A Permanent Member of the Family

THE OUTER BANKS

Ed pulled the RV off the road and parked it in a small paved lot, the front bumper kissing the concrete barrier, the large pale gray vehicle facing the sea, and Alice said, “Why are we stopping?”

The rain came in curtains off the Atlantic, one after the other, like the waves breaking against the sand, only slower, neither building nor diminishing. The couple watched the rain and the waves through the wide, flat windshield. There were no other vehicles in the lot and none in sight on the coastline road behind them. It was late fall, and the summer houses and rental cottages and motels were closed for the season.

“I don’t know why. I mean, I do know. Because of the dog.” He cracked open his window and relighted the cold stub of his cigar, and for a long while the couple sat in silence.

Finally she said, “So these are the famous Outer Banks of North Carolina.”

“Yeah. Sorry about the weather,” he said. “‘Graveyard of the Atlantic,’ Alice.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Joke, Alice? Joke?”

She didn’t answer him. A moment passed, and he said, “We’ve got to do something about the dog. You know that.”

“What’ve you got in mind? Bury her in the sand? That’s a real cute idea, Ed. Bury her in the sand and drive on our merry way, just like that.” She looked at her hands for a moment. “I don’t like thinking about it either, you know.”

He eased himself from the driver’s chair, stood uncertainly, and walked back through the living area and the tidy galley to the closet-sized bathroom, where he got down carefully on his knees and drew back the shower curtain and looked at the body of their dog. She was a black and white mixed breed, Lab and springer, lying on her side where Ed had found her this morning, when, naked, he’d gone to take a shower. He studied the dog’s stiffened muzzle. “Poor bastard,” he said.

“Maybe we should try to find a vet!” she called from the front.

“She’s dead, Alice!” he hollered.

“They’ll know how to take care of her, I meant.”

Ed stood up. He was seventy-two; the simple things had gotten very difficult very quickly — standing up, sitting down, getting out of bed, driving for longer than four or five hours. When they left home barely a year ago, none of those things had been difficult for him. That was why he had done it, left home, why they both had done it, because, while nothing simple was especially difficult for them, they were old enough to know that whatever they did not do or see now they would never do or see at all.

It was Alice’s idea, too, not his alone — the romance of the open road, see America and die, master of your destiny, all that — although the actual plan had been his, to sell the house in Troy and all their furniture, buy and outfit the RV, map and follow the Interstate from upstate New York to Disney World to the Grand Canyon to Yosemite to the Black Hills, man, he’d always wanted to see the Black Hills of South Dakota, and Mount Rushmore was even grander and more inspirational than he’d hoped, then on to Graceland, and now the Outer Banks. He hadn’t once missed the hardware store, and she hadn’t missed the bank. They’d looked forward to retirement, and once there, had liked it, as if it were a vacation spot and they’d decided to stay year-round. There were no children or grandchildren or other close family — they were free as birds. “Snowbirds,” they’d been called in Florida and out in Arizona. When they left home, their dog, Rosie, was already old, ten or eleven, he wasn’t sure, they’d got her from the pound, but, Jesus, he hadn’t figured on her dying like this. It was as if she had run out of air, out of life, like a watch that had stopped because someone forgot to wind it.

He dropped his cigar butt into the toilet, looked at it for a second and resisted flushing — she’d scowl when she saw it, he knew, because it was ugly, even he thought so, but he shouldn’t waste the water — and walked heavily back to the front and sat in the driver’s chair.

“Vets are for sick animals. Not dead animals,” he said to her.

“I suppose you want to leave her in a Dumpster or just drop her at the side of the road somewhere.”

“We should’ve found a home for Rosie. When we left Troy, I mean. Should’ve given her to some people or something, you know?” He looked at his wife, as if for a solution. She was crying, though. Silently, with tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she cried steadily, as if she had been crying for a long time and had no idea how to stop.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Alice. Hey, c’mon, don’t cry. Jesus, it’s not the end of the world, Alice.”

She stopped and fumbled in the glove compartment for a tissue, found one and wiped her face. “I know. But what are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“Oh, Ed. About Rosie. This,” she said and waved a hand at the rain and the sea. “Everything.”

“It’s my fault,” he said. He stared at her profile, hoping she would turn to him and say no, it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t anybody’s. But she didn’t turn to him; she said nothing.

Slowly, he rose from his seat again. He walked to the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. He kneeled down and gently lifted the dog in his arms, surprised that she was not heavier. Lying there she had seemed solid and heavy, as if carved of wood and painted, like an old, unused merry-go-round horse. He carried the dog to the side door of the RV and worked it open with his knee and stepped down to the pavement. The rain fell on him, and he was quickly drenched. He wore only a short-sleeved shirt and Bermuda shorts and sneakers, and all of a sudden he was cold. He carried the dog to the far corner of the parking lot, stepped over the barrier between the pavement and the beach, and walked with slow, careful steps through the wet sand toward the water. The rain blocked his vision and plastered white swatches of his hair to his skull and his thin clothes to his body.

Halfway between the parking lot and the water, he stopped and set the dog down. He was breathing rapidly from the effort. He wiped the rain from his eyes, got down on his hands and knees and started scooping sand. He pulled double handfuls of it away, worked down through the wet, gray sand to the dry sand beneath and kept digging, until finally he had carved a large hole. Still on his knees, he reached across the hole and drew the body of the dog into it. Her hair was wet and smelled the way it had when she was still alive. Then, slowly, carefully, he covered her.

When he was finished and there was a low mound where before there had been a hole, he turned around and looked back at the RV in the parking lot. He could see his wife staring out the windshield from the passenger’s seat. He couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or at the sea or what. He turned his gaze toward the sea. The rain was still coming steadily in curtains, one after the other.

He stood and brushed the crumbs of wet sand from his clothes, bare legs and hands and made his way back to the parking lot. When he had settled himself into the driver’s chair, he said to his wife, “That’s the end of it. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Okay?” He turned the ignition key and started the motor. The windshield wipers swept back and forth like wands.

“Okay,” she said.

He backed the RV around and headed toward the road. “You hungry?” he asked her.

She spoke slowly, as if to herself. “There’s supposed to be a good seafood place a few miles south of here. It’s toward Kitty Hawk. So that’s good.”

He put the RV into gear and pulled out of the lot onto the road south. “Fine,” he said. “Too bad we have to see Kitty Hawk in the rain, though. I was looking forward to seeing it. I mean, the Wright brothers and all.”

“I know you were,” she said.

The cumbersome vehicle splashed along the straight, two-lane highway, and no cars passed. Everyone else seemed to be inside today, staying home.

Ed said, “We could keep going, y’know. Head for Cape Canaveral, check out the Space Center and all.”

She said, “They shut the space program down, I thought.”

“I guess maybe they did.”