*Fast Dogs* Part V

My eyes watered and bulged as the attractive young veterinarian gave me and my husband the run down on Little Paint's surgery.

            "She lost a tooth and a toe, and I can't tell you how many stitches that chest wound took."

            I groaned. Shut my eyes and pressed my palms into my eye sockets.

            "Look on the bright side," the vet said. "Her chest doesn't fall open like an oven door now."

            I crouched and inspected Little Paint inside her post-op crate.

            "But I can still see pink stuff," I said. "Looks like chicken meat. Raw. In between the stitches."

            The vet nodded and smiled. "That's healthy muscle tissue," she said. "Over the next month, that'll granulate. Take on the appearance of pink cobblestone. And the skin'll close up."

            I grimaced and crossed my arms. My eyes prickled with the threat of tears. 

            "Promise?" I said. "'Cause if she'd be better off dead, if the best thing would be to—"

            The vet pressed her pointer finger against her lips. "Ssh. She's going to be fine. Really."

Over the weekend, Little Paint received liberal amounts of hugs and drugs from the Paw Prints staff. They massaged her ears and tempted her with treats. Hosed her chest wound every day. Renamed her Wonder Dog.

            "Do you pray?" the girl vet asked on Monday when I came to visit.
            "Uh hunh. Why?”
            She didn't take her eyes off Little Paint. "Pray we don't find necrotic tissue."

             I wrinkled my nose. "Necrotic?"

            "Means dead," the pretty vet said. "If the tissue around the edges of that chest incision dies, we'll have to put her under again. Trim it off and sew her back together, even tighter. Like a Hollywood actress."

            I gulped. "Anything else?"

            "Can you get her to eat?" the vet said. "'Cause she won't eat for us. Not even wet food. She's losing weight, and that's not good."

            I thought a minute. "Carrot juice."

            The vet tilted her head. "Excuse me?"

            "I read in a natural pet care book that some guy brought his Dalmatian back from the brink of death by giving her carrot juice."

            "Give it a try," she said. "Might want to add some raw hamburger too. For protein."

                       

A week later, I was begging the fresh-faced girl vet to keep Little Paint Lou just one more day.

            "You'll do fine," she said. "She'll be much happier at home, and you won't have to run her homemade food up here every day."

            She pressed discharge papers and a bag of meds at me.

            "Now, remember," she said. "It's Memorial Day weekend. We'll be closed until Tuesday morning. If anything goes wrong, not that it will, or if you have questions, call the emergency vet clinic in Fairmont."

I slept with Little Paint Lou that night. Me on a 40 year-old sleeping bag, her on a pile of soft blankets. Sometime in the night, she crept onto my sleeping bag. Tucked herself behind my legs.

            Daisy May was upstairs having a sleepover with the middle child. The white long-legged slut puppy had decided she hated Little Paint when she came home from a week at the vet's. Well, she didn't exactly hate her. She just wanted to eat her.

           When my husband set Little Paint on the ground beside the car, Daisy held her head low to the ground. A soft but gravelly growl rumbled out between her bared teeth. Little Paint tried to look fierce too, but her patchwork of shaved parts and stick out ribs made her a liar.

We made it thirty six hours before we sped to the emergency vet clinic with Painty Lou on the back seat. Her stitches were popping open left and right giving her chest the appearance of Swiss cheese over deli ham.

            "Be really sure you can't handle it any more before you take her to the Fairmont clinic," a friend said the next day when I called her about the Swiss cheese chest crisis. "It's a hundred fifty bucks just to walk in the door."

            "What's a hundred and fifty when you've already spent twenty five hundred plus?" my husband said as he hoisted Little Paint into the car.

If Little Paint Lou was Wonder Dog, the emergency vet clinic doctor was Boy Wonder. In the reception area, my husband and I both fit in his shadow. While he examined Paint, my gaze vacillated between his strong jaw and the strain of his quadriceps against his scrub pants.

            "I'm going to put your dog back together," he said. "But I’m warning you, she's gonna look like Franken Dog afterwards."

            I nibbled my lip.

            "I'll use whatever it takes to hold her together," he said as he fondled Little Paint's ears inside the humongous plastic lampshade.

            He yanked a tissue out of the box on the counter. Handed it to me.

            "Aw, don’t worry,” he said. “She made it this far. She'll be just fine. I'll do the procedure around midnight tonight. You all can pick her up at eleven tomorrow."

           

Boy Wonder grinned as he led Little Paint into the waiting room the next morning.

            "Sit, girl," he said.

            She sat.

            He waved us closer. "Lean down here."           

            We leaned.

            "No way," my husband said.

            "Buttons?" I said. My stomach heaved. I cupped my hand beneath my mouth. Just in case.

            Boy Wonder smiled and nodded. "Yep. Six of them," he said. "I cut them off a coat from the lost and found box. Sewed the buttons into her chest, then wrapped the suture around them. It takes the pressure off the tissue. Works every time."

            He patted Little Paint's head. "You ready to go home, girl?"

            She gazed up at him with adoring, pumpkin-colored eyes. Her tail brushed his leg over and over.

            My husband stood and shook Boy Wonder's hand. "Thank you so much,” he said. “Is there a tip jar around here?"

            Boy Wonder chuckled. "No tip required,” he said. “It was my pleasure. You've got a great dog there."

Two weeks later, the Paw Prints clinic was abuzz. I heard the whispers and yells into the back.

            "Wonder Dog's here!”

            Pretty Young Vet sat crisscross-applesauce on the floor and fingered Little Paint's buttons, one by one.

            "Amazing," she said. She smiled up at me. "We've been trying to recruit that guy for years."

            “You should marry him,” I said. “If you don’t have a husband, that is.”

            Vet techs and vets lined up to examine Boy Wonder's handiwork. Little Paint decided her chest was getting too much attention and her head not enough, so she deposited a pineapple-sized poo pile on the floor.

            The girl vet grinned and scooped up the mess with an inside out Ziplock bag. She flipped the bag right side out, zipped it, and tossed it in a corner. After she washed her hands, she crouched in front of Little Paint, cradled her face, and kissed her on the nose.

            "You're going to be just fine, Wonder Dog," she said. "No way you'd be better off dead."

*Saving Booger Hole*

In college I knew this guy named Francis.  Sometimes I called him the Gentle Giant but that all stopped the day I found out he was gonna feed a cute little mouse to a mean old tarantula.

            “No how, no way,” I said.  “Not on my watch.”   

I'm not sure why Frank got a tarantula.  It's not like you can cuddle one or anything.  Frank named it Legs, 'cause he liked ZZ Top.    The mouse was a BOGO item--buy a tarantula, get its first meal free.
            I was walking through the common room on my dorm floor when I heard the announcement. 

            "Frank's gonna feed a mouse to his tarantula.  Who wants to--"
            That's all I heard.  I left a trail of my econ textbook, a spiral notebook, two Bic pens, my gloves, and a hoodie in the hall.  I flung open the door to Frank's room.  He lowered the beer bottle that was en route to his lips.  One corner of his mouth went up.  He didn't say it, but it seemed he was expecting me.
            I put my hands on my hips and glared at him and his red-headed roommate. "Where's the mouse?"
            The guys looked at each other, then back at me.  Frank used his beer bottle to point to the other side of the room.  I walked over and sat at his desk.  Put my hands on the ends of the cardboard pet box.  A half-dozen fiber optic-looking whiskers stuck out of the air holes.  I touched them.  They retracted.  After a minute, a little eraser pink nose poked out, all quivery. 
            "That does it,"  I said.
            I picked up the mouse house and held it close to my heart.  Walked back to the red head's side of the room. 
            "How much?"
            Frank squinted.  "How much what?"
            "How much for the mouse?"
            Frank shrugged.  "I don't know," he said.  "That probably would’ve fed Legs for a good month."
            "Crickets 'til the end of the year," I said.
            Frank shook his head.  "What?"
            "I'll buy your stupid spider a bag of crickets every week 'til the end of the year in exchange for this little guy."  I tapped the top of the box.
            When he didn't answer, I braced the pet container on my hip with one hand and held out my other. 

            "Deal?"
            Frank looked at the ceiling a minute, then stuck his hand out.  "Deal." 

            He took his time letting my hand go.

The next day, Frank and I rode the elevator to the ninth floor after lunch.
            "You want a lift to the pet store?" he said, before he turned left and I went right off the elevator.
            I looked up at him and wrinkled my nose.  "What for?"
            "You know.  Mouse food?  Crickets?"

            "Oh.  Yeah.  I guess I do.  Let me get some cash."
            My mad money from Dad was running low so I bought Booger Hole a glass turtle bowl instead of a fancy Habitrail.  I didn't buy him any food.  I'd just bring him scraps up from the dining hall.  I found a little blue dish for him to drink water out of 'cause I couldn't figure out how to attach a water bottle to the turtle bowl.

            Frank waited for me by the register, hands deep in his Wrangler pockets.  “All set?”

            I grinned.  “Yep.”

I named my  mouse Booger Hole 'cause one of my brothers had told me about a bluegrass band called Booger Hole Revival.  When you revive something, isn't it like snatching it from the jaws of death?  Like Jesus did Lazarus?
            Booger Hole was a silky, charcoal-colored mouse, the size of my thumb.  I could tell he was a boy 'cause--  Well, I could tell.  Even though he was super cute, Booger Hole turned out to be a pain in my butt.  He was forever peeing in my sweatshirt pockets and escaping his turtle bowl.  He didn't seem to realize or appreciate what I'd done for him--the way I'd purchased his redemption and all.  I loved him anyway.
            Booger figured out how to come and go early on.  Every morning he was inside his bowl, but there were always chocolate jimmy-looking mouse presents all over my desk.  I started putting a textbook on top of his bowl with a sliver of a gap for him to get air.  Each of my school books wound up with a crescent moon-shaped hole on the side opposite the spine.  I didn't get cash back for used books that semester. 

On about our fourth trip to the pet store, Frank turned to me at the stoplight right before the Mileground. 
            He looked at my knees instead of my face.  "Legs was scared of Booger." 
            I looked over at him and huffed.  "Are you serious?"
            Frank bent forward to see if the light had changed. 

            "Yeah.  I put Booger in with him and he ran to the other side of the tank."
            I didn't say anything.
            Frank cleared his throat.  "You don't have to keep buying crickets.  If you don't want to."
            I looked out my window and shook my head.  "No.  A deal's a deal."

And then I killed him--Booger Hole.  School was out for summer so Booger Hole and I went home to Huntington.
            One night I had one too many at the Varsity Club and I made a bad choice at two in the morning.  After I brushed my teeth, I got Booger out to play on my bed.  I passed out and when I woke up, I felt like the Princess and the Pea.  What is that lump under me?  It was Booger Hole, dead, but still warm. 
            I held him in my hand and sobbed.  Tried to wash my guilt away with tears.  I stroked his little body with my pointer finger.  All his important stuff was smooshed to one side.  Like when the loaf of bread gets crushed by the gallon of milk in your grocery bag.

I never got around to telling Frank I killed Booger Hole.  If I did, I’d have to face the fact that I’m a giant as sure as he is, only not as gentle.  Not by a long shot.

Killing Her Softly

I don’t want to get out of bed. I’m afraid to actually.  If I get up, I’ll have to look out the window.  Then I’ll know.  If my dog is alive or not. 

“If she’s dead in the morning,” husband had said, “I’ll put her in the Honda and take her to work.  So you all don’t have to . . . You know . . .”

The thing is, I never heard a car, mine or his, start and leave.  What if he’s down there right now?  Trying to get her sixty pounds out the back door without the other dog getting loose?  I know I should help.  Put my slippers and hoodie on and go downstairs.  Instead, I pull his pillow parallel to me and draw it against my hollow parts.

At 7:30 I wake again.  Get up, coward!  I throw back the flannel sheets and two ton down comforter.  Put my feet on the berber.  Shiver.  Stand.  Rearrange my jammie britches.  I realize I’m holding my breath when I get to the window.  Silver leaf SUV?  Gone.  I exhale and my lips flap.

Down two flights of stairs.  Pause outside the kitchen.  Please be alive.  And better.  Back legs healed.  In the name of Jesus.  I bend at the waist and peek.  The white dog is in a nose-tucked knot by the door.  Brown dog’s flopped on her side, the way I left her last night.  I smell, then see, the streak of pee on the floor back by her tail.

I approach and crouch.  “Hi, baby.  How’s my Painty Lou?” 

The power tail does not pound per usual.  Instead, a long quavery moan starts in her belly, works its way up.

My brow furrows.  “I know, sweetie.  I know.”

I get a  shallow condiment bowl off the dish drainer.  Run water in it.  Lap, lap, lap.  I hold her food dish in front of her nose.  She closes her eyes.

“But there’s grated cheese on it.  You sure you don’t . . .”

I sigh.  Get a rag and soak it with warm water.  I pull her away from her accident.  Wipe her back end and then the floor.  Daisy May, the white dog, does a jig near the door. 

“I’ll be right back,” I tell Paint.  “Let me put Daisy out.”

When I return, she’s by the door.  Dragged herself there using her front legs.

“You want out too?” I say.  “Do you have to do business?  Number two?”

I ponder how this will be accomplished.  I’ll carry her outside then support her by her rib cage while she--.  First things first.  I get a plastic table cloth and a towel.  Arrange them in the back yard, on the area with the most grass, least mud.  I slide out the gizmo that holds the screen door open.  Then I hoist the girl who weighs almost half of me.  Dear Jesus, please protect my back. 

It’s a difficult burden—half living and active, the rest almost-dead-weight.  Off the porch, into the grass, onto the makeshift bed.

“Baby, you can lay down now.  Relax.”

Instead, she’s caught in a sit pose.  Upright only because she landed that way.  She seems happy though, to be anything but flat and not likely to go anywhere soon.  I take a seat nearby and enjoy her accomplishment with her.  But then her front legs, stiff with determination, start to tremble.  Aftershocks from Japan maybe?  No, fatigue.  Her front paws slide across the vinyl.  She looks like an ill-fated swing set, anchored in quicksand instead of certainty.  I catch her around the chest, ease her to the ground.  Glance at my watch—7:51 a.m..  The vet’ll probably open at 8:00 or 8:30.

I consider going as is, soft blue jammies, black hoodie, red Crocs.  No, really should get dressed.  Put on a bra and undies at least. 

All of a sudden, my chest staggers with a fear breath.  The Dobie Brothers and Sergeant Oz, a Pit Bull, live next door!  What if they come out to pee and see her?  Smell compromised canine?  Surely they’ll come over the fence and have at her.  Especially Ricco.  Even though he squats to pee instead of hiking a leg, I know he’s vicious.  His ears, cut and docked into tiny triangles, make him look like a devil dog.  I’ve seen him hang onto his red, suspended-from-a-tree rubber donut for five minutes or more, thrashing, attempting to kill what is not alive.

I lift Painty Lou’s ear and whisper.  “Count to 60 and I’ll be back, girl.  I promise.”

As I drive down big Grand it occurs to me I haven’t cried yet.  Not  even when husband carried Paint into the kitchen last night, all mud and poo striped, almost black against his oxi-white IronMan running shirt.

I watched from inside the house.  “Why are you—“

“’Cause she can’t move her back end, that’s why.  Now open the dang door!”

I spent the next three hours beside her.  After I gave her a sponge bath, I spooned water into her mouth.  Begged her to eat her cheesed kibble.  I covered her with a towel and a blanket because shivs and little electrical currents seemed to be holding races under her fur.  I read parts of Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! out loud.

“A red baby alligator.  Isn’t that interesting, Painty Lou?  I think it needs a name, don’t you?  I’d call it Ruby Slipper Bigtree if I were Ava.”

At 10 I made my way upstairs.  Husband was watching basketball highlights.

“I left a light on—“

He looked up.  “I know.  I’ll check on her, before I come to bed.”

He grabbed my hand before I went 'round the corner and upstairs to our attic bedroom.  I turned and waited.  In the end, he didn’t speak.  What do you say when something very bad is close at hand and you know, ‘It’ll be okay,’ is a lie?

I dreamed of my favorite aunt—Aunt Lo.  Saw her faded copper beehive hairdo.  Heard her happy machine gun laugh—eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.  Saw her Revlon "Cherries in the Snow” lips turn up.  I knew why she’d come.  To tell me to do something.  The thing I didn’t do when—

“Be with her when she dies.  No one should go from here to there alone.”

I licked my lips and nodded.  “Yes, ma’am.  I will.  And . . . I’m sorry.  That I—“

“Hush now.  Go back to sleep.”

The tears begin their serious work on the second speedbump in the middle of the flat part of Grand Street.  I keep my left hand on the steering wheel and bat around for the glove compartment latch with my right.  Click.  I pinch at the contents.  Score a Dairy Queen napkin.  Soak it with one nose blow.  I turn up the radio.  "Blessed be your name, on the road marked with suffering--"  

I hiss at the windshield.  “This road.  Rename it.  Call it

Suffering Street."

After I park at Pawprints, I glance in the rearview mirror.  My face looks like I’ve been bobbing for something in thinned out ketchup.  Hope maybe?  Pity all I got was desperation.  My eyes look and feel as if I swam all night in an over-chlorinated pool.

I run inside.  “My dog—L’il Paint—you all know her, she can’t move her back half.”

After a brief exam, the young vet comes back up to Painty Lou’s head.  She holds out her knuckles for Paint to sniff. 

“How old is she?”

“She’ll be 14 on April Fool’s Day.”

The woman focuses on the print of a sunflower field that hangs over my head. 

“There’s so many things this might be.  Cancer, a herniated disc, a blood clot.  I could recommend an MRI or back surgery.  But with her having no deep pain response, and with her age, I don’t think—“

I rub my nose with my palm and nod.  “So we should . . . you know . . .”  I mouth the rest.  “Put her to sleep?”

“This is so hard,” the young woman says.  “Telling someone to—“

I put my pointer finger to my lips.  “Shhhh.  Whisper.”

She fondles Paint’s ears. 

“Can I call my husband?  See what—“

“Oh, gosh!  Of course.  I’ll leave you alone.  You can call whoever.”

I hear him before I see him.  I put my fingers under the door and wiggle them.  I’m in here. See my hand?  Look down.

The minute she sees him, she tries to get up.  She gives him her paw again and again.  The one with the catheter that will deliver her . . .   Her strawberry Laffy Taffy tongue lolls out the side of her mouth.  Her glossy black rickrack gums swing up in a smile.  Husband’s eyes get a skim of water.

He puts his face next to hers.  Closes his eyes when her tongue gets close.

“Hi, girl.  Who’s my girl?  Who’s my girly goo?”

The door cracks open.  The jolly blonde vet tech that helped me get her out of the car peeks in. 

“Take all the time you need, hon.  Just open the door when you’re ready, okay?”

I nod.  When we’re ready.  When will we ever be ready?  Right before she disappears, I see it.  The sign in the plexi-glass pocket on the door.  MASS.  I squint.  What?  Do they think we’re having church in here?  Then I get it.  Not church MASS.  Mass cremation MASS.  A pet funeral pyre.  My insides compress like a tin foil ball.  Squeeze.  Crush.  Compact.  I close my eyes.  Try to not see the visions.  I look away from the metal shed with smoke coming out a little rusted chimney pipe.  I grimace at the plate of pancake-looking pets, piled high.  Open your eyes!  So you won’t see! 

My hands are over L’il Paint’s ears again.  It’s getting to be a habit.  I’d held them shut when the jolly tech and I had the aftercare talk.  Hum inside your head, Paint.  Sing ‘How much is that doggy in the window?’

I take my face off Painty Lou’s neck.  Look over at husband.

“Should I--  Should we . . . open the door now?”

He winces.  Shakes his head, shrugs, and nods.

No one comes for the longest time.  Someone burps in  the next room.  Excuses himself.  A girl collects lunch orders and money.  A machine buzzes.  Is it a nail grinder or a tooth polisher?  Or maybe a bone saw.  Please don’t come.  Ever.

I have a thought.  What if we build her a skate board contraption to get around on?  Put a ramp down the back porch steps.  Put puppy pads on her to collect pee.  Rig her with a poo pouch, like the carriage tour horses have in Charleston, South Carolina?  That could work, couldn’t it?  And at night . . .  No.  No.  That’s no good.  It’s not right.  It’s only me patching together another week, one more month.  Trying to keep her alive.  For me.  I’d just be postponing this . . . this . . . 

The tiny, gentle vet comes back in the room.   Cups the weapon of MASS destruction in her small hand. 

“You’re fine.  Don’t get up.  I’ll just squeeze in here.  Keep loving her.”

She sits on the floor between us.  “Oh, yes, girl.  That is your paw. It’s a very pretty paw.”

My head feels like it might explode.  From sinus pressure. Grief.  Guilt.

I cover Paint’s ears and speak to my lap.  “It seems so wrong,” I say.  “To do this, when her top half’s just fine.”

The vet purses her lips and nods.  She pushes the plunger on the hypodermic needle a tiny bit.  Squirt.

I rub L’il Paint’s ears like a rosary.  Not that I’ve ever had one, but hey, this is MASS, right?  I put my forehead against hers.  Stop shaking, dang it!  Don’t let her see, or know, what’s about to—

The girl vet puts the needle into its starting gate.  I sing into Paint’s ear.

“Go to sleep.  Go to sleep.  Go to sleep, Little Paint.” 

My voice sounds broken.  It chugs.  Stops.  Starts.  She lays her head between her paws.  I speak but it seems like the words come from the ceiling instead of me.

“It’s so weird, doing this on purpose.”  I wonder if everyone wants me to shut up.  It’s like I have Tourrette’s.  Or diarrhea of the mouth.  Logorrhea. That was one of my word-of-the-day words once.

I scratch at a piece of dried mud on her neck.  The grit falls to the gurney.  Paint’s eyes are half closed now.  My teeth clench and I pull a long inhale through my nose.  Let it out.  I put my mouth next to her ear again. 

“I love you.  I love you.  I’m so sorry.”

Husband strokes the ridge of stand-up fur on her snout.  Closes her left eye, then the right.

I whimper.  “Is she gone?”

The vet fiddles with her stethoscope.  Inserts the ear buds.  Listens to Painty Lou’s side.

“The heartbeat is very faint now.”

I put my ear on Paint too.  To see if I can hear the last of her—

The girl straightens up, pulls off the stethoscope.  “And, she’s, gone.”

I moan and turn away.  The vet gets up.  Rests her hand on my shoulder blade.  Moves around me.

“Take all the time you need.  When you’re ready, I’ll show you the back door.”

Husband takes Paint’s collar off.  Rubs at the bone-shaped name tag.  Holds his hand out to help me up.  I massage the fur ruff around L’il Paint’s neck one last time.  Lift my hands to my face, to sniff, then kiss them.  We walk past the MASS sign.  I stop  and look back at her.  Her, and yet, not her.  Not any more.  I roll my fingers.

"Sleep tight, baby.  Don't let the bedbugs bite."

We step out into the parking lot.  Husband makes a noise deep in his throat. 

“Well, that about sucked.”

“Big time,” I say.  I blot my face with my eighth soggy tissue.  “Know what?”

He keeps walking.  “What?”

“That wasn’t really us putting her to sleep.  It was us killing her softly.”

Burying Barney

My best friend buried Barney Fife all wrong. Karen Dandelet was my best friend. She lived right around the corner from me in the 70’s. At night, we could see each other when we looked out our bedroom windows.

Barney was her hamster. Next to each other, Barney was our best friend. We played with him every single day. We always got him out whenever we watched our favorite tv program--The Andy Griffith Show.

“Man, Don Knott’s Adam’s apple sure is big,” I’d say.

“Andy Griffith is pretty good looking for an old guy,” Karen’d say.

Karen named her hamster, Barney, after Deputy Fife. ‘Cause they both had bug eyes.


Karen was crying Sunday night when she called to tell me Barney had gone to hamster heaven while I was at church camp down in the southern part of the state. She gave me a quick rundown of his funeral, in between sniffs.

I didn’t take her fresh grief into account when I said, “I can’t believe you buried him in cardboard. Now we’re gonna have to do a grave digging do-over.”

You see, by that point in my life, I was pretty much a pet burying expert. Karen hung up on me. She’d never done that before.


The next morning, I told my mom there’d been a death in Karen’s family. She let me walk over to the Dandelets’ even though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock.

I knocked on the screen door so the doorbell wouldn’t wake her four brothers. Karen’s eyes looked red when I stepped into the living room.

I put my arm around her and squeezed. “Sorry I was mean last night.”

She pulled away and headed for the back door. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“He was only two,” I said as we walked down the back porch steps. “How’d he die?”

“Last week he was running so much on his exercise wheel, I had to put him in the basement so I could sleep.”

“Could’ve tried some WD-40 on his wheel,” I said.

Karen snapped her fingers. “Ah, man! I didn’t think of that.”

“Maybe he had a hamster heart attack,” I said. “When did you figure out he was dead?”

We stood in the back yard. “Mom noticed it when she was switching a load of whites from the washer to the dryer.”

“Did he have rigor mortis?”

“Who’s Vigor Morris?” Karen said.

“Rigor mortis,” I said. “It’s when their legs stick up in the air.” My oldest brother was going to be a doctor when he grew up. He taught me all kinds of cool stuff like that.

Karen shook her head. “Nah, he was just flopped over on one side.”

We went into the garage, and Karen grabbed a shovel and handed me a spade.

“Should be fairly easy to dig him up since it rained all night,” I said.

Karen closed the garage door behind us. We stepped into the wet grass, and I took a deep sniff of summer—Karen’s mom’s roses, the honeysuckle climbing the fence, the mock orange bush on the other side.

We walked out to the apple tree. Karen pointed to a round spot of fresh dirt clods by the trunk. She put her foot on the right side of the shovel back and pushed down hard. The soil was West Virginia clay--rusty in some spots, the color of Velveeta cheese in others.

I dropped my spade, bent, and grabbed a handful of dirt. It stuck together like pie crust dough.

“We could make some cool pinch pots outta this stuff.”

Karen turned more soil over.

“You know why we gotta do this, right?” I said, throwing the clay ball up in the air and catching it.

“’Cause we don’t want to eat Barney in our applesauce next summer,” Karen said.

“Yep. Too bad you buried him in cardboard.”

Karen leaned the shovel against the tree. She crouched and put her hands into the small grave. She pulled out Barney’s coffin. It was floppy with ground moisture but still recognizable as a Hartz hamster food box.

I held my hands out. “Give it here. You go in the house and get something else to bury him in.”

She turned to go.

“Get a Cool Whip container or an old Skippy jar,” I said. Peanut butter still came in glass jars back then, and those are the best thing for burying dead critters. The small ones any way. Glass lasts forever in the ground.

Karen held up a Jif jar and a paper Big Bear bag as she came out of the house.

“That’ll do fine,” I said.


We sat criss-cross-applesauce on the ground beneath the tree. Karen laid the grocery bag on my lap, and I placed Barney’s burial box on top. I was a bit freaked out about seeing him. What if he was crawling with worms?

Not to worry. There were no worms. He didn’t even smell like death. He smelled like wet hamster food. His nose was pointier than usual, having been smooshed into the corner of the box for a week. The white places on his body were multi-colored because Karen had wrapped him in the Sunday comics.

“I thought it would keep him warm underground.”

I leaned forward and wiped a tear from her freckly cheek. “Ah, Karen. That was sweet of you.”

She looked down at him. “He kinda looks like he was just born, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, the way he’s slimy from the underground moisture, that’s like placenta.” I said.

We sighed.

“Poor little guy,” Karen said.

I tried to think of a way to cheer her up. "Remember how he used to flick his poop?"

Karen smiled at me. Finally. “It always stuck on my wall and looked like polka dots.”

I found my clay ball in the grass and squeezed it.

Karen started to giggle. “Remember the time we were mad at Chucky, and we put Barney poop in his Coke bottle when he wasn’t looking?”

I laughed. We sat in silence for a little while.


After awhile, I glanced at my watch. “I have to go home for lunch soon. Did you get a rag to wrap him in?”

Karen pulled a cloth diaper out of her back pocket. She leaned over and rubbed it against my cheek. “Is this soft enough?”

“Yep. That’ll do.”

I picked up Barney’s cold, stiff form and placed it in the middle of the diaper. I folded the left side in, then the right. I brought the bottom half up, then the top half down. I put my hands on top to keep it from springing open.

Karen unscrewed the lid from the Jif jar. I pressed the Barney bundle to make it even smaller, and slid it inside.

I took a miniature golf pencil and a piece of crumpled notepaper out of the back pocket of my jean shorts.

“Let’s both write a note so if anybody ever digs him up, they’ll know what kind of animal he was and that we loved him a whole lot.”

Karen nodded and wiped her nose. “I like that idea.”

She wrote her note, and I added my part under hers. She stood and screwed the top on the Jif jar.

“Don’t put him in the hole yet,” I said, as I stood. “I wanna say a few words first.”

We bowed our heads. Neither of us had ever been to a real funeral, but we’d seen ‘em on tv.

“Dear Lord,” I said. “We’re gathered here to bury our beloved pet, Deputy Barney Fife. He was a good friend and a great pet. We ask Sir, that you and he forgive us for the time we blew his cheeks up like a balloon. And we pray he forgives us for the many baths we gave him in my bathroom sink, but wasn’t he cute when he did the dog paddle?”

Karen tapped my shoulder and whispered. “Tell him we’re sorry for the time we gave him a teaspoon of your dad’s beer.”

I nodded. “Yeah, Barney. We’re sorry about the beer incident even though you seemed to like it. It probably wasn’t the best idea.”

I ran out of things to say, and we were quiet for a minute.

“Oh, and please comfort Karen in her sorrow, Lord. We pray that her parents will take her to Petland to get another hamster this weekend. We pray this in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Karen crossed herself ‘cause she’s a Catholic.

“Amen,” we said.

Karen put the box in the hole and grabbed the shovel. As she covered the box with dirt, I looked at the sun through the apple tree leaves. Without thinking, I started whistling the Andy Griffith theme song.

Karen looked at me and smiled. And started whistling along.

(FYI, this is a new and improved version of a prior post--Oct. 12, 2009.)