THE ROCK, THE RIPPLE, AND THE
RIVER.
BOOK ONE: THE ROCK
Prologue
This is a love story.
And like all great love stories it’s
a tale of a journey against all odds, fraught with danger and full of magical
encounters and adventures. Of a love that travelled thousands and
thousands of miles across 16 lands through forests, mountains, swamps, and
flatlands in hellish heat, arctic cold, and savage storms.
But this isn’t your typical love
story. There are no fair maidens, no knights in shining armor –
just a cast of unlikely characters on an extraordinary journey. Nor does
this story end happily ever after. But oh, what a glorious journey it
was.
It didn’t begin as a love story.
It began with a dog named Malcolm......
Actually, it began with a stripper
from San Antone.
Prologue II:
Leesburg, Virgina 2009
“A
What???”
“A stripper from San Antone”, I
answered excitedly to Theresa who had left the balcony to take the empty plates
into the kitchen.
----------------
Theoretically if you go back far
enough in time you can trace the origin of everything.
I was two bottles of wine into a
perfect evening of grilled swordfish steak and her husband, Ray’s, guitar when
Theresa had asked me how our travels really began. They were one of our
host families for a few nights as we passed through the Washington DC area.
Hudson and Murphy, my trusty travel
companions known endearingly as The Fuzzybutts, and I were hiking a contiguous
trail system from Pittsburgh to the nation’s capital some 315 miles of a low
grade, nicely manicured pathway that is part of the Rails to Trails
network.
At that point we were on the second
stretch known as the C & O towpath that ran right between the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal, used years ago to run coal up to Maryland, and the Potomac
River. It had been in disuse for well over a century and the lock houses
and gates are now mostly in ruins. And the waterway that once was the
Canal is now pestilent and pea porridge green that smells of swamp stink and
host to mosquitoes the size of sparrows.
Still, so much history and beauty we
had found on the trail but it was nice to be out of our tent for a few nights
and with such kind and gracious hosts.
----------------
Initially, I answered, as I had so
many times over the roughly 1,700 miles we had trekked up to that point and to
so many hosts and kind strangers we had met along the way, that our story began
with Malcolm, a Great Pyrenees I lost to metastatic bone cancer in 2006.
I think Theresa sensed there was more
to it so she pressed. “No, I mean, how did it really begin?”
And that’s when it hit me like one of
the super-sized semi-trailer tractor trucks that almost plowed into us on the
road pretty much weekly. On a good week.
“Oh. OH.”
I shook my head in startling
realization as I hadn’t really thought about it. Not in any of the months
since we left Austin, Texas in March 2008 or the many miles we had logged
since, because moving forward doesn’t lend itself to looking backwards.
But I was thoroughly enjoying the
company and our conversation and it seemed like the right night to
reflect. I stroked the big wedge shaped heads of the Fuzzybutts sprawled
out next to me on the deck, poured myself another glass of wine, and began
regaling Ray and Theresa with how our story really began.
----------------
Lindsey was an exotic dancer from San
Antonio, Texas. She was a woman of exceptional beauty and intelligence
with a biting wit to boot and we took off the second we met. But we were
like two brilliant stars that, when brought too closely together, they collapse
and although our affair was brief, Lindsey and I remained friends throughout
the years.
In the fall of 1997 I received a call
from Lindsey and true to her nature, she got straight to the point the second I
answered the phone.
“Do you want a dog?” she asked
impatiently borderline impudently.
But I answered in my usual fatuous
way with her, “Why, what’s wrong with it?”
She went on to tell me some crazy
story about how she and her sister while taking a trip into the hill country
found these cute puppies and they both got one but her sister wasn’t taking
care of it or something to that effect. Just listening to it was
exhausting and it sounded complicated to me so I asked if I could think it over.
“Nope need an answer now”, she
replied tersely, as though I was merely one on a long list of prospective
takers and she had no time to court me.
----------------
At the time I was living with my
brother in Castroville, a small Alsatian bedroom community southwest of San
Antonio, and even though we had an entire acre fenced in, the truth is I didn’t
want a dog. I’ve always lived the ‘work-hard, play-hard’ lifestyle and my
many passions consumed just about every spare second I had.
Plus, I’d never had a dog in my adult
life and had no desire to start then and there. Add that to the fact I
was in school pursuing a BBA and had little time for anything else. It
was at that point in the conversation my mind had already begun constructing a
spreadsheet with a cost versus benefit analysis when something inside of me
spoke, I swear unconsciously and unwillingly.
“Okay.”
----------------
Such a simple decision made in a
flash of a second would ultimately send shockwaves across time touching
thousands and thousands of people throughout the world. It was a decision
that would nearly cost me my life but restore my faith, and it was a decision
that would change me forever.
THE ROCK: CHAPTER ONE
:
I Don’t Even Like Dogs
August 2009. Oldtown, Maryland.
Gerry, a retired white bearded
postman whom I had only just met earlier in the day, sat across from me on his
two-sectional sofa. He regarded me intensely yet curiously like a bug on
a rock as either an entomologist bent on studying it would. Or a madman
intent on squashing it.
There was a looming, uncertain
feeling in the late night air that made me a tad edgy. His wife, Bettie,
the only certified animal rehabilitation rescuer in western Maryland - and the
only reason I was there in their house that evening, had retired earlier
leaving only me and him watching TV on the couch.
But I was regarding him equally as I
had done so with dozens of strangers before him.
Engage and smile graciously.
Then disengage but don’t seem confrontational or discourteous. It’s a
survival strategy you learn to hone on the road staying in unfamiliar houses
and with hosts utterly unknown to you but no matter how skilled you think
you’ve become in survival, you’re never entirely certain you’ve mastered it.
When you’re on the road, you see, you
never let your guard down. And you never let anyone around you know it.
The TV was dialed into some BBC
thriller Gerry was raving about earlier in the evening that involved serial
killers. Great. That’s exactly what I wanted to watch while surrounded by
dozens of venomous snakes. As part of Bettie’s wildlife rescue efforts
she had saved rattlers, copperheads, and a whole host of other lethal reptiles
that were encaged in their living room plus one evil prairie dog in our spare
guest room hell bent on breaking loose and putting the hurt on me, Hudson and
Murphy, gnashing us to the bone.
What the hell am I doing here when I
could just as easily be camping out on the C & O towpath as we had done
hundreds of nights before?
And then, after many uncomfortable
commercial breaks, Gerry spoke.
“You’re not at all what I expected”.
Honestly, I wasn’t surprised at all
that these were his first singular utterances to me nor taken aback by the
apparent effrontery. By that time, I was kind of used to it. Most
people I’d met on our journey had prior expectations and a mental image of what
this ‘Man’ who had sold his stuff and started walking cross county should look,
sound, and seem like - A super human genetic hybrid between Bear Grylls and
Gandhi.
The folks in Bowling Green, Kentucky
even asked me if I drank beer. I still laugh at that. It was like I was made into the myth
that William Wallace was in Braveheart, a ten foot tall giant who shot
lightning bolts from his eyes and fireballs from his arse.
I was about to launch into the ‘Aww,
shucks I’m just a southern boy’ speech when Gerry interrupted my thoughts and
continued his.
“No, I mean, you’re like a normal guy.
I was expecting a vegan, PETA card carrying, animal rights zealot doo-dad.”
‘Heh’, I laughed under my breath and
thought to myself. You don’t even know. I never even used
to like dogs.
----------
That’s not entirely correct but it is
technically and my love of and devotion to dogs developed despite my
upbringing, shit, despite me and not because of it.
----------
Belton, Texas.
Growing up, like most normal boys, I
had a whole host of creatures I called pets whether furry, scaly, slimy, or
feathered at one time or another - from box turtles to lizards, tarantulas,
gerbils, scorpions, and even a ball python. But our household was home to
the softer, more mammalian and snuggly kind, too.
There was a Siamese cat we had,
Papanicolaou, named so by my mother after the doctor who developed the Pap
smear for reasons to this day that still elude me and remain
inexplicable. Then there was Wally, a ghostly white cat with
extraordinary hunting abilities.
Jenny, true to the black lab breed,
was just about the sweetest dog I ever did meet. Loyal and full of love, I
think I drew a picture of her once in grade school. But man, her noxious
farts would disperse a room full of my friends in 0.2 seconds like tear gas and
a flashbang and that’s the lone, lasting memory I really have of her.
Sure, my younger years were replete
with pets of all sorts, but not necessarily a love for them. They were all
well-kept and cared for in the Robinson household but they were always in the
backdrop of our daily lives. I cannot recall one single vacation we took
as a family where any of our dogs came with us.
Reflecting on it now, it seems the
animals in and out of our lives were playthings meant to preoccupy me and my
three brothers and for my parents as filler to float the holes in their
marriage. As I am older now, and though a bit wiser and longer on in the
years, why companion animals sometimes become surrogates to our personal
disappointments and stand-in symbols for something darker still remains a
mystery to me.
I grew up in the Deep South where
animals were treated like chattel: Bought, sold, traded, or discarded like farm
implements or any other piece of property.
----------
When Lindsey called me that fateful
day asking me if I wanted a dog I should have never let my guard down.
Why I did is a question that still
haunts me.
--------
“There is no greater glory than a
good piece of wood in hand, the path underfoot, your dogs at your side and the
call of the wild leading you on.”
How many years it took to earn the right to write those words...
--------
There are many reasons I could offer up as to 'Why' I initially didn't want
Malcolm in my life like I had no compelling need or even the slightest desire
to have a dog. Or I was busy in business school and my upbringing just
didn't lend itself to a loving nature towards companion animals.
But
this isn't a fluff piece. I am writing this with the purist of intentions
like scientists trying to understand something unquantifiable and seemingly,
eternally elusive. The thing that keeps them up late at night in the lab,
calibrating, testing, and toiling then recalibrating, retesting, and toiling is
the same thing that keeps me up late at night.
Only we use different instruments.
This book is my microscope, the focal point of which
is aimed squarely into the depths of my soul and the lens I chose for it, the
lens I use isn't either refracting or reflecting, it's a piercing one.
--------
Inglorious
(sic) Basterd
The truth is I've always been a self
centered, singularly absorbed, solipsistic sumbitch hyper focused on myself,
something that's taken me a long time to understand and accept.
It wasn’t my fault but hell, I was having fun in my twenties and I had no
interest in being encumbered. I was exceedingly well educated, rakishly
handsome, dapperly dressed, dating models, and in an upward spiral to what I
thought was my destiny.
And then everything changed. Not immediately. Nothing ever does.
--------
But even after I had Malcolm for a couple of years I still wasn’t what you
would consider a dog lover. I didn’t go to parks to meet other dog people
and whenever we were out for a stroll and happened upon one of them I hurried by.
They creeped me out kinda like the
cheerleader and beauty pageant moms of the south who live fanatically and
vicariously through their kids. Think Toddlers
and Tiaras. I won't even mention the other one.
I felt uncomfortable being around dog people, you know the ones who talk all
about the color, consistency and regularity of poop like a carat rating then
hit you up with play dates? I had absolutely no interest in discussing
Malcolm’s bowel movements with complete strangers or hearing how special their
little snowflake was. It’s like they lived in this one-dimensional
universe and I was a stranger in their strange land.
A girlfriend once goaded me into
going to some sort of dog event up in the hill country and it didn’t do
anything for me. I wasn’t interested in talking to anyone there so I
found a secluded patch of flat grass far away from the others and just hung out
with Malcolm.
I didn't know if I was protecting
myself from them or protecting him.
Whatever, I wanted no part of it, which,
in the grand scheme of things is a cosmic irony why I was picked for this
mission.
-----------
Of Metaphysics and Men
Noone likes being under the scope but it's a responsibility some must bear.
John Donne famously wrote, "No man is an island in of himself".
It's a quote that's almost always abused and misused.
He should've written instead,
"We are all rocks part of a great mountain. Some of us choose to be
pebbles, some cobblestones, and others gigantic boulders. But we are all,
each and everyone of us, part of it."
Though I studied Donne and Johnson
and all the rest in a 17th century literature class in college, I had no idea
what any of that meant at the time and even if I did, I could have never
predicted nor been prepared for that one day back in 1997 in Castroville, Texas
when I got the call from Lindsey.
--------
Unexpectedly, unwillingly, and definitely undeservedly, I became part of
something bigger than me back then.
Malcolm became the rock that I broke myself against.
--------
THE ROCK: CHAPTER TWO
The Gospel According to Malcolm
“Look to the rock from which you were
cut and the quarry from which you were hewn.”
Isaiah
51:1
--------
Malcolm was all of a few months old
when I met him for the first time back in 1997 and he didn’t seem like much of
a rock to me. More like a powdered cream pastry or a lump of Crabapple
blossoms freshly blown from a tree. Or the thing that sat atop Albert
Einstein’s head well after he was a genius. I didn’t know what to
think of him.
Malcolm, though nameless to me then,
had kind, curious and unexpected eyes that drew me in. But what I
couldn’t see at the time was a stoic and ancient story behind those eyes and
that the white and innocent fluffiness of the Great Pyrenees belies an intense
and fierce nature.
While their exact origins are
uncertain, it’s widely believed that Pyrenees date back to 1,000 BCE and is one
of the oldest pure breeds still extant. They hail from the mountain range
that bears their name and were born and bred by Basque farmers to protect their
livestock from wolves, a job they performed then and now expertly.
I didn’t know any of this when I
stared at him in the back of my Nissan Pathfinder, still ambivalent and
wondering what in the hell I had gotten myself into. Picturing it now,
the contrast was stark; his small, wobbly body all alone in the rear of my
empty and capacious SUV. I wonder if he was as unsure as I was about the
arrangement but what I did know, I had to eat and since I was in Austin that
morning that meant Ruta Maya.
As I was ordering a café au lait and
one of their righteous blueberry muffins I stopped mid-request and said, “No,
make that two.” After all, the lil’ feller had to eat and who wouldn’t
love a muffin in the morning? Feeling pretty damn pleased with myself and
already owning up to my new role, I fed Malcolm his half and he graciously ate
every last buttery, sugary crumb.
Yep, things we going just swell on my
drive back to Castroville when I heard a gurgling, churning sound like
something being dredged up from the bowels of hell. And then that cute
little Crabapple spewed the Ruta Maya muffin all over my SUV. Oh, but he
wasn’t done yet.
Somehow, blueberries triggered a
chain reaction that went from his fore to his aft and he squirted poop like a
Jackson Pollock painting. Only the canvas was the cloth interior of my
Pathfinder.
I once read an article about senses
having memory. How long after you hear a song can you recall the singer
and album? When do you forget the name of the person you just met?
What scientists found is smell has the longest and most eternal of memories.
Case in point. You’ll never
forget the acrid, eye watering, migraine inducing smell of a skunk after your
first introduction. And til the day I die, I’ll never lose the memory of
what happens when you combine blueberries and feces. All I could think about
while I was still trying not to swerve off of I-35 was the scene from Stephen
King’s movie Stand By Me about blueberry pies and the state fair.
I pulled off the interstate at the
nearest rest stop and, after cranking out every single paper towel from the
dented, rusty, dispenser, cleaned up the mess Malcolm had made.
Surprisingly, given my upbringing, I wasn’t mad or mean to him. I just
went about it, cleaning the truck as best I could. But I couldn’t help
wondering if I made the wrong choice not only for me but for Malcolm,
too. After all, I had just fed him something that clearly was
disagreeable to his digestive system and it had become apparent I had no idea
what I was doing.
We were somewhere around New
Braunfels and the Canyon Lake exit, about the halfway point to Castroville, and
I was wrestling with myself. I should just take him back.
But I didn't. I slid into the
driver's seat, put the gear into drive and headed down south on the freeway.
All I could think was, “This is going to be a long trip home.”
Some fifteen years later, and we're
still so far away.
--------
Arriving in Castroville for the first
time, full of fear and fully unaware of what was in store for me and Malcolm, I
had no idea where to begin. After I let him romp and stomp around our
acre of fenced in backyard, I took him into our solarium, and there we sat nose
to snout regarding each other, both of us unsure what came next.
Talking to the little tyke seemed like
as good as any place to start so I began.
“These are the rules of my
house and if you respect them, I’ll respect you.”
And then I enumerated them for him.
(1) No chewing on anything that isn’t previously designated as ‘chewable’, (2)
No interrupting me when I am working, (3) You’ll only speak when spoken to… and
the list went on and on.
With his big brown eyes open wide and
a sweet smile, Malcolm appeared to listen attentively and agreeably, which I
assumed we had reached a meeting of the minds.
I nodded my head, got up and patted
his. “Good talk”. Whew, that part was over and our ‘contract’ was
signed, sealed, and delivered. “You see”, I thought to myself, “It ain’t
that tough”.
The ink wasn’t even dry before
Malcolm ate the contract and pooped it out into my Cole Haan loafers. And
over the coming weeks he set about, like the Tasmanian Devil, to destroy
everything I held sacred. He peed on an antique edition of Grey’s
Anatomy passed on to me from my father.
And after I had passed out from a
long day, my clothes draped over the nearest chair on the way down, I awoke to
the horror to find my Hermes tie, a gift from my girlfriend, severed and all
slobbery in the little rat bastard’s mouth.
And he was shitty about it,
too, and he knew it!. He was like, “Thanks. I
needed a new chew toy”. And every time he pissed in the house and by this
time, no square foot had been spared, he looked up at me all innocent like,
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I do something wrong? Was that something you
treasured?” And then he cranked up the nozzle a few notches.
I mean, come on, do dogs have four
bladders like cows have stomachs?
But it wasn’t Malcolm’s fault.
The truth is he was untrained. And so was I. You see, I had a
preconceived notion based on my upbringing of how to raise a dog but it wasn’t
long before I had to accept the reality that I was way in over my head. I
purchased a few books on Pyrenees and the experts described the breed as
‘independent’ but I became to understand that as a Texas euphemism for
‘stubborn sumbitches’.
But I was too.
Indeed Malcolm and me became a
perfect study in what happens when an immovable object meets and unstoppable
force.
But the old model on which I was
raised of ‘establish dominance and punish unruly behavior’ just wasn’t
working. It was will against will and that just made it worse.
It would have been somewhat tolerable
I suppose if he showed the slightest shred of gratitude. He had a good
life at our humble little abode in our small Alsatian community and he wanted
for nothing.
I’ve never needed much by way of
affection in life but there’s nothing like a good snuggle every now and then
but Malcolm wanted no part of it. I’d have to wrestle him up on the couch
for it and, at times, he’d relent for five minutes, tolerate me, then jump
right down and be on his way with a “KThnxbye”. And that damn near drove
me daffy.
Nope, Malcolm was too cool for that.
Thinking about him now, he was a
man’s dog. Hell, he slept like Superman and pissed like Steve
McQueen.
There was a tiled corridor from the
den to the solarium where he slept most nights and he would face the wall with
his right paw extended, almost touching it and his left tucked in.
Malcolm’s legs would be stretched far, far out which made him look like The Man
of Steel flying, only in the old, old movies when the first word of the term
'special effects' was more exact and telling than the second.
He slept differently and he peed
differently, too. Or unlike any of the male dogs I grew up around.
He didn’t hike it but he didn’t squat like a girl either. Rather, Malcolm
planted all fours squarely on the ground and arched his legs like mounting a
motorcycle with a certain machismo that would’ve made the King of Cool smile.
It was fascinating, albeit foreign to
someone like me, to behold Malcolm.
But still we struggled. I
didn’t know what the hell I was doing and everything I tried seemed to end in
utter failure. There was a chasm between us that I ultimately deemed
unbridgeable. Despondent and downright convinced I was utterly incapable
of caring for Malcolm, I called Lindsey and tried to give him back. True
to her nature, she said, “No”, and then promptly hung up the phone.
--------
And then a miracle happened.
--------
The term ‘Miracle’ can have many
meanings especially when you’re talking about a puppy; the first pee on
newspaper, the first poop outside or when it’s a Pyrenees, the first paw.
But for me and Malcolm it meant
blankets.
I’ve had chronic back pain most of my
adult life due to an injury sustained on a job and then a subsequent car crash
in Corpus Christi when, on my way to a deep sea fishing expedition, a
Dodge Ram driving 50 MPH slammed into my rear end rupturing a disc.
For as long as I can recall, beds
made it worse but couches made it tolerable.
Back in Castroville, I slept on the
living room sofa while Malcolm was asleep all Superman style on the cold
corridor tile, and even though we were close in proximity we still seemed
worlds apart.
--------
Then one morning, after what must've
been a fitful night, I awoke and found Malcolm sleeping not in the tiled
hallway but right next to my couch.
“Why hasn’t he done that before”, I
wondered? And then I realized that at some point my blanket had partially
slipped off me onto the floor upon which he lay.
I tested that hypothesis the very
next night.
After I retired to the couch, I
deliberately took half my blanket and draped over me and the other onto the
floor and closed my eyes pretend like.
Moments later, sure enough, Malcolm
plopped himself down onto the blankets and fell soundly asleep.
It wasn’t my notion of ‘snuggling’ or
even what I wanted or expected out of a puppy but that night I realized
something I’d never ever thought possible from a dog. He was trying to
communicate with me.
But about what? Are cold tiles
giving you piles? Is Timmy stuck in the town well?
Hell, I didn't know. And at the
time, he didn't even have a name.
--------
You’d think a creative type wordsmith
like me would have no problem at all naming a dog but even after months
together nothing came to mind. And it wasn’t due to lack of
diligence. I researched mythologies from around the world and the only
name I came close to was Loki, the Norse God or mischief, which seemed fitting.
.
Still, I remained uncommitted until
my brother, Mark, came into the living room one night and spoke the name
‘Malcolm’.
“That’s it”, I said without any
hesitation and up until now, I never understood why I pulled the trigger so
hastily.
To the extent of my recollection,
I’ve never known anyone or anything named Malcolm and couldn’t find any
personal, historical, emotional, or grand significance to it either.
And maybe that’s the reason.
I didn’t want this dog and maybe
giving it a name that I had no attachment to meant I could get rid of it
cleanly and easily.
Or maybe even then I had absolutely
no idea what I was up against and it was still so foreign to me.
--------
Over the coming months Malcolm would
accrue many nick names.
One of the rules I had set forth on
our first day together was I absolutely refused to ‘cutesy-tootsy baby talk’
him like girls do. Southern men just don’t do that
But Malcolm had a way of breaking
down my preconceptions and down and outright bigotry towards dogs.
One morning in our first winter
together, I was taking a long soak and he nosed the door open to the bathroom
and I started singing the ‘Rubber Ducky’ song to him but instead substituted
the name ‘Chubby Bubby’.
Other names followed; Smiley Britches
and then later on, Snow Monkey.
And I loved singing to Malcolm as he
listened to me with rapt attention, whether I sang Queensryche, Emmy Lou
Harris, or Luciano Pavarotti.
From nicknames to sing songs to
finding any and every excuse to picking up a new chew toy on my way home from
school, the little feller was growing on me.
Malcolm rarely left my side and I
his. With one exception. Church.
--------
One Saturday morning I was headed out
to worship at the Alsatian Golf Club, the only church I knew at the time. As
I suited up and strapped my bag on my shoulder, Malcolm got all excited as
though he was coming with.
“Oh, no”, I said patting his
head. “This is a man’s sport and no dog’s allowed.”
Unconvinced, he sidled up to me with
a sweet expectant look. Whether I was spent from the constant battle
between us or resigned to the inevitability, I said to the little wedge shaped
head dog, “Fine. But I’m driving the cart.”
“And don’t bark in my backswing.”
Malcolm didn’t. He turned out
to be an exceptional caddy, riding shotgun in the golf cart, spotting my errant
balls, and chasing the geese and gophers from the fairways. And although
he couldn’t keep score so good, his card always erred on my side.
--------
I think then and there on the
fairways of the old Alsatian course, I was entering into a new chapter of my
life. Malcolm had become my mate.
--------
But my naive misconception of the
true nature of our relationship almost cost Malcolm his life several times over
and I had a whole helluva lot to learn.
THE ROCK: CHAPTER 3
Inflection Point
Inflection point –
Noun.
1. Math. Point on a curve
at which the curvature changes from convex to concave or vice versa.
2. Business. A moment of
dramatic change, especially in the development of a company, industry, or
market.
3. Dog Owner. The
absolute moment at which you realize you don’t own a dog, it owns you.
--------
As I reflect back on our first six
months together, it’s still surprising that both of us made it out alive.
But me and Malcolm were now mates,
having a helluva lot of fun, mixing it up, playing golf, and side by side
twenty four seven. And we were developing a routine. As the sun
sneaked up over the Medina River that abutted our land, we’d awaken, Malcolm
stirring from the blanket beside the couch and me uncrumpling from the
two-seater I slept on that didn’t quite fit a man of my size, then head out to
the backyard and take our morning piss. Ah, what a way to start the
day.
At the time I was pursuing a business
degree and was thoroughly involved with accounting and finance type clubs but
at every study session at Calcutta’s Coffee House and at every school sponsored
event I attended, Malcolm came with. ‘I Go, He Go’ was how we rolled and
there were very few exceptions to that rule.
At one of the FMA or Eco-Finance
meetings I was chairing, I can’t recall which, I met a fellow named Eric
Gamble, a rapscallion, scraggly looking, screw-the-system sort and we became
friends. He got his rebellious bent and respect and admiration of nature
I suppose from his grandfather, the founder of Ozark water, but Eric was more
than that to me. He was a fellow dog lover and at the time, I knew very
few of them that I cared for, tolerated talking to, or even respected.
He and his striking Great Dane, Lily,
lived on 200 acres south of San Antonio, a place that became a second home to
me and Malcolm. On any given weekend, we’d go out there to romp and
stomp, pound our chests, and explore the wild and untamed. Cheese-Mo type
stuff, you know? At least I thought it was just that.
Yep it was beers for me, bitches for
him at our weekends at Patron’s Ranchito (as Eric’s place became known by me),
and by bitch I’m speaking of the most beautiful Lilith, a name that if
you understand its origins, was most aptly picked by Eric. Fawn colored
yet fiercely independent, she was the Mamasita of the little ranch and Malcolm
fell in love with her the moment they met.
One of my favorite memories is
driving up the half-mile bumpy, pot ridden, red sandy loam, unpaved drive to
Eric’s house and before I had a chance to park the Pathfinder, Malcolm leapt
out the half opened passenger seat window to greet her. Like all proper
Southern Belles, Lily asserted and like all proper Southern gentlemen, Malcolm
submitted.
And once the dance was done, they
tore off together to wallow in the nearest mud pit or livestock tank, which,
for those of you who never grew up on a farm, is like a pond but with an
indelible and unforgettable stank to it. Maybe that’s where the name came
from.
--------
Indeed, those were our salad
days.
Back then, I thought that idiomatic
expression meant just the good times, the life of Riley. I don’t know
where it came from but I recall the Shakespearean play about it
being green in judgment. And that I was.
You see, it’s easy to be mates as
Malcolm and I had become. Friendship doesn’t and shouldn’t really require
a whole lotta moving parts. Parenting does but at that time, I still
didn’t see myself as one.
So at what point does an inflection,
the inverse curve, begin? What causes it and why? For some I
suppose its love, loss, beauty, pain, tragedy, triumph, despair or
desperation.
For me it was fear. A fear I’ve
never felt before the weekend we were at El Ranchito de Patron, one sweet sunny
South Texas day.
I still recall that day with absolute
clarity. It was the day that I became a dad for the first time but it was
also the day I almost killed my son.
--------
Farmers in the deep south are pretty
unforgiving when it comes to stray dogs and they shoot them on sight, the
second the innocent and unknowing paws trespass onto their land.
--------
Not all strays are sweet natured and
innocuous, that's true. We've encountered a few predatory packs on our
travels but the 'shoot first' mentality that's pervasive down there is a
special kind of ignorance and absurdity that often ends in tragic and unnecessary
consequences.
I just didn't know it at the time.
--------
We were spending the weekend at
the Ranchito in Somerville, Texas. Eric and I were thoroughly involved in
a crazy project of some great momentary importance that I can't recall while in
the near distance, Lily and Malcolm were mixing it up, playing slap and tickle,
rolling in dead Armadillo carcasses or whatever the two of them did when we
weren't watching.
By that time, I had grown comfortable
enough leaving him off leash so long as he remained within earshot, but like a
bat using echolocation, it was a range I tested every ten minutes or so just to
be sure. Kinda like an out of water version of Marco Polo.
I must have lost track of time
because when I stopped for a sec to call out to him there was no response.
Again. And again. No hide nor hair nor fuzzybutt tail after
repeatedly calling out to Malcolm.
There are minutes that defy physics
and logic and somehow condense down into microseconds and this was one of them.
I stopped the construction job I was working on at the time and started
walking in the direction I last spotted him.
My pace became hurried, the pitch of
my voice increasingly excited and desperate, I ran to his usual haunts but he
was nowhere to be found. Frantic and half-crazed now, I scoured as much
ground as I could and still nothing but I was the limiting factor. By
then Malcolm was missing for at least half an hour which meant he could have
been 5 miles from us.
Eric had a beat up work truck that we
jumped in and tore ass along the perimeter of his property, across adjacent
country roads, up down, back, again and again searching for Malcolm. I
remember at some point I heard gunfire in the distance and my heart sank.
Plummeted actually, down to a deep
dread and desolate darkness and that day I experienced two emotions I'd never
felt so singularly affecting and utterly consuming: fear and hate.
--------
If indeed that was the gunshot that
killed my boy I would turn it on whoever fired it. I'd take their life
with as little consideration and hesitation. Even the simplest minded
person could have seen Malcolm's smile had no ferocity in it and in spending a
split second with him, sensed his gentle nature. I had all but given up
on that possibility and was hell bent on avenging him.
--------
After several hours, our search was
unsuccessful and as the twilight wasn't too far off, we returned to Eric's
house. And although the ending had already been wrought in my mind, I
called to check my voicemail messages at our home in Castroville in the off
chance Malcolm had been found and they called the number on his collar.
I remember hearing the voice of a
woman, an angel she seemed. Malcolm had wandered onto her property, a few farms
down, and she'd lured him up to her house with some treats. He was safe
she said and.... I didn't listen to the rest... and within minutes, Eric and I
were there and Malcolm and I together again.
--------
I wept quietly, privately and though
I was eternally grateful to the gods for his safe return and the Angel of
Somerville, still a silent rage seethed within me.
--------
A Great Growl was growing inside of
me and it felt both prehistoric and preternatural at the time. I’d never
been a parent before but the innate instincts of one had lain dormant inside me
that I discovered that day when I damned near lost Malcolm.
The terror I felt took me to the Dark
Side and by Dark Side, I mean being a Dog Person.
I realized just how uneducated, ill
prepared, and uninformed I was about pet parenting and I started reading
indiscriminately about Pyrenees, puppies, and about raising big dogs in
general. And it was then I learned a term I was never properly introduced to
before but became the absolute bane of my existence.
--------
Bloat
A term I previously associated with a
late night that consisted of a dozen or so Dos Equis and take out from Taco
Cabana. Like people, dogs get gassy, too, I assumed, but upon learning
for the first time bloat could lead to catastrophic and complete organ failure
and death, I was panic stricken.
For months thereafter I hadn't a
single restful night as I became obsessed with bloat. And every article I
read, website I came across, and story I learned of only compounded my
dread.
When Malcolm didn't finish his meal,
he had bloat. When he didn't have a bowel movement at his usual time of
day, dammit it was bloat. I was constantly sticking my head to his belly
listening for peristalsis, or stomach gurgling, to assure me his systems were
functioning normally.
In short order I’d gone from ‘Don’t
want dog’ to ‘He’s my mate’ to ‘Okay I’m a dad’ to “Mad dog man’. I
wasn’t a parent anymore. I was a hyper-maternalistic maniac who was
probably seriously freaking Malcolm out with my obsession over his
bowels. And all of my friends and family, too.
But my mania wasn’t just limited to
bloat. Shortly after nearly losing Malcolm, I became hell bent on
protecting him from outside threats to the point that I installed an electric
fencing system in our back yard.
Malcolm had escaped a few times
before and I couldn’t figure out how until I let him outside and hid in our sun
room until he tried it. I’d read about dogs digging holes
underneath gates, squeezing through them, or even the more athletic ones
jumping over fences but nothing like how Malcolm got loose.
Our backyard acre was enclosed by a
standard four foot high Cyclone fence and there was no way Malcolm could clear
it. Instead, he put his front paws on top then stuck his hind paws in the
first or second openings in the weave and then somehow, miraculously, threw his
fat butt over the fence in a painfully uncoordinated way.
An Olympian, surely not, nor would he
ever be invited to perform with Cirque de Soleil, but after a few rolls he got
up quite contented, dusted himself off, and tore ass down to the Medina River
to wallow in the mud.
The only solution I could come up
with back then was to electrify the top of the fence where he positioned his
front paws. I grounded a single looped wire from a system I purchased at
a local feed store that assured me the voltage was so low it would act a
deterrent only and not a detriment. But the first time I saw it in
action, Malcolm jumped straight up in the air, clearly frightened. The
look on his face I never wanted to see again and I immediately deactivated the
electric fence.
I just didn’t have enough parenting
experience how to balance enrichments and risks and to compensate for that
deficit, I suppose, I systematically started to insulate him from all external
threats. Or maybe I was protecting myself.
But it all culminated when my
girlfriend brought home a Pyrenees puppy she had rescued that day from an
irresponsible groomer. I came home late that night and she had hoped to
surprise me with him, but the second I saw the dog, I told her to start looking
for a home for him.
Unquestionably, there was no way I
was going to make Malcolm feel like he had to compete for my love nor was I
going to permit anything to breach the bond we had developed.
The dog could stay with us for a
week, I informed my girlfriend, after that, the Pyr pup had to have a new
home. I was adamant I didn’t want it, wouldn’t accept it, and damn well
couldn’t have another in my life.
--------
I couldn’t have been more wrong as
‘that dog’ would one day be known as Murphy.
--------
Author's Note: The cover art for the trilogy was brilliantly done by my dear friend Jamie. I wanted to start telling the story in 2011 after losing Murphy, it didn't happen. She's an amazing artist and here's the link to her portfolio. Thank you for shining through and if you're from Philly, you're from Philly.
