The Dog That Whispered (6 page)

W
ILSON TOOK
confident steps to the end of the walk. Then he stopped, and Thurman stopped. And then the dog sat and looked up at Wilson, as if trying to determine what rhythm a walk with this person might take.

Thurman had walked with Gretna, and with her he'd paced so slowly that he could have navigated his way with eyes shut. In fact, he had tried that once, walking to the end of the block, trying to guess when they were close to the curb by the sound of traffic, judging the distance using Gretna's shuffled steps as a measuring rod.

Thurman had come close that day to counting it out exactly, opening his eyes only two small shuffle steps from the curb on Wilkins Avenue.

But with this person, Thurman did not possess the same manner of assuredness.

Wilson stopped. He looked both ways several times. He then looked down at Thurman and shrugged his shoulders.

“I suspect it doesn't matter which way we go, does it?”

Thurman growled in response, not being able to shrug like a person, but almost saying that he wished he could. It often seemed like the most fitting gesture in certain circumstances, situations where there was no right or wrong but only equally vague choices.

Wilson turned left, heading away from the house, heading east.

Squirrel Hill at one time was old Jewish, and Jewish old money. The houses were not what anyone might call palatial, but they were large and solid and brick and substantial, making a statement as to their owners—that they had arrived, that they had come to America from the old country and had made it and built a big brick home on a big lot and there was even a room for a garden in back, if so desired, or a gazebo or a patio with electric lights strung out over the expanse.

Wilson knew that the sumptuousness of the houses in this neighborhood could never match the sumptuousness of newer homes in trendier, more up-and-coming neighborhoods, but he liked it nonetheless. While the demographics were in a state of flux, to Wilson the area recalled a simpler time, a time when there was truth and beauty and permanence and solidness.

Now there was no solidness.

He walked along with some purpose. Thurman growled a bit as they trotted along, as if he was endorsing, or enjoying, the pace.

They turned a corner five blocks later and headed north.

Wilson must not have been used to the spring sun just yet and felt beads of some small perspiration on his forehead.

He was not fond of sweating, not like this.

The beads of sweat on his forehead were tangents of past memories.

He reached up, swiped them away before the salt and the sweat fell into his eyes. He slowed down, Thurman keeping pace, a step to his side and a half-step behind, like a well-trained dog should walk with a person, exactly how they should walk.

Wilson wiped at his forehead again.

“Maybe we'll do this at dusk, Thurman. It will be cooler.”

Thurman growled
Okay
and added that he didn't mind the warmth.

Wilson turned another corner and headed back west.

From the corner of his eye he saw a man at the top of a driveway. It was a slight incline—Pittsburgh was a city built on hills, after all. The driveway wasn't all that steep, but a car might have trouble climbing the expanse if snow were packed into a layer of ice.

Thurman saw the man too. He must have, because he slowed and offered a bark. Thurman had yet to bark in Wilson's presence. He did growl a lot, and mutter and whisper just under his breath, but this bark was new, and it took Wilson by surprise.

The bark was a friendly bark, a bark of greeting, if Wilson had been asked to classify the bark on some sort of dog/English translation grid.

The man at the top of the driveway was seated.

Wilson now felt obligated to stop and look, which he did not want to do—not with anyone—but Thurman did bark and that required something.

Wilson waved. Well, sort of waved. He reached up, palm out, and acknowledged the man.

“Dr. Steele,” the man called out. “Good to see you. It's been a while. How's your mother?”

Thurman looked up and growled.

You know man?

Wilson leaned forward, as if three inches of a closer view would bring anything into closer focus. He noticed then the wheelchair. And then he remembered.

“Dr. Killeen, how are you?”

“Just fine, Wilson. Your mother?”

“She's fine too,” Wilson responded, hoping the conversation would not go on much longer.

“Tell her I said hello, would you?”

“I will.”

There was silence.

Then the man in the wheelchair spoke.

“I see you got a dog.”

Wilson nodded.

“I guess.”

Silence.

Then Wilson waved and set off walking again. Thurman's leash grew taut before he began to follow.

Then the dog growled.

Who that?

Wilson wiped at his forehead again.

“It's a long story, Thurman. And not one I want to get into. Not now.”

Fog blanketed Portland in the morning, muffling and concealing, and to Hazel the outside environment perfectly mirrored how she felt. She padded about her smallish apartment, drinking only a single cup of coffee, unusual for any morning, even more unusual for a Sunday morning. She left the
Sunday Oregonian
newspaper on the kitchen counter, still wrapped in its protective plastic sleeve. She had not even bothered with toast this morning—again exhibiting a most unusual behavior.

Hazel never skipped breakfast.

She had the TV turned on and then off and then on and then finally off. The chatter of the Sunday press reports made no sense, and she was in no mood to sit down and attempt to concentrate.

The small sepia-tinted photo remained where she had placed it the previous evening, on the small desk that occupied a corner of the kitchen and from where Hazel managed all her finances and correspondence. A small laptop sat there as well. It was also dark.

She could not imagine trying to access Facebook that morning.

What would I post? “Oh, by the way, my mother was really married once. Sorry for the elaborate, decades-long façade.”

To complete a circuit in her apartment took a few dozen steps. The space was not large enough for a serious, soul-searching walk. That sort of activity had to be done outside.

Hazel didn't really want to go outside, not in this thick fog and mist, but the walls of the apartment grew inward, making the space even smaller, and any cogent thought had become much more difficult.

She pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, a mostly waterproof jacket, a wide-brimmed hat she had bought from L.L. Bean that promised to keep all rain off the back of one's neck. She slipped on her waterproof duck boots, grabbed her phone, and hurried down the steps to the street below.

Where to?

She did not stop to think, just turned right and began to walk. That direction was more level and therefore more conducive to contemplation.

Harder to think when you're panting up a hill
.

The fog, thicker than she had anticipated, really did muffle most of the sounds that morning. Traffic was always light on Sunday, but what traffic there was appeared to be mostly silent.

That's good…I guess
.

She kept walking, thinking about that photograph, that snapshot, and all that it entailed—or rather not thinking about that snapshot, pretending that it did not change a thing in her life, and then thinking that her life had just exploded and there was no one left to place the pieces even in close proximity to one another.

She walked on, feeling the fog sort of creep into her sleeves and under her coat and drip off the brim of her hat. The air was not exactly cold that morning, but the dampness and the fog and her sense of temporal dislocation gave her a severe case of the chills.

Hazel looked up and tried to figure out exactly where she was.

A pool of light illuminated the sidewalk on the next block.

A pool of light meant one of two things: a restaurant or a coffee shop.

She was hoping for the latter.

And it was. As she neared it, she recognized the place, having been there once before—Stumptown Coffee.

Coffee, lots of varieties, all fair trade, of course; handmade, mostly organic pastries; a hip, urban vibe, with hipsters in plaid and ironic camouflage—just the sort of place Hazel felt most out of place in.

But she was cold now and wanted to sit.

And perhaps think.

Or not think.

She ordered a medium-sized coffee.

The barista waited for extras and further instructions about the coffee, and hearing none, she shrugged and poured a regular cup of coffee into a regular paper cup, no markings on the cup, no foam, no flavors—just like Hazel liked it.

She planned on adding the half-and-half and the artificial sweetener at the mixing station and avoiding the possibility of any arched eyebrows from an anti-milk or anti–artificial sweetener barista.

There was an empty chair facing out to the fog-clogged street.

Hazel sat down with an audible sigh.

Loud, poignant sighs were probably not unusual in a place frequented by disparate hipsters offended by most of what goes on in the world. Certainly no one that foggy Sunday morning turned around to notice, or paid attention to Hazel's sigh.

She sipped at her creamed and sweetened coffee, feeling the warmth in her chest and stomach.

And then it was back to that photograph.

She almost wished that it had remained taped to the drawer, or wedged in the back of the drawer, so that she would never have had to deal with the fallout of its discovery.

But it did exist.

And the carefully constructed history of her life was now upended.

While it had been painful to think that her existence only occurred because of a fleeting affair with an almost nameless man, it was a history that she had inured herself to long ago. That history had become comfortable over the years, like an old pair of shoes or a well-worn shirt. The people who knew her best, her closest friends, knew that she had a gap in her genealogy—and they loved her in spite of it.

Perhaps their love was tinted with sympathy. Hazel suspected that of some of them, but sympathy was okay.

Now her version of the past, and of herself, had suddenly been irrevocably altered, changed in a twinkling, in the blink of an eye, and she was unsure of what direction to proceed.

Do I get angry with my mother?

She shook her head.

A little late for that now
.

But I am no longer a foundling…but I guess I never really was. A foundling, I mean
.

She sipped at her coffee again.

The fog was slowly burning off.

I wonder who he was
.

And then it hit her.

Is he still alive?

Was I born when they were together?

Did he ever see me?

Was he my father?

I suspect he was
.

He could still be alive, couldn't he?

And at that, she sat up straight. She pushed the hair off her forehead and stood up, put her hat back on. Stepping outside, she wondered what route would get her home in the least amount of time.

W
ILSON MADE
his way downstairs, holding on to the banister as he did.

How long have I been holding on to this just to make it downstairs without falling and breaking a hip?

Thurman had been up, Wilson surmised, ever since the garbage truck rattled down the street at 4:30 in the morning, crashing down the empty bins with an echoed din. But to Wilson's surprise, Thurman left the truck and driver alone, or rather, unbarked at. From the bay window at the front of the house, Thurman had a commanding view of the sidewalk and street. Wilson watched him sit there, observing traffic, wiggling and growling if a pedestrian walked past—especially a pedestrian with a dog in tow.

But no barks.

Must have been well trained before…before he came here
.

Thurman wiggled at the bottom of the steps, not at the very bottom, but a few feet away, as if intentionally leaving room for Wilson to get on solid, level ground first.

When that happened, only then did Thurman rush over and rub his head against Wilson's thigh. Wilson accepted the gesture begrudgingly, unwilling to tell him to cease and desist, although he was certain Thurman would stop it if bidden, but the dog also seemed to view this greeting as one of the most important rituals of the day. Only food seemed a bit higher in the dog's hierarchy of important events.

Wilson leaned over and stroked the dog's forehead.

“You want out, right?”

Thurman growled,
Yes
.

When Wilson's hand was on the doorknob, he added, as he had done every day now, “No swimming.”

Thurman, on cue, looked back over his shoulder with a disappointed look, and growled in reply,
Okay
.

Then Wilson went back into the kitchen.

By the time his coffee was ready, Thurman would be standing by the back door, staring in, as if he had been locked out for hours instead of a moment, overjoyed when he saw Wilson return, with cup in hand.

Thurman bounded inside, growling
Breakfast
as he rushed past.

While Wilson sat in his recliner with his coffee and the local news on the TV, he could hear Thurman's rustling crunch-chew-rustle-swallow routine with the fresh bowl of Friskies laid out next to the pantry door.

As Thurman ate, Wilson wondered if all of this—Thurman talking, him talking to Thurman, all of this—was simply a precursor, as it were, to some serious malady, some degenerative brain withering, some “slipping into the vast unaware.”

From the kitchen came an interruption in the nibbling and crunching.

He heard Thurman shake his head, his ears flapping like soft leather straps whacking on a wooden post. Then he growled,
No. No worry
.

Wilson smiled, then shut his eyes, and began to worry, just a little, and then a little more.

“You're not supposed to be here this week,” Henry Karch, an insurance auditor at the agency where Hazel worked, whispered as Hazel appeared in front of his desk, as if her being there while on vacation was some manner of corporate disobedience that might involve him somehow.

And Henry did not want that at all.

“I'm still on vacation, Henry,” Hazel said with some patience. “And I've already said hello to Mr. Shupp. So they know I'm here. It's okay.”

Henry glanced in the direction of the corner office, and, seeing no security guards hurrying toward them, not just yet, he relaxed, if only a little.

“Henry,” Hazel said calmly, “you know a lot about military history, right?”

Henry wore camouflage ties on occasion, and often mentioned, unbidden, his involvement in a war-gaming group that met in a basement room of the civic center twice a month.

“Maybe.”

Hazel reached into her purse, and Henry's eyes followed her hand closely.

She pulled out the photograph.

“What branch of service is this uniform?”

Henry leaned in closer, then leaned back, opened his desk drawer, and retrieved a rather large magnifying glass.

Why would he have a magnifying glass at work?
Hazel thought and was about to ask, but decided against it.

He did not actually touch the photo, but simply leaned closer and peered at it with intensity.

“That's easy. Army. Regular issue. Vietnam time frame. He's wearing a Vietnam campaign ribbon. Can't see his nametag. Well, maybe that's a W there. Could be. He's a corporal. No big deal there. Everyone was a corporal.”

Hazel's eyes widened.

“Wow. You can tell that much?”

“And he's from the 25th Infantry Division. The Army called it ‘Tropic Thunder.' See the divisional ID patch there? The soldiers called it the ‘Electric Strawberry.' I guess it does look like one, sort of. An electrified strawberry, I mean.”

Hazel turned the picture back to herself, hiding her mother's handwritten note, and stared at it again, as if hoping to see something different this time.

“Did they see much combat? The 25th?”

Henry shrugged.

“A good bit. The division was among the last to leave the country…when the war, such as it was, was ending. So, depending, this soldier could have seen a lot of combat. Or not.”

Henry looked up.

“Who is he?”

Hazel slipped the photo back into her purse. She looked at Henry. Her eyes were weary.

“I don't know exactly. Someone my mother knew, I guess.”

Henry nodded as if such requests were a regular occurrence at the sedate insurance agency, which they were obviously not.

“You could check with Facebook. I bet the 25th Division has a page. There would have to be some sort of veterans' group, somewhere. Maybe someone will recognize him. I mean, if you really want to find out. But Vietnam happened a while ago now.”

Hazel offered Henry an honest smile and then hoped he wouldn't interpret it as something else, and hurried toward the front door.

She was pretty sure he had already started misinterpreting it.