The World According To Garp (34 page)

“The dog
looked
very mean,” said Walt.

“Now you’ve got the picture,” Garp told him. “Every night was the same for that dog, and every day he was tied up in an alley beside the café. He was tied to a long chain, which was tied to the front axle of an old army truck, which had been backed into the alley and left there—for good. This truck didn’t have any wheels.

“And you know what cinder blocks are,” Garp said. “The truck was set on blocks so it wouldn’t roll an inch on its axles. There was just enough room for the dog to crawl under the truck and lie down out of the rain and the sun. The chain was just long enough so that the dog could walk to the end of the alley and watch the people on the sidewalk and the cars in the street. If you were coming along the sidewalk, you could sometimes see the dog’s nose poking out of the alley; that was as far as the chain would reach, and no farther.

“You could hold out your hand to the dog and he would sniff you, but he didn’t like to be touched and he never licked your hand the way some dogs do. If you tried to pat him, he would duck his head and slink back into the alley. The way he stared at you made you think it would not be a very good idea to follow him into the alley, or to try very hard to pat him.”

“He would bite you,” Walt said.

“Well, you couldn’t be sure,” Garp said. “He never bit anyone, actually, or I never heard about it if he did.”

“You were there?” Walt said.

“Yes,” Garp said; he knew that the storyteller was always “there.”

“Walt!” called Helen; it irritated Garp that she eavesdropped on the stories he told the children. “That is what they mean by “a dog’s life,” Helen called.

But neither Walt nor his father appreciated her interruption. Walt said, “Go on with the story. What happened to the dog?”

The responsibilities loomed for Garp, every time. What is the instinct in people that makes them expect something to
happen
? If you begin a story about a person or a dog, something must be going to happen to them. “Go on!” Walt cried impatiently. Garp, caught up in his art, frequently forgot his audience.

He went on. “If too many people held out their hands for the dog to sniff, the dog would wall back down the alley and crawl under the truck. You could often see the tip of his black nose poking out from under the truc. He was either under the truck or at the sidewalk end of the alley: he never stopped in between. He had his habits and nothing disturbed them.”

“Nothing?” Walt asked, disappointed—or else worried that nothing was going to happen.

“Well,
almost
nothing,” Garp admitted, and Walt perked up. “Something bothered him: there was just one thing. It alone could make the dog furious. It was the only thing that could even make the dog bark. It really drove him crazy.”

“Oh sure, a
cat
!” cried Walt.

“A
terrible
cat,” said Garp in a voice that made Helen stop rereading
The Eternal Husband
and hold her breath. Poor Walt, she thought.

“Why was the cat terrible?” Walt asked.

“Because he teased the dog,” Garp said. Helen was relieved that this was, apparently, all that was “terrible.”

“Teasing isn’t nice,” Walt said with knowledge; Walt was Duncan’s victim in the area of teasing.
Duncan
should be hearing this story, Helen thought. A lesson about teasing is clearly wasted on Walt.

“Teasing is
terrible
,” Garp said. “But this cat
was
terrible. He was an old cat, off the streets, dirty and mean.”

“What was his name?” Walt asked.

“He didn’t have a name,” Garp said. “Nobody owned him; he was hungry all the time, so he stole food. Nobody could blame him for that. And he had lots of fights with other cats, and nobody could blame him for that either, I suppose. He had only one eye; the other eye had been missing for so long that the hole had closed and the fur had grown over where the eye had been. He didn’t have any ears. He must have had to fight all the time.”

“The poor thing!” Helen cried.

“Nobody could blame that cat for the way he was,” Garp said, “except that he teased the dog. That was wrong; he didn’t have to do that. He was hungry, so he had to be sneaky, and nobody took care of him, so he had to fight. But he didn’t
have
to tease the dog.”

“Teasing isn’t nice,” Walt said again. Very definitely Duncan’s story, Helen thought.

“Every day,” said Garp, “that cat would walk down the sidewalk and stop to wash himself at the end of the alley. The dog would come out from under the truck, running so hard that the chain wriggled behind him like a snake that’s just been run over in the road. You ever seen that?”

“Oh sure,” Walt said.

“And when the dog got to the end of his chain, the chain would snap the dog’s neck back and the dog would be tugged off his feet and land on the pavement of the alley, sometimes knocking his wind out or hitting his head. The cat would never move. The cat
knew
how long the chain was and he would sit there washing himself with his one eye staring at the dog. The dog went crazy. He barked and snapped and struggled against his chain until the owner of the café, his master, would have to come out and shoo the cat away. Then the dog would crawl back under the truck.

“Sometimes the cat would come right back, and the dog would lie under the truck for as long as he could stand it, which was not very long. He’d lie under there while the cat licked himself all over out on the sidewalk, and pretty soon you could hear the dog begin to whimper and whine, and the cat would just stare down the alley at him and go on washing himself. And pretty soon the dog would start to howl under the truck, and thrash around there as if he were covered with bees, but the cat would just go on washing himself. And finally the dog would lunge out from under the truck and charge up the alley again, snapping his chain behind him—even though he knew what would happen. He knew that the chain would rip him off his feet and choke him, and throw him on the pavement, and that when he got up the cat would still be sitting there, inches away, washing himself. And he’d bark himself hoarse until his master, or someone else, would shoo the cat away.

“That dog
hated
that cat,” Garp said.

“So do
I
,” Walt said.

“And so did I,” said Garp. Helen felt herself turn against the story—it had such an obvious conclusion. She said nothing.

“Go on,” Walt said. Part of telling a story to a child, Garp knew, is telling (or pretending to tell) a story with an obvious conclusion.

“One day,” said Garp, “everybody thought the dog had finally lost his mind. For one whole day he ran out from under the truck and all the way up the alley until the chain jerked him off his feet: then he’d do it again. Even when the cat wasn’t there, the dog just kept charging up the alley, throwing his weight against the chain and heaving himself to the pavement. It startled some of the people walking on the sidewalk, especially the people who saw the dog coming at them and didn’t know that there
was
a chain.

“And that night the dog was so tired that he didn’t pace around the café, he slept on the floor as if he were sick. Anyone could have broken into the café that night: I don’t think that dog would have woken up. And the next day he did the same thing, although you could tell his neck was sore because he cried out every time the chain snapped him off his feet. And that night he slept in the café as if he were a dead dog who’d been murdered there on the floor.

“His master called a vet,” Garp said, “and the vet gave the dog some shots—I guess to calm him down. For two days the dog lay on the floor of the café at nighttime and under the truck in the daytime, and even when the cat walked by on the sidewalk, or sat washing himself at the end of the alley, that dog wouldn’t move. That poor dog,” Garp added.

“He was sad,” Walt said.

“But do you think he was
smart
?” Garp, asked.

Walt was puzzled but he said, “I
think
he was.”

“He was,” Garp said, “because all the time he’d been running against the chain, he’d been moving the truck he was tied to—just a little. Even though that truck had sat there for years, and it was rusted solid on those cinder blocks and the buildings could fall down around it before that truck would budge—
even so
,” Garp said, “that dog made the truck move. Just a little.”

“Do you think the dog moved the truck
enough
?” Garp asked Walt.

“I think so,” Walt said. Helen thought so, too.

“He needed just a few inches to reach that cat,” Garp said. Walt nodded. Helen, confident of the gory outcome, plunged back into
The Eternal Husband
.

“One day,” Garp said, slowly, “the cat came and sat down on the sidewalk at the end of the alley and began to lick his paws. He rubbed his wet paws into his old ear holes where his ears had been, and he rubbed his paws over his old grown-together eye hole where his other eye used to be, and he stared down the alley at the dog under the truck. The cat was getting bored now that the dog wouldn’t come out anymore. And then the dog came out.”

“I think the truck moved enough,” Walt said.

“The dog ran up the alley faster than ever before, so that the chain behind him was dancing off the ground, and the cat never moved although this time the dog could reach him.” “Except,” said Garp, “the chain didn’t quite reach.” Helen groaned. “The dog got his mouth over the cat’s head but the chain choked him so badly that he couldn’t close his mouth; the dog gagged and was jerked back—like before—and the cat, realizing that things had changed, sprang away.”

“God!” Helen cried.

“Oh no,” Walt said.

“Of course, you couldn’t fool a cat like that twice,” Garp said. “The dog had one chance, and he blew it. That cat would never let him get close enough again.”

“What a terrible story!” Helen cried.

Walt, silent, looked as if he agreed.

“But something
else
happened,” Garp said. Walt looked up, alert. Helen, exasperated, held her breath again. The cat was so scared he ran into the street without looking. “No matter what happens,” Garp said, “you don’t run into the street without looking, do you, Walt?”

“No,” Walt said.

“Not even if a dog is going to bite you,” Garp said. “Not
ever
. You
never
run into the street without looking.”

“Oh sure, I know,” Walt said. “What happened to the cat?”

Garp slapped his hands together so sharply that the boy jumped. “He was killed like that!” Garp cried. “Smack! He was dead. Nobody could fix him. He’d have had a better chance if the dog had gotten him.”

“A car hit him?” Walt asked.

“A truck,” Garp said, “ran right over his head. His brains came out his old ear holes, where his ears used to be.”

“Squashed him?” Walt asked.

“Flat,” said Garp, and he held up his hand, palm level, in front of Walt’s serious little face. Jesus, Helen thought, it was Walt’s story after all.
Don’t run into the street without looking!

“The end,” said Garp.

“Good night,” Walt said.

“Good night,” Garp said to him. Helen heard them kiss.

“
Why
didn’t the dog have a name?” Walt asked.

“I don’t know,” Garp said.

“Don’t run into the street without looking.”

When Walt fell asleep, Helen and Garp made love. Helen had a sudden insight regarding Garp’s story.

“That dog could never move that truck,” she said. “Not an inch.”

“Right,” Garp said. Helen felt sure he had actually been there.

“So how’d you move it?” she asked him.

“I couldn’t move it either,” Garp said. “It wouldn’t budge. So I cut a link out of the dog’s chain, at night when he was patrolling the café and I matched the link at a hardware store. The next night I
added
some links—about six inches.”

“And the cat never ran into the street?” Helen asked.

“No, that was for Walt,” Garp admitted.

“Of course,” Helen said.

“The chain was plenty long enough,” Garp said. “the cat didn’t get away.”

“The dog killed the cat?” Helen asked.

“He bit him in half,” Garp said.

“In a city in Germany?” Helen said.

“No, Austria,” Garp said. “It was Vienna. I never lived in Germany.”

“But how could the dog have been in the war?” Helen asked. “He’d have been twenty years old by the time you got there.”

“The dog wasn’t in the war,” Garp said. “He was just a dog. His
owner
had been in the war—the man who owned the café. That’s why he knew how to train the dog. He trained him to kill anybody who walked in the café when it was dark outside. When it was light outside, anybody could walk in; when it was dark, even the master couldn’t get in.”

“That’s nice!” Helen said. “Suppose there was a fire? There seems to me to be a number of drawbacks to that method.”

“It’s a war method, apparently,” Garp said.

“Well,” Helen said, “it makes a better story than the
dog’s
being in the war.”

“You think so, really?” Garp asked her. It seemed to her that he was alert for the first time during their conversation. “That’s interesting,” he said, “because I just this minute made it up.”

“About the owner’s being in the war?” Helen asked.

“Well, more than that,” Garp admitted.

“What part of the story did you make up?” Helen asked him.

“All of it,” he said.

They were in bed together and Helen lay quietly there, knowing that this was one of his trickier moments.

“Well,
almost
all of it,” he added.

Garp never tired of playing this game, though Helen certainly tired of it. He would wait for her to ask:
Which
of it? Which of it is true, which of it is made up? Then he would say to her that it didn’t matter; she should just tell him what she didn’t
believe
. Then he would change that part. Every part she believed was true; every part she didn’t believe needed work. If she believed the whole thing, then the whole thing was true. He was very ruthless as a storyteller, Helen knew. If the truth suited the story, he would reveal it without embarrassment; but if any truth was unsuccessful in a story, he would think nothing of changing it.