Have Dog, Will Travel

by Stephen Kuusisto

  “We can be misunderstood and stylish,” I thought.

  * * *

  It was a warm day. We walked around Ithaca’s tiny downtown. I’d gone into a hat shop first thing because the freedom of having a service dog meant spontaneity. Every little place could be Paris—Joni Mitchell’s Paris, where one is “unfettered and alive.” That’s how I felt about it. And though I thought I knew the Morris Frank story—knew there might still be occasional moments of opposition to a guide dog in public—I didn’t foresee the awkwardness and uncomprehending silence that greeted us in a millinery store.

  We walked an ordinary street . . . houses, shops, a few churches . . . and Corky was so fully confident.

  “This must be what sighted people feel like,” I thought as we climbed a steep hill. “You’re just you.” The idea was both banal and oddly original. “You’re just you, or we’re just us,” I said aloud.

  We approached Cornell University. Corky stopped in her tracks—looked left and right and didn’t budge. “What the hell is it?” I thought. “A hole in the pavement?” But no, it was a Volkswagen, abandoned, awaiting the cops, evidence of some student misadventure.

  Why hadn’t Corky stepped off the sidewalk and gone around it? She was trained to look for detours. Instead she’d backed up, dragging me along. Then a policeman appeared.

  “That’s one smart dog,” he said.

  “Just off the sidewalk there’s a hole about five feet deep.”

  I remembered what they said back at Guiding Eyes about praising your dog and I “loved her up.”

  “Hey,” said the policeman, “I’ve always wondered, do guide dogs know their owners are blind?”

  “No,” I said, “they think we’re clueless!” We shared a laugh. But there was truth behind the joke. A guide dog knows her human needs assistance—not sometimes but always. She knows her job is to keep on task wherever we go.

  After the tow truck hauled the car away I invited the policeman to have a cup of coffee in a nearby bagel place. Much to my surprise he accepted. We talked about dogs. “Have you ever heard of Sergeant Stubby?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “wasn’t he a military dog in World War I?”

  “Yeah, he served with the troops in the trenches.”

  “His story is wild,” he said, adding, “By the way, I’m Joe.”

  After introducing myself and Miss Corky I said, “If I remember correctly, Stubby turned up on the Yale University football field while the troops were drilling.”

  “Yes, and a soldier named Robert Conroy took a shining to him and smuggled him aboard the troop ship,” said Joe. “He fought with the 102nd Infantry in France—he learned how to warn the troops of gas attacks; he located the wounded; he even bit a German spy on the ass.”

  “There’s another great thing about Stubby,” I said. “When Conroy went to law school at Georgetown after the war, Stubby went with him. He’s the mascot of the Hoyas.”

  “He fought in seventeen battles,” said Joe. “Can you imagine?”

  * * *

  I was having conversations with strangers. In a diner, the owner, an old Greek man, wanted to give Corky some sausage links. I explained she couldn’t have any human food. “That’s crazy!” he said, and he pushed three sausages into my hand. I stuffed them in the pocket of my coat. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll give them to her later.”

  “That dog’s a hero!” he said. “You have to feed heroes!”

  “Oh I know,” I said.

  “My uncle was blind,” said the proprietor as he wiped the counter.

  “He lived to be a hundred,” he said.

  This was the life I’d always wanted: being out and about, engaging in casual talk. Though I was uncomfortable with the heroism shtick, I was talking to someone I scarcely knew and he was admitting us into his tribe.

  * * *

  A couple of weeks later the Ithaca newspaper ran a story about Corky. It was a good piece about a poet and his dog. I said something about poems and walking. There were some nice photographs. It was a small and positive accomplishment. Then the phone rang.

  The voice was pure gravel.

  “I don’t know you,” she said, “but I’ve read about you.”

  “Oh yes,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m the president of the local garden club. We’re a group of women who talk about nature. We thought it would be wonderful if you would come to our next meeting. You know, just talk about guide dogs.”

  I pictured a tasteful sunroom, a dozen women, and a tea trolley.

  What harm could there be in it? “Why not be an ambassador for the guide-dog school?” I thought.

  The woman, whose name was Sarah Bookmier, sent a limo to get us. I should have been somewhat suspicious of a garden party at night but I wasn’t. I’d never been to such a thing before. Corky and I climbed into a Lincoln with a largely silent uniformed driver. I didn’t know where we were going and for some reason it never occurred to me to ask. I was attending a party at a farm. I had my dog. How bad could it be? The car eventually came to a stop and the door swung open and there was Mrs. Bookmier.

  I found it wasn’t a garden party at all, but an Amway meeting—the event was about recruiting women to sell cleaning products. A dozen of us were treated to a film about soap and stain removers. We sat uneasily on hard chairs while rain beat at the windows. I did my best to smile.

  I stroked Corky’s ears—the dog as familiar, my Labrador as lucky blanket. I was in the country home of Mrs. Bookmier-Sparkle. We were captive in her temple. We’d sell soap and she’d become the queen of soap and our chairs squeaked and every now and then wind punched the roof.

  When the film was over and it was time for discussion, Mrs. Bookmier made a pitch about financial independence through soap, which meant selling lots of soap, and in turn, recruiting more people to sell soap.

  Mrs. Bookmier looked my way. She said blind people were poor—weren’t they? And why couldn’t I recruit an army of blind soap sellers and make sightless people rich? I could, couldn’t I?

  One woman named Bethany spoke up and said: “How can Stephen know every blind person? Do you think blind people just hang out together?”

  I loved her for saying it. But Mrs. Bookmier sailed on:

  “He can call all the guide-dog users, they must have a network,” she said.

  I said something about privacy laws.

  Then it got worse. Mrs. Bookmier said the problem with disabled people was that they didn’t have a work ethic.

  I decided to escape. I had no idea if the Lincoln was outside. I reckoned with Corky by my side I could hitchhike back to Ithaca. The unknown didn’t bother me. It was a new feeling. I’d barely been home a month from Guiding Eyes and I felt wholly independent.

  I walked downhill in the rain with Corky jingling beside me. When we reached the bottom of Bookmier’s twisted drive the Lincoln pulled up. “They didn’t tell us about moments like this in guide-dog school,” I said to Corky, who shook her dog tags in reply.

  * * *

  Civic life with a disability is theatrical. I hadn’t fully known this. I’d been so busy trying to play the role of a dashing nondisabled lad, the impossibly healthy boy of American imagination, that I’d failed to appreciate what being myself would be like. Corky had brought me into the land of Prospero, where the world was a stage, where each location was nuanced and required negotiation in ways I’d not imagined. Sometimes we were accepted and sometimes not. I found my reception could change in an instant. I could be admired as a blind traveler and in the same hour face opposition. I discovered this upside-downside drama was consistent, and whether I liked it or not, I now had to perform with mixed emotions on a very real stage.

  I wrote in my journal:

  I’m right here and I’m immensely inconvenient. A blind man at a garden party. Blind man in a comic book store. Built environs are designed to keep our kind out. Our kind includes those who direct their wheelchairs by breathing, amble with th
eir crutches, speak with signs, type to talk, roll oxygen tanks, or ask for large-print menus. We are here. And our placement is insufficiently understood in public. Which came first, these blues or the architecture that keeps us always inconvenient?

  To perform disability meant affirming its place in the village square. Whenever possible it also meant the cultivation of irony.

  I walked downtown to get a haircut. Corky and I descended steps—the shop was below street level. A bell on the door chimed as we entered. Men were talking as we came in but they turned silent when they saw us. I wondered if there was a word for a group of men gone quiet. No one bothered to speak. The sight of a man and dog had violated house custom. I shut the door carefully. The bell wasn’t cheerful. “Christ,” I thought, “even the bell is against us.” Still no one said a thing. I thought: “Disability scares some folks. They have no words for it. On a primitive level they may believe disability is contagious like influenza, or worse, it’s the evil eye.”

  I had to be the one to break the ice. I went for a dog joke. “Hey, my dog needs a trim,” I said. That was all it took for the boys to snap back to life. It was like I’d said “abracadabra.” There was old-guy laughter. “Great,” said the barber, “take a seat.” I took a seat. Corky lay down.

  But then they went quiet again. I realized the men weren’t getting trims or shaves. The barber’s place was their social club and my arrival had dampened things. Even the radio wasn’t helping, as it was tuned to static. Corky rattled her chain. The scene was exceedingly strange. Rather than tossing out another joke I kept silent, wanting to see what would happen. I thought the barber might throw out a cliché—something like: “We don’t get many dogs in here,” to which I’d reply, “No wonder, at prices like these.” But it wasn’t the barber who broke the silence. One of the men said: “My friend, who I served with in Korea, he went blind—he got a seeing-eye dog back around ’fifty-five.” Then I understood their silence. It wasn’t the oddness of a blind man and his dog, or disability superstition that had kept them quiet. It was memory.

  * * *

  Up and down the streets we went. It was half sunny and then it would threaten to snow. April. Upstate New York.

  In a moment trees would be turning green. With my meager sight I’d see the new leaves as yellow smoke. It would be our first changing season together. I recited “Sumer is icumen in . . . and the forest sings anew . . .” Then I sang it. I couldn’t tell whether Corky liked my singing or not. As a matter of human vanity I decided she did. Or I told myself she didn’t mind. It was a turning season of newfound pleasure.

  That’s when I decided I’d go to New York. To be sure, there’d be plenty of good and bad experiences in Manhattan. But what mattered was the spontaneity of walking. It felt as though Corky and I had conquered Ithaca in two weeks and I’d always wanted to go to New York solo. Now I could do something nearly as good. I could go with a Labrador.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The doorman at the Algonquin Hotel on Forty-Fourth Street loved the sight of us as we uncoiled from a taxi, Corky’s tail wagging, ears up, appearing to smile. And the doorman seemed equally pleased. “Now that’s a great dog!” he said, “she’s a champ!” We stood together on the sidewalk and by God if everyone didn’t seem happy. A couple of tourists asked if they could take our picture. “Of course,” I said. “Of course.” This was our first hotel as a guide-dog team. It was going nicely. The doorman was named Charlie. He wore a top hat and a black coat with gold braid. He appeared pleased both with his job and our sudden appearance. Upside: welcoming man. At the front desk Charlie introduced us as Stephen and Corky the Champ.

  He insisted on giving us a private tour of the hotel. We saw the Rose Room and the famous Round Table where in the 1920s writers Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman and others gathered daily for lunch and savage gossip. In the dark Edwardian lobby Charlie introduced Corky to Mary Bodne, widow of the hotel’s former owner Ben Bodne. Mary in turn introduced us to Matilda, the hotel cat.

  * * *

  Charlie was so happy I thought he might stay with us all afternoon. I’d reserved the room formerly occupied by James Thurber and Charlie lingered, describing all the pictures on the walls.

  * * *

  We were in a good dream all day: Corky and I walked the Brooklyn Bridge. The sky was blue-going-to-green as we raced along the promenade deck. It was easy to imagine men in swallow-tailed coats and women with wide hats approaching. Blindness was all mist for me and yet the dear light was wonderful. For people like me light is a mystery—a literal one, less of physics, more a matter of interpretation. I live in unfocused brilliance. We were going very fast in a jogger’s reverie, Corky and I. We passed two slow runners. I wondered what Corky’s waking dream was like.

  I thought how a dog’s vision must be like widescreen cinema—what they used to call Panavision—the whole world must be wide and bright for a dog. The entire day must be like watching Ben-Hur—a sequence of dazzling chariot races. It was amusing to think of it. Every day is a big-screen Hollywood spectacle for a dog.

  * * *

  In Macy’s I made the mistake of talking to a mannequin. Every blind person has done this. A woman said, “That man won’t be talkin’,” and laughed and walked with me to the men’s department. Bonding meant I couldn’t be embarrassed—it felt as if some essential part of my self-regard had been fired in a kiln. “Thank you Corky,” I said. “Thank you, girl!”

  I was a little bit like Charlie Chaplin—easy, loose jointed, mistake prone and strong.

  * * *

  Small things: she walked me around a sidewalk elevator, its doors revealing steep stairs. New York: the city of ominous basements.

  She stopped at a curb, then backed up. A double-decker tourist bus was drifting, scraping street signs, the people up top laughing—the bus was like a boat filled with drunks. Good girl.

  We walked past odd little shops, their doors open, releasing Victorian odors of commerce—New York is a city of smells—many unidentifiable—the scent of earth from one door; fragrance of plums from another. On Sixth Avenue a woman ran out of a shop and grabbed my arm. “You must taste,” she said. “Taste?” I said. “Yeah, you taste!” She dragged us into a Chinese bakery and offered us a Chinese cocktail bun, filled with coconut. Corky and I rewarded her with a little dance. New York. Everyone feels vaguely as if he or she is in a circus. What can you do? You chew, dance, and walk. You thank strangers who suddenly appear. Do they appreciate your soul? Do they have pity for you? You don’t know.

  I felt there had to be a better word than bonding. I was living the chaos of joy, something one can’t talk about with ease, largely because there’s no vocabulary for the thing—you’re in love with your surroundings, loving a barefoot mind, wild to go anyplace. Sometimes crossing Fifth Avenue felt like traveling to the top of Mount Olympus. The hot dog vendor on the corner was Zeus. I could tell.

  We bought a bag of wild cherries from a fruit stand. Stood beside a fountain. Touched the hair on skinny trees.

  * * *

  George Eliot wrote:

  “We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.”

  By day two in Manhattan I saw George Eliot was incorrect. Corky wasn’t ignorant of my faults at all. Working through the tangled places she surmised my confusions. Stopping before a flight of subway steps she looked up at my face, wanting to be certain I’d found my location and that my footing was secure.

  And the caresses of the subway dark! A softness like twilight under the city! The anteroom of hell with its stink of burnt rubber and urine and the collected odor of ten million human fears—and we were forging ahead through the damasked air and I don’t know how to convey it—but the rhythms of the trains and our own courage were tightly bound. Who the hell is happy in the subway? I swear we were.

  * * *

  Our session in New York underscored both our safety and happines
s. Now and then we had to stop someplace just so I could hug her—we found a bench outside of FAO Schwarz, the famous toy store, and I took her harness off and scratched her chest. And then she flopped over, demanding a belly rub. And wouldn’t you know it? Two children from Germany, a boy and girl, about ten years old, accompanied by their mother—they wanted to help give Corky a belly rub . . . we had a spontaneous belly-rub klatsch. Then more people came. A dozen. People unbeknownst to each other, drawn by softness and animal faith in the heart of a great city. “Animal faith” was philosopher George Santayana’s term for instinctive belief, belief without rational foundation. I’d begun using the term for my own purposes—walking with Cork was opening the hours for me. I was feeling a foundational confidence and openness I’d never known. Perhaps this wasn’t rational. But maybe it was? Animals keep us alive to perceptions we’ve long given up on. I’d always kind of imagined this was true. Now I was experiencing it. Our belly-rub klatsch was a little impromptu church ceremony. Afternoon sunlight was reflected by tall windows. Children and adults were laughing. Corky had all four feet in the air and a wizened dog smile.

  Our last “trial” day in the city had to involve a long walk in Central Park. We entered somewhere around Seventy-Second Street at Fifth Avenue and made our way to the boat pond. I walked with my eyes closed. I’d always suffered from tremendous eye pain and Corky’s skill allowed me to rest them, to give up on the desperation of residual sight. It was a late April day and the scent of new grass was on the wind. And from a distance we heard boaters laughing on the water.

  Someone had a portable radio playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I felt a lovely, tempered joy among trees.

  I remembered Joseph Campbell once saying: “You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so, where you do not know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody or what they owe you—but a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be . . .”