gripped a volume in its teeth, and tried to withdraw it for further examination.
“Whoa,” Travis said, reaching for the book. “Keep your slobber off the fine
bindings, fur face. This one’s Oliver Twist. Another Dickens. The story of an
orphan in Victorian England. He gets involved with shady characters, the
criminal underworld, and they—”
The retriever dropped to the floor and padded back to the shelves on the other
side of the archway, where it continued to sniff at those volumes within its
reach. Travis could have sworn it even gazed up wistfully at the books that were
above its head.
For perhaps five minutes, in the grip of an eerie premonition that something of
tremendous importance was about to happen, Travis followed the dog, showing it
the covers of a dozen novels, providing a line or two of plot description of
each story. He had no idea if that was what the precocious pooch wanted him to
do. Surely, it could not understand the synopses he provided. Yet it seemed to
listen raptly as he spoke. He knew he must be misinterpreting essentially
meaningless animal behavior, attributing complex intentions to the dog when it
had none. Still, a premonitory tingle coursed along the back of his neck. As
their peculiar search continued, Travis half-expected some startling revelation
at any moment—and at the same time felt increasingly gullible and foolish.
His taste in fiction was eclectic. Among the volumes he took off the shelves
were Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.
Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Two
books by Richard Condon and one by Anne
Tyler. Dorothy Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise and Elmore Leonard’s 52 Pick- Up.
At last the dog turned away from the books and went to the middle of the room,
where it padded back and forth, back and forth, clearly agitated. It stopped,
confronted Travis, and barked three times.
“What’s wrong, boy?”
The dog whined, looked at the laden shelves, walked in a circle, and peered up
at the books again. It seemed frustrated. Thoroughly, maddeningly frustrated.
“I don’t know what more to do, boy,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re after,
what you’re trying to tell me.”
The dog snorted and shook itself. Lowering its head in defeat, it returned
resignedly to the sofa and curled up on the cushions.
“That’s all?” Travis asked. “We’re just giving up?”
Putting its head down on the sofa, it regarded him with moist soulful eyes.
Travis turned from the dog and let his gaze travel slowly over the books, as if
they not only offered the information printed on their pages but also contained
an important message that could not be as easily read, as if their colorful
Spines were the strange runes of a long-lost language and, once deciphered,
would reveal wondrous secrets. But he could not decipher them.
Having believed that he was on the trembling edge of some great revelation,
Travis felt enormously let down. His own frustration was considerably worse than
what the dog had exhibited, and he could not merely curl up on the sofa, put his
head down, and forget the whole thing as the retriever had done.
“What the hell was that all about?” he demanded.
The dog looked up at him, inscrutable.
“Was there any point to all of that stuff with the books?”
The dog stared.
“Is there something special about you—or have I popped the pull-tab on my brain
and emptied it?”
The dog was perfectly limp and still, as if it might close its eyes at any
moment and doze off.
“If you yawn at me, damn you, I’ll kick your butt.”
The dog yawned.
“Bastard,” Travis said.
It yawned again.
“Now there. What does that mean? Are you yawning on purpose because of what I
said, because you’re playing with me? Or are you just yawning? How am Ito
interpret anything you do? How am Ito know whether any of it has meaning?”
The dog sighed.
With a sigh of his own, Travis went to one of the front windows and stared out
at the night, where the feathery fronds of the large Canary Island date palm