Stress Test Ch. 40

Billey opened his eyes when the rhythm changed. He stretched the kinks out of his arms and legs. He'd slept all curled up like a dog to keep himself warm without a blanket. He smelled old wood and hot grease as he felt the pockmarks the rough floor had left in his cheek.

He crawled over to look out the door. The shadows of telephone poles and grain elevators rushed past. Billey could make out the shapes of billboards in the distance whenever a pair of headlights swept the ridge.

The rush and rumble of the train eased, and Billey watched the stars lose themselves—never fading—in the wash of the morning sky.

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Every Friday, the short detective phoned to update Sandy on the investigation. It disturbed her that the cops didn't seem to be able to come up with any solid leads.

She had no trouble thinking of a thousand reasons for Stephen X to be killed. What scared her was the thought that a person could enter a quiet neighborhood, shoot someone to death in a brightly lit doorway and disappear into thin air.

It was like her car. Sandy still didn't understand how Marti could have just taken it like that. The police found it a few days later, stripped of its battery and radio, the only parts that were worth anything. Sandy sold it for scrap and began driving Stephen X's Mustang.

Of course, she never felt like grieving—or even pretending to grieve—for Stephen X. But the way it all happened left its scars. The bullets had transformed him like an effect from one of his sick horror movies. One moment he was his usual, disgusting self and the next he was something entirely different, a twist of meat in a six hundred dollar suit, as if he had been turned inside out to expose all the blood and ugliness.

So often, as she had looked at the insane mask he put on while brutalizing her, she had wondered if he would kill her this time. And later, when she had survived and he had reverted to that other mask—the one he put on for the rest of the world—Sandy doubted her own sanity. If not for the bruises, how could she know that the violence really happened? How could she know whether questions of life and death had been asked?

In a way, the murder vindicated Sandy by condensing the horror of Stephen X in a last burst of savagery. She thought of those stories where a person on the verge of death hovers near the ceiling, watching himself. Stephen X probably would have enjoyed the spectacle of his grand finale. The gore seemed like the kind of touch he would have engineered himself, but at least it sealed that chapter of her life.

Sandy toyed with the idea of going to Stephen X's funeral to let the sense of finality wash over her, but she decided she had already moved past the need for that. All she'd ever wanted was for him to be gone.

But she still had to wonder where the killer was and if he wanted anything more of her.

The day they buried Stephen X, Sandy took Saury to the park. It was the first day that hinted at autumn. It reminded her of the sense of promise and anticipation that a new school year used to bring. She saw the excitement ballooning in Saury as he sprinted for the slide, and she felt as if she were breathing pristine air that had been saved for her far above the earth.

While Saury climbed the ladder, Sandy noticed a man in a conservative, blue suit sitting on a bench not far away, staring at them. She didn't know if he were a pervert or a cop, and she didn't much care. She wondered if men believed they were invisible—like cats crouching behind tiny objects—and that invisibility licensed them to gawk.

Each time she caught Saury shooting off the end of the slide, she noticed the man fidgeting with a small brown bag that might have been left over from his lunch. He crumpled the paper into a tight ball, then spread it across his thigh and stroked out the wrinkles, never taking his eyes off Sandy.

Once she tried to stare him down, but it didn't work because she didn't want to look at him, at the way his suit hung in lumps and billows, at his dry, parted lips, at his rude, puffy eyes. She turned away and tried hard not to feel his eyes boring into her.

Saury launched himself from the top of the slide. He lifted his arms over his head and yelled "Look out below!" so that his voice trailed off as he rushed down the ramp. When he reached the bottom, he flew into Sandy's arms and gave her his usual hug. But this time, he didn't let go when Sandy straightened up. He stared at something behind her, but before she could look, she heard heavy breathing at her back.

Sandy gasped to see a massive, black dog, its jaws large enough to take Saury's head, staring into the child's eyes. Sandy spun around and saw that the dog had a slim woman in tow.

"Now, Samson," the woman said without as much confidence as Sandy wanted to hear, "let these good people be."

Samson strained against the leash and licked Saury's cheek, to the boy's enormous delight.

"Samson!" the woman said, as harshly as she could. "No!"

The dog's tongue rolled over teeth as sharp as ivory daggers. Saury moved his embrace from his mother's leg to the dark, silky fur of Samson's neck.

"He's big," Sandy said, "What is he?"

"Part Rottweiler," the woman said.

"And the rest horse, I guess," Sandy laughed, running her fingers along the dog's powerful neck. "I thought they were supposed to be mean."

"He can be a hundred forty pounds of hell," said the woman with awe that familiarity had not dulled. "But only when he needs to be."

"How does he know? Have you trained him to K-I-L-L on command?"

She eyed Sandy curiously. "Haven't you ever had a dog?"

"No." Sandy shrugged. "My friend has a useless, one-eyed beagle. It was her husband's, but he died."

"They're very sensitive creatures." The woman crouched down and guided Saury's hand along Samson's broad face. "It's all non-verbal. They're loyal and forgiving and attentive. They give you unconditional love."

"Sounds better than a husband." Sandy meant to be funny but she didn't hear any humor in her voice.

The woman stood up and announced, "I'm not afraid anymore."

They looked at each other for several moments and shared something too common to be called a secret, but too private and sad to be spoken out loud.

"Goodbye, Samson," Saury called. When he finished waving, he parked his arm on his forehead to shade his eyes.

"Did you like that dog?" asked Sandy.

"Uh huh." Saury nodded deliberately. Then he pointed. "Mom, look at Samson now!"

As the woman passed near the park bench, the dog stiffened. His growl came out so deep and loud, Sandy felt it through the soles of her feet. The man's pink face turned pale, accenting his blue suit. He edged away, pushing his palms against the air. He opened a little distance between himself and the dog and tried to run backwards, but he lost his balance and fell. The tumble stripped away the last shred of his facade of dignity. Samson bellowed in triumph with all the strength of his mighty lungs.

"What's wrong with that man, mom?" wondered Saury, who had never seen such a spectacle, even on the weekends when Stephen X had been falling-down drunk.

Sandy pulled him against her leg. "Nothing anymore," she said.

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Sandy surprised herself the next morning by finding a ninety-pound Rottweiler in the classifieds. So much of her life had required approval that acting on an impulse left an exciting, clean feeling inside her chest.

She followed Westmore past the city limits where the billboards and pre-fab buildings gave way to trees and livestock. Sandy lifted her foot from the gas to watch two young horses race across a slope, inspired by the change of weather.

A chain-link fence surrounded the place she wanted, a small, white ranch house set back from the road in a stand of maples. A chorus of dogs announced her arrival so that the breeder, an old woman named Irene, came to the porch even before Sandy put the car in park.

Something in the way the wrinkles played around Irene's eyes and mouth reminded Sandy of Mama Gore. The woman had tucked her white hair beneath a cloth cap, but a few delicate, beautiful strands spilled out. Sandy thought of the Saturday afternoons when she and Mama Gore had sat by the Airstream and taken turns braiding each other's hair. That might have been the last time Sandy thought she understood the world.

Irene led her in back of the house. The dogs in their runs seemed to be charged with the sight of her. They adored Irene, pressing their cheeks and tongues against the cyclone fence, but never barking in her presence.

Sandy had never been allowed to own animals. Her mother had blamed her for the sudden death of a shimmering tankful of fish, and Stephen X set household standards too high even for humans. So Sandy had no idea how to pick a dog for herself. She wished she'd brought Saury along to help.

"This is Suvi. He's crazy about you," said Irene. "He's still just a pup. He hasn't even grown into his feet yet, so you can expect him to get a lot bigger. He'll be good protection."

"Suvi." Sandy nodded. "That's a pretty name."

"It's short for Vesuvius." Irene studied Sandy carefully for a reaction. "I named all of this litter for volcanoes."

"Oh! Why do you do that?"

"You don't know dogs, do you?"

"Well, no." Sandy felt like she'd forgotten to do her homework. "But I want to. How do I train him?"

"You don't need to teach a dog about protection anymore than a dog needs to tell you how to bake a potato," Irene said, shaking her head. She worked her hands between the dog's teeth and pried open its huge, threatening mouth while Sandy worried for the woman's fingers. "You think you know more about self defense than this?" She nodded at the gaping jaws.

"He'll watch you and learn all he needs to know. A dog wants to please its master. That's just the way they're born. You might think he loves you, but it's beyond love; it goes beyond life itself. Dogs are smart about a lot of things, but they don't understand strings attached to things like love and loyalty." The woman stood up and laughed at herself. "Just listen to me—as if people understand those things any better than a dog does!"

Her laugh sounded like Mama Gore and Sandy felt comfortable with her decision.

"A dog will do what you want whether you teach it or not." She shrugged. "It's because they have no self-image. They don't have a clue what they look like. A dog doesn't see itself in a mirror, it sees another dog. You can have a terrible struggle for dominance between the real dog and its reflection. That's one reason I don't allow dogs in the house. Anyway, since they don't know what they look like, they figure you're one of them. They make you the leader of the pack, even if the pack is just you and one dog. They don't know politics from garbanzo beans, so a dog will never disobey once it knows what you expect of it.

"The only thing you have to remember is to never take away a dog's dignity."

"Why not?" Sandy felt so ignorant. She imagined that violating this rule would cause the animal to turn on her with horrible results.

"Why?" The woman shook her head again. "Because then it won't have its dignity."

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Go back to Chapter 1 of Stress Test.

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