Problems with People (16 page)

He stayed with the boat, clinging to a gunnel, and screamed Paul’s name repeatedly. He called for a minute, and then he stopped. He adjusted his grip and hung on, silent. The lights of the
Wayfarer
cut through the sleet. She came near, her skipper made some minor adjustments—tricky and deft, given the boiling of the waves—and then her deckhand tossed out a life ring. He missed for six or seven tries before the
Wayfarer
quartered in closer. Bob hung on; he was getting numb, though. His hands no longer felt anything. The life ring came his way again. After ten or twelve more tries, he grabbed it. He let go of the gunnel and held on to the life ring. Then he was
under. He came up again. The deckhand pulled him to within ten feet of the pilothouse before a wave pitched Bob onto the
Wayfarer
’s afterdeck, where he broke his nose against the net winch.

After Bob left the house that night, Hutchinson’s daughter wept uncontrollably, and Hutchinson’s wife consoled her. They sat together in a paralyzed embrace beside the dining-room table. Hutchinson sat with a hand on his head. They stayed like that for at least five minutes with the cold food still on the table. Then his wife and daughter rose and, limbs tangled, left the dining room together.

Hutchinson wondered if he should leave the house now. The flashlight, the hatchet, the rain gear, the vomit—he knew it was better not to imagine that. It was too real to be imagined.

He was about to leave—he’d just stood up—when Laura came in with a photo album and showed him a portrait he’d taken of Paul, seven years ago, holding a duck by its neck. Then she removed it from its plastic sleeve and passed it into his keeping. “That’s yours,” she said. “You take it.”

“It’s ours,” replied Hutchinson.

He left, taking the photograph with him. A friend of his who was a trucking consolidator had an in-law apartment over his garage, and that was where Hutchinson was staying right now, but he didn’t go there yet. He drove, instead, to a parking lot at a mall, found a lonely spot there, pushed his seat back, shut his eyes, and leaned his head against the window. Twelve,
he thought—Paul had been twelve. He opened his eyes and looked at the photograph. Paul had on not only his checked coat but, under it, two wool sweaters.

He knew the spot where this photograph was taken. You drove under power lines beside a little feeder stream that sometimes had mallards in it. When he went there with Paul, everything was frozen over. They’d had to break ice in order to set out the decoys.

He remembered what happened. It was snowing that day. They were back in the reeds. Snow landed on the shoulders of their coats and settled on their caps and on the decoys. The wind blew it, stinging, into their faces. Flights of ducks would suddenly appear in it, the whistling of their wings and their cries long preceding them. It was fast shooting, and Paul missed his shots. Then a single greenhead came low across a point of sedge, and Paul fired straight on, then going-over, and then a long going-away that caused the duck to arc steeply to the ice, where it flopped for a while before settling.

The dog picked it up. Enough was enough. It was late in the day; it was starting to get dark. They walked back to the truck, where Hutchinson got his camera. Paul held the duck by the neck for this picture. “Smile,” Hutchinson had said, from behind the viewfinder. He remembered that Paul had tried to smile—his face contorting, searching for the right shape. “Come on,” urged Hutchinson, “smile a little.” But it hadn’t happened—it was not a real smile—and Hutchinson had been forced to snap the picture with his son’s face arranged in this false way.

“Lou Calhoun?” she said into her phone.

“Who wants to know?”

“Eastside Pet Care.”

“Joker,” the guy answered.

“I walk dogs. Your friend gave me your number.”

“You walk dogs.”

“Professionally.”

“My friend? Which friend?”

“Jim and Joan Jarvis. They said you wanted me to call.”

“I’m being worked here.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You have a business license?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“Vivian Lee.”

“What’s the accent?”

Vivian said, “Mississippi. Long time ago.”

There was a pause. “Ma-sippi,” said Lou Calhoun. “A Mississippi
dog walker. Mississippi dog walker—never heard of that before.”

“Shit happens,” answered Vivian. Because it had.

There was a laugh at the other end that turned into a cough. “Three references,” said Lou Calhoun. “I’ll call back, depending. Got my pencil ready, so shoot.”

He called two days later. He said, “Sounds good, except you charge a lot.”

“No.”

“I called around,” said Lou. “You charge a lot.”

“Okay.”

“You got any questions?”

“What kind of dog?”

“I got a Rottweiler, old. Walks like a champ, though.”

His house was hard to find. A cemetery interfered with the continuity of addresses. She had to snake around the back of it, contending with speed bumps, on streets cracked and buckled by hoary roots and littered with dropped catkins. Lou’s house turned out to be conspicuously new, given the mossy neighborhood. He had a no-maintenance yard, all gravel and beauty bark, and some bonsai trees in pots that either needed water or were dead already. She went up the walk, but before she could ring the doorbell, Lou’s voice came out of an intercom. “I know you’re there,” it said.

She waited. The Rottweiler started barking at her from inside the door. It sounded incorrigible. Then, from the intercom, “I’m buzzing you in now.” The latch hummed next, but instead of going in, Vivian pushed the intercom’s speaker button and yelled, “I’m not walking in on that dog.”

“His name’s Bill. Bill’s all talk. Walk in and say hi to him.”

“No.”

After a while, Lou’s garage door rose. Then she heard him, again, on the intercom. “On-tray,” he said. “You’re safe.”

There was a station wagon in Lou’s garage, which otherwise looked like the site of a junk sale—tables of clothing, dishware, knickknacks, paperback books, a corner full of lamps, a lot of videocassettes, a collection of old phones and answering machines in a nest of snarled cord and wire. A door opened, and there was Lou, leaning on an aluminum walker. He looked like Kirk Douglas—the liver spots, the sunburn, the helmet of gray hair, the long earlobes, the puffy eyelids, the hole in his chin. “Holy moly,” he said.

Vivian didn’t answer.

“I didn’t know they were going to send a looker. Bill’s harmless,” he added.

“Right,” said Vivian, who was forty-three.

“There’s a leash over there,” said Lou. “Will you get it?”

She got the leash. Bill was still barking, somewhere in the house. “I locked him up,” said Lou. “Come in for just a minute. I got a muzzle he has to wear in public. My hip,” he added, and began a deliberate rotation, slow to the point of painful to watch, on the points of his walker. “You go ahead of me,” he ordered.

Vivian did. Lou made struggling noises. “Turn right,” he gasped. “Bill! Pipe down!”

They made it to the living room. Lou had a large television. His floor made a din under his walker that mingled with the din from Bill. “Tell me your name again,” Lou said.

“Vivian Lee.”

“How’d you end up walking dogs?”

“I’m a country song.”

“Which?”

“All of them.”

“Drunk, broke, driftin’, divorced, half dead, just outa jail, hungover, beat up, cheated on, and—a cheater yourself.”

“Fifty percent of that. Approximately.” She meant, though, broke at the moment and cheated on repeatedly.

“Which fifty?”

“Doin’ menial for folks.”

“Ha,” said Lou. “You can’t get no respect.” He shrugged and wiped his sweaty forehead with his wrist. “All right,” he said. “So what’s our agreement?”

“I walk your dog.”

“I’m not going to sit,” Lou said. “Up and down’s too much. What’s our agreement?”

“Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”

“The rate?”

She told him.

“Pipe down!” Lou yelled again. “Hey, Bill! Shut up!”

Bill stopped. He made a whine that sounded like the air going out of him. This was followed by low, menacing noises—attenuated growls, chippy barks, clawing at a door. “Muzzle,” said Lou. “Let me get it.”

“Muzzle?” she answered. “Do I really want to walk your dog?”

“At your rate, absolutely. Like I said, he’s a cream puff.” Lou made an effort to sweep-groom his hair, but what he
really needed was two hands on his walker. “Muzzle,” he said. “I gotta find his muzzle.” Again he made a tedious rotation. “Where is it?” asked Vivian. “I’ll get it.”

They made a foray toward the kitchen. “Slim possibility,” Lou said. “Things collect there.” She went ahead of him down a hall, and he called, “Just a minute, hold up, hold on, slow down, wait,” and, when they arrived—referring to empty containers—“I have to do Meals on Wheels right now, that’s their stuff.” From the sink windowsill, a tiny radio emitted talk; the subject was government spending; someone was calling in. There was an issue of
Forbes
and a squeezable honey bear on the table, but no muzzle.

“Maybe you can walk him without it,” said Lou. “He doesn’t always need it. Just, if you see another dog, cross the street. Muzzle isn’t necessary.”

“Forbes,”
Vivian said.

“You keep up with finance?”

“Not really,” said Vivian. “Despite my exorbitant dogwalking rates.”

Lou grinned. “Put your money in CDs,” he said. “FDIC-insured. You know FDIC rules?” With his chin, he indicated his chattering radio. There were plastic flowers beside it in a vase. “Listen to these jerks,” he said. “Yay-hoos.”

“Meals on Wheels?” asked Vivian.

“Scuzz,” Lou said. “You get gouged so they can kill you with salt and cholesterol. But it’s not Meals on Wheels, it’s something else.”

“Someone does the cooking.”

“The chef who does rubber chicken for luncheons.” Lou
raised his walker and banged it on the floor. “Do I look like I need a bib?” he wondered. “Fuck it,” he added. “Bill.”

“Bill,” said Vivian. “Muzzle or no muzzle?”

“We’ll get him suited up,” answered Lou.

They wound through the house. There was a mudroom in back, and Bill was sequestered there, still making neurotic and murderous noises. Lou blocked him with the walker and said, “Up, you jerk, get up here, Bill,” and the dog immediately put its paws on the walker so that Lou could attach the leash to its collar. Vivian saw immediately that Bill wore a choke collar—chain links and a ring—and also a studded ID collar. He was a huge salivator with big green eyes. “Look,” said Lou. “It’s staring us in the face.” He meant the muzzle, in front of him, on a hook. “That’s where I keep it,” he said. “Can you grab it?”

Vivian did, which provoked a growl from Bill. “Hey, shut up,” Lou hissed.

He got the muzzle on. Then he gave Vivian the leash. “Go out this door,” he said. “You know the neighborhood?”

“No.”

“Go left—I go left. Bill likes to do his duty in the cemetery. You know the cemetery?”

With the wire cage over his snout, Bill seemed subdued. He sat there panting. Lou touched his head. “Piece a shit,” he said. “Get out of here.”

Wednesday came. Same drill—intercom, garage door, a half-hour of fussing, going in circles. Vivian walked Bill again. Outfitted in his preventative gear, he was a cinch, meek. He heeled perfectly, and performed discreetly in the cemetery. On
Friday, Lou had an article for Vivian, cut from a magazine and folded sharply in half. “Getting Started in Small Business.” In the upper right corner he’d scrawled the magazine’s name, as well as the article’s date of publication. Lou’s handwriting was shaky and archaic. “You need this,” he said. “It’s the basics.”

“I’ll take a look.”

Lou gestured magnanimously. “Don’t look,” he said. “Read it.”

Vivian read it over the weekend. “You were right,” she told Lou on Monday. “To start, I’m getting licensed, bonded, and insured.”

“I told you,” Lou said.

“After that,” said Vivian, “my rates go up. They’ll have to—I’m adding costs.”

“Joker,” answered Lou.

Each week, Lou had new troubles. His eyeballs looked yellow—in fact, one eyeball now looked bigger than the other. Something in his gut was infected, and whatever it was, it made him slower. His feet swelled. He told Vivian he had a ringing in his ears. His teeth looked darker, except they weren’t his teeth, they were a bridge, she could see, supported by gold crowns. Lou’s doctor told him not to eat anything fatty, not to have a drink, and not to do anything stupid. Meanwhile, he had pills in a dispenser with space for a thirty-day run—plus, he had to take a cab to the pharmacy, because his hip couldn’t handle it when he got behind the wheel. Groceries? Impossible. How would you get down the aisle with a cart? What were you supposed to do with your bags when it was time to carry them out to the cab? On the other hand, Meals
on Wheels for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Insane bills. A minor freebie: he had a friend who lent him videos, so he was watching a lot of flicks he’d missed. Over the last weekend, he’d run through
The Hunt for Red October, The Godfather Part III, Pretty Woman
, and
Dances with Wolves
.