“John, John.”

  “Anyway, it’s not that far. And we can come back here afterward if we want. Or go to San Francisco. Alaska. We could sleep under palm trees in Hawaii and live off coconuts.”

  “And what if this is the kind of door that only swings in one direction?”

  “They all are. But there are other doors.”

  “Doors we won’t see until we go through this one.”

  Vi had curled up beneath the window. The pups snugged their hindquarters against the door. And in the center of the room, with the last of their energies, John and Mary pulled the blankets across their exhausted bodies.

  The next morning they went for a celebratory walk with the dogs, and returning, Mary found the place startlingly transformed: a collection of echoing, historyless rooms. All the sorrow and anger and betrayal that had poisoned the place to its timbers was gone, evacuated along with the furnishings and plateware and knitted throws and china figurines, its last vestiges swept into dustpans they’d emptied onto the breeze.

  Now it could be a house again, she told John, a house like any other.

  What she meant, John knew, was: safe for someone to live in.

  early in the morning of their last full day in hartford, John brought the Kissel to a stop at the dead end of James Street and walked under a pair of oak trees into the weeds beyond. It had rained during the night. The air felt as cool and placid against his skin as pond water. The cuffs of his trousers, sopping up water, darkened as he trudged along the swale between the railroad embankment and the little factory-town houses that flanked these blunt-ended streets.

  The yard he was looking for, the one belonging to the woman who’d taken Hoppy, was only a block down. He picked a spot behind the lilac bushes filling the furthest corner of the yard and stood watching the house. The long, angled rays of morning sunlight were only then reaching the ground and the shadows of trees stretched far behind him up and over the embankment and into the field beyond. At three minutes before six, according to his Webster chronograph, a Soo Line train, mostly coal cars, came clanking down the rails, shaking the ground beneath his feet. Before it had passed, one of the upstairs windows began to glow yellow. A few minutes later the back porch door swung open and Hoppy came down the steps, stumbling and sleepy-footed. He delivered his morning stream onto the base of a maple tree, peering ahead as gravely as a statesman. He looked half again the size he’d been when they’d given him over. When he finished his business he began trotting back to the house, then abruptly froze and poked his muzzle at the air. He began an excited, goofy-gaited circling of the yard. On his third orbit he came bursting through the branches of the lilac.

  John leaned over the fence. The pup bucked under his touch, his coat thick and sleek. “Easy, easy. Don’t give me away now,” he whispered. Though it didn’t really matter if the woman saw him at her back fence, he felt somehow that the truth of the moment depended on its secrecy.

  “Look at you. What’s she feeding you, nitroglycerin? But she’s doing okay, is she? Good, good. Now listen, she’s calling. Go on back. Okay? I’m just saying hello. And goodbye, I guess. You’re going to be fine. Now go. Go!”

  He pushed at Hoppy’s back end, but the pup could turn back on himself like an eel. He made huge silent shoveling gestures with his arms, but this only further excited Hoppy, who leapt in circles, paraded, swabbed his tongue across John’s hands. Finally, the pup shouldered through the lilac branches and went galloping across the yard, tongue flapping from the corner of his mouth, the bearer of strange news he would never find a way to make the woman understand.

  Next was the pup they’d called Theda because her eyes reminded them of the film star Theda Bara. Her owners lived in a house on the ragged north edge of Hartford. Before the Kissel was even stopped he saw the pup lying in the back yard. He rang the doorbell, knocked, looked through a window. When he rounded the side of the house, Theda was standing, ears erect, chained to a half-buried tractor tire. He let her climb on him until she calmed, then walked to the back porch and knocked at that door. When he tried the knob, the door swung inward.

  He emerged carrying two raw pork chops. He knelt beside the dog and cut the meat off the bones with his pocketknife, tossing the chunks one after another and the dog snatching them out of the air. Then he took the turned-over coffee can that had been left for the pup and filled it from the pump beside the back door and watched the pup lap the fresh water. He looked at the house. Then he looked at the pup. He filled the coffee can again, then walked to the Kissel.

  Forty minutes later he’d checked on the other two pups. Ten or fifteen seconds was all it took for him to know they were okay. Afterward he drove up and down the residential streets, doubling back, wandering in circles, unable to return to Elm Street. Finally he drove south on the lake road all the way out of town and stopped the Kissel on the side of the road and looked back over the lake at the smokestacks of the Kissel factory. He opened his notebook and began to write a note to Theda’s people, then tore the page out and began again. He sat with his pencil over the page for a long time.

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  When he arrived, the house stood as empty as before. The chain on Theda’s collar was cheap and thin but it was attached to her collar with a solid steel ring. He could unbuckle the collar, but if he left it behind, it would look as if she’d been stolen.

  He looked at Theda. “People who chain up their dogs don’t chase runaways,” he told her.

  He walked to the rock pile at the back of the overgrown garden and picked out two big rocks. He unbuckled the collar from around the dog’s neck and hammered one of the links in the chain between the rocks until the metal was flattened to a strip. Then he stood and pulled. The link stretched, thinned, opened. He pocketed the collar and the dangling bit of chain.

  “Come on,” he said.

  The road they took out of town was ungraded and the Kissel shook and juddered. Before long the pup vomited a gruel of undigested pork chop onto the passenger-side floor, then looked back at John in confusion.

  He leaned down and stroked the pup’s face and smoothed his hand down the pup’s neck. “Never mind,” he told her. He pitched the collar out the window, its length of chain waving like a tail as it fell. “Doesn’t matter.”

  He halted the Kissel in the dirt roundabout in front of Ricardo Bruno’s house. He led the pup onto the front porch and knocked and knelt and put the pup facing out from between his knees and pressed his fingertips into the fur on her chest. He could hear the innumerable Bruno children inside, laughing, arguing, the clatter of breakfast dishes being cleared from a table. He could smell sausages and coffee and fresh bread. The pup panted and leaned back into John and looked around wide-eyed.

  Ricardo appeared at the door wearing an undershirt and suspenders and wiping his face with a napkin. He looked down at the two of them.

  “I need one more favor,” John said.

  CHAPTER 13

  THERE ARE TIMES YOU NEED A ROAD

  They would find him waiting, Frank had written in his one and only reply to the letters John had posted him detailing their travel plans, at a diner, Malone’s, located five or ten minutes down the highway from the veteran’s hospital. John knew it well: on Sunday afternoons past, if the Kissel and Frank’s motorcycle had both survived without too much damage after the day’s back-road rallies, Frank would cajole John and Elbow into stopping at Malone’s for lunch. From the road the place looked like a dump—the m in the rooftop sign had long since fallen off, so that it read alone’s—but the booths were clean, the service quick, and the food every bit as tasty as what they served at the tony restaurants on Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee. Or so Frank claimed, being the gastronomist of their clique.

  As soon as John pulled into the lot they spotted Frank seated in one of the window booths near the front door. John trolled the Kissel past the diner while Mary shouted his name and waved, but Frank sat staring at the empty seat opposite him. After two slow passes, John halted the Kissel by the front door and hopped out, leaving the engine burping along at idle.

  Inside, the diner sweltered with the aroma of fried meat, pancake batter, and coffee. John strode toward Frank’s booth.

  “Frank? Frank! Car’s outside. Let’s go.”

  Frank lifted his gaze from whatever abstracted dimension he’d been peering into. His face shone with sweat. He was wearing a gray trench coat too large to have fit him even at his most robust. The booth table in front of him was crowded with plates of food, mostly untouched. Three fried eggs, punctured yolks congealing. A slab of ham. Toast, oatmeal, a fancy Danish. Mounds of fried potatoes. No more than two bites had been nibbled from the Danish.

  A waitress intercepted John. “You paying the tab?”

  “I guess. What do we owe you?”

  “Including what we already took away? Five and a quarter.”

  “Good God. How much food are we talking about?”

  “More,” the waitress said. “Much more. Not that he ate any of it. You’re just lucky we don’t charge by the hour.”

  Frank had by then pushed a small valise from under the booth with his foot. As he stood, John held out a hand. Frank shoved it aside, picked up the valise, and lurched toward the door.

  “He’ll be missed for his shining personality,” the waitress said.

  John took out his wallet, counted out nine dollars, and handed them to her.

  “How long has he been here?”

  “When I came in at four, his coffee was cold and he’d already sent back two breakfasts. I let him talk me into bringing him a third. He said whoever cooked it must have thought he’d ordered camel manure fried in axle grease. Which Bob overheard. Then I had to stop Bob from coming out here. So it’s been nothing but fun.”

  Through the booth window he could see Mary and Elbow waiting beside the Kissel. Frank came into view, taking a step, gauging his balance, taking a step. He looked like a crane wrapped in a tarp.

  “You’ll have to excuse him. He had it pretty rough overseas.”

  “Oh, well,” the waitress said. “My, my.”

  “What, you didn’t notice the arm? Or the leg?”

  “I noticed. I guess that excuses anything, doesn’t it?”

  “It excuses a lot.” He felt his face flush. He didn’t take an instant dislike to many people, but here was one. “I know that man. And like I said, he had a rough time.”

  The waitress began stacking Frank’s dishes in piles. “He didn’t have a rough time, honey,” she said over her shoulder. “He had a hard time. My husband had a rough time.”

  “Oh? What happened to him?”

  “I wish to hell someone could tell me.”

  john came outside just as frank reached the kissel. Elbow was holding Frank’s valise and Mary was stepping back from a welcoming embrace. In the midmorning sunshine Frank looked paler than he had inside the café. John bounded over and took the valise from Elbow. “You have a bindle or something? This feels almost empty.”

  “You said there wouldn’t be much room. I packed a change of clothes and a shaving kit.”

  “Want to put that coat inside before I strap this down?”

  “I’ll keep it on.”

  “Suit yourself, but you’re going to roast. And the sooner you say hello to the dogs, the sooner they’ll calm down. That’s Vi. Remember her? You met her this spring? On the hospital lawn?”

  Vi was standing on the front seat looking out at Frank and swiping her tail slowly. Frank nodded. He held his hand out for Vi to scent. “You want me in front, then?”

  “No, no, no,” John said. “You’ll be in back.” He gestured at the rear door. Gus and Needles were jostling and surging to see who could thrust their head further out. John was struck all over again at how much size and muscle the pups had put on.

  Frank looked at them doubtfully.

  “Is it one two-headed dog or two one-headed dogs?” he said.

  Mary said, “Hold on, hold on.” She ran to the far side of the Kissel and climbed in. A moment later Needles withdrew from the window, scrabbling with all four feet, as if sucked backward by an irresistible force. John bent down to look; Mary sat with both arms wrapped around Needles.

  “Go ahead,” she shouted.

  John said, “Meet Gus.”

  Frank took two hobbling steps to the Kissel’s rear window and set his hands on the door ledge. Without Needles competing for window space, Gus kept nearly as calm as Vi. He scented Frank’s real hand, his prosthetic hand, then the sleeves of his trench coat.

  Mary said, “That’s enough.” Gus backed up, circled on the upholstery seat, and sat by Mary’s side.

  “Are you ready for Needles?”

  John grinned at Frank. “You’re in for a treat.”

  “Let’s just get it over with,” Frank said.

  As soon as Mary released her grip, Needles lunged past Gus and nearly burst out the window. He scented Frank’s crotch, then fixated on Frank’s wooden hand, snorting along each digit, the palm, the metal joint at the base of the palm. He pushed up Frank’s coat sleeve. Frank endured it by looking over the roof of the Kissel. When he looked down again Needles had worked the index finger of his prosthetic hand into the corner of his mouth in an attempt to gnaw on it.

  “Jesus Christ!” he cried. He tried to jerk the hand away, but Needles, taking this as a sign Frank wanted to play, advanced his bite to the palm, and began tugging.

  Frank jumped back from the car. There followed a moment of equilibrium. Frank seemed to be executing some extraordinary dance movement depicting a man blown backward by a gale. Then Needles growled and tucked his haunches and Frank plunged headlong toward the car.

  “Needles!” Mary cried. “What are you doing?” She pried Needles’s mouth open, wrestled the dog back from the window, and pinned him against the far side of the car.

  Frank steadied himself against the Kissel, glowering at John. For a moment John thought he might walk away. Instead, he wrenched the door open and lowered himself onto the seat—cautiously, as he was entering prosthesis-side first.

  John got behind the wheel. Elbow was already in the shotgun seat, Vi between his knees. John looked back at Mary, who made shock eyes at him. Needles was panting, cheerfully unabashed. Frank inspected his prosthetic hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mary told him. “I don’t know why he’d do that.”

  “Does he like to fetch sticks?”

  “No, tug is his favorite—oh God.”

  “I don’t suppose we need explain Mister Needles’s name,” John said over his shoulder as he backed the Kissel around. He headed them out onto the blacktop. “We couldn’t find anyone who’d take him.”

  “Gee, that’s a wonder,” Frank said.

  Gus, seated between Mary and Frank, had begun subtly investigating Frank again, scenting his shoulder, collar, hair. To John, watching in the rearview mirror, Gus looked like a dog scientist noting some new phenomenon only later to be named. Frank was looking out the open window, barely aware of the dog’s attention at all.

  Needles kept trying to wiggle past Mary to continue his own examination. Mary forced the dog to look her in the eyes. “Behave,” she told him. Needles stilled momentarily, panting with self-restraint. Within a few miles, he’d crawled down onto the floor and put his head on his paws, dejected. Within a few more, he’d climbed back up onto the seat, this time between Mary and Gus. Shortly after that, the dogs switched positions. The next time John looked back, Needles had clambered across Frank’s lap and was standing with his muzzle out the window.

  “Needles, get off him!” John said, but Frank shook his head. “Don’t bother. He had the window first.” He pulled his prosthetic hand up into the sleeve of his trench coat and leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Shortly, the veteran’s hospital came into view at the top of a long ridge in the distance. “Take a good last look,” John said. “A year from now I bet you won’t even remember the name of that place.”

  Mary leaned up and lay a hand on his shoulder.

  “He’s asleep,” she whispered. “My God, John. He’s a wraith.”

  He drove on in silence, his hand on the steering wheel, his arm on the ledge of the window, the road ahead a belt of westward-heading tarmac under the blazing August sun. Elbow had made just enough space beneath his legs for Vi to curl up and sleep, and Elbow himself slept. Mary kept her hand on John’s shoulder for a long time before she, too, slept. After a while a small reedy lake came into view to the south, and with a shock John remembered a day three summers past when on that same stretch of road he and Elbow had watched, awestruck, as Frank passed the Kissel standing on the seat of his motorcycle, its throttle strapped wide open, laughing maniacally. The same man now asleep in the back seat, emaciated and exhausted in his gray trench coat. John drove with great care, gliding around potholes and heat buckles, adjusting the throttle in tiny increments, wanting his passengers to sense only the miles slipping softly beneath them. He felt not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, not even remotely bored, simply above all physical concern, in communion with the movement of time and the world’s steady turning, and he wondered if this was how it felt to be immortal, to know that life had a definite vessel, a tangible purpose: caretaker and courier of the rare, the valuable, the beloved.

  Before they reached Highway 10 every passenger in the Kissel, human or canine, had long been asleep. He feathered the clutch through the turn and headed them north. For the next hour they passed in long dips and swells through the prairie pastureland, the only sounds inside the Kissel the watery putter of the engine and the roar of air across the open windows, and no words spoken—except once, when John patted the Kissel’s door and said, in response to a question no one had asked, “It’s been reliable from day one. I don’t see why it won’t keep going for a good long time.”

  near nightfall john steered the kissel down a rutted dirt camp road at Devil’s Lake. They took a site marked by a sign with the number eleven carved into it. While John and Elbow set to work unpacking the camp gear, Vi raced the pups in a complicated, comic ellipse through the pine saplings and around the tent site, skidding and kicking up gouts of dirt and brown needles.