The Primitive Tongue Of A Lesser Species

THERE’S NOTHING like an old dog to remind a man of his own decline. Just a few short years ago Jake and I used to take daily five-mile jogs together, but now we’ve both got arthritis — his in the hips, mine in the knee — and we’ve had to give them up. Instead we take long walks through the woods near our house. Jake practically grew up in these woods. He knows where the blackberries bloom in the summer (he pulls them delicately off the bush with his teeth, like a horse) and where the groundhogs awaken in spring. For Jake there’s no higher sport than chasing groundhogs. Most get away, but every once in a while he catches one too far from its den. He kills painlessly, one hopes, quickly shaking the animal to death by its neck. Once, thoroughly exasperated at my inability to break Jake of this behavior, I screamed at him as loudly as I could and then made him sit like a soldier while I pretended to walk home by myself. It was, I realize, a foolish way to act.

Jake’s never been the easiest of dogs. He has a seemingly ineradicable stubbornness, as well as a boundless neediness — common to golden retrievers, I’m told — that can at times be exhausting. I must confess I lack the steely resolve necessary to train an animal properly. I’ve never been able to banish the feeling that every time a dog learns to sit or stay or pee on a small square of newspaper, as much has been lost as gained.

My partner, Pam, and I recently found out that Jake has cancer and probably has just a few months to live. We took him to the vet this morning to have the stitches removed from his biopsy incision. He’d been panting a lot, and we were concerned the cancer might have spread to his lungs. Fortunately his x-rays were clear. The vet says the panting is due to the prednisone we’re giving him twice a day to reduce the swelling in his lymph nodes; a major side effect of the drug is thirst. It appears to be working. A few days ago it seemed to me I could actually see the glands in his neck bulging beneath his fur, and they’re much smaller now, although Pam says I’m spending too much time feeling them in an attempt to determine whether they’re closer in size to golf balls or marbles and what, if anything, this might portend for the rate of Jake’s decline.

How nice to be a dog, I often find myself thinking. I imagine Jake doesn’t fret about his cancer or the knotty moral implications of killing groundhogs for sport. Nor does he sit around pining for the good old days when he used to go running with his master or, even more absurd, lose one wink of sleep over whether or not he’s got a “good soul” or a “gentle heart,” the way I so often do. He just is, and that’s the way he will be until the moment when he is no more.

THERE’S BEEN MUCH DISCUSSION about how we should approach the subject of Jake’s impending demise with Jessica, Pam’s five-year-old granddaughter, who’s lately formed a strong attachment to the dog — or, at least, to the idea of the dog, as she’s a bit intimidated by his size. If she’s not crawling around our house on all fours with his leash hooked to her pants, insisting we call her “Jakey” and begging to be “walked,” she’s playing with a large collection of toy dogs, almost all of which bear some permutation of Jake’s name.

My own opinion, based on the theory that children should be spared life’s cruelties for as long as possible, is that we shouldn’t tell her anything. When the time comes, we can just trot out that old fairy tale about the dog having gone to live on a farm, the kind where he’ll get to run and play with other animals all day. Pam disagrees, arguing that experts now think children are better served by frank discussions of death. She also points out that while I might have been dumb enough as a boy to swallow such a story, Jess is a sharp kid, and we’d be putting ourselves in the awkward position of having to fend off questions concerning the location of said farm and possible visiting days.

Pam’s daughter Heidi, Jess’s mom, is undecided on the matter, but I think I’m losing her too. In an attempt to win her over to my side, I dredged up a story from childhood about my neighborhood playmate who hadn’t been permitted to go to her father’s funeral because her mother hadn’t wanted her to see the coffin. I’d never heard that word before and thought she was saying her mother didn’t want her to see the “coughing.” For a long time afterward I was tormented by the grisly image of dead bodies undergoing some sort of ritualized coughing fit prior to burial, a spectacle so nightmarish only adults were allowed to watch.

Heidi was quiet for a moment on her end of the phone line, and I imagined I’d convinced her. Then she said, “But, Al, wasn’t the fact that nobody bothered to explain things to you what caused you to imagine something so horrible?”

I’M GRATEFUL FOR MY RELATIONSHIP with Jess and her little brother Will, because I’ve never had children of my own. The truth is I never felt I deserved them. I was an active drug addict and alcoholic for many years and could barely take care of myself, much less a kid. If I’d had any doubts about this, they were settled once and for all the day I struck a girlfriend’s eight-year-old son. I was drunk, of course, and high on pills, and I slapped him hard across the face because he wouldn’t stop pulling at my shirt. All he’d wanted was a little attention.

Until that day, despite my many difficulties, I’d always thought of myself as a gentle person, almost constitutionally incapable of violence. Giving up that cherished notion of who I was has been painful. Granted, I was a “sick and suffering addict,” as they say in the twelve-step program that saved me. And, granted, I can’t conceive of doing something like that while sober. But I have to accept that, under certain circumstances, I’m capable of hurting a child. I’ve had to watch myself slap that little boy in my mind’s eye countless times since then, a self-imposed torment I’d give just about anything to escape.

When Jess was born, I made a solemn vow that I’d be a good honorary granddad.

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