Astray

It’s one of those maddening, out-of-context sightings. You’re kicking around town, minding your own business, when out of nowhere you spy a familiar face in the crowd. Someone you absolutely know you know, but can’t for the life of you remember why—or how, or from where—because the rational underpinnings necessary for such identification are curiously absent.

Take the woman in line ahead of you at the ballpark. There at the concession stand. Isn’t that Paula, your dental hygienist? And what about that bozo in the crazy pink shorts who chugged past you on the jogging trail this morning, huffing and puffing? The one who smiled and wheezed your name as he went by. Wasn’t that Father Rayburn, your pastor?

See, it’s in one of those situations where a simple clue—a packet of dental floss or a clerical collar—would go a long way in clarifying things. But instead of recognizing something familiar in the person, your mind is short-circuited by an unusual cameo representing a small but significant part of the subject’s life in which you hold no earthly place. You’re looking for a black cassock and you get neon running shorts. You’re ready for the words Do your gums always bleed like this? but what comes out instead is Make mine a footlong with extra cheese. So there’s no being sure. And the uncertainty drives you crazy.

The point here is that some sort of incomplete recognition takes place. You see the person, you’re certain you know him, or her, and yet you draw this huge blank trying to remember the reason you remember them. Did you meet at a party? Did they stop and help you fix a flat? Are they your long-lost cousin from Sheboygan?

To complicate the scenario, add this little twist. Imagine the mystery person isn’t a person at all but a dog. A twelve-year-old German shepherd with a black and tan face and a slight limp that undercuts his otherwise show-worthy conformation. And now imagine it isn’t you who’s doing the sighting but a twenty-eight-year-old marketing executive named Felix Sharpe who works for a small promotions company with global aspirations.

It’s Saturday, a few minutes after noon, and Felix is strolling through Crystal Valley Park without a care in the world when he snatches an unexpected glimpse of a dog he swears looks exactly like the one whose head he patted on the way out of his house this morning. An old dog with a black and tan face and a grizzled muzzle. A dog named Buck.

Felix slipped out early this morning to play a game of baseball with a few of his buddies from the office. So he’s still in his grass-stained uniform, strutting home across the park’s newly mown lawn with a Louisville Slugger resting on one shoulder and a pair of mud-caked cleats slung over the other. He’s feeling pretty good this morning. Looking pretty good, too, he thinks, in his pinstriped jersey and matching stirrups, oil-stained fielder’s mitt swinging jauntily from the end of his index finger. He’s feeling so good, he’s humming a tune: “Short Skirt/Long Jacket.”

Felix’s team, the Trophy Husbands, won handily today, and he’s reliving the glory of the two-run double he hit in the bottom of the fourth when the German shepherd that might or might not be his comes loping over the hill with an ear-bridging grin on its face. The sight puts the brakes on Felix’s self-aggrandized reverie, and he stops and groans like a man who’s been hit in the cup with a line drive. The dog is prancing along as if it’s on some kind of mission. Some secret bit of yet-to-be-completed doggy business. And while Felix isn’t absolutely, positively sure it’s Buck, he isn’t willing to lay any bets to the contrary, either.

Damn. He straightens, shifting the bat from one shoulder to the other, then leans and squints. But it doesn’t help. Despite his seeing what he thinks he sees, his vision is a very ordinary 20/20. Which means at this range he could stand there all day, gawking, scratching his nuts (as men in his boys’ game are wont to do), or he could quit wasting time and do the right thing. Meaning, walk over and find out for sure.

It’s the dog’s limp, or absence thereof, that’s throwing Felix off. Buck—his Buck—has a slight but noticeable hobble owing to a puppyhood accident. The dog was struck in a crosswalk by a reckless cyclist, and the collision left him with a torn tendon in his front leg. The tendon was repaired, but it turned out the vet wasn’t much of a surgeon and the leg never completely healed, so the poor pup was left with a limp. A limp this Buck doesn’t seem to have.

But wait a minute. Wait just a second. Felix takes a closer look and, yeah, all right, there it is. He sees it now. He was wrong. The limp is there. It’s just not as noticeable as it usually is. He sighs a tired sigh. He knows he should be relieved, having had the good luck to find his dog like this, on the stray, before it got picked up by the dogcatcher and tossed into a holding pen at the Humane Society. But he isn’t. Truth is, he’s a little pissed. Pissed at his wife, Tracy. Because if Buck is on the loose, it’s thanks to her leaving the back door ajar on her way to work this morning.

Perfect, Felix thinks. Just perfect. Their gimping geezer of a dog is swaggering around town without tags or a collar or any form of ID, and he, Felix, is without a leash. He’s got no leash, and without a leash he’s got zero chance of corralling the dog. Why? Because even though Buck is sweet and loving and loyal to a fault and all the rest, he isn’t what you’d call well-trained. Specifically, he does pretty much what he pleases when he pleases, and no amount of cajoling has ever been able to get him to do otherwise. He’s the kind of dog who, when he escapes from the house, you have to bribe with a slice of baloney or a ride in the car to get him to come to you. So, damn, Felix thinks. What’s he supposed to do now? Chase the mutt around all afternoon until one of them runs out of gas? What he wants to do is call Tracy and leave a snide message in her voicemail. Hey, nice going, babe. Guess who I just ran into at the park? Buck. Yeah, our Buck.  We met in pissing. How about that?

The young exec is muttering to himself, carrying on this imaginary rant with his careless wife whose sloppy door-locking habits have mucked up his perfectly perfect morning when a brilliant idea flashes through his head. Of course! He’ll make a leash out of his belt! Why didn’t he think of it sooner? He drops his gear in the grass and proceeds to monkey with the fancy buckle on his uniform. At first, nothing. Then, a few seconds later, success! He’s yanked the belt free of its loops, threaded the loose end through the double-ring clasp, and voila! Instant tether! In the nick of time, too, because here the old boy comes!

The dog is trundling toward him, not even noticing it’s his master’s arms into which he’s about to commit his limping, gimping, forever-shedding black-and-tan self, and that’s because he’s focused on more important things. Squirrels. Children with ice cream cones. The occasional dive-bombing magpie. But Felix, who’s taken up a position behind the big cottonwood tree next to the bike path, is grinning because he sees it’s going to be an easy tag.

Bring it, he thinks, summoning up the visualization technique that helps him focus when he’s standing in the batter’s box. Bring it!

The old German shepherd is still a good ten yards away. But he’s bearing down hard the same way that fastball did in the bottom of the fourth when it headed toward the plate, and Felix is as ready now as he was then. He can see his imaginary self slinging the loop over the dog’s head the same way he watched himself crack the ball down the third base line just out of reach of the fielder’s glove. Only, wait! Hold up! He steps away at the last second, as if calling “Time!” What’s this? What’s this look on the old mutt’s face? He studies it, frowning. He and Buck have lived under the same roof for more than ten years, and in all that time he’s never seen this look before. It’s a strange, otherworldly smile, and it unnerves him.

He slackens his grip on the makeshift noose, and for a second it nearly slips from his hand. But as he catches hold of it again, the answer comes to him. He knows what it is! It’s happiness! That’s what he’s looking at, what he’s seeing in the old dog’s face. Happiness! The kind you can’t buy with a butcher’s bone or a word of praise or a pat on the head. The kind that’s so secret and honest, that lives so deep inside you, you have to hide it from the rest of the world to keep it from being spoiled.

It’s a revelation to Felix, seeing his old dog like this. It really is. But while it pleases him to know Buck is happy, it hurts him, too, for the silly and, yes, vain reason that it’s not him who’s the source of his own dog’s secret joy. He leans against the tree and sighs. Thumbs up his ball cap and lowers his arms, trying to imagine the things the old dog has been doing since he escaped the house this morning—humping that prissy little poodle on Turner Street . . . knocking over garbage cans in the alley behind the bakery . . . picking a fight with some snippy wiener dog, and winning. But for all the trouble the old guy’s already gotten into, Felix can tell by the look on his face that he’s still a long way from finished. That he’s still feeling his oats, or kibble, or whatever.

So, seconds away from tossing the loop over Buck’s old, gray head, the jealous master has a change of heart. On a whim he decides to wait before putting an end to Buck’s escapades. At this point, he figures, what difference does it make? The old guy’s having the time of his life, nobody’s getting hurt, and why should he, Felix, have to play the buzzkill when it was Tracy’s fault the dog got loose in the first place? Besides, by letting the old boy run free and tagging along after him, he can “monitor” the outing while sharing, vicariously, in his dog’s secret life! Discover what it is that’s so much better here in the “free” world than it is at home.

The happy old German shepherd comes within five feet of the tree, hauls up suspiciously, and sniffs. Felix thinks maybe he’s been busted, but no, the old dog’s simply decided to change his mind and wander off elsewhere. Buck looks around, makes a quick turn for the kid’s playground, and romps up the hill. Once there, he trots a circle around the jungle gym, beats a quick path to the big pavilion where picnickers celebrate their Fourth of July family reunions, then shifts direction yet again, jaunting off to the duck pond where a cacophony of honking ensues.

A skein of birds rises from the pond against the cloud-puffed sky, and moments later Buck reappears from the cattails at a fierce gallop. Still smiling. His belly is dripping water, and he trots over to the bubbler near a flowerbed full of geraniums and rises up on his hind legs, clutching either side of the stainless steel bowl with his big tan paws and begins to drink. He laps away, pausing occasionally to look around, saliva dripping from his rubbery pink jowls. When the world at last comes to balance in his dark canine eyes, he drops to all fours and shoots a challenging glance side-to-side before trotting off toward the trees, lopsided balls swinging merrily between his legs.

Felix follows at a distance, stitching his way through trees and bushes, and as he watches the frisky old mutt dance along, he gets unexpectedly misty. They’ve been best buddies for more than ten years. Through thick and thin. High and low. All of it. The grizzled German shepherd won’t live forever, and when he’s gone to whatever doggy heaven God’s laid up for Man’s Best Friend, Felix will look back on today and be happy to have had it. Meanwhile, he notices that the dog’s limp is worse than he remembered, and he chides himself for being a cheap-ass and not buying one of those round camouflage mattresses from Cabela’s so the old guy can sleep a little easier at night. Well, he’ll take care of that today. He promises. Or tomorrow. Either way, it’s an oversight he’ll rectify before the weekend’s out.

Foot traffic is picking up, and Felix knows it’s only going to get worse as the afternoon wears on, but for the moment it’s all good—everything’s fine. The sight of a stray dog doesn’t seem to bother anybody. Couples stop now and then, give with an easy smile, and pass their hands over the old boy’s graying coat, but that’s the extent of it. The chance meetings are all breezy and brief and full of goodwill.

Soon Buck pulls up alongside a hedge of bushes, raises his leg and takes a long, satisfying whiz. Then he does something he never does at home. He kicks out his back legs, one after the other, raking up grass and dirt, sending divots flying high in the air. All the while, he’s got that look on his face. That crazy look Felix never gets to see at home.

The old dog breaks for new territory and Felix follows from a distance. He rounds the corner on a tall euonymus hedge that opens out onto the south end of the park, but loses sight of the dog when he stumbles over a tree root. He falls, gets up, dusts his hands on his uniform pants and looks around. He doesn’t see the old dog anymore, but what he does see (and he’s the first to admit the distance between them is too great to make the identification positive) is a woman he believes to be his wife, Tracy, sitting on a wooden bench near the small reflecting pool some thirty yards away, head in a book.

Tracy holds a master’s in drama from Northwestern and teaches class at the local college downtown. She appears in the school’s theater productions on a regular basis, and is well thought of by both her students and colleagues. In addition to teaching and acting, Tracy volunteers at the theater box office on Saturdays, glad-handing, ticket taking, and the like, so if it’s her, she must be on her lunch break.

Felix, who’s moved behind the euonymus hedge, squints for a better look. The woman—Tracy, if it is Tracy—is wearing a skirt and blouse, and beside her is a small leather handbag, pressed against her hip. But what instantly strikes Felix as curious, what nettles his thoughts as he steals this furtive look at the woman who might, or might not, be his beautiful young wife, is not what she’s wearing, but rather, her calm, almost otherworldly demeanor. She doesn’t look anything like the Tracy he’s used to seeing at home, sitting on the sofa reading a book. She looks different, more satisfied. More fulfilled, for lack of a better word. This Tracy looks as if she’s basking in the sun of some voluptuous dream, savoring strawberries and cream, poolside, on a warm summer day.

Felix stares, blinking back his wonder. It’s all he can do, the sight of her is so engrossing. He’s forgotten about Buck, who’s wandered off into the cotoneaster bushes with his nose in the grass and his rump in the air, and has fixed his attention entirely on his wife. His fetching bride, whose piercing green eyes he cannot see but can imagine without difficulty when he closes his own eyes. The breeze tickles the ends of her hair, and every now and then she reaches up and pushes at it, urging it back in place with her small, white fingers. The sight of her doing this sends a warm feeling through Felix. A deep, mushy affection.

The woman who might or might not be Tracy turns the page and shifts her hip, looking to find a more comfortable place on the bench. She uncrosses one leg and crosses the other. Tugs at the end of her skirt, which reveals a modest, yet attractive, amount of thigh, and Felix can’t help but follow the movement of her fingers. He loves Tracy’s hands. The way her fingers turn the page, lingering over the calm black print with a luxurious ease. She seems so—centered. So within herself. So lovely and full of charm.

Another leaf turns. Then another. Finally, the woman who might or might not be Tracy closes the cover over her thumb and sets the novel aside. Her gaze wanders across the grass and her eyes close and she breathes in the scent of the glorious summer day, and as Felix looks on, admiring the blissful expression on her face, a man he’s never seen before strolls up the cobblestone path from the reflecting pool and pauses in front of the bench. This man, this stranger, says something to Tracy, and she opens her eyes and smiles and says something in return. Only a word or two. But the man stands there, expectant, and sits when she scoots over, making room for him.

The man is pleasant-looking. Handsome, if Felix wants to be honest. His auburn hair is neatly trimmed, and he’s wearing Louis Vuitton shades and a cotton shirt that’s open at the throat. His sleeves are rolled, exposing a pair of solid forearms, and the muscles of his thighs strain impressively against the crease of his freshly laundered khakis. Tracy smiles as he takes the seat beside her. When he crosses his legs, a sudden flash of bare white ankle appears above the saddle of his tasseled oxblood loafers.

The man—the stranger, the interloper—sits at a polite distance at first. But it isn’t long before he stretches an arm along the seat back behind Tracy’s shoulders. Felix’s brow creases when he sees this. The familiarity of the man’s hand bothers him, and his first instinct is to march over and slap it away. But of course he can’t do this because it would be irrational and jealous and, yes, ridiculous, given the circumstances. They’re just sitting there, talking, after all. Nothing untoward is going on. Nothing out of line. They’re just enjoying a pleasant chat the way friends everywhere do.

Friends? Why did that word suddenly rise to mind, he wonders? He’s never heard Tracy mention anything about any “guy friend” from the theater. He rolls his shoulders and gives his balls a quick jog. He decides to stroll over after all—nonchalantly, of course—and interrupt their little get-together before it takes a direction he doesn’t care for. But then he stops himself. Isn’t he better off letting the scene play out? If he really wants to know what the relationship is between his wife and this sockless fuck with the fancy sunglasses, he’s better off sticking it out where he is, isn’t he, here in the bushes?

He has no reason to mistrust Tracy. But then again, he has no reason not to mistrust her. This is what he tells himself. He also reminds himself that he’s standing on the moral high ground in thinking so. After all, it isn’t he who’s reclined on a public park bench, flirting with some would-be floozy. He isn’t looking to buy trouble here—that’s not the point. He isn’t looking to catch Tracy in some kind of compromising or embarrassing position. He just wants to see his wife do the right thing and tell this suave, sockless douchebag with the expensive sunglasses who’s cozied up next to her to fuck off and die because it’s never gonna happen. She isn’t going to go to bed with him. She isn’t going to run off with him, now or on the best day he ever lived, not even for a quickie in his fashionable apartment around the corner, and what’s more, she’s mortally injured to think that he’d think she was the sort of graceless slut who might surrender her fidelity so easily.

But that isn’t what happens.

What happens is, instead of getting up and collecting her book and her bag and giving the guy the brush, she and Romeo share a knowing glance. A very intimate and dangerous glance that, even witnessed from a distance of thirty yards, seems destined to resolve in a kiss.

Felix leers from the cover of the bush as they lean into the heat of one another’s gaze, eyes locked, lips parting. His heart is thump, thump, thumping against the stripes of his cotton jersey, but before the act is able to find its romantic conclusion, a ruckus breaks out on the other side of the park.

He turns to the sound of snarling, barking of dogs. The shrieks of screaming children. Buck is chasing a golden retriever out of the woods, snapping at the dog’s neck, and the retriever, defending himself, wheels around with teeth bared and strikes back. Soon the two are tangled in a growling, howling, snarling ball, and a moment later a grungy-looking college boy appears from the woods, panting like a diver who’s just broken the surface of a lake. His eyes are wide and he’s fetching for breath as he shakes a broken leash over his head and shouts obscenities.

Felix steals a quick glance at Tracy, then turns his eyes back to Buck. The college bum has somehow gotten between the fighting dogs and is kicking at them with his boot. The guy’s going all out, but the only dog he’s making contact with is Buck, and when Felix sees this—his best friend being brazenly abused in public—he forgets all about the girl who might or might not be his wife and charges to the old mutt’s rescue.

He shouts “Hey!” or something equally limp-dicked as he beats a path across the grass toward the woods. But the golden’s owner, the college boy, has already separated the animals and now has his eyes set savagely on Felix. The men glare at one another. They’re both gasping for breath, and they exchange a number of ugly words, the golden’s owner assuring Felix that if he ever sees him or his dog in this park again, he’ll kick both their asses. Felix tells him to fuck off and, with the guy standing there trembling in rage, slips the looped belt over Buck’s head. Neither dog is cut or bleeding, which seems something of a miracle given the way they were going at it. But with nothing left to fight over, the conflict ends. The two men give one another one final testosterone-fueled glance, then part ways, talking to themselves.

“Asshole,” Felix mutters, leading Buck away.

“Asshole,” the college boy mutters, leading his golden away.

When Felix and the old German shepherd reach the euonymus hedge where Felix was spying on Tracy, the winded young exec looks across the broad expanse of lawn to the reflecting pool and sees that the park bench his wife (or the woman he took to be his wife) was sitting on is now empty. Neither she nor Romeo is anywhere to be seen.

Dog and master drag to a halt. Felix turns a full circle in the grass, the makeshift leash wrapping around his middle. He sees no sign of them, not a trace of either one, and he’s left to wonder whether they parted ways after a few small words or wandered off arm-in-arm while his back was turned.

He looks down at Buck.

The dog smiles his doggy smile, and in the private moment of misplaced recognition that follows, the old boy’s black-and-tan muzzle takes on a lighter, less familiar hue, and his puppyhood limp miraculously disappears.

Felix shoots a confused glance at the empty park bench. Then at the dog. He blinks a few times, face reddening, and casually slips the makeshift leash from the animal’s neck. So, okay, he thinks, urging the mutt on its way with a nonchalant pat. So, I might’ve been wrong. So sue me.

He chalks the incident up to jealousy and heartbreak. But with his mind already drifting back to the two-run double in the bottom of the fourth, he forgives himself and moves on. He’s sorry he got so worked up over nothing. But come on. What happened here this afternoon could have happened to anyone. Anyone at all.

ROBERT McGUILL

Robert McGuill’s work has appeared in Narrative, the Southwest Review, the Saturday Evening Post, Louisiana Literature, American Fiction, and other publications. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and short-listed for awards by, among others, Glimmer Train, the New Guard, and Sequestrum Art & Literature.