Dancing Dogs (13 page)

Then the two came into the barn, and the man called Doc looked her over, felt her nose, and checked her eyes. He smiled, but the farmer seemed anxious. He told Doc about the attack on Red, the nervousness, the refusal to eat, the balkiness. How Zip had even nipped at his hand.

“She’s fine,” Doc said. He leaned over to pat Zip on the head, but she pulled back. She was having none of it. He reached into his pocket and offered her a cookie, but she snorted and refused.

“Your problem is that she doesn’t know she’s a donkey. She thinks she’s a dog. You’ve been working the sheep and she’s come along, so she thinks she’s herding them. She doesn’t know better. And now you’ve brought another dog in to work the sheep, which she thought was
her
job. It’s like she was just fired.”

The farmer laughed. Of course. Zip had always come along when he took the sheep out to pasture, and again when he brought them back.

“What can I do?”

Doc packed up his bag and headed for his truck. “Get another donkey. Then she’ll figure out who she is. And she’ll let the dog do his work.”

S
OME DAYS LATER
, another truck pulled into the farm. A young male donkey, a small, four-legged creature with large ears and a high-pitched bray, got off the truck and was led into the pasture.

Zip rushed over and snorted at it, nipped it on the shoulder,
kicked her rear legs at it. She was uncertain whether to be enraged or terrified. She was both.

Then Zip and this new creature—his name was Jimmy—were put into the barn together, and the two of them didn’t come out for days. The farmer dropped hay in through one of the barn windows, leaving the two to get acquainted.

When Zip and the new donkey emerged after nearly a week, she was calm again. She and Jimmy trotted out to pasture with the sheep, but though they grazed with them, she and the other donkey spent the day mostly together. Often, they went off to find some weeds and scrub by themselves, and they chewed quietly and peacefully together for hours. At night, the two of them went back into the barn and lay down on the pile of straw together, sleeping until the rooster woke them in the early morning. Sometimes at night, the farmer would bring his radio into the barn, and he would sing to Zip and Jimmy as he fixed some of the equipment, pausing occasionally to give them oats and apples.

Zip still missed Fly, and thought of her often.

But it was a good life again.

H
ARRY
A
RCHIBALD AND HIS WIFE
, S
ALLY, MOVED TO
N
APLES
, Florida, from Columbus, Ohio, a few months after Harry attended the forty-fifth reunion of his Vietnam War infantry division. Seeing his old buddies, Harry was reminded that life was too short to keep freezing every winter. It was time for some fun. He and Sally had earned it.

In short order, they got a used two-bedroom trailer in a meticulously maintained retirement community around a small man-made lake; a custom-made wooden motorboat to putter around the lake with; a Dodge minivan with powerful air-conditioning; a Walmart patio set with a table, four chairs, and umbrella; a large-screen HDTV; and a pug named Gus.

The Archibalds were what some called “good people.” They were cheerful, positive, and generous. Sally volunteered at local nursing homes, reading to the patients, bringing cookies and soda, and Harry was the kind of guy who mowed the lawns of widows and offered total strangers rides
to the market. They were good neighbors, the kind of people you left your keys with and asked to feed your cats.

Harry and Sally had had a dog once before. They’d gotten a pound dog from a local shelter years earlier when the kids were young, but he died after a few years and they never got around to getting another one. They were so busy working and raising their family, they didn’t think they could devote enough time to another animal. But now was their chance.

They called Gus their surrogate child, since none of their children were nearby. The neighbors adored him too. You couldn’t walk Gus or take him to the post office without touching off a small riot. It was, Sally joked, like having a kid again, without having to actually have the kid.

The couple was crazy about their little motorboat. Every afternoon, Sally would make sandwiches, and they would set off in the tiny lake. They would putter around and pull into the community marina, buy some soda, iced tea, and ice cream, and have lunch with some of their neighbors. Harry especially loved piloting the little boat, turning up the tiny outboard as far as it would go. “Like Lord Nelson,” he would say to Sally, and both of them would smile.

Gus would always come along. He loved to sit in the front and bark at the other boats, as if ordering them out of the way. He went everywhere with Harry—on walks, drives into town, even to the card games at the VFW.

One afternoon, as Harry and Sally were taking their evening walk around the edge of the lake, Harry turned to Sally and said, “I think Gus is our guardian angel. I think he came here to watch over us.”

Sally teared up. “Harry, I’ve never heard you talk that way about anything, not even me.”

Sally loved to look out the trailer window on sunny afternoons and see Harry lying on a deck chair, listening to the radio or reading his paper, while Gus perched on the edge of the chair and looked out imperiously over the trailer park, daring anyone to bother them or come near. Harry usually read Gus the headlines, especially the outrageous ones—scandals, political news, sports-contract negotiations. Sally was pretty sure that Harry read Gus every word written about Tiger Woods and his troubled married life.

Harry had always expected to go first, planned for that, so he was surprised when Sally started to feel poorly and felt a sharp pain in her abdomen. He had a bad feeling about it.

The pancreatic cancer was diagnosed right away, and their idyllic life abruptly changed. Death on the battlefield was one thing. Death in your family was quite another. Harry was, he knew, going to be tested in a completely new way.

He wasn’t really prepared for the nightmares of the health-care system. The doctors put Sally on an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy. Next, the doctor recommended surgery, and Sally had one operation, then another. She lost her hair. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t sleep. She was nauseous much of the time. One of Harry’s neighbors urged him to consider a hospice, but Harry felt guilty even thinking about it, like he was giving up on Sally.

The medications piled up, as did the medical equipment in their home—the pill bottles, feeding tubes, special pillows, a hospital bed, specially made chairs, a wheelchair, and a walker. Meanwhile, Sally got only weaker and more uncomfortable.

Gus seemed to get what was happening. He went to the doctor with Harry and Sally, waiting in the car, looking out the window. When she felt bad, he sat on Sally’s bed, near
her feet. He seemed to know when to get close and when to stay away.

And he hovered near Harry like a spirit. Harry never wanted Sally to see him discouraged, so he took Gus for walks when he needed to step away. He did his best thinking out on the boat, and the dog always came along too. He talked to Gus, mentioned the hospice to him, wondered about how much to put Sally through. He had the odd sense that Gus was listening, and got the gist of it, even if he didn’t understand the words.

Sally slept in a hospital bed in the living room. Harry had moved their regular bed so he could be near her, and Gus moved back and forth all night between the two beds. “You’re my angel,” Sally said to the dog one night, just before falling asleep.

The kids came and went, and were loving and helpful, but they had lives elsewhere, and Harry and Sally had been rigorous about not intruding on them. But it was Gus who was there for Harry every minute.

After a year of surgery and chemo, the doctors recommended Sally be put in a nursing home. That afternoon, Harry took Gus out into the boat. “We’re at the end, boy. I can’t put her through more of this.” Sally begged Harry to let her die at home, not in a home or hospital, and so Harry called the hospice. A social worker came and talked to them while Gus sat and listened as if he were part of the team. It was decided that Sally would stay at home.

Harry and Sally both came to terms with her impending death, and she died holding his hand, just as she had wished. She always said Harry was the last thing she wanted to see on this earth. Gus watched from the foot of the bed, and just before she died, he jumped off and went into the other bedroom
and curled up on the floor, where he stayed for hours. When he finally came out, he attached himself to Harry like Krazy glue.

After Sally died, Gus began sleeping next to Harry in bed, curling up on his feet, sitting in his lap while Harry stared at his flat-screen TV through the long nights. When Harry was drained, he would get into the boat with Gus, and head out into the lake, or take a walk on one of the community paths, or just ride out to the beach to listen to the waves and look at the morning sun.

Even with Medicare and Harry’s veteran’s benefits, he was left with $30,000 in medical bills and paying them off had just about wiped him out. If necessary, he’d get a job at Walmart, or pump gas. Even at his age, he could still work, and he would if he had to. War was one kind of sacrifice for his country. This was another.

Harry was not a complainer. He was always careful to be cheerful when his kids called.

“I’m fine,” he would say. “Moving on with my life. I miss your mom very much, but she wouldn’t want me to mope.”

Still, the calls from his kids made him sad. He knew there was something missing. Everybody was always fine, everybody always recited what they did that day, what the kids did that day, but Harry wished there had been more connection, that his daughters and son would open up to him more. But, hell, he had never done it, so why should they?

Harry loved the boat rides with Gus in the afternoon and was determined to keep taking them. At the marina, he would sit with Gus and toss him bits of the sandwich he’d brought along. Harry didn’t often have an appetite.

Once, at church, he thanked God for Gus. “I don’t know
what would have happened to me without that little dog. Thank you, Lord.”

By now, the joke had become an article of faith. Gus was, without doubt, an angel, Harry believed, sent by God to help Sally and him get through the end of their lives with dignity and peace. When all was said and done, there was nobody else. There was just Gus, every day, every night.

W
HEN
G
US BEGAN LOSING WEIGHT
and vomiting, Harry assumed it was something the dog had eaten. The vet kept him overnight, the first time Harry had been alone in Florida. It was a tough night.

The vet called him the next morning with bad news. Gus had kidney disease, a narrowing of the renal blood vessels. It was potentially fatal. Without treatment, Gus would lose weight, appetite, and his kidneys would likely fail.

Harry’s heart sank. He could not yet comprehend life without Sally. And to lose his guardian angel as well?

The vet said there was one choice, but it was a long shot. There was a veterinary kidney specialist in Fort Lauderdale who could put stents in Gus’s arteries, perhaps save his life. The problem was that the procedure was complex, and expensive, and sometimes it took two or three operations. And it didn’t always work. He gave Harry the number of the practice in Fort Lauderdale and hung up.

This time, there was no insurance, and nothing left in the bank.

He picked Gus up in his arms and took him out to the boat. He lay the dog’s listless little body on a boat cushion and flicked the ignition. The boat roared to life and quickly
chugged out into the middle of the lake. There, Harry turned the engine off, and looked down at Gus, who stared at him with his big black eyes. Harry felt tears in his own eyes.

“Are you hurting, Gus? I won’t let you suffer unnecessarily.”
I’ll be your angel
, he thought.

The lake was still, his voice echoed across it. Fish bubbled up to the surface, and herons watched for fish, and ducks bobbed their heads under the water looking for food. Harry had never felt so alone in his life, not even in Vietnam.

He motored back to the dock behind the trailer and picked Gus up to carry him back to the house. Gus had already lost a lot of energy. Once inside, Harry put some kibble down, but the dog wasn’t hungry.

Harry called the number in Fort Lauderdale. The receptionist said the kidney-stent surgery cost $3,400 and payment was required in full and in advance. She cautioned that the dog would need aftercare—follow-up visits, MRIs, X-rays, and medication, possibly for the rest of his life. He could expect to spend up to $10,000.

Harry made an appointment for the following week.

He dug out the checkbook—Sally had always handled the money—and took out a pocket calculator that she had kept in the desk. He added up his Social Security money, veteran’s benefits, and pension check. His IRA was almost gone. There was not enough there.

The dog was sleeping in his lap. Gus had been there for him. Now he had to be there for Gus.

Harry called his son, Richard, a state trooper in Colorado. He was levelheaded and smart, and he listened carefully to Harry’s story.

“Dad, listen,” he said, “I know you love the dog. But you
can’t afford that kind of money, not now. And look, he’s just a dog.”

Harry thanked his son. His father would have said the same thing. The dog was just a dog, for chrissake. You had to have perspective. He had to think about his own future, be realistic.

Harry stepped out onto the patio—he loved the view out there, of the lake and the cypress trees. In Florida, he thought, everybody had a tiny slice of paradise, and on those breezy, sunny winter days, you really felt like you’d gotten away with something.

There was nothing Harry wanted that he didn’t have. Except a longer life for Sally. And now, he wished that Gus would stay with him. How strange, he thought, to feel this way for a dog. Not something he would ever have imagined.