I stumbled down the bank, clawing at the raw, wet earth, barely able to see through the twilight and my tears. Coming to myself, the cold river water spilled into my shoes, soaked my socks.
I couldn’t see his eyes, but I felt their weight on me.
Come! they said.
Here…
I took another step into the river, my shoes squelching in the mud, the water coming up to my shins.
No! Of course it isn’t him.
He was dead… buried not more than a few yards away. I could turn to my right and see the disturbed clods of earth that lay atop his body… had I wanted to…
But I couldn’t cross the river, I knew that. It was deep with spring runoff, choked with tree branches and detritus of all kinds. Its current exerted a powerful pull on my legs even where I stood, less than a foot into its body.
If I tried to cross, I might make it… but it’d be more likely that I’d be swept downriver or drown in the attempt.
I stood there, both the water and Hector urging me, tugging at me to come deeper. To break their hypnotic effect, I scrubbed my eyes angrily with the heel of one hand, and phosphenes swam in the air before me, sparkling and nauseating.
But when I opened my eyes again, the shape was still there… except that it had moved slightly… ever so slightly… just a tilt of its head… and my heart expanded until I felt it press against my ribcage, as if it might burst through.
That tilt… that comical, ‘What?’ turn of the head dogs do when they hear an odd tone or when they’re not quite sure what you’ve said.
That tilt… I’d seen it from Hector many, many times…
My heart crowded my chest, stopped moving.
I closed my eyes slowly, opened them even more slowly…
He had turned, was moving away into the brush on the opposite side of the river, until he faded into the scrubby darkness and was gone.
I let my breath go in a strangled gasp that was as much a sob as anything.
Turning to the house, I pulled myself from the reeking river mud and climbed the slippery bank, ready to seek the comfort of my bed.
But I walked instead to where he was buried.
Looking down, I saw the grave, the slightly raised mound of dirt.
It was still there, unchanged from the previous night.
He was still there, unchanged, too.
The tears fell, and I went inside.
* * *
I spent days searching the internet, trying to assuage the grief I felt. Days at work were spent in a blur, pretending to get things done, but secretly Googling “pet grief” and “dogs hit by car” and other combinations of words that, no matter their arrangement, couldn’t penetrate the density of my emotions; couldn’t seem to shed light on what had happened. Couldn’t offer a response to the triteness of Why him?
When people came into my office, I clicked away from any one of a dozen Rainbow Bridge web sites, as guilty as if I were cruising porn. Most of the sites were maudlin, saccharine places where people who I might previously have categorized as half-crazed to begin with revealed just how far over the edge the death of their ferret had pushed them.
Nevertheless, I posted to each one, tearing up about Hector’s death each time I laid the words down.
And I realized that I was one of them now… had been one of them all along.
We all wanted the same things, this group I found myself suddenly a part of.
We wanted the pet we’d loved to be remembered, not just by ourselves, but by others.
And we wanted to do something, some small thing to honor that love, in the chance… no, the hope, however slim, that pet would know, know in a way that perhaps we’d been unable to communicate to it in life, that it was loved.
* * *
I saw him again a few days later, as I was driving home from work.
I’d turned onto the road that leads to my house after a long day at work spent trying to catch up on everything I’d been avoiding since his death. It had been a busy, harrowing day, even more so as I realized just how much had slipped past me that week.
The radio was on, an afternoon drive show, and the weather was forecast to be sunny and cool tomorrow. I was not paying attention; having driven this length of road so many times, I didn’t think it necessary.
The day was bright and cool, as the radio had just promised tomorrow would be, and something caught my eye keeping pace with the car on the passenger side…
I stomped on the brake, swerved left, and a blur shot out in front of the car, paused.
A squirrel, I thought at first, or maybe a groundhog or someone’s cat.
I cursed myself for not paying attention, for almost running down an animal just as that unknown driver had run down Hector in front of my house…
The dark shape stopped in a pool of shadow cast by the trees on the side of the road. It was small, a bit larger than a cat, and it stood motionless, facing away from me, looking down the road ahead.
Then it turned its head, looked at me without turning its body.
Hector!
My breathing caught. I reflexively mashed the accelerator pedal. The car jolted forward, scattering gravel behind.
I saw him… God, it was him!… tilt his head at me and pull his loose lips into a doggy smile. Then, he turned his head and dashed forward.
Come here!
Breathing hard now, I inched the car closer, watched as he fell back beside the passenger side front tire. I could see him sprinting along the side of the road, through splashes of sun that lit his black fur in vivid blue patches, then into shadow where he seemed to lose substance.
I lifted myself out of me seat, craned my neck to see him.
Lord, lord… it’s him… there’s just no doubt now…
And as I thought that, he turned his head toward me, still running full tilt, and I saw his eyes for the first time. They weren’t sad or empty as I’d seen them last, but bright and eager and full of life, as they’d been when he was…
He flashed me that puppy smile again and… and winked, slinging his head sharply to the right, motioning me to follow.
Here!
Then, just as sharply, he veered into the underbrush off the side of the road, disappeared.
“Hecky!” Without thinking, I pulled the steering wheel to the right.
Before I knew what I had done, the front of the car struck a small tree and the front wheels dipped into a drainage culvert.
Luckily, the tree was small, the culvert shallow, and I wasn’t going that fast.
I jounced forward, hit the steering wheel with my chest as the car slumped to a stop.
I sat there for a long while, listening to the idling engine, the chirping of birds, and droning of insects, waiting for the full import of what I’d seen, what I’d done to sink in.
If I had been going any faster, I’d be…
I let out a long, slow breath.
After a few seconds, feeling like a fool, I backed the car out of the ditch and away from the tree, got out to check for damage—a dented front fender and a smashed headlight on the passenger side.
And I knew how lucky I was. I could have flipped the car or hit a larger, less yielding tree.
I could have killed myself trying to get to him.
Maybe, maybe that’s what he…
* * *
“Do dogs go to heaven?”
“They do in cartoons,” Chris replied, covering a small plate in ketchup as we sat in the local sports bar where we usually had lunch.
The look on my face gave him pause.
“Hector?”
I nodded.
“Well,” he said, smashing a red-dripping french fry into his mouth. “I guess I never really thought about it. I mean, if dogs go to heaven, then what about squirrels? Moles? Flies?”
I waited, silently chewing my hamburger and giving him time.
“So, you think they all… you know… go to heaven?”
Swallowing a gulp of ice tea, I
nodded.
“Why not? Why doesn’t everything that’s born, that dies, all go to the same place?”
“Flies? Are you shitting me?” he asked, his face scrunching up as if this conversation had taken a turn from sort of uncomfortable to just plain crazy.
“Well, I mean, sure. We’re all born into the same place. Why wouldn’t we all die into the same place wherever… whatever… that is?” I wiped my mouth with the napkin, settled it back into my lap. “I need to know… to believe… that Hector is there. That he’s somewhere safe, loved.”
“Heaven?” he asked again. “For a dog?”
“Heaven. Nirvana. Valhalla. The afterlife… whatever. I need to know he’s okay.”
“Why is that so important?”
I waited a minute, pretended to watch the weather report on one of the big-screen TVs.
“Because I keep seeing him. And I think he wants me to follow him… to come to him, wherever he is.”
Chris closed his mouth, swirled his tongue around to dislodge something behind his tight lips, played for time. He looked at me hard, though.
“Look, man. Everyone’s gotta have their own thing, believe what they want. If you believe he’s there, that’s great. If you believe you’re seeing his… ghost or whatever, great. Who cares what I think or what anyone else thinks? If it makes you feel better, that’s great. Just… just don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid?”
“You know… like… to be with him,” he said, forcing a fry between teeth that were nearly clenched. “Like that movie says.”
“That movie?”
“Heaven can wait, man. Heaven can wait.”
I took another bite of my hamburger, mainly just to have something to do with my mouth than make more crazy words. I felt embarrassed, exposed for having told him that I was seeing… what? The ghost of my dead dog?
That he was trying to get me to come with him?
… to… where?
Things don’t work that way, though,
Do they?
* * *
One week later I saw him again, and it almost killed me.
I sat outside on my deck with a beer, waiting for the time… that damned time a week ago…
The beer I lifted at intervals had gone flat, but the twilight was an explosion of colors, reds and purples and oranges. It was as if the sun, rather than falling beneath the horizon, had simply exploded, spraying the evening sky with its arterial blood.
But that wasn’t what I watched.
I kept my eyes on the small, bare patch of the road where he’d been hit, where the car had struck his small body, run it down. Where he had lain, hopefully not for long, in whatever pain or panic God allows a dog to feel in its final moments.
Did he wonder what had happened?
Did he wonder where I was, why I wasn’t there to take the pain away, to hold him?
To protect him from it having ever happened?
Only a week… only a week, and everything had changed, so suddenly, without warning.
I watched that spot, so bare now, so unadorned, so unremarkable for a place that had turned my life upside down.
What I watched for, I don’t know.
Yes… yes, I did.
And there he was.
I didn’t need to look at my watch. I knew the time, knew it as if it were the time of my own birth.
More clearly than the two times before, he stood outlined against the stark emptiness of the farmer’s field on the other side of the road. I could make him out plainly, even though the light was fading and his coat was black.
I could see his sparkling eyes; the ripple of the wan light on his coat; his short, double-curled tail wagging, eager.
Standing, I went to the deck rail, put my hands on it, gripped it tightly to ensure that I was awake, that this wasn’t a dream or a weird fugue state. As if to offer proof, a splinter slipped into the mound of flesh where my thumb met my palm, and I knew I was awake.
Then he moved, and my heart leapt inside me.
It was a playful, puppyish move. He pounced, lowering the front half of his body to the ground, but keeping his head, his eyes fixed on me. Then, he jerked his head, wriggled his rump.
I knew what those moves meant, what they said.
Come to me!
Come here!
Here!
I backed away from the railing, my brain telling me that it wasn’t real, that he wasn’t there.
But, I mean, really, who ever listens to their stupid, heartless brain?
I stumbled down the steps and across the front lawn.
I was still a dozen or so yards from him, when he turned, dashed into the field about 100 feet, then turned back toward me, lowered his head to the ground again and shook his rump.
Here!
I didn’t see the headlights of the truck that bore down on me from the left. All I saw was his small, dark body, so clear in the field, urging me on.
There was a blare of a horn, the skittering of gravel, the whine of brakes.
The car actually struck me, no more than a nudge really, but it brought me around. I turned, as if not really knowing where I was, how I got there, and touched the hood of the truck. It was smooth and warm, and I could feel the engine beneath the metal, like a beating heart.
“Mister, you on something?”
I came around the driver side of the truck, looking back at the field.
Hector was gone.
Distressed, I scanned the field, but couldn’t find him.
Of course… of course… because he…
Then, anger.
“You need to watch where you’re going,” the older driver snapped at me.
“Me? I need to watch where I’m going?” I spat. “Screw you. You need to slow down and watch where you’re going. I was just walking across the road, and you nearly ran me down.”
The man, who was probably more scared than I was, scowled. “Mister, you walked right in front of me. You telling me you didn’t see my lights coming down the road?”
I turned to fully face the guy now, anger hot and gelid all at once inside me.
“You’re probably the asshole who ran my dog down last week,” I snapped. “Why don’t you slow the fuck down before you kill someone else?”
Instead of making the guy even madder—and perhaps getting him to leave the truck and join in a little dust-up between the two of us—his face fell, as if I’d accused him of something truly horrible, worse than nearly running me down.
“Kill your dog? What a thing to say. Buddy, I didn’t kill your dog. Just watch where you’re going, that’s all.”
Insulted, he rolled his window up, effectively ending the conversation. Slowly pulling away, he gave me one stark look in his side mirror. I saw him shaking his head as his car pulled away.
Then all of the adrenaline hit, and I tried to sit there on the side of the road facing the field, but I more fell than sat. I could feel the gravel beneath me, the beer swirling in my blood. My heart began to race and cold sweat leapt from my pores. I swallowed and swallowed, but my mouth was dry.
He’d been here… I knew it… I saw him so clearly, so distinctly. He wasn’t a dark shape as he’d been at first, or a blur as he had been when he’d raced the car a few days earlier.
He’d been here and he wanted…
… what did he want?
Here!
Come here!
I’d tried… but it had almost…
Cold swept over me, chilling my sweat-covered body so abruptly that I shivered violently.
That’s exactly what he wanted.
* * *
It was daylight when I saw him again, downtown.
It had only been a few days since I’d seen him in the barren field, since he’d urged me to follow him, to come to him.
Here!
And I had spent those two days, in their entirety, thinking about seeing him. But I still didn’t know what the meaning of it all was.
Wh
at I was supposed to take away from seeing him.
That I was crazy, struck mad from grief?
That I was hallucinating?
That I needed to see him so badly that I was imagining him?
Or was I really seeing him?
I couldn’t think. Deprived of sleep, haunted by wakefulness, crushed under the burden of this grief, this guilt, I couldn’t hold two thoughts together for more than a few seconds.
Withdrawing into myself, I remained silent at work, holed up at home, didn’t go out, didn’t have anyone over. Spoke to no one by phone or e-mail.
At work one day, I had to go into the city for a meeting. I had volunteered for it, eager to leave the office and my colleagues, their faces heavy with pity or contempt at what I was going through—still going through.
Eager to talk to someone about something other than myself, other than my dead dog, other than my inability to close the incredible loss that had opened inside me.
So, I went downtown, drove my car into the heart of the unaware, uncaring city and found a parking lot. I left my car there, descended the grotty stairwell, with its odors of gasoline and urine, down to the street level, where I lost myself in a sea of humanity, became just a mote within it, drifting like a water molecule in a great ocean of water, unknown, unknowing, unremarkable. No one knew me; no one knew what I felt, or even cared.
Lost, I paused at an intersection, waited for the streetlight to change.
And I saw him again.
The sign said ‘Don’t Walk’ in bright orange, and I stopped at the front of the crowd of people. The traffic sped through the intersection, and I stared dumbly ahead, waiting for the light to change, for the orange letters to become white and say, ‘Walk.’
Across the street, at the other corner, a similar group of people hovered on their curb, waiting for their light to flash.
I glanced down at the distant curb and saw him.
Little Deaths Page 22