He had dozed. Now, however, he was perfectly awake. The motion picture had advanced, the flood receded, the horses were safe, Luella was asleep, and Paprika barked, as before. Brown would throw a handful of poison over the fence to Paprika, who would come and gratefully chew it up and die. Brown would enclose each little poison pill in a small sausage the size of a phosphorous ball.
But always, at this point, as reliably as in any old film, Paprika rose from the dead, for Brown was forced to consider the effects of Paprika’s death on the Ferne children, two little girls whose names he did not know. He saw them weeping beside the body of their dead and stiffened dog, and when Brown considered the children’s weeping he revised his fantasy of the death of Paprika, or he went on to other things, as he did now, lying beside Luella. She had drifted off. Nothing kept her awake. Luella appeared to Brown to be without fantasies, without nonsense. Except when Stanley came to town she was placid, tranquil. When Stanley came she suffered, but then she was done with suffering. Yes sir, she was all business, no pipedreams, no daydreams, no castles in the air, no murder a day to keep her doctor away, no morning anger. You couldn’t have two dreamers in one house; you needed one hard head at least, and that was Luella, dreaming of prices and mortgages and how to feature properties. “I had a dream last night,” she’d say, “about the Multiple Listing Service . . . I dreamed last night about new interest rates.” Romance, romance.
Luella had neglected to turn off the television, and Brown rose and did so, trying to keep his mind blank, to see no enemies on the newscast who might excite him, to engage in no debates, no killings, to scatter no phosphorous balls, hurl no hot harpoons, kidnap no boys in wheelchairs. He was successful, his mind began to wind down, and he marveled at his detachment from that man, undoubtedly himself, who had telephoned the bomb scare. He had so often imagined himself doing such a thing that actually doing it had apparently occurred as the purest anti-climax. Could it be?
There went Paprika, who had been silent for several minutes, “alert” to every cat’s tread for miles around. The “alert” dog protected “the wife.” She was rather attractive, “the wife.” She wore pink; she drove a little green car as a reply to her husband’s big black limousines. He was in the car business. Brown appreciated beauty in women, but Luella was his lover. None other had ever existed, nor did women enter his fantasies except those who were villains to be done to death like any other.
But if, thought Brown logically, neither Harold nor his wife nor their daughters were now hearing Paprika’s alert barking how would they hear his barking if in fact a real danger presented itself? True, Paprika was alert, but he was alert all night and all day. He nullified himself. Suppose a real burglar or rapist advanced upon the Fernes’ house right this minute, in the dead of night. In what way would Paprika’s warning barking differ from his present idle barking? How many barks would Paprika bark if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers? Brown read those old tongue-twisters with Junie in this very bed. Now he rose quietly from his bed, having enjoyed, so to speak, a short introductory sleep this night, and found his slippers with his feet in the dark, and in his slippers slipped away, out of the bedroom and downstairs to the front door.
When he opened the door he thought for an instant that he had heard some alteration in the level of Paprika’s barking, some change in the dog’s degree of alertness: if so, he was a smart dog indeed, thought Brown, crossing the street in his pajamas and slippers and opening the gate to the Fernes’ yard. Out ran Paprika joyfully. His barking ceased — could it be that that was his signal to his family, cessation of barking altogether? Then we’ll soon see, thought Brown, enjoying the delicious relief of Paprika’s sudden silence. Off into the night Paprika ran. “Goodnight and good-bye,” said Brown. Who said that? Someone said it more ominously. Oh yes, Edward R. Murrow always said it in ominous tones, “Good night — and good luck,” on C.B.S. radio in the good old days when Brown knew little enough of the world to believe that radio reporters were as wise as they gravely sounded. He had thought Murrow a hero at the time, saviour of England. Murrow had worked up all our sympathies for England in those days when it was being bombed by the Nazis. He exhilarated us and charged us up with his low, cool voice. Since war was horrible we were all the more virtuous for accepting the necessity to engage in it. It was only now, in this moment, a quarter of a century and more after Murrow’s voice, crossing Yukon Street at Eagle, that Brown saw in perspective this item of history at last. After all these years of admiration for Edward R. Murrow his admirer, Brown, was pulling out. Good night and good luck, indeed! So Murrow was a fraud with the rest! It was all a game played with the lives of boys. My Very Dear Walter Cronkite, Brown wrote in his mind, but began another instead, My Very Dear Officer Phelps, Following your trail one night recently I noticed that you parked illegally in a bus zone in front of the public library, illegally again beside a fire hydrant out on Geary in the Avenues, and illegally turned left off Park Presidio into Geary while driving from one illegality to the next. The violations of the police are worst of all. . . .
But look at this. Paprika had not run “off into the night” at all. Far from it. He had run only to the door of Brown’s house, standing waiting there for Brown to open the door and allow Paprika to run in and snatch Luella’s muffins from the window ledge. The dog remembered. He had done that once — snatched muffins set to cool on the window ledge. Brown remembered, too. Then Mrs. Ferne came over a short while afterward with a frozen pie to compensate for the loss of the muffins, rather a sweet pert girl with a funny little name such as Tata or Gaga or Baba. “Nothing doing,” said Brown, “no muffins for you. Come with me.” Paprika followed Brown from the front door to the garage. Paprika loved riding in automobiles as much as he loved eating muffins, and in he went into Luella’s car.
Brown reentered the house. There she lay, gently breathing. When Brown switched on the lamp to find her purse she lifted her hand to her cheek, touching herself with her fingertips as if, in her dream, she were trying to locate a misplaced thought. “Something I can do?” he’d ask, and she’d reply, “Just thinking. Nobody can help me.” To which Brown might reply, “Nobody can help any of us.” Taking her keys from her purse and leaving the room, he descended to the garage, where Paprika was sitting up straight and never more “alert” in the seat beside the driver (for Paprika knew that dogs don’t drive cars). When Brown entered the car Paprika greeted him with joy, licking his face and wagging his (Paprika’s) tail. His enthusiasm was high. He was all set for a wonderful drive in the car, although he had no idea where he was being taken, knowing only that wherever it was it was bound to be better than standing and barking and howling all night in the solitude of the Fernes’ yard. Perhaps he was being taken for a romp on the green in the park. He didn’t ask why this excursion should be occurring at a quarter of one in the morning. Any old hour was good enough for Paprika, a ride was a ride, and companionship was a pleasure. Now, at last, a companion, a ride, a car, going somewhere, seeing the sights.
Brown, having backed out, left the car. He lowered the garage door. The Fernes had an automatic electric-eye garage door, but Brown did not. When he returned to the car Paprika was freshly ecstatic, leaping upon him after his absence of thirty seconds, kissing him with his wet tongue, bowling him over, so to speak, until Brown was finally able to fight himself upright to his position behind the wheel, saying over and over, “Paprika, calm down, we can’t get going until you’re calm.” Soon Paprika did calm down. He sat panting, steaming up his window, and he was happy.
Brown intended to kill him Finally, after ten thousand fantasies, Brown was going to kill someone at last a dog. He would run the dog over with his automobile — Luella’s automobile, to be precise — freeing Paprika as if for a run, then coming up behind the dog ever so slowly and just nudging him behind the knees so that he’d fall forward and be gently ground to death by Brown’s Atlas tires (clipping it was called, illegal in football). Brown had the right to sleep at night. That was justice. Paprika had no right to keep Brown awake. Did Brown keep Paprika awake?
And yet Brown wondered how much sleep he actually did lose each night because of Paprika. Possibly he lost less than he supposed. Often in the morning when he complained to Luella that he had slept badly — “hardly slept a wink all night” — she replied that she had observed him sleeping soundly without motion or interruption hour after hour. Thus his impression of having been kept awake by Paprika’s barking may have been only illusion, distant from reality. Possibly Brown simply needed more sleep than ever before. Was Paprika then a scapegoat? How about due process for Paprika?
It wasn’t the kind of thing Luella understood. The question was justice, whereby in the most brazen and callous manner Harold Ferne made himself unapproachable for the settlement of a dispute. If the shoe had been on the other foot — if Brown had a loud dog, if Harold were the complainant — Brown would have taken immediate steps to restrain his dog. “Just cover up your head,” Luella said, and as far as she went she was right enough. But covering one’s head, my dear Luella, leaves unsettled the question of justice; a just man hears injustice even when his ears are under the pillow.
They had driven up Market, onto Portola. Brown had been thinking in terms of Great Highway. He’d kill Paprika there. Instead, however, just as he and the dog reached the heights of Miraloma he became aware of the wooded proximity of Mount Davidson, and he swerved from Portola and wound his way up the climbing streets to the great cross.
Brown drove as high as he could go, parking near the entrance to the woods. From here he had several times in his life walked with Junie up the path to the cross, to see at close range the cross so often seen from the distance, and Junie was always pleased, too, to be for one moment higher than anyone else in the city. To establish this, Brown crouched upon the cement at the foot of the cross, so that Junie would be sure to be higher than he, and higher than anyone else, too. Brown leaned across Paprika and opened the door, and Paprika leaped out and ran forward into the darkness, sniffing and smelling and wagging his tail, soon stopping and looking behind to see where Brown was, for Paprika supposed that Brown, too, by now, had leaped from the automobile and was chasing after him up the lanes in his bedroom slippers at one o’clock in the morning, or scrounging around on the ground looking for a suitable stick to throw for Paprika to retrieve. In truth, however, regardless of anything Paprika might be thinking, Brown had closed the car door behind Paprika and had sat a moment watching the dog run off. Then he stepped on the gas and departed, leaving Paprika alone in the woods to howl the rest of the night if he cared to, to be higher than anyone else in the city, man or beast, to stay alert, and keep the trees awake.