M.C. Schmidt
Just past the two-mile marker, Gerda followed a curve in the trail and was startled by a young woman, charging toward her, being dragged by some breed of muscular mid-sized dog. At the sight of her, the dog erupted, its snout close enough that she saw the edges of its tongue curl as it hallooed its displeasure. She took a step backward, shaking her head at the commotion before raising her eyes in appeal to its handler.
Recognition wasn’t instantaneous, but nearly so. Later, she would marvel at her own calmness. “Beth?” she said and nothing more.
The young woman pulled back on the dog’s leash, managing to tug it to the border of the trail, yelling, “Arlo, no! Arlo, come this way!” She addressed Gerda only after she had wrangled him into the trees where there was no chance of him snapping at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s normally friendly. I think you just spooked him.” She never even looked back, just dragged him deeper into the woods where eventually they disappeared around the bend. For some time, his barking continued to echo through the hills.
Gerda stood disabled by the encounter. She had backed into foliage that was poking her skin and causing her arms to itch. There was a tremble in her hands and jaw. Minutes passed before she called out, “Honey?”
***
“Why didn’t she acknowledge you, do you think?” Alvin asked. He was being cautious, open to believing she was crazy.
“Well, because of the dog, I suppose. Containing him was a more immediate concern.”
“Yes, but afterward. Why didn’t she wait for you farther down the trail, or in the parking lot?”
She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow at him in his recliner. Irritatingly, his feet were propped on the ottoman. “Who’s to say she didn’t? I told you I was stunned in place. Maybe she waited, but I simply took too long.” This admission caused an unexpected clinch in her chest, and she took a moment before continuing. “She wouldn’t have known my car, so where would she have waited? She may not have even recognized me in that dumb wide brimmed hat I was wearing.”
“You addressed her by her name, you said.”
“Yes, during all that caterwauling, and with her trying to restrain him.” She shook her head, exasperated. “I don’t think I’m getting across how hectic and confusing the moment was. And it’s not like she was expecting to see me. No more than I was expecting to see her.”
Alvin shifted his eyes away from her. She knew what he was thinking; she had heard her mistake as soon as she said it: confusing moment. Well, confusion can go both ways, can’t it, dear? And this took place in the short span of a moment? Well, to hell with him, if that’s what he thought. She wasn’t confused. Not then. Not now. She wasn’t some doddering old fool.
“What are you thinking, Al?” she asked, a challenge in her voice.
He was blinking slowly, staring at the floor, still hiding his eyes from her. He sniffed before rising from his chair and shuffling across the living room, waiting to answer her until he was in the bathroom with the door two-thirds closed. “I was thinking that it’s very hot today, and that too much exertion in this heat might cause a person to become disoriented. I was thinking that your eyes might simply be playing tricks on you. I was also thinking,” he concluded, before shutting himself inside, “that this is all very depressing.”
Alone, staring after him, Gerda pounded the empty air, a futile gesture that only left her feeling powerless. What kind of man was he, her husband? What kind of father? She smiled despite him, smiled because he was wrong. No, today was the furthest thing from depressing; today was the most hopeful she’d felt in ages. Beth was alive, and she was near them.
***
Alvin stood in the bathtub, dressed and with the faucet closed, staring out the small window. He wished it was the type that opened. It had been ages since he’d last craved a cigarette, but he fantasized about having one now—an emergency pack secreted in a Band Aids tin with a little window like this one to smoke out of like a teenager in a movie.
Across the street, three little girls were playing in the Wilkenson’s yard, only one of whom was a Wilkenson daughter. It was a game he didn’t recognize, some sport that concerned running back and forth from the old poplar to the front porch, and crying, “Safety,” every time they tagged one of those boundaries. He watched them, trying to ascertain the game’s objective, but it eluded his understanding. Eventually, he gave up, stepping out of the tub and taking a seat on the closed toilet lid.
He had thought this was all behind them, but now, out of the blue, here she was, doing it again. In the early days, it happened a lot—countless neighborhood mothers confronting Gerda in supermarkets for how closely she was following their children, devising ways to speak to them or even pet their hair. The same at parks and shopping malls; behavior which would have gotten Alvin arrested as a man. Once, the father of one of those little girls had gotten ahold of his office number and called him, threatening to take matters into his own hands if he ever saw Gerda near his girl again, assuming them to be a pair of perverts. It was easier to take her side back then, with the newness of their grief—and he didn’t blame her now, not exactly. He’d simply grown old and lacked the strength to deal with this kind of fabulism, and wasn’t that also fair? Beth was his daughter too, for Christ’s sake, and he missed her just as much.
His thoughts returned to that poor woman on the trail. He hoped that it was as quick an encounter as Gerda suggested. He hoped that his wife hadn’t frightened her too badly.
Alvin clasped his hands and hung his head, listening. Soon, she would huff away, and he could go back to watching his show. Presently, she was muttering to herself, words he couldn’t make out. He settled in to wait. Across the street, the little girls called, “Safety, safety, safety.”
***
The next day, and for several days after, Gerda returned to the trail, retracing every step that had led her to Beth. She came prepared with a backpack filled with snacks and extra water bottles which would allow her to linger in the sweltering summer heat, along with a stuffed animal that Beth loved when she was a girl and small packet of dog treats to help endear her to Arlo. She brought her wide-brimmed hat but left it slung by its cord on the back of her neck so that nothing, save the passage of time, might mask her appearance. Arriving at the two-mile marker would start her heart pound in her ears. She would rush around the bend or else hesitate, peeking first, searching for the right combination of movements to prompt her daughter’s reappearance.
No matter what she tried, however, the path was always clear with not even a fox or chipmunk to startle. Practiced at disappointment, she felt little in these moments other than the weight of knowing that, once again, she would likely return tomorrow. Still, she would hang around the path, waiting and listening. On one occasion, she heard a scuffling of shoes followed by a voice which caused her body to tense with anticipation. When two young men finally appeared and nodded their greeting, Gerda glowered at them, prompting them to audibly laugh at her. When she’d given up on the trail for the day, she would sit on a bluff a quarter mile farther, waiting. The July sun burned her nose and forehead. By the end of that week, the skin on her face looked red and angry.
Driving home that last day, she felt discouraged, but only mildly so. It occurred to her that she may need to scout other trails in the area, find similar locations that Beth might frequent. She was trying to think of whether she knew of any dog parks in town when she drove past the elementary school and saw the dog in question, Arlo, sitting beneath the empty playground swing set, aggressively scratching its ear with its hind leg.
She nearly screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. After a quick glance at the rearview, she pulled to the curb and put on her hazard lights. The playground was now a few hundred yards back, but when she turned, she could see the dog through the back window, and darned if it didn’t look just like him. The chances were so slim, she knew, but everything happened for a reason, didn’t it? She waited, twisted around in the driver’s seat, watching for any sign of Beth. It was the middle of summer, so there were no kids around. Was Beth a school administrator or maybe a janitor? Given Arlo’s poor temper when she’d startled him on the trail, it didn’t seem likely that he was well trained enough to sit obediently on his own while his master worked inside. And why would she leave him outside anyway, when the school was abandoned for the summer? No, that dog was lost. Poor Beth would likely be hysterical. It weighed on Gerda that she had missed so much of her daughter’s life, so many opportunities to do for her. Perhaps it wasn’t so unlikely after all, then, that the universe would devise a circumstance that would allow her to do for her daughter now.
All at once, she was overcome by the urgency of the moment—Arlo might trot off into the tree line behind the school; he could dart into traffic and force Gerda to reunite with her daughter with the sickening burden of presenting her with her dead pet. It was unthinkable.
From her backpack, she grabbed the dog treats and an unopened bottle of water, then she stepped out of the car and started cautiously toward the school playground. She scowled at the swoosh of the grass as she moved through it, as if her plan involved sneaking up on the dog, followed by a leap and a tackle. She certainly didn’t want to surprise him again, but she would prefer that he not see her coming from so far away and run off.
Luckily, he was too taken with scratching that ear to notice her. She stopped a few yards away from him, took a deep breath, and called, “Arlo!”
His head snapped toward her. His foot hung un the air where his ear had been. He didn’t bark or growl at her, but he rose to his feet, prepared, perhaps, to attack. She noticed that he had a pink leash clasped onto his collar. Its handle lay in the grass behind him.
“Who’s a good boy, Arlo?” she said, crouching, narrowing her shoulders to make herself small and nonthreatening.
He cocked his head.
“Are you hungry, good boy? Do you want a treat?” She crinkled the bag, and he took a single step toward her. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You want a treat, don’t you, Arlo, good boy?” It took her three tries to tear the top off the packaging, but she finally managed it, discarding the plastic strip in the grass. Arlo’s head dipped as he followed its fall. “Look,” Gerda said after withdrawing a small handful of the treats and opening her hand. They were small and rectangular. “Does you good boy want these?” Gobbledygook in a comforting tone, the same way she spoke to Beth when she was a baby. She pulled her arm back and performed an underhand toss. The small meaty parcels flew, separated, then sprinkled the grass between them.
The dog leapt at the treats, moving this way and that with his snout in the grass, hoovering them up. Gerda forced a bellowing laugh, wanting him to associate this moment of pleasure with the timbre of her voice. After all the treats were found, he continued to sniff the ground, turning in swift circles, dedicated to ensuring that he hadn’t missed one. When he finally gave up and lifted his head to regard her, Gerda was standing closer, with a second handful of treats at the ready. These she dropped in a pile at her feet. He hesitated to come so near her, but the lure of the treats and her melodic words of encouragement proved too much, and he closed the distance between them. She bent at the waist and petted the scruff of his neck as he devoured them, then she rose, lifting his leash with a gentle grip, allowing it to slide along the edges of her index finger and thumb until its handle lifted off the ground and she was able to coax it into her hand. Before he was through eating, she uncapped the bottle of water and poured out its contents onto the ground, spattering her shoes and ankles. The dog examined the puddle before quickly lapping it up. “Okay, Arlo” Gerda said, tugging the leash, “let’s go home.”
***
It was too much for Alvin; the dog was a step too far. He had been napping in his recliner while some old Glen Ford western played on the television, when he was startled awake by the rampaging sound of the beast’s barking, the alarming clack of its nails on the kitchen tile as it exploded into their home. He had risen to his feet with a start, demanding, “What in God’s name!” His eyes bored into her as she explained herself, his face angry and unmasked. “It isn’t enough that you’re stalking this woman, now you’ve stolen her dog? And you bring it here, into our home?”
“I wasn’t stalking anyone!” Gerda cried. “It was Beth, Al. I know my daughter when I see her. If you can’t believe it, it’s only because you gave up on finding her years ago. Shame on you, Al. Shame on you.”
He took a moment, closed his eyes to the sting of those words, the modicum of truth in them. He took one deep breath, then another, his practice for years now. When he was finally able to look at her again, she was staring at him, her face hardened with defiance. The dog’s leash was wrapped several times around her hand, and the beast was tugging her, jerking her, undercutting the strength she was trying to project. In a soft but firm voice, he said, “Gerda, Beth disappeared when she was seven. That was thirty years ago. I know it hurts to hear, but you could not possibly know her.”
She pushed her sunburned face close to his. There was a glint on her patches of reddened skin and a slight swelling that made her look younger. Her tone was defiant when she said, “I know my daughter when I see her.”
He pulled his mouth into a frown then lower his eyes to watch as the dog frantically circled the space between them, chuffing and snorting, begging for the freedom to explore these unfamiliar sights and smells. Gerda had lost her mind, pure and simple. Her clothes were still visibly stained with sweat from her hours spent outdoors, and it occurred to him that it might be this ungodly heat that finally caused her to crack, breaking apart the little bit of reason that decades of grief had failed to wear away. He felt an upswelling of anger for the man who had done this to them all those years ago, taking Beth and leaving them to become the worst versions of themselves without her there to steady them. He had turned dear Gerda into a fantasist and Alvin into a man so cold and unfeeling that most days he couldn’t even be bothered to hate what he’d become. Probably, they should have divorced. Most do in their situation. What remains after a child goes missing only serves to emphasize their loss, so it was better, probably, to start over. Alvin and Gerda hadn’t made that choice, had never made any choice, and now this was what they had to show for it, this dog, this standoff. “You honestly found it at the playground?”
“Yes, of course, I found him at the playground! What do you think, that I stole him out of her hands?”
Alvin didn’t answer. This had been his worry, precisely. “Does he have tags on his collar?”
At this simple question, her resolve faltered. She dropped her eyes and watched the dog. When she responded, she sounded more like his wife than his enemy. “I don’t know, Al. I haven’t been brave enough to look. There’s one there, tinkling, but I think it’s just a rabies tag. I’ve been too afraid of him to check it for an address.”
“That seems wise with an animal that doesn’t know you. So, what’s your plan?” He was calming now, too. “I have no more intention of being bitten then you do, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t have the knees to crouch down there, and I surely lack the agility to back away if he protests.”
“So, then?”
For a period of seconds, they studied the dog, unified in the immediacy of the problem of him, silently agreeing to not further litigate how that problem occurred. Alvin tensed when she squandered the moment by saying, “If we find out where he lives, he can lead us to Beth.”
“Put him in the car,” Alvin said, definitively. “If he has a rabies tag, then he probably has one of those chips too. We’ll take him to a vet, see if they can scan him.”
Gerda’s face brightened. “Oh! Oh, yes! I hadn’t thought of that! Yes, let’s take him now!” She began to tug the creature toward the kitchen, cooing his name. Alvin watched her struggling with it, waiting until they arrived at the back door before following her.
***
His shirt was instantly sopping. The sun was pitiless, and the car’s air conditioner labored to do more than breathe hot air onto their hands and faces. They rode in silence, other than the dog who made figure eights on the backseat, walking from one side window to the other in an infinite, irritating loop.
The nearest vet was three miles from their house, and Alvin was fixated on what would happen once they arrived there, once it was confirmed that the dog’s owner was no one they knew, and no one who they had ever known. Would Gerda accept this answer, or would it break her further to hear it? The worst thing would be if she elaborated this fantasy to include their daughter being brainwashed to forget her past, a name change from Elizabeth Mary Cline to whatever this dog’s owner knew her name to be. Should he have her committed in that case? Send her away and let professionals pry apart her knotted understanding of truth and fiction? It would break his heart, if so. No one should be made to endure what Gerda had. He would do it, though, if it was best for her.
It was possible, too, though, that the hard reality they were driving toward would be enough to shatter her fantasies, that she would realize, as he had so many years ago, that there is no magic in this world, no long shots, no near misses, not for regular people like them. Hope was for the foolish, and maybe for those rich enough to bend the world to their wills.
Alvin stopped at a light and signaled to turn. He spied the vet’s office in a strip mall across the intersection. Beside him, Gerda was blotting sweat from her brow with a paper towel. This is reality, he imagined saying to her. Your body is producing sweat to cool down, to keep from overheating. The dog is currently tearing up the backseat, as is its nature. When a little girl goes missing for thirty years, she doesn’t come back. Reality is cruel and predictable. As he thought these things, his eyes were on the beast in the rearview. It was digging at the leather seat, almost certainly ruining it. Through the back window, he saw a car pull behind them from a neighborhood side street. Its headlights were on, though it was barely past two in the afternoon, and its wipers rapidly arcing left and right. He narrowed his eyes, pushed his face nearer to the rearview. At first, he couldn’t be sure, but, yes, looking at it now, there was no mistaking it—the car’s roof and hood were topped with what had to be at least seven inches of snow. Its windshield was completely frosted, other than a small section on the driver’s side which had been scratched clear. It made no sense. It made no sense, whatever.
Alvin watched as it pulled behind them and said nothing, and then, when the car’s driver honked to alert him that the light had changed, he snapped out of it.
#
M.C. Schmidt’s recent short fiction has appeared in Gulf Stream, Memezine, The Forge, Southern Humanities Review, HAD, The Pinch, Mud Season Review, EVENT, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel, The Decadents, and the short story collection, How to Steal a Train.