6

Dooley

I slept late the next morning … Too late.

Usually the first thing I do when I wake up is crawl down the bed, say good morning to Sam in his box, and pet him awhile. Then I give him his breakfast, two biscuits from the can I keep under the bed. But on that morning Sam was not there. And Sam has this habit—I think it’s half love and half habit—of never getting up until I do.

I dressed as fast as possible, stamping out as many of the fears that kept cropping up as I could and went into the kitchen. Aunt Lucy was there talking to Rose. I heard her saying, “It’s very unlike Maurice. He’s been so reliable all these years. Oh, good morning, Timothy. You certainly slept—”

“Good morning, Aunt Lucy, good morning, Rose, where’s Sam?” I said.

Rose turned around to look at a counter with a bowl on it and said to me, not wanting to see me, “Well, hi there, Rip Van Winkle! Look, I just happen to have this batter. You want pancakes for breakfast?”

Honestly!—the way the minds of some people work! I’m surprised Rose let Aunt Lucy put her up to it. If ever I heard a bribe, or a consolation prize, or condolences, it was those pancakes. “No, thank you. I’m not really all that hungry,” I said. “Please, Aunt Lucy—where is Sam?”

“Oh, Timothy—” her voice sounded like a violin string, tuned too high—“this is such a topsy-turvy morning. I’ve just had a call from the agency, about Maurice—”

“I don’t give a damn about Maurice—”

“Timothy!” She got out of her embarrassment by being indignant. “I will not tolerate language like that from—” And gave me the whole lecture.

I did feel like swearing, too. And I could have, very well. When Lorenzo or Madame Sosostris got really mad at somebody, they’d let go a string that made quite an impression—on me, too. But I bit my tongue and said only, “I’d just like to know—where my dog is.”

“Timothy, you didn’t seem to know how to—dispose of—” That high voice of hers got stuck in her throat.

“Aunt Lucy—did you give Sam away? To strangers—?”

“I have taken care of the matter. Let that be—”

“Where is he?”

“Young man, do not raise your voice to me!”

We were heading into a battle royal, with swearing and a lot of other things, too, as far as I was concerned, when the buzzer at the servants’ entrance rang.

“Saved by the bell,” Rose muttered on her way to the door.

I was going to ask her nicely, one last time, where Sam was, before I started to punch out Aunt Lucy, when I saw who was standing in the kitchen door.

It was him! Abdullah! All dressed up in a uniform like Maurice’s. But instead of that usual sly smile, he had a big grin on, at my amazement.

“Are you the man from Maurice’s agency?” asked Aunt Lucy.

“Yes, mistress,” said Abdullah. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he winked at me.

“Now, am I to understand that Maurice just—”

“—vanished!” said Abdullah. His smile got back to the secret it always seemed to know.

“Well, I think it’s all very mysterious,” dithered Aunt Lucy. “People don’t just—vanish.”

“I assure you, mistress,” said Abdullah authoritatively, “that that is just what Maurice has done.”

“Strange,” murmured Aunt Lucy.

“Mmm,” Abdullah echoed her with a rumble from his chest. “There’s a lot of strangeness around these days.”

“And I take it that you would like Maurice’s position?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Well—I suppose, for a week or so, we might try it. But if Maurice comes back—”

“Mistress, Maurice is not coming back.”

“I trust that you have references,” said Aunt Lucy in a dry employer-type voice.

“Oh, certainly, mistress.” Abdullah put his hand in his inside jacket pocket—I’m sure I heard his fingers click—and brought out a bunch of letters. And I know they weren’t there, until he got them in by magic.

Aunt Lucy glanced at the letters, pretending to be methodical, and finally did recognize a couple of names. “Oh, yes—the Cornelius Vintons and Mrs. Callisher Davidson. I’m sure you’ll do very well.”

“Thank you, mistress.” Abdullah bowed slightly. But his grin didn’t put her down.

“Now I’d like you to meet my nephew—Timothy Farr.”

“Little Master Timothy—” I got a little bow myself and a look like a private laugh that went straight through my eyes to my brain. I’d been standing there all this time like a gawk, believing and not believing, both.

“And this is Rose Jackson.”

I know I keep harping on his smile—but a smile is where you can tell a lot—and his did something else now, as Abdullah made his courtly bow to Rose. “Mistress.”

Rose was wary—the way women are, at first. “Pleased to meet you—”

But Abdullah continued to be gallant. “And I you—Rose.”

“Now your name is—?”

“Abdullah, mistress.”

“Abdullah—” Aunt Lucy mouthed the word over. “Such an interesting name. Has it been in your family long?”

“For over a thousand years, mistress.”

“Really! My goodness.” Aunt Lucy didn’t know what to make of that, but she made whatever she could of it, and then said, “But we can’t really call you Abdullah. I tell you what—we’ll just call you Dooley—is that all right with you?”

“Perfectly, mistress.”

So it was Aunt Lucy who named him. An inspiration. I think her change began right there. And I hate to admit it, but I think that that was the first time I really liked Aunt Lucy. Despite what she had just done to Sam.

“Well—that’s settled.” She remembered how bad the scene had been before Dooley showed up. Her eyes glanced at me once, then flew away like frightened birds. “Uh—have you had breakfast this morning, Dooley?”

“No, mistress.”

“Then I suggest that you and Timothy have breakfast together. And I’m sure Rose will join you for a cup of coffee.” She was beating a retreat to the hall. “I have to do my desk today. Pay bills and things like that. You three get acquainted—and—and—” she stopped in the door—“and, Dooley, you don’t really have to call me mistress. I’ve always been terribly liberal.” She made good her escape.

“Rose,” I said quietly but quaking inside, “where is he?”

“Now look, mister, I will not become—”

“Rose—are you my friend?”

“—involved in an argument between you and—”

“Rose—are you my friend?”

She sighed, gave up, and said flatly, “The Houston Street dog pound. One sixty-eight West Houston Street.” She had it all memorized to tell me … I love Rose.

But I didn’t think of that then. “The dog pound!” I shouted. “That means they’re going to kill him! Dooley—come on!”

*   *   *

In the elevator down to the garage—I was urging it under my breath to hurry—another fear grabbed me. “Dooley—can you drive?”

“Oh, master,” he said scornfully, “I have driven the Wizard’s Chariot of Winds.”

“That’s fine, but my aunt owns a Cadillac.”

“It will hold no mystery for me.”

Maybe not, but the first thing he did when we got the keys from the attendant—that’s how safe Aunt Lucy’s building is, you can leave your keys in the garage—was to put us in reverse and wham us into the wall. Dooley got a grim expression and gripped the wheel determinedly. “Fear not, little master.” Then he said to the car, “Machine—proceed!”

And that Cadillac purred out in the street just as sweetly as you could ask. I’m sure it was running on magic, because Dooley never bothered to shift gears or brake. It just did what he willed it to.

I was jouncing around on the front seat beside him, wondering if we’d make it in time, when about two blocks down Second Avenue he brought up something completely irrelevant. “Master,” he calmly asked, just as if we weren’t in a race for Sam’s life, “discuss Rose Jackson.”

“She’s a girl who’s a singer and who’s working for Aunt Lucy to pay for her lessons. Hey, Dooley!—that was a red light—”

“Very pretty.”

“No, when it’s red you have to stop. On the green lights you go.”

“Then let them all be green.” He snapped his right hand, as if he were flicking water—but it was magic—off his fingertips. Every light on Second Avenue turned green!

I was sitting there, swimming in the wonder of that, when we came to the cop. “His hand is up now, Dooley.”

“A greeting, no doubt.”

I realized I was going to have to give this Genie driving lessons. (Later I found out that he’d been so busy exploring about me last night that he hadn’t bothered with simple things.) “No, when a cop’s hand is up, you have to stop. You go forward when he beckons—like this.”

He did it with just one finger this time, crooking it forward. And I never will forget that cop’s face when he wanted us to stop, and his hand just kept rising in front of him, beckoning us on … I really would have enjoyed that ride, if it hadn’t been for Sam.

Behind Sam there was also another nag—not nearly as important, of course. “Dooley, you didn’t do anything like—evaporate Maurice, did you? I didn’t much like him, but—”

“Master, at this very moment Maurice dwells in his own dull vision of Paradise. In my comings and goings last night, and my picking over of many minds that appertain to you, I learned that Maurice had only one dream: to retire to a city named St. Petersburg, in a state called, I believe, Florida. Thus, this morning Mister Maurice woke up in the Golden Age Motel, 136 Palm Drive, St. Petersburg, Florida. And he found, beside his bed, a bank book containing not only his own hoarded savings, but enough in addition to keep him in his middling bliss for the rest of his days.”

The way he could just take care of people!—as if he were dealing cards. “But Dooley,” I said, “won’t Maurice be a little suspicious—if he goes to sleep in New York and wakes up in Florida?”

“Little Master Timothy, in my dealings with men I have found that they fall in two groups. There are some—and I believe you are one such yourself—who seek out the forces that shape their fate. As for the others—when Mister Maurice sees the amount of money that has been deposited in his name in the First National Bank of St. Petersburg, Florida, he will be well content to live in ignorance.”

“If you say so, Dooley.” As long as I didn’t have to feel guilty about the evaporation of Maurice, I wasn’t going to worry about it.

Besides, we’d reached Houston Street. And there was the dog pound, in all its ugliness. A terrible place, like a concentration camp, with horrible concrete buildings all around an open yard. I knew that one of those buildings had the gas chamber in it, or the room where they drained the air away and the dogs suffocated to death.

But at least the yard was open, and that’s where the dogs were, behind this thick meshed fence. “There he is!” I shouted even before I got out of the car.

That Sam. There he was, only minutes away from extinction, just lying off in one corner, away from the other dogs, having himself a snooze. “Sam!” I called. “Sam!” He heard me and came padding over, with his tail plopping side to side, moderately glad to see me, I guess, because he was grinning. “Thank goodness we’re in time!” He knew I wouldn’t let him down.

“Woof,” said Sam, in that special husky woof that he woofs only to me.

I was just about to ask Dooley to magic a hole in the fence, so Sam could get out, when a man appeared from one of the buildings in the back. I have never liked the idea of dogcatchers in general, but this was the first one I’d ever met—and he was really bad news! As big as Frankenstein’s monster, and you could tell from that gleam in his eye that he really enjoyed his work.

“Whaddaya want here?” he barked at us. Except dogs sometimes sound nice when they bark. Men don’t. “Get away from that fence! You’re makin’ the animals nervous.”

“I want my dog,” I said. “This is him. This is Sam.”

“Got a license? Got a permit?”

“Sam has a license—”

“Got authorization? I picked this animal up this mornin’—with specific instructions. Now get outta here!” He dragged Sam off to a bunch of dogs that were cowering against one wall. They must have been the condemned group for that day.

Behind me Dooley softly asked, “Master, shall I make that man vanish?—and I mean vanish! Not like Maurice.”

“No, no. It’s not his fault he’s a creep,” I said. “At least, don’t evaporate him yet.” The man had gone into the building. “Gee, I don’t know what to do. Even if you get Sam out, I can’t bring him home again.”

“Well, master,” said Dooley, “’tis my opinion that we should do something. I fear that the creep has evil designs on Sam.” His forehead puckered up a minute. And then, just as if it weren’t a revolutionary solution, he came up with the answer. “Would Aunt Lucy object to Sam if he were not a dog?”

I didn’t get him at first. “What else could he be?”

“Oh—an insect, a fish—a man.”

“Could you make him a man—?”

“With a flicker of these fingertips.”

“But Dooley—” talk about having your mind blown—“a man!”

“I know, little master. But in the sight of these eyes—which are immortal—the difference between an ant and a man is less than human pride might wish.”

A man!… “Would it hurt?” I asked.

“There is pain in being human, but the transformation would cause him none.”

“He might not like me any more—”

“I think he will love you, master—though men are less faithful than dogs.”

“But how long would he stay a man?”

“As long as my spell held him.” Just like that! So matter-of-factly. “Lo, master, the creep comes again.”

The dogcatcher had come out of that building and was heading for a dismal little blockhouse off in one corner of the yard. The condemned group knew what was coming, too. They were barking hysterically and running around in circles, in fear.

“Do it, Dooley!” I said. The man’s back was turned as he unlocked the door. “Oh, do it—please!”

The Genie lifted his right hand, and from the depths of his chest, he sort of sang, “Oh, simple, soulless beast named Sam—I call thee to the dubious estate—of man!”