Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  Now he said, "Give Merle a head butt for me," alluding to how Merle would greet Bill by planting his head into his chest and pushing hard, his tail wagging passionately. Merle had known, in an instant, the connection Bill and I had.

  Merle was lying by the woodstove, in the center of the house, facing the great window, though there was nothing to be seen there now except clouds and rain. Walking to him, I noticed some foamy saliva on his lips and I wiped it off, as I had been doing during the past couple of hours.

  "This is from Bill," I told him. Putting my head against his head, I scratched his ruff. His eyes remained vacant, and he breathed in small puffs.

  He had messed his towels while I was on the phone, as well as himself, and I got the bucket and began to sponge him off. The towel directly beneath him had also become urine-soaked, and I decided to change that at the same time.

  Taking him by his outstretched legs, I rolled him over, and as his head came around, his mouth opened in a snarl. I petted him and said, "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to get you clean." When I had rolled him onto his other side, I smoothed the snarl of his lips and flapped his ear onto his cheek. Removing the wet towel from beneath him, I began to swab off his urine-soaked flank. As I went to rinse the cloth, I saw his chest stop rising and falling. I dropped the towel and raced around to his face. His eyes were filmed over with the silver-white cloudiness that is the end.

  "Merle! Merle!" I cried.

  But his chest was still. There had been no warning or death rattle, no slowing of his breath that was supposed to warn me to lie before him, as I had been doing for days, and say a final good-bye.

  "I know a dog—" I began. There was no response and I buried my face against his flank, which smelled of urine and soap. I had to put my nose into his ruff to smell his sweet nutty odor. His mouth opened and closed several times, remaining agape. I closed it gently and smoothed his lips over his teeth.

  Rocking back on my heels, I wondered how this could be—his going off while I was cleaning his butt. Somehow, it seemed apt. A dog is always more interested in another dog's rear end than in its eyes. Half laughing, half crying at this thought, I suddenly felt all my joints lose cohesion, as if what had been holding me together had suddenly dissolved.

  "My dog," I said to the empty house. "My dog."

  We buried him by the prayer flags, though it took a couple of days. He died at five-thirty on a Thursday afternoon, and there was nothing to be done that night except clean him off and carry him to his round green bed, which I placed under the great window, a vase of yellow wildflowers on the sill, flanked by two red candles.

  Looking at him from the balcony that evening, I thought he might stand up and walk off, he looked so perfectly gold and calm, so untarnished by death. "Fly on, Merle," I said. "And may flights of elk sing thee to thy rest."

  Allison and three other friends helped me dig his grave—a round one the size of his bed and three feet down. It took three hours, picking and shoveling through the rocky ground, and when we were done we stood around the grave, gazing at its perfectly vertical sides. One of my friends, who owns many Springer Spaniels, said, "That is a damn good hole for a dog."

  "Damn good," I said.

  Though it was cool after the rain, Merle had begun to bloat. Allison, who had kept Brower's body by her hearth for two days before she took him to be cremated, said not to hurry. She went into town and bought dry ice, and we packed him in it, covering him with one of his favorite blankets, imprinted with great stags, and leaving his head out so people who came by could look him in the eye. The silver cloudiness had gone from them, and they were brown and bright.

  Midday on Saturday, many of Merle's and my friends gathered around the prayer flags. I had built a low catafalque and covered it with Merle's stag blanket, and we put him and his bed on it, taking the ice away. My four-year-old godson Reed, who had been picking wildflowers, laid blue and yellow ones by Merle's back, and Allison placed a gold kata around his neck—one of the silken scarves used by Tibetans as an auspicious symbol of greeting or a good-luck token upon one's departure.

  Then people spoke, remembering him. I told some of my favorite stories about him—counting coup on the coyote, skiing deep powder, and how we had found each other on the San Juan River.

  Allison read the poem I had translated for Brower, in which he told her not to cry for him, because I was definitely crying. As were many others. In fact, later that day Tessa told her mother that she had never seen her father cry before.

  Allison gave Merle an eagle feather, one I had brought home from Alaska for her when she was in a transitional place, to lift him, as she said, on his journey. She also gave him an elk tooth from one of the first elk she had shot—the debutante who had become a hunter after hanging out with a half-wild dog and his man.

  Scott gave Merle a great pile of elk steak, and I gave him two big bones. I also laid several photos next to him. They were of him, Brower, Allison, and me, hiking and skiing. There was a photo of Scott and Merle, hunting. And there was a photo of Merle and me on the summit of the Sleeping Indian, his face pressed to mine. I taped an elk tooth to the photo, one of a pair from an elk I had shot on the mountain as Merle had sat by my side. Between the tooth and the photo, I nestled a lock of his hair and a lock of my hair, lying across our hearts. The other tooth of the pair was in my pocket.

  Looking over to a friend, I nodded. He tripped a switch, and from the speakers I had brought outside came the "Hallelujah Chorus." The prayer flags snapped in the wind, the clouds sailed over the Tetons, and we listened to Merle's favorite sing-along. And listening to music that had made kings rise to their feet, I wondered if some of my friends thought all this too much ceremony for a dog. Then I remembered those people, twelve thousand years ago, who placed their loved ones in the same graves with dogs—the forehead of the person and the forehead of the dog nodding toward each other. And I thought that this was no more than my nod to Merle.

  Finally, we put a tanned elk hide over him, the same rich dark reddish gold as he was, and carried him to his grave on his bed, wrapped in, surrounded by, and sent off with elk.

  Allison, Scott, and I lowered him down, and I took one more look at his face—those brows, those deep brown eyes—before touching my nose to his forehead and breathing in his scent: sweet, crisp, nutty, with a hint of lanolin. Then I gently pulled the elk hide over him and, climbing out of the hole, helped Allison and Scott shovel in the earth.

  There were over thirty people at his party later that afternoon, and others drifted in and out, dogs running through the house and children playing everywhere. Allison had taken care of the food and arrangements, making people comfortable as she handed out drinks and appetizers—Merle's party allowing us to share a domesticity we had never enjoyed while he and Brower were alive.

  As we were eating, one of Donald and Gladys's daughters walked into the great room, looking ill at ease, perhaps from the size of the group, perhaps from the old issue of her parents' having sold me land. I had learned from Donald and Gladys that some of their family had resented the diminishment of their legacy.

  Walking up to me, she said, "We're really sorry about Merle. We really liked him." Declining any food or drink, she gave me a tiny nod of her head, the way old Wyoming people do when they're at a loss for words, as if they were still wearing cowboy hats and the slight dip of the brim toward the person they're addressing—like the tiny movement of Wilhelm von Osten's hat toward Clever Hans—conveys all that needs to be said. And, in this case, it did. Grateful for a visit that had made her uncomfortable, I walked her to the door and thanked her into the dusk.

  Around 9:30, as the sky grew lavender, folks began to make their good-byes. I went out to the deck and stood with Allison, our arms around each other's waists as we looked at the summit of the Sleeping Indian, where we had sat with our dogs just a year before.

  "Too soon over," I said.

  She turned around and looked at the prayer flags, limp in the cool night air
, and Merle's freshly filled grave beneath them.

  "Too soon over," she replied.

  When everyone was finally gone, I walked across the grass and sat by him, just feeling him, as if he might be a kind of osmotic pressure, pushing out to the edge of the universe.

  My head nodded and I fell asleep. An hour later, the stars bright, I went inside and up to bed, feeling the same outward bulging of the house, Merle's spirit still full within it. Sometime in the night, I heard the dog door slap, and his claws come across the floor and climb the stairs—tok, tok, tok.

  He blew a breath in my face, and when I opened my eyes he was right there, reddish-gold, one brow going up, the other down, saying, "You need a dog, and I'm it." I leapt out of bed, crying, "Merle! Merle!" and started roughhousing with him on the floor, only to wake and find myself tangled in the sheets.

  Slowly, I looked to the corner of the room where he had slept. Of course, it was empty. I went downstairs and walked to his grave, where I stood, listening to the hum of the river and feeling the universe still pressed out to its farthest corners by him. And I couldn't tell if the bigness was him or how we had filled each other's hearts or if there was any difference between the two. Looking down, I imagined him lying on his green bed. Even though he would now always be close, it seemed like too confined an end for a dog who liked to roam.

  I needn't have worried. When I looked up, he was bounding across the grass toward me, already as much starlight as dog.

  Tail lashing, front paws dancing, he twirled before me.

  "You dance, Sir!" I cried.

  "Ha-ha-ha!" he panted. "I dance! I DANCE!"

  With Many Thanks

  To Kim Fadiman, who read each word, some of them many times, who talked over issues of tone and meaning, who suggested important changes, who helped to find a subtitle, and who has been an enduring friend. To Allison von Maur for her careful read of the manuscript, her helpful comments, her humor through thick and thin, and her unstinting support. To Dr. Theo Schuff, D.V.M., for his review of the manuscript for veterinary accuracy and his reminding me not to be afraid to ask the deepest question about dogs. To Lorraine Bodger for insisting that this was the book I should write. To Marian Meyers for helping me discover some of Merle's origins. To Molly Breslin for listening to many of these chapters several times. To Douglas Smith of the Yellowstone Wolf Project for his enthusiastically answering my questions about wolves, year after year, and to Marc Bekoff for his read of my early manuscript. To Richard Appleman for our many discussions about the canine world. To Noelle Naiden for pointing out key readings in the dog literature. To Benj and Janet Sinclair for those many days at Hunter's Rest. To Lyn Benjamin and Tater and Tot for their love and friendship. To Len Carlman, Anne Ladd, and Mayo and Susan Lykes for their comfort when I needed it most. To Carol Connors and Steve Whisenand of the Teton County Library for processing hundreds of Interlibrary Loan Requests. To Jane Backer, Jo Cleere, Jim Billipp, Sylvaine Montaudouin, and Anna Dank for help in translation. To Tim Bent and Tina Pohlman for their editorial counsel. To David Hough for his scrupulous and fun-filled production of the book. To Russell Galen for guiding me through the publishing world with the patience he would have shown a young inexperienced dog. And to Merle's vets—Jack Konitz, Tim Gwilliam, Theo Schuff, M. J. Forman, Erick Egger, Paul Cuddon, and Marybeth Minter—for their care of my friend.

  Notes

  CHAPTER 1: From the Wild

  PAGE

  [>] "Smell is our oldest sense": Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Vintage, 1995), 20.

  [>] "whom they call 'Four-Eyes'": Marion Schwartz, A History of Dogs in the Early Americas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 20.

  [>] "their expressions were easier to read": Stanley Coren, How To Speak Dog (New York: Free Press, 2000), 112.

  [>] "acclaimed Newfoundland Seaman": Mark Derr, A Dog's History of America (New York: North Point Press, 2004), 104, 109–120.

  [>] "most sagacious animal": John James Audubon, The Birds of America, vol. U, Plate CCCLXVIII, "The Great White Heron," Web version at http://www.audubon.org/bird/BoA/F38_G1f.html.

  [>] "ability to transmit a rich array of information": Irene Pepperberg, "Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots: Implications for the Enrichment of Many Species," Animal Welfare 13 (2004): S203–208.

  Jane Goodall, "Behaviour of Free-Living Chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream Area," in Animal Behaviour Monographs, vol. 1, part 3 (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cassell, 1968), 165–311.

  For a cautionary view of chimpanzees' ability to sign and use language as humans do, see Marian Stamp Dawkins, Through Our Eyes Only?: The Search for Animal Consciousness (Oxford, England: W. H. Freeman, 1993), 71–79; C. N. Slobodchikoff, "Cognition and Communication in Prairie Dogs," in The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition, ed. Marc Bekoff, Colin Allen, and Gordon M. Burghardt (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 257–264; V. M. Janik, L. S. Sayigh, and R. S. Wells, "Signature Whistle Shape Conveys Identity Information to Bottlenose Dolphins," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (23 May 2006); Fred H. Harrington and Cheryl S. Asa, "Wolf Communication," in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 66–103; Marc Bekoff, "Social Communication in Canids: Empirical Studies of the Evidence for the Evolution of a Stereotypical Function of Play Bows Mammalian Display," Science 197 (1977): 1097–1099; Sophia Yin and Brenda McCowan, "Barking in Domestic Dogs: Context Specificity and Individual Identification," Animal Behaviour 68 (2004): 343–355.

  11 "[T]he difference in mind": Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man (New York: The Modern Library, no date), 444–495, 912.

  [>] "Stray dogs,": L. Boitani, F. Francisci, P. Ciucci, and G. Andreoli, "Population Biology and Ecology of Feral Dogs in Central Italy," in The Domestic Dog, ed. James Serpell (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 217–244.

  CHAPTER 2: The First Dog

  PAGE

  [>] "a variety of wild ancestors": Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (New York: Heritage Press, 1963), 8–9, 10. See also Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 21.

  [>] "little submission and less obedience": Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog (New York: Kodansha International, 1994), 28.

  [>] "is descended from wolves": Carles Vilà et al., "Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog," Science 13, vol. 276 (13 June 1997): 1687–1689.

  [>] "Dogs are gray wolves,": Robert K. Wayne, "Molecular Evolution of the Dog Family," Trends in Genetics 5, vol. 9 (June 1993): 220.

  [>] "as long as 135,000 years ago.": Carles Vilà et al., "Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog."

  [>] "There were no wolves in Africa": Ronald M. Nowak, "Wolf Evolution and Taxonomy," in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 239–258.

  [>] "Murie watched a wolf family": Adolph Murie, The Wolves of Mount McKinley (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1944), 45–50.

  [>] "outcompete their brawny cousins": Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 60–61.

  [>] "sniffing and licking the researchers": "Early Canid Domestication: The Farm Fox Experiment," http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/807641/posts.

  38 "found to be ninety-five hundred years old": Stanley J. Olsen, Origins of the Domestic Dog: The Fossil Record (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 71.

  [>] "lived fourteen thousand years ago": Juliet Clutton-Brock, "Origins of the dog: domestication and early history," in The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People, ed. James Serpell (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 10.

  [>] "six thousand years befor
e agriculture": Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 181.

  [>] "seventeen thousand years old": Mikhail V. Sablin and Gennady A. Khlopachev, "The Earliest Ice Age Dogs: Evidence from Eliseevichi I," Current Anthropology 5, vol. 43 (December 2002): 795–799.

  [>] "rather a common practice": Peter Savolainen et al., "Genetic Evidence for an East Asian Origin of Domestic Dogs," Science 22, vol. 298 (November 2002): 1610–1613.

  [>] "founded some of today's breeds": Jennifer A. Leonard et al., "Ancient DNA Evidence for Old World Origin of New World Dogs," Science 22, vol. 298 (November 2002): 1613–1616.

  [>] "pacifying an angry wasp": Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (New York: Everyman's Library reprint of the 1883 edition, 1907), 185–193.

  [>] "ability to read us extremely well": Brian Hare et al., "The Domestication of Social Cognition in Dogs," Science 22, vol. 298 (November 2002): 1634–1636.

  [>] "substitute objects like dogs": Konrad Lorenz, "Part and parcel in animal and human societies" (1950), in Studies in Animal and Human Behaviour, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 154–156.

  [>] "kisses it on the snout": Carl Lumholtz, Among Cannibals (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1889), 178–179.

  [>] "ridiculous affection": George Forster, A Voyage Round the World, vol. 1 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), 206.

  [>] "happy expression on its face": Marion Schwartz, A History of Dogs in the Early Americas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 54.