West of Rome Page 10

  “Sorry,” the man said. Relieved that a tragedy had been averted, he sat back with a sigh and tilted his hat away from his suddenly perspiring face.

  “You jerk!” I yelled.

  The man picked up a briefcase and stepped from the car. He wore a grey silk suit that draped him like a theatre curtain, a large man with massive shoulders and an anvil jaw. A vice president, maybe, or a used car hustler.

  “Awfully sorry,” he said.

  We chilled him with ice cube eyes and he walked away, down an aisle of cars. After a few steps he paused, stared back at us over his silk shoulder, and retraced his steps.

  “Aren’t you Molise?” he said from the front of the Porsche.

  “What’s it to you?” Jamie said, folding his arms.

  The big man grinned, addressing both of us.

  “How’s that fucking pervert dog of yours?”

  Then I recognized him. John Galt, the lawyer, whom Stupid had mounted on the beach the night of the big Santa Ana wind. I recalled him standing on the shore in drooping Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian print shirt, his gut protruding, his hairy legs like timbers, and the intimidating thrust of the way he had put me down that night still festered in my skull, specially since Jamie had witnessed it. Now I had a chance to even things, for the boy was present once more.

  “Hello, Galt.” I turned to Jamie. “Remember him, Jamie? The guy Stupid jumped at the beach? Same fella.”

  “I remember,” Jamie said. ‘The man in the funny looking shorts.”

  Galt smiled faintly.

  “Has that beast raped anybody lately?”

  “Not lately,” I said. “But he sure misses you, Galt. You’re the apple of his eye.”

  Gait’s smile was made of inflexible iron. His blue eyes sizzled as he pulled a handkerchief from his lapel pocket and wiped the perspiration from under his jowls. He meticulously folded the handkerchief and returned it to the pocket. I could feel his rage coming at me like a hot wind, and I turned in the seat and gripped a 5-iron lying on the floor. It became a staring match, Galt versus Jamie and me. Suddenly Galt whirled and paced rapidly through the parking lot, the sun gleaming on his silk coat.

  “That was great,” Jamie said. “You nailed him good.”

  “So did you.”

  “I never did like him.”

  “He’s a bully boy,” I said. “Good thing he didn’t make a move, or I would have brained him with this.” I raised the 5-iron in my fist.

  We walked across the parking lot to the entrance of the building. There was a coffee shop adjacent, and I saw Galt at the counter, reading a newspaper as he lifted a cup of coffee to his lips. We checked the building directory and took the elevator to the fourth floor.

  Stepping into the Selective Service office was like walking into a Dostoyevsky novel. A chill of bureaucracy went right to your bones and the machinery of government began devouring you at once. It was a big white room smelling of fresh plaster, over-illuminated by tubes of fluorescent lights. A dozen youths, mostly long-haired, stood before little windows along a partition, talking to clerks. The harsh light brought out their features, emphasizing every stubble and pimple on their chins.

  Jamie’s eyes opened wide at the scene, and he sucked in a breath of air. Looking as nondescript as everyone else, he walked to one of the windows and stood in line. I moved to a plastic chair against the wall and sat down. Some of the kids were smoking, so I filled my pipe and lit up. Behind the partition of windows a squad of typists hammered away on typewriters. The machines seemed in heated argument among themselves.

  The door to the corridor opened and there was a flash of grey silk. It was John Galt. He crossed to a doorway in the partition, swinging his briefcase. Jamie and I spotted him at the same time. My pipe suddenly went out and I felt a bulge of blood in my neck as Galt paused before entering the door and looked around. His glinting blue eyes gunned us down like a sniper. Then he stepped through the door. Jamie turned to stare at me. He opened and closed his sweating palms. He whispered something to the young man ahead of him, nodding toward Galt, who could be seen through the partition windows as he entered an office to the rear. Jamie left the line and started toward me. His face was grey, but he was smiling ironically, like the victim of a practical joke.

  “You know who he is?”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Head of the board.”

  As he returned to the line I tried to hold back a thought galloping through my brain, but it was like a wild horse that could not be restrained:

  Three down and one to go.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Jamie never encountered Galt again, at least not face to face. Doom settled upon him like an Arctic winter as he realized his civilian days were down to a trickle. I knew he would make a good soldier, he had too much self-esteem to be a bad one, but the dread of military life left him bleak and silent as a monk.

  In the face of crisis, he reacted as I did. Like father, like son. When my own father died, I slept with my dog Mingo. At my mother’s death the grief was tempered with old Rocco by my side through many a sad night. Jamie took Stupid to bed with him. The dog was no fool. Sensing the boy’s desolation, he sought to comfort him in the only way he knew, by staying close to him those last two months.

  It worked a change in Stupid. At last he was something more than a wayward dog who hung around the house without purpose. Now he was needed, there was a job to be done, for somebody who loved him. Gratitude overflowed in his mournful eyes and he padded after Jamie down the halls and around the house. At breakfast he was under the table, his head on Jamie’s shoes. He followed him out to the garage and stood beside the car door for a friendly pat before Jamie drove away to the clinic. As the car vanished, he spread his hulk on the garage floor and waited Jamie’s return. He was worried about Jamie. You saw it in his untouched food and his lack of interest in Denny, Harriet and me.

  On the Fourth of July we drove Jamie to the Army Induction Center in downtown Los Angeles. We took the station wagon to make room for Stupid. With his head on Jamie’s lap, he slept all the way. Two buses were waiting for the inductees in the parking lot. Jamie shook my hand, pecked his mother on the cheek, and flung his arms around Stupid, kissing him three or four times.

  ‘Take good care of my dog.”

  I nodded.

  “Promise?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  He hurried away to a line of grubby young men boarding the buses. They looked like a Nazi mop-up headed for Buchenwald. Jamie stepped inside and presently he waved from the rear window. Harriet wept and fluttered her wet handkerchief. With the hiss of a dragon the bus pulled away, bound for Fort Ord.

  Harriet cried for two days, but my weltschmerz lasted about twelve minutes into the Santa Monica Freeway, where the raging torrent of traffic swept the station wagon toward the coastline. I finally found a slot in the third lane where I could cruise at seventy without holding up the maniacs bound for a holiday at the beach.

  I felt fine about Jamie. Now I understood why my father had been so happy when I was drafted. Somebody else was assuming the responsibility. It wasn’t like a runaway kid vanishing into the wilderness of a big city as Dominic and Denny had done, keeping us awake at night, fretting and biting our nails, our hearts stopping with each ring of the telephone. Jamie was in good hands. He would be fed and housed and disciplined. He would gain weight and self-sufficiency. He would miss his home and his mother and cry himself to sleep for a while. Worst of all he would be bored, but who wasn’t?

  When we arrived home Stupid lay stretched out on the seat, his head on his paws. He refused to get out of the car. I spoke to him reasonably, soothingly, but he made no move. When I reached in and tugged at his collar, he opened one murky eye and growled.

  “Screw you, you ingrate.”

  “He misses Jamie,” Harriet said.

  “We all miss Jamie. Is that any reason why he can’t get out of the car like the rest of
us?”

  “He feels bad. Leave the door open.”

  He was beginning to bug me. All the months I had fed him, bathed him, sprayed him, plucked bloated ticks from his hide, cleaned his bed, brushed a high gloss into his fur, wormed him, offered my friendship, and now his only interest was in Jamie, who hadn’t provided him with as much as a cup of water. Not that I asked any special favors or expected his total devotion, but I was certainly entitled to obedience and a show of respect. Where would he be had I not given him a good home, lavished attention on him, and treated him better than my own flesh and blood? It must have been the breeding. He was a slovenly, indifferent son of a bitch without the intelligence to respond to love and kindness. My dog Rocco would have leaped with joy at half the attention.

  A couple of hours later I was watching the Dodger game on television when he scratched on the back door. I got up to let him enter. Without looking at me, his tail drooping, he padded glumly down the hall to Jamie’s room. Whimpering, he sniffed the empty bed, then climbed upon it. With a sigh he made himself comfortable and closed his eyes. I left him there and went back to the tube. After dinner I fixed him a bowl of horsemeat and kibble on the porch and tried to coax him off the bed. He rumbled with hostility when my hand gripped his collar.

  “Leave him alone,” Harriet said. “He’ll eat when he’s hungry.”

  Not true. He neither ate nor drank, nor would he leave Jamie’s room. He was there all night and through the afternoon of the next day. Then I discovered that he had piddled on the rug. It was time to take him in hand.

  Harriet brought rags and a solvent and I walked out to the car and drew a sand-wedge from my golf bag. He was sitting up when I returned to the bedroom. I pointed the club-head at him.

  “Out.”

  Haggard with the miseries, his coat lustreless, his eyes wet and sluggish, he slid belly-first from the bed and slumped down the hall and out the back door. He had reverted to the same melancholia as on the rainy right we found him. I stood in the doorway and watched him gazing about aimlessly, as if unfamiliar with the surroundings. A pitiless, embarrassing thought brought a blush to my brain. I wanted to get rid of him. Despite my promise to Jamie, I felt the dog had to go. He must have gotten the vibration, for he stared at me in sorrow, as if regretting what was on my mind. Shuddering like a criminal, I couldn’t look at him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Next day around noon Harriet discovered that he was gone. We searched the yard, the deep ivy beds he liked, the shady havens under the pines, the corral, the abandoned trailer. He had truly vanished, though both gates were locked.

  “He must have gone over the fence.”

  “Let’s try the beach,” Harriet said.

  “Hell be back. Leave the gates open.”

  “We’ve got to look for him.”

  She put on a pair of low shoes.

  “I’m writing something,” I said.

  “You’re coming with me.”

  We trudged to the beach. She went south and I plodded north. After a quarter of a mile I sat against the cliff and lit my pipe. For two hours I watched the gulls and stared at the water. He wasn’t much of a dog after all. Really a schizophrenic. He had terrorized Rick Colp. He had bitten Denny. He had jumped Galt and was probably responsible for Jamie’s being drafted. He was cold and indifferent to me. Suddenly a beautiful aspiration bathed my whole body and sent a sweet melody up and down my spine. I would get another bull terrier, a puppy, white like Rocco, with a pink underbelly, a long rat tail, and soft brown eyes. But first I had to be sure that Stupid had split for good.

  Back at the house Harriet was drying off after a shower.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “He’s gone for good.”

  “He’s such a slow moving dog. He can’t be far. Let’s drive around.”

  “I’m writing something.”

  “It can wait. We’ll take both cars.”

  She drove off toward Zuma Beach, and I made for the Coast Highway. At Topanga Canyon I turned north through the mountains to the Valley and a brand new driving range on Ventura. It was a fine, uncrowded range with luxurious grass and clean unblemished balls. I hit three bucketsful and cured a slice that had given me fits for two years. On the whole, a rewarding day.

  I arrived home as the gold sun hovered momentarily before being swallowed by a pink sea. Harriet was at the stove preparing dinner and talking into the telephone, asking neighbors if they had seen this big brown and black dog with the plumed tail. She dialled and talked tirelessly, serving my dinner at the same time. She looked exhausted. She had phoned the Animal Shelter, the Sheriff, the SPCA, the Life Guard Service and the private local police patrol. She had also placed advertisements in the Times and all the papers on the west side.

  Mixing a highball, she asked, “Any luck at all?”

  “Nothing. I even went into the back country, through Latigo and Corral Canyon, all the way to Mulholland. I went up Decker Canyon. I hit all the roads from here to Camarillo.”

  “We’ve got to find him, for Jamie’s sake.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “We’ve got to try.”

  “But just suppose we don’t?”

  “It’s ten weeks before Jamie’s back from boot camp. We’ll surely find him by then.”

  “Let’s be realistic. The dog’s gone. He stayed awhile and left. That’s his pattern.”

  “I don’t believe it. For all we know, he may be on his way to Fort Ord.”

  “Oh, shit. That’s Lassie.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “On film. Not on Point Dume. But there’s a solution, assuming we don’t find him.”

  “What solution?”

  “Another dog.”

  She was aroused and suspicious and I decided not to press the matter. “I was thinking of a nice little cocker spaniel, or maybe a Scottie.”

  Her eyes smouldered and she was breathing hard.

  “I see your game.”

  “What game? I’m talking facts.”

  “I won’t waste words. If you even mention a bull terrier, consider this marriage dissolved. And that’s final.”

  She spun around and zipped out of the room.

  There it was again, the old pressure, bending me to the mold. I got a pencil and paper and added some figures sputtering from my head like a computer. Three thousand for my Porsche, twenty-two hundred still due the finance company, a hundred for my golf clubs, five hundred for the tractor, fifty for the power mower, a hundred for the chain saw, maybe another two hundred for my guns. A total of around sixteen hundred. Subtract five hundred for plane fare and I’d arrive in Rome with eleven hundred. It was something to think about.

  The phone rang and we responded from different rooms. The caller was Mrs. Pollard on Dume Drive. From her window she could see a large dog with lots of fur wandering through the lot next door. Harriet thanked her and came down the hall on the run.

  “Bring the flashlight,” she said.

  Minutes later she wheeled the station wagon off Dume Drive into the lot next door to the Pollards’. The bouncing headlights plucked the figure of a massive dog out of the blackness, a Newfoundland standing rigid on a weed-cluttered knoll, surprise expanding the whites of his eyes.

  It didn’t discourage Harriet. ‘This looks promising. We should have searched around here in the first place.” Reversing gears, she brought the car back to the street.

  For the next two hours we cruised Point Dume, moving with hearse-like slowness that agitated all dogs along the way. They followed us in droves, an aroused mob, their teeth and gums gleaming in the beam of the flashlight. Dogs, dogs. Point Dume’s elite, the best fed, best housed canines in the world from Chihuahuas to St. Bernards. But no Stupid. When the flashlight battery gave up the ghost, we drove home.

  Smoke belched from the fireplace chimney as we drew into the garage beside Denny’s beat-up crate. I jumped out and looked up at the chimney. It belched black, tumbling stuff that gave off
the stench of burning synthetic rubber, hanging like a dark angel in the warm night air.

  Denny sat cross-legged in front of the fireplace, his chin in his hands as he watched the blaze. He was burning his crutches. The sponge rubber pads hissed and smoked. I crossed over and looked at the fire. We didn’t speak for two minutes.

  “So you made it.”

  He smiled and drew an envelope from his pocket. It was from the Department of the Army. His medical discharge. Chronic tendon-sheath inflammation. Permanent impairment. I handed the document to Harriet.

  “Disgraceful,” she said, scanning it.

  “I gave them three years of my life,” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “You pledged six.”

  “Do I look like a soldier, act like a soldier, think like a soldier? I don’t belong in the army. It was a mistake in the first place. Now I can go on with my life.”

  “New York?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He got to his feet and suddenly did a jig.

  “Denny!” Harriet scolded.

  He grabbed her and kissed her.

  “I’m free, Mom! You know what that means?”

  There wasn’t much Harriet could say. He really had her nailed to the wall. She had written too many of his term papers, entered into too many conspiracies with him to protest now. Anyway, it would not have mattered. There was a thing about Denny, his charisma was a flag unfurled in the wind, a young man restlessly on the move, the boy who loved to run away. It was present in the first sperm that sailed up the Fallopian tube and went ashore at the ovary where he was born.

  “Four down and none to go,” I said.

  He swung around grinning and put his hands on my shoulders.

  “You made it, Dad. Congratulations.” He reached into his pocket and took out his car keys. “Here’s your reward. I’m giving you my car.”

  “Gee, thanks!”

  He slapped his hands, the same old bullshitter.

  “Okay, Mother dear. Let’s get packing. My plane leaves at seven in the morning.”