Shiloh and Other Stories (27 page)

Jack was right. That was the only sort of death they had known.

—

Grover lies on his side, stretched out near the fire, his head flat on one ear. His eyes are open, expressionless, and when Nancy speaks to him he doesn’t respond.

“Come on, Grover!” cries Robert, tugging the dog’s leg. “Are you dead?”

“Don’t pull at him,” Nancy says.

“He’s lying doggo,” says Jack.

“That’s funny,” says Robert. “What does that mean?”

“Dogs do that in the heat,” Jack explains. “They save energy that way.”

“But it’s winter,” says Robert. “I’m freezing.” He is wearing a wool pullover and a goose-down vest. Jack has the thermostat set on fifty-five, relying mainly on the woodstove to warm the house.

“I’m cold too,” says Nancy. “I’ve been freezing since 1965, when I came North.”

Jack crouches down beside the dog. “Grover, old boy. Please. Just give a little sign.”

“If you don’t get up, I won’t give you your treat tonight,” says Robert, wagging his finger at Grover.

“Let him rest,” says Jack, who is twiddling some of Grover’s fur between his fingers.

“Are you sure he’s not dead?” Robert asks. He runs the zipper of his vest up and down.

“He’s just pretending,” says Nancy.

The tip of Grover’s tail twitches, and Jack catches it, the way he might grab at a fluff of milkweed in the air.

Later, in the kitchen, Jack and Nancy are preparing for a dinner party. Jack is sipping whiskey. The woodstove has been burning all day, and the house is comfortably warm now. In the next room, Robert is lying on the rug in front of the stove with Grover. He is playing with a computer football game and watching
Mork and Mindy
at the same time. Robert likes to do several things at once, and lately he has included Grover in his multiple activities.

Jack says, “I think the only thing to do is just feed Grover pork chops and steaks and pet him a lot, and then when we can stand it, take him to the vet and get it over with.”

“When can we stand it?”

“If I were in Grover’s shape, I’d just want to be put out of my misery.”

“Even if you were still conscious and could use your mind?”

“I guess so.”

“I couldn’t pull the plug on you,” says Nancy, pointing a carrot at Jack. “You’d have to be screaming in agony.”

“Would you want me to do it to you?”

“No. I can see right now that I’d be the type to hang on. I’d be just like my Granny. I think she just clung to life, long after her body was ready to die.”

“Would you really be like that?”

“You said once I was just like her—repressed, uptight.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You’ve been right about me before,” Nancy says, reaching across Jack for a paring knife. “Look, all I mean is that it shouldn’t be a matter of
our
convenience. If Grover needs assistance, then it’s our problem. We’re responsible.”

“I’d want to be put out of my misery,” Jack says.

During that evening, Nancy has the impression that Jack is talking more than usual. He does not notice the food. She has made chicken Marengo and is startled to realize how much it resembles chicken cacciatore, which she served the last time she had the same people over. The recipes are side by side in the cookbook, gradations on a theme. The dinner is for Stewart and Jan, who are going to Italy on a teaching exchange.

“Maybe I shouldn’t even have made Italian,” Nancy tells them apologetically. “You’ll get enough of that in Italy. And it will be real.”

Both Stewart and Jan say the chicken Marengo is wonderful. The olives are the right touch, Jan says. Ted and Laurie nod agreement. Jack pours more wine. The sound of a log falling in the woodstove reminds Nancy of the dog in the other room by the stove, and in her mind she stages a scene: finding the dog dead in the middle of the dinner party.

Afterward, they sit in the living room, with Grover lying there like a log too large for the stove. The guests talk idly. Ted has been sandblasting old paint off a brick fireplace, and Laurie complains about the gritty dust. Jack stokes the fire. The stove, hooked up through the fireplace, looks like a robot from an old science fiction movie. Nancy and Jack used to sit by the fireplace in Massachusetts, stoned, watching the blue frills of the flames, imagining that they were musical notes, visual textures of sounds on the stereo. Nobody they know smokes grass anymore. Now people sit around and talk about investments and proper flue linings. When Jack passes around the Grand Marnier, Nancy says, “In my grandparents’ house years ago, we used to sit by their fireplace. They burned coal. They didn’t call it a fireplace, though. They called it a grate.”

“Coal burns more efficiently than wood,” Jack says.

“Coal’s a lot cheaper in this area,” says Ted. “I wish I could switch.”

“My grandparents had big stone fireplaces in their country house,” says Jan, who comes from Connecticut. “They were so pleasant. I always looked forward to going there. Sometimes in the summer the evenings were cool and we’d have a fire. It was lovely.”

“I remember being cold,” says Nancy. “It was always very cold, even in the South.”

“The heat just goes up the chimney in a fireplace,” says Jack.

Nancy stares at Jack. She says, “I would stand in front of the fire until I was roasted. Then I would turn and roast the other side. In the evenings, my grandparents sat on the hearth and read the Bible. There wasn’t anything
lovely
about it. They were trying
to keep warm. Of course, nobody had heard of insulation.”

“There goes Nancy, talking about her deprived childhood,” Jack says with a laugh.

Nancy says, “Jack is so concerned about wasting energy. But when he goes out he never wears a hat.” She looks at Jack. “Don’t you know your body heat just flies out the top of your head? It’s a chimney.”

Surprised by her tone, she almost breaks into tears.

—

It is the following evening, and Jack is flipping through some contact sheets of a series on solar hot-water heaters he is doing for a magazine. Robert sheds his goose-down vest, and he and Grover, on the floor, simultaneously inch away from the fire. Nancy is trying to read the novel written by the friend from Amherst, but the book is boring. She would not have recognized her witty friend from the past in the turgid prose she is reading.

“It’s a dump on the sixties,” she tells Jack when he asks. “A really cynical look. All the characters are types.”

“Are we in it?”

“No. I hope not. I think it’s based on that Phil Baxter who cracked up at that party.”

Grover raises his head, his eyes alert, and Robert jumps up, saying, “It’s time for Grover’s treat.”

He shakes a Pet-Tab from a plastic bottle and holds it before Grover’s nose. Grover bangs his tail against the rug as he crunches the pill.

Jack turns on the porch light and steps outside for a moment, returning with a shroud of cold air. “It’s starting to snow,” he says. “Come on out, Grover.”

Grover struggles to stand, and Jack heaves the dog’s hind legs over the threshold.

Later, in bed, Jack turns on his side and watches Nancy reading her book, until she looks up at him.

“You read so much,” he says. “You’re always reading.”

“Hmm.”

“We used to have more fun. We used to be silly together.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Just something silly.”

“I can’t think of anything silly.” Nancy flips the page back, rereading. “God, this guy can’t write. I used to think he was so clever.”

In the dark, touching Jack tentatively, she says, “We’ve changed. We used to lie awake all night, thrilled just to touch each other.”

“We’ve been busy. That’s what happens. People get busy.”

“That scares me,” says Nancy. “Do you want to have another baby?”

“No. I want a dog.” Jack rolls away from her, and Nancy can hear him breathing into his pillow. She waits to hear if he will cry. She recalls Jack returning to her in California after Robert was born. He brought a God’s-eye, which he hung from the ceiling above Robert’s crib, to protect him. Jack never wore the sweater Nancy made for him. Instead, Grover slept on it. Nancy gave the dog her granny-square afghan too, and eventually, when they moved back East, she got rid of the pathetic evidence of her creative period—the crochet hooks, the piles of yarn, some splotchy batik tapestries. Now most of the objects in the house are Jack’s. He made the oak counters and the dining room table; he remodeled the studio; he chose the draperies; he shot the photographs on the wall. If Jack were to leave again, there would be no way to remove his presence, the way the dog can disappear completely, with his sounds. Nancy revises the scene in her mind. The house is still there, but Nancy is not in it.

—

In the morning, there is a four-inch snow, with a drift blowing up the back-porch steps. From the kitchen window, Nancy watches her son float silently down the hill behind the house. At the end, he tumbles off his sled deliberately, wallowing in the snow, before standing up to wave, trying to catch her attention.

On the back porch, Nancy and Jack hold Grover over newspapers. Grover performs unself-consciously now. Nancy says, “Maybe he can hang on, as long as we can do this.”

“But look at him, Nancy,” Jack says. “He’s in misery.”

Jack holds Grover’s collar and helps him slide over the threshold. Grover aims for his place by the fire.

After the snowplow passes, late in the morning, Nancy drives
Robert to the school on slushy roads, all the while lecturing him on the absurdity of raising money to buy official Boy Scout equipment, especially on a snowy Saturday. The Boy Scouts are selling water-savers for toilet tanks in order to earn money for camping gear.

“I thought Boy Scouts spent their time earning badges,” says Nancy. “I thought you were supposed to learn about nature, instead of spending money on official Boy Scout pots and pans.”

“This is nature,” Robert says solemnly. “It’s ecology. Saving water when you flush is ecology.”

Later, Nancy and Jack walk in the woods together. Nancy walks behind Jack, stepping in his boot tracks. He shields her from the wind. Her hair is blowing. They walk briskly up a hill and emerge on a ridge that overlooks a valley. In the distance they can see a housing development, a radio tower, a winding road. House trailers dot the hillsides. A snowplow is going up a road, like a zipper in the landscape.

Jack says, “I’m going to call the vet Monday.”

Nancy gasps in cold air. She says, “Robert made us promise you won’t do anything without letting him in on it. That goes for me too.” When Jack doesn’t respond, she says, “I’d want to hang on, even if I was in a coma. There must be some spark, in the deep recesses of the mind, some twitch, a flicker of a dream—”

“A twitch that could make life worth living?” Jack laughs bitterly.

“Yes.” She points to the brilliantly colored sparkles the sun is making on the snow. “Those are the sparks I mean,” she says. “In the brain somewhere, something like that. That would be beautiful.”

“You’re weird, Nancy.”

“I learned it from you. I never would have noticed anything like that if I hadn’t known you, if you hadn’t got me stoned and made me look at your photographs.” She stomps her feet in the snow. Her toes are cold. “You educated me. I was so out of it when I met you. One day I was listening to Hank Williams and shelling corn for the chickens and the next day I was expected to know what wines went with what. Talk about weird.”

“You’re exaggerating. That was years ago. You always exaggerate
your background.” He adds in a teasing tone, “Your humble origins.”

“We’ve been together fifteen years,” says Nancy. She stops him, holding his arm. Jack is squinting, looking at something in the distance. She goes on, “You said we didn’t do anything silly anymore. What should we do, Jack? Should we make angels in the snow?”

Jack touches his rough glove to her face. “We shouldn’t unless we really feel like it.”

It was the same as Jack chiding her to be honest, to be expressive. The same old Jack, she thought, relieved.

“Come and look,” Robert cries, bursting in the back door. He and Jack have been outside making a snowman. Nancy is rolling dough for a quiche. Jack will eat a quiche but not a custard pie, although they are virtually the same. She wipes her hands and goes to the door of the porch. She sees Grover swinging from the lower branch of the maple tree. Jack has rigged up a sling, so that the dog is supported in a harness, with the canvas from the back of a deck chair holding his stomach. His legs dangle free.

“Oh, Jack,” Nancy calls. “The poor thing.”

“I thought this might work,” Jack explains. “A support for his hind legs.” His arms cradle the dog’s head. “I did it for you,” he adds, looking at Nancy. “Don’t push him, Robert. I don’t think he wants to swing.”

Grover looks amazingly patient, like a cat in a doll bonnet.

“He hates it,” says Jack, unbuckling the harness.

“He can learn to like it,” Robert says, his voice rising shrilly.

—

On the day that Jack has planned to take Grover to the veterinarian, Nancy runs into a crisis at work. One of the children has been exposed to hepatitis, and it is necessary to vaccinate all of them. Nancy has to arrange the details, which means staying late. She telephones Jack to ask him to pick up Robert after school.

“I don’t know when I’ll be home,” she says. “This is an administrative nightmare. I have to call all the parents, get permissions, make arrangements with family doctors.”

“What will we do about Grover?”

“Please postpone it. I want to be with you then.”

“I want to get it over with,” says Jack impatiently. “I hate to put Robert through another day of this.”

“Robert will be glad of the extra time,” Nancy insists. “So will I.”

“I just want to face things,” Jack says. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to cling to the past like you’re doing.”

“Please wait for us,” Nancy says, her voice calm and controlled.

On the telephone, Nancy is authoritative, a quick decision-maker. The problem at work is a reprieve. She feels free, on her own. During the afternoon, she works rapidly and efficiently, filing reports, consulting health authorities, notifying parents. She talks with the disease-control center in Atlanta, inquiring about guidelines. She checks on supplies of gamma globulin. She is so preoccupied that in the middle of the afternoon, when Robert suddenly appears in her office, she is startled, for a fleeting instant not recognizing him.