The Innocence of Dogs

Katie awoke to the sound of a dog barking. Somewhere down the street Mr. Peterson's retriever Kahlua had been startled by something, and gradually now bedroom lights began flipping on up and down the block.

"Shut that damn dog up, Peterson!" "It's 4:30 in the morning, goddammit!" "Some of us have work, you know!" And so it went every night until finally the dog was let in, or the sun rose and the residents of Pinewood St. rose angrily from their beds and went to work. Each morning at 4:30 am, without fail, Kahlua started up with her growling and petrified barks, and each morning the neighbors growled back. Someone was out there, thought Katie, and none but the dog bore witness.

It was Wednesday, hump day, the slowest day of the week at the book store, and Katie slouched over the counter, head on her palms, fingers rapping gently on the delicate skin of her cheeks. Suddenly there rang a bell, a soft chime that drew her attention to the store entrance, through which stepped a gaunt albino man, perhaps sixty or seventy years old, wearing dark glasses and grasping tightly with his left fist a leash. At its end walked a dark brown retriever with blood red eyes. Kahlua, thought Katie. But who was this man? Was this Mr. Peterson? Not many had actually ever seen him, and what was known was more urban myth than known fact.

They said he wasn't always an albino, that he was born quite tan but had once seen something that literally scared him white. They said he went blind in the war again at the sight of something too unspeakable to utter. They said that frequently mysterious sounds could be heard coming from the old man's attic, and that when he did emerge from his home, he did so only at night, and even then quite secretly.

But now here he was, moving into the store, hunched painfully over as though carrying on his back the full weight of the world's woes. Katie approached him. "Can I help you find anything?"

"NO!!" the old man barked. And Katie jumped back to let him pass. Without instruction or prompt of any kind, the dog led the old man to a shelf marked SCIENCE, where the albino's bony white index finger traced along the spine of each volume until it stopped on a strange hardbound copy of Gray's Anatomy. Led by his companion, Mr. Peterson made his way to the front counter, where Katie, with shallow breaths and quick movements, rang the book up and took his money. Without a word, then, the old man took his leave, and it wasn't until he was gone that the thought crossed Katie's mind: Why would a blind man need a printed book?

Expectedly, at 4:30 the next morning, Kahlua's voice rang out: first a deep, low growling rising up from inside her gut, followed by a sudden shriek, a sharp whimper, and then the barking began. One by one, the lights in the neighbors windows clicked on, and throughout the block could be heard the angry shouts of sleep-deprived boomers. "Goddammit, Peterson!" "Put that dog down! Put it down, dammit!" "I swear to God, Peterson! I'mm going to kill your dog! I'm not even joking!" And on and on.

Katie swung her legs off her bed and rose sleepily to her feet. A long stretch, and she walked groggily to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and took a long, cool drink. Back to bed, a warm snuggling into her pillow, and she pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. She imagined that sleeping beside her was her boyfriend, who had recently moved to Los Angeles. The two were very much in love, and the melancholy pain of his absence was still fresh in her heart.