directly ahead. Zero had felt this same impulse a week or two earlier, when we’d called him on the phone to let him know what was about to transpire. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, what if I could … nurse him back to health?”
He hadn’t seen Alex for a while now and didn’t know how far his old friend had fallen. So perhaps he could be forgiven for not understanding that the days when Alex might have been nursed back to health were long gone. It’s a human impulse, I reckon. Years and years later, as I sat by the side of my dying mother, I thought something along the same lines. It wasn’t as if, at age ninety-four, Hildegarde was leaving us too soon. And yet, instead of preparing myself for the inevitable, I found my thoughts running toward the miraculous. What if my mother gave up gluten? Was it so impossible that that might restore her, even now that her internal organs were shutting down and she had lost the ability to speak?
Still, I suppose the belief in the impossible is a sign of human resilience, rather than idiocy. If it is possible that the universe itself is the result of a primordial singularity, a moment at which all known things began to expand from a single point of energy and light and heat—then who is to say that a dying dog might not yet be healed by love? Is the transformative power of love so much more unlikely than the Big Bang? You tell me.
I wasn’t around during the Big Bang—at least not in this form, anyhow—so I can’t say. But I have seen love make some things come into being that you seriously would not believe.
“Okay,” said the vet. “Are you ready for me to give him the injection now?”
“Jim,” said Deedie, and we clutched on to each other like survivors of a shipwreck desperately grasping the same floating two-by-four in the midst of a vast and terrible sea. Alex was still giving me that look. It’s all right, he said. You will know many dogs.
It’s been said that one reason we don’t remember the pain of childbirth is that if we did, no one would ever go through it more than once. Losing a dog is like that, too. I’m pretty sure that if I remembered the terrible details of those losses more clearly, I would never have taken in another puppy. You wonder, as you stand there with your friend up on the table, if all those good years justify this one horrific moment.
The vet looked at me. “Are we ready?” he asked again.
I felt like General Longstreet when Pickett asked him if he should make his charge. I’d lost the ability to speak. So, like Longstreet, I just nodded.
I couldn’t wait for it to be over, so I could start it again.
* * *
Zero hadn’t been back to Syracuse for a long time. He had a few friends still in the area—most of them chefs and nightclub owners. So we drove back there one golden autumn day, my old friend and I, and once again walked up through the hills of Tully.
In one hand I carried an Autoharp in a little suitcase. In the other I had Alex’s ashes in a large cookie tin. They were heavier than I’d expected.
We’d parked our car on the far side of the mountain, opposite from the place where he used to live, and began to hike up the old familiar paths. Somewhere along here was the place where, when I’d learned he was getting married, back in the early 1980s, I’d tackled him and we’d rolled around together in the tall brown weeds.
A little way up the path we were suddenly accosted by a small Boston terrier. He looked at us and said, “Yap.”
“Hey, look,” said Zero. “It’s Scrap.”
“Scrap?” I said. “Do you know this dog?”
“Loosely speaking,” he said.
We walked up the path, Scrap trailing us, growling softly. It was a little unnerving. “No,” I said. “What I mean is, is this a dog you’ve met before?”
“Not while I was awake,” said Zero.
“So what’s the deal?” Scrap was still on our heels. We climbed farther up the mountain, Alex’s ashes in my hands.
“I think he’s our spirit guide.”
I looked back at the irritated, territorial Scrap. “Yeah, well, if he is our spirit guide, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
“Yap,” said Scrap.
The three of us climbed up the hill, breathing heavily, until at last Zero raised one hand.