“I need you to … Il faut… Il faut…” he stumbled. He demonstrated. He took one puppy and put it to her left nipple. She shook it away with a quick shiver, and looked to him with puzzlement. He did it again.

She did not flinch this time, so he took the other puppy and put it atop her domed stomach, against her right nipple.

She watched, curious and not yet understanding. The puppies’ heads were moving now, noses flexing and sniffing. The closest one to Lee, Nanette, was bolder, and opened her mouth. She began to nurse. Natalie flicked at the dog like it was a mosquito, but she was confused and so her wrists mostly just trembled in weak outrage. Lee put the puppy back onto her.

He expected Natalie to look down—the sensation must have been strange, dogs at her breast—but instead he saw some kind of light in her eyes—understanding—that dimmed.

He had things to say to her. But it was as if he were looking into the windows of an empty house. The puppies wriggled, the loose flesh around their mouths pulsed as they swallowed. “You see, I care,” he wanted to say, because apparently that made him a hero at this late date in this small muddy dot of 1918. He wanted to tell her the war would end soon, and peace would feel better than today felt. He wanted to tell her that the women of Irian Jaya suckled their hunting dogs, that they did it in Kamchatka, in tribes found along the Orinoco, areas he had never heard of but about which Harry seemed to know. It isn’t so terrible, he wanted to say. It really was done for love and to bind the animal to humans. A dog treated so well was a friend for life, Lee wanted to tell her. Here are your friends, he should say, ce sont tes amis.

There was nothing to say. The dogs continued to nurse. The magazines on the floor were colorful. On the covers were Louise Lovely, the newest Australian siren; then Helen Holmes, Queen of the North, looking resourceful; and Alice Joyce, who Leland had always thought seemed intelligent. He imagined having his own projector, and showing a Chaplin film on the wall. “Do you know Charlie?” he might say, and then might come the first ray of hope that Natalie’s spirit could be saved.

She looked with doll eyes toward the window. The river outside gurgled in the darkness, and inside the house, children were running with their silk toys through the hall, and there was the smell of bread baking. Really, Lee was thinking of saying, all they had to do was hold on a few more weeks, and things would be better.

23

Engstrom Hotel
Los Angeles
October 26, 1918

Dear Charlie: