No sooner had Lala Ferne and James Berberick hung up than Brown awoke without opening his eyes, but his ears were open and he could hear silence. No dog barked across the street. That was how things should be. Everything was blissful so long as Brown kept his eyes closed.
When he opened them, however, he saw upon the floor, where Luella had dropped it, an old copy of Life magazine whose cover bore a photograph of Walter Cronkite and the legend “A Visit With a Nice Guy.” Cronkite in color was steering some sort of boat with his hairy arms. Also visible was one hairy leg. How was he “nice”? He was the messenger of bad news. Worse than that, Brown felt, Cronkite was neutral toward the bad news he brought. How could moral indifference be nice? If Cronkite were better than morally indifferent then let him weep on national television at prime time, not for Junie’s death alone, but for all boys whose deaths he so calmly reported, reading the figures from a piece of paper. Brown closed his eyes again.
The trouble was, however, he could still hear dogs barking. True, they were no longer virtually beneath his window, as Paprika Ferne had been — they were at a distance; but they were real, and they were barking, and Brown was offended in principle. Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town. Those verses, too, with pickled peppers, Brown read with Junie in this very bed, and now he understood them at last: dogs barked against beggars, protecting the private property of the citizens, protecting wives and children, too, Brown supposed, opening his eyes to see Cronkite still there on the floor, still smiling, still steering, still hairy, and above his left ear a second legend, “How the U.S. Army spies on citizens.” Brown might read that, he thought, skipping Cronkite. It was a boat of some sort, yes, a little craft, a yacht, a sailboat, and behind him was a lady wearing sunglasses and staring off into another direction. No doubt the editor of Life thought Cronkite was a nice guy because he was so much like himself, you know. They were making a big show of it all, one grand entertainment, filling loose moments and blank pages between commercial announcements and full-page advertisements.
Luella’s old Life, her morning Chronicle, her coffee, her nightgown, her slippers — it was a trail of pure Luella across the room. She’d had the television on low, he could tell, for the set was warm — she liked to watch the gentleman exercise — and Brown loved the smell of her, the warmth of her. She’d left a little early to vote. He’d vote, too, and cancel hers, innocent thing she was, deceived by a handshake: McGinley shook her hand and called her “my pretty lady.” But although Brown’s eyes and ears were open, he had not yet moved his body. His eyes gazed at his own favorite headline, cut from the Chronicle several years ago, framed by Manasek on Market Street, and hung upon the wall between the windows:
“With Relish”
Boy Eats 55 Hamburgers in Contest
Brown had written thousands and thousands of headlines, but he recalled only a few. Such was his life, down the drain mostly, all his little skill poured into headlines thrown out with the trash the next day. Yet he had been the outstanding writer at Faith Calvary Central.
Yes, he must vote. He stirred his body a little. A vote against McGinley is a vote for the preservation of the language of the Constitution in the order it was written by the Founding Fathers, without scrambling or distortion. Brown thought he might branch out from Paprika Ferne across the street to all dogs within earshot, producing a perfect silence by kidnapping all dogs, as he had kidnapped Paprika in the dead of last night. That was no dream. It was real. And now, by the light of this day, Brown was alarmed by his having taken such a bold action. In a single night he had boldly acted twice — once telephoning a bomb scare from McGinley headquarters, and then kidnapping Paprika. Was he going too far in these matters? Were these the actions of a man with “a sophisticated moral code”? So Junie had described him to Officer Phelps. Little wonder that Officer Phelps would hardly suspect Brown of telephoning a bomb scare! Brown needed to get hold of himself, he felt. Things were going too far. He was losing control, perhaps. If he weren’t careful things would erupt, for by the commission of acts however harmless, or even by the private invisible commission of thoughts themselves, vibrations emanate and become suggestions. Someone should stop him. Lock up the Suggestion Box. He remembered Heirens in Chicago years ago killing girls and stuffing them down sewers and going about scrawling on walls and mirrors, “Stop me.” It was a feast for the newspapers. Oh, that hairy Cronkite leg! No doubt the other was just as hairy. Hairy legs, hairy arms, hairy mustache, the man was nothing but a bundle of hair.
The watch upon Cronkite’s wrist appeared to say eleven thirty, but here where Brown lay it was luckily earlier and he was rising, his head now for the first time this day clear of his pillow, but his consciousness already populated by crowds and swarms and hordes of people and dogs moving in upon him, challenging his love and his temper, occupying his mind. He was never alone. Luella, Cronkite, Cronkite’s lady, Junie, boys at war, Paprika, dogs at a distance, McGinley, Officer Phelps, Manasek, hamburgers, the Founding Fathers, the mad boy Heirens — all had invaded him, moved in upon him. He was never free of irritation, and if the truth be known he couldn’t blame it on the dog across the street, either, because — notice! observe! Brown tried to be honest with himself! — no barking was occurring now, and yet Brown was filled to his customary level of irritation without yet having set his foot upon the floor. Unfair to dogs, he thought, for Paprika was gone, as he could see, setting foot upon the floor at last and walking to the window and raising the shade and observing across the street, at Paprika’s gate, Mrs. Ferne and her stout mother and a policeman in uniform whom Brown did not yet recognize as Officer Phelps.
They were examining Paprika’s gate. How could Paprika possibly have escaped unless someone had come and let him out? He couldn’t have opened the gate himself. Not dumb Paprika. Upon that fact Lala Ferne and her mother were agreed, and Officer Phelps, too, upon their authority. “You know the dog better than I do,” he said. He hadn’t come upon that errand at all, but upon another — to call upon Luella, as it happens — but he had been attracted to the present investigation by the sight of Lala in her pink robe wandering up Yukon Street calling for Paprika. One door of his police car hung open.
Since one of the doors of Iris McCoy’s chocolate Fleetwood Cadillac also hung open an impression of emergency existed, although Brown knew from his window that the emergency was past, that the dog was gone, and that all anyone now could do, with or without the aid of the police, was to discover where. He felt himself to be on the side of the seekers. To them his heart went out against his own crime. He wished for the safe return of the dog, almost as if, nine hours before, he had not willed the dog’s absolute extinction. His having spirited Paprika to Mount Davidson had dissipated Brown’s anger, and he now wished to retrieve Paprika, especially for the sake of the Fernes’ children.
As one, Lala, her mother, and Officer Phelps turned their attention from Paprika’s gate to Brown’s house, for Officer Phelps had asked, “Have you spoken to any of your neighbors? Have you spoken to my old friends the Browns?” Phelps had gone sleepless half last night, hearing over and over the simplest exchange between Luella and himself. “May I give you a small kiss?” he repeatedly asked, and she repeatedly replied, “I’d like that,” and he reviewed, too, in his sleeplessness, his last conversation with Junie, the two of them leaning on their elbows on the table at Station G.
Brown, at the window, withdrew himself without haste from their view. Whether they had noticed him he could not know, but he acted upon the probability that they had, rapidly dressing, and descending to the street in the spirit of normal curiosity. He crossed Yukon to join them. He had dressed casually, clean white shirt but no tie. He could feel that he had tied his shoes insecurely. He had not shaved. He carried Life rolled, and Luella’s tube of money. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon again,” he said to Officer Phelps.
“I was on my way to see you,” the young officer said.
“Our dog is gone,” said Lala.
“I’m Mrs. Ferne’s mother,” said Iris McCoy, who pronounced the name Fer-nay, as if it were a Frenchman, not a plant.
“I’m awfully pleased to meet you,” said Brown. “I’m sorry we haven’t become as acquainted with your daughter as we should be.”
“Did you see anybody let their dog out?” Officer Phelps inquired.
“You’ll have to pardon me for not shaving,” said Brown to the ladies. “I sleep late some days. I just got up. I’m a day sleeper.”
Day sleeper! Could Lala believe her ears? Did he say “day sleeper”? She was aroused. She had once received a distressing anonymous letter signed “Day Sleeper,” and she intended now to keep her ears wide open. “Such as somebody opening this gate?” she asked, offering a footnote to Officer Phelps’s question.
“I have been sleeping,” Brown said. “I wish I saw something helpful. If I were a dog where would I go? I’m positive he’ll come back.”
“This is a nice quiet street,” said Officer Phelps.
“That’s why they took him away,” said Lala. “I saw your wife in the voting garage.”
“Doing her civic duty,” said Brown.
Mrs. McCoy was a large, broad woman. Wide might be the word, Brown thought. Inquiry widens. Headlines writers often stooped to puns.
Inquiry Widens
Broad Search Begins
For Missing Paprika
But her fat face was pleasing, too, with shining cheeks and bright blue eyes. Brown could see Lala’s petite face in her mother’s. Mrs. McCoy was enormous behind. Brown couldn’t help noticing. How did such a person sit on the toilet? Perhaps toilets are larger than they appear.
“Did he bark a lot?” asked Officer Phelps.
“He barked all the time,” said Brown, “that’s probably why somebody took him away.”
“Don’t you work at the Chronicle?” Lala asked. “I just put an ad in.”
“For the dog?” Brown asked.
“That’s really about all you can do,” said Officer Phelps, “unless there was a rash of it throughout the neighborhood, a whole series of episodes, then we could be sure somebody was up to something. But in this case it looks like an isolated case, if you know what I mean. I believe Mr. Brown is correct: somebody’s objecting to the barking; somebody’s trying to tell us something.”
“Somebody’s been trying to tell us something right along,” said Lala. “We get a telephone call in the night now and then, the most recent last night, where a person barks.” She refrained from mentioning, however, the anonymous letter she had received from “Day Sleeper” some months ago, enclosing two newspaper clippings. Now Mr. Brown referred to himself as a “day sleeper.” Of course it was a common phrase. . . .
“Do you or don’t you really want to do anything?” Iris McCoy sharply asked Officer Phelps.
“It’s not that I don’t, ma’am,” he politely replied. “I have a dog myself.” So he said. He didn’t, actually, but he said he did, as a shopkeeper ratifies a product by saying, “I use it myself.”
“Harold will hit the ceiling if he doesn’t come back,” said Iris. His rage was likely to go hard upon Lala. In a way, of course, Iris thought, things were Lala’s fault. If Lala had remained fat she’d have been more attractive to Harold. A good fat wife would have distracted him from dogs. But Lala would reduce — she’d lost eighty-five pounds in twenty-three months. Harold loved fat girls — “more bounce to the ounce” he sometimes said.
“I’ll make a report of it, though,” said Officer Phelps, bringing his clipboard from his car. Brown saw that the officer’s neck was smooth and white. No doubt he had just had a haircut. My Very Dear Officer Phelps, he thought, I saw you commit three illegal acts of driving in a single recent evening, and I ask you . . . his eye catching Mr. Maxim’s garage where folks were voting. Bomb it, he thought. Phone first. Or he’d call out through his Life rolled like a megaphone, “Everyone in Maxim’s garage, clear out, here comes a bomb,” and hurl the bomb which he held in his other hand, which was, in fact, Luella’s tube of money wrapped in a deposit slip, secured with a rubber band. He slipped the money into his pocket.
“You should have a cat,” said Iris to her daughter. “Cats take care of themselves better than dogs.”
“Cats are quieter, too,” said Brown. “Your dog was somewhat of a barker, you must admit.”
“Did his barking bother you?” Officer Phelps asked Brown.
“It didn’t bother me,” said Brown, “no. But we could hear him barking fairly regularly.”
“Regularly, eh?” said Officer Phelps, writing down that word, and writing down the number of Lala’s house, too, and asking for certain basic information — name of the dog, kind of dog (“German Shepherd,” she said. “Thoroughbred?” he asked. “Why be redundant?” she said.), was the dog an habitual wanderer? “Let’s take a look around inside,” said Phelps.
“Oh no,” said Lala, “nothing’s picked up.”
“Let’s do as he says,” said Iris, for reasons of her own. She knew that nothing was to be gained inside. She suspected the officer merely wished to linger. “Won’t you come in, too?” Iris asked Brown.
They entered the house.
Would that the furnishing of Lala’s house (Harold’s house, really) were as lean as the previous sentence, but it was not. Harold’s house was heavy in its emphasis upon long stuffed sofas and immovable stuffed chairs based upon squat oaken stumps. Heavy objects thwarted thieves. Thick, dark, impervious drapes hung so heavily at the windows that from time to time they tore their supporting brackets from the walls.
“I was never here before,” said Brown. He recalled a previous owner, long since removed, whose small son ran recklessly into the street coming and going with Junie.
“I was never in yours either,” Lala frankly said.
To hell with them, thought Officer Phelps. Why should he run about trying to find the damn dog of people who lived in a house as oppressive as this? This furniture was all of a piece with barking dogs; such people lacked grace or courtesy. On the other hand, he wished to become better acquainted with Brown, as a means to becoming better acquainted with Luella, and then, too, there was Mrs. Ferne herself, who appeared perhaps to be, as one might say, “badge happy,” one of those girls crazy for policemen who sometimes even set their own dogs loose or invented other complaints in order to bring a policeman to the house. She’d stopped him on the street, hadn’t she? Or anyhow her pink robe had. Well, there’s no telling. Sometimes they lost their nerve, of course, or they kept their mothers close for protection. Gads but this mother was fat. Somebody down at the station was telling Phelps only the other day for gosh sake about this girl that wanted this cop to screw her with a gunbelt on. One received strange requests. Then somebody else was telling Phelps about this girl who wished to be tied up and bawled out by a policeman in full uniform, and the policeman obliged, too, stripping her naked and tying her up and bawling her out something awful for her bizarre perversions. She supplied the rope. He took the rope home and gave it to his wife for clothesline.
“Where do you live?” Lala asked, turning her attention to Phelps.
“We’re in the process of moving,” he replied, although he wasn’t. He lived with his father on Eureka Street, in the only house he had ever known.
“Are you buying or renting?” Brown asked without caring in the least. But Luella would ask. “Do you suppose that nice young officer is buying or renting?”
“We’re buying,” said Officer Phelps, “like everybody else, I guess,” shamefully lying to Mr. Brown, father or stepfather to Junie. To what end tell such a trivial lie to a man of “sophisticated moral code”? It was only because Officer Phelps was somewhat sheepish about admitting that he still lived with his father. He preferred to imply that he was married, that he and his bride were buying a house, and so forth.
“Do you know any of the people who work in classified advertising?” Lala asked Brown.
“Such as who?” Brown asked.
“A nice man took care of me,” said Lala. “I forget his name.”
“Took your ad for the dog?” Brown asked.
“He had a smooth voice,” said Lala.
“We have a lot of smooth-voiced men on the paper,” said Brown.
“The dog couldn’t be anywhere in the house could he?” Officer Phelps inquired. “Could he be in a closet or anything like that? We do find them there sometime. I’m sorry to say we also find children there sometime, too.”
“Let’s take a look around,” said Iris McCoy, leading the way.
“Oh, mother,” said Lala, “nothing’s picked up,” and she tried to dissuade her mother.
But Iris had taken a forceful initiative. Mounting the stairs, she shook the house, and Officer Phelps followed, and then Lala, too, observing the whiteness and the smoothness of the back of his neck, and thinking for one irresponsible moment how she might detain him — “I’m sure that there’s a prowler prowling in our cellar . . . we have neighbors up the street that neglect their son . . . Officer, come back later, I’m being kept by Harold in involuntary servitude in violation of the Whichever Amendment . . .” and what the fuck’s my mother doing in my husband’s dresser drawer, Lala wondered, pretending not to notice, although she could quite easily have summoned a policeman.
“You’ve sure got a plentiful supply of television sets,” said Officer Phelps.
“My husband goes for television in a big way,” said Lala.
“One in every room,” said Officer Phelps.
“Two in some,” said Lala.
“And they’re all color,” said Iris.
Officer Phelps opened closet doors. The extravagance of this house oppressed him. Look at this, for example, a shower curtain designed like an American flag. Look at this, electric toothbrushes in every bathroom. Terrific. Telephones in every room, including bathrooms, the kids’ own television in their own bedroom, their own telephone in their own bathroom. We never lived like this, he thought. Arrest them for flag desecration. Polaroid windows installed to reduce glare, they must think they’re living in an airplane. “Could he possibly have wandered up here from the yard?” he asked.
“Not really,” said Lala, running ahead of him into her bedroom — the “master bedroom,” as it was called, a term she resented — to put the bed together before he came looking in there. Her mother stood with her back to Harold’s dresser, clutching her purse, standing guard; Iris had never trusted Lala alone anywhere near a bed with a young man under the same roof. “He’s all alone down there,” Lala said, pointing to the floor — pointing through the floor to Brown below.
“He’s a wonderful man,” said Officer Phelps. “His son and I were close friends.”
Downstairs, Brown was alone. Here he was. He had created this moment. If he had not — what shall we say? — liberated Paprika this moment would not have occurred, for Lala would not have detained Officer Phelps on the street. Why such massive drapes? How did his own house look from here? He looked out upon his own house, imagining himself, seeing himself as the Fernes saw him, his lawn poorly attended, his garage door trustfully raised, window shades unevenly drawn. It was an accessible house in need of paint. But I don’t keep sneakers on the TV, he thought. From this window he could assassinate himself, pop himself in the back of the head while turning the landing in the upper hallway. He had never seen his house from another house this way. He had never fired a gun, either, certainly not at himself from across the street from the Fernes’ window. People were voting in Mr. Maxim’s garage. Brown had voted there for years and years. He’d voted there for John F. Kennedy, soon shot in the back of the head from a window, and he’d vote today against McGinley, whose opponent’s name Brown scarcely knew. No matter whom he voted for he was always sorry afterward. He’d voted here for Truman and Johnson who went on to great things in the global-murder line. It was a failed system. At any rate, Brown had come to the end of it. Behind him they came down the stairs, all three, in the order they’d gone up — fat mother, earnest young officer, trim daughter. “Obviously no luck,” said Brown.
“The poor, poor girls,” said Iris, “I feel for them, though I hate the dog basically,” her eyes upon Harold’s bowling shoes on the television. But she couldn’t spirit away the bowling shoes as she’d spirited the binoculars from Harold’s dresser drawer. She’d pop a test question to dumb Harold: “Harold, my dear, what shoes did you bowl in?” She had appropriated the binoculars for Harold to peep with, and that was enough for one day. He peeped for fat women in high-rise apartments. She’d peep, too, she’d go along with Harold along whatever lines he took her, queer as he was, but a barrel of fun, too, dumb as an ox, couldn’t even read. She was teaching Harold to read these days, every Tuesday, and making good progress, too, considering the fact that she’d never taught anyone to read before, and never been anyone’s spiritual confessor before, either. Of course Harold hadn’t been entirely unable to read; he could read the words “Harold’s Fleet Rental” with ease, and that had been a starting point from which Iris had done well enough, she thought, for when Harold now saw letters in combination, such as “har,” “old,” “eet,” “ren,” or “tal,” he understood how they were intended to sound, and he was beginning to master them, reading all sorts of small messages — signs, posters, billboards, advertising exclamations, some newspaper headlines, and some short notes when plainly printed. All his life he had kept secret his inability to read. It was a marvel of dexterous concealment, and it only proved, as Iris told him, his cleverness.
“It’s always the children who are hurt,” said Brown. “I know he just strayed away, that’s all. He’ll come back. I have one of those feelings.”
“A dog doesn’t stray through a closed gate,” said Officer Phelps. “My opinion is that somebody let him out.”
Somebody who’s a day sleeper, Lala suspected, still turning over in her mind that little phrase, hearing it in Brown’s voice, and hearing in Brown’s voice, too, a certain anonymous letter received not long ago by My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner. A bit redundant, wasn’t it? A German Shepherd is a dog by definition. The envelope had been addressed to Harold, but Harold was too busy, too fatigued, to read his mail. In the case of this particular letter, Lala preserved him from it, retaining it for herself among her private papers in the attic, thousands of items of various sorts, for she was a bit of a pack-rat historian of herself and of her own past.
For several weeks, alarmed by the letter from “Day Sleeper,” Lala had kept a close watch over Paprika, remaining in his company as much as possible. Paprika was quiet then, for he was always quiet when close to his family. Gradually, however, her fear of the mysterious anonymous writer dissolved, and she spent less and less time with Paprika. She no longer brought him into the house, and he therefore returned to his old habits, his barking resuming and increasing, whereupon the Fernes began to receive (perhaps from the same “Day Sleeper”) telephone calls at night from someone barking, as a hint that Paprika was also barking, regardless of how insistent Harold was that Paprika never barked. “If we take him indoors he’ll stop barking,” Lala pleaded, but Harold refused, saying, “You don’t understand about dogs. A dog in the house goes soft. He gets fond of people.” Sometimes Lala said to herself, “Why not let Paprika sleep in the house and let Harold sleep outside?”
“Let’s all take a little ride,” said Officer Phelps, “and see what we can see in the way of straying dogs.”
“Let me go across the street and vote first,” said Brown.
“Vote later,” said Iris McCoy.
“Let me go and shave first,” said Brown. “I don’t feel right not shaving.”
“You don’t need a shave,” said Iris. She touched his chin. The touch will linger all day upon Brown’s chin.
“Do you sleep all day?” Lala asked Brown.
“Not all day,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, “I suppose there are people who do sleep all day. Day sleepers.”
“Meanwhile even if we don’t find anything scouting around,” said Officer Phelps, “you’ve got the ad going in the newspaper, and you’ve got Mr. Brown being so helpful. I must say it’s very neighborly. You don’t see enough of that any more.”
How absurd to be beginning his morning here in the back seat of a police car with Iris McCoy, mother of Mrs. Ferne! “Get up there on top of Solari where we can get a good view,” said Iris to Officer Phelps, as if he were a chauffeur.
“Sure thing,” said Officer Phelps. She was one of these take-charge women. But he didn’t mind. He enjoyed being taken charge of, he was content to be a slave, he loved it, let him be the lowest male subject in the kingdom of women, he’d settle for that. He drove down Nineteenth Street to Eureka, and up Eureka past his house. These streets were his, and he knew them well.
From the level atop Solari Hill they saw no dogs resembling Paprika. Down these slopes Junie often coasted on cardboard boxes. Brown must vote. He must not forget. If it was possible that McGinley, having murdered Junie, was now to become a ruler of men, then it was possible to think that all justice had failed. Boys sliding down hills on cardboard boxes are easy prey for warmakers, Congressmen, Chairmen of Draft Boards. He must bring Paprika home, for the sake of the Ferne girls. That was the trouble with crime when you weren’t a natural criminal; once you committed it you wished it recalled. For that reason Brown was fortunate that he never committed crimes, mainly thinking about them, carrying them through in his mind only. Here he was in the back seat of a police car, prisoner unshaved behind a grill. From the street it would certainly appear that he had been captured. He was being carried to his execution on Mount Davidson, where Abraham in his motorman’s cap almost went all the way with Isaac. He was notorious. Notice the female guard placed over him. Yes, you need a hefty lady for such a desperado. Off to his maker carrying a copy of Life, and in his pocket a tube of money. Brown felt, however, that he would certainly struggle against his executioner, for death was too final. As a boy, reading newspaper accounts of condemned persons, he knew how fortunate they were to know the moment of their end: 11:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 15. But he had grown to doubt that God was waiting.
“I think the person disposed of him,” Lala was saying as they slowly toured the streets. “I can’t imagine the person coming and just opening the gate and letting him out. I believe he must have taken him somewhere and dumped him.”
“If he didn’t kill him then he might come back,” said Officer Phelps.
“You hear about dogs coming back from awfully long distances,” Brown said.
“Not if they’re dead,” said Lala.
“Bring ’em back alive Frank Buck,” said Brown.
“I didn’t know anybody remembered Frank Buck,” said Iris McCoy. “Frank Sinatra, too, there’s another.”
“You and I are the same vintage,” Brown said.
But not the same weight, thought Officer Phelps.
“Now he’s retired,” said Iris. “When I was a girl we swooned over him. I had a big photograph of him on the back of my closet door. Frankie, Frankie, speak to me.”
“Frank Buck?” asked Officer Phelps.
“God no,” said Iris. “Frankie Sinatra. Frank Buck kissed lions but Frankie Sinatra kissed girls. I can’t believe I never kissed him.” In her fantasies, as a girl, she had been seen on his arm in public places night after night — “we’re just good friends,” she was constantly telling the press.
“This is a male dog?” said Officer Phelps, turning his head slightly to the back of the car, to Iris, as if upon the question of male and female she were the ranking authority.
But it was Lala beside him who answered. “Yes, a male,” she said.
“Then he might have run off after — you know — a female in season,” said Officer Phelps.
“Who still opened the gate, however?” Lala asked.
“Yes,” said Phelps.
They cruised. They wound about several streets. At Twenty-Third & Eureka Streets, slightly hesitating, Phelps chose the downhill route, his theory being, as he said, that any dog, having wandered this far, will choose to continue down, not up. “He’d be tired,” he said.
“Dog tired,” said Iris.
“He’d have been tired long before here,” said Lala. “He was out of condition. He never exercised. Can you imagine Harold exercising him? Harold won’t walk three feet.”
“Harold bowls,” said Iris.
“Paprika doesn’t even bowl,” said Lala.
“I’ll run us back,” said Officer Phelps. “I don’t seem to be seeing any dogs at all to speak of.”
But his promise to “run us back” was unaccompanied by any alteration of his direction. It was as if he had made a promise he was privately unprepared to keep, and Brown began to feel a certain irritation toward Phelps. Why was Phelps being so helpful? Was his eye on his young passenger Lala? But Brown knew himself to be unentitled to irritation, for, had he not spirited Paprika away, this whole excursion would never have occurred. On the other hand, he’d have suffered “a certain irritation” no matter what. Perhaps it was the chemistry of his body. Perhaps he knew too much. Perhaps his ambition was too altruistic, too little selfish: he lived unrequited by the luxuries society bestowed for good behavior. Sometimes he felt that he would be unable to live one hour longer without bursting of irritation, without exploding into rage — overflowing with violence into the face of things. The contrasts were too great between the mighty and the humble, the rich and the poor, the well and the ill, the living and the dead. Why was Phelps alive and Junie dead? “Take me home,” he said.
Officer Phelps, hearing the sharpness in Brown’s tone, met his eyes in the rear-view mirror. He saw him as Junie’s father, a kind man with “a sophisticated moral code,” entitled now to some irritation he need not explain, and he said to Brown most courteously, “Yes sir, I will if you like.”
Lala Ferne, beside the officer, hearing the sharpness or irritation of Brown’s voice, adjusted her mirror, too, so that she could see Brown’s eyes, and she said, “I know it was some neighbor that let him loose. I could swear to it. It might have been some irritable neighbor irritated by the barking.”
“Harold says he didn’t bark.” said Iris.
“Oh, mother, he was a barker,” said Lala. “It might have been some neighbor who was a day sleeper,” Lala continued, fixing her eyes upon Brown’s in the mirror.
“He was a barker all right,” said Brown, swatting his knee with his copy of Life rolled in his damp hand. He continued to meet her eyes with his own in her mirror, and yet he might not have been staring into her eyes at all — she might be mistaken — but somewhere else, as if, while looking out the window, his eyes only appeared to be staring into the mirror. Lala couldn’t be sure. He said, “Election Day is always a lovely day,” as if he were looking out the window at the weather.
“Somebody wrote us a letter once telling us to make him stop barking,” Lala said.
“I remember that,” said Iris.
“Somebody in the neighborhood,” said Lala. “It didn’t upset Harold, but it upset me.”
Because Harold can’t read, thought Iris.
“People do things like that,” said Officer Phelps.
“I suppose you get a lot of such cases,” said Brown, pretending casualness, unrolling his Life and turning irresistibly to the pages featuring a visit with Cronkite, where Brown’s eye met the headline:
His “faked” college football broadcasts made him a celebrity in Kansas City
Faked? Yes. Faked indeed. Why put quotation marks around “faked” when faked it was, and no mistake? He faked it to make the broadcast and advance his career. “Cronkite cannot resist games,” Brown read. “He likes Pro Football. He likes Waterloo. He likes Battle of the Bulge. He likes Yacht Race and Civil War.” Was Brown to believe this? It was worse than he had supposed. His horror grew. Waterloo, Battle of the Bulge, Civil War, were these games? Why no game called “Vietnam?” Wasn’t it popular enough? Couldn’t they design a sufficiently attractive package? Or perhaps it never existed. Perhaps Cronkite had only faked it to make himself a celebrity. Then where was Junie? If Vietnam had been only a game then it was time for Junie to come home. It was recently said that the government was “winding down” the war in Vietnam. Then it was a wind-up game such as you’d buy at Mordecai’s Toys. When Junie arrives home from his game no doubt Cronkite will take him for a ride on his yacht, a visit with a nice guy, but not dead, as Junie was, and out came Sevareid from wherever he was, having seen Walter shot. Off the Air. On the Air. Eric’s perplexed, he blinks, bang, bang, back up, back out, close the door behind you, put your gun in your pocket with your flesh-colored gloves, seventeen floors to go, walk carefully, so much for faking the news in Kansas City.
“Yes,” said Officer Phelps, “we get a certain number of cases like that.”
“What can be done about them?” Brown asked while reading Life.
“There’s not an awful lot you can do about them,” said the young policeman. “If they contain a threat you can try to keep an eye on the object of the threat if you can. Usually a person that writes a threat won’t carry it out.”
“Then in that case probably the person that wrote the letter wasn’t the same person that let Paprika loose,” said Lala.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Phelps with precision. “As I recall, I said usually, but I wouldn’t guarantee a thing. It’s a strange world. Just as soon as you think one thing is true it isn’t. There’s no telling in these matters. Nothing is beyond belief.”
“I’ll say,” said Iris.
“What about anonymous telephone calls?” Lala asked. “Can they be traced?”
“Not easily,” Officer Phelps replied.
Lala was relieved. This morning she had made an anonymous obscene telephone call. In her mirror her eyes met Brown’s — but no, she could not be sure their eyes were meeting. “Don’t forget to vote,” she said, perhaps looking into the eyes of Mr. Brown, perhaps not. Perhaps he was the “day sleeper” in question. Perhaps not. “Did Paprika ever keep you awake, Mr. Brown?” she asked.
“Nothing ever keeps me awake,” said Brown.
Mirrors are funny that way, she thought. She was pleased by the shape of his mouth, which seemed to wish to smile, waiting only for something to smile about. Was he looking into her eyes? Had she “caught his eye,” as the expression goes? Because of the oddity of mirrors she could not answer her own questions. “Are you looking at me?” she asked, staring straight into the eyes in her mirror, but he offered no sign of recognition, neither appearing to see her eyes nor appearing to hear her question; or so it appeared to her.
They returned via Castro Street, up Eighteenth, now “over Clover” (Junie’s rhyme), up Caselli, up Yukon. “I’m not satisfied with our little excursion,” Brown said. “I’m going to go find him. Mrs. Ferne, will you lend me your little car?”
“I’ll lend you my big one,” said Iris McCoy.
“I’ll shave and then go,” said Brown.
“You don’t need a shave to drive my car,” said Iris. It wasn’t her car. It was Harold.’s.
He voted first, speaking his name to a lady at a table, although she had found his name upon the poll-book even before he had entered Mr. Maxim’s garage. She in turn spoke his name to her associates, ladies of the neighborhood, too, whom Brown saw year by year upon the streets and in the markets of the neighborhood, and once a year in Mr. Maxim’s garage. He signed his name on the designated line. He was the fifty-ninth voter of the day. He searched for Luella’s name. She had been the twenty-second voter. Below Luella’s signature Mrs. Ferne’s appeared. For whom would Mrs. Ferne have voted? For McGinley? Such a matter was difficult of speculation. People live hidden lives. Luella was different, for she was simpler. She had voted for McGinley because he had called her “my pretty lady” and shaken her hand. For that she put his sign in her window. She fell for that. She never put two and two together. McGinley, Chairman of the Draft Board, sent Junie to war. “It was only his job,” Luella said.
Before the polling booth Brown waited his turn, twirling Iris McCoy’s Cadillac keys upon his finger. Inside the booth an elderly gentleman voted at his leisure while Brown turned pages in Luella’s old Life. Whitney Young dead at forty-nine. Now Brown viewed a photographic gallery of prostitutes of New Orleans, 1912. Letters to the Editors Sirs: What kind of country have we become that people pick up the tab and give VIP treatment to a man who murdered old men, women and tiny children without any apparent disturbance to his conscience? Winston’s Down Home Taste. End of a Company Town. In quest of the deadliest creature in the seas Great White Shark The Whites came down a mile-long slick of blood. A book by Wallace Stegner is reviewed. Brown had met Stegner at the Press Club years ago. He read nothing, turning pages only, advertisements, solicitations, coupons to tear out, cigarettes named True. My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner, I released your dog from his confinement because of his troublesome barking, I then secretly advised your neighbor Brown how to find him, as your neighbor is a soft-hearted and sympathetic person. This is the last time, however, so let it be a warning. If your dog wakes me again I’ll finish him off. Day Sleeper.
Brown entered the polling booth, pulling the curtain closed behind him. Now he would vote for McGinley’s opponent, who might be no better than McGinley, who might corrupt the Constitution, too. It was only politics. What had Luella said, sweet, good-hearted Luella? “Well, he’s the one that’s running.” That he should rule me! Brown thought. “Die,” he said, voting.