Lee Thomas
The theft was a courtesy. At least, that’s how Scotty Collins explained it to himself. After the funeral of his best friend and mentor, and after an hour at the reception, extolling the virtues of Judge Walter Griff to men in fine suits and women in tasteful black dresses, he’d ordered a refill on his scotch and slipped away to spend time alone with his grief. He’d been hesitant to leave the crowd, because he knew the moment he stepped out of earshot, his daughter would become a topic of conversation. For years now, his little girl, Miranda, had provided fertile ground for the weeds of gossip. However, her last instance of recklessness had brought a new level of humiliation to her family. Even Scotty, who had successfully argued many improbable legal defenses, wasn’t able to explain it away as youthful indiscretion. But he knew he couldn’t stop the talk, knew he couldn’t control the world, so he’d excused himself from the mourners and made his way to the study. The door had been closed, but it hadn’t been locked, so when he checked the room—richly decorated with mahogany bookcases and leather furniture—and found it empty, Scotty stepped inside. He meandered around the study, spending time reminiscing and absorbing the atmosphere that now felt thinner without the great man’s presence.
They’d spent hours in this space, drinking good whisky and talking about work, their families, fishing, and politics. He’d been introduced to two state senators in this room, both of whom had promptly received a check from Scotty, and both of whom he still supported to this day.
The book on Walter’s desk caught his eye, because its garish, yet worn, paperback cover was so different from the hardbound volumes lining Walter’s shelves. Scotty lifted the book and examined the cover, which showed the purple silhouettes of a man and his dog, standing before a glistening body of water.
The Litter’s Runt by Christopher Pelham.
He sipped his scotch and perused the back cover, his face growing warm with the line, “. . . and sexual awakening of a gay kid from small town North Carolina.” The book seemed highly uncharacteristic for his mentor, but opening the cover, he noted an inscription:
To Walter,
Who was like a second father to me. Chris
Without giving the action any thought, Scotty tucked the book into his jacket’s inner pocket the way he’d once slotted his checkbook before leaving the house, and only after he took another sip of his drink did it occur to him that he was breaking the law. It was then he decided that taking the novel was an act of respect. If someone else found the book on the judge’s desk, it might lead to ridiculous speculation, particularly considering the odd inscription.
He returned to the throng filling the front of the house, where nothing had changed during his brief absence. The faces of the crowd, a garden of somber blossoms, fell in around him. He’d known most of these people all his adult life. Walter had brought them together for holiday parties, political fundraisers, or just to fill his house with like-minded friends.
“He was a great man,” noted a slender lawyer with a tightly fitted suit. “He had a brilliant mind,” said a young woman with perfect hair and crooked teeth. “I never saw a man his age in better shape,” said a diminutive gentleman with a tight, tanned face.
Scotty paused at the periphery of this conversation, waiting to be noticed. Dr. Desmond Threlkeld was his personal physician; he’d been Walter’s as well.
“Scotty,” Threlkeld said, cocking his head away from a matronly woman who wore her white hair in a globe on the top of her head. “I’m so sorry. I know how close you and Walter were.”
The crowd pushed in tight at Scotty’s shoulders and the weight of the book against his chest reminded him of his crime. He thanked the doctor. “It’s been a shock for all of us.”
“It has,” Threlkeld agreed. “I was just saying how fit Walter seemed. Shocking.”
“And there were no signs something like this might happen?”
“I can’t speak to specifics, of course, but no.” Dr. Threlkeld’s face grew pensive as if he were trying to remember the name of an actress from an old film. He leaned in closer to Scotty and whispered. “The medical examiner is a friend of mine. He had some difficulties with the autopsy.”
“Difficulties?” Scotty asked.
“Oh, you know,” Threlkeld said. “The aftermath.”
Scotty nodded. It was a grisly business. After suffering a lethal cardiac event in his backyard, Walter had lain exposed to the elements for at least twenty-four hours, and some of those elements had had teeth. Though animal attack had been ruled out as the cause of death, the local media had been happy to report that his corpse had suffered the attentions of wildlife and stray pets.
Before Scotty could ask his next question, a hand gripped his arm and pulled. Rachel Smith, an attractive young associate with the firm, whose eyes blazed with ambition, faced him for a moment and then threw her arms around his shoulders.
“This must be so hard for you,” she said. The scent of the expensive perfume dousing her neck crawled into his head like a virus, instantly triggering the tightness in his sinuses he associated with an impending allergy attack. “First Miranda, and now this. I’m so sorry, Scotty.”
He patted her back, eager to send her on her way.
“If you need anything,” she said as sweetly predatory as a kitten toying with a roach, “you let me know. I’m here for you.”
He thanked her and excused himself, but when he turned to resume his conversation with the doctor, he couldn’t find the man. Scotty worked his way through the crowd, distracted by Threlkeld’s words and the book in his pocket. What difficulties had the doctor meant? Had something important been left out of the coroner’s report? As for the book, why would the story of some homo in North Carolina hold any interest for Walter Griff? Further, what had been meant by the inscription?
Giving up on his search for the doctor, Scotty left the reception, carrying a sense of disappointment along with his questions and grief. The word “difficulties” persisted, clicking around in his head.
• • •
In nature, the runt of a litter not only struggles for nourishment but also attention. Fighting with its stronger siblings for a place at the teats, a runt can die of starvation while its brothers and sisters grow strong and healthy. Sensing this weakness, this inferiority, the parent will often ignore the runt, instinct dictating that such a defenseless creature deserves neither effort nor resources, because ultimately it has no chance for survival. It’s an evolutionary imperative, you see. It’s animal. It’s primal. While I certainly had more than enough to eat as a child, my parents, Father especially, practiced this brand of natural selection.
I was the runt of my litter. Weaker and smaller than my brothers, weaker and smaller than my classmates. To my father, I was an embarrassment. A waste.
Outside the walls of my home, the world treats me as prey. My pack doesn’t protect me. If I am unable to find or create a new pack, I may never survive my youth. . . .
• • •
The blue-black horizon at the edge of the ocean faded to a lavender-hued sky. Scotty stood on the wraparound porch, his drink sweating a ring on the stark white railing as he gazed at the foaming tide. In the distance a dog barked angrily, as if warning an intruder away from its property.
Though he felt miserable, he couldn’t complain about the view. Three years ago, before real trouble had found his daughter, he’d come home to find the lawn of his former residence littered with three-thousand dollar suits and garbage bags gorged to near breaking with his other belongings. At that point, he’d commandeered the beach house with its sharp-edged modern exterior and an interior color palette reminiscent of a Cape Cod vacation rental his ex had adored. The blues and greens, all framed in glaring white trim, had always been too soft for Scotty, perhaps too feminine, but he’d never gotten around to having them painted.
He inhaled deeply. Salted air filled his lungs.
“Fuck,” he said to the ocean view.
He’d been reading the book he’d stolen from Walter’s study. It only added to his confusion. Though a tremendous reader, Walter Griff’s taste in literature had always run to nonfiction: histories and biographies. The few novels he had discussed incorporated dense and accurate historical notes. In short, he didn’t read fluff. He certainly wasn’t likely to read the blunt and self-pitying account of a young homosexual.
Scotty couldn’t help but wonder if Walter had actually known Christopher Pelham, the author of the book. The copyright was more than twenty-five years old, around the time Scotty had first fallen under Walter’s wing.
To Walter,
Who was like a second father to me.
Scotty certainly understood the sentiment.
The distant barking drew his attention down the beach. He saw the animal, way off, barely larger than a speck near where the Zanes property met the Williamsons.
The presence of the agitated animal, even so far from him, made Scotty uneasy. He couldn’t say why exactly. He’d been reading Pelham’s novel, and clearly the author had identified strongly with the creatures, but the novel hinted at nothing even remotely sinister about the animals.
His phone rang. It was the tone designated for his daughter, the opening notes of a song she’d loved as a child. A year ago, she’d downloaded the ringtone and loaded it onto his phone. Miranda had said it was “their song,” which had made Scotty wince. He hated the six bars of music.
He continued to stare at the shimmering water and the darkening sky, as the melody played over and over. The rail proved sturdy enough for his tightening grip and the weight his now-swaying body placed on it.
Tomorrow, he thought. His emotions had been thoroughly wrung for the day. Tomorrow he’d take her call.
The dog, maybe a German shepherd, darker than any he’d seen, was closer now. It ran along the shoreline. Through a trick of distance or fading light, it appeared that the charging animal actually made no forward progress, despite the rapid pedaling of its legs. The eager animal ran, but went nowhere, like a digital image endlessly looping.
Unnerved by this illusion, Scotty lifted his glass and walked inside.
• • •
It is the last day of school, and I am ten years old. Already, the summer’s promised heat has descended on Hargett’s Bend. Pollen dust still speckles the air, lit by the sun’s glare. Walking with Jacob Larimer, I drift in and out of a daydream in which I imagine swimming through a sea of radiance, a fantasy ocean of luminous tides.
I walk with Jacob, not because we are friends, because we certainly are not, but because he had announced to the class that his dog had mothered a litter of pups, and the news had compelled me to see the animals.
Without a note of hospitality or facade of friendliness, he walks me through his house to the mudroom beyond the kitchen. The Larimer house is very much like my father’s house. So many of the houses of our class resemble one another, inside if not out.
There, in a large wicker basket that might have once held towels at the poolside, lays a magnificent shepherd. Nearly all black, she reclines as three fist-sized pups crowd against her belly. A fourth pup tries to wriggle in for its meal but is nudged aside. After several attempts it plops down on its backside and stares up at me with the most beautiful black eyes, satin eyes, silken eyes.
“That one’s going to die,” Jacob says casually. “The others cost three hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Why is she going to die?”
“How do you know it’s a she?”
“I just know.”
“Weird,” Jacob concludes. “Well, she’s going to die. Father said that if she wasn’t getting fed he’d drown her in the pool. It’s a mercy, he said. Better than starving to death. The others won’t let her anywhere near the tits, so he’ll probably dunk her tonight.”
“I’ll take her.”
“What’s she gonna suck for food?” Jacob asks and then bursts out laughing, driven to hysterics by his own crass humor.
My eyes haven’t left those of the pup. I have already named her. I will call her Bette, and I will find a way to feed her. I will never let Mr. Larimer “dunk” her.
“She’s still gonna die,” Jacob taunts before closing the door at my back.
“I’ll shoot that fucking thing,” my father says later that evening. “If I even smell it in the house, I’ll put a bullet in the bitch’s skull.”
• • •
In his office, Scotty listened while the phone played his daughter’s favorite song. Work lay scattered on his desk, but he had no heart for it. He mourned for Judge Griff and remained confounded by the book he’d found in the man’s library.
He couldn’t say he enjoyed the book, but he’d read late into the night. At first, he’d found the narrator’s dedication to the shepherd pup cloying and sappy. It seemed like an easy emotional button the author could press to get a collective empathic sigh from his readers, but as he finished the chapter that detailed the lengths the boy had gone to in saving the dog’s life, he found himself admiring the kid’s tenacity.
When the phone gave up, Scotty listened to his daughter’s message. It was nearly verbatim to the one she’d left the previous evening:
“Hi, Daddy. Can you visit tomorrow? I haven’t seen you in forever, and I really need to see you. Mom won’t come. She said she can’t because of Clint. She thinks I’m so stupid. I know she just doesn’t want to. Please can’t you come? I’m so alone. I miss you.”
The message brought an ache to Scotty, but the pain grew hot and liquefied. After a few moments, the sadness he genuinely wanted to feel was gone, and in its place was offense. Another manipulation. Another running of the fingers to find cracks that could be exploited and ripped open.
Walter had warned him about Miranda’s behavior. The judge had seen it in his offices and the courtroom for years. He talked about the skilled deceit addicts practiced. He’d noted that lies and manipulations were drugs unto themselves. They started small, little hits of misdirection and falsehood, which eventually blossomed into an uncontrollable dependence on fabrication.
He hadn’t believed a thing his daughter had told him in more than three years. For too long, he’d pretended to be convinced by Miranda’s fresh devotions to honesty, but the performances were exhausting. Invariably, he’d forced a smile, patted her shoulder, and reached for his wallet.
Nothing had changed, except for her address.
Scotty simmered in his office for thirty minutes more and then gave up on the day.
• • •
My father and Carl sit by the pool, drinking highballs and smoking cigars. Father is bundled in his white terry cloth robe, but Carl wears nothing but his swim trunks. They grip his strong thighs and waist, covering his masculinity like a layer of sky-blue paint. Water glistens from where it beads on his shoulders, from where it clings to the hairs on his chest, from the stream trickling down his belly to the pale blue lip of his trunks. The sight of him suffocates me.
He raises his head and turns his attention in my direction. He smiles and lifts his hand to offer a friendly wave. My father also sees me by the pool house, and his face tightens and darkens. Beside me, Bette whimpers before nudging the back of my leg with her snout.
She is smarter than I. She understands the danger, but I remain ignorant, or, if not ignorant, indifferent, as my eyes have found a paradise they refuse to vacate. Carl says something to Father, who shakes his head and scowls. Then Father is laughing and lifting his drink to his lips.
Carl glances my way again. I detect something different in his expression. I tell myself that he is looking at me in the same way I am looking at him.
Bette whimpers. She begs. She backs away and then returns to my side, clearly distraught. And finally, though hesitantly, I give in to my best friend’s demands.
• • •
The text from his assistant arrived with a startling trill at just after one in the morning. Scotty struggled into wakefulness and coughed violently as a dense odor crept into his nose and down his throat. Sniffing the air, he noted a musky scent fading as the tone from his phone grew clearer in his ears. Scotty blinked several times and then retrieved his reading glasses from the bedside table.
Reyna: I thought you’d want to see this. It’s probably a hoax or a scam to get money from his estate.
A link followed the brief and unsettling message. Scotty tapped it with his finger and waited for the web page to load. When he saw the headline, he groaned and shook his head before throwing back the covers and racing from the room to make his way down the hall to his study. He read the words displayed in a tiny font on his phone as he threw open the door and went to his desk.
“No. Fuck no. Fuck no,” he muttered as he powered up his computer.
Conservative Judge spends weekend at gay resort with teenage boy three weeks before his death.
Outside the house, Scotty noted a grating sound, like wood scraping wood. He thought about the swing on his porch, the swing his daughter had once shared with him, and wondered if it had fallen loose.
The noise persisted, creating a distant, unsettling rhythm for his reading.
An eighteen-year-old man, named Ross Michaels, claimed to have spent three days at a gay bed and breakfast in Hargett’s Bend, North Carolina, with Judge Walter Griff.
“I saw his picture, you know, with his obit, and I couldn’t believe it,” Michaels said. “I started surfing around, and damn, what a prick. I saw the terrible people he used his money to support, and all of the right-wing shit he’s said over the years, and no way was I gonna shut up about it. These people are a disease. You know, like cancer? And they’re killing us from the inside.”
The grating sound grew more determined. Louder. It sounded as if it were coming from the front door. Scotty winced at the noise, but refused to leave his desk chair.
The article was clearly a fabrication, meant to tarnish the reputation of a good man. Scotty would have stopped reading two sentences in to the ridiculous story if it hadn’t been for the name of the city in which the alleged tryst had occurred: Hargett’s Bend. It rang a bell, but he couldn’t place the town in his memory.
Scotty ran half a dozen searches, but found no indication that the real media had picked up the story. It was only a matter of hours, he knew. Even if the accusations went unsubstantiated (and they can’t be true), the fucking hairdos with microphones would be jizzing buckets over a story like this.
E-mails and additional text messages began to trickle in from Walter’s friends and peers. Within ten minutes they were arriving every few seconds. Behind all the pings and trills, the scraping sound at his door played like a jug band washboard, now all but booming in his ears.
“Damn,” Scotty bellowed. He pushed himself away from the computer and stormed into the hall.
At the top of the stairs, he paused and gazed down at the entryway. The white rectangle of the door, with four, small, absolutely black windows, suddenly frightened him. The scraping sound persisted, and though he felt determined to discover the source of the distracting noise, his legs refused to take him any further. He inhaled deep breaths and experienced a flash of heat along his cheek and throat. Raising his hand to touch his neck, he looked down and noticed he was naked. In defense of his trepidation, he told himself that modesty had nailed his feet to the oak floorboards.
Below, the scratching continued. And it was scratching, he decided, like a dog eager to enter a house to see its master.
Scotty took a step back. The heat at his throat intensified. Burned. Sweat ran in a line down his spine to tickle a path to his backside.
“Oh, horseshit,” he mumbled defiantly.
He stomped down the stairs. In the entryway, he flipped on the porch light and grasped the doorknob. The frantic scrabbling on the other side of the plank grew furious, and Scotty twisted and yanked, pulling the door wide as the racket instantly ceased. On the sand beyond his porch, he caught sight of a dog’s haunches and the flash of a scythe-shaped tail, all shadow and murk. It flashed for a moment and then vanished behind an enormous earthenware vase in which his ex-wife had constantly failed to grow roses.
He shouted threats after the retreating animal, cursing the dog for its intrusion, though he didn’t attempt to pursue it. For all he knew, the damn thing could be rabid.
When he’d expelled the bulk of his rage into the night, challenging the volume of the ocean surf as it rhythmically shushed him, Scotty took another step onto the porch. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then spun angrily as if to challenge the house to aggravate him further.
What he saw there confused him. In fact he found it so perplexing his rage subsided. He’d expected the woodwork to be shredded, considering the intensity of the dog’s attack, but he found no gouges or chips on the semigloss. Scotty leaned in close and ran his fingers over the smooth surface. Not so much as a scratch. Son of a bitch, he thought as he straightened himself.
He worked his way along the porch, checking the siding for further signs of attack, and found nothing. Returning his attention to the beach, he caught a brief scent. It was musky and dense, but gone the second he noted it, just like the odor he’d woken to.
Feeling off balance and exposed, Scotty walked inside. He closed the door, locked it, poured himself a glass of vodka from the bottle he kept in his freezer, and then returned upstairs, where a very long night waited for him.
• • •
. . . it hurts, and I beg him to stop, but my pain only excites him, and he presses my face against the wall, and he drives deeper into me. He calls me “faggot” and “bitch” and his voice is the voice of my father. His breath hitches in his throat with an ugly chuckle. I had imagined seducing him, because my eyes had adored his strong chest and his masculine face. I wanted him to be mine. I thought I could take him or at least stain him in my father’s eyes. We would love, and Father would be left behind. His best friend gone. His youngest child away. But there is no love here. There is only piercing. Stabbing.
Carl pinches my throat in the crook of his elbow. My head grows light, but it does nothing to assuage the pain. Outside the pool house, Bette frantically scratches at the door.
He tells me this is what I wanted. He grunts it in my ear with his final thrusts.
This was never what I wanted.
• • •
Scotty threw down the book and rubbed his eyes. He’d been searching the paperback for any indication that Walter, or a fictionalized version of him, appeared in its pages. It had been a mistake and fruitless. Though he couldn’t help picturing his deceased friend in the role of the abusive Carl, there was nothing in the description to connect the character to Judge Walter Griff.
He stood from the chair and walked to his front door. For the third time since early that morning, he peered through the windows. He eyed the shoreline, looking for signs of the dog, fearing he would see the thing loping over the sand, its eyes locked on him like prey, its muzzle crumpled in a ravenous snarl.
In the course of twelve hours, Ross Michaels’s story about his weekend with Walter had ascended to the mainstream media. Scotty’s name and e-mail address had reached reporters, bloggers, and random lunatics, all of whom demanded information about his friend, but he’d ignored the requests for quotes. Articles and accusations ran on every major news site. The owners of the bed and breakfast had come forward to confirm Michaels’s claim. They offered to provide a credit card receipt for verification. Already, the timbre of the messages coming in was changing. Men and women who had hours before sternly defended Walter Griff from such malicious defamation were suggesting they didn’t really know the man well, or noted how something had always seemed off about the judge.
Though well-skilled in self-delusion, Scotty himself was losing the fight to keep his mentor’s reputation unspoiled.
He remembered where he’d seen the name Hargett’s Bend before; he’d read it in the pages of Christopher Pelham’s novel. Adding fuel to his emotional chaos, the bed and breakfast Walter had allegedly visited was called the Pelham Plantation.
The story grew too complex for his exhausted mind. He tried telling himself he didn’t know what Walter was doing at the establishment, though the flimsy material of the lie crumbled as he attempted to hold it. Of course, he knew. He didn’t want to imagine it, not in any concrete way, but he certainly knew. The evidence was there. But it was so appallingly reckless, unless Walter was hoping to be discovered.
He called Reyna Baldwin, his assistant, and told her he wouldn’t be coming into the office. He could only imagine the battle plans being formed at the firm. Walter Griff’s name shared space on the letterhead with Scotty’s and five other mens’. Reyna informed him that Lucinda Folgers, the firm’s public relations counsel, had requested a meeting with all senior partners for ten a.m. to discuss media management. Scotty declined to attend. He wasn’t speaking to anyone about Walter.
His daughter’s call came through as he listed the files he needed Reyna to messenger over. Miranda’s name on the phone’s screen infuriated him. His daughter’s timing had always been terrible, always the most needy when it was the most inconvenient. He ignored the intrusion and continued to direct his assistant in how to manage his day.
“And do something else for me,” Scotty said. “I want you to look into a book called The Litter’s Runt by Christopher Pelham.”
• • •
I wait in the doctor’s office. Fever burns me. My body is weak and aches. I’ve been sick since the night Carl led me into the pool house.
As I wait for my family’s physician to see me, I read a story about indoor scavenging. It’s what forensic scientists call the practice of animals feeding on the remains of their deceased masters. Though cats are not above such behavior, dogs are known to partake in this particular ritual more frequently. The article notes a man in Sweden who killed himself, blew out the back of his head with a .22 slug. His dog, a Labrador retriever, who by all accounts was a friendly, well-loved and cared for animal, was found by authorities entering the home, standing over his master’s body. The dog sat calmly and obeyed the commands of the strangers.
He appeared completely docile, but at some point between the suicide and the arrival of the authorities, the animal had devoured the man’s cheeks and gnawed through his neck to the point of decapitation.
The article goes on to describe the fear this practice instills in many pet owners, but I can think of nothing lovelier. Were I to die, I would offer my remains to Bette.
If I were to now write my last will and testament, it would be as follows:
“To the men who have touched me and tasted me, the men who lived honest lives and shared their desires with me, I leave my joy and gratitude. To the other men, those who hide their passions behind hard red walls, and exercise those passions with cruelty, I would leave only my contempt and loathing. My family gets nothing of me.
But for my heart’s joy, Bette, my constant friend, I would leave all else. I humbly and gladly bequeath her my flesh and my spirit. . . .”
• • •
After twenty-four hours, the national news had moved deeper into the story of Judge Walter Griff. Two more young men had come forward, and a third man, now in his forties, revealed a long-term affair he’d had with Griff during the nineties. Though all the men had been of legal age, one just barely, the media kept calling them “boys,” kept digging into the old man’s corpse with their talons, looking to pluck more tasty filth from his history. Lifelong friends of Judge Griff refused to speak about his place in their lives, preferring to let his soiled memory fade while extricating themselves from that memory. The firm had taken its first hit, in the form of Snowburn Industries’ decision to end their business dealings, but Scotty knew it wouldn’t be the last, as all of the fine southern Christians who’d entrusted their legal matters to Griff’s legacy scrambled to distance themselves from a company built by that kind of man.
He hid in the beach house, working for his remaining clients. Scotty had barely slept. The previous night, he had again woken from troubled sleep with the musky scent in his nose. It was the odor of a dog’s pelt, or so he’d come to believe.
He hadn’t read anymore of Pelham’s book. It remained on the floor of his study, kicked to and fro as Scotty attempted to manage both personal and business correspondences. Reyna remained his lifeline to the office. She told him the other partners were furious with his absence. Scotty had no doubt they were, but none of them, not one, knew what he was going through.
The greatest man he’d ever known wasn’t really the man he’d known. So many years of advice and wisdom. So much time spent together, and not once had Scotty understood the machinations of his mentor’s deceit. The fishing trips and the resort vacations and the late night hours spent over piles of paperwork and grease-stained pizza boxes had been a fiction. Scotty had fully invested himself in the man’s vision, in his old-school sagacity. And the stupid son of a bitch had dropped dead, leaving Scotty to deal with the creeping toxic fallout of the old man’s secrets.
Scotty let his daughter’s call go to voicemail as he poured himself a vodka. The last thing he needed was to endure her demands, or worse, her self-pitying bullshit. He wasn’t falling for it again. He’d defended her and bailed her out and done his best for too long. Walter had always told him that if you didn’t let people help themselves, let them save themselves, they’d never be anything but a burden.
They’d never be anything but runts, Scotty thought.
From the porch, he watched a young family playing in the sand. The mother tossed her son a red ball. The father smiled as he spoke into his cell phone. Determined to get his father’s attention, the boy kicked the ball in his father’s direction, causing a faux look of surprise and determination to light on the man’s face as he scrambled to join the game.
The scene irritated Scotty. He downed the rest of his drink in one shot and walked inside. He poured another drink and set his cell phone on the counter. Six messages from Miranda waited. He erased the first five and leaned against the counter before starting playback on the most recent.
His daughter’s words emerged from the small speaker. The panic and tears in her voice unnerved him, and Scotty stood a little straighter.
“You didn’t come. Why didn’t you come, Daddy? I needed to talk to you. I’m in trouble. So much trouble. I need money, but I wanted to tell you why I needed it, so you’d understand, but you never came, and you won’t answer your fucking phone.” Her voice broke, and she sobbed. “She’s going to kill me, Daddy. If I don’t pay her, she’s going to kill me. You have to help. You have to. If you don’t want to see me, just send the money to my account. Please.” The message went silent except for an occasional sob. Then Miranda’s voice returned, calmer and deeper. “I’m glad he’s dead.” The message ended there.
Scotty roared at the device and slammed his hand against the counter, sending shocks of pain to his elbow. He filled his glass a third time and stood trembling in his kitchen. Every muscle in his body clenched and sparked ache. A specific, sharper pain rose between his eyes, and he bellowed another useless shout into the room.
She blamed him. She’d always blamed him. The therapist he’d spent a fortune on had convinced Miranda that her acting out was the result of trying to get his attention. You were never home, she complained. You never cared. All the psychobabble justifications she parroted back to him had made Scotty feel like shit, but they were just excuses.
“I was building a life for my fucking family,” he yelled. “And you wasted it. You smoked it and shot it and drank it away. I did not do this to you. You had everything. Every-goddamn-thing! And you nearly murdered an old woman for sixteen bucks and a fake diamond brooch.”
His tirade ended, and Scotty searched the kitchen in a daze. He’d never felt such absolute hatred for another human being, and the power of the emotion unbalanced him. He gazed around the room, at the stainless steel sink, the glass kitchen cabinets, the aqua-colored dish towels, hanging from white plastic hooks he’d stuck to his refrigerator.
As the throbbing of his pulse lessened in his ears, the sound of scrabbling claws on the bare wooden floors in the upstairs hallway emerged. The tremble in his hands intensified. Though it sounded like a dog racing from one end of the corridor to the other, Scotty told himself it was nothing. There was no way a dog or any other animal larger than a spider had gotten into his house. He was overwrought. Exhausted. Drunk.
It was time to get out. He’d spent too much time alone, wallowing in crisis. He could call Desmond, or the Shermans, or the Cunninghams. He could call Rachel Smith from the firm and invite her to meet him at the Westin. She’d thrown herself at him during Walter’s funeral reception. She’d help him blow off some steam. She knew how the game worked. Maybe they’d have dinner first. A good dinner would help.
Scotty gazed upward at the white ceiling while putting his drink on the counter. On the second floor of his house, the clicking of hard nails on polished wood returned.
He began for the stairs when his phone rang. Snatching it up, he prepared himself for another tirade, only this time his daughter was going to hear it. As he jabbed the icon to accept the call, he realized the ring wasn’t the one he’d assigned to Miranda.
“Hey, Scotty,” Reyna said. “Shit is spraying the walls over here. Langley and McDonald are walking. They’re demanding we reimburse their retainers.”
“We don’t—”
“I know,” Reyna said. “No refunds. They’ve been informed. Naturally, they threatened to sue.”
“Yeah,” Scotty said, listening to the clicking sound overhead. “Naturally.”
“Are you ever coming back into the office?”
“Tomorrow,” Scotty replied. “I’ll be in tomorrow.”
“Doing fine,” Scotty said. “Walter was a piece of shit. It’s time to flush and get off the throne. See if you can’t get me a meeting with the other partners in the morning, and make sure our PR counsel is there. I want the firm to issue a statement, distancing ourselves from Griff.”
The clack of nails from above faded. The anticipation of the sound remained, though, creating a moment of unbearable tension during which Scotty held his breath, waiting for the next click of claw on wood.
“The partners will be happy to hear it. The only reason they’ve delayed is to give you a chance to sign off on it.”
“Consider it signed.”
“As for that book,” Reyna said.
“What about it?”
“Well, I assume you already know that the author of the book, Christopher Pelham, grew up in the house Walter took his friend to before he died.”
“I put that together,” Scotty said. “So when did Pelham turn it into a bed and breakfast?”
“He didn’t,” Reyna said. “He’s been dead for about twenty years.”
He wished the news carried more surprise for him. A small part of his mind, a part that resided in the shadow of fear, had already suspected this. His imminently rational mind had begun to consider irrational things.
“So what happened to him?”
“His father happened to him,” Reyna said. “Chris Pelham wrote this book, which is pretty much a thinly veiled memoir, in which he describes his childhood and teenage years, including his sexual activity while still a minor. He detailed multiple same-sex affairs, including one with a man who is clearly Curt Ramsey, his father’s business partner.”
“The stories about his sex life were true?”
“Probably,” Reyna said. “I found a student thesis online that compared the content of his diaries to the content of the novel, and apparently the names were changed, but just barely. Anyone who lived in Hargett’s Bend would have known whose dick that kid had sucked. The whole city went simple. Fights. Vandalism. A shitload of divorces. If Pelham had wanted to destroy the town, he couldn’t have done a better job if he’d sprayed it down in Exxon premium and sparked a Zippo.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Pretty much. Months before the book actually hit shelves, Pelham gave the thing to his father as a Christmas present. Stupid-ass move. He’d probably intended to drop that bomb in daddy’s lap and then skip town the following morning. But that didn’t happen. His father read the book that night. Needless to say, the elder Pelham didn’t enjoy his son’s contribution to the literary canon.”
“So he killed him?”
“Sure. That’s as good a way to put it as any.”
“Excuse me?”
“Scotty, Old Man Pelham tied his son up and threw him in the pool house. He also put the kid’s dog in there. No food. No water. Hands and feet tied so tightly they were black when the coroner found the kid.”
“He just left his son and the dog in there to starve?”
“Well,” Reyna said, “the son starved.”
The dog’s growl crept down to him from the second floor. Scotty’s neck went cold and his skin puckered. “Hold on,” he instructed. He eased toward the stairs, and then changed his trajectory, rapidly moving to the kitchen and through the utility room to the garage. “Okay.”
“They figure the kid lasted about four days,” Reyna went on. “On the fifth day, puppy ate supper.”
“Are you serious?” Scotty said.
“It’s documented. I mean, Pelham’s actual cause of death was listed as dehydration, but the part about being doggy treats is true. You can’t blame the dog. I’m surprised it waited that long. That night, Old Man Pelham went to the pool house, found the dog gnawing on his kid’s face, and shot it.”
“Bette,” Scotty said.
“What?”
“The dog. Her name was Bette.” At least, that was her name in the book.
“Okay,” Reyna said as if it were wholly useless information. “Anyway, Pelham shot the dog and then cut the ropes off his kid. He called the cops and tried to convince them that the dog had attacked his son, and he’d put the dog down.”
“Did they believe him?”
“Are you serious? It’s a ridiculous story, but Pelham thought he had enough clout in town to get away with it. Well, the book came out and whatever support he might have had vanished. He was sentenced to life. Died about ten years ago. A couple of gays bought the old Pelham house and turned it into a bed and breakfast. It’s some kind of homo Mecca at this point, which I think Christopher would have loved, if only because the rest of the city is thoroughly pissed about it.”
Scotty walked to the end of his Mercedes sedan and rested his butt on the trunk. He listened carefully for paws on the concrete before telling Reyna he would be staying in a hotel for a few days.
The growl leapt through the closed garage door, startling him. Scotty fumbled the phone and it bounced off his chest. He shot out his hand and felt a twinge of surprise when he caught the device. He’d never been particularly athletic. His moment of pride ended with another growl, sending him racing back for the utility room door.
• • •
My father is always there. He hides behind the faces of his friends, behind the eyes of his colleagues, behind the mouths of strangers who have never met him. He is the fat man I met on the beach who took me into a rickety shack so close to the road it shook when trucks passed; he is the beautiful young executive who led me into the woods behind our house and forced me to my knees; he is Carl Ramsey, the man my father trusted more than any other.
If I scrape away the layers of their skin, I will find my father hiding in these men. Or maybe I just want to find him there. To please him. To punish him.
He can’t be pleased.
• • •
Scotty packed a bag. His fear had formed from nothing rational: bits of coincidence, magnified anxiety, isolation, phantom noises, and perhaps too much vodka. Regardless of the fear’s unsustainable reasons, it had settled on him heavily after he’d fled the garage and ended the call with his assistant, so he shoved his overnight kit into the suitcase along with three suits and the other clothing he might need to get him through the week. He zippered the luggage and hoisted it from the bed.
When fresh scratching sounded at his front door, Scotty tensed, but he refused to entertain the illusion. He set the suitcase down in the hall outside his study and entered to gather his tablet and its charger.
Christopher Pelham’s outrageous book still lay on the floor. The scrabbling at the front door intensified. Scotty retrieved the book from the planks. He held it in his thick hand and stared at the cover, on which a young man and his dog appeared as shadows against a shimmering watery backdrop. The musky odor he now associated with a dog’s fur climbed into his nose, but instead of fading in an instant it remained. Scotty wrinkled his nose, attempting to dislodge the scent. His face and neck began to sting.
The book was the problem. Ever since he had taken the thing from Walter’s study, his life had unraveled in heavy loops.
Leaving the study with the book clutched tightly in his fist, he went to the stairs and paused as the claws on the door below reached a frantic pace. He imagined Christopher Pelham’s dog, the black shepherd named Bette, attacking the wood, trying to get into his house with the same ferocity she had once used to attempt escape from the Pelham’s pool house.
Then his mind created more disturbing pictures: the dog’s muzzle buried deeply in the crimson pulp of her master’s neck, her tongue lapping blood and loosening scraps of tissue, making them easier for her teeth to take hold.
His phone announced yet another call from his daughter. Like a slap to an already stinging cheek, the sound pulled him from reverie.
Scotty stepped heavily on the top stair and then the next. The call ended as he reached the entryway. The nails on wood, only ten feet away, had taken on the volume of a threshing machine. The song from his phone started again.
At the fireplace, Scotty set the book on the mantel and answered the call.
“Miranda, I do not have time for this right now.”
“Mr. Collins,” a low male voice responded.
The attack on his front door ceased. In its place came the clicking of a dog’s overgrown nails on the second-floor hallway. He whipped his head upward and followed the progression along the ceiling. The sudden relocation of sound wasn’t possible, but the tick-tick of a dog’s paws was as clear in his ears as the pounding of his pulse.
“Mr. Collins? This is James Zyler from Eastbrook Correctional.”
“I don’t . . . ,” Scotty began. “Excuse me?”
The man repeated the information as Scotty continued to track the clicking on the floorboards above.
“It’s about your daughter,” Zyler said. “There’s been an incident.”
“Define ‘incident,’ ” Scotty said.
“Miranda was assaulted this afternoon. We don’t have all the details just now.”
“What happened to my daughter?” Scotty asked, head still cocked toward the ceiling.
“She’s in critical condition,” Zyler said. “She’s experienced multiple stab wounds. I’m very sorry to have to give you this news. I can tell you more when you arrive.”
Disbelief was Scotty’s first reaction to the news. Miranda had mentioned a debt she owed another prisoner, but Scotty had taken care of that, the way he’d taken care of everything. He’d wired money into her inmate account. She should have had no problem clearing the debt.
Except he hadn’t wired the money.
He’d been caught up in damage control after the news about Walter broke across the internet. He’d intended to wire his daughter the money, but he’d never done it.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Scotty said.
Zyler kept talking, but Scotty was no longer listening. He lowered his head and turned to the mantel. He exchanged the phone for the paperback novel.
The thing had to burn.
He pressed the button on the wall beside the fireplace and flames leapt through the vents in the gas pipe, rising high and furious around the fake, ceramic logs. Above him, the clacking of nails grew fierce, sounding as if the animal were attempting to change its direction rapidly and slipping on the polished floor in the process. He opened the cover of the book and read the inscription.
At first he didn’t notice the change in the wording. Reading over it quickly, he saw Walter’s name, because he’d expected to find it written there. But the inscription had transformed, and Scotty’s organs twisted and coiled into knots when the altered phrase became clear.
To Scotty,
Who was like a second father to me. Chris.
At his back, Bette ran down the stairs, carrying her scent into the room.
Scotty turned from the fireplace, weighted with dread. The sight of the dog, or what had once been a dog, struck him with disparate emotions. The first, most prominent feeling was one of terror. The black shepherd crouched in his foyer. Though not transparent, the body appeared not quite solid, and the edges of the animal feathered away, rising, narrowing, and fading like ink in water. Its bared white fangs looked too large for the smallish head. Its black eyes, silken eyes, locked on him hungrily. But despite the lethal appearance of the beast, Scotty found the creature darkly beautiful. This conflicting emotion confounded him, but he couldn’t deny it. The urge to call it to him, so that he might stroke the uncommon fur, played like a melody at the back of his mind.
Bette barked savagely, crouching lower in the entryway.
His desire to summon the dog vanished, and Scotty spun. But where to go? He couldn’t hope to outrun the beast in the house. The fucking thing was built for speed and he wasn’t. He wouldn’t make it to the dining room before the dog caught him. Canceling his attempt to flee he danced awkwardly backward, suddenly flummoxed as to how to protect himself against the animal. Then the jaw clamped on his wrist and the remaining fragments of rational thought whirled away.
He screamed and attempted to pull his arm back, but Bette yanked, sending him off balance. He threw out his left hand to steady himself on the mantel. Christopher Pelham’s novel dropped to the floor.
Amid his panic, Scotty realized the sensation on his arm was as wrong as everything else about this moment. The first sensation was one of pressure, as if his wrist and lower arm had been caught in a vice. Moments later, a second sensation joined the first. Now, he felt the teeth in him, but it wasn’t a piercing sensation. The fangs seemed to lengthen and deepen within him as if forming under his skin. Regardless, the pain was agonizing.
Bette shook her head violently. Pain radiated from his wrist to his shoulder, where a blossom of pure agony erupted as the dog dislocated his arm from the socket. The pop filled Scotty’s head for a moment. Nausea followed. As he struggled with the animal, his stomach lurched, and he vomited on the floor, spattering the animal in the process. Bette released the arm, backed away, her nails clicking noisily on the hardwood floor. The heaving persisted. His body cramped, and his head began to swim. Scotty dropped to his knees and clutched his wounded arm.
He lifted his head to check on the dog, but she seemed to be done with him for the moment. She sat calmly with wisps of ethereal blackness pulling away from her beautiful face as she eyed him.
Tears blurred Scotty’s vision. Loud moans, rhythmic and deep, escaped his throat as he rocked back and forth on his knees, in a primal response to the pain. The room teetered and then spun. Scotty lowered himself to the floor and lay on his side to combat the sickness and vertigo.
“You fuck,” he cried.
He wasn’t speaking only to the dog. He also spoke to Christopher Pelham. He knew that Pelham existed in this animal form, perhaps sharing it, perhaps simply wearing it as a disguise.
Bette’s head cocked to the side. Her mouth opened and a long black tongue lolled out. She took a step forward and then another. Her muzzle hovered above his face. Scotty trembled beneath the mouth. Prayers died in his throat.
The dog’s head dipped low, and Scotty gritted his teeth in preparation for what he could only assume was a killing bite. The tongue pressed into Scotty’s cheek, but he did not feel a tongue. More than anything the sensation on his cheek was like a hard knuckle drawing a line up his face.
A second lick was softer. It almost felt soothing, more like the actual tongue of a dog.
Scotty tried desperately to roll away, but only got as far as his back. Once he placed weight on the dislocated shoulder, a shock of pain caused him to gray out.
He came to seconds later beneath Bette’s tongue. He screamed again and then fell into hopeless sobbing.
What was the animal waiting for? If she wanted him dead, why didn’t she just do it? It wasn’t as if she had to play loyal, the way she had with her master, and wait for Scotty to dehydrate or starve.
Except this wasn’t just the dog, Scotty thought. Pelham was part of this spectral monstrosity. And he had dehydrated. He had starved.
The hunger started as a tickle in Scotty’s belly, and then it exploded like a punch. Bette continued to taste his neck and cheeks, and with each lap of her tongue, the hunger grew more painful. Scotty’s eyes clouded with tears and weakness. The anguish in his arm was now matched by the pain in his stomach. He cried out again and began to pray that his heart would stop or a vessel would burst in his brain or the bites on his wrist would bleed out.
The pain radiated through every nerve in his body, and Bette licked his face like the good dog she was.
• • •
I’ve never known hunger. Maybe I never will, but I’ve experienced abandonment. I feel certain both produce a similar sensation: an aching emptiness. Even though I lived under the same roof as my father, I felt his absence. At least, his absence from me.
A runt never knows the sincere embrace of a parent, experiencing only its empty and perfunctory counterpart. A runt can never hope to please its parents, because they have already labeled this particular offspring fruitless tissue, a lesser thing, a disposable error in genealogy.
So I escaped to the city, and I found it full of runts like me. They understood the hunger, understood the deprivations. We gathered together for entertainment and huddled together for warmth. We nourished one another, and there was joy. There was love.
As the litter’s runt, I was denied much, but I grew stronger fighting for these petty, missing things. And now I don’t need them any longer. I’ve found what I need in the city. I’ve found my protection. I’ve found my pack.