The Dog Says How (11 page)

rio

I knew when my dad
invited me over for a pancake breakfast it meant two things. One, I have to eat at least ten pancakes or it’s not even worth it to make the batter. And two, when I’m done a semi-truck full of industrial paint will pull into the driveway and need to be unloaded.

I’ve eaten my ten pancakes. We wait for the semi. In my pocket I have a tape from a new performance art group I’m in. It is headbanging music, loud and offensive and angry, and I know it will piss off my dad. I play the tape for Dad and he smiles and says, “Things seem to be going well for you, Kev.” The semi never comes and my dad tells me he has cancer. He says, “Kevin, it’s not immediately life-threatening. I’m gonna be around for a long time.”

I get on a plane and fly to Rio de Janeiro. Rio-de-Janeiro. Rio-by-the-sea-o.

Ipanema, Copacabana. Beautiful beaches, beautiful people walking by. And I’m thinking, “My cat plays with more cloth than is on this beach.”

I’m watching my girlfriend swim at the hotel beach. Next to me is this huge German guy. He looks like the Michelin Man. Next to him is this thin, pale, paid traveling companion. He’s got this look on his face like, “I’m not getting paid enough.” The Michelin Man is looking at my girlfriend and says, “Why do you bring your girlfriend to Rio de Janeiro? Zat’s like bringing a sandwich to a bar-b-que.”

The city of Rio is stretching up behind me, up to the statue of Christ: Corcavada. A man I’ve met at the hotel comes up and says, “We have a beautiful city, do we not?”

I say, “Oh yes, it’s incredible!”

He says, “You see those buildings up there, the blue and the white and the yellow?” I say, “Yeah. Very nice.”

He says, “Don’t go up to those buildings. Those buildings are the slums. Stay away from them, they are very dangerous. But we paint them nice for you tourists. What do you think? Aren’t they beautiful?”

I decide to look at the beach instead. I say, “Why don’t the locals swim down here? Why don’t you swim in Ipanema or Copacabana?”

He said, “Well, sometimes after the rain, the sewage from the slums washes down into the water and sometimes if the tide isn’t right, it will wash up onto the beach. Not always.”

Watching my girlfriend swim in the surf, the Michelin Man says, “Have you been to the Scala?”

I say, “What?”

“Have you been to the Scala? It is a nightclub act. Each act more spectacular than the last. I cry like a child.”

I think, “I gotta see what makes this guy cry like a child.” So that night we go to the Scala, this nightclub in the middle of the jungle. It looks like a piece of Las Vegas with neon signs out front. Inside is a huge stage with giant speakers. A tiny man comes out with a sequined high hat and white sequined suit. “
Mein damen und herren;
Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the Scala! Waah!” His eyes and mouth are wide open. These women come dancing out with feathered hats that are twice as tall as they are. They are balancing them on their heads and have bare breasts. Every time their bare breasts pass this man’s little head, he shouts, “Waah! Waah! Scala! Scala!” Then he introduces a Rio do Janeiro quica band. They come out with their quicas and their drums and their maracas. They’re piped through those huge speakers and they’re turned up so loud, they start beating my heart for me. I yell to my girlfriend, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

The next day we rent a car. By evening we leave the city proper. People are driving by, but their headlights aren’t on. Their headlights are off. I ask someone later, “Why do people drive without their headlights?”

They said, “They think it wastes gas.”

The cars are going past, flashing their lights like “Your lights are on! Your lights are on!” “I know my lights are on. I’m trying to see.”

We’re driving down the road. It starts to rain, a light, tropical rain. “Whoa!” The car starts to slide. The mud is sliding down the hill. Pretty soon it’s hard to hold the car on the road. My girlfriend says, “Why don’t we pull over for the night?” I’m fighting to keep the car on the road. Now the mud isn’t just going under the car, it’s going up over the car. I turn on the windshield wipers, but they just smear it on the window. I roll down my window so I can see. Just then the hillside comes sliding down behind us and wipes out the road. “Okay, wherever we’re going, that’s where we’re staying!”

At daybreak, we get to this little village. These people come out of their houses. They see us and they go back inside. They come out again. This time they have card tables. They set them up, look at us, and go back inside. This time they come out with stuffed, mounted animals. They set them on the card tables up and down this street, and say, “Come buy. Come buy. Buy this. Buy this!” I’m looking at these animals and they all have blue eyes. Big blue glass eyes. I wondered what happened. Did a crate wash up on shore filled with blue glass eyes and they started stuffing everything they could get their hands on? There were turtles with big blue eyes, parrots, little dogs—all with big blue eyes. I looked at those blue glass eyes and the brown-eyed people selling them. “Buy this!” My girlfriend has her window down and is giggling and petting the animals. I say, “We gotta get out of here. We gotta get out of this place. This isn’t paradise. This is a nightmare!”

We’re driving toward Rio in the night. The car slips in the mud and threatens to slip down into the jungle. A light drizzle begins to fall.

I’m three years old, leaning against my dad, smelling him in his cotton shirt. I’m in the front seat of our car eating an ice cream cone and holding my blanket. “Where are we going, Dad?”

I’m lying in a puddle of water working with my dad on his airplane. He says, “You know, Kev, the day you were born I was in the garage putting the wings on a Piper Cub. I rushed to the hospital and held you for the first time with airplane goop and dope dripping off my hands.”

I’m with my dad. We’re waiting for the semi. I’ve just eaten my tenth pancake. I play him the tape and he smiles.

When grandmother drove into the driveway, she saw all of grandfather’s tools put away. She went into the house and dialed 911 for the paramedics. Grandmother had never seen those tools put away. She knew my grandpa’s time had come.

My grandpa was hit with lightning when he was with his tools. My brother, who has four motorcycles, three snowmobiles, a couple of cars, and a few boats, was hit while he was pumping gas. My dad was hit when he was with his airplane. He loved to fly. More than anything else in his life, he loved to fly. My dad was hit with his airplane . . . but he was also hit with me.

I get home from Rio and my father is still in the hospital. I’m with him one night and he gets out of bed. He doesn’t show it but I know he’s been in a lot of pain. I’m afraid he’s going to pull the IV out of his arm so I get up and he says, “Sit down.” Then he takes out a suitcase, a suitcase only he could see, and he packs his belongings, sets it down, and crawls back into bed. That night all the family gathered around a table. A nurse came in and told us Dad was on life-support and the family needed to let him go. “It’s the right thing, Kevin. He’s in a lot of pain. Even if he does come back he won’t be the same.”

“No . . .” And while I was saying no, my father passed away.

I remember sitting with him that night and wondering where I’m going to be the next time I get hit by lightning.

the dog says how

Several years ago
I was in a motorcycle accident that made typing difficult, so I invested in voice-activated software for my computer. The voiceware has to get to know my vocal patterns and inflections so there is a series of sentences I read into the computer and it learns my vocal nuances. I remember when the movie
Fargo
came out people kept calling my local radio station saying, “Hey, what’s the deal? We don’t sound like that.”

So I’m reading away when my dog and cat get in a fight.
Bark, bark. Meow, meow, meow. Bark, bark.
I look at the computer and it has written: “How how why why why how how.” I think that explains a lot.

I think when it comes to the underworld most people are either dogs or cats. It’s either “How?” or “Why?” For me the underworld is like a good haircut in that it probably falls somewhere between something I have and something I wanted. But you don’t know. You do know whenever you take a trip there’s the trip you plan and the trip you take. You get out your maps, pack just right . . . but at some point you just have to give in to the ride, give in to the journey. Face it, the only place that looks like its map . . . is Nebraska.

Time was only a select few visited the underworld, like Odysseus, Orpheus, Dante, Nixon. Now anyone with enough money can go to hell. When I had my accident I got a glimpse of things to come. As I lay unconscious I had that experience so often talked about. I never saw “the light,” but as doctors were working to save my life, I was heading for this amazing sense of peace. At some point I was given the choice to continue on or return to this plane of existence where it was made clear there
would
be consequences. I did return but without the use of my right arm. At first it bothered me that I had returned. Why didn’t I follow that peace?

But it’s too late to turn back; I’d returned to the living. At least I thought I had. There was a guy who saw the accident who thought I had died. He went around telling people I had died and even to this day he still believes it. I’ve seen him on the bus a few times and have tried to talk to him, but he looks right through me. He honestly thinks I am a ghost.

At first this was disconcerting. But he’s right. I haven’t completely returned—I can’t. But I’ve grown used to the fact that I do have a foot in two worlds. So now I haunt and am haunted.

And let’s face it. We all have things that haunt us: ghosts, things that can’t find a home, that go bump in our hearts and minds. We call them names like Sins or Regrets or Desires. They seem to fall into two categories: kind of like Kentucky Fried Chicken—they’re either original or extra spicy. Original ones are with us from before birth, tiny time bombs lurking in our genetic weedbed, just waiting to spring into acts of passion or illness. We can’t do anything about them.We don’t even know why they’re there—like the tae kwon do school in a shopping mall. (Why is that there? It just is.) Then there are the haunts we create by losses or choices made in life. They tend to trouble us even more. Our great fear is that they will follow us into the afterlife.

Dante understood this. When he entered the underworld midway through life, he called it
Dis
.
D-i-s,
Latin for the underworld, the place of shadow and reflection, a place to contemplate and round off the rough edges of torment and desire. He knew you can’t cure a trauma, whether it’s a broken limb or heart or promise. The heart, especially, is an instrument that once broken never plays the same and, although it can’t be cured, it can be healed.

Dante knew
Dis
was a necessary step toward paradise. It’s also the prefix for words like
dis
ability, which doesn’t mean
un
ability. It means able in a different way. Able through the world of shadow and reflection. A foot in two worlds.
Dis
.

We have a Basset Hound we got as a puppy. We were told by the breeder that when training a Basset Hound they start out slow and then taper off. If ours sees a squirrel he goes crazy and runs after it. But if the squirrel goes up a tree, the dog thinks, “Wow, it’s gone. How? How, how? How? How?” And there’s the squirrel in the tree looking down at his problem.

Ever since my accident I don’t fear death. I get a sense of peace to think I’ll see my ancestors and friends I’ve lost—and my dad, my dog, and my arm. Until then . . . How how why why why.

acknowledgments

My family, Von, Dora, Laura, Steven, I love you.

I would like to express my gratitude to the folks at Borealis Books: Pam McClanahan and Greg Britton. And to Bill Holm, John Rezmerski, Mary Ludington, Mary McGeheran, Steven Dietz, Mark Bly, Kenneth Washington, David Esbjornson, Erin Sanders, and Michael Dixon. And all those at Jungle Theater, The Guthrie, Second Stage, Seattle Rep, and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Also National Public Radio’s
All Things Considered
, Noah Adams and Bob Boilen, Minnesota Public Radio, Tony Bohl and Leif Larsen, Susan Schulman, Amy Bissonette, John Richardson, Patty Lynch, Jim Stowell, Michael Sommers, Loren “Dr. Buzz” Niemi, Rob Simonds, Lynda Barry, Will Ackerman, Julie Boyd, and the doctors and nurses at HCMC.

And finally, Jon Spelman and the teachers at Osseo High School and Gustavus Adolphus College for pointing the way.

The Dog Says How
was designed and set in type by Percolator Graphic Design, Minneapolis. The type is Adobe Chaparral, designed by Carol Twombly. Printed by Maple Press, York, Pennsylvania.