Comet's Tale

by Steven Wolf

  Freddie sat on the bed and reached for Comet’s face. The greyhound’s liquid eyes snapped open and she glared at Freddie with an expression of hurt and confusion. A loud, low-pitched growl curled in Comet’s throat. Freddie instantly jumped up. “What just happened?”

  “No, Comet,” I said in a stern tone. I walked to the bed, gently pushed Comet onto her back, and stroked her belly. In the same firm voice I repeated, “No,” several more times. I was well aware that dogs are hierarchical animals who vie for position within the pack. It was essential that Comet accept Freddie as her superior. Comet rolled to her stomach as I sat next to her. She snuggled her body next to mine and tried to bury her cold nose behind my back. Freddie softly asked, “Has she done that before?”

  “No. It’s just that you weren’t part of the original deal. Maybe this is too much too soon.”

  To Freddie’s great credit, she immediately understood. “Poor thing. She’s scared, isn’t she? Why don’t we leave her alone and let her get used to having someone else in the house.”

  Late that afternoon, Freddie and I sipped wine on the back patio. I caught up on news about the girls and grilled Freddie about the spring arrival of eagles and herons, the number of neighbors’ gloves the goldens had picked off the snow over the winter, and the activity on the lake as boats were returned to their lifts. Freddie had questions, too. She asked about the not-so-tidy house, my worsening limp, and my wince whenever I got to my feet. In the growing darkness, the biggest question descended like fog: with my health steadily declining, how was I going to care for myself, much less a greyhound?

  As if to lift this blanket of uncertainty, Comet slipped out to the patio and stood about ten feet away from us, proper as a debutante. Her soft eyes regarded us for a brief moment, and then she seemed to make a decision. She glided forward to a quiet stop directly in front of Freddie. Comet stretched to full height and tilted her head forward, her ears angled to the side. Her eyes focused on Freddie’s, and she waited. I have witnessed this ritual countless times since, and I am always struck by its intelligence and purpose. The formality of the greeting seems to slow time and relax the person to whom it is directed. It is a near-human gesture, an armless hug.

  “I think Comet likes me!” Freddie declared.

  Soon after that introduction, my wife informed me that Comet’s decision to join the family was a great idea. Freddie also made it clear that my part in this whole venture was highly irresponsible and bordered on lunacy. I was very lucky the end justified the means.

  Much too soon, Freddie prepared to return to Omaha. The ladies, new best friends, eagerly anticipated their next meeting. As she waited at the front door for the airport shuttle, Freddie advised Comet, “Be patient with Wolfie.” Then, after a pause, “Keep an eye on him for me.”

  4

  MAY 2000—ARIZONA TO NEBRASKA

  The shuttle delivered Freddie to my doorstep again in the first week of May. During her brief absence, spring had arrived in Sedona. Electric blue rosemary flowers in my front garden buzzed with bees, and the tangy scent of new sage drifted across the yard. Walnut-sized quail chicks waddled in the lacy shadows of a manzanita bush, as momma quail encouraged a quicker pace. A twelve-foot agave stalk bursting with fuzzy yellow nest-shaped blooms towered overhead. Freddie stepped from the van and stood for a moment admiring the desert diorama. She inhaled deeply, then hoisted her luggage from the back of the shuttle and headed for the house. I stood in the shadowed doorway, wishing I could leap to the sidewalk and grab those bags from her hands. While I balanced on my canes, Comet spun in gleeful circles behind me.

  “Wolfie! Comet! Hello!” Freddie shouted, laughing as Comet squeezed past me to greet her. It was a scene straight from a Hallmark card, but my only thought was, Comet’s never that excited to see me.

  Yes, I was grumpy. More accurately, I was worried. Freddie had come to drive me and Comet back to Omaha, where we would gather for the summer at the lake house with our three daughters (and now, three dogs). Kylie, soon to be twenty-one and living mostly at college, and Lindsey, who would be a high school senior in the fall, lived and held jobs in Omaha from June through August, but they loved spending weekends at the lake. Jackie was fifteen and still lived at home. According to the master plan, the family would enjoy the same kind of carefree summer we always had in the past. But I had a strong suspicion that my homecoming might be more like a bad high school reunion, the kind where the star athlete returns as a balding blob of middle-aged mediocrity. I couldn’t imagine how the girls would react to my bent spine and crooked gait, which were much more pronounced than they had been the last time they saw me. Freddie had carefully avoided discussing my health with them for the eight months I had been gone. The girls had not pressed her for details.

  Sedona was safe because people only knew me as the broken-down neighbor who owned Comet. Home was different. I treasured my daughters. I was far from perfect, and they were the first to point out my weaknesses, especially my inability to dress myself tastefully. But before my fall on the basketball court and subsequent decline, I had always tried to be a man they looked up to, their own flawed hero. I wanted to be the man in the poem “He,” written by a much younger Lindsey during one of the girls’ childhood adventures to my law office:

  He is like a sun that brightens up my life

  He can always make me smile when I am down

  He always encourages me to do my best

  He loves me for who I am

  He is the best man I have ever known

  He is my best friend

  He is my Dad

  I was scared that I would never be He again. I was petrified that my family might decide that their old memories of me were more comforting than a reunion with a disabled shell of a father.

  “Did you make sure the neighbors have keys so they can check on the house once in a while?” Freddie’s question penetrated the quiet twilight of the backyard where we sat, exhausted, after clearing the cupboards of food and readying the place for my absence.

  “Wolf ! Anybody home?” My mind slowly bobbed to the surface.

  “Sorry. I was just wondering how Comet is going to adjust to the family and how they’ll adjust to her.” Varying scenarios, none good, had been playing like movie trailers in my head all week. Now we both watched Comet as she nosed through the rocks and shrubs along the fence. Sensing our attention, she glanced up and trotted over to Freddie.

  “She’s going to do just fine, aren’t you, sweetie?” my wife cooed, scratching behind Comet’s ears. Freddie beamed at Comet, but looking up at me, her eyes were serious. “I won’t lie to you. The girls are acting like you’ve lost the rest of your mind. They talk about Comet almost as if we’re divorced and she’s the new young girl-toy who’s coming to meet the family. They haven’t seen you in a while, and now they have to share you with a new dog that you talk about every time you call. They think the goldens, especially Cody, will be even less enthusiastic.”

  I’m sure my laugh sounded a little harsh. “Then I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?”

  It was probably true that I spoke about Comet and greyhounds too often when I called the girls. Because I had no job and few friends in Sedona, I had a chance to observe Comet more closely than I had ever observed another creature, human or canine. Living with her and learning about her background as a racer spurred me to research the breed itself. What I discovered was fascinating.

  Greyhounds are the only breed mentioned by name in the Bible. Greyhound cousins appear everywhere throughout history: in myth and scripture, on Roman vases and Greek coins, on the walls of Egyptian tombs and the tapestries of French castles. King Tut kept greyhound-type dogs, as did Cleopatra. Even the gods prized these swift and graceful animals. They were valued in ancient times for the same reason they are today: their astonishing speed and agility.

  Greyhounds are sight hounds, meaning that they hunt using vision and speed, not scent. It was the Romans who first taught them to chase hare
s, primarily for the pleasure of watching the dogs run. They called this formalized hunt “coursing.” The point was not to kill the hare; it was really a race between hare and hound. The dogs didn’t compete against one another. Around 1500 BCE the first greyhounds arrived in what is now England. By the eleventh century they had found their way into the upper echelons of society—only noblemen were allowed to own and hunt with greyhounds. Five hundred years later, Queen Elizabeth I established official rules for greyhound coursing, which again involved the pursuit of hares and did not pit the dogs against one another. Coursing required not only speed and sharp vision but also intelligence and flexibility. Over the centuries, greyhound owners cultivated those traits in the breed.

  “They’re the fastest dogs on earth! They’ve been clocked at forty-five miles per hour,” I gushed to Lindsey during one of my calls to her.

  “Cheetahs can do sixty-five,” she instantly responded. Lindsey, who wanted to become a marine biologist, was no slouch about her animal facts. If I had listened to her tone, I might have noticed the wounded feelings beneath that comeback. The whole time they were growing up, I could recite my daughters’ class schedules by heart, as well as their extracurriculars and the first and last names of their friends. Now my wavering health and Comet consumed nearly all of my attention.

  THE TOP OF Bell Rock was just reflecting the vague eastern light when Freddie and I left Sedona, the few things I was bringing home loosely thrown behind the front seat. Comet was splayed across her bed next to the rear hatch, luxuriating in the bright sunlight that splashed through the window. A CD of Native American music provided the soundtrack as we drove from Arizona through western New Mexico. After a few hours, Freddie glanced in the rearview mirror at the sleeping Comet. “If we weren’t stopping for gas, how would we know when she needs to get out to potty?”

  A reasonable question. Comet had suffered only one accident—one!—since I adopted her, and that happened the day after she arrived at my house. Perhaps confused about where to relieve herself, she had let go on the carpeted space between the master bedroom and the kitchen.

  “Hey!” I had shouted, and the poor dog had shut off her flow in midstream. Her long tail slapped down between her legs, and she glared at me in astonishment.

  “I’m so sorry, Comet,” I had whispered as I stroked her back. “Let me get the leash and we’ll spend some time outside.” From that day forward, Comet informed me of her need for a bathroom break by standing directly in front of me with an intense stare, one ear perked sideways over her head while the other horizontally hovered out in the same direction, all accompanied by a very short high note from the back of her throat.

  “She’s never been in a car this long, but I assume she’ll cry like she always does,” I told Freddie as she dodged into the car lanes at a truck stop. After that break, we realized that Comet’s bladder would not be an issue. Her pee mileage far exceeded the SUV’s gas mileage.

  All the way to Albuquerque, earlier summers shimmered in my memory, in contrast to what was sure to be the upcoming disaster movie. The discordant scenes outside the window echoed my internal agitation. Bulky casinos were planted in front of ancient pueblos. The distant Sandia Mountains formed a painterly backdrop to billboards urging teens not to use meth. The theme continued as we turned north onto I-25. Santa Fe, a center of government since the conquistadors, was surrounded by hillsides packed with peach-colored stucco houses. In Denver the Brown Palace Hotel, an eight-story marvel when it opened in 1892, was dwarfed by granite skyscrapers.

  Two days of gloomy introspection later, Freddie exited the highway in western Nebraska to give us another break. “Wolfie, you have to get out of your head,” she told me. “Paralysis by analysis—isn’t that one of your pet peeves?” Her light, teasing tone was betrayed by the tension in her arms and face as she opened the hatch, allowing me to slip a leash onto Comet.

  I didn’t notice the cool evening air, but it must have been invigorating. The collar had barely encircled Comet’s head when she flashed by me like one of her celestial namesakes, snapping the end of the leash in my hand, then spinning like a prairie windmill. I’m convinced she stopped only because she got dizzy. Her eyes had hardly refocused when she took off down an invisible path, following an intriguing scent located somewhere in the bottom of a roadside ditch.

  “Hold on, Comet! I can’t go down there!” For the first time in two days, the corners of my mouth tugged upward into a smile. Comet’s frenzied joy reminded me of how our preteen daughters used to react on family vacations when they found out the motel had a pool. All the eye-rolling boredom and demands to have various sisters placed into foster care magically vanished. If life was still so exciting to Comet that she didn’t have time to unpack the emotional baggage from her racing days, I could sure as hell try to emulate her attitude.

  Our three-day multistate marathon finally ended at the lake. As we pulled into the driveway, I was struck by the different spring that awaited me here. Instead of blooming succulents and newly leafed mesquite trees, I saw muted shades of brown pierced with the vivid green of young grasses. The prairie bloom of wildflowers had painted a deep blush on the cornfields across the lake. Low gray moisture hovered just above the branches of the cottonwood trees, where tiny buds were shedding the annoying resin that stuck to every exposed surface, especially the soles of shoes.

  Familiar signs told me that life had been unfolding for several weeks. Green-winged teal bobbed on a small pond next to the road, and Canada geese had returned to the lake. On a sandbar I spotted two bald eagles snipping at each other over a mutually claimed fish corpse. And when I wrested myself from the SUV, the funk of dead fish and algae freed from a long winter under ice still lingered, mixing with a hint of oily gas smells from boats just placed on their lifts.

  I had no sooner shut the SUV’s door when a bumping, stumbling mass rounded the corner of the house from the direction of the lake. Cody and Sandoz knew only one greeting—Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! The two dripping wet balls of wheat-colored fur hurled straight at me as I tried to pull my shoes loose from the cottonwood resin. I heard Freddie’s door slam and she leaped into their path, yelling, “Cody! Stop!”

  Cody’s butt slid, then stuck to the resiny driveway. Sandoz’s brain, always two steps behind her body, got the message a little late. She streaked past Cody, braking and spinning her rear end around my legs like a car sliding on ice, finally coming to a belly flop behind me. Freddie glared and nobody moved.

  “Come on, Freddie. No harm, no foul?” I was secretly delighted that the goldens still seemed to think I was Whitey Ford—early in his career, when he remained capable of throwing a baseball a country mile.

  “Steve, this isn’t funny. You’ve got to teach them to stop running when they get within ten feet of you. We didn’t drive all this way just for you to get knocked down and hurt by your own dogs.” I nodded as Freddie opened the back hatch to let Comet out.

  Comet had observed the manic greeting through the SUV’s windows. She now stood in rigid profile, not daring to leave the safety of her sanctuary. Her ears were flattened against her head, and her eyes, stretched wide, darted back and forth as if she were watching a rubber bullet bounce off me, Freddie, and the goldens.

  Our Sedona days had consisted of a quiet and uncluttered routine. Most activities involved just the two of us and the neighbors we encountered on our frequent walks. In this unhurried atmosphere, Comet’s initial timid reluctance had blossomed into a shy curiosity punctuated with bursts of happy excitement. She developed a quiet confidence as a new world was presented to her in bits and pieces she could easily digest. That genteel pace was a far cry from this frenzied welcome. Comet’s stare pleaded with me to provide some relief, some quiet space apart from the merry meltdown.

  Freddie turned to the still-unmoving Cody and Sandoz. “Why don’t you two go on? Go fetch your ball.” Both dogs hesitated. “It’s okay. Go on now,” she urged them. Two heads tilted and two tongues loll
ed. Then, as if summoned by Poseidon, father and daughter sped to the lake.

  I sat on the back bumper scratching the underside of Comet’s belly. “I’ll bet you just can’t wait to meet the rest of the family.”

  FREDDIE AND I had married when the girls were ages ten, seven, and four, and for the next ten years we had scrambled to keep up with the shifting moods, alliances, and quirks of three very different daughters. Kylie was my firstborn, blessed with the blond hair and blue eyes of her mother, my ex-wife. Being my precious first child and the family’s first grandchild, she was our clan’s pampered princess. As the oldest daughter, Kylie took it upon herself to bring a sense of (sometimes unwanted) order to chaotic sisterly activities.

  Lindsey, three years younger than Kylie, also had blue eyes and blond hair, which was cut short and gleamed a shade lighter than her sister’s. Her long legs put her a good five inches taller than Kylie. Lindsey and I were so close that whenever the clucking members of the flock wanted something, they’d tell her, “You go ask Dad. He won’t say no to you.” Lindsey had been not quite three years old and strongly attached to me when her mom and I divorced. I always had the feeling that the breakup had caused her to doubt her worth on some deep level.

  Jackie, Freddie’s daughter, was still in preschool when Freddie and I married. Her large brown puppy eyes and long eyelashes were the envy of every female who met her, and the cuteness factor was enhanced by round eyeglasses that corrected for a lazy eye. As the years passed, she could usually be found outdoors kicking a soccer ball, chasing the dogs, or leaping into the lake.

  Merging the families had not been smooth sailing. Kylie and Lindsey lived with their mother in Omaha during the week but also spent a great deal of time with me. Naturally they were reluctant to share their dad with some new woman, especially one who sometimes spoke a different language and wanted to live in their home. Jackie had been raised by Freddie, secure in the world of her one-parent household. At first she didn’t take kindly to being supervised by another adult, especially since her father, Freddie’s ex, had not been a major part of Jackie’s life. Given the young ages of our daughters, we had a hard time convincing some people that combining our families was a wise idea.