Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself: A Man and His Dog's Struggle to Find Salvation

by Anderegg, Zachary

  “Keep me in the loop,” I say.

  I realize I should probably be more affected by the news, but I’m not. I look over at Michelle and tell her what I’ve just learned.

  “Oh my God,” she says. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, half-laughing. “I wonder what’s going to happen if he dies?”

  It’s the first thought that comes to mind, one I’ve never had before. How will I feel? How will it affect the family? Will there be any regrets? My bemused tone is just false bravado, me trying to show I’m above being saddened by the loss—but what am I losing? A man who was never there? A chance to patch things up? But if we were going to patch things up, it was his turn to make the first move, not mine, and in two years, his best effort was an email blaming me for the evening at their house.

  Ten minutes later, my uncle calls back. I know what he’s about to say.

  “Zak,” he says. “Your dad is gone.”

  I’m not shocked or caught off guard. For some reason, I’ve been expecting this. I have not been expecting good news.

  “So I guess by the time they got him to the hospital,” my uncle continues, “he’d already—”

  “It’s all right,” I say, cutting him off. All I can think is how he just lost a brother, and he must be devastated, but instead of addressing his own grief, he’s trying to help me. He is the conduit between me and my father, even in death, and he wants things to be right between us, so he’s putting his own needs aside and doing what he thinks has to be done, being strong for me. “You shouldn’t be worrying about me. I’m truly grateful for the call, but you should be taking care of yourself. Just be present there. I’m okay.”

  After he hangs up, I tell Michelle the news. She looks at me, trying to read me to know what to say or do, but I’m not giving her much information as to my emotional state, probably because I’m not all too clear about it myself. I’m feeling very practical, or maybe numb, or maybe cold-hearted, or some combination of the three. I can’t quite see how the fact that he’s just died is supposed to change my feelings toward him. The facts were the facts, and they spoke for themselves. I can tell that Michelle wants answers from me, but I don’t have any, so rather than stay home, unable to talk to her or answer her questions, I tell her I need to go to the gym. I kiss her goodbye, and I know she understands why I need to be alone. I tell her she should call somebody if she needs to talk, maybe even my mom.

  At the gym, I do thirty minutes of circuit training, not focusing on any one thing. I felt strange, thinking, I’m the same guy I was when I was here yesterday, except now I don’t have a father. But something always happens when I work out. Something about keeping my body occupied and challenging it to perform always clears my mind. It’s not that while I work out, I try consciously to think of the things I need to do or the answers to my question, but rather, when I’m working out, the answers just come to me.

  I realize my family will be coming together, physically and emotionally. They all live in the Milwaukee/Racine area and will probably be getting together at someone’s house. I should be there with them. My resentment toward my father has not diminished, but it’s time to put it on the shelf for a while.

  As I finished my dinner at McDonald’s, I briefly wished I had a gym I could go to, even though I was certain I’d be getting all the exercise I needed tomorrow. The gym is probably one of the few places on Earth where I feel at home and at ease. I remembered my father’s funeral, how so many people came, a line forming outside the funeral home that went back to the street and around the corner at the end of the block, and how highly respected he was as an X-ray technician by the people who worked with him. People kept telling me how intelligent and organized he was, and I thought that if I’m intelligent or orderly, perhaps I inherited those genes from him. I wondered how many of the people at the funeral knew he’d left my mother with a sixteen-week-old baby to marry the woman he was having an affair with, but I said nothing.

  The boy and his dad left. I realized eating at McDonald’s and seeing the two of them had afforded me this insight—I understood why I was unable to abandon the dog. I would not do to him, or to anyone, what my father did to me. I would not become like him. I wasn’t proving it to him, as if I had some sort of magical or mystical idea that he was looking down from heaven, watching me. I wasn’t proving anything to myself, either, because I felt no need. It was simple. I knew what the right thing to do was, so I had to do it.

  The question was, how?

  On my way back to the motel, I called Michelle to fill her in since our last conversation from the general store. She heard the outrage in my voice when I told her I thought somebody had intentionally abandoned the dog. I told her how I’d left him with food and water, and how it looked like I’d be on my own, trying to get him out.

  “How are you doing?” she said. “You don’t sound so good.”

  I told her about the kittens in the sofa, and that the whole day had been enormously upsetting, a lot of emotional ups and downs.

  “You’re taking a lot on,” she said. “You do that.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “I’m sure it will be.”

  “You know me. I overthink everything.”

  “I know I don’t have to say this,” she said, “but be careful. Come home safe.”

  We both knew there was no talking me out of it now.

  “I’ll call you in the morning with the details and the drop-dead time,” I told her. “Once I get out of town, there’s no cell coverage.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you. Sleep well.”

  “You, too. Do your best.”

  She meant do my best to get some sleep, because she knows how I obsess over the details when I’m planning something.

  The parking lot at the Motel 6 was already filling up with semi-tractor-trailers, but the vacancy sign was still lit. I checked in and parked as close to the room as I could, hauling in all of my climbing equipment. The room was dark and stuffy, so I turned on all the lights and cranked the air conditioner to maximum. The fan was strong enough to billow out the curtains. I used the extra bed to lay out my gear.

  You can’t make any mistakes, I told myself. I recalled learning a certain kind of logical focus as a Marine. Once, when our platoon came under “friendly fire” during a training exercise where live rounds were accidentally fired at us, I had the presence of mind to stand up and give the cease-fire sign, my arms crossed over my head, even though the lieutenant in charge told me to get down. If I’d listened to him, it might have gotten someone killed.

  I found myself recalling acronyms I’d been taught as a Marine as a way to make sure nothing got overlooked. SAFESOC stood for Security, Avenues of Approach, Fields of Fire, Entrenchments, Supplementary and Alternate Positions, Obstacles and Camouflage. SMEAC stood for Situation, Mission, Execution, Admin and Logistics, Command/Signal. BAMCIS meant Begin Planning, Arrange Reconnaissance, Make Reconnaissance, Complete Planning, Issue Order, Supervise.

  I worked through the process in the order of events sequentially. First, I would need to make sure my anchor was secure. I’d proven I could use my ATV as an anchor, and the dog and crate would not add substantially to the load on the line.

  I was more concerned about abrasion. A tensioned line is easier to cut through than an unloaded one. As the rope passed over the edge of the canyon, it would take a near ninety-degree downward turn, making it the most likely spot for failure. I would also be on the rope longer than I was the first time I’d dropped in, and working my way back up the rope was not going to be quick or easy. The additional time meant the rope would have that much longer to abrade at the fail point. Fortunately, I’d brought an edge guard with me, an eighteen-inch-long piece of heavy fire hose that could be folded over the rope lengthwise and secured to itself with Velcro. If I could get it to stay in place at the edge of the cliff, I thought, I should be fine.

  I continued going down my list. I checked my harne
ss for wear. I clipped onto it more carabiners than I’d probably need, but I’d be bringing in and out extra gear and wanted to overcompensate. I checked my descender. I added my heavy leather gloves, because the extra weight was going to generate extra heat, and given the length of the drop, I wanted as much protection from the heat as possible. I’ve seen pictures of climbers who ripped the skin off their hands because their gloves weren’t equal to the task.

  I added my ascending kit to the pile—the most critical piece of equipment I had. An ascender is an aluminum or steel device that locks onto the rope, with a cam inside that allows the rope to pass in one direction as you move up the rope, but prevents the rope from moving in the opposite direction. When climbing a free-hanging rope, you use two, one to hold your place while you move the other up the rope. Each ascender is attached to your harness, and to a sling your foot goes in, and then you step your way up. To someone who’s never done it, it looks like you’re doing most of your climbing with your legs, but it actually requires a fair amount of upper body strength. I once ascended a hundred-foot rope wearing a thirty-pound backpack and I was absolutely exhausted by the time I reached the top, mostly due to the extra load on my arms. My climb to rescue the dog would be more than twice as long, with more weight, and I had probably been in better shape then than I was now. That was why I was being as careful as I could, planning what I would take with me. Every ounce was going to count, because when you’re repeating an action three or four hundred times, it can add up. Bringing something I wouldn’t need would be almost as bad as forgetting something essential.

  Last, I examined the dog carrier, though it was small enough that it was probably intended for cats. It was a lightweight plastic shell, held together with a few rivets, with a door at one end, held shut with a plastic handle on the top. That it was lightweight was a plus, but it seemed too fragile for the task. I couldn’t hold the crate in my hand as I climbed, so my plan was to tether it to my harness and let it dangle about three feet below me. It would, I was certain, bounce against the rocks, and possibly (hopefully not) get snagged or caught and require tugging to free it.

  I had the solution in my gear, and pulled out a long strip of climber’s webbing, like seatbelt material, but an inch wide, and softer, with a tensile strength of about four thousand pounds. I basically wrapped the crate the way you would a Christmas package, then secured the vertical bands from slipping around the corners by knotting them with clove hitches to a piece of cord that girded the circumference. I could tie on with a carabiner where the straps intersected at the top of the package, where the bow and ribbons would go. The straps along the sides would prevent the door from accidentally opening, preventing a potentially disastrous moment.

  For a tether, I would use an adjustable daisy chain, a length of webbing with a fixed loop at the end that clipped to my harness and an adjustable slide at the other, preceding a second loop I could use to clip to the crate. By adding or removing slack, I would be able to adjust the distance between myself and the crate, depending on the circumstances I found myself in. To ensure I would have as much freedom of movement as possible, I decided I would clip the tether to my harness at the rear, near the small of my back, leaving my legs free to work the ascenders or push away from the rock in front of me. Then it occurred to me that there was an overhanging ledge about a hundred feet up from the canyon floor. I had enough rope to attach a long tethering line to the crate, climb to the ledge, rest, attach a pulley to my main climbing rope with a Gibbs cam to grab the rope and serve as a dead man’s brake, just in case I were somehow forced to let go, and hoist the crate to the ledge with the pulley. Working with any rope system, and in particular when you’re climbing solo, in addition to double and triple-checking the mechanical elements, you have to take into account the possibility of unexpected human failure, such as a heart attack or a stroke. You have to plan for what you can’t plan for. If I dropped dead, for some reason, the Gibbs cam would save the dog from a fatal plummet.

  I turned off the lights and lay on the bed with my eyes closed, mentally rehearsing what I would do in the morning, visualizing each step in the process to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. It was hard to stop thinking about it. I needed to be rested, but falling asleep was difficult. I wasn’t worried about whether I’d be able to do it, because I wasn’t allowing failure to be an option. I would be exhausted afterward, I thought, maybe more than I’d ever been before, but I would find a way to do it. I would summon the strength from somewhere.

  But there are always surprises. The worst case scenario would be a sudden rainstorm, somewhere up-canyon in the catchment. I pictured myself in the pothole, on my knees, trying to get the dog into the crate but stopping at the sound of something growing louder, like the rumble of a train approaching, and then I’d turn to look up-canyon, where I’d see a wall of raging water about to crash down on me. I’d take a deep breath and grab hold of my rope, but the dog . . .

  Or maybe the worst case scenario was something simpler, quieter. Something more likely. I would climb down into the canyon, and cross to where I left the dog, and kneel down, and put my hand on him, and feel something cold and lifeless. I would shine a light into his eyes, and maybe hold my eyeglasses in front of his nostrils to see if they fogged up, but they wouldn’t, and then I would know I was too late. That I should have acted sooner, should have found a crate and brought it with me when I brought the food and water in, should have . . .

  I have lived my whole life with “should have”s and “could have”s and “would have”s. If I didn’t get the dog out, alive, it might be the biggest disappointment I’d ever feel, and I would have nobody to blame but myself. Michelle and everyone else would assure me that I did everything I could, but I’d know I didn’t. And I obsess over my failures. Lying in bed at the Motel 6, I understood that I was setting myself up for a colossal failure. Some people fail over and over again and seem completely oblivious to it. My mother, for instance.

  Oh great, I thought Another happy thought to fall asleep to.

  I am eight years old, at home, in my room, in bed. It’s 2:30 in the morning when I hear a noise and awaken to realize the lights are on. The noise I hear is my mother cursing. I am a neat child who keeps a spotless room. When I’m finished with my Lincoln Logs, I put them back in the cardboard container they came in. When I’m done with my Matchbox cars, I put them back in the display case that holds them. My closet is next to my bed, and my mother is pulling boxes out of my closet, muttering, “That damn kid never puts things away properly.” Her language is more violent than that. She is removing neatly stacked boxes of my toys, only to put them right back where she found them. I close my eyes and pretend I’m still asleep. After fifteen minutes, she’s done rearranging my toys and leaves the room.

  This happens perhaps five more times in the next few years.

  I am too young to understand what it means when she spends an hour polishing the kitchen sink until there’s not a speck or watermark on it, while there’s dust and grime on the bathroom shelf thick enough to write your name in. I am too young to understand why she’ll scrub the kitchen stove, over and over again, while junk mail and collection notices pile up on the dining room table. Or why she’ll have panic attacks and be unable to move. Or why she would tell me to lie next to her on the floor and then she’d clean my ears with metal tweezers for forty-five minutes, digging so hard it made me cry. Or why she is always so late that I know I have to get a ride from someone else’s parents because if I wait for a ride from my mother, I won’t get to my soccer game until the second half.

  All I know is that I can’t count on her. I can’t talk to her. I don’t want to be seen with her. I am on my own, because something is not right with her.

  4

  I awoke before the alarm clock rang, but I usually do when I have something important on my calendar. I dressed, checked the television for the weather report—no rain was expected—and ran down to the lobby for the continental breakfast, w
hich is how the hospitality industry tries to make cereal and toast sound more interesting than it really is. I was thinking of food only as fuel. I wondered if the dog had managed to eat any of the food I’d left him. I needed fuel to power my muscles, though in truth, I knew I could probably get down and up without eating anything, just on adrenaline. The dog needed fuel like a car with a tank so empty it was running on fumes. I saw the food I’d left him in terms of hours, or minutes. One bite would give him fifteen more minutes of life.

  In my room, I checked my gear one more time and then packed up. It only then occurred to me that I didn’t have much of a plan beyond getting the dog out of the canyon. If I was staying in Page another night, I might want to keep the room, but I didn’t know if I was staying. My plan was only to get the dog to the animal hospital. Beyond that, I might want to explore a few other canyons I’d had my eye on.

  At the same time, a kind of oppressive feeling had come over me, something I’d never felt before. I tried, at first, not to think about it, but it was hard to shake. It was something more than the occasional global pessimism I’d experienced from time to time. I had a new responsibility. A life was in my hands. As I carried my gear down to my truck, I felt a sense of purpose, a new meaning to the day, if not to my life, and I felt myself rising to the challenge in a way that quickened my step, but . . . I also felt the weight of something dark and heavy pressing me down. It wasn’t fear of failure, but more a kind of gloom when I thought about the dog and, more to the point, how he got there. My task was to undo a single wrong, but it was just one wrong, one little dog in a world full of dogs and canyons and people who derived pleasure from abusing those who were weaker than them. Maybe it was that my belief in justice had been shaken, because I knew I’d never know who’d put the dog in the hole—unless the dog had a subcutaneous chip that might let the vet identify the owner, a modern improvement on the traditional collar-tagging system. But I highly doubted the dog had been chipped; it just didn’t seem likely.