A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

“We were all duped.”

“You think trust has to be replaced by suspicion?”

“It would appear so. I don’t mean to sound flippant. I don’t want to be a cynic; I don’t want to become embittered. But I need to understand this. That’s why I’m going to see his mother.”

“You found out his identity?”

“Pat told me his real name was Jimmy Gordon. She told me how to find his mother.”

“What is it you feel you can get from meeting his mother?”

“She may want to claim the body.”

“No, no. What would you get from meeting her?”

“Whatever I find will be better than what I would imagine.” I was hit by the weight of the situation.

“Is this a job for you or for the police?”

“The case is closed as far as they are concerned. He killed Susan Rorke. My dogs killed him.”

“What about your classes? Are you keeping up with your research?”

“This is my research. You’d tell me if I was going off the deep end, right? I mean, if I was really off the mark here?”

“Your instincts are good. Trust them.”

• • •

Back in Williamsburg, I was starving when I got off the subway at Lorimer Street. I bought a Godfather wrap — soppressata, provolone, roasted red peppers — at Bagelsmith on the corner. I walked slowly — there was no wind — and had eaten about half the wrap when I saw a little white dog, unleashed, running in the street. I looked for the dog’s owner, but saw only a couple of young people calling after the dog. I crouched on the sidewalk and pulled a piece of salami from between the bread I was holding. I tried to get the little dog’s attention, making kissing noises. A truck was coming down the street, and I ran in front of it and waved my arms for it to stop. The young people continued to call after the dog, who had not stopped running. This was not going to end well, I feared.

Then a man on a bike stopped pedaling and approached the dog slowly, while not looking at it. I remembered that this was the way to win a stray’s trust — don’t look at it directly. The man slapped his leg — like a tail wagging — and he knew to swing his arm against his leg from right to left, mimicking the tail wag of a friendly dog. Left to right shows aggression. It was coming back to me — the right things to do. I had been moving toward the man as he made these gestures, and then I saw that it was McKenzie.

“Hey,” I called out to him, “do you know whose dog this is?”

“Give me a minute.” He asked me to bring him my sandwich.

He put half of it a couple of feet in front of him on the pavement. He sat down and told me not to move. By this time, the young couple had recognized someone who knew how best to proceed and were, themselves, now spectators at what might turn out to be a rescue, after all.

The dog was hunched under a parked car. I sat down beside McKenzie, and we waited. We didn’t speak. When five minutes had passed like this, the little white dog crawled out from under the car and dispatched the sandwich in two bites.

An amateur might then have grabbed the dog, but McKenzie unzipped his backpack and retrieved a worn bungee cord, made a quick slipknot at one end, and collared the dog gently, all the time speaking to it in a low, friendly voice. The dog looked relieved, not trapped.

Finally, McKenzie turned to me. “I’ve got to be somewhere half an hour ago. Can you take this pup home till we can arrange a foster?” I had two dogs on a DOH hold, but no way would I not take this stray home with me.

I took the makeshift leash from McKenzie’s hand.

“I’ll phone you later,” he said.

The little white dog pulled in his direction, wanting to go with him.

“You’re stuck with me, little one.” I had plenty of dog food at home, and this would be the first time a dog had been in my apartment since the day Bennett died.

I carried her to my apartment and filled one of my dog bowls with cold water and another with kibble. The little dog tucked right in. I’ve always loved the sound of a dog eating. Satisfied, she leaped into my lap, so lightly that I was surprised to find her there. I stroked her gently between her shoulder blades, trying to feel for a rice-grain-size microchip. I could feel vertebrae, but nothing else. She could not have weighed more than twelve pounds. I ran a bath in the kitchen sink and eased the filthy pup into the warm bath. She didn’t fight me but gave herself over to the pleasant sensation of a gentle shampoo. I towel-dried her, and a name came to me. Her big, black eyes looked like olives, so that is what I called her. Later that night, I persuaded Olive to accompany me into the bedroom. When I woke sometime after midnight, I found her sleeping on my chest. I needed to turn over, and moved slowly so as not to jar her, but it wasn’t necessary; Olive moved along with me, remaining on top, logrolling.

In the morning, while I was still in bed, McKenzie called to tell me that he’d found a rescue organization willing to take the stray.

“I’m fine fostering Olive for a while.”

McKenzie laughed. “Olive? You want to take this on right now? The hearing is on Monday.”

“The hearing is on Monday whether I keep her or not. How worried should I be?”

“Were you able to persuade your downstairs neighbor to testify?”

“She said she didn’t want that killer dog back.”

“Well, that was a long shot. I guess you won’t be watering her plants when she goes on vacation.”

“How many cases like this do you win?”

“Not enough.”

“But you keep at it.”

“The individual outcome is only part of what I’m trying to do. The law is the way I can try to change the way people treat animals.”

His simple eloquence reassured me, and I thanked him again for his help.

When we hung up, I went online to check FidoFinder for lost dogs. I clicked on lost, white, small , and my zip code. I braced myself against the wrenching descriptions of the missing, but none of the dogs seemed to be the stray I had taken in. I printed out a Lost flyer. The site recommended posting the flyers within a half-mile radius of where a small dog was found. Taking Olive with me, I papered the neighborhood. On the walk home, I posted the last flyer at the McCarren dog park. One woman held her puppy on its leash over the pen and dunked it into the play group, then withdrew it, like a tea bag.

I phoned Billie when I got home to remind her about the hearing on Monday and to tell her about my visit with Pat. I liked what happened when I brought Billie up-to-date: whatever horror I was reporting on became a narrative; it was transformed in the telling into a story, and as such felt further away from me than it actually was. It was like the times Kathy and I had regaled each other with a game called He Actually Thinks. He actually thinks he can call me on Christmas Eve to meet him for a drink. That kind of thing. Turn an upset into a game or a story, and you move ahead of it, maybe even to a place of not caring.

When I told Billie that Pat had displayed the series of naked self-portraits with a pig’s heart over her left breast, Billie said, “You wouldn’t want to be a muse for that girl.”

“And her dog. A missile when there was the slightest sound outside. Throwing herself against the glass.”

I told Billie I had taken in a stray and was caught off guard when she said, “Shouldn’t your focus be on your own dogs?”

“I am entirely focused on them.” I was hurt by her scolding tone.

I heard the beeps that indicated I had an incoming call, but I ignored it, knowing that Billie would hear me pass up a call to stay on the line with her — a peace offering. It worked, and we were back on track. She told me she had gotten Enrique, the head kennel worker, to write a character reference for my dogs. My phone beeped again, and this time Billie suggested I take it. “I’ll see you Monday at the hearing,” she said.