The Page the Landlord Never Read
“Then show me what I’m supposed to be reading,” Todd Brandt said. “I don’t mean the page.”
I had not expected that either. I looked at my brother.
“Walk with me,” Walt said. “Just to Elm. It’s 212 steps. He’s working, so nobody pets him on the way. I’ll show you what I mean by a working dog.”
This was not mine to arrange, and I did not nod. Walt held out his right elbow, the one he never offers, and Todd Brandt, who had not been invited to do a kind thing for any person in a very long time, took it.
We all followed, the 7 of us, a boy with a coloring book under his arm among them. I do not know how to describe the way a handful of people walk 212 steps behind a blind man and a landlord without a word. We went out the front door and down the walk and left on Elm.
Walt walked at his steady pace, Bishop a half step ahead and to his left, the harness gently up, and he said, “Forward,” and “Good,” and once, very quietly, “Bishop, find the curb.” The big yellow dog stopped, and sat, and placed his two front paws at the exact edge of the street.
“Now,” Walt said. “Tell me, Mr. Brandt, is there a slab of the sidewalk lifted up on this side? About a third of the way down?”
Todd Brandt looked down. There was. Right in front of the building, a concrete slab had heaved up a good 2 inches in the frost, and had been sitting that way since before he bought the place.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “How did you.”
“Bishop goes around it,” Walt said. “He’s gone around it every day for 4 years. He moves me 10 inches to the left right there, and I’ve never tripped. It wasn’t me who knew it. It was him.” He turned his face toward the man. “I never complained about it, because I figured the landlord had other things to worry about.”
“I’ll have it ground down Monday,” Todd Brandt said.
“I’d be grateful,” Walt said. “It’s not for me.”
We went back inside, and Mrs. Janssen put the kettle on in her unit upstairs, because that is what a woman of her generation does when something has happened, and the landlord stood at the end of the hallway with the page in his hand.
He was not a monster. That is the uncomfortable part. He was a man who had been burned on a carpet and had made a policy so it would never happen again, and he had not asked what the policy would cost the next person.
“Mr. Meeks,” he said. “I’m sorry about how that notice reached you. I should have read the file before it went out. I’m not going to promise more than I know today, but nobody is moving a dog this week. The 10 days are on hold. Mrs. Janssen, that goes for the cat too.”
“Monday,” Mrs. Janssen said.
“Monday.”