Robert Calder - The Dogs

Friday afternoon he called Ursula to confirm the time he'd pick the children up in the morning. She wasn't in yet. They'd met in family court last week and the judge had granted him the visitation rights he'd petitioned for.

Ursula had shot him a single venomous glance of hatred, but then had composed herself. They'd exchanged a few minutes' polite conversation as they left the court. He got no answer after dinner, nor a couple hours later when he tried again. He went to bed and slept restfully.

He woke early, showered, dressed, and cooked sausages and eggs. He took a second cup of coffee outside, drank it and looked up at the sun-flooding mountains through a cigarette. He drove into town.

He found the front door locked. He rang the bell again and waited. He walked over to a living-room window and looked in. He tried to identify exactly what was askew. Then he saw; details. The brass cigarette box was gone from the coffee table, the ivory Art Nouveau dancer from the mantel, there were lighter blocks of paint on the walls where pictures had hung. He went around the back and tried the kitchen door. It was locked too. He got a rock from the yard and broke out a small pane of glass, reached through and opened the lock and went in.

The house was utterly still. He went upstairs. Most of the toys were gone from the boys' rooms, most of their clothes. The aquarium no longer stood on Jeff's dresser. Michael's joke books were missing from the shelf over his bed. Ursula's makeup and jewelry chest were not in her room. Her closet was only a quarter full, the clothes that remained had never been her favorites. There was a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste in the bathroom, a topless deodorant stick that had shrunk to a dry cracked nub. Downstairs again, he picked the receiver from the wall phone in the kitchen. He hadn't expected a dial tone and he didn't get one.

He went next door and knocked on Janie's door. She came from the living room. When she saw him she bit her lip.

"Just a second," she called.

She disappeared, returned a minute later with her husband Bill at her side.

They looked unhappy. She let him in. Bill stood with his back to the refrigerator, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Where did she go?" Bauer said.

"Let's not allow ourselves to get upset," Bill said.

"I'm not upset."

"I don't know." Janie wouldn't meet his eyes.

"She must have said."

"She didn't. Not a word."

"The personal stuff is gone, but there's still a couple thousand dollars' worth of possessions in the house. She didn't just throw them away-money and things are important to Ursula."

Janie looked helplessly to her husband. He came from the refrigerator to stand beside her. "She left some money with us to have the stuff put in storage. The truck is coming next week. That's all she said."

His tone grew belligerent. "Nothing more."

Bauer nodded. "When you talk to her, tell her this is senseless. It can only hurt Jeff and Michael. I don't care what she does. I'm not angry with her and I don't want to take her children away from her. I only want to see them. Tell her to call me."

"She won't," Janie said. "She-"

"She nothing," Bill said. "She just asked to see that her things got into storage. That's all. She didn't leave any messages, and we're not taking any for her."

Bauer left. He went back to his cabin. He called her parents. They were nervously cordial but wouldn't tell him anything. Her brother, whom he'd never gotten on with, refused to talk to him.

He sat for a moment, thinking. He dialed New York City Information and got the number of Gruman Security & Investigations. The receptionist said Mr.

Gruman didn't come in Saturdays. His partners Mr. Charleston and Mr.

Webster were there, she'd be happy to connect him. He told her to call Wallace Gruman at home and ask him to phone Alex Bauer as soon as he could. He gave the girl his number and hung up.

Gruman called back forty-five minutes later. Bauer had once written a series on Gruman and his agency. It attracted interest and was responsible for a lot of new business.

"She might have gone to California," Bauer said. "She lived in San Francisco once. She has a cousin there she's close to, some friends and an old boyfriend."

"Is she whacky, dangerous to the kids or anything?"

"No. Actually, I don't think it's all me. This town's too small for her, and I think she had a love affair that went sour. She probably wants to start everything over. That's fine, I don't care where she lives, and she'll get over hating my guts in a few months, but I want to know where my kids are. I want to talk to them. I want to work out times I can see them-school holidays if she wants to stay in California, or wherever she is, summer vacations. How long will it take to find her?"

"That depends. Since she's straight-a solid citizen-and has children with her, it won't be very hard. She'll be applying for a telephone, have to list her Social Security number on job applications, get a new driver's license, make arrangements for schooling, that kind of thing.

Unless you're really going underground-and that's only for kids, crazies and fugitives-it's just not possible to keep your whereabouts unknown long in this society. With a couple of lucky phone calls, we've found people in under two hours. I'd say a week to ten days at the outside."

Bauer gave Gruman Ben Nichols' number and asked that a message be left there if Gruman couldn't get him personally.

He hung up. He didn't feel anything but a kind of firmness, a still and steady certitude. He respected the tranquillity; it seemed a rite of preparation.

He could set off now. The bulk of the day still remained. But he didn't.

He'd fixed a point of beginning, Monday, and it was better to adhere to that, not to alter the rhythm of it.

He went walking in the woods, through areas he'd wandered with Orph. He was saddened, but armored by his will against despair, against the sanctuary of disengagement. He listened to music before he went to bed.

The pups were five weeks old, and the bitch had weaned them. Orph and the black and the spotted dog brought small kills and pieces of larger ones back. The pups pushed at each other over the food, dragged bones and hunks of meat off to private corners and showed their teeth, growled if one of the others came too close. They ate ravenously, they were growing round.

Their hair was soft and fuzzy. Heavy and big-boned, they favored Orph.

They had his broad skull and bull neck, his powerful chest and shoulders. The bitch had pulled most of their muzzles, which were longer than Orph's. One, the biggest, a male, had a head and front assembly that were replicas in miniature of his sire. Another had an up curled tail. The bitch's dun color had washed and sported with Orph's deep black and rust, and one pup was a sable with a light tinting of red.

They were frolicsome and aggressive, happy to play outside the burrow as long as the bitch would allow. They ran after blowing leaves, and bit them.

They stalked insects. They wrestled each other with mock snarls and sharp nips.

They chewed on the older dogs' tails and bit their ears. They charged their mother or one of the others barking loudly, snapped playfully at legs. They harassed the males until one would lose patience and knock the offender to the ground and give it a harsh snarl or a low growl, which immediately caused the pup to roll over on its back and sprinkle a few drops of urine, which infantile display guaranteed its safety.

Orph liked them. They amused him and he felt good playing with them.

In another week the bitch would bring them from the den a final time and then they'd begin to live and sleep in the open with the rest of the pack, and a week or two after that they'd be old enough to travel, slowly and not any great distance at a time, but Orph could lead the pack away from here, and the human scent that drifted sporadically through the woods. He was more tolerant of the pups' enthusiasm than the black, who warned them away frequently and sulked into the woods when they became too much to bear, but less than the spotted dog, who seemed nearly as proud and devoted to them as the bitch. The spotted dog rarely rebuked or withdrew from them. He licked them, he groomed them, he baited their charges with his swishing tail, be rolled on his back and let them climb on him and didn't object to their little needle teeth.