So, great. These were the conclusions I came to while sitting with the dead. I couldn’t see any way that they were going to help me and I began to regret the fact that I had traveled so far for what seemed like such poor reasons. All I seemed to have accomplished was to remind myself of my own shortcomings. I could have saved myself a long trip by doing the same thing at home.
But just as I was about to leave, I heard a sound at the other end of the corridor, which branched off into another hallway that led to the mausoleum entrance. At first, I thought it was just footsteps echoing on the marble floor, but I soon realized that what I was hearing had a sharper edge than a footfall would have made: the sound brought to mind something clicking against the cold stone. And whatever was making that sound was heading straight for me.
I turned my head in the direction of the clicking sound and waited as it drew nearer. I couldn’t imagine what it could be.
And then, suddenly, at the far end of the hall, I saw a thin brown dog, not much taller than the bench I was sitting on. It regarded me with a look of intense concentration, pausing for a moment before it advanced down the corridor. Now I knew that what I had heard was the sound of the nails on the dog’s paws tapping against the stone floor.
As the dog drew nearer, I found myself riveted by its purposeful demeanor; it didn’t seem lost, or out of place though surely, it had to be both. The dog continued to advance in my direction, but then paused once again to stare at me, tilting its narrow head sideways, as if it were considering some question that needed an answer before it continued forward.
At last, as if it had made a decision, the dog walked up to me, stood still for just a moment, and then seated itself beside me. Finally, and completely unexpectedly, it leaned itself against my leg. Now, it was facing in the same direction I was, looking toward the marble wall of burial niches. Tentatively, I put my hand on its head and gave it a sort of pat. The dog seemed relaxed but alert. His body was so close to mine that I could feel the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
I felt like I had crossed over into some sort of dream state. This morning, I was wandering around my apartment, not knowing what to do with myself and now, just a few hours later, I was sitting in a mausoleum, petting a strange dog who seemed to have a better sense of purpose than I did myself. Jack Shepherd suddenly came to mind and I thought, Well, I should call and tell him about this. A dog has come to visit Avi. Because that was what I was beginning to think. It didn’t make much sense, but that was what occurred to me. I was here, working through a bunch of complex feelings about Avi, and about my own life. The dog, on the other hand, just seemed to be a visitor, some kind of quiet, neutral force that signaled the welcome end of my experiment in soul searching. And while he was here, to also stop for a moment and say hello to Avi.
Was that true? Well, really, what difference did it make? At the moment it was what I decided was true, and so I felt better. I sat on the marble bench awhile longer with the dog leaning against my leg. Eventually, I decided it was probably time to go. The bus back to the city came only once an hour and I thought I’d better try to make the next one.
But what to do about the dog? When I got up, he followed me like a thin, brown shadow as I headed down the marble corridors toward the glass doors. Before I went outside though, concerned that the dog might run away, I thought of calling the cemetery office to see if anyone knew who the animal might belong to. If not, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. If he was a stray, I didn’t think I could just leave him here to fend for himself. On the other hand, I couldn’t exactly buy him an extra bus ticket and offer him a ride to the nearest shelter. Or take him home. I actually considered doing that for a few moments. After all, his unexpected appearance in the mausoleum seemed like a sort of sign of something—either that or the beginning of a bad joke: a dog walks into a cemetery . . . Whatever it was, I didn’t think I could just take off without doing something.
My problem was solved for me when I saw a young couple, trailed by two small, worried-looking children, walking through the field of graves on the other side of the gravel path that led to the mausoleum. Even through the glass doors, I could hear them calling, “Buddy! Buddy!”
I led the dog outside and waved my hand in the air, calling out to the family. The father heard me and turned in my direction. A moment later, they were all heading down a grassy slope that angled toward the path, picking their way between the gravesites as they hurried toward me.
The first to reach me was the father, who quickly bent down and put a collar and leash around the dog’s neck. Then, as the rest of his family caught up with him he explained that they were on their way to visit relatives in Pennsylvania and had stopped along the way to put some flowers on his mother’s grave. They had left the dog in the car with the window only slightly cracked so he could get some air, and none of them could imagine how he had both slipped his collar and managed to escape from the car. As I accepted everybody’s thanks for returning their beloved Buddy to them, I didn’t mention the even stranger problem of how the dog had managed to get into the mausoleum. Those were pretty heavy glass doors and they didn’t open automatically; you had to pull them open in order to enter. Buddy, it seems, had acquired either one of two skills: the ability to open doors or to pass through them, like a ghost. I would have given money either way.
With some final thanks, the family started to walk away. But Buddy, it seemed, wasn’t ready to go. He turned around to face me and then sat down on the ground, stubbornly refusing to move. Dad tugged on the leash, but the dog wouldn’t budge. He just kept looking at me, as if we hadn’t yet finished whatever business he had come to carry out.
So, since the situation was becoming a little embarrassing—I didn’t want the family to think I somehow wanted the dog to refuse their efforts to get him to come with them—I walked over to the dog and once again gave him a pat on the head.
“Go on,” I said to him. “It’s okay. I get it.”
Get what? I had no real idea of what I meant but it somehow seemed like the right thing to say. And apparently, the dog thought so too because he immediately stood up, turned around, and let himself be led away. One of the kids turned back once to wave at me, but the dog just kept on trotting briskly along in the other direction. His business with me was finished and now he was ready to continue on his way.
~VIII~
I kept meaning to call Jack and tell him about the dog, but I never quite got around to it. I was pretty much over being angry with him and was, in fact, a little embarrassed about how I’d behaved. I always did seem to overreact when I thought someone was trying to manipulate me, or finesse me into doing something—a holdover, I suppose, from my younger days when the worst thing you could do was cooperate with authority. Well, Jack Shepherd didn’t have any authority over me—I knew that, of course—and it really wasn’t his fault that I had gotten involved with Ravenette and the Blue Awareness. It was my own. Jack had encouraged me to see her, but I’d made the decision to do that all by myself. I was the one who had allowed myself to delve into things I knew nothing about: lost ideas, old mysteries, strange dreams. No one had forced me to do that. At some point, I was going to have to call Jack and apologize for placing the blame on him for everything that had happened. After all, he had even given me the documents I needed for the attorney, and I hadn’t exactly been Miss Lovely during that conversation, either.