Devoted(26)
Now, as Rosa watched the video of Dorothy recounting all this, she realized that she had become as enchanted with her benefactor’s story as Kipp had been with A Christmas Carol, and she wondered why she had no doubt whatsoever that it was true. Well, for one thing, Dorothy had been neither delusional nor a liar. And in retrospect, Rosa saw that in her own interactions with Kipp, there had been moments when he had charmed her with behavior that seemed unlike that of an average dog; on other occasions, he had been so quick-witted that he briefly disquieted her. Intuitively she had known something about Kipp was wonderfully strange, but the hard life that she had led conditioned her to reject any consideration that there might be magic in the world and instead to resort always to cold reason.
On the computer screen, Dorothy introduced the rest of her story with a wide smile and a shake of her head. “And so I told him that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was showing Scrooge not what would be, but only what might be. I put the MP3 player on the floor and told him that Tiny Tim wouldn’t die, that I’d play the rest of the book for him only if he stopped this pretense of ordinariness.
“He ran to the player and stood over it, staring down at it, wagging his tail furiously. I turned it on, and he sat listening to the rest without moving. That night, I designed a rather clumsy version of the pedal-operated laser pointer that would eventually be refined, and which Kipp would use to spotlight letters of the alphabet to communicate with me. I must tell you, Rosa, I felt like a bespelled child in a fairy tale or some little girl in a Spielberg movie, and at the same time I wondered if I might be going mad, a doddering old woman who could no longer trust her senses. But if I doddered into anything, I doddered into the fantastic truth of what Kipp is.”
23
The carved grizzly was stupid. Maybe brown bears and black bears roamed the California mountains, but not grizzlies.
What was the point of having it here, anyway?
To terrify the campers and drive their business away?
Although dogs had lived with people for thousands of years, a lot of things people did mystified Kipp—giant wood grizzly bears no more or less than abstract impressionist art and nose rings.
Worse than a grizzly bear, Fred, the brother of Frank the Hater and probably a Hater as well, was en route.
Even a dog of greatly enhanced intelligence might find it difficult to escape from a puppy-mill cage and chained servitude.
The leash tethering Kipp to the carving of a bear was eight or ten feet long. He managed to turn and get a mouthful of it.
Although the fabric proved to be tough, his teeth were up to the task. He chewed and tugged vigorously.
From his office chair, Frank the Hater said, “What the hell are you doing?”
Even if Kipp had been able to talk, he wouldn’t have stopped chewing to explain his intention to escape.
If the question wasn’t rhetorical, Frank was even dumber than he looked.
“I know your kind, dog. I know how to deal with you.”
Green eyes flashing under his mustache-size eyebrows, the Hater came around the desk.
Kipp growled but continued chewing on the leash.
When the Hater tried to grab the back of the dog collar, Kipp sidled around to face him, growling more ferociously as he chewed.
“Better shut you in the bathroom till Fred gets here.”
Frank the Hater reached up to untie his captive from one of the steel rods between the bear and the wall.
Kipp dropped the leash and snapped at his captor. He didn’t intend to bite, just to scare the man off.
Suddenly reeking of anger as much as he did of hatred, Frank backed away a few steps.
He took off his belt and clenched the tongue of it in his right fist. The buckle dangled at the free end.
“Teach you a lesson,” said Frank the angry Hater.
When he lashed with the belt, the buckle missed Kipp and cracked against the wooden bear.
“Down!” the man ordered.
Kipp did not lie down. He growled and bared his teeth.
“Down! Down, damn you!” the Hater commanded.
He raised his right hand high, intending to whip harder this time, more accurately, maybe repeatedly.
Just then, the front door opened and a stranger came in. He said, “Hey, hey, hey! What’re you doing?”
“Stay back,” Frank the Hater warned. “I’ve got a vicious damn dog here. He’s a half-wild stray.”
Wagging his tail, Kipp whined as pathetically as he knew how and cowered before the Hater’s raised fist.
“Never hit a dog,” said the newcomer.
The stink of Frank’s anger grew more intense. He was enraged now with both Kipp and the stranger.
“Get your ass out of here before you’re bitten,” said the Hater, “and leave this to me.”
“I’ll leave when I’ve got my dog,” the man declared, stepping between Kipp and the Hater.
“Your dog? He’s a damn stray. No license tag on his collar.”
Untying the lead from the steel rod, the newcomer said, “He’s my dog.”
“Like hell he is.”
“If you strike at him again, so help me God, I’ll cinch that belt around your neck tight enough to make your face turn blue.”
In addition to the garlic, verbena aftershave, coconut-scented hand sanitizer, antiperspirant, ChapStick, pee on the shoes, anger, and hatred, Frank also smelled of the particular kind of fear that had a sour edge and was called cowardice.