Einstein blinked at her, then looked at the letters, blinked at her again, sniffed the letters, and she was getting a sick feeling in her stomach when, suddenly, he began to choose tiles and push them around with his nose.
FIDDLE JUST OUT OF TUNE.
Travis shuddered as if the dread he had contained was a powerful electric charge that had leapt out of him in an instant. He said, “Thank God, thank you God,” and he laughed with delight.
“Holy shit,” Jim Keene said.
Pooka raised his head very high and pricked his ears, aware that something important was happening but not sure what it was.
Her heart swelling with relief and excitement and love, Nora returned the letters to their separate piles and said, “Einstein, who is your master? Tell us his name.”
The retriever looked at her, at Travis, then made a considered reply.
NO MASTER. FRIENDS.
Travis laughed. “By God, I’ll settle for that! No one can be his master, but anyone should be damned proud to be his friend.”
Funny-this proof of Einstein’s undamaged intellect made Travis laugh with delight, the first laughter of which he had been capable in days, but it made Nora weep with relief.
Jim Keene looked on in wide-eyed wonder, grinning stupidly. He said, “I feel like a child who’s sneaked downstairs on Christmas Eve and actually seen the real Santa Claus putting gifts under the tree.”
“My turn,” Travis said, sliding forward and putting a hand on Einstein’s head, patting him. “Jim just mentioned Christmas, and it’s not far away.
Twenty days from now. So tell me, Einstein, what would you most like to have Santa bring you?”
Twice, Einstein started to line up the lettered tiles, but both times he had second thoughts and disarranged them. He tottered and thumped down on his butt, looked around sheepishly, saw that they were all expectant, got up again, and this time produced a three-word request for Santa.
MICKEY MOUSE VIDEOS.
They didn’t get to bed until two in the morning because Jim Keene was intoxicated, not drunk from beer or wine or whiskey but from sheer joy over Einstein’s intelligence. “Like a man’s, yes, but still the dog, still the dog, wonderfully like, yet wonderfully different from, a man’s thinking, based on what little I’ve seen.” But Jim did not press for more than a dozen examples of the dog’s wit, and he was the first to say that they must not tire their patient. Still, he was electrified, so excited he could barely contain himself. Travis would not have been too surprised if the vet had suddenly just exploded.
In the kitchen, Jim pleaded with them to retell stories about Einstein: the Modern Bride business in Solvang; the way he had taken it upon himself to add cold water to the first hot bath that Travis had given him; and many more. Jim actually retold some of the same stories himself, almost as if Travis and Nora had never heard them, but they were happy to indulge him.
With a flourish, he snatched the wanted flyer off the table, struck a kitchen match, and burned the sheet in the sink. He washed the ashes down the drain. “To hell with the small minds who’d keep a creature like that locked up to be poked and prodded and studied. They might’ve had the genius to make Einstein, but they don’t understand the meaning of what they themselves have done. They don’t understand the greatness of it, because if they did they wouldn’t want to cage him.”
At last, when Jim Keene reluctantly agreed that they were all in need of sleep, Travis carried Einstein (already sleeping) up to the guest room. They made a blanket-cushioned place for him on the floor next to the bed.
In the dark, under the covers, with Einstein’s soft snoring to comfort them, Travis and Nora held each other.
She said, “Everything’s going to be all right now.”
“There’s still some trouble coming,” he said. He felt as if Einstein’s recovery had weakened the curse of untimely death that had followed him all of his life. But he was not ready to hope that the curse had been banished altogether. The Outsider was still out there somewhere… coming.
TEN
1
On Tuesday afternoon, December 7, when they took Einstein home, Jim Keene was reluctant to let them go. He followed them out to the pickup and stood at the driver’s window, restating the treatment that must be continued for the next couple of weeks, reminding them that he wanted to see Einstein once a week for the rest of the month, and urging them to visit him not only for the dog’s medical care but for drinks, dinner, conversation.
Travis knew the vet was trying to say he wanted to remain a part of Einstein's life, wanted to participate in the magic of it. “Jim, believe me, we’ll be back. And before Christmas, you’ll have to come out to our place, spend the day with us.”
“I’d like that.”
“So would we,” Travis said sincerely.
On the drive home, Nora held Einstein in her lap, wrapped in a blanket once more. He still did not have his old appetite, and he was weak. His immune system had taken severe punishment, so he would be more than usually susceptible to illness for a while. He was to be kept in the house as much as possible and pampered until he had regained his previous vigor- probably after the first of the year, according to Jim Keene.
The bruised and swollen sky bulged with saturated dark clouds. The Pacific Ocean was so hard and gray that it did not appear to be water but looked more like billions of shards and slabs of slate being continuously agitated by some geological upheaval in the earth below.
The bleak weather could not dampen their high spirits. Nora was beaming, and Travis found himself whistling. Einstein studied the scenery with great interest, clearly treasuring even the somber beauty of this nearly colorless winter day. Perhaps he had never expected to see the world outside Jim Keene’s office again, in which case even a sea of jumbled stone and a contusive sky were precious sights.
When they reached home, Travis left Nora in the pickup with the retriever and entered the house alone, by the back door, carrying the.38 pistol they kept in the truck. In the kitchen, where the lights had been on ever since their hasty departure last week, he immediately took an Uzi automatic pistol from its hiding place in a cabinet, and put the lighter gun aside. He proceeded cautiously from room to room, looking behind every large item of furniture and in every closet.
He saw no signs of burglary, and he expected none. This rural area was relatively crime-free. You could leave your door unlocked for days at a time without risking thieves who would take everything down to the wallpaper.
The Outsider, not a burglar, worried him.
The house was deserted.
Travis checked the barn, too, before driving the pickup inside, but it was also safe.
In the house, Nora put Einstein down and pulled the blanket off him. He tottered around the kitchen, sniffing at things. In the living room he looked at the cold fireplace and inspected his page-turning machine.
He returned to the kitchen pantry, clicked on the light with his foot pedal, and pawed letters out of the Lucite tubes.
HOME.
Stooping beside the dog, Travis said, “It’s sure good to be here, isn’t it?”
Einstein nuzzled Travis’s throat and licked his neck. The golden coat was fluffy and smelled clean because Jim Keene had given the dog a bath, in his surgery, under carefully controlled conditions. But as fluffy and fresh as he was, Einstein still did not look himself; he seemed tired, and he was thinner, too, having lost a few pounds in less than a week.
Pawing out more letters, Einstein spelled the same word again, as if to emphasize his pleasure: HOME.
Standing at the pantry door, Nora said, “Home is where the heart is, and there’s plenty of heart in this one. Hey, let’s have an early dinner and eat it in the living room while we run the videotape of Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Would you like that?”