Larry & the Dog People

by J. Paul Henderson

  Alice’s concern, however, grew. Working from home two days of the week and returning other days at lunchtime to feed Repo, she saw more of him than Laura, who was tied up at the nursing home and often stayed late. She’d look up from what she was doing and find Repo staring blankly into space or gawping at a wall; she’d return to the house some days and find him stuck in a corner or helplessly wedged in the legs of a dining room chair; and other days come home to a wet patch on the carpet.

  ‘He’s probably got a urinary infection,’ Laura said. ‘That would explain his confusion, too. It should be a simple enough matter to treat.’

  Alice, however, was unconvinced, and took advantage of her visit to the vet to discuss Repo’s changing behaviour. ‘It’s not just a matter of him pissing on the carpet, Jim. He genuinely looks lost.’

  Jim listened, nodded his head and made grunting noises. ‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, Alice, but just to be on the safe side I think we should give Repo a complete overhaul.’

  While Alice waited in the reception room, Jim filled small phials with Repo’s blood, did ultrasounds and took X-rays. By the time he rejoined Alice he had his suspicions but remained tight-lipped. ‘I should have the results by Friday. As soon as I get them I’ll give you a call.’

  On the evening of the designated day, Alice’s phone rang. She excused herself from the table and moved away from the restaurant’s al fresco dining area.

  ‘Sorry for the hour, Alice, but it’s been a hectic day. You okay to talk?’

  Alice said she was; asked him to give her the news straight.

  ‘We found brain lesions. I’m afraid Repo’s suffering from Canine Cognitive Dysfunction.’

  ‘Not that straight, Jim. I don’t even know what that is!’

  ‘In layman’s terms it’s known as doggie dementia or old dog syndrome. It’s the canine equivalent of Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Jesus, Jim! How am I going to tell Laura that? Repo’s her child!’

  ‘It’s not the end of the world, Alice. Repo’s world might be changing but he’s not going to keel over dead anytime soon. One out of three dogs his age has CCD, and there’s a drug on the market now that’s proved successful in treating some cases. If that doesn’t work we’ll try behavioural interventions. But like I say, it’s not the end of the world. Apart from the dementia Repo’s in perfect shape. Why don’t you and Laura stop by the office next week and I’ll explain things in more detail?’

  After the conversation ended Alice stood for a while, wondering whether to mention the news to Laura now or wait until they returned home. She decided it would be better to tell her while Larry was with them. He was a strange old bird, but might well have something to say on the subject. He certainly had plenty to say on every other subject.

  Alice rejoined them at the table and topped up her wine glass. She carefully rehearsed the words in her head, took a deep breath and parted her lips…

  ‘What do you do for a living, Alice?’ Larry asked.

  3

  The Dog Park

  ‘Well I never, Moses,’ Larry said. ‘It says here that you’re descended from a wolf!’

  The book Larry was reading was a basic primer and tended toward reduction: Moses’ genes were more likely a mixture of wolf, jackal and coyote. But Larry was right in supposing that Moses’ appearance and behaviour bore little resemblance to those of his wild ancestors.

  According to the primer the relationship between man and dog had started some 14–17,000 years ago when the first wolves were domesticated. Although by nature hunters, wolves were quite happy to scavenge: easy pickings in their book being just as tasty as the more dangerous ones they had to run to ground, and which could be found in abundance close to where humans made their camps. Consequently they started to locate their dens nearer these encampments and a symbiotic relationship developed. By eating their discarded leftovers wolves provided humans with a daily garbage collection, and the commotion they made whenever a wild animal or group of strangers approached the camp also made the lives of their two-legged neighbours safer.

  Not all wolves, however, were capable of adapting to this new world order of co-existence and the more aggressive and threatening ones were killed. Only the docile and friendly were ever interbred, and it was humans who determined which of their characteristics were passed from one generation to the next. Over time, and through a process of selection, distinct breeds of dog came into being: some useful for guarding, some for herding or hauling and others for hunting (dogs were always expected to work for a living).

  It was only after the Second World War that dogs became household pets in the modern sense; brought indoors, commoditised and made a member of the family. They were now fed premium foods and taken to vets, given their own beds to sleep in and toys to play with, and all that was expected of them in return was their companionship. In the conventional sense, a dog’s life was no more a dog’s life.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this at all, Moses,’ Larry said. He’d just read a short section on sexuality and learned that dogs were a lot more promiscuous than wolves – a fact that probably explained why there were now 400 million of them in the world.

  Larry bent down and took Moses’ head in his hands and looked him square in the eyes. ‘Now then, young man: I’m counting on you to be on your best behaviour when we go to the park tomorrow. It’s our first visit and we have to make a good impression. Miss Laura’s a respectable woman and she’s not going to take kindly to either of us if she sees you fooling around with another dog. Now do we have an understanding?’ (It was doubtful they did. Moses might one day understand 165 of Larry’s words, but at this time in his life his vocabulary was limited and certainly didn’t include the phrase fooling around. All Moses could surmise from Larry’s tone was that he was the most wonderful dog in the world.)

  Larry and Moses had been set to go to the park the previous Saturday but Laura postponed the visit. News that Repo was suffering from dementia had thrown her into a spin; more of a spin, in fact, than if she’d been told that one of her elderly relatives had been diagnosed with the condition. Although she coped with dementia at the nursing home on a daily basis – it was par for the course, something she took in her stride – the revelation that it had crossed her own doorstep came as a shock, especially when the sufferer was her own surrogate child. (Despite Repo’s advancing years, Laura still looked upon him as an innocent.) Immediately, she’d insisted on returning to the vet with Alice as soon as possible, and the only available appointment all three could make was the morning of the following Saturday, the day they usually went to the park.

  For a time, Laura wondered if she’d been in denial these past few months, purposely turning a blind eye to patterns of behaviour she would have readily identified had Repo been an aged man. After some consideration she decided she hadn’t: after all, she’d never even heard of CCD or known that a dog could actually sustain dementia. The diagnosis was so out of left field that she wondered if Alice had somehow misunderstood Jim or, in her own mind, overly dramatised the situation – which Alice often did.

  Although Laura envied Alice her zest for life she was forever puzzled by her partner’s need to enliven it unnecessarily: life, it seemed, always had to be more eventful than it actually was. A straightforward disagreement between spouses, for instance, would be construed by Alice as a couple teetering on the brink of divorce, while a neighbour’s downsizing of car would just as quickly – and mistakenly – be interpreted as a sign of impending bankruptcy. And to Alice’s way of thinking a person never simply fell ill, but went straight to the door of death and hovered there uncertainly until – and against all odds – they miraculously recovered.

  Laura could still remember the day she’d bumped into Travis Laidley on the street, a man in his mid-forties who’d once worked as a volunteer at the organic food store they frequented and whose bones, according
to Alice, were now so fused that he even had trouble moving his littlest finger. Yet there Travis had been, dressed in shorts and T-shirt, jogging towards her at a lick and glancing at his wristwatch. ‘You okay, Travis?’ she’d asked cautiously. ‘Never better, Laura,’ he’d replied cheerily. ‘I’m on track for a personal best!’ When she’d mentioned the encounter to Alice, Alice had riposted that if Travis hadn’t been kidding her then he was certainly kidding himself. ‘By the end of the year he’ll be in a wheelchair, Laura. You mark my words.’ Three years later and Travis was still jogging through the neighbourhood.

  And Alice brought the same melodrama to her own life. Other people’s deaths became her close encounters with death. Someone falling off a platform and being hit by a train at Dupont Circle was, but for the grace of God, her death: ‘Jesus, Laura! I was standing on that platform only last week. That could have been me!’ And another time, after a tornado had swept through Oklahoma not five miles from where she’d been driving just three years previously, Alice had again claimed the disaster as yet another of her narrow escapes from death. ‘This is getting scary, Laura. I’m either a marked person or a cat with nine lives. How weird is this?’

  ‘How weird are you?’ Laura had smiled at the time. Now, however, she took comfort from her partner’s weirdness and, until the visit to the vet proved opposite, dared to believe that Alice had got it wrong.

  Repo was put on a course of Anipryl: one 1.0mg tablet per day for two months; if after this time there was no noticeable improvement in his behaviour the dosage would be doubled. ‘It’s early days yet, Laura, but Repo’s in good hands,’ the vet said. ‘All being well he’ll be as right as rain in no time.’ He then handed her the bill.

  Laura glanced at the invoice. ‘I don’t think you’ve charged for the clichés, Jim.’

  The vet smiled, took back the statement and added two cents.

  The day of Larry’s visit to the park dawned. He woke early and turned the radio to an easy listening station. Percy Faith and his Orchestra were playing Theme from a Summer Place, one of his favourites. He stared at the ceiling and pictured the day ahead: Laura and Alice calling for him at eleven, the three of them driving to the park and there being introduced to new people. He’d take an interest in them, listen to what they had to say and not talk over or at them: ‘Speak only when spoken to, Larry, and keep your answers short,’ he reminded himself. Who knew, with Moses as his wingman, there was every chance he might make new friends. The day, in fact, could well turn out to be the start of that new life Laura had talked about.

  Strangers in the Night started to play and Larry decided it was time to switch off the radio and climb into the shower. He liked Sinatra’s voice but was as unsure of the singer as J Edgar Hoover had been. He could imagine Dr Young palling around with Ol’ Blue Eyes though, sharing dirty stories and drinking too much, dropping cigarette butts in the street and then shouting rude words through his letter box at four in the morning. No wonder Helen hadn’t liked him.

  Larry ran the water and climbed into the shower. He used a bar of soap rather than the gel that Helen had favoured, and then applied a small amount of conditioning shampoo to what was left of his hair. ‘What’s the condition?’ he asked the bottle, as he did every morning. ‘You’ll wash my hair in return for what? What do you want from me?’ It wasn’t the funniest of jokes, but it was his joke and it always made him laugh. It was good to start the day with a chuckle.

  He dried himself on a clean towel, shaved and dressed and then went downstairs to prepare breakfast. Moses was awake but still in his basket, unmindful of the day’s promise; he raised himself slowly, stretched and then padded to his feeding bowl in the kitchen.

  Larry couldn’t decide whether to have cereal or toast that morning. He usually alternated: cereal one morning and toast the next. The previous day he’d eaten toast so today, and by rights, he should have eaten cereal, but for some reason the prospect didn’t appeal. He hummed and hawed for a while and then looked at his wristwatch. ‘Pancakes!’ he suddenly announced, ‘Gosh darn it, Moses, I’m going to have pancakes for breakfast!’

  Laura and Alice arrived ten minutes late. Laura, who was driving, honked the horn while Alice climbed out of the station wagon and opened the tailgate. ‘Come on, Larry, we’re running late,’ she said. ‘Move that skinny butt of yours and let’s get this show on the road!’

  Larry was well aware they were running late: he’d been sitting on the front step with Moses for the past fifteen minutes! He’d even started to wonder if they’d forgotten about him or that he’d got the day wrong. ‘Be right there, Alice,’ he said.

  He walked briskly to the open tailgate and Alice gave him a hand lifting Moses into the wagon. The dogs sniffed each other, wagged their tails, and once the vehicle started to move settled into a companionable silence verging on sleep.

  ‘Sorry we’re late, Larry,’ Laura said. ‘Repo got himself stuck in some chair legs just as we were leaving.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Larry said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Laura. I suppose it’s going to be some time before you know if the pills are working?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ Laura murmured, and reached for Alice’s hand.

  Larry was sure the ensuing silence was companionable, but it appeared to be verging on tears. It was up to him, he decided, to lighten the mood and introduce a new topic of conversation. ‘Guess what I had for breakfast this morning?’ he asked.

  Alice turned to look at him and after only a moment’s pause said: ‘Pancakes.’

  ‘How on earth did you know that?’

  ‘You’ve got syrup on your shirt.’

  ‘Oh shoot!’ Larry said. ‘It’s one of my best shirts, too.’

  Alice stared at him. ‘Your best? How long have you had it?’

  ‘Not long,’ Larry said. ‘No more than ten years. Helen bought it for me at Walmart one Saturday.’ He searched in his trouser pocket for a handkerchief and came up empty. ‘I don’t suppose either of you has a spare tissue, do you?’

  ‘You can have this one,’ Alice said, handing him a crumpled tissue she found in the glove compartment. ‘I doubt it will do much good, though: the fibres will just stick to the syrup.’

  Alice was proved right and Larry gave up. ‘I don’t suppose we have time to go back to my house, do we? I feel a bit uncomfortable being introduced to new people with a stain on my shirt.’

  ‘You suppose right,’ Laura said. ‘And besides, we’re almost there now.’

  They’d been in the car less than ten minutes, and much of that time had been spent idling at stop signs or stationary at traffic lights. It dawned on Larry that the park must be only walking distance from his house and he wondered why he’d never known this. Well, for one, he reasoned, he’d never had a dog before – excepting for Loop, of course, who’d always taken him for walks – and secondly, because they were now on the other side of Wisconsin in a neighbourhood he seldom visited, especially after the incident with the shopping trolley.

  The car started to slow and an open area came into view on the left. ‘There’s a space there, Laura – behind the Humvee!’ Alice pointed. Laura braked, carefully reversed into the opening and turned off the ignition.

  ‘How much gas do you suppose one of those things guzzles?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Laura sighed.

  ‘About nine miles to the gallon,’ Larry said.

  ‘Nine? Jesus! Who can afford to run a monster like that?’

  ‘Well, rich people, I suppose,’ Larry said, wondering if he was falling into a trap by answering so simple a question. ‘And as DC has the highest median per capita income of anywhere in the country there’s a good chance that a lot of them live here. There’s a guy on my street who could afford to fill the tank of a Humvee every day of his life if he wanted to.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a question of whether a person can afford the g
as, Larry,’ Laura replied. ‘It’s more a matter of whether the planet can spare it. Now, come on, let’s get the dogs out and go to the park. Who knows, from what you say we might even meet some rich people there, but the chances are they won’t be my friends!’

  Volta Park occupied a block of prime real estate in the West Village of Georgetown. It had started life as a place for dead people – fallen soldiers and members of a local Presbyterian Church – but towards the end of the nineteenth century the bodies were exhumed and the cemetery transformed into a park for the living. Alger Hiss, the accused Soviet spy, had walked there, John F Kennedy, a future president of the United States, had played touch football there, and Herbert ‘Flight Time’ Lang, a Harlem Globetrotter, had shot hoops there.

  The park was divided into two spaces. The stretch backing on to 33rd St was split into tennis and basketball courts, a children’s play area and an outdoor swimming pool, while the larger space, fronting 34th, was open and grassy, intended for little league games and the exercise of dogs. Most grounds in the area enforced leash laws, but here dogs were allowed to run free and consequently the park had become a popular destination for owners. There were occasions, in fact, when a visitor might count as many as two dozen dogs. This Saturday, however, the day of Larry’s inaugural visit, there were only six.

  The three of them entered the park through an opening in the ornamental iron fence and walked down a grassy slope towards a picnic table backing on to the tennis courts. Two large people were sitting there: a man in his early fifties sporting a severe crew cut and appearing to have been hewn from a slab of granite, and a woman in her late thirties with Shirley Temple curls and a red ribbon in her hair who, less gloriously, looked to have been moulded from a tub of beef dripping. Two dogs were playing close by: a sable long-coated Chihuahua weighing no more than five pounds and a giant mahogany-coloured Dogue de Bordeaux twenty times heavier.

  Repo started to bark and Laura unleashed him. Immediately he bounded in the direction of the picnic table but then stopped, seemingly unsure of where he was or what his intention had been.