The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Robinson and Gandalf usually found Timlin sitting in one of the rockers on the wide front porch of his cottage (Veronica), reading a book or listening to his battery-powered CD player. Robinson would unclip the leash from Gandalf’s collar and the dog – just a mutt, no real recognizable brand except for the spaniel ears – raced up the steps to be made a fuss of. After a few strokes, Timlin would gently pull at the dog’s gray-white fur in various places, and when it remained rooted, he would always say the same thing: ‘Remarkable.’

On this fine day in mid-August, Gandalf only made a brief visit to Timlin’s rocker, sniffing at the man’s bare ankles before trotting back down the steps and into the woods. Timlin raised his hand to Robinson in the How gesture of an old-time movie Indian.

Robinson returned the compliment.

‘Want a beer?’ Timlin asked. ‘They’re cool. I just dragged them out of the lake.’

‘Would today’s tipple be Old Shitty or Green Mountain Dew?’

‘Neither. There was a case of Budweiser in the storeroom. The King of Beers, as you may remember. I liberated it.’

‘In that case, I’ll be happy to join you.’

Timlin got up with a grunt and went inside, rocking slightly from side to side. Arthritis had mounted a sneak attack on his hips two years ago, he had told Robinson, and, not content with that, had decided to lay claim to his ankles. Robinson had never asked, but judged Timlin to be in his mid-seventies. His slim body suggested a life of fitness, but fitness was now beginning to fail. Robinson himself had never felt physically better in his life, which was ironic considering how little he now had to live for. Timlin certainly didn’t need him, although the old guy was congenial enough. As this preternaturally beautiful summer wound down, only Gandalf actually needed him. Which was okay, because for now, Gandalf was enough.

Just a boy and his dog, he thought.

Said dog had emerged from the woods in mid-June, thin and bedraggled, his coat snarled with burdock strickers and with a deep scratch across his snout. Robinson had been lying in the guest bedroom (he could not bear to sleep in the bed he had shared with Diana), sleepless with grief and depression, aware that he was edging closer and closer to just giving up and pulling the pin. He would have called such an action cowardly only weeks before, but had since come to recognize several undeniable facts. The pain would not stop. The grief would not stop. And, of course, his life was not apt to be a long one in any case. You only had to smell the decaying animals in the woods to know what lay ahead.

He’d heard rattling sounds, and at first thought it might be a human being. Or a surviving bear that had smelled his food. But the gennie was still running then, and in the glare of the motion lights that illuminated the driveway he had seen a little gray dog, alternately scratching at the door and then huddling on the porch. When Robinson opened the door, the dog at first backed away, ears back and tail tucked.

‘I guess you better come in,’ Robinson had said, and without much further hesitation, the dog did.

Robinson gave him a bowl of water, which he lapped furiously, and then a can of Prudence corned beef hash, which he ate in five or six snaffling bites. When the dog finished, Robinson stroked him, hoping he wouldn’t be bitten. Instead of biting, the dog licked his hand.

‘You’re Gandalf,’ Robinson had said. ‘Gandalf the Grey.’ And then burst into tears. He tried to tell himself he was being ridiculous, but he wasn’t. He was no longer alone in the house.

‘What news about that motorhuckle of yours?’ Timlin asked.

They had progressed to their second beers. When Robinson finished his, he and Gandalf would make the two-mile walk back to the house. He didn’t want to wait too long; the mosquitoes got thicker when twilight came.

If Timlin’s right, he thought, the bloodsuckers will inherit the earth instead of the meek. If they can find any blood to suck, that is.

‘The battery’s dead,’ he told Timlin. Then: ‘My wife made me promise to sell the bike when I was fifty. She said after fifty, a man’s reflexes are too slow to be safe.’

‘And you’re fifty when?’

‘Next year,’ Robinson said. And laughed at the absurdity of it.

‘I lost a tooth this morning,’ Timlin said. ‘Might mean nothing at my age, but …’

‘Seeing any blood in the toilet bowl?’

Timlin had told him that was one of the first signs of advanced radiation poisoning, and he knew a lot more about it than Robinson did. What Robinson knew was that his wife and daughter had been in Boston when the frantic Geneva peace talks had gone up in a nuclear flash on the fifth of June, and they were still in Boston the next day, when the world killed itself. The eastern seaboard of America, from Hartford to Miami, was now mostly slag.

‘I’m going to take the Fifth Amendment on that,’ Timlin said. ‘Here comes your dog. Better check his paws – he’s limping a bit. Looks like the rear left.’