To Dance With the White Dog

  Kate: “Not now, but he may be before long. I’ve read stories about how people go crazy. They do it a little bit at a time. One day, it’s almost nothing. They’re talking along like they always do, and then they start saying things that don’t make the first bit of sense, like they were trying to tell a joke, but nothing’s funny about it. Next thing you know, they’re down on all fours, making out like they’re a goat or something.”

  Carrie: “Oh, Lord, don’t say that.”

  Kate: “Happened that way to that old woman down in Elberton a few years ago. Mama told me about it. Said she was a pillar of the community, even taught school—home economics, Mama said. Then one day they found her on her front porch, in the swing, sitting on a quilt and clucking away like a chicken. Mama said she’d put a dozen eggs on the quilt and was trying to hatch them. Broke every last one of them.”

  Carrie: “I hope to heaven we won’t find Daddy that way, trying to crawl around on all fours, making out like he’s a dog.”

  Kate: “Why’d you say that, Carrie? Oh, Lord, now I’ll be worried to death. Maybe that’s what’s happened—and we don’t know it. Maybe he’s looking in the mirror and seeing a dog instead of himself. I wish you hadn’t said that. I remember reading something about how lots of crazy people get to thinking they’re some kind of animal.”

  Carrie: “I don’t even want to talk about it. Makes me want to cry just thinking about it. Every time I think about him patting the air like he was patting a dog’s head, saying I was blind because I couldn’t see his dog, I can’t help but cry.”

  Kate: “Did Lois call you this morning?”

  Carrie: “We talked for a minute. She wanted to know if we’d been able to see the dog yet, and I told her I couldn’t even talk about it, it bothered me so much. She sounded put off.”

  Kate: “I told her the same thing yesterday. I know she thinks we’re making it up. I can hear it in her voice. She calls me two or three times a day, like all I’ve got to do is talk about Daddy.”

  Carrie: “Sam Junior sounds the same way. He told me last night that we must be making more of it than was needed. Said it may be Daddy’s way of keeping everything in balance and we ought not to worry if he wanted to make up having a dog.”

  Kate: “Well, Sam Junior and Lois and the rest of them don’t know what it’s like, watching it every day. All they got to do is call up and talk, and a lot of good that does.”

  Carrie: “I know it.”

  Kate: “Have you seen Daddy today?”

  Carrie: “I was about to go out there.”

  Kate: “Call me when you get back.”

  Noah did not mean for the comment to be taken seriously—had said it, in fact, more to tease them than to inspire them—but he knew immediately from their uplifted faces and from the way their eyes flashed with revelation that he had provided them with a plan of action.

  “Now, wait a minute,” Noah said quickly. “All I said was you ought to put a lookout on your daddy early in the morning. I didn’t mean nothing by that. I was just talking.”

  “What’d you say it again for?” Kate asked indignantly.

  “I know that look,” Noah told her. “I know you got it in your head. You and Carrie both.”

  Carrie pushed back the empty coffee cup. Her eyes moistened slightly, and she sniffed softly. She said, “I just came back from watching him sitting out there in his rocking chair with a hairbrush in his hand, brushing thin air, saying he was brushing that white dog’s hair. That’s what he calls it: White Dog. I couldn’t even go back to the house, it scared me so much. I had to come on out here. You ask me, it’s a good idea to find out the truth.”

  “Damn it,” Noah sighed. “I don’t know why I ever open my mouth around the two of you, especially when Holman’s not here to take my side.”

  “We just want to know if Daddy’s going crazy,” protested Kate.

  “Your daddy’s not the one that’s crazy. It’s the two of you,” Noah said bluntly.

  “I resent you saying that,” Kate replied angrily. “You’re not around here in the daytime. You didn’t see what Carrie saw.”

  “I stopped by there on the way in,” Noah argued. “Your daddy was sitting in his rocking chair reading the paper. He didn’t say nothing about a dog.”

  “Well, I guess he’d already finished when you got there, Mr. Smartbutt,” Kate hissed cynically.

  “Good Lord, Kate, don’t you know your daddy better’n that? The two of you are aggravating him to death. All he’s doing is paying you back. He’s putting you on. You know he likes to do that.”

  “When’s he ever done that?” snapped Kate.

  Noah stared at Kate in disbelief. “Well, what about last year when he got you going about buying a mule?”

  “He was serious about that,” Carrie said. “Dead serious. Said he was going to put in his garden with one.”

  “Come on, Carrie, you know better than that,” Noah said. “Mr. Sam can’t even walk without using his walker. He knows he can’t plow anymore, but he got pure joy out of the two of you fretting over it.”

  “He drug his plows out,” Kate argued.

  “He had to make you believe it, didn’t he? All he wanted to do was touch them again. The trouble with the two of you is you don’t know how a man feels when he can’t do something anymore.”

  “Well, you think what you want to, mister. He was going to buy a mule, before Mama stopped him,” Kate said defiantly.

  “Your Mama didn’t even try to stop him,” corrected Noah. “In fact, she said she’d make the call for him. She knew he was putting the two of you on. He’s always doing that, and y’all just don’t know it.”

  Carrie rolled her eyes and got up from the kitchen table and poured more coffee into their cups. After a moment, she said, “But the white dog’s different, Noah, and you know it.”

  Noah nodded reluctantly. “I guess that’s right. He must think it’s there, or he wouldn’t’ve wanted me to kill it.”

  “But you said it can’t be there,” Kate said.

  “Don’t see how,” admitted Noah. “Old Red would be barking his fool head off if there was another dog around. Your dogs, too, Carrie.”

  Carrie sat again at the table. “He keeps saying the dog shows up early every morning to be fed, before we get up and get going.”

  Kate narrowed her eyes on her sister and said in a low voice, “We could hide out in the ditch, behind that boxwood hedge.”

  “Good Lord,” Noah whispered in desperation.

  “You can see the back of the porch clear as day from there,” continued Kate.

  “If we got out there before sunup, we’d be able to see anything that showed up,” Carrie said.

  “I don’t believe this,” Noah moaned. He got up and opened the kitchen door leading to the outside of the house. “I swear, I feel sorry for Mr. Sam. I’m going out to see Holman.” He left the house.

  “If Daddy sees us, he’ll have a fit,” Carrie warned.

  “He won’t see us,” promised Kate.

  When she left her house the following morning in the soot cloud of night, slipping out the back door, using only the beam of her flashlight, Kate was dressed in jeans and a dark sweater. She had a stocking cap pulled over her hair and the top of her forehead. Her face was smudged with ashes taken from the fireplace. She stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the night, then she raised her flashlight and, partly covering its beam with her fingers, flashed a signal in the direction of Carrie’s house. She saw a return light. At least she didn’t oversleep, Kate thought. She crouched over and began moving across the lawn, following the familiar path to her father’s house.

  Carrie was already kneeling behind the boxwood hedge when Kate arrived. Carrie was also dressed in dark clothes, with a stocking cap unfolded down over her hair. She looked at Kate in astonishment.

  “What’s that you got all over your face?” Carrie whispered.

  “Ashes. I got some for you,” Kate said. She handed Carrie
a small glass jar half-filled with ash.

  “I don’t want to put that stuff on me,” Carrie mumbled.

  “Noah said it was what they used to do in the Army. He said it was easy to see a white face from a distance.”

  “Well, Noah can kiss my foot.”

  “If Daddy sees you, it won’t be a foot-kissing.”

  “My Lord,” sighed Carrie. She opened the jar and dumped the ash out in her hand and rubbed it over her face. “I feel like a fool,” she complained. “I hope none of the kids see me like this. They do, they’ll be covered up in this stuff.”

  “It washes off, for crying out loud, Carrie. No reason to take chances. You put up the dogs in the house?”

  “I told you I would. You put Red up?”

  “Stupid dog didn’t even move when I left the house. He was asleep under the kitchen table.”

  “Is Noah up?” Carrie asked.

  “Wadn’t when I left, but he was awake. I could tell. He was trying to make me think he was asleep. I could hear him giggling when I left the room.”

  “Holman was the same,” Carrie said. “He thinks we’re crazy.”

  “I don’t give a flip what they think,” Kate declared in an angry whisper. “It’s not their daddy.”

  “What I say,” agreed Carrie. “How long you think we’ll have to wait?”

  “Don’t matter.”

  “What if he sleeps late?”

  “He won’t. He went to bed early last night. I saw the lights go out.”

  “He was hurting some yesterday. Maybe he’ll sleep late,” Carrie said.

  “If he does, we’ll come back tomorrow. If he’s got a dog, I plan on seeing it.”

  “Watch out,” Carrie said quickly. “That’s my foot you’re on.”

  “I thought it was a rock,” Kate said.

  The two sisters squatted in the ditch behind the boxwood hedge and peered anxiously through the limbs, two dark sentries in the dark of night, and waited for a white dog they did not believe existed. Behind them, in the east, the still-deep frost of morning began to coat the sky.

  “He’s sleeping late, like I said,” Carrie whispered. “It’s going to be light before long.”

  “Let’s give him a little more time,” Kate said.

  A mockingbird began to sing noisily in a nearby tree. A rooster crowed from the farm of Herman Morris, far across the creek on the Goldmine ridge.

  And then a light snapped on in Sam Peek’s house.

  “He’s up,” Kate said excitedly.

  They watched as the bathroom light went on and, a few minutes later, the kitchen light. They could see their father at the kitchen window, hobbling slowly about on his walker.

  “He’s making biscuits,” Kate guessed.

  “Looks like it,” Carrie said.

  They spied impatiently as their father cooked his breakfast and then disappeared from their view to eat. In a few minutes they saw him again at the sink behind the window. They watched him lift something and, turning, make his way across the room. The light to the back porch snapped on. They heard a door open and saw him at the steps of the porch, bending to place a bowl on the steps. They heard his soft voice: “Come on, girl. Breakfast time.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Carrie said in a soft whine. She bit her lip to stop the surge of pity.

  “Ssssssh,” Kate commanded. She moved closer to the hedge and pushed aside a boxwood limb.

  “You see anything?” Carrie asked.

  “Nothing yet,” answered Kate.

  Suddenly, from behind them, a dog barked sharply.

  “Good Lord,” Kate exclaimed, leaping to her feet.

  A short, shrill scream spit from Carrie’s throat. She grabbed Kate.

  The dog sprinted across the road, barking happily, wagging his tail. He nudged playfully against Kate.

  “Red,” Kate said angrily. “How did you get—?” She heard a roll of laughter from beneath the black canopy of a pecan tree.

  “Noah,” Carrie snapped. “And Holman.”

  “Damn you, Noah,” Kate yelled.

  From across the yard, Sam Peek called, “What’s going on out there?”

  “Daddy,” Carrie whispered fearfully. She dropped to her knees below the hedge. Kate dropped beside her.

  “Who’s out there?” he called again.

  Noah and Holman stepped from the shadows of the pecan tree.

  “It’s just us, Mr. Sam,” Noah said in a loud voice.

  “Who?”

  “Noah and Holman,” Noah said again. He paused and smiled at the hiding Kate and Carrie. “And the girls,” he added cheerfully.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “The girls were out taking a walk,” Noah called back. He began to laugh uncontrollably.

  “Yes sir,” Holman sang out. “The girls were out taking a walk and—and me and Noah heard a dog barking and we came out looking for them.” He laughed hard, bending over, swallowing the sound.

  “Where’re the girls?” he asked harshly.

  “Right here,” Noah said.

  “I don’t see them,” he said.

  Kate and Carrie stood slowly. They glared at their husbands.

  “Right here, Daddy,” Kate called. She held the flashlight up.

  “Here, Daddy,” echoed Carrie.

  “Come on up here,” their father ordered.

  “Damn,” Kate muttered. She turned to Noah. “I’ll get you for this if it takes the last breath in my body, Noah,” she sputtered in a low, menacing voice.

  “Come on, Kate,” Carrie said.

  He watched his daughters approach the house, followed by Noah and Holman. His daughters looked absurd, dressed in dark clothing, their heads covered with stocking caps, their faces smudged.

  “Good God,” he said. “What’re you doing out this time of morning, looking like that?”

  His daughters stood sheepishly before him, their faces lowered in shame.

  “Well, like I said,” Noah replied confidently, “the girls got it in their heads they ought to be out walking for exercise. There was something on television about it a couple of nights ago.” He turned to Holman. “That’s when it was, wadn’t it, Holman?”

  “Seems to me that’s right,” Holman said. A smile broke in his face like a light. He turned away.

  “Anyway, it said early morning was the best time of day for it. We tried to talk them out of it, but you know how they can get, Mr. Sam.”

  “What’s that you got all over your face?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Uh,” Kate muttered.

  “Ah, it’s—” Carrie said.

  “Well, that’s our doing, Mr. Sam,” Noah said quickly. “Me and Holman were just pulling their legs. Told them it’d keep the bugs off them. All it is, is fireplace ashes.”

  “Good God,” he said sorrowfully. He looked at his daughters and shook his head.

  “It was Holman and Noah, Daddy,” Carrie said defensively. “They were just trying to scare us. We were just—just walking.”

  “You want to walk, you do it in the daytime, so you can be seen,” he said. “I could of shot you.”

  “Yes sir,” Carrie whined.

  “Probably scared off my dog, with all that racket,” he said. “She likes to eat this time of morning.”

  Kate could feel tears welling in her eyes. It was sad, watching him like that, standing in the porch light, leaning heavily on his walker, looking for an imaginary dog. “We’ll go home now, Daddy,” she said. Then: “We won’t walk any more this time of the morning.”

  He did not see his daughters for the rest of the day. The day was warm and clear, and he went out among his pecan trees for a short time before retiring to his padded rocking chair to rest his aching hip. At lunch he made a peanut butter sandwich and ate it and then went to the front porch to sit and watch for his white dog. The dog had been driven away, he believed, by the early-morning nonsense of his daughters. It didn’t matter. She was not gone, only hiding.

  In the afternoon,
he napped fitfully, dreaming a nightmarish dream of his daughters wandering ethereally in their strange dress, with gray-black faces like mourners. When he awoke, the pain in his hip had increased, and he took aspirin. In early evening, he went to the front door and called for the white dog, and the dog appeared out of the tangle of the shrubbery and trotted into the house.

  “Been keeping out of sight, have you?” he said to the dog. “Don’t blame you. You ought to be hiding from some folks.” He thought of his daughters and smiled. “Lord, they’re enough to hide from sometimes.”

  He fed his dog and watched television and then went into the middle room to sit at his desk and write in his journal.

  Not much to say today. Kate and Carrie caused a ruckus this morning by wanting to get out and go walking when it was still dark. Noah and Holman made a joke of it but I could tell Kate and Carrie did not think it was funny. They were both spirited children and they still are. Sometimes I think they have too much spirit. My hip has hurt worse today than it has in a long time. I fixed White Dog some food, but didn’t eat much myself. I hope I sleep tonight.

  11

  It was after midnight, and he was awake, sitting in his padded rocker beside his roll-top desk. The pain in his hip nauseated him. He had taken the druggist’s medicine earlier, but the pain was still very great, and he could not rest. He had not moved for hours, not since he had taken his journal from his desk to write in. His mouth was dry. He wanted water, but knew he could not rise from his chair and pull himself into the kitchen. He breathed in a shallow sucking through his opened lips. A film of perspiration coated his forehead.

  He could hear from the living room the steady sizzling of the television, which he had left on when he went to take the medicine. He had listened to the faint playing of The Star-Spangled Banner at sign-off and had imagined the black-and-white fluttering of images across the screen—a formation of jet airplanes, soaring upward in perfect symmetry, splitting and backdiving gracefully into the clear, endless ocean of the sky. And the flag superimposed over the airplanes, the flag rippling in a wind of music, its sharp-pointed stars dancing across the cloth.