My groggy brain apparently mistook all those blaring horns for my alarm clock, because my day began with a crazy fit in the predawn gloom, batting at the nightstand until my senses knit. I came to in mid-swing, left wondering how long I’d been doing that. Although alone in my bedroom, I was still a little embarrassed, like a belligerent patient just resurfacing from the throes of anesthesia. No one likes to be caught out of control, and I went from dazed to exceedingly angry with whomever was outside, wailing on their fucking car horn.
What time was it? Five A.M. I had to give Maggie her insulin shot.
With a whimper, I staggered toward the bathroom to have a myself quick piss, but it was anything but quick, and the longer I hovered there, staring down at my Morse Code dribble while tolerating the outside commotion, the more irritated I became.
I finished up, flushed, and tramped over to the bedroom window, parting the dusty slats with trembling fingers.
A white van was out there -- parked right out in the middle of my goddamned street. Something out front was all splashed in headlight, tumbling over and over on the pavement … two somethings … animals? … a fight? Couldn’t tell -- I couldn’t see that far without my goddamned glasses on.
Maggie sprung to mind and my stomach flip-flopped. Christ almighty, I hoped it wasn’t her out there. I turned from the window sill and exited the bedroom, bashing the living shit out of my left shoulder on the door frame.
“Goddamn-sonofabitch!”
Floating down the darkened hall and into the kitchen, I finally flipped a light switch. I winced in the new brilliance, focusing on a porcelain rooster, adjusting to the familiar clutter like a dazed boxer on a standing eight-count. The groceries were all still sitting there on the counter where the delivery kid had left them, yesterday afternoon. I could see the milk and sour cream too, right through the plastic sack ... goddammit.
I vaguely remembered the kid telling me to remember to put it all away. The empty liter of bourbon was still sitting on the counter too, where I’d drained every last drop of its bottled lies and adventures. Booze was all I’d leave the house for, booze and medicine … the only two items I really needed, and the only two items the kid couldn’t bring. Funny … I probably owed my life to my chemical dependencies. Were it not for those sad prompts I’d have rotted away years ago, curled beneath sheets as yellow as my four-inch fingernails.
I kept Maggie’s insulin in the fridge. I don’t think it needed to be refrigerated, but I kept it in there anyway because there’d been so many drugs scattered around this house and I couldn’t fucking remember which ones -- hers or mine -- were supposed to be kept cold, so I started refrigerating every goddamned one of them.
I reached into the butter compartment for a glass ampoule, but my hands were shaking so badly I fumbled and dropped the vial, and just like bad slapstick, promptly kicked the little bastard clear back underneath the fridge. It was the last one in stock, too. Perfect.
I dropped to my knees with audible cracks, peeked beneath and there it was, waaay back there, surrounded by a lost tribe of dust bunnies.
“Why does every simple thing always turn into some circus-fucking-bullshit!” I bellowed that one so loud that I made the overhead light fixture sing.
A fly swatter might reach it. I had a couple out there in the breakfast nook. That’s where Maggie was.
I opened the door, just a crack, half-expecting her snuffling snoot to protrude, followed by that eager paw, batting the air in that universal doggy-plea for admittance. But I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about her bolting through the aperture, claws all skittering and clattering over the linoleum in a wild, whimpering tap dance of shameless joy at the sight of my sorry old ass, standing there in my holy underwear. Those days were over.
I let the door swing wide open, exposing what was left of her in a broad shaft of light. Maggie lay prone on her piss-soaked newspapers, in the same position I’d left her, yesterday afternoon. She never raised her head, but her tail gave one weak thump of acknowledgement. She knew I was standing there.
“Oh, girl …’’
Every time I saw my baby in that awful state, I just wanted to break down and sob like a little boy who was losing his first pet. It was a lot like that, she being my last. She was all I had left worth a shit in this world and she was fixing to leave me here, all alone. It could happen today, maybe tomorrow, but her little spirit was slipping.
Averting my eyes from the tragedy that was the last dog I’d ever own, I plucked a flyswatter from the wall and shuffled off to retrieve her medicine.
Parkinson’s made it nearly impossible to fill a goddamned syringe, and the overgrown fingernails that never stopped shaking quite long enough for me to clip only increased the level of difficulty.
“Aren’t we a pair.”
Squatting beside her, I scruffed her neck fold and jabbed the silver tip into the heart of the furry wad, depressing the plastic plunger with a quivering thumb. So far, I hadn’t snapped a needle. Thank God. I think she could sense my relief, every time an injection was over.
Why did it have to end like this for us? Our waning lives had culminated in a dreary regimen of scheduled injections, swallowed pills, and backyard pursuits with a glucose strip in hand, trying to catch a drop of that pitiful urine stream -- no more pitiful than my own -- to check my poor dog’s blood sugar. This was it, until our end. This was as good as life got. “We’ve gotten old, girl, you and me.” I smoothed her cheek and massaged her velvety ear. “When did that happen to us?”
Truth was, it seemed like I’d been an old man forever. Couldn’t hardly remember my own youth anymore, outside the few good stories I’d revisited a thousand times, or those couple dozen moments supported by photographic evidence. The balance might as well have been an ellipses ... I guess I was pretty well ready to go, whenever the good Lord decided to call me. I was finished here.
Those horns, and shouting now; what was the goddamned deal? Maggie’s tail thumped a couple times when I quit massaging her ear. She almost looked up, but didn’t, when I rose and slipped silently out the back door.
Hugging the vinyl siding, I felt a rare shudder of pleasure whistle up through my core; the moist night air was like a mama’s cool cloth against feverish skin, and I was thrilled by the gritty tooth of parched soil beneath my feet. I was outside! The blipping fireflies, preaching crickets, lightless homes all around me … my neighbors, all sound asleep in their cozy beds … unaware of my movement. It felt just like old times. It was all still the same -- just the way my Parkinson’s had forced me to leave it all behind, fourteen years ago.
Clawing the verdant baffle of trumpet vines that ensnarled my chain-link fence, my eyes were served an unexpected and rather violent breakfast, right out in the middle of the street. It was a dog fight … and what chaos! An old man tottered away from the safety of his vehicle and right toward the knot of brawling beasts, gaping anxiously about the neighborhood for somebody, anybody, who might assist him in correcting this most terrible matter. Nope. You’re all on your own on this one, shit-for-brains.
It was difficult to discern his age, but by his apparent frailty, his faltering movements, I dated him as older than I. Looked as if a stiff breeze could have knocked him right over on his liver-spotted butt, yet incredulously, he attempting to break up a dog fight with what appeared to be a small ice scraper. This promised to be most entertaining.
The old geezer produced a croak that might have sounded threatening, half a century ago, and swiped his silly weapon at the mass of raging muscle. Naturally, they paid him no mind, and … no-no-no! It wasn’t a dog fight at all … it was a deer! It was two dogs and a whitetail deer! No wonder all the big fat fuss! Two dogs were taking down a whitetail deer in the middle of my very own street! I could see them clearly now! One was a chow-mix, and the other -- sort of a mutt, but that deer, oh, they really had her! She was doomed! The chow was clamped down on her throat while the mutt wrenched and tore at her flank. Her skin was pulling loose, and I heard sounds, not unlike those of duct tape being jerked from the roll! And get this: I could feel things starting to happen, down there … south of the border, as they say. What a way to start the day!
Get her! Take her! I was suddenly an armchair quarterback, cheering his favorite team.
A warm tongue lapped my fingers. Maggie? I knelt beside my dying pit bull and kissed her right between the eyes, inhaling her doggy-dog scent.
“You won’t belieeeve what’s happening!” I tittered, actually considering lifting her up for a quick peek over the fence, but I knew she’d just pee all over me, if I didn’t break my back.
Maggie whined and dropped her chin, back legs trembling. It had taken all she’d had to make it out here, as if she knew she was missing something really good. Goddammit, if this was my poor dog’s last wish, I’d be a real cad not to grant it.
So, I seized her around the breadbasket and hoisted her carcass up off the ground, staggering toward the snarl of trumpet vines. Gad, she was heavy! And yeah, here came the river of piss, right onto the tops of my feet. Yuck.
Had she seen it yet? I hoped so, because my back was giving out.
We collapsed together into the dirt, and I laughed when she licked my face. She’d seen it.
“Aren’t we a pair.”
We’d had some good times, that old pooch and I. I recalled the weekend I’d worn the clown mask, and pulled that long glistening rope of waitress flesh loose, much to the extreme displeasure of its unwilling donor. The look on that hogtied gal’s face when I flipped the gruesome treat over to Maggie, who popped it right out of the air as if we’d rehearsed it a hundred times -- was priceless.
My neighbor’s living room lights popped-on, followed by their porch-light. So, we gathered ourselves and slunk away, back toward the breakfast nook, into the night, to fetch me a pair of sweatpants and a glucose strip for Maggie, to start what might be our last morning together.
