Devoted, page 11
They should be able to transmit at a distance soon. Donald and Georgina Curtis are fully aware of Rusty’s and Mandy’s nature, and are prepared to keep all five pups. Much joy in Corte Madera.
Something exciting is happening out there. Just today, Caesar and Cleo, members of the Robert and Mei-Mei Ishigawa family of San Jose, produced a litter of six, all healthy. Robert and Mei-Mei are likewise aware of the Mysterium, and the offspring will remain in the family.
We have long wondered where we came from, why we are here, and why there are so few of us. If suddenly our numbers are increasing, perhaps answers to our first two questions, the reason for our existence, will soon be revealed to us. Rejoice. Be true. Stay tuned.
28
Ben Hawkins stopped at a Tahoe City market to buy a case of canned gourmet dog food not unlike what Dorothy had served, as well as deli sandwiches for his own dinner.
Kipp waited in the Range Rover. He didn’t mind. He wasn’t lonely. A colorful variety of people came and went from the market. Especially when unaware that they were being watched, human beings were always interesting.
When Ben returned, he said, “I knew you wouldn’t steal the Rover and leave me stranded. Maybe a poodle, but not you.”
They traveled a few miles farther to Olympic Valley, which was twenty-five miles or so from Dorothy’s house above the lake.
They were still moving toward the boy who murmured all but constantly on the Wire. Before morning, Kipp hoped to determine if Ben expected to continue in that direction.
Olympic Valley offered four-star accommodations at Squaw Valley Lodge and at the Resort at Squaw Creek.
However, anti-dog bigotry required Kipp and Ben to take a room at a two-star operation. Enlightenment was ever ongoing.
The mom-and-pop owners had a dog of their own. He was a Welsh corgi named Llewellyn.
He came out through the gate in the check-in counter to greet Kipp. He had stubby legs and a beautiful coat.
Llewellyn smelled of oatmeal-based shampoo. On his breath were cooked carrots, green beans, and poached chicken, which he evidently had been given for dinner.
If Llewellyn’s weight and height were a disadvantage in any contest with a larger dog, they were ideal when it came to being in the best position to sniff Kipp’s crotch and butt.
Llewellyn seemed surprised when Kipp failed to return this traditional greeting.
He was a friendly fellow, however, and he took no offense. His short tail was always wagging.
The motel room proved to be simple and clean.
Next to a small coffee brewer were complimentary packets of coffee, creamer, and sugar.
Ben put his sandwiches and two cans of beer in the under-the-counter refrigerator.
Like ghosts, the smells of people who had stayed here in the past haunted Kipp’s nose.
The ugliest thing he found was a little dead pill bug in one corner of the bedroom, which wasn’t terribly offensive.
Unexpectedly, Kipp was given an informal grooming.
Ben produced a box of moist pet wipes in foil packets. He also had two different grooming combs.
He hadn’t bought those items at the market. For some reason, he’d already had them in the Range Rover.
“This will do till we can find a place to get you a real bath.”
Living with Dorothy, Kipp had been bathed every Thursday and regularly trimmed. Everyone said he looked like a show dog.
During the long day of overland travel, which had brought him to the campground, he’d gotten a bit dirty and bedraggled.
Ben didn’t take off Kipp’s collar, but otherwise gave him a thorough wipe down.
Of course he had to endure a brief session with a hair dryer. Every life had its ups and down.
Once Kipp was dry, Ben produced a water bowl and a food bowl.
Both were white ceramic and made for dogs. The green-lettered name on each was Clover.
These, too, had come from the Range Rover, not from the market in Tahoe City.
Ben filled one bowl with water and emptied an entire can of the gourmet food into the other.
Although he’d had the burger and frankfurter earlier, Kipp ate this offering with pleasure, though not with canine haste.
One of the first things that Dorothy had found peculiar about him, as a puppy, was that he savored his food rather than gobbling it in typical doggy fashion.
With his sandwiches, beer, and a book, Ben settled in a chair at a small table by the window.
After he had licked the bowl clean, Kipp considered the mystery of it. He was exhausted after a busy day without naps, but curiosity wouldn’t let him sleep.
With one paw, he tipped the empty bowl on its side. With his nose, he rolled it across the carpet to Ben Hawkins.
The writer looked up from his book and watched this performance without comment.
Kipp stopped the bowl next to Ben’s chair, with the name Clover clearly visible. He sat and cocked his head and regarded the man.
“You want more food?”
Kipp thumped his tail once, which meant no. But that was code he’d developed with Dorothy. This man couldn’t know what it meant.
Kipp shook his head from side to side.
Ben inserted a bookmark in the novel and set it aside. His expression was unreadable. As a former Navy SEAL, he was a man of reason who was cautious about making assumptions.
After a silence, Ben said, “Did you just shake your head no?”
Without hesitation, Kipp moved his head up and down.
They stared at each other. Kipp had learned that a direct stare could convey considerable information, depending on the intensity and duration of it.
Now he lowered his eyes to the name Clover on the dish, then looked again at Ben Hawkins.
The writer picked up his can of beer, hesitated, and put it down without taking a drink.
“You know you’re a little spooky?”
Patiently, Kipp watched him, waited.
“Clover was my dog for eight years. A rescue. I got her a few weeks after I was out of the navy, the day before they would have put her down. She was a golden, like you.”
Kipp issued a whimper of sympathy.
“Clover was a fine girl. Fearless but with the sweetest heart. Cancer was eating her alive. Five months ago, I held her in my arms while the vet put her to sleep. It was the hardest damn thing I’ve ever done. Me, a big, tough Navy SEAL. The hardest thing.”
Kipp thought of Dorothy. He was very tired. He had never been so tired before.
He padded to the farther end of the room and stared at the writer across the bed.
“You want to sleep up there? It’s all right with me.”
Marshaling what energy he had left, Kipp sprang onto the mattress. He circled and laid down and closed his eyes.
He heard the writer getting up from the chair, moving around.
The seal on the refrigerator made a soft sucking sound as the door opened.
The click-tear of the pull tab on a can. The smell of fresh cold beer.
A moment later, the chair creaked as the writer settled in it once more.
“Spooky,” Ben said again.
Dorothy smiled at Kipp in the dream and put a hand on his head and smoothed his fur and said, My special boy.
29
Megan found Woody lying on his bed, atop the spread, fully clothed, in the fetal position, eyes open, which meant that he was distressed about something. He remained as silent as the versions of himself that appeared in some of her paintings, including the one of him in the moonlight with deer, which was currently on her easel.
When she spoke to him and he wouldn’t even look at her, she could do nothing for him other than climb on the bed, spoon against his back, and put her arms around him. He had no objection to being held, though he never returned a hug.
She didn’t pressure him about what was wrong, because nothing could be gained either by insistence or gentle probing. When he was in this mood, he turned further inward on himself, and he would come out of it only when whatever issue caused it—some fear or sadness or confusion—had resolved itself.
At times like this, she didn’t know if holding him made any difference in his emotional state. She had never seen evidence that it did. Holding him, however, made a difference for her, made her feel that she was doing something essential.
When you loved someone as much as she loved Woody, and when you were helpless to console him when he seemed to need consolation the most, you could at times feel miserably inadequate. She had known that feeling.
Now she counseled herself to remember that Woody always came out of these funks sooner than later. He didn’t lie stricken like this for days or even for longer than an hour or two. Whatever might cause these withdrawals, he was resilient enough to overcome it. And when he did return from emotional isolation to mere detachment, he would find her and, in that shy way of his, touch her and smile to let her know that whatever had devastated him had now relented.
As she held him and smoothed his thick black hair with one hand, she sang to him—softly, softly—one of those songs that he would sometimes play over and over for hours on his iPod while he read or used his computer. “When you’re weary, feelin’ small . . .”
She heard Verna Brickit’s car leaving the driveway and turning onto the state route. The housekeeper had a key; she would have locked the back door. She was reliable.
“. . . when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all . . .”
30
Lee Shacket stands at the window at the end of the side hall, watching as the older woman in the Toyota follows the driveway to the two-lane blacktop, turns south toward Pinehaven, and quickly cruises out of sight.
Ravens appear again in the sky, as they had just before he shot to death the owner of the Shelby Super Snake. They wheel through the air less like ravens than like seagulls. For such usually solemn birds, they appear to be celebrating.
Previously, there were three ravens. This time, seven engage in this aerial ballet. Throughout history and across all cultures, the numbers three and seven have had supernatural meaning. The ravens are for him, to encourage him in his becoming.
He jams the pistol under his belt and takes from a pocket of his jeans the feather that had fallen to his hand as he’d pursued Justine. The soft barbs sprouting from the shaft to form the vane are glossy black, inky yet with a hint of midnight blue, as if the bird that shed it was an emissary of some ancient god of darkness and, in the name of its master, had stolen the color of the daytime sky to ensure eternal night.
After returning the feather to his pocket, he draws the pistol.
He steps to the door on the right and eases it open and enters a room where the only illumination issues through tall windows in the north wall. Because the overcast is thicker, because the false twilight is becoming the real thing, and perhaps because rain is impending, the quality of light suggests an underwater realm, as though he is not in a house but rather in a submerged vessel.
And yet he has no need to turn on a lamp. When he moves from the brighter hallway into this room, his eyes adjust as they never would have before. His vision has been improving. Now his eyes take what light is available and somehow multiply it, so that he sees at once that he is in Megan’s studio.
A large canvas appears near completion, and he is drawn to it. This is yet another of her works that, in spite of the photorealism with which it’s rendered, is incomprehensible to Lee Shacket. What is it supposed to mean? What feelings is it intended to evoke?
In the foreground stand three deer and a boy. The boy is Woody. He’s feeding slices of an apple to the deer. The pale moonlight is eerily diffuse, strangely reflected, in counterpoint to the realism of all else.
For reasons that he can’t explain, he is profoundly irritated by this image. He wants to go to the kitchen and find a sharp knife and slash the canvas to ribbons.
Not yet. In time, he will destroy every one of her paintings in this house. Once she has submitted to him, once she has been reduced to the essence of what she is and understands her place, Megan will destroy them herself, at his direction.
The only meaning, the only truth, he can see in this painting is that the deer and the mentally deficient boy are weak, nothing but prey that are destined to be taken by a predator.
31
After she sang to Woody and thought she felt him relax slightly in her arms, Megan said, “Meat loaf, potato-and-cheese casserole, one of your favorite dinners. And for dessert, Verna’s best muffins with ice cream. I’ll be in the kitchen, whenever you’re ready. Take your time, honey.”
She got off the bed and stood over him and smiled and bent down and kissed his cheek. The boy still stared at nothing, as though in a state of shock, but she was pretty sure that he was coming around.
His computer and desk lamp were off. A thick sheaf of papers, held together by a spring clip, lay to the right of the keyboard.
Megan wondered what he had printed, but she didn’t take a look at it. Every child needed privacy and trust, but that was especially true of Woody, who had an extreme aversion to his personal space being invaded. For all of his limitations, he was a good kid, and whatever he’d been doing, he would sooner or later share it with her.
After switching on one of the nightstand lamps, she left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
She went down the narrow back stairs, which terminated in the kitchen.
The meat loaf stood on a wire rack, in a pan, beside the ovens. When it cooled and firmed, she’d cut two servings to be reheated. Covered with foil, the finished potato-and-cheese casserole waited in the warming drawer. The back door proved to be locked, as she’d known it would be. Verna Brickit was an entertaining curmudgeon, but she was also as reliable as the rising and setting of the sun.
Megan put plastic place mats and paper napkins and flatware on the breakfast table.
For whatever reason, Woody ate with less haste and was more content at dinner if the meal was served by candlelight. Megan put six small, red votive glasses on the table and inserted a four-hour candle in each. The candle glow must always be filtered through red glass. If the holders were clear, the flickering flames agitated Woody. If the glass was blue, he lost his appetite. If it was green, he grew depressed.
She didn’t put china on the table, but set it on a counter for later service. She required one plate, but Woody needed a plate for his meat loaf and three shallow dishes, one each for servings of the potato-cheese casserole and the two accompanying vegetables. If one food touched another, he could not eat it. She didn’t know why, and perhaps neither did he.
When Woody came down from his room, she would put the carrots and the cauliflower on the stove to cook and pour his “cocktail.” If Megan was drinking a white wine, Woody wanted a clear, flavored water. If she was drinking red, he wanted grape raspberry to match the color of her cabernet. Trapped as he was within his condition, he nevertheless sought connections between them, however awkwardly.
She allowed herself one or two glasses of wine in the evening. Now, as she waited for Woody, she poured Caymus cabernet.
At the window in the back door, she stared at the yard where, in her current canvas, Woody stood feeding the deer. Only a few of her works featured the boy, but once she painted him in a setting, the place never seemed right again without him in it. In spite of his autism or perhaps because of it, he possessed a gravity that she couldn’t explain, that bent the world around him, reshaped any venue and colored it anew and gave it fresh meaning. The yard now, without him, looked incomplete, like a simple sketch, a study for a more serious scene. She supposed that it wasn’t Woody who transformed those places where she’d painted him, but rather her love for him that made her see a mystical quality in them.
At the end of the lawn, in the gathering dusk, the forest darkled into a castellated architecture of turrets and battlements, just as she portrayed it in the current painting. She hadn’t quite known why she’d given it an ominous character, but now she realized that it represented the evils of the world that contrasted so starkly with Woody’s innocence, which would be such a threat to him if anything happened to her and she was no longer here to protect him.
She went to the table, where earlier she’d left a half-read novel. She sat and found her page and began to read again. The day had been one of accomplishment, and her pleasure felt earned. The story was good, and the wine was better.
A theme of the novel seemed to be the power of solitude. She assured herself that she wasn’t lonely, and she knew that assurance for a lie. She told herself that life was good, that there were worse things than loneliness, and those were truths.
32
The hallway light passes through the living room archway and lays a faint golden arc across floor and furniture, but the deeper reaches of the large room are veiled with shadows as the day recedes beyond the French windows.
Shacket’s strange augmented eyes conjure an eerie light by which he crosses the room to the Steinway. He had forgotten that Megan played the piano.
The lid is down on this parlor grand, and upon it stands an artfully arranged collection of photographs, the silver frames of which attract what light reaches this part of the room. His new way of seeing makes the silver seem to be in motion, molten and flowing even though the frames retain their shapes.
