By Brian Yeary
The kitchen table was cold to the touch as the old man wiped crumbs that had fallen from his rye toast onto the tile floor below where the old dog waited patiently to gobble them up, just as she had done every day for the last fourteen years. After breakfast the two sat by the fire, warming themselves by the sounds of the crackling wood that sent the occasional spark dancing into the flue. The house was quiet otherwise, save for the low hum of the clothes dryer in the basement turning over wool socks and flannel blankets in preparation for the onset of winter. Though she had been a dog for all seasons, in recent years her distaste for the cold had become more and more apparent, as she often dug herself a tunnel under the covers attempting to fasten herself along the length of the old man’s form, becoming a part of him as he slumbered in the night.
The drive was pleasant enough. A mile or so more of tidy urban street was all that lay between them and their fate. The old man said nothing as he clenched the wheel. The old dog thought ahead, imaging what it might look like to chase a blue-winged dragonfly in a blizzard. As the thought ran its course in her mind, the Plymouth turned into the parking lot on squeaky breaks and well-worn rubber.
The old man ran his aging fingers through the gray whiskers of the old dog seated next to him in the front seat of the sedan. The parking lot of the veterinary office was nearly empty. He had asked for the earliest possible appointment, feeling the need to be over and done with it. The new autumn sun made him squint as he looked down into her eyes as she had eased herself down in the bench seat next to him resting a salt-n-pepper muzzle atop crossed paw.
“These slacks are stained, coffee maybe. What do you think, girl?” The old man licked his fingers and rubbed the brown spot on the leg of his trouser. The sun eased in on the old dog through the window of the sedan, accentuating each line in her jowl, drawing attention to the tired red whispers of age in her eyes. She looked up at him as if to ask a question, then it didn’t seem quite so important anymore.
They could see the figure of a familiar man in the doorway. The old dog knew this place well. She didn’t look forward to visiting even on the best of days, but today she seemed a bit more ill at ease than usual. The old man coaxed her out of the car with a favorite treat and some soft persuasion.
“Come on now, Sunshine, you can do it. Only a few steps up that hill and we’ll be inside. They’re waiting on us up there, Ol’ Doc Perkins and Ms. June. Let’s go and say good morning to them, what do you say?” He held out a shaky hand and slipped a beefy morsel into the mouth of the old dog. She smacked her lips around the taste of it before swallowing it whole and then limped her way from the car to the long sidewalk that led to the clear glass entryway where the figure in the door wedged himself, watching them.
“You’re doing just fine, Sunshine, just fine. You’re a good girl. Damn, but you’ve been good.” He encouraged her as they reached the halfway point. He tried to slip another treat under her tongue, but she was not having it. Her legs were beginning to tire, and her eyelids were hanging like heavy curtains.
“You remember the first visit we made up to the hospital? It seems like only yesterday. I can’t believe we spent nearly twelve years going up there together, seeing those folks, all those sick and hurt folks. You sure made a lot of people smile.” He stopped for a moment to let the old dog catch her breath. She seized the opportunity to take a rest on her haunches, letting out a grunt and a sigh as she did so. The man in the doorway stood at the ready, patiently waiting on his work to arrive. A small foreign car wheeled into the lot and parked beside the old man’s Plymouth. Sunshine lowered her full weight across her master’s feet, restricting him from going any further without forcibly removing her from his presence. He bent over now and scratched her on the top of the head, causing an eyebrow to raise and a whine to slip from her downturned lips. The old man just stood there, unsure of how to proceed.
“Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?” he asked. The old dog refused to answer or give credence to the question by looking in his direction. Ol’ Doc Perkins was no longer in the doorway. The young man who had emerged from the foreign car walked casually toward the sidewalk with something just shy of a limp causing him to favor his right leg. The old dog watched him now, trying to distract herself. The old man watched too, until he decided they had rested long enough.
“Okay girl, we better get along now.” His voice began to quiver as he spoke. The old dog refused to budge. She lay herself stubbornly across the old man’s loafers and let out another tired sigh.
“Look at you,” he scolded her with the voice of compassion. “Look at me,” he continued. “We’re out to pasture, don’t you know? We’ve passed our prime, all used up and spent like old money.” He pretended to be angered by her bullish behavior, but soon felt a sweeping pang of guilt. Gathering the guts from some place where the strength of young men resides, he leaned over and grabbed the old dog by the scruff of the neck. She yelped, not out of pain, but rather out of surprise. He had never been unkind to her, all these years. She came to attention and steadied herself with the pride and grace of a companion’s companion. She had lived to serve and wasn’t about to stop now. The old man stuck out his chin, squared his shoulders and began to lead his friend once more up the path to the front door. After only three steps, the old dog’s knees buckled and she crumbled on the sidewalk, nearly collapsing across the old man’s shoes once more. He bent down over her and rubbed her shoulders as he had done from time to time after the two had spent a long day at the hospital making the rounds.
A voice called out from behind them: “Sunshine?” The man from the foreign car moved in close to get a better look. He carried a small gray cat in a pet cage under one arm. He bent down on one good leg and one not so good, positioning himself close to the old dog and the old man.
“Sunshine, is that you girl?” He smiled at the old dog who turned her head slowly in his direction when he spoke, exposing the twisting silver whiskers on her chin, and the drooping jaw that hung in slack as she still panted from the exhaustion of the short walk from the car.
“It is you!” he exclaimed. “I knew it, I’d recognize you anywhere! Good morning, Sunshine!” Now he patted her on the head and rubbed a quick hand across her back as the gray house cat meowed for attention from the cage nearby. The man leaned over and hugged the old dog around the neck, causing her to grunt ever so softly. She acknowledged a remembrance and licked his bearded cheek with a long, dry tongue. Ol’ Doc Peterson stood in the doorway and asked if everything were alright. The man from the foreign car waved a friendly wave and assured him all was well. The old man looked down at the old dog and the gray house cat and the man from the foreign car. He scratched his chin and asked, “Do I know you?”
The house cat stuck its pink nose up close to the tiny bars that were holding it hostage and tried to get a closer look at what all the hubbub was. The old dog had raised herself up from the sidewalk and now positioned herself to appreciate the warm massage the man was applying to her aching back. “Oh yes,” he spoke to the old man. “You know me, at least you should. You brought Sunshine to visit me three-and-a-half years ago in the hospital, after the crash.”
The old man did not remember, after all there had been hundreds of visits, maybe thousands?
“Makes no difference if you do. I remember her, and that’s all that matters. Is she sick, hurt?” The man from the foreign car began to closely inspect the old dog, one shank-hair at a time. She seemed to be all in one piece. He continued to assess while the old man spoke. “No, she’s not sick, and she’s not hurt. She’s just old, we’re both just old.”
Ol’ Doc Perkins had made his way to where the group gathered under the shade of a bent Oak, shielding themselves from the uniquely warm fall morning.
One of his assistants followed him. “Here, I can take her,” Ms. June said with a kind, outstretched hand.
The old dog seemed to straighten her tired back and broaden her achy shoulders, as if in defiance of the suggestion. An understanding was finally beginning to take shape in the mind of the man from the foreign car. He stood between the old dog and the vet, the vet’s young assistant, and the old man. He seemed to be manufacturing a thought he could not assemble fast enough. He spoke in a spitfire jumble of words. “Oh no, really, Sunshine?” he protested. “Look at her, you can’t, no…” He wrestled with a thought before gathering his courage and delivering a proclamation. “I’ll take her home with me…with us.” He remembered the gray house cat in the carrier looking on from behind the tiny bars. “We’ve got a nice yard, a fence, a tree where all kinds of squirrels run and play, she’ll love it there! She can come home with us…I’ll take good care of her.” He tried to convince them with a final plea. “Please, let me take her home.”
***
The squirrels in the sycamore pestered the old dog nonstop for the rest of the year. Winter was mild, spring sprang as a fresh bud from a long stem, and then summer corrupted them like so many unwanted lovers, steamy and unavoidable. The gray house cat never cared for the intrusion but the two managed to remain civil most of the time. The next winter, the man with the foreign car made a call to the old man with the Plymouth. He explained to him what had happened the night before. The old dog began to whimper, pleading to be let outside. The old dog and the gray house cat wandered off together collecting snowflakes on their backs before the dark of night shrouded them from sight. The house cat returned alone. The walk around the yard in search of the old dog proved to be short, cold, and sorrowful. She had hidden herself under a thicket near the corner of the fence and had laid right down there and died. The old man listened from the other end without even breathing. After a long stretch of lonesome silence, he exhaled and said, “Thank you,” then hung up the phone.
As he carefully shuffled off to bed that night, the old man stopped in the hallway to straighten some photos hanging there, photos of the old dog when she was not so old, when the two of them were not so old. Wounded and broken people were there too, framed in wood and golden trimmed frames. Some of the images were dusty and some were faded; memories of so much good work the two had accomplished together, good memories, memories that would never age. He slid underneath the covers and thought about the old dog until he had to cry. He knew she would join him later in the anxieties of his restless mind, running and jumping and barking and chasing and playing in his dreams as she had done so often in these last days, chasing dragonflies in the summer sun and snowflakes in the winter shadows of his unconsciousness. He waited on her now with the covers up and around his old chin; he waited on her to arrive like the great breaking of dawn when the sun would scare away the last bit of darkness and she would run barking across the meadows, running and running, and when she would arrive, he would say to her, “Good morning, Sunshine.”
Brian Yeary is a chaplain resident at UAMS.