Under the Wolf, Under the Dog Read online

  So I’ve been thinking a lot about how my brother made me participate in his drug habit, and it sort of pisses me off. I thought nothing of it at the time, but looking back on it, I must admit that I possess a fair amount of anger toward him.

  So this is what would usually happen.

  When Welton got home from the nursing home, he would slide an envelope of pills under my bedroom door. Before the pills, it was a five-dollar bill, which was to be used to purchase his daily bottle of Robitussin at the Piggly Wiggly. He’d always let me keep the change. I’m still not sure if that was out of generosity or if he just forgot there was money coming back to him.

  After a few months, the cough medicine money was replaced by a small manila envelope of pills with Bury in the backyard. Thanks, bro. written on the front.

  I kept the pills in a Mason jar that Welton put on my dresser. It had THE ITTY-BITTY PHARMACY written in black permanent marker on the front. It wasn’t important to Welton that I separate or organize the pills in any special way. Some were small and colorful. Others were these big white pharmaceutical hockey pucks. I think he took them as arbitrarily as I put them in the jar.

  “What are these, anyway?” I asked him once.

  “Just pills,” he said.

  “What kind of pills?” I asked.

  “The kind that make you feel stuff.”

  Once I took one. It was of the larger, blondish, UFO-shaped variety, and it made me sad and lethargic. I kept thinking about the sycamore tree in our front yard and how it smelled like graphite pencils and how I used to climb it and how I saw my dad urinate on it once. It was just after my mom got diagnosed and she was having trouble using the toilet and he couldn’t hold his bladder. He was too much of a coward to go in the sink like Welton and me. He would rather urinate on a tree, right there in the front yard for all the neighbors and the rest of the world to see.

  After I took the pill, I slept for like twelve hours and woke up in the early afternoon. Welton called the gifted school pretending to be my dad. He could do voices pretty well. He was especially good at my dad, but he could also imitate Homer Simpson and the guy who does the monster truck commercials on the radio.

  Welton told the secretary at the gifted school that I got food poisoning and that there was a chance that I would have to miss the following day, too. That was probably the coolest thing he ever did for me. . . .

  It’s like ten at night right now, and Shannon just came into my room and told me that Gary Ship died in the helicopter on his way to that hospital in Traverse City. There’s supposed to be some sort of memorial service tomorrow night after dinner.

  I just have to say that I’m so sick of people dying wherever I go.

  5.

  So last night that memorial service for Gary Ship was unbelievably stupid.

  The faculty all took turns sharing their various illuminating thoughts. This heavyset woman with this gross curlicue chin hair whom I’ve never seen before (apparently she’s the chairwoman of the Burnstone Grove board) talked about community healing and how grief is simply a kind of weather system and how we can all be shelter for each other until this “unfortunate” weather passes. She took her glasses off and put them back on about fifty times, as if her thoughts were too expansive for her own head. Dr. Shays spoke about choices and the concept that what makes us different from animals is that we have the ability to choose and that Gary Ship made a very conscious choice to “harm himself.” I have no idea what his point was. I mean, of course he made a choice to harm himself with that extension cord! It wasn’t like the thing wrapped itself around his neck and strung him up while he was sleeping!

  Mrs. Leene was the only one who said anything that halfway made sense, which was about how in some way maybe it was good that Gary Ship finally got to leave us because he was in such pain about stuff. That’s all she said and then she sat back down. She got a few funny looks from her Burnstone Grove cohorts or whatever they’re called, but she wouldn’t look back at them. She had tears in her eyes, too, which I thought was sort of nice.

  Later the Blue Groupers went into the TV lounge and played this Nick Drake album called “Five Leaves Left.” I guess Nick Drake was this English singer-songwriter guy who committed suicide in his mom’s house when he was like twenty-seven. His stuff sounded pretty sad and folky. Shannon says that his suicide is a bit of a mystery — that no one could officially discern whether he took too much sleeping medication intentionally or not — but that as far as singer-songwriters go, he was ahead of his time.

  I thought it was cool how the Blue Groupers gathered together in private like that.

  If something like that happened to me, I would appreciate that kind of gathering.

  So back to bibliotherapy. . . .

  When thinking back on stuff, especially things that happened toward the end of last summer, I find that the notion of time gets weird for me.

  Events jump out of order, and sometimes I can’t place the stuff with my mom and the stuff with Welton. It gets all jumbled in my head, so please bear with me. I’ll do my best.

  I think things started going bad that day at Greyhound Park. Just before the bridge to Foote, there’s this dog track. There are fourteen races a day — twenty-eight on Saturdays — and entire like sects of senior citizens from Chicago and Milwaukee and Madison come over by the busload to spend the afternoon eating five-dollar hot dogs and blowing their Social Security checks on the pheromonal whims of half-starved, fleet-footed dogs.

  I like to go because I’m pretty good at handicapping my bets. I can usually score on a quinella or two, and if I don’t get killed early, I can walk away having made twenty or thirty bucks. Success at the dog track is all pretty random. Once I lost two hundred on the last four races after I’d pocketed three-fifty on the first ten.

  So it was a Saturday in July, a week or so after the fireworks over the river had given enough of a cheap thrill to get the local Feet (that’s what I call the citizens of Foote) through the rest of the summer, and I decided to go to the dog track.

  When I think about it now, I’m sure part of going there had to do with my mom — she was pretty far along in hospice care then, and nobody knew how many days she had left. I mean, I wasn’t constantly thinking about her or anything like that. Maybe I was just going through this phase where I didn’t feel like being anywhere, ever, and the dog track was about the best alternative to falling down a mineshaft or something like that.

  At the Piggly Wiggly, I wrote a check to cash for a hundred bucks and headed west toward the river.

  Our house is about a fifteen-minute walk from the track. I have to say that walking through East Foote isn’t particularly exciting. The houses look like they’re made out of stale gingerbread, and all the parked cars seem sad and dirty and half broken-down.

  I don’t recall the exact temperature that day, but it was so hot that little neighborhood kids were running through sprinkler systems in their underwear. Their slow, overweight mothers were sitting next to bird feeders and ceramic deer and blue plastic pools, shoving cold cuts and Fig Newtons and macaroni salad into their mouths, while strange, sexless men (their husbands) trimmed the hedges and pulled up dandelions, their wet, hairless legs all white and rubbery-looking. I don’t mean to be gross, but that’s really what my neighborhood is like.

  As I approached the highway, I was suddenly downwind of the river. The Mississippi smelled pretty bad that day — like sewage and catfish and rotten crawdads festering in the same thick stew. You eventually get used to it, but late in the summer, when it gets warm and humid, it takes a few weeks to adjust to the general rot of things.

  You’re supposed to be eighteen to get into Greyhound Park, but they never card me, because I’m tall and when I want to, I can give off a fair amount of sophisticated energy. I’ve found that it’s all about the way you walk and the way you reveal your money. Just slow down and let the bills grace your fingertips like they’re a nice handkerchief or something. The guy in the little tu
rnstile hut loves it when you’re nonchalant with your money.

  Despite the heat and the smell of the river, it was a perfect July day. The sky was so blue, it almost looked fake. I was wearing a pair of jeans and my blue Explosions in the Sky T-shirt. Explosions in the Sky is this band from Austin. They record these amazing ten-minute songs with no lyrics. They’re totally anti-radio, way above it in my opinion. Welton turned me on to them after he came back from one of their shows in Madison.

  I’d missed the first six races, and as I was passing through the gates, I could see that they were showing the dogs for the seventh. The grandstand was about half-full, and everyone was smoking and drinking enormous plastic cups of beer. I was starving, so I got an order of nachos and pop and made my way to the rail so I could study the dogs.

  I was immediately drawn to the eight dog. It had these totally muscular forelegs, and ten pounds on the seven dog. I always go with a heavy eight dog if they have good times, because they can take the hits around the first turn. Despite the eight dog’s previous two finishes (a win and a show), the odds were 32–1. It was a few minutes before post time. I weaved my way through the crowd and put twenty dollars on the eight dog to win, ten on it to place, and ten to show — forty dollars total, which is pretty risky for a first bet.

  After I got my tickets, I went down to the front to watch the race. I like to get as close to the rail as possible, because sometimes when the greyhounds pass, you can totally feel the wind breaking off of them.

  I grabbed the rail and waited for the bone pole. I always grab the rail when the bone pole starts its slow, screeching arc toward the box. It’s a weird little ritual, I admit, but I do it for good luck, and you have to deal with superstition when you’re betting on dogs. I remember that the only thought in my head was that I was feeling pretty good. Not great or anything. Just good. The sun was on my face and the nachos tasted pretty good and they put just the right amount of crushed ice in my pop, the way I like it.

  Then the bell rang and the kennels flew open and the shouts boiled up from the grandstand. I looked at the board and saw that the odds on the eight dog had dropped to 24–1. Despite the last-minute plummet, it was still possible to make some decent money. I would buy this car I’d seen for sale that morning in our neighbor’s driveway. It was a midnight blue Caprice Classic with only thirty thousand miles on it — new tires and everything — and they were selling it for four hundred dollars. I would road-trip to Vermont or Canada and just like hike around for a few weeks before school started up.

  About halfway through the race, I realized that my eight dog was boxed in the middle and unless a miracle happened, he wouldn’t be able to break out of it.

  On the backstretch my eight dog finally got free and came up around the outside. The grandstand was going crazy, and for the briefest moment I thought I would get my miracle. But the four dog won by five lengths and my eight dog finished sixth. But even though I had lost my first race, I took my eight dog’s late surge as a promising sign. I pictured that Caprice Classic in my neighbor’s yard and counted my money.

  The dogs for the eighth were being chaperoned to the front for their showings. I was particularly impressed with the four dog. It had had four top-two finishes in a row and had a nice inside position.

  I made my way to the betting counter and put a twelve-dollar wheel on the four dog. The nice thing about a quinella wheel is that to win, all your dog has to do is finish in the top two. Obviously it’s nice if it finishes with a high-odds dog, because the payoff’s better.

  Near the betting counter, I heard this old guy who I always saw at the track telling someone about the five dog and how it was a sleeper, how in a practice race down in Waterloo, it dead-heated with one of the top dogs on the circuit. I had an impulse to change my bet and go with the five dog, but I second-guessed it and stayed with my pick.

  The dogs had been boxed, and the bone pole was making its slow sweep around the track.

  When the kennels flew open, my stomach knotted up and I was so excited I could hardly breathe.

  When I looked up, the four dog was in third place, a half a length off the lead. People were clinging to the fence and the cheers from the grandstand started swelling again.

  Then out of nowhere, the one dog raced toward the lead. It was a dead heat for the last fifty yards. At the finish there were the kind of cheers you hear at monster truck shows.

  It was a photo finish. My four dog was mixed in with the five dog and the surging one dog. I was positioned too far to the left of the line to make a guess. To the naked eye it appeared that my four dog was easily among the top two, but photo results are always so loaded with politics and larceny, you’d need a busload of nuns and half the National Guard to obtain an outcome with any kind of moral decency.

  Suddenly more shouts rose up and the results were posted on the board. The one dog had finished first, sharing the quinella with the five dog, which had 83–1 odds to win. If I’d gone with the five dog, I’d have won $537.

  I have to admit that I was tempted to bet again. That’s what happens when you lose a tight one like that — you get bitter and you start getting reckless. I only had ten bucks left, and I decided not to blow the rest of it on the ninth. Instead I went and sat in the grandstand for the rest of the day. I didn’t bet on another race, but I picked three winners. All two dogs, strangely enough.

  By the fourteenth race, the place had pretty much cleared out except for the desperate ones who were still hoping to reverse all their bad luck. I clung to my ten bucks and just watched.

  At the end of the day, some old lady with a stuffed Velcro monkey clinging to her straw hat screamed and nearly fainted because she’d won fourteen hundred dollars on the superfecta. A security guard had to help her to the counter to collect.

  Good for her, I thought. Maybe she’ll buy herself a new hat.

  I crossed the highway just before dusk.

  I’d like to believe that if I’d played that five dog, everything would be different now. I would have easily bought our neighbor’s Caprice Classic and taken that road trip and hiked or camped in Vermont or Canada or wherever, and I know it’s stupid, but part of me wants to believe that maybe my mom wouldn’t have died and Welton wouldn’t have hanged himself with that necktie. I know it’s absurd to think those things, I really do, but I can’t help it. The smallest victory can affect a lot of things.

  Enormous trucks filled with beef and coffee beans and office furniture screamed by on the highway. I had this thought that if one of them hit you, you wouldn’t even feel it. It would be like turning off the light.

  6.

  So that night after the races, I crossed the bridge and walked home through the hot, mosquito-infested neighborhoods of East Foote.

  I walked past the Amoco station and the ice-cream shop and the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, where kids on skateboards were trying to imitate stunts they’d seen on MTV.

  When I came through the front door, my dad was asleep in his living-room chair. The TV light was making his face look somehow pained. I could hear one of the hospice nurses talking to my mom in her room. They were discussing the new orthopedic toilet seat they’d just installed in the bathroom. It was like two feet thick and made it easier for my mom to sit, because she had been having a lot of trouble with her hips. That thing made me so nervous, I stopped using the bathroom altogether. I must have urinated in the sink a hundred times that week.

  I went into the kitchen and rooted around in the cupboards for a few minutes. The only thing that seemed the least bit edible was a bag of Chex Party Mix, so I grabbed that and went back to my room. I sat down at my desk and went sort of blank for a while. After eating a few handfuls of the Chex Party Mix, I took a pack of Camel Lights out from the top drawer of my desk. I’d only been smoking for a few weeks, and I wasn’t very good at it yet. I don’t even know why I started the stupid habit, if you want to know the truth. I guess I had to do something to keep boredom at bay. The house was starting
to smell all damp and sickly, and smoking killed the stench a bit.

  I had no plans that evening and I was sort of depressed from blowing most of my money at the dog track, so I decided I would just go to bed early and sleep for like sixteen hours. So I took my shoes off and I was about to get ready for bed when I heard my mom call for me. Whenever she would call out my name like that — especially during her last few weeks — it was like getting thumped between the shoulder blades with a hammer.

  In the hospice room, my mom was trying to reach the straw from her water cup. She was totally bald at this point, and the whites of her eyes had dulled to this weird brownish gray. She only weighed eighty-something pounds and her lips had sort of disappeared. My mouth hurts just imagining her.

  “Steven,” she said, “help me drink, honey.”

  The hospice nurse had been using this citrus-smelling disinfectant, but her room still stank pretty bad. There was a yellow stool in her bedpan and the sight of it almost made me retch.

  “Come here,” my mom said.

  I took a step toward her and I could see a new growth pressing through her forehead. There were things emerging all over her lately. At first they were calling it breast cancer, but now it was everywhere. A few weeks before, the oncologist had discovered a tumor in her abdomen that was the size of a baseball.

  I tried not to focus on her forehead and stepped closer. When I reached for the water cup I practically knocked her morphine cartridge out of her arm. It beeped a few times, but I steadied it and helped her drink. Her breath smelled like eggs and pepper.

  “Where’s your father?” she asked after she finished drinking. Her voice sounded like it had been cut in half.

  “He’s in the living room watching TV,” I said.

  “Did he shave today?”

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  “Ask him to shave, will you, Steven?”

  “Sure,” I said.