Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him

by Luis Carlos Montalvan

  Tuesday, meanwhile, is the Gentleman. He loves to play, but he never jumps on the other dogs or sniffs aggressively at derrières. Instead, he bends his shoulders toward the ground and wags his tail, asking them to play. He doesn’t mind a little roughhousing, and he always holds his own in a play fight, but more often than not he explores alone, happily rooting in the dirt, nosing out sticks, and kissing up to the women because he knows they can’t resist his charms. Tuesday’s always been a people dog, but he has a special fondness for women. It’s funny to see him running from dog to mossy old acorn to young woman and then back again, his tail held high and contentment slathered on his face. He’s happy-go-lucky; he sees the good in life and appreciates the little things. Since he’s my doppelganger, that attitude brings out the good in me. Perhaps that’s why I find it so easy to laugh and joke with the other owners at the dog run—because Tuesday showed me how.

  Not that everything went smoothly that spring. The dog run was surrounded by trees, so Tuesday always wanted to play fetch. Usually, that was good. But one afternoon, I faked a toss in one direction, then faked in another, and then to my horror the stick slipped out of my hand, went flying across the dog run, and struck a young woman right in the middle of her forehead. It was awful, sort of like cutting a fart in paradise. The poor woman stumbled backward, shocked and dazed, and, I mean . . . she was bleeding pretty bad. I’m sure it didn’t help to see a big Latino with an eighty-pound dog and a Bubba Stik cane hobbling toward her. I apologized and offered a baby wipe and, eventually, we talked a bit about Tuesday, who was standing a few feet away staring at her with soft-eyed concern. She was extremely nice and understanding, especially for someone holding a bloody baby wipe to her face. By the end, we were even laughing about the errant stick. But inside I was frazzled—after all, you don’t just recover immediately from blowing the peace of paradise—and Tuesday and I didn’t return to the dog run for a week.

  Ironically, that was probably one of my longest conversations that spring.

  For a while then, Tuesday was confined to the hillside a hundred meters from the dog run. It wasn’t a hardship, though, since the hill was actually his favorite place. It was covered with grass, and Tuesday loved the feel of grass on his paws. He was a city dog, confined almost exclusively to a concrete world, and smushing plant life was a special treat. I felt his excitement every time he bounded up the hill, looking for squirrels to chase and then, if no small creatures caught his attention, flopping like a very enthusiastic fish in the grass. He rolled a few times, just for fun, then rubbed one side of his face and neck along the ground, then the other, as he pushed himself along with his back legs before turning over on his back and twisting his whole body from side to side. It was a moment of unbridled ecstasy that was so different from his ordinary manner it always made me cheer him on. Was he scenting the lawn? I doubt it. I think he just liked the feel of cool grass on a warm spring day: the softness, the smell, the way it scratched that unreachable itch. I mean, who doesn’t like that?

  He is a confident dog. That’s what our relationship did for him, in the end: it brought out his natural grace. He loves to please others, even when it is just someone stopping to say, “Oh my, he looks like the Bush’s beans dog” (which someone says, by the way, almost every day). He loves it when Rudy, the superintendent for the four or five buildings Columbia owns in the area, yells, “It’s Tuesday!” from halfway down the block.

  “Go say hi, Tuesday,” I tell him, unhooking his leash and giving him a pat on the flank. That is a new command Tuesday and I worked on over the winter, one that was never in the service dog manual. In fact, Lu Picard wasn’t too happy when she found out about it.

  “He’s not a pet, Luis,” she said, shaking her head (but secretly smiling at my audacity, I’d like to think). “You can’t encourage him to interact when he’s working.” I get the feeling sometimes that Tuesday and I are like Lu’s gifted but exasperating students, always plotting trouble just right when we’re about to make her proud.

  I’m not worried. Not now. My bond with Tuesday is so deep and ingrained I know it will never come unbound. He knows my scent and my respiration. He can hear my heart beating fast or slow. He knows my inflection—angry or sad—and I know the hunch of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, and the angle of his tail. We trust each other unequivocally; we know each other down to our bones. There are no doubts between us anymore, no hesitations or concerns. We don’t even need to practice our commands, although we still do for about thirty minutes a day because Tuesday enjoys it. Even outside, I only have to tell him what to do half the time, because the rest of the time he already knows. When we cross Broadway, for instance, he always starts right, toward the restaurants with sidewalk tables. I only have to command him when I am going straight or turning left and, honestly, that rarely happens. I am a creature of habit in a hamster-cage world.

  “He’s a good dog, Luis,” Rudy always says with the smile of a wise old neighborhood fixture. “You take care of him.”

  “Don’t worry, Rudy. I will.”

  On campus, Tuesday is just as popular. There was a buzz that spring when he entered the lecture hall of my largest class, and a hundred eyes followed him when he rose to leave. After class, he had a standing date with his friend Cindy, whom we met at the dog run. I’d unhook his leash as soon as we saw her, and the two of them would sprint down the halls of the journalism school together while I limped behind. Tuesday and I entered the elevator one day with a woman I didn’t recognize, and halfway up she turned to me and said, “You know, it’s really nice to have a quadruped in the j-school.”

  A quadruped? “I like that,” I told her with a chuckle. “Thank you.” And then I petted Tuesday, because I always petted him, that’s how we lived, and because I was amazed again that whether it was the National Geographic documentary filmed that spring called “And Man Created Dog” or the halls of academia, he was always a star. At some unrecognizable point, he had crossed over from being “the dog” to “Tuesday the service dog” to “the famous Tuesday.”

  “Oh,” people say when they see him, “is that the famous Tuesday?”

  “Say hi, Tuesday,” I tell him, and he doesn’t hesitate to leave them laughing.

  But he has a therapeutic side, too. I remember a waitress at our favorite restaurant walking across the room and asking, “Can I just say hi to Tuesday?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She bent down and petted him for a while. “Thanks,” she said, with a wistful smile. “I was having a really bad day.”

  There’s an assisted-living home on the end of our block, near the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and on nice days the residents sit outside with their wheelchairs and walkers. Many are wary of dogs, but they know and love Tuesday. He was trained to assist the infirm, after all, so he understands the equipment. But even if he wasn’t trained, he’s so gentle and intelligent he would put them at ease. I am always moved to see these wonderful old veterans of life petting Tuesday in the sun. I don’t know all of their names, even after all these encounters, but—and I know this sounds weird—Tuesday does. He knows more about these people than I will ever dare to discover.

  That’s why I always smile when we’re sitting out on West 112th Street and someone stops to stare at Tuesday. “I’m sorry,” they say finally, noticing me. “I don’t mean to intrude, but he’s just such a beautiful dog.”

  “Go say hi, Tuesday,” I tell him. “Go say hi.”

  Tuesday hops up immediately. He knows what I want—the Socializer, the Gentleman—and he wants that, too. I smile as I watch him work his charm on another unsuspecting person, playfully but with perfect manners rubbing against their hand.

  “He’s so friendly,” they laugh, as he turns to let them pat him on the back.

  Yes, he’s friendly. And helpful. And warm and outgoing. He’s dedicated. Loving. Confident yet open, professional and yet personally involved. He’s my cane. He’s my balance. He’s my alarm clock, my med
icine schedule, my life coach and emotional monitor. He’s my companion. My friend. My ballast. My hope. What else? What more can I offer in his honor?

  I shrug.

  “He’s Tuesday,” I say.

  EPILOGUE

  GRADUATION DAY

  In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen

  —PSALM 36:9

  In Thy light shall we see light.

  —COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MOTTO

  We walked first to the university bookstore, where I bought a light blue graduation cap and gown, then strolled across campus to the registrar’s office for my cord. There were eight veterans graduating from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in the spring of 2010, a record for the university, and we were each receiving a special red, white, and blue cord to wear around our shoulders and down our lapels. As usual, Tuesday wowed the three women in the office, and we ended up leaving with two special cords, one for each of the veterans of the last two years.

  “Kiss-up,” I joked as we left. Tuesday glanced at me with laughing eyes and a sly smile. He didn’t disagree.

  A few days later, I took the gown, the smallest size available at the university store, and cut it in half at the waist. Then I cut off the sleeves above the elbow, rolled the remainder the rest of the way up, and pinned them in a perfect pleat.

  “Try it on,” I said to Tuesday, who had been watching the preparations. I slipped it over his head, then around his front legs. There was some pinning and readjusting, a snip or two at the back, but Tuesday never complained, never moved more than a foot or two, and within half an hour he was standing before me in his own light blue graduation gown, the gold crown of the Columbia insignia visible on each of his shoulders. I wrapped his special veteran’s cord around his neck three times, until the tassels hung down in front of his shoulders. He snapped at them a few times; they were too tempting not to bite.

  “A true scholar. Mamá and Papá will be impressed.”

  Tuesday’s eyebrows went up and down. Mamá and Papá?

  “Yes, they’re here, Tuesday. This is it. The end of the semester. Graduation day.”

  It wasn’t the end of anything. Not really. That spring, when I was sure I would be earning my master’s in journalism, I had re-enrolled at Columbia to complete a second master’s degree in strategic communications. After a tough first six months, I felt comfortable in upper Manhattan, and it was too stressful to think about leaving. Besides, the Army had started a new specialty branch called Information Operations. This wasn’t public relations or communications; those branches already existed. This new field was a merger of psychological operations, electronics, and cyber warfare. The Army was training specialized officers to deal with new threats in the global infosphere, which included training in the art and science of propaganda. Since I want to work in policy development and help induce the honest statements and assessments out of a military throwing itself openly into media manipulation, I figured I better understand its strategic communication methodology and mind-set.

  It’s funny. I entered the Army partially as a repudiation of my father’s faith in numbers and words, believing instead that the world can be changed for the better by boots on the ground. I still believe in boots on the ground. I am not an enemy of the U.S. Army. In fact, I love it more than ever, and that’s why I want it to change, to own up to its mistakes and actually be the force for justice, honor, and freedom it has always claimed to be. There is no heroism without responsibility; there is no shining example without an honest accounting of actions. There is no valor for the troops at the bottom if there’s no honor among the generals at the top.

  In the end, I walked away from that world. Like my father, I am betting my life that the pen in my hand (or computer keyboard under my fingers) is mightier than the machine’s slow grind.

  So for another year, at least, I return. But one day . . .

  One day, I am going to leave this place. I am going to have a wife. And children. And a job that makes a difference and some land out west, with a few horses in the back field and a view of the mountains. I wasn’t made to live in New York City. I am more of a country boy. In ten years, when Tuesday is retired, I want to see him pushing gingerly through the clean mountain air with the grass beneath his feet, not hobbling through crowded streets with toxic ice-melting salt stuck in the fur between his toes.

  It’s going to happen. I know it is, just like I knew I would be accepted to Columbia. One day I’m going to hold Tuesday beneath a beautiful blue sky and tell him, “We made it, boy. We did it.” I’ll give him a hug and kiss him on his head, like I always do, then remind him, “You don’t have to give those kids a ride, you know, just because they ask. We have a pony for that.”

  But that was in the future. For now, we had a lunch date with Papá and Mamá. I could see the pride in Tuesday’s eyes, both a reflection of my own and his alone, as I readjusted the gown, rewound the slightly slobbery cord, and placed the cap on his head. He knew something was happening. He felt the excitement. We walked out into a light rain, but nothing could dampen Tuesday’s spirit. All along Broadway, people were pointing and smiling, shouting compliments, taking pictures, and Tuesday strolled like a king, casually relishing the stares. By the time we reached Le Monde, one of our favorite sidewalk restaurants on Broadway, Tuesday had shaken off the cap so many times that I finally folded it up and stuffed it in the trash. He was right; he looked better with a bare head, so everyone could see his eyes.

  An hour later, after a nice lunch with my parents, Tuesday and I headed off to campus. We had skipped the large graduation ceremony for the entire university, and since the journalism school graduation was less formal I was sporting a jacket, a tie, and some stubble (because, honestly, I had spent so much effort on Tuesday’s outfit I ran out of time to shave). That left Tuesday as the star, as he truly was, and we must have posed for a hundred pictures on our way into Lerner Auditorium. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a photograph of the famous Tuesday in his graduation gown. The atmosphere, the crowd, the smiling classmates who suddenly seemed like old friends: it felt great, and I think I laughed the whole way to my seat, both from the excitement of the moment and the goofy, tongue-dangling smile Tuesday flashed for every camera.

  They placed Tuesday and me at the left corner of the first row of graduates. I thought that meant we would go first, but when they started calling names, the seating chart didn’t correspond to the order. Tuesday and I watched happily, completely in the moment despite the large energetic crowd, as each of our classmates crossed the stage. We waited an hour, through the calling of four hundred names, before the graduates on our row started to stand up and proceed to the stage.

  So there was an order, I thought. The front row is last.

  “And last but not least,” the dean announced, after the young man beside us had left the stage, “Luis Carlos Montalván, a veteran of the U.S. Army, and his service dog, Tuesday.”

  We stepped forward and, with the precision of a drill team, made our way up the steps and onto the stage. I walked quickly, even with my cane marking time on one side, but the journey seemed to take years. Dean Melanie Huff shook my hand and passed me my diploma, then turned to Tuesday and handed him one, too. I was deeply touched; I had no idea of the plan. Columbia had been astonishingly good to me over the last two years, and in that moment, with tears in my eyes, I felt tremendously grateful not just for them, but for all the people who had pulled with me and tolerated me and rooted for me over the years. America, I was reminded, was a wonderful place indeed.

  Tuesday was less affected. He took the diploma in his mouth, then with his lips curled in that big doggy grin, lifted his head and held it up to the crowd. The auditorium burst into applause. As we walked toward the edge of the stage, side by side, the applause grew louder and louder, until I raised my hand at the top of the descending stairs and everyone whistled and cheered. The applause wasn’t just for Tuesday and me. It was for the whole graduating class, for all my fellow students and everything we
had accomplished, but at that moment I felt humbled. I was, as Lou Gehrig once said, “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

  I also felt proud. It had been a hard two years—at times, devastatingly hard. No one knew the depths of my problems when I enrolled, including me; no one knew how hard I’d worked to stand on this stage. Only Tuesday, of everyone in that auditorium, understood.

  After the ceremony, Tuesday and I went to celebrate with my parents at Max Caffé. I don’t remember what was said exactly, but I know they were proud of me, and their pride was more special to me than the diploma in my hand. Their smiles and congratulations made the struggles worthwhile, and when I hugged my parents four hours (and three bottles of wine) later at the end of the meal, I felt the warmth of their love like a hot blanket around my soul.

  And then I went back to my small apartment alone with Tuesday, and curled up with him in our queen-sized bed, and felt not a warm blanketlike love enveloping me but the warm contentment of two hearts melting into one. Because this was my true home, I realized then. Not the apartment or the bed or New York City or even the proud embrace of my parents, but the moment at the end of every day of my life, whether I succeeded or failed, when Tuesday tucked me in.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest thanks go to Peter McGuigan, Hannah Gordon, Stéphanie Abou, and all of the amazing people at Foundry Literary & Media. Thank you for believing in Tuesday and me.