Dog on the Cross Read Online Free Page B

purchase an isolated, rural bar, one mile south of the Pentecostal church. After renovations and six months’ business, he bought also a barbershop that had recently come up for sale, signing the deed over to Wisnat. (The man was now acquiring a belly to accompany his balding skull. Though Jansen’s love for him had not faltered, he hated to see Wisnat metamorphose into something so pale, so hairless and bloated. The desperation had faded from Wisnat’s face only to be replaced by an even more profound expression, one redolent of despair.) Jansen walked in, pitched him the keys, and as if that action had triggered an engine, Wisnat woke the next morning and dressed in his barber’s smock and slacks. He drove down Main Street, pulled in front of his new shop, unlocked the doors, turned the OPEN sign streetward, without pause pressing a button that started the red-and-white pole spinning in its cylinder of glass, this candy cane signaling to the barber neither pleasure nor sweetness but rather an attendant decay.
    A ND SO THEY entered a new era, a period so like marriage that the two refused to make jokes about it. Not because it did not occur to them to do so but rather because the obviousness of such comedy would have killed the laughter before it left their throats.
    The bar Jansen purchased established a faithfulclientele (mindful of his town’s history, he named it the Gusher), one that expanded with each new week. He would awaken late in the morning, dither about the house in his robe, drive into town to meet Wisnat for lunch. They’d walk across the street to a shop that sold coffee and sandwiches, Jansen carrying the conversation, Wisnat responding with an occasional nod. Wisnat had never been one to ramble, rationing his speech as a stranded man does water. Now he seemed all but mute. Perhaps, Jansen tried to convince himself, the customers were wearing on him—making small talk about weather and mortgages and farm equipment for eight hours a day was affecting his desire to speak. But behind his self-delusions, Jansen knew Wisnat had traversed some desert of the mind, a pair of footprints tracking an infinity of sand. His friend, as he’d known him, might not be coming back.
    Late in the night when both men were in their rooms, Jansen would lie awake listening to crickets outside his window, the hum of the refrigerator, the house settling. He imagined he could hear Wisnat from across the hall, the rhythmic noises of inhalation, the serene breathing of the unconscious. Often, he would climb out of bed, move the door on its hinges, creep the expanse of hallway, and peer into the near blackness of Wisnat’s room—moonlight framing the blackout shades, the face of a glow-in-the-dark clock. He thought many times about making his wayfarther, to his friend’s bed, parting the covers and sheets, sliding in between. But what, he began to ask himself, would he encounter once he reached the warm body in its center? What would be left to embrace?
    The more time that passed, the more Jansen did not want to answer such questions. It was no longer a fear of being met with outrage (
What are you doing, Jansen? What the hell do you think you’re
…); these were issues he’d assuaged in 1,001 nighttime fantasies: explanations and reasoning, a long silence wherein enlightenment might take sudden hold. What troubled Jansen was the fact that even if he were able to negotiate the minefield of Wisnat’s confusion, even if able to settle his friend’s nerves and allay his panic, he would be faced with nothing but a shell, a hollow parody of the man he had known. For almost a year, Wisnat had been an automaton, his emotions gone beneath the surface, his desire extinguished. How could he recognize love, much less return it?
    So, standing at the door, Jansen bided his time, hoping for that thing inside Wisnat to regain its consciousness, for the sleeper to awake. He stared into the