Blogatron

The Dog Lady

Please indulge Blogatron while we serve up a helping of total fiction! Read on...

"Sometimes, the most innocent actions are the ones that lead to years of therapy bills." Was ever a truer sentence spoken? With this adage in mind, huddle round the fire, children, and let Grandma Hilatron relate the tale of The Dog Lady.

It was on a bright autumn day that I set out with my mother and a high school friend on what was supposed to be a lighthearted junk store excursion. I was just a young slip of a robot then, innocent to the ways of the world, and painfully unaware of how easy it is to slip off the path of sanity and into a dimension of surreality, terror, and Stephen King cliches. However, the veil was soon to fall from my sensors...

Laughing and chattering, my friend Nora and I were excited to be getting away from our boarding school for an afternoon jaunt. Adolescent power struggles with my mother were left behind as she joined in the conversation, and all seemed right with the world. Our first few stops were uneventful: experienced junk-store shoppers both, my mom and I were quick to spot the likeliest prospects by their dusty windows, dim lighting, and physics-defying ability to stack vast quantities of broken oddities. The beginning of our trip seems so distant, given what followed, that it's hard to recall what our purchases were, but I believe I picked up a nonfunctional fountain pen, while Nora considered and rejected several tailcoats in an attempt to complete her winter ensemble, the fashion in our circle being a sort of "Mad Max meets Cabaret" look at the time.

It was after our third stop, I believe, that we spotted the first sign. We had been considering heading back into town for an afternoon snack, but when we saw the weathered wooden board which read "DL Collectibles - 1 Mi." in faded, wobbly lettering, we decided to investigate further. Innocent actions, remember.

We saw the second sign shortly thereafter, directing us to turn onto a slightly less well-traveled road. Strangely, this sign also told us that we had but 1 Mi. to go. Filled with the spirit of adventure, we were happy to take the scenic route: the foliage was beautiful, the day was young, and we were full of vigor.

We passed sign after sign for "DL Collectibles," each more faded than the last, each promising that we would arrive in just 1 Mi. The adventure was becoming less fun and more damaging to our old station wagon's suspension with each turnoff, as our route led us from paved road to neglected rural route to, finally, a hilly, swerving dirt road that hadn't seen a maintenance crew in years. But, like burgeoning cult members, we had come too far by now to give up. Surely, sometime soon, we would traverse that last 1 Mi. and reach our destination.

Then we saw it - the next sign we passed promised "DL Collectibles Next Right!" A few more spine-jarring bumps and curves, and we spotted the turnoff, marked by the biggest, oldest, least legible sign yet:

DOG
LOVERS
COLLECTIBLES

We were somewhat taken aback, having assumed all this time that the "DL" stood for the owner's initials or something equally innocuous. But perhaps this was a small business which donated its profits to the ASPCA, or the like. It seemed plausible. And so we carried on, still in good spirits, if somewhat tired from our long journey.

The drive was narrow, and the overhanging autumn trees seemed less vibrant than those on the main road, giving it a dark, oppressive quality. We quieted, perhaps sensing that we were entering a dim, claustrophobic kingdom. The silence of the countryside grew charged; no longer peaceful, it seemed instead to be waiting. The crunching of tires over gravel was shockingly loud. "They might not even be open anymore. Those signs looked pretty old," said Nora, and it was hard to say if disappointment or hope was the dominant tone.

The relief we felt upon emerging from the driveway into a small yard evaporated as we took in our surroundings. The overhanging trees receded only slightly, admitting a wan light that filled the clearing with a sickly orange glow. We were in a dirty, unkempt lot filled with odd bits of junk, a rotting car or two, and a sad enclosure bordered in half-demolished chicken wire, which might once have housed dog kennels. Clearly Dog Lovers Collectibles had seen better days. To the right, across an expanse of mangy lawn, a one-story white clapboard house moldered in the dampened sunlight. At the end of the cracked walkway, a wooden pole held the final "DL Collectibles" placard. Below it, a red and white store-bought "OPEN" sign dangled from a nail.

Warily, we opened the dusty screen door and peered into a dim cavern filled from top to bottom with stuff. We stepped into the overheated room, wrinkling our noses at a smell that was both musty and strangely feral, and called "Hello?" uncertainly into the crowded darkness.

There was a rustling from the back of the house, followed by a series of scrabbling and thudding noises. We might have heard someone say "Shush, now." A door slammed. Finally, from a dimly glimpsed doorway at the back of the room, a figure emerged. Short and fragile, clothed in fuzzy, shapeless shades of brown and gray, she seemed to have been overtaken by the same dry decay that affected the house and grounds. But where her presence was unimposing, her voice cracked sharply across the room. "Let me get a light on for you," she grated, switching on a lamp that bathed the room in the same sickly pallor cast by the trees outside.

We took in our surroundings. The front room of the little house had been converted into a serviceable junk shop by the addition of several rickety old bookcases and a mammoth glass display counter that stood between us and our proprietor. Behind her, a long hallway led off to the rest of the house. All around us were the usual items: an umbrella stand with canes and parasols, piles of cracked old books, prints and memorabilia jostling for space on the walls, luggage leaning in precarious heaps on the floor.

Leaning over, I peered into the display case to examine a pin adorned with a silver Scottish terrier. Next to it was a medal: Best in Show, Dartmouth, NH, 1969. My mother examined the canes; all had handles shaped like dogs' heads. Nora flipped through a shoebox of old postcards. They all pictured dogs. Gazing around, we realized that each and every item in the shop was dog-related. The three of us looked at each other, telegraphing "This isn't for us, let's go now." It was then that The Dog Lady spoke.

"You folks like dogs?" She didn't wait for an answer, but started on a nonstop monologue about the wonders of dogs, her favorite breeds, the strengths and weaknesses of each. Greyhounds were beautiful but too fussy, only good for showing or racing - "not that I approve of that;" retrievers were a good breed, easy to train, real people dogs. But The Dog Lady's favorites were the small dogs - terriers, toy poodles and the like.

If only we had listened to that key piece of information.

As we listened and nodded, adhering to the junk store tenet that you must listen to at least five minutes of soliloquy if you enter a place of business, we continued to browse. As I wandered deeper into the room, the finds got stranger, and more ominous. An ancient stuffed Snoopy, stained, one ear chewed off. Creased, obviously used wrapping paper adorned with cartoon poodles. A wicker dog bed, one side crushed, with coarse white fur still covering the flannel blanket inside. A newspaper article about the best food for your dog's teeth and nails, in a broken frame. What we had here was not a collector, but an obsessor. Clearly, this woman had saved every single dog-related item that had ever entered her possession, and she was not capable of judging what was saleable and what was junk. To her, it was all precious.

We tried not to show fear. As normally as we could, we made polite noises. "Gee, we should really be going" had no effect; "Well, thank you very much for your time" prompted The Dog Lady to offer to open up the display case so we could get a better look at her collection of leashes ("Real leather!"). The more we pressed to leave, the sharper her voice got, the brighter her colorless eyes gleamed. The heat and smell in the room seemed to increase with each minute that passed, and a buzzing noise in my head drowned out everything but The Dog Lady's voice, going on and on. I heard Nora gasp, "I think I'll just wait outside," and then the door slammed and my mother and I were alone with The Dog Lady. It was then, in a last-ditch effort to extricate us both, that I made my mistake.

"You know, I'm really more of a cat person, actually..."

The Dog Lady, who until now had taken little notice of anything we said, fell silent. She looked sharply up from the box of unlabeled dog show videotapes she had been offering us for $0.50 apiece. Her eyes glowed with a new alertness, her head cocked to the side, and she considered me like a new and interesting kind of dinner, teeth bared slightly. She breathed in, deeply.

"Uh - that is - I mean, I like dogs. I like them fine. It's just that I've always had cats, you know, and -"

"Cats!" she retorted. "Can't train cats, can't even get cats to answer to their own name!" She was edging closer to me now, her sharp little nose thrusting toward me, as I tried to unobtrusively get a large brass sculpture of a Doberman between her and me. She was smiling incongruously, but looked at me with dead eyes as she continued her anti-cat monologue. Backpedaling as fast as I could, I tried to placate her.

"Well, they always say you don't own the cat, the cat owns you, ha ha ha, no accounting for taste..." The cliches spilled out of me as I made a panicked retreat towards the door. From the other corner of my eye, I saw my mother making for the exit as well. My technique was doing little good, as every time I said the word "cat" I could see The Dog Lady flinch and stiffen a little more.

Then suddenly, just as I was ready to break into a full run, manners be damned, she stopped. A genuine smile appeared on her face and she seemed to relax. Wary, but hoping that the storm had passed, we paused in our surreptitious flight.

"You know, I bet you like dogs more than you think you do," she grinned, her manner suddenly coy and conciliatory. "I'll bet I can change your minds." My mother and I glanced at each other - no idea where this was heading. The Dog Lady started heading toward the back of the room, maneuvering behind the counter as she talked at us over her shoulder. "If you just see how cute they are -" she opened a door and disappeared into the darkness "- you'll find out you're dog people after all. Wait till you see -" a light switched on in the hallway "- my babies!"

From the depths of the house, we heard a scraping noise, and then a repeat of the thudding and skittering from earlier. There was movement in the dark room beyond the hall. Then, they came.

I don't know how many there were. My horrified eyes took in what looked like a sea of bedraggled fur, brown and black and gray and white, knee-high and moving toward us. The scrabbling noise we had heard was hundreds of little nails on the hardwood floor as The Dog Lady's "babies" - dozens of lapdogs of all varieties - ran full-speed across the room. The thudding was their little tails whacking each other and everything else in sight in their overwhelming excitement. Upon rounding the counter, they sighted us. They paused for a second, then let out a yipping, howling racket that could probably be heard out on the main road, and headed straight for us. I don't know how long they had been locked in the dark recesses of that house. They were terrible in their joy.

To this day, I don't know what would have happened if we'd stayed there. I can't say for sure that we would have disappeared forever, smothered under a damp blanket of canine exuberance, our last earthly sight the gleaming teeth of The Dog Lady as she crowed, "See! I knew you were Dog People." But at the time, I saw good reason to fear for my life. Judging by the way she set the land speed record in grabbing me by the elbow and making for the car, my mom felt the same way. Shouting for Nora to "hurry up dammit," we piled in and wasted no time in peeling out of the dreary yard and back towards civilization. As we left, I looked back to see The Dog Lady waving and shouting, surrounded by a leaping, wiggling heap of dogs. Maybe she said "Thanks for stopping by!" Maybe she said "Sic 'em!" I'm not certain. All I know is, I feel lucky that I'm here to tell you about it.

Oh, and be careful around Nora - she doesn't respond well to the phrase "let's go antiqueing" anymore.

Posted by hilatron at April 22, 2003 05:11 PM