Ever by My Side

by Nick Trout

  Once again, I’m not sure how it happened, but one morning I was in George’s arms, about to take flight when Patch suddenly appeared at the doorway, alone, visibly perturbed, Mum and Dad nowhere in sight. I think I was dropped more than deposited on the ground, instantly replaced by one hundred pounds of snarling dog pinning George down by standing on his chest. My attempts to call Patch off went ignored, but they did attract the attention of my father, who soon was dragging Patch away by his collar, scolding the dog, and apologizing to George while searching the street and neighbors’ windows for witnesses. Outwardly, George made an effort to be understanding but it was obvious from his face that he was no longer jolly. In fact I never saw him again. I don’t know whether he changed his route or changed his schedule. I do know deliveries of fresh milk consistently started arriving long before breakfast. But while it was unfortunate that we had to lose a convivial milkman because of Patch’s lack of social graces, shall we say, his protective streak came in handy for an admittedly frail boy in a tough neighborhood.

  Every morning I shuffled down the street to the nearest school bus stop in my school uniform. I may be biased, but for those of us who grew up as awkward, geeky kids, school uniforms were great equalizers among our peers, blazers and ties helping us try to blend in and remain anonymous. You never found yourself frozen in front of your wardrobe, trapped in a moment of deliberation, of troublesome color coordination, racked with the fear of lacking an appropriate designer label.

  “No matter the uniform,” said Mum, “uniformity makes you notice the character of the individual, not the clothes on their back.”

  Of course my parents did their best to neutralize these advantages. It’s hard to avoid ridicule when they force you to wait at the bus stop wearing a crisp, oversized trench coat that makes you look like a cold war spy. And their faith in the respect and recognition afforded by a uniform extended to extracurricular activities. That was why I routinely found myself walking home alone from a local Cub Scout meeting late at night, sporting a cap, shorts, and colorful neckerchief. So you can imagine my concern one night when, with only yards to go before reaching the big white wooden gates that opened up to our backyard, I spied two kids, notorious bullies from school, emerging from the shadows and crossing the street to head me off.

  To a nine-year-old kid, it can feel as though there is a fine line between being the subject of ridicule and being beaten up for looking ridiculous. And don’t go bad-mouthing my parents for not picking me up by car. Back then, no one owned a minivan or spent their nights and weekends working as a chauffeur. So what if the neighborhood could be a little iffy. Everyone knew that if you were sensible, kept your head down, and didn’t talk to strangers you’d be fine.

  Carrot and the Slouch had other ideas, though.

  I didn’t know Carrot’s real name but I knew enough not to refer to him as Carrot. He was an overweight redhead, relying more on fat than muscle to intimidate, always flaunting a lit cigarette as proof of his advanced maturity. His sidekick, the Slouch, was actually Simon Louch, a gangly kid with bad posture and a stutter that made him perfect for keeping his opinions to himself and simply grunting when Carrot sought his approval or disapproval.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  Carrot got the question off before the two of them reached me. I was pretty sure neither of them knew where I lived, but they stood between me and the white gates, blocking my path.

  I didn’t say anything, wondering if I could run at them, get past, and open the gate.

  A cloud of cigarette smoke hit me in the face and I watched Carrot’s smile fade in disappointment when he failed to induce a coughing fit. Those day trips trapped inside a car with my father’s forty-a-day habit had to count for something.

  “Where’ve you been?” Carrot asked.

  I really wanted to look around for the hidden camera and say, “Where do you think I’ve been dressed like this, you big fat idiot!” but opted for a meek “Cubs.”

  Carrot nodded, flicked away his cigarette butt, and elbowed the Slouch.

  “You pay your subs?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking that since he had said “subs,” short for “subscription” (dues), at one time or another Carrot had probably been a Cub Scout.

  “Any left over or did you spend it on candy?”

  This clinched it. Only an insider would know that the one upside to carving woodland animals out of bars of soap and trying to earn your first-aid badge was getting your hands on some seriously unhealthy candy at the end of the night.

  “I don’t have any money,” I said, trying to sidle around them.

  They saw the move for what it was and backed up all the way to the gate, trapping me on the wrong side of sanctuary.

  The wooden gate must have given a little, emitting a slight creak as the Slouch leaned back into it, and that was enough. From inside the house, Patch, sensing a threat on the perimeter, let out a solitary but thunderous woof.

  Carrot and the Slouch looked at each other, looked through the gaps in the gate, and saw nothing but darkness between the driveway and the house.

  “You got a dog?” asked Carrot. He was truly gifted in the art of the redundant question.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What sort?” he said.

  “Alsatian.” (No one said “German shepherd” until the late 1970s.)

  He scoffed and faked a wince of disapproval as though he was not impressed.

  “They don’t scare me,” he said and the Slouch grunted his agreement that he too would not be intimidated by such a dog.

  Carrot moved in close, close enough for me to smell his nicotine breath, and grabbed the front of my shirt in his meaty hand.

  “He can’t help you out here,” he whispered, “so you best have some change left over to give me, or else.”

  The Slouch had taken his cue to muscle in closer, and just as he did, something big and angry slammed into the white gates.

  Patch’s bark exploded, as the gates bowed outwards, threatening to splinter. He stood tall on his back legs, with his massive paws leaning on the gate, head and neck lunging in the direction of my assailants. One second they were about to beat me up, the next they were gone, not just hanging back but vanished, disappeared, as if they had never been there.

  “Good boy, Patch,” I said, unlocking the gate, squeezing past him to get in, as he let out a brief series of “and don’t you dare to come back” barks. I could tell he was pumped up, like a racehorse after a race, all pleased with himself, hackles up, pacing back and forth, letting the surge of adrenaline run its course.

  I wondered if Carrot and the Slouch were still out there somewhere, watching me interact with the beast that had frightened them enough to make them run away. I hoped so. I hoped they could see how I may have been smaller than them but I was completely at ease around this intimidating creature. And looking back, this was a huge part of Patch’s legacy for me. I may not have been his alpha dog, but I was a member of his pack and so we still got to spend a good deal of time together. It was this kind of effortless accrual of time, doing nothing in particular, simply sharing each other’s presence, that let me feel “the aura of dog”—their mannerisms, their behavior and bearing, the everyday minutiae of integrating your life with theirs. It cannot be faked, this knowledge and appreciation of “dogness.” You either get it or you don’t. Thanks to Patch I was learning what it was like to be around dogs.

  “Everything all right, son?” my father shouted from the back door.

  “Yes,” I said, patting Patch on his flanks and once more telling him he was a good boy. “Everything’s fine.”

  3.

  Blessings in Childhood Time

  All of a sudden, when I was about ten years old, my parents dropped the biggest bombshell of my young life. “You’re going to love it,” said Mum, with the kind of artificial enthusiasm that makes all kids instantly suspicious. “New house, new school, new friends, and best of all we’ll be just down
the street from Grandma.”

  I’ve never been good at faking a hound-dog look of desolation so I thought about my new proximity to Grandma’s poodle, Marty, and bent my expression into a look of abject fear.

  Dad mussed my hair and squatted down to my height to get a better read of my reaction.

  “Don’t worry, son. It’s a nice neighborhood and best of all we’re right next to a public footpath that leads to miles of open fields and woods. Patch is going to love it too.”

  I wanted to say, “That’s great, Dad, and I’m sure Patch will appreciate the nearby recreational amenities but to be honest, this great outdoors angle isn’t exactly sealing the deal for me.”

  It wasn’t until I was standing in our new kitchen, surveying our backyard, that I realized why my father had felt the need to clarify Patch’s new state of affairs.

  Compared to his old backyard, a kingdom my little eyes saw as stretching to an emerald infinity, this new backyard would make Patch a veritable prisoner besieged on three sides by tall, creosote-stained fences, boxing him into a swatch of grass with just enough room for him to do his business and not much else. Playing fetch was out of the question, even when you took my limited ball-throwing skills into consideration.

  “Dad, he’s not got much room to run around in,” I said.

  My father winced ever so slightly, rolling his head from side to side, as if caught between a yes and a no.

  “I think he’ll be fine,” said Dad, though he didn’t look so sure. “You and I are going to have to do a better job of taking him for walks if he’s going to get enough exercise.”

  I agreed, convinced these nearby hiking trails, wherever they were, had to be better than this snub to freedom and nature. We both seemed to know I had brought up something my father’s conscience had hoped to ignore or overcome. For all the hypothetical pros in our domestic upheaval, the one family member who didn’t have any say in the matter seemed to have been landed with a major con. And watching Patch sniffing and pacing out there for the first time wasn’t helping matters. Patch seemed surprised by the brevity of his tour, the speed with which he had covered all the available space. He was a dog used to freedom, to surveying his domain by turning from side to side, not bouncing from one boundary to the next, forced to strain his neck upward in search of a glimpse of the world he used to know. I gazed up at my dad staring at Patch and later, much later in life, I would come to realize how the expression on his face reflected a sentiment my emotional palate was just starting to discover. I didn’t know its name but I knew exactly where I had felt it once before. It had been during a school trip to our local zoo, staring at an animal that seemed so improbable on an unusually hot summer day—a polar bear. More than appearing to be uncomfortable, this impressive creature seemed so sad and frustrated, pacing back and forth in a space that felt all too small, his murky pool more suited to paddling than laps. There’s nothing unusual about a kid getting all anthropomorphic in a zoo, but when it came to Patch, this nameless feeling seemed far more personal and disturbing, something close to what I might later come to think of as empathy.

  Making Patch’s precarious circumstances worse was the fact that our new next-door neighbor took an immediate dislike to him. Not that Mr. Peevish, as I will call him, singled Patch out in particular, he loathed canines of all shapes and sizes and he was particularly averse to any dog that, in his opinion, looked as though he could tear you limb from limb.

  Sometimes, if I heard him in his backyard, gardening or mowing or plotting Patch’s demise, I would take Patch out and make a point of fussing over him, brushing out his coat, roughhousing with him, hoping he might overhear how at ease a defenseless young boy was around this four-legged killer, hoping he might peek through a gap in the fence and see that Patch was really a big softy, all bark and no bite, or, as they sometimes say in England, “all mouth and no trousers”! I never envisaged the two of them becoming friends. I simply wanted to prove that Patch was not a mean dog, that with a little tolerance and respect we could all get along. But, sadly, as far as I could tell, Mr. Peevish never looked and he never listened. His mind was already made up. If there was ever the possibility of crossing paths with Patch when Patch was out on a leash with me and Dad, Mr. Peevish would visibly panic, as if calculating his odds of survival, all the while slowly backing up, Patch deemed no less terrifying than an escaped lion.

  It seemed so unfair for Patch to be the subject of canine profiling. Then again, the Peevish disdain for dogs also included an adorable, submissive, perfectly affable two-year-old black Lab called Sam, who lived across the street. His owner, Martin, and my dad became friends, bonded by the universal camaraderie of dog lovers everywhere. The same was not exactly true of Sam and Patch. Theirs was more of a grudging respect—a brief circle and sniff, an indifferent and cautious “wassup,” with an option for a little trash talk, and that was pretty much it. Their biggest battles were over who would be the last one to leave his signature over disputed territory like lampposts.

  One thing I’ll say for my father, what he lacked in decent dogtraining skills, he more than made up for in consideration for others when it came to Patch’s etiquette in public. Martin, on the other hand, had no such qualms about letting people like Mr. Peevish know how he felt about irrational hostility to all canine companionship and Sam gave him the perfect opportunity to make a show of his irritation.

  Sam’s compulsion to one-up Patch in the battle for territorial marking got the better of him when one afternoon, long before leash laws and poop scooping, he slipped his leash, bolted across the street, and took the mother of all dumps on what he clearly believed to be our front lawn. I caught him in the act, all pleased with himself, scratching up stripes in the grass with his back paws before running back home.

  Unfortunately his prank was flawed by one fundamental problem: the fresh turd sat in the middle of Mr. Peevish’s immaculately manicured front lawn and not ours. Worse still, I was not the only witness to the crime. Within seconds of Sam disappearing into his home, Mr. Peevish emerged with a garden shovel, scooped up the offending item, careful to keep it at arm’s length, walked it over to Martin’s front door, and rang his doorbell.

  Martin appeared at the door, joined by Sam, who politely sat by his side, attentive but chaste, affecting an inability to recognize his handiwork.

  “I believe this belongs to you!” said Mr. Peevish.

  Martin took one look at the steaming mound being shoved in his direction, saw his advantage and said, “Prove it!” before slamming the door in the poor man’s face.

  I admit it, a part of me enjoyed Mr. Peevish’s moment of incredulity, his embarrassment as a car pulled into our cul-de-sac and the driver offered a friendly wave and an inquisitive “What you got there?” But when I stopped laughing, what remained was a man who would continue to condemn and seethe, and a need for me to understand that not everyone shared my point of view when it came to dogs. Putting all personal bias aside, Martin had been in the wrong. If Patch and Mr. Peevish were going to successfully remain in one another’s orbit for the foreseeable future, Dad and I would have to work hard to be both responsible and respectful pet owners.

  For some people, when it comes to their dogs, there’s a fine line between devotion and raison d’être. Regardless of the label, all I knew was Dad kept his promise to Patch through a wholesome recreational alternative to a big backyard. Every morning without fail, they would be up at five, though I am led to believe the four-legged accomplice was the one who provided the alarm clock. Dad would don a waterproof coat and Wellington boots, regardless of season, and attach a leash to Patch’s collar, and together they would set out for the fields and an opportunity to run free on more open land than Patch had ever known or could ever want for.

  Accompanying them was unworkable for a boy who consistently struggled to regain consciousness before seven, but I might tag along for their evening walk, perpetually amazed by Patch’s enthusiasm for the same routine, as though he had no
idea where he was going and always thought that this time around would be a whole new adventure.

  Of course we all saw through Dad’s choice of off-peak hours. It was as if my father had confirmed something we had suspected for some time. Dad had given up trying to curb Patch’s antisocial behavior. His solution was simple, some would argue lazy, but if nothing else, practical. If you can’t stop the dog from behaving badly at least you can reduce the risk that he will get into trouble. Dad had found a possible solution to a problem of his own making. He was trying to be responsible and, perhaps more importantly, he was trying to protect the dog he loved from being misunderstood.

  The first time I joined them on their walk I discovered that Dad had also incorporated a backup security measure into their route. Within a few minutes of leaving the house we were lost in fields that consistently offered unencumbered vistas of the pathway ahead, providing plenty of lead time to grab a leash and call a name. There’s no debating the fact that my dad did a far better job of teaching Patch to come when called than he ever did with me.

  By the time we returned from that first walk, all my fears for Patch’s mental well-being were allayed. I had watched him chase rabbits, explore a copse, leap over wooden stiles, and trot along, smiling, always slightly in the lead, his huge tail stretched out, down and low, bouncing with the beat of our footfalls. Neither my father nor I knew a thing about the science of animal behavior, but instinctively we both knew this was a happy dog.

  When it came to the rest of Patch’s well-being, there wasn’t much to notice because there wasn’t much that went wrong. These days, I often chat with dog owners who remember canine companions of yesteryear who similarly never got sick. They fondly recall a less complicated bygone era, governed by fewer conventions, when dogs knew how to be dogs, as though ailments and disease are disruptive innovations, like TV, rock ’n’ roll, or the Internet. I have no proof that dogs were generally healthier a generation or two ago, but if they were, then Patch’s good health was emblematic. Still, from time to time, we did take him to see a veterinarian and on one memorable occasion when I was eleven or twelve I asked if I could join Patch and my father for a scheduled annual checkup. Based on this experience, it is remarkable I would ever show any interest in working with animals again.