Hound Dog & Bean (34 page)

“That’s one of your guides,” Ezzie said then.

“Huh?”

“One of your spirit guides. We all have them. Seven or nine depending. Dog is another of yours, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” he said, and it started out sarcastic and died on his lips.

Spirit animals?
He shrugged. Why not?

(
“Why not? There’s something about this place. I like fairies as much as anything.”
)

Ezzie opened the bag. She closed her eyes, placed her hand inside, and then quickly pulled it out and dumped the contents onto the table. There they were, the glass, the arrowhead, the fossil, the gnarl of wood, the bone (had to be a chicken bone, had to be) and all the rest, scattered haphazardly in front of him.

She leaned over. Stared at what looked like nothing to him.

Then she began to speak.

“T
HE
DOGS
are calling for you, Hillary. Especially the black puppy. You are his keeper now, and you left him.”

He stiffened.
Bullshit. She can’t know that. Can’t
.

“And a lady. She is sad. Very sad. The place of dogs doesn’t work without you.”

“Ezzie. You called her. That’s how you know this stuff.”

She looked up at him, and he closed his mouth. He wasn’t sure she even had a phone.

Down went her eyes again.

“Your momma—she says, ‘Now Puppy? I don’t know how much longer I can watch over you…’”

He sat up in his chair. Wait! That was too far. That was below the belt. He started to stand up, tell her to fuck off, and the black bird let out such a cry he cringed in his chair. He turned. The bird stared him down.

This was crazy.

Crazy!

He was not some small town hick to be fooled by sleight of hand and tall tales. This old bat knew him. She knew
just
what to say to pull his strings. It was not real. Not real!

“‘That man? He loves you, Puppy, and he can take care of you….’”

Puppy? Had he ever told Ezzie that his mom used to call him Puppy? Well, of course. He
must
have.

“‘He sits every morning and he stares into his coffee and he thinks of you.’”

Wait. Coffee? How could—no. Of course. Tricks. Who doesn’t have coffee in the morning? Except for those who drink tea, maybe….”

“‘He loves you more than anything ever, Puppy. He loves you more than his beans—’”

Beans? He felt a chill. How could Ezzie know that? He had not told—he must be talking in his sleep. He must….

Man?

H.D. began to tremble.

He had
never
told Ezzie he was gay.

He’d been afraid to. An old lady in a hick town. Why, they’d taken Matthew Shepherd and tied him onto a fence and let him die outside a small town. He knew that. H.D. had known that back then. He’d been afraid to tell the old woman he was gay. She couldn’t know. Couldn’t.

“‘He sits and he longs for you. He holds your hat. The burgundy one—’”

The one I left at his house….

“‘—and he looks at it and looks at it and sometimes he puts it on and he misses you and he thinks,
I love you, Hill. I love you so damned much. I don’t know what I would do without you.
’”

H.D. leapt up from the table. He was shaking hard.

Ezzie couldn’t know that. Could
not
. How could she know?

Ezzie pointed then at a small red felt heart.

Had he ever seen that before?

She picked it up.

“That man loves you with all his heart, Hillary. And your momma can’t watch over you anymore. She stuck around and she watched you and put me and other people in the right time and the right place to help you. But now? Now you gotta let the coffee man watch over you. You gotta watch over him.”

“How do you
know!
” he shouted. “This is not
real!
”

He turned and ran into the house. He ran into his room. He slammed the door. He jumped on the bed and he pulled the cover over his face and hid. Hid from it all.

I
N
THE
dream, Lucas the beagle came to him. He was carrying a leash in his mouth and he dropped it by the bed. H.D. sat up and looked down at the leash. It was Sarah Jane’s rainbow leash and not the leather one he’d had for Lucas.

Nevertheless, he bent and picked it up and clipped it to the link of Lucas’s collar.

Then Lucas led the way. It wasn’t H.D. walking the dog. The dog was walking H.D.

They walked slowly, leisurely—he was sure of that—but the countryside whisked by. There went the rest stop, the road a blur; then they were over the Paseo bridge and into Kansas City and it was midtown and finally Hyde Park.

Things slowed down, it had never seemed fast despite how things flew by, and they were standing in front of Dean’s house.

He didn’t want to go in there.

Lucas insisted.

He pulled H.D. up the walk leading to the porch and Sarah Jane and Rammstein were waiting for him.

Lucas stopped. Looked up at him in the way only a dog could. With pure love. Then Lucas shook his head, jerked the leash right out of H.D.’s hand. He gave a bark and somehow H.D. knew he was supposed to take the leash off of Lucas’s collar.

H.D. got down on one knee.

“You’re leaving me too?”

Lucas just looked at him.

Love. The love of a dog.

H.D. sighed and unhooked the leash, and then Lucas faded away. He didn’t walk away. He didn’t blink away. Just floated apart and onto the breeze.

Sarah Jane barked and danced her dance and pawed at the air like a tiny pony. Rammstein wiggled in puppy joy.

So H.D. bent down once more—leaned really. Sarah was on the top step of the porch and he on the bottom, and he hooked the leash onto her rainbow collar and she led him inside. He didn’t remember even opening the door. She took him past the stairs and through the living room with all its dark wood and bookcases and comfortable furniture, through the dining room, the kitchen, and onto the back deck.

Dean was sitting in his usual chair. He was naked, of course, and damn if he—H.D.—wasn’t naked as well. Dean stood. He was holding that burgundy hat with the pheasant feathers and he said, “Hill. Come home. I need you. I can’t live without you.”

Later, when he woke, that was the thing H.D. remembered.

H
E
FOUND
Ezzie making breakfast. It was her canned sausage. Every year she bought a pig and had it slaughtered (after giving it some herbs that put it to sleep) and she ground it up, used almost everything, and made her homemade sausage. How many times had he craved it through the years? There was nothing like her sausage.

“How many eggs?” she asked him.

He was powerful hungry and asked for three, and she made them sunny side up, just like he liked them.

There was grits too, with lots of butter, and he fell on the food like a starving man. So good. Dean would love this breakfast.

Dean….

She ate her share too. “Gotta keep up my strength. Don’t know how much longer this old body has, and like I keep saying, I got some powerful important things.”

“I thought you were talking about me,” he said and chuckled.

“It’s not all about you, Hill. Even though you’re all the bean man needs.”

“How did you know about me?”

“That you love men? You think I don’t know about men who love men? My grandson, before he ran away like you? He loved a boy. They pledged their hearts under a full moon to be together forever.”

“How did that work out?”

“They was torn apart from each other.”

“So that full moon stuff didn’t work so good.”

“Who knows,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to wait for the magic.”

He sighed. Decided not to argue with her about it. “You know I don’t believe that, right?”

She shrugged. “Yet you believe giant trees have a presence about them, and you believe in the fae.”

He laughed. “I don’t know if I do.”

“You do. ’Cause you’re smart.” She ate her last bite of egg. “It’s time for you to go.”

He sat up hard. Leave? “You’re throwing me out?” he cried.

She shook her head. “No. I am sending you to him. There is a difference.”

He trembled. “When.”

“Why, today,” she said.

“Today?” No warning? Just like that?

“That’s why I made you this powerful good breakfast. And I’ve packed you two jars of my sausage. So he can taste how good a cook I am. I love you, honey. But I can’t watch over you anymore either. That’s
his
job.”

“What if he doesn’t want me anymore!” he shouted, and from out of nowhere, the tears were springing to his eyes.

She rose and came to him and pulled him against her withered old body. He cried. She held him like she had when he was a kid. She rocked him.

He cried until he’d cried it all out.

Then he packed.

T
HE
DAYS
had turned into a week and then weeks and there was no sign of Hill.

He’s gone. He’s not coming back.

Bean drifted through those days. He was in a fog. When he thought about Hill, the pain was so deep he could hardly breathe. He felt like dying. He wanted to die.

This is what it means. What I’ve heard people talk about when they lose a love, and I’ve always thought they were just being melodramatic. Drama queens
.

Well, now I know
.

I will
never
fall in love again.

As good as it had felt, it wasn’t worth this kind of pain. That is what Hill had meant. Why he wouldn’t let himself love. Because it went away, and then you felt like this, and it was better to have never loved at all. The guy who said it was better to have loved and lost was wrong.

His friends tried to help. They came by and tried to cheer him up. They took him to dinner and an exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum.

Mara and Elaine—they’d moved in together, and he wanted to warn them that it would end and then they would feel like he was feeling—would have him and Sarah Jane and Rammstein over for dinner (because of course, he’d adopted the Sheltie—the sight of both dogs reminded him of Hill, and that hurt but it also felt good), and once they took him for a weekend to Eureka Springs, but the sight of all the gay people had just hurt.

Elaine did bear good news, though, about the Huxlies. It seemed the wife had shown up at Four-Footed Friends. She’d left the man and was staying in a battered woman’s shelter and deciding what to do with the rest of her life. She had called the ASPCA, and they had stepped in and made sure the puppy mill was over and done with forever. And a restraining order was the beginning of the end for their marriage was well. At least that was a happy ending. Of sorts.

And of course, there was the whole matter about there being a “Mara and Elaine.” They seemed really happy. That was good too. A real happy ending.

Bean finally called Sloan, feeling like a total shit because he’d told Sloan he would be his friend. Asked him if he wanted to have coffee. But Sloan declined. He said his friends were there for him—and was that a slap or was he just stating a fact?—and that he was fine, but he appreciated the call.

Bean’s mother had gone off the deep end—or at least as much as she ever did. It lasted for a weekend and for her, that was pretty long for such displays. She blamed H.D. leaving on herself, and one night (and one night only) he’d screamed at her and told her she was right, it was her fucking fault (he’d actually said “fucking!”).

But then Dean, being Dean, went to her and apologized and took the responsibility for his actions.

He had driven Hill away. He had. It was his fault.

Then the other night, he’d had a dream. He dreamed he was sitting on his back deck—naked, of course. He’d been holding Hill’s burgundy hat. He slept with that hat. And then Sarah Jane and Rammstein had come to him and they had Hill with them. The dream had been so real that he woke up and reached for his lover, only to realize it wasn’t true.

His Hound Dog was gone.

He actually thought about selling The Shepherd’s Bean for all of a day or two, but then a new bean came in from the Gelana Abaya region of Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia and he’d roasted it and it was all berry and spice aromas and a candy sweetness that danced on the taste buds with wonderful floral notes and the most amazing cocoa finish, and he remembered his passion for coffee and that he had employees who depended on him for their livelihood and customers who came to him for the best coffee in Kansas City.

It was a start.

So now he sat at his kitchen table with Sarah Jane and Rammstein playing at his feet, and he was sipping his Gelana Abaya when suddenly the dogs sat up.

Sarah Jane’s big floppy ears were standing up in that weird way of hers and then she was off like a torpedo, barking in that high bark of hers. Rammstein was at her heels, and they were at the door, and it was like they’d gone completely insane.

“Okay!” he called. “I’m coming! I’m coming!”

He went to the door and he saw a man through the thick old semisheers that covered the glass of the front door. A man with a big mane of….
Must be a trick of the light
.

But when he opened the door, it was no trick.

It was Hillary. It was H.D. It was Hound Dog.

It was impossible.

Sarah Jane and Rammstein went wild, and they jumped and danced and barked out their joy.

“Hello,” said Hill.

“Hello,” said Bean. Then his throat seized up and anything else he might have said refused to come.

They stood looking at each other for the longest time, and finally H.D. went to one knee and let the dogs leap up and kiss his face.

“Are you really here?” Bean asked. “Am I dreaming? Because I had a dream the other night that the dogs brought you back to me.”

“You did? I had the same dream. That they brought
me
to
you.
” H.D. stood back up, a wiggling, joyous dog under each arm.