todd of tacoma

We’ve heard the story of the dog whose master’s gone off to war via train. The master dies in the war and the dog left behind waits by the depot every day at five o’clock in the morning or something, maybe six, or maybe it was in the evening, and we’re supposed to hear this story and think of loyalty as this ultimate virtue, or some form of undying love, but if the dog’s owner, nee master, known today as doggie daddy, knew how goddamn miserable he’d made his poor dog he’d have shot him before he left. That’s love, no greater virtue.

My dad shot all three of my favorite dogs. He really loved them. Probably even more than I did. O was the one that stung the most and I can’t imagine how Dad felt having to trick her into a hole and then get her to turn away from him and sting her in the skull with the worst blow she’s ever endured. Or worse, what if she didn’t get in the hole, or jumped in and then jumped out, and he shot her but only just grazed her a little and she’s confused and runs to him for safety and security and he has to level the gun at her once more and shoot her through the skull at close range but he only glances her again because he’s not that close and she’s moving too much and she gets a body blow that will drain her of life slowly. Dad can’t watch her suffer so he goes to the edge of the hole where O is panting her last and he sticks the barrel between her trusting eyes and gives her one more shot, and imagine knowing your murderous face is the last face she’ll ever see, and why does kindness have to feel like this?

He couldn’t stand the idea of flopping her lifeless body into the hole, I imagine, so he did the dignified thing and carried her in and set her in the dirt and grabbed his shovel with a bloody hand and wiped the brains off his lips with his sweaty flannel sleeve and sprinkled the best dog he ever had with dirt and stubble and the wind swirled dust eddies around the scene because the six-row barley stubble was drying in abandoned straw winrows. All those cracked up beards. This was gonna itch and sting later. He thought of shaking his flannel out, mussing his hair clean, thought how good a shower will feel. Thought of the dog’s blood circling the shower drain. The practicalities are the gravity. Her dead eye, looking its last at his shadow, just said this:

Ah fuck, I had it.

Something he’d forget and I forgot or never heard.

He shoveled dirt on her face. It was hot in the field, hotter than he could remember for this time of year.

Three Halloweens

Some people marvel at the fact I quit drinking on Halloween and not after, like you gotta throw your addiction a little party before you get clean. But I never drank to celebrate, so there’s not much to marvel at. I was pretty bad off every other day of the year, too, so I quit the only day it made sense. That day.

There’s a 4 balloon and a 1 balloon flying over a grave by the Laurel Crest sign in Tacoma Cemetery, where I walk Baby and Buddy on days I don’t work. I can’t recall the day or week exactly that the balloons were strung and tied to a sandbag by that grave, but they have to have been there three months now, a full twenty-four seasons for helium balloons, and they’re still flying and twisting and they haven’t sunk an inch. I’m beginning to wonder if they’re new each week. I also wonder about next year. Will they be forty-one still? Or will the libation bearers let the dead woman age to forty-two?

What I do when I walk the cemetery is let Baby, a hyperactive collie mix of some sort, I let her out on the long leash and she runs helicopters around me. I swing her like a lariat and make sure she doesn’t run into Buddy, my chihuahua mix, with a full head of steam. I have to pull her to the ground and topple her over when we turn by the balloons.

For three years this has been the full extent of my exercise. I can’t seem to make things better for myself, not since leaping that first hurdle, sobriety, exactly three years ago this Halloween. There’s a comfortable self-improvement bubble you get used to, or that you languish in, when you’re on the wagon. You can excuse almost every self-destructive behavior with: at least I’m not drinking. When Dr. Todd at detox (he was really a Todd, is that so confusing? should I call him something else?), when Dr. T at detox told me to eat all hours of the day, eat lots of protein, eat lots of carbohydrates, eat whatever, whatever you can fit into your mouth, eat it, eat it, eat, etc., I said, hold my beer.

I weigh more than I’ve ever weighed.

At least I’m not drinking.

Whitman and Jung

Apparently, Walt Whitman masturbated all the time. I don’t know what to make of that.

Jung linked tics to voices, and vice versa. More on the voices in another blog.

I believe they’re the echoes of a hangover with no agreed-upon end.

I’m not drinking.

I’m most comfortable not drinking when I admit it doesn’t really matter if I’m sober. No one cares. It feels a little like trying to find love when you’re not looking, but it works. Giving up to get along.

My destructive half catches on to this conceit from time to time, a few hours every day, actually, and I lose some sleep then and a bag of chips. Ice cream, too, but it’s working.

D/2

There’s a man in the cemetery almost every time I walk. He wears waders and he scrubs the headstones. I used to think he was bleaching them, but you don’t bleach them, that’s a sure way to wear them down prematurely. The man’s got a chair and a thermos and jugs and jugs and unmarked jugs of this product I can only assume is D/2, all scattered around him, around his work area. I looked up cleaning headstones product and learned there’s really nothing out there better than D/2.

The trick is you let it sit on the stone. Some people even just spray or dab it on or whatever and walk away. You can do that. This guy, though, he has his chair and thermos. Some days he’s sitting in his hatchback with a steaming cup of something. He gets up from time to time and uses a soft brush and a little water from one of the jugs and scrubs off just a little moss and debris. A little at a time and all the patience of Job. The strokes of a master.

When it rains he’s got a free rinse. The work looks really good after a good rain because D/2 works with the weather, not against it.

He works no more than a few stones at a time, the D/2 man, but he must work year-round. Tacoma Cemetery is one of the best kept cemeteries I’ve ever been in. I don’t let Buddy or Baby piss on the graves. I reel them back to the path.

I thought my favorite dog, O, I thought she was the best dog in the world. She was an avid bird dog with great recall, I thought, and was tender and patient. She moved with us from M to M and she didn’t whine about the heat or anything in the U-Haul. But it turns out she was dumb. According to my dad, she was extra dumb. I trust him on this. He knew her better than anyone. Almost shot her while hunting once because she just couldn’t stay behind the gun.

Standard disclaimer. This blog respects the anonymity of everyone in recovery, whether in AA, an alternative recovery program, or nothing at all. Letters, applied mostly at random, have been assigned to most or some persons, sometimes places, too. Any resemblance to real-life persons or places or letters is purely coincidental and an understood hazard of fiction writing.

Standard plea. If you want a dog you should adopt. Stand up for bastards.