A Little Yellow Dog

17

Pharaoh didn’t want me picking him up and told me so. But when I bared my teeth and snarled the yellow dog backed down.

I drove toward Hoagland Street while he sat in the backseat planning guerrilla tactics that I couldn’t even imagine.

The wide boulevards shone brightly and black under a glassy sheen of rain and streetlights.

The address on Hoagland was another small house. There was another light on and another car parked on the side. There was no berry tree, no recessed porch in which to hide. The walkway was a series of cement disks that were laid out in a meandering trail up to the front door.

The rest of the street was empty. Nothing stirred except the splattering rain.

After five minutes I hadn’t seen anything. No matches struck in darkness; no black cats hissing at their own wet fur. Pharaoh gave out a little yelp and for the first time I agreed with him — it was time to go out and ring the doorbell.

The bell was disconnected or maybe it was broken. I knocked lightly but no one stirred. I was afraid to knock loudly or call out, so I tried the doorknob. If it was locked I would go to Primo’s the next morning and give him the dog; then I’d forget Idabell and her dead relations.

But the door was not locked.

“Hello?” I called into the dark entrance. “Idabell?”

I closed my umbrella and shook the loose water from it.

To the right was a dark doorway and to my left a turn into a lighted room. On the wall facing the door was a mirror that reflected my own shadowy silhouette and the blurry lamp from the street behind me.

I went toward the light thinking of how many times I’d called moths fools.

She was sprawled on her back in the center of the floor, one hand flung out over her head and her mouth agape.

“Naw,” I said in the smallest whisper.

At the sound of my voice her eyes opened and a soft smile came to her lips. She reached toward me with both arms like my daughter did almost every morning. Out of habit I extended my hands.

“What you doin’ on the floor?” I asked as she rose.

“My back hurt,” she said. “I must’ve fallen asleep like that.”

“But…”

“Hold me.” Her body thrust forward as if some invisible force were pulling her to my chest. “Hold me.”

I didn’t love her, I didn’t care about her — I didn’t even like her since she tricked me into taking her dog. But the warmth of her body through our clothes couldn’t be denied. All of those proper ideas and good women couldn’t hold my wild heart like she did.

“I’ve been so lonely,” she whispered.

It might have been a sweet lie but her words were true to my heart. I was lonely. I was cold inside. Idabell spoke to a deep hunger that grew in me back when there was only hunger and need. She’d pulled me out into the street and now I wanted to play.

Her hands moved down between us and showed me what magic they could do.

“Your suit’s going to get wrinkled,” she told me.

My pants fell down around my ankles again. She shoved me backwards into the chair using her shoulder to push because her hands were busy making me mumble. When I was seated I leaned forward to pull off my pants, but she grabbed both my hands by the fingers and pulled them away.

“Leave them,” she said. “You can’t run if your ankles are tied.”

I tried to push past her hands but when she took my erection into her mouth I faltered. And then, when she kissed my lips with that salty brew, I relented.

She moved her head half a foot back from mine and gave me a serious look as if she were searching for defects in my character. Then she kissed me again, moving her tongue deeply inside my mouth. She went back and forth between my hard-on and my lips a few times, each time stopping to gauge her effect.

When she saw that there was no fight left in me she stood up and opened her blouse, showing me with a coy smile that she had no bra on. She hiked her skirt way up on her waist.

When she moved to come astride me I put up my arms to steady her but she said, “Put your hands down,” just like she must have said every day in her classroom.

I was used to being in charge with women, at least I was used to playing that role in love. But Idabell ruled that night. I grabbed on to the wooden arms of the chair obeying her command and she rocked me further and further down into the cushion. When I tried to pull back up she told me to be still.

Every now and then she’d arch back telling me with her body, and a turn of her eye, to kiss her breast.

I was getting more and more excited, and so was she. We were going at it hard and loud when all of a sudden we both just stopped. We were very excited and neither one of us had come, but we had to stop and be still for a little while; like small birds who have risen too high on a hot breeze, we had to coast back down toward the earth.

Her face was wet. The look in her eyes would have been called insane at any other time.

“Easy?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh. Uh, I want to ask you.”

“Wha’?”

“Do you believe me?”

I did. I really did and I told her so.

“I’d never lie to you,” she said. “I mean…” She laughed a little. “I mean I would lie but I’m not. I need you.”

Those three words shot a tremor through me.

“Hold it, Easy,” she said, feeling my mood. “Wait a second. I didn’t do anything wrong. I want you to believe that.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Really?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. Neither of us said anything for the next while. I fell out from the chair and we wrestled across the floor more like snakes than humans, or birds.

In the dream there was an orange-hot sunset at the horizon of a dense German forest. I was a dogface again, separated from my troop and deep behind enemy lines.

The forest was beautiful and rich with the scents of things living. I wanted to take off my uniform and get down on my belly. I wanted to grow fur and scurry off between the thick branches that bristled at the road.

There were men coming up through the woods. They moved cautiously and abreast. I could see snatches of them but they were mainly hidden by the foliage, and I was nearly blinded by that orange sun.

Were they GIs like me? Or Nazi soldiers? My heart thumped in my throat and I tried one last time to become a beast and run.

A rifle swung up and aimed at me. Was it a GI who saw a bear or a German shooting down an American invader? Maybe it was just a white man shooting at shadows.

Whatever it was, I jumped, gasping my last breath.

“Easy, what is it?” Idabell was lying next to me, her hot skin against my back.

The lamp in the living room had an orange shade.

My pants were down around my ankles and my shirt and jacket were pulled up to my chest. I was in a strange house in the middle of the night sleeping next to a woman who might have been a murderer.

My nightmares were no more threatening than my waking life.

“Nothin’s wrong,” I said. “I got your dog out in the car.”

She jumped up with a wide grin on her face.

“I was so happy to see you that I forgot. Where is he?”

“Out in the car,” I said again. I was sitting there pulling up my shorts and pants. Then I stood trying to straighten out my clothes.

“Can we go see him?” she begged.

Pharaoh leapt high into the air on our walk back to the house — splashing in the puddles and putting paw marks on Idabell’s skirt. Inside he licked her face and wagged his whole backside along with his tail while Idabell cooed and giggled and scratched.

After a long reunion I pointed out that it was nearing two o’clock in the morning.

“I have a bus ticket for five.” She yawned deeply and smiled at me. When she reached out to stroke my face Pharaoh growled.

“Oh shush,” she said. “You silly dog you.”

“You wanna ride to the bus station?”

“Yes. I just need to drop something off.”

“What’s that?”

“Just a note to my friend Bonnie,” she said sleepily.

“Is that Bonnie Shay?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get my number from her?”

“She called me here after you came by. We’ve had our differences but Bonnie’s still my friend.”

“So you just wanna drop this note off and then go to the bus station?”

“Yes.” She had very white teeth. “When I get somewhere I’ll write you. Maybe you could come visit — after a while.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” I was as sincere as a boxer putting up his guard. “Well, let’s go.”

“I just have to bring a couple of things,” she said.

She ran somewhere in the house and came back with a child’s croquet set that consisted of two wooden mallets and six large wooden balls held together in a wire frame that had a handle at the top. She also had a carrying case for Pharaoh. It was a little doghouse with a screened door and a handle at the top.

I took the child’s game and dog cage, she took Pharaoh and held the umbrella over all of us out to the car. The croquet set was very light. I remember thinking that it must have been made from balsa wood.

Maybe Idabell thought my head was made from the same material.

She might have thought it, but she was wrong.