Howl (30 page)

Seven Protective Popeyes

[George Singleton]

I
ALWAYS FELT
deep down that my odd assortment of ex-strays all hailed from the Me Generation. Oh, I brought them each into the fold like they were down-on-their-luck drifters, and knew that they didn’t carry Will Fetch for Food cardboard signs only because they didn’t possess opposable thumbs and Magic Markers. And at first each dog pretty much retained a look in the eyes similar to that of the planet’s terrified, hungry, orphan children. They—whether ten or eighty pounds, whether appearing biracial or a mixture of forty breeds—continued the ruse for a week, then felt comfortable enough, evidently, to join the pack under its inherent, ongoing Me First banner.

My dogs’ tendencies became apparent this past November when I realized they didn’t care whatsoever about my undergoing the pains and side effects of possible
E. coli
infection. There’d been a massive recall of all bagged spinach, and every grocery store in America sent produce managers on an endless beeline between their vegetable stations and the Dumpster out back. The
E. coli
outbreak had killed a few people scattered across the country, and left other healthy-eating individuals somewhere between painful gastrointestinal episodes and outright kidney failure. A panic ensued, of course. Terrorists had struck our food supply! some survivalists declared, as did a few of the more paranoid members of Congress.

Let me say right now that I have never been known as a “healthy eater” in regard to the recommended fifty-six daily portions of fruits and vegetables. That’s another story. But for some reason, I couldn’t fathom not eating spinach if and when I wanted the stuff. So I got out one of the garden books I rarely open, and learned that, indeed, spinach is a fall crop. So is broccoli. Up until this point, I’d only planted tomatoes (which my dogs took off the vine, thinking that tennis balls ripened), cucumbers (which my dogs picked and carried around like giant green cigars, maybe in hopes of being in the next C. M. Coolidge portrait of dogs playing poker), squash (which my dogs seemed to use as juggling clubs), and so on. They never touched the jalapeños, but then again, I don’t have any Chihuahua-mix strays.

I got to work. I bought topsoil. During the last week in September I constructed a raised-bed garden that measured eight feet by twenty-four. Spinach seeds only cost ninety-five cents an ounce, as it turned out, and there were about a million seeds in an ounce. I planted eight rows. Off to the side I planted a dozen broccoli plants, just in case the terrorists struck that lovely plant next. I watered every morning and tried not to pay attention to my dogs sitting in a row behind me, staring.
I hope he’s planting something that attracts more moles, voles, and shrews that we can dig up and roll on,
I could almost read on Maggie’s and Hershey’s faces. Charlie, Marty, and Stella looked as though they wanted Brussels sprouts, of all things, seeing as they would fit their smaller mouths as compared to tomato/tennis balls. Nick and Dooley, kind-of-black-Lab and kind-of-Pointer, respectively, wanted something to attract more slow-moving doves.

I came back inside all smiles each morning from tending the garden.
Tell me I can’t eat spinach when I want to eat spinach,
I thought. I took each of my seven dogs aside and said, “You’re in charge of making sure no one else digs in the garden. You’re in charge of keeping the other dogs from using the new raised bed garden as a gigantic Porta Potti. That would kind of defeat the anti–
E. coli
purpose of this little experiment.”

Every one of my dogs nodded. They promised.

In late October, I had to leave for five weeks in order to be some kind of writer-in-residence at an MFA program in Wilmington, North Carolina. Every other writer in the United States must’ve been busy for a month; perhaps they didn’t want to travel around with possible spinach terrorists in their midst, I don’t know. I left on October 24. My spinach had come up nicely, in straight rows, maybe an inch high. I thought,
When I come back I’ll have to pick the stuff, blanch it, get it into freezer bags quickly.
I had read up on that part of the operation soon after the gardening book, understand.

About ten days into my residency I drove home, feeling guilty for leaving my patient better half, Glenda, with seven dogs to take care of. She couldn’t leave her job—oh, I should mention that this Wilmington gig included a house on Wrightsville Beach—and she wasn’t exactly ecstatic that I had to work
nonstop
for three hours on Mondays, spend a day reading student work sometime during the week, and use the rest of my time there to make friends with seagulls.

I came in the side door to our house, and the indoor dogs leapt on me as they always did. They didn’t make eye contact as usual, though. When I let them outside with me—I wanted to go check on the garden seeing as we’d undergone a dry stretch of weather—they took off immediately for the back corner of the property. They passed Maggie and Hershey along the way, two obviously sated dogs who barely moved from their spots in the sun. I called back to Glenda, “What the hell happened to the spinach?” My dog-members of the Me Generation took up their posts in the garden, growling at one another.
This is my spinach, this is my spinach, this is my spinach
and grazing on it at will.
I will be Popeye, I will be Popeye, I will be Popeye.
They acted the same way they did over a rock, or a dried-up miniature peach that finally fell off one of the trees like a scab, or a scrap of paper that had flown into the yard. I might’ve cursed loudly. I could hear children being herded in from miles around, could hear drapes and Venetian blinds being closed, could sense the slight populace of Pickens County dialing 911. Marty and Nick got up from their claims first, slowly walked over to the tallest broccoli plant, and lifted their legs. The other five dogs followed.

I took Dooley with me back to Wrightsville Beach. He, too, showed interest in the seagulls. It seemed like he spent a great deal of time looking for vegetation in order to do his business, and the waves coming in only confused him. Other dogs being walked around on leashes didn’t fascinate him, and I wondered if he grew homesick for his pack of selfish buddies. Most every dawn, and at midday, and again at night, I walked him out to the beach path, where he sniffed every stalk of sea oats, then pulled me back to the house. He showed no interest in the rawhide chews I bought.

So when my teaching gig finished, I packed up and started the six-hour drive home. Dooley sat in the passenger seat, per usual, staring straight ahead. He didn’t bark at cows or horses, and when I stopped at South of the Border on I-95 so that he could check out the giant sculptures of giraffes, gorillas, and rhinos, he looked at me as if to say,
Let’s not waste our time; let’s get home as soon as possible.

He whined and wagged his tail when I turned onto Hester Store Road, a mile away. We got out of the Jeep, but he didn’t run to the side door where we normally entered. No, he took off—maybe he’s part Pointer and part Greyhound—straight for the spinach. He sniffed every remaining leaf in each row, then got down on the ground as close to the spinach as possible, as if waiting for his buddies to come outside so he could tell his stories, so he could listen to them tell their tales of Bluto coming by.

An Open Letter from Miss Ruby to Her Problem Owner

[Miss Ruby]

(who may or may not have used the assistance of one J. F. Englert and his opposable thumbs)

Dear J. F.:

Recently, I have confirmed that you have been using me as a sort of “muse” for your writing work and that the main character of your new book is a pudgy five-year-old black Lab with a tuft of white hair on his chin and a Felix Unger–like attitude. This makes me feel rather uncomfortable since, despite some differences (gender the most obvious), this fiction hits a little too close to home. Allow me to explain.

As a true Labrador Retriever, I have always been extremely supportive of your struggles with the written word and, for that matter, with whatever you do, especially if it includes food, and generous helpings of it. It would be easy—and disingenuous—to say that I am a genetically programmed pushover and will “love” you no matter what. This is not true. You have, through your words and good behavior, earned my affection and loyalty over the years. For example, you can be counted on to correct anyone who calls me fat by informing them that I am merely well-insulated or better still, a “water dog” and possibly descended from seals. I have done my part by rolling in all available puddles and relishing our infrequent trips to the ocean. You have also consistently delivered my thyroxine pills for my sluggish thyroid (a Lab’s Achilles’ heel, they say) and have always been sensitive to my need for walks—perhaps this empathy comes from your awful experience when caught with a bladder full of beer in the front row at Carnegie Hall during a performance of Handel’s
Messiah.
Whatever the cause, I appreciate your sensitivity. Many humans fall short in the walk department.

In return, I have observed your many eccentricities and conveyed through my muteness and large brown eyes that these things ultimately do not matter and, in fact, somehow make you a better person. We will not speak of your habit of waking in the middle of the night, tripping over my green velvet cushion, scouring the refrigerator for some snack and not giving any thought to whether your dog might also like to partake.

But this “muse” business has really bothered me. I have heard you speak to your friends about how you have “channeled” me, and I cannot help but notice how you strut about our tiny New York apartment of late, unshaven and in boxer shorts, as if you are some sort of animal behaviorist just waiting for Stockholm to call with news of your Nobel Prize.

I would have no problem with any of this if you were right in your assumptions about what goes on inside my brain and heart but, unfortunately, I fear this is not so. Keen observer you might be, but you have missed much about what makes a dog a dog. For example, you spend a great deal of time writing about Number 1’s and 2’s in your book (I concede your suspicion that I could read was correct, as was your guess about me watching television). But, honestly, Number 1’s and Number 2’s aren’t the stuff of great literature or good manners—it’s bathroom humor. I might as well tell you that I did not appreciate you jotting things down in your note pad as I squatted on the pavement or strained on the fringes of the meadow in Central Park. Worse were your knowing comments about my “curious shyness,” “melancholy eyes,” and “astounding self-consciousness, almost shame” as I assumed these positions to do my “business.” I wouldn’t think of disturbing you on the “throne” and disrupting your “business.” And to suggest that a dog is humiliated or ashamed by doing something so natural as going to the bathroom defies reason. After all, I’m not the one picking up after me, you are.

Your observations of my interactions with other breeds at the dog run are likewise misleading. Dogs are, in fact, very practical creatures. Of course, we like to play and we love being dogs (two points battered to death in your work, I believe), but more than this, we are intent on sharing information with one another. And this involves engaging in strange, ritualistic behavior that might make the uninitiated think that our kind is either obsessive-compulsive or daffy—when, in fact, the behavior is as task-specific as firing off an e-mail or conducting a business meeting. Nowhere in your work do you capture the intricacy and seriousness of dog relations and the amazing speed with which we find out exactly what we need to know and move on to the next dog’s hindquarters. You do explore the fact that our sense of smell is 100,000 times greater than man’s, and the wondrous world of scents that belong to the canine because of this ability (regrettably, you have not
yet
taken measures in our own home to add more enticing smells beyond your unwashed socks; may I suggest hanging ham hocks from every doorknob?).

Most of all, though, I dislike the suggestion that behind human and dog relations is opportunism. No doubt when dogs or dog-like creatures first inched up to the primeval campfire of man, a bargain was made that involved the exchange of goods and services. I’m not naive. The junkyard dog still earns his keep, but as for you and me…well, this just isn’t the case….

Already I feel my calm, even-tempered, and generous Lab spirit get the better of me. I know you were doing the best you could to understand the life of a dog and I forgive you. After all, you’re only human.

Faithfully,
Miss Ruby