Watchers (49 page)
But Einstein was not an ordinary dog. Considering his remarkable intellect, the soiling of the bed was even more of an outrage than it would have been if he
had
been ordinary.
had
been ordinary.
Getting angry now, moving toward the dog, Travis said, “This is inexcusable.”
Einstein scrambled off the mattress. Realizing the dog would try to slip around him and out of the room, Travis scuttled backward and slammed the door. Cut off from the exit, Einstein swiftly changed directions and dashed to the far end of the bedroom, where he stood in front of the dresser.
“No more fooling around,” Travis said sternly, brandishing the leash.
Einstein retreated into a corner.
Closing in at a crouch, spreading his arms to prevent the dog from bolting around either side of him, Travis finally made contact and clipped the leash to the collar. “Ha!”
Huddled defeatedly in the corner, Einstein hung his head and began to shudder.
Travis’s sense of triumph was short-lived. He stared in dismay at the dog’s bowed and trembling head, at the visible shivers that shook the animal’s flanks. Einstein issued low, almost inaudible, pathetic whines of fear.
Stroking the dog, trying to calm and reassure him, Travis said, “This really is for your own good, you know. Distemper, rabies—the sort of stuff you don’t want to mess with. And it will be painless, my friend. I swear it will.”
The dog would not look at him and refused to take heart from his assurances.
Under Travis’s hand, the dog felt as if he were shaking himself to pieces. He stared hard at the retriever, thinking, then said, “In that lab . . . did they put a lot of needles in you? Did they hurt you with needles? Is that why you’re afraid of getting vaccinations?”
Einstein only whimpered.
Travis pulled the reluctant dog out of the corner, freeing his tail for a question-and-answer session. Dropping the leash, he took Einstein’s head in both hands and forced his face up, so they were eye-to-eye.
“Did they hurt you with needles in the lab?”
Yes.
“Is that why you’re afraid of the vet?”
Though he did not stop shuddering, the dog barked once:
No.
No.
“You were hurt by needles, but you’re not afraid of them?”
No.
“Then
why
are you like this?”
why
are you like this?”
Einstein just stared at him and made those terrible sounds of distress.
Nora opened the bedroom door a crack and peeked in. “Did you get the leash on him yet, Einstein?” Then she said, “Phew! What happened in here?”
Still holding the dog’s head, staring into his eyes, Travis said, “He made a bold statement of displeasure.”
“Bold,” she agreed, moving to the bed and beginning to strip off the soiled spread, blanket, and sheets.
Trying to puzzle out the reason for the dog’s behavior, Travis said, “Einstein, if it’s not needles you’re afraid of—is it the vet?”
One bark.
No.
No.
Frustrated, Travis brooded on his next question while Nora pulled the mattress cover from the bed.
Einstein trembled.
Suddenly, Travis had a flash of understanding that illuminated the dog’s contrariness and fear. He cursed his own thickheadedness. “Hell, of course! You’re not afraid of the vet—but of who the vet might report you to.”
Einstein’s shivering subsided a bit, and he wagged his tail briefly.
Yes.
Yes.
“If people from that lab are hunting for you—and we know they must be hunting furiously because you have to be the most important experimental animal in history—then they’re going to be in touch with every vet in the state, aren’t they? Every vet . . . and every dog pound . . . and every dog-licensing agency.”
Another burst of vigorous tail wagging, less shivering.
Nora came around the bed and stooped down beside Travis.
“But golden retrievers have to be one of the two or three most popular breeds. Vets and animal-licensing bureaucrats deal with them all the time. If our genius dog here hides his light under a bushel and plays dopey mutt—”
“Which he can do quite well.”
“—then they’d have no way of knowing he was the fugitive.”
Yes,
Einstein insisted.
Einstein insisted.
To the dog, Travis said, “What do you mean? Are you saying they would be able to identify you?”
Yes.
“How?” Nora wondered.
Travis said, “A mark of some kind?”
Yes.
“Somewhere under all that fur?” Nora asked.
One bark.
No.
No.
“Then where?” Travis wondered.
Pulling loose of Travis’s hands, Einstein shook his head so hard that his floppy ears made a flapping noise.
“Maybe on the pads of his feet,” Nora said.
“No,” Travis said even as Einstein barked once. “When I found him, his feet were bleeding from a lot of hard travel, and I had to clean out the wounds with boric acid. I’d have noticed a mark on one of his paws.”
Again, Einstein shook his head violently, flapping his ears.
Travis said, “Maybe on the inner lip. They tattoo racehorses on the inner lip to identify them and prevent ringers from being run. Let me peel back your lips and have a look, boy.”
“Einstein barked once—
No
—and shook his head violently.
No
—and shook his head violently.
At last Travis got the point. He looked in the right ear and found nothing. But in the left ear, he saw something. He urged the dog to go with him to the window, where the light was better, and he discovered that the mark consisted of two numbers, a dash, and a third number tattooed in purple ink on the pink-brown flesh: 33-9.
Looking over Travis’s shoulder, Nora said, “They probably had a lot of pups they were experimenting with, from different litters, and they had to be able to identify them.”
“Jesus. If I’d taken him to a vet, and if the vet had been told to look for a retriever with a tattoo . . .”
“But he has to have shots.”
“Maybe he’s already had them,” Travis said hopefully.
“We don’t dare count on that. He was a lab animal in a controlled environment where he might not have needed shots. And maybe the usual inoculations would’ve interfered with their experiments.”
“We can’t risk a vet.”
“If they do find him,” Nora said, “we simply won’t give him up.”
“They can make us,” Travis said worriedly.
“Damned if they can.”
“Damned if they can’t. More likely than not, the government’s financing the research, and
they
can crush us. We can’t risk it. More than anything else, Einstein’s afraid of going back to the lab.”
they
can crush us. We can’t risk it. More than anything else, Einstein’s afraid of going back to the lab.”
Yes, yes, yes.
“But,” Nora said, “if he contracts rabies or distemper or—”
“We’ll get him the shots later,” Travis said. “Later. When the situation cools down. When he’s not so hot.”
The retriever whined happily, nuzzling Travis’s neck and face in a sloppy display of gratitude.
Frowning, Nora said, “Einstein is about the number-one miracle of the twentieth century. You really think he’s ever going to cool down, that they’ll ever stop looking for him?”
“They might not stop for years,” Travis admitted, stroking the dog. “But gradually they’ll begin to search with less enthusiasm and less hope. And the vets will start forgetting to look in the ears of every retriever that’s brought to them. Until then, he’ll have to go without the shots, I guess. It’s the best thing we can do. It’s the only thing we can do.”
Ruffling Einstein’s coat with one hand, Nora said: “I hope you’re right.”
“I am.”
“I hope so.”
“I am.”
Travis was badly shaken by how close he had come to risking Einstein’s freedom, and for the next few days he brooded about the infamous Cornell Curse. Maybe it was happening all over again. His life had been turned around and made livable because of the love he felt for Nora and for this impossible damn dog. And now maybe fate, which had always dealt with him in a supremely hostile manner, would rip both Nora and the dog away from him.
He knew that fate was only a mythological concept. He did not believe there was actually a pantheon of malevolent gods looking down on him through a celestial keyhole and plotting tragedies for him to endure—yet he could not help looking warily at the sky now and then. Each time he said something even slightly optimistic about the future, he found himself knocking on wood to counter malicious fates. At dinner, when he toppled the salt shaker, he immediately picked up a pinch of the stuff to throw it over his shoulder, then felt foolish and dusted it off his fingers. But his heart began to pound, and he was filled with a ridiculous superstitious dread, and he didn’t feel right again until he snatched up more salt and tossed it behind him.
Although Nora was surely aware of Travis’s eccentric behavior, she had the good grace to say nothing about his jitters. Instead, she countered his mood by quietly loving him every minute of the day, by speaking with great delight about their trip to Vegas, by being in unrelievedly good humor, and by
not
knocking on wood.
not
knocking on wood.
She did not know about his nightmares because he did not tell her about them. It was the same bad dream, in fact, two nights in a row.
In the dream, he was wandering in the wooded canyons of the Santa Ana foothills of Orange County, the same woods in which he had first met Einstein. He had gone there with Einstein again, and with Nora, but now he had lost them. Frightened for them, he plunged down steep slopes, scrambled up hills, struggled through clinging brush, calling frantically for Nora, for the dog. Sometimes he heard Nora answering or Einstein barking, and they sounded as if they were in trouble, so he turned in the direction from which their voices came, but each time he heard them they were farther off and in a different place, and no matter how intently he listened or how fast he made his way through the forest, he was losing them, losing them—
—until he woke, breathless, heart racing, a silent scream caught in his throat.
Friday, August 6, was such a blessedly busy day that Travis had little time to worry about hostile fate. First thing in the morning, he telephoned a wedding chapel in Las Vegas and, using his American Express number, made arrangements for a ceremony on Wednesday, August 11, at eleven o’clock. Overcome by a romantic fever, he told the chapel manager that he wanted twenty dozen red roses, twenty dozen white carnations, a good organist (no damn taped music) who could play traditional music, so many candles that the altar would be bright without harsh electric light, a bottle of Dom Perignon with which to conclude events, and a first-rate photographer to record the nuptials. When those details had been agreed upon, he telephoned the Circus Circus Hotel in Las Vegas, which was a family-oriented enterprise that boasted a recreational-vehicle campgrounds behind the hotel itself; he arranged for camp space beginning the night of Sunday, August 8. With another call to an RV campgrounds in Barstow, he also secured reservations for Saturday night, when they would pull off the road halfway to Vegas. Next, he went to a jewelry store, looked at their entire stock, and finally bought an engagement ring with a big, flawless three-carat diamond and a wedding band with twelve quarter-carat stones. With the rings hidden under the seat of the truck, Travis and Einstein went to Nora’s house, picked her up, and took her to an appointment with her attorney, Garrison Dilworth.
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