“Do you mind making a stop?”
“Where?” Buster asked.
When Buster saw the animal shelter, he sighed. “You’re kidding, right? He’s dead.”
“Just give me a minute.”
In the lobby, I smelled the accumulated odors of hundreds of caged animals. Their fur, their waste, their food. Their fear and desperation. The door at the back, the one that led to the cages, muffled the sounds, but I could still hear a faint chorus of barks and yelps. I asked the woman working at the counter about Frosty, and she seemed immediately confused by my request.
“He’s your dog?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And he was lost?”
“No, I brought him here. He’s a yellow Lab. Frosty’s his name. I wanted to get rid of him, but now I want him back.”
She pursed her lips like the nuns from my grade school.
“Well, I’ll see,” she said. “But this doesn’t happen often.” She stopped at the door to the cages and looked back at me. “You’ll have to pay the adoption donation even if he is your dog.”
I nodded my assent. While she was gone, I looked around the lobby. The faces of dogs and cats in need of homes stared back at me from one bulletin board, and next to that another one held flyers advertising missing pets. We didn’t make a new flyer for Caitlin this year. The police created an age progression image, one showing Caitlin at age fifteen, and it was so warped and distorted-the eyes too large, the hair artificial-I couldn’t bear to look at it. I thought it belonged in a mortician’s textbook, an example of what not to do to preserve the image of a loved one. But the police distributed it anyway, and from time to time I came across a faded, wrinkling copy in the corner of a coffee shop or stuck to a community bulletin board downtown.
The woman reappeared so quickly I knew she bore bad news.
“He’s gone,” she said matter-of-factly, as though talking about a housefly.
“I thought you kept them for a week-”
“He’s been adopted,” she said. “Someone got him yesterday.”
“Okay, can you just tell me who it is? I need him back.”
She shook her head, the lips pursed again. “We can’t do that, sir.”
“But he’s my dog.”
“You brought him in here. You gave him away.”
“It was a mistake. A misunderstanding.” I leaned against the counter, letting it support most of my weight. I felt drained by the day. And guilty. I’d hoped having Frosty back would lift me.
“We can’t give out that information. It’s private.”
“I know, but-”
“We can’t just have people coming in here and getting personal information about our clients.”
“Okay, okay. I get it.”
“We have plenty of other dogs here,” she said. “Good dogs.” She seemed suddenly cheery and upbeat. “Is this for a family? Are you looking for a dog for your children?”
“No, just for me, I guess. And I only wanted that dog.” There was nothing more to say, so I turned and left.
When I climbed back into the car, Buster didn’t say anything. He dropped it into gear and drove me home, the voice of the talk radio host our only companion. Buster stopped at the curb in front of the house, but neither one of us got out.
“Thanks for coming today,” I said. “I’m glad you made it.” I extended my hand, which he shook.
“That’s what brothers do for each other,” he said.
“I didn’t even ask what you’re doing these days.”
He shrugged. “A cell phone company. Sales. It pays the bills. Look, I know why you’re asking about that-”
“No-”
“I plan on paying you back. All of it, all five thousand.”
“I don’t care.”
“Abby?”
I paused. “She cares about it. But she’s also given up on you. She tells me she’s written off that money, like it was a business expense.”
He started tapping his right hand against the rim of the steering wheel. “The price of being related to me.”
“Something like that.”
“How about you? What are you doing with your time off? Writing a book? Who’s it about this time? Melville? Moby Dick? Dicky Moe?”
“Hawthorne. His short fiction. You know, it sounded like there was a woman with you when I talked to you on the phone the other day. Are you dating someone?”
“Why the sudden interest?”
“I just don’t want us to be pissed at each other. I know the stuff with your dad is tough. For both of us maybe, but certainly for me. I still dream about him, about him coming into our room at night, drunk and angry. The way he’d come after us, swinging at us. I see his figure there in the dark. Sort of a hulking presence. I can’t forget it.”
“We’re not going to solve all this sitting here in the car.”
“Do you remember the same things?” I asked. “At least tell me that.”
He didn’t hesitate. “No, Tom. I don’t remember it that way at all. Sorry.”
“We used to huddle together in the dark,” I said. “Hell, you used to try to protect me. You’d lay on top of me and keep me safe. Are you going to tell me you don’t remember? You’re really going to stick to that? Really?”
“I’m not sticking to anything,” he said. “It’s a fact.” He looked at the console clock. “I have to get back home, okay?” I opened the door, and before I was out he added, “But, Young Goodman Tom, if you do decide to change your life-really change your life-give me a call. You have my number.”