Ruby dreams again of her mother. This time she hears her voice. Of course, she cannot possibly know what her mother’s voice sounded like as she has never heard it. Or seen her face. Or felt the touch of her hand. Nonetheless, someone is speaking to her, a faceless entity. Please open the door. Let me in.
Ruby opens her eyes, pushes back the café curtain in the Westfalia. The light gracing the lake shimmers in the dawn. The blue sky above the lake’s surround of green pines is cloudless. It’s a pretty day. The dream has dissipated, but not the sense of hearing a voice.
Open the door.
“Oh geez.”
Not her dream-mother, but some stranger outside her van asking for admittance. Jumping up, Ruby slips a sweatshirt over her T-shirt, pushes open the café curtain on the door side of the van, and looks out. No one there. Then she hears a rough scratching against the side of the van, too rhythmic to be a branch. She slides the heavy door a few inches and looks out, then down. Looking up at her is a small black and white dog. It has a goofy grin on its face, as if it’s brought her a surprise. Please let me in.
Ruby sinks back onto the bench. Scowls. She slips the derringer into the palm of her hand, then pulls aside the café curtains on the other side of van, looks out. Still no one. No one human.
In, please.
Ruby jerks open the van door to its fullest and steps out, looks for the ventriloquist who has woken her with his foolish parlor trick. But it is only the dog. Taking her silence for permission, the dog jumps into the van, jumps onto the bench, circles three times and is instantly asleep.
“Hey, you can’t do that. Out.”
The dog opens one eye. “You invited me in.”
It’s not like the dog’s mouth is moving, or even that she’s hearing its voice with her ears, it’s more like she’s being inhabited by some kind of auditory mist. It’s all in my head, she thinks. And yet it doesn’t feel entirely unfamiliar. It is almost exactly the same misty sense that she gets when she has an actual intuitive moment with a client. Or when she was a child, just finding out about her clairvoyant powers, and would see the future or the pain or the conflict residing within a person. In this case, she is hearing what the dog thinks. It’s not even that what’s bouncing around in her mind are actual words, it is the language of images and senses, not speech. Gingerly, she reaches out and touches the dog on its furry back. There is a mild vibration, a tingling that courses up through her fingertips and suddenly her mind is filled with sounds which feels like she’s breathing them in. It’s like a sudden onset synesthesia, where scent translates into colors. In this case, the olfactory becomes visual. She hears grass and macadam; the way a child’s skin is soft; the way loss is unspeakable. She pulls her hand away. Her heart is racing, her hands shaking. Ruby is suddenly dry-mouthed. She leaves the van, leaving the door wide open and runs to the park’s restroom. Scooping water from the faucet, she drinks and then splashes her face. Catches her breath. “This is crazy.”
If she can understand what this dog is thinking, what does it expect of her?
Refreshed from its brief nap, the dog greets Ruby outside the van, bows and stretches. Shakes. Squats, and Ruby sees that this is a little girl dog. Ruby sits down, pats her knee and the dog bounds over. “What do you want?” She doesn’t touch the dog, wanting to see if this phenomenon will happen without a physical connection. She leans down, and the dog gives her a tiny kiss. “I want to be with you.”
“Why?” Ruby hopes that she is truly alone in this state park; she would hardly like to be observed asking a dog questions as if she expected answers.
“You are alone.”
“I’m not looking for a companion.”
“Yes, you are.”
Okay, this is all in her head. Ruby is certain that she’s never been psychotic before, but maybe that’s what all this fortune-telling has really been; all this seeing the auras of other people. The way the gift, as her first mentor called it, rises and ebbs like the tide. Maybe she really is just plain crazy. Although, to be accurate, she’s never before heard voices in her head. Voice, singular, and, to be clear, she’s not hearing a voice, but hearing images. Oh, yeah. Totally not normal, not even for a psychic.
Ruby pushes the sliding door fully open and sits on the ledge of the van’s carpeted floor. The dog snuggles up to Ruby, shoving her little black nose under Ruby’s arm so that she can press herself against Ruby’s side. The dog’s white ruff is as soft as down and Ruby feels herself calming as she runs the fur through her fingers. She can practically hear her own pulse slow down. They sit, neither one speaking, and that overused phrase, companionable silence, seems to describe the moment just about right. The morning air is spring flavored. The calm beyond the storm. The calm of capitulation for sure. The lake surface ripples as a fish somewhere leaps for joy. Where the heck am I, Ruby thinks, in what rabbit hole have I fallen?
“With me,” says the dog. “Place. Stay.”
It had been a horrible night. I regretted my impulse to bolt from where I had been even though I had been there without food and water for so long. The rain and the thunder and the searing lightning were terrifying, until I saw that van. I have been in many a van in my short life, always in a crate. I expected that the person in that van might have a crate I could crawl into, and maybe food too. The problem was that in all that storm noise, she couldn’t hear me ask for help. So I hunkered down beneath the vehicle, waited until it was safe to come out and then asked for what I needed. Thankfully, I had happened upon the only human I have ever encountered who understood me.
An hour later and Ruby is dressed and ready to move on. She needs coffee and the van needs gas and now she’s got this little hitchhiker ensconced on the bench seat as if Ruby wants her there. “What am I going to do with you? Who’s your person?”
No answer. The dog wiggles her expressive eyebrows and settles her chin more comfortably on the seat. Ruby sits beside her, places her left palm against the dog’s skull. A mild stimulation tickles her palm. “Home with you.”
“This is my home.”
“Mine too.” The dog’s mouth cracks open in a happy pant. “Now.”
“I can’t complicate my life with you.”
“I’ll be good.” She rests her chin on Ruby’s arm. “I’m a good girl.”
This audible scent of good intentions floods Ruby’s mind with a strange mixture of hope and comfort. Without a doubt, she understands, this dog is as rootless as she but hasn’t always been. No one will come looking for her, any more than anyone has ever really searched for Ruby.
Ruby cups both hands against the sides of the dog’s head and feels the increasing tingle. “Where did you come from and why did you choose me?” It may be a far too complex question for a dog’s thoughts, but she asks anyway. A moment later, the scent of rotting flowers, that peculiar nasty odor of forgotten vases. No. It’s not flowers. This dog has lost her former owner to death. A lingering, lonely death. Ruby jerks her hands away.
For nearly eighteen years Ruby traveled with her daughter, Sabine. Encumbered first by pregnancy, then by an infant, then by having to make sure her daughter was educated, even if it meant settling for a school year in a dozen different places, Ruby missed Sabine, but as an empty nester, or, in her case, an empty Westfalianer, she’d quickly grown used to, was maybe even happier, going solo. She and Sabine had knocked heads so often over Ruby’s wandering lifestyle that not having a glowering teenager in the passenger’s seat was, in some ways, a blessing. Happy and settled, Sabine was a lot more fun now when they saw each other.
So, at least a dog wouldn’t complain about being constantly on the move. A dog might even be useful. A dog whose thoughts she could interpret might even lead to something interesting. What if Ruby is now open to other dogs’ thoughts?
“Okay. You can stay.” Ruby strokes the dog’s head, noting that the tingling is gone. But the contented look on the animal’s face is plain. Ruby has made her happy.