PATTERNS

by Juleen Brantingham

* * * *

She never again dreamed of dancing.

There was movement, naturally; pat­terns formed, broke, reformed in color and light, streaming, whirling, always with grace, but not in the movements of the dance.

Someone who knew little of dancers might have thought it too much to hope to control dreams, but the apparent freedom of the dance is founded in rigid control; the discipline that permits such grace comes first from the mind. She would put it from her, never dream of it again, never ache for what was lost.

But she had lived for this since she was eight years old. Every act, every thought had been somehow related to her training. She had nothing now but pain and emptiness. And Richard. She did not even have herself because if she was no longer a dancer she did not know who she was.

He showed her. There would be some­thing more. They would go away and they would build it together.

It was late July and heat had settled into the valleys like liquid in a cup. All morning she had tried to distract her­self, to ignore the heat. Before moving south she had always thought of moun­tains as cool but this was the humidity of a lowland swamp, the heat of New York at its worst. While Richard was getting ready for work Anya had come out to the shop to throw open the windows, hoping for a breeze. But there was no breeze, no clouds, nothing but the pitiless glare of the sun. When he kissed her goodbye he fingered the damp tendrils at the back of her neck, making her shiver.

She was sitting at her work table when Elizabeth arrived to sweep and dust, to rearrange the quilts on the displays. The girl gossiped about the people of Drover Trail, giving her shy looks. There was a half-finished quilt lying slack on the frame, a Log Cabin pattern in shades of green, but she couldn’t bear to work at something so heavy in this weather. She had been cutting pieces for a Double Wedding Ring but she pushed them aside. They were behaving perversely, sticking to each other, depositing a layer of furry lint on her hands.

She remembered the treasure of old silk she’d found in a secondhand shop weeks before. Silk promised coolness and though she knew it was an illusion, she asked Elizabeth to bring her the box from the closet in the house. She started with the shears, cutting away seams and button rows.

“Too hot to be working today. You should be setting in the shade sipping a cold drink.” He spoke from the door, surveying the room like a monarch, thumbs tucked into his gun belt.

“So should you. What could be so important that it takes you away from that air-conditioned office?”

Tom Dawson crossed the shop with ponderous dignity, as if claiming it for his own.

“Air-conditioned?” he scoffed. “You talking about the little fan we got and the glass of icewater we set in front of it?” He reached for her hand, then pulled back his own and wiped it on his shirt, which was sweat-stained, spat­tered, too, with what looked like dried blood.

“What have you been doing?”

“Oh, I been up the hill a ways,” he said, sounding disgusted.

The “hill” he referred to was what Anya would have called a mountain. She wondered where Tom came from. Though he softened the endings of his words, his accent wasn’t quite the same as Elizabeth’s. He’d taken a fatherly interest in Anya and Richard, even telling Richard who to see about the loan they needed to open Anya’s shop, but other than his occupation, his life was a mystery.

“Old man had himself a place up there in the woods. One of our local crazies. Guess you could say he got what he deserved.”

Anya pressed her lips together and looked at him, laughing silently. He shook his head in rueful agreement, sighed, and started over.

“This old man had buncha dogs. Kept them chained up, starved them, beat them, it looked like, just for the pure joy of having something that couldn’t hurt him back. ‘Cept one of them did. One of them tore his throat out sometime yesterday, then broke its chain and got away. Neighbor complained about the others howling, was how I found out. Came to warn you to keep your doors shut.” Anya started to object but he raised his voice and wouldn’t let her get a word in. “Keep ‘em shut and keep a watch on your yard. You see a strange dog hanging around, you call me right away.”

“It’s that dangerous, you think?”

He sighed again. “I don’t know, to tell you the truth. Could be so weak it crawled off to die. The others I found, three of them was so bad off I had to put them out of their misery. Even the ones I brought down, don’t know what’s going to be done with them. A dog that’s treated like that, he never gets over it. Turns vicious. When you least expect it he’ll jump you and tear your head off.” He gave her a one-finger salute and left, closing the door. Elizabeth was wide-eyed.

“Put up the Closed sign and lock the door. Nobody will want to look at quilts in a stuffy shop. We’ll go to the house.”

“I’ll get my things and go on home,” the girl said.

“You’re not going to walk that road with a dangerous dog on the loose. Richard can take you. Or you can call your father. If you think he can drive this time of day.” She hadn’t meant to sound critical but everyone knew Elizabeth’s father was in a drunken stupor by noon. “You can look at my scrapbook,” she added, and was re­warded with a smile. She picked up her canes and began the awkward process of getting to her feet.

No storm came through to cool the air, and sunset brought little relief. Richard suggested dinner out and a movie but even for the promise of air-conditioning it didn’t seem worth the trouble. Anya spent the evening going through her pattern books, trying to decide how to use the silk. She kept imagining she heard noises; if it hadn’t been so difficult to get up she would have gone to the window a dozen times.

Richard was watching television, the sound turned low. When she noticed he’d fallen asleep, she didn’t move to wake him, only smiled, feeling tender­ness. He was a quiet man whose manner was sometimes mistaken for a lack of ambition. But he’d had ambitions, once. He gave them up for her, to practice his legal skills here where there was little call for them.

Was that a whisper or a breeze? This time she had to know. Richard woke and came to stand beside her, gazing out at the moonlight. He slipped an arm around her, his cheek brushing her hair.

“Pretty isn’t it,” he said.

Not even a shadow moved. Why, then, did she have the feeling of being watched? She shivered.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s still wild up here, isn’t it? Parts of it.”

He laughed, tightening his embrace. “Only a city girl could think of this place as wild.”

“But there are —” She swallowed. “— bears in the woods?”

“You’re afraid of that dog, aren’t you?”

“Not afraid exactly.” The rest of it came in a rush. “He must be so angry! To be chained up, starved, tormented. To be strong and healthy once and then so helpless.” She caught herself then, only then, after revealing too much.

If he understood, he bore it in silence.

She never dreamed of dancing. But there was movement: colors whirled and streamed, patterns formed, broke, re­formed, as in a kaleidoscope: Wheel of Fortune, Country Roads, Castle Walls, Starry Pavement.

She woke with a start. She could still see the shapes, the final pattern: rays and arrows of color as if from a blazing eye, God’s Eye. In her dream it had been more than a pattern in patchwork; it had an almost sorcerous power. She slipped from bed, trying not to waken Richard and walked through the house to the shop. She didn’t turn on a light but opened the door, allowing moonlight to flood the room. She brought the silk, scissors, and pincushion to the front where the light was bright.

God’s Eye was an easy pattern she had made before, but in her dream there had been something odd about the center, a folded look she could not recall clearly. She cut and basted, forgetting time, forgetting the heat. Dissatisfied with the result, she ripped out her stitches and started again. Her mind provided the colors moonlight leached away.

The largest piece of silk was an eve­ning gown — must be, though when she’d pulled it from the rack in the store she thought she’d smelled orange blossoms, along with decades of mustiness. The hand-stitching, the embroidered bands on sleeves and hem, the hundreds of bugle beads hinted this was no ordi­nary gown but something crafted with hopes and dreams. But why would some­one make a wedding gown of sable-colored silk? Still, as she’d worked with it, she had thought of weddings and of promises made with the knowledge, so its color testified, that even in bright beginnings there is the certainty of sorrow to come.

The other pieces were not unusual, blouses, a skirt, and a scarf, in autumn colors. It would make a striking patch­work.

She knew when she had found the right combination of colors, when she’d found the trick of folding the center. Something clicked. It was the same as in her dream and it had a kind of power. Too excited then to sleep, she had to see how it would look when several blocks were assembled. Hours passed and she didn’t notice the sky lighten. She saw nothing but the pattern until she straightened to ease the ache in her back.

She saw the dog.

Her chest was suddenly tight. How long had he been there, leaning against the door? Why hadn’t she heard him panting? His tongue was hanging out, dripping drool, and his eyes were glazed with pain. His fur was dark brown but thinned by bad health. She could have counted his ribs but not his wounds, some scabbed, some pus-filled, some raw and bleeding. He was a large dog and even now, starving, must have weighed as much as she did.

The pattern and the colors danced before her eyes. She felt no fear. She should have, she knew, but it simply wasn’t there.

She went to him and touched his head, placing her fingers on the only un-wounded part of it, between his ears. She felt a fever’s heat. And something more. Something she couldn’t name.

Richard stopped, his face frozen in mid-yawn. Beneath the kitchen table the dog lifted his head, his growl a deep rumble. Richard didn’t move.

“Stop that,” Anya ordered.

The dog dropped his head back to the floor, closed his eyes. Still Richard didn’t move.

“What the Hell have you done?” Softly, almost in awe.

“Come and sit down. He’s not going to bother you.”

He took the cup of coffee she poured but he wouldn’t sit and he never took his eyes from the dog.

“Have you called Tom yet?”

“No,” she said. “You can if you want. I suppose he should know so people can leave their doors open again. But no one is taking Casey away from me.”

He didn’t ask about the name and she couldn’t have told him. It was his name, that’s all.

She wasn’t a fighter, never had been. Her battles had always been within herself. Tell her there were rules, she would obey them. Put a block in her path, she would turn back; she wouldn’t go around. When the doctors said she would never again walk without pain, she accepted it; she didn’t look for miracles.

She fought that day, for Casey’s life.

“Anya, get away from him. He killed a man.”

Tom stood just inside the front door, his hand inches from his holstered weapon, Richard by his side.

“Self-defense,” she said. “You’re not taking my dog.”

“He’s got to be put down. He’s danger­ous.”

“Self-defense,” she repeated.

“Anya, we’re talking about a dog. I’m sorry as Hell about what that old man did. If I’d known in time I’d a found a way to stop it. But it’s done and he killed the man. He’s turned vicious. He can’t ever be trusted.”

“Look at him,” she said, turning to look herself. He gazed up at her with adoring eyes, as if she were a candle burning in the darkest night of his life.

“Means nothing,” Tom said. “He was hurt and you made him feel better. He’s still weak. When he’s healthy again, when someone does something that re­minds him of how he was hurt before, he’s going to defend himself. Suppose it’s a child? Hell, Anya, a full-grown man might come out second-best in a fight with that brute. I don’t mind admitting I’m leery of him myself.”

“He’s not vicious. He’s not going to hurt anyone.”

Tom made a sound of exasperation. Anya knew then she was holding her own. Tom and Richard could have taken him by force; she couldn’t have stopped them. But he was still trying to convince her, which meant she had a chance, Casey had a chance.

Richard’s eyes said sorrowfully this was betrayal. In a way it was true but Richard’s life wasn’t in danger. She refused to believe that.

Casey had no one else.

Her legs trembled, her hands and arms ached but it was Tom and Richard who turned away, finally. With another accusing look, Richard murmured some­thing about walking Tom to his car. They hadn’t given up; they were only retiring from the field to plot new strategy. She almost smiled but caught herself as Tom turned back to point a finger.

“You let him loose once,” he threat­ened, “just once without a leash and I will hunt him down and I will shoot him where he stands.”

Casey’s body filled out, his wounds healed as quickly as the quilt took shape in her hands. She watched him pace, his eyes bright, his coat shiny, muscles sliding under his skin; the sight was so beautiful her breath caught in her throat. Here was health and strength, things she had never truly appreciated when she still had them.

Richard and the dog tolerated each other. Though he said no more about turning Casey over to Tom — biding his time — his silences could have been no colder if she had taken a lover.

Anya had to walk Casey. She couldn’t ask Richard to do it and even Elizabeth was afraid of him. The first time, she thought he would get the leash tangled around her canes, jerk her off her feet, but it never hap­pened. With almost human under­standing, he took the role of protector, not only careful in his own move­ments but alert to other dangers.

Once when they were walking, a toad popped out of the grass near her feet. Instantly, Casey leaped to stand between her and the small brown thing, hackles rising, a fearsome growl coming from his throat. The toad disappeared. Laughing, she knelt to throw her arms around the dog.

He stayed beside her in the shop. The tourists who came to look at quilts or wall hangings kept their distance but their children knew what they did not. They patted his head, climbed on his back, pulled his tail. Casey enjoyed the attention, though he never willingly left her side.

When the silk patchwork was assem­bled she was reluctant to begin quilting; she didn’t want to finish, to risk having to sell it. For over a week she left it rolled up.

Richard had gone to Asheville and wouldn’t be back until late. He hadn’t said why he was going. He said less and less these days.

Anya wandered through the house, dusting haphazardly, trying to deny her unease. Casey’s toenails clicked behind her as she went from room to room. The heat wave had broken weeks before but tonight the air was heavy. Hoping for a breeze she opened the side window, the one she usually kept closed because it was unscreened and had a low sill. It didn’t occur to her there was any risk. Casey was so obedient, sensing what she wanted even when she didn’t speak.

With one brief, apologetic look he leaped over the sill and was gone.

She dropped her canes to lean out, calling in an urgent whisper, afraid to raise her voice. Someone might be pass­ing, someone who would report to Tom. Casey bounded through the yard, over the fence. For a moment she could not move. Tom. His threat. Her own weak­ness. She was alone with this and help­less.

Something called to her, a whispered promise.

Awkwardly, struggling with her canes and the slippery silk, she carried the top, now basted to batting and lining, to the quilting frame. She hadn’t stenciled in the pattern. The light was weak. But she had to keep busy or she would go mad with worry. Her ears strained to detect the sound of a shot.

He bounded through the field, revel­ing in the scents. There was joy in movement, the ripple of muscles, the freedom. His ears pricked to the small­est sounds, a rabbit darting through the grass, hiss...