The Dog Says How (2 page)

dogs

Dogs have been
an integral part of our culture, from Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the underworld, to Rin-Tin-Tin. To some extent, they are our creation. We have bred them to carry our burdens, guard our loved ones, hunt, herd, entertain. In ancient Egypt, the white on the chest of the Pharaoh hound was encouraged to reflect the light of the moon for night hunting. The long ears and wrinkles of bloodhounds are designed to hold scent for tracking. Some dogs were bred to keep queens warm on cold nights. Others worked as tireless sentries keeping predators at bay.

My uncle had hunting dogs and although he didn’t hunt with them, he swore they were quality hound dogs. His backyard was full of dogs and old cars. Whenever he bought a new car he tore the doors off his old one, parked it out back, and it became the new doghouse. The dogs loved it and often sat in the front seat like they were going somewhere. My uncle loved to sit in a lawn chair framed in the proscenium of his garage door with a cold Schlitz tallboy beer and a cigarette, surrounded by his dogs. My dad said my uncle was the kind of guy who smelled “all the roses all the time.” Sometimes he’d have a bar-b-que smoldering. His ribs were incredible. He told me the secret of good bar-b-que: “There’s three things I never wash and one’s my grill.” One time while he was sitting around smelling the roses, he pointed at his dog and said, “Look at that darn dog. Been staring at that dead butterfly for two hours. Two hours. And I ought to know, I been watching it the whole time.” My uncle couldn’t have found a better dog. In his world it seemed time spent with his dog did not count against life. From my uncle I learned early the value of a good dog.

I love watching dogs dream. What are they chasing? In some cultures, on the night before the hunt, it was important to watch the dogs sleep. The one that dreamed he was already living the hunt was the dog to take the next day.

A friend of mine was pheasant hunting recently with her German Shorthaired Pointers. Three generations of hunting dogs. It was the puppy’s first hunt and he was bounding all over the place. The oldest dog was thirteen and this was quite possibly her last hunt. She had been a tireless hunting companion throughout the years. The third dog was a four-year-old and in her prime. Although the dogs worked well, it was a slow morning. Finally a rooster got up and my friend shot and saw it drop up ahead. The three dogs took off, the four-year-old in the lead, followed by the veteran and then last came the puppy, excited but clueless. The four-year-old found the bird and was returning with it when suddenly she stopped and gently passed it to the older dog. The older dog took the bird several steps then stopped and gave it to the puppy to finish the retrieve.

SOMETIMES IT’S HARD
to find the “beast” left in a dog. Princess, a Brittany Spaniel, lived with the mayor of a small town in North Dakota. I was asked to their home for supper one evening. I noticed when we sat down to dine there was an extra plate set; it turned out Princess had her own place at the table. What amazed me most about that dog was she waited until after grace before digging in.

Are we paired with the dog we deserve?

If that’s true I immediately think of Charger. Charger was one of those big, goofy dogs that carries a log around all day—the kind of dog that would’ve joined the army for the food—a mutt with claims to all seven dog groups. Every year I’d watch the Westminster Dog Show and at the end when they’d announce “Best in Show‚” I’d yell, “Charger, you won, you won!” Charger wasn’t very smart or if he was he hid it masterfully. One time when our neighbor started up his lawn mower Charger started barking and ran to the door. He thought I was pulling into the driveway on my motorcycle, even though I was sitting right next to him on the couch. When I said, “Charger, I’m right here,” he looked at me like “how’d you do that?”

Charger never saved my life, or if he did, he never let on that he had, but when he passed away I cried buckets. The words of Kipling: “Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware, of giving your heart to a dog to tear.” Despite this warning we do give our hearts to these creatures. Is this because dogs are our last connection to nature? For me the answer is simple: Charger was my friend.

NOT LONG AFTER
Charger passed away my girlfriend, Mary, found a puppy. I told her I wasn’t ready. Nevertheless, there stood Fafnir, a dachshund—a wiener dog.

I look at the floor next to him and say, “Who did that?”

“Oh,” she says, “it looks like a little accident.”

I walk around the house and there are more accidents than in a liquor store parking lot. I look at Fafnir—and I know you’re not supposed to anthropomorphize dogs—but that face was definitely Lutheran guilt.

Mary says, “He’s special. He’s a show dog. He has papers and everything.”

A show dog . . . No! My mind flashed to those dogs that resemble cleaning implements. All those perfumed, powdered, and pampered dogs—dogs the color of marshmallows in a box of Lucky Charms. I remember seeing a bumper sticker once that read, “Please don’t tell my mother you saw me at a dog show. She thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.”

Mary says, “Why don’t you get to know him.”

So Fafnir and I go out for a walk and I learn when people see a dachshund they have to yell, “A wiener dog!” like—a rainbow! A shriner! A shooting star! A clown! A nudist colony! Busloads of children cry out, “Look, a wiener dog!” as we pass my local motorcycle coffee shop. Now I’m waiting for the taunts and jeers from my biker friends, references to Fafnir as foodstuff for their larger dogs, when a leather-clad man named Zach steps up and says, “Nice dog.”

I say, “What?”

“Yeah,” he says, “That’s a good-looking dog.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says, “Good confirmation. And there’s nothing that will go through a sack full of rats faster than a daschshund.”

Wow. Now the guys are looking with new reverence, and I decide it’s best to get Fafnir out of there before one of them says, “Hey, I happen to have a sack full of rats at home.”

When I get home, I ask Mary when that next dog show is. And before you know it, I got more leashes than belts. I got a houseful of wiener dog doormats, gravy boats, knickknack, bric-a-brac. Call me what you will, but when I put on a pair of pants, there’s liver in one pocket and plastic bags in the other.

I remember a little prayer that goes, “Please Lord, make me the man my dog thinks I am.” Ain’t it the truth, when the world turned on Nixon he turned to Checkers. There’s a passage in the American Kennel Club Show manual and the words refer to dachshunds, but I think they are words to live by. It says something like, “Scars achieved in battle will not count against contestants.” Now that’s got to make you feel better about yourself.

I’ve read that the Aztecs bred Chihuahuas to lead them across the great river into the afterlife. It makes sense. Where else would you entrust your soul than to something that would fight for you with that ferocity?

This story also gives me solace. I like to think that someday I’ll see Charger again, waiting for me on this side of the river to cross together into peace. My guess is he’s probably sitting in the smoking lounge right now with a bunch of Chihuahuas.

beaver in a box

The other day
I was working with my neighbor Ben. He’s about ten years old and we were breaking the glass out of an old storm door. I held the door frame over the garbage can and then Ben took a hammer and broke the glass into the can. All of a sudden Ben looks up and says, “Are there jobs like this?” And I said, “Yes, there are jobs like this.”

I remember in my early twenties when I used to work at the chow mein noodle factory. It was a job through a temp agency where I was guaranteed twenty dollars a day whatever the work. I stuffed chow mein noodles into bags and after the first day I was offered permanent employment. I liked the chow mein noodle factory and they liked me, too, and called me “college boy” because I could read. Every evening after work I’d race the band of daylight that stretched between the chow mein noodle factory and the Uptown Bar.

This was back in the late seventies before south Minneapolis was fixed up and gentrified. The bowling alley next to the noodle factory still hired human pinsetters, teenagers who smoked cigarettes, drank pop, and talked dreams, all the while straddling crashing bowling pins. Quick as a wink they disappeared anytime a carnival rolled into town. Next door to the bowling alley was the Ace Hardware store with the Zen-like sign in the window: “Help Wanted. Inquire Within.” Past the hardware store sat a small brick building with a neon sign that hummed “Barbie’s Sauna,” where a man could get just about anything—except for Barbie or a sauna.

The Uptown Bar was a working-class bar. I push open the heavy steel door and enter the dark room. It took some time for my eyes to adjust but when they did I saw the familiar faces of people at their usual spots. B-girls sat up on the barstools—women who for a drink and a couple bucks would tell you how interesting you are. They were true sirens of their day and few could resist their art of conversation. Behind the bar were tickets to a meat raffle, a cash register decorated with bad checks, and a jar of pickled eggs old enough to vote. The clientele at the Uptown was mostly on the wide end of the economic pyramid, troubled men and women who sat over their highballs staring into the glass like ice fishermen waiting for a bite. The Uptown Bar was a hub of contemplation more designed for the
incubation
of ideas than the actual hatching. There were guys who worked nights like Larry, at the slaughterhouse, and Scotty, who worked as a mortician’s assistant, and Whispering Jesus, called Whispering Jesus because every time he stepped out on his bad leg he whispered, “Jesus.”

One afternoon I was doing what we called “sitting around practicing for when we get old.” I was with my buddy Larry. Ever since I’ve known him he’s been missing some teeth and the bow from his Ray-Bans. I only know him from the bar. He’s always there: summer, winter, fall. I saw Larry outside the bar once one summer day and it was horrible. It was like the sun was trying to kill him. I wanted to throw a coat over him and breathe smoke on him until I could get him back into the bar.

Larry and I watch the news together. The weatherman announced it was two below zero. First cold snap of the year. I worry for some of these guys. God knows where they go at night when this place closes. I guess there’s a flophouse upstairs but nobody confirms it for fear of it getting shut down. There is an interview on the news with a guy—must be eighty if he’s a day. He says he’s from International Falls, the nation’s icebox. He says, “Fifty years ago I moved up here for arthritis and this year I finally got it.”

We all saw it at once. Out in the middle of traffic looking lost and scared was a beaver. We watched it cross the busy street one way and back the other. Cars screeched. Every once in a while he’d rear up to get a better look at his situation but he was clearly confused. His defenses for life in the wild were all but useless in this urban setting. Somehow this little guy had wandered into town. I wondered what body of water he could’ve come from. The Mississippi is over two miles away and the nearest lake a good mile, mile and a half. This beaver was clearly out of his element.

Now, after you’ve had a few beers one of two things happens. You either develop a great disdain for God’s creatures or you become exceedingly magnanimous. Which is what happened to us.

“Gentlemen, we goda save that liddle fella,” announced Larry.

“Poor guy,” we all say.

So leaving our jackets inside and armed with only good intentions, we approach the beaver, speaking in falsettos, assuring him everything would be fine.

When you think of a beaver you might think of an industrious creature—kind of cuddly, an intelligent, happy worker. Couldn’t be further from the truth. This thing had claws like razors and huge yellow teeth that were designed to fell a birch sapling in one bite. He emitted a hiss that made your knees weak. Worse yet, he obviously held some deep hatred for us . . . like he already knew us.

The beaver took the offensive. He gave a lunge that belied his winter fat. We feinted back. The beaver then picked his targets based on proximity. It was horrifying—like a mad ninja.

“The tail, watch the tail!”

“It’s a deadly weapon!”

“I seen it on Mutual of Omaha.”

The beaver continued on the offensive, taking advantage of the fact that he hadn’t been drinking. And in no time he had us slipping and scattering for the safety of the bar.

From our perches back at the bar we watched the beaver finally settle into a defensive stance.

“I think he’s sleeping. I bet we wore him out.”

“Oh, he ain’t sleeping. He’s in a meditative state, more alert than ever.”

Larry took a drink from his beer. “We used to have it, too, but it’s evolved out of us somehow.”

“How we gonna help him?”

“Sometimes nature doesn’t want our help.”

“But nature can’t sense the danger, man. Look at the dinosaur.”

“The dodo bird.”

“The Baltimore Colts.”

“Sometimes nature must run its course.” It was Larry and this meant he was done helping the beaver. In his mind, the beaver had made his choice.

“Well, I for one am not giving up,” said Scotty. “I got a buddy with a van. I’m getting it.”

While he was gone Whispering Jesus went into the back room of the bar and came out holding a liquor box with a lid on it. He ran outside just as a rusted white van pulled up. The side door of the van slid open and with surprising speed they worked the beaver into the box, shut the lid, threw it in the van, slid the door shut, hopped up front, and were off over the hill. As we watched the one working taillight disappear, Larry turns to me and says, “How long you think it’s going to take a beaver to get out of a cardboard box?”

larry

One Saturday I walked
into the Uptown Bar. When I entered the bar something was off, I could tell even before my eyes adjusted. Then it slowly took form; Larry was nowhere in sight. I asked the bartender and he said that Larry was never in the bar on Saturday afternoons anymore. I asked where Larry went and the bartender didn’t know, but he did know Larry would be back about four or five. I waited. Sure enough, Larry comes into the bar around five o’clock. I asked him where he’d been.

He said, “I was sitting with the cows.”

“Larry, why are you sitting with the cows?”

He said, “To ask their forgiveness.”

“Why do you need forgiveness from cows?”

Then he told me. . . .

“Whatever stories you’ve heard about a meat-processing plant, they’re true. The conditions are deplorable. Four floors dedicated to the transformation of animal to meat. What arrives on hoof leaves in plastic. What’s impossible to describe, however, is the odor. The rich, thick odor. Not a bad smell, but so thick at first it makes you sick—not from the smell but from the thickness. But after a time you get to craving that smell. You can’t wait to get to the plant and breathe that air; it feeds you and all other air becomes insufficient.”

Larry said, “I worked at the plant for five years. But you have to be very, very careful. A person can get used to almost anything. A while back I quit and started visiting the cows on Saturdays and asking their forgiveness.”

I asked, “What do the cows do?”

He said, “Mostly lay around, but you’d be surprised how forgiving they can be. . . .”

We ordered some beers.

“We need nature to sustain and forgive.” Larry smiled.

And then the news came on.