Hotel of the Saints (18 page)

“It would freak Basilboy out to see you so upset,” Moss says firmly. “Whoever goes with him has to stay calm.”

“One more week,” I tell Moss.

It's beginning to snow the morning Ev helps me to lift Basil onto the back seat of Moss's car. Ev has been saying goodbye to him for the last hour, and she's still stroking his head.

“Okay now?” I kiss her cheek, nudge her toward the house.

Then I slide in next to Basil, position him across my knees. For a large dog, he has become impossibly light. Jesse was right: all the hurting has indeed hollowed Basil out. Moss is backing up, jerking the stick shift as if she were Catherine the Great auditioning a horse. I feel awful: here I am with my dog on his way to die, and once again I'm thinking smut.

“I'm sorry, Moss,” I say.

She glances at me in the mirror, doesn't ask what I'm sorry for, “It's okay.”

As she drives north on Division, she hits a pothole, and Basil's head bounces against my breasts. He peers at me as if apologizing. Considerate even now. But most of all so very tired. There is no more puppy left in him.

I cradle him against me, whisper a lie. “It'll be all right… all right.”

On both sides of Division, the stores and strip malls are still closed, making it seem that today hasn't begun yet, that we're
on river time—
and why not?—
stuck in that time zone an hour or two behind everyone else, making us immune to whatever is to come. But as soon as I think that, it all changes, and we're driving fast, so fast—on fast-forward, that's how fast—until Moss brakes hard, swerves to the edge of the road.

I hold on to Basil. “Is it icy out there?”

Her tires crush tumbleweeds that are dusted with white, and as her car rocks to an abrupt halt, she's laughing. Laughing?

“Moss?”

“Talk about location.” She motions to a billboard with an arrow:
Taxidermist Turn Here.

I stare at the billboard, at Moss, and then both of us are off laughing, a grim laughter that rides on tears.

“We could—” Moss hiccups. “We could bring Basilboy here.”

He hears his name, raises his head weakly.

“Afterward,” she adds. “Instead of letting them cremate him.”

“And then what? Prop him up at the Street Café?”

“He'd look real handsome next to the cake display.”

I'm howling with laughter. “You know how much that dog loves chocolate.”

But when Moss turns to glance at Basil and me, it's plain that she isn't kidding.

“You're not kidding,” I say.

“We can take him to the vet and then come back here with him.”

“No, Moss.” I slide one hand down my chin, wipe tears into my neck.

“I have two reasons. Okay?”

“Just two?”

“One: his fur is still full.”

I run my hand up his back, make his thick yellow hair stand up, smooth it down again. At home, Ev will already have thrown out his fudge jar. Stored his toys and blanket in the attic. To shield me from anything that could possibly remind me of him. As if he didn't live inside my heart. From that, I don't need protection.

“And, two,” Moss is saying, “he would look better stuffed than he did these last few months —not so skinny.”

“No, Moss.”

“The taxidermist can fix Basilboy up so he can stand by himself. And I'll pay half. You and Ev can split the other half.”

“No, Moss.”

“Or I can stuff him myself.”

“You're not serious.”

“I did taxidermy when I was fifteen. Because I loved the pizza man across from my high school.”

“What does that have to do with —”

“He did taxidermy for a hobby.”

“God, I hope he washed his hands.”

“He had all those stuffed animals on pedestals along the walls of his pizza parlor. I asked if I could take lessons from him.”

“Don't listen to her, Basil.”

“I wanted to be around the pizza man more. Without gaining twenty pounds.”

“Of course. How much pizza can anyone eat? The next logical step had to be taxidermy.”

“His pizza wasn't that good.… But he taught me how to do a couple of birds. Small ones. A dove. Two parakeets. Then my brother's hamster died.”

“Let me guess. You eternalized your brother's hamster.”

“By then I was no longer interested in things that didn't breathe. I liked the expressions of the animals, their poses, but I wanted them in motion, and it was only natural that I stopped loving the pizza man. He never noticed—the love
or
the not-love. But I sent my brother to him. He still has the hamster. Except it's fatter now than it used to be.”

“Sounds like your pizza man put too much stuffing inside.”

“He was always putting too much cheese on pizzas.”

For an instant there I think I hear the jiggling of Basil's collar, even though he's not moving, and I know I'll continue to hear that sound for months after he's dead. But now the jiggling is coming from Moss, from her knee against the key chain against the steering column as she starts the car and already we're in the vet's parking lot and I'm carrying Basil into Dr. Sylvia's office by myself—that's how light he is, how impossibly light—and Moss is steadying my arm while I stand next to a metal table, breathing animal fear and disinfectants, cradling Basil's head in my palms as I did once before when Dr. Sylvia was sticking a needle into him.

Except that day he did wake up again.

He was just a year old, and we'd been reluctant to get him neutered, because we didn't want to mess with his personality. Besides, we figured he'd outgrow his restlessness and stop barking by the door at dawn, ready to chase squirrels and skunks and pheasants and whatever else he might scare up in the undergrowth along the river.

Three evenings in a row he came home skunked so thoroughly that tomato juice wouldn't get the stink out of his fur. When Gloria said to rinse him with douche and water—a solution of one to four—I didn't want to, because I was embarrassed the cashier at Rosauer's might think I poured that kind of junk
into myself when every self-respecting woman knows how bad it is for your insides. But Ev—simply to prove to me she didn't care what others thought of her—drove to Rosauer's and returned with a dozen bottles of douche in four flavors, just douche, not bothering to buy at least a few other items for camouflage. Then she bragged, of course, how she'd looked straight at the man who rang them up, daring him to make one single comment.

Turned out we needed just three bottles. That's how well the douche killed even the worst odors. Made me shudder to think what it's really sold for. Still, from then on we kept stocked up on douche, Ev's assignment.

One afternoon Basil ran home wailing, head fringed with porcupine quills that stuck out like Tammy Faye Bakker's eyelashes. Most of them we extricated, careful not to leave any ends in Basil's skin even though he thrashed about, his tongue swollen. We were afraid he was having convulsions, because he kept curling his tongue outward as if he were trying to push something from his throat. When Ev and I finally managed to pry his jaw apart, we could see that his gums and the roof of his mouth were pierced by dozens of quills, and we drove him to Dr. Sylvia's clinic.

To get rid of Tammy Faye, the vet said, she had to put Basil out. “You may as well get him fixed at the same time,” she suggested. “It'll settle him down considerably. And it's the responsible thing to do.”

Ev and I were too exhausted—from struggling with Basil; from dreading yet another skunking—to protest. “So he went in for porcupine quills and came out deballed,” was the story we told our friends, “and he's been staying away from porcupines ever since.”

It turned into the kind of story so familiar you hear yourself
using the same words, the same inflections, the same pauses—all in the same sequence of words and inflections and pauses—while already you anticipate the same laughter and even resort to manipulating that laughter by starting it yourself. “So he went in for porcupine quills and came out deballed …”
pause pause pause

Beneath my hands, Basil's skull feels gaunt—

pause pause
“… and he's been staying away from porcupines ever since.”
Laugh track. Turn it on. Blast it to its max. Run it and rerun it.
“So he went in for porcupine quills and—”

“And then?” Jesse asks me.

Gaunt, so gaunt, his skull, beneath my hands—

“And then?”

Ah,
Jesse.
He's heard that old story many times, except for him we substituted neutered for deballed. “So he went in for porcupine quills and came out neutered …”
pause pause pause laugh track number
15

Dr. Sylvia sinks her needle into Basil —

belly laughter louder laugh track number 17 laugh track number
”… and he's been staying away from porcupines ever since.” Such a used-up story. And no longer funny.

“What does 'neutered' mean, Libby?” Jesse asked me the first time he heard the porcupine story.

“So he can't make puppies.”

“Why not?”

“Because—You have such good questions, Jess.”

“Why not, Libby?”

“Because there are already too many dogs around that no one takes care of.”

“You and I can take care of Basil's puppies.”

Dr. Sylvia's needle —

I try to evoke Basil as a puppy, but I can't see him. It's a failure of imagination. A failure of resurrection. All I get are fragments of him as a young dog: the hayloft smell of his fur, sun and dust; that slipped note when his barking turned high with excitement; the rumble of contentment in his belly after he ate…. But I cannot see him as a puppy.

That needle—

“—and he's been staying away from porcupines ever since.” Forever she sinks that needle into Basil, now—

“—been staying away from porcupines ever since staying away from porcupines ever since away from porcupines ever since from porcupines ever since porcupines ever—”

For what that needle is about to do, it is shockingly small. I want to look away from it, but I don't let myself. I hum to Basil, hum the way Moss does when she massages him. Moss knows. How to hum. How to stand close behind me —so quiet, quiet now—

“And then?” Jesse asks. “And then, Libby?
”

Red frogs with three tongues. Drums made from the heads of lions and alligators. Home improvements. My mother in her rain-beaded garden. Eagles and moose. Moss's garbanzo stew. Bears that live in hedges. The green window in our plant shop.
If I want to, I can believe what I already know in my gut: that what nurtures us, will also sustain us at times of pain if we choose to go there.
Geese doing cartwheels in the sky. The first apples on Gloria's trees. My father double-tying my orange life vest. Songbirds at our feeders. Stars talking to me through Jesse's glass roof. My sister and I walking to the edge of our garden. Far below us, the river flows heavy and gray and cold. But it doesn't have to be winter.
It can be summer. Still and again. And my sister can enter the current. I can follow her, immerse myself in whatever pain and loss are mine, let myself sink beneath the surface, where the river will continue to carry me. Whenever I emerge to tears, I search for my sisters shining back and follow once again until she reaches the opposite bank, and when she grips a branch of the cotton-wood tree, I'll leap for one close to hers. While the current guides our legs downstream, my sister and I hold on to the supple branches, arms taut, while the rest of our bodies are floating. Floating that feels like flying.

I trace the familiar ridge of bone up the length of Basil's head between his eyes and ears—so quiet, quiet now—and take my hands from him, release him. And still feel the imprint of his skull. When I flatten my palms against each other, preserving Basil between them, I finally can see him, a yellow pup, tongue flopping—
bullet, my bullet—
running toward me at dusk. I can go there again—to that place at dusk where Basil runs toward me forever. Where Basil swims with Jesse, though he never liked the water.
Floating that feels like flying, Jesse. Flying that feels like floating. While all along the river continues to hold the light. Holds us the way it holds the light. The way I hold on to the cottonwood branches. I reach up with one arm. Seize a handful of leaves. A few of them will get away when we swim home, but the rest I'll stick into a vase. Come morning, they'll still have the texture of heavy silk.

Ursula Hegi is the author of eight critically acclaimed books, including
Intrusions, Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, Tearing the Silence,
and
The Vision of Emma Blau.
She lives in New York State.