Last Days of the Dog-Men

THE WAKE

THE GRIZZLED BITCH LAY ON HER SIDE IN THE FADING sunlight in Sam’s front yard, her black wrinkled teats lumped beside her like stillborn pups. It had been a sunny late-October day but now cool evening crept along the edge of the sky and Sam could see the dog’s sides shiver as she labored to breathe. Her dark coat was patchy with mange and her eyes looked bad. When Sam walked closer they went to slits and a low growl came from her throat. He could smell her from ten feet away: a ripe, sweet rotten smell. Sam went back inside and called the pound.

When the pound truck cruised slowly by the house at dusk the dog had disappeared. Sam, fresh from the shower and drinking a can of Miller Lite, walked out to the street and told the two men in the truck what the dog looked like. The driver adjusted his cap, spat out the window past Sam, and said likely she went off into the woods to die. He looked at the can of Lite, nodded at Sam, and pulled away. At the spot where the dog had lain in the yard, Sam saw maggots curling and uncurling on the grass.

That night he was awakened by a long yowling moan beneath the floorboards. A latent, heavy loneliness welled in his chest. He went out to the porch. A good breeze had stirred up, and he thought for just a second he could smell the dog. Except for the wind rattling the dry leaves it was quiet.

The next morning, Saturday, Sam went out back with the shovel. There was a big hole in the crawlspace wall near the back door where cats went beneath the house sometimes to have their litters. It somehow made sense a dog would go there to die. Sam started digging.

He heard a truck pull up in front and stuck the shovel into the hard clay of the shallow hole. A UPS man stood in the street behind his van, writing on a clipboard pad, his paper flipping in the wind.

“Sam Beamon?”

Sam nodded. “Something for me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, a small black fellow whose crewcut head sloped upward toward the crown like a tilted egg. His name tag said “Henry.”

“Sign right here on the line, please.”

“What is it?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“You sure it’s for me?”

“If you’re Sam Beamon.”

“Well,” Sam said. “What the hell.”

Sam signed. Henry hopped up into the truck and grabbed a wooden crate that came up to his belt.

“It’s heavy,” he said, sliding the crate toward the lift. He hopped down, flipped a chrome toggle switch; there was a high grinding whine and the lift descended with the crate to the street. Sam stepped onto the platform and knocked on the wood.

“I guess I could use this box to bury the dog in, if I wanted to.” He looked at Henry. “Seems kind of undignified, to be buried without a box, doesn’t it? Uncivilized.”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “For a dog.”

“It’s not really my dog,” Sam said. “But she died here, I think. Under the house.”

Henry shrugged and looked at the box, then gazed off at the trees. The breeze gently rattled the leaves.

He heaved at the dolly. Sam directed him up the porch, through the living room, and into a comer of the dining room, which sat between the living room and the kitchen. The house was an old frame home with creaky floors, and the three rooms ran straight back shotgun-fashion, bedrooms off to the right. The kitchen had a door to the backyard.

Sam watched Henry unstrap the dolly and set the crate in the dining room. He wondered if he should have Henry move it to the garage, instead. No way to know, until he knew what it was.

“Where’d this come from?” he said.

Henry checked the ticket.

“New Orleans.”

“New Orleans?” Sam said. He looked at the crate again.

Henry said, “You going to open it now?”

Sam looked at him absently.

“Hmm? Oh. I don’t know.”

They both looked at the box for a moment.

“Well,” Henry said. “Got to go.” He checked his clipboard again, then wrapped the loose straps around the dolly’s frame. He pulled it behind him to the front door and looked back.

“It’s an unusual box, you know,” he said.

Sam didn’t answer, not comprehending.

“Bigger, I mean,” Henry said. “Made of wood like that, heavy.”

They both looked again at the box.

“Well,” Henry said. “Have a nice day.” Then he went out, leaving the front door open. Sam heard the dolly rattle down the steps, heard the van door slide shut, then walked out onto the porch and watched him drive away. He went back in and stood beside the crate. He thought he could smell the dog underneath the house, faintly, but then again wasn’t sure, thought it could have been his imagination. If he could smell it up here already, it would be bad getting her out of the crawl space. He should be finishing the grave. He had almost decided to do this when the box spoke up.

“Sam?”

He felt his skin go cool.

“Who’s there?” he said.

There was laughter from the box.

“Sam,” the voice said. “It’s me, Marcia.”

“Marcia?”

A small plug in the box’s side began to wiggle its way out and then dropped to the floor, rolling a few inches to the wall. Sam knelt down warily and brought his eye up to the hole. A brown eye stared back at him. He smelled gardenias. Her perfume. He sat back onto the floor. The sight of her eye, so close, the smell of gardenias. He felt aroused, then ridiculous. Sitting in his dining room with a woman inside a packing crate.

“I don’t know what to say.” He stood up. “I guess I could get you out of there.”

“I can let myself out, Sam,” Marcia said. “There’s a latch. But if you don’t mind, I’d sort of like to stay in here a minute, first. I want to talk first.

“I mean,” she said after a moment, “before I get out and we see each other again, I want to talk about things.”

“Oh, God,” Sam mumbled.

“Aside from the fact that you never write letters, why didn’t you answer any of mine?”

“Why?” Sam said. “You took off. You left. You went to New Orleans.”

“That’s not the issue,” Marcia said.

“It’s not the issue?”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “I tried to work it out with you before I left but you were intractable.”

“Interesting word choice,” Sam said.

“You were the one who wouldn’t give,” Marcia said. “You wouldn’t change your ways the least little bit. I’m sorry, but intractable is the right word.”

“I think you’d better look that word up again,” Sam said.

There was a pause.

“I hate it when you do that, Sam.”

“I hate it when you’re so goddamn self-righteous.”

“Me?” She paused again, and in a moment he heard her breathing slowly and heavily. “Okay, Sam,” she said, “I had to go away for a while, and you know it. You knew it. And we were going to correspond.”

Sam tried to think of how to say he couldn’t write letters because he couldn’t bear to read what he wrote in them, and he hadn’t the courage to not read them after writing them, but he didn’t say anything because he knew how Marcia would respond.

“Sam, I thought maybe that a little while alone would help you to admit some things about our relationship. About yourself. And I thought maybe a little distance, and putting it into letters, would make us more candid. You know.”

“About myself,” Sam said, unable to stop himself. “Of course.”

“Oh, boy,” Marcia said. “This was a mistake. You really know how to fuck up a reunion, Sam.”

“Look,” Sam said, and he stopped, not even sure of what he wanted to say. Then he laughed.

“What?” she said.

“You know,” he said, “I’m wondering. Why did you ship yourself here in a box?”

“Why not?” she said. He could hear the familiar irony in her voice, the ironic resignation. “I thought, a little creative punch, you know. Something weird. I thought it might break things down a little.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, and meant it. They sat a moment without talking.

“Look,” he said then. “I’m going to go out back for a while.”

“What are you doing?”

“Well, this dog died underneath the house last night, I think.”

“Oh, no,” Marcia said. “What dog?”

“I don’t know, a strange dog,” Sam said. “Anyway, I’m going to bury it out back. The pound came by, but they left, and I don’t want to give them the poor thing anyway, because I hear they just dump them in a ditch outside of town somewhere. Anyway, I’ve got to dig the hole and get her out to it. And then I’ve got to start dinner. Some people are coming over tonight. And so I guess if you want to leave, this would be a good time. But, look, if you want to stay, that would be fine.” He stopped for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry about this. I mean, this argument.”

He started to leave the room.

“Who’s coming over?”

“Dick and Merle.”

“Ah, God,” Marcia said. “Dick and Merle? You’ve been hanging out with Dick and Merle?”

“No, I haven’t been ‘hanging out’ with them,” Sam said. “I haven’t been hanging out with anybody. I just felt like having some company.”

“Ah, Christ, Sam,” Marcia said. “Dick and Merle. Jesus.”

Sam stared at the box and held his tongue.

“I’m going out back,” he said, and left the room.

“Sam,” he heard her calling from the box. “You’ve got to open your heart up a little bit, Sam.”

He walked out through the kitchen and into the backyard, where he stood and let his eyes adjust to the bright sunlight. Then he walked over to the shallow hole and started digging again, widening and lengthening it. He worked slowly, his mind wandering all over the place. The dirt piled up and the sun sank into the oak tree leaves. He tried to let the work clear his head. The leaves rustled in the breeze, and they moved in dark relief against the sun. He worked through the afternoon, shaping the sides of the grave as carefully as an archaeologist. Finally, he stepped up out of the hole, knocked the dirt off his boots with the spade. At his job, he covered the city beat — council meetings and small-town political intrigue, constant complex and trivial bullshit. What gave him pleasure was a simple job, such as digging a hole. A worthwhile job, such as providing a grave for a homeless stray dog. He went over to look in the hole in the wall where the dog had to have gone in.

Kneeling there with his head and his shoulders underneath the house, he could smell the dog’s stench, and he listened for the sound of someone moving around on the old creaky floorboards above. But in the dank emptiness there was only silence and the stench of the carcass whose vague shape he thought he could see back near a brick piling, lying still. He hadn’t the heart to go in after it just then, though. He decided it could wait until the morning. He’d bury the dog on a Sunday.

THAT EVENING SAM ANSWERED THE DOOR AND LET IN HIS dinner guests, Dick and Merle Tingle. Merle shot by him, ducking under his arm.

“Watch out, watch out. Open the bathroom door.” She rounded the comer with her hands on an imaginary steering wheel. “What’s that?” she called as she passed the box in the dining room. Then they heard the bathroom door slam.

Dick stood in the door and leaned down to Sam, put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and his face in Sam’s face.

“Hello, pal.”

Sam shifted his weight to support Dick. Dick dropped his hand and swung past Sam into the living room. He pulled a can of Pabst from his jacket pocket, popped the top, and drained it, his Adam’s apple jumping up and down. Then he swung to his left and lofted the empty can into the wicker trash basket in the corner.

“Two,” he said with a soft belch. He smiled at Sam. Sam knew Dick and Merle from the office, but they seemed okay. Dick was a mediocre sportswriter who covered the local high school games, and Merle was typical of a certain type of copy editor who seemed to be a lobotomized automaton one minute, an aggressive, opinionated jerk the next. But after Marcia had left and word got around the office, they’d had him over to their place a couple of times and he’d accepted them without much discrimination. It was not difficult for him to be around them. He had come to like Dick’s quiet way of settling all his bones deep into their sockets, turning his ankles in, relaxing his spine, and seeming to pull his neck in like a turtle whenever he spoke to someone any shorter than six foot seven. It was perhaps a habit that came from being married to Merle, who was tiny and loud, but at any rate Dick stayed scrunched up most of the time, until he got very drunk, when he’d straighten up like a cobra, swaying and boast.

“Look, Dick.” Merle called Dick into the dining room, where she stood looking at the box. Sam followed. He stood just inside the living room and watched them. When he’d come back in from the backyard earlier he’d looked in on the box and called Marcia’s name, and heard nothing. Instead of checking further, afraid, really, to look into the box, he’d showered and gotten busy cooking supper, and when he’d walked past the box to open the door to let in Dick and Merle, he was almost capable of ignoring it. Such was not the case with Merle.

“Let’s move this crate in by the fireplace and eat there,” she said.

“Okay,” Dick said. He and Merle got behind the box and pushed it across the hardwood floor into the living room. Merle straightened up and blew the bangs out of her eyes, puffing. Dick stepped over and patted her on top of the head.

“Dick can build a fire, too,” she said. “Sam, don’t you think this is better than the dining room?”

Sam nodded.

“How do you like my coat?” Merle said. It was a waist-length jacket of some kind of fur, thick and full of brown, white, and silver streaks. She twirled, pulled the coat tight, and made a funny face. “Don’t I look like a rabbit?” They all laughed.

“Wait, wait, okay,” Merle said, waving impatiently, “look, look,” and she hunched up, drew in her eyebrows, and stuck out her teeth. “Grr. Timber wolf!” Dick and Merle burst out laughing, holding on to each other. They bumped into the box. “Whoops!” They backpedaled and grabbed the mantel. The box rocked and settled back upright.

“Hey,” said Merle, “what’s in that thing? It’s heavy. Whew! Did you see us pushing that thing?

“Well,” Sam said. “If it’s heavy, it’s probably Marcia.”

Dick and Merle looked at the box, then at Sam.

“Marcia?” Merle said, looking back at the box. “In this crate?”

“Yes,” Sam said.

“Oh, we all wondered where you’d put her,” Merle said.

“Ha, ha,” Dick laughed, nodding, his eyes closed.

“I’m serious,” Sam said. “She shipped herself back here from New Orleans in this box.” He leaned down and looked into the plug hole. In the poorly lighted room he couldn’t see inside, but he could still smell her perfume, faint and trailing from the plug hole like a memory.

“Marcia,” he said. “Are you still in there?”

“Are you serious?” Merle said. She leaned down to the hole.

“Marcia?”

“Hello, Merle,” Marcia said.

Sam felt his blood race for a moment in relief.

“Ahh!” Merle cried, straightening up. She looked at Sam.

“What’s she doing?”

“I guess she’s not ready to come out,” Sam said. He shrugged. “We had an argument.”

“Don’t mind me,” Marcia said, with the irony so familiar to Sam. “Go ahead and eat your dinner. I’ll just stay in here awhile. I’m not hungry.”

“Strange,” Dick said, fluttering a hand in front of his face.

“Huh,” Merle said. “Well,” she said after a moment, “let’s eat.”

Sam had baked a hen and sweet potatoes, steamed buttered carrots, baked fresh onion, and made a spinach casserole. He carried it all out on a large wicker tray and set it on top of the box. There was barely enough room for the food, so they held their plates in their laps. Dick had a small fire going in the grate, and he and Merle ate rapidly. Sam ate slowly, watching them and listening. There was no sound from the box. He felt of the wood on the fire side to make sure it wasn’t getting too hot. No one said anything throughout the meal. They avoided one another’s glances.

He went out to the kitchen for another bottle of wine, and when he came back Merle was staring at the box and Dick looked vexed.

“So,” Merle said. “Is she staying in there because we’re here for dinner?”

“Stay out of it,” Dick said. He stared at a blank spot on the wall.

Sam knocked lightly on the box.

“He’s communicating with the woman in the box,” Merle said.

“Marcia,” Sam said softly. “You doing all right?” He leaned his head down to the box. Nothing stirred. Mingling with the paling scent of her perfume he thought he detected another odor. A cool breeze wafted in through the window, and he looked up at Dick and Merle. Merle pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders and seemed to be making her rabbit face again. Dick’s fire was dying.

“What’s that smell?” Merle said.

Dick sniffed and furrowed his brow.

“I’ve been smelling that, too.”

“What?” Sam said.

“Something rotten,” Dick said.

“It’s a dog, I think,” Sam said. “It crawled up under the house and died. Sorry. I meant to get it out today, but I ran out of time.”

“A dead dog?” Merle said. “Under the house?” She looked down at the remains of their meal. Sam looked, too. The picked rib cage of the chicken, the cold claylike sweet potato chunks, the single shiny orange carrot, the bit of spinach in the corner of the dish like something a cat coughed up.

“Gross,” Merle said.

Dick straightened up.

“You want me to get rid of that dog for you?”

“No,” Sam said. “Just sit there. I’ll be back in a second.”

He got a scented candle from the kitchen. When he got back to the living room, Merle and Dick were staring at the box.

“I left Dick one time, he nearly died,” Merle said. “Laid around and wouldn’t go to work or eat.”

“Oh, Sam wouldn’t do that,” Marcia’s voice came from the box. “Sam would just go on about his life. He would try to pretend nothing had even happened. And pretty soon that’s the way it would be. His whole life would seem like a blank because he never let himself get involved in anything.”

“Maybe you’re being too hard on him,” Dick said.

“How would you know?” Marcia said.

“Why didn’t you just take a bus?” Merle said. She sat up and crossed her arms and legs.

Dick was looking away at the wall. Sam looked down at the pointed toe of the pump that on Merle’s skinny, bouncing leg looked like the beak of a hatchling. Dick wore large scuffed wing tips and thin blue socks that gathered around his pale ankles. Sam had on the cowboy boots he’d bought himself when Marcia took off. They looked as cheap as they actually were.

Dick straightened himself up and sniffed. He cleared his throat.

“Seems like I can still smell that dog.”

“Why don’t you go get rid of the dog, then,” Merle said. “A while ago you said, ‘I’ll get rid of the goddamn dog.’ ”

“I didn’t say that.” He glared at her.

“It stinks,” Merle said. She glowered at Sam, then at Dick.

“He wouldn’t let me get us a dog,” Marcia said. “He didn’t even want the responsibility of owning a dog.” Sam could hear the emotion in her voice and almost welled up into tears himself in silent protest and anger.

“Here he is with this fucking dead dog under the house,” Marcia said, her voice quavering. “Oh, he can care about this stupid dead dog. It’s completely safe. He has nothing but the simplest responsibility. To bury it.”

“Christ, Sam,” Merle said. “Why don’t you let her out of the box? What the hell’s going on here?”

“I didn’t put her in the box,” Sam said, his voice rising. “She can let herself out of the goddamn box.”

“Whoa, now, bud,” Dick said, straightening up. “Settle down, now.”

Sam started to lash out at Dick and checked himself, breathing deeply and dropping back into his chair.

“I’ll let her out of the box, for Christ sake,” Merle said. “Dick, go find a hammer or something.”

“I don’t want to come out,” Marcia said. “Jesus.” She was crying now. “What an idiot. I’m such an idiot.”

“I don’t want to hear that!” Merle said. “Don’t get into that, for Christ sake.”

“Why don’t we go check on that dog?” Dick said to Sam.

“Ah, shit,” Sam said under his breath. “Look, maybe you guys should just go on home, now. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of this.”

Dick looked offended. Merle stood up and brushed roughly past Sam toward the back of the house.

“What are you doing?” Sam said. He followed her back into the kitchen, where she began to rifle through the cabinet drawers.

“If you’re looking for a hammer, it’s in the bottom drawer on the left,” Sam said, “but I think she’s locked herself in there.” Merle glared at him briefly, then went for the drawer.

“The least you could do is help us get her out,” she muttered.

“I’m telling you, Merle, just leave it alone,” Sam said. “She’ll come out of the box when she’s good and goddamn ready and you better just leave it the hell alone.”

Merle straightened up from the drawer and stamped her feet in a paroxysm of fury, sputtering a mangled mouthful of curses, her face screwed up and her fists flailing about the kitchen air.

“Ahhhhh!” she shouted. “Don’t you tell me what to do!”

She reached into the drawer, pulled out the hammer, and reeled past him on her way back to the den. Sam got his flashlight out of the open drawer and stepped outside.

The starlight fell softly on the mound of dirt beside the perfect grave he’d dug that afternoon. He stood for a moment, breathing the clear night air in the breeze from the south. Then he walked around the house and looked into the living-room window. Dick pried at the box’s lid with the hammer claw while Merle stood by, her hands on her hips.

“Hurry it up, Dick,” she said.

Sam left the window and walked around back. He shone the flashlight onto the crawl-space hole, then shut it off. Crawling through the hole, he turned the light on again and swept it toward the spot beneath the den. He saw the hindquarters. The stench was bad. He crawled, circling around to the right, the light slashing back and forth in the dark on the bricks and boards and earth. He came around in front of the dog, set himself, and shined the light on her face.

Her eyes bore fiercely into the beam, black lips curled back from her teeth. Sam’s heart leapt and raced in his chest.

She never moved.

“Oh,” he whispered, eyes welling, “poor thing.” He shut off the light and lay in the dark beside her. Above him, the shuffling sounds of the living were creaky and vague.