Chapter Twenty-Six

WILSON PACED around the house, not looking at anything, not paying attention to the machinations of Thurman, not hearing, not seeing.

He looked at his watch.

Emily had called earlier that day—well before the strange woman appeared with the strange photograph from his long-buried past—had called and asked Wilson if he might like to take a walk that afternoon. The weather was bound to get warmer soon, probably hot and most likely humid, and this specific day promised to be perfect: mild and sunny and well suited for a stroll around the neighborhood with Thurman in tow.

Wilson had not thought of a reason to decline, or thought of it in time, so he had agreed.

The doorbell sounded again and Thurman launched himself toward the front door, obviously hoping it was that woman who had come earlier.

When Wilson opened the door and Thurman saw Emily standing there, he managed a canine double take, but quickly went from confused to delighted.

One of Thurman’s most endearing traits—a trait of all dogs, most likely—was the ability to go from grumpy to ecstatic in a heartbeat, with no angry residue polluting the present. Dogs did not, probably could not, hold grudges or seek revenge. Such emotions were not in their DNA; certainly it was not in Thurman’s DNA.

Seeing Emily brought him joy, and he would choose no other course of action than to show it, and to welcome her with open arms—or paws, as it were.

“Hello, Thurman,” she called out and knelt down to greet him. “Are you ready for your walk?”

Thurman obviously knew the word “walk,” and he was even more delighted after hearing it, showing his delight by repeating his retriever dance, rear legs swinging back and forth like a semi truck fishtailing as it barreled down a snow-covered mountain road.

She grabbed Thurman and hugged him to her. This delighted him even more and he mumbled and whispered and growled happily in reply.

“I know, Thurman, I know,” Emily said, repeating the words many pet owners tell their pets, as if expecting the animal to understand. But Thurman understood and looked at Emily with a quizzical look, as if to ask what it was that she said she was understanding.

He growled a whispered response and Emily tilted her head as if trying to understand him.

Wilson returned to the front door after finding and putting on his shoes.

“Ready?” Emily asked.

“I am,” Wilson replied.

“I didn’t want to pressure you on this walk thing,” Emily explained as they made their way down the front pathway of the house. “But I feel awkward sometimes if I walk by myself. I feel like people are either watching me or judging me somehow. Or think that I’m lost. Or a stalker.”

Wilson looked surprised.

“I feel the same way,” he said. “But now with Thurman, that fear is gone. I think that’s why so many insecure people have dogs.”

Thurman growled a reply, and it sounded like he was disagreeing with Wilson.

No. Like dogs. People like.

Emily’s face reflected her puzzlement.

“Does it ever sound to you like Thurman is actually trying to form words?”

Yes. Words. Thurman.

Wilson pondered the question, not trying to figure out if Thurman was trying to talk—that he knew was true—but pondered on how to tell Emily that the dog wasn’t talking and that it simply sounded like words.

“Maybe. Sometimes,” he replied. “But I think we’re just projecting.”

“Really? That’s too bad.”

They turned the corner onto Negley Avenue.

“I actually asked one of the psychology professors at school about it. His office is a few doors down from mine. He said that lots of people with dogs think that. That their dogs talk. Or understand English. He said they don’t, but it was normal for people to think that way. Well, not normal, but not unexpected.”

“Hmmm.”

They walked in silence, Thurman happy to tack from one side of the sidewalk to the other, a furry sailboat in the wind, sniffing passionately, looking up into every tree for elusive squirrels. There was a squirrel, or many squirrels—Wilson could not tell them apart—that appeared to live in his backyard, and whose sole purpose in life was to torment Thurman by scampering away from him, circling tree trunks, making the dog think they had disappeared, and chattering at him, scolding him with great agitation from a high branch, chattering from safety, well out of Thurman’s leaping range.

Wilson wondered why Thurman did not come back into the house with a crick in his neck from spending so much time staring up into the leafy upper reaches of trees, trying to force one of the squirrels to fall off the limb solely through the strength of his canine will.

Thurman did not appear to want to do violence to the squirrels—at least that’s what Wilson understood him to say. He just wanted to play with them.

Play. Squirrel play. No.

As they walked, Wilson wondered if he should take Emily’s hand. They had been out together three times, and for Wilson, that number of “dates” stood as a record achievement. But they had only talked, never expressed anything in the physical realm, and he could not be sure if she wanted anything more out of their relationship than simple friendship and adult conversation.

And as they walked, Wilson kept pushing the image of that photograph from his mind.

She’ll never return, he told himself. In a few days, she’ll be back on her way to Portland. And I will never have to think of…of that time of my life, ever again. Never.

“What are you thinking about, Wilson?” Emily asked after they had gone four blocks without exchanging a single word. “You seem a bit preoccupied. Schoolwork? A paper you’re writing?”

He could have answered using either of those explanations, but neither felt right, and neither reply was honest.

And that conflicting emotion surprised Wilson. He was not a person with particularly high moral standards, and had not held himself to high standards in the past. He had used ruses to deflect inquiries away from himself, to prevent people from drawing too close.

But today it did not appear that he would resort to those old, well-established, and deeply entrenched behaviors.

Instead, he simply replied, “I’m not sure what I’m thinking about. Just letting my thoughts wander, I guess.”

That’s less of a lie than I would normally tell.

“Okay. I get that way sometimes,” Emily replied, and she reached over and, without appearing to give the action much thought, took Wilson’s hand in hers.

Thurman recognized it immediately.

He began to jump, dance and whisper and growl, Good. Good. Good.

They walked that way for nearly a block, without speaking, save the whispery growl of Thurman repeating, Good. Good. Good.

The three of them stopped at a red light on Wilkins.

Thurman continued to mutter and growl.

“You sound like a Muppet,” Emily said to Thurman.

Thurman stopped speaking and stared up at Emily, a confused look on his face. He tilted his head, as if hoping for an explanation.

She knelt down and placed her hands on the sides of his head.

“A Muppet, Thurman. They are sort of like puppets. It’s a children’s show on television. The Muppet Show. They are very cute little creatures. Funny and fuzzy and cute.”

Thurman tried to sound out a word.

Emily looked at Thurman, then up at Wilson.

“Is he trying to say, ‘Muppet’?”

As Wilson shrugged, Thurman danced about, trying to repeat the sound of “Muppet.”

“I can see why your mother thought he was talking to her,” Emily said.

Muppet. Muppet. Muppet. It was obvious that Thurman liked the sound of his new word.

“The light’s changed,” Wilson said. Emily stood and the three of them crossed the street while Thurman growled and whispered, Muppet, Muppet, Muppet.

The air felt good—not cool, not hot, as if the weather was invisible, wrapping itself around everyone in a comfortable embrace, everyone who was outside. Such perfect days were rare for Pittsburgh. Chilly, humid, hot, windy, cold, really hot, really cold, frigid, jungle humid, Arctic cold, frosty, sticky—those conditions were normal in the city, and when a perfect day arrived, it took many people by surprise and led them quickly to feeling a sense of total well-being, almost happiness.

Wilson was not immune to such nudges and realities. It did feel good to be outside, walking with another person, walking with Thurman, enjoying the scents and the sounds and the fact that he was still alive.

Yet despite this perfect day and all its unspoken expectations of contentedness, he felt something inside, a feeling that he had seldom if ever felt before, a feeling in his heart as if a thick wrapping was being removed, as if a box was being opened and the sun and the warmth and the freshness of the air was reaching the heart for the first time in years and years and years.

It was pain, but not really pain. It was new, but not really new. It was revelatory, but…it was not revelatory. Wilson had not let his heart move anywhere, or expand, or feel for so long that he had forgotten it was there.

Thurman’s arrival had marked the beginning of the change in Wilson, by simply being there and participating in his daily existence. Thurman’s acceptance of Wilson at face value had at first been unsettling and had sometimes brought Wilson to the edge of panic. But now he could not imagine life without Thurman, without those eyes of expectancy every morning, sitting by his empty food dish, without his unbridled and unexpected joy over just about everything he encountered, from a tennis ball in the backyard to a rawhide bone that he hid under his blanket in the family room.

Midway down the block, Thurman seemed to grow serious, growling and muttering to himself. Then he sat down. Both Emily and Wilson had to stop and they both turned around.

“Come on, Thurman. You’re not tired. You’re a big dog. You can make it,” Emily said in the well-practiced voice of a mother offering encouragement to a recalcitrant toddler.

Thurman shook his head and growled.

Emily looked over at Wilson.

“Is he trying to say something?”

Thurman growled it again.

“He is, isn’t he?”

Wilson closed his eyes, for just a moment, feeling the sun on his eyelids, seeing the gold behind them.

“He is,” he replied.

Thurman growled it again.

“I’m pretty sure he’s trying to say the word ‘honest,’” Wilson said.

Emily looked at Wilson with a surprised smile.

“It does sound like that, doesn’t it?”

Thurman said it again.

“It does sound like ‘honest,’” Emily repeated. “That’s amazing.”

Wilson did not want to say what he was about to, but felt he had to.

“Thurman wants us to be honest with each other.”

Emily’s face showed an incredulous expression that quickly changed to that of belief.

“He does?”

Thurman said it again.

Honest.

“I’m sure,” Wilson replied. “I think I’m sure.”

Thurman growled out Yes.

“As sure as I can be of a talking dog,” Wilson added.

He and Emily looked into each other’s eyes.

“And now…who do you think is the most outlandish here? Me, you, my mother…or Thurman? Or are we all deluded?”

Emily did not reply—because she had no answer to the question.

Hazel found the Wyndham University Center all-suites hotel without any problems, though the steep streets and twisting roads of Pittsburgh were a new experience for her—and for her Quest.

Couldn’t they have found a nice flat piece of land to build a city on?

She turned into the hotel’s parking lot.

And land was cheap back then. Why couldn’t they have built wider streets?

She got out her smaller, this-I-bring-into-the-hotel-with-me suitcase, plus the larger case, filled with clothing that needed to be washed again.

I’ll be here for a couple of days. I’ll have time.

Check-in went smoothly and Hazel was given a room on the third floor, with a bedroom that looked out over a very large skyscraper sort of building in the middle of a large block filled with lawns and trees and walkways and benches.

That must be something from the university. It looks old.

She stared up toward the top.

It looks like something out of Europe.

She walked back to the bed and started unpacking her laundry first.

Except I’ve never been to Europe either, so I’m making an educated guess.

She stacked the clothes into two piles—lights and darks.

And so far, I like Pittsburgh. Hardly a hipster in sight. It does not seem like a granola sort of place. More blue-collar, but not bad blue-collar. I’ll make a list of the places I want to see here before I…leave? Stay?

She found two plastic bags in the closet and filled them with the two loads of laundry. Then she used the Lilliputian-sized coffeemaker and made a free cup of coffee, complete with artificial sugar and some manner of white powder that turned the coffee grayer than mocha.

She sat in the upholstered chair in the sitting area and sighed.

Lord, you never promised me an answer. I know that. But…could you sort of help me decide on what to do next? I’m not asking for a sign or a burning bush or anything cinematic like that. But maybe…maybe I could just put a settled feeling in my heart. That would work too. That would be swell.

She sipped at her gray coffee.

Oh…and thanks. Or Amen.

She tried to smile. She wasn’t sure God was all that a smiley of a deity, but she hoped he was.

Or whatever. You know what I mean. Thanks. Really. I really mean that. And whatever you decide…I’ll be okay with. So…Amen, again.

She took one last sip and decided that she would have to see if they had real coffee and real cream in the lobby.

I guess you have to say “Amen” to make it official, right? So…Amen.

The three of them ping-ponged looking at each other—Wilson to Emily to Thurman and back to Wilson to Thurman to Emily. The three-handed silent conversation went on for some moments.

Thurman growled again.

It sounded like Go.

She stopped and looked at Wilson. “I am terrified of all this. You, me, whatever this is. It scares me.”

Wilson did not disagree.

“And…you don’t know what I’ve done. My past, Emily. What happened back then.”

Emily offered him a look of understanding. Thurman growled in support.

“You’re not still doing it, are you?”

Wilson appeared surprised—more than surprised, appearing as if he had never once considered being asked that specific question.

“No. No. I’m not. Of course not.”

Emily’s face did not change. It did not grow worried or anxious or nervous. She maintained a comforting half-smile.

“Then it is over. Isn’t the past the past? I mean, it won’t come around again.”

Wilson waited.

“No. I guess it won’t,” he said, then added softly, “I mean, I know it won’t.”

Emily’s face did show a shadow of pain and regret, for a moment. “My husband, my late husband, he could not let it go. He could not let go of whatever happened over there…he could not let it go. It stayed with him. Or he kept it close on purpose. I don’t know which.”

Wilson tried to keep his expression neutral, but it was obvious that he knew exactly what her husband had felt or did not feel.

Wilson’s voice grew small. “Did he kill people?”

Emily did not appear surprised by his question. People who have endured the same sort of trauma are not surprised when that trauma is openly discussed. Other people may be kept out, but those who knew pain understood those in pain.

“No…well, I don’t know for certain. He might have. He did not tell me much. The stress got to him, I think.”

Emily’s hand clenched into a fist. Wilson recognized the gesture as a way of coping.

“He saw too much,” she said. “But he…before we married…he was sensitive, almost delicate. I don’t why the military appealed to him so much. I think he had something to prove to himself…and maybe his father. They had a difficult relationship.”

Wilson found himself nodding in agreement, in sympathy, in empathy.

“I don’t think he was ever totally honest with himself,” she said. “And maybe not with me either.”

A part of Wilson wanted to step closer to Emily and to embrace her in a hug of comfort.

But he did not.

“You have to tell the truth to yourself,” she added. “And you have to be honest with God—if you ever want to find peace. And without God, I could never survived, going through that pain. Not alone. You need God’s grace to endure. I know I needed it.”

That night, the evening spread out against the sky with only a few very bright stars making their presence known. Wilson stood out on the back steps, in the dark, watching, or actually listening to, a black dog circumnavigate the yard in an inky darkness. He could hear him rustle about, nudging against the bushes that outlined the backyard of his childhood home.

“The trees weren’t as big when I was a child,” Wilson said aloud, softly. “The sky looked bigger because of that.”

Thurman bounded back to the house from the darkness, grinning.

He seemed always to grin as he ran toward the house.

Perhaps it was knowing that the inside of that house promised warmth, softness, and security.

Wilson wondered how long Thurman had been in the dog detention unit at the animal shelter. His mother never asked, and Wilson knew that if he went back there now, no one would remember one specific, isolated dog from the hundreds, or thousands, that had been processed since Thurman had been adopted. Maybe they have some sort of paper trail, he surmised. But not knowing is okay as well. I can imagine his history, and it doesn’t matter now.

Thurman took the last two steps in a leap and slid into the family room, nails scrabbering on the wooden floors, headed, no doubt, to the kitchen to check to see if the kibble fairies had visited his food bowl while he was outside.

He grumbled the same way every night seeing an empty bowl.

Wilson locked the back door and double-checked the lock’s hold, twice, as he always did every night. He knew that if a burglar or intruder really wanted to get in, a glass pane in the door would prove little to no deterrent.

Yet the locked door, and his checking, made him feel secure, although it was never a feeling of overwhelming security.

He switched off the lamp in the family room. The oven light provided enough illumination for Thurman, he was sure of that. He never once saw or heard Thurman run into anything in the dark.

Thurman kept up a soft, under-his-breath, whispery growl as Wilson made his rounds. Most evenings, Thurman stood, silent and observant, by his bunched-up blanket as Wilson got the house ready for the night. But tonight he stood by the stairs. When Wilson climbed the stairs, Thurman followed him, climbing slowly and carefully as he always did, as if he were unsure of how to make all four legs work in partnership as they found footing on uneven surfaces.

Wilson knew he was following.

Wilson got ready for bed and Thurman waited just outside the doorway, as if respecting Wilson’s need for privacy—something that dogs, in nature, had no need of, nor understanding of. Yet there Thurman was, outside, waiting. When Wilson walked to the bed for the final time, Thurman entered the room. He did so slowly and with a sense of deliberateness.

The dog sat down on the small throw rug by the side of the bed and looked up at Wilson. Thurman could form a severely serious look on occasion, and this was one such occasion.

“What?” Wilson asked.

Thurman tried to pose a question, adding his version of a querying inflection to the tone of his whispered growls.

Be honest?

Wilson appeared to know exactly what Thurman was asking and why.

“It’s about this afternoon, isn’t it? About Emily? And us? Being honest? About telling the truth.”

Thurman nodded.

Honest.

Wilson knew that Thurman had problems making a “th” sound, so the word “honest” covered for the word “truth.”

“I know. I know.”

Past is past.

“I know. But I don’t know…you know what I mean?”

Thurman’s look was hard, almost brittle.

No.

“I’m guilty, Thurman. I have done so many bad things…back then. Things no civilized person would do. I am tired of feeling guilty.”

Forgive. He forgives.

Wilson looked back at Thurman, trying to read his eyes, his expression.

“You mean that, don’t you?”

Yes.

Wilson closed his eyes.

“You know, I’m just projecting all this onto you. You don’t really talk, you know. You growl in weird ways and make odd noises in your throat that I hear as words. But you don’t do any of that, not really.”

I do.

“You don’t.”

I do.

“Thurman…back then…in the war…the people that I…killed. Sometimes it was at close range. I could see their faces. And when that happened, I felt…something like joy. I felt happy, Thurman. I was happy over it. I won. I survived. I got to come home. Victorious. But that was then. Now, when I think of it, I realize that only a monster takes glee in killing people. And that’s what I was, Thurman. I can’t escape that. I can’t forget that.”

Thurman stood and head-butted Wilson’s knee.

Past. Past. Gone. War past. Gone.

“That’s what you say, Thurman. ‘Gone’ is easy to say. But it isn’t that easy. I can’t do it.”

Past. Gone. Forgive. Gift.

Wilson sighed.

“But I can’t believe it is just that simple. To ask for forgiveness. To ask for a new start. To be right with God. Ask him into your life, the preachers on TV say. And expect everything to be wiped clean.”

Honest.

“I can’t, Thurman. Too much water under the bridge. Too long ago.”

No. Can. Do. Gift. God gift.

Wilson knew that if he stayed as he was, Emily would never stay with him. She didn’t want another closed-off person like her husband. She wouldn’t want another dishonest man. Unless something changed in his life, Wilson knew with a dreadful certainty, he absolutely knew for truth, that he would be alone. He would be alone now and for the rest of his life. His mother would die and then Thurman would die and he would be alone and die alone, and that scared him almost as much as anything else in the world. He had seen fellow soldiers die in Vietnam, but if someone was with them, if someone was there to hold their hand and say, “There, there, it will be okay. I’m with you,” then regardless of the specter of death, the wounded soldier became quiet, as if…as if the peace of Heaven filled them. Wilson saw it happen dozens and dozens of times, when a chaplain would fly with them and offer comfort on the return flight to the sick and dying. When a chaplain, or another soldier, made a connection, a sometimes final connection, then the dying would not die alone. They would be facing death with a friend.

Wilson yearned to have that peace while he was still alive.

He did not want to die alone. He did not. He could not imagine reaching out, at the very end of days, and finding no human flesh to hold on to, to comfort, to…to love.

He had read much on the subject—about guilt and pain and forgiveness and alienation and stress and walling off feelings and not actually living a life, but merely being a spectator. He had read much. He knew much. That was his job, his profession. To read. To understand. He had read books. He had read portions of the Bible. Maybe all of it by now, in bits and pieces. He had listened to sermons, on TV, usually. He knew the way. He knew the path. He knew the words.

But knowing…and doing…were poles apart, worlds apart, lifetimes apart.

Wilson had thought, up until Thurman arrived, that being alone was his destiny.

Now he realized that maybe, just maybe, it was not.

The words were there, in his head, but on the way to his heart, they remained stuck in his throat.

He swallowed hard.

Thurman whispered.

Do. Say. Honest.

Wilson looked down at the dog. Thurman looked back. His eyes were filled with hope and expectation and unbridled honesty. He nodded, his canine head bobbing, as he tried to will Wilson into speaking the words.

“Okay, Thurman. Okay.”

He swallowed again and closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry. I accept. I’m tired of fighting. Please forgive me. God, please forgive me. Please. I accept the gift. I am…yours.”

A sense of relief started—first a trickle, then as a torrent of blessed, sweet freedom, blessed relief. Wilson felt his heart unbound and free, for the first time in many decades.

Perhaps this was the most singular, pellucid moment of existence that he had yet encountered.

And Thurman began his dance, hips to the left and hips to the right.

Forgive. Forgive. Forgive.

Dance. Dance. Dance.

Happy. Happy. Happy.

“Thank you, Thurman. Thank you.”

Happy. Dance. Happy.

Wilson wiped at his face.

“Tears? Really?” He looked at his wet hand with some curiosity, as if he could have never imagined shedding them in the past.

He looked down at Thurman, whose face exhibited a marked degree of concern. He figured the dog had never seen him cry—or perhaps never seen anyone cry.

“It’s okay, Thurman. Tears of relief, I guess. It’s normal. Sort of. Relatively speaking.”

Thurman’s head bobbed again and he looked relieved.

Wilson sucked in a large breath of air, as if trying to cleanse the toxins of the past out of his body.

“It might take a while,” he said.

Thurman grinned.

After another moment, Wilson spoke.

“I should call her,” he said.

Emily, Thurman growled. Good. Pretty. Good.

“No, not Emily. The woman who was here this afternoon. With the picture.”

Thurman’s eyes opened a bit wider. It was not that he had forgotten her, but Wilson was sure he had no idea of how she figured into his life.

“I need to call her,” Wilson said. “Is it too late?”

Thurman tried to shrug.

“It’s only nine. That’s not too late.”

Wilson used his cell phone to find the number of the Wyndham. He pressed call.

“Hazel Jamison, please, she’s a guest at your hotel.”

Wilson heard an electronic hustle and whistle, then the sound of a cautious “Hello?”

Wilson reached over and put his hand on Thurman’s head.

“Hazel? This is Wilson Steele. You were at my house today. I think I have some information about that picture.”

The phone was silent. Then came a very tentative “Okay.”

“But it’s not the sort of information that’s easy to pass along over a phone. Will you be in town tomorrow? Could we meet somewhere?”

Again, a long moment of silence ensued.

“I will be in town…for a while. Maybe longer. I was going to do some sightseeing. Are the cable cars—the incline, I think it’s called—on Mount Washington worth a visit?”

Wilson smiled.

“Absolutely. The view of Pittsburgh from there is fantastic.”

“Okay. I was going to do that in the morning. And then I was going to the Phipps Conservatory. I like plants. My mother was a great gardener—not at the end, but when I was growing up. She always had flowers. Is that Phipps thing worth a visit?”

“It is. Could I meet you there? Maybe at two?”

Again, a long moment of silent decision making.

“Sure. But…could you bring your dog?”

Wilson nodded to the phone.

“Sure. Thurman will be there as well.”

Why did I ask him to bring his dog?

Hazel had been propped up in bed, watching the local news and wondering if she could ever feel comfortable with a new set of newscasters and weathermen. How long would it take her to decide which local news team she liked best?

And why couldn’t he just tell me over the phone what he remembered?

Maybe he found a picture or something.

She tapped at the TV remote control.

Well, tomorrow is another day.

She switched off the bedside lamp.

I’ve never been on an incline before.

She stared at the dark ceiling.

Or a cable car, for that matter. Or does the one in San Francisco count? Maybe.