Under the Wolf, Under the Dog Page 5

  It felt like there were only so many hours left on the earth — that’s the hardest part about being alive.

  Mary Mills would be going off to New York City in a few weeks and there was just too little time!

  That’s when I decided to rehijack the Fairmont. Before I left, I brushed my teeth and reapplied Old Spice High Endurance deodorant stick. I put on this after-shave that my dad keeps in the bathroom, too. It’s green and it’s the kind you use for an electric razor. It has a masculine smell and I’m pretty sure girls like it.

  9.

  So before I continue, I have to tell you about this dream I had last night, which was the night after the Gary Ship memorial service.

  The dream went like this:

  I was a stainless-steel robot. I had been put together with circuits and switches. When I opened my mouth to speak, a sound like the highway came out. Like a convoy of semis blaring under viaducts on Interstate 90. It was dark and I was alone until I walked through this huge silver gate. I passed through the gate and happened upon this secret graveyard, where I saw this huge like Lollapalooza gathering of other robots. There were thousands of them. We all pretty much looked the same, which is perhaps best described by the term “factory-built.” The graves were already dug. Each robot had its own plot. Mine had all of these pink flowers around the rim. They were the pinkest flowers I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure they were tulips. I joined the other robots and we formed these huge militaristic platoons of doom, and then one by one we stepped down into our graves. We weren’t instructed to do it — no one gave us orders or anything — we just somehow knew what we were supposed to do, like it was our fate.

  But when it came to my turn, I couldn’t go through with it. The other robots were screaming at me — there was so much highway noise I thought my robot head would pop off — but I wouldn’t budge. Instead, I started eating all the tulips. One by one at first and then by the armful.

  When I woke up, my mouth tasted like a Nerf ball and I was covered in a cold sweat. I lurched toward my trusty Burnstone Grove sink and pounded about four cups of water. Man, I couldn’t stop panting.

  I felt so lost and alone that I wound up curling into a ball on the other bed and sort of freezing like that. I don’t know why I chose the other bed. Maybe I felt somehow betrayed by mine, that it wasn’t like protecting me or something. It took me a while to fall back asleep, and I tried to distract my terrible thoughts of loneliness and insomnia by listening to the Burnstone Grove pipes knocking. At night the whole facility constantly belches like it’s suffering from architectural indigestion or something.

  I was particularly humiliated in the morning when I woke to discover that I had urinated the bed.

  “What do you think the dream means?” Mrs. Leene asked at our session today.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe that I’m afraid of graves.”

  “Hmmm,” she said. “I think there’s more to it than just that.”

  But as usual she didn’t push.

  I didn’t tell her about how I urinated in the bed of my future, still-undisclosed roommate. I told the old Mexican maintenance guy about it, though, and he was cool.

  “Some guys came in here and did that in the middle of the night,” I lied. He just nodded and told me he’d take care of it.

  “I take care,” he said.

  Later I came back from lunch and he had replaced the mattress and everything.

  The other thing Mrs. Leene brought up today was the subject of lithium, which is this psychoactive drug they give you if you’re what they call bipolar or manic-depressive. Lithium somehow keeps you from emotionally peaking too high or dropping too low.

  “It evens you out,” Mrs. Leene explained.

  I imagined myself walking around in a leisure suit listening to elevator music or something.

  “I’m not sure you need it,” she added. “The other day it was brought up for discussion at our faculty meeting. I just wanted to let you know.”

  So I haven’t slept much and I’m not sure how this is all coming out.

  Lithium lithium lithium lithium lithium lithium . . .

  But dinner’s in less than forty-five minutes and they’re serving potpies, which are my favorite, and I have to get back to this whole thing with Mary Mills.

  So where was I?

  Mary Mills lives in Foote over near Founders High School, where the houses are so upright and similar it’s like the neighborhood was modeled after some weird science-fiction novel. Blond brick and manicured lawns and jumbo-size, calligraphy numbers on the garage doors. Chimneys and satellite dishes, too. And all those German cars parked in the driveways. Cars just sitting there like enormous sleeping beetles. The houses in that part of Foote are so big it’s like they have their own thoughts. Like after the humans go to sleep, they engage in these totally weird telepathic conversations with each other.

  While I was crossing the bridge to Foote, I saw squad-car lights in the rearview mirror. In the middle of the night there’s nothing like a cop to make you feel paranoid. After the bridge, I slowed down so he could pass me. Fortunately it wasn’t a cop after all — it was a tow truck pulling this huge Cadillac. What was weird was that there was a man sleeping in the front seat of the Caddy. His head was resting on the steering wheel, and for a second I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  I checked in the rearview mirror a few more times, but all I could see was my own face staring back. I had this crazy feeling that the me in the mirror would start chewing gum or something. And I didn’t even have any gum. In fact, I hadn’t chewed gum in months! I looked about five times, and I kept getting that creepy gum feeling, so I turned the mirror down.

  For some reason, I decided to stop off at my dad’s electronics shop. He had given me a set of keys the previous summer so I could go in on weekends and help him and Lyman Singer clean up the store. I hadn’t been there in a long time, but I figured I could take a few minutes and get myself together.

  Just after my mom started her chemo treatments, my dad spent most of his time going to flea markets to buy and trade things for the store. He would usually drive to Iowa City or Cedar Rapids and sometimes he’d road-trip all the way out to Council Bluffs for the smallest thing.

  Once he got a call from a friend who saw a vintage Victrola record player at a garage sale in Dordt, which is all the way on the other side of the state. Sure enough, he gassed up the Fairmont and left that morning like he was going on some historical fishing trip or something. He forked out over two hundred bucks for the Victrola and spent the night in a Motel Six, and when he called home, he raved about the record player like it was the thing that was going to cure my mom’s cancer.

  When I keyed into the shop, I could see the Victrola still sitting on a shelf behind the register. It was marked down from $350 to $180. My dad wouldn’t even make the money back that he’d spent for it. The first thing I did when I saw the price tag was mark it up to $400. I used this black Sharpie that was next to the cash register. I put an exclamation point after the price, too. And then I wrote OR ELSE! I don’t even know what that was supposed to mean, but I wrote it and it made me feel more effective than I had all day.

  After that, I started snooping around the shop. To be honest, I have no idea what I was looking for, but I have to admit that I was acting sort of desperate.

  There were boom boxes and console office phones and old clock radios from the sixties. There were toaster ovens and electric toothbrushes. There were six-foot lamps and rotisserie hot-dog grills. There were chrome things and wooden things and things with dials that I couldn’t name.

  I walked into the back room, where they keep all the really prime vintage stuff that my dad and Lyman Singer found at garage sales and at this obscure flea market they used to go to up in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Then suddenly, just as I was about to put my hand on this old milk-shake machine from the fifties, all of these clocks chimed. There were grandfather clocks and these things that were sort of like half
-grandfather clocks, and so many cuckoo clocks I suddenly felt like I was trapped in some weird pop-up book for little kids. It scared me so bad I just about had a stroke. That would have been pretty pathetic to die of a stroke at sixteen. Behind me there was this one particular cuckoo clock that looked about three thousand years old. This thing flew through the clock’s doors, and before I even realized what had happened, my hand shot up and broke it off. When I opened my hand, I was holding this totally deformed, premature-looking half-chicken. It was maybe the evilest thing I’d ever seen in my life. For some reason I started kind of choking it. Now, I know that’s almost like serial-killer nuts or whatever, and I’m not asking you to try to understand — I swear I’m not — but that’s what I did. I choked the thing between my thumbs and forefingers as if my life depended on it. When it felt like it was good and dead, I dropped the thing on the floor and stepped on it. My heart was beating so fast, I put my hand on my chest, as if that would help it slow down.

  It was one o’clock in the morning, and I had just murdered the little bird that pops out of a cuckoo clock. And I still had so much to tell Mary! But I couldn’t go yet. I started looking at all the other things in the back room. It was loaded with TVs. I was wearing my steel-toed Red Wing construction boots, so I decided to finally find out how useful they really were. When I kicked in the first TV — a nineteen-inch Magnavox with wicker speaker panels — it felt like the most perfect thing I had done in a long time. And there’s nothing like the feeling of perfection that will inspire repeated behavior. So what I did was I went from TV screen to TV screen and just started kicking away. None of them broke on the first kick. One caved in after three. The sound it made was better than birds. It was way better than waterfalls or wind chimes. I didn’t even care that I had a bunch of glass falling in my boot.

  When I was through, I counted the TVs. There’s something about numbers in a moment like that. Maybe it’s because they’re good for lore. Someday I would tell my grandkids that I kicked in seventeen TVs at my dad’s electronics shop. They’d be proud, right?

  After gathering the necessary data, I turned and sort of limped out. My shin was totally burning, but I had to lock up and get over to Mary’s house before it was too late. According to all those clocks, when I left, it was almost two in the morning.

  When I finally got to Mary’s house, I parked about four blocks away, because I knew walking would help with the head-spinning sensation I was having, and I’m glad I did, because I had to stop against a tree and vomit. It was mostly that beef stew and the milk, but I won’t go into too much detail — don’t worry. I felt better almost immediately, although I must admit I was a little guilt-ridden about puking on somebody’s tree.

  Mary’s house was blond brick, like the others. I sort of walked around their property a couple of times just to scope things out.

  The backyard was full of that strange, hypnotic buzz of crickets. From the patio I could see into the kitchen. I pressed my face up against the sliding doors and watched my breath fog on the glass for a second. Someone had left a light on over the stove. They had this huge white refrigerator that looked like you could store five years’ worth of food in it. The countertops were sparkling clean. It looked like the kind of kitchen you’d see photographed for a magazine.

  I didn’t even realize I was opening the patio doors until I was actually doing it.

  When I got inside, I just sort of stood there. There’s nothing stranger than the smell of someone else’s house. The scent goes right to your stomach. Mary’s house smelled like lemon furniture polish and oatmeal cookies and logs in a fireplace. For some reason it made me want to curl up in the fetal position. I could have slept right there on their kitchen table.

  Then all of a sudden my hands were doing things. They opened a cupboard and removed a box of cereal. It was weird because I wasn’t even hungry. When my hands opened the refrigerator, so much light spilled into the room it felt like I had been caught by the police. My hands removed a quart of milk from the second shelf and set it on the counter. Then they opened up some more cupboards and started rooting around till they found a good bowl. Then they opened about twelve drawers for a spoon. I was getting pretty loud, but for some reason I felt safe.

  While I ate the cereal, I totally started crying. I felt so lost I didn’t know what to do. My shin was stinging, and when I looked down, I could see blood soaking through my corduroys, just below the knee. My foot felt wet too. I think my one Red Wing was filling with blood.

  After I finished my cereal, I set the bowl and spoon in the sink and then I did something completely crazy.

  I stole a plate.

  It was this huge serving dish hanging above the sink. It had all of these buttercup flowers illustrated around the edge. They were blue and yellow, and just looking at them made you want to start singing some song about a rubber ducky or a kite made of licorice or whatever. I undid the plate from its hook and stuffed it down the front of my pants so half of it was shielding my stomach.

  Then I walked into their living room. There was this huge sofa wrapped in plastic and a few overstuffed chairs and a coffee table and bookshelves and lamps and fake trees and embroidered drapes and big stone bowls of pinecones and pictures on the walls.

  I was disappointed to find that they didn’t have a TV. I’m not sure what I would have done if they did have one; maybe I would have kicked that in too. Or maybe I would have just sat down and watched a late-night movie. I was so disappointed, it made me even more tired. I wanted to lie down right there on the sofa. I even started sort of falling asleep while I was standing up. I had to pinch my face a few times to get my eyes to stay open.

  After a minute I finally left through the kitchen patio doors with the plate in my pants.

  When I got back to the Fairmont, I opened the door, set the plate on the passenger’s side, and slid into the driver’s seat.

  My shin was stinging so bad it was almost numb. And my boot was like totally oozing blood every time I hit the gas.

  Through the windshield you could see the moon. It looked like something was eating it, little by little.

  When I got across the bridge, I started talking to the plate.

  “We only have so much time, Mary,” I remember saying. “Time will kill you — it really will.”

  When I turned onto our block, I switched the lights off and stopped the engine. Then I shifted to neutral and coasted into the driveway. I stuffed the plate back down the front of my pants and limped across the porch and opened the door. Welton had greased the hinges a few months before so that they wouldn’t squeak when he’d come in late.

  I left the car keys on the kitchen table and limped straight to my mom’s room. She was sleeping really still, and her room smelled even worse than ever. I just stood there and watched her curtains blowing for a moment. I remember how blue they were. I think it was the first time I had ever noticed them.

  It felt like time had stopped, like I was getting free minutes on earth or something. I remember enjoying that feeling. It was like I was the only one alive who had been given the privilege.

  A moment later I heard the door creak behind me. I turned around and my dad was standing in the entrance. He was wearing a three-piece suit. It was gray and it looked too small, like he’d stolen it. You could see where moths had gotten to it. The tie he was wearing was so yellow it almost hurt to look at. He had shaved and there were all these bits of red toilet paper on his neck and face. He had cut himself so many times it almost seemed like he’d done it on purpose.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the plate.

  His voice wasn’t a voice anymore. It was something from a computer. It was like the telephone company had come and replaced it with one of theirs.

  “It’s a plate,” I said.

  He made a swallowing sound and adjusted the knot in his tie.

  “I got it for Mom,” I added.

  “She’s dead,” he said.

  He just stood there stari
ng at my mom, but I wouldn’t look at her. You couldn’t have paid me a million dollars. I was afraid of what I might see, that some other crazy tumor was popping out of her mouth or something.

  I just sort of stood there and tried to keep from dropping the plate.

  Then he said it again.

  “Dead.”

  One word.

  All by itself.

  I walked up to him and handed him the plate.

  And then I limped down the hall to my room and closed the door.

  I sat on the end of my bed for a long time.

  My mouth tasted like rust and there were big hunks of glass in my shin.

  After a while I just lay down.

  I didn’t even change my clothes.

  I just curled up and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

  10.

  It was about four in the afternoon when I finally got out of bed. I had a terrible headache and I was keenly aware of a searing pain in my shin.

  The house was full of murmuring voices. I could practically feel each room getting choked with the hot breath of other people.

  I limped to the bathroom and urinated in front of a hospice nurse with big flabby arms. I normally wouldn’t ever do anything like that, but I was sort of on autopilot. She was kneeling in the bathtub, trying to break down all of the handicapped equipment. My mom used to sit on this fiberglass bench to shower. Once I walked in on her and she looked almost fake, like my dad had brought her home from a wax museum and thrown her in the shower.

  The nurse said, “Excuse me, Steven,” and exited the bathroom with some sort of handrail.

  I didn’t flush, which was also rude, I admit, and decided to hit the refrigerator for a Coke.

  As I limped through the living room, I could hear walkie-talkies popping static, but I couldn’t quite place where the noise was coming from. In the living room, some severe-looking guy with thick black eyebrows was sitting on the couch. He was wearing a navy blue suit and his hair was combed neatly and he was holding a bouquet of reddish-orange flowers.