Brown Dog: Novellas Read online

  “That’s the whitest woman I ever saw,” Rose said when Shelley left.

  “Why not? Always thought I was white myself,” I said.

  “You never were that white. How did you ever get such a high-class lady, B.D.?”

  “A lot of women see things in me you were blind to.” It was then I handed her the scarf which she shook out and tied around her neck without a word. She reached down and selected an apple, polished it against the sweater covering her big breasts and handed it to me. We looked off to where Shelley was coming back at us across the field. I was nervous but I didn’t know if she was, so I bit into the apple.

  “If you don’t mind I’d like to stop by and visit,” I said with a bit of quaver in my voice and almost choking on the apple.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, which wasn’t much to go on, but when Shelley pulled up and Rose pried Berry off my leg Rose gave my ass a good pinch. Later at the hotel I checked out the red spot and it made me feel good.

  It was at dinner that Shelley described to me what was going to happen, depending on my cooperation. We were sitting in the fancy dining room of the House of Ludington Hotel in Escanaba, and I was glad I had on my new sport coat despite the dried gravy spot. I was agitated because Shelley didn’t want me to have a drink until she discussed the deal she had cooked up on the phone. The upshot was that either I told her where my burial mounds were or I was facing three to five years in the prison down in Jackson for the crime of arson, added on to the other stuff.

  “I’ll sleep on it,” I said, mostly because that was what people seemed to say when they were discussing a big deal. A man at the next table who was eating alone finished his whiskey and water, then poured himself a full glass of wine with a burbling sound. Three to five years was a long time. I couldn’t remember exactly what I was doing that long ago.

  “No you won’t sleep on it. You’ll sleep on shit. You’re always sleeping on it.” She was angry and sounded like her dad when he was pissed at me. “You think each day is a fresh new start, which it isn’t.”

  “I don’t get why you and your friends are always doing run-downs on people. You’re always taking people apart in pieces, especially me.” I felt my ears getting red. I had never been real mad at Shelley before but now she was squeezing my balls too hard. I was close to the point I had been when I poured the drink down the lady’s neck in the Soo.

  “I need to know your answer. People are waiting to hear. My dad and my lawyer are waiting. A State Police detective is waiting. My friends whose tent and field notes you burned up are waiting. You’re going to tell me or you’re going to prison. If you tell me, I’m going to help you out with some money and we’ll say goodbye. Also, you can’t go back to Grand Marais for one year.”

  “Why’s that?” The man next door had finished one glass of red wine and was starting another.

  “Because I can’t trust you to not sabotage our field work. That’s the whole deal. Take it or leave it, but tell me now. I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

  “I’ll tell you what. If I don’t get a drink I’m going to kick over this fucking table on your lap.” I stood up as if to judge my leverage. Shelley signaled the waitress and I ordered two doubles and sat back down. There was something in her face of the school principal who used to tell me I was headed for the reform school down in Lansing, the same one who made fun of me when Rose hit me over the head with her books. One night David Four Feet and me snuck up on the principal’s house and poured a couple pounds of sugar into his gas tank to generally get even.

  “What do you say now?” Shelley asked as I was eating my shrimps for appetizers and sipping whiskey. She wasn’t touching her soup and slid it over when I looked at it. There was nothing in the soup but beef-tasting water but it was so good I could have drunk a quart.

  “I’m lost in thought over your proposition. Who is to say which of us is right? I know I could use a bottle of red wine to go with dinner.”

  “You are fucking driving me crazy.” Now she was hissing and called the waitress over and ordered a bottle of red. The waitress knew something was wrong and brought the wine in a hurry.

  “You know you got me cornered. I’ve been taken prisoner in the war of life. That’s how I look at it. Maybe they keep the prison too warm in winter and I couldn’t stand that. I’d have to hang myself with a sheet.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said. Shelley can’t stand the talk of suicide because she had an aunt who did herself in.

  “Yes I would. You know I can’t stand the hot air, and there wouldn’t be any walking or fishing or trees. In fact, if you called the police right now I wouldn’t be taken alive. When I got my toothbrush out of the van I also got my pistol which is in my back pocket.”

  “I don’t believe you, but you’re putting off the answer.”

  I reached toward my back pocket where there wasn’t a pistol and she waved at me with alarm. The waitress brought my huge porterhouse and Shelley a little piece of fish.

  “What’s to happen to me if I can’t live in Grand Marais? The son of man has no place to lay his head.”

  “I’d give you a thousand dollars and you could make a fresh start, maybe over this way.”

  “I wouldn’t accept more than seven hundred,” I said, which sounded like a solider figure to me than a thousand.

  “Then we have a deal?”

  “Of course,” I said, and she got up to make her phone calls. “You’re not going to eat your dinner?” I asked.

  “Go ahead,” she said and rushed off.

  I took her plate and dumped the piece of fish alongside the steak. A portion of bird meat would have completed the circle. It wasn’t exactly a happy meal but I cleaned my plate. If you live on the railroad tracks the train’s going to hit you, Grandpa used to say. I had a notion to call up Frank and ask him the name of that tribal lawyer he knew over in Brimley. Maybe they could organize a welcoming party for the grave diggers, but suddenly I was tired of the whole damn thing. The steak had heated me up as beef will do, so I went outside and stood under the awning, letting the cold wind blow on me. I stood there like a statue until I got real cold, then I stood there longer. Grandpa and I used to drive past the hotel but neither of us had ever been inside. He said it was a place for the men who owned the trees, not for the ones who cut them down. Come to think of it, I was not likely to return myself.

  After a while Shelley came running out as if I had made an escape. “There you are,” she yelled. We took a long walk without saying much. I had an urge to haul her into Orphan Annie’s striptease club but it didn’t seem to go with the evening. There would be other times for that, I thought, if I came back this way for a year. We took a turn down a side street so I could show her the church that sent me off to Chicago so many years ago. I had been sentenced to attend church by a juvenile judge after a couple of unfortunate accidents. David Four Feet and me found a source for black-market fireworks, serious stuff like cherry bombs and M-80s, and there was a lot of noise around town for a month. Before we got caught for that we had cabled a county snowplow to a fire hydrant outside this diner, with a lot of slack so the truck would have a head of steam before the cable came tight. Little did we know the truck would uproot the fire hydrant and cause a flooding problem in the middle of winter. I had to shovel city sidewalks all winter for free, and attend church where everyone was nice and thought of me as the prodigal son.

  We went back to the hotel because Shelley was cold and tired, probably because she didn’t eat her dinner. She got us two connected rooms again with the living room having a big flat-top piano in it. I said it was wasting money but she said that this is where we were to have our meeting in the morning. Nice to have something to look forward to, I said, wandering around the room hunched up like I was a lot older, which always irritates her. I admit I was a bit blue so I sat down at the piano. Back in my church days I could play “The Old Rugged Cross” with one finger, also “Chopsticks,” but now I didn’t feel up to it desp
ite the rare opportunity of a piano.

  Shelley tuned me in a hockey game on TV while I sat there on the piano bench. Hockey’s the only sport I was ever good at except boxing. I suddenly got this idea I was a great piano player whose hand had been crippled when his girlfriend had slammed it in a door, so near to greatness but yet so far. I told this to Shelley and she gave me a big hug to cheer me up and she said she had brought along my favorite nightie for our last night. This nightie is purple and smooth as satin because that’s what it’s made of. It clings to her and you sort of peel it off until bingo, you’re there.

  She went to take a shower and I sat down by the phone with an urge to call Frank and give him the sad tidings. There was a card attached to the phone that said to dial 33 for room service so that’s what I did. They asked me what I’d like and since I had already eaten I wondered if they could bring me a couple of drinks. Presto, a guy was there in minutes. They let me sign my name as I only had fifteen bucks after the six-pack and pickled bologna and wasn’t counting on the big payment mentioned. I took my drinks over to the piano and tried to noodle along singing my favorite country songs, but I couldn’t get the piano to go with the words and, what’s more, the drinks weren’t making their way through the load of shrimp, fish and steak in my gut. I had just about decided to ask Shelley if she had ever loved me or was she just hanging in there for the burial mounds when she came out in the purple nightie and I didn’t have the heart to. She came right over and I lifted the nightie and a lot of shower heat escaped. “It’s like a blast furnace in there,” I said, dropping the hem. She laughed and had a slug of my second drink. I asked if she’d mind getting up on the piano and laying out so I could sing to her. She scrambled up with no problem and lay there leaning her head on a hand. I tinkled along singing a mishmash of my favorite lines from country music, including one I made up: “Our love was not meant to be, at least not in the long run.” She was getting tears in her eyes so I swiveled her legs around so the backs of her knees were over my shoulders and I sang, “Yes, we have no bananas,” and she started laughing. I stood partway up and she slid down, her butt hitting the keys in a nice way like the lost chord. We did it right there which wasn’t easy.

  I woke up from a bad dream where I was suffocating in a hot cabin and I couldn’t walk, then I saw where I was and lightened up. The first of the morning sun was red in the east and there were black rolling clouds and snow flurries, sure sign of a coming gale. The red sun made the room pinkish and I turned to look at how Shelley’s nightie was pulled up all the way under her arms. I opened the window which squeaked to cool it off.

  “B.D., is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Not so you would notice. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. That’s all I know.”

  She said “Oh” and went back to sleep. It was then I had the notion that I’d better memorize her body as another one this fine was not likely to pass my way again. I started with her face but I knew it well enough so I went down to the feet and stared at them, then the ankles and knees. I thought of the old grade school song which we used to sing to the tune of “I’m looking over a four-leaf clover.” The dirty version went, “I’m looking under a two-legged wonder” but I couldn’t remember the rest. Also, in the pink light her body was too lovely to be thinking of nonsense. She didn’t wake up until I turned her over to memorize the other side.

  “B.D., what are you doing? It’s too early.” She checked her watch on the nightstand and put her face in the pillow.

  “I’m memorizing your body because we’re going to part,” I said, and she went back to sleep with another “Oh.” I said I never cried but I think I was getting pretty close by the time I got the memorizing job done, also I remembered how the Chief told me to keep my feet light. Luckily other emotions took over and by the time she fully awoke she was making yodeling sounds like Judy Canova on the Louisiana Hayride program.

  The meeting wasn’t all that it was pumped up to be. I was the sailor who took the red sky as a warning and played it hard and cold as Robert Mitchum. I had had breakfast in bed for the first time since I was sick as a kid so I was in a good mood except I couldn’t get a beer. I had eaten Shelley’s ham and mine too, so I was a bit dry, but when I called room service they said it was state law—no beer on Sunday until noon. I asked them what kind of low-rent hellhole they were running and they apologized. It was a comfort somehow that rich folks had to wait until noon just like everyone else.

  First to arrive was Shelley’s lawyer fresh off a stormy ride on the morning plane from Detroit. He kissed Shelley on both cheeks, like I’ve seen on television, and told her her dad couldn’t come because he had to do a “C-section” on an important lady. He just looked at me and sighed, deciding not to offer his hand for a shake, partly because I was staring him down like he was so much dog shit. Then came the State Police detective and the two of them whispered in the far corner while I watched snow swirling up the street which was putting a jinx on the color tour. Along came Jerk and Jerkoff with a tube of topographical maps which they spread out on the lid of the sacred piano. They glanced at me out of the corner of their eyes. I told Shelley that they had to stand over against the wall or the deal was off and I wouldn’t trace a route on the map. The lawyer and the detective came over and gave me some papers to sign that said the arson charge would be resumed if I showed up in Grand Marais within a year. I was given two days to move my stuff out. I signed the papers and the detective said he’d be keeping an eye on me.

  “No doubt you will because you can’t find honest work,” I said with a sneer. Then I went over and worked on the map with Shelley, using the lawyer’s gold pen I intended to swipe. She gave me a pleading look that said “Please no tricks,” but it was too late in the game for that. When I finished with the topo map she said she was surprised how close she had been several times. She waved over Jerk and Jerkoff but I yelled, “Stay in the corner, shitsuckers,” so they did. For some reason I picked up the cover of the piano bench and looked at some sheet music. There was a piece by Mozart, whose name I’d heard on the NPR station out of Marquette. I took it out and sat down to play.

  “A little Mozart for Sunday morning,” I said, then beat the hell out of the keys. Everyone left right away except Shelley. On the way out the lawyer picked his gold pen out of my pocket and gave me the envelope of money which I didn’t stop to count.

  That was that. We checked out of the hotel without saying much of anything. While she warmed up her car I cleaned all the wet snow off her windows, looking at her as she sat there shivering. She wasn’t built for winter. She almost ruined it by saying maybe we’d see each other again someday, but I said “I doubt it,” and off she drove.

  So there I stood in the Sunday snow with my toothbrush in my pocket wrapped up by Shelley in Kleenex. I felt the toothbrush and envelope of money and it was then I remembered my van was parked at the Ramada Inn up in Marquette. Worse things have happened, I thought. I’d just have to hitchhike up there. Just then a taxicab dropped off a lady at the hotel and I walked over. I asked the driver who was an old man how much was the eighty miles to Marquette, and he said things were slow so he’d make the drive for fifty bucks. I got in but before he’d start he wanted to see the color of my money just like Beatrice when I ordered a steak back in Chicago. I drew a hundred-dollar bill from the envelope and off we went. It was quite the shock when he asked me if I wasn’t B.D. who he saw fight a pulp cutter over in Iron Mountain twenty-five years ago. It wasn’t the biggest thing on earth but it made me feel life was holding together somehow.

  We were out on the edge of town when I had the idea to stop at the supermarket and pick up a bunch of chickens, also a six-pack for my trip, to drop off at Rose’s. Maybe she and her mom would cook Sunday dinner. I’d see if her boy Red might want to ride up to Marquette since he probably had never been in a taxi before. And that’s what I did. A pinch and a “suit yourself” wasn’t much to go on but it didn’t hurt to try.

  The Seve
n-Ounce Man

  I

  BACK HOME

  It was the darkest and coldest summer of the century in the Upper Peninsula, or so everyone said. When in groups people spoke in muffled dirge noises; alone, their soul speech was a runt-of-the-litter whimper. If you were awake the night of the summer solstice, perhaps driving home from a tavern, you saw snowflakes. You wanted them to be a hatch of summer bugs but they were definitely snowflakes. Then the night of the Glorious Fourth, when multicolored pyrotechnic bombs burst in the air over Escanaba’s harbor, folks huddled in their heated cars or sat on blankets in their snowmobile suits. By dawn every tomato plant in town lay supine under a crust of hoarfrost. The sturdier peas survived but the pods were already atrophied by the frigid dankness of June.

  It was to be a summer without the pleasures of sweet corn, tans, beach parties, and most disastrously, tourism. Bridge crossings over the “mighty Mackinac” dropped to an all-time low along with beer sales. A trickle of diehard, dour downstaters with shiny vehicles arrived—RVs towing compact cars that in turn towed boats—but few of them other than the campers, known locally as bologna eaters, unlike the most welcome kind of tourists who stayed in motels and ate in restaurants. Even the bears suffered and became scrawny from the failure of the wild berry crop, invading the outskirts of town for garbage cans and tooth-some household pets.

  Since Brown Dog was not given to lolling on beaches he did not mind the weather which stayed right around a daytime high of forty-nine degrees, actually his favorite temperature among all the possibilities. He liked the symmetry involved in the idea that his favorite driving speed and temperature were the same. His grandpa had always said that nobody ever got killed driving below fifty so Brown Dog kept it at forty-nine, kissing the inside limit of fatality. The real problem was that he no longer had his own vehicle, what with Rose totaling the old Dodge van against a birch tree on her way home from her job cleaning the Indian casino. He visited the junkyard as if it were a grave site, fondly patting the undamaged parts, caressing the metallic wounds, a lump forming in his throat as he said goodbye to his beloved vehicle.