Bhodisatva

Being young and grown up is about the best fun one can have if the times are good. And they were. In my twenties, I had a small apartment just off the nicest shopping street in the upscale part of town and a job that left me plenty of time to hang out. I got to know the bartenders and barmaids and usually didn't have to pay for more than one drink. I had no phone and no television and so I read incessantly. Hanging out can make you smart. It felt good to be grown up.

Way leads to way, though, and I moved into a house with my girlfriend. It was a great place built in 1925 with high ceilings and pine floors, a front porch and a rear deck and the largest kitchen I had ever seen. We threw some great parties in that house. And best of all, we lived two block from the campus of an expensive private college. My daily runs always took me across the campus.

One day just before sunset, in that not quite dark purple time, I was on the last leg that took me by the junior high school, and in the half-light, a large object ran at me from out of the bushes giving me a start. It was a strange, scrawny, ghostly looking dog. I thought it was attacking, but it wasn't, at least not in that way. The dog latched on to my pace and wouldn't leave me. She followed me all the way home.

It was clear the dog was starving, but not clear if it was an old dog or a young one. I had no dog food, so I mixed up some eggs and milk and bread and put it out for her to eat. And that was it. She wasn't leaving. When my girl came home, she shouted, "there's a dog on the porch." I know, I told her. It can hang around if it wants, but it's not coming into the house.

The next day when I came home, my girl and the dog were sitting on the couch together. The dog had tags. The vet said she (the dog) was about six months old. The dog was scarred like the kids I saw in old films about babies that had not been held in orphanages. They were not able to stand much attention and no matter how much they were fed, they did not grow. And that was my dog. I fed her and named her Wiley, and she hung around, sleeping outside. One morning when I got up, she had built a nest on the front lawn out of one of my jackets and various things she had picked up running around the neighborhood including a new golf shoe. Shit, I thought, this dog is going to cause me trouble.

When I tried to pet her, she would get up and move a few feet away, but she stayed near me. I ran every day and the dog would always come along without being called. I never put her on a leash and we would go far from home. If she stopped to smell the bushes or wandered off somewhere, I'd tell myself that it was fine if she decided to go. But she would always catch up. I guess she liked living with me.

When she came into heat, I had to move her into the house. All the dogs in the neighborhood were sleeping on our lawn. A hierarchy was established and it was a big lab, an older dog, that got to sleep by the door. His real competition was a young, very macho and muscular husky. I guess the old lab just saved all his experience and energy for fucking because when he was challenged by the husky, it was really not much of a fight.

I was running at six in the morning at that time, and Wiley always ran with me. She was a German Shepherd/Husky mix, and I'd read that each breed required a lot of exercise if they were not to become mean and spiteful. I decided that she needed to run. We would chance it. I would watch and make sure that none of the boys were able to mount her.

We stepped out of the house and all the boys got up. It was cold enough to see your breathe and just turning light. We ran. All of us. And it was eerie. All there was to hear was the soft thud of a dog pack running and their heavy breathing sending up a cloud of vapor. We breathed in tandem, it seemed, Wiley understanding and running right nest to my side. A car drove by us, a young man running with a pack of perhaps eight dogs. I wish I could have seen what he saw.

We got home without incident, but those boys were not in as good of shape as Wiley and I.

But the lab had his way one day. I was in the shower and my girlfriend was leaving for work. She closed the screen door, but that was all. I heard a yelp and a squeal and came running wet from the bathroom. The lab was locked up with Wiley, she looking at me for help, he hunkered down waiting for the beating he seemed to have taken many times. He looked like he knew what came next.

Wiley got an abortion and the lab stayed. He would be sleeping by the door when I got up and I took to feeding him so that he would not starve. Wiley liked him and he her and we all ran together every day. People came to think he was my dog, but he would come and go. One day an angry man brought him to my house and complained that the dog had broken down his back fence and screwed his little pooch in heat. I told him that the dog was not mine.

I had learned where he really lived and what his name was. He went home from time to time, but he spent most nights on my porch. One day when we were on our run, a pickup truck stopped and called his name. The dog reluctantly jumped into the bed and the driver rolled away. The next time I saw him, he was chained up in the yard. I was heartbroken. He never slept at my house again.

Last week, a fellow introduced himself to me at the gym. He said he had seen me around the neighborhood for years. He told me that he was the fellow who owned the lab. For all those years, I had never met his owner. I told him that his dog had gotten mine pregnant and he gave a belated apology. We laughed and told stories about his dog. The damned thing led quite a life of fucking and fighting for a long time.

Wiley lived with me for seventeen years, the last five of which she was diabetic. I had to give her two shots of insulin every day, at eight and eight. In those five years, it was rare that anyone else took care of her. She got cataracts and couldn't see well enough to run in the end, but I walked her for miles every day. In the end, I gave her a codeine tablet to take away her pain and called a friend of mine who was a vet. She came over that night and put her down.

That was years ago, but I still find her hair stuck in some fabric from time to time. I kept her and took care of her because I thought she was a c bhodisatva come to teach me great lessons. She wasn't. She was just a dog. But she was a good one.