Shaper Page 4

  Chad had heard dozens of times the story of V’s childhood epiphany. He mouthed the words as she spoke them: “When I went out to feed him, there was the hole he’d dug, just the way I’d seen it in my dream. He loved his hole.”

  Bun whisked in and out of his new hole a hundred times a day, showing many signs of rabbit pride. “About a week later I dreamed he’d filled the hole in. This time I mentioned my dream to Mom and Dad at breakfast. When I went out to feed Bun, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He had filled his hole in and patted the ground smooth on top of it, and he was lying there looking terribly grumpy.” This was the point in the story where V made her eyes round and still. “He never dug a hole again!”

  “I don’t know what it meant to him”—Chad finished for his aunt—“but for me it meant that dreams were true, that I should trust my insights.” Louise’s gaze was directed across the table. She had a small, secret smile on her mouth. Chad wanted to curl up like a caterpillar.

  Now V would start telling about her life as an animal communicator, and Louise would think, as many people did, Mom among them, that she was a complete fake. Chad didn’t think that, but he didn’t think this story showed the trustworthiness of dreams either. The story was true; it was also silly. It said, “Sometimes dreams can show you something. Don’t build too much on it.”

  Ask! he thought at David. That was all he wanted: David to ask, Mom to say yes, and the two groups to separate, he going downhill with David and Louise, his family staying.

  Louise, he suddenly realized, was playing peekaboo with Sky. She’d catch his eye, then move her head a little, disappearing behind the lemonade pitcher. Out again: peek. Sky’s laughter squealed, and Louise put a finger to her lips. Sky’s eyes got even brighter, and his laugh went whispery.

  At least Louise wasn’t listening to V, and nothing else awful was happening. Queenie whined. For lack of anything else to do Chad gave her half a hot dog roll.

  “Oh, good!”

  V’s voice cut across the other conversations. She gazed at Chad intensely. When V looked at you that way, you felt seen, as if no one else had ever seen you before.

  He wanted to slide under the table.

  “You’re getting over it! Queen is so happy. She knows it’s not her fault, but she’s been waiting—”

  “V!” Mom said. Her face was red.

  “Do you know how to skip?” Louise asked Sky, in the sudden silence around the table. “Come on, I’ll teach you!” She and Sky headed across the yard, hand in hand.

  V said, “Let it in, Chad. Let her love into your heart.”

  Chad felt hot and blinded, as if the sun had leaned down out of the sky at him. “Excuse me,” he started to say, and he was pushing back from the table when V said, “Shep says it’s all right. He wants you to love another dog. He fulfilled his mission on earth with you, and now—”

  “V, cut it out!” That was Gib, sharp and angry. Chad couldn’t move.

  “He needs to know!” V said. “Shep doesn’t blame anyone, Chad. It was his time. If he hadn’t gone with Julia that day, it would have happened some other way. And he certainly doesn’t blame your grand—”

  Slap! Jeep’s hand smacked hard on the table. Everyone looked at him, but he didn’t say anything, just got up and walked toward the barn. Julia ran after him. She was crying.

  “Well done, V!” Mom said. “It’s too bad we all aren’t as sensitive as you are!”

  “My gift demands honesty—”

  “Honesty! I’ll give you honesty!”

  Gib said to David, “Ironically, we invited you up here to see if you’re fit to be our son’s employer! I’m sorry—”

  “No need!” David said. “What I want Chad to do—”

  “You should know what this is all about,” Gib said, overrunning David’s voice. Chad couldn’t move. His skin felt hot, and his insides cold. If anyone touched him, he would shatter.

  “… Chad’s dog,” Gib was saying. “Julia took him out with her on a ride, which she wasn’t supposed to do, and he was hit by a car. My father-in-law came along a few minutes later and put the animal out of his misery. Chad—”

  “I’ll be experimenting on Chad,” David said loudly. It stopped Gib from talking and Mom and V from bickering. Even Helen stared. “I’m working on certain teaching principles, and I need someone to teach them to, to see if they’re … well, teachable. So I can’t say too much more without giving the show away. It’s games, nothing dangerous. But the cat and horse have graduate degrees in my methods, and Louise …” He seemed to run out of words for a moment. The hamburgers sizzled on the grill. Far off, Chad heard Sky’s voice. He could move, he found. He could turn his head and see them, tall Louise and little Sky, skipping hand in hand.

  “I’ll pay him a dollar above minimum wage,” David said suddenly. He sounded slightly desperate. “That’s what—Anyway, what is minimum nowadays?”

  Gib stirred. “It’s a pretty good wage for fourteen years old!”

  Helen said, “The burgers are ready. V, ring that dinner bell!”

  Unlike in a book or a movie, the scene didn’t fade to blankness just because it had been embarrassing. They had to sit down together. They had to get over it.

  They had to eat the hamburgers that had been last year’s slow-witted steer, the one that had liked to lick Jeep’s face. Chad remembered Jeep out there on fall mornings, guarding the steer so the horse and the old cow didn’t steal its grain, the steer reaching cautiously toward Jeep’s chin with a long tongue, the white gleam of Jeep’s teeth, morning mist.

  Then one morning, when the head had gone into the grain pail, a bullet behind the ear, and now hamburgers on the grill, hay in the barn, a new steer in the pasture, and a new young calf at the cow’s side.

  Later, after David had arranged for Chad to start work on Wednesday, and he and Louise had left, V caught Chad alone. He wouldn’t look at her, but the blue of her tunic glowed just at the edge of his field of vision.

  “Chad, I’m sorry. I think I was—No. I know. I was showing off.”

  Now he did look, and her eyes caught him.

  “You do feel better these days. Don’t you?”

  Chad didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t hurt every minute, so bad he wanted to roar with it. He’d felt gray for months; now even that was lifting.

  But the world still seemed empty, and if the gray was all he had of Shep, then he missed even that, and shouldn’t V know all this? Wasn’t she supposed to be able to pick it up?

  “You’ll be all right, Chad,” she said, looking deep into his eyes. “There’s something very special about you.”

  Chad waited to hear what that was, but V had said all she was going to.

  CHAPTER

  8

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, WHEN Louise opened the door, she didn’t quite look at Chad. Embarrassed. He was embarrassed, too, because of the picnic and because someone had let Queenie out and she’d tracked him down the road, catching up just at the Burtons’ house.

  “I’ll call and have Julia come get her.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll take her back.” Louise wore crumpled khaki pants and a dusty green T-shirt that said BALLET ROCKS. Don’t go, Chad thought. He could have killed Queenie.

  “She’s impossible to lead,” he said.

  Louise just smiled. “Daddy, where’s the leash basket?”

  David came from the kitchen, coffee mug in one hand and notebook in the other. “Chad, do you remember?”

  “Shed. I’ll show you.” He watched Louise’s bare foot tread on the doorstep. The stone would be warm with sunshine. A second later she’d feel chilly, dewy grass.…

  Malkin rose from his perch on the stone wall, stretched, and came trotting across the yard. Queenie’s head jerked up, and she bounded gleefully toward the cat.

  “Queenie!” Chad shouted.

  Malkin bristled, arched, and lunged. Chad heard solid little blows—whapwhapwhap—and pops as claws pierced skin. Queenie leaped back and ducked
her head, swiping at her nose with her front paws. Chad saw a bright gleam of blood.

  Malkin stalked toward Chad and Louise. His fur was starting to settle, but his eyes glared, and twice he whipped around to look at Queenie, who rolled on the lawn, sliding her head in the grass.

  “Wow! Malkin, what a brave—”

  “Don’t,” Louise said.

  Don’t what? Chad had bent to pat the cat, and he stayed that way, feeling foolish.

  “Don’t reassure him. If you tell him he’s brave, he’ll think there’s something to be afraid of. I probably shouldn’t have said that,” Louise added.

  Chad had a moment of deep disconnection. How much English did this cat understand? “Why not?” he asked cautiously.

  “It’s one of Daddy’s things, and I’m sure he wants to teach you himself, so he can learn how to put it across.” Louise picked Malkin up and scratched him hard under the chin. The cat squeezed his eyes shut and purred loudly. “Daddy’s really embarrassing in grocery stores.”

  Chad felt logic slip again. He managed to put his eyebrows up, to look a question.

  “Little kids are always falling down,” Louise said, “and when the mom starts cooing, ‘Are you all right?’ he yells at her.”

  “Yells?”

  “Well, interferes. He walked right up to this one woman and said, ‘You’re teaching that child to be a wimp. You know that, don’t you?’ She yelled at him, all right! I never go shopping with Daddy if I can help it!”

  She pushed back the shed door. There was the basket of leashes where Chad had left it. He’d thought then that David must have a dog. It was weird—wasn’t it?—for a dog trainer not to own even one dog.

  Weird enough that he didn’t want to ask. He looked around at the dark tangle of bikes and birdcages, dusty old furniture and lumber. A stack of doors leaned against one wall.

  “Are these from your house?”

  Louise shrugged. “All the doorways have doors on them.”

  “So these are spares. Did you know you have fourteen doors just in your kitchen?”

  Louise’s head came up sharply. She counted on her fingers. “I only get twelve.”

  “Did you count the little ones in the hearth?”

  “No. How did you happen to notice there were fourteen doors?”

  Chad shrugged. He didn’t know, but if he’d known it would make her look at him that way, he’d have counted everything in the house!

  She took three yellow plastic cubes from the basket, all in one hand. Her fingers around them looked like a study by Leonardo or Michelangelo. Chad had always thought the beauty in drawings came from the artist, but hands could look like that. The beauty was in the world.

  In the kitchen Louise got a block of cheese from the refrigerator and cut about twenty half-inch cubes. She put them in a sandwich bag and called, “Daddy, I’m going!”

  “What?” David’s voice came from somewhere deeper in the house. “Chad, I’ll be right there.” His voice went on, lower. He must be on the phone.

  Chad stood at the kitchen window. He watched Louise call Queenie, patting her thighs to encourage the dog. Queenie came, and Chad heard a metallic click. Queen’s ears leaped from flat to upright. Louise gave her a cube of cheese. She took two steps. Queenie kept pace. Another click, more cheese. Three steps, click. Five steps, click. Queenie stared intently at Louise, as if trying to puzzle something out. They disappeared beyond the trees.

  The voice in the other room murmured. Chad tried not to listen. The refrigerator hummed, Malkin washed in the square of sunshine on the floor, and time stretched. Five minutes, eight minutes …

  David came into the kitchen frowning. Two patches of red burned on his cheekbones. “Hello, Chad. Where’s Louise?”

  “She took Queenie home. Somebody let her out, and she followed me.”

  David’s frown deepened. “Oh. Well.” He sat down and opened his notebook, turned a page forward, back. The paper trembled in his hand. “That call was from my ex-wife.” He let out a noisy breath. “Do not imagine, do not imagine for a moment, that yours is the only messed-up family on the planet! That aunt of yours may be tactless and full of horsepucky, but at least she means well.”

  Chad felt himself relax inside. Everything was suddenly in the open.

  David said, “Sorry, is it all right if I say your aunt is full of horsepucky?”

  Chad worked out a sentence, and then he said, “That’s one word for it!”

  David gave him the same sudden, sharp look that Louise had. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Holloway!”

  CHAPTER

  9

  “WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE food?” David asked. They sat at the kitchen table. “Chocolate? Cheese? Chips? Name anything!”

  “That pâté,” Chad said. He felt funny saying the word; maybe he wasn’t pronouncing it right. David smiled and wrote it down.

  “Good choice! We still happen to have some. Now the game is this. I’ll decide on an action I want you to perform, but I won’t tell you what. You move around randomly. I’ll click you for every step you take in the direction of what I want. When you get it, we stop for pâté.”

  “What do you mean, click?”

  David picked up one of the little plastic boxes Louise had left on the table and squeezed it. Click!

  “What is—oh.” It was a cricket, a little noisemaker. You pressed a metal strip in the box, and it made a click, the same click Louise had been making with Queenie.

  “Every time this clicks it means pâté,” David said. “I won’t ask you to do anything king through the doembarrassing, dangerous, or painful. If you ask me questions, I won’t answer. You’re an animal, I’m your trainer, and I assume that you can neither speak English nor communicate with me telepathically. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Start by walking through the door.”

  “Now?”

  David didn’t answer. Must be now. Chad walked out of the room, turned around, came back in. He felt stiff all over. Click!

  Chad stopped. What was that for? What had he done?

  He took another step forward. No click. Backward. Click!

  Another step backward? No click. Forward. Click!

  “You just want me to stand here?” No answer. No click.

  Chad turned in a circle. Click! Another circle. Click! Another; faster, slower. No change. All he could get was one click per circle, and he was starting to feel like an idiot. Also, he was getting dizzy.

  He turned in the opposite direction. Click!

  Okay. This time he turned one step at a time and paused between each step, listening. One click. Again. One click, at the same point on the circle.

  Okay. He stood facing the back wall of the kitchen. No click. Moved his arms. No click. Stood on one leg. Click!

  Standing on one leg? He tried that again. After a minute, just as he lost his balance, he got a click.

  Again. Again he lost his balance, Click! Again, Click! Again—“Aah! I don’t get this!” He unbalanced forward, Click! Took another step, Click! Another, Click! Step by click by step, he passed the door to the cellar and the bathroom door, and the back wall stopped him.

  The clicks stopped coming.

  Chad stood on one leg. Nothing.

  Other leg. Nothing.

  Turned around. Nothing.

  Waved his arm. Click!

  Wave. Click! Wave. Click!

  Left arm only. Nothing.

  Right arm only. Click!

  Right arm straight up over his head. Nothing.

  Bent at the elbow. Click!

  Wave from bent elbow. His hand brushed the bathroom door. Click!

  Wave. No click.

  Wave. No click.

  Wave. No click. Dammit! Chad thought. I don’t like this! Wave. He brushed the door again. Click!

  The door. The door. He touched it deliberately. Click! Ran his hand down it. Click! Touched the latch. Click! Opened it. Click! “Yes!” David said. “Excellent!”


  “That was hard!” Chad slumped against the doorjamb. His arms and legs felt jangly.

  “If you were an animal, you wouldn’t even have gotten the explanation beforehand.”

  Chad closed his eyes, trying to imagine that. “How do they learn anything?”

  “I know! And what if I had a choke chain on you instead of a clicker in my hand? This humbles me, every time.” David got out the pâté and crackers. “Eat. It’s part of your job.”

  When Chad had consumed two soothing crackersful, David said, “What we just did is called shaping. Take a small tendency in the right direction and shift it toward the goal, one step at a time. Do you understand?”

  Chad felt loose and reckless, drunk on pâté and confusion. “I understand all the words!”

  “The classic example is teaching a chicken to dance. I should say, scientists have a pretty loose definition of dancing! How would you do that?”

  “I have no idea!”

  “Chicken.” David shoved the saltshaker to the center of the table. “It’s moving around randomly, and I’m watching it, you should forgive the expression, like a hawk! It turns a little to the left”—he nudged the saltshaker—“and I reinforce it with a kernel of corn. Every time it moves left, even a little bit. Soon it’s moving to the left a lot more often.

  “Sometimes this chicken moves a little left”—nudge—“and sometimes it moves a lot left.” David gave the shaker a hefty shove. It tipped over, spilling salt on the table. David set it upright again.

  “I start giving corn only for the stronger movements. The chicken’s got to take a quarter turn left to get anything from me. When it’s doing that consistently, I wait for a half turn before I click, and so on. We say the chicken’s dancing when it’s making several fast turns. Do you see?”

  Chad’s eyes were on the spilled salt. Did he dare? This wasn’t his house, but it made him uneasy. “Yes,” he said, and when David turned away for a moment he pinched up a few grains of salt and tossed them over his left shoulder. It couldn’t really keep away bad luck, but it couldn’t hurt either.

  CHAPTER