False Memory

Give a nail gun to a carpenter from the preindustrial age, and although he might intuit that it was a tool, he would be unlikely to understand its purpose — until he accidentally fired a nail through his foot. The possibility of unintentionally causing psychological harm to his brother motivated Dusty to contemplate the haiku at length, until he understood the use of this tool, before deciding whether to explore further its effect on Skeet.

Missions.

To grasp the purpose of the haiku, he had to understand, at the very least, what Skeet had meant by missions.

Dusty was certain he precisely remembered the haiku and the kid’s odd interpretation, because he was blessed with a photographic and audio-retentive memory of such high reliability that he cruised through high school and one year of college with a perfect 4.0 grade average, before deciding that he could experience life more fully as a housepainter than as an academic.

Missions.

Dusty considered synonyms. Task. Work. Chore. Job. Calling. Vocation. Career Church.

None of them furthered his understanding.

From the big sheepskin pillow in the corner, Valet whimpered anxiously, as though the rabbits in his dreams had grown fangs and were now doing the dog’s work while he played rabbit in the chase.

Martie was too zonked to be roused by the dog’s thin squeals.

Sometimes, however, Valet’s nightmares escalated until he woke with a terrified bark.

“Easy boy. Easy boy,” Dusty whispered.

Even in dreams, the retriever seemed to hear his master’s voice, and his whimpering subsided.

“Easy. Good boy. Good Valet.”

Although the dog didn’t wake, his feathery plumed tail swished across the sheepskin a few times before curling close around him once more.

Martie and the dog slept on peacefully, but suddenly Dusty sat up from the pillows piled against the headboard, the very thought of sleep banished by a rattling insight. Mulling over the haiku, he’d been fully awake, but by comparison to this wide-eyed state, he might as well have been drowsing. He was now hyperalert, as cold as if he had ice water for spinal fluid.

He had been reminded of another moment with the dog, earlier in the day.

Valet stands in the kitchen, at the connecting door to the garage, ready to ride shotgun on the trip to Skeet's apartment, patiently fanning the air with his plumed tail while Dusty pulls on a hooded nylon jacket.

The phone rings. Someone peddling subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times.

When Dusty racks the wall phone after only a few seconds, be turns toward the door to the garage and discovers that Valet is no longer standing, but lying on his side at the threshold, as though ten minutes have passed, as if he has been napping.

“You had a shot of chicken protein, golden one. Let’s see some vigor”

With a long-suffering sigh, Valet gets to his feet.

Dusty was able to move through the scene in his mind’s eye as though it were three-dimensional, studying the golden retriever with acute attention to detail. Indeed, he could see the moment more clearly now than he’d seen it then: In retrospect the dog obviously, inarguably had been napping.

Even with his eidetic and audile memory, he could not recall whether the Times sales person had been a man or woman. He had no memory of what he had said on the phone or of what had been said to him, just a vague impression that he had been the target of a phone-sales campaign.

At the time, he had attributed his uncharacteristic memory lapse to stress. Taking a header off a roof, watching your brother suffer a breakdown before your eyes: This stuff was bound to mess with your mind.

If he had been on the phone five or ten minutes instead of a few seconds, however, he couldn’t possibly have been speaking with anyone in the Times subscription-sales operation. What the hell would they have talked about for so long? Typefaces? The cost of newsprint? Johannes Gutenberg — What a cool guy! — and the invention of movable type? The tremendous effectiveness of the Times as a puppy-training aid in Valet’s early days, its singular convenience, its remarkable absorbency, its admirable service as an environment-friendly and fully biodegradable poop wrap?