The Dog That Whispered (28 page)

He bounded out of the car with great enthusiasm, however, as if feeling certain that his dinner would be forthcoming.

Wilson led the way into the house, allowing Hazel her choice of chairs in the kitchen while he got Thurman's kibble ready for serving.

Hazel chose the chair where Wilson always sat.

“Okay. He has his dinner,” Wilson said. “Would you like some coffee? Tea? Water?”

“Coffee, if it's not too much trouble,” she replied.

“I have this fancy pod coffeemaker. It'll take a minute to heat the water. I need to run upstairs to get something. Bathroom is down that hall, if you need it. Make yourself at home.”

“Okay.”

And Hazel was alone in the kitchen with Thurman, whose head was engulfed in a bowl of kibble, making happy chewing, crunching noises as he ate, his tail wagging slowly.

The pod coffeemaker hissed and stopped making boiling noises. She looked around. There was a small metal carousel of pods on the counter. She selected one that sounded strong, but not overly bold. She opened a cabinet door where she would have stored coffee mugs. A gathering of disparate coffee mugs took up the first shelf. She selected one that showed a Pitt panther on the side. Then she pulled open a drawer where she would have put spoons and the like, and the drawer held exactly that, in neat little bins, the spoons all spooning each other in one stack. She was careful not to dislodge any other than the top one. The top shelf on the refrigerator door held a carton of half-and-half, which she took out and left on the counter, assuming that Wilson might have coffee himself.

Her coffee brewed quickly. She added cream and returned to her seat at the table.

Thurman had finished his meal and clattered up closer to her and sat down, licking his chin and whiskers with his rather long, thick tongue.

“This is very nice,” she said softly.

Thurman appeared to nod.

Nice
.

Hazel stared at him, thinking that she heard him repeat what she had just said, but she knew that dogs couldn't talk. Or least none of the dogs that she had met during her life could talk. She assumed Thurman was no different.

Wilson came back downstairs holding a metal box the size of a large shoebox, or a shoebox that would have held boots.

“Good. You found the coffee and all that.”

“I did. I hope you don't mind.”

“Not at all.”

Wilson busied himself with his coffee, making small talk, holding off the important details until he could be face-to-face.

“So, Hazel, do you work in Portland?”

Hazel swiveled in her chair.

“I do. I mean, I did. I quit some weeks ago. Sort of picked up stakes in Portland, and I guess I'm looking for a place to settle down.”

Wilson nodded as he poured cream in his coffee.

“Did you want sugar? I put the sugar bowl in the refrigerator. I read that it keeps ants away. I've never had an ant issue. Maybe the refrigerator thing works.”

“No. No thanks. I'm okay. I use it sometimes. But not all the time.”

He came and sat down opposite her at the table. Thurman remained where he had been, able to see them both very clearly.

Hazel appeared to want to explain.

“I would never have done this…quit a job and sell everything and just travel…but my mother sort of left me…I guess I would call it an inheritance. I never knew she had it and only discovered it while cleaning out her house.”

“What sort of inheritance?” Wilson asked, hoping that the question did not appear intrusive.

If Hazel had taken offense, she did a wonderful job of masking it.

“It was some stock. She had it for years and years and it was fairly valuable.”

A seriously bemused expression filled Wilson's face, as if he knew the answer and was equally puzzled and delighted.

“Was it Apple stock? The computer company?”

It seemed to be Hazel's turn to look bemused.

“It was. How did you know?”

“It was a lucky guess. Or an educated guess.”

Wilson must have seen that this answer was not nearly as complete as it needed to be.

“I have something I need to show you,” he said, and pulled the metal box toward himself and carefully lifted the lid.

The sheet metal box, gunmetal gray, looked like it had been handmade by a young boy forced to take an industrial arts class back in the time when such classes were required.

“This has been sitting on the top shelf of the second closet in my bedroom, under a stack of blankets, for the last forty-some years. I have never taken it out, but I know everything that's in here.”

Hazel watched as he placed the lid on the table; it made a chilly metallic sound.

Hazel could see inside and on top was a tattered and stained T-shirt—or what looked to be a T-shirt—with a University of Pittsburgh logo and panther on the front.

Wilson appeared almost hesitant to reach in.

Thurman did not move, but his snout was in the air, and his nose flexed wide to capture the scent of whatever this box held. Obviously he did not think it was kibbles, or he would have been on all fours trying to investigate.

“I was wearing this under my uniform when I was wounded,” Wilson said, his words coming out slowly and carefully, as if he was trying to keep any emotion at bay. “I kept it because…well, I am not sure why I kept it. Perhaps it signified survival.”

He touched it with a delicate tracing of his fingers.

“There are a few other things in here: pictures of people I served with, some medals, some trinkets from Vietnam. Dog tags. I suppose I thought it was important to keep them.”

He reached in, felt under the shirt, and pulled out an envelope. Hazel stared at the handwritten address, recognizing the flowery strokes as well as the hand that wrote it.

“That's from my mother, isn't it?” Hazel asked.

The kitchen became a solemn, somber place; the only noises were the tattering hum of the refrigerator and the heavy breathing of Thurman, almost a panting. And that was all. It was as if neither Wilson nor Hazel drew audible breath.

“It is. I think it is the only letter that she sent me.”

“Can I read it?” Hazel asked in a nut-brown mouse voice.

Wilson handed it to her and Hazel slid the single sheet of paper out and unfolded it.

As she began reading aloud, Wilson moved his lips as well, as if he had memorized that letter.

Hazel's voice had begun to quiver and quake midway through the short note, and at the end she could barely be heard. To Wilson, it was no matter. He knew what the note said.

“I could not have been a father then,” Wilson said, staring at the letter that Hazel held in trembling hands. “Biological, yes. Emotional, no. I was in such deep and troubled waters and I wasn't sure that I would stay afloat. There were drugs and alcohol. I used anything to dull the pain. For years.”

Thurman stood, stepped to Wilson, and jumped, his front paws on Wilson's thigh. Wilson put his hand on Thurman's face.

“I managed to graduate and do graduate school and work on my doctorate—but it was all done in a self-medicated fog.”

“Was the war that bad?” Hazel asked.

“Death is bad. Violent death is terrible. Violent death that you begin to enjoy is the most corrosive acid your heart and soul will ever experience.”

“Oh,” Hazel replied, obviously not knowing what to say.

“I have only recently been able to think of the war without nightmares, without crushing guilt. I know it was wrong to leave her…your mother…but being there would have been worse. Had anyone been close to me, back then, they would have been damaged as well. I would have made sure of that. Lashing out. Being creatively cruel. I could not do that to her.”

“Oh.”

“I sent her money. Not right away, because I didn't have it then. But two years later, I received a book advance. I sent all of it to her. Twelve thousand dollars. I told her that she should use it to make her future easier. I told her that I had heard good things about Apple computers. I told her that maybe she should buy some stock in that.”

Hazel's face gave way to a curious smile, a half-smile, a slender smile, but a smile.

“So you paid for me to come here,” she said.

Wilson tried to smile in return. “In a way, I guess I did.”

Thurman appeared to be confused. He bounced down from Wilson's thigh and turned his attention to Hazel. He butted his head into her knee, and she responded by patting his head.

The silence returned as they both remained still.

Hazel was the first to speak into that silence.

“So, you're my father?”

Her eyes were sad and hopeful and frightened and resolute.

Wilson nodded.

“Yes. I am sure that you are my daughter. You are.”

Thurman turned back to Wilson.

Daughter?

Wilson sighed.

“I think Thurman is slowly figuring this out. The relationship. Our relationship.”

Daughter?

Wilson pointed to Hazel, who was allowing a semi-baffled and delightfully confused smile to form.

“Yes, Thurman. She is my daughter.”

And at this, at this startling confirmation, Thurman bounced down and began the happiest of his happy dances—back hips going left, front legs going right, all four paws dancing in some sort of madcap calypso, canine rhythm.

And Thurman began growling as he danced.

Wilson wondered if Hazel heard his words.

Happy, happy, happy
.

An hour later, the three of them—Thurman, Wilson, and Hazel—stood in the lobby of the Heritage Square Senior Apartments and Retirement Village, in front of Gretna Steele.

“Yes, she is my daughter,” Wilson reaffirmed.

“Seriously?” Gretna asked again.

Daughter. Daughter. Daughter
.

Thurman's whispered growls were equally insistent and authoritative. Gretna wavered a bit, then sat back down, heavily, in the chair she had just risen from.

Her face was beatific, at peace, happy.

“Thank you, God,” she said staring upward.

“Now I can die happy,” she added. “But maybe not for a little while.”

T
HE FALL
SUNSHINE
played long shadows over the backyard of Wilson Steele's home, warming and comforting, the air still, the leaves going to reds and gold.

An informal semicircle of chairs arced around the shallow end of the reflecting pool. Emily sat at one end, then Wilson, then Hazel, and Gretna at the other end. None of them had talked much—they simply sat, warm, full from lunch, enjoying an autumn environment that would soon turn to gray and cold.

But not today.

Today was near perfect.

Hazel had found an apartment in Shadyside, only minutes away. She began to talk to Wilson…talk to her father, about returning to school.

“You will get a family discount, you know,” he told her. “After all these years, I can finally take advantage of that.”

This afternoon, Thurman sat in the middle of this arc of humans—smiling, eyes shut, tongue lolling to one side, happy, deliciously happy.

Wilson spoke, quiet, firm.

“It will be a long journey. I know that much. The journey that all of us are on. Are now on.”

Hazel nodded her agreement.

“But we have started,” Emily said. “And that is what is important. We'll get there.”

“And I think your friend, Dr. Killeen, has already helped so much,” Hazel said. “Helped all of us.”

There were nods from everyone, including Thurman, who stood up, stretched mightily, and began to growl and whisper.

God
.

“And of course, faith,” Emily added. “Thank you, Thurman, for reminding us of the obvious here. That without God, we would all still be lost.”

Thurman smiled, nodded in acknowledgment, and began to dance, just a little.

Muppet. Muppet. Muppet
.

It had become one of his most favorite words. He walked and danced around the pool—sniffing, looking, sniffing again.

“Go ahead,” Wilson called out as Thurman got to the far end.

Thurman waited.

“I said it's okay,” Wilson added. “Really.”

At that, Thurman launched himself into the air and into the water, the splash well removed from his humans. He paddled about, snorting and smiling, the water rippling off his fur, making tiny kaleidoscopic jewels on his black fur. He swam for a bit, then made his way to the shallow end of the pool, the safe and warm end of the pool, the end of the pool where all his humans gathered.

He closed his eyes, then smiled to himself and then tilted his head upward and smiled to God above.

Happy Muppet. Happy Muppet
.