The Trouble with Tuck (5 page)

A
bout a week after the unproductive visit to the companion-dog school at San Carlos, just a few days before my school started, Mother let Tuck out for his usual morning stroll at about six-thirty.

Tuck started off as he did on any other morning, loping down the driveway, but less than ten seconds had passed when Mother heard the sickening screech of car brakes and a muffled yelp. Instantly she guessed what had happened and called out to my father, who was upstairs, shaving. Then she ran outside, still in her blue robe and scuffs.

A car was stopped in the middle of Cheltenham, about fifty yards from our house, and in front of it was poor Tuck, on his side on the pavement, a still gold mound. Maybe dead. The driver of the car was kneeling down.

My mother ran to Tuck, and then my father, having
pulled on his robe, joined her. There was blood on Tuck's head, and he was quivering, breathing in short gasps, blank eyes still wide with fright. Fortunately the car had struck him a glancing blow as it skidded to a stop, only the bumper hitting him.

The driver, a student on his way to college classes at Los Angeles State, was very upset, saying, “The dog suddenly ran out in front of the car, as if he hadn't seen me.”

“He couldn't see you,” my father said.

Stan had heard my mother cry out and had awakened me. I came downstairs in my nightgown just as my father and the young driver were carrying Tuck to the station wagon. I saw them through the kitchen window. They had Tuck in a first-aid carry, with their hands locked on each other's wrists.

My mother was already on the phone to Dr. Tobin.

As I rounded the corner of the house, my father took one look at my chalky face and said, “Helen, don't panic! He's alive. He's hurt, but he's alive.” Closing the back door to the station wagon, he added, “Maybe you shouldn't look at him. I have to get some cotton. I'll be right back.”

I'd never been very brave about anyone getting hurt, or seeing blood. I'd always turned away, feeling faint. But this time I made myself do it, opening the wagon door instantly. I almost wished I hadn't.

Tuck was on some beach towels that my mother had thrown down, and I saw that the gash on his head went from behind his left eye all the way to the back of his right ear. Blood was oozing from it, and the yellow hair was already matted. Tuck was shaking all over, as if freezing.

He needed me, I knew.

Climbing in beside him, I pulled one of the towels around him, then began stroking his side and belly, telling him again and again that everything would be okay. I tried not to look at his bashed head.

Having put some clothes on, my father came back with the surgical cotton and began pressing it against the wound. He asked how I was doing. He knew about the willies I always got when I saw blood. I said I was doing fine, but I wasn't at all. I thought I might faint. Yet I sur-prised myself that morning.

Stan soon relieved me, stroking Tuck while I dressed, and then we rode to the clinic, like attendants in the back of an ambulance, my mother doing the driving.

Tuck was in surgery by seven-thirty, wheeled in on a cart.

Mother and I sat anxiously in the waiting room for more than an hour, but it seemed like weeks. It wouldn't have been much worse if Stan or Luke had been stretched out on the table in there. Unable to shake the fear of Dr. Tobin coming out to say Tuck had to be put to sleep, I fidgeted and kept going to the water cooler.

Mother said, “Calm down.”

I couldn't.

Finally the doctor did come out, saying, “He's bruised mostly, and I had to do some stitchwork. He now has a crown of sutures.”

“He'll live?” I asked.

Dr. Tobin laughed heartily, which was reassuring. “Sure, he'll live. You can pick him up tomorrow. I put him under, of course. He'll be groggy for the rest of the day. I want to watch him for a while.”

Crisis over, my mother glanced at me. “Tuck is just plain lucky,” she said.

“Maybe you'll take my advice now and pen him up,” said Dr. Tobin. “He won't survive many of these.”

Next day, we picked up the patient, and aside from where his head had been shaven and the wound stitched up, he didn't look much the worse for having lost to a car bumper. He was limping, though, because of bruises, and Dr. Tobin said to let him set his own rate of recovery. He was still very sore and tender.

T
uck did take it easy for a few days, during which time I started back to school. He went no farther than the backyard for his morning stroll, or he stayed safely in the kitchen or den. Or up in my room. He'd learned his les-son, we all thought. No more tours over to Denham or Wickenham; no more going to the park by himself, or visiting Mr. Ishihara, crossing the streets.

Tuck, however, always had other ideas.

On Sunday morning he apparently felt well enough to jump the fence and take his usual prowl of the neighborhood, even with the black curlicue stitch ends still crowning his stubborn head. One minute he was safely out in the yard, sniffing around, and the next he was gone. He departed while my mother was fixing waffle batter. She just happened to see that flag of yellow tail fly over the fence.

Next thing I knew, my father was shaking me awake, none too kindly, and telling me to go find my dumb dog.

I found him, all right, ambling without concern along Wickenham, as if cars had never been invented, as if he didn't have an ugly scar on his half-bald head. I scolded him, but he stood there looking at me with those useless eyes, his tail wagging.

What was I to do? Hit him for something he'd been doing all his life? I couldn't. But that short Sunday jour-ney surely cost Tuck his freedom.

My father was waiting with a long rope when we came home, and he said, “Helen, I've had all the scares this week that I'm going to have. And, believe me, we're not going to make a practice of visiting Dr. Tobin every few days. Tuck will stay in this yard whether he likes it or not.”

Tuck had never been on a rope. I said, “It'll kill his spirit.”

“Better to kill his spirit than to have him kill himself in the streets. Right?”

Yes, that was right.

He'd already tied the rope to a clasp, and that was snapped to Tuck's collar. The other end of the rope was tied to a water pipe that ran around the base of the house.

I said, “Can't we make the fence higher, Daddy?”

He shot back, “No,” and stomped off.

He seemed to be angry with both of us, but my mother said, a few minutes later, that he was just frustrated. He was truly worried about Tuck's safety.

I stayed out a little longer and watched Tuck as he
encountered the new enemy. He couldn't see what this was for, but he certainly felt it. Walking to the end of the rope, he was suddenly stopped, with a jar. He turned, as if trying to figure out what was holding him, then barked at it.

I went to him and tried to explain. But how do you tell a dog that something is being done for his own good, especially a dog that looks at you out of dead eyes?

I was now beginning to understand what Dr. Tobin had been talking about.

After breakfast, I watched Tuck for a while from the kitchen window. He was like the tigers at the zoo, pacing and pacing. He'd go to the full length of the rope, only to be jerked back. Then he'd pull against the enemy, his strong front legs braced against the ground.

Unable to stand it any longer, I finally went out and took him off the rope and up to my room.

Seeing us troop up the stairs, my mother advised, “He's got to learn, Helen.”

“He doesn't have to do it all in one day, though, does he?”

“He'll be alone here tomorrow,” she reminded.

In the morning, after Tuck was put back on the rope, one by one we all went off, my father first.

My school, Montclair Elementary, was less than a mile away, and I usually departed last, walking it each day. I made certain that Tuck's water bowl was full because Septembers in Southern California are nearly always hot. Then I knelt by him to hug him and tell him to be good; I'd be back soon.

Throughout much of the day, I worried about him and then ran straight home—to be greeted in the backyard by Friar Tuck,
off his rope.
Only a few frayed feet remained on his collar. He'd chewed through it.

Though I did talk to him about it, there wasn't much use in scolding him, shaking a piece of rope at him, or yelling that he was a bad dog.

Instead, I got a snack of oatmeal cookies, which he dearly loved, and off we went to the park.

On the way home, I stopped by Ledbetter's, and Mr. Ishihara volunteered that Tuck had paid him a visit in midmorning, dragging that short length of rope. “I didn't take it off, so you'd know he chewed through it.”

“We put him on it yesterday. We had to do something.”

Mr. Ishihara knew all about Tuck's collision with the car. “Maybe you'll have to keep him inside every day until you come home.”

“He wouldn't like that.”

“Maybe he must learn to like it. Be positive with him.” Mr. Ishihara was beginning to sound like my mother.

I didn't have to tell my father that night that Tuck had mangled the rope. It was all too evident. I also admitted that he'd gone over to Rosemont and Ledbetter's.

“Well, he'll now lose another privilege,” my father said, with stony intent.

Tuck would now have to spend most of the day locked up in the house, to which he'd never been confined. And that meant he should have a long walk before I went off to school. So I set the clock-radio alarm for a quarter to six.

Never one to jump eagerly out of bed and greet the sunrise with a smile, I remember I struggled up and dressed in a daze the next morning. It was still dark outside, which made no difference to Tuck, of course. He sat on my bedside rug, staring anxiously in whatever direction I went, sensing he was about to have a treat.

My room was next to my parents’ bedroom, and Father appeared in the doorway in his polka-dot pajamas, blowsy and frowning and blinking. “Helen, what are you doing?” he asked.

“I'm taking Tuck for a walk.”

“At this hour?”

“Somebody has to do it,” I said heroically.

He went away, and I heard him grumbling to himself, “It's still dark out there. She shouldn't be walking the street.”

Then I heard my mother soothing him. “Tony, come on back to bed. You've got another half hour.”

“Thanks,” he said.

I went downstairs and out. The morning paper hadn't even been delivered.

Again that night, my father complained about my walking Tuck in the darkness and now would not let me go out until after daylight, cutting the time we had for his exercise.

Then, on Thursday, I came home to complete disaster.

Walking up the driveway, I always yelled, like my father and his beeps, letting Tuck know I was home, so he could stop sinning. Then he'd run to the back door from wherever he was inside, and wait, tail waving.

That day his tail wagged vigorously all right but I
knew something was wrong the moment the door swung open. He'd sinned. Splinters of wood were all over the floor. He'd tried to chew his way out. Chunks of wood had been torn from the back of the door. Teeth marks were also on the door handle where he'd tried to open it. Splinters were on the sill and floor by the kitchen window.

Tuck had been a one-dog wrecking party while I was in school.

I talked to him, telling him that he'd done something very bad, but I still couldn't bring myself to hit him, though I wanted to. Waiting to be walked, tongue hanging out, he sat there looking at me with those sightless eyes. I had to pity him.

Tears of helplessness leaked out of my own eyes as I swept up the debris. A lot of damage had been done, and I dreaded having my mother walk in; even more, my father. I decided not to take Tuck out and to await our fate.

An hour later, Mother, a bag of groceries in her arms, surveyed all the destruction and said, “Oh, Lordy.” She sat down weakly at the kitchen table and said to Tuck, “What'll we do with you?”

I thought she might be furious with him, but she seemed to feel more the way I did—just helpless.

My father was angry for a moment or two but also ended up shaking his head in despair.

I offered to pay for all the damage, but he just groaned.

However, on Saturday, Father installed thirty feet of heavy steel chain, attaching it to the foundation of the house. I saw him testing it, heaving back on it, and it was
plain that a twoton Percheron would have trouble with it.

Tuck was stopped.

I passed my mother in the downstairs hallway that gloomy morning and said, “I hate that chain already.”

She answered calmly, “We're not in love with it either. It's necessary, Helen.”

The rope had been bad enough, but now to have Tuck shackled to steel was almost more than I could bear, or watch, despite all the problems.

Day after day, Tuck fought back. He went to the chain's full length and pulled against it, as if he were pulling a sled. Or he'd turn the other way, rearing on his hind legs the way a wild stallion fights a rope in a corral. He would try to pull the choke collar from his neck, over his head and ears. The fur around his neck was being worn off.

Failing to break the chain or get loose from it, he paced in a long, tight oval, wearing the grass away. Though Tuck himself never made a sound, we could hear the clanking of the chain from inside the house and knew that Tuck was waging his lonely battle. Within a month, not a blade of grass was growing where he paced.

It was terrible to watch and hear. When I was home, I walked him for hours, just to keep him off the hated chain. I kept up walking him every morning before school; then after school, I'd run straight home and have him off the chain within a few minutes, sometimes not even going to the bathroom. My mind wasn't on school or books, and my grades, which had always been good, began to slip.

Other inner things were happening to me, I guess.
Even my brothers were worried, I suppose. Stan said, “Hey, Sis, you don't whistle anymore. I miss it.” They'd always been the first ones to hassle me about the tweeting.

One evening just before Thanksgiving, when my brothers weren't around, my parents sat down to talk to me about a lot of things, mainly Tuck and myself. They talked about school and my grades; then they talked about my health. Finally my father said, “Helen, maybe we should seriously think about what Dr. Tobin said, about giving Tuck to the university at Davis. He's more than any of us can handle now …”

Stricken with grief, I ran from the room. My best defense now was to run.

Then, just before Christmas, I was in the den. There was a half-written letter on the desk from my mother to my grandmother, back in North Carolina. I read some of it:

I didn't read any more.

It was raining hard that chill afternoon but I decided
to take Tuck for a walk anyway. After I got a half block from 911 West Cheltenham, I repeated to Tuck that I'd never let
anyone
take him to Davis or any other place like that. Nor would I ever let anyone put him to sleep. The two of us would be long gone before that happened. Just where, I didn't know.