Chancho corrects her pronunciation.
132
Andrew looks like Andrew thanks to a very powerful, very temporary spell.
He goes to see his lawyer, signs everything over to Marina Yaganishna, whom he describes as a cousin.
“Cousin, eh? Is that what they’re calling Russian Internet brides these days? What are you doing, Andrew?”
“Just trust me.”
“Tax stuff? You hiding assets?”
“Just do it, please.”
Andrew has until sunset to look, smell, and sound like himself.
He calls Salvador.
Sal waggles his hips for the first time since Andrew’s body died.
“Sal, I have to ask you a question.”
The framed portrait of Dalí nods.
“Sal, are you happy?”
Salvador doesn’t respond for some time.
Then it turns the knobs on the Etch-a-Sketch.
I
SERVE
“That’s not an answer. I want to know if you’re happy. Now. Like this.”
One of the automaton’s hands moves toward the knobs to reply.
Then it lies still.
There it is, then.
“I’m going to ask you another question, Sal. It’s a question that means more than it seems to mean, so I want you to think about your answer, okay?”
The portrait nods.
“Do you want to stay inside with me? Or do you want to go outside?”
Salvador bows his head.
Then points at the Etch-a-Sketch.
I
SERVE.
Andrew shakes his head.
“Tell me really. Tell me what you want.”
The automaton squirms.
Then writes.
OUTSIDE
Sal shakes the screen clear and turns the knobs again.
YOU OUTSIDE
WITH SAL LATER
Andrew laughs, feels a tear start in one eye, knuckles it away.
“It’s a date,” he says.
First, Andrew watches the tape with Sal and Sarah a dozen or thirteen times, never opening the trapdoor. Just watching. Then he pops the tape out, takes it upstairs.
The microwave is destroyed, so Andrew uses the stove to thaw a piece of filet he had been saving in the freezer, a big red bastard wrapped in applewood-smoked bacon.
That done, he turns Salvador back into a border collie, using the last of the alarm magic woven into his wicker limbs.
This will last only twenty minutes at most.
He gives Sal the filet.
Watches the greedy, beautiful dog gobble it down.
All ten ounces of it.
He takes Sal outside, throws a Frisbee for him.
Laughs as Sal plucks the orange disc from the air once, twice, then gets distracted and chases a raven, probably one of those that ate Andrew’s face not so long ago.
Then they just run together.
The dog is big-legging it through the last warm day of the year, his tongue hanging behind him for what seems like half a mile, barking and jumping.
Then they fall into a tumble of scratches and playful bites and cheek-licking, a dance as old as man and dog and meat and fire. At last they rest, Sal’s head on his lap.
Andrew smells the dog’s good smells, from the waxy scent of the fur near his ears to the grassy, leathery black pads of his feet, even his steaky, hot breath.
A squirrel chirrs from a tree and Sal raises his head, pricks his ears up, but doesn’t chase it.
Just wags.
Happy as he’s ever been with the smells of squirrel and fresh air and dead raccoons in the air and the sun on his coat, his master’s hand in his fur, his master’s voice in his ear and smell in his nose.
For the last time.
It has to be here.
It has to be now.
The dog begins to blur.
Stands up and yawns, curling his tongue.
Andrew stands, too.
The dog blurs and stays blurry.
Rises from four feet to stand on two.
Now Sal is an automaton again.
Before he can lose his nerve, Andrew pulls the lid off the basket at the center of the wicker man, yanks out the dog’s salted heart.
Not unlike pulling a plug.
The wicker man collapses, falls into an almost fetal position with Dalí looking up at the sky.
The portrait will hang in the library.
The prosthetic legs will go to the VA, where some bewildered young man or woman home from a hot country may be glad for them.
The wicker man and the dog’s heart go in the fire.
As does the VHS tape.
Sal and Sarah.
Outside.
Later.
It’s a date.
Andrew Blankenship watches the sun go down, sitting by the fire in his Japanese robe.
Marina Yaganishna gets up, ties the robe tighter.
Hears the cell phone ringing.
Picks it up.
It’s Anneke.
133
This is what Marina Yaganishna does at the AA meeting.
She introduces herself to everyone.
Tries to act like she doesn’t know anything at all about bottle-red-haired-child-spoiling-Mom Cathy, or beauty-queen-for-Jesus Laura, or toilet-plungered-Art-Garfunkel Jim, Lexus-lawyer Jim, Saint Bob, or any of them.
She eats half a doughnut, gives Anneke the other half, watches Anneke eat two more.
Anneke has put on a little weight, but she carries it well.
Anneke is happy.
When Chancho speaks, Marina dims the good Presbyterian fluorescents above their yellowing Presbyterian screens, then brightens them again, stopping before they pop. He cuts his eyes to her, but she just looks back at him with those calm, tilted blue icon eyes of hers.
Chancho speaks.
“I used to be in a lotta bad stuff, down in Texas, Mexico. Since I was a kid, drinkin’ beer and raicilla, which is made from agaves but not like the stuff they give the tourist but the stuff somebody made at home. Always in trouble. Most of the boys in my family, they went to guns and drugs, and I did too, at first. Bad stuff, bad stuff. You see it on the news now, how bad it’s got, but it’s never been good. I got out of Matamoros, went up to Houston, still got mixed up too much, drinkin’ Shiner was okay but cocaine and tequila and whiskey, I ruin my boxing. Got arrested. Went to Austin and started getting clean, workin’ in a garage, but was still too close to it all. Met my wife, Consuela, married her, almost got happy but addiction don’t let nobody be happy. I hit her not one time but two times, and she shouldn’t’a stayed, but I thank God every day she did. Said she had people up north and why didn’t we come up here, get away from all that. I said okay. It was good. I got eight years sober now, and I know it don’t never go away. My family come up, some of them still in the life I was in, and it was hard to say no to some of the stuff they wanted me to do with them. But I did. I said ‘My food is your food, and stay as long as you want, but don’t you bring that in my house.’ So some of them got a hotel. Maybe I should have warned you if you was gonna stay in the Days Inn in Oswego not to tell nobody to turn the music down if you heard accordions or somebody singin’ about corazón. All Mexican songs got the word corazón. I think it’s a law. Anyway, the temptation was on me, ’specially around my cousin Julio, who got good shit, the best in Chihuahua, and he’s a fun dude, too. But I was drivin’ down 104 to the Days Inn thinkin’ maybe just this one time cause I ain’t seen these muchachos since back in the day, and Consuela won’t never know, you know how that song goes, and no sooner had I thought that than BAM! Out pops this dog, an I almos’ hit him, he glance off the tire. He’s a old dog, too, vet thinks he’s between eight and ten years old. Been on his own for a while, all dirty, got some mange and fleas, lotsa fleas. But I didn’t know about that yet. If I’d’a known how much he gonna cost me at the vet, I mighta not take him. So I pull over and pick this chingado dog up, take him to the hotel with me, and all the dudes were drinkin’ and smokin’ and snortin’ and effin’ with his ears, he look like a beagle, with a white smutch on his face like a máscara. And you can go ooooooo in his face an’ he’ll howl back at you, too. Anyway, I think God sent me that dog to remind me. So I kept him. My buddy An’… Marina. My friend Marina, you just met her tonight, she’s a friend’a Andrew’s, she said she thinks his name was Caspar because of that mask. But I want to call him Ocho because he remind me not to blow my eight years. But he answers to Caspar, guess she was right. But I call him both. His name is Caspar Ocho Morales. Good name for a fighter. Good name for a dog.”