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Obedience

Eric Erickson

    Henry walked slowly back to the front steps of his house. His fourteen-year-old daughter and twelve-year-old son waited at the curb as their mother pulled up in her minivan. The usual greetings were quickly interrupted by the spastic jumping and huffing of the furry, tongue-wagging creature whose unbridled joy seemed to match the pleasant afternoon breezes that worked their way down the humble row of houses on Piedmont Street, rustling amorously through the budding leaves on the adolescent maples and ash.
    “So this is your new friend?” Martha asked to no one in particular. She removed her coat and set it on the car antennae. “He’s still a puppy, isn’t he?”
    “Not even a year, but almost full size. Dad wouldn’t let us get a puppy,” the older girl spoke pushing bangs away from her face with one hand as she attempted to control the dog with the other, grasping for the orange collar that hung loosely on his shoulders.
    “Here, Buddy!” the boy screamed as he chased desperately at the dog’s wiggling hind quarters.
    “No, we’re naming him Nixon – because of his jowls,” the older girl corrected.
    Martha squatted down to face the creature. “What about Henry, he kind of looks like Kissinger,” she gave a quick glance toward the silent man sitting on the steps.
    Henry’s involuntary grin belied his motivations. He thought about adding to the discussion, but instead chose to lean back on his elbows.
    “Can we bring him home?” the boy blurted, “I mean, can we bring him to your house, Mom?”
    “No,” Martha immediately shook her head forcefully, “David’s horribly allergic.”
    Henry watched the scene carefully, avoiding interjection. When the time came, and he knew he would be the last to comment, he would become the patriarch and take charge of the situation. He would command the dog to lie obediently in the grass while he hugged and kissed the kids, waved at Martha from a distance, and then stoically walked back into his house, followed in step by the unnamed dog. But now, he watched as the dog seduced their collective attention, exchanging glances with the kids who he had now known for several hours, and then inevitably looking back at Martha, willing her to engage.
    “He is definitely friendly,” Martha stated, “Maybe I can show you guys a few things. He’s old enough to mind, you just have to show him who’s boss.” She knelt on one knee and allowed the dog to scratch and climb at her chest, voraciously licking at her face. “See, this is what I mean. He’s excited, but he’s really trying to figure out if he owns you, or you own him.” She stood upright again, overly rigid in her shoulders, and turned her back on the dog. She walked to the opposite end of the front yard, glancing back inconspicuously to see if the dog was following. “You should use some kind of reward system, but you don’t really need one. I know he looks happy, but he’s just excited, and that can be really uncomfortable for him, especially as he gets older.”
    The kids stared at her blankly. The boy couldn’t quite tell if he was in trouble or not. The girl, drifting away in her mind, overcorrected. “I’ve taught him some tricks. Watch.” She grabbed a ball that had landed near the bushes by the house. “Nixon!” She yelled, holding the ball in an outstretched palm.
    “No, no, that’s not the way,” Martha took the ball from her daughter and hid it behind her back. “See, he knows we have something he wants, and now he needs to try to figure out how to get it from us.” The dog jumped against Martha’s pant leg, snorting and slobbering. Slowly, she led the dog down the block, followed by the kids.
    Henry lit a cigarette and watched the smoke drift upward, blending with the wispy afternoon clouds. He watched as the quartet moved in strange unison down the street. Soon they were out of view, and he leaned forward to watch them, listening for voices but they were drowned out by the dog’s toenails scraping against the sidewalk. Soon they were across the street, three houses down the sloping block that met a dead end in front of the old quarry. From a distance, they were all strangers to him. His son was much taller than he remembered. His daughter was even more awkward in her adolescence than he recalled. They made it a little further down the block and Henry could only see the blurry outlines of people, small and indistinguishable by the flush of forest in the distance. They were part of a collective that had become Henry’s frame of reference, a row of simple white and grey houses, some with chain-link fences surrounding the perimeter, another bearing a rusted swing-set, still another flanked by two cars propped up without wheels on top of cinder blocks. The order of this view seldom changed, and only then to reinforce the scene – a brightly-colored windsock hanging from the awning of the Helga Salazar’s house, a new mailbox at Russ Carter’s curb, a used camper trailer beside the Flannigan’s. In the midst of it now, three strangers and a dog walked back in forth in ten-foot increments. The women held something in her hand, displaying it every so often to prove to the dog that it was still in play, that it was still something to achieve.
    Henry knew that Martha would never enter the house. He unconsciously maintained an untidy living room and kitchen to reinforce this law. When she came to pick up the kids he would generally guard the door from the outside, protecting it, knowing that it somehow protected him from behind. In another sense, he attempted to screen the vision of the house itself, to make it disappear in Martha’s vision, as though it didn’t even exist. From a distance now, he could see Martha as a women that he had never met, just a long-legged stranger walking forcefully up the block with two smaller humans attempting to mimic her stride, to hold their heads upright the way she did, commanding attention with graceful gestures in their arms. Soon, the shaggy brown and black creature began to mimic as well, with quietly shaking steps slowed to a march, his small head erect as his mismatched ears sat stiffly in anticipation. At night, after he had given the kids hugs and kisses, after he had politely waved goodbye to Martha as she sat in the driver’s seat of her car, he would bring the mutt into the house. He would let it chew his slippers, and he would delight as the dog frantically nibbled on his arm on the couch. While lying sleeplessly in bed that night, he would take quiet comfort in the constant scratching and panting as the noises worked their way through an otherwise silent house.

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