For Love of a Dog
I think it's probably safe to
say that many of us have seen some hard times. May still be seeing them. If
there's one thing you can take for granted, it is that if life decides to kneel
on you, there ain't a thing you can do to stop it.
We were going through one of
those hard spells about ten years ago. There were five of us then, as there are
now, but at that time, half the family was under four feet tall. Plus we had a
dog that had been with us for a few years. Sam was grown when he was given to
us, and he made several moves with us, before we finally bought a house in
Sarasota. It was after that, that Sam's health began to deteriorate.
At first it was the ear mites. I
suspected that he had them, and when I found him one morning with a hematoma on
his ear I knew that I was right. Not only that, he was covered with fleas. It's
like the house we moved into had millions of fleas in the dirt just waiting for
some unsuspecting family to move in and provide a dog so that they could feast
in earnest.
Sam was the best dog ever. A
great, heavy, blonde lab, he was intimidating to those who didn't know him and
was fiercely protective of the house and the kids. I never met a smarter dog.
He would follow me when I hung clothes on the line, and in between sitting down
to scratch at those infernal fleas, he would retrieve the clothespins I
dropped, placing them carefully in the laundry basket. He knew how to play hide
and seek, and would get between the kids if a squabble ensued that deteriorated
into physical combat. Sam wasn't having any of that. Not on his watch.
I remember once I took him
walking. I let his leash drop to the ground so that he could roam a bit. We
were close to home, he was safe. He immediately went to the back of a
neighbor's car that sat parked in the driveway and squatted.
"Uh uh, Sam ... not
there." I said in a level voice. He stopped instantly and moved to a bush
nearby leaving his offering in a neat pile out of harm's way.
"Want me to get
that...?" I asked the neighbor who had come out to check his mail.
"Nah." He said.
"No harm done." Sam sat and scratched. Oblivious.
I checked into the once a month
treatment for fleas. Sixty dollars for three months. That would almost pay the
light bill. I'm not ashamed to say that we were pretty poor. We sure as heck
didn't choose to be. Three small mouths to feed, doctor bills, diapers. Anyway,
I did the best I could by bathing him, which did little more than dry out his
lovely coat.
When the hematoma popped up I
became desperate. The dog was in real discomfort. Now he had this thing on his
ear. We never once thought when we took the dog in, that one day we would not
be able to afford to care for him. I had no money to have him treated. I called
the vet. Sixty-five dollar examination fee, plus meds. I envisioned this two
hundred dollar vet bill that I had no hope of paying.
"Do you guys ever ... you
know, take payments?"
"Sure," replied the voice
on the phone, "we will finance fifty percent of the balance due."
"But how do I know how much
that will be?"
"Well ... you don't."
Of course it wasn't the vet's
fault, he had to make a living too.
I sat looking at Sam all day out
the window. He wasn't allowed in the house. He had never been in the house, so
he was not trained. By that afternoon I reached a decision. I would either take
Sam to the pound where he could get the treatment he needed, and hope that he
would find a good home, or I would find him a home myself.
I didn't know anybody to give
him to. I didn't know what to do. That evening after dinner I loaded Sam in the
van, drove him to the local supermarket and tied him to a post in the parking
lot. Then I parked several rows away and watched him. I knew someone would take
him, so I sat there and sobbed myself silly, even before a man walked up and
squatted down next to him. I could see the man's mouth moving as he talked to
Sam. Then I saw his eyebrows go up when he noticed the scrap of paper tucked
into Sam's collar. He unfolded it and read......
'My name is Sam. I need flea
medication and I have ear mites, but my owners cannot afford to take me to the
vet, so if you decide to untie this leash, you better be prepared to assume the
expense for my treatment. I am a damn fine dog. I can fetch and retrieve and
play hide and seek. I can understand English almost as well as you, so you need
to talk to me on occasion. I love kids and I will love you too, as long as you
love me.'
The man paused and studied Sam
for a moment and then he slowly slipped the piece of paper back in Sam's
collar. Then he went into the store. I didn't know whether to be relieved or
mad. I had seen the man get out of an expensive SUV, he was well dressed,
clearly not poor. Why didn't he take Sam. Why? Was his resume not good enough?
Had I left some important detail out?
I sat there with my heart in my
mouth and had just about decided to go get Sam, and take him home and try
something else, when the man returned. He had a woman with him. Together they
knelt down and the man handed the woman the note. She read it and then stood
and glanced around the parking lot. Women. We know each other. She knew I was
there. I sank down as low in the driver's seat as I could go and still be able
to see. I watched, bawling my eyes out as Sam was loaded into the SUV. He
seemed a little concerned, but went willingly enough. I watched them drive away
and then I drove home, crying every single inch of the way.
I don't know where Sam is now,
but I do know that I did the best I could to find him a good home, and in my
mind, he's stretched out on a nice brick patio somewhere, in the shade, with
healthy ears, and no fleas, and I hope that someday he thinks of us and
remembers the good times we had together, and doesn't hold it against me that I
couldn't do better by him.
I get through this memory by reminding myself that Sam was a dog. Not a child, or a brother or a sister. He was a dog. A friend. Friends leave, go on to other places, sometimes better places. Many times we lose contact with those friends, but you can love them and still let them go if you know in your heart that it is what's right for them.
I don't know what practical
purpose chinaberries serve, unless it's just to make more chinaberry trees. For
all I know they could be edible. Or maybe they are a delicacy for birds. Who
knows. But when I was growing up, they served one purpose and one purpose only.
To make someone squeal in pain.
We had a massive chinaberry tree
in the back yard. Had the somewhat dubious honor of owning the only one on the
block. It was a beautiful tree with slender leafy branches that provided a
wonderful shade. It was taking advantage of that shade that led to the idea to
gather up the fallen chinaberries, filling pockets, t shirt tails, empty
bottles, whatever was available, and chunking them at each other with all the
gleeful, evil, abandon that only kids can muster.
I'm sure we didn't invent the
idea. Kids for hundreds of years have probably been chunking these lemon drop
sized seeds at each other on countless summer days gone by. But that didn't
stop us from getting creative to the point of being dangerous with them.
When a chinaberry hit you full
force anywhere above the neck, it would make you cry, (at least me anyway) and
then it would make you mad, causing you to spend valuable ducking time
searching out and aiming for the guilty party. A chinaberry hitting you
anywhere below the neck was bad, but tolerable. It always left a mark, a little
red welt and usually a little green stain as well.
You could always spot a rookie.
He would throw handfuls at a time. Sure he hit more targets, but this practice
also left him woefully un-armed when the paybacks came, and they always came.
We all started out as rookies of course, so we all learned that lesson the hard
way. There was no more frightening and vulnerable feeling, than crossing the
yard at break neck speed, squatting under the tree with no protection, and
gathering up chinaberries to replenish your supply, all while being pelted
mercilessly by the competition.
How did one win? Well, being the
only one left standing and not crying or mad was usually a pretty good
indicator. Any one who stormed into the house with the ominous...'I'm
telling'... thrown over their shoulder, was automatically disqualified from any
hope of winning. Also breaking away from chinaberries and resorting to other
types of ammunition, like rocks, for example, was seriously frowned on and
would get you thrown out of the game.
There were some fairly
respectable ground rules, learned through trial and error. However, we had not
counted on Johnny Small. Johnny was a new kid. His name suited him to a tee as,
while he was the same age thereabouts as every one else, he was a full head
shorter than the rest of us, and as a result had learned to compensate in many
areas for his lack of height.
He was as welcome as a fresh
spring rain when he wandered past the house wanting to get in the game. New
meat. No idea of the rules or strategy. He looked like a full fisted thrower if
anybody ever did. Yeehaw!
Just as anticipated, and even
though we gave him a full five-minute lead to fill his pockets and find good
cover, he went through his reserves in less than ten minutes. Which gave him no
option but to run the gauntlet to re-load, and we peppered him. Brutally. Most
kids learned from that experience and didn't let it happen again. Johnny not
only learned, he set us up for the most devastating revenge ever heard of on
Florence Street.
I got my first clue when a
chinaberry hit the tree I was using for cover and smashed like a well cooked
pea against the bark. Oh hell, I thought, this kid's got an arm like a rocket
launcher! The next clue was hearing Danny Golden scream out in pain like a
little girl. He was crying for God's sake. This was unprecedented chinaberry
war behavior. I had seen Danny Golden get ripped up by Ronnie Barr's dog and
not cry.
I finally gathered the courage
to raise my head and see what was causing this wailing and spotted Johnny
Small, standing alone and looking ten feet tall, chinaberries causing the
pockets of his jeans to bulge, a chinaberry ready in one hand, and a sling shot
in the other. Crap!
Johnny had gotten even in the
only way he knew how. Cheat. He must have had the slingshot in his back pocket
the whole time. The best we could do was cower behind our respective shields
and scream for my mother, who I might add, took her sweet old time getting out
there, all while Johnny was ricocheting chinaberries off tree trunks, slamming
them into bushes and firing them wherever else he thought that there was the
slightest chance that he might make contact. Mom appraised the situation in a
glance, and disarmed Johnny with one withering look.
Danny Golden waited until the
screen door slammed behind mom before he sailed across the yard, arms flailing
like a windmill in a tornado and pounded Johnny until he screamed for mercy,
while one of the other boys quickly dispatched the tree branch and inner tube
sling shot into splinters with a rock.
Danny had a nasty bruise and a cut where the chinaberry had actually broken the skin, and while the rest of us found it in our hearts to forget and accept Johnny Small into our group, Danny never did quite make that leap of forgiveness.
Just saw the first......
... gator slide of the season, I
guess. Poor thing. It's so dry here in central Florida right now, it was little
more than a thin line in the dirt surrounded by some dusty footprints. I reckon
he is wandering around looking for some water. I've gotten used to seeing them
around by now, their heads barely poking above the water, eyes scanning the
surface, waiting for some unsuspecting impromptu meal to wander by.
I visited Florida from Texas
when I was a kid, long before I ever knew I would be moving here. We barely
scraped up the money for gas and food and tickets to Disney World so my uncle
invited us to stay with him in Merritt Island so that we wouldn't have to fork
out for a hotel. I think we were the only family that smuggled bologna
sandwiches into Disney World in a shoulder bag. Or maybe not...but the free
lodging was too good to pass up.
It seems to me that kids back
then were always treated like second class citizens, so it came as no real
surprise when we were informed after supper that we would be bunking in the
moldy old travel trailer out behind the house, while mom and dad took the air
conditioned guest room in the house.
My uncle's house was an old
cracker style thing with a tin roof, a wrap around porch, and sat up on stilts
right on the edge of a marsh surrounded by cypress trees. It was a really neat
place, but coming from a ranch style wood frame home that sat right on the
ground, and not being exposed to anything other than that up to that point, it
looked like something right off of the weekly t v program 'Gentle Ben'.
"It'll be fun," my mom
said, "like camping out."
Well, okay, whatever you say.
"Better take a leak now if
ya have to, as there ain't no facilities in the trailer and you don't want to
be crossin' the yard in the dark." Said uncle Mark, clearly unfamiliar
with the sporadic operation of the juvenile plumbing system.
"Why's that?" asked my
brother, the oldest, the authority on just about everything and pretty much the
spokesman for the height challenged members of the family.
"Gator'll gitcha."
Not gator 'might' get you, or
gator 'could' get you, but gator 'will' get you.
"Can't keep chickens out
here." uncle Mark went on, "in fact just last week I lost a good dog.
Gator got him."
He walked us to the trailer
carrying a large flashlight, checking the bushes and even shined the light under
the trailer reminding us once again not to leave the safety of the trailer in
the night. For anything. I think the point was pretty well made as he had to
practically give birth to all four of us before he could get loose and go back
to the house.
We got settled in, a fan mounted
in one of the windows almost drowning out the buzzing of the mosquitoes and the
croaking of the frogs and almost stirring up enough air to make the heat
bearable.
Sometime in the middle of the
night I woke up, you guessed it, needing to relieve myself in the most awful
way. I woke my brother.
"Larry, I havta pee."
"So go!"
"You heard uncle Mark,
we're not supposed to leave because of the alligators.'
"Oh bull pucky, he just
said that to keep us from buggin' them going back and forth to the house all
night. Just go!"
"Go with me."
"NO I'm not goin' with you.
Just take the light and run real fast."
Uncle Mark had left the
flashlight with us before he went back to the house, and I had watched this
grown man, probably in his forties back then, literally sprint the twenty or so
yards back to the house. If he was fooling us, then he was one of the best leg
pullers I had ever seen.
I took the light and stood at
the little door debating. Even went as far as to open the door to do some more
debating, letting in God knows how many mosquitoes in the process. I flipped on
the light and shined it around the yard. If you've never seen a cypress tree in
the dark, I can tell you that it is not a pretty sight. Draped in Spanish moss
and crawling with vines they look like they're alive and moving in the shadows.
I'm standing there with my legs
crossed, I was about eight I guess, with a bladder the size of a peanut, and
had just about made up my mind to risk it, when the light fell on two shining
objects at the edge of the marsh. I squinted as hard as I could trying to
figure out what I was seeing, but all I could make out was those two glowing
discs.
Suddenly, although I had never
seen the shine of a gators eyes in lamplight, I knew instinctively that that
was precisely what I was seeing. A moment later, with a lunge and a slap of his
tail he did a complete flip and dove into the water. He was probably about six
feet long.
It's a good thing that it was so early in the morning. The steps leading up to the trailer had plenty of time to dry before morning so nobody was any the wiser.
The sun set on my boy's second
baseball game of the season, our team in the lead. I stopped watching the ball,
and I started watching the faces. I paid close attention to the boys'
expressions. Their looks of open optimism and anticipation as they stepped up
to bat. The grim determination as they threw, caught, ran with all their might
from base to base. Having lived in the city, I have to tell you, there is a
world of difference between a city game and a rural game. I don't know why,
there just is.
I watched the audience. 'Left
wing or right wing' last night, boiled down to which team you were rooting for.
I watched the small children by the bleachers, their hopeful faces upturned,
waiting for the foul ball that they would scramble for and then take to the
concession stand to trade for a sucker.
A boy from the home team tried
to steal third. The pitcher was not to be so easily had, he slammed the ball to
the third baseman who caught it deftly and then, noting the runners close
proximity to second, let the ball fly to second base. The second baseman
allowed the ball to slip past him. So the runner, anticipating a home run, did
an abrupt about face and lit a shuck for third base again.
The outfielder snatched the ball
out of the air and fired it back to third, leaving our runner once again penned
between second and third base. The runner swung around and headed at a dead run
back to second. The third baseman, still on his toes, blasted the ball back to
second, the second baseman, this time, caught the ball and our runner was once
and for all....OUT.
The audience roared with
laughter and applause at this unexpected Abbott and Costello type play and the
players, both teams, laughed and slapped each other on the back for having
provided such quality entertainment.
For just a while our 'battle'
was contained to a little league field in rural Florida and my husband, being
the eloquent man I know and love summed it up for me.
"This is neat"
I grinned at him.
"Yeah ... it is."
After the game was over the
audience began to stir around, gathering up kids and belongings, the scent of
the honeysuckle lining the stadium fence thick in the air and laughter and good
natured joking cutting through the gathering darkness.
I paused at the fence waiting
for our team to finish its post-game prayer.
...'for seeing us through this
game with no injuries, and Lord, please take care of our soldiers who are fighting
in Iraq and bring them home safely....'
It wasn't expected, the tear that worked it's way from the corner of my eye and slipped down my cheek. I found to my shame that I had to find a private place as more tears were clearly imminent. Not too awful many, just a few. One for our soldiers, one for their soldiers, a couple for the children of Iraq who know no such joy as a baseball game, one for the mothers over there who are not able experience the gleeful jubilation of watching her son try to steal third base. One just out of sheer gratitude that the war was happening there and not here. The last one for me, because no matter how hard I try not to be, I'm just too dang sentimental.
I don't know why, but despite
the fact that it is mother's day, I got to thinking about my dad. We never got
along really, he never even knew who I was, even though I was 29 the day he
died. We just never could seem to get past that father/child relationship and
progress on to person/person.
I was three months pregnant with
my son when I received the call that he had passed away. Even though he had a
bad heart and we all knew that he was due for a 'tune up' (valve replacement)
it still came as a shock. He went sitting in his favorite chair, his jaw
resting on his fist, elbow on the arm of the chair, eyes on the television
screen. My mom said the only way she knew he was gone was that the light in his
eyes winked out. Makes me think it was fairly peaceful and painless. But
permanent and devastating nonetheless.
We made the trip to Georgia, not
in time to be there for the funeral, but in time to visit with some of the
family who had come from different parts of the country to pay respects. It was
the first time all four of us kids had been together in several years, so we
sat around the kitchen table in my grandmother's house swapping stories about
dad and other childhood memories.
"You'll be wanting to go to
the cemetery, right?" My sisters both asked.
"Of course." I replied
quickly.
"Good, you have to see what
Larry did."
It was at that point that my
sister handed me the little cloth and wire elf I had given my dad for Christmas
twenty-seven years prior. The elf had adorned the rear view mirror of every
single vehicle my dad drove from that day forward. It now resides in a little
glass box on the desk in my bedroom.
My grandmother wandered through
to remind us that a child should not go before his mother, that she was not
prepared to lose a son, that it was not fair to have to bury him, he should
have buried her, and we cried and hugged her and smiled with her before she
made her way back to bed to continue to grieve.
What I did not know at this
point in time, is that I had not accepted my father's death. I knew he had
died. I knew that. But I had not accepted it. I would not do so until I visited
the cemetery.
The next morning dawned cold and
rainy. I should have known better the moment I stepped out the door. I held
back, not yet ready.
"You have to go, you have
to see what Larry did." My sisters kept insisting.
What Larry did. What did Larry
do? No one would tell me.
The red earth at the cemetery
did nothing to make me feel any better. I knew that when I left Georgia I would
see red in the crevices of our shoes for weeks, weeks to be reminded of my trip
to Georgia and why we went.
I was led past several
tombstones, watching fervently for the one that read James Davis M***** ... not
wanting it to sneak up on me, wanting to be prepared.
We turned a sharp corner and my
sisters both stopped. I was confused. I saw no headstone, only a massive guitar
molded in concrete, standing on its broad base, wet from the rain. It wasn't
until I saw the bronze plaque set in the guitar, that I realized it displayed
the name I had been seeking.
James Davis M***** ... beloved
father, son, and husband ... musician.
I don't know when I hit my knees
exactly, and don't really know when I started sobbing but sob I did, until I
thought I would burst from the agony. All I could think about was the cold rain
pouring down, and he was lying there in the cold damp ground, no one to touch
him, or warm him. I wanted to dig into the red earth, to pat his cheek one last
time but I knew it was foolish to think that way. My sisters both sighed in
satisfaction as though this reaction from me was what they had been waiting
for.
I finally discovered what my
brother Larry had done. Creatively challenged and clumsy to the point of
embarrassment, he had fashioned this headstone himself, with his own two hands.
It was as smooth as glass, a perfect replica of dad's six-string Fender. He had
the plaque made on his own and set it into the concrete, delivered the
tombstone and set it in place alone.
I was left to my own tears, my
siblings giving me time to let it all sink in. I don't know how long I was
there, I do know that when I finally got to my feet I was chilled to the bone
and wet through and through. I studied the grave site a few minutes more, said
my goodbyes and made my way back to the car, memorizing every detail of the
cemetery, committing the name to memory, for I know that one day, when time and
money permits, I will return to visit my dad, where he lies in Georgia, in the
red earth, under the concrete guitar.
© 2003 Copyright held by the
author.