Jonathan Lethem - Lucky Alan - And Other Stories

As if snow outside invading, Traveler’s screen begins defecting, digital freezing, slurry of staticky white pixels corrupting shots of insomniac detective. Traveler ignores until he can’t, as picture worsens, glitching story line irretrievably. Traveler sighs. Time’s come as he suspected. Satellite dish outside caked, icicles shredding signal, white stuff needs bumping off. Not the first time. Terrier needs decanting anyhow. This duty preeminent, regularly dragging Traveler outside cave of warmth, into snowfall, needs of Terrier for an earth patch to perfume. Traveler dons coat, knee boots, gloves. Terrier at door trepidatious understanding. Traveler gathers kitchen broom for knocking off accumulation from dish, freeing of signal, resumption of movie. No reason Traveler and Terrier can’t be back on couch in minutes. So, outside, into the howl. Traveler tucking Terrier under arm, a protected football. Practically impossible in this height of snowfall for Terrier to find a place to squat. Find an evergreen with snow-sheltered interior, bed of cones barely dusted, best hope. Preferable to carry dog seeking ideal spot. Otherwise Terrier’s low belly beads with icicles, Terrier runs discouraged frozen yelping for porch. Trial and error, Traveler now carries Terrier.

Satellite dish first. Traveler trudges hip-deep in drifts at the side of the house. Raises broom into swirl, rattles ice on heaped dish, scoops snow from concavity. Icicles clatter to shards deep in snowbank. Dish freed, adequate. Through own window like yeti peeper, Traveler spots lit screen, image rescued. Distant stratospheric signal unblocked from local occlusion of particles. Unfathomable mysteries of science best ignored. Sleepless detective restored oblivious to malfunctional interlude. Empty rooms equally oblivious, carrying on without. Now only remains the Terrier’s peeing, then inside, cleave to warmth, boots-puddle melting by vent. Traveler carries dog and broom across open margin of yard, high-fall of snow, into the woods, into the trees, where canopy offers Terrier possibilities.

Traveler had in warmer months begun carving path back into woods, labor of unfamiliar intimacy with saplings, wood saws, mammoth treetop clippers. Pushing through woods, foot by foot, toward rendezvous with path already established, deep in trees, running behind all their houses invisible. Known locally as “Drunkard’s Path,” ribald suggestion of shitfaced farmers sneaking home concealed from judgmental porch-views. No sense how much farther to reach this older path, Traveler had simply gone on clipping, chopping, making his own mark. Provides place for Terrier to defecate anyhow. Tonight path’s a white tunnel, trees large and small draped silent, cone of moonlit intensity. Traveler sets Terrier down in relative shallow, waits. Terrier alerts, snarls. Traveler looks. Ahead on path now, arrayed in woods, seven wolves. Teeth bared, snarling too, ready. The always feared. Traveler’s seen animals here, sure, mostly prey, deer, bunnies. Nobody from this place would call them bunnies but he can’t think of another word. Once a fox, harmlessly decorative. Eagles overhead sometimes turning, as if with Terrier in sights. Locals joke he’d best keep Terrier inside. Keep close, city dog. Now here they’ve come, the deeper locals. Patrolling for drunkards maybe, but they’ll take what they get. Traveler thinking always danger to Terrier never to himself. Is broom enough to fend them? Then sees basket.

Wolf now emerging from back of group, padding in white path, basket in jaws. Others part to allow this passing. Terrier still growling low in throat, wolves unimpressed. Traveler cranes to look in basket. A baby there, human animal faintly squalling. Tucked in bare blanket, lightly snow-clung. Wolf perhaps proposing a trade, baby for Terrier, as if claiming canine sovereignty here. Do they expect Traveler to eat baby? Why haven’t wolves eaten baby themselves? No way to ask. Traveler as by instinct turns broom to extend handle. Wolf permits. The basket is unexpectedly light. Traveler reels it in. Wolves turn on path, scatter, not demanding Terrier or anything else in return. Terrier, idiot, goes on growling at retreating forms, as if having routed them personally. Traveler gathers basket to his arms, letting broom sink in snow. Find it later. No arm free for Terrier either, so the dog’s left to hopping through snowbanks, vanishing below their height and encrusting entirely, thusly following Traveler and basket with baby onto porch, and indoors.

Baby, unwrapped indoors, is a boy baby. White blanket unstained, though even as Traveler makes this observation baby arcs yellow to moisten the basket’s lining. Traveler finds towels, pats limbs dry, replaces blanket with towel, first lesson in baby’s consummately blunt demands. The other being to feed. Mouth pursing in silent expectation. No question of any task but find it satisfaction. Traveler has barely anything in the fridge, much less milk. Ill-prepared for self not to mention newcomer. Should have laid in groceries before storm, Traveler’s classic city-man error, now car waits for plowing, locked in driveway helpless. Plowman uncallable, ranging out in night’s campaign. Likely wouldn’t call if even could. Traveler’s got no notion how far down he dwells on Plowman’s list, but certainly low. Often plowed in dawn hours, wakes to find it done, silent reprimand of countryperson’s early rising. Plowman never billing, denying Traveler ground for complaint. The times he’s asked, Plowman laughs gruffly, as if Traveler’s plowing is comically negligible. Then offered a rural cipher: “I’ll bill when I’ve done enough to be worth billing.” Bastard. Hence no counting on when the way might open to groceries, milk, bottles with nipples, baby food in jars if this creature’s even ready for such. That mouth won’t be reasoned with, won’t wait, Traveler knows this much. Delves in fridge, finds one shred of dairy, a sliver of Brie. Terrier to one side watching, high whine in throat. Unhesitating on baby’s behalf, Traveler carves off the cheese’s white horny rind, thinking as he does how it resembles plowing the cheese like a snow-crushed road. But no time now for fruitless comparisons. Traveler frees gooey center from cheese’s interior, douses in bowl with waterdrops, mashes it to yogurt-like fluid with a spoon’s bottom. Dribbles mixture into waiting mouth. Baby feeds in eagerness too primal to give the name of gratitude. Naps for two hours then demands repeat. Traveler repeats. At third waking Terrier, finally bored with new rituals, pads off to curl in sleep. Baby naps, wakes, Traveler repeats. In this manner Traveler and baby manage through night’s dark. Waiting for light and a path to town, doctors, grocery shelves, diapers. Outside somewhere, Plowman working.

3.

She liked to rescue dogs flung from family station wagons, Plowman’s crazy eldest, whole town knows her this way, as simple as if missing a leg or with a birthmark on forehead, the crazy one. Summertime haunts the cursed bend in road where unfamiliar drivers never slow to curve’s necessity, blacktop layered with curving skids, items tossed from badly secured pickups, winter a black-ice trap, regular towing work for her dad Plowman. Scored her first catch here at age fifteen: collie leaning through open back window, jumping at centrifugal careening, path of least resistance, while the family oblivious, three or four kids in backseat fighting, voices raised over dad’s ballgame radio, nobody notices, poof, dog’s gone. Five hundred dollar pedigreed city dog, they never even turn back, or if they do Plowman’s crazy eldest has the sleek keening creature by then tied in Plowman’s barn deep off main road, not a chance in the world they’d persist to find it.

She turned this anomalous event into a precedent, began vulture-like prowling vigil at road’s bend in warmest weather, incredibly gathering another three dogs plopped from rolled windows in summer following, another collie to make a pair, a dachshund, comical waddler stranding in roadside ivy, and a bulldog, this last her boon companion, seen with her thenceforth everywhere, driving in cab of wretched pickup or on her infrequent town visits, in the post office or the general store, cutting across church or library lawn, defiant survivalist spinster and fist-like, oozing, snorting dog, Plowman’s wild, Plowman’s unfortunate, Plowman’s crazy eldest daughter.