Gripping the pavement with his bowed, short front paws—turned inward slightly like a furry alligator's—our four o'clock walks in the neighborhood advanced my status in the world somewhat as, three years later, would marriage. Accompanying the ancient, slow-moving but determined, jet-black and grey Scottish terrier past the houses, eventually carrying but seldom needing the day-glo orange leash, I met a 50ish mixed-race couple who walked their Beagle, "Buttercup," and passed children who would stop their play on a cold winter afternoon and call to me, earnestly like adults, "I like your dog's coat!" I still have the mackintosh plaid jacket, lovingly folded, in my bureau drawer.
One May, as we reached the end of 9th Street, I stopped and admired the raised beds, still nothing but dirt and labels, and the fetal tomato vines in their pottery cribs—all newly installed in a sunny spot on the lawn. Without being told, somehow I knew the corner house was a rental, and that a new and environmentally conscious family had moved in, personalizing the lot as one puts a framed photo or a potted violet on an office desk.
A colorful, fat plastic tricycle appeared one day, then an old-fashioned wagon on another. Once, the dad was leaning into the hatch of a car, pulling out the headboard of a bed as his daughter watched. His sturdy, hairy young thighs met the bottom of his shorts like Corinthian columns, and I briefly swooned. Finally, on a warm afternoon, we saw two little girls, on the sidewalk in the front of the house, with their mother.
Everyone investigated Jamie, and I held my breath as the tots circled him and leaned in to pat his head. Their mother seemed to be holding her breath, too, and calming herself by asking me questions about the dog. But Jamie overcame his breed characteristics and geriatric grouchiness—a gentleman from the Highlands.
In those moments the glacier of myself among others withdrew a few centimeters, and the two large city blocks themselves shrank, proportionately, as familiar faces and houses sprang from anonymity, like the thumbs of lettuce appeared in the beds, or how the yellow starbursts opened on the vines.
I was the man with a handsome dog. A character in a novel. A person on the block.
But the bag of lactated Ringer's solution we injected under the skin of Jamie's neck each night slowed down its magic, and our walks, as summer came on in fullness, grew short. One night as Gary started to slip the huge needle into him, his wasted body shivering in fear, I simply said—a bit before I was aware of meaning to—"No more."
Today, I took a different way home from the store and passed the corner property. There's a beige patch in the grass where the raised beds were, and the curtainless windows of the corner room, one facing the front and the other facing the side, gaze off like a ship's bow.
The heart numbs.
