Chapter 15. Thongoor

It was clear and sunny for only the second time in ten days but Stoner's skies were far from cloudless. In July he had stopped going to school and, by law, the government should have stopped sending him checks; it hadn't, and month after month he had illegally continued to live on the money. This month's undeserved check was overdue and he was broke. He wanted the checks to stop arriving, didn't like breaking the law, but he had been counting on getting the bucks for at least one more month. No check, no house, no girl--Sandra had told him she wasn't his girlfriend and that he wasn't living with her--, back to living in his van and being a crasher, still no dog food for Nostradamus.

Nostradamus! Stoner liked her well enough but he had never meant for her to be his dog. She was from the last litter of his previous dog friend--now dead and, Stoner hoped, gone to a better world--, with whom he had lived for several years. He had, he had thought, found homes for her and her siblings, but two weeks after being rid of her--she had been the last to go--the two brothers who had taken her as a pup had brought her back, a dog. "Thanks," they’d said, "for giving her to us. We really liked her. We hope you find her a good home." Stoner had been speechless. He'd really thought he didn't have a dog.

The day that Alice and Stoner had met they had been on opposite sides of Lee and Arthur's living-room window; the new acquaintances had hopped up and down scratching themselves and gibbered at one another like monkeys as Stoner ate a banana. When he'd finished, he had briefly walked on his hands, then righted himself and smushed his face against the window glass; Alice had smushed back.

"This is Stoner," Arthur had shouted to her through the window. "He's normal."

"I like him," Alice had called back. "He's crazy as I am." Alice had not seemed even marginally crazy to Arthur, but when, as Stoner resumed gibbering, Alice had burst into song to express her happiness at the meeting, her voice a strong clear soprano, it had occurred to him that he should raise her estimated whimsy quotient.

Today, soon after Stoner had arrived at Arthur and Lee's, Alice had come to the door.

"Have you seen Chicken?" she asked them. They hadn't. "I've been looking for her." She wanted to take her to eat fat white grubs at her friend’s compost pile and left to continue her search.

Stoner stepped into the doorway and called after her. "Really," he called, "Nostradamus ate her." Why had he said it? He already wished the words back in his mouth.

"What?" Alice said.

"My dog ate her."

"Stoner," said Alice, perplexed but knowing he wasn't serious and meant no harm, "you are crazy."

Stoner thought she was right. Why had he told Alice his dog had killed her chicken? He turned to Arthur.

"I gotta learn to shut up," he said.

"It would be a practical skill," said Arthur.

Alice's cries of "Thongoor" and "Here Chicken" faded. She was worried but decided to go to her friend’s alone. Could Thongoor have had a premonition and already be there? When Lee got home it was she, not half an hour after Stoner's bad joke, who saw Nostradamus lying next to Alice's front porch with Chicken in her mouth.

"Stoner," said Lee. He looked up and then over to where she was looking.

"No," Stoner said.

"You can see," said Lee.

Stoner stepped clear of Lee and Arthur's doorway; Nostradamus looked at him across the fallen fowl and happily wagged her tail.

"You've been bad," Stoner said.

For another instant his dog didn't look guilty, then dropped Thongoor's body and slunk away. Stoner stepped back in the front door. Not his door. No girl. No job. Defrauding the government. Broke anyway. Not even a student. Should go home. Work for father digging ditches for seven bucks an hour. Live at home. Settle down. What was he here for? And now he had to beat his dog, at whom he wasn't mad, whom he had found a good home, who had just done the most natural thing in the world for a hungry dog, killed a chicken--if she had, if she hadn't just picked it up after it had died. Killed a chicken? Killed Chicken! Thongoor! What was he going to say to Alice?

"What do I have to do?" he said.

"First I guess you have to have a heart to heart with Nostradummy and then do something with Thongoor," Arthur said.

"Bury her?" said Stoner.

"I don't know," said Arthur. What would Alice want? "What would Alice want?"

"Alice," Stoner moaned. "I have to tell her."

"She's not home now."

"Maybe she'll never come back."

"Maybe Nostradamus has her stashed behind the house," said Arthur. Not funny. Poor Stoner. Poor Alice. Chicken's troubles were over. "Yeah," said Arthur, "I guess bury her."

Nostradamus was beaten. Lee and Arthur heard her yelp twice, then saw her dashing from around the house, her tail between her legs. Stoner dug a two-foot deep hole next to Arthur and Lee's porch and laid Chicken to rest.

That night under a bright moon a few days past full, inside what had been Thongoor’s fenced area, Alice dug a hole with a stick under a lilac bush and next to Thongoor's favorite place to lay eggs. Into the hole she put three plump white grubs from her friend's compost pile. The grubs had been hard to find because it had already been dark when she had searched for them. Next to the grubs she placed one of Chicken's own eggs that she had first sucked dry and painted. Then she exhumed Thongoor, gave her one last kiss on the beak, and put her into the new grave, which she then filled in and marked with a small cross of twigs beside which she sat into the night, thinking of times gone by.

The next day she cleaned her yard, especially the pen where Chicken had scratched out her living in dignity and independence, and cleaned her house. Junk was everywhere when she started. She stacked it all in one corner of her bedroom and one corner of her yard, the work helping her be less lonely for Chicken, and, as she saw them, she invited Arthur, Lee, Stoner, Lucia, Stephen, Carol, Peg, Lloyd, and Sandra to her newly enlarged living space for spaghetti the next night.

The day of the dinner party she worked all day on a sauce that included mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, tomato puree, three kinds of cheese, peppers, garlic, cloves, carrots, onion, and selected herbs, and she laid out dominoes, playing cards, crayons, water colors, and paper with which to play. The guests arrived. Sandra and Lloyd drew pictures and Stoner played with the dominoes as everyone chatted. Stoner stood the dominoes on their narrow ends in the shape of a question mark; he knocked the first over and watched as it knocked over the second and so on. Arthur watched them fall. Stoner gathered them up and stood them on end in the same shape, this time making the last domino more obviously a question-mark dot. Again he tipped the first one over and watched as they all fell. Absent-mindedly he picked up the last to fall, the dot, and turned it over in his hands, then tossed it onto the floor and reached for a piece of paper and the crayons.

"Stoner," said Arthur, his voice low. The domino Stoner had tossed had landed in the curve of the question mark, making it look not like a question mark but like a head in profile, the single domino an eye; not just any head, either. It was as though Thongoor herself were looking up from the floor. “It’s Chicken,” Arthur said.

"It’s Chicken!” Stoner echoed, much too loud.

Alice, across the room, looked up. Earlier, tacos had been mentioned and before Stoner had thought what he was saying, he'd said "Chicken?" Everyone had heard then and everyone heard now and knew that Alice heard. Stoner looked at her, then quickly back at the dominoes in front of him as the others began again to talk. He stood up and went to Alice and hugged her. She wiped away a tear.

"It's okay, Stoney," she said.

Before they ate, they held hands in a circle. The spaghetti was delicious, whole wheat of course, the kind Thongoor had liked.

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