Watchers

woozy from his half-bottle of San Miguel .
    “Okay,” Travis said, “I need more detailed answers than we’ve been able to get with yes-and-no questions. It occurred to me that this might work.”
    “Ingenious,” Nora agreed.
    To the dog, Travis said, “I ask you a question, and you indicate the letters that are needed to spell out the answer, one letter at a time, word by word. You got it?”
    Einstein blinked at Travis, looked at the stacks of lettered tiles, raised his eyes to Travis again, and grinned.
    Travis said, “All right. Do you know the name of the laboratory from which you escaped?”
    Einstein put his nose to the pile of Bs.
    Nora plucked a tile off the stack and put it on the portion of the board that Travis had left clear.
    In less than a minute, the dog spelled BANODYNE.
    “Banodyne,” Travis said thoughtfully. “Never heard of it. Is that the entire name?”
    Einstein hesitated, then began to choose more letters until he had spelled out BANODYNE LABORATORIES INC.
    On a pad of motel stationery, Travis made a note of the answer, then returned all the tiles to their individual stacks. “Where is Banodyne located?”
    IRVINE.
    “That makes sense,” Travis said. “I found you in the woods north of Irvine. All right . . . I found you on Tuesday, May eighteenth. When had you escaped from Banodyne?”
    Einstein stared at the tiles, whined, and made no choices.
    “In all the reading you’ve done,” Travis said, “you’ve learned about months, weeks, days, and hours. You have a sense of time now.”
    Looking at Nora, the dog whined again.
    She said, “He has a sense of time now, but he didn’t have one when he escaped, so it’s hard to remember how long he was on the run.”
    Einstein immediately began to indicate letters: THATS RIGHT.
    “Do you know the names of any researchers at Banodyne?”
    DAVIS WEATHERBY.
    Travis made a note of the name. “Any others?”
    Hesitating frequently to consider possible spellings, Einstein finally produced LAWFON HANES, AL HUDSTUN, and a few more.
    After noting all of them on the motel stationery, Travis said, “These will be some of the people looking for you.”
    YES. AND JOHNSON.
    “Johnson?” Nora said. “Is he one of the scientists?”
    NO. The retriever thought for a moment, studied the stacks of letters, and finally continued: SECURITY.
    “He’s head of security at Banodyne?” Travis asked.
    NO. BIGGER.
    “Probably a federal agent of some kind,” Travis told Nora as she returned the letters to their stacks.
    To Einstein, Nora said, “Do you know this Johnson’s first name?” Einstein gazed at the letters and mewled, and Travis was about to tell him it was all right if he didn’t know Johnson’s first name, but then the dog attempted to spell it: LEMOOOL.
    “There is no such name,” Nora said, taking the letters away.
    Einstein tried again: LAMYOULL. Then again: LIMUUL.
    “That’s not a name, either,” Travis said.
    A third time: LEMB YOU WILL.
    Travis realized the dog was struggling to spell the name phonetically. He chose six lettered tiles of his own: LEMUEL.
    “Lemuel Johnson,” Nora said.
    Einstein leaned forward and nuzzled her neck. He was wiggling with pleasure at having gotten the name across to them, and the springs of the motel bed creaked.
    Then he stopped nuzzling Nora and spelled DARK LEMUEL.
    “Dark?” Travis said. “By ‘dark’ you mean Johnson is . . . evil?”
    NO. DARK.
    Nora restacked the letters and said, “Dangerous?”
    Einstein snorted at her, then at Travis, as if to say they were sometimes unbearably thickheaded. NO. DARK.
    For a moment they sat in silence, thinking, and at last Travis said, “Black! You mean Lemuel Johnson is a black man.”
    Einstein chuffed softly, shook his head up and down, swept his tail back and forth on the bedspread. He indicated nineteen letters, his longest answer:
    THERES HOPE FOR YOU YET.
    Nora laughed.
    Travis said, “Wiseass.”
    But he was exhilarated, filled with a joy that he would have been hard-pressed to describe if he had been required to put it into words. They had been communicating with the retriever for many weeks, but the Scrabble tiles provided a far greater dimension to their communication than they had enjoyed previously. More than ever, Einstein seemed to be their own child. But there was also an intoxicating feeling of breaking through the barriers of normal human experience, a feeling of transcendence. Einstein was no ordinary mutt, of