Gentle Rafael, sweet Rafael, only two years old, always an eager companion on midnight adventures, member in good standing of the Clyde Tombaugh Club, known to have been frightened by a long-legged leaping hare—if he were to die, the children would be devastated. And they would not be alone in their grief. I’d known him only nine weeks or so, yet I found myself insisting, “No, no, no, no, no,” each repetition as much a sob as it was a word. If I’d obeyed my first impulse, I would have run to the house for help. However, intuition argued that he would be dead by the time I brought help back here. “He’s been poisoned,” I heard myself say, though there was no way I could have known that to be true.
My second impulse was to comfort him, to hold him so that he would not die alone. Or at least that’s what I thought I meant to do, for I was not capable of conceiving what in fact happened. I settled behind him, on my left side, and pulled him against me with one arm. I told him he was a good boy, gentle and beautiful and much loved, that this was only his first life and that the next would be in Heaven. “There must be dogs in Heaven,” I assured him, “because they’re better than people. They deserve Heaven more than we do.” Violent tremors shuddered through him. I held him tighter, whereupon his tremorspassed into me. I do not mean either that I felt them more profoundly than before or that I developed sympathetic tremors of my own. His body stiffened and his legs kicked. Each time that he convulsed, a simultaneous volcanic concussion originated in the very core of me and sent shock waves to my extremities. I was not merely feeling his convulsions through bodily contact; I wasexperiencingthem as I would a lethal current if I grasped the bare wires of a frayed lamp cord. They becameourconvulsions. My thin cries and his pained whimpers were synchronized. My legs scissored like those of a hound fleeing a threat in its dreams. A smell similar to that of potent onions overwhelmed me, and with it came a flavor that was far too sweet to be pleasant. I knew, without knowinghowI knew, that I was drawing from Rafael the poison he had consumed, and not only the poison but also the dire effects of it, the damage that it had done to his organs and tissues. He was being made right and whole again. The astringent scent swelled into a repulsive malodor. The sugary flavor became cloying. Scent and taste intensified, forming a dark cyclonic mass that turned slowly but relentlessly through my mind, pulling me down into its funnel, as if I were the sailor narrator of Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelström.” A roaring blackness took me.
I could not have been unconscious more than a minute or two. Rafael awakened me by snuffling loudly and licking my face. When I sat up, he backed off and stood panting, not with canine anxiety, but with the note of eagerness that expressed his happiness when he was in the thick of a late-night adventure with the children. I was not even briefly confused about what had happened. I had brought the dog back from the edge of death to full health. Thewhatof it could not be denied, but thehowbeggared explanation. I was not blessed with the power to heal. If I were so gifted, surely the power would have manifested years before this when I held a bird with a broken wing as it died, when I had sat bedside as another human oddity in the Museum of the Strangesuccumbed to heart failure. When holding Rafael against me, I thought I had felt his convulsions becoming mine instead of his, the poison migrating from him into me. If anything like that had really occurred, I should be dying now—or dead. However, I felt in the best of health, perhaps even better than I’d felt when I set out to tour the gardens.
Although Rafael rarely barked, when I got to my feet, he issued one loud yawp, as though in approval or celebration. A meager wintry gray light sifted through the interlaced trees. It wasn’t sufficient to relieve the murkiness, but it was enough to find the reflective layer of his eyes and foster the animal eyeshine that allowed him to see in the dark better than I ever could. I met his steady stare, and he met mine. I wondered if he might understand what had occurred better than I did. That wasn’t a far-fetched notion, considering that I didn’t understand it at all.
There was no way I would tell anyone in the family what had happened—or seemed to have happened. Whereas I had once been a freak, I was merely an oddity here at the Bram, and I treasured my newfound status. Month by month, year by year, I would seem less odd to everyone, until one day I’d fit in so well that I would be thought normal. I had no intention of doing anything to make anyone wonder if I might be some kind of spooky nonesuch. It was necessary, of course, to let the family and staff know that someone had attempted to poison Rafael. Until the miscreant was identified and confronted, Rafael remained at risk. The problem was that the shepherd appeared healthy. Even if I were to embrace the role of freak and claim to have healed him, I had no evidence to prove my story.
The shepherd followed me out of the woodlet, onto the acre of lawn. When he paused there and looked at me, I said, “Evidence. How can I tell them you were poisoned when I have no evidence? And look at you—grinning and wagging your tail, the picture of good health.” I was speaking aloud to myself, not so much to him, certainly not with any expectation that he would understand the word “evidence” and acton it. The shepherd set off across the yard as though with a destination firmly in mind. When I didn’t at once follow, he stopped and looked back as if to say,Are we on the same page or not?
He led me off the lawn and, by one paved path and then another, past the dolphin fountain, around the small palm-ringed amphitheater where, on birthdays, the children watched entertainers—magicians, jugglers, clowns—and from there directly through the hedge maze. When we came to the bungalow with the schoolroom, I thought of Miss Blackthorn as she’d been on that first day I’d come to Bramley Hall. A faint chill stepped down the ladder of my spine. The teacher had been dismissed more than two months earlier. She might possess a capacity for enduring hatred that the passage of time could never diminish. However, she’d shown so much affection for Rafael that I could not seriously credit her with an attempt to kill him. Her role as a poisoner was almost certainly limited to the toxin of ideology that she hoped to inject into the minds of children.
We passed the bungalow and continued to the southwest end of the property. In the corner where the western estate wall met the southern wall stood a statue of W. C. Fields that was manufactured for one of his motion pictures. He had gifted it to Franklin and Loretta because they had been among the backers of his Broadway hit,Poppy, which Paramount later filmed asSally of the Sawdust. Fields had stipulated that the statue be set in a remote corner of the estate. “Place this hallowed effigy,” he insisted, “where no casual inebriate will stumble across it and be amused to empty his bladder thereupon. Find for it a quiet corner where perchance a wandering monk will come upon it while ardently searching for the meaning of life and, on sight of it, will shatter like a crystal goblet.” The statue stood on a black-granite plinth and was surrounded by a wide limestone apron on which those words had been engraved.
Rafael stopped in front of the statue and stared at a large lump of raw meat lying on the limestone to the left of the great comedian. Red meat. Perhaps beef. A good cut. Steak. Someone had known there was a dog in residence. Concerned about a confrontation with a German shepherd, the poisoner most likely hadn’t come into the property but instead had tossed the bait from the top of the wall. There would have been a pound or more of steak, enough for the scent to attract the intended victim.
But why? The estate occupied an entire promontory overlooking much lower land, and there were no close neighbors to be annoyed by the baying of half a dozen hounds if the Fairchild family had been of a mind to harbor such a pack. Rafael, not being a barker and alone of his kind at the Bram, could not have done anything that would motivate a poisoner to kill him.
I tore an enormous leaf from a nearbyGunnera manicata, picked up the bait with it, and carried it to the house, with Rafael close behind me. Cuts had been made in the meat, and oval tablets smaller than sunflower seeds had been wedged into the resulting pockets. I counted five in what amounted to about a four-ounce chunk of beef.
The children were still engaged in their various pursuits in farther rooms, but the adults were in the kitchen where I had left them. I didn’t put the contaminated meat on a counter but held it out in both hands, displayed on the large, soft, prickly-edged leaf for their inspection. I said, “It looks as though someone meant to poison our Rafael. I found this on the pavement near the statue of Mr. Fields.”
If some were skeptical of my claim, they were not able to sustain their doubt when they got a close look at the bait. Mr. Symington said, “I believe those little brown tablets are a brand of rat poison, although not one that Mr. Reinhardt ever used.”
Franklin grimaced at the foul meat. “To attract a dog, the villain behind this would have thrown more than a single piece of meat over the wall. Maybe Rafael already consumed the rest.”
The shepherd sat alert in the nearest corner, the tip of his thick tail wagging as though he must be anticipating a treat.
I was quick to put Franklin’s fear to rest. “There were three more chunks. I threw them back over the wall. It’s just wild brush on the other side. If anything eats them, it’ll be a coyote, which just means that a lot of little rabbits won’t be killed and eaten.”
Loretta gave me a look of incredulity, perhaps because it was not like me to excuse so cavalierly the killing of even a coyote, but she said nothing.
Everyone agreed that a mystery had been put before us, that we needed to identify the poisoner and learn his motive, and that until the mystery was solved, Rafael must not be outside except when on a leash. Further discussion of the issue must be delayed. Everyone had left culinary tasks unfinished. Today’s preparations must be completed, for much else needed to be done tomorrow.
“A proper Thanksgiving feast,” Chef Lattuada said, “is as much an act of glorious creation as it is one of grotesque consumption. I will not allow my reputation as a glutton to be diminished because, as the chef, I failed to lay a table that made gross overindulgence possible. My pride is on the line.”
That night I could not easily fall asleep. I listened to Rafael softly snoring. Being a fair-minded dog in all things, he did not favor me or one of the children more than the others when it came to gracing us with his presence at bedtime. If he spent Monday snoring next to Gertrude, he devoted Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to the rest of us before returning to her on Friday. He had slept alongside me on Tuesday night, yet here he was again on Wednesday. I suppose he wished to express his gratitude for being saved from poisoning. I wouldn’t be surprised if he bedded down with each of the children twice before returning to me for a night.
The question of who had attempted to poison Rafael might have kept me awake all night if the shepherd’s recovery from imminent death had not been an even bigger mystery that thwarted sleep. The event in the grove of trees filled me with wonder and with a vague expectation of revelations. It also gave rise to apprehension, fear of the unknown. When at last I did fall asleep, the usual settling noises of the great house woke me more than once. Always I sat up in mild alarm, breath caught in my throat. Black shadows stood in every corner of the moonlit room, and it was easy to imagine that one of them was more than a shadow. Each time, I reached out in the dark to put a hand on Rafael. I expected to find that he had never been there or, worse, that he was dead. When I placed my hand on his flank, I felt his chest rise and fall with his slow and steady breathing. Eventually all hope of further sleep was gone for the night.
Had I found my place in the world, here in the Bram, or might I be destined to belong nowhere? If I developed the ability to embrace a dying creature and make it well again, I must admit to being both a freak and a phenomenon. Fully exposed, I would simultaneously disgust and enchant people. No one in the world would be able to confer on me the normalcy for which I yearned. Any unfortunate soul who is both freak and miracle worker will be forever gazingstock. Everywhere I went would be a stage. Whatever I did would be a performance. Only isolation would provide peace. Once I might have accepted such an existence, living only through books. I have always needed people. In my former existence, those characters who lived only on paper gave me experience and sufficient fellowship, for they were all that I had. However, now that I’d known kindness in the flesh, been warmly welcomed as a friend, known a loving touch, a loving smile, a life in books alone was no longer life enough.
Lying there, I kept thinking ofA Tale of Two Cities, mostly the inspiring last chapter. Sydney Carton, posing as Charles Darnay, goes tothe guillotine in place of the other man because the love of Carton’s life is Darnay’s wife. I wondered to what extent Dickens might have been inspired by John 15:13. I wondered why I wondered.
Rafael woke with sunrise, yawned, and thumped his tail on the mattress. By then I decided that what occurred in theMetrosiderosgrove would remain our secret. If ever someone in my new family were to fall gravely ill and the doctors could effect no cure, I would discover at that time whether what happened with the dog was what it seemed to be, and learn if the gift I once possessed might still be with me. Common colds, mere flu, and other minor interruptions of good health would remain subject to Nature’s curative power. This decision was the only one that allowed me anything close to a normal life, but having made it, I knew that one day I might be ravaged by regret. Therefore, every night since Thanksgiving 1930, my bedtime prayer has been simply “God, forgive me.”
Twenty-Four
My first Thanksgiving Day was everything I hoped and much more, and the fun began at eight o’clock in the morning. At breakfast, we were told that a ceramic turkey the size of a milk bottle had been hidden somewhere in the house. Nine clues to its whereabouts were provided in nine numbered envelopes. If we members of the Clyde Tombaugh Club were able to find the bird by two o’clock, we would have dinner on December 14 with Loretta and Franklin and their four guests—Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and their wives. The renowned comedy team’s short films—includingFrom Soup to Nuts,Perfect Day, and the recentAnother Fine Mess—had made them famous. Laurel and Hardy! What a fun dinner that was sure to be! The wives of the comedians, Lois and Myrtle, suggested the competition; Mr. Symington chose the place where the prize was hidden; Loretta and Franklin devised the clues. Chef Lattuada, who might have been a pretty good comedian in another life, suggested a consolation prize if we didn’t find the turkey. In failure, we would not meet Laurel and Hardy. We would eat dinner alone and be escorted to the roof where we would stand in the dark and wavebye-bye to the departing guests while the chef played “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You” on the ocarina.
Obviously, these fiendish adults knew exactly how to structure a challenge so that the competitive instinct of children would be supercharged. We were happily outraged that we had been given only until two o’clock and that the consolation prize was so unfair. If we could not begin the turkey hunt until we cleaned our plates, then we would hog down our food as if we were mannerless savages. We were told we must open only one envelope every half hour, which meant that we wouldn’t see the final clue until half past noon. This was of course typical—typical!—of the rules adults make to ensure they will get what they want, which in this case was our humiliation. We raced directly to the library, where we engaged in rebellion against the injustice of the rules by tearing open all nine envelopes. Those numbered 2 through 9 contained only blank slips of paper. Envelope number one provided a clue not to the whereabouts of the ceramic turkey but to the location of therealenvelope number two. Mere words are not sufficient to describe the exhilarating outrage with which we responded to this shameless treachery. We took thirty-six minutes to locate the second envelope tucked among the logs in the drawing room fireplace, and it contained nothing but a puzzling twenty-word clue to the whereabouts of the third envelope.
“When I grow up and have children,” Isadora said, “I will never be so cruel as to subject them to emotional turmoil like this.”
I pledged myself to the avoidance of becoming an unfair adult. “On my next birthday, I’m not going to accept being eighteen. I’m going to insist on being sixteen and move backward from there.”
Gertrude said, “If we have to pay a price to have dinner with Laurel and Hardy, why don’t our parents just beat us with sticks? This search isn’t going to go well. It’s already not going well. I’m a nervous wreck.It would be more humane to just beat us with sticks and then let us go to the dinner.”
