Chapter 1 The Dog I Had in Mind 2019 The cat in the waiting room looked us over, suspicious and superior. That''s the way a cat will do you. I sat with my dog, and worried. That morning, he had a bad, shaking cough, and choked when he tried to breathe. I heaved him, kicking, protesting, into the back seat of my pickup, and rushed him to the vet. I thought he had just swallowed something unspeakable, and with this dog that could have been anything from a live toad to a welding glove. That, or he was just sick, or poisoned; there was no telling what terrible disease he might have picked up, toting a jawbone around for a chew toy. He had been my dog for about two years now, and had ingested things I cannot even say.
He was stuck fast to my knee, again. This did not mean I was his master, merely his alibi, coconspirator, bailsman, and the driver of his ambulance. Most people would have taken comfort in the fact their dog stuck so close to them. These people, I suspect, are not familiar with the term "guilt by association." The nurse called his name, and I dragged him to the exam room on a leash. On the way he tried to water the dog food display like it was my mother''s calla lilies, but I snatched him back. He gave the cat a look as we passed by. Don''t be here when I get back, Fluffy.
I don''t like to read too much into the dog, and I don''t like to pretend to speak for him, but in the two years or so since he arrived some things are just easy to translate. In the exam room, he coughed so hard he seemed to vibrate, but wagged his tail, unconcerned. He is not a good boy, but he is a tough boy, and this was just one more scrap for him, just one more fight in a ditch. The vet, Dr. Eric Clanton, called his cough "violent," and decided to do an X-ray to see if something was stuck in his windpipe. The nurse gave him a shot to knock him out, because it was not in his nature to behave or hold still just because someone asked him to, and he lay on the floor as the drug took effect, goofy and kind of lost. "That''s the best he''s behaved since I got him," I told the nurses, trying to sound tough, but it broke my heart to see him like that. I reached down and rubbed his head, but he was out cold now, snuffling and drooling on the floor.
He is not the dog I had in mind. I had in mind a good dog, in all the usual ways. * Just a few weeks before, I had been half asleep in a deep chair with a novel, The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr, open on my chest. The television was on, the sound turned low. Rita Hayworth was singing a torch song and dancing in her bare feet. I could hear the dog outside, his bark fading in and out, drowning in the hollers, rising on the ridge. I remember there was a big, orange moon that night, almost like daylight. The dog went wackier than usual under a moon like that.
My sixtieth birthday had passed without a parade, but I was feeling old, used up, and no-account long before I approached that milestone. I had been falling apart and glued back together for some time, tired, grouchy, and confused, and still five years shy of what people here call their old-age pension. My excellent doctors, all eleven or twelve, told me I was damaged, undisciplined, self-destructive, probably doomed, and maybe maladjusted, but in no immediate peril. I might limp on a ways, with clean living and fine insurance. But this was not a walk I wanted to take on my own. I thought it might be nice, on this leg of the journey, to have an old, slow, easy dog to go with me. I had in mind a fat dog, a gentle plodder that only slobbered an acceptable amount and would not chase a car even if the trunk was packed with pork chops. In my mind, we shuffled side by side along a smooth path that was always slightly downhill, in a season that was always sweatshirt weather, always just right.
In the chest pocket of my old, frayed button-down there was always a fresh pack of Juicy Fruit; you will go through more than you would think, going no place special. In my mind, I had traded my boots and jeans for some spongy orthopedic shoes and a baggy pair of corduroy trousers; I always planned on getting some when I was too old to care. Here, in this easy make-believe, I always had an apple in my pocket, and a full bag of treats. A good dog, especially a fat one, will need a treat every mile or so. And together, my old dog and me would shuffle off into the sunset, though we might have to stop occasionally, for a nap. I have always loved that notion that dogs bring out the best in us, and have always wanted to believe in something like that. Sometimes, when the melancholy is on me, I get a little lost in the bitter weeds, and I see a much more likely end for a man like me. I see one of those mean old men who rock angry on an unpainted porch, glaring off into the great might-have-been.
I can almost hear the runners squeal, hear the old man screech at the passersby that, as soon as he can get straightened up good, he will come down off that porch and kick their asses up to their watch pockets. But I can''t picture it, somehow, with an old, slow, easy dog close by. It would make me ashamed of myself, in a way that most people never had. Maybe we would even shuffle off down to some clear lake and pretend to fish, beside a bottomless cooler of bologna sandwiches and ice-cold root beer; maybe that is what heaven is. We might not even bait a hook, might just kick back and enjoy the day. If, by some miracle, we should catch a fish, we will just ease it back into the water. And if we see a snake, we will let it be. It always seemed like a reasonable thing, not a dream but a modest plan.
I know it might not sound like much to someone who wants to dive with the sharks on their one hundredth birthday, or hike a volcano on a new hip. I''m just telling you the dog I had in mind, for the shape I was in. Outside, I could still hear my crazy dog chasing the wind through the trees. Midnight passed, then one, two.I think I had just closed my eyes. Yalp! Yalp! Yalp! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Speck. His tone was different this time, urgent, angry.
My older brother, who has a fine way with words, calls it a booger bark; you heard it in a dog''s voice when he was truly spooked, not just interested in some wayward coon or wandering deer. Some dogs, you can ignore in times like this; you can leave them to their silliness till the threat moves away, or the dog just runs down, like a child''s battery-powered toy. Some dogs, you can. I have seen Speck run himself into staggering exhaustion, over a possibility. It better be a rhinoceros, I thought as I pulled on my shoes. I was surprised to see him at the foot of the hill, bouncing in place, waiting for me to catch up. That worried me a little; he never waited for me to catch up. As soon as he saw me in the porch light he took off again, running not into the trees that formed a horseshoe around the cabin, which was where he usually played in the dark, but straight down the driveway and toward the road, as fast as he could go.
I followed him around a sharp dogleg that hid the cabin from the road. And there in the driveway, a few yards from the mailbox, I saw the red glow of a single taillight. The car, an old import, had backed into the drive, its engine idling. I eased up behind it, thinking what a sad end it would be to get shot dead in my fuzzy house shoes in my own driveway. I should have had a flashlight, but I didn''t think I needed one just to step outside and cuss out a barking dog. I stopped, not sure what to do next. Of all the hateful things that descended on me in the years after getting sick, a wretched and feeble uncertainty was the worst. Once, it all would have seemed harmless to me.
Teenagers pulled into the dark drive to park, sometimes, but it appeared that this was not young love taking its course, or kids passing a joint. Meth had left a stain on life down here, and no one said, anymore, that they didn''t lock their doors. I saw the spike of a lighter, and then again, and again.The old car seemed to sag with people. I imagined skinned heads and neck tattoos, but they could have been Amway salesmen or Jehovah''s Witnesses for all I knew, or nuns. But they shouldn''t have messed with my dog. He was bouncing at the driver''s side door, growling, furious, and I could hear the people inside laugh at him through the cracked windows of the car. Speck yowled at the glass, close enough to fog it with his breath.
I heard an anemic electric window groan down and saw something fly out of it, then heard a yelp and the unmistakable thunk and tinkle of a beer bottle, not shattering but rolling in the grass and gravel. They were throwing bottles at my dog. A dog with any sense would have run away, but I guess all they did was make him mad. I called him, once, twice, almost in a whisper. Nothing. I picked up the first dead limb I saw in the gloom. I was not particular. I stepped up closer to the car, almost to the back bumper, and called again, in that inane way that people try to whisper as loud as they can.
"Speck! Here!" I hissed. Nothing. I took one or two steps more, to within a few feet of the car''s rear window. What I meant to say, what I had in my mind to say, was a stern, reasonable: Y''all need to ease on out of here, right now. What came out, instead, was a shrill, angr.