Maureen McHugh - After the Apocalypse

Abby whines again. Hudson is out there in the dark. Lost dogs don’t do well in the desert. There are rattlesnakes. I didn’t protect him. I sit down on the floor and wrap my arms around Abby’s neck and cry. I’m a stupid woman who is stupid about my dogs, I know. But they are what I have.

I don’t really sleep. I hear noises all night long. I worry about what I am going to do about money.

Replacing the tools is going to be a problem. The next morning I put the first layer of paint on a new doll to replace the stolen one. Then I do something I have resisted doing. Plastic doll parts aren’t the only thing I can mold and sell on the internet. I start a clay model for a dildo. Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten queries from companies who have seen the dolls online and asked if I would consider doing dildos for them. Realistic penises aren’t really any more difficult to carve than realistic baby hands. Easier, actually. I can’t send it to Tony; he wouldn’t do dildos. But a few years ago they came out with room-temperature, medical-grade silicone. I can make my own molds, do small runs, hand finish them. Make them as perfectly lifelike as the dolls. I can hope people will pay for novelty when it comes to sex.

I don’t particularly like making doll parts, but I don’t dislike it, either. Dildos, on the other hand, just make me sad. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using them, it’s not that. It’s just … I don’t know. I’m not going to stop making dolls, I tell myself.

I also email the Chicago couple back and accept the commission for the special, to make the same doll for the third time. Then I take a break and clean my kitchen some more. Sherie calls me to check how I’m doing, and I tell her about the dildos. She laughs. “You should have done it years ago,” she says. “You’ll be rich.”

I laugh, too. And I feel a little better when I finish the call.

I try not to think about Hudson. It’s well over a hundred today. I don’t want to think about him in trouble, without water. I try to concentrate on penile veins. On the stretch of skin underneath the head (I’m making a circumcised penis). When my cell rings, I jump.

The guy on the phone says, “I’ve got a dog here, he’s got this number on his collar. You missing a dog?”

“A golden retriever?” I say.

“Yep.”

“His name is Hudson,” I say. “Oh, thank you. Thank you. I’ll be right there.”

I grab my purse. I’ve got fifty-five dollars in cash. Not much of a reward, but all I can do. “Abby!” I yell. “Come on, girl! Let’s go get Hudson!”

She bounces up from the floor, clueless, but excited by my voice.

“Go for a ride?” I ask.

We get in my ancient red Impreza. It’s not too reliable, but we aren’t going far. We bump across miles of bad road, most of it unpaved, following the GPS directions on my phone, and end up at a trailer in the middle of nowhere. It’s bleached and surrounded by trash—an old easy chair, a kitchen chair lying on its side with one leg broken and the white unstained inside like a scar, an old picnic table. There’s a dirty green cooler and a bunch of empty forty ounce bottles. Frankly, if I saw the place, my assumption would be that the owner made meth. But the old man who opens the door is just an old guy in a baseball cap. Probably living on social security.

“I’m Nick,” he says. He’s wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt, despite the heat. He’s deeply tanned and has a turkey-wattle neck.

I introduce myself. Point to the car and say, “That’s Abby, the smart one that stays home.”

The trailer is dark and smells of old man inside. The couch cushions are covered in cheap throws, one of them decorated with a blue-and-white Christmas snowman. Outside, the scrub shimmers, flattened in the heat. Hudson is lying in front of the sink and scrabbles up when he sees us.

“He was just ambling up the road,” Nick says. “He saw me and came right up.”

“I live over by the river, off 109, between Belen and Jarales,” I say. “Someone broke into my place and left the doors open, and he wandered off.”

“You’re lucky they didn’t kill the dogs,” Nick says.

I fumble with my purse. “There’s a reward,” I say.

He waves that away. “No, don’t you go starting that.” He says he didn’t do anything but read the tag and give him a drink. “I had dogs all my life,” he says. “I’d want someone to call me.”

I tell him it would mean a lot to me and press the money on him. Hudson leans against my legs to be petted, tongue lolling. He looks fine. No worse for wear.

“Sit a minute. You came all the way out here. Pardon the mess. My sister’s grandson and his friends have been coming out here, and they leave stuff like that,” he says, waving at the junk and the bottles.

“I can’t leave the other dog in the heat,” I say, wanting to leave.

“Bring her inside.”

I don’t want to stay, but I’m grateful, so I bring Abby in out of the heat, and he thumps her and tells me about how he’s lived here since he was in his twenties. He’s a Libertarian, and he doesn’t trust government, and he really doesn’t trust the New Mexico state government which is, in his estimation, a banana republic lacking only the fancy uniforms that third-world dictators seem to love. Then he tells me about how lucky it was that Hudson didn’t get picked up to be a bait dog for the people who raise dogs for dogfights. Then he tells me about how the American economy was destroyed by operatives from Russia as revenge for the fall of the Soviet Union.

Half of what he says is bullshit and the other half is wrong, but he’s just a lonely guy in the middle of the desert, and he brought me back my dog. The least I can do is listen.

I hear a spitting little engine off in the distance. Then a couple of them. It’s the little motorbikes the kids ride. Nick’s eyes narrow as he looks out.

“It’s my sister’s grandson,” he says. “Goddamn.”

He gets up, and Abby whines. He stands, looking out the slatted blinds.

“Goddamn. He’s got a couple of friends,” Nick says. “Look you just get your dogs and don’t say nothing to them, okay? You just go on.”

“Hudson,” I say and clip a lead on him.

Outside, four boys pull into the yard, kicking up dust. They have seen my car and are obviously curious. They wear jumpsuits like prison jumpsuits, only with the sleeves ripped off and the legs cut off just above the knees. Khaki and orange and olive green. One of them has tattoos swirling up his arms.

“Hey, Nick,” the tattooed one says, “new girlfriend?”

“None of your business, Ethan.”

The boy is dark, but his eyes are light blue. Like a Siberian husky. “You a social worker?” the boy says.

“I told you it was none of your business,” Nick says. “The lady is just going.”

“If you’re a social worker, you should know that old Nick is crazy, and you can’t believe nothing he says.”

One of the other boys says, “She isn’t a social worker. Social workers don’t have dogs.”

I step down the steps and walk to my car. The boys sit on their bikes, and I have to walk around them to get to the Impreza. Hudson wants to see them, pulling against his leash, but I hold him in tight.

“You look nervous, lady,” the tattooed boy says.

“Leave her alone, Ethan,” Nick says.

“You shut up, Uncle Nick, or I’ll kick your ass,” the boy says absently, never taking his eyes off me.

Nick says nothing.

I say nothing. I just get my dogs in my car and drive away.

Our life settles into a new normal. I get a response from my dildo email. Nick in Montana is willing to let me sell on his sex site on commission. I make a couple of different models, including one that I paint just as realistically as I would one of the reborn dolls. This means a base coat, then I paint the veins in. Then I bake it. Then I paint an almost translucent layer of color and bake it again. Six layers. And then a clear overlayer of silicone because I don’t think the paint is approved for use this way. I put a pretty hefty price on it and call it a special. At the same time, I am making my other special. The doll for the Chicago couple. I sent the mold to Tony and had him do a third head from it. It, too, requires layers of paint, and sometimes the parts bake side by side.