Chapter Nineteen
Curtis
I went over to Allie’s house at around breakfast time that morning, carrying Jake on a leash.
“Hey, you,” I said brightly when she opened the door wearing a pair of panda slippers and brightly colored fox-print pajamas. “I heard a rumor that you found yourself a puppy.”
“Yeah, or the puppy found me.” She found the dog lying in his cot in the corner and carried him over to the door. “Gandalf, this is Curtis. You don’t have to be afraid of him. He’s one of the good people.”
I grinned, which seemed to put Allie at her ease as her shoulders lowered. “You sure about that?”
“Well, I’m assuming,” she said. “You got anything I need to know about?” I shifted uneasily. “Like, maybe you wanna explain what that girl was doing over at your house the other night?”
The shadows in the room shifted, and a sudden chill came over me. Here it was, the moment I had been dreading. I tugged at the collar of my shirt and thin beads of perspiration broke out on my brow. “Yeah, about that…” I said slowly.
She smirked and gave me a piercing look. “You about ready to make a confession?”
At this point, there was nothing for it but to give it over quickly. “Her name’s Lizzie,” I said, my gaze never wavering from her face. “She don’t come around here much anymore, but she showed up a couple nights ago, randomly, wantin’ to know if she could come over. I wouldn’t even let her through the door.”
“Well, just so you know,” said Allie, “I did look through my window last night and saw you standin’ over there talking to someone, but I figured it wasn't anything. I just can never pass up an opportunity to tease you, and when I saw that, I went, ‘Yes!’” She clinched her hands into fists. “‘A whole day of teasing!’”
I didn’t think it was very funny, but I managed a weak smile.
Still, some of the tension between us lifted as we stepped out of the tiny house into the amber light of morning. Allie placed Gandalf down in the grass and led him step by step toward the back door, Jake trotting along happily beside him.
We ate a quick breakfast of grits, hash browns, warmed-over mashed potatoes, and seasoned eggs. The dogs ate together from a couple of bowls at the foot of the table while Mama, apparently forgetting that Allie was a veterinarian’s assistant, gave her advice on how to take care of the puppy.
“You’re going to want to let him out every so often to visit with other animals, and with us,” she said. “The thing about labs is that if they’re raised in isolation, they’ll grow up to be fearful and distrusting. The more time he spends around Jake and the rest of us now, the more sociable he’ll be when he’s a fully grown dog.”
“I think Allie probably knows most of this, Mama,” I said as the puppy came nosing up to me, sniffing my hand. “She takes care of animals for a living.”
“Well, it helps to be reminded,” said Allie. “I grew up with cats, but dogs are a new world to me. Any advice you can give me would be helpful.”
I felt sure she was just saying this to appease Mom, but Mom got up from the table and came out of the back room a minute later with a puppy care handbook.
“This is the book we used to raise our dogs,” she said as they flipped through the pages together. “It’s got all the information you’ll need on potty training, fleas, ringworms, shots, and how to get along with cats.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Savery,” said Allie, taking and placing the book in her lap. “This is lovely.”
After breakfast, as she was walking the dog back to her house, I confronted her about it. “You know you didn’t have to accept that. I know you already know every damned thing in that book.”
“Yeah, but your mom is such a sweet lady,” said Allie. “It would break her heart if I told her I already had three copies of that book in my office.”
***
I spent most of the afternoon teaching her the basics of horse-riding. Once we had mastered the concept of saddling, which she picked up pretty easily, the hardest part was getting her to stay on the horse. For the first hour or so, she kept weaving dangerously from side to side with every step the horse took through the tall grass.
“I’m horribly uncoordinated,” she said as we headed out on the trail, me walking beside her ready to grab her if she fell. “And clumsy. It took me forever just to learn how to ride my bike.”
“How did you ever manage to get your driver’s license?”
“I had a rich uncle who pulled some strings at the DMV. I’m kidding! It just took about a hundred and fifty hours of practice before I was comfortable being on the road with other drivers. Even now, I still get panicky when I have to go out on the highway. Driving through Nashville on my way here was a nightmare.”
“Just be glad you didn’t have to go through Dallas. Maybe after we’ve mastered horseback riding, I can give you some driving lessons.”
“Thanks, but I think I’m alright as long as I stay in the small towns with the dirt roads. Just don’t ever let me take you on a road trip.”
I laughed. “If we ever go on a road trip,” he said, “I’ll be the one driving. Or we can just take the horse.”
In a more serious tone, Allie said, “It’s actually really scary knowing you could die every time you get in your car. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience, but it’s something I have to think about whenever I go to work. That within a few minutes I could be just a pile of flesh and twisted metal on the roadside.”
“We could all die at any time,” I said, thinking of Christine. “That’s true no matter what you do.”
“But being in a car really brings it home to you,” said Allie. “Or at least it does for me, because I’m such a bad driver. That’s one of the reasons I’ve put off having kids, because I don’t want to bring them into this world not knowing whether or not I’ll be around to see them graduate from high school.”
“I didn’t know you thought about death so much.”
Allie pitched slightly to the left, and I ran forward to catch her. “You’re alright,” I said. “I’ve got you. I think the horse just stumbled over a turtle shell.”
“Did you ever want kids?” Allie asked as she straightened herself in the saddle.
It was going to be a day of unwanted questions, apparently. I could tell by the tone in her voice she had wanted to ask me this for a while. “Yeah, me and Christine talked about it. It just never happened, though.”
Of course there was more to it, and I think she knew that, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. Not now and maybe not ever.
“Sad,” said Allie, kicking one foot against a large stone with black etchings carved into it. “When I was younger, I couldn’t be bothered with children. I was so focused on getting my degree and becoming a licensed nurse. But as I’m getting older, I think I would like to have kids someday. Maybe not immediately, but before I’m too old to have them.”
I turned her around, and we trotted back toward the house in the waning light. I hadn’t shown much enthusiasm for the subject of kids, and I think Allie took it as a sign of disinterest. She slumped down in the saddle with a sad, sullen look as we made our way down the trail, thorns and briars and barbed wire on either side of us.
I figured she’d go back to her house when we got back, and that’d be the end of it. But when I was leading Bessie back into the stall, she appeared at the door of the barn, framed in the light of the setting sun.
“Hey,” she said. “You wanna come over for a bit?”
I could tell by the tone in her voice she had more on her mind than just a friendly visit.
“Yeah, I’ll be over there in a minute,” I told her, and I went on feeding Bessie.