Short Cuts

  “She’s crazy,” he’d say. “And she’s driving me crazy. I can’t make it fast enough to replace it. The sonofabitch, I’m going to kill her one of these days!”

  Betty tolerated the dog at greater durations, would go along apparently unruffled for a time, but suddenly she would come upon it, with fists clenched, call it a bastard, a bitch, shriek at the kids about keeping it out of their room, the living room, etc. Betty was that way with the children, too. She could go along with them just so far, let them get away with just so much, and then she would turn on them savagely and slap their faces, screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! I can’t stand any more of it!”

  But then Betty would say, “It’s their first dog. You remember how fond you must have been of your first dog.”

  “My dog had brains,” he would say. “It was an Irish setter!”

  The afternoon passed. Betty and the kids returned from someplace or another in the car, and they all had sandwiches and potato chips on the patio. He fell asleep on the grass, and when he woke it was nearly evening.

  He showered, shaved, put on slacks and a clean shirt. He felt rested but sluggish. He dressed and he thought of Jill. He thought of Betty and Alex and Mary and Sandy and Suzy. He felt drugged.

  “We’ll have supper pretty soon,” Betty said, coming to the bathroom door and staring at him.

  “That’s all right. I’m not hungry. Too hot to eat,” he said fiddling with his shirt collar. “I might drive over to Carl’s, shoot a few games of pool, have a couple of beers.”

  She said, “I see.”

  He said, “Jesus!”

  She said, “Go ahead, I don’t care.”

  He said, “I won’t be gone long.”

  She said, “Go ahead, I said. I said I don’t care.”

  In the garage, he said, “Goddamn you all!” and kicked the rake across the cement floor. Then he lit a cigarette and tried to get hold of himself. He picked up the rake and put it away where it belonged. He was muttering to himself, saying, “Order, order,” when the dog came up to the garage, sniffed around the door, and looked in.

  “Here. Come here, Suzy. Here, girl,” he called.

  The dog wagged her tail but stayed where she was.

  He went over to the cupboard above the lawn mower and took down one, then two, and finally three cans of food.

  “All you want tonight, Suzy, old girl. All you can eat,” he coaxed, opening up both ends of the first can and sliding the mess into the dog’s dish.

  He drove around for nearly an hour, not able to decide on a place. If he dropped her off in just any neighborhood and the pound were called, the dog would be back in the house in a day or two. The county pound was the first place Betty would call. He remembered reading stories about lost dogs finding their way hundreds of miles back home again. He remembered crime programs where someone saw a license number, and the thought made his heart jump. Held up to public view, without all the facts being in, it’d be a shameful thing to be caught abandoning a dog. He would have to find the right place.

  He drove over near the American River. The dog needed to get out more anyway, get the feel of the wind on its back, be able to swim and wade in the river when it wanted; it was a pity to keep a dog fenced in all the time. But the fields near the levee seemed too desolate, no houses around at all. After all, he did want the dog to be found and cared for. A large old two-story house was what he had in mind, with happy, well-behaved reasonable children who needed a dog, who desperately needed a dog. But there were no old two-story houses here, not a one.

  He drove back onto the highway. He had not been able to look at the dog since he’d managed to get her into the car. She lay quietly on the back seat now. But when he pulled off the road and stopped the car, she sat up and whined, looking around.

  He stopped at a bar, rolled all the car windows down before he went inside. He stayed nearly an hour, drinking beer and playing the shuffleboard. He kept wondering if he should have left all the doors ajar too. When he went back outside, Suzy sat up in the seat and rolled her lips back, showing her teeth.

  He got in and started off again.

  Then he thought of the place. The neighborhood where they used to live, swarming with kids and just across the line in Yolo County, that would be just the right place. If the dog were picked up, it would be taken to the Woodland Pound, not the pound in Sacramento. Just drive onto one of the streets in the old neighborhood, stop, throw out a handful of the shit she ate, open the door, a little assistance in the way of a push, and out she’d go while he took off. Done! It would be done.

  He stepped on it getting out there.

  There were porch lights on and at three or four houses he saw men and women sitting on the front steps as he drove by. He cruised along, and when he came to his old house he slowed down almost to a stop and stared at the front door, the porch, the lighted windows. He felt even more insubstantial, looking at the house. He had lived there – how long? A year, sixteen months? Before that, Chico, Red Bluff, Tacoma, Portland – where he’d met Betty – Yakima … Toppenish, where he was born and went to high school. Not since he was a kid, it seemed to him, had he known what it was to be free from worry and worse. He thought of summers fishing and camping in the Cascades, autumns when he’d hunt pheasants behind Sam, the setter’s flashing red coat a beacon through cornfields and alfalfa meadows where the boy that he was and the dog that he had would both run like mad. He wished he could keep driving and driving tonight until he was driving onto the old bricked main street of Toppenish, turning left at the first light, then left again, stopping when he came to where his mother lived, and never, never, for any reason ever, ever leave again.

  He came to the darkened end of the street. There was a large empty field straight ahead and the street turned to the right, skirting it. For almost a block there were no houses on the side nearer the field and only one house, completely dark, on the other side. He stopped the car and, without thinking any longer about what he was doing, scooped a handful of dog food up, leaned over the seat, opened the back door nearer the field, threw the stuff out, and said, “Go on, Suzy.” He pushed her until she jumped down reluctantly. He leaned over farther, pulled the door shut, and drove off, slowly. Then he drove faster and faster.

  He stopped at Dupee’s, the first bar he came to on the way back to Sacramento. He was jumpy and perspiring. He didn’t feel exactly unburdened or relieved, as he had thought he would feel. But he kept assuring himself it was a step in the right direction, that the good feeling would settle on him tomorrow. The thing to do was to wait it out.

  After four beers a girl in a turtleneck sweater and sandals and carrying a suitcase sat down beside him. She set the suitcase between the stools. She seemed to know the bartender, and the bartender had something to say to her whenever he came by, once or twice stopping briefly to talk. She told Al her name was Molly, but she wouldn’t let him buy her a beer. Instead, she offered to eat half a pizza.

  He smiled at her, and she smiled back. He took out his cigarettes and his lighter and put them on the bar.

  “Pizza it is!” he said.

  Later, he said, “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

  “No, thanks. I’m waiting for someone,” she said.

  He said, “Where you heading for?”

  She said, “No place. Oh,” she said, touching the suitcase with her toe, “you mean that?” laughing. “I live here in West Sac. I’m not going anyplace. It’s just a washing-machine motor inside belongs to my mother. Jerry – that’s the bartender – he’s good at fixing things. Jerry said he’d fix it for nothing.”

  Al got up. He weaved a little as he leaned over her. He said, “Well, goodbye, honey. I’ll see you around.”

  “You bet!” she said. “And thanks for the pizza. Hadn’t eaten since lunch. Been trying to take some of this off.” She raised her sweater, gathered a handful of flesh at the waist.

  “Sure I can’t give you a lift someplace?” he said.

  The wom
an shook her head.

  In the car again, driving, he reached for his cigarettes and then, frantically, for his lighter, remembering leaving everything on the bar. The hell with it, he thought, let her have it. Let her put the lighter and the cigarettes in the suitcase along with the washing machine. He chalked it up against the dog, one more expense. But the last, by God! It angered him now, now that he was getting things in order, that the girl hadn’t been more friendly. If he’d been in a different frame of mind, he could have picked her up. But when you’re depressed, it shows all over you, even the way you light a cigarette.

  He decided to go see Jill. He stopped at a liquor store and bought a pint of whiskey and climbed the stairs to her apartment and he stopped at the landing to catch his breath and to clean his teeth with his tongue. He could still taste the mushrooms from the pizza, and his mouth and throat were seared from the whiskey. He realized that what he wanted to do was to go right to Jill’s bathroom and use her toothbrush.

  He knocked. “It’s me, Al,” he whispered. “Al,” he said louder. He heard her feet hit the floor. She threw the lock and then tried to undo the chain as he leaned heavily against the door.

  “Just a minute, honey. Al, you’ll have to quit pushing – I can’t unhook it. There,” she said and opened the door, scanning his face as she took him by the hand.

  They embraced clumsily, and he kissed her on the cheek.

  “Sit down, honey. Here.” She switched on a lamp and helped him to the couch. Then she touched her fingers to her curlers and said, “I’ll put on some lipstick. What would you like in the meantime? Coffee? Juice? A beer? I think I have some beer. What do you have there … whiskey? What would you like, honey?” She stroked his hair with one hand and leaned over him, gazing into his eyes. “Poor baby, what would you like?” she said.

  “Just want you hold me,” he said. “Here. Sit down. No lipstick,” he said, pulling her onto his lap. “Hold. I’m falling,” he said.

  She put an arm around his shoulders. She said, “You come on over to the bed, baby, I’ll give you what you like.”

  “Tell you, Jill,” he said, “skating on thin ice. Crash through any minute … I don’t know.” He stared at her with a fixed, puffy expression that he could feel but not correct. “Serious,” he said.

  She nodded. “Don’t think about anything, baby. Just relax,” she said. She pulled his face to hers and kissed him on the forehead and then the lips. She turned slightly on his lap and said, “No, don’t move, Al,” the fingers of both hands suddenly slipping around the back of his neck and gripping his face at the same time. His eyes wobbled around the room an instant, then tried to focus on what she was doing. She held his head in place in her strong fingers. With her thumbnails she was squeezing out a blackhead to the side of his nose.

  “Sit still!” she said.

  “No,” he said. “Don’t! Stop! Not in the mood for that.”

  “I almost have it. Sit still, I said! … There, look at that. What do you think of that? Didn’t know that was there, did you? Now just one more, a big one, baby. The last one,” she said.

  “Bathroom,” he said, forcing her off, freeing his way.

  At home it was all tears, confusion. Mary ran out to the car, crying, before he could get parked.

  “Suzy’s gone,” she sobbed. “Suzy’s gone. She’s never coming back, Daddy, I know it. She’s gone!”

  My God, heart lurching. What have I done?

  “Now don’t worry, sweetheart. She’s probably just off running around somewhere. She’ll be back,” he said.

  “She isn’t, Daddy. I know she isn’t. Mama said we may have to get another dog.”

  “Wouldn’t that be all right, honey?” he said. “Another dog, if Suzy doesn’t come back? We’ll go to the pet store –”

  “I don’t want another dog!” the child cried, holding onto his leg.

  “Can we have a monkey, Daddy, instead of a dog?” Alex asked. “If we go to the pet store to look for a dog, can we have a monkey instead?”

  “I don’t want a monkey!” Mary cried. “I want Suzy.”

  “Everybody let go now, let Daddy in the house. Daddy has a terrible, terrible headache,” he said.

  Betty lifted a casserole dish from the oven. She looked tired, irritable … older. She didn’t look at him. “The kids tell you? Suzy’s gone? I’ve combed the neighborhood. Everywhere, I swear.”

  “That dog’ll turn up,” he said. “Probably just running around somewhere. That dog’ll come back,” he said.

  “Seriously,” she said, turning to him with her hands on her hips, “I think it’s something else. I think she might have got hit by a car. I want you to drive around. The kids called her last night, and she was gone then. That’s the last’s been seen of her. I called the pound and described her to them, but they said all their trucks aren’t in yet. I’m supposed to call again in the morning.”

  He went into the bathroom and could hear her still going on. He began to run the water in the sink, wondering, with a fluttery sensation in his stomach, how grave exactly was his mistake. When he turned off the faucets, he could still hear her. He kept staring at the sink.

  “Did you hear me?” she called. “I want you to drive around and look for her after supper. The kids can go with you and look too … Al?”

  “Yes, yes,” he answered.

  “What?” she said. “What’d you say?”

  “I said yes. Yes! All right. Anything! Just let me wash up first, will you?”

  She looked through from the kitchen. “Well, what in the hell is eating you? I didn’t ask you to get drunk last night, did I? I’ve had enough of it, I can tell you! I’ve had a hell of a day, if you want to know. Alex waking me up at five this morning getting in with me, telling me his daddy was snoring so loud that … that you scared him! I saw you out there with your clothes on passed out and the room smelling to high heaven. I tell you, I’ve had enough of it!” She looked around the kitchen quickly, as if to seize something.

  He kicked the door shut. Everything was going to hell. While he was shaving, he stopped once and held the razor in his hand and looked at himself in the mirror: his face doughy, characterless – immoral, that was the word. He laid the razor down. I believe I have made the gravest mistake this time. I believe I have made the gravest mistake of all. He brought the razor up to his throat and finished.

  He did not shower, did not change clothes. “Put my supper in the oven for me,” he said. “Or in the refrigerator. I’m going out. Right now,” he said.

  “You can wait till after supper. The kids can go with you.”

  “No, the hell with that. Let the kids eat supper, look around here if they want. I’m not hungry, and it’ll be dark soon.”

  “Is everybody going crazy?” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. I’m ready for a nervous breakdown. I’m ready to lose my mind. What’s going to happen to the kids if I lose my mind?” She slumped against the draining board, her face crumpled, tears rolling off her cheeks. “You don’t love them, anyway! You never have. It isn’t the dog I’m worried about. It’s us! It’s us! I know you don’t love me any more – goddamn you! – but you don’t even love the kids!”

  “Betty, Betty!” he said. “My God!” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right. I promise you,” he said. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I promise you, things’ll be all right. I’ll find the dog and then things will be all right,” he said.

  He bounded out of the house, ducked into the bushes as he heard his children coming: the girl crying, saying, “Suzy, Suzy”; the boy saying maybe a train ran over her. When they were inside the house, he made a break for the car.

  He fretted at all the lights he had to wait for, bitterly resented the time lost when he stopped for gas. The sun was low and heavy, just over the squat range of hills at the far end of the valley. At best, he had an hour of daylight.

  He saw his whole life a ruin from here on in. If he lived another fifty years –
hardly likely – he felt he’d never get over it, abandoning the dog. He felt he was finished if he didn’t find the dog. A man who would get rid of a little dog wasn’t worth a damn. That kind of man would do anything, would stop at nothing.

  He squirmed in the seat, kept staring into the swollen face of the sun as it moved lower into the hills. He knew the situation was all out of proportion now, but he couldn’t help it. He knew he must somehow retrieve the dog, as the night before he had known he must lose it.

  “I’m the one going crazy,” he said and then nodded his head in agreement.

  He came in the other way this time, by the field where he had let her off, alert for any sign of movement.

  “Let her be there,” he said.

  He stopped the car and searched the field. Then he drove on, slowly. A station wagon with the motor idling was parked in the drive of the lone house, and he saw a well-dressed woman in heels come out the front door with a little girl. They stared at him as he passed. Farther on he turned left, his eyes taking in the street and the yards on each side as far down as he could see. Nothing. Two kids with bicycles a block away stood beside a parked car.

  “Hi,” he said to the two boys as he pulled up alongside. “You fellows see anything of a little white dog around today? A kind of white shaggy dog? I lost one.”

  One boy just gazed at him. The other said, “I saw a lot of little kids playing with a dog over there this afternoon. The street the other side of this one. I don’t know what kind of dog it was. It was white maybe. There was a lot of kids.”

  “Okay, good. Thanks,” Al said. “Thank you very very much,” he said.

  He turned right at the end of the street. He concentrated on the street ahead. The sun had gone down now. It was nearly dark. Houses pitched side by side, trees, lawns, telephone poles, parked cars, it struck him as serene, untroubled. He could hear a man calling his children; he saw a woman in an apron step to the lighted door of her house.

  “Is there still a chance for me?” Al said. He felt tears spring to his eyes. He was amazed. He couldn’t help but grin at himself and shake his head as he got out his handkerchief. Then he saw a group of children coming down the street. He waved to get their attention.