Hotel of the Saints (17 page)

“I can always tell when you're about to go for home improvements.”

I swear my sister has a detector that tells her when I'm getting ready for sex. Except we call it home improvements. And in a way, it does improve our home life. Even afterward. Because our half-empty tube of caulking evokes Steve from Eagle's on Division, the glue gun Matthew from the South Hill Ernst's, the bicycle pump Hal from the General Store.
Home improvements.

I shine my flashlight toward a huge ponderosa. “At least they're my age.”

“Is that your only prerequisite?”

“You …”

“Yes?”

“Go on, have your intense study sessions with your young man.”

“Between the two of us, we've really split up the entire man-department. Has that ever occurred to you, Libby?”

“I don't want to be analyzed. I'm so tired, I can barely hold this flashlight.”

Ev stops the car.

“It's unlikely Basil made it this far anyhow. Uphill at that.”

We get out. Lean against the side of the car.

Ev opens a prescription bottle, swallows two pills. “Let me give you some speed,” she offers, and holds the bottle out to me.

I hesitate, such a good citizen when it comes to obeying the rule about not taking someone else's medication. “Sure,” I say.

But when she hands me the bottle, it drops and the pills scatter on the ground. At least a dozen geese get to them before we can, jabbing, raising their heads as they swallow, the insides of their beaks voracious as they shriek for more.

“Jesus Christ,” Ev says.

I rub my arms, wishing I'd worn my hooded sweatshirt instead of this cotton blouse. “What will they be like once the speed starts working?”

“Straight out of Hitchcock. The birds. Only worse. Dive-bomber geese.”

“I don't want to be around for that.”

“Well, they stole my speed. So they deserve it.”

“That's vindictive.” In the voice that Ev has used to analyze me, I add, “It is unprofessional to apply standards of human conscience and responsibility to animals.”

She looks at me, sharply.

“It's not nice.”

“Nice?”

“Not fucking nice. Okay? It's not fucking nice. Is that better?”

“I can't stand being near you when you get vulgar.”

“Let's just find Basil.” My voice skids. “Please?”

“Sure.” She nods, eyes worried. Worried for me. “Sure, Libby.”

Silently, we drive to our house, and after Ev parks her station wagon, we walk once again downstream along the river trail. A dank smell rises from the stagnant water. Dawn strips the parched embankment, reveals the barren earth. A
dangerous landscape to get lost in. For any living being.
Tumbleweeds careen across the cracked ground, yielding instant blooms of dust. What has survived of the vegetation here is amber and brown, as invariably this time of year.

When we pass a torn, matted blanket, I wonder if anyone slept on it last night. Basil maybe? “Basil?” I call his name, determined to make him safe once again.

Across the river, the hillside is still undeveloped. Scrawny bushes and trees straggle up the incline, where a structure of tarps and lumber hangs at a precarious tilt, half hidden by sumacs and weeds. Just a week ago this shack wasn't here. I'm terrified for the people who live in it. They feel endangered. Like Basil. How devastating it would be to look from a place like that across the water, to see the lamps in the houses of Lower Crossing, and to realize that the smoke rising from the chimneys means warmth for others—not you.

“You think I should drive around some more?” Ev asks. In her round face, her chin is skinny, so skinny. “You could check around here.”

I stop. Touch her chin with one finger.

“Libby? What is it?”

“I want to know what happens when people … when they no longer have whatever it was that once used to … sustain them.”

“Libby-”

“What happens then? When they no longer have that?”

“Maybe I should stay with you and look for Basil.”

“No. It's better to search as many areas as possible. I'll double back close to the water.”

She hesitates. With one shoe, she works free a pebble, nudges it toward a log.

“Go.” I set my hands on her shoulders, gently, steer her in the opposite direction, and head toward the broken stone pillars that used to support a bridge. On the pebbled bank lies a rusted stovepipe, and I step across it and onto a flat rock that, until recently, was covered by water. Where the pillars jut from the riverbed, they obstruct the last trickle of current as it pursues its way around them.

It's getting lighter when I reach our neighborhood. Before starting up the hill to our house, I glance around once more. To the east, Monroe Street Bridge and the taller buildings of downtown. To the west—

Whimpering.

“Basil?” I ask softly. “Basil?”

And hear.

Whimpering. Again.

Hear him whimpering.

And start shouting: “Basil—oh my God—” I crash through tangled branches, crash toward the whimpering, and still I don't see him—not till I stop altogether and listen, listen hard—and there he lies, near the bottom of our path, where he must have been snagged all night, in one of those ditches carved by debris that the river dumped when it retreated

Basil tries to crawl toward me, whimpering, but his hindquarters are wedged beneath branches and briars.

“Don't…” I'm crying. “I'll get you out.”

Still, he tries to hoist himself up again, launch himself in my direction as if he were forever the pup we took home from Spokanimal. But his legs tremble. Buckle.

Branches snap around me as I burrow toward his den, his prison. “I'll get you out.”

He howls, barks, his throat raw, worn out overnight. While I didn't hear him. While I searched in the wrong places. While all along he was nearby.

“Sshhh,” I murmur to him. “I'm almost there, Basil. Lie still. Ev and I looked for you all night. We did. We didn't sleep. Sshhh, Basil.” What did he think all alone here? That this was the end? That he would never see us again? Twigs scratch my face, my arms, and I'm sweating hard. I want to have my hands on his long, sweet face, want to feel the life-warmth of his fur so much that I, too, tremble. Tremble with a love for him more fierce than anything I've felt for my sister or my parents. Because he is out of my reach now. So terribly close. And then—“And
then …,” Jesse would say—
I'm crouching next to Basil, our feet in the shallow lick of river.

“Let's get you out of here, Basil.”

I don't trust it, that river, suspect it of still plotting to claim my dog. But maybe being claimed by the river would be better for him than being deserted by his body. Carefully, I try to lift him across the barrier of twigs and trash and stones.

“And
then?”

“And then, Jesse, your grandmother will drum us a path right up this hill, and I'll carry Basil up to our house, and—”

But it's not that easy. He's too heavy for me, and I have to set him back down. My belly feels tight. Queasy. “Stay,” I tell Basil.
And laugh. “What else is there for you to do, huh?” With both hands and feet I thrash about, open a gap for us, all along continuing eye contact with Basil. “I promise I won't leave you behind. Ev gave me speed. I could shlep fifteen dogs like you up that hill. Fifteen hundred zillion dogs. You hear that?” I use my back to break us a wedge out of the thicket. “So don't you worry, Basil. I'll get you out of here. I will.”

“And then, Libby?”

I raise Basil to his feet. But he is too shaky, too weak to stand alone. I straddle him without adding my burden to his, take off my blouse, and loop it beneath his belly. I hold on to the fabric, letting it support him so he doesn't have to carry his own weight. “We should get you some of Ev's speed. That's why I got tons of energy. Because of Ev's speed. I can do this for hours, Basil. For days. That's how strong I am. And with some of that speed, you'd be able to leap right out of here and up that hill.”

But it takes us more than an hour to reach the top of the path that Basil used to race up in seconds—
bullet, my bullet—
coming at me grinning, tongue and tail flopping. “You were the fastest dog ever,” I tell him. “Faster than Ev's divebomber geese on speed. How do you think they're feeling now, huh? Now, if Jesse were telling you about those geese, they'd be doing cartwheels in the sky. They'd swoop down for you, their wings one big parachute, and carry you up to the house.”

Once I get him inside the house, Basil won't eat, won't even drink water. I drag his blanket from the kitchen into the living room, settle him in front of the fireplace, build him a summer fire to stop us both from shaking.

For five months Ev and I keep him going: with medicine; with food; with visits to Dr. Sylvia; with Basil stories that we've both heard before but need to hear again. Now and then we get silly with him, remind him how we chose him over his brother, even demonstrate how he liked to crouch low before doing his crazy dance around us. He blinks at my rendition of his crazy dance. Frowns, if it's possible for a dog to frown.

I remind him that we still have to hold our vigil outside the gay bar, take Ev along, and sit on the curb across from the bar. “You can sleep while we wait for the rednecks, but once they get there, you'll have to look ferocious.”

When Gloria boils the hearts of five chickens for Basil, he refuses; but when she mashes them with fudge and potato chips—“Some bloody valentine,” Ev sings—Basil scarfs the whole mess down the way he hasn't scarfed anything in months. So vigorously does he lick his bowl that it skids across the kitchen floor while he chases it with his tongue, lapping, jostling.

“Such a strong dog,” Ev praises him.

“Protein plus the three major food groups,” Gloria says. “Sugar, salt, and grease.”

From then on we concoct Gloria's bloody valentine every day and grind Basil's medicine into it. We leave the house only for work or classes or groceries. No movies. No dinners out. We want to be home with Basil. For hours we sit with him by the fireplace, stroke his thick pelt, watch the river through the French doors, the trees as they cast off golden and red leaves in their own flowing motion. One morning we spot a bald eagle. The following day a moose swimming parallel to shore. We bring our father's binoculars from the attic, and whenever we
notice movement on the water, we report to Basil what's out there.

And it does slow our season of parting from him. Makes us easier with each other. One afternoon we count five deer in the clearing. From then on we count everything for him: geese, quails, song birds, squirrels. Friends bring food. Toys for Basil. A bird feeder. Our first bird at the feeder is plump and red-breasted. It arrives when Moss is visiting.

“A cardinal,” Ev tells Basil. “Look at the cardinal. In the feeder out there. Basil? Look.”

“I think cardinals have peaked heads,” Moss says. “You really should learn the names before you confuse Basil.”

Two days later she is back with a guide to Northwestern birds that she's bought at Auntie's Bookstore. We study the pictures, notice details we haven't seen that clearly before. As children we were always in motion, as adults too busy. Now we have made a choice to be here. To see. To take shifts with Basil.

He never recovers. That night by the river has hurled him forward into old age, has rendered him helpless. Once he is no longer able to raise himself to his legs, we rig up a canvas sling—our log carrier—to hold him up and help him outside. If he soils himself, he shifts his head aside as if to protect us from the shame in his eyes. Tenderly, we clean him up, tell him we don't mind. But away from him in the bathroom we gag, muffle the sounds so he won't hear us.

One Saturday afternoon Jesse tries to get Basil to raise his head by unwrapping the rawhide strips he's brought. Not too long ago, just the sound of cellophane would get Basil excited, but now he won't even sniff Jesse's hand when he extends the rawhide.

“He's hollow inside from hurting,” Jesse explains. “And loopy.”

“Loopy …” Ev says. “How do you mean loopy?”

“All loopy like with the moon at night and it being sunshine somewhere else but you can climb up behind the loopiness and climb up like a bear climbing a telephone pole like my dad when he went to the airport and then climbed up a telephone pole so he could get on the airplane and then I had to climb up the telephone pole when his airplane came back so I could get him back down.”

“Now I understand exactly what it means,” Ev says gently. “Thank you.”

Early the following morning, before the Street Café opens, Moss comes over to give Basil one of her massages. She lies next to him on the rug, and while she kneads the toes on his front legs, she hums. It's become a ritual between them: she'll hum; he'll lean his snout against her high, curved forehead and close his eyes as if he were meditating with her. “There …” she'll say as she scoops her fingertips into the crevices between his black pads. “You like that, oh yes.” And she'll progress to his hind legs, his flanks.

“Moss?” Ev asks. “Do you ever wish you had finished divinity school?”

“Not really.” She keeps rubbing Basil's belly.

“You would have made a good minister.”

“Yes. But I like this here better.” She flattens her hands across Basil's ears. “It may be time … soon, to let Basilboy have his last nap?”

I nod. “It's what Dr. Sylvia says too.”

But my sister is shaking her head.

“One more week?” I ask her.

“I can't—I can't do it, Libby.”

“I'll go,” Moss offers. “I'll go in your place, Ev.”

“I hate to be like this. So selfish and—”