Trouble (3 page)

And immediately dumped Henry over and into the sea.

Henry's mouth filled with water when he went under, and he tried to cough it out while he was still capsized—which only let more in. Quickly, he pushed himself down and away and came up to the surface, sputtering. The kayak was floating beside him, tipping bow to stern on the swells. He grabbed onto it, still sputtering.

The dog was gone.

"Here!" hollered Henry. He coughed up water. "I'm here." And he was pushed under by two paws that had come up from behind him. His mouth filled again.

When he came up to the surface, he grabbed at the dog's neck. "Stop ... "—more choking and coughing and sputtering—"stop doing that," he said.

So the dog stopped, and instead it began to rake its back legs along Henry's chest as if it could somehow use Henry as a ladder and climb right out of the water. Henry felt the laces of his life jacket start to give way.

"Stop doing ... "—cough, sputter—"that, too," he said.

So the dog went back to throwing its front legs over his shoulders and holding him down under the water. Henry let go of the kayak, which floated away from him.

He decided he would have to do something differently. So he coughed up as much of the water as he could, took a breath, swam under the next wave—which is not easy with a life jacket on—and came beneath the frantic dog. Then he reached up from under the water, grabbed whatever he could grab, and pulled the dog beneath the surface. When they both came up, the dog's eyes were round and shocked, and it coughed up more seawater than Henry could believe.

"Now stay still," said Henry. He put one hand under the dog's chest to hold it up; with the other he began to stroke toward the kayak. If it had been any rougher, he thought, they would have been in ... trouble.

He was glad it wasn't rougher.

When they reached the kayak, Henry grabbed hold with one arm, held the dog with the other, and began to kick. It took a while to make progress, so by the time Henry, the dog, and the kayak all reached the point where the waves began to break in to shore, Henry was starting to shiver. The dog was already shivering so badly, it could hardly swim at all. Its eyes looked at him with more trust than he felt he deserved.

"Almost there," he said.

And they were. Two breaking waves knocked him under, and the dog as well. Coughing, sputtering. Then a third wave almost flipped him over, and the dog as well. Coughing, sputtering. But that was the wave that finally brought them to where Henry could touch bottom, and he held the dog and kayak against the ocean's tow, pushed toward the shore with the next wave, held on against the tow again, came in more on the following wave, and so stumbled up onto the beach of Salvage Cove, and collapsed.

He looked up toward his house. His parents were probably still asleep. Maybe Louisa, too.

During all that trouble.

The dog stood uncertainly, spreading out its back legs to keep itself from falling over sideways. Its back was arched against the coughing spasms that spewed out white water from its guts—which was also true of Henry. He finished before the dog, and figured that he shouldn't do anything until it had cleared its lungs. So wiping his mouth and still coughing, he got up and went out into the water to grab the kayak and drag it from the waves and onto dry sand. Then he sprawled on his back beside the kayak and looked into a sky that was starting to blue.

It had never looked so blue before.

Until the dog came and stood over him, its face panting and looking down into his own. It licked him once and then drooped down beside him on its back, still heaving.

They lay together, dog and boy breathing heavily and to the same rhythm, the salt strong in their mouths. Overhead, seagulls flew randomly, and their shrieks pushed the sun higher. A cool breeze came off the sea, ruffling the hair of both, but neither noticed. The sand warmed beneath them.

Henry was the first to open his eyes. The sky was full blue now. He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at the dog, who instantly opened her eyes, too, and watched him. She was, Henry figured, the ugliest dog since Genesis. Her snout was all beat up and scabby—and some of the scabs had torn away during their frantic swim and were bleeding. She was missing a good chunk of her left ear—which gave her head a lopsided look—and a little of her right. As her black hair—her short black hair—was drying in the sun, it was getting duller and duller, and the bald parts near her hindquarters and down her legs showed yellow skin. Every rib stood out from her sides to be counted, and where the rib cage stopped, her body cascaded inward like a deflated bag. When Henry ran his fingers down her spine, he could feel the ridge of each vertebra, as sharp and distinct as the mauled beams beneath his house.

This dog hadn't moved far enough away from Trouble.

"What were you doing in the water?" Henry said.

The dog watched his eyes.

Henry wondered if she had been looking for something to eat on the ledge and then slid in. "Are you hungry?" he said.

The dog was still. She watched his eyes.

Henry wiped the sand from the dog's face. He thought he should try to clean away the blood from her snout, too, but she pulled away when he reached for it. When he stood, she jumped up, almost on her toes, but she kept her head low and she curled her tail between her back legs. "C'mon," said Henry, but he hadn't taken three steps down to the water before the dog had run ahead of him, lain down on the beach, and rolled over to show her belly.

Henry reached down and scratched her behind the ears. "Stop fooling around," he said, and walked past her.

Another three steps and she was in front of him again, her belly up. She did not move. She watched his eyes.

"C'mon," Henry said, but this time he took only two steps before she was in front of him again, lying on her back but still able to wag her tail.

It was a slow walk down to the water, and when they finally got there, Henry had to struggle to make the dog stand and not flop down and turn up her belly. He didn't think she would get back into the waves—and she didn't—but he cupped some water in his hands and dribbled it over the bleeding wounds. The dog did not move—except for her tail, which she tightened beneath her. Henry cupped water onto her snout until all the blood was washed away and the exposed flesh beneath was pink and white.

But she wouldn't let him touch the broken scabs.

"You are a mess," Henry said.

The dog watched his eyes.

Henry walked back up the beach to secure the kayak—this took a long time, since he couldn't go three steps without having the dog flop down in front of his feet, and he had to reach down every time to keep her bleeding snout out of the sand. She lay beside him, belly up, while he knotted the kayak ropes; and when he climbed the black boulders up to the house, she clambered on ahead and was waiting for him, belly up, when he reached the top.

"You look like you haven't eaten since the day you were born," said Henry. He walked around to the back service door and the dog followed him, her head down, her tail still tucked tightly between her legs and up against her body, looking like a mongrel that nobody loved, the kind of dog that hangs around the edges of a dump and tears open garbage bags.

When Henry reached for the door latch, the dog stopped her flopping. She stood rigidly beside him, watching the latch, up on her toes, waiting for the door to open. But Henry knew that his parents would never, ever,
ever
let a dog into the house. Never. Especially an ugly, bleeding dog that was starting to smell as if she really did hang around the edges of a dump.

She watched his eyes.

"Stay here," Henry said. "I'll bring you out something to eat."

But once the door opened, the dog would have none of that. She slid in like smoke as soon as a crack appeared, sticking her nose through and letting the rest of her follow. "No!" Henry called in a kind of whispered shout, but the dog went in, the nails on her paws clicking loudly on the pine boards, and her tail—up for the first time—striking against the wall and leaving wet strokes as she went.

"You sorry dog," said Henry

But she was ignoring him now, and Henry watched her follow her tingling nose, which led her past the mud room, down the hall—her nails click, click, clicking on the floors so loudly that everyone in the house must be hearing it—and so on into the spotless kitchen, where she immediately found the garbage pail beneath the sink and stood waiting politely for Henry to open the door so that she could explore it. Henry opened the refrigerator instead and looked around. It was pretty much empty, since no one had been doing any shopping for the last couple of days. One shelf was taken up by the whipped-cream cake for Henry's birthday celebration, now with most of its whipped cream turning yellow and sliding off. There was some milk and butter and a drawer of carrots and broccoli and lettuce heads. Nothing that a dog would want. But in the cupboard Henry found some beef stew, and while the dog watched eagerly, he opened a can, dumped it all into a mixing bowl, and set it down. The dog's bleeding snout was in it before it hit the floor.

Her tail was still curled low between her legs.

When she finished, Henry dumped in another can of beef stew, and she went to it, slobbering her jowls and throwing gobbets of the stew against the light maple cabinets.

The kitchen was beginning to smell like cold beef stew and wet dog, so Henry was hardly surprised when his father came in—wearing an untied bathrobe, unshaved, uncombed!—and began to sniff. He looked over the kitchen island to see what the snuffling sounds were on the other side. He sniffed again.

"It smells like you have a dog in here," he said. "A wet dog." His voice was tight.

It did not seem useful to Henry to lie about this.

Especially since the dog came around the corner of the island and sat down, her head cocked off to the side so that the ear with the large missing piece stuck out.

Now Henry's father's face grew tight, too.

"Get the dog out of here," he said.

"I just saved her from drowning out in the cove."

"That was a mistake. You don't go looking for Trouble, Henry. ... Get away."

The last part was directed not at Henry but at the dog, who had come to sniff Henry's father to see if he might be at all interesting.

"Get away," he said again. "Black dog, get away."

The dog lifted up a paw.

And Henry's father kicked her about as hard as a slippered foot can kick. Enough to skid her across the quarried-stone floor.

She did not cry out. When she stopped skidding, she turned on her back, put her feet up in the air, and showed her belly.

"Why did you ever bring that dog in here?" said Henry's father. "Look at her. Who would want a black dog like that? Lying there, all beat up. Bleeding. Pieces of her missing." He stopped. He leaned against the kitchen island and put his hands across his eyes. "Pieces of her missing," he said again. His body trembled, slowly, and then a little bit more, and a little more, like a building that is beginning to feel the earthquake starting under its foundations.

Then his mouth opened, and though no sound came out, his silent howls filled the kitchen.

Henry held his father. Tight. Very tight. He felt the black dog come back to them. He felt his father reach down to scratch her behind her chipped ear. He saw the dog roll her face with pleasure against his father's untied robe—and hoped that his father would not see the pus and blood that she left there.

They stood, the three of them, together in the kitchen, and two things happened.

First, Black Dog had a home and a name.

Second, the telephone rang. It was the hospital.

Henry changed while his parents dressed. They were already waiting for him in the BMW that his father had pulled around. "Leave the dog out in the carriage house," he said.

"Dog?" said his mother.

They raced through Blythbury-by-the-Sea, so fast that if it hadn't been a car they recognized, the town's policemen would have stopped the Smiths by the end of Main Street. They reached the hospital, bounced across the parking ramp, half-walked and half-ran through the hospital lobby, smacked at the elevator button until the doors opened, and ran through the corridor to Franklin's room, where three nurses—two of them big enough to be impressive rugby players—were holding Henry's brother down.

"Another seizure," one of the nurses said. "He almost tore the straps off."

Henry's mother sat down on the bed.

"He's sedated now, but there were signs that another one was about to start."

Henry's mother laid her hand over her son's heart.

"Franklin," she said softly.

He opened his eyes. They were bright and fierce. The nurses tightened their grip on him and spread their legs, ready for the next monumental struggle.

But Franklin did not struggle. He looked around from face to face, wildly, quickly. It was as if he was in a room full of strangers and he was desperately trying to find the one face that he knew, the one face that meant something to him.

And then he found it.

He looked at Henry. His eyes fixed on him, so bright that Henry thought they were about to burst into flame.

He spoke, his voice as urgent as a prophet's. One word to Henry. One word.

He turned to the window and looked far out.

And he said the word again, softly.

Then the fire died, his bright eyes dulled and closed, and the strength of his body deflated into the bed. But the word echoed in the room and in Henry's brain.

"Katahdin."

He first saw her from high up, while standing on the scaffolding, the slate pieces stacked around him. It was late in the day, and she came out of the house with a bowl of cereal in her hand and walked toward the ledges over the sea. And just before she got there, she turned and waved to him. Just waved. Only for a moment.

He waved back.

And his father, tied carefully to the roof, told him to keep his eyes where they were supposed to be kept.

But that was the beginning.