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Dead Dog

2024; Duke University Press; Volume: 2024; Issue: 102 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00265667-11047030

2157-4189

Patrick J. Zhou,

Gothic Literature and Media Analysis

My dad didn't leave his family and a government job just to bankroll two do-nothing American degrees. What was I going to do, be a pastor. He didn't work so hard—delivering pizzas to penny-tipping college students, hoarding stale bread from the Italian spot where he washed dishes—to see his one daughter struggle to find work after graduation. A desperate dog jumps the wall, he'd say in Chinese. It was a warning and I took it to mean he had to do whatever it takes. I had to do whatever it takes.And that's what I reminded myself as I lay on my back like a tipped cow. At the bottom of a hole. In the Shenandoah. Just do whatever it takes.An annoyingly shimmery mountainscape and smugly chirping canopy bluebirds taunted me while I scrambled from the pit that deep-sixed my pride. I resented the log I'd tripped over, the dirt clumps pressed into my nylon shorts and white t-shirt, the early morning walk I'd thought would ease my nerves. Maybe coming here was a bad idea after all. My one hope was that there'd be time to shower before anyone saw me.But there at Grady's cabin, on the deck overlooking the valley, a leggy blonde sprawled on a white plastic patio chair. Our university's navy-blue sweatpants and hoodie hugged her wiry frame. Gold aviators perched on her acne-less nose. She scrolled on her phone in an eczema-free hand and tilted an open can of rosé in the other. I checked my sports watch which, like my body, had yet to experience actual sport. It was half past nine.It was not the start to the weekend I imagined.At the end of every school year, our department chair, renowned religious scholar Elaine Grady, invited select first-year master's students to her cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The early summer getaway was a chance for the professor to bond with her most talented students, removed from the ivory tower, its crucible of publishing-and-perishing. Of mostly perishing. The one requirement was that students wouldn't be allowed to talk about their academic work, the religious studies department, or any business whatsoever. This was leisure time. So she said at least.The unspoken truth was that one retreat attendee would garner Grady's coveted recommendation for our university's Jefferson Fellowship—four-year funding for a PhD at a network of sister schools and the prestige that often fast-tracked someone to tenure. Every single Jefferson Fellow had attended the so-dubbed Grady Grind. My invitation, which came in a one-sentence, no-subject-line email, represented my best shot at a real career. And, having been Grady's graduate assistant, I figured I'd have the upper hand. That is, until I saw who else would be going.I wanted to dislike Hannah. I'd heard from a friend in admissions that one of the incoming master's students would be an Academic All-American volleyball player; that she was the only woman in her college's program; that her thesis, "Epiphanies: Taylor Swift as Modern-Day David and Her Lyrics as Psalm," was voted by her student government Most Interesting Sounding Thesis. She, according to her volleyball team website, was also pretty and blonde and six feet tall. Our struggling department was thirsty for anyone marketable, their actual qualifications be damned, and Hannah, with her frothy pop theology, was recruitment gold. Already accustomed to the rigor of our department and Grady's exacting standards, I was prepared to prove that Miss All America was just another dumb jock.Unfortunately, she wasn't. She was brilliant. And painfully cool.Hey, she said when she saw me looking all Pigpen clambering up the deck's creaky wood. I've got some boom-boom juice, do you want—whoa. Are you okay.I told her I was fine and that I tripped into a hole on my morning walk in the woods, a sentence even more humiliating than it sounds.Like a regular hole or like a trap, she said. Are we talking Most Dangerous Game here.I laughed and asked what a regular hole was and said that if Grady was hunting my dignity then mission accomplished.The professor left a note that she went into town to get food so I showered quickly and changed into a fresh long-sleeve shirt and a pair of old jeans. When I got back, I too lay out on an Adirondack and let Hannah coax me into a canned rosé while we waited for our host to return.I don't want to sound like a creeper, Hannah said. But I checked a bunch of the cupboards in the kitchen—empty. Except for condiments and trash bags.I'd seen it too. There weren't any personal photos or framed art. Only textbooks on the shelves and a crusty box of baking soda in the fridge.Do you think it's related to what she'll have us do, she said.Rumors circulated for years about what happened on the Grind. Whenever I asked past fellows, I could never get a straight answer. It was a game for them to spin the wildest tales of the weekend. Who could pluck more of Grady's nose hairs. Who could read the most Latin from her monkey-skin Gutenberg Bible. The Octagon. The inscrutable Grady, with her quirks and oddities, rendered it all plausible. And to see an immensely talented peer peel edgily at the label on her can while we talked about the fearful possibilities was a relief.Hannah was a motherhood-and-apple-pie type and peddled in a fluency she didn't know she had—the mastery of unspoken manners, her body language, references to the Andy Griffith Show. The more time I spent with confidence like Hannah's, the more I felt deficient, that there was some secret society code I didn't inherit from a father who spat fish bones on restaurant table cloths and asked regularly if I'd gained weight. Grady though, in her everlasting strangeness, didn't play by normal rules. And in that wilderness, the woods of her weirdness, my time might finally come.We got up, wines in hand, to look out over the vista. The forest was a green bowl in a valley walled by weathered stone. Late morning sun gleamed through the mountain mist into which we cast our favorite Grady Grind folklore: the secret mural of toenail clippings, her cucumbers pickled with student tears, the shrunken head of her mother hidden behind the complete works of Shel Silverstein.We finished our breakfast rosé and walked down the steps to the side of the cabin. Beside the trash cans lay a disheveled pile of tools. An old ladder. A shovel. A wrinkled blue tarp pinned down with rocks over, I don't know, firewood. Flies whirred around the heap. The garbage smelled like rotten hamburger so we held our breaths and clanked in our empties.A howl of rusty brakes announced Grady's return. I straightened my shirt. Hannah stuffed the sunglasses in her pocket and fixed her hair. We hustled around to the front to find Grady plodding up the gravel toward the cabin, a paper bag in both arms.Our professor's physical appearance belied her monumental stature. She was a little shorter than me, about five foot, with a vulture neck and hunched shoulders. Her sweater was brown, her peeling leather loafers were brown, and she sported a lop-sided, self-administered bowl cut of thin gray hairs. Behold, the almighty hag who held my fragile future in her tiny arthritic hands.Good morning, young women, she said. I have food.Despite my assistantship and having taken all her classes, I never learned to communicate with Grady beyond the transactional. She was intensely awkward. Her terse and stilted speech, dropping insanities like calling us young women, furthered her reputation as an utter inquisitor. Like your every word, every reaction to her Gradyness might divulge your truest substance, your moral quality. Then, during a mental debate whether she'd appreciate help or if it would offend her feminist sensibility, I belched. Loudly, echoey. I never drink in the mornings.Hannah graciously ignored me and swooped in to fold Grady's groceries into her massive wingspan like a mother eagle.Thank you, Grady said with no acknowledgment of my gassiness, thank God.We set up breakfast—bagels and assorted fruit—outside on a round metal table on the deck. The conversation, choppy with Grady's curt prose and vacant expressions, was unexpectedly smooth. The professor could make small talk. She asked how we slept and if we enjoyed the view. We asked how long she'd had the place and if she hiked.For a moment, I'd forgotten about the hallowed Grind. All those rumors about the weekend amounted to little more than a good-natured hazing. This was merely a harmless vacation with a run-of-the-mill weirdo.Young women, Grady said abruptly. Before we begin, one thing.I braced myself for our tear ducts to be drained, our toenails harvested.This cabin needs a proper clean, she said. Can you help.Before I could speak, Miss All America struck first again. Where do you want us to start, she said.I didn't like cleaning. It didn't spark joy for me, much less on a supposed retreat. Still, I had to keep my job. Even if I didn't win the Jefferson Fellowship, being Grady's assistant remitted most of my tuition and there was no guarantee she'd have me back next year. In Dad's words, I had to make the most of every golden opportunity. He'd remind me that if I had the same résumé as anyone else, they'd choose the name without strange consonants, the person who looked and sounded more relatable to them. To succeed, I would have to be more; harder work and better work—not good work—was the rod by which we'd be measured.Hence why, over the course of the last year, I ran Grady's eighties-era pantsuits to the dry cleaners. I brought one of her dining room chairs to get reupholstered and alphabetized her classical music CDs by composer. While Hannah, newly hired as Grady's other graduate assistant, got to grade papers or comfort freshmen weeping at her cubicle because of a Grady comment, I ignored the possibility that a supremely intelligent woman could relegate me to a docile Asian stereotype. I kept agreeing to do it, though, so there was that.I dipped my rag into a sudsy bucket and asked Hannah what she wanted to do after she finished her PhD.Ideally, she said, I want to teach at a small college and coach volleyball. It's what my dad did.Agonizing, how reasonable her aspirations were. Here was someone who could have done whatever she wanted and she had to compete with me.How do your parents feel about getting a degree in religious studies, Hannah said while polishing the kitchen counter.I was drawn to the department because the major acknowledged a world of universal and hidden truths. In class, we could ask fundamental questions that most of my friends didn't need answered. They'd never had to ask, What am I doing here, Where do I belong, Who is God, Whose am I. Most of them went right to buying stocks or pipetting into test tubes or expounding the geopolitics of World War II. I gravitated toward a world where there was some greater, more gracious Magic than I could ever devise or achieve, some universal Mystery, a cosmic comfort in the cloud of unknowing. A hope beyond what I could achieve.Life for my dad was more tactile. It was un-trifolding the overdue bills in the mail. It was assembling makeshift couches for us out of stuffed cardboard boxes and pillows. It was shoving pepper spray into my hands after watching news of Asian women getting harassed for bringing COVID to America and getting pushed in front of oncoming trains. It was asking if this was the better future he'd envisioned when he'd come. The urgency for me to succeed, the shouting matches we had in the kitchen, wasn't only about his love for me; it was about his validation as a good dad, as someone who'd sacrifice everything for his daughter to have a better life than he did. And he was afraid he'd made the wrong choice. That I'd made the wrong choices.Spitting out the soapy rag corner that fell into my mouth while I wiped the windows, I said that they were super supportive.After we washed windows and cleaned the kitchen, I vacuumed the carpet. Hannah dusted the sagging bookshelves. When our assignments weren't clear, we found another surface or corner to scrub or sponge. By late afternoon, I stood outside at the bottom of a rickety wooden ladder, my back sore, my stomach a void, spotting Hannah whose long limbs gave her better access to the gutters.I asked Hannah if she thought this was all some bizarre exam.She scooped out a cakey layer of rotted leaves and animal crap which landed with a squelch by my foot. My hand gloved, I cupped the debris into a black trash bag.Honestly, Hannah said, it feels like she wants us to be her maids. We should tell her we didn't come to be her help. Can't she get her own cleaning person.I nodded in complete agreement, but we both kept on. She'd get down. I'd move the ladder. She'd go back up. Despite our chumminess, these hollow tasks could have comprised the legendary Grind. We still vied for the same prize and, no matter how much we commiserated, neither she nor I forgot it. Grady could be watching. Nanny cams were a dime a dozen.Young women.Grady'd appeared out of thin air and surveyed the two us. I imagined what I must have looked like to her, waiting at the bottom to shovel gunk into a trash bag's open maw. A literal bottom-feeder. My dad was right. I wasn't taking this seriously enough. Not desperately enough.I will work on dinner, she said. Come in when you're done.When Grady was out of earshot, I asked Hannah if we could switch roles and, because of her natural charity, she obliged.My balance was awful so I had to be slower and more careful. My arms were stubby so we moved the ladder more often. Hannah, her stamina fortified by years of athletic training, had moved at a good clip. I, on the other hand, faded fast. With every shaky dip into a grimy gutter, I doubted. Was I here because I was capable and dedicated or was I here because I was willing to be someone else's token, some important person's drudge.The hard truth was that Hannah deserved this fellowship more than I did. I'd read her papers. She was sharper. I'd seen her in class, she was more poised and thoughtful. She was also kinder and more generous when she needed to be, more resolute and unyielding when she wanted. Hell, I'd vote for her to be the face of fusty, obscure, male-dominated academic theology. What I couldn't do was get myself to be happy for her. It was easier to be gracious when you have everything to give. Ultimately, Hannah could have excelled in any field, whereas I put all my eggs into this one flimsy basket. She may have earned this award, but I needed it. That had to count for something.By then, the sunset, lemony and unmisted, exposed how mucky and clammy I'd gotten, how much soap scum I'd smeared on my jeans and shirt. This entire day, on the trial I'd wanted and dreaded, we'd said a handful of sentences to our teacher and nothing about our professional interests. Though Hannah cleaned more effectively and cheerfully, while I channeled the spirit of Oscar the Grouch, this could not possibly be the basis on which our professor made such a consequential decision. Truly, truly.When our host announced dinner was ready, we returned the ladder to the side of the cabin, tossed the leafy refuse by the garbage cans, and, famished, I hustled upstairs for my second shower of the day. I put on my last set of clean clothes: a blouse I got from Macy's and the black pants I wore to the symposium last year. It seemed appropriate. The plan was to head back to campus after breakfast the next day so if she had anything serious planned, it would be at dinner.Outside, on the same patio table from breakfast, lay a revelation. Arugula and goat cheese, a seared salmon filet, and garlic roasted red bliss potatoes with caramelized onions. Grady had outdone herself. She, once again to our great surprise, flaunted her domestic humanity. Hannah, who'd put on eyeliner and a nice summery top, and I matched angled brows, impressed.Until then, it didn't occur to me that we both might secure recommendations for the fellowship. I'd heard two guys were co-recipients a few years before my time. This was, after all, the first retreat where Grady'd had two women, and here we were chatting and feasting like we'd earned our place at the mountaintop. We talked about our summer plans. The weather. As I devoured forkfuls of fish and salad, I couldn't believe I'd let the former fellows get to me, let their idiotic scare tactics shroud my better judgment.By the end of dessert, a warm evening gust passing over us and a mound of rocky road melting in my mouth, I felt the relief students ought to feel at the end of a school year. Like this excursion was a real retreat from an impractical discipline. At last.We cleared our plates and thanked Grady for the nice weekend.Young women, it's been a pleasure, she said. One last favor, though, before we lose light. Then we relax.This time, I was first. I asked her what she'd like us to do.We followed Grady down the back steps. Rounding the corner toward the side of the house, we waded into a stomach-churning odor. Maybe it was the stark contrast to dinner but the stench was unbearable. Grady sauntered toward the garbage cans but, instead of reaching for the lids, she bent toward a corner of the crumpled blue tarp. She picked up the stones at the corners and pulled it off.There, on the gravel, lay the carcass of a large dog. Flies hovered in and out of its gaping mouth, the paling gums stark, even in the slithering shadow of the cabin. Patches of inky and auburn fur were scraped off, baring lashes of red flesh and pus on its torso.Oh, God, Hannah said, before she ran back around the corner to retch.I stuttered but no words came out of my mouth. I couldn't avoid eye contact with it.It ran in front of my car last week, Grady said, marveling at the carcass like she'd never seen it before. I pulled into the driveway and pushed it onto this tarp to get it here. I need you to help me bury it. I'm not strong enough to get it farther.The normally self-assured Hannah slunk back toward us, her body withered and trembling.I inched closer to it. It was big like a German shepherd. Its claws were clipped, its hair was trimmed.I told Grady that this was probably someone's dog. I wondered if it'd once had a collar and if she'd removed it. I looked back at Hannah. Her mouth gaped, her pupils darted from the dog to Grady to me.Whose dog, our professor said Socratically, like we were in class, like a real answer could be given.I told her I didn't know and that we should tell somebody.Will you young women help me or not, she said. Like she asked us to post the syllabus.Before I could think, the words seeped out of my mouth. I told her I'd do it.Hannah stared at me, her pretty face sallow, lips torqued with disenchantment. She shook her head and stormed back into the cabin. Grady shrugged. Her haircut fluttered innocently like chimes in a breeze and she looked now only at me.Thank you, she said. Come in when you're done. I dug a hole down the path there. You can use the tarp but bring it back. It's my only one.This body broken must have weighed at least a hundred pounds. I put on the gloves we used for the gutters, gripped its cold, bony ankles and pulled it onto the tarp. Its body crackled over the gravel. Dirt and hairs rubbed onto my symposium blouse. The flies, a veil over my face. I mustered all the strength I had left to drag it back down the path I'd walked earlier that morning.I set it next to the hole and put my rubber-gloved hands on the stiffened torso. Sweat droplets streamed from my forehead onto the matted fur. I pushed slowly so as not to take the tarp down with it. When the body rolled over the edge, its limbs flailed and tumbled with soft thuds. The carcass lay motionless at the bottom, its face dug into the earth with sticks and rocks in its once-groomed fur.I used the log I'd tripped over to bulldoze a small mound of dirt in, to fill in as much as I could, again and again, until my pit was just a depressed patch. I jumped on it to pack it all down. Again and again until my legs turned gummy. With every stomp I reminded myself that I had to do what needed to get done, convincing myself that all my hard work, all my father's hard work, had led to a moment such as this. This was me, seizing my golden opportunity. Finally, desperate enough.I tramped back to the cabin. Dirty, teary, and spent, I lugged the tarp and listened to it scratch on the weeds and the rocks. There were no more milky sprinkles of sun, no more whispers of wind. The last day's light narrowed to a thin red needle on the horizon while the forest's grave and steady oaks groaned in quiet judgment.Grady propped upright on the newly vacuumed couch inside her cabin. Her brown sweater and brown loafers spotless, she gazed at the pages of a thick volume in her hands. A mug of tea steamed on her freshly polished end table. No sign of Hannah.That's better, Grady said. Good work today, would you like to join me.Half a day earlier, I would have seen this as my chance to make my case for the Jefferson. To seize this reward that Hannah failed to earn. But by then, I'd learned two things.When someone asks you to bury a dog they killed, they forfeit their sheen. The scales freshly felled from my eyes, I now saw a Grady exposed, small and brittle, a wisp with a serial-killer haircut. A graceless woman who played grievous games.Then when you agree to bury that dog, you prove more than you ever care to. You don't impress anyone so much as you impress upon yourself, until the husk falls away and all you see is the stuff you're made of, whatever savage you've got left. And you live with it. You've made it. And you know you're the one who survives.Elaine, I said. I'm going to sleep.I bounded up the steps and didn't look back. Hannah's bedroom door was closed and dark beneath the doorframe. I went into my room, chucked my clothes, and showered for the third time. It wasn't even nine yet, but, without any clean underwear left, I went to bed, naked.The next morning, I brushed off what I could from my pit-dirtied nylon shorts and t-shirt and came down for breakfast. Though Grady tried to make small talk again, I wasn't in the mood and neither was Hannah, who hadn't spoken since dinner. She slouched and kept her head down toward her day-old bagel and grimaced like she'd lost the championship game. And, for the first time, I pitied her. She didn't have what it takes.Grady said a few things but I didn't hear her. While I chewed on a crisp cold apple and slathered cream cheese on my second bagel, I brainstormed the yarn I'd spin for next year's slate of potential fellows and imagined soon holding in clean hands that acceptance letter bearing our university's letterhead.