The Eyes and the Impossible, page 7
“I’ll get your paws through first,” Angus said, and helped me disentangle my claws. He pulled one paw through and then the other.
“The head part is funny,” he said. “It’s so thin, and your head is so big,” he said, laughing. “I wonder what kind of dog used to wear this. It must have had a tiny noggin!”
“Can we get on with it?” I asked.
“Did you say something?” he asked. “I can’t understand you under all that sweater.”
The opening for my head was indeed very small. Angus had to pull on it from various sides, widening the gap.
“Try pushing through now,” he said, and I tried. I made no progress.
“You must have some pit bull in you,” he said. “Only pit bulls have such huge heads.”
Angus had Yolanda grab one side of the sweater, and Bertrand grabbed another side, and Angus pulled himself, and we heard a tiny ripping sound.
“Oh no!” Yolanda said.
“Don’t worry. We’re just stretching it,” Angus said.
They continued stretching until Angus was satisfied.
“Try again now,” he said, and I pushed, and with my snout I could finally feel the cool air outside. I pushed and pushed, and Angus continued to make adjustments, squeezing out one ear and then the other, until I could see again, and soon enough my head was through.
“You’re in the world again!” Bertrand said, and laughed. “But didn’t you have a tail before?”
Angus scrambled to the back of me and pulled my tail through the horrifying little hole meant for tails.
“That’s better,” he said.
It was not better. The sweater was a wretched thing. It scratched me everywhere, like I was enclosed in a thicket of dried weeds. And though I could see, this was not a plus, for now I knew that about fifteen birds and animals were gathered around me—where had they come from?—and many of them were fighting back their laughter. When Angus put the collar on, their barely held laughter escaped in tiny squeaks and sighs.
“Very dignified,” Yolanda said, covering her mouth with her great gray wing.
This sweater was a terrible thing for me. I felt very bad, very ashamed, very much like I wanted to be deep in my hollow, alone and in the dark. But then Bertrand did the kind of thing he was known for doing—a wise, rational, convincing and impossible-to-debate thing.
He brought over a piece of glass. The animals of the park had grown accustomed to glass. We saw it on the buildings, the cars, the windows of the homes that bordered the park. We knew we could see ourselves in the glass, and so our reflections were not foreign to us. We knew what we looked like. For instance, I knew, before this day, that I was a breathtaking paragon of muscle and speed.
And now, when Bertrand brought a piece of glass before me—he’d planned it! he’d planned it!—I knew I was a ridiculous clown-dog clad in pink and fake diamonds.
“It will work,” Bertrand said.
EIGHTEEN
None of us knew what would happen. Would I actually blend into the world of humans and kept dogs? The sweater covered most of my dappled coloring, disguising me, but I was still the size and shape of the dog they were looking for.
Bertrand decided to stick to the original plan, with him flying overhead and keeping track of me and any approaching problems. If he saw vehicles or humans pursuing me in any way, he’d swoop down and let me know.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I am,” I said.
He flew up and caught a thermal and floated above me like a guardian cloud. “Get going,” he yelled down to me.
I began. I took the earth under me and sent it into the past. I did it again and again, taking the future and tossing it backward, and soon my eyes were glassy with cold speed and I was flying. I broke the speed of foxes and rabbits and kept going. I entered the speed of sound and broke it like a cheap toy. When I was flying across the picnic fields and could see the windmill and could smell the salty ocean, I became light itself.
When I slowed down I realized I’d crossed the highway and was already in the oceanside sand and could feel the surf on my toes. If I hadn’t stopped then I think I would have flown across the surface of the sea. I made a note to try that another time, and I smiled. I laughed. I could still run. I looked up and saw Bertrand hovering up near the Sun.
“So far so good,” he said.
You are wondering about the sweater. You are wondering if the sweater altered my running ability, or my ability to reach the speed of light by throwing the future into the past and being the mechanism that turns the world.
I am here to tell you that it did not affect this ability, and I have to give credit to whatever human loons had designed and made this garment. For years I—and every free animal I knew—made glorious fun of these sweaters, and looked with pity upon the dogs who wore them.
But now that I had run in one, I knew that it did not inhibit my movement. It warmed my body, which I appreciated, especially when I got close to the sea, where the wind often cut through me with sharp chilled fingers. In all, I was able to run just as well as before, and was warmer than ever. Not bad.
But it still looked ludicrous, and the collar was an insult to all that was dignified and right.
I ran more, and ran along the water till the beach ended at the great jagged boulder, and ran the other way, till the beach ended at the high white cliffs, and to see how fast I could move up slanted sand, I darted up the cliffs and found myself almost bumping into Bertrand. He was perched on the cliff, staring out over the sea.
“Coda,” he said.
I followed his stare and found the tiny silhouette of a seagull soaring high, crossing the Sun in ever-higher ellipses.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Louis,” he said. Louis had contracted some kind of illness, something the gulls got, and soon would be unable to fly. So he was taking this final flight before he lost the ability altogether. “Look how beautiful!” Bertrand sighed.
I said nothing. I did not and do not approve of this thing they do. They consider this act—coda, they call it—full of honor and heroism and sacrifice, but I consider it self-indulgent and silly and unnecessary and grim. When a gull is getting very old, or if they have sustained an injury or illness that will prevent them from flying again, that gull decides on a time and place for their final flight. The coda—their last time on earth. Even if they’ve been wounded grievously, and can barely flap their wings, they will manage one last flight. They go out to sea, and they fly high, as high as they can manage, and they circle if they can, and then, when they reach their apex, when they feel the heat of the Sun—the warming touch of God—they let go. They let go, and spiral down, and give themselves up to gravity and the water, and when they hit the surface of the sea, that is that. That is the end of them.
This is what Louis was about to do. He was flying higher, his ellipses ever-more melancholy, and Bertrand thought this was just wonderful.
“It’s wonderful,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s the way I’ll do it when I do it.”
I turned away from Louis and his coda, not wanting to see the last of it, and I ran down the cliff and down the beach. Bertrand is my brother, and we know each other and agree on most things, but this coda-madness I cannot abide.
Wonderful? No. Heroic? Not a chance. There is no reason the gulls cannot go on living even after losing their ability to fly. They can walk—they walk very quickly and well—and they can find food, and can talk and see and enjoy just about everything about this singular and precious life.
But they see their loss of flight as a loss of face, a shameful thing that embarrasses not only themselves but their species. They call it dishonor, and for a million years they have done this, this terrible coda, and I cannot look and will not look. I don’t approve and won’t watch.
* * *
—
When I ran back into the park, I took another way, hoping to see the roller-skaters and the Cape, but as I got closer I saw more cars and humans than I’d ever seen before in the park. I was running just below the speed of sound, so it was hard for me to count, but I would say there were at least twelve and a half million people there, all around the new building. There was some kind of band, and there were many smells of many foods, and there were millions of children—maybe nine million?—and umbrellas of a thousand colors, and I thought I had to stop or at least slow down so I could see what this was all about.
But there was no place safe where I could sit and watch. There were no trustable woods with a view of the building’s entrance. I could take my usual spot at the back door where I’d seen the giant impossible pictures enter, but that was quite removed from all of this, all of these people and excitement. I circled the building at the speed of a jet and thought about this, about how to get a bit closer. So many of the humans present had their dogs with them, all of them on their leashes, and so many wearing those silly sweaters—
Oh! I thought. Oh! Oh! For a moment I had forgotten that I, too, was wearing a sweater. I laughed to myself about this.
Ha ha hoooooo!
With so many kept dogs and so many of them silly-sweatered, I could blend in, even though I had no leash and no keeper.
I slowed to the speed of the fastest car and got a better look at the plaza. I looked for Control-the-Animals people and found none. I looked for wary-looking Parks People and found none. The event was festive and crowded and no one, I was sure, was there looking for me. I slowed to the speed of a slower car and swung into the crowd.
“Museum’s open,” a voice said above me.
It was Bertrand. He was doing that thing where he flies right above me such that I can’t see him. No matter where I craned my neck, he would float left or right so I couldn’t see him. He thought this was the height of all worldly hilarity.
“Stop that,” I said.
“Stop what?” he asked, still invisible to me.
I didn’t know how he could be so playful and wry after seeing Louis’s coda, but again, this particular gull-madness eluded me and I have chosen not to try to understand it.
“Go away,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, and floated near my shoulder. “Looks like they’re opening the building. Now all the people can go in there and see those crazy rectangles you like.”
I couldn’t go in, I knew.
He knew, too.
“But there’s a couple rectangles visible from the outside,” he said. “There’s a giant window and they have a few big ones, bigger than a bush, hanging in the front there. You’ll see.”
I went to see, and I saw.
There were two, and they looked nothing alike. They didn’t look like the same species could have done them both. The one on the left was like the ones I’d seen before, in that there were things I recognized. There was a jagged boulder, though it seemed to be upside down, balancing precariously. There were a hundred or so people, and most were chartreuse. There were roads, and there was a giant chicken being ridden by a man with the head of a chicken. There were a hundred other things in the picture, and I couldn’t see them all, because there were so many slow-moving people near the painting. I was not surprised by this—it was a tremendous picture—but it was annoying, too, to have it so difficult to take it all in.
The one on the right had no things in it, nothing I could place in the world. It was just colors and shapes. There were stripes, and ovals, and I think there might have been a triangle. And then half the painting seemed to have been dipped in midnight. It was a liquid darkness that took me in and I became part of it, living inside it. I found it very confusing and mesmerizing, too, and I was staring at it—it was messing with my mind, to be honest—when I felt the flapping of wings near me. It was Bertrand. He landed near me and, for the sake of the humans nearby, he pretended to eat some popcorn on the grass.
“Move on,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “You’re being noticed.”
I broke the spell of the picture and looked around. Several humans were looking at me; they’d noticed me hypnotized by the picture.
“Check out the dog who likes art,” one said. Another was taking photos.
“Pretend like you’re waiting for your owner,” Bertrand muttered out of the side of his beak.
I looked toward the front door and whined a bit, like a kept and needy dog would. A woman in a uniform, who I assumed was attached to the museum, started walking toward me.
“Time to move,” Bertrand said, and flew ahead.
I trotted away from the museum, but found myself among more humans than I’d ever seen. I weaved between legs, always watching every which way, tingling with a fear that one of them would have a leash and would leash me with it.
Finally I got clear of the throng and was in the open grass in front of the white-glass cathedral of flowers.
“There he is,” a different voice said. I turned to find a Control-the-Animals person approaching me from behind, with—with—with—
A leash!
Another leash.
There was another Control-the-Animals person in front of me. They were converging on me, one with a piece of paper bearing an image of a dog. It was me!
I ran before I could think. I ran like the birth of the universe. I left the open park and entered the darkness of the woods and wove through the trees as a swallow would, as a hummingbird would, and I did not slow until I was sure there could be no one near, no one who could have followed, and finally I arrived at my hollow, where Bertrand was waiting.
“I think we have a problem,” he said.
“Yes we do,” I said.
“The sweater helps a little,” he said, “but those rectangles still get you in such a trance that you’re putting yourself in some serious danger. And I’m saying that as your friend. The way you were looking at those rectangles was concerning. You zoned out to the point where you could have easily been leashed again. Or caught by the Control-the-Animals people. Or—”
“I know, I know,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I was embarrassed and I was concerned, too.
“But listen,” Bertrand said. “We’re going to get you into that building. I don’t mean while humans are there. I mean sometime when it’s empty and you can take it all in without attracting attention and endangering yourself.”
I didn’t know if this was a good idea or a horrible one, but I was intrigued. “I’m sorry to put you guys through all this,” I said.
“It’s nothing,” Bertrand said. “What else are we supposed to do? Eat pieces of bread and french fries all day? We need some kind of higher purpose. And maybe that higher purpose is keeping you from harm, and getting you into that weird building with all the demented rectangles.”
NINETEEN
For the next week Bertrand and his gull-friends did what they called reconnaissance. It meant they flew and hopped around the museum and then gathered outside my hollow and used their beaks to sketch their ideas to get me inside. They squabbled among each other, and flapped their wings haughtily—they did this to make their points, and their passions, known—and then they left again, to gather more information.
Meanwhile I was told to stay unseen. The rescue at the peanut-pond had brought unwanted attention, and then my staring at the pictures through the museum window, even while wearing the pink sweater, had made it worse.
“There is talk,” Bertrand said, “about this unusual dog in the park. Or unusual dogs, plural,” he added. “No one is sure whether it’s one dog, or two, or a whole herd of eccentric and sometimes-heroic dogs who sometimes wear sweaters. But there is curiosity out there. And it’s best that you stay out of sight for another few days.”
So I did.
I stayed in my hollow and slept. I lost track of days. I dreamed while awake and was awake while dreaming. I slept so much I thought I’d forget how to wake up. But then, two or two hundred days later, Bertrand woke me at my hollow one pink morning.
“Okay,” he said. “We have a plan. We’re getting you into that building.”
“It’s a pretty good plan,” Yolanda said. I had not noticed Yolanda was there. Now I saw that everyone was there—Sonja, too, and Angus, and everyone seemed excited about this plan.
“It could work,” Angus said. I was surprised to see Angus awake in the morning, and more surprised to see he had a few other raccoons with him, too—including Johnson and Sharif. They were crafty and experienced with getting in and out of places they were not meant to be.
And nocturnal as they were, they all looked shockingly awake. They were smiling with clenched teeth and unblinking eyes. I didn’t want to know what they thought, but it was clear they were less optimistic than the birds. They were there out of a sense of duty, but their opinion about the plan seemed iffy.
“It’s an interesting plan,” Sharif added finally.
This is a thing with raccoons. They think their plans are better—always better—but then they offer no such better plans. Instead, they squint a bit, smirk a bit, as other animals explain their plans. And then the raccoons go along with these plans, because they have no plans of their own. It is an ongoing thing that is maddening if you think about it too much.
“The signs say the museum is open every day but Monday,” Yolanda said. “So Monday’s the day. One woman comes in the morning and opens the building.”
“From the loading side,” Bertrand added.
“We’re assuming she shuts down the alarm,” Yolanda said. “So once that happens, we’re halfway there. All day there are cleaners and workers who come and go from that same door. It’s propped open from time to time, too.”
“It’s very accessible,” Sonja added. “Weirdly easy.”
