Picture credit: thetailwaggers.wordpress.com
The dog was old and the man was ill. And the man would sit at his kitchen table and watch the dog wheeze as it lay on its side and its sounds would make him grimace in sympathy. Other things made him grimace, too: the effort it took to swallow, or the moan that escaped from his throat when he tried to speak. He was in fact giving up both swallowing and speaking: he drove into town and a doctor inserted a tube for his food and drink and he began to use a small device like a cell-phone to type text that was then electronically spoken.
Though his social life had become limited as talking was such an effort, he needed to instruct the two workers about farm things: a water leak that had to be mended, a filter installed, a tree chopped down, and the like. He was tired, but worked the small farm hard, rising early, doing his bit with the one hand that still had a grip, walking instead of driving, staying out when it rained, sweating in the sun. Sometimes he walked for the sake of doing so, down into the valley he had known as a youth where he sat on the edge of a pine plantation, staring at insects, the way he had come, the woods, or the sky, which was the way he imagined he would go, soon, as he had determined to be cremated. Or he went up the gravel road to the intersection with the tar road and the small shopping center there. He bought wine and carried it back to his house and poured some of it into the tube and for a while he was happy.
Earlier, the dog had followed him all over, patient at his heels, to the point of being possessive, guarding against other dogs, against baboons, against snakes. It panted, for the dog true to its breed had been out of breath since puppyhood, even as its breathing had by now become one laborious gasp after the other. The man sat in his kitchen and watched the dog struggle on its blankets. Many would have the animal put down, but he had known it for ten years and knew its history and that history was of a tough and fighting being. An ear was torn. There was a scar above its left eye. It seemed disgraceful to consider killing a being with such a history. And the man believed that life with suffering was better than death without it, though his faith in that philosophy was waning.
Sometimes the dog went missing. Even though it spent most of its time indoors, the man let it out three times a day and watched it carefully, feeling reassured when it looked up at him with apparent trust and faith in the human being it belonged to. He believed that fealty to be a sign of life and confirmation that death should always be postponed. The dog would finish its business, glance at him again, and come into the house. Sometimes, though, the man would be distracted by a call or worker and the dog would seize the opportunity to wander to old haunts, roaming. The man would look for him at the back of the old barn, or next to the pump on the dam, or in the black wattle woods beyond the vegetable garden. Always he’d find the dog and it would slowly follow him back.
One day someone drove up from the gate by the dam and a woman, a neighbour, got out to say, “Why was your dog all the way up there in the road? I could've caused a nasty accident. There was no room to swerve.” The man knew she owned cows and had a problem with local dogs that developed a taste for harassing them. But even in his healthy days he had had no unusual fondness for his fellow human being. Why would he feel any different now that he was ill and limited in his abilities? He said nothing. He couldn’t be bothered to employ his little speaking gadget, which at the best of times seemed ineffectual. He glared at the woman, who lifted her chin and drove off.
He walked to the road and bent over the dog which was lying on its side, not panting. It was dead. And heavy, so that the man couldn’t pick it up with only one arm working properly. But with the aid of a rough harness over one shoulder he managed to bring the carcass up to the house where he dug a hole in the vegetable garden. The hole took time, the man wanted to do a decent job, it had been a good dog. In the evening he sat outside, staring at the stars and listening to the sounds of birds and the traffic on the tar road. He thought he heard baying, as of a pack of dogs. In his youth there had been a period of religiosity. He then knew many people who would hear a kind of baying, anticipating the end that would surely come in their lifetimes and lead to a great and wonderful afterlife. He sat listening, remembering convictions. Then he went to bed.
The man was tired. He was impatient and irritable. A worker he had had words with didn’t return. The other one left. Projects came to a standstill: wood from the black wattles was not cut down to be sold; vegetables rotted in the garden; the pickup truck’s battery ran flat; there was something wrong with the water supply to the house and the man had to walk to the dam for water, which he filtered in a makeshift scheme. He could still get to the shopping center on the tar road when he took the tractor, but it was awkward handling the gears even with the good arm, which itself was no longer what it had been. The man would need help at some point and the notion worried him.
The doctor, when the man went to see him, suggested the man move into a caring facility. Arrangements could be made. But what else was there to do with life than force one’s way through it like a plough breaking the soil? And the man stayed on the farm and drove his tractor and carried water and at night he sat watching the stars.
When he had filled his bathtub with cold water, he sat down in it. It was quiet in the house except for the din of a radio he had turned up loud in the sitting room. He remembered things: his parents, a friend, a romantic encounter, work, always work, then the weakening in his arm. Two years, the doctor said. He was determined to make the most of that.
After a while the man tried to rise in order to get away from the memories of health and strength and found he couldn’t. His legs were too weak. He struggled all night in the tub, trying to maneuver this way and that, reaching for the towel rail above him and pulling that out of the wall before collapsing, feeling as weak as he’d ever felt. When morning came, he made another lunge for freedom and slipped over the side of the tub to lie on the bathroom floor, gasping. Then he rose unsteadily. By three he had eaten and slept and was feeling better.
He drove into town intent on speaking to the doctor, but in the parking area he sat slumped in the tractor seat, realising that the physician would insist on sending him to the facility he had mentioned. Around him people walked, sat in cars, talked on the sidewalks, laughed. The day seemed impossibly cheerful.
When he saw the dog, he was on his way back and in fact almost out of town. It stood on thin legs on the edge of the industrial area, its tail between its legs, its body emaciated, the ribs sticking out like the fingers of two hands holding the animal’s entrails up to scrutiny. It was mangy and sick and diseased and there was nothing to do but stop and approach it. Its obvious fear touched something in the man. Here was a case of suffering that surpassed his own.
Getting it to the vet proved a problem. The man couldn’t pick it up by himself, and even if he could there was the matter of the tractor which hardly catered for the transport of the ill. He paid two boys who didn’t mind the awkward seating on the back to hold the weak dog while he drove to the animal hospital in the industrial area.
The vet seemed taken aback at the man’s situation when he took out his speaking gadget. The vet shook his head as if washing his hands of both the man and the dog. “I can give it shots and wash it and feed it and keep it for a few weeks, but it’s a cur and who’s going to pay? I’ll put it down for you. There are many wretches around.”
The dog, which was lying on the metal table, looked back at the man. A look shot between them, the dog seeming quick and alert, belying the desperate state the animal found itself in. It was as if the dog was imploring the man to have mercy, to intervene. He typed on his gadget and an electronic voice said, “Fix the damn dog. I’ll pay.”
After a week had passed the man returned to the vet to see the dog. It had put on weight. Its coat was looking better. Its demeanour had improved and the fear had made way for exuberance and the vet said he had not realised how young the dog still was. They watched it play with other dogs and listened to it yelp. But it was the man of whom it was fond.
"You’ve made a friend," the vet said to the man. "Want me to bring it to your place?" the vet said with sudden sympathy. "I notice you’re here with a tractor."
The man welcomed his new companion to his home where it immediately set about exploring the area, yelping and running and jumping. It knew its fortunes had improved. This was also evident in the sheen that was developing in its coat, which stretched over a frame that was growing round and strong.
Containing it soon proved to be a problem. The previous dog had been old and listless even when it went roaming, but the newcomer would not be held back, and definitely not by the old fencing. The man, walking in a more and more cumbersome way, fetched it from further places than its predecessor had ever gone. He didn’t punish it. He noted some of its favourite haunts had been those of the old dog too. There was something to be said for continuity.
There were however surprises, unpleasant ones, when the woman who had earlier driven over the old dog would phone and in her aggressive way insist that he make a plan with the mongrel. Listening mutely, he let her talk, though he would sometimes type a response on his electronic machine.
“It’s no damn mongrel,” he’d type, and once, “Go to hell.”
She phoned again. “That thing of yours is among my cows. Get rid of it or I will.”
He walked over, taking his time, angry with the woman and the way she stirred at his serenity. People were a problem to him. When he reached her place, the dog was barking wildly at a bunch of cows that had gathered together in the deep grass. It did not heed his calls and instead bit at a cow’s hind leg. The cow kicked the dog so that it rolled over.
“Good,” the woman said and went into her house. Soon, the cows seemed to have relaxed and dispersed again.
The man couldn’t carry the dog and sat with it as it lay in the grass panting. He was worried about severe injury, but then it rose to its feet and they made their way home, each stumbling to his fashion.
For days the dog was subdued and miserable. It lay in the kitchen, not eating, but occasionally sighing through its nose. The man phoned the vet who asked for details. The man typed in a response and played this into the phone. Perhaps this way of communicating annoyed the vet. He said curtly that good fences made good neighbours. The man typed into his gadget, “I no longer have the strength to work on fences.” The vet said, “Have your workers do it.” The man typed, “There are no longer any workers.” The vet said he had a good relationship with the woman that he didn’t want spoiled. He didn’t think the dog was seriously hurt and would soon recover.
This it did. In fact, it took up its pursuit of cows and when the woman phoned again, it was to report that the dog was biting into and hanging from the cows’ dewlaps. “I’ll make a plan,” the man typed. “I’ve already made a plan, I’m just informing you,” she said furiously.
When the man reached the scene, a worker had taken a whip to the dog, which was shaking even as it was lying in the dirt. Its skin was broken and it moaned when it saw the man. The woman stood with her arms folded. “You will pay for my cows,” she declared.
The man looked up from the dog at the worker with the whip. The latter shrugged. Obviously the whipping had been an instruction from the woman and as such not a responsibility to him personally. The worker left the scene with his whip in his hand and the woman went to her house where soon light coloured the windows in the darkening evening. The man sat with his dog, which died in the night.
The worker with the whip carried the dog back to the man’s house, where he dug another hole to bury the animal. It took a long time and afterwards he sat on the ground next to the mound of soil. It was a quiet day but for the birds and the traffic on the tar road. There was another sound too. The man listened and listened. It was faint, but growing. It was baying he was listening to, he realised, or imagined. He sat in the overgrown vegetable garden and felt exposed. After a while he managed to suppress the feeling and to reinforce his belief in himself, he walked into the valley, to the edge of the pine plantation. Here he took his place on a log and watched the insects and heard something rustling nearby. Slowly the silence made him relax.
There had recently been work done in the plantation and quite a bit of it had been cleared; a huge yellow cutter stood on large black wheels among the stumps. In the clearing process a view had developed. The man looked out past the edge of the remaining pine trees toward the sea which was blue like the sky. He thought of the dogs he had buried and his youth which he had buried too and life seemed unutterably unappealing.
For a while he heard the baying again and tried to think what it could be. In the plantations and forests there were animals, but leopards were quiet until they growled and baboons were loud and the other animals weren’t dangerous and he did not think there was anything around that would be interested in harming him.
Toward evening he went back to his house, but stood outside the door, reluctant to go in and spend another evening like so many others, this one without a companion. When he did go in, it was to fetch a tin of food which he sat outside eating, watching the stars. It was a warm night and the insects were like pricks of conscience or resentment, but he was if not serene then impassive and he fell asleep.
The baying woke him. It was very loud. As he sat up, he saw dark shapes coming through the badly mended fence and sliding across the deep unmowed lawn. The barking and yelping were fierce. He could make out huge furry heads lined with teeth and lit up by red eyes. He got to his feet but to no purpose, he realised. The dogs went for him, biting into his shins and thighs, jumping for his face, tearing at his throat. He moaned in fury, no other sound being possible, and kicked and lashed out with his reasonably good arm. More and more dogs attached themselves to him, snapping and biting and crunching his bones. He stayed upright for a minute, swinging his assailants from his limbs like fruit in a tree tortured by the wind. Then he went down in a pall of pain and anger.
There was also a certain relief. This was it, he knew. They were over, the lifelong feelings of helplessness and weakness and indignation at one’s fellow man. He was going, if not to a better place at least away from here.
For a while the dogs worried about his body. They stopped biting and stood back, turning this way and that, softly yelping. A form of calm ensued. Some began to lick at the blood.
The man was however spared any more disfiguration, as a pickup truck drove up to the house and the neighbour slammed her palm against the steering wheel hooter. The sounds rang shrill in the night, annoying the dogs with their keen hearing, driving first only the more timid off, before the rest followed, back through the unmended fence, across a meadow, into the dark, the baying growing softer, then faint and even fainter.