now smiling broadly, as if greatly relieved.

“That would be great. I like Denny's too.”

Thurman must have heard the word “Emily,” because he began to do his dance in the hallway by the front door, the hallway where Wilson made many of his phone calls—always standing up, always pacing after the first few words were spoken.

“Hi. This is Wilson.”

Thurman danced about Wilson's legs, circling him twice.

“Yes. I enjoyed the play as well. Although I'm still not sold on the viability of the playwright. I still think he might be a flash in the pan.”

Thurman danced with even more abandon as he heard Emily laugh, her voice coming through that thing that Wilson held close to his ear.

“I was just wondering…if you would like to go out this evening and get a cup of coffee or something. I guess it would be a date, but a minor date, if there is such a nomenclature for levels of dating.”