Chapter Seventy-five

It doesn’t take long to stuff his duffel bag. Fold up the cot. Find his textbooks, his Morte d’Arthur. Packed up in minutes, Keller tosses everything into the backseat of his car, leaving the lamp and the chair. Into the ammo box he shoves a few of the tools he’s bought—a hand drill, a screwdriver, a hammer. He can’t find his winter coat, then remembers hanging it in the hall closet. All the time Keller packs, Pax is at his side, worried, making little grumbling sounds in his throat.

He’s made a grave mistake, a life-changing mistake, in touching her last night and now she wants him to leave. They no longer need him. With Rick away for an undetermined period, Keller is free to go. Free to go. That’s what she said. Free. He’s never felt less free in his life.

“I’m sorry for what happened. I won’t let it happen again,” he told her, ashamed at the pleading in his voice.

Francesca looked at him with weary eyes. “Keller, it’s time.”

“What will you tell Rick?”

“That it was time.” She didn’t offer him breakfast; she was leaving to see Rick. It was too early for visiting hours, but she needed to go. Unspoken but implied: Be gone when I get back.

Hurt has evolved into anger. Fine, he’ll go, but he’s goddamned going to take Pax with him. He’s going to do what he should have done in the beginning, packed the dog into his car and kept moving. Avoided all this unhappiness. If this is love, who needs it? If this is what loving friends does for you, screw it.

Going through to the kitchen, Keller spots Pax’s bowls. His leash is hanging on the breezeway doorknob. He snatches them up, puts the bowls in the ammo box and hangs the leash like a bandolier around his torso. In the hallway, his winter coat reclaimed, Keller sees Pax’s squeaky mouse on the top of the hallway table. He shoves it in his pants pocket. Then he notices that the drawer in the hallway table is pulled out slightly askew. The June humidity is oppressive and the drawer in the hall table is stuck cockeyed and half-open. For some reason, this enrages him and he pounds it with the heel of his hand to set it straight. Nothing moves, so Keller gives it a good yank to pull it open. The whole drawer flies out of the table and everything in it falls to the floor. Sheets of ecru writing paper scatter, along with a fountain pen, pencils, and a boxful of paper clips. A date book embossed with 1942 falls open, facedown. Keller gathers the objects, and when he picks up the forgotten date book, three photographs fall out.

Francesca and Rick at the Totem Pole Ballroom, grinning into the camera. They both look so young, so happy. The second photograph is of Pax sitting on the top step of a porch, his long forelegs on the next step down. Even in this black-and-white photograph, his color is brighter, sharper than it is now.

Keller looks at the last photograph. Someone, maybe Sid, has taken a family portrait. Francesca and Rick stand side by side on the porch steps. It is winter and they are wearing dress coats, perhaps on their way out to some party. It is so strange to see Rick standing up. Keller is a little surprised to see how tall he is beside Francesca, as if she’s shrunk. She’s looking up at him, instead of him looking, as he does now, up at her. The look on her face is worried love. Pax stands between them, his eyes, too, on Rick.

Francesca and Rick and Pax. Keller flips the photograph over and reads the inscription: On our way to the station. March 1942. Smiles fake.

Out of the depths comes the memory of seeing that couple and their dog on the station platform. And then it hits him: Rick and Francesca were the couple he saw at South Station that cold winter afternoon when he, too, was on his way to war. He sees again the man embracing the dog before he does his wife, but now he is Rick and the woman is Francesca. He remembers the dog forcing the crowd away from her. Protective. Pax. The little family that would never include anyone else.

The truth isn’t a mallet hitting Keller over the head. It is more insidious, a wraith of smoke burning up through his gut into his bloodstream. Whatever he and Pax have had, Pax was and always will be their dog.

He takes the black-and-white photograph of Pax and puts all the rest of it away in the drawer.