"NEW TRICKS"
“What do you wanna do for your birthday?” Doris asks Alan over breakfast the Saturday before.
“Haven’t thought about it,” Alan says after chewing and swallowing the spoonful of bran cereal he’d stuck in his mouth just before she asked.
“But it’s your seventieth. We’ve gotta celebrate.”
“It’s just another day. As long as it’s not noted in the Obituaries, I’m okay with it.”
“No, c’mon, pick something.”
Why?, Alan thinks, swallowing another spoonful of cereal, just so you’ll have something more to disagree with. He just smiles down at his cereal bowl, not wanting to pursue the conversation, meet Doris’s eyes.
“I’m not giving up on this,” Doris warns, takes a sip of tea.
“Okay,” Alan sighs, “how about going over to Sausalito, spend the day walking around and have dinner at The Spinnaker? We haven’t done that in a long time.”
“Good. . . . Or would you rather go down to Monterey?”
If I’d wanted to go to Monterey, I would have said so. Why can’t you ever just say ‘Yes’? Why do you always, always, always have to have a better idea? “Fine, Monterey it is. Like I said, I don’t really care.”
“No, it’s your day. We’ll do whatever you want.”
How ‘bout you disappear. Leave someone behind who doesn’t think saying ‘Yes’ would compromise her independence? But Alan doesn’t say that aloud, of course. What would be the point? He took a vow: for better or worse. And it isn’t that bad, … putting up with Bossie. “Monterey will be fine,” he finally says. “I like Monterey.”
“Or what about going up to Mendocino? We haven’t been up there in years. It’s such a pretty drive, and we could stay at one of those quaint inns with fireplaces in the rooms, where they give you a bottle of wine every day.”
And the waves have been known to wash women off the rocks, Alan thinks, knowing it’s childish but enjoying the thought anyway. “Fine.”
“What was the name of that inn we stayed at? Didn’t they make a movie there?”
“’Same Time Next Year.’”
“No, that wasn’t it.”
Why do I bother? Alan scoops up the last of his cereal, swallowed the last of his grapefruit juice. “I’m going to check the e-mail,” he says, starting to get up from the table.
“And what do you want for a present?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t thought about that, either.” And I’m not giving you yet another chance to have a better idea.
“You’re so hard to shop for. … You get what you want and tell me what I owe you.” You never appreciate what I get you, all I do for you, Doris thinks as she rises from her chair, starts to pick up the breakfast dishes.
It’s only hard because I don’t want what you want me to want. “Fine.” Alan starts for the alcove off the family room where his computer is located.
“And make a reservation for your birthday, if you can remember the name of that inn. It’s not ‘Same Time Next Year.’” Who would ever name an inn that? Stupid.
“That was the name of the movie. The inn was The Heritage House.”
“That makes more sense,” Doris answers as she turns away and walks into the kitchen. “Maybe you’re right about that.”
“I am,” Alan mumbles as he moves toward the family room.
“What did you say?” Doris calls as she bangs the dishes into the dishwasher.
Alan doesn’t bother answering.
He really is losing his hearing, Doris thinks. But will he admit it? Of course not. Just expects the rest of us to put up with it. Oh well.
Finding nothing of interest in the e-mail and having nothing else to do, Alan decides to go out, gets up stiffly, and heads for the front door. “I’m going for a walk,” he yells toward the den, where Doris has her office.
Doris waves dismissively in his direction, saying nothing since she’s on the phone with her friend Sarah Beth. “It’ll be good to have him out of the house for awhile,” she finally says to Sara Beth after hearing the door close behind Alan. “I never realized what a blessing it was having him go to work five days a week. Not the pay checks, though I wish we had that money again. No, the blessing was not having him around all the time, having time to myself, being able to do what I want. Men are so lucky.”
“Well, be careful what you wish for,” Sarah Beth responds. “I’d give anything to have Ralph back, even if it was just snoring on the couch.”
“You know, he was no prize. I mean, he took advantage of your being a good woman. And look at all the bills he left you.”
“Yeah, I know, but he was here. The kids come and go, grandkids, too, and I have good neighbors. But when the sun sets, it’s just me. And if something were to happen to me, those other lives, they’d go on with just a little bump in the road, a funeeral to arrange, an estate to settle, stuff to go to Good Will or in the trash. Then they’d all get back to normal, what’s normal for them. If Ralph were here, his normal would include me, wouldn’t survive without me.”
“Don’t be morbid,” Doris responds. “What counts is that you have your own life, and no man to tell you what to do or depend on you for what he needs.”
“Right,” Sarah Beth sighs, giving up.
Alan turns left at the sidewalk, taking his usual route toward the Starbuck’s three blocks away. It is October—he loved the fall—and late enough on a warm, sunny morning that the kids are in school, the breadwinners at work, and the housewives busy with cleaning, shopping, or soaps.
Probably won’t be anyone out in the yard to shoot the shit with, Alan thinks regretfully, checking out both sides of Yorktown, his street. All he sees is three gardeners mowing, trimming, and blowing the Nielsen’s yard. “Pablo’s Quality Yard Care” he sees painted on the bright green pick-up parked in the Nielsen’s driveway.
Used to be, I could stop and talk to the gardeners, Alan thinks, but they’re all Mexicans now, don’t speak English. Why don’t they havta learn English to work here. Oughta be a law. They do a good job, though; gotta admit that. Wonder what they charge for those poodle-cut evergreens? Whatever it is, Jim Nielsen can afford it. He passes the Nielsen place without even trying to talk to the guy who must be in charge, standing by the truck, giving out tools, sipping coffee.
As he nears Concord, the first cross street, a cheery, “Toodaloo, Alan,” rings out through the screen door of the pink ranch house with the massive maple tree dropping multi-colored leaves on his left. Cherokee tan, Alan reminds himself, not pink. Bruce had insisted on that, proud of his one-eighth Indian blood, picked the color because of that. Lucky Suzy, his wife, was fond of pink.
“Hi Suzy,” Alan says, stopping and turning to face the plump, older, smiling woman emerging from the house—she reminds Alan of the Mom!, definitely with a capital M, that Barbara Bush was supposed to be. Suzy is a great cook; Alan hopes she’ll invite him in. She always seemed happy to have people over, both when Bruce was alive and now that he is gone.
“Isn’t it a beau-ti-ful day,” Suzy coos,” standing on her red brick front porch now.
“Yes, ma’am,” Alan agrees, leaning on the gate of her two-rail, white, country fence now, shifting his weight onto his right, better hip.
“Doris send you out on an errand?” Suzy asks, just to say something, not malicious.
Whole damn neighborhood knows I’m hen-pecked, Alan thinks. “Just out for the exercise,” he says aloud, also without rancor, knowing that Suzy didn’t mean anything by the remark. Woman doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, he reminds himself. “Thought I might get a coffee at Starbuck’s.,” he adds, hopeful athat will plant the idea that she should invite him in instead.
“The carpet cleaners are due any moment, or I’d save you the walk.”
Lucky guys, Alan thinks. Bet she has a fresh pot on for them, and some fresh cinnamon rolls, too. Alan remembers what it was like visiting people’s homes when he was a young insurance salesman. There’d been some real tightwads, men and women both, whose sole concern was to pay as little for as much as they could get. Tried to get him to cut his commission to get the sale. Tea Party types,he thinks. Then there were couples like Bruce and Suzy, always welcoming, eager to be good neighbors, send their business to the guy down the street, maybe expect a little discount for that, but knowing, caring that he had to make a living, too. And all shades in between, he reminds himself. “Too bad,” he says as he turns to resume his walk, “I’ll take your coffee over Starbuck’s anytime.”
“If you’re out tomorrow, you be sure to stop by,” Suzy says, watching him turn, sharing the pain each arthritic step so obviously cost him, sad every time she sees the stooped shoulders and bowed back of the tall man grown old. “I don’t have any plans for tomorrow.”
“I’ll sure keep that in mind,” Alan says, waving good-by. Doris says Suzy’s like a fish out of water without a man; a widow on the prowl. I wonder . . ., he thinks with an inner chuckle, a little smile showing on his face. Figuring Suzy is watching him go, Alan tries to walk tall, stride down the block, attempting to match the military pace of 120 steps per minute. But he can’t keep it up for long; his left hip is killing him again. “Bursitis,” his doctor has told him, “just one of those prices we have to pay for getting older.” So, after less than a minute, he’s back to limping slowly along. I’ll just have to hope she takes pity on me, he thinks with a chuckle again, self-deprecating this time.
Kind of like the rolling gait of sailors, he thinks. What if I’d gone to sea? he muses as he passes the Wilson place with their mammoth RV parked next to the garage, covered now that summer is over. He remembers the good times they had when he and Doris had rented an RV, gathered up the kids and dog and joined the Wilsons at Lassen Park. How many years had they done that? He can’t remember, but it has been a bunch—until the kids, like most teenagers, he figures, grew too old to want to go camping with their folks. The Wilsons had invited them to keep up the tradition, but Doris had been ready to move on to other things as soon as the kids were out the door.
Had the Wilsons resented being turned down? he wonders. They’d pretty much lost touch. He feels both glad and sad seeing the RV: sad he and Doris no longer share those good summer times with Bob and Mary Wilson, glad they’re still camping, still have that as part of their lives. He wonders if their kids still go camping with them. He knows their kids live nearby, but he doesn’t know exactly where. Dublin maybe, he thinks. Just part of losing touch. Too bad. He sighs and continues on his way.
I could’ve volunteered for the Navy, he thinks, pain reminding him of his rolling gait. He’d gotten a high lottery number for the draft, so he didn’t have to worry about being taken for the Army and sent to Vietnam. But he still could have volunteered, picked the service he wanted, and served his country. John Kerry had done that; why hadn’t he? He hadn’t been 4F, and he’d left college after his sophmore year, bored, eager to make some money.
Dad had seemed happy enough to have his only son join the insurance agency, though Alan had always wondered if secretly Dad had been disappointed he hadn’t served. Dad had been in World War II. But Alan had been mama’s boy, and she was totally happy he’d drawn that lucky number and escaped the draft. Volunteering was a thought that never even crossed her mind, not for her boy.
Was I really lucky that day? Alan wonders as he starts across Concord, wincing as he comes down too hard on his left leg. Friendships made in the service, especially in battle, were supposed to be the strongest, deepest, most enduring. Alan had watched intently the news reports of WWII veterans coming together in Europe 50, then 60 years after the Normandy landings. Crying, embracing, reliving, sharing again the emotions that had meant so much, that were still there, had always been there, just below the surface, that welled up now reminding them all of how precious youth had been and how poignant that made life still.
Alan had watched those ceremonies again and again—with envy, regret, knowing he’d never have that, knowing he’d missed all that, just because he’d failed to volunteer, stuck to the safe and peaceful walkway along the side of the tumultuous, pock-marked road of history that had defined his youth: the Vietnam era.
“Lucky? Hah!” he mumbled aloud, passing the Newberry’s, an impressive Victorian replica with gables balconies, turrets, a wrap-around, screened-in porch, and enough gingerbread trim to festoon a whole block in San Francisco. The biggest house in the neighborhood, Alan acknowledges, admiring the perfectly trimmed euonymous, veronica, evergreens and gold-leaved acuba surrounding the house, thinking I didn’t even achieve that.
He smiles at the idea of running out into traffic when he comes to Lexington, the busiest street in this residential area. A crazy old man, half running, half limping, waving his arms furiously, yelling some banshee war cry, trying to prove . . . what? Trying to create what? What cannot be recaptured because it never was? He crosses Saratoga, careful as he stepped off the curb this time to come down on his right leg. Bursitis isn’t the only toll collected on life’s sunset highway, he thinks sadly. Long-term memory flooding back, that’s no prize. All those could-ve-been’s, should-have-been’s, but now can-never-be’s—the load would be a lot lighter if we had no rear-view mirror,
As he neared Lexington, where he will turn right to reach the Starbuck’s, Matt Duval comes out of his Spanish-style bungalow, red tile roof over curved arches of white stucco, surrounded by Birds of Paradise, bushes of bright yellow, white, and blue daisies accented by a sprinkling of mini palms, a “lawn” of Mexican river rock, and two Jacaranda trees that put on a brilliant lavender show of petals in the spring. He is heading for his Mercedes in the driveway. Seeing Alan walking past, he waves and gives him his signature, “Top of the morning!”
“Beautiful day,” Alan responds.
“That it is, that it is,” Matt says, standing by his car. “I’m off to the club for a round of golf. What you up to?”
“Just a stroll, maybe a cup of coffee.”
“Yeah, we’ve gotta keep our bones moving and our juices flowing,” Matt responds as he pulls open the car door. “Catch you later.”
“Right,” Alan says, stopping to wait as Matt starts up the car and backs out in front of him.
Then Matt stopped, leans out the window. “I almost forgot; Jane’s planning something for Columbus Day. Can I still say that, Columbus Day? Does that make me some kind of politically incorrect neanderthal? Screw ‘em! Anyway, she’ll be giving Doris a call. Hope you two can make it.”
“Thanks,” Alan responds sincerely. The Duvals throw great parties, plenty of good food and stiff drinks.
“The girls’ll get it all set up. Now that we’re done with business, and it’s just for fun, we can leave it all to them,” Matt concludes with a knowing smile and returns to backing out.
He waves through the side window as he starts down the road. Alan waved back, resuming his walk. He’s aging gracefully, Alan thinks. Maybe it’s just me.
As he nears Stsarbuck’s, Alan sees an old man, short and thin, sitting at one of the outdoor tables. There’s a small dog beside him, white and black, short-haired, pointed ears. Probably some Jack Russell in him, Alan thinks, though the dog isn’t yapping at people walking by. It is just lying there, head up, alert but not aggressive, next to the old man’s chair. Alan doesn’t recognize the man, who looks about Alan’s age but down on his luck, wearing a faded, black Mets baseball cap, a worn, red and yellow, plaid shirt, equally worn blue jeans, but a good-looking pair of brown hiking boots. The old man needs a shave and hair cut and looks none too clean. His face is lined, his gray eyes old but not defeated, and the right temple of his glasses is held together by a dirty little piece of adhesive tape. He seems to be resting there, nothing on the table in front of him. Like his dog, he is just watching the people come and go.
Homeless? Alan wonders. That would surprise him, since few homeless people make it into the Tri-Valley area. Not much sympathy for losers here. This isn’t San Francisco. And where’s his shopping cart? Don’t those people always have carts to carry around their worldly belongings? But there is nothing parked near the old man, not even a back pack on the ground, just the little dog.
The old man catches Alan surveying him while limping up to Starbuck’s. The old man doesn’t say anything but holds Alan’s gaze, smiles. Alan smiles back briefly—force of habit—but plans to give his table a wide berth, just like the other Starbuck’s customers. Then he sees that the little dog is watching him. He smiles at the dog, longer this time, and the dog seems to smile back. His ears have perked up, too.
Alan and Doris haven’t had a dog since Millie died, some twenty years ago. She was the Golden Retriever they’d brought home for the kids, as a puppy. She’d been a learning tool: “teaches them reskponsibility,” that’s what everyone said. All young marrieds got dogs for their kids back then, Retrievers, Labs, Collies, maybe a terrier, but not too small, didn’t want the kids to hurt it if they played too rough. Millie had served her purpose well. Brittany and Alan Junior had loved her and been reasonably good about feeding, watering and walking her. Cleaning up after her was another matter. “Gross,” they always said, and Doris wasn’t going to pick up after their dog. Alan hadn’t minded, much, figured it came with the territory.
When Millie died at eleven, the kids seemed sad—for a day or two, anyway—but being in high school by then, they had lots of other interests. Doris quickly donated whatever Millie left behind to the Tri-Valley Humane Society, had the house thoroughly cleaned to get rid of every last dog hair. She, too, quickly moved on, once not only Millie but the kids were out of the house. She returned enthusiastically, joyously even, to the real estate career that having a family had interrupted.
Alan had been sorry to see Millie go, but he knew better than to suggest they get another dog, even years later, when the kids had married and followed their own careers to Alaska and Texas, and it was just he and Doris knocking around the big house. She didn’t dislike dogs, wasn’t afraid of them, even bought treats for the dogs of friends and neighbors, but caring for a dog was a burden too far for her. Let Alan get his canine fix by walking dogs at the animal shelter. She wouldn’t begrudge him that. It would even get him out of the house. But Alan couldn’t walk ‘em and leave ‘em—maybe to die—so he didn’t volunteer at the shelter.
“What’s your dog’s name?” Alan asks the old man, surprising himself, as he comes closer to the stranger’s table.
“I call him Jackson,” the old man responds, his voice friendly and younger than he looks. “I don’t know his real name.”
“Oh, you adopted him?’ Alan asks after a moment’s reflection on that surprising answer--isn’t a dog’s real name whatever his master calls him? His voice, too, is friendly but sounds as old as he looked with thin, white hair over his big ears, long, lantern-jawed, horsey face—the curse of the Swensons—wrinkled now and tight with the constant pain of arthritis, and gentle, some would say sad, even defeated, brown eyes. No glasses, though. And thanks to Doris, his clothes never get old, never even make it to faded. He’s been able to hang onto a few, treasured old shirts and jeans by hiding them in the lawn shed and wearing them only when gardening in the back. But whenever he goes out the front door, he has to be wearing the bright, new clothes Doris is forever hanging in his closet. He has long since stopped fighting that.
“He adopted me,” the stranger says. “Just came up to me a couple of years ago, near Reno. Tagged along, because I let him sleep in the car with me, I guess, got him out of the weather. But he didn’t come with a collar, and he’s never told me his name.”
“Why ‘Jackson’?”
“Andrew Jackson was the first governor of Florida—my home state—back when it was a territory. And he was the first President who spit in the eye of the establishment. And I’m always happy when I see his picture on what someone gives me—makes for a really good day.”
“Bet it does,” Alan chuckles but has no intention of taking the hint and reaching for his wallet. “Is he friendly?” Alan asks, changing the subject, as he bends down, steadying himself on an empty chair, and holds his hand out for the dog to sniff, the way you’re supposed to when approaching a dog who doesn’t know you.
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?” Alan responds, not moving his hand closer to the dog.
“He sizes people up pretty fast. He’s friendly to those who are friendly to him.”
Reassured, Alan resumes moving his hand toward Jackson until it is just in front of the dog’s nose. Jackson sniffs Alan’s hand, then turns his head a little to the left. Alan strokes Jackson under the chin for a moment, then starts to get back up, with difficulty, pushing on the empty chair, hoping it won’t slide and send him sprawling. It doesn’t. The dog watches him straighten up but doesn’t move himself.
“Guess he trusts you,” the stranger says once Alan is standing again.
“I like dogs.”
“Have one of your own?”
“No, not now,” Alan admits, his voice droppingt.
“There’re plenty out there, looking for a home.”
“Yeah, I know. Well, nice talking to you,” Alan concludes, not wanting to pursue the topic of his doglessness, and turned toward the door to Starbuck’s
“Enjoy your day.”
Alan takes a couple of steps, then, surprising himself again, stops and looks back at the old man. “Want a coffee?”
“Sure, that’d be great.”
“What kind?”
“Oh, just good ol’ coffee, cream and sugar.”
“You got it.” Alan turns and goes into Starbuck’s, wondering what has gotten into him. He isn’t any friend of the homeless, doesn’t even throw them some change when he passes them begging on the streets of Oakland or The City. Hadda be the dog, he tells himself, amused. When he returns, he has not only two coffees but two Bear Claws. He sets everything on he old man’s table and plops down heavily in the chair across from him.
“Jackson like cake?” Alan asks.
“Who doesn’t like cake?” the old man answers, reaching for the coffee Alan has pushed toward him, along with one of the pastries.
Alan breaks a small piece off the other pastry and holds it down for Jackson, who sniffed it then quickly grabs and swallows it. “That a boy,” Alan beams, pleased. He breaks off another piece for Jackson but before giving it to the dog asks, “All right if I give him more?”
“Give him all you want,” the old man says. “It’s a treat for him.” And obviously for you, too, he thinks.
Alan gives Jackson the second piece, then a third. When he pauses to sip his coffee, Jackson gets up and putting his front paws on Alan’s leg, gives him an eager, questioning, tail-wagging look. Alan is delighted, chuckles, and gives the dog another, bigger piece. Jackson grabs it and drops back down to sit and work at eating it.
“My name’s Alan,” Alan says, turning to face the old man.
“Titus.”
“I’ve never met anyone named Titus. That a common name in Florida?”
“Not common, but there was a famous colonel named that, arounbd the Civil War. Ever hear of Titusville?”
“Uhhh, can’t say I have.”
“It’s near the Space Center. Took a big hit—economically, I mean—when Obama cancelled the shuttle.”
“Oh. That why you left?”
“No. I left long before that. What about you? You must live around here, seeing you walked up.”
“A few blocks over. What brings you to California?”
“An old Ford, just barely.”
Alan smiles. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. . . . No reason really. I just follow the sun, live off the land, meet up with folks, trade war stories, stuff like that.”
“Been at it long?” Alan asks, “following the sun, I mean.”
“Most of my life. Thirty years at least, maybe forty now. Something like that. I’m not too big on counting time.”
Alan studies Titus, thinking how different this man’s life must have been from his own carefully organized, secure, purpose-driven existence. While he’d been steadily moving up the company ladder, cautiously testing the next rung up before leaving the one below, Titus must have been savoring the adventures of the open road, never knowing what lay around the bend or over the next hill. He envies Titus that road not taken—never even seriously considered, truth be told—even though he’s the one, having followed his well-plotted map who has arrived able to provide the coffee and cake.
Titus knows what Alan must be thinking but doesn’t say anything further. He just savors another swallow of coffee and bit of cake. He doesn’t offer Jackson any.
Having finished the third piece Alan has given him, Jackson sits up, looking back and forth between the two men. Alan flipped him another little piece of cake, which Jackson catches smartly in mid-air, swallows, then looks for more. Alan smiles. “Somebody’s taught him some tricks.”
“I think he’s just smart, knows how to get what he wants from people.”
Alan looks at Jackson. “Roll over!” he commands, Holding out his hand, turning it over a couple of times to show the dog what he wants.
Jackson doesn’t budge.
“Roll over!” Alan tries again, with the same hand signal and result. He shrugs and flips Jackson another little piece of cake, which the dog catches in mid-air again, then looks for more. “He’s a pleaser, all right,” Alan says, facing Titus, drinking some more coffee, thinking Bet you know how to get what you want from people, too. “So, why’d you stop in Pleasanton?” he finally asks.
“Running out of gas.”
Here it comes, Alan thinks, smiling down at his coffee.
“So I pulled off the Interstate to find a station,” Titus continues, “then I felt like just driving around—seems like a pretty town.”
“Oh,” Alan says, embarrassed by not hearing what he’d been expecting, “yeah. It’s pretty, okay. We take good care of our yards in Pleasanton.” He stops to give another piece of cake to Jackson, which gives him a chance to look away from Titus’s eyes. “You said war stories,” he resumes. “You a vet.”
“Did a tour in Nam. You?”
“No. I got lucky on the lottery. You drafted?”
“Yeah, I drew lucky number 13.”
“Wow. Was it as bad as they say?”
“We should’ve never gone.”
“You join the anti-war vets when you got back?”
“Did you oppose the war?”
“No,” Alan mumbles, looking off to the side, “y’know, I just sorta got on with life, once I drew number 234. It, uh, seemed like it, the war, wasn’t really my business to worry about, after that. I mean, there were plenty of folks, guys who had to go, and their families, they had a stake in it, so I left it up to them, figured it was their business. Who was I to interfere?”
“Right,” Titus says, looking across the street at the substantial, well-kept homes. “Lots of folks felt that way, I think. Still do, even more so today, since there isn’t even a lottery, a draft, to make our wars your business, if you don’t want it to be. Funny how a little thing like that—a number on a ping pong ball—can change your whole life—or not.”
“Did you, uh, hate it over there? I mean, except for that crazy colonel in that Apocalypse movie, I’ve never heard of anyone who likes having been in Vietnam.”
“I was too scared to hate it. It didn’t matter whether you were in a town, a city even, or on post or out on patrol, you were never safe. Some kid on a mo-ped could drive by and blow you up or some peasant in a field could straighten up from planting rice and spray you with bullets or you could be walking along, just you and your buddies, no Cong anywhere aroundl, and you could be blown up by a mine. You live with that, day after day, night after night, you live with that. Pretty damn quick, all you care about is covering your ass until they let you out of there. You don’t have room for any other feelings”
“Yeah,” Alan responds softly, trying to imagine what being there had felt like, trying not to sound naïve, soft, unmanly. “Funny, but I was thinking about that on my walk over here this morning.”
“About Nam?”
“Not just Nam, about war in general, about what they say, that the strongest friendships are made in war.”
“Could be. When your whole life, your survival, is on the line, I mean, and you share that with some other guys. And you do that day after day, not just for a few hours, like if your apartment building catches fire. No, you live that for a long time, with a bunch of guys, not all of who get through it. But those of you who do get through it, when you come out the other side, and you’re safe, and you can feel something else besides scared, then, yeah, that can be a special bond, something you’ll never have with anyone else.”
“Yeah,” Alan sighs again, wishing he could have that. “You stay in touch, with your buddies from Nam, I mean?”
“No.”
“But you just said”
“I said that could be. What you were talking about, I can see that happening.”
“But not to you?”
“Guys I served with, we all split up once we got back to the States.”
“Keep in touch?”
“Not really. I just tried to get back into the life I’d had before. Figure the other guys did, too. . . . Didn’t have much success at it.”
“No?”
“When we were in Nam, we called back home ‘the real world,’ but when I got back it seemed un-real. It was flat, flavorless, boring, uninspiring, unfulfilling, unabsorbing, un this, un that, nothing really there, nothing. . . . So I left.”
“To re-enlist?”
“No. Maybe I should have, though. Maybe I should have gone back over there, taken up the gun and the fear again, seen how it feels if it’s a life I’ve chosen to live, a life I know is the realest I’d ever know.”
“So why didn’t you?” Alan can’t help asking.
“Because I was afraid.”
“But that’s what made it real, that’s what you said.”
“But it’s still scary. Not the thought of dying. No, that’s what makes it real. If you could only count on dying, that’d be worth the risk. But you can’t, count on dying, I mean. No, you might come back a cripple, maybe psycho, not even able to realize how pathetic you are. You’d have to come back to all that pity, in your family’s eyes, in the eyes of strangers even, watching you hobble across the street, or trying to get your wheelchair over the curb, or button your shirt without a hand, or wipe your ass with no hands at all. No, I didn’t want to risk that. They’d forced me to risk that once, and I’d made it through. I wasn’t going to chance it again. Still, . . . ”
“Still?” Alan prompts.
“I still couldn’t stay there, back home, I mean. That’s how Nam ruined life for me. It made peace flat. Mom dad, wife kids, high school friends guys on the job, it just wasn’t there, the passion I mean, the being scared shitless, every nerve on edge, every fiber taut, sharing that together, for each other, that was all gone, and I couldn’t get it back with them, the folks at home. . . . So I hit the road.”
Alan watches a pretty, young, busty blonde in a tank top and tight jeans go into Starbuck’s. Trophy wife? he wonders. “Thought you’d find better on the road?” he asks Titus as the girl disappears into the coffee shop.
Titus has been watching the sexy, young woman, too. “Don’t you just hate that?” he asks with a smile.
“What?”
“Seeing something sexy as that, knowing you’ll never have it. Not being too old to want it but knowing you’re too old for her to want you.”
Alan chuckles, and they both watch as the young woman emerges from Starbuck’s and walks over to her car, rolling her hips, knowing the two old men with the cute, little dog are watching her, enjoying that.
“So, did you find better, on the road, I mean” Alan resumes.
“’Better’? I don’t know if that’s the right word. I found . . . anonymity. I entered a world of … ‘reduced expectations.’ I guess that’s what they’d call it today. When you’re on the road, nobody expects much of you, not much good, anyway, so you don’t have to worry about letting people down. You can do an odd job here, enjoy a one night stand there, lose what you made at poker without worrying about having to explain that to someone who was counting on you bringing it home, shoot the shit with some guys, or pick up a stray dog and drive off to somewhere calls itself Pleasanton. You take what life provides. You don’t expect more, so you don’t get less.”
“Sounds pretty good.”
“It is what it is,” Titus responds. “But you, you took the other fork in the road.”
“Guess I did.”
“Wife, kids, career?”
“The whole bit.”
“You live in one of these nice houses.”
“One block down, two over, white stucco, black roof, two stories, one chimney, flowering plum in the front yard, starting to lose its leaves now.”
“The American dream,” Titus says, his voice flat but hard. “Sounds like you’re bored with it.”
“I’m retired.”
“The golden years,” Titus mocks.
Alan snorts appreciatively. “Want another coffee? I think Jackson’s ready for more cake.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be a minute, gotta tap a kidney.” He heads into Starbuck’s. Jackson watches him go, then looks up at Titus, then back at Alan disappearing through the door, as if wondering whether he should stay or follow.
Titus pays no attention to the little dog, watches the traffic pass as he waits for Alan’s return. He hopes another busty babe will drive in, but no such luck. A business guy in a hurry rolls into the parking lot, jumps out of his Beamer, gives the dirty old man with the mixed breed dog a passing glare as he rushes in to get a booster for his caffeine high. Get the fuck out of my town, you bum; Titus knows that’s what he’s thinking. Titus smiles broadly back, enjoying watching the guy drop his hostile eyes.
Alan returns with the coffees and pastries. “You sure this is okay for Jackson?” he asks, readying another piece of cake for the eager little dog. “I mean, I don’t want to give him too much sugar. What do you feed him, anyway?”
“He eats whatever people want to give him.”
“But what do you feed him?” Alan insists.
“I don’t feed him. Like I said, he’s a charmer. Plenty of people see him, like him, get a kick out of feeding him. He does okay for himself.”
Alan is caught up short by Titus’s obvious indifference to the dog’s needs. “But what if you’re out on the road, somewhere where there’s nobody around to feed him?”
“Doesn’t happen much. He doesn’t look like he’s starving, does he?” Titus challenges.
Alan has to agree the dog seems okay,maybe a little skinny, skinnier than he’d be if he belonged to Alan, that’s for sure, but that might be a good thing. He flips the piece of pastry in the air, and Jackson catches it nimbly. Still, Alan is bothered by Titus’s attitude. “Ever take him to a vet, get him his shots?”
“No,” Titus says with neither heat nor guilt.
“What if he got hurt? Got a foxtail in his ear or stepped on a piece of glass?”
“Hasn’t happened.”
“But what if it did,” Alan persists.
“Look,” Titus says, impatience creeping into his voice, “the dog showed up two years ago. I didn’t go looking for him, and I’ve never forced him to stay. He jumped in my car on his own, and he’s kept doing that. His choice. I don’t do anything to hurt him; I don’t try to chase him off, but it’s him chooses to stick with me, even though it’s others feed him.”
“Hmmm,” is all Alan can respond.
“Jackson and me, it’s like I was saying about the folks I’ve met on the road. We meet up, do this or that together, stick it out while it lasts, then part, some of us moving on, some going back to their lives the way they were, where they were, before those like me rolled into town. That’s the way life is on the road. Like I said, it is what it is, not some melodrama, some deep, abiding romance of the chance encounter that novelists and moviemakers want to sell to folks bored with their homespun lives,” Titus concludes with a knowing glance at Alan.
Alan catches the glance, looks down.
“People overrate dogs,” Titus can’t resist continuing, even though he knows he’s losing Alan as a mark for gas money. “Dogs aren’t real friends. They don’t love you because you’re so great. You can be rotten to them, and they’ll still slobber all over you. It’s just some hormonal thing, I guess, something bred into them over years and years. Has nothing to do with you or me or Jackson, nothing personal, nothing like that. If the dog happens to be looking in your direction when those hormones are up, then Bam!, he’s attached to you forever, no matter how indifferent or even cruel you are to him.”
“Sounds like the road’s made you a cynic,” Alan says, taking a renewed look at Titus, noticing the eyes seem harder now, the hands grasping his cup not just grimy but cracked, nails broken, teeth yellow and broken, too, some missing.
“Oh, it didn’t take the road for that,” Titus responds, finishing his Bear Claw while Alan again gives most of his to Jackson.
“What then?”
“Maybe that’s just a hormonal thing, too. You know, it isn’t just dogs that are meat machines—organisms, I guess is the word. I mean, people are born certain ways, too, maybe more different ways than dogs—we’re more complex machines—but still born with hormones that pop up and take us over. So, we’re overwhelmed with anger and beat up some guy who really didn’t do us any harm. Or we’re driven to go to war to get land and power and all sorts of stuff we’ve no idea what to do with, but we’ve just gotta have it, don’t know why but just gotta. Or we fall in love, get stuck on some pretty girl—or boy, that’s hormonal, too, no choice of ours—we fall for them, end up devoting our whole lives to what it takes to keep them, never knowing why.
“Or we just can’t do anything like that. The hormones just aren’t there, and we can’t relate to anyone like that. The prettiest girl in town may take a fancy to you, come on to you, offer to devote her whole life to you. She’s got those hormones, and they’re pumping in your direction. But you can’t respond. Oh, you may take a tumble with her, sexually I mean, but you never fall in love, never see your whole life wrapped up with hers, nothing like that ‘finding your sould-mate’ stuff.
“Not that you don’t want to, not that it doesn’t look good to you. No, it’s just not there, nothing you can do about it, just have to live without it, because that’s the kine of machine you are,” Titus concludes, his voice running down after starting strong. He turns from looking at Alan to surveying the homes across the street.
“That’s sad,” Alan responds.
“No it’s not,” Titus snaps back, angry at the pity in Alan’s voice. “It’s what it is. Once you accept that, it frees you up, y’know. And it doesn’t make you some bad guy, somebody who’d be wearing a black hat in those old Westerns.
“Oh, I’ve rolled some drunks in my time, when they had the money I needed. And I’ve left a widow or two early in the morning, after going through their purses. But I made ‘em feel loved for a few days, made ‘em feel desired and fulfilled, left ‘em with stories they can savor and whisper to their friends over cards for years to come. They got a lot for what I took.
“And I’ve played Robin Hood, too. Back in Kansas, I helped a bunch of good ol’ boys torch a bank so their houses couldn’t be foreclosed on. And I even helped a vet get even with a guy in Colorado who beat up his sister. Got paid pretty good for that, and that guy won’t be beating up on anyone again.
“I take what life provides, slide on through without getting caught up in all those values people fret over, don’t bother about what they think of me—as long as they leave me free to go.”
“You end up in jail sometimes?”
“Now and then,” Titus allows. “Not for long, though, just for vagrancy, public drunkenness, penny anty stuff like that where they just want to get you off the street, sober you up, and send you on your way out of their cherished town. And that’s fine with me, what I want even. Most of ‘em even set the old vet on his way with a few extra dollars, so I leave them behind with more in my pocket than when I arrived.”
“Sounds like you have it down to a formula,” Alan says, obviously disappointed with Titus’s version of life on the road.
“Is your life that great?” Titus challenges again, annoyed by the tone of Alan’s voice. “Here you are, tied to mowing one of those smooth lawns over there, keeping the house painted, the roof fixed. Buying as good a car as that Cadillac parked next to that colonial revival monstrosity down the street there. Going to Hawaii, getting new carpets, hosting the neighbors with over-priced wine and stinky cheese on crappy crackers, all sorts of things you don’t really care about, but you’ve gotta do them to keep your wife happy. And you wanna have a dog, right?”
Alan is caught up short by Titus’s sudden turn from generalities to him. He looked at Jackson, doesn’t answer.
“Yeah, well, it’s that obvious,” Titus goes on. “So, why don’t you have one?”
“We did,” Alan says, knowing it’s lame.
“That was the kis’ dog. Why don’t you have one now, your dog? Not one you got because that was what was expected. One you could have now, just because you want a dog for yourself.”
“But I did want Millie. And she was my dog, too, not just the kids’, and not just because it was a good idea to get a dog for the kids.”
“Fine,” Titus says, dismissing what Alan said. “You’re a real dog lover. But you’re ducking my question.”
“Which is?” Alan interrupts, starting to get heated himself.
“Why don’t you have a dog now?”
“Why do you?” Alan shoots back, knowing it’s a dodge, still unwilling to face the answer to Titus’ question. “You say you don’t care about dogs, don’t really want one. So why are you stuck with one?”
“I’m not stuck,” Titus answers too quickly, then continues, angry with himself for being defensive. “Like I said, he may be stuck on me, but I’m not stuck on him. He wants to leave, that’s fine with me. That episode will be done. My life will go on. The road will cough up something else for me, some other big panorama or little scene for me to live through, get what I can from it, for better or worse. That’s just the way it is. And I can face it. You, you can’t face your life, your supposed choices.”
“What?” Alan shoots back.
“Why don’t you have a dog?” Titus thrusts back, quick, sure.
Alan glares at Titus but had nothing to answer. Finally, he pushes his chair back, pushes himself up from the table as forcefully as his arthritis allows. “I’ve had enough of this. And it was such a pretty day, and I came in here for a cup of coffee, not to be psychoanalyzed by a bum,” he says as he turned to walk back home, trying to stride again in spite of his aching hip.
“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to the dog?” Titus mocks.
Alan turns back to face the homeless old man and Jackson, ready to throw the jeer back in Titus’s face. But he doesn’t know what to say. Finally, he looks down at the little dog and whispers, “Good luck, Jackson. I think you’re going to need it.” Then he turns and walks away as quickly as he can.
“Why don’t you pick him up and take him home with you?” Titus hurls at Alan’s retreating back.
Alan hears, but has nothing to say besides mumbling “sorry son-of-a-bitch,” then realizes he isn’t sure who he’s talking about. At the corner of Lexington and Yorktown, he turns and, once out of sight of Starbuck’s, resumes the rolling limp his left hip favors. He looks at each of the well-kept yards he passes, the well-maintained, large houses, each a distinctive variation, an impressive façade, a stylish and stylized front on a half-dozen basic floor plans some developer offered Yuppie families racing to the suburbs decades ago. He isn’t seeing them for the first time, seeing them for what they are, what they represent, what they cost those living in them, not just in money and labor but in spirit and—yeah, he had to admit it—freedom. He knows all those clichés, has known them for a long time, ever since Doris and he started looking for a home in the burbs and for all the years they’ve lived here, making that developer’s offering their life.
No, Titus hadn’t held a mirror up to his life that he hadn’t looked in before. But somehow, now, as he passes the Creighton’s Tudor with its front yard transformed into an English garden surrounded by a white picket fence—the only one on the block—and the Sanchez’s canary yellow ranch—they’d really had to fight the homeowners association for that color, had to tone it down several shades to get it approved—and the Dunham’s mirror-image ranch—though you’d never guess it because of the carport and screened-in porch they’d added when they bought it from the Finches and the inconspicuous cream they keep it painted, that couple never wanting to stand out in spite of their wealth. Somehow, all these stories he knows so well, stories of the families that have come and gone from his neighborhood these many years, they seem more intense now, after listening to Titus, more pressing, more questioning. Maybe it is their contrast with Titus’s life, something he hadn’t known before, a life he’d seen on TV, in books, probably, but had never run up against in the flesh, heard it spoken out loud, seen the man that sort of life had produced.
Or maybe I’m just getting old. He smiles to himself, realizing how many—most—of life’s choices are behind him now. Do all us oldsters try to pump up into some grand sociological, even metaphysical melodrama the trivial, unavoidable, merely biological facts of aging?
He again crosses Saratoga carefully, coming down on his right leg to spare his left hip. Halfway down the next block, Cindy Gates comes out the side door of her oversized, white, New England clapboard home, with dark green shutters and a chimney at either end, heading toward her midnight blue Lexus SUV in the driveway. Cindy is a pretty brunette in her fifties who can pass for thirty-something. She worked hard at keeping her figure, exercise and surgery both, Alan would wager and Doris would guarantee. She wants to look like a trophy wife so Sam won’t go looking for one, Alan thinks. Her husband is a hard-charging stock broker known to have an eye for the ladies—and plenty of opportunity to find them in the financial district—but so far Cindy has been able to keep him eating at home even if he worked up an appetite in The City.
Cindy waved at Alan, then stops. “Who’s your friend?” she calls.
“Friend?” Alan answers, not understanding until Cindy points to a spot ten or twelve feet behind him. He looks back to see Jackson following him.
“Haven’t seen that one around here before,” Cindy continues, standing by her car.
“He was over at Starbuck’s,” Alan says over his shoulder, facing Jackson now.
Jackson comes up to within a couple of feet of Alan and sits on his haunches, looking up at him, smiling. “I gave him some of my Bear Claw,” Alan says lamely, looking down the road for Titus or an old Ford but sees nothing.
“Was he with anyone?”
“Uhhh, that’s kind of a long story,” Alan says, looking down at Jackson then back up the road, hoping he would not see Titus now.
“Looks like he’s with you now,” Cindy says cheerily as she slides into her car. “I’m late for my aerobics class. We’ll see you and Doris at the Duval’s party.” Doris will have a fit, she thinks as she drives off, knowing what a meticulous housekeeper Doris is.
Alan continues to look down at Jackson, who smiles back at him. “Did Titus kick you out, drive off without you? Or did you run off on your own? . . . Sticking by someone who won’t even feed you, that has to be tough. . . . But it’s you who’s gonna make life tough for me now,” he says, thinking of what Doris will say when he shows up with a dog. “You ever see a woman explode, Jackson, a genuine female volcano? Well, that’s what’s in store for us. . . . C’mon, we might as well get the fireworks over.”
Doris happens to be looking out her office window as Alan approaches home. Oh no you don’t! she thinks as she sees the little dog trotting along behind him, almost next to him now. “Jim,” she says into the phone, “I’ll text you the pictures of the VanAkres’s house in a few minutes. You and Hazel will fall in love with it—guaranteed. Right now, something just came up that I really have to take care of. I’ll call you again as soon as you and hazel have a chance to look at the photos, and we’ll set a time for you two to visit your new home. Bye.” She sets the phone down and runs to catch Alan before he can bring the dog into her house.
“You know there’s a stray dog following you?” she asks from behind the screen door as Alan approaches the side porch.
“Yeah, I notice,” Alan says, looking down at Jackson, not facing Doris.
“Where did he come from?”
“He was with a guy at Starbuck’s, some homeless guy, passing through.”
“Well, hadn’t you better get the dog back to his owner? Poor thing must be lost, and I bet his owner has no idea where to look.”
“Oh, Titus won’t be looking for him.”
“Titus?”
“That was the guy’s name.” Alan makes no effort to come into the house, not even to step up onto the porch, which would have provoked the issue of whether Doris was going to open the door to him or bar the way against the dog.
“How do you know he won’t?” Doris challenges Alan, eyeing the dog, who is sitting now, staring back at her, one of those silly doggie smiles on his face. “He’s a cute dog. I’m sure his owner misses him.”
“Titus is kind of—I don’t know—kind of a road warrior, I guess. Not that he’s a gun for hire or anything like that. No, he’s just a guy on the road, rolling along, not settling anywhere, nothing sticking to him. Taking life as one adventure after another, something like that. The dog’s been tagging along with him for awhile. Nothing more than that. Probably kept him because he figured the dog helped him get hand-outs.”
“That’s still a reason for him to want the dog back, maybe even a better reason.”
“I dunno,” Alan muses, looking down at Jackson again. “When I left Starbuck’s, Titus and Jackson”
“Jackson?”
“That’s his name,” Alan says, looking at Doris, nodding toward the dog. “When I left Starbuck’s, Titus was sitting at a table, finishing his coffee, and Jackson was lying on the ground beside him. I got all the way over here, between Saratoga and Concord, when Cindy Gates yells ‘Hello’ and tells me there’s a dog following me. I hadn’t even noticed him till then.”
Not with Cindy there, you wouldn’t notice anything. Your eyes would have been glued to those big, fake boobs. Old goat, you’re all old goats, Doris thinks. Aloud, she says, “And how is dear Cindy?”
“Dunno. She was in a hurry, drove off without chatting.”
“Maybe she’d like the dog.”
“Dunno,” Alan shrugs. Deciding it is now or never, he steps up onto the little side porch and reaches for the screen door handle. It wouldn’t surprise him if Doris quickly locked the latch. But she doesn’t. She turns away from the door, moves down the laundry hallway between the door and the kitchen, then quickly crosses the kitchen to close the door leading to the dining room and turns to face Alan as he and Jackson come into the kitchen.
So this is where you’re going to make your stand, Alan thinks. Aloud, he says, “I’ll get him a bowl of water.”
“I’ll do that,” Doris says before Alan can grab one of her better bowls. She finds an old plastic bowl below the sink, fills it, and sets it on the floor near the sink, across the kitchen from where Alan and Jackson stand.
Jackson doesn’t hesitate. He trots right over and starts slurping up the water.
“Wait!” Doris commands, picking up the bowl. She grabs a dishtowel from the rack and spreads it on the floor before setting the bowl on top of it. Having watched her do this, Jackson quickly starts slurping again, apparently unphased by what must seem strange behavior to him. Alan pulls out a chair from the dinette and eases down into it, pleasantly surprised at how well this is going.
“Has he had anything to eat?” Doris asks.
“Better part of two Bear Claws,” Alan answers sheepishly.
“Figures,” Doris says as she turned toward the refrigerator. “Let’s see,” she continues as she looks into the deli drawer, “here’s some liverwurst. Dogs love liver—and it’s really not good for us—so he’ll have it for lunch—what’s his name? Jackson?—instead of you.”
“Yeah, Jackson. He’ll like that. He’s a good eater.”
“Then I’ll drive him down to the animals shelter,” Doris says, closing the refrigerator, pulling down an old plate, cutting up some liverwurst on it. “They have the right things to care for him, not just human food. I have to go out anyway to show a house. I’ll drop him off on the way.”
“I’ll get him some dog food,” Alan says, wary now.
“He’s not staying,” Doris says as she sets the dish on the towel next to the water bowl, straightens up, then turns and leaning on the counter, faces Alan.
Jackson quickly starts gobbling down the meat.
“I’ll take care of him,” Alan says.
“I’ve done the whole dog thing,” Doris responds, looking down at Jackson finishing his treat. “Between taking care of the house and doing my job—and taking care of you, she adds to herself—I’ve got all I can handle.”
“You said to pick out what I want for my birthday present,” Alan offers. “Well, he’s it.”
“I meant a nice shirt, a new hat, a nice suit even. Not a dog.”
I’m sure you did, Alan thinks but says, “That’s not what you said.”
“Don’t be so picky. We’re not arguing over an insurance claim here. I’ve worked hard to make a beautiful home for you here, and we’re not having some stray dog come in to mess it up. Do you remember how long it took me to fix this place up after Millie? Once was enough.”
Alan stares at Doris for a while, then knowing it’s a lost cause, shakes his head, smiles sadly looking down at Jackson. “Okay,” he finally sighs, “he won’t be here when you get back. Like I said, I’ll take care of him. How long you gonna be, anyway?”
Doris looks at Alan, skeptical, suspicious. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Alan responds, trying to sound definite.
“Promise.”
“I told you I’d take care of it. I just want him to have a little time, well, you know, a little time where he can feel he’s with someone who cares about him.”
“Don’t try to make me feel guilty. It won’t work. We went through all this years ago, and we decided: no more dogs. And that’s worked out fine, still is.”
“Right,” is all Alan offers aloud, adding we decided, fat chance to himself.
“So, you promise?”
“Yeah, yeah. Now, you’d better get going or you’ll be late. When did you say you’ll be getting back?”
“I want to stop by the agency after showing the house. I’ll be back by four.”
“Good,” is all Alan says as he watches Jackson lick the now-empty plate then look up first at Doris then at him in hope of more. “Y’know,” Alan continues softly, still looking at Jackson though his mind and heart have shifted gears, “once, maybe a year before my dad died, after he retired and was already, well, on his way out, he found a little dog wandering, a little poodle, I think it was. It was white, I remember that. Anyway, he brought it home, fed it, like you just did Jackson.
“When mom got home, he told her he wanted to keep it. She was okay with that, but the dog had an ID tag on its collar. She told him they had to call the owner. He didn’t want to, said if they hadn’t taken good enough care of the dog to keep him home, they didn’t deserve him. Mom said maybe the dog got out accidentally, that could happen to anyone. So, she called the number on the tag, and the owner came over and retrieved the dog, was really happy to get him back.”
“So?” Doris prods, eager to get to her showing.
“So, dad hated to see the dog go. He’d really enjoyed having a little dog again, even for just a few hours.”
“So why didn’t he go adopt one? There are always lots of dogs looking for homes. Look, I’ve gotta run; you can finish the story when I get back,” Doris says as she grabbed her purse and starts for the side door, her SUV. “Why don’t you take a couple of steaks out of the freezer. You can barbeque tonight; you always like that. And I’ll pick up some Sam Adams and German potato salad at Petrini’s on the way home. You always like that, too. We’ll have a fall picnic in the backyard, just the two of us. Won’t that be fun?” Doris concludes, her voice bright, her manner soothing.
“Right,” Alan says andwatches her leave before finishing his story, having to say it aloud even if only he and Jackson are there to hear him say it. “Because dad was on his way out, Mom too, . . . and I didn’t want to get stuck with a dog,” he finishes to himself, barely audible, staring at Jackson, who is now sitting in front of his chair, looking up at him. Meanest thing I ever did, he acknowledges, accepts, remembering the look on his father’s face when, that evening, he and his mother had told the old man he was too old for a new dog. “That’s one thing I’d sure take back,” he declares to Jackson, “if I only could.
“But we can’t do that,” he continues after a brief silence, getting up. “No, we can’t undo what’s done. All we can do is not repeat our mistakes.
“C’mon, Jackson, m’ boy,” he says to the little dog, a broad smile breaking out on his face, “it’s time we hit the road, and don’t come back no more, no more,” he sings to the dog as he heads out the side door, then into the garage. Once there, he opened the car door, and Jackson, at his heels, jumps in. Alan then goes to the garden shed, grabs the old clothes he keeps there, and throws them in the back of the car.
Next, he trudges back into the house, goes into the den—Doris’s office—sits down at her desk, pulls a pad of paper over, grabs a pen, and looks around for inspiration. Out the window, he sees the Monroe’s house, with its twin, diamond-paned bay windows facing the street, Newport gray siding trimmed in Sierra white with redwood accents, pale pink Queen Elizabeth roses growing up and onto the gable over the front porch. Carl and Amelia’s house, good friends, long-time neighbors; their kids grew up together. Doris had hoped Alan Junior and Amelia’s oldest daughter, Celeste, might get married. Didn’t happen, but they were all still close friends.
Alan’s gaze lingers on the Monroe house, the good memories flooding over him, tugging at him. But his gaze moves on, alighting next on a bar towel Doris had framed and hung on her wall. Inside a border of happy little girls dancing hand in hand, smiling at each other, is the phrase, A Woman Without a Man Is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle. Enjoy Your Swim, he quickly, grimly writes on the pad, then heads for the garage. Crossing the kitchen, he stops, grabs a plastic bag from the dispenser and dumps the contents of the refrigerator deli drawer into it before going to his car.
As he backs out onto Yorktown, he says to Jackson, “Okay, we’re gonna find out what that road not taken holds. If Titus can do it, so can we—and better.” Jackson rolls over on the passenger’s seat, his legs propped up on the seat back and looks across at Alan. “No fool like an old fool. Is that what you’re thinking?” he asks the little dog. “To which I say: Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Anyway, in dog years I’m only ten.” He has a good, deep and long laugh as he presses the pedal to the metal.
“Haven’t thought about it,” Alan says after chewing and swallowing the spoonful of bran cereal he’d stuck in his mouth just before she asked.
“But it’s your seventieth. We’ve gotta celebrate.”
“It’s just another day. As long as it’s not noted in the Obituaries, I’m okay with it.”
“No, c’mon, pick something.”
Why?, Alan thinks, swallowing another spoonful of cereal, just so you’ll have something more to disagree with. He just smiles down at his cereal bowl, not wanting to pursue the conversation, meet Doris’s eyes.
“I’m not giving up on this,” Doris warns, takes a sip of tea.
“Okay,” Alan sighs, “how about going over to Sausalito, spend the day walking around and have dinner at The Spinnaker? We haven’t done that in a long time.”
“Good. . . . Or would you rather go down to Monterey?”
If I’d wanted to go to Monterey, I would have said so. Why can’t you ever just say ‘Yes’? Why do you always, always, always have to have a better idea? “Fine, Monterey it is. Like I said, I don’t really care.”
“No, it’s your day. We’ll do whatever you want.”
How ‘bout you disappear. Leave someone behind who doesn’t think saying ‘Yes’ would compromise her independence? But Alan doesn’t say that aloud, of course. What would be the point? He took a vow: for better or worse. And it isn’t that bad, … putting up with Bossie. “Monterey will be fine,” he finally says. “I like Monterey.”
“Or what about going up to Mendocino? We haven’t been up there in years. It’s such a pretty drive, and we could stay at one of those quaint inns with fireplaces in the rooms, where they give you a bottle of wine every day.”
And the waves have been known to wash women off the rocks, Alan thinks, knowing it’s childish but enjoying the thought anyway. “Fine.”
“What was the name of that inn we stayed at? Didn’t they make a movie there?”
“’Same Time Next Year.’”
“No, that wasn’t it.”
Why do I bother? Alan scoops up the last of his cereal, swallowed the last of his grapefruit juice. “I’m going to check the e-mail,” he says, starting to get up from the table.
“And what do you want for a present?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t thought about that, either.” And I’m not giving you yet another chance to have a better idea.
“You’re so hard to shop for. … You get what you want and tell me what I owe you.” You never appreciate what I get you, all I do for you, Doris thinks as she rises from her chair, starts to pick up the breakfast dishes.
It’s only hard because I don’t want what you want me to want. “Fine.” Alan starts for the alcove off the family room where his computer is located.
“And make a reservation for your birthday, if you can remember the name of that inn. It’s not ‘Same Time Next Year.’” Who would ever name an inn that? Stupid.
“That was the name of the movie. The inn was The Heritage House.”
“That makes more sense,” Doris answers as she turns away and walks into the kitchen. “Maybe you’re right about that.”
“I am,” Alan mumbles as he moves toward the family room.
“What did you say?” Doris calls as she bangs the dishes into the dishwasher.
Alan doesn’t bother answering.
He really is losing his hearing, Doris thinks. But will he admit it? Of course not. Just expects the rest of us to put up with it. Oh well.
Finding nothing of interest in the e-mail and having nothing else to do, Alan decides to go out, gets up stiffly, and heads for the front door. “I’m going for a walk,” he yells toward the den, where Doris has her office.
Doris waves dismissively in his direction, saying nothing since she’s on the phone with her friend Sarah Beth. “It’ll be good to have him out of the house for awhile,” she finally says to Sara Beth after hearing the door close behind Alan. “I never realized what a blessing it was having him go to work five days a week. Not the pay checks, though I wish we had that money again. No, the blessing was not having him around all the time, having time to myself, being able to do what I want. Men are so lucky.”
“Well, be careful what you wish for,” Sarah Beth responds. “I’d give anything to have Ralph back, even if it was just snoring on the couch.”
“You know, he was no prize. I mean, he took advantage of your being a good woman. And look at all the bills he left you.”
“Yeah, I know, but he was here. The kids come and go, grandkids, too, and I have good neighbors. But when the sun sets, it’s just me. And if something were to happen to me, those other lives, they’d go on with just a little bump in the road, a funeeral to arrange, an estate to settle, stuff to go to Good Will or in the trash. Then they’d all get back to normal, what’s normal for them. If Ralph were here, his normal would include me, wouldn’t survive without me.”
“Don’t be morbid,” Doris responds. “What counts is that you have your own life, and no man to tell you what to do or depend on you for what he needs.”
“Right,” Sarah Beth sighs, giving up.
Alan turns left at the sidewalk, taking his usual route toward the Starbuck’s three blocks away. It is October—he loved the fall—and late enough on a warm, sunny morning that the kids are in school, the breadwinners at work, and the housewives busy with cleaning, shopping, or soaps.
Probably won’t be anyone out in the yard to shoot the shit with, Alan thinks regretfully, checking out both sides of Yorktown, his street. All he sees is three gardeners mowing, trimming, and blowing the Nielsen’s yard. “Pablo’s Quality Yard Care” he sees painted on the bright green pick-up parked in the Nielsen’s driveway.
Used to be, I could stop and talk to the gardeners, Alan thinks, but they’re all Mexicans now, don’t speak English. Why don’t they havta learn English to work here. Oughta be a law. They do a good job, though; gotta admit that. Wonder what they charge for those poodle-cut evergreens? Whatever it is, Jim Nielsen can afford it. He passes the Nielsen place without even trying to talk to the guy who must be in charge, standing by the truck, giving out tools, sipping coffee.
As he nears Concord, the first cross street, a cheery, “Toodaloo, Alan,” rings out through the screen door of the pink ranch house with the massive maple tree dropping multi-colored leaves on his left. Cherokee tan, Alan reminds himself, not pink. Bruce had insisted on that, proud of his one-eighth Indian blood, picked the color because of that. Lucky Suzy, his wife, was fond of pink.
“Hi Suzy,” Alan says, stopping and turning to face the plump, older, smiling woman emerging from the house—she reminds Alan of the Mom!, definitely with a capital M, that Barbara Bush was supposed to be. Suzy is a great cook; Alan hopes she’ll invite him in. She always seemed happy to have people over, both when Bruce was alive and now that he is gone.
“Isn’t it a beau-ti-ful day,” Suzy coos,” standing on her red brick front porch now.
“Yes, ma’am,” Alan agrees, leaning on the gate of her two-rail, white, country fence now, shifting his weight onto his right, better hip.
“Doris send you out on an errand?” Suzy asks, just to say something, not malicious.
Whole damn neighborhood knows I’m hen-pecked, Alan thinks. “Just out for the exercise,” he says aloud, also without rancor, knowing that Suzy didn’t mean anything by the remark. Woman doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, he reminds himself. “Thought I might get a coffee at Starbuck’s.,” he adds, hopeful athat will plant the idea that she should invite him in instead.
“The carpet cleaners are due any moment, or I’d save you the walk.”
Lucky guys, Alan thinks. Bet she has a fresh pot on for them, and some fresh cinnamon rolls, too. Alan remembers what it was like visiting people’s homes when he was a young insurance salesman. There’d been some real tightwads, men and women both, whose sole concern was to pay as little for as much as they could get. Tried to get him to cut his commission to get the sale. Tea Party types,he thinks. Then there were couples like Bruce and Suzy, always welcoming, eager to be good neighbors, send their business to the guy down the street, maybe expect a little discount for that, but knowing, caring that he had to make a living, too. And all shades in between, he reminds himself. “Too bad,” he says as he turns to resume his walk, “I’ll take your coffee over Starbuck’s anytime.”
“If you’re out tomorrow, you be sure to stop by,” Suzy says, watching him turn, sharing the pain each arthritic step so obviously cost him, sad every time she sees the stooped shoulders and bowed back of the tall man grown old. “I don’t have any plans for tomorrow.”
“I’ll sure keep that in mind,” Alan says, waving good-by. Doris says Suzy’s like a fish out of water without a man; a widow on the prowl. I wonder . . ., he thinks with an inner chuckle, a little smile showing on his face. Figuring Suzy is watching him go, Alan tries to walk tall, stride down the block, attempting to match the military pace of 120 steps per minute. But he can’t keep it up for long; his left hip is killing him again. “Bursitis,” his doctor has told him, “just one of those prices we have to pay for getting older.” So, after less than a minute, he’s back to limping slowly along. I’ll just have to hope she takes pity on me, he thinks with a chuckle again, self-deprecating this time.
Kind of like the rolling gait of sailors, he thinks. What if I’d gone to sea? he muses as he passes the Wilson place with their mammoth RV parked next to the garage, covered now that summer is over. He remembers the good times they had when he and Doris had rented an RV, gathered up the kids and dog and joined the Wilsons at Lassen Park. How many years had they done that? He can’t remember, but it has been a bunch—until the kids, like most teenagers, he figures, grew too old to want to go camping with their folks. The Wilsons had invited them to keep up the tradition, but Doris had been ready to move on to other things as soon as the kids were out the door.
Had the Wilsons resented being turned down? he wonders. They’d pretty much lost touch. He feels both glad and sad seeing the RV: sad he and Doris no longer share those good summer times with Bob and Mary Wilson, glad they’re still camping, still have that as part of their lives. He wonders if their kids still go camping with them. He knows their kids live nearby, but he doesn’t know exactly where. Dublin maybe, he thinks. Just part of losing touch. Too bad. He sighs and continues on his way.
I could’ve volunteered for the Navy, he thinks, pain reminding him of his rolling gait. He’d gotten a high lottery number for the draft, so he didn’t have to worry about being taken for the Army and sent to Vietnam. But he still could have volunteered, picked the service he wanted, and served his country. John Kerry had done that; why hadn’t he? He hadn’t been 4F, and he’d left college after his sophmore year, bored, eager to make some money.
Dad had seemed happy enough to have his only son join the insurance agency, though Alan had always wondered if secretly Dad had been disappointed he hadn’t served. Dad had been in World War II. But Alan had been mama’s boy, and she was totally happy he’d drawn that lucky number and escaped the draft. Volunteering was a thought that never even crossed her mind, not for her boy.
Was I really lucky that day? Alan wonders as he starts across Concord, wincing as he comes down too hard on his left leg. Friendships made in the service, especially in battle, were supposed to be the strongest, deepest, most enduring. Alan had watched intently the news reports of WWII veterans coming together in Europe 50, then 60 years after the Normandy landings. Crying, embracing, reliving, sharing again the emotions that had meant so much, that were still there, had always been there, just below the surface, that welled up now reminding them all of how precious youth had been and how poignant that made life still.
Alan had watched those ceremonies again and again—with envy, regret, knowing he’d never have that, knowing he’d missed all that, just because he’d failed to volunteer, stuck to the safe and peaceful walkway along the side of the tumultuous, pock-marked road of history that had defined his youth: the Vietnam era.
“Lucky? Hah!” he mumbled aloud, passing the Newberry’s, an impressive Victorian replica with gables balconies, turrets, a wrap-around, screened-in porch, and enough gingerbread trim to festoon a whole block in San Francisco. The biggest house in the neighborhood, Alan acknowledges, admiring the perfectly trimmed euonymous, veronica, evergreens and gold-leaved acuba surrounding the house, thinking I didn’t even achieve that.
He smiles at the idea of running out into traffic when he comes to Lexington, the busiest street in this residential area. A crazy old man, half running, half limping, waving his arms furiously, yelling some banshee war cry, trying to prove . . . what? Trying to create what? What cannot be recaptured because it never was? He crosses Saratoga, careful as he stepped off the curb this time to come down on his right leg. Bursitis isn’t the only toll collected on life’s sunset highway, he thinks sadly. Long-term memory flooding back, that’s no prize. All those could-ve-been’s, should-have-been’s, but now can-never-be’s—the load would be a lot lighter if we had no rear-view mirror,
As he neared Lexington, where he will turn right to reach the Starbuck’s, Matt Duval comes out of his Spanish-style bungalow, red tile roof over curved arches of white stucco, surrounded by Birds of Paradise, bushes of bright yellow, white, and blue daisies accented by a sprinkling of mini palms, a “lawn” of Mexican river rock, and two Jacaranda trees that put on a brilliant lavender show of petals in the spring. He is heading for his Mercedes in the driveway. Seeing Alan walking past, he waves and gives him his signature, “Top of the morning!”
“Beautiful day,” Alan responds.
“That it is, that it is,” Matt says, standing by his car. “I’m off to the club for a round of golf. What you up to?”
“Just a stroll, maybe a cup of coffee.”
“Yeah, we’ve gotta keep our bones moving and our juices flowing,” Matt responds as he pulls open the car door. “Catch you later.”
“Right,” Alan says, stopping to wait as Matt starts up the car and backs out in front of him.
Then Matt stopped, leans out the window. “I almost forgot; Jane’s planning something for Columbus Day. Can I still say that, Columbus Day? Does that make me some kind of politically incorrect neanderthal? Screw ‘em! Anyway, she’ll be giving Doris a call. Hope you two can make it.”
“Thanks,” Alan responds sincerely. The Duvals throw great parties, plenty of good food and stiff drinks.
“The girls’ll get it all set up. Now that we’re done with business, and it’s just for fun, we can leave it all to them,” Matt concludes with a knowing smile and returns to backing out.
He waves through the side window as he starts down the road. Alan waved back, resuming his walk. He’s aging gracefully, Alan thinks. Maybe it’s just me.
As he nears Stsarbuck’s, Alan sees an old man, short and thin, sitting at one of the outdoor tables. There’s a small dog beside him, white and black, short-haired, pointed ears. Probably some Jack Russell in him, Alan thinks, though the dog isn’t yapping at people walking by. It is just lying there, head up, alert but not aggressive, next to the old man’s chair. Alan doesn’t recognize the man, who looks about Alan’s age but down on his luck, wearing a faded, black Mets baseball cap, a worn, red and yellow, plaid shirt, equally worn blue jeans, but a good-looking pair of brown hiking boots. The old man needs a shave and hair cut and looks none too clean. His face is lined, his gray eyes old but not defeated, and the right temple of his glasses is held together by a dirty little piece of adhesive tape. He seems to be resting there, nothing on the table in front of him. Like his dog, he is just watching the people come and go.
Homeless? Alan wonders. That would surprise him, since few homeless people make it into the Tri-Valley area. Not much sympathy for losers here. This isn’t San Francisco. And where’s his shopping cart? Don’t those people always have carts to carry around their worldly belongings? But there is nothing parked near the old man, not even a back pack on the ground, just the little dog.
The old man catches Alan surveying him while limping up to Starbuck’s. The old man doesn’t say anything but holds Alan’s gaze, smiles. Alan smiles back briefly—force of habit—but plans to give his table a wide berth, just like the other Starbuck’s customers. Then he sees that the little dog is watching him. He smiles at the dog, longer this time, and the dog seems to smile back. His ears have perked up, too.
Alan and Doris haven’t had a dog since Millie died, some twenty years ago. She was the Golden Retriever they’d brought home for the kids, as a puppy. She’d been a learning tool: “teaches them reskponsibility,” that’s what everyone said. All young marrieds got dogs for their kids back then, Retrievers, Labs, Collies, maybe a terrier, but not too small, didn’t want the kids to hurt it if they played too rough. Millie had served her purpose well. Brittany and Alan Junior had loved her and been reasonably good about feeding, watering and walking her. Cleaning up after her was another matter. “Gross,” they always said, and Doris wasn’t going to pick up after their dog. Alan hadn’t minded, much, figured it came with the territory.
When Millie died at eleven, the kids seemed sad—for a day or two, anyway—but being in high school by then, they had lots of other interests. Doris quickly donated whatever Millie left behind to the Tri-Valley Humane Society, had the house thoroughly cleaned to get rid of every last dog hair. She, too, quickly moved on, once not only Millie but the kids were out of the house. She returned enthusiastically, joyously even, to the real estate career that having a family had interrupted.
Alan had been sorry to see Millie go, but he knew better than to suggest they get another dog, even years later, when the kids had married and followed their own careers to Alaska and Texas, and it was just he and Doris knocking around the big house. She didn’t dislike dogs, wasn’t afraid of them, even bought treats for the dogs of friends and neighbors, but caring for a dog was a burden too far for her. Let Alan get his canine fix by walking dogs at the animal shelter. She wouldn’t begrudge him that. It would even get him out of the house. But Alan couldn’t walk ‘em and leave ‘em—maybe to die—so he didn’t volunteer at the shelter.
“What’s your dog’s name?” Alan asks the old man, surprising himself, as he comes closer to the stranger’s table.
“I call him Jackson,” the old man responds, his voice friendly and younger than he looks. “I don’t know his real name.”
“Oh, you adopted him?’ Alan asks after a moment’s reflection on that surprising answer--isn’t a dog’s real name whatever his master calls him? His voice, too, is friendly but sounds as old as he looked with thin, white hair over his big ears, long, lantern-jawed, horsey face—the curse of the Swensons—wrinkled now and tight with the constant pain of arthritis, and gentle, some would say sad, even defeated, brown eyes. No glasses, though. And thanks to Doris, his clothes never get old, never even make it to faded. He’s been able to hang onto a few, treasured old shirts and jeans by hiding them in the lawn shed and wearing them only when gardening in the back. But whenever he goes out the front door, he has to be wearing the bright, new clothes Doris is forever hanging in his closet. He has long since stopped fighting that.
“He adopted me,” the stranger says. “Just came up to me a couple of years ago, near Reno. Tagged along, because I let him sleep in the car with me, I guess, got him out of the weather. But he didn’t come with a collar, and he’s never told me his name.”
“Why ‘Jackson’?”
“Andrew Jackson was the first governor of Florida—my home state—back when it was a territory. And he was the first President who spit in the eye of the establishment. And I’m always happy when I see his picture on what someone gives me—makes for a really good day.”
“Bet it does,” Alan chuckles but has no intention of taking the hint and reaching for his wallet. “Is he friendly?” Alan asks, changing the subject, as he bends down, steadying himself on an empty chair, and holds his hand out for the dog to sniff, the way you’re supposed to when approaching a dog who doesn’t know you.
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?” Alan responds, not moving his hand closer to the dog.
“He sizes people up pretty fast. He’s friendly to those who are friendly to him.”
Reassured, Alan resumes moving his hand toward Jackson until it is just in front of the dog’s nose. Jackson sniffs Alan’s hand, then turns his head a little to the left. Alan strokes Jackson under the chin for a moment, then starts to get back up, with difficulty, pushing on the empty chair, hoping it won’t slide and send him sprawling. It doesn’t. The dog watches him straighten up but doesn’t move himself.
“Guess he trusts you,” the stranger says once Alan is standing again.
“I like dogs.”
“Have one of your own?”
“No, not now,” Alan admits, his voice droppingt.
“There’re plenty out there, looking for a home.”
“Yeah, I know. Well, nice talking to you,” Alan concludes, not wanting to pursue the topic of his doglessness, and turned toward the door to Starbuck’s
“Enjoy your day.”
Alan takes a couple of steps, then, surprising himself again, stops and looks back at the old man. “Want a coffee?”
“Sure, that’d be great.”
“What kind?”
“Oh, just good ol’ coffee, cream and sugar.”
“You got it.” Alan turns and goes into Starbuck’s, wondering what has gotten into him. He isn’t any friend of the homeless, doesn’t even throw them some change when he passes them begging on the streets of Oakland or The City. Hadda be the dog, he tells himself, amused. When he returns, he has not only two coffees but two Bear Claws. He sets everything on he old man’s table and plops down heavily in the chair across from him.
“Jackson like cake?” Alan asks.
“Who doesn’t like cake?” the old man answers, reaching for the coffee Alan has pushed toward him, along with one of the pastries.
Alan breaks a small piece off the other pastry and holds it down for Jackson, who sniffed it then quickly grabs and swallows it. “That a boy,” Alan beams, pleased. He breaks off another piece for Jackson but before giving it to the dog asks, “All right if I give him more?”
“Give him all you want,” the old man says. “It’s a treat for him.” And obviously for you, too, he thinks.
Alan gives Jackson the second piece, then a third. When he pauses to sip his coffee, Jackson gets up and putting his front paws on Alan’s leg, gives him an eager, questioning, tail-wagging look. Alan is delighted, chuckles, and gives the dog another, bigger piece. Jackson grabs it and drops back down to sit and work at eating it.
“My name’s Alan,” Alan says, turning to face the old man.
“Titus.”
“I’ve never met anyone named Titus. That a common name in Florida?”
“Not common, but there was a famous colonel named that, arounbd the Civil War. Ever hear of Titusville?”
“Uhhh, can’t say I have.”
“It’s near the Space Center. Took a big hit—economically, I mean—when Obama cancelled the shuttle.”
“Oh. That why you left?”
“No. I left long before that. What about you? You must live around here, seeing you walked up.”
“A few blocks over. What brings you to California?”
“An old Ford, just barely.”
Alan smiles. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. . . . No reason really. I just follow the sun, live off the land, meet up with folks, trade war stories, stuff like that.”
“Been at it long?” Alan asks, “following the sun, I mean.”
“Most of my life. Thirty years at least, maybe forty now. Something like that. I’m not too big on counting time.”
Alan studies Titus, thinking how different this man’s life must have been from his own carefully organized, secure, purpose-driven existence. While he’d been steadily moving up the company ladder, cautiously testing the next rung up before leaving the one below, Titus must have been savoring the adventures of the open road, never knowing what lay around the bend or over the next hill. He envies Titus that road not taken—never even seriously considered, truth be told—even though he’s the one, having followed his well-plotted map who has arrived able to provide the coffee and cake.
Titus knows what Alan must be thinking but doesn’t say anything further. He just savors another swallow of coffee and bit of cake. He doesn’t offer Jackson any.
Having finished the third piece Alan has given him, Jackson sits up, looking back and forth between the two men. Alan flipped him another little piece of cake, which Jackson catches smartly in mid-air, swallows, then looks for more. Alan smiles. “Somebody’s taught him some tricks.”
“I think he’s just smart, knows how to get what he wants from people.”
Alan looks at Jackson. “Roll over!” he commands, Holding out his hand, turning it over a couple of times to show the dog what he wants.
Jackson doesn’t budge.
“Roll over!” Alan tries again, with the same hand signal and result. He shrugs and flips Jackson another little piece of cake, which the dog catches in mid-air again, then looks for more. “He’s a pleaser, all right,” Alan says, facing Titus, drinking some more coffee, thinking Bet you know how to get what you want from people, too. “So, why’d you stop in Pleasanton?” he finally asks.
“Running out of gas.”
Here it comes, Alan thinks, smiling down at his coffee.
“So I pulled off the Interstate to find a station,” Titus continues, “then I felt like just driving around—seems like a pretty town.”
“Oh,” Alan says, embarrassed by not hearing what he’d been expecting, “yeah. It’s pretty, okay. We take good care of our yards in Pleasanton.” He stops to give another piece of cake to Jackson, which gives him a chance to look away from Titus’s eyes. “You said war stories,” he resumes. “You a vet.”
“Did a tour in Nam. You?”
“No. I got lucky on the lottery. You drafted?”
“Yeah, I drew lucky number 13.”
“Wow. Was it as bad as they say?”
“We should’ve never gone.”
“You join the anti-war vets when you got back?”
“Did you oppose the war?”
“No,” Alan mumbles, looking off to the side, “y’know, I just sorta got on with life, once I drew number 234. It, uh, seemed like it, the war, wasn’t really my business to worry about, after that. I mean, there were plenty of folks, guys who had to go, and their families, they had a stake in it, so I left it up to them, figured it was their business. Who was I to interfere?”
“Right,” Titus says, looking across the street at the substantial, well-kept homes. “Lots of folks felt that way, I think. Still do, even more so today, since there isn’t even a lottery, a draft, to make our wars your business, if you don’t want it to be. Funny how a little thing like that—a number on a ping pong ball—can change your whole life—or not.”
“Did you, uh, hate it over there? I mean, except for that crazy colonel in that Apocalypse movie, I’ve never heard of anyone who likes having been in Vietnam.”
“I was too scared to hate it. It didn’t matter whether you were in a town, a city even, or on post or out on patrol, you were never safe. Some kid on a mo-ped could drive by and blow you up or some peasant in a field could straighten up from planting rice and spray you with bullets or you could be walking along, just you and your buddies, no Cong anywhere aroundl, and you could be blown up by a mine. You live with that, day after day, night after night, you live with that. Pretty damn quick, all you care about is covering your ass until they let you out of there. You don’t have room for any other feelings”
“Yeah,” Alan responds softly, trying to imagine what being there had felt like, trying not to sound naïve, soft, unmanly. “Funny, but I was thinking about that on my walk over here this morning.”
“About Nam?”
“Not just Nam, about war in general, about what they say, that the strongest friendships are made in war.”
“Could be. When your whole life, your survival, is on the line, I mean, and you share that with some other guys. And you do that day after day, not just for a few hours, like if your apartment building catches fire. No, you live that for a long time, with a bunch of guys, not all of who get through it. But those of you who do get through it, when you come out the other side, and you’re safe, and you can feel something else besides scared, then, yeah, that can be a special bond, something you’ll never have with anyone else.”
“Yeah,” Alan sighs again, wishing he could have that. “You stay in touch, with your buddies from Nam, I mean?”
“No.”
“But you just said”
“I said that could be. What you were talking about, I can see that happening.”
“But not to you?”
“Guys I served with, we all split up once we got back to the States.”
“Keep in touch?”
“Not really. I just tried to get back into the life I’d had before. Figure the other guys did, too. . . . Didn’t have much success at it.”
“No?”
“When we were in Nam, we called back home ‘the real world,’ but when I got back it seemed un-real. It was flat, flavorless, boring, uninspiring, unfulfilling, unabsorbing, un this, un that, nothing really there, nothing. . . . So I left.”
“To re-enlist?”
“No. Maybe I should have, though. Maybe I should have gone back over there, taken up the gun and the fear again, seen how it feels if it’s a life I’ve chosen to live, a life I know is the realest I’d ever know.”
“So why didn’t you?” Alan can’t help asking.
“Because I was afraid.”
“But that’s what made it real, that’s what you said.”
“But it’s still scary. Not the thought of dying. No, that’s what makes it real. If you could only count on dying, that’d be worth the risk. But you can’t, count on dying, I mean. No, you might come back a cripple, maybe psycho, not even able to realize how pathetic you are. You’d have to come back to all that pity, in your family’s eyes, in the eyes of strangers even, watching you hobble across the street, or trying to get your wheelchair over the curb, or button your shirt without a hand, or wipe your ass with no hands at all. No, I didn’t want to risk that. They’d forced me to risk that once, and I’d made it through. I wasn’t going to chance it again. Still, . . . ”
“Still?” Alan prompts.
“I still couldn’t stay there, back home, I mean. That’s how Nam ruined life for me. It made peace flat. Mom dad, wife kids, high school friends guys on the job, it just wasn’t there, the passion I mean, the being scared shitless, every nerve on edge, every fiber taut, sharing that together, for each other, that was all gone, and I couldn’t get it back with them, the folks at home. . . . So I hit the road.”
Alan watches a pretty, young, busty blonde in a tank top and tight jeans go into Starbuck’s. Trophy wife? he wonders. “Thought you’d find better on the road?” he asks Titus as the girl disappears into the coffee shop.
Titus has been watching the sexy, young woman, too. “Don’t you just hate that?” he asks with a smile.
“What?”
“Seeing something sexy as that, knowing you’ll never have it. Not being too old to want it but knowing you’re too old for her to want you.”
Alan chuckles, and they both watch as the young woman emerges from Starbuck’s and walks over to her car, rolling her hips, knowing the two old men with the cute, little dog are watching her, enjoying that.
“So, did you find better, on the road, I mean” Alan resumes.
“’Better’? I don’t know if that’s the right word. I found . . . anonymity. I entered a world of … ‘reduced expectations.’ I guess that’s what they’d call it today. When you’re on the road, nobody expects much of you, not much good, anyway, so you don’t have to worry about letting people down. You can do an odd job here, enjoy a one night stand there, lose what you made at poker without worrying about having to explain that to someone who was counting on you bringing it home, shoot the shit with some guys, or pick up a stray dog and drive off to somewhere calls itself Pleasanton. You take what life provides. You don’t expect more, so you don’t get less.”
“Sounds pretty good.”
“It is what it is,” Titus responds. “But you, you took the other fork in the road.”
“Guess I did.”
“Wife, kids, career?”
“The whole bit.”
“You live in one of these nice houses.”
“One block down, two over, white stucco, black roof, two stories, one chimney, flowering plum in the front yard, starting to lose its leaves now.”
“The American dream,” Titus says, his voice flat but hard. “Sounds like you’re bored with it.”
“I’m retired.”
“The golden years,” Titus mocks.
Alan snorts appreciatively. “Want another coffee? I think Jackson’s ready for more cake.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be a minute, gotta tap a kidney.” He heads into Starbuck’s. Jackson watches him go, then looks up at Titus, then back at Alan disappearing through the door, as if wondering whether he should stay or follow.
Titus pays no attention to the little dog, watches the traffic pass as he waits for Alan’s return. He hopes another busty babe will drive in, but no such luck. A business guy in a hurry rolls into the parking lot, jumps out of his Beamer, gives the dirty old man with the mixed breed dog a passing glare as he rushes in to get a booster for his caffeine high. Get the fuck out of my town, you bum; Titus knows that’s what he’s thinking. Titus smiles broadly back, enjoying watching the guy drop his hostile eyes.
Alan returns with the coffees and pastries. “You sure this is okay for Jackson?” he asks, readying another piece of cake for the eager little dog. “I mean, I don’t want to give him too much sugar. What do you feed him, anyway?”
“He eats whatever people want to give him.”
“But what do you feed him?” Alan insists.
“I don’t feed him. Like I said, he’s a charmer. Plenty of people see him, like him, get a kick out of feeding him. He does okay for himself.”
Alan is caught up short by Titus’s obvious indifference to the dog’s needs. “But what if you’re out on the road, somewhere where there’s nobody around to feed him?”
“Doesn’t happen much. He doesn’t look like he’s starving, does he?” Titus challenges.
Alan has to agree the dog seems okay,maybe a little skinny, skinnier than he’d be if he belonged to Alan, that’s for sure, but that might be a good thing. He flips the piece of pastry in the air, and Jackson catches it nimbly. Still, Alan is bothered by Titus’s attitude. “Ever take him to a vet, get him his shots?”
“No,” Titus says with neither heat nor guilt.
“What if he got hurt? Got a foxtail in his ear or stepped on a piece of glass?”
“Hasn’t happened.”
“But what if it did,” Alan persists.
“Look,” Titus says, impatience creeping into his voice, “the dog showed up two years ago. I didn’t go looking for him, and I’ve never forced him to stay. He jumped in my car on his own, and he’s kept doing that. His choice. I don’t do anything to hurt him; I don’t try to chase him off, but it’s him chooses to stick with me, even though it’s others feed him.”
“Hmmm,” is all Alan can respond.
“Jackson and me, it’s like I was saying about the folks I’ve met on the road. We meet up, do this or that together, stick it out while it lasts, then part, some of us moving on, some going back to their lives the way they were, where they were, before those like me rolled into town. That’s the way life is on the road. Like I said, it is what it is, not some melodrama, some deep, abiding romance of the chance encounter that novelists and moviemakers want to sell to folks bored with their homespun lives,” Titus concludes with a knowing glance at Alan.
Alan catches the glance, looks down.
“People overrate dogs,” Titus can’t resist continuing, even though he knows he’s losing Alan as a mark for gas money. “Dogs aren’t real friends. They don’t love you because you’re so great. You can be rotten to them, and they’ll still slobber all over you. It’s just some hormonal thing, I guess, something bred into them over years and years. Has nothing to do with you or me or Jackson, nothing personal, nothing like that. If the dog happens to be looking in your direction when those hormones are up, then Bam!, he’s attached to you forever, no matter how indifferent or even cruel you are to him.”
“Sounds like the road’s made you a cynic,” Alan says, taking a renewed look at Titus, noticing the eyes seem harder now, the hands grasping his cup not just grimy but cracked, nails broken, teeth yellow and broken, too, some missing.
“Oh, it didn’t take the road for that,” Titus responds, finishing his Bear Claw while Alan again gives most of his to Jackson.
“What then?”
“Maybe that’s just a hormonal thing, too. You know, it isn’t just dogs that are meat machines—organisms, I guess is the word. I mean, people are born certain ways, too, maybe more different ways than dogs—we’re more complex machines—but still born with hormones that pop up and take us over. So, we’re overwhelmed with anger and beat up some guy who really didn’t do us any harm. Or we’re driven to go to war to get land and power and all sorts of stuff we’ve no idea what to do with, but we’ve just gotta have it, don’t know why but just gotta. Or we fall in love, get stuck on some pretty girl—or boy, that’s hormonal, too, no choice of ours—we fall for them, end up devoting our whole lives to what it takes to keep them, never knowing why.
“Or we just can’t do anything like that. The hormones just aren’t there, and we can’t relate to anyone like that. The prettiest girl in town may take a fancy to you, come on to you, offer to devote her whole life to you. She’s got those hormones, and they’re pumping in your direction. But you can’t respond. Oh, you may take a tumble with her, sexually I mean, but you never fall in love, never see your whole life wrapped up with hers, nothing like that ‘finding your sould-mate’ stuff.
“Not that you don’t want to, not that it doesn’t look good to you. No, it’s just not there, nothing you can do about it, just have to live without it, because that’s the kine of machine you are,” Titus concludes, his voice running down after starting strong. He turns from looking at Alan to surveying the homes across the street.
“That’s sad,” Alan responds.
“No it’s not,” Titus snaps back, angry at the pity in Alan’s voice. “It’s what it is. Once you accept that, it frees you up, y’know. And it doesn’t make you some bad guy, somebody who’d be wearing a black hat in those old Westerns.
“Oh, I’ve rolled some drunks in my time, when they had the money I needed. And I’ve left a widow or two early in the morning, after going through their purses. But I made ‘em feel loved for a few days, made ‘em feel desired and fulfilled, left ‘em with stories they can savor and whisper to their friends over cards for years to come. They got a lot for what I took.
“And I’ve played Robin Hood, too. Back in Kansas, I helped a bunch of good ol’ boys torch a bank so their houses couldn’t be foreclosed on. And I even helped a vet get even with a guy in Colorado who beat up his sister. Got paid pretty good for that, and that guy won’t be beating up on anyone again.
“I take what life provides, slide on through without getting caught up in all those values people fret over, don’t bother about what they think of me—as long as they leave me free to go.”
“You end up in jail sometimes?”
“Now and then,” Titus allows. “Not for long, though, just for vagrancy, public drunkenness, penny anty stuff like that where they just want to get you off the street, sober you up, and send you on your way out of their cherished town. And that’s fine with me, what I want even. Most of ‘em even set the old vet on his way with a few extra dollars, so I leave them behind with more in my pocket than when I arrived.”
“Sounds like you have it down to a formula,” Alan says, obviously disappointed with Titus’s version of life on the road.
“Is your life that great?” Titus challenges again, annoyed by the tone of Alan’s voice. “Here you are, tied to mowing one of those smooth lawns over there, keeping the house painted, the roof fixed. Buying as good a car as that Cadillac parked next to that colonial revival monstrosity down the street there. Going to Hawaii, getting new carpets, hosting the neighbors with over-priced wine and stinky cheese on crappy crackers, all sorts of things you don’t really care about, but you’ve gotta do them to keep your wife happy. And you wanna have a dog, right?”
Alan is caught up short by Titus’s sudden turn from generalities to him. He looked at Jackson, doesn’t answer.
“Yeah, well, it’s that obvious,” Titus goes on. “So, why don’t you have one?”
“We did,” Alan says, knowing it’s lame.
“That was the kis’ dog. Why don’t you have one now, your dog? Not one you got because that was what was expected. One you could have now, just because you want a dog for yourself.”
“But I did want Millie. And she was my dog, too, not just the kids’, and not just because it was a good idea to get a dog for the kids.”
“Fine,” Titus says, dismissing what Alan said. “You’re a real dog lover. But you’re ducking my question.”
“Which is?” Alan interrupts, starting to get heated himself.
“Why don’t you have a dog now?”
“Why do you?” Alan shoots back, knowing it’s a dodge, still unwilling to face the answer to Titus’ question. “You say you don’t care about dogs, don’t really want one. So why are you stuck with one?”
“I’m not stuck,” Titus answers too quickly, then continues, angry with himself for being defensive. “Like I said, he may be stuck on me, but I’m not stuck on him. He wants to leave, that’s fine with me. That episode will be done. My life will go on. The road will cough up something else for me, some other big panorama or little scene for me to live through, get what I can from it, for better or worse. That’s just the way it is. And I can face it. You, you can’t face your life, your supposed choices.”
“What?” Alan shoots back.
“Why don’t you have a dog?” Titus thrusts back, quick, sure.
Alan glares at Titus but had nothing to answer. Finally, he pushes his chair back, pushes himself up from the table as forcefully as his arthritis allows. “I’ve had enough of this. And it was such a pretty day, and I came in here for a cup of coffee, not to be psychoanalyzed by a bum,” he says as he turned to walk back home, trying to stride again in spite of his aching hip.
“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to the dog?” Titus mocks.
Alan turns back to face the homeless old man and Jackson, ready to throw the jeer back in Titus’s face. But he doesn’t know what to say. Finally, he looks down at the little dog and whispers, “Good luck, Jackson. I think you’re going to need it.” Then he turns and walks away as quickly as he can.
“Why don’t you pick him up and take him home with you?” Titus hurls at Alan’s retreating back.
Alan hears, but has nothing to say besides mumbling “sorry son-of-a-bitch,” then realizes he isn’t sure who he’s talking about. At the corner of Lexington and Yorktown, he turns and, once out of sight of Starbuck’s, resumes the rolling limp his left hip favors. He looks at each of the well-kept yards he passes, the well-maintained, large houses, each a distinctive variation, an impressive façade, a stylish and stylized front on a half-dozen basic floor plans some developer offered Yuppie families racing to the suburbs decades ago. He isn’t seeing them for the first time, seeing them for what they are, what they represent, what they cost those living in them, not just in money and labor but in spirit and—yeah, he had to admit it—freedom. He knows all those clichés, has known them for a long time, ever since Doris and he started looking for a home in the burbs and for all the years they’ve lived here, making that developer’s offering their life.
No, Titus hadn’t held a mirror up to his life that he hadn’t looked in before. But somehow, now, as he passes the Creighton’s Tudor with its front yard transformed into an English garden surrounded by a white picket fence—the only one on the block—and the Sanchez’s canary yellow ranch—they’d really had to fight the homeowners association for that color, had to tone it down several shades to get it approved—and the Dunham’s mirror-image ranch—though you’d never guess it because of the carport and screened-in porch they’d added when they bought it from the Finches and the inconspicuous cream they keep it painted, that couple never wanting to stand out in spite of their wealth. Somehow, all these stories he knows so well, stories of the families that have come and gone from his neighborhood these many years, they seem more intense now, after listening to Titus, more pressing, more questioning. Maybe it is their contrast with Titus’s life, something he hadn’t known before, a life he’d seen on TV, in books, probably, but had never run up against in the flesh, heard it spoken out loud, seen the man that sort of life had produced.
Or maybe I’m just getting old. He smiles to himself, realizing how many—most—of life’s choices are behind him now. Do all us oldsters try to pump up into some grand sociological, even metaphysical melodrama the trivial, unavoidable, merely biological facts of aging?
He again crosses Saratoga carefully, coming down on his right leg to spare his left hip. Halfway down the next block, Cindy Gates comes out the side door of her oversized, white, New England clapboard home, with dark green shutters and a chimney at either end, heading toward her midnight blue Lexus SUV in the driveway. Cindy is a pretty brunette in her fifties who can pass for thirty-something. She worked hard at keeping her figure, exercise and surgery both, Alan would wager and Doris would guarantee. She wants to look like a trophy wife so Sam won’t go looking for one, Alan thinks. Her husband is a hard-charging stock broker known to have an eye for the ladies—and plenty of opportunity to find them in the financial district—but so far Cindy has been able to keep him eating at home even if he worked up an appetite in The City.
Cindy waved at Alan, then stops. “Who’s your friend?” she calls.
“Friend?” Alan answers, not understanding until Cindy points to a spot ten or twelve feet behind him. He looks back to see Jackson following him.
“Haven’t seen that one around here before,” Cindy continues, standing by her car.
“He was over at Starbuck’s,” Alan says over his shoulder, facing Jackson now.
Jackson comes up to within a couple of feet of Alan and sits on his haunches, looking up at him, smiling. “I gave him some of my Bear Claw,” Alan says lamely, looking down the road for Titus or an old Ford but sees nothing.
“Was he with anyone?”
“Uhhh, that’s kind of a long story,” Alan says, looking down at Jackson then back up the road, hoping he would not see Titus now.
“Looks like he’s with you now,” Cindy says cheerily as she slides into her car. “I’m late for my aerobics class. We’ll see you and Doris at the Duval’s party.” Doris will have a fit, she thinks as she drives off, knowing what a meticulous housekeeper Doris is.
Alan continues to look down at Jackson, who smiles back at him. “Did Titus kick you out, drive off without you? Or did you run off on your own? . . . Sticking by someone who won’t even feed you, that has to be tough. . . . But it’s you who’s gonna make life tough for me now,” he says, thinking of what Doris will say when he shows up with a dog. “You ever see a woman explode, Jackson, a genuine female volcano? Well, that’s what’s in store for us. . . . C’mon, we might as well get the fireworks over.”
Doris happens to be looking out her office window as Alan approaches home. Oh no you don’t! she thinks as she sees the little dog trotting along behind him, almost next to him now. “Jim,” she says into the phone, “I’ll text you the pictures of the VanAkres’s house in a few minutes. You and Hazel will fall in love with it—guaranteed. Right now, something just came up that I really have to take care of. I’ll call you again as soon as you and hazel have a chance to look at the photos, and we’ll set a time for you two to visit your new home. Bye.” She sets the phone down and runs to catch Alan before he can bring the dog into her house.
“You know there’s a stray dog following you?” she asks from behind the screen door as Alan approaches the side porch.
“Yeah, I notice,” Alan says, looking down at Jackson, not facing Doris.
“Where did he come from?”
“He was with a guy at Starbuck’s, some homeless guy, passing through.”
“Well, hadn’t you better get the dog back to his owner? Poor thing must be lost, and I bet his owner has no idea where to look.”
“Oh, Titus won’t be looking for him.”
“Titus?”
“That was the guy’s name.” Alan makes no effort to come into the house, not even to step up onto the porch, which would have provoked the issue of whether Doris was going to open the door to him or bar the way against the dog.
“How do you know he won’t?” Doris challenges Alan, eyeing the dog, who is sitting now, staring back at her, one of those silly doggie smiles on his face. “He’s a cute dog. I’m sure his owner misses him.”
“Titus is kind of—I don’t know—kind of a road warrior, I guess. Not that he’s a gun for hire or anything like that. No, he’s just a guy on the road, rolling along, not settling anywhere, nothing sticking to him. Taking life as one adventure after another, something like that. The dog’s been tagging along with him for awhile. Nothing more than that. Probably kept him because he figured the dog helped him get hand-outs.”
“That’s still a reason for him to want the dog back, maybe even a better reason.”
“I dunno,” Alan muses, looking down at Jackson again. “When I left Starbuck’s, Titus and Jackson”
“Jackson?”
“That’s his name,” Alan says, looking at Doris, nodding toward the dog. “When I left Starbuck’s, Titus was sitting at a table, finishing his coffee, and Jackson was lying on the ground beside him. I got all the way over here, between Saratoga and Concord, when Cindy Gates yells ‘Hello’ and tells me there’s a dog following me. I hadn’t even noticed him till then.”
Not with Cindy there, you wouldn’t notice anything. Your eyes would have been glued to those big, fake boobs. Old goat, you’re all old goats, Doris thinks. Aloud, she says, “And how is dear Cindy?”
“Dunno. She was in a hurry, drove off without chatting.”
“Maybe she’d like the dog.”
“Dunno,” Alan shrugs. Deciding it is now or never, he steps up onto the little side porch and reaches for the screen door handle. It wouldn’t surprise him if Doris quickly locked the latch. But she doesn’t. She turns away from the door, moves down the laundry hallway between the door and the kitchen, then quickly crosses the kitchen to close the door leading to the dining room and turns to face Alan as he and Jackson come into the kitchen.
So this is where you’re going to make your stand, Alan thinks. Aloud, he says, “I’ll get him a bowl of water.”
“I’ll do that,” Doris says before Alan can grab one of her better bowls. She finds an old plastic bowl below the sink, fills it, and sets it on the floor near the sink, across the kitchen from where Alan and Jackson stand.
Jackson doesn’t hesitate. He trots right over and starts slurping up the water.
“Wait!” Doris commands, picking up the bowl. She grabs a dishtowel from the rack and spreads it on the floor before setting the bowl on top of it. Having watched her do this, Jackson quickly starts slurping again, apparently unphased by what must seem strange behavior to him. Alan pulls out a chair from the dinette and eases down into it, pleasantly surprised at how well this is going.
“Has he had anything to eat?” Doris asks.
“Better part of two Bear Claws,” Alan answers sheepishly.
“Figures,” Doris says as she turned toward the refrigerator. “Let’s see,” she continues as she looks into the deli drawer, “here’s some liverwurst. Dogs love liver—and it’s really not good for us—so he’ll have it for lunch—what’s his name? Jackson?—instead of you.”
“Yeah, Jackson. He’ll like that. He’s a good eater.”
“Then I’ll drive him down to the animals shelter,” Doris says, closing the refrigerator, pulling down an old plate, cutting up some liverwurst on it. “They have the right things to care for him, not just human food. I have to go out anyway to show a house. I’ll drop him off on the way.”
“I’ll get him some dog food,” Alan says, wary now.
“He’s not staying,” Doris says as she sets the dish on the towel next to the water bowl, straightens up, then turns and leaning on the counter, faces Alan.
Jackson quickly starts gobbling down the meat.
“I’ll take care of him,” Alan says.
“I’ve done the whole dog thing,” Doris responds, looking down at Jackson finishing his treat. “Between taking care of the house and doing my job—and taking care of you, she adds to herself—I’ve got all I can handle.”
“You said to pick out what I want for my birthday present,” Alan offers. “Well, he’s it.”
“I meant a nice shirt, a new hat, a nice suit even. Not a dog.”
I’m sure you did, Alan thinks but says, “That’s not what you said.”
“Don’t be so picky. We’re not arguing over an insurance claim here. I’ve worked hard to make a beautiful home for you here, and we’re not having some stray dog come in to mess it up. Do you remember how long it took me to fix this place up after Millie? Once was enough.”
Alan stares at Doris for a while, then knowing it’s a lost cause, shakes his head, smiles sadly looking down at Jackson. “Okay,” he finally sighs, “he won’t be here when you get back. Like I said, I’ll take care of him. How long you gonna be, anyway?”
Doris looks at Alan, skeptical, suspicious. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Alan responds, trying to sound definite.
“Promise.”
“I told you I’d take care of it. I just want him to have a little time, well, you know, a little time where he can feel he’s with someone who cares about him.”
“Don’t try to make me feel guilty. It won’t work. We went through all this years ago, and we decided: no more dogs. And that’s worked out fine, still is.”
“Right,” is all Alan offers aloud, adding we decided, fat chance to himself.
“So, you promise?”
“Yeah, yeah. Now, you’d better get going or you’ll be late. When did you say you’ll be getting back?”
“I want to stop by the agency after showing the house. I’ll be back by four.”
“Good,” is all Alan says as he watches Jackson lick the now-empty plate then look up first at Doris then at him in hope of more. “Y’know,” Alan continues softly, still looking at Jackson though his mind and heart have shifted gears, “once, maybe a year before my dad died, after he retired and was already, well, on his way out, he found a little dog wandering, a little poodle, I think it was. It was white, I remember that. Anyway, he brought it home, fed it, like you just did Jackson.
“When mom got home, he told her he wanted to keep it. She was okay with that, but the dog had an ID tag on its collar. She told him they had to call the owner. He didn’t want to, said if they hadn’t taken good enough care of the dog to keep him home, they didn’t deserve him. Mom said maybe the dog got out accidentally, that could happen to anyone. So, she called the number on the tag, and the owner came over and retrieved the dog, was really happy to get him back.”
“So?” Doris prods, eager to get to her showing.
“So, dad hated to see the dog go. He’d really enjoyed having a little dog again, even for just a few hours.”
“So why didn’t he go adopt one? There are always lots of dogs looking for homes. Look, I’ve gotta run; you can finish the story when I get back,” Doris says as she grabbed her purse and starts for the side door, her SUV. “Why don’t you take a couple of steaks out of the freezer. You can barbeque tonight; you always like that. And I’ll pick up some Sam Adams and German potato salad at Petrini’s on the way home. You always like that, too. We’ll have a fall picnic in the backyard, just the two of us. Won’t that be fun?” Doris concludes, her voice bright, her manner soothing.
“Right,” Alan says andwatches her leave before finishing his story, having to say it aloud even if only he and Jackson are there to hear him say it. “Because dad was on his way out, Mom too, . . . and I didn’t want to get stuck with a dog,” he finishes to himself, barely audible, staring at Jackson, who is now sitting in front of his chair, looking up at him. Meanest thing I ever did, he acknowledges, accepts, remembering the look on his father’s face when, that evening, he and his mother had told the old man he was too old for a new dog. “That’s one thing I’d sure take back,” he declares to Jackson, “if I only could.
“But we can’t do that,” he continues after a brief silence, getting up. “No, we can’t undo what’s done. All we can do is not repeat our mistakes.
“C’mon, Jackson, m’ boy,” he says to the little dog, a broad smile breaking out on his face, “it’s time we hit the road, and don’t come back no more, no more,” he sings to the dog as he heads out the side door, then into the garage. Once there, he opened the car door, and Jackson, at his heels, jumps in. Alan then goes to the garden shed, grabs the old clothes he keeps there, and throws them in the back of the car.
Next, he trudges back into the house, goes into the den—Doris’s office—sits down at her desk, pulls a pad of paper over, grabs a pen, and looks around for inspiration. Out the window, he sees the Monroe’s house, with its twin, diamond-paned bay windows facing the street, Newport gray siding trimmed in Sierra white with redwood accents, pale pink Queen Elizabeth roses growing up and onto the gable over the front porch. Carl and Amelia’s house, good friends, long-time neighbors; their kids grew up together. Doris had hoped Alan Junior and Amelia’s oldest daughter, Celeste, might get married. Didn’t happen, but they were all still close friends.
Alan’s gaze lingers on the Monroe house, the good memories flooding over him, tugging at him. But his gaze moves on, alighting next on a bar towel Doris had framed and hung on her wall. Inside a border of happy little girls dancing hand in hand, smiling at each other, is the phrase, A Woman Without a Man Is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle. Enjoy Your Swim, he quickly, grimly writes on the pad, then heads for the garage. Crossing the kitchen, he stops, grabs a plastic bag from the dispenser and dumps the contents of the refrigerator deli drawer into it before going to his car.
As he backs out onto Yorktown, he says to Jackson, “Okay, we’re gonna find out what that road not taken holds. If Titus can do it, so can we—and better.” Jackson rolls over on the passenger’s seat, his legs propped up on the seat back and looks across at Alan. “No fool like an old fool. Is that what you’re thinking?” he asks the little dog. “To which I say: Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Anyway, in dog years I’m only ten.” He has a good, deep and long laugh as he presses the pedal to the metal.