Succor of the Hound by William Bolen
Succor of the Hound by William Bolen
When the barking started, Timothy was standing at his sink carefully peeling the shell from a boiled egg. The egg, cooked for exactly two minutes and forty-five seconds, was blessed with a tender white and a yolk properly set. Timothy knew that there was not the faintest darkening of yolk where the white encircled it. The obnoxious din grated his nerves and his hands shook. The egg slipped from his grasp and plummeted into the drain. He wiped his hands clean and flicked up the garbage disposal switch. The disposal, a gleaming marvel of German engineering, growled the egg into nothingness.
Timothy cranked open the window blind. In the lot next door loomed the two-story Victorian home. A faded blue Volvo station wagon was parked crookedly in the driveway. The incessant barking came from the house.
Had someone moved in? Timothy was planning to buy the house from the estate of the home’s previous owner, a mousy widow who suffered a fatal heart attack the previous summer.
This just won’t do, Timothy thought. The gruff barking, the intrusive chuffing without pause for breath or succor weighted Timothy’s heart with a heavy disquiet – a disquiet he hadn’t felt since the fortuitous passing of his nagging mother.
Timothy neatly laid his napkin across his breakfast plate. He marched to the front door of the home next door, stopping only twice along the way to pluck errant leaves from his immaculate lawn. Resisting an urge to peek into the windows that bracketed the door, he rang the bell.
A moment later the door swung inward and Timothy saw the woman. She was tall and slender, with pearly skin and shining blond hair pulled back in a topknot from her angular face. Dressed in a low-cut blouse and faded bell-bottom jeans, she leaned forward on shoeless feet and cocked her head.
“Yes?” she asked.
Timothy experienced a moment of conversational vertigo as he tried to remember why he was there and what he was doing. The woman’s beauty unnerved him. She smelled of honeysuckle, and the scent was horribly distracting. Timpthy glimpsed a dirty-white furball scooting back and forth behind the woman.
A dog. An unclean mutt. Timothy’s lips curled upward. For an instant, his mind flashed back thirty years to memories of his youth, when next door to his childhood home squatted the territory of a bedraggled sheepdog, its boundaries landmined with dog faces. The burr-ridden canine never passed up an opportunity to soil Timothy’s clean clothing with its muddy paws.
Timothy shook his head and returned to the present. “You don’t live here.”
“I’m sorry?” the woman asked, her forehead wrinkling. She took a half-step back into the house.
You don’t live here. I know this because I live next dooor – have for years. This house is vacant. Do I need to call the police or will you just leave?” Timothy folded his arms across his chest.
“Oh,” the woman said, the wrinkles clearing from her forehead and a smile brightening her face. “We’re neighbors then. I’m Naomi. Naomi Ryan. My aunt owned this place and she left it to me. She passed on. You knew her?”
Timothy felt the heat of a flush burning his face. The woman’s presence filled him with an unwelcome pressure – a tingling, messy feeling. “I did not know her well. She was messy and disorderly.”
Naomi’s smile became strained. “I guess that’s one way of putting it. I thought she was wonderful. A free spirit. She lived life. Always too busy smelling the roses to actually weed the garden, if you know what I mean.”
“I know extacly what you mean. You’re referring to slovenliness, which is no asset. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but look at this wilderness.” Timothy gestured at the yard.
Naomi glanced at the yard. “Maybe it could use a mowing, sure. Look, Mister…I didn’t catch your name.”
“Lane. Timothy Lane.”
“Mr. Lane then. I really need to get unpacked. It’s been a busy day.”
Timothy nodded. “And the dog?”
Naomi glanced at the smoke-colored terrier at her feet. It stopped its frenetic pacing and came to rest between her legs. It stared up at Timothy. “Oh, this is Pasha.”
“Tes, well, it won’t be staying.” A statement, not a question.
Yep, she’ll be staying, Mr. Lane.” Naomi’s voice was an ice-rimmed whip. “If you’re concerned about the barking, don’t be. She’s just excited. Now, I have to go. Goodbye.”
As she was closing the door, Timothy started to say something, but before he could, the door slammed in his face. He stood there for a moment and stared at the peeling paint on the door. This was not good, not good at all.
Timothy spent the day working in the yard. The grass still sipped from the fertile moisture of yesterday’s spring rain, and the hungry lawn threatened to creep onto the clean white sidewalk, snipping individual blades of grass with bright chrome scissors. Each clipping was painstakingly placed into a burlap bag for later disposal.
Timothy felt the tapping on his shoulder. It was Donny, the deaf teenager from down the street who did odd jobs. The chubby boy was thrusting his little chalkboard into Timothy’s face. A misshapen smiley face filled the top of the chalkboard, and beneath that, in crinkled lettering, were the words: Good afternoon, Mr. Lane. Got work for me?
Timothy stood and snatched the chalkboard from the boy’s grasp. Using the piece of chalk that was tied to the board with a frayed string, he wrote:
Did you comb your hair with a firecracker, boy? I have work, but first make yourself presentable.
As an afterthought, Timothy drew unkempt curly hair on the smiley face before handing the board back to Donny.
The boy grinned. He shrugged and dragged a comb through his hair and then stood ramrod straight, like a soldier at attention.
Timothy pushed past the boy and marched into the garage. The boy followed. Timothy pointed at the treated pine boards stacked against the wall and gestured out the door toward the underground septic tank. Donny nodded and smiled. Timothy grinned. The boy shrugged and started hauling boards outside and laying them beside the rotting planks that covered the old tank.
For a while, Timothy stayed in the garage straightening and polishing the assorted tools above his workbench. Pleased with his handiwork, he stood with his hands on his hips and reveled in the perfect order of it.
Then he sensed someone behind him. He turned, expecting to see Donny standing in the doorway. But it wasn’t Donny. It was the dog from next door. It sat back on its haunches, glaring insolently at him, its mouth hanging slightly open and curled upward in a belligerent grin. Gleaming teeth the color of polished bone jutted sharple from its crocodilian maw.
But it wasn’t the dog’s mouth that froze Timothy’s face and sent an electric tremble through his clenching hands. It was the dog’s coat. The fur was silver-gray. Why should the color of the mutt’s fur both him so?
“Shoo. Get out, you mongrel bitch.” Timothy stomped a foot toward the dog.
It didn’t move. It just resettled itself and kept staring.
Timothy glimpsed a flash of red at the tips of the dog’s feet. At first, he thought the dog’s feet were torn and that fresh blood still oozed from its toes. But a moment later he recognized what it was. Nail polish. The dog was wearing nail polish. Timothy’s stomach was doing somersaults. The nail polish was the exact same color favored by Timothy’s mother – bright, arterial red.
And now Timothy knew why the color of the dog’s coat bothered him so. The dog’s fur – that shade of silver-gray – was identical to that of his mother’s hair.
Timothy took a step back.
The dog cocked its head and the smile broadened into the baring of a predator’s fangs.
Timothy jumped back. On the corner of the workbench he painfully barked his spine. But then he spotted a brown piece of food logged in the beast’s teeth, and his revulsion and anger overcame his fear. It was then that Timothy decided; the dog must die.
Then Donny appeared in the doorway holding the board. He pointed at a dark discoloration in the center of the board – a knot. It was a perfect circle, and tendrils spun outward from its center like grasping arms. The boy grinned inanely, proud of his discovery. The dog yipped and Donny knely down, the board clattering forgotten to the floor. The dog leaped into his arms and licked his face.
Timothy shook his head. The moment was shattered. It was just a mangy dog, nothing more. He clamped a hand on Danny’s shoulder and gestured at the house next door.
Donny peered at him, looked down at the dog, and then he seemed to understand. He headed next door with the dog clutched tightly in his arms.
Timothy leaned against the doorjamb, his knees still shaking. He watched the boy and the dog cross the lawn. With the dog, he would have to take matters into his own hands. The mutt was an affront to God’s order, but God didn’t always have the time to wipe each and every spec of rancid flesh from the corners of his world. For this, God had Timothy.
Secure in the knowledge of his path forward, Timothy whistled while he swept the garage clean of each and every speck of dirt.
***
Timothy watched out his kitchen window as the dog meandered, nose to the ground, over to the sausage link. The chamomile tea he was sipping warmed his throat, and he smiled; he was enjoying the show. The dog zigzagged closer to the meat, rooting in the grass with its nose.
Azaleas were the answer. Timothy remembered reading somewhere that azaleas were poison, that the nectar of azalea flowers was the deadliest part of the plant and that even bee honey produced from azalea flowers was deadly if ingested. A quick trip to the library to confirm his memory and a plan was formed. The azaleas that lined one edge of his property provided more than enough nectar to lace the sausage with poison. Now he could just watch as the greedy little mutt sniffed its way to a painful death.
“That’s it, you canine cretin. It’s din-din time.” The cup and saucer clattered in Tomthy’s hands. He set them down and pressed his face to the window. “Come on. Come on.”
The dog arrived at the sausage. It sniffed the link, but instead of gobbling it up, the terrier sat down and tossed back its head. It turned to stare at Timothy.
He felt the blood drain from his face.
His mother had thrown her head back just like that when she was exposed to something she found distasteful. He could see her perched at the dining room table, her pale collar buttoned close to her throat, staring at the leg of lamb he had prepared. “Overcooked,” she said, dropping her napkin over the meat and tossing back her head.
Just like the dog.
He pulled the curtain shut with trembling hands.
***
Soaking in the bathtub, his chin resting on the surface of the scalding hot water, Timothy focused on leaving the madness of the disorderly world behind. He felt the hot water pressing against his lobster-red skin, enveloping him, immobilizing him, and comforting him like a fetus in the womb. This was his special place, the sactuary where he could till the soil of his inner self – soil burnt fallow by his constant battle against the forces of chaos.
The dog was a thing of chaos; Timothy knew that now. Like his mother. Not the mother of his youth – the role model for his perfection – but the mother of later years. The mother who left her clothes lying on the floor, who burned dinner in the oven until it was charred black, and who deposited snot-filled Kleenexes around the house like germ-ridden landmines. But she was gone now, and that dog was here.
The dog had eventually pranced back to its yard, after giving the tainted sausage one last disdainful sniff. Timothy picked up the sausage with gloved hands and tossed it into a gap in the boards covering the septic tank. The dog watched him while chewing on a rubber bone clasped between its nail-polished forepaws.
Timothy sat up fast. Water surged over the edge of the tub onto the white tile floor, but he didn’t care. He had an idea, and it was perfect.
***
Later that afternoon, Timothy stood in his kitchen with the lights out, peering through a crack in the curtains into the backyard of his next-door neighboor. His pale face was halved by the sunlight that shone through the opening. The left side of his face was animated – a quivering grin and a glistening eye in the spotlight. The right side of his face was shrouded in darkness – invisible, unknowable, and as lifeless as the dark side of the moon.
They were out there, sitting within the vine-festooned gazebo. Naomi, Donny, and the Dog. A silver teapot was perched on the wrought iron table in the center of the gazebo. Naomi’s tanned legs were crossed, a cup and a saucer resting in her lap. Donny clutched his cup and saucer with exaggerated care in a two-handed grip, as if it were priceless bone china rather than dollar store cermic.
Timothy grimaced with disgust. The quain tea party reminded him of the last year of his mother’s life, the way she lounged in the same gazebo with Donny and the widow next door. For Timothy, his mother’s fraternization with their dysfunctional neighbor and the mental deficient was one of the many signs of her descent into disorder and madness.
And now, the widow’s niece had taken the widow’s place, and instead of his mother, the Dog now leaned forward expectantly and listened to the conversation, as if anything spoken within the wretched gazebo was of the greatest import.
Timothy watched, unblinking, the anger growing within his chest – twisting and twining about his hear like a tenacious weed – until all he could feel was the cold, heavy constriction of his thorny hatred.
An hour later, Naomi called the Dog into her house. The Dog left the rubber bone behind. Perfect. Timothy wore gloves to retrieve the dog toy and carry it back to his yard. The boards were already in place beside the old septic tank. He laid one of the new boards across the gap at the center of the old planking and placed the chew toy at the end of the board. He anchored one end of the board with a fireplace log and stood back to survey his handiwork. It should work.
He busied himself picking oak leaves from the lawn while he waited for the Dog to come back outside. He didn’t have to wait long. The screen door banged shut and a few seconds later, he glanced over at the house next door. The Dog was walking in circles on the back porch, occasionally stopping to scratch at the weathered flooring, as if its toy were buring beneath the wood.
Timothy smiled and took a deep breath. This was going to be too easy.
“Here…doggy,” he whispered.
The Dog didn’t respond; it just kept sniffing at the porch.
Timothy whistled. The Dog’s ears perked up and it swiveled its head toward Timothy.
“That’s right,” Timothy said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Come to daddy.” He gestured at the rubber bone at the end of the plank. His hands were shaking.
The Dog leaped off the porch and sprinted to Timothy’s side. Timothy held his breath. The Dog place one paw on the end of the new board and then pulled it back. It looked up at Timothy and cocked its head.
God, even its yes look like Mother’s.
Timothy didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded toward the chew toy.
The Dog’s eyes narrowed, and then it made its decision. Scooting on its belly like a soldier under barbed wire, the dog inched down the board to the toy.
Timothy felt his heart beating in the back of his throat and his face went numb.
The Dog snatched up the toy in its mouth.
Timothy kicked the log off the end of the board.
The Dog whirled as if bitten, and before the board began to fall, it leaped upward, higher than Timothy would have thought possible, and his him in the chest. Timothy caught the Dog.
It took a moment for the enormity of the situation to hit Timothy’s brain. He was holding a dog – a filthy, slobbering, flea-ridden mutt.
Timothy screamed, hoarse and guttural.
He tried to fling the Dog away, but its bright-red nails caught in his shirt. He stomped about like a barefoot man in a fire ant bed. He took a step back and heard a wet cracking sound. By the time he realized what the boice was – the boards covering the septic tank splintering beneath his weight – he lost his balance, and he was falling.
The Dog jumped free and Timothy disappeared into the black pit of the septic tank.
Darkness. Stench. Pain. This was Timothy’s world when he blinked the warming purple dots from his vision. Above him, perhaps twenty feet, a ragged line of light marked the break in the boards, but where Timothy flailed in the muck, no light reached. He dogpaddled around the circumference of the tank, and the hysteria was already chortling up his throat when he discovered the ledge. Some kind of outcropping jutted from one wall of the tank five feet below the surface of the sewage. He was just able to stand on it and maintain his balance by treading himself upright with his hands.
Must not panic, he thought. But his imagination was running wild. The wtness, the filth, the awful wrongness in which he soaked seemed about to break through his skin. And if that happened, he would be foul, corrupted – no better than the Dog, no better than his mother.
When he thought of his mother, his breathing hastened. He closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep, steady breaths.
Something bubbled nearby, and he almost panicked, almost screamed. But if he started screaming, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop until he passed out and sank into the fetid depths.
Escape. How could he escape? The walls were slick. No way to climb out. He needed help, but the street was eighty yards away. From down here, surrounded by tons of dirt and steel, his voice would never reach the road.
What if he -
A rattling sounded from above. Someone was at the top of the tank. He heard the hollow thump of boards knocking together. Thank God.
“Hey, I’m down here!” His voice echoed hollowly off the metal walls.
He listened for an answer, stared at the narrow strip of sunlight above.
Then the strip of light was halved.
“Hey,” he screamed, his voice tearing the lining of his throat.
The strip of light disappeared, and he realized it hadn’t been dark before.
Now it was dark.
Then he heard the pounding, and he began to scream in earnest, jumping as he yelled. He slipped off the ledge and his mouth filled with warm and bitter fluid. He spit and gagged.
Above, the pounding stopped.
Timothy flailed his arms out in the darkness, his mind a babbling cacophony, as if his head was stuffed to bursting with screaming strangers.
His hand touched something like twigs and he grasped it tightly, pulling at the one solid thing in a pool of stagnant ooze.
It wasn’t until he pulled the thing up on the ledge beside him that he realized what it was. He tried to push the thing away, but his hand would not uncurl, would not release his mother’s clutching fingers.
***
The Dog sat back on her haunches, her chew toy resting between her forepaws, and watched Donny as he pounded the last nail into the new boards covering the septic tank.
Donny looked down at his work and smiled. Mr. Timothy was going to be so proud, so happy. Donny knew this, for the boards were perfectly aligned, exactly plumb – a masterpiece of order.
After Donny put the hammer and nails back in the workshop and walked to the front of the house, he realized he was getting late. He climbed onto his bike and pedaled away.
The Dog stood in the driveway, watching the boy disappear around the corner. The Dog’s tongue lolled out the side of her mouth.
To a passerby, she might have seemed to be smiling.
