Pearl, p.10
PEARL, page 10
part #0 of Nodd's Ridge Series
“Oh.”
Pearl wondered why this woman thought she needed to know about the relationship, tenuous as it seemed to her.
The Conroy woman laughed lightly.
“Roscoe’s quite a character, isn’t he? My mother never could stand him. He’s such an old reprobate. I’ve been dying to meet you. I just wish my mother were still alive so I could tell her Roscoe’d met his match.”
“Really?”
Pearl felt nearly as insulted for Roscoe as she did for herself.
At the sight of the kittens, sleepy from the ride, the woman gushed.
“Look at them! Aren’t they cute?”
“They need their shots.”
The receptionist handed her a couple of forms and told Pearl how much the shots cost.
“I’ll take care of them while you fill these out.”
Picking up the kittens, she carried them off.
Pearl picked up a pen and filled out the forms, putting down “Boy” and “Girl” in the space for names.
Belinda Conroy reappeared in a few minutes.
“All done,” she sang out, taking Pearl’s money.
She told Pearl when they would need their next shots and when they could be neutered, if she wanted.
Outside Pearl breathed deeply. The air outside seemed extravagantly pure. She felt herself unwind a little and decided she was overtired and grouchy. So she treated herself to an ice-cream cone and went home.
4
Keeping them together to ease the separation from their mother, Pearl left both kittens at the diner for the night when she stopped to check that Karen had closed up shop properly. The clouds were breaking up to make a lovely twilight as she arrived home. The cloudiness in her spirits lifted. When she opened the back door, an envelope which had been stuck in it fluttered to her feet. It was an ordinary business-letter envelope with her name typed on it.
Sliding a nail under the flap to break the seal, she took out a single page. On it was a poem.
The Sunday New York Times Newspaper War
“Mine, Mine.”
We rip the newspaper to shreds,
tear words letter from letter,
and toss them overhead, to float
and flutter and lastly swoon earthward.
Black and white and read all over,
the newspaper winter falls
upon us
in the shape of a map;
X marks the spot where
something is buried.
She sat down and read it again. Then she picked up the phone book and called David Christopher.
“Thank you.”
He was silent a moment and then said, “You’re welcome. You don’t have to say anything else.”
“I wouldn’t know how. Not the first thing.”
“It’s just a first draft.”
He seemed to be embarrassed at the impulse which had led him to leave a poem in her door. So she asked him if he wanted to meet her at the Dog for a pizza. He seized the invitation as if he were a teething puppy being offered a rag to chew on. They made an appointment for seven.
Her phone tape whispered and clicked in a rapid series but there were no voices. Someone had called and not left a message. Brother Bobby, she thought. He hated talking to a machine. She wondered where and how her stepbrother was.
Pearl had had a soak and was just changing to go out when she heard a vehicle coming in.
The door banged open downstairs and Roscoe Needham shouted tremulously from the kitchen.
“Pearl!”
She ran down the back stairs in her stocking feet.
The old man was standing in the kitchen, his mouth fallen open and his Adam’s apple falling and rising in distress.
“Roscoe, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Jack,” Roscoe said. “I think he’s dying.”
Pearl grabbed her galoshes and slicker and piled out after the old man to his ancient truck.
Jack lay on the front seat loosely wrapped in a hairy old blanket. The old dog’s eyes were rolled up, there were flecks of foam around his muzzle, and his sides heaved with the effort of breathing.
Pearl stroked his head gently a moment.
“Roscoe, you’d better take him to a vet.”
Roscoe was shaking.
“He’s dying, I know it. He’s dying.”
She put an arm around Roscoe.
“He might be. He’s old, Roscoe.”
“I never seen him like this.”
The old man seemed to have aged another decade since breakfast. His hands shook, he looked frantic. He was in no shape to take the dog anywhere by himself.
“Let me call the vet.”
She was back again in three minutes.
“Dr. Beech is going to meet us at his office. Come on, you hold Jack, and I’ll drive.”
Roscoe nodded dumbly and did as he was told.
During the drive to Greenspark, Jack had several convulsions, but Roscoe, perhaps because he was able to concentrate entirely on the dog, seemed to pull himself together a little more with each seizure, as if the holding and soothing of the animal gave him strength.
“Jack’s been sick a long time. I knew he was ready to go. I was selfish.”
“People get attached. It’s hard to let them go.”
Roscoe sat up a bit.
“I didn’t expect nothing when I got him, but Jack turned out to be a natural rabbit dog. Why, one year, musta bin October of seventy-nine…” Roscoe wandered off into reminiscence. At the vet’s door, he simply stopped talking in mid-word, “… that piebald buck was the biggest rab…” and slid out from under the dog.
Pearl wasn’t sure he had the strength to carry the dog, but he summoned it.
The vet admitted them to his office. He was a young man, thin, with freckled skin and sandy hair that was already in retreat over his pate.
“This way,” he said, and led them into an examining room, his eyes never leaving the dog.
Pearl introduced herself as they went in and the vet shook her hand casually and said he was Dr. Beech.
Roscoe laid the dog on the examining table and the vet stroked Jack’s head and ran his hands along his slack old body. The convulsions had stopped and the dog’s ribs heaved upward, fell inward, struggled upward again.
“Well, Mr. Needham, Jack’s in very bad shape.”
The old man cringed. He was trembling.
Pearl put her hand on Roscoe’s forearm.
“I shoulda shot ‘im,” Roscoe suddenly blurted.
He wiped under his nose savagely with the back of his hand.
“I shoulda done it myself before he got so bad.”
Pearl noticed a box of Kleenex on a table and passed it back to the old man. He blew his nose loudly.
The vet patted Roscoe’s shoulder.
“Mr. Needham, I know this isn’t easy for you.”
Roscoe blinked.
“I know it’s time to put him down.”
The vet nodded.
“Would you like a moment with him?”
Roscoe straightened up and shook his head.
“No.”
He held the dog’s head.
“Do it, this has gone on too long already.”
It was over very quickly.
Pearl put her arm around Roscoe’s shoulders again.
“There’ll never be another Jack, will there?”
The vet patted Roscoe’s shoulder again and the starch went out of the old man. He burst into tears. Within a few minutes he had mastered his emotions, however, and insisted on helping return the dog’s body to the truck. But he was very quiet until they were back at Nodd’s Ridge.
“I’ll get me and Jack back home on my own, Pearl. You get out at your house.”
A quick glance assured her he was very calm.
“You sure?”
Roscoe nodded.
“I’d ruther be by myself now.”
He thanked her when she got out. His voice shook slightly and he wiped at one eye hurriedly but held on.
“You’re a good woman, Pearl.”
“Call me if you need me.”
She watched him drive away, hunched over the steering wheel as if somebody’d punched him.
5
The phone was ringing when she came in.
“David,” she said to herself.
She dove for it.
“Did you get lost?”
“No, no, I’m sorry. Errand of mercy came up suddenly.”
“They do,” David said. “Come up suddenly, I mean. You don’t have to tell me what it was.”
“I had to rush Roscoe and his dog Jack to the vet’s.”
“Oh.”
“I couldn’t let Roscoe drive, he was too upset.”
“That mangy old collie? What happened?”
“He died.”
There was a pause.
“Too bad for Roscoe. Really. I mean that.”
“Yes. ‘S hard to get old.”
“You realize, if I may be so indelicate, you stood me up for a dead dog?”
Pearl laughed.
“I said I was sorry. Take a rain check.”
“Okay. You can’t help being a nice person.”
“Thanks again for the poem. Last poem anybody gave me was in the third grade.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“It do the third-grade poet any good?”
“I let him ride me home on his bike. Next day he fell in love with a little redhaired girl.”
The way he laughed, she thought he had forgiven her for standing him up for a dead dog.
6
Karen drove in early the next day as Pearl was dressing.
The girl let herself in and called up the back stairs, “ ‘Morning.”
“Right down,” Pearl called back, and pulled on her jeans.
When she came into the kitchen, she found Karen, a cup of coffee already poured, reading the poem Pearl had left on the kitchen table.
Oops.
“Wow,” Karen said. “Nobody ever wrote a poem for me in my whole life.”
“It’s not a love poem,” Pearl pointed out hastily. “He didn’t write it for me, anyway. He just gave it to me to read, that’s all.”
“I can see that. I don’t understand it but I can see it’s not a love poem.”
“Maybe you quit high school too soon,” Pearl said, hoping to divert her.
Karen dropped the poem on the table.
“I don’t think I’d understand it if I had stayed in school.”
“Actually, I’m not sure I understand it myself.”
Karen giggled.
“Well, I think it’s just incredibly romantic, getting a poem. What’s going on, anyway? Are you two going to have an affair? I ran into David last night at the Dog and he asked me if I’d seen you. I got the idea he was expecting you and you didn’t show.”
“We were going to have a pizza, that’s all. But I had to take Roscoe and his dog to the vet. Jack died.”
“His old collie? Roscoe’s had that dog ever since I can remember.”
“ ‘S shame. The vet seemed like a nice fellow.”
“Dr. Beech? He’s a sweetheart.”
“Hey, time to go to work.”
Pearl hustled them on out with relief at having at least momentarily distracted Karen’s nose from her business.
Roscoe was waiting for them at the diner. He didn’t look like he had slept the previous night.
Karen hugged him, and he was so startled, Pearl had to suppress a grin. It was clearly a first in the relationship between those two natural antagonists.
“Sorry about Jack,” the girl said.
Roscoe shrugged.
“Ya live long enough, everything dies on you.”
The kittens were frisky but hadn’t killed any mice.
“They’re so little,” Pearl said, “probably a mouse would scare ‘em.”
Karen laughed. “Don’t you ever think it. I’ve had kittens kill mice as big as they were. There’ll be dead mice around here this week, I promise.”
Finding no new mouse trace but no dead mice, Pearl decided if all the kittens did was scare away the vermin, she’d be happy. She made Roscoe his breakfast but he just picked at it.
The early-morning customers wandered in. Karen’s whisper to Sonny Lunt was somehow transmitted, sotto voce, to each. Pearl was moved to witness the brief pats on the old man’s shoulder, the murmured condolences. They were all people to whom a dog meant something.
Roscoe had no banter, not even spleen. He left early.
Reuben dropped by, looking for Roscoe. Sonny had stopped at the station long enough to inform him that Roscoe had lost Jack. Reuben stayed long enough to have a cup of tea and examine the kittens critically, peering into their eyes and ears and mouths as if he were checking for alignment, before saying he had to get back to work, as he was expecting a delivery of gasoline from his distributor and Jonesy was nervous about dealing with the deliveryman. He bought a doughnut and coffee for Jonesy and said he would call on Roscoe later in the day to make sure he was okay.
Pearl was closing up when she realized David Christopher had not come in all day. Well, she had nothing invested. He was an amusing man, certainly attractive, but she was too old to expect anything from any man who wasn’t ready to give it, whether it was friendship or more. If he was having an attack of the shys, he would have to get over it on his own.
Karen, however, had also noticed.
“Don’t worry,” she counseled Pearl, uninvited. “He’s probably a little pissed off at you about last night. He’ll get over it.”
“I’m not worried about it.”
But Karen was too busy fantasizing to pay any attention to Pearl’s disclaimers.
“You know, if I didn’t already have a honey, I’d be jealous. David’s just about the most gorgeous man I know. I bet you never in your wildest dreams thought you’d meet somebody like him out here in the boonies.”
“No.”
Karen just rolled on. “It’s just like a soap.”
As she watched Karen drive away, Pearl didn’t know whether to be amused or irritated at the kid’s runaway romanticism.
7
She went directly to Roscoe’s and found Reuben there before her. He and Roscoe, who was red-eyed and drunk, were sitting on the back porch, shying pebbles into the dirt. A raw patch at the bottom of the steps next to the lilac revealed Roscoe had buried the dog in Jack’s favorite spot.
She showed Roscoe the bag she was carrying.
“Brought you supper.”
Reuben took the bag.
“Smells good. Smells great, actually.”
“You eat it then,” Roscoe said, and then, looking away from Pearl apologetically, “I ain’t got no appetite, Pearl. Thanks anyway.”
Reuben and Pearl shrugged at each other.
“I’ll put it in the fridge.”
Reuben took it inside.
Pearl sat down next to Roscoe.
“Wanna get drunk?” he asked her.
Pearl squeezed the old man’s arm.
“Tough to get up at five-thirty, hung-over.”
“You ain’t just talking to hear yourself talk.”
Reuben came back out and handed Pearl a beer.
“But I’ll drink to Jack’s memory,” she said, popping it.
Solemnly they raised their cans to Jack.
“Throwed my back out, planting Jack,” Roscoe said. “This Bud’s all I got for painkillers.”
Reuben teased and scolded.
“I’d have been glad to do it for you. Why didn’t you ask me? You don’t take care of your back, it can turn into a real misery.”
The old man stared bleary-eyed at the dog’s new grave.
“Guess I can plant my own dog, even if I was too chickenshit to put him out of his misery when it was time.”
Reuben nodded. Roscoe had rolled himself up around his mourning like a threatened porcupine. There wasn’t much anyone could do for him but put up with it.
A Country Squire wagon rolled in behind Pearl’s truck and Belinda Conroy got out. She waved at them and then opened the rear door and straightened up holding a black Labrador puppy.
Pearl and Reuben looked at each other in chagrin.
Roscoe laughed his most unpleasant, chalk-scratching laugh.
“Uncle Roscoe,” the Conroy woman cried, “look what I brought you.”
Roscoe tossed back the last mouthful in the can, crushed it in one hand, and tossed it over the porch rail onto the ground.
“I don’t want it. I ain’t having any more goddamn dogs.”
Belinda Conroy continued inexorably across the yard with the puppy lolling in her arms.
“Why, hello, Reuben.”
With a toss of her head, she dismissed Pearl as an intruder.
“Pearl. What a surprise to find you here.”
Pearl thought about telling her she was Miss Dickenson to her, but the woman was like a tank.
“Now, Uncle Roscoe, Jack was very old. It’s all to the best, he’s out of pain.”
“Oh, fuck off, Belinda,” Roscoe said.
Pearl had to fight off a grin.
Belinda’s mouth pursed.
“I know you’re upset, Uncle Roscoe. But you need a puppy, Uncle Roscoe. First thing. Like getting back on a horse that’s thrown you. Lots of old people,” Belinda rattled on, “when their old dogs die, don’t get another one because they’re afraid the animals will outlive them, but I don’t think you should concern yourself with whether they will or not. I mean, somebody will always take care of an animal if the owner dies”—a statement of such rank untruth that Pearl could barely contain herself—“and what’s important is, old folks need animals so they won’t be lonely. Now, this little guy is one of my own, Desdemona’s pups. You know what a terrific dog Desdemona is. I get three hundred dollars apiece for her pups. You couldn’t find a better-bred dog in the state.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Roscoe said. “I’ll write you a check for three hundred dollars and you keep the goddamn dog.”
Belinda Conroy struggled visibly to damp the anger in her face.
“Oh, Uncle Roscoe, you are so stubborn. You just don’t have any idea what’s good for you.”
