Krusoe - Toward You

Table of Contents

JOHN ASHBERY, from At North Farm

Testing. One. Two.

Id been tinkering with the Communicator when I heard a short squeal of brakes outside my house and then a dull thud: the sound of a body being struck by a speeding car. As quickly as I could I removed the headset, shut off the current, and hurried to my front door. When I opened it, I looked around.

The street was pretty much empty except for a big brown dog wobbling up the walk to where I stood. About five feet away, it suddenly sat down and stared as if it knew me but was having trouble remembering from where exactly, and whether Id been a friend or an enemy. The dogs dark eyes moved from deep, pained questioning, to blank, then back to me.

Hey, boy, I said, but before the animal could come to any resolution one way or another, it fell heavily onto its side, all four legs stuck out and quivering. I tried to remember if Id seen it around the neighborhood and, if so, where, but in truth Id never paid much attention to dogs. The animal looked at me again, let out a sort of exasperated sigh, as if it had done what it was supposed to dohad brought back the ball, or whatever, and dropped it at my feet. And now, it seemed to say, its your turn. But my turn to do what, I couldnt understand.

Then it died.

The dog, a male, had short red-brown hair with a small patch of white on its chest and a flat, broad skull. His expression, in death, had changed to one of dignity and regret. I walked over and patted his stony head. Sorry, guy, I told him. You did OK. You came to the right house. It wasnt your fault. You did fine. It just didnt happen to work out. Things go that way sometimes. Believe me, I should know.

Around the dogs neck was a thick leather collar with silver spikes and an oval nameplate with Bob in block letters, but there was no other identificationno license, no rabies tag, no carefully chosen heart-shaped or bone-shaped or round disk with an address to look up or a phone number to callnobody at all to tell the bad news.

And as chance would have it, Bob was my name, too.

Bobs nails were dark, shiny, and in need of cutting. There was an endearing tuft of black hair at the very tip of his tail. His tongue, already drained to gray in the fading light, poured carelessly out from one side of his loose mouth. I could see no visible marks on him, but clearly he had been the victim of that speeding carwherever it had disappeared tothe sound of whose drivers belated attempt to brake had disturbed me. It seemed odd that out of all the doors on this street Bob might have staggered toward, he had chosen one that belonged to a person who shared his namehis brother, in effectbut animals, I knew, often had a way of sensing the nearness of a kindred spirit.

Or, alternately, I thought, if Bob hadnt known my name, was it possible hed been sent as a sign? Could Bobs visit be a warning, like in that famous scene in The Godfather when the horses head is left on the movie producers bed? Was someone or some thing telling me: Hey pal, its time to wake up. Bob was alive. Now he is dead. You are alive, but how long do you think that is going to last? So carpe diem, Bob, if you get my drift?

I may have been missing a couple of steps in the old reasoning process here, but the point was the same. In other words, there was a possibility, however remote, that some godlike force had chosen this unfortunate dog to send me a message, and that message was: Get off your ass, Bob. Its time to stop your woolgathering and to make something of your life. Youve been working on the Communicator in a more or less half-assed fashion ever since Yvonne disappeared, and how far have you gotten? Not very, is how far. Youve been putting on those headphones and taking them off for how long? Since Yvonnes been gone, thats how long. Dont let me lose more faith in you than I have already, but also, dont spend so much time on your invention that you forget you have an upholstery business to maintain. I could tell you dozens of stories of people who starved to death before they finally found what they were looking for. Still, as it did for this unfortunate animal, the messenger of this message, time is running out for you, too. That ship, or train, or bus supposed to take you out of here to a better future is at the station and is about to move on without you unless you get onboard.

As messages went, I thought it could have been a little more focused. The messenger of this message? And woolgathering ? Where did that come from? Id never used that word in my whole life. Why was I using it now?

I took a few steps down the walk, toward the street, and turned to look at my house. It was a modest frame structure with a mostly brown front yard and some kind of bush on the right side of the door. True, the door could have used another coat of varnish and the bushs leaves were starting to curl, but we were in a water shortage. That wasnt the whole story, however. The fact was that I had neglected to do the watering as wellyet another strike against me, the dogs message might have added, in a sort of PS. To make matters worse, my gutters were stuffed with leaves. My next-door neighbor, Farley, had a tree whose branches hung over my roof, and though Id asked him a million times to cut it back, he refused. One of these days I was going to have to get a ladder to clean those gutters out. I hated heights.

I knew I should call the city and report Bobs death, but the truth was that the dogs timing was terrible. It was five-thirty on a Thursday, and the city offices were already closed for the day. As a cost-cutting move, they were closed on Fridays, so no one would be answering phones again until the following Mondayno, Tuesday, because Monday was Columbus Day. In other words, whenabout five days in the futureI finally got through to the city switchboard and sat on hold for about ten minutes listening to an idiotically cheerful trumpet solo that some well-meaning civil servant must believe represents the sound of a happy citizenry, was connected to a clerk, and had to explain how the previous week an animal had died on my doorstep, how long would it be from then before someone actually appeared to take said animal away? Over a month ago Id called to ask them to take away a metal bookshelf that had been tossed near the curb in front of my house, and large parts of it still remained, making a clanking sound every time a car ran over one of them. So I figured that from where I was right now, time-wise, to the actual moment a bored maintenance worker arrived at my small house to carry Bob away, I would have a dead dog lying across my threshold for a minimum of five days, with a week far more likely, possibly two.

Also, there would be the smell.

It didnt seem right, somehow. Bob had done his job. Bob had made his painful way all that distance, up my walk nearly to my front door, and had, like the inventor of the marathon, Philippides, used his last precious moments of life to deliver his message. That, and maybe to beg for a little first aid. And I