Sleeping Dogs Lie

Strays

Joe left the motor running. He wanted it to be quick, he wanted to get a good head start, he wanted to be very far away before the morning came. He could see that the lights were on downstairs. Elsie was still up. He took Digger with him to the door. The old mutt didn't want to leave the warm comfort of the pickup truck's cab but he'd follow Joe anywhere and, to make sure, Joe had him on a lead.

With a heavy heart Joe, lifted the brass knocker and let it fall, once, twice.

It took a few moments. Elsie wasn't quick on her pins any more. It had stopped raining a while earlier but Digger didn't want to sit on the wet ground. He whined a little, letting Joe know that his hips still hurt. Behind the frosted glass panel, Joe saw the hall light come on and heard the rhythmic thump of Elsie's walking cane on the hall floor.

"Who is it?" she called through the closed door.

"It's us, Elsie. It's Joe an' Digger."

A bolt was drawn, a lock unlatched and the door opened. Elsie Baker stood there in her slippers and a dressing gown.

"Joe," she said, but then her eyes moved past him, to the pickup truck idling across the road in the entrance to her muddy field, and the old caravan that was hitched to it.

"You're leaving, Joe?" Elsie asked.

"Got to, Elsie. It was a bad business tonight. It's poisoned the well. I can't stay 'ere no more. Nothin' good will come of it if I do," Joe told the old lady.

"What about Arthur?" Elsie asked.

Joe felt it then. The loneliness of the old widow sprung from her like leak in a dam wall, a trickle that became a river, which became a flood, threatening to drown him. Joe gritted his teeth.

"He's always here, Elsie. You know that. He's always with you," he said.

Elsie made no reply; she just looked at Joe, sorrow written in every line of her face. It was true, Arthur was always with her, he was always on her mind and in her thoughts. Alive today in Elsie's memory as the day he had died, Arthur; her childhood sweetheart, her lover, her husband, forever young and forever beyond reach. It came through so clearly in her voice in Joe's head. It didn't help the old lady though. She'd been stuck there, a dull needle in the worn out groove of an old seventy-eight. Just waiting for the gramophone to wind down, for the tired, old tune that was her life to finally come to an end. Then Joe had come along and changed the record.

"I'm sorry, Elsie, love, but I need to ask you a big favor before I go."

"Yes, Joe?"

"It's Digger, you see. He ain't a young pup no more. He 'ates the rain and he 'ates the cold. The weather's turnin' bad and it ain't no life for an old dog to be on the road with me in that knackered, old van. Will you look after him for me, Elsie? Will you take him in?"

Elsie looked at the old mutt and Digger, in turn, looked back at Elsie. His tail wagged a couple of times, as if in hope.

"I don't know, Joe. I think I'm too old to have a dog."

"Please, Elsie," Joe stepped forward and put the end of Digger's lead into the old lady's hands. "I ain't got nobody else I can ask." Joe took the battered tea tin from his jacket pocket and gave it to Elsie as well. "It's a bit of cash, like, for lookin' after the mutt, for food and the vet and such. Please, Elsie, say you'll take him."

She relented then. Joe already knew it before she looked up and gave him a small nod.

"He won't be no trouble," Joe said, taking a step back. "He's a good dog."

Digger looked around at Joe and started after him, but Elsie held his lead and when it pulled tight it stopped him. The old mutt gave a small whine again, looking after Joe.

"Will you come back for him, Joe, in the spring?" the old lady called after Joe as he turned away, a hint of hope in her voice.

"Maybe, Elsie," Joe called back over his shoulder. "Maybe not next year, maybe the year after, eh?"

It was so hard, those few steps across the road to the truck, not to look back. Joe didn't want to give them false hope but that was all the hope he had to give. He didn't know how long they would have together, the old lady and the old dog, maybe a year, maybe two. Maybe it would be enough, here and now at the end of their days. Joe climbed in, put the truck in gear and pulled away from the field that been his home since the spring; away from the farmhouse and the mud, from Elise and Digger, from séances and ghosts, from lecherous Professors and broken reporters.