Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself (4 page)

T
he trip back to my campsite at the head of the canyon took a little more than an hour, less than the time I logged getting in because I’d left my lines in place for the return trip, and because now I was racing against the clock. Near the pothole, I set a coil of rope on a ledge where I hoped I’d be able to see it from the top of the canyon; it was the only way I could think of to mark the spot. It was clear to me that the fastest and safest way to get the dog out of the hole (though it would be the most difficult approach for me) would be a vertical drop from as close to the pothole as I could get. The horizontal distance from the pothole to the head of the canyon was maybe two miles, but the technical sections, the drops I had to rappel and the obstacles I had to scramble over to get here, would be too dangerous for the dog, even in a protective crate or sling.

Back at my truck, I left everything in place and five minutes later was headed off in my ATV for a nearby village, bouncing along the washboard gravel road with only my wallet and my cell phone in my pockets. I wanted to call Michelle to fill her in, but coverage near the canyon was spotty at best and time was of the essence. I knew she’d understand when I finally did get hold of her.

I pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store, wondering who could help me. Perhaps there was some sort of volunteer search-and-rescue organization in the area, I thought, though it seemed unlikely that they’d bother saving a small dog trapped in a deep canyon. I knew that, in the recent past, National Park Service policy had begun to rescue stranded hikers or mountain climbers—but then they’d send them the bill for the rescue operation, generally a number in four figures, partly to deter ill-prepared campers and climbers from taking undue risks and partly to recoup costs. Given the recent struggle my business in Salt Lake City had been having making ends meet, I wasn’t prepared to bear the burden. I wasn’t even sure if fire departments still rescued cats from trees. I doubted anybody was going to send a helicopter or a National Guard unit to save a puppy.

In the grocery store, I bought four cans of wet dog food with pop-top lids, a small bag of dry food, and a package of small Styrofoam bowls from the picnic supply section. I purchased bottled spring water to refill my canteens and then paused at a bulletin board by the front door. Among the notices for tag sales, landscapers, and home repair services, I could find nothing about a lost dog. I asked a few locals in the parking lot if they knew of anyone who lost a dog, but no one seemed to know anything—or care. I knew it then: No one was going to help me—I had to do this by myself.

This is what I meant when I said I’m self-reliant to a fault. It’s a habit of mine, but it’s also a coping mechanism. As a Marine, I learned to take care of my team members, but I also learned to take care of myself as much as possible, so that my fellow Marines didn’t have to take care of me.

I decided before heading back to the canyon I would check in with Michelle, given that I now had signal. She answered in a tone she always uses when I call from out in the desert; real upbeat, like she hasn’t spoke to me in a month. I always give her a hard time about it.

“You won’t believe what I found out here.”

“What?” she asked.

“I found a little black puppy stuck in a pothole. I’ve never seen an animal in such bad shape. It’s just awful.”

“Oh my God, what are you going to do?” The words came out of her mouth but she already knew I was going to try to get him out.

“I just picked up some things at the store and I’m going to go leave some food for him. I’ll go into Page this afternoon and try to find a carrier or something to get him out of there.”

My voice was a bit sharp, filled with disgust for the situation. Michelle knows me well and understood my mood. We both have a love for animals, but when a situation involves some type of cruelty or abuse, I definitely go to a darker place, a place filled with hatred and resentment for those who exercise their power in ways that hurt, even kill.

I told her if she didn’t hear from me by sundown then something went wrong. She told me to be safe and we said our goodbyes.

I remounted my ATV, supplies in hand, and headed back to the canyon.

As the landscape flies past me, I’m standing on a corner, waiting for a bus in Cudahy, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. Every morning, I stand on the curb and stare down the street in the direction the bus will come, and as I wait for the bus, I fill with dread, an ever-tightening knot in my stomach that makes me feel like I’m going to throw up. Every morning, I rehearse what I’ll do, depending on what seats are available, though the bus picks up the same kids in the same order each day, presenting the same set of problems. The best seat, the safest place to sit, is the front row just behind the driver, with some harmless kids directly behind me as a buffer. The real threat is in the back of the bus, where the mean kids sit to be the farthest from the driver. In the worst case scenario, I get on the bus and walk down the aisle, and I see open places, but kids usually have their bags there, and they don’t move them for me. Their actions say, loud and clear, “Not here—I don’t want a loser like you sitting next to me.” But I have to sit down or the bus won’t move. On those occasions, I’m forced to sit near the back, amid the boys who might slap me, or thwack the back of my head with a finger, or pop their hands over my ears, or call me names.

Friday nights and Saturdays offer relief, but Sundays, the knot in my gut tightens, because I’m worried about Monday, when it starts all over again. The bus driver is essentially powerless, occasionally glancing in his rear-view mirror and calling out, “Simmer down in the back,” but unless backpacks actually fly through the air, he is oblivious to what goes on, his eyes on the road. This is how I start my day. I can’t fight back, and I can’t flee, so I brace myself, pick a point a few feet in front of me, and stare at it, trying to make myself invisible, and pretending I don’t hear them when they call me a queer, or loser, or threaten to kick my ass.

The leaders of the conspiracy are two boys named Wade and Kevin. Kevin clearly doesn’t like me. Wade’s attitude is more confusing because he will talk to me and be almost friendly, but only if we’re alone and somewhere no one else can see us. In public, he gets laughs by making fun of me. The bus ride is a free-for-all, where abuse can come from almost anybody. It feels like it’s organized somehow, like they have regularly scheduled “Let’s pick on Zak Anderegg” meetings where they decide who’s going to take which shift.

I see bullied kids on television, on the sitcom reruns I sometimes watch after school. On television, bullying is generally depicted as comical, the wimpy boy who gets turned upside down and deposited in a trash can, and maybe he gets an “atomic wedgie” to the delight of his friends and peers, while the laugh track howls with glee and mirth. It’s not like that in real life, not even close. It’s never funny to the person being picked on. It always hurts, even when you pretend it doesn’t or laugh at yourself or put yourself down first to preempt further put-downs. The first instance scars you. Subsequent events deform and cripple you. Every time you’re picked last for a team, you feel your ears burning with embarrassment, and when the coach or gym teacher instructs the class to choose up sides, you try to hide behind somebody else as a way to save face, or prepare an excuse, telling yourself, “The reason I was picked last was because the captains couldn’t see me.” Every time you hear kids talking about an after-school event they’re attending, you know you won’t be invited so you walk away quickly to pretend you couldn’t hear, or you make up a story and say you have to go straight home after school, but even so, when you’re not invited, you want to cry. You don’t pull yourself out of the garbage can, dust yourself off, and laugh about what just happened to you, hardy har har. You develop a hyper-vigilant mindset, because you’re on display all the time, conspicuous and singled out as you try to ward off an insidious sense of constant betrayal, where you don’t know who your real friends are or where or when your enemies are going to pull something.

Even on the bus, on my way to school, there are, in fact, a few kids who’ll talk to me or hang out with me or even have me over to their house, but in public, they avoid my company because they want to stay out of the line of fire. They might feel sorry for me, but it’s safer for them to not speak up or defend me. I’m a target. Getting too close to me would make them targets, and no one wants to be in my position. I am effectively emotionally quarantined externally by the people who hurt me or exclude me while internally I quarantine myself when I avoid eye contact, speak to no one, pretend to read a book—pretend I like it this way. Pretend I don’t need friends . . .

Driving back to the canyon, I knew that, to an extent, I am still this way. At thirty-three—almost thirty-four—years old, I am still that scared little boy. A study in the March 2013 issue of
JAMA Psychiatry
by a scientist at Johns Hopkins said, “The experience of bullying in childhood can have profound effects on mental health in adults,” and that adults who were bullied as children are more likely to have anxiety or panic disorders and are almost five times as likely to experience depression. Upon reading this, I wasn’t surprised—I grew up not trusting anybody, and certainly not relying on anybody. Today, I am initially distrustful of people, and I often expect the worst from them,

Or maybe I’m just surprised when something short of “the worst” happens. When I become someone’s friend, they could not wish for a friend more loyal or committed, but I am slow to commit, wary and skeptical. It explains in part why I so quickly committed to helping the dog—it was not a commitment that required questioning, so I could make it without hesitation.

Back at my truck, I parked the ATV, a 4WD Yamaha Grizzly. I realized I was going to have to make an exception to my rule to ride only on designated dirt roads and ATV trails. I transferred the supplies I’d bought to my backpack, then fastened it to the cargo rack on the ATV and headed toward the canyon rim, bouncing over the depressions and steering to avoid the larger rocks and clumps of sagebrush and mesquite. I had to guess where the pothole would be, and I knew I could be off by a half mile in either direction.

Finally I stopped the ATV and walked to the edge of the canyon, stepping down the decline as far as I dared, looking for the coiled rope I’d left as a marker. I didn’t see it. I walked twenty yards toward the head of the canyon and looked again.

There it was.

This was dumb luck, but, I thought,
I’ll take it
.

I scouted around for something to anchor to, but the ground was too loose and sandy to set a bolt. I made a decision I hoped I wouldn’t regret and decided to use my ATV as an anchor. A Yamaha Grizzly weighs more than six hundred pounds and would be nearly impossible to drag while in park, but to be safe, I tied both hand brakes in the engaged position and chocked all four wheels with large stones to avoid some sort of accidental Wile E. Coyote scenario where I plunged to the bottom of the canyon and pulled my ATV down on top of me.

I tied a 200-foot length of rope to a 265-foot length with a figure-eight joining knot, calculating that had to be more than enough length. I fastened one end to the ATV, backed my anchor up in two places with redundant knots (in case the first one failed), and then tossed the coil over the edge and watched my line fall clear. I clipped on to begin my descent, giving the rope as firm a tug as I could to test it before loading it. If I looked calm and collected from the outside, inside I was terrified, making what was probably going to be the longest rappel of my life, knowing that a fall meant certain (and sudden) death, and that if I hurt myself or miscalculated and for some reason couldn’t get out the way I got in, I could face a death less sudden but no less final.

Fifty feet down, the rope brought me over a ridge to a hundred-foot free drop and then a ledge where I could rest a minute, dividing my descent into two stages. I leaned out, but I still couldn’t see the bottom. I passed the figure-eight knot through my descender and kept going, careful to avoid kicking any loose rocks that could fall on the dog below. Another hundred feet and I was down, hitting the canyon floor about twenty feet upstream from the pothole.

When I reached the dog, he didn’t turn his head or look up or wag his tail, but he was still breathing. I realized I’d been bracing myself for the possibility that I’d get back and find him dead, in which case I would have pulled him out and given him a proper burial, but he was hanging on to life with whatever strength he had left. My goal and hope, bringing him food and water, was to make him stronger, even if only by the smallest degree. I wondered if, at this stage in the pathology of starvation, he was drifting in and out of consciousness or incompletely aware of what was going on around him. He didn’t seem to know I was there.

I crouched next to him, cracked the pull tab, and popped open a can of dog food. The smell rising from the contents of the can, strong and putrid, made me gag, but when I held the can under the dog’s nose, it acted like smelling salts and revived him. The dog lifted his head, eyes barely open, and extended his tongue to lick the lid. I knew that humans who go on extended fasts feel hungry for the first few days, but then the hunger feeling goes away and sometimes they have to be force-fed to start eating again. How I would manage that with the dog was beyond me. I emptied the dog food into a Styrofoam bowl, set it in front of him, and was gladdened to see I wouldn’t have to force him to eat. He took a big bite and swallowed.

Almost immediately, his body began to convulse; he hunched forward as he retched involuntarily. After a half dozen convulsions, he stopped, and thankfully the food stayed down. I pulled the dish away to give him a moment to recover, and then I sat with him and fed him slowly.

I’m fourteen and in my high school cafeteria at a table by the door. I am sitting alone. Everyone who comes in or out of the lunchroom sees me sitting by myself. They see me, but they don’t know what I’m thinking. What I’m thinking is this: Who am I? Why am I so worthless?