The Calling

By Andrew Birden

The dog started barking as soon as Sylvie closed the door to the wooden fence. The sound came through the redwood boards, moving along the outside of the enclosed yard as the unseen dog circled Danny's property.

Sylvie looked for the telltale flickering of shadow between the wooden boards as the animal moved along the fence perimeter, but there was no visible sign of movement. She could only sense the animal's location by the noise. She turned down the volume on her hearing aid.

From the sound of the barking, it was a large dog, and Sylvie wondered if it would attack her when she finished with Danny and tried to return to her battered pickup. She turned from the metal latch of the door and crossed the small grassy yard to the cottage where Danny lived.

Through the muddied filter in her ear, she could sense the autumn leaves lightly brushing past each other as they fell from a dominating yellow birch. She adjusted her blue workman's jacket.

This was going to be a tough session for Danny, and Sylvie put her hand into her purse, touching her rosary for reassurance. As she stepped up to the sagging wooden porch, she noticed the door was open, and she made a note to tell the traveling care worker to go over the instructions again with Danny. His support check from the government would only go so far, and he was unable to afford to waste heat as winter approached.

“Danny?” As she called out, the barking stopped, but then immediately started up again.

There was no answer through the door. Sylvie pushed the door open wider, calling out again, as she stepped inside and pulled the door shut. She turned her hearing aid to a higher setting. The closed door muffled the sound of the barking dog. The mudroom was barely the size of a closet inside the cottage.

She heard movement to her left, and Danny Cyr shuffled down the short hallway, barely glancing at her as he turned into the living room. She could see his lips turned down in an expression of boredom on his flat, wide face; but with people like Danny, it meant he was either tired or sad. She knew it was the latter.

Danny went into the living room and stopped with his back to her. His hands limp at his sides. He just stood there.

Sylvie knew why Danny was sad, but she pretended not to notice his silence. As she took off her scarf and hung her coat she said, “What's with that dog out there? It sounds so big I might have you walk me to my car when we are done.”

She bustled past him, and she shook her head as she thought how she looked – short, gray headed, and just kind of old. In all of her 58 years, she never thought an aging lesbian would be one of those senior women who bustled. Yet here she was.

Sylvie glanced down at the small wooden coffee table. On it was a small book of Family Circus cartoons, a child's version of the Bible and a framed picture of a smiling woman, about the same age as Sylvie, but with eyes as dark brown as Danny's.

Staring at the picture, Sylvie became still, like Danny. Then she reached out and lightly touched the frame of the picture, not daring to caress the photo itself. She closed her eyes and sighed. Remembering Danny standing behind her, Sylvie blinked her eyes several times and moved past the coffee table.

She went into the kitchen, noting the open cupboard was still just as full as it had been two days ago when she came by for her last visit. She opened the refrigerator and saw Danny had never opened the milk carton, and the expiration date had passed. On the wooden countertop, Danny had arranged several pictures, but they were all face down. Sylvie lifted one up and saw a picture of a slightly younger Danny, a grin stretched across his wide face, dressed in academic robes and clutching a green high school diploma. The same woman with Danny's eyes was leaning down, giving Danny a hug. Sylvie remembered taking the picture of Jenny and her son Danny when he graduated. When she took the photograph, she wondered if the feeling in her heart, which she left unexpressed, was anything like what it would have felt like to have her own child graduate.

Thinking of the rosary, Sylvie said a prayer asking for help with her next task.

Sylvie returned to the living room where Danny was still standing, motionless, staring down at the colorful cover for the child's Bible and the framed picture of his mother.

“Danny?” began Sylvie gently. “We have to talk.”

Danny's slightly nasal voice responded in a low whisper, “Don't want to talk.”

“I know, honey, but we must. Your mama might be in the cemetery, but she knows you have to make some decisions.”

“Don't wanna d'cide.” Danny shook his head and said, “Already d'cided. I wanna be a priest.” And there it was, the impossible dream.

For the past 22 years, Sylvie had watched her friend raise Danny, joining them whenever she could find a way to be a part of the family, knowing her friend was aware of the twin forces of shame and love that kept Sylvie in an orbit around the struggling single mother raising her precious son. And the single middle-aged mother accepted Sylvie’s help.

She went every Sunday to St. Sebastian Catholic Church, sitting as close to Jenny and the boy as she could. She watched the woman guide Danny to understand why God had made him different, why He had placed this special cross on the boy's shoulders. Sylvie listened to Jenny on too many late evenings, the mother's back shaking as she cried, angry that God had given her a broken son. Then Jenny would square her shoulders and find a way to show her son another way to fit in the world. Sometimes her explanations and the stories she read from the kiddie Bible helped, and sometimes Sylvie ached to join her friend to carry this cross.

“I know, honey, but you know that you can't be a priest. Father Tim explained it to you.”

Danny turned and finally sat on the couch in front of the coffee table. “When mama got sick the first time, Father Tim said it was s'posed to happen. God’s will. He said he prayed for Mama before Mama started getting better the first time. He said God heard his prayers, and that's why Mama got better. He said God told him I supposed to be disabled. He said when Mama got sick again that I should pray. When Mama died, he said I should pray. I'm good at praying, but I still disabled, and Mama still died. God listens to Father Tim but not me.” The young man reached out to the colorful Bible and touched the picture of Jesus telling stories to the smiling children.

“Oh Danny. I prayed for your mama too. She was my best friend, and she told me over and over again how you were a gift from God just for her. When the cancer came the second time, she went so fast. I know you prayed, and so did I, and so did Father Tim. But it wouldn't have mattered if you were a priest. I don't think anyone in the whole world could have prayed hard enough to save your Mama.”

The barking suddenly became louder, and Sylvie looked out the window to see the fence shake as if the animal had leaped from the ground and crashed into the side of the fence. The wooden barrier shook again, and then the barking started louder than ever.

Sylvie stood up as she continued speaking, slipping her hand to Danny's shoulder as she peered out the window. “You know who prayed the most, though? Your mama.”

The woman moved the dusty white curtain to the side and tried to look to the side of the house, following the sound of the dog as it seemed to circle around the property once again. “But your mama wasn't praying for God to cure her cancer. She wasn't praying for God to make you normal, but she was praying for you. She was praying that you could still be a gift from God for someone, even after she was gone.”

Sylvie let the curtain fall back, and sighed. “There is something wrong with that dog out there.”

“What dog?”

“That dog that's been barking ever since I walked into Jenny's... I mean... your yard.”

“Barking?” The sound of the animal moved again, as if the dog were desperate to find a way inside the yard.

“You don't hear that big dog that's barking right out there?” Sylvie pointed to the spot where the fence was closest to the window. She could just imagine the dog, big and white, jumping up and down and barking, its teeth gnashing and a wild desperate look in its eyes.

Danny pushed the illustrated Bible away and looked directly at Sylvie for the first time since she came to the house. “I don't hear any barking.”

Sylvie stared at Danny for several seconds. The barking was so loud she would almost swear the animal was just past the fence outside the window.

*

Sylvie and Danny stood outside the cottage by the gate of the fence. She had her rosary wrapped around the palm of her left hand, but she was also using both hands to grip a wooden baseball bat. The small crucifix dangled from the curve of the wood, swaying as she held it tight.

“I'm going to open the door just a crack and look through. You push the door closed as soon as I say.” Through the wood, the sound of the barking hound moved from left to right, stopping briefly in the middle to shout louder, as if the dog were pacing back and forth, and then stopping to face the gate directly from the other side. The sound of the animal's voice was starting to become hoarse.

“There's a dog out there?”

“I'm not sure anymore, Danny. I hear a big dog barking like crazy out there, but you can't seem to hear it. Maybe my hearing aid is broken or maybe I'm going bonkers. What matters is that you close the gate as quick as lightning when I tell you.”

Sylvie considered the possibility that Danny was just pretending he couldn't hear the dog, but rejected it as too complicated for her friend's son. The last time Danny lied, he confessed, begged and cried over pilfered cookies for three days.

The woman leaned the bat against the fence. The barking became more excited. Still holding the rosary, she lifted the metal latch, opened the door a crack and peered through.

There was only the worn path leading to the driveway, her blue pickup, and the woods behind. The barking, however, continued, but the tone changed, becoming throatier, and the sounds further apart. She heard the sound come closer and then move towards her truck. She thought for a moment that she saw a white dog, looking almost like a white wolf with a curled tail, leap into the back of the truck, but when she looked again, she couldn't see the dog.

Sighing, she opened the gate wider, and the barking stopped completely. “Danny, I might be crazy, but I think that invisible dog is in my truck. I think it wants us to get in the truck.” Before she could stop him, Danny pushed past to the driveway and walked towards the truck.

Sylvie raced ahead and hissed, “Wait Danny!”

She grabbed his hand, and the two stopped about a dozen paces away from her truck. “I wanna see the invisible dog.”

She listened, tilting her ear towards the bed of the truck. “It wouldn't be invisible if you could see it, now would it? Now be quiet.” She could hear panting, and then the sound of an animal licking its chops, followed by more panting. There were 53 Hail Mary beads on her rosary, and Sylvie passed two of them through her fingers, reciting the prayer without really paying attention.

Sylvie had wrestled with her thoughts for close to six decades, and she supposed it was possible the death of her friend had kicked her over the edge. But while her relationship with Jenny had always been a special kind of torture, she also knew the world had a sense of its own, and no one, not Jenny or Danny or Father Tim nor anyone, could tell her that the universe was just too big for people to understand.

From the bed of the pickup, the invisible dog whined. Sylvie came to a decision.

“Get in, Danny.”

The young man circled the front of the truck and climbed in without a question. Sylvie opened the driver's side and darted into the bench seat, pulling the door shut as quick as she could.

She drove along the old crumbling farm road, a field to her right and dark woods to her left. About five miles down the road she looked in the left hand mirror and saw the white dog leaning over the edge of the truck bed, looking from behind her left shoulder, alert and straining forward with the wind blowing in her fur. She began to bark loudly and with a definite cadence.

“What's that?” Danny asked.

At the sound of Danny's voice, the dog disappeared from the mirror and the barking stopped as quick as a door shuts out a winter storm.

Up ahead, something was in the road. Sylvie put the truck into neutral and pulled the handbrake. “Stay here, Danny.”

She grabbed the bat from under the seat and stepped out of the car. She walked towards the object in the road. It was the white dog, but only barely. A large vehicle must have hit the animal. The left front leg was hanging from the body by a thread of red muscle tissue and white tendon. The blood had pooled around the body and then slowly drained to the edge of the road, leaving a crusty wet film behind, still drying in the fall air. The dog's fur, once as white as her Pepere's long beard, was matted in blood. The force of the blow had twisted the body around so the hind legs were pointing up, the skin around the break twisted like her favorite shower towel had gotten trapped in the taffy machine at the Northern Maine Fair.

Yet even through the horrible wrongness of the twisted form, she could see the animal was the same one that she had glimpsed in the mirror.

“Sylvie, I hear it.”

There must be a point, thought Sylvie. Was it to prove she was insane? Was God punishing her?

“Sylvie, am I hearing the dog you hear?” His voice came to her through a buzzing in her ears. Was she supposed to horrify Danny by showing him the crumpled twisted body? Was this another lesson?

Well screw that, she thought.

“Stay back!” She waved her hand behind her, gesturing for Danny to remain still. Sylvie squatted down by the corpse, put the bat on the split asphalt, grabbed a slightly less bloody patch of fur and dragged the body to the side of the road.

“I hear it. I hear your dog. It's in the woods.”

“What's that? No-no. The dog stopped barki...” Sylvie listened, and heard a faint yipping bark. She stood from the dead animal and turned around.

The passenger side of the truck opened and Danny stepped out.

“I hear it. It's over there.” Danny skirted around the back of the truck and then ran stumbling into the woods.

Sylvie yelled, almost screamed, at him to stop. She scooped up the bat as she ran towards her truck. When she stopped at the pickup, she heard a shout of pain, somewhere in the woods.

She adjusted her grip on the bat and called out, “Danny? Where are you?” She heard a muffled response and followed the sound into the woods. The wind blew through the autumn leaves and reds, yellows, and oranges swirled from the branches, blinding her.

Gasping as she stumbled through the blowing leaves, the rushing sound caused her hearing aid to squeal, forcing her to stand still to adjust the stupid machine.

The squeee sound from the device stopped, and she heard Danny's voice. She rushed forward because he sounded hurt, but when she came closer she realized it wasn't pain in his voice, but excitement.

In the lee of a hollow log, Danny sat with his back to the wood and his legs splayed out in front of him. A little brown puppy with a wolfish face and a curled white tail crouched on his chest, licking his face.

*

Danny named the mongrel puppy Rustle, after the sound of the autumn leaves, before they even finished the short drive back to the cottage. They took a trip into town and had a vet look the puppy over, but he was obviously healthy, about six weeks old. Doc Wilson thought the puppy might be a mix of wolf and Samoyed. The mama dog apparently had no other puppies, but hunger had forced her to leave the makeshift den and forage for food. A logging truck must have hit her.

Danny accepted Sylvie's story that she had her hearing aid turned up high, and that's why she could hear the puppy barking, but Sylvie knew otherwise.

*

Sylvie sat in the parking lot of St. Sebastian. In the back of her truck she had loaded some puppy chow and an old dog house for Rustle.

As she sat behind the wheel, she finished the final Hail Mary and recited the final prayers of the rosary before slipping the necklace into her jacket pocket. She knew she would never understand why God had made her like she was, made Danny like he was, took away Jenny from both of them and let the logging truck hit that beautiful dog. Sylvie reached back into her jacket pocket to touch her rosary again. She guessed it didn't really matter if she understood, because what she knew was that the puppy, Danny and herself were bound together by love and loss and need. They each had a calling to take care of the others.

Some might look at their lives, their natures, their disabilities and call them broken. But they weren't broken. They were special pieces that fit together in an infinite yet simple universe.

She put the truck into gear and spun the tires as she pulled on to Main Street. The rattling old pickup flew through a drift of leaves as she passed a Maine State Police cruiser.

Trooper Pinette watched Sylvie drive by and reached for his radio to call in the violation, but then he paused. He’d seen through the swirling leaves the white dog illegally riding with its head sticking out over the edge of the truck bed, and fur blowing in the wind like speed and time never mattered. When he looked a second time, it was gone.