When Dogs Cry (17 page)

Later, in the lounge room, Rube was still talking about it. He managed to laugh now, and we discussed when the funeral might be. Obviously if there was going to be a cremation, there'd be a funeral.

We found out the next day that there'd be a small ceremony on Saturday afternoon at four. The dog was being burned on Friday.

Naturally, as the walkers of Miffy, we were invited next door for the funeral. But it didn't stop there. Keith also decided he wanted to scatter Miffy's ashes in the backyard that was his domain. He asked if we'd like to be the ones who emptied them. ‘You know,' he said. ‘Since you two were the ones who spent the most time with him.'

‘Really?' I asked.

‘Well, to be honest,' he shifted on the spot a little. ‘The wife wasn't too keen on the idea, but I put my foot
down. I said,
No, those boys deserve it and that's it, Norma.'
He laughed and said, ‘My wife referred to you as the two dirty bastards from next door.'

Old bitch,
I thought.

‘Old bitch,' Rube said, but luckily, Keith didn't hear.

I must admit, Wednesday night was kind of vacant without Miffy. Octavia didn't come over either, so I stayed in Rube's and my room, reading a book. I could have watched TV, I s'pose, but I was sick of it. Reading was tougher, because you actually had to concentrate and not just sit there. The book I was reading was brilliant, about a guy who jumped from a sinking ship in a storm one night only to find out that it didn't sink. He was so ashamed that he spent the rest of his life half-running from that incident and half-seeking out danger, to face it and test himself, to finally prove he wasn't a coward after all. I had a bad feeling it would end in tragedy, and I thought it must be the worst thing to live with guilt and shame.

I made up my mind that I wouldn't allow that to happen to me. I used to look at myself as an underdog and sometimes as a failure, but that was all starting to end this winter. This year I was standing up, and I wasn't just saying it, attempting to convince myself.

This time, I believed it.

I said it to Octavia on Saturday afternoon and she held me and kissed me.

‘Me too,' she answered.

Dad, Rube and I finished work at two so we could get home in time for the big funeral, and by four o'clock it
was Rube, Sarah, Octavia and me who went next door. We all climbed the fence.

Keith brought Miffy out in a wooden box and the sun was shining, the breeze was curling, and Keith's wife was sneering at Rube and me.

Old bitch,
I thought again, and you guessed it, Rube actually said it, as a whisper only he and I could hear. It made us both laugh, and I nearly said, ‘Now Rube, let's put our differences aside—for Miffy's sake,' but I thought better of it. I don't think the wife would have looked too favourably on any comment at this stage.

Keith held the box.

He gave a futile speech about how wonderful Miffy was. How loyal. How beautiful.

‘And how pitiful,' Rube whispered to me again, to which I had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from laughing. A small burst actually made it out and Keith's wife wasn't too impressed.

Bloody Rube,
I thought.

The thing was though, it was fitting for it to be like this. There was no point us standing there claiming how much we loved the dog and all that kind of thing. That would only show how much we
didn't
love him. We expressed love for this dog by:

 1.  Putting him down.

 2.  Deliberately provoking him.

 3.  Hurling verbal abuse at him.

 4.  Discussing whether or not we should throw him over the fence.

 5.  Giving him meat that was a borderline decision on whether or not he could adequately chew it.

 6.  Heckling him to make him bark.

 7.  Pretending we didn't know him in public.

 8.  Making jokes at his funeral.

 9.  Comparing him to a rat, ferret and any other creature resembling a rodent.

10.  Knowing without showing that we cared for him.

The problem with this funeral was that Keith was going on and on, and his wife kept insisting on attempting to cry. Eventually, when everyone was bored senseless and almost expecting a hymn to be sung, Keith asked a vital question. In hindsight, I'm sure he wished like hell that he didn't ask it at all.

He said, ‘Anyone else got something to say?'

Silence.

Pure silence.

Then Rube.

Keith was just about to hand me the wooden box that contained the last dregs of Miffy the dog when Rube said, ‘Actually, yes. I have something to say.'

No Rube,
I though desperately.
Please. Don't do it.

But he did.

As Keith handed me the box, Rube made his announcement. In a loud, clear voice, he said, ‘Miffy, we will always remember you.' His head was held high. Proud. ‘You were strictly the most ridiculous animal on the face of the earth. But we loved you.'

He looked over at me and smiled.

Not for long though.

Definitely not for long, because before we even had time to think, Keith's wife exploded. She came tearing across at us. She was onto me in a second and she started wrestling me for the bloody box!

‘Give us that y' little bastard,' she hissed.

‘What did
I
do?' I asked despairingly, and within an instant, there was a war going on with Miffy in the centre of it. Rube's hands were on the box now as well, and with Miffy and me in the middle, he and Norma were going at it. Sarah, who was in love with that instant camera by now, took some great action shots of the two of them fighting.

‘Little bastard,' Norma was spitting, but Rube didn't give in. There was no way. They struggled on.

In the end, it was Keith who ended it.

He stepped into the middle of the fray and shouted, ‘Norma! Norma! Stop being stupid!'

She let go and so did Rube. The only person now with their hands on the box was me, and I couldn't help but laugh at this ludicrous situation. To be honest, I think Norma was still upset about an incident I haven't previously mentioned. It was something that happened two years ago. It was the incident that got us walking Miffy to begin with, when Rube and I and a few other fellas were playing soccer in our yard. Old Miffy got all excited because of all the noise and the ball constantly hitting the fence. He barked until he had a mild heart attack, and to make up for it, Mrs Wolfe made us pay the vet's bill and take him for walks at least twice a week.

That was the beginning of Miffy and us. The
true
beginning, and although we whinged and carried on about him, we did grow to love him.

In the backyard funeral scene, though, Norma wasn't having any of it. She was still seething. She only calmed down a few minutes later, when we were ready to empty Miffy out into the breeze and the backyard.

‘Okay Cameron,' Keith nodded. ‘It's time.'

He made me stand up on an old lawn chair and I opened the box.

‘Goodbye Miffy,' he said, and I turned the box upside down, expecting Miffy to come pouring out.

The only problem was, he didn't. He was stuck in there.

‘Bloody hell!' Rube exclaimed. ‘Trust Miffy to be all bloody sticky!'

I wanted to look over at him and agree, but I thought better of it, what with Keith's wife and all. All I could do was start shaking the box, but still the ashes didn't come out.

‘Put your finger in it and stir it round a bit,' Octavia suggested.

Norma looked at her. ‘You're not gettin' smart now too are y' girly?'

‘No way,' Octavia replied honestly. Good idea. You wouldn't want to upset this lady at this point in time. She looked about ready to strangle someone.

I turned the box back over and cringed before rummaging my hand through the ashes.

The next time I tried emptying it, there was success. Miffy was set free. As Sarah took the photo, the wind
picked up the ashes and scattered them over the yard and into Keith's other neighbour's yard.

‘Oh no,' Keith said, scratching his head. ‘I knew I should have told next door to take their washing off the line . . .'

His neighbours would be wearing Miffy on their clothes for at least the next couple of days.

 

the pause of death

I pause a moment and thoughts of death stumble into me. The dog allows me this rest, out of respect.

The crowd has cooled and I think of death and heaven and hell.

Or to be honest, I think of hell.

There's nothing worse than thinking that that's
exactly
where you're going when eternity comes for you.

That's where I usually think I'm going.

Sometimes I take comfort in the fact that most people I know are probably going to hell, too. I even tell myself that if all my family are going to hell I'd rather go with them than enter heaven. I mean, I'd feel sort of guilty. There they'd be, burning through eternity, while I'm eating peaches and most likely patting pitiful Pomeranians like Miffy up in heaven.

I don't know.

I don't.

Really.

I'm pretty much just hoping to live decent. I hope that's enough.

After a last pause, I move on again.

Into the night.

T
HE QUESTION NOW IS, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED NEXT?
Every time I think about the whole death of Miffy debacle, the story gets obscured in my mind.

On Tuesday, I went up to Steve's and he told me there was a pretty big game coming up that Sunday. The phone calls started up again for Rube and now you could hear Julia the Scrubber in the background as well.

Sarah bought an album for her photos, and when she was laying them out on the floor on Thursday night, arranging them, I went in and sat down to look at them with her. There were a lot of shots there I hadn't seen before.

Dad getting out of his panel van after work.

Mrs Wolfe sleeping on the couch one night.

An anonymous person struggling down our street when we had all that rain.

Then of course, there was Octavia and me, Rube hitting the punching bag in the basement, and the death of Miffy sequence. Next came various photos of leftovers heating up in the kitchen, the lounge room wall which contained photos of all of us at different times, and there was even a picture of Steve on the street with his football bag, about to leave for a game.

I noticed that the only thing missing was Sarah herself, so quietly, I took the camera, focused it and took a photo of my sister arranging each of the pictures for her album. I cut off her left shoulder a bit, but the main thing was that you could see the peace on her face, and her hands touching the photos. She looked alive.

She examined it and gave it her approval. ‘Not bad.'

‘I know,' and I left the room again, hoping that Sarah understood what had just happened. It was a small statement saying that I could see into her sometimes as well.

The following Saturday, Octavia took me home. Dad took the day off so I was free.

It was mid-afternoon when we walked down her street and through her front gate. I wondered why my pulse was racing as she opened the door and called out.

‘Ma? You there?'

A lady came from a back room. Octavia told me she didn't have a father any more. He left, years ago, with someone else.

The lady looked at me and smiled. She had the same mouth as Octavia and the same ocean-green eyes. Just older.

‘It's nice to meet you, Cameron,' she said.

‘Nice to meet you, Mrs Ash.'

She was very friendly to me. She offered me coffee and talked. She asked me questions. About me. About the other Wolves. Somewhere between it all, I could tell she was thinking,
So you're the one.
I was the one Octavia knew she loved. No better feeling had ever lived in me.

A bit later, we went back down to the old movie theatre and saw a movie called
The Agony and the Ecstasy.
It was, without doubt, the best movie I had ever seen in my life. It was about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and how it had to be perfect and how he nearly destroyed himself in the process of doing it. I thought about how much suffering he went through, purely because
he had to.
I sat there in awe. That had never happened to me before in a movie.

Even when the credits were flashing through the screen, my hand gripped Octavia's, and we sat completely still.

It was later though when the true importance of that day arrived.

Octavia and I were on the porch, just before we headed to the station, still talking about the movie. The city was covered in cloud and the pale shades of rain formed glowing blankets around the streetlights.

We were talking for nearly half an hour when she asked, ‘Is there anything you ever wanted to do perfectly?'

I concentrated on the rain, which started falling harder, and I knew now what I was going to say. It stretched through me, and I said it quietly.

I said, ‘Something I'd like to be perfect at?' but now I couldn't help but look away.

‘Loving you,' I said. The words climbed from my mouth. ‘I'd want to be perfect at loving you.'

I waited then, for a reaction.

It came.

‘Cam?' she asked. ‘Cameron?'

She made me look at her and I could see the feeling rising in her. I pulled her hand up to my mouth and kissed it. ‘It's true,' I said, though I knew she believed it. It was in me, and all over me.

‘The only thing is,' I went on, ‘I'm only human. I'll just do the best I can, okay?'

Octavia nodded, and although we knew she had to go, we stayed on the porch for a fair while, using the rain as an excuse. The shell still dangled from her neck, but now it didn't look as obvious as it did at first. Now it looked like it had always been there.