Lost (40 page)

The pure wintry silence returned.

At the side of the highway, the Chinaman slowly, feebly, hauled himself up. Sherman heaved for breath. Nothing seemed real. The highway was empty. In the distance, not the suggestion of a car appeared.

Sherman knew what he had to do. It seemed as if he had known all along. And yet everything in him went on resisting it. He drew the dog into his arms, stroking the thick coat. No thought, no words came to comfort him. Waiting for a ride, they stayed there, close together as they had been for so long, while the afternoon light fled into the trees.

In the gray dusk, a coal truck slowed on the outskirts of Gentryville, Kentucky. The high door on the driver's side opened and the driver stood down, turning toward the back of the truck where Sherman had dropped to the ground, talking softly to the dog. The driver helped him lift the Chinaman down. Slowly, laboriously, the dog rose to his feet. The driver pointed to a mailbox and a lane. “If you take this lane up to that white house, somebody there might help you. Ask for old Tom Phelps.”

Sherman watched the truck pull away.

They followed the lane marked off by evergreen trees and entered a cluster of white buildings edging a beautiful wide lawn of frosted grass. In the main house, lights glowed through the windows. Sherman went to the door and knocked.

Wiping her hands on a dishcloth, Mrs. Phelps turned from the casserole on the drainboard and went to answer the front door. As she approached the door, a formless shape shielded its eyes and peered into the foyer. Mrs. Phelps saw the outer edge of an upheld hand pressed to the glass. She flipped on the porch light. It was not until the boy stepped into the hall that Mrs. Phelps could have sworn with any certainty that the figure on the porch was indeed a boy. There was blood on him. Huddled in his shabby jacket, without looking up, he said, “It's my dog. He's hurt real bad.” His voice sounded weak with exhaustion. “That truck driver said maybe you could help. I'm s'posed to ask for Tom.” The boy lifted his head and glanced at her, and the look in his eyes caused her to step back quickly. But just as quickly his expression dissolved and his pupils seemed to soften and catch reflection like the eyes of a changeling. There were tears in his eyes.

His head was spinning. He tried to focus, watching her lips as she spoke. “The doctor's not here,” the lips said. “I'm his daughter-in-law. I keep house for him.” She was still talking. “Ben Sizemore's mare is in foal,” but Sherman turned blindly and stepped out onto the porch.

With his back to her, he gulped down two more of his pills. And the woman, grasping the door to shut it, saw the dog sitting at the edge of the light, head bowed nearly to the ground, its chest covered with blood. It took her breath. “Oh, dear God.” Suddenly she felt herself drawn into the boy's desperate predicament and she hastily added, “You could wait. Tom'll be back any minute.”

Sherman's head had started to clear. He looked at her, then glanced through the evergreens at the highway and the fringe of lights from the town. “Okay,” he said.

She pointed to a shed and told him to take the dog to it. “There's a light switch just inside the door and some old gunnysacks you can use to make him a bed. You wait there,” she said. “I'll send Tom out just as soon as he gets home.”

Speaking to the Chinaman, Sherman twice looked back at the woman in the doorway with the light streaming around her. Mrs. Phelps closed and locked the door and went back to the kitchen. She wished she could do more to help him. There were sandwiches in the refrigerator, which she had made that afternoon, and apples in a bowl. With paper napkins she lined the bottom of a small basket and set three of the sandwiches in it and an apple. And that poor dog. She drew warm water into a pan and pulled out some housecleaning rags to take to him. Through the kitchen window, she noticed that the light was on now in the shed. She had the basket on her arm and had lifted the pan of water before she set it all down and went to the telephone.

She dialed Ben Sizemore's number and said, “Marcella, this is Ruth Phelps. Could you get Tom to the telephone?” She did not see the boy come to the square of light on the lawn, then edge up close to her kitchen window. Presently, she said, “There's a boy here with a dog. It gave me something of a fright. I don't know, I think the dog must've been shot. He looks awful bad.…”

“All right,” she said finally. “All right. Come just as soon as you can.”

Even in his panic, Sherman avoided the square of light.

I knew it!
he thought.

She called the police!

It was dark. Night.

Though he fought to hold on, he could feel himself coming apart.

His head was throbbing like a faulty circuit. He had no idea where he was; he had lost all sense of time and direction. Now they were walking alongside plate-glass windows. The cold wind made his eyes sting. Moving on the glass, their shadowed reflections looked like apparitions. A car passed, its taillights bleeding on the black night. It streaked across his eyes. On a rooftop scaffold at the corner, a sketch of a dog was tirelessly running in blue neon, its legs switching back and forth. It looked beautiful, effortless. Above it, in white neon, the word
GREYHOUND
blinked off and on.

From the side of the bus station came an enormous chrome bus. With a ratcheting of gears, the bus swayed by him, spewing fumes and blowing exhaust, the cameo lights along its sides shining bright colors like a beautiful ship setting off for the stars. A bus, Sherman thought. Light wires fluttered over it as it sank from sight.
A bus!
I'd like to be on that bus. Shaking with cold and hunger, leading the Chinaman, he walked past gas pumps crowned with mock torches. The artificial light glowed everywhere around them.

“What the hell happened to your dog?” the attendant asked.

Sherman stared at him, turned and started to go, unable to remember why he was there. Suddenly he said, “How far is it to Kentucky anyway?”

“You're in Kentucky,” the man said. “Where is it you're tryin' to go?”

Sherman stared at him again, then looked over his shoulder at the empty driveway. “I'd know where it is on one of your maps,” he said.

With a shrewd glance at him, the man produced a map and unfolded it; Sherman studied it and showed him the dot and the name, Brandenburg Station, and the man said, “Well, sir, that's clear over by Louisville.”

“So how far's that?”

“I don't rightly know,” the man said. “From here, I reckon it must be three, four hundred miles.”

“So how long'd it take somebody to drive there?”

The man squinted. “Lessee. Roads like they are, oughta be able to make it in three days. Two maybe, if they've got the roads cleared.”

“Three days?”

“Yes, sir. I imagine that's 'bout right.”

Outside, Sherman slipped into the rest room in back, coaxed the Chinaman in, and locked the door. Three days, he thought. Three days and this is one day and it's almost over. Quickly he took off his jacket. She was getting away from him. And now that housewife had called the police and they would be looking for him. He pulled out all the papers in his shirt—the crumbling newspaper pieces, the last thousand-dollar bill he'd saved for his getaway with Mamie, the torn photographs of the woman, which he stared at closely now to refresh his memory. Everything had gone bad. He looked down at the Chinaman and saw him slumped in his own blood. He had to accept then that the dog couldn't make it, couldn't go with him, and a terrible, heartbreaking loneliness swept through him. I'll be all alone without you, he thought. All alone. Only Mamie was left. He had to go find her right away. Just as soon as he got rid of that woman, he'd take Mamie—he had the money.… They would find some place to live, a new place. She was all he had.

He picked up his jacket. Around the sleeve hole, the lining had ripped loose and he shoved his mess of papers down inside the jacket—they slid down to the waistband just where he wanted them. Now if the police felt in his shirt they wouldn't find anything. He helped the Chinaman stand and they went outside. A police car turned the corner in a cloud of exhaust and black gutter leaves. Sherman rocked back, everything too bright to see.

After that he remembered that they went through the chrome metal doors of the bus station. Sherman stood at a blackboard of chalked-in schedules, scanning for the name of the town he wanted. But he couldn't read it; the letters wouldn't hold still.

The bus station was a big, empty room with benches for sleepers and talkers. He didn't wait for the watchman, who was headed for him, to tell him to take the dog outside. The nebula of high ceiling lights whirled around him. I gotta do something, he thought. There was a red candy machine; he took nickels from his pocket and quickly pulled the plunger. Three Hershey bars appeared in his hand. He put them in his pocket, then led the dog out of the station.

The Chinaman staggered at his side. Sherman looked down at him. They were in among some railroad tracks. Farther and farther they wandered from the downtown lights, the muffled noise of traffic, and entered into a dark region of boxcars and weeds. Now he looked back to where the street crossed the tracks—the small lighted crossing bloomed in his eyes like a distant mirage. He unwrapped the first Hershey bar and broke it into chunks, his hands shaking so hard he almost dropped it. He fed the dog a piece. “You like this kind, doncha?” Sherman said, watching him carefully, spending these last few moments entirely with him. “Does it hurt you to eat, boy? It's your favorite.” The Chinaman settled back and lay down. Sherman gave him another chunk, then the last one, and turned away while the Chinaman chewed on the chocolate. The boy drew the knife from his pocket, opened it, saw it glassily in his fist, and laid it on the iron hitch of a boxcar. Then he pulled off his jacket.

Suddenly he paced down the dark glimmering track, gasping for breath, turned and came back. He unwrapped another candy bar, broke it in pieces, and gave it to the dog. Wave after wave of sweat broke across Sherman's brow, and he could do nothing but wipe it away on his shirt sleeve. The wind was blowing, colder and colder. He let out a long shuddering sigh. He knew, the way an animal knows, what had to be done and how to do it, but his grief held him back. With his bandaged hand, he stroked the Chinaman's broad sleek head. “You're okay,” he murmured. “Chinaman, you'll be okay.” The night rose up around him in a brilliant black haze and slowly began to whirl. “We're just alike, you and me.”

Fits of trembling ran through him as he unwrapped the last candy bar and laid it intact on the ground. He inched to the side. No longer trying to chew, the dog gulped the chocolate in hard swallows, the mottled sheen of his coat heaving on his frame. Sherman wiped his hand on his pants and clasped the knife. His dread grew monstrous; he expelled the air trapped in his lungs. Now. Abruptly he bent over the Chinaman. His bandaged hand stroked down under the dog's head and gripped the fur already stiff with blood. Although he acted with speed, the knife seemed to fly downward with excruciating slowness. Sensing danger, the Chinaman twisted too late and looked up. The blade sank and tore across the furry throat.

A hideous, strangling growl wrenched the air and the Chinaman pitched sideways in a paroxysm of astonished strength. Blood blew in a spray from the wound. Sherman stumbled forward, aghast. Terror struck him in hard convulsions. The dog thrashed about and came up, the wound reducing the flow of his movement to a spastic tossing, an odd broken cry tearing apart in his throat. “
Stop it!
” Sherman screamed. “
Don't cry!
” In a frenzy to end it, before he could think to stop himself, he swung again, savagely. “
Don't cry!
” The knife whipped down, missing, inflicting surface wounds as the Chinaman snapped at him, teeth flashing, then howled and squirmed. “Don't cry,” Sherman gasped, “don't cry, don't cry,” driving the knife down again and again until he couldn't lift his arm any more. The Chinaman rocked back and pulled himself up dazedly, fell and came up again, stumbling sideways, and with a burst of his old speed, tore into the brush.

Sherman's pain was as large as the air. Filled with horror at what he had done, he began to weep as never before, his voice breaking with grief. “I'm s-sorry,” he stammered. “I'm s-sorry, I'm sorry, boy, I'm sorry.” He ran blindly into the brush to find the Chinaman. Through his mind, as he ran, went that broken, unhinged cry. He reached the Chinaman and knelt for him, his hands sliding up the rigid lattice of the dog's ribs, lifting him gently, slowly, into his arms, speaking to him, begging. “I take it back,” he said, “Chinaman, I take it back, I take it back,” the tears blinding him.

It seemed a long time before he had secured the dog firmly against him, drawing him up on his body in a series of shrugging, sliding movements, still asking him, still pleading, “Come on, Chinaman, come on, I'm sorry,” and finding it almost impossible to move himself as the paws dragged and scraped around his shoes. Once, he picked the dog up and carried him and then fell back to his knees. No matter what he did, the black eyes, still open and alive-looking, were fixed on him.

His hands and shirt turned dark with blood. He went on struggling with the dog, as if he could somehow make it be all right if he only tried hard enough, but the body was falling through his arms; the big head nodded loose against him, and he felt a spasm fly through the crooked hindlegs like a wild shudder of breath. And at once Sherman let go and shrank back, staring transfixed, unable to utter a sound. His hand reached out and stroked the Chinaman's head, and from the dog's stubby face the eyes now stared with a dull, milk-black luster.

He was dead.

Sherman reached out and took the big tufted paw and held it tenderly, stroking it, to rub all the pain away. He couldn't find his breath. Then a cry broke from his mouth so loud and high-pitched it carried out over the freight yard, and from the neighborhoods of that little town a cry rose with his, a reverberation of grief from every back-yard dog that heard him. And the wind blew, ruffling the Chinaman's fur, gently lifting the sleek, black ruff around his face, as if somehow that small part of him were still alive.