The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac (3 page)

Mother enjoyed Eli and she abbreviated the boy's grief, but, compared with Hermit, she was measured and fussy. She would sit with Eli at the couch, for example, but she would not approach the boy if he sat in his father's recliner. Or she would greet Eli at the back door when he returned from school, the door facing the woods, but never the front door, facing the road. The boy changed his habits to suit her, but Greg was annoyed. He wanted to return the dog and find a more affectionate one, although he could never bring himself to suggest this to his son. Eli already loved her, and Greg begrudgingly tried to accept this love. But she reminded him of something, or someone, although he couldn't quite think of what or who it was, not until Eli called her Mother.

It was true. Eli's mother. The damn dog reminded him of Agnes.

Despite the wild red rage that flamed in him when he connected dog with woman, Greg could not bring himself, despite the years of rejection and regret, to hate the dog fully. Not yet. Eli loved her. Eli was quick to forgive her quirks, and the dog, in turn, became almost, if not quite, affectionate with him. It was not unlike the odd mother-and-son relationship that Greg had witnessed when Eli was little. It had been a relationship that comforted him as well as frightened him, with its easy floating intimacy, its foreign, accepting quiet. Greg's own mother had been effusive, tender to the point of discomfort. Not so with Agnes. She had been attentive but distant, kind but aloof. In some moments he found her to be the best sort of mother possible, a mother who never raised her voice in anger or sighed in annoyance, but in other moments he found it bizarre—disturbing, even—that she sometimes did not notice Eli at all. There was, for example, the incident with the wood chipper, when Eli had shoved his little fist into its maw, curious. It was off, thank God, but Greg, pulling weeds from the flower bed, had launched to his feet with an angry shout, warning the toddler never to approach the machine again, all while Agnes stared vacantly into the trees, her face as black and unreadable as a crow's. Later, Greg had asked her how she had not noticed. She had been standing with Eli, practically on top of him. How had she not seen what he was about to do, what he did? What if the wood chipper had been on? What if Eli had managed, being a smart boy, to turn it on right at that very instant?

Agnes had turned toward him, her face still empty. “There are people who worry. There are people who don't.”

A little worry, Greg argued, was a good thing where a child was concerned. A boy as smart as Eli, as smart and as fragile, well, to go through parenthood with blinders on was unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.

Agnes had smiled at him, and the smile reduced him, as always it did, to an insignificant, paltry thing: a man, a husband, a father—the ridiculous sex. As he spoke, his anger and worry waned.

What right did he have to tell a woman how to be? Wasn't Eli growing up to be a marvelous boy, a truly kind and rational and generous child, a child rumored by other parents and the schoolhouse to be, in fact, brilliant? Men had no rights in these matters, and Greg was ashamed. After all, he was not in the house daylong, as she was. She knew Eli best. And he supposed, as many men supposed, that she loved her child more than he did. He backed off. His wife expressed no gratitude and no annoyance with him either way. If anything, she seemed simply bored with the whole affair.

And that was how Mother behaved, too. Bored. Not angry or tense, not furtive or sad. Just bored. At night, Greg passed by his son's room, saying hello and good night on his way to work; he held down the night shift at a filthy pub, a job that was easy and decent despite the long, late hours. Usually Eli would already be asleep, one hand clutching the fur on Mother's back. Mother, however, never slept. She lay very still, statuesque, but Greg had not once seen the dog's eyes close. She didn't even bother to raise her head to study Greg—she merely combed him over with her eyes, judgeless but uninviting. God, the boredom!

And, like Agnes, the dog simply lay there, visibly but joylessly caring for his son. Greg wondered if she would suddenly up and disappear, just mysteriously vanish. He considered purchasing another dog straightaway, to soften the blow of such a departure. Or he could put the dog down now and save them all from an even bigger misery down the road.

Most days, Greg found additional work mending fences or loading hay or repairing downed power lines, and he would sleep only two or three hours before rising and heading out to work again, his brain sloshing in his skull like a bowl of cold soup. It was dangerous to work in such a twilight state, especially driving testy machinery or climbing the bald telephone poles, but others did the work drunk or just plain boggled with stupidity. Greg was sure-footed, small but coordinated, his hands as deft as a raccoon's, and he performed as well on no sleep as other workers did on a full night's rest. He took whatever job was offered to him: He was saving for his son's schooling. Eli deserved all he could provide. Greg had little else to give the boy if he died, other than the furniture and his good rifle, so he worked and saved.

When he left in the morning, he would knock on the door to his son's room and say, “Leaving now. Go to school. Feed the dog.”

The boy never needed to be told these things, but Greg liked to have a reason to look in on him, his yellow tufts of hair poking up from the blankets, the room awash with the sweet smells of his boyhood, smells of salty earth and maple syrup and warm, fetid sleep. Rarely, the boy stirred, but sometimes he lifted his head from the blankets just long enough to say, without opening his eyes, “Goodbye, Daddy,” and Greg's heart filled and spilled over. He loved his son. He was not, he knew, the world's best father. But,
goddamn it,
he did love his son.

One morning, on the way to scale poles just outside Wallace, Idaho, Greg poked his head into his son's room and saw that he slept alone. He said goodbye and gave the boy a kiss on the forehead. Eli grumbled something and turned over, taking with him most of the blankets and a corner of the fitted sheet. Greg stood and gazed for a moment, embraced by the old, sleepy sensation of love. Then he went into the kitchen to retrieve his thermos of coffee and his lunch: some salami, a hard knob of cheese, and a round rock of a plum, dried to a small black husk. The same food sat in another satchel in the fridge, ready for Eli to ferry to school. Greg went to the front door and pulled on his work boots and began to tie the laces. He was energized and hopeful despite his short night of sleep. As he finished tying his right boot, Greg heard a soft snuffling noise. He raised his eyes to find Mother staring at him, her nose wet from the water dish, or maybe from drinking out of the toilet, something Hermit had loved to do, although Mother likely believed herself too good for such a lowbrow habit.

Greg smiled at the dog and patted his leg. “Here, girl. Here, Mother.”

Mother did not so much glare at him as raise her eyebrows with incredulity.

“Come here,” he said softly. “Come here, Agnes.”

The dog moved forward hesitantly.

Greg opened the palm of his hand.

“Agnes,” he said. “I thought so.”

Mother peered at the palm of his hand with a regal expression, as though staring down into a pit of snakes. She did not move closer.

Greg wanted to cradle the dog for a moment. Not in any weird, sexual way, he told himself. Just to feel her warmth, anything's warmth, curled against him. Mother yipped in protest as he grabbed her collar and pulled her to his chest.

“Stay,” he said. “Stay. Mother. Agnes. Stay put.”

She squirmed against him and he held her there harder. Her breath came in a labored wheeze.
Stop,
he told himself.
Stop it, or you'll choke her to death.
He couldn't stop. He crushed her to him with more force, his own breath coming in urgent, clumsy gulps.

A horn sounded. The truck bound for Wallace. Greg released the dog and stood. Mother scampered, whimpering, away from him, and Greg thought,
Good
. He felt enormous, powerful, post-coital. And also: delusional, concerned, filled with an ominous regret. Had he hurt her? He saw her curl into a ball near her food dish, her indifferent face clearly expressing,
You cannot reach me. Ever. You'll never reach me.
The expression meant she was okay, okay enough for him to be annoyed again, to want to give her a solid crippling kick, but he hurried from the house instead, shutting the door firmly behind him.

When Greg returned later, drained and irritated, he found Eli on the couch with the dog, looking over his arithmetic lesson.

A bright boy, brighter than Greg had ever been. Very much like Agnes. He could be an engineer, even a doctor. The dog, he noticed, leaned over the book, too, as though reading along.

“She's smart,” Eli laughed. “Look how smart she is.”

“Oh, I have no doubt,” Greg said. He sat down to unlace his boots and noticed the dog peek at him warily—just for a moment—and was pleased when she quickly looked away. So. He had affected her. He felt satisfied. He rubbed at one of his sore shoulders and sat there on the old bench, leaning against the wall, listening to the heavy panting of the heating register.

“You know, son,” he said. “I've been meaning to ask you.”

“Hmm?” Eli said, half listening.

“I've been meaning to ask you about this dog here.”

“Mother,” Eli said. He didn't look up from his work, only turned his pencil over and erased what must have been a wrong answer.

“This dog here of yours. Meaning to ask how you came up with the name you did. It's a queer name for a dog. Especially for a dog that's not, you know, a mother.”

Eli stared into his book. A moment's silence passed.

“It's just,” Greg continued, tugging at a callus on his palm, “I'm curious. Why Mother? Why not Angela or Katie or Mutt or Aloysius? Good gravy, why not Spot or Fuzzy or any other normal dog name? Why Mother?”

“You don't like the name,” Eli said, and looked up at him, his eyes filling with tears.

“Well,” Greg said, “I didn't say that. Don't go crying on me, son, you're nearly full-grown. Let's not have tears here, now. You know I hate that. Tears are the tools of manipulation. I've always said it.”

“You hate the name,” Eli repeated.

“Tell me how come.”

“Because—” he began. Then stopped, shook his head as though freeing water from his ears, and began again. “Because the man—her first owner—called her a first-rate bitch. He pointed at her and said, ‘She's a first-rate bitch.' And you said, ‘We'll take her, then,' even though I wanted a different one. I wanted the one who wouldn't drink his mom's milk, who had to be fed from the bottle. But you didn't want him. And also,” and he looked up at Greg's face again, brave the way only children can be, and said accusatorily, “and you called Mother a damn bitch once. I heard you.”

“I did not. I never said such a thing to your mother. Not once. Not ever.”

“Not
to
her. You said it
about
her. After she left. You said, ‘If I could get my hands around that damn bitch's neck, I'd kill her.' That's what you said to Uncle Frome. And Uncle Frome said, ‘Now, now, that's no way to speak.' And you said, ‘That damn bitch. I'll kill her! I'll kill her for what she did!'”

The boy finished his exclamation and then buried his face into his dog's body, the bravery stripped from his face, his deepest secrets dredged and discovered.

Greg, too, felt ruined. He wanted to put his arms around his son, console him and explain why,
why,
he'd said such horrible things, but the dog had risen and stood between them, and Greg worried that if he came too close to her, he would take her up in his arms and swing her sideways against the wall and smash her head open, spatter her brains against the wainscoting.

So instead he said, “I was angry. Very angry with her. For what she did. For leaving us. For leaving you. I was angry because it wasn't fair to you, Eli, what she did.”

“She loved me,” Eli said, crying freely now. The dog went closer to him and nosed the boy in the arm, as though to say,
Yes
, as though to say,
Hate your father, as I do
. “She loved me; I know it.”

That may be so,
Greg thought,
she loved you, but she didn't love you
enough. That was the thing. Anyone could love. Anyone could say they loved their husband or child or wife or dog. They could be out in public and behave with perfect respectability, so that people would say, as was often said of his wife,
What a wonderful person. What a wonderful mother. What a wonderful, calm, loving woman.
Anyone could perform such an act. But to actually love, to love enough to commit to unhappiness,
that
was real love. When his wife would say to him,
I wish we could travel, Greg; I wish we could go dancing; I wish we could drink beer until we black out and then do nothing tomorrow but vomit and fuck and then drink some more,
Greg would frown. Yes, he wanted those things. They sounded like good fun. But they had a child now, he would say, a responsibility, and they owed it to Eli to be constant, reliable parents. Agnes would listen raptly with what Greg assumed was the pure, quiet understanding of love but with what he realized now was sheer bafflement at the depth of his own affection.

“It's so easy for you,” she'd told him once, “to love and not grow bitter. It's hard for me, Greg. I'm just not good at it. The more I love, the more bitter I become.”

“But you do love Eli?” Greg had pressed, worried.

“Oh, yes. I love him. Of course I do.”

And Greg's worry had immediately deflated; he had decided that she was simply tired.

So many mothers were. So very tired. So very fed up with the young children they watched day in and day out. He understood it all in a way that most husbands did not. She would say that to him, even—
You're very understanding, Greg
—but she would say it with a sorrowful tone, as though she wished he would beat her, or tongue-lash her, or choke her during sex, as she had once read about in a dirty book she'd found at a friend's house. When she'd told him of the latter discovery, Greg had ignored it. He had not taken her seriously when she'd mentioned the choking, had not accepted the tacit invitation suggested there, but maybe he should have taken it very seriously indeed. Maybe a little roughhousing would have gone a long way.