Everybody Loves You (2 page)

I expect the clown dog must have liked me, because he used to follow me around some days that I know of with his coat and his dumb little hat. He looked so sad. I guess he sensed that he was supposed to be a secret, because he tended to hang back a little, like someone who has already been tagged out of a game and is waiting for the next thing to start. I don't recall that he even barked. And he never went along with us when we tried to get him to talk out of the circus.

Of course we had listened, with all the concentration of adolescents, to the exact words Hopey used in the act when the clown dog would speak, and we would try these words on the clown dog ourselves—imitating Hopey's voice, even, and standing the way he stood to be an imperial ringmaster. But we couldn't make it happen; never did the clown dog utter a word out of his context, the circus. It was the strangest thing. I was just thinking that I would have hated to be around Bill someday if someone tried to get him into a hat with pom-poms.

I was at college when Bill ran away, so I only know about it secondhand, from stories. I couldn't help thinking it was presumable in the end that Bill would take a walk one day and not come back. It was presumable. But still I was surprised to hear of it. It was Christmas, when I was a freshman, and the first sight I got of home when I got off the bus was my father cutting the grass with the Johnsons' lawn mower, and Bill nowhere to be seen. I knew something was wrong then, because Bill never missed a chance to play dogfight with the Johnsons' lawn mower, which always enraged my father. Bill would growl at it for starters, lying way off somewhere, and slowly creep towards it … you know, paw by paw. Then he'd run around it, fussing and barking, and at last he'd get in to rushing it like he was going in for the kill, only to back up snarling at the last second.

So when I saw the lawn mower and no Bill I thought he must be sick, but my father said he had run off like as far back as October sometime. I listened carefully to this, though he didn't talk careful, not ever in all his life that I knew him. Whatever he was thinking when he spoke, that's what he'd say, as tough as you can take it. He didn't expect Bill back, he said, and he didn't miss him. He said it and I believe him. I can just see that now, what he said, and saying it, so plain it was like a picture somebody drew to prove something. I could see that way he didn't care right up front on him.

“No,” he said lazily, because he is lazy. “I don't miss him. You run away from home and don't come back, nobody misses you at all. That's the rule.”

I don't know of any rule saying you don't miss a runaway dog, even if he never comes back. If he's of a mind to run, there's usually a good reason. My father used to say, “There's always a reason for something, and sometimes two.”

That was one of his wisdoms. He had wisdoms for most things that came up in life—lawyers, school, elections, working. He had his wisdoms for Bill, too, even when it was really clear that dog was born to go his own way in a nice wisdom of the animal kingdom.

I can see why that dog took off, anyway, because my father wasn't any too easy to get along with, especially when proclaiming one of his wisdoms. But despite what he said and how he looked saying it, I suppose he really did love that dog … or he
wanted
to love it, which would be the way people like my father express affection. It must have threatened to tear him up some when Bill deserted him.

That was a bad time, too, with the strike coming up sooner or later but sure as doom. I wasn't around for the strike. I was sixteen when I finished high school, and I could still have been young some more and not done much of anything with myself, but I had more ambition than to work in the factory or pump gas on Route 16. So I went to college on what you might call a soccer scholarship. My father always poked fun at me for playing soccer. “What kind of sport is that for a man, chasing a ball around with your feet? You look like a bunch of giant bugs,” was his view of it. But soccer took me to college, on a full scholarship. It's true, I guess; soccer isn't much of a sport, and this wasn't much of a college. But one wisdom might be that college is college. Anyway, I went.

I came home for Christmas, because I was only two states away, one long bus ride. Besides, they closed the dorms on me and I had to go somewhere. That first night, Thursday, when I came home and saw the lawn mower and learned that Bill had run away, standing in the yard with my bag like a salesman, I decided to walk around town instead of just being home. Because I already knew about home, but I felt mysterious about Hanley, that it was a place filled with riddles that ought to be solved, even by someone who had lived his whole life of sixteen years so far in it.

I thought maybe I would take a look over to Hopey Paris's circus, in case that should be going on … or maybe I would talk Hopey into doing his show just for me, because it was extremely rare that the circus would happen in December. I had an idea that Hopey favored me over some others of my generation there in Hanley because I had always been keen to see the clown dog and figure out how he talked, and Hopey was pleased to be appreciated, even by kids.

He liked to think—I'm guessing at this—that his circus, starring the clown dog, which he celebrated as The Talking Dog of the World … his circus was what kept the town from feeling too complete. You might suppose that a town with a circus is more complete than most, but instead I sense that it is less complete, and therefore more open and more free. Because a circus is magic. And having its own private circus reminds the town of all the other magic things it doesn't have. It is like … it puts the town a little in touch with another town, a secret town that is the ghostly image of itself, a kind of myth in a mirror. Now, so long as the town is aware of its ideal twin, it will wonder about itself, and never think it knows everything there is to know, and not pretend that it is complete. Which I think is all to the good. So no wonder I liked to watch the clown dog's act. And that's why I went over to Hopey Paris's circus on my first night back from college—to watch the ghost dance by me again. Even after all those years, I still didn't understand how the clown dog did his trick.

This was the act. Hopey comes in with his whip and his hat and he stands in the ring. “And now we take great pride and the most highly principled pleasure”—this is exactly what he said every time—“in presenting for your delectation and enlightenment the one and only clown dog … The Talking Dog of the World!”

And out from behind a flap of the tent, in his coat and pom-pom hat, the clown dog would trot in. And he would sit on his hind legs looking expectantly at Hopey. That same old coat and hat. That poor little clown dog. Or I guess maybe he was well off, even if no one called him a hero.

In any case, Hopey would say, “Tell these folks here assembled who you
are
”—like that, with everything on the
are.
And … I swear to God, the clown dog would answer, as if he was going to growl first. But no, it was this funny talking—“Clown … dog.” Like that, broken up into words. It was a high voice, tensely placed, like the sounds puppets make on television. And of course we were looking madly from the clown dog to Hopey and back to see the trick.

Then Hopey would say, “Who is the
clown dog?
” And the clown dog would answer, “Me.” Something screwy would happen in his mouth, as if he was biting a fly or had bubble gum. And his head would tilt. But he talked, all right, and that was some trick. Just these two questions was all the talking, though. Because then Hopey would shout, “Leap, clown dog!” and that poodle just leaped right into Hopey's arms and licked his face. That was the whole act, and that was also the whole circus.

I miss that circus, for it is miles away from me now. But when I came home that Christmas, I didn't have it in mind as something you ever lose hold of, because I didn't realize about growing old. Now, that is a term for you,
growing old.
And it, too, has a trick: it contains the thought that things vanish. You don't grow old yourself as fast as old things grow old because even as you age you're still there but the other things are gone … what you might call completed. They function, and they pass, and you also pass along, and perhaps you come to the big city here, and you learn a new function, and think about who you are … and somewhere in there you remember the old things, and the other place, and suddenly you realize how much you miss them. And this tells you how you have your own completion to accomplish.

I didn't reckon on any of this at the time, passing through Hanley on my Christmas vacation. I was just out for a stroll. I should have stopped and seen everything the way a camera sees, marking it down so when I grew old everything that was there wouldn't have vanished even in completion. I just wanted a little peace.

The thing was, that if I was sixteen, the clown dog must have been well on to thirteen or fourteen. He just never acted old, so it was not something to realize. Fourteen is old for a dog, and that's as near as far as a dog can last without vanishing, even if he still acts spry and bouncy and leaps into your arms when you tell him. So I just went up to Hopey's door and knocked, thinking he'd be there like always and maybe he'd rustle up the circus just for me in honor of my coming back from college on my first holiday.

The house was lit inside but no one answered, so I went around to the back where the tent was. Except there was no tent there now. You could see the tracks in the dirt where it was, all the time before, and some of the bleacher seats were still there, a little wrecked, like someone was trying to take them apart and then suddenly changed his mind. And as I stood there wondering, I heard Hopey's back door open. I turned and saw him in the doorway, so I asked him where the circus had gone to.

“My little clown dog passed away,” Hopey said, “so I cut down the tent and dissolved the circus.”

It happened in October, he said, which would be only a few weeks after I left town for school. I didn't know what to tell him without making it seem like I was holding another funeral, and I was worried about words because I got distracted thinking about the clown dog's little hat and how sad he looked in it sometimes. You know how touchy it can be, lurking about a place and looking like a stranger. And what if I asked how did it happen and only made Hopey feel worse? I didn't ask. I must have stood there for a whole minute trying to get my mouth around a sentence.

“He liked you, you know,” Hopey said suddenly. “Perhaps you suppose that I was busy in the store, but I knew who his friends were. He was a pickety chooser, but he had exquisite taste in people. Didn't you think so?”

“I think he was a shy little fellow,” I said.

“Yes, that he was.”

“I'm sorry, Hopey. I came over especially to see him again.” Now that I'd found my tongue, I expected he would break down or get very quiet, but he was just so calm. The clown dog used to follow me around, I wanted to say. We tried to make him talk. But we never hurt him.

“Since he liked you,” said Hopey, “do you want to plumb the mystery of how he talked?”

I had to smile now. “It was a trick, wasn't it?”

“It was a tip-top trick,” Hopey replied, “because nobody knew how it was done. Bet I shouldn't spoil it for you after all this. Should I? Do you want to know?”

“I think I ought to plumb the mystery, if he liked me, after all.”

“He didn't like everyone,” said Hopey. “But I believe he was exceptionally popular in the town.”

“I guess he had to be,” I said. “No other circus dog that I heard tell of has ever been the headline attraction.”

“Well, he certainly was that. And he led a rich life. He was The Talking Dog of the World.”

Hopey asked me about college then, and I told him, and after a while there was this natural space to say good-bye, so I left. Hopey forgot to tell me the trick and I forgot to remind him that I should know it, but I didn't think it was fitting to go back there just then, and before I was halfway home I was glad I didn't find it out.

You'd think I would be unhappy to learn that the clown dog had died, but in a way that conversation with Hopey was the only nice thing that happened all Christmas. My father was in a terrible mood the whole time, spitting out wisdoms like he was on a quota system and falling behind. He kept talking about the strike that everyone knew was going to happen, and finally, a few days before I was due to go back to school, he asked me didn't I think my place was here with the people I'd known all my life instead of at some college?

It seemed to me that the place to be during a strike was as far from it as possible, and college would do as well as any. And that's what I told him. So he said if I felt that way about it, I might as well get going right now.

“Just like Bill,” he said.

I was waiting for that. I didn't have anything prepared to say back to it, but I knew it was coming. I don't care. It was meant to hurt me, but it didn't, though I must admit it began to gnaw on me after a while … because I hoped it was true.

I really did. “Just like Bill,” he said, but he meant more like: “Go vanish.”

“Just like Bill”—because I was leaving him, too. Well, there's always a reason for something, and sometimes two. I never went back to Hanley, either; maybe Bill did, after I left, but I won't. I have heard those words often since in my mind,
Just like Bill,
in just the way he said it, looking so smug that he had doped it out at last, made the simple sum and added another wisdom to his collection. I could accept it if I had to, but the truth is I am no way like Bill, all told. I am not like anyone. Whenever someone asks who I am, I say, “Me,” just like the clown dog did, because it cheers me to remember him, and to think back on how I could have heard the trick if I had wanted to, which is as close as anybody ought to get. That was a strange, but fine, animal.