Year of the Dog (3 page)

I nodded. “I guess I thought you'd look like my grandmama. I mean not
like
Grandmama, but—.” I didn't know how to say she didn't look like family, and I'd expected that she would, that she'd be someone if I'd passed her on the street I'd have known she belonged to us.

She considered. “You have my height,” she said. “My father, your great-grandfather, was a tall man. Though you have the hazel eyes and fair hair of my mother's side.” Then she rose, as if we'd got too personal. “I was making tea. Will you drink it hot?”

I told her yes, taking it as a good sign that she remembered that
iced
tea, usually sweetened to the gills, was the Carolina state drink. I fretted that maybe I shouldn't have said what I did, remembering that Grandmama had got her nose out of joint about her sister who'd left the state and gone off to Vassar College and had never made a family of her own or kept up with the one God gave her. She used to say that May had been serious about someone while still a girl, but her dad put an end to it. In recent years, Mom got a thrill out of hearing that Aunt May had got herself a boyfriend, at her age, the Vermont mystery writer named Bert Greenwood, which put her somewhat back in favor with the family. Though we didn't hear about it till the week of Grandmama's funeral.

Looking around the large room, I wondered how it would
be to end up like this great-aunt, in your seventies in a northern climate between two mountain ranges, living alone. Librarians, like pharmacists, maybe, must be people who helped you out when you weren't sure what to ask for or what to do with it when you got it. But was that enough?

When Aunt May came back with two cups on a tray, I mentioned that I had my puppy-in-training in the car. “I think my mom wrote you I was raising one? I wonder, could I bring her in?”

The tall woman in jeans looked out the wide bay window. “The dog. Yes, I believe Ida Jean did mention that. Perhaps—.” She clasped her large hands together. “Perhaps another time.”

We had bitter brewed tea and I didn't ask for lemon or use the cream but drank it straight, nearly the color of coffee. I talked about how early it grew light in the mornings this far north, and how late it stayed light in the evenings. How the summer days were so amazingly long I found myself wanting to take a dawn run along the lake or a late-night walk downtown. “Is it hard in the winter? Having it the other way?”

“I've grown to like the contrast.” She sipped her tea.

“I never had a dog before,” I told her, my mind on wishing I'd come dressed in something better than shorts and a tee, my hair just-washed and flying in all directions. “She's just a puppy—.”

“All dogs were once puppies,” she commented dryly.

Silenced by her tone, I wondered what else I could talk about, if she had an interest in hearing what Mom was doing in Peachland or what in a general way was going on these days in our upland part of the state.

But then Aunt May asked a nice question, as if she realized she'd sort of shut me up. “What made you decide to raise a dog during your year here, Janey?”

And, grateful she'd asked about that instead of prying into the business of my splitting with Curtis, I told her the whole
story about Mr. Haynes, the blind man who came into the pharmacy all the time because he couldn't remember which shaped pill was for what ailment and needed reminding. How he always brought his guide with him, the big black lab he called Blind Dog. How I asked him about where had he got the dog and how did they place them with a blind person. And that he'd told me a great lady over in Greenville had raised the dog so it knew just what to do from day one, so he didn't have to use his blind stick anymore. “I thought about that, because I saw him a lot and had grown fond of Blind Dog who always came in with him. And I figured if I was going to come way up here, and not have my work at the pharmacy for a spell—well, I wanted to at least be doing something for somebody.”

“As I recall,” Aunt May said, “the Haynes family is black. Is that correct?”

“Yes, ma'am, he is. And so is his dog.” And I laughed out loud, I couldn't help myself, it was a southern joke.

She smiled. “I haven't heard the sound of Carolina for years.” Then, setting down her teacup, she took off her glasses to clean them, and that seemed a signal it was time to go.

Outside, after glancing quickly toward the car to make sure Beulah hadn't climbed up on the seat (the way a child or an ordinary dog would), I asked my great Aunt May the name of the towering tree with the rough bark and scented white flowers that I'd been living with but didn't know.

“That's a black locust.” She seemed pleased I'd asked. “I like them a lot.” She gestured behind her. “These three are older than the house.” She stopped to pick a twig off the ground. “Perhaps you would like a tree book, Janey. Would you? I have a slew. Librarians seem to accumulate a world of reference books.”

“I would,” I said. And, waiting in the windy air for her to bring it, felt grateful that now I'd have something to tell them at home about my visit to Mom's remaining blood kin.

4

AFTER SUPPER, I dug my cell out of my tote bag and called Mom and Daddy. It was no secret they still had mixed feelings about my coming up here. Mom pretended to be chipper about it, how I needed to get away for a spell, but she kept on telling me all the gossip just as if I'd never left, not getting the idea that the whole reason I'd come up here was to get away from everybody like her minding everybody else's business.

Daddy couldn't help being of two minds. On the one hand, he wanted what was best for his girl, on the other he didn't warm to the idea of sending me off to a state which had just that spring declared civil unions legal. Whatever racism he'd inherited from his daddy had been rubbed away after thirty years of working at the hardware store, where, he liked to say, you could see who was doing the hard work and who wasn't, and who built straight and who built crooked. But he still had a blind eye in the direction of people loving their own kind. “You watch out,” he'd said when I was packed and the car loaded for the drive, “up there anybody can marry anybody.”

“I went to see Aunt May,” I told them. “She served hot tea, and gave me a book on trees.”

“That's her being a librarian,” Mom explained.

“What? Her heating up the tea?” Daddy interrupted.

I said, “I'm not sure she remembered that I was supposed to be up here—she seemed surprised to see me.”

“Now don't you go casting a stone about the treatment you got, hear? So many different apples fell off our family tree we could change our name to Newton. She'll look after you.”

“She didn't like the idea of me bringing the puppy inside.”

“Well, of course,” Mom nearly shouted, “she doesn't want to have a
dog
in her house. Didn't you listen to what I told you? Didn't you read Bert Greenwood's books which I sent you up there with two of? Those mysteries, every single one, has some kind of bad-dog event in the past of somebody, somebody deceased or maybe the suspect, and this judge always has to retire to his chambers to get over hearing about it, before solving the case. He sometimes has to have a glass of bourbon, and your daddy, who is on the other line listening in, says to ask you, Do they drink bourbon up there in Vermont, he thinks it's only in the South.”

I hadn't read the books, which probably were still in the unpacked box in the trunk of the car. I remembered they were all set in a little town in Vermont, spelled like CHARlotte, the town in North Carolina, but pronounced CharLOTTE. They all had titles which sounded like something you'd heard before, which I guess was the point:
Charlotte's Web, Charlotte Ruse, The Prisoner of Charlotte.
But if Bert Greenwood or anybody was living with Aunt May, I didn't have an inkling of it.

I had to admit to Mom that I hadn't got around to reading the mysteries yet, but promised her I would soon. “I've been spending all my time with Beulah,” I explained, and patted my trusty puppy who, hearing her name, had padded over to stand beside me. Good girl.

“Beulah?” Daddy's voice broke in.

“The
dog,
Talbot,” she said. “The dog.” Then, just when she'd shooed him off the line and I thought the call was over, Mom added in a whisper: “Hon, there's some news you might not want to be hearing, so stop me if you're going to get upset.”

5

I'D KNOWN MILLIE Dawson longer than I'd known Curtis. She had been a thorn in my side from grammar school through high school. At least that was my side of the story. She'd sat behind me in homeroom, and always had to ask the teacher if she could move in front of me so she could see the board or if I'd just remove my head. She was one of those girls that the rest of us had a jealousy just looking at: a waist about the diameter of my ankle bone, boobs like cup cakes, hair that bounced even when she sat still. Bitsy and limber and energetic, she could do the split and jumping jacks, and made me—a pretty good athlete actually—feel large and lumbering.

She'd been wild in love with Curtis Prentice forever, and when, our senior year, he'd asked me to the senior all-night party instead, I didn't have a guilty minute. I figured she could've had anybody in the state of South Carolina she wanted. I never spent an instant wondering if she cried herself to sleep when he started up with me, or if she ripped out my pictures in the yearbook. Instead, I floated six feet off the ground because I, good serious Janey Daniels, working part-time at the pharmacy after school, had taken Curtis Prentice, hunk, away from Millie Dawson.

All of this I needed to remind myself about, having just heard from the town's biggest rumor-spreader, Mom, that
Millie had already been three months pregnant before I knew she'd stolen my one-time husband back.

Whimpering enough to cause my wagging, padding, pale-faced puppy to settle down at my feet, on her tummy, paws forward, listening for her name, I tried to eat the plate of faux-Caesar salad with chicken I'd put together before the call home. Deciding lettuce didn't do much for a squirrelly stomach, I added a cold bottle of Magic Hat beer.

My brain remembered the thrill of that time, when everything about Curtis had stopped my heart. He'd walk down the street moving fast and smooth, like a halfback about to run for a tackle, eating a cone or a burger with one hand, waving to the town with the other. When he started hanging out with me, he talked a lot about my ambition. He wanted to catch some of it, he said, because he wanted to make something out of himself. So when it became clear I liked my job at the pharmacy and wanted to make that my work, he'd stop by, talking to me about what did I think about the emergency medical service, didn't I think they did more than the doctors?—being right there on the spot when somebody had a heart attack or got themselves in a car accident? He got excited about the EMS, figuring if he worked for them we'd be in the same field: saving lives.

By the time we got our diplomas, he'd begun riding with the ambulance crew, studying up on first-aid measures. And I guess I started to split in two at that time: trying to get my pharmacy degree and trying to hang onto Curtis. It didn't take much persuasion to talk me into a wedding while I was still in school at USC. I guess at that time I'd have followed him nude down the street with a rose in my teeth if he'd asked.

But things worked out differently between me and Curtis from what I'd expected. He gave up on making a living or even getting a lot of satisfaction from riding ambulances. He thought about being a nurse, but his buddies made a lot of
jokes about
Nursie Curtis,
and he'd given up on that. His dad suggested he try life insurance: Who helped the injured guy the most? Who helped him in his back pocket? So he did that, became a claims adjuster. That might've been fine, except that people in town kept telling him his wife had sure been a help, how she'd got their husband off his deathbed. People kept asking him, Are you Pharmacist Daniels' husband? And then one day somebody brand new to town hollered out the car window, “Afternoon, Mr. Daniels.” And Curtis came home, his face blazing, and shouted at me. “You think you're the tail, don't you, Janey? Well, you're not the tail and you're not gonna be wagging me.”

When he took the case for Mr. Dawson, promising to get him a truck-load of money for an injury to his back—some dumb nut hitting his car broadside in a pile-up—he made a trip by the pharmacy to tell me. “I'm gonna get him a bundle. Man just wants to get his car overhauled; I'm gonna get him enough to buy the dealership.”

“Is that Millie's daddy?” I'd asked. It came out of my mouth, the wrong question, old people in wheelchairs and a couple of regulars waiting, and me, all of a sudden, acting like I was back at Peachland High.

“If he is, what about it? You don't remember that I haven't been with her since the day I nearly broke my ass trying to hook up with you? You don't remember that? I bet
she
remembers that. You want me to tell him I can't make the deal, it wouldn't be ethical to get him his wad of compensation because I once had the opportunity to get into his daughter's pants? Is that it?”

We had an audience by that time, naturally, so I said, “That's great, Curtis,” to his suit-coated back barging out the door.

I'd been grieving that day over some bad news about the mother of First Baptist's pastor, news I hadn't any business
sharing but which made me heavy inside. But even if I'd wanted to violate pharmacy confidentiality, no way I could've got Curtis to listen to this worry on my mind. And that hurt me a lot, that he didn't have an interest in people outside himself. No wonder I'd asked about Millie; I must've really been asking if he was wishing himself back single again.

We'd had a sort of fight the week before. I'd mentioned to him here we were turning twenty-five, had got ourselves a nice house with a yard, and maybe it was time we thought about a family. I knew that Mr. Sturgis would let me have baby-leave or at least cut down my hours if I asked. He'd promised that the day I started work full-time, with my degree finished and a ring on my finger.