Nop's Trials

  PLEASE PRESS BUTTON.

  STATE YOUR NAME AND BUSINESS.

  THANK YOU.

  Behind the receptionist, a central corridor stretched the length of the building. Wide corridor.

  “My name is Lewis Burkholder. I’m from White Post, Virginia. I’m here because you’ve got my dog. It wasn’t your doing. It’s a mistake.”

  The speaker sputtered. Bad static. “What mistake?” The woman put on glasses to peer at Lewis. The door was tempered glass. A man came out of the office right at the head of the corridor. The man had gold hair and wore a white lab coat. He was arguing with somebody inside the office.

  “State your business, please.” The intercom was still full of static.

  Talking very slowly, Lewis specified, “You have my dog. I want my dog back.”

  The blond-haired man was all smiles now, nodding and bobbing to the person in the office. Once he had the door shut, Lewis could see he was terribly angry.

  “We buy all our dogs from federally licensed dog dealers. That’s the law. We can’t buy from an individual.”

  She just wasn’t hearing him. She’d got it backward. “You got it backward. I didn’t bring you a dog. I come for a dog.”

  The blond man in the lab coat overheard and stepped right up to the glass door, not six inches away. He eyed Lewis for the longest time before he fitted a black cigarette in a stubby yellow holder.

  When he turned to speak to the receptionist, Lewis heard every word. “Tell him we are closed to the general public. Tell him we don’t have his dog. He may go to the dog pound which is just six blocks from here, if he has lost his dog.”

  Lewis shouted, “I know my dog’s in there.”

  The speaker sputtered with the information that Detweiler Labs was closed to the general public. “Try the dog pound.”

  Lewis shook the door but it was too tightly fitted to rattle. Inches away, already thinking about his own problems, the man in the lab coat looked right through Lewis. He scratched the side of his nose, thoughtfully, before going down the hall. Lewis pressed the button and put his mouth right up to the speaker and yelled that his dog was a black-and-white Border Collie named Nop and Nop’d come with the load from Elite Kennels in Ohio, but the receptionist turned to the switchboard where a light was blinking. Lewis told her that Sergeant Nelson of the Cincinnati Police … but she cut her speaker with an impatient flick of thumb and forefinger. Lewis found himself yelling at the glass door and the back of her head. Again he shook the door but it didn’t wiggle.

  So Lewis marched off, his heart beating very fast. The side of the building was smooth and the back door, beside the concrete loading platform, was guarded by an identical buzzer-and-speaker arrangement. No human on the platform to help him.

  The far side of the building was blank, too, though Lewis walked all around it on new sod. He left big footprints in the soft soil. The clumps of dirt on his shoes made him feel awkward. He wondered if anyone inside could see him. He certainly couldn’t see them.

  He scraped his feet off on the front stoop. When he pressed the button again, the receptionist glowered and switched her speaker off again. She returned to the letter she was typing. Far down the corridor, the blond man had cornered another figure in a lab coat and was gesturing.

  Lewis went back down the entrance walk, past his car and all the employees’ cars. He kept on going down the sidewalk and when it quit at Detweiler’s property line, he kept right on walking. Lewis wondered if the town was big enough to have a police station.

  He walked by a little grocery store/gas station and it looked just like the grocery stores back home. He felt homesick. He wondered if dogs ever felt homesick.

  The VFW had a hall here. It had been somebody’s house once, but it was a VFW hall now. The grass needed cutting.

  Eleven o’clock in the morning. What was he doing in Kentucky? He watched his feet proceed with apparent sureness down the sidewalks and when the sidewalks became dirt paths, his feet mastered those too. Probably five hundred, six hundred people lived in this town. More than White Post.

  Far overhead an icy jet contrail slashed the sky. Higher than any bird could fly. Lewis found himself standing on the concrete apron of the Craigsville Volunteer Fire Department. The cornerstone in the building bore a date: 1948. Apparently, the volunteers were taking advantage of the weather to wash trucks. A couple soapy buckets and a garden hose, shut off now.

  The tank truck was parked behind the International pumper. The pumper was painted yellow which was the color many departments were going to. Personally, Lewis preferred red.

  Somewhere inside the firehouse a radio was playing. Crystal Gayle sang: “Don’t it make my brown eyes blue.”

  The tanker was a homemade job with brushed aluminum gear bins underneath the tank. It had been an oil truck once, or maybe an army truck.

  The yellow pumper had a rag lying on the front fender. Careless. Lewis removed the rag and tossed it in the bucket. He supposed the volunteer had had to answer a call of nature or a phone call or … something.

  Lewis raised his hands shoulder high, like a prisoner. He waggled his hands at the wrists like devil-may-care. The key was right there in the ignition, attached to a little chain so it couldn’t be removed from the truck. Lewis wiped his sweaty hands on his knees and took time to examine the dash.

  BRAKE LOCK. Flip that off. Lewis had driven fire trucks many a time but never noticed before how high they were off the ground.

  CHOKE. All these engines that aren’t run very often need a good choke to get them started.

  Lewis Burkholder had a distinct thought. He thought, “I am committing a crime.” He’d never thought he had it in him.

  He fired her up, slipped the choke, popped her into high range/low gear. He kept one eye on the mirror but didn’t see a soul, even as he rounded the corner that took him out of sight. It took a delicate touch on throttle and clutch to keep the cold motor smooth. From habit, Lewis reached for the box that housed light and siren controls, paused, and hit the lights but not the siren.

  Past the VFW, the houses, the little grocery. Lewis was doing about fifteen miles an hour.

  When he nosed into the curb at Detweiler, the kid baseball players came running to see.

  He engaged the power takeoff, floored the brake and flipped BRAKE LOCK. There was a fireman’s helmet on the floorboards so he picked it up. It had one of those flip-up clear plastic face shields and an emblem that read CHIEF. Since Lewis was a fire chief, he put it on.

  Like most pumpers, the International carried three hoses. Lewis would have liked to use the two-inch hose but he didn’t think he could handle that big hose alone so he unloaded the neat folds of the inch-and-a-half. The nozzle was a fog nozzle, set (like White Post’s nozzle) to a forty-five-degree spray for the initial fire attack. Lewis unscrewed it and replaced it with the straight-stream nozzle. The straight stream was the old-fashioned power nozzle used when firemen couldn’t get anywhere near a fire.

  The baseball players were asking, “Where’s the fire? Is the lab on fire? What’s doin’?” One boy was jumping up and down in excitement and a couple new arrivals rolled in on bicycles.

  Lewis hauled the limp hose out in a great arc. No kinks. Wouldn’t want kinks. Carefully, he laid the nozzle on the stoop right beside the front door. He didn’t ring the bell this time. He didn’t even look inside.

  The pumper’s control panel was unfamiliar but the valves were labeled with punched plastic labels.

  He revved the throttle and pressed the PRIME lever. Most of the newer trucks have quick prime pumps, but you never can tell; every fire truck’s a little different.

  TANK TO PUMP. He pulled that lever and the pressure needle bounced once, twice and started to climb. He’d want about a hundred seventy-five pounds. With the inch-and-a-half hose that was all the pressure one man could handle. The truck motor bellowed. Like White Post, these boys hadn’t bothered to muffle their fire truck. Lewis would have bet fifty dollars they??
?d removed all the pollution-control devices too.

  The water hissed around in the pump and the needle climbed steadily. The pressure needle swung past a hundred pounds, past a hundred fifty. At one seventy-five, Lewis throttled back. The RPM counter stood at just 2,500 rpm. One hose would be nothing to this truck and it looked to have a 750-1,000 gallon storage tank.

  The kids surrounded him, many excited, puzzled faces. The oldest was perhaps ten years old.

  “I need some help,” Lewis said. “I’m by myself and I need a second man.”

  One of the kids, a towhead, said, “My dad’s in the fire department and I don’t know you.”

  Patiently, Lewis explained, “When I take the nozzle, I’ll need someone to pull this valve open.” He touched the big red valve labeled: 1½ PRECONNECT delicately, just a tap of his forefinger. “If I charge my hose myself, before I reach the nozzle, it’ll be flopping all around and, there’s no man who could catch and control it.”

  The towhead said, “Where’s the fire? I don’t see any smoke.”

  A few kids stepped back, taking themselves out of it, and the others were giving Lewis plenty of room.

  “Anybody here got a dog?”

  Three kids nodded. The towhead too. Kid wore a striped T-shirt and his baseball cap backward on his head in the dashing manner.

  “If someone took your dog, what would you do?”

  One of the kids said, “Tell the police.”

  “Look for it.”

  “Go out in the street and call.”

  “And what if somebody tried to kill your dog?”

  One kid thought he’d “kill them.” Another said he’d “punch him just like he punched that kid from Elizabeth City.” Another suggested, again, that he’d call the police. The towhead didn’t say a word. The other kids were playing with the exciting question and one boy was already dancing around demonstrating just how he’d punched the kid from Elizabeth City—pow, pow. The towhead looked thoughtful.

  “My name is Burkholder. Lewis Burkholder. A man stole my dog, Nop. Nop’s a real good dog and he means a lot to me. They’ve got Nop inside that building and unless I stop them, they’re going to cut him up and kill him. I’m going to go get the nozzle. When you see me raise one hand in the air, I want you to jerk on that valve. It’ll come easy. That’s all you have to do. Pull the valve and get me water.”

  And Lewis went up to Detweiler Labs, not knowing whether he’d have the water or not, and picked up the nozzle and cracked it, just a bit so the initial rush wouldn’t twist him around.

  He raised his hand and got set.

  It was a nice Kentucky morning. The fire engine roared.

  The receptionist shrieked when the surge of water took the door right out of its frame.

  Lewis shut down, stepped through the broken space he’d made. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t really want to do this. I’ve come for my dog.”

  She jerked the switchboard headphones right off her head because she’d heard of people being electrocuted in their bathtubs and the water swirled around her feet.

  That man. That man smiling the apologetic smile as he dragged his heavy hose past. The hose was stretched taut as a log, as a … the receptionist, a modest lady, blushed.

  Lewis threw open the first office door. The man at the desk wore a blue suit, thinning hair and an expression that invited Lewis to explain the commotion. He had papers raised in his left hand, like he was signaling for attention.

  “Excuse me,” Lewis said, and shut the door.

  “Excuse me.” He shut the second door too. The laboratories were bound to be in this building somewhere. He’d just look until he found them.

  The hose was very, very heavy. At a fire scene, there’d be plenty of willing hands to hump the hose behind the nozzle man but today Lewis had to go it alone.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. You happen to see a black-and-white stockdog? A Border Collie? Sorry I bothered you.”

  Now here came trouble. A couple lab coats running toward him—one the gold-haired man from the front door. Lewis washed them, tumbled them back down the hall like bathtub toys.

  There wasn’t a soul in the next office, just mail cubicles and the company coffee urn. “Nop?” Lewis asked.

  The corridor was awfully long. This building sure didn’t look this long from outside.

  The director opened his office door. Lewis closed it with ten seconds of straight stream at 175 pounds per square inch.

  Heads popped out into the hall and Lewis bellowed at them, “I’m looking for my dog!” But they just ducked.

  The water was ankle deep in the hall. At a fire scene he would have had boots and his feet would have been dry. He pushed into CHEMO LAB 3. No people. The cages were full of cats. Dead cat gutted on the lab table. The cat spread out like a fox had been at its innards.

  The blond-haired man was coming down that slippery hall like a broadjumper, running head down, fists clenched and his broken cigarette holder jutting out of his mouth like a tusk. Twenty feet away, Lewis slapped him down. He rolled over and pushed through the nearest laboratory door.

  And came right out of there like a jack-in-the-box. On top of the man—a dog blur: a black-and-white dog blur, skidding legs splayed like a moon lander. Hit the corridor wall pretty hard, pushed off, gathered itself and raced down the flooded corridor toward the loading-dock door where several timid souls were waiting, way down there out of hose range.

  Tail down, front legs crossing the back legs and the water flew!

  “Nop! That’ll do!”

  And the dog braked, slowed from dead run to trot to walk to stop. He turned his head and looked at the man. One ear was cocked and nervous.

  “Nop, Nop. That’ll do. Come here.” Softly, between his teeth, Lewis Burkholder whistled the recall whistle.

  And Nop came. Delicately placing each foot, like it was important how he set it down, Nop returned. As befitted a matter of importance, he came on very slowly and Lewis didn’t try to hurry him.

  When he came abreast of the gold-haired man, Nop fired off a single glance that pressed the man against the corridor wall.

  Ten feet away, Nop stopped. One ear was broken, his hair had been jerked out, he was covered with excrement. He had a bad scar on his hind leg. Nop’s eyes were full of question.

  Lewis removed the fire helmet so Nop could see his face better. He gave the dog time before he snapped his fingers and said, “Come,” and went back the way he’d come.

  Without a single doubt, Nop followed Lewis, right at his heels.

  The receptionist had fled.

  Lewis Burkholder jammed the hose nozzle in between the broken doorframe and the wall, so the hose wouldn’t start whipping around. Sodden letters and memoranda lay in puddles on the floor. When Lewis stepped into the outside air, his hands were trembling.

  All the kids had run off. The fire truck was still roaring. The sun felt pretty good.

  Nop just stood there, leaning against Lewis’s leg.

  Together, they waited for the police to come.

  THIRTEEN

  The Top Dogs

  It was seven that evening when they turned Lewis Burkholder loose. For a while there it had looked like they weren’t going to release him at all. The Kentucky sheriff had used terms like, “grand theft auto,” and “assault.” Not to be outdone, the county attorney added, “misappropriation of a public safety vehicle” and “breaking and entering.”

  Folks were pretty mad, none madder than the Craigsville Volunteer Fire Department. “What if there’d been a fire? What if some kid had been trapped in the flames?”

  “I ain’t making excuses,” Lewis said. “I know I committed a crime.”

  Nop lay, quietly, at his feet right there in the sheriff’s office in the County Courthouse.

  The Kentucky sheriff phoned Sergeant Nelson. After he heard the Cincinnati part of the story, he phoned Sheriff Lohr to hear the Virginia part of it.

  Lewis sat, hands in his lap, making
polite response to all the questions they asked. He felt like all the sap had drained right out of him.

  Sheriff Lohr had news of Grady and Lester Gumm. Seems that Lester missed a curve on Little Stony Mountain and hit a big spruce tree, wrecked the four-wheel drive and killed Grady outright. Sheriff Lohr got to Lester before Lester got straight and Lester answered all his questions. Lester confessed to crimes Lohr hadn’t suspected were crimes. Lester said Doug Whitenaur had offered Grady three hundred dollars to steal Lewis’s dog. Sheriff Lohr said (on the phone) that Lester felt awful bad about Grady’s death and was trying to make a few things right again. Sheriff Lohr said he’d testify as a character witness for Lewis.

  “What do you think about that, Chief?” The Kentucky sheriff had taken to calling Lewis by his official title. In his eyes, being a fire chief was Lewis’s worst offense. If a couple joy-riding kids had snatched the truck, the sheriff wouldn’t have minded near so much.

  Lewis shrugged.

  The county attorney looked at the big, quiet man and the dog lying beside him. He’d known farmers like Lewis all his life. “I’m setting your court date for July eighth, right here in this building at eight-thirty in the morning. Do I have to make you post bond?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  So Lewis got up and walked out into the evening. The grass was mighty green, greener than home, and a magnolia on the courthouse lawn was in bloom. Spooky white in the evening light, but sweet.

  Mark’s old VW was so dusty you had to guess at the original color. Still, it ran.

  “You look hungry,” Lewis said and Nop got in front.

  A few miles down U.S. 150, Lewis spotted a Burger King with a Drive-Thru Window. He ordered two double cheeseburgers for himself and three hamburger patties, plain, hold everything, even the bun. “They’re for my dog.”

  “That’ll be six eighteen, sir.”

  Lewis broke Nop’s burgers into small pieces because he didn’t want Nop choking himself. Nop ate each piece and his eyes never left Lewis’s face. He lapped water from a paper cup.

  Lewis puttered north on I 75, doing about fifty, enjoying the faint twilight line above the green-black horizon.