It’s 4:30 in the morning, and Nate finally rocking his way out the bed. Can’t just throw his leg over and get up since the stroke. I been laying here listening to Chumley whine about a hour, hoping — naw, praying — Nate wake up and let that dog out before he make a mess all in that crate. He make a mess, that’s on me. I’m the one got to clean it. Nate right hand don’t work good enough, and sometimes I get in there to clean and find dried-up mess from I-don’t-know-when after he done tried to clean it up. So I just lay here, cause Nate need to start understanding Chumley belong to him.
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Fiction
Took Us All Like We Was His
Correspondence
LaToya Watkins’s beautiful short story “Took Us All like We Was His” had me bawling. Nate suffered the loss of his once-capable self. His wife, Honey, suffered the loss of safety and belonging that Nate had once offered her. And the dog, Chumley, suffered from Honey’s perspective that “he a dog” — in other words, that he was beneath her.
Watkins’s story exposed the vulnerability of what being human is, but it also exposed humankind’s misunderstanding of the animals we have domesticated. They are not human, but we brought them into our lives, and it is our responsibility to learn to communicate with them. We can’t toss them away when they are only acting from their instinctual nature. Chumley was speaking through his behavior. Nate heard him; Honey didn’t.
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June 2018
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