Barking Man (5 page)

“You won’t never make it,” Jackson said. They were both still again for a minute, listening to the dogs trying to come through the door.

“I could always kill you,” Bantry said.

“You’ll still come out behind,” Jackson said. “I already lived a lot longer than you.”

Bantry sat down on the edge of Jackson’s bed, looking down at the floor. He still had to hold the handkerchief over his cut to keep the blood from running in his eye.

“What say we just call it a draw?” Jackson said. “We could just go on in the kitchen and eat supper and forget the whole thing.”

Bantry looked over at him. “How I know you’re telling the truth?” he said.

“Hell, you don’t,” Peter Jackson said. “But there’s always a chance of it. And some chance is better than no chance at all.”

Bantry sat and thought a while longer. Then he reached over and unlatched the door. The dogs came in fast, spinning around, slipping a little on the slick board floor. They were in such a hurry to find Bantry and eat him alive they were just about falling over themselves.

“Let him alone,” Jackson called out, and both dogs simmered down right away. Then to Bantry: “You come on here and help me up. And let me have that aspirin bottle. That’s what I was after in here in the first place.”

Another week or so went by. Bantry’s cut was healing up; it was not so bad as it looked at first. Jackson had thought his ribs were cracked but it turned out they were only bruised and soon enough they started feeling better. Bantry went on about the same as before, doing what he was told and not saying much, yet Jackson didn’t think he was quite so sullen and angry as he had been. Then one afternoon Bantry came up to him and said, “I’m done with the dog runs. All right I go down by the lake a while?”

“Go ahead on,” Jackson said. He was right pleased because it was the first time Bantry had asked him for anything, and for that matter it was the first time he’d acted like he knew the lake was even there.

So Bantry went on down the trail and Jackson went and turned out a dog named Theodore he was training for K-9. He had on all the pads he wore whenever he was going to let a dog have at him. After twenty minutes or so he took a break and walked around the low side of the kennels where he could see out to the lake, and that was when he saw Bantry out paddling in the pirogue.

Later on, Jackson couldn’t tell just why the sight of it hit him so hard. He hadn’t told Bantry he could use the boat, but then he hadn’t told him he couldn’t either. He might have been trying to run off again; there were people in the houses on the far side of the lake and Bantry might have thought he could get over there and steal one of their cars. But even from that far distance Jackson could see that Bantry didn’t know much at all about how to handle a boat: he couldn’t keep it headed straight, and he kept heeling it way over to one side or the other.

Whatever his reason was, Jackson decided he wanted to get down there quick. He took out running down the trail, shedding his pads as he went along. Bronwen and Caesar came along with him, and Theodore, who was still out loose, was frisking along after all of them, not taking it too seriously, just having a good time. The trail takes a zig and a zag through the cedar grove, and for the last leg or two Jackson couldn’t see the lake at all. When he finally came out at the foot of the path, he saw Bantry had turned the boat over somehow and was thrashing around a good way from it. You could tell by one quick look he didn’t know how to swim a stroke. And what kind of a fool would overset a flat-bottomed boat, anyway? He wasn’t over the deep part of the lake; if he had been, the way things fell out, he would probably be there yet.

Jackson took off his knee pads, which he hadn’t been able to get rid of while he was running. He took off his shoes and some more of his clothes and waded out into the lake. The dogs ran up and down the shoreline barking like crazy, and now and then one of them would put a paw in the water, but they were not dogs that liked to swim. Without thinking, Jackson swam straight out to where Bantry was at and laid a hold to him, only Bantry got a better hold on him first, and dragged him right on under. It was not anything he meant to be doing, exactly, just how any drowning man behaves. He was trying to climb out of the lake over Jackson’s back, but Jackson was going down underneath him, getting lightheaded, for no matter what he tried he couldn’t raise his head clear for a breath. Then it came to him he had better swim for the bottom. When he dove down he felt Bantry come loose from him and he kept going down till he was free, then out a ways, swimming as far as he could under water before he came back up.

He was tired then, and his banged ribs had started to hurt from that long time he’d been down and holding his breath. For a minute or two he had to lie in a dead-man’s float to rest, and then he raised his head and started treading water, slow. It was a cloudy day, no sun at all, and he could feel the cold cutting through to his bones. The surface of the lake was black as oil. Bantry was still struggling about twenty feet from him, but he was near done in by that time. He stared at Jackson, his eyes rolling white. Jackson trod water and looked right back at him until Bantry gave it up and slid down under the lake.

Ripples were widening out from the place where Bantry’s head went down, and Peter Jackson kept on treading water. He counted up to twenty-five before he dove. It was ten feet deep, maybe twelve, at the point where they were at, colder yet along the bottom and dark with silt. He didn’t find Bantry the first dive he made, though he stayed down until his head was pounding. It took him a count of thirty to get the breath back for another try, and he was starting to think he might have miscalculated. But on the second time he found him and hauled him back up. Bantry was not putting up any fight now; he was not any more than a dead weight. Jackson got him in a cross-chest carry and swam him into the shore.

The dogs were going wild there on the bank, yapping and jumping up and down. Jackson dumped Bantry face down on the gravel and swatted the dogs away. He knelt down and started mashing Bantry’s shoulders. There was plenty of water coming out of him, but he was cold and not moving a twitch, and Jackson was thinking he had miscalculated sure enough when Bantry shuddered and coughed and puked a little and then raised up on his elbows. Jackson got off of him and watched him start to breathe. After a little bit, Bantry’s eyes came clear.

“You’da let me drown,” Bantry said. “You’da just let me …”

“You never left me much of a choice,” Jackson said.

“You was just setting there watching me drown,” Bantry said. He sat up one joint at a time and then let his head drop down and hang over his folded knees. The cut above his eye had opened back up and was bleeding some. In a minute, he started to cry.

Peter Jackson never had seen anybody carrying on the way Bantry was, not some pretty near grown man, at least. He didn’t feel any too sorry for Bantry, but it was unpleasant watching him cry like that. It was like watching a baby cry when it can’t tell you what’s the matter, and there ain’t no way for you to tell it to quit. He thought of one thing or another he might say. That he’d had to take a gambler’s chance. That a poor risk was better than no hope at all. But he was worn out from swimming and struggling, too tired to feel like talking much. Bantry kept on crying, not letting up, and Peter Jackson got himself on his feet and went limping up to the house with the dogs.

That was what did it for Bantry, though, or so it seemed. Anyway, he was a lot different after that. He acted nicer with the dogs, feeding them treats, stroking them and loving them up, when he never as much as touched one before, if he had a way around it. He began to volunteer to do extra things, helping more around the house and garden, when his chores in the kennel were done. He put on pads and learned to help Jackson train dogs for K-9. He followed Jackson around trying to strike up conversation, like, for a change, he was hungry for company. He was especially nice with Bronwen and Caesar, and Caesar seemed to take a shine to him right back. Bantry had turned the corner, what it looked like. In about two more weeks, Peter Jackson called the courthouse and said they could send somebody out to pick him up.

As it turned out, it was me they sent. I was still a part-time deputy then, and the call came on a Saturday when I was on duty. Bantry was packed and all ready to go when I got there. Soon as I had parked the car he came walking over, carrying his grip. Caesar was walking alongside of him, and every couple of steps they took, Bantry would reach down and give him a pat on the head.

“Hello, Mr. Trimble,” he said. He put out his hand and we shook.

“You look bright-eyed arid bushy-tailed,” I said. “I’d scarce have known you, Bantry.”

“You can call me Don,” he said, and smiled.

I told him to go on and get in the front while I went down to take a message to Jackson. It surprised me just a touch he hadn’t already come out himself. He was sitting on his back stoop when I found him, staring out across the lake. Bronwen was sitting there next to him. Every so often she’d slap her paw up on his knee, like she was begging him for something. Jackson didn’t appear to be paying her much mind.

“Well sir, you’re a miracle worker,” I said. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d just been told, but it looks like you done it again.”

“Hello, Trimble,” Jackson said, flicking his eyes over me and then back away. He’d known I was there right along, just hadn’t shown it. Bronwen slapped her paw back up on his knee.

“Marvin said tell you he’ll have another one ready to send out here shortly,” I said. Jackson looked off across the lake.

“I ain’t going to have no more of ’m,” he said.

“Why not?” I said. Bronwen pawed at him another time, and Jackson reached over and started rubbing her ears.

“Well, I figured something out,” Jackson said, still staring down there at the water. “It ain’t any different than breaking an animal, what I been doing to them boys.”

I stepped up beside him and looked where he was looking, curious to see what might be so interesting down there on the lake. There wasn’t so much as a fish jumping. Nothing there but that blue, blue water, cold looking and still like it was ice.

“What if you’re right?” I said. “More’n likely it’s the very thing they need.”

“Yes, but a man is not an animal,” he said. He waited a minute, and clicked his tongue. “Anyhow, I’m getting too old,” he said.

“You?” I said. “Ain’t nobody would call
you
old.” It was a true fact I never had thought of him that way myself, though he might have been near seventy by that time. He’d been a right smart older than his wife.

Jackson raised up his left hand and shook it under my nose. I could see how his fingers were getting skinny the way an old man’s will, and how loose his wedding band was rattling. Then he laid his hand back down on Bronwen’s head.

“I’m old,” he said. “I can feel it now sure enough. The days run right by me and I can’t get a hold on them. And you want to know what?”

“What?” I said. Walked right into it like the sharp edge of a door.

“It’s a relief,” Peter Jackson told me. “That’s what.”

I
DON’T KNOW HOW
much I remember about that place anymore. It was nothing but somewhere I came to put in some pretty bad time, though that was not what I had planned on when I went there. I had it in mind to improve things, but I don’t think you could fairly claim that’s what I did. So that’s one reason I might just as soon forget about it. And I didn’t stay there all that long, not more than nine months or so, about the same time, come to think, that the child I’d come to try and get back had lived inside my body.

It was a cluster-housing thing called Spring Valley, I wouldn’t know why, just over the Botetourt County line on the highway going north out of Roanoke. I suppose it must have been there ten or fifteen years, long enough to lose that raw look they have when they’re new built, but not too rundown yet, so long as you didn’t look close. There were five or six long two-story buildings running in rows back up the hillside. You got to the upstairs apartments by an outside balcony, like you would in a motel. The one I rented was in the lowest building down the hill, upstairs on the northwest corner. There was a patch of grass out front beyond the gravel of the parking lot, but the manager didn’t take much trouble over it. He kept it cut, but it was weedy, and a few yards past the buildings it began to go to brush. By my corner there was a young apple tree that never made anything but small sour green apples, knotted up like little fists. Apart from that there was nothing nearby that the eye would care to dwell on. But upstairs, out my front windows, I could look way out beyond the interstate to where the mountains were.

You got there driving about two miles up a bumpy two-lane from the state road. It was mostly wooded land along the way, with a couple of pastures spotted in, and one little store. About halfway you crossed the railroad cut, and from the apartment I could hear the trains pulling north out of town, though it wasn’t near enough I could see them. I listened to them often enough, though, nights I couldn’t sleep, and bad times I might pull a chair out on the concrete slab of balcony so I could hear them better.

The apartment was nothing more than the least I needed, some place that would look all right and yet cost little enough to leave me something to give the lawyer. Two rooms and a bath and a fair-sized kitchen. It would have been better if there’d been one more room for Davey but I couldn’t stretch my money far enough to cover that. It did have fresh paint on the walls and the trim in the kitchen and bathroom was in good enough shape. And it was real quiet mostly, except that the man next door would beat up his wife about two or three times a week. The place was close enough to soundproof I couldn’t usually hear talk but I could hear yelling plain as day, and when he got going good he would slam her bang into our common wall. If she hit in just the right spot it would send all my pots and pans flying off the pegboard where I’d hung them there above the stove.