“You kids see anything of a little white dog?” Al said to them.
“Oh sure,” one boy said. “Is it your dog?”
Al nodded.
“We were just playing with him about a minute ago, down the street. In Terry’s yard.” The boy pointed. “Down the street.”
“You got kids?” one of the little girls spoke up.
“I do,” Al said.
“Terry said he’s going to keep him. He don’t have a dog,” the boy said.
“I don’t know,” Al said. “I don’t think my kids would like that. It belongs to them. It’s just lost,” Al said.
He drove on down the street. It was dark now, hard to see, and he began to panic again, cursing silently. He swore at what a weathervane he was, changing this way and that, one moment this, the next moment that.
He saw the dog then. He understood he had been looking at it for a time. The dog moved slowly, nosing the grass along a fence. Al got out of the car, started across the lawn, crouching forward as he walked, calling, “Suzy, Suzy, Suzy.”
The dog stopped when she saw him. She raised her head. He sat down on his heels, reached out his arm, waiting. They looked at each other. She moved her tail in greeting. She lay down with her head between her front legs and regarded him. He waited. She got up. She went around the fence and out of sight.
He sat there. He thought he didn’t feel so bad, all things considered. The world was full of dogs. There were dogs and there were dogs. Some dogs you just couldn’t do anything with.
Collectors
I WAS OUT OF WORK. But any day I expected to hear from up north. I lay on the sofa and listened to the rain. Now and then I’d lift up and look through the curtain for the mailman.
There was no one on the street, nothing.
I hadn’t been down again five minutes when I heard someone walk onto the porch, wait, and then knock. I lay still. I knew it wasn’t the mailman. I knew his steps. You can’t be too careful if you’re out of work and you get notices in the mail or else pushed under your door. They come around wanting to talk, too, especially if you don’t have a telephone.
The knock sounded again, louder, a bad sign. I eased up and tried to see onto the porch. But whoever was there was standing against the door, another bad sign. I knew the floor creaked, so there was no chance of slipping into the other room and looking out that window.
Another knock, and I said, Who’s there?
This is Aubrey Bell, a man said. Are you Mr. Slater?
What is it you want? I called from the sofa.
I have something for Mrs. Slater. She’s won something. Is Mrs. Slater home?
Mrs. Slater doesn’t live here, I said.
Well, then, are you Mr. Slater? the man said. Mr. Slater … and the man sneezed.
I got off the sofa. I unlocked the door and opened it a little. He was an old guy, fat and bulky under his raincoat. Water ran off the coat and dripped onto the big suitcase contraption thing he carried.
He grinned and set down the big case. He put out his hand.
Aubrey Bell, he said.
I don’t know you, I said.
Mrs. Slater, he began. Mrs. Slater filled out a card. He took cards from an inside pocket and shuffled them a minute. Mrs. Slater, he read. Two-fifty-five South Sixth East? Mrs. Slater is a winner.
He took off his hat and nodded solemnly, slapped the hat against his coat as if that were it, everything had been settled, the drive finished, the railhead reached.
He waited.
Mrs. Slater doesn’t live here, I said. What’d she win?
I have to show you, he said. May I come in?
I don’t know. If it won’t take long, I said. I’m pretty busy.
Fine, he said. I’ll just slide out of this coat first. And the galoshes. Wouldn’t want to track up your carpet. I see you do have a carpet, Mr.…
His eyes had lighted and then dimmed at the sight of the carpet. He shuddered. Then he took off his coat. He shook it out and hung it by the collar over the doorknob. That’s a good place for it, he said. Damn weather, anyway. He bent over and unfastened his galoshes. He set his case inside the room. He stepped out of the galoshes and into the room in a pair of slippers.
I closed the door. He saw me staring at the slippers and said, W. H. Auden wore slippers all through China on his first visit there. Never took them off. Corns.
I shrugged. I took one more look down the street for the mailman and shut the door again.
Aubrey Bell stared at the carpet. He pulled his lips. Then he laughed. He laughed and shook his head.
What’s so funny? I said.
Nothing. Lord, he said. He laughed again. I think I’m losing my mind. I think I have a fever. He reached a hand to his forehead. His hair was matted and there was a ring around his scalp where the hat had been.
Do I feel hot to you? he said. I don’t know, I think I might have a fever. He was still staring at the carpet. You have any aspirin?
What’s the matter with you? I said. I hope you’re not getting sick on me. I got things I have to do.
He shook his head. He sat down on the sofa. He stirred at the carpet with his slippered foot.
I went to the kitchen, rinsed a cup, shook two aspirin out of a bottle.
Here, I said. Then I think you ought to leave.
Are you speaking for Mrs. Slater? he hissed. No, no, forget I said that, forget I said that. He wiped his face. He swallowed the aspirin. His eyes skipped around the bare room. Then he leaned forward with some effort and unsnapped the buckles on his case. The case flopped open, revealing compartments filled with an array of hoses, brushes, shiny pipes, and some kind of heavy-looking blue thing mounted on little wheels. He stared at these things as if surprised. Quietly, in a churchly voice, he said, Do you know what this is?
I moved closer. I’d say it was a vacuum cleaner. I’m not in the market, I said. No way am I in the market for a vacuum cleaner.
I want to show you something, he said. He took a card out of his jacket pocket. Look at this, he said. He handed me the card. Nobody said you were in the market. But look at the signature. Is that Mrs. Slater’s signature or not?
I looked at the card. I held it up to the light. I turned it over, but the other side was blank. So what? I said.
Mrs. Slater’s card was pulled at random out of a basket of cards. Hundreds of cards just like this little card. She has won a free vacuuming and carpet shampoo. Mrs. Slater is a winner. No strings. I am here even to do your mattress, Mr.… You’ll be surprised to see what can collect in a mattress over the months, over the years. Every day, every night of our lives, we’re leaving little bits of ourselves, flakes of this and that, behind. Where do they go, these bits and pieces of ourselves? Right through the sheets and into the mattress, that’s where! Pillows, too. It’s all the same.
He had been removing lengths of the shiny pipe and joining the parts together. Now he inserted the fitted pipes into the hose. He was on his knees, grunting. He attached some sort of scoop to the hose and lifted out the blue thing with wheels.
He let me examine the filter he intended to use.
Do you have a car? he asked.
No car, I said. I don’t have a car. If I had a car I would drive you someplace.
Too bad, he said. This little vacuum comes equipped with a sixty-foot extension cord. If you had a car, you could wheel this little vacuum right up to your car door and vacuum the plush carpeting and the luxurious reclining seats as well. You would be surprised how much of us gets lost, how much of us gathers, in those fine seats over the years.
Mr. Bell, I said, I think you better pack up your things and go. I say this without any malice whatsoever.
But he was looking around the room for a plug-in. He found one at the end of the sofa. The machine rattled as if there were a marble inside, anyway something loose inside, then settled to a hum.
Rilke lived in one castle after another, all of his adult life. Benefactors, he said loudly over the hum of t
he vacuum. He seldom rode in motorcars; he preferred trains. Then look at Voltaire at Cirey with Madame Châtelet. His death mask. Such serenity. He raised his right hand as if I were about to disagree. No, no, it isn’t right, is it? Don’t say it. But who knows? With that he turned and began to pull the vacuum into the other room.
There was a bed, a window. The covers were heaped on the floor. One pillow, one sheet over the mattress. He slipped the case from the pillow and then quickly stripped the sheet from the mattress. He stared at the mattress and gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. I went to the kitchen and got the chair. I sat down in the doorway and watched. First he tested the suction by putting the scoop against the palm of his hand. He bent and turned a dial on the vacuum. You have to turn it up full strength for a job like this one, he said. He checked the suction again, then extended the hose to the head of the bed and began to move the scoop down the mattress. The scoop tugged at the mattress. The vacuum whirred louder. He made three passes over the mattress, then switched off the machine. He pressed a lever and the lid popped open. He took out the filter. This filter is just for demonstration purposes. In normal use, all of this, this material, would go into your bag, here, he said. He pinched some of the dusty stuff between his fingers. There must have been a cup of it.
He had this look to his face.
It’s not my mattress, I said. I leaned forward in the chair and tried to show an interest.
Now the pillow, he said. He put the used filter on the sill and looked out the window for a minute. He turned. I want you to hold onto this end of the pillow, he said.
I got up and took hold of two corners of the pillow. I felt I was holding something by the ears.
Like this? I said.
He nodded. He went into the other room and came back with another filter.
How much do those things cost? I said.
Next to nothing, he said. They’re only made out of paper and a little bit of plastic. Couldn’t cost much.
He kicked on the vacuum and I held tight as the scoop sank into the pillow and moved down its length – once, twice, three times. He switched off the vacuum, removed the filter, and held it up without a word. He put it on the sill beside the other filter. Then he opened the closet door. He looked inside, but there was only a box of Mouse-Be-Gone.
I heard steps on the porch, the mail slot opened and clinked shut. We looked at each other.
He pulled on the vacuum and I followed him into the other room. We looked at the letter lying face down on the carpet near the front door.
I started toward the letter, turned and said, What else? It’s getting late. This carpet’s not worth fooling with. It’s only a twelve-by-fifteen cotton carpet with no-skid backing from Rug City. It’s not worth fooling with.
Do you have a full ashtray? he said. Or a potted plant or something like that? A handful of dirt would be fine.
I found the ashtray. He took it, dumped the contents onto the carpet, ground the ashes and cigarettes under his slipper. He got down on his knees again and inserted a new filter. He took off his jacket and threw it onto the sofa. He was sweating under the arms. Fat hung over his belt. He twisted off the scoop and attached another device to the hose. He adjusted his dial. He kicked on the machine and began to move back and forth, back and forth over the worn carpet. Twice I started for the letter. But he seemed to anticipate me, cut me off, so to speak, with his hose and his pipes and his sweeping and his sweeping.…
I took the chair back to the kitchen and sat there and watched him work. After a time he shut off the machine, opened the lid, and silently brought me the filter, alive with dust, hair, small grainy things. I looked at the filter, and then I got up and put it in the garbage.
He worked steadily now. No more explanations. He came out to the kitchen with a bottle that held a few ounces of green liquid. He put the bottle under the tap and filled it.
You know I can’t pay anything, I said. I couldn’t pay you a dollar if my life depended on it. You’re going to have to write me off as a dead loss, that’s all. You’re wasting your time on me, I said.
I wanted it out in the open, no misunderstanding.
He went about his business. He put another attachment on the hose, in some complicated way hooked his bottle to the new attachment. He moved slowly over the carpet, now and then releasing little streams of emerald, moving the brush back and forth over the carpet, working up patches of foam.
I had said all that was on my mind. I sat on the chair in the kitchen, relaxed now, and watched him work. Once in a while I looked out the window at the rain. It had begun to get dark. He switched off the vacuum. He was in a corner near the front door.
You want coffee? I said.
He was breathing hard. He wiped his face.
I put on water and by the time it had boiled and I’d fixed up two cups he had everything dismantled and back in the case. Then he picked up the letter. He read the name on the letter and looked closely at the return address. He folded the letter in half and put it in his hip pocket. I kept watching him. That’s all I did. The coffee began to cool.
It’s for a Mr. Slater, he said. I’ll see to it. He said, Maybe I will skip the coffee. I better not walk across this carpet. I just shampooed it.
That’s true, I said. Then I said, You’re sure that’s who the letter’s for?
He reached to the sofa for his jacket, put it on, and opened the front door. It was still raining. He stepped into his galoshes, fastened them, and then pulled on the raincoat and looked back inside.
You want to see it? he said. You don’t believe me?
It just seems strange, I said.
Well, I’d better be off, he said. But he kept standing there. You want the vacuum or not?
I looked at the big case, closed now and ready to move on.
No, I said, I guess not. I’m going to be leaving here soon. It would just be in the way.
All right, he said, and he shut the door.
Tell the Women We’re Going
BILL JAMISON HAD ALWAYS been best friends with Jerry Roberts. The two grew up in the south area, near the old fairgrounds, went through grade school and junior high together, and then on to Eisenhower, where they took as many of the same teachers as they could manage, wore each other’s shirts and sweaters and pegged pants, and dated and banged the same girls – whichever came up as a matter of course.
Summers they took jobs together – swamping peaches, picking cherries, stringing hops, anything they could do that paid a little and where there was no boss to get on your ass. And then they bought a car together. The summer before their senior year, they chipped in and bought a red ’54 Plymouth for $325.
They shared it. It worked out fine.
But Jerry got married before the end of the first semester and dropped out of school to work steady at Robby’s Mart.
As for Bill, he’d dated the girl too. Carol was her name, and she went just fine with Jerry, and Bill went over there every chance he got. It made him feel older, having married friends. He’d go over there for lunch or for supper, and they’d listen to Elvis or to Bill Haley and the Comets.
But sometimes Carol and Jerry would start making out right with Bill still there, and he’d have to get up and excuse himself and take a walk to Dezorn’s Service Station to get some Coke because there was only the one bed in the apartment, a hide-away that came down in the living room. Or sometimes Jerry and Carol would head off to the bathroom, and Bill would have to move to the kitchen and pretend to be interested in the cupboards and the refrigerator and not trying to listen.
So he stopped going over so much; and then June he graduated, took a job at the Darigold plant, and joined the National Guard. In a year he had a milk route of his own and was going steady with Linda. So Bill and Linda would go over to Jerry and Carol’s, drink beer, and listen to records.
Carol and Linda got along fine, and Bill was flattered when Carol said that, confidentially, Linda was “a real person.”
Jerry
liked Linda too. “She’s great,” Jerry said.
When Bill and Linda got married, Jerry was best man. The reception, of course, was at the Donnelly Hotel, Jerry and Bill cutting up together and linking arms and tossing off glasses of spiked punch. But once, in the middle of all this happiness, Bill looked at Jerry and thought how much older Jerry looked, a lot older than twenty-two. By then Jerry was the happy father of two kids and had moved up to assistant manager at Robby’s, and Carol had one in the oven again.
They saw each other every Saturday and Sunday, sometimes oftener if it was a holiday. If the weather was good, they’d be over at Jerry’s to barbecue hot dogs and turn the kids loose in the wading pool Jerry had got for next to nothing, like a lot of other things he got from the Mart.
Jerry had a nice house. It was up on a hill overlooking the Naches. There were other houses around, but not too close. Jerry was doing all right. When Bill and Linda and Jerry and Carol got together, it was always at Jerry’s place because Jerry had the barbecue and the records and too many kids to drag around.
It was a Sunday at Jerry’s place the time it happened.
The women were in the kitchen straightening up. Jerry’s girls were out in the yard throwing a plastic ball into the wading pool, yelling, and splashing after it.
Jerry and Bill were sitting in the reclining chairs on the patio, drinking beer and just relaxing.
Bill was doing most of the talking – things about people they knew, about Darigold, about the four-door Pontiac Catalina he was thinking of buying.
Jerry was staring at the clothesline, or at the ’68 Chevy hardtop that stood in the garage. Bill was thinking how Jerry was getting to be deep, the way he stared all the time and hardly did any talking at all.
Bill moved in his chair and lighted a cigarette.
He said, “Anything wrong, man? I mean, you know.”