The Man Who Watched the World End (22 page)

The ticket booth h
as a colony of thirty mixed-breed feral dogs living inside it. You couldn’t pay me to go there now. The screams of dying animals would echo across the empty park. Instead of little kids waiting impatiently for the next ride, kittens and puppies hide from the bears and wolves while they wait for their momma to come back with food, if the momma can avoid the hundreds of other animals and return at all.

Everything has gone to hell. The happiest places on earth have become littered with animal carcasses. Random a giant brown bear lumbermeget sp bones
scattered in random places. If I hadn’t spent the day cleaning up Andrew’s shit and feeling sorry for myself—no one is coming to save us; we are truly alone—I might be writing instead about how nice it would be to imagine a bear and a dog having their picture taken in the same cutout where Andrew and I once posed. It’s just not one of those days to be writing about happy things.

I lost my patience with Andrew again today.
He chose the exact moment I was repositioning him on the sofa, with one of my hands around his shoulder and the other under his leg, to crap himself. It squished against my palm. Pieces of liquid shit pushed through the cotton khakis he was dressed in.

“
God damn it!” I yelled.

At that moment I swear I would have fought him if he had turned toward me and said, “Stop you’re whining
, it’s just a little bit of crap.”

I paced back and forth across the living room while Andrew remained motionless and speechless,
devoid of any embarrassment at the mess he had made.

“Son of a bitch,” I screamed, not at him, but at the neighborhood in general. It did not make me feel any better.

One glance at my helpless brother was all it took for me to feel ashamed of my outburst. There was nothing he could do about changing his circumstances. I washed my hands before apologizing to him.

It took all of my strength to get him back into his old position on the sofa. And when it was done, I was out of breath and desperately in need of a glass of water. My chest was on fire. I felt lightheaded.

I sat next to him on the sofa until I stopped shaking. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

I wouldn’t have
yelled at him if the Johnsons were still here, or, at the very least, if there was a chance someone might find us.

Andrew and I are over another round of colds. One reason Andrew is lucky: he doesn’t have the reflex to cough. He gets all the same colds I get, but as I walk from room to room announcing my presence and departure with long strings of hacking coughs, he sits perfectly still as though the frogs in his throat don’t exist. Perhaps the frogs in his throat are Block frogs.

The days have become difficult for all of us. Andrew’s arm shows signs of irritation where the IV for his nutrient bag goes in. He hasn’t had an infection there since he was a baby. Either he is growing weak in his old age or I’m not doing as good a job of disinfecting the needles.

Andrew would think me insane if he knew what I did today. He would break out of his spell long enough to say, “You’re crazy if you give that dog water. You’re just encouraging more animals to come up to our house.”

I don’t even know if that would be his opinion or not, but it seems like something my parents would have said. I transfer their voice onto him since he doesn’t have one of his own. Each time a voice in the back of my head reminds me to get the day’s chores done before I relax in front of the TV, I think it’s something my parents would have said to me when I was younger, and because of that I think of it as something Andrew would say to me now. The same thing happens when I hear a tiny voice reminding me to clean the food processor before going to sleep. A clean kitchen keeps bugs away. “Yes, mom,” I would have said as a kid. “Okay, Andrew,” I think to myself now.

In an attempt to gauge my brother’s reaction, I look over at him each time the dog arrives on our porch. On the days when I’m in a bad mood, Andrew would tell me to leave the dog alone. When I’ve had a good day, Andrew would say it might be fun to have a pet; it would be like old times.

The dog gave cautious sniffs while approaching my patio. The bowl of water, it seemed, might be a trick of some kind. It’s possible the dog caught my scent on the bowl and questioned if it could trust this strange creature that lives inside a house while the other surrounding animals all live in the woods. Its head rose then, expecting an attack party from the woods, but for the moment at least there was nothing around to harm it. It didn’t stay for very long after having the water. I blame the constant shuffling of unknown predators lurking in the forest brush.

I have to admit part of me would like the dog’s company at the edge of my driveway while I’m staring down at the Johnsons’ house. Its tail would flap against my leg. If the dog got nervous because of the smell, if it whined and wanted to retreat to the woods, I’d know I shouldn’t walk down the street to investigate. But if the dog panted and sniffed as though the smell wasn’t any worse than walking in the woods and coming across a huge mound of bear crap, I’d know it was okay t'go,be,o venture down the street.

The dog will quickly get used to the water I provide. After drinking today, it looked at me through the glass
panels, its head cocked sideways, a look that makes me think it was wondering where the food dish was that belongs next to the water.

I’ve begun talking to it the way I would if it was next to me on the floor, my hand rubbing its belly, instead of us on either side of the glass door. It has learned not to be bothered when I make movements on my side of the glass. When I
placed my hand on the glass today, it looked up casually, then rested its head again. And for my part, when its head darted up because of a sound from the forest, I didn’t accidently jump in my seat the way I would have a week ago. I knew it was reacting to something behind it, something it considered a threat, not to me, the man who sits and talks to it, gives it water. We were perfectly happy with each other’s company. Andrew had no complaints either.

I was in the middle of my blabbering, one-sided conversation with the dog when a fox appeared at the edge of the woods. Immediately, the Labrador was on all four feet, the hair on its back standing straight up. I couldn’t believe the same dog I sat and relaxed with could growl so ferociously. It bared its fangs and saliva spilled out from between its teeth. I was amazed at how sharp, how long, its teeth were. They were the same teeth that every pet dog had, but as a wild beast they looked deadly. It was hard to imagine those same daggers retrieving a twig in a game of fetch.

The fox was smart enough to stay at the edge of the forest. It crouched low to the ground but was also curious at this dog and man sharing a day together. Its teeth still bared, the dog took a small step toward the fox. Then another. The movement was so slight that I would have sworn the Labrador was in the same spot as before if I hadn’t personally seen it move. It repeated this miniature step again. I knew it was going to make a mad dash at the fox. Just then, the fox jumped higher than I would have thought possible, vanishing into the trees.

The dog’s fur was still sticking straight up, its teeth still on display. Nothing else dared to approach. After a minute it relaxed and turned back toward the spot it had been occupying on my welcome mat. It grumbled a little,
then went back to resting in the sunlight, giving a single whine in my direction as though apologizing for the outburst.

“I’m sorry,” it was trying to say. “Nobody is more embarrassed by my behavior than I am, but I have to act like that if I want the other animals to leave me alone. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

I tried to go back to my meaningless conversation with it, but I couldn’t get the image of it—ready to chase downqy do another creature, dig its teeth into the other animal’s throat, disembowel it—out of my head. The moment between us was ruined. The dog was on its side with its belly facing me. It gave me a carefree, happy glance, as though I was supposed to join it in acting like nothing had happened. I couldn’t think of it the way I had five minutes earlier; I couldn’t nurture it like it was my pet.

It struck me as odd to think of the Johnsons at that moment, but that was exactly what I did. They had been my best friends.
My only friends for the past two years. And then, just like that, they were gone. I had an idea of them that was based on nothing more than time spent together, and that understanding of them and who they were had been completely inaccurate. It took much less time with the dog, but in the end I realized the same thing. My romantic notions will be the end of me.

I leaned over to check on Andrew. He was, as he always is, perfectly unaffected by everything that had taken place. When I walked by the patio door again the dog was gone.

Now that I’m over the most recent bout of coughs and fever, I’m not going to wait any longer to find out what’s causing the smell down in the neighborhood. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Johnsons’ incinerator broke in the weeks leading to their departure, and instead of simply walking to one of the other working units in the neighborhood, they let a landfill build up behind their house before leaving Camelot.

People always used to say that serial killers seemed like normal people; you would never suspect one of foul behavior because they presented a sense of normality in order to hide their insanity. I feel that way about the Johnsons now. These people who I spent thirty years next to, who I discussed the fate of our neighborhood with, not only snuck out in the middle of the night without saying goodbye, but they didn’t even burn their trash before they left. No matter how long someone lives down the street from you, you never really know
them.

My only concern in getting down the street is protecting myself from the animals on my way there. I was going to take a golf club with me but imagined it breaking in half after the first time I hit a dog (as if I can actually swing that hard anymore) and then being left with a useless grip to defend myself with. Instead, I’ll take a baseball bat. It’s heavier than I wanted, but it won’t break. And I’ll keep a knife in my backpack. And I’ll wait until the sun is at its highest. That’s when the animals are most likely to
stay in the shadows. If I attempted the walk in the middle of the night I’d never make it past my driveway.

To combat the smell, a bandana will be wrapped over my nose and mouth. That’s my plan. I’ll put it into action tomorrow.

I like to think the Labrador will walk with me on my way there. I might cry if a dog actually did accompany me down the street like pets used to do. Maybe I would throw a tennis ball ahead of me and it would go and get it and bring it back. That’s a nice thing to think about as I fall asleep.

Getting down to the Johnsons’ wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I was all set: my bandana and bat in hand, a knife and a water bottle in my backpack. But when I opened my front door a bear was sunning itself in the Matthews’ old driveway. I could have tried to make a run for it, but I would have been out of breath and hobbling after twenty feet. I once saw a black bear chase down a Rottweiler that had gotten separated from its pack; I wouldn’t have a chance of making it. And with the roads overgrown with weeds and broken up into rocks and potholes, I would have twisted my ankle before I could break a sweat. The bear would have all the time in the world to walk up and tear my guts out.

I considered sneaking out the patio door and walking behind the houses until I was at the Johnsons’, but if the bear caught one sniff of me it would have been over just the same. There was also the risk of some other creature waiting for me at the forest’s edge. One of my greatest fears these days is being dragged into the woods by some monster that has a hold of my leg. No matter how much I would struggle, the animal would drag me away until
I was enveloped by leaves and brush. Not soon after I would be eaten alive. Maybe I could hit whatever animal came at me with my bat, fight it off, but if it was part of a pack there’s no way I could take them all on. A pack of ten feral dogs would make short work of me. One of them would easily pounce and knock me to the ground. As soon as I was down I would never be able to stand up again. There would be an army of wild dogs ensuring I stayed exactly where they wanted me. And to think they used to bark ever so cutely and play fetch.

My plan will have to wait until tomorrow, when the bear is gone.

One of the most amazing days of my life.
I scanned the neighborhood for animals before leaving my house. The streets were clear. My supplies were in hand. The sun was directly overhead. I was sweating even before I stepped into the open air. At the end of my driveway I stopped to make sure no animals were getting ready to dart out. A trickle of sweat ran down my back. Even from the end'ri,& of my driveway, the smell coming down the street made me want to gag. That was how my journey down to the Johnsons’ house began.

It took me longer to make my way down the street than I thought it would because the grass provided cover for each pothole. Some of the crevices are the size of human bodies. I had just gotten past the
Mackenzies’ old home when I saw it out of the corner of my eye: a tiny grey blur. Staring toward the bushes where the movement had been, I stopped in the middle of the street. Everything was still. I kept staring at the bush without seeing anything move. Eventually, I realized I was an old guy standing in the open, welcoming any bear or wolf to a surprise present. As soon as I turned to start down the road I swore I saw another flash of movement to my side. But when I looked at the shrubs, there was nothing. To the extent possible, without tripping on the broken road in front of me, I kept my eyes toward the Jeffersons’ overgrown bushes. I got halfway between the Jeffersons’ home and the Gladwells’ house when I saw it. It darted out of one bush and ran to the next as quickly as I had ever seen anything run in my life. A house cat. It was grey and fluffy, the type an old woman would have pampered with expensive cat food and demeaning costumes.