Walkin’ the Dog
Tom Gest checks the door of Dorm C to make sure it’s secure and he peers through the safety glass. The inmates seem to have settled down. Their orange jumpsuits hang from the ends of bunkbeds like emaciated spirits. There is a faint light coming from the far end of the barricks-style dormitory, from the restroom and shower area. But that is the responsibility of the guard in the surveillance station. Tom pauses for a moment to notice his own ghostly reflection in the thick glass. His dark hair is neatly trimmed, as is his beard and mustache, but there appear to be a few more filaments of white, and the creases around his eyes are deeper set. There is no doubt about it: Tom is becoming his father. He carries in his wallet a laminated black-and-white photo of his father from his fiftieth birthday party; Tom is three months away from forty-seven.
He reaches into the pocket of his green uniform pants for the watch he keeps there. His fingers have to work past the envelope which is folded in half. He regrets wanting to know the time; he had been able to put the envelope and its contents out of his mind for a while. It’s just before midnight, more than six hours until his shift is finished. He puts the watch away, but in the opposite pocket, with his Chapstick and his lucky Kennedy half-dollar. He’s had the fifty-cent piece for over thirty-five years. Has it brought him any luck? His transfer request was rejected again; again for being incomplete.
When Nancy calls tomorrow and eventually asks about his transfer, Tom will be able to report that the paperwork is still in the system. His fellow guards often complain about the bureaucracy of the Department of Corrections, and Tom has complained too, but now he is comforted by its tendency toward stagnation, its unflagging support of the status quo.
He feels the outline of the folded envelope in his pocket.
Tom will check the other dormitories in Building Two and make sure that it takes about an hour, then he can justify a coffee and a smoke. He will leave Little Muddy Correctional Center at six a.m. with his body and mind in tact. Again he feels the shape of the envelope in his pocket. He’ll take another transfer form when he leaves the prison, to fill out later when the kids are at school.
Tom turns his Jeep into the long gravel drive which runs in a straight line past the big front yard and the brown two-story house and the man-made fish pond in back. He maneuvers around the blue Corolla fringed in rust that Nancy’s daughter drives, then he parks in front of the garage, which also serves as a workshop and storage for the riding mower and other equipment. Tom can’t see inside because the door is down but he thinks of how the garage is cluttered with kids’ stuff—bicycles, skateboards, roller blades—and partially completed projects, particularly a pine bookcase he’s been working on for over a year. Barely more than its frame is assembled.
He steps out of the Jeep and remembers all the weeds growing in the drive. He needs to spray some herbicide and put down a new layer of gravel. He knows it won’t be done any time soon, probably it will never be done by him.
Yeller is whining in her kennel next to the garage. The big Lab’s tail beats loudly against the metal fence.
“I hear you, girl.” Tom takes a five-gallon plastic bucket from in front of the garage and fills it with water from the garage spigot. The rim of the bucket has been chewed ragged by Yeller. He carries the heavy bucket to the kennel and unlatches the gate with his free hand. Yeller has been standing at the gate but backs away on her hind legs to let Tom enter with the water. Inside the kennel is a dilapidated wooden dog house, yesterday’s water bucket and a large metal food bowl, which is turned upside down and caked in mud.
While Yeller drinks noisily from the bucket, Tom observes there’s about five pounds of dog shit in the kennel. Matt, Nancy’s oldest son, was supposed to clean out the kennel yesterday after basketball practice—she’s his dog—but he obviously neglected the chore. At least on a cool fall day the flies and the stench aren’t as bad as they might be.
Tom picks up the muddy bowl then goes to the garage to wash it and fill it with dry food. He returns it to the kennel and stands there petting Yeller, his hand feeling the powerful muscles of her back, while she devours the food; the crunching is so loud it could be her teeth that are being ground to bits. Later he will take her to the pasture behind their house and let her run. For now Tom leaves Yeller to her food. It’s time to check the progress of the kids getting ready for school.
Tom goes into the house through the back door, which brings him into the dining area of the lower level’s great room. The dining-room table is supposed to seat eight, but right now there are so many books and backpacks and other stray debris, including a pair of basketball shoes, that there is just one spot carved out for actual dining, and it is occupied by a cereal bowl half-full with milk and a few bits of cornflakes. It could be from breakfast, or last night’s snack.
The house was built in the seventies, so the concept of having the living room, kitchen and dining area essentially be one large room was ahead of its time. The realtor said the great room, with its fireplace, exposed beams and hardwood floor in the kitchen, is an important selling point. It and the four nice size bedrooms upstairs should more than compensate for the half-bath downstairs with its toilet, countertop and basin all in bright orange—“men-at-work orange,” the realtor called it. The little bathroom has never appealed to Tom and Nancy, and they always intended to remodel it. Then Nancy was in graduate school and there was the mess with Nancy’s second husband, the internist, over the terms of custody and support payments. Their six years in the house, and for that matter their eight years of marriage, have slipped by so quickly.
Officially the house isn’t listed yet—there’s no for-sale sign in the yard—but the realtor is keeping it in mind. Nancy is anxious for the house to be put on the market and to sell, so that Tom and the kids can join her in Jacksonville, where she is the nurse practitioner and licensed midwife at a rural health clinic. She wants to buy a house in Jacksonville—she’s been living in a one-bedroom apartment for the past six weeks. In fact, there’s a rambling Victorian that Nancy has inquired about. Glen Fork Correctional Center is twenty-two miles from Jacksonville, “but less than twenty minutes by interstate,” Nancy has reminded Tom a few times.
When she calls today, she will use that phrase Tom has come to hate: suspended animation. She will say, “Any news on your transfer?” Tom will say no, it’s still in the system. Then Nancy will say, “If you don’t hear tomorrow, can you call Springfield? I just feel like we’re in a state of suspended animation—I want to flip some switch so that our lives will start moving forward again.” I know, hon, I know.
From upstairs Tom hears the dull thuds and muffled footsteps of the kids getting ready for school. He also smells the fresh coffee in the kitchen. Since starting college in the fall, Allyson has become a coffee drinker, and already she makes it better than her mom. Nancy’s is either too weak or too strong, never the same twice. Allyson is Nancy’s from her first husband, a documentary film producer for public television who keeps in touch and has always sent money when it’s due. Tom goes to the kitchen and pours himself a cup of steaming coffee. It will probably affect his sleep but he can’t resist. Besides, he doesn’t seem to sleep more than three or four hours no matter how exhausted he feels.
Tom stands at the kitchen counter drinking the good hot coffee and craving a cigarette. Later he’ll go on the deck for one. His smoking is no secret but he doesn’t like to do it in front of the kids nonetheless.
. . . . It was nearly midnight when Nancy came upstairs to bed. The director of the clinic had called about ten. He apologized for the late hour of his call as he asked for Nancy. They spoke for nearly two hours; Tom had come upstairs to read in bed after listening to Nancy’s excited chatter for only a few minutes. He didn’t need to hear her words: It was obvious the director wanted Nancy for his nurse practitioner and midwife, and it was equally obvious she wanted the position.
Nancy was jittery when she came into the bedroom. Tom interrupted his reading, Walter Mosley’s Walkin’ the Dog, for an instant to smile at her. Nancy was in her cinnamon-orange, man’s-style pajamas; she and Tom had talked about getting to bed early. Nancy’s blond hair looks good with the cinnamon color, truly like gold.
Tom watched the page of his book, waiting, knowing Nancy would have to speak. She would have to tell him about the conversation, but Tom already understood the most salient facts. Nancy removed her earrings, replaced the backs, and set them one at a time in her jewelry box on the dresser. She rubbed her earlobes as if they were cold and she was trying to restore circulation.
Tom watched the page of his book.
Nancy looked at herself in the oval mirror above the dresser.
“That was Glenn,” she said matter-of-factly.
Glenn—no longer Mr. Jeffries.
“The position sounds very good—he’s awfully generous.”
Tom set the book aside, his finger marking the spot. “Nanc’, you want the job.”
“Yeah, yeah I do. It’s just the kind of position I imagined when I went back to school.” She stood looking at Tom for a moment, studying him, as if from behind a glass partition.
Nancy unbuttoned her silk pajama top and let it fall to the floor. Tom loves her perfect breasts, full and artificially symmetrical. Thanks to a lifetime of avoiding the sun, in her forties Nancy has the smooth, fair skin of a twenty-year-old. Still wearing the cinnamon pajama bottoms, she knelt on the end of the bed then moved on her hands and knees toward Tom.
She pulled back the blankets. Tom had on one of the three pairs of boxers he always slept in. Nancy kissed her husband’s chest and lightly touched his nipples. Tom noticed that a hint of her perfume, applied hours before, lingered still. She kissed down his stomach toward the waistband of his boxers. He pulsated against her perfect breasts. She ran her tongue in and out of his navel.
“Nanc’?”
She paused long enough to say “yeah?” dreamily, without looking up.
“What about the kids?”. . . .
Allyson is the first to come downstairs; Tom recognizes her quick, light steps. She is wearing her college’s sweatshirt, faded jeans and her oldest running shoes. In high school Allyson was determined to sport the latest fashions. Her bedroom was littered with magazines like Vogue, Glamour, Seventeen and Allure. Her preoccupation with her appearance bordered on an obsession, and it sometimes worried Nancy. But she was too busy with her masters program to do anything more than worry. For much of Nancy’s schooling she lived on campus three or four days a week, commuting the eighty miles home for long weekends; then she would sequester herself in some corner of the house with her laptop and her textbooks.
“Good morning, Ally-cat.” Tom says it even though she doesn’t respond well to her old nickname. Allyson forces herself to say “morning.” She goes directly to the kitchen counter and pours herself a cup of coffee. Three months ago she drank it with milk and sugar; now she prefers it black. Allyson’s honey-brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She’s wearing a touch of eye makeup but it’s hard to see because of her glasses, which have small oval frames. She is a pretty girl, though barely recognizable as the exuberant ten-year-old who was her mother’s maid of honor. Then it was emerald taffeta and a tiara of baby’s breath.
They stand drinking their coffee for a minute or two. The entire time Tom is thinking about how to engage Allyson in a positive conversation; he finally manages, “Are the boys about ready?”
She lowers her cup and speaks over the coffee’s heat. “Yeah.” She pauses. “You’ve got to talk to ass-hole Matt. He refused to help Drew with his homework last night. No big deal, just reading a couple of chapters out of his science book. Mr. Honor-roll could’ve handled it but he locked himself up in his bedroom playing video games all Goddamn night.”
Allyson rarely cusses around Tom, so she must be especially frustrated. Drew is a bright sixth-grader but has always had trouble reading. He’s been making progress—tough words, scientific words, are still a struggle though. Tom thinks it’s his turn to speak and opens his mouth, but Allyson cuts him off:
“As a consequence I read Drew the chapters, which took forty-five minutes, and I had a soc. project and a final draft for comp. to write. Talk to the ass-hole or I’m going to kill him, I swear to God.” She takes a big drink of coffee.
“Ok, Ally, I’ll add that to the list.” He’s thinking, along with Yeller’s kennel and the basketball shoes on the table. “You should’ve woke me up. I would have dealt with young Matthew.” Except Tom knows he’s not pleasant when his sleep is interrupted, and the kids have been strongly discouraged from doing it. He recalls telling them once, “If you get me up, the first sentence out of your mouth better include the word fire.”
He knows that Allyson isn’t upset about helping Drew; it’s Matt’s selfishness that truly angers her. She’s not a selfish person and she can’t stand it in others, especially her half-brother. She and Matt used to be close, but during junior high Matt became a different person. Maybe it’s as simple as his being the star of the freshman basketball team—Matt’s coach is already talking about a trip to state in a year or two. Maybe it’s just puberty. Or maybe it’s some unfathomable tangle of being a child of divorce; of a father who has little interest in him; of a mother who has been away from home attending classes, or, now, working; of a step-father who has had to request the graveyard shift at the prison because of his therapist’s anxiety-management plan.
Tom repeats his promise—“I’ll talk to Matt”—even though too much time has passed and it sounds as if he’s muttering to himself, a habit his father developed later in life, some time between the prostate cancer and the dementia. Alzheimer’s, they call it now.
Allyson puts her cup in the sink then goes to the stairs: “Come on, you two. I’m going to be late.”
Each of the boys calls back something but Tom can’t make out what they say.
Tom comes to the stairs. “Go ahead to class, Ally. I’ll run the guys into town. It’ll give me a chance to talk to them.”
Allyson digs her keys out of her pocket and retrieves her backpack from the dining-room table. She turns before going out the back door: “I won’t be around for dinner. James is taking me out.”
“What’s the big occasion?” Tom asks lightly.
“It’s our six-month anniversary.” Allyson’s voice cracks at the end as she rushes out the door.
Way to go, dumb-ass. It would be six months. Allyson’s first date with James Harvey was their senior prom. James is a good guy, works part-time at a pizza place and takes classes at the college. He’s what Tom’s father would have called a straight-shooter.
The pasture belongs to Tom and Nancy. It once was used for cattle grazing but now the grass grows wild. They pay a local farmer to mow the two-acre field three or four times a year. Tom opens the gate for Yeller and she bounds into the pasture. Running in the grass, chasing birds and rabbits, is clearly the high point of her quiet day. She never catches anything. Perhaps, Tom thinks, she doesn’t really try.
A crisp wind has stirred and Tom turns up his collar against it. Winter is coming. He lights a cigarette and walks along the white-washed fence line, keeping an eye on Yeller as she bounces through the field like a gazelle. Tom notices a prairie flower that still has its summer color. The orange petals are a stark contrast to the gray-green pasture grass. It is mid-morning. In a while he will return Yeller to her kennel, then it will be time to work on the projects he’s been putting off.
Yeller’s sudden barking startles Tom. She’s trapped something in a patch of high grass. She jumps and yelps and dodges for it with her big Labrador head. Before Tom can start over to her, Yeller comes up with something in her jaws. At first Tom thinks all the commotion was over a stick, then he realizes Yeller has caught a long, orange-brown cornsnake. It’s still writhing in Yeller’s grip but a couple of quick shakes and the hapless snake goes limp. Lifeless, Yeller has no interest in it. She drops it in the grass and trots over to Tom, proud of herself, seeking his praise.
He scratches between her ears. “That’s great, girl. As if today won’t be heavy on carnage as it is.”
He leads Yeller out of the pasture, through the yard, and back to her kennel. Tom is tempted to clean the shit out of Yeller’s kennel but he’ll wait. He wants to give Matt the opportunity to do the chore, to redeem himself. It was a lesson his father taught him: Given the chance, most people will do what’s right . . . eventually. Besides, Tom has other projects in mind.
He goes to the back of the Jeep, which is parked just off the driveway in the yard, and opens the hatch. He gets out the bottles of weed-killer. At the hardware store he figured two bottles would do the job but he bought three just in case. After glancing at the directions, Tom breaks the safety seal on the herbicide and chooses a particularly onerous weed to spray first. He squeezes the trigger and coats its leaves. The scent of the spray is sweet, but overly so. He looks at the long driveway stretching to the road. In a month or two he will be plowing snow from it, and in the spring he’ll shovel on a new layer of gravel.
That much, at least, is certain.
Ted Morrissey’s fiction has appeared in numerous journals, including Glimmer Train Stories, Paris Transcontinental, The Chariton Review, PANK, Eleven Eleven, and Slush Pile Magazine; and his novel Men of Winter is forthcoming from Punkin House Press. He holds a Ph.D. in English studies from Illinois State University, and his wide-ranging interests include postmodern writers, foreign films, Shakespearean productions, and Siberian huskies. He can be contacted through tedmorrissey.com.
