The Dog That Whispered (26 page)

She found two plastic bags in the closet and filled them with the two loads of laundry. Then she used the Lilliputian-sized coffeemaker and made a free cup of coffee, complete with artificial sugar and some manner of white powder that turned the coffee grayer than mocha.

She sat in the upholstered chair in the sitting area and sighed.

Lord, you never promised me an answer. I know that. But…could you sort of help me decide on what to do next? I'm not asking for a sign or a burning bush or anything cinematic like that. But maybe…maybe I could just put a settled feeling in my heart. That would work too. That would be swell
.

She sipped at her gray coffee.

Oh…and thanks. Or Amen
.

She tried to smile. She wasn't sure God was all that a smiley of a deity, but she hoped he was.

Or whatever. You know what I mean. Thanks. Really. I really mean that. And whatever you decide…I'll be okay with. So…Amen, again
.

She took one last sip and decided that she would have to see if they had real coffee and real cream in the lobby.

I guess you have to say “Amen” to make it official, right? So…Amen
.

The three of them ping-ponged looking at each other—Wilson to Emily to Thurman and back to Wilson to Thurman to Emily. The three-handed silent conversation went on for some moments.

Thurman growled again.

It sounded like
Go
.

She stopped and looked at Wilson. “I am terrified of all this. You, me, whatever this is. It scares me.”

Wilson did not disagree.

“And…you don't know what I've done. My past, Emily. What happened back then.”

Emily offered him a look of understanding. Thurman growled in support.

“You're not still doing it, are you?”

Wilson appeared surprised—more than surprised, appearing as if he had never once considered being asked that specific question.

“No. No. I'm not. Of course not.”

Emily's face did not change. It did not grow worried or anxious or nervous. She maintained a comforting half-smile.

“Then it is over. Isn't the past the past? I mean, it won't come around again.”

Wilson waited.

“No. I guess it won't,” he said, then added softly, “I mean, I know it won't.”

Emily's face did show a shadow of pain and regret, for a moment. “My husband, my late husband, he could not let it go. He could not let go of whatever happened over there…he could not let it go. It stayed with him. Or he kept it close on purpose. I don't know which.”

Wilson tried to keep his expression neutral, but it was obvious that he knew exactly what her husband had felt or did not feel.

Wilson's voice grew small. “Did he kill people?”

Emily did not appear surprised by his question. People who have endured the same sort of trauma are not surprised when that trauma is openly discussed. Other people may be kept out, but those who knew pain understood those in pain.

“No…well, I don't know for certain. He might have. He did not tell me much. The stress got to him, I think.”

Emily's hand clenched into a fist. Wilson recognized the gesture as a way of coping.

“He saw too much,” she said. “But he…before we married…he was sensitive, almost delicate. I don't why the military appealed to him so much. I think he had something to prove to himself…and maybe his father. They had a difficult relationship.”

Wilson found himself nodding in agreement, in sympathy, in empathy.

“I don't think he was ever totally honest with himself,” she said. “And maybe not with me either.”

A part of Wilson wanted to step closer to Emily and to embrace her in a hug of comfort.

But he did not.

“You have to tell the truth to yourself,” she added. “And you have to be honest with God—if you ever want to find peace. And without God, I could never survived, going through that pain. Not alone. You need God's grace to endure. I know I needed it.”

That night, the evening spread out against the sky with only a few very bright stars making their presence known. Wilson stood out on the back steps, in the dark, watching, or actually listening to, a black dog circumnavigate the yard in an inky darkness. He could hear him rustle about, nudging against the bushes that outlined the backyard of his childhood home.

“The trees weren't as big when I was a child,” Wilson said aloud, softly. “The sky looked bigger because of that.”

Thurman bounded back to the house from the darkness, grinning.

He seemed always to grin as he ran toward the house.

Perhaps it was knowing that the inside of that house promised warmth, softness, and security.

Wilson wondered how long Thurman had been in the dog detention unit at the animal shelter. His mother never asked, and Wilson knew that if he went back there now, no one would remember one specific, isolated dog from the hundreds, or thousands, that had been processed since Thurman had been adopted.
Maybe they have some sort of paper trail
, he surmised.
But not knowing is okay as well. I can imagine his history, and it doesn't matter now
.

Thurman took the last two steps in a leap and slid into the family room, nails scrabbering on the wooden floors, headed, no doubt, to the kitchen to check to see if the kibble fairies had visited his food bowl while he was outside.

He grumbled the same way every night seeing an empty bowl.

Wilson locked the back door and double-checked the lock's hold, twice, as he always did every night. He knew that if a burglar or intruder really wanted to get in, a glass pane in the door would prove little to no deterrent.

Yet the locked door, and his checking, made him feel secure, although it was never a feeling of overwhelming security.

He switched off the lamp in the family room. The oven light provided enough illumination for Thurman, he was sure of that. He never once saw or heard Thurman run into anything in the dark.

Thurman kept up a soft, under-his-breath, whispery growl as Wilson made his rounds. Most evenings, Thurman stood, silent and observant, by his bunched-up blanket as Wilson got the house ready for the night. But tonight he stood by the stairs. When Wilson climbed the stairs, Thurman followed him, climbing slowly and carefully as he always did, as if he were unsure of how to make all four legs work in partnership as they found footing on uneven surfaces.

Wilson knew he was following.

Wilson got ready for bed and Thurman waited just outside the doorway, as if respecting Wilson's need for privacy—something that dogs, in nature, had no need of, nor understanding of. Yet there Thurman was, outside, waiting. When Wilson walked to the bed for the final time, Thurman entered the room. He did so slowly and with a sense of deliberateness.

The dog sat down on the small throw rug by the side of the bed and looked up at Wilson. Thurman could form a severely serious look on occasion, and this was one such occasion.

“What?” Wilson asked.

Thurman tried to pose a question, adding his version of a querying inflection to the tone of his whispered growls.

Be honest?

Wilson appeared to know exactly what Thurman was asking and why.

“It's about this afternoon, isn't it? About Emily? And us? Being honest? About telling the truth.”

Thurman nodded.

Honest
.

Wilson knew that Thurman had problems making a “th” sound, so the word “honest” covered for the word “truth.”

“I know. I know.”

Past is past
.

“I know. But I don't know…you know what I mean?”

Thurman's look was hard, almost brittle.

No
.

“I'm guilty, Thurman. I have done so many bad things…back then. Things no civilized person would do. I am tired of feeling guilty.”

Forgive. He forgives
.

Wilson looked back at Thurman, trying to read his eyes, his expression.

“You mean that, don't you?”

Yes
.

Wilson closed his eyes.

“You know, I'm just projecting all this onto you. You don't really talk, you know. You growl in weird ways and make odd noises in your throat that I hear as words. But you don't do any of that, not really.”

I do
.

“You don't.”

I do
.

“Thurman…back then…in the war…the people that I…killed. Sometimes it was at close range. I could see their faces. And when that happened, I felt…something like joy. I felt happy, Thurman. I was happy over it. I won. I survived. I got to come home. Victorious. But that was then. Now, when I think of it, I realize that only a monster takes glee in killing people. And that's what I was, Thurman. I can't escape that. I can't forget that.”

Thurman stood and head-butted Wilson's knee.

Past. Past. Gone. War past. Gone
.

“That's what you say, Thurman. ‘Gone' is easy to say. But it isn't that easy. I can't do it.”

Past. Gone. Forgive. Gift
.

Wilson sighed.

“But I can't believe it is just that simple. To ask for forgiveness. To ask for a new start. To be right with God. Ask him into your life, the preachers on TV say. And expect everything to be wiped clean.”

Honest
.

“I can't, Thurman. Too much water under the bridge. Too long ago.”

No. Can. Do. Gift. God gift
.

Wilson knew that if he stayed as he was, Emily would never stay with him. She didn't want another closed-off person like her husband. She wouldn't want another dishonest man. Unless something changed in his life, Wilson knew with a dreadful certainty, he absolutely knew for truth, that he would be alone. He would be alone now and for the rest of his life. His mother would die and then Thurman would die and he would be alone and die alone, and that scared him almost as much as anything else in the world. He had seen fellow soldiers die in Vietnam, but if someone was with them, if someone was there to hold their hand and say, “There, there, it will be okay. I'm with you,” then regardless of the specter of death, the wounded soldier became quiet, as if…as if the peace of Heaven filled them. Wilson saw it happen dozens and dozens of times, when a chaplain would fly with them and offer comfort on the return flight to the sick and dying. When a chaplain, or another soldier, made a connection, a sometimes final connection, then the dying would not die alone. They would be facing death with a friend.

Wilson yearned to have that peace while he was still alive.

He did not want to die alone. He did not. He could not imagine reaching out, at the very end of days, and finding no human flesh to hold on to, to comfort, to…to love.

He had read much on the subject—about guilt and pain and forgiveness and alienation and stress and walling off feelings and not actually living a life, but merely being a spectator. He had read much. He knew much. That was his job, his profession. To read. To understand. He had read books. He had read portions of the Bible. Maybe all of it by now, in bits and pieces. He had listened to sermons, on TV, usually. He knew the way. He knew the path. He knew the words.

But knowing…and doing…were poles apart, worlds apart, lifetimes apart.

Wilson had thought, up until Thurman arrived, that being alone was his destiny.

Now he realized that maybe, just maybe, it was not.

The words were there, in his head, but on the way to his heart, they remained stuck in his throat.

He swallowed hard.

Thurman whispered.

Do. Say. Honest
.

Wilson looked down at the dog. Thurman looked back. His eyes were filled with hope and expectation and unbridled honesty. He nodded, his canine head bobbing, as he tried to will Wilson into speaking the words.

“Okay, Thurman. Okay.”

He swallowed again and closed his eyes.

“I'm sorry. I accept. I'm tired of fighting. Please forgive me. God, please forgive me. Please. I accept the gift. I am…yours.”