The Unexpected and Fictional Career Change of Jim Kearns
After the Incident: Chapter 1
NOTE: FOR READERS WHO HAVE RECENTLY JOINED ME, A LINK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE NOVEL CAN BE FOUND AT THE END OF THIS POST.
Dazed and confused. A week into the new regime and I still had a hard time grasping my situation. Like a teenaged marine recruit at boot camp, my previous life had been stripped away and I now struggled with new, foreign values; I faced an indoctrination of sorts, with nothing but my list of labors to guide me.
I still wasn’t sure where to start. Do NOT look for a new job would be the easiest chore to tackle. I’d already done it for a while. But how long could I continue? And when I stopped, where would I be?
I had no answers, just the need to find some.
So I stood on my front porch, assessing my neighbors, knowing I’d been procrastinating, and wondering who in hell I could possibly get to know better. I hadn’t been both at home and healthy at the same time on a clement weekday in some time, and the street seemed different, not just quieter, but with the hidden implication that whatever went on behind closed doors was meant to stay behind closed doors. Like what, I couldn’t tell you — mailman dalliances, secret morphine addictions, merely the settling of dust? It didn’t matter; I found the feeling unnerving.
So where and how to begin? I could see Rose McIntyre sitting stock-still on her porch, clutching her Bible, looking back at me. In my seventeen years on the street, I’d talked to the woman one time, the summer before last, and never again. How do you go about breaking the ice when you’ve laid down that kind of chill?
But to be fair, it wasn’t just me. We’d eyed and ignored each other with equal ardor during our shared tenure on Linden Avenue, and I doubt I’d have had any dealings with her at all if it weren’t for the circuitous yarn of Rose, the kids, and Hank the wonder dog, who resides atop our piano right now in a sealed black ceramic urn. Well, either it’s Hank or the staff at the White Cross Veterinary Clinic took us for a ride, sending us the collected cigar ashes from their regular Wednesday night poker game in lieu of his remains and still charging fifty dollars for the cremation. But even if they did, it wouldn’t make much difference. When you’re a dog, all you really leave behind are droppings and memories.
And I’ll say this about old Hank: on his way to leading me to my single conversation with Rose McIntyre, he left some whoppers — memories, that is — from the moment he stepped into our house. With his wild black fur firing in all directions, he came across as the Don King of the canine world — seventy pounds of mutt flaring out into what looked like a freshly electrocuted one-hundred-pound package — and that street-dog attitude he exuded as he walked through our living room for the first time, checking me out, dismissing me, seemingly on a mission, distressed me initially.
Image number two was of the curtain of freshly mixed crepe batter dangling from his beard, already congealed into little pellets by the time Maddy and I stepped into the kitchen five minutes after the damage was done. Those lapping sounds we’d heard while filling out the paperwork hadn’t come from the water bowl we’d laid down earlier in honor of his arrival but from the mixing bowl we’d left unattended on the kitchen table while writing a check for our personal Brooklyn Bridge.
Henry (his name when not on his best behavior) still sat at the scene of the crime; seemingly unperturbed, he eyed us for a moment before discharging an enormous belch. In the background, I could hear the squeal of rubber as the Save-a-Dog agent (Save-a-Dog being the organization that bought pound dogs destined for laboratory use and found homes for them) stomped on the gas and rocketed from our front curb. Such a nice lady, I’d thought minutes earlier, devoting her life to the ethical treatment of animals — but suddenly I could imagine her laughing diabolically as she made her getaway, racing to the bank before we could issue a stop-payment.
And my other big recollection of that day, burned into my mind forever, took place an hour later, as Maddy, Hank, and I stood on the porch … and a lengthy bundle of tapeworms squirmed from his rectum. They steamed as they made contact with the frigid January air, and Maddy, positioned behind him, with her sweatshirt sleeves rolled up past her elbows, stepped on the worms’ heads (if, indeed, those were the ends exiting first) as they reached the porch floor, pushing at his flanks, hastening their departure.
I stayed up front, stroking his muzzle, trying to soothe the poor beast (who, for the moment, at least, had lost all “attitude” and stood wide-eyed, whimpering, and terrified). Only Maddy barked, with “Jesus Christ Almighty,” “Son of a fucking bitch,” and foamy spittle flying from her lips — along with the occasional wet, gagging sound as she struggled to hold down her makeshift, crepe-free breakfast — until finally we achieved total separation. She fell back, soaked and spent, on the porch floor with a coiled puddle of white, twitching worms lying before her.
“I think,” Maddy said from her prone position, “that we might have made a mistake.”
But we hadn’t. Hank never forgot our bravery, Maddy’s especially, and devoted himself to us. He kept his attitude, though; friends and relatives dropping by soon learned to bring Milk Bones or Rawhides with them, gifts of appeasement, giving them up at the door in return for a peaceful, if guarded, visit.
Over the next two years, as first Eric and then Rachel came along, Maddy and I worried about his … edge. But we needn’t have. He took his family loyalty one step further, doting over the children as if they were his own. We see this in our photo albums, with my personal favorite being the picture of him dangling two-and-a-half-year-old Rachel over our long-lost plastic froggy swimming pool, the seat of her diapers clamped between his teeth, both of them grinning hugely. Maddy prefers the shot of four-year-old Eric, decked out as a cowboy and sitting astride Wild Horse Hank — with Hank staring into the lens, his eyes flashing like two blazing buttons and his head tilted quizzically at the laughter boiling up from behind the camera.
If I came across these pictures in another family’s collection, I’d consider them pukey-cute — photo fudge. But they’re ours, so I don’t.
And his presence supplied invaluable lessons about life and how it worked — like that morning close to a decade ago when Rachel and I sat watching Mr. Rogers while Hank dozed, spread-eagled and on his back, in front of the television. When she pointed to his exposed groin and asked, “What’s that thing, Daddy?” I responded quickly and sagely. “Why that’s his number-one thingamajiggy, of course. You can’t go pee-pee without one of those.”
“Why does he lick it sometimes?”
Leaving the punchline alone was difficult: Because he can, of course. But a short, strained moment later, I gave her my best alternative response. “Well, dogs don’t have hands, sweetie, and they don’t bathe nearly as often as we do … so that’s Henry’s way of staying clean.”
She put a chubby little fist to her Cupid’s bow mouth and giggled, but right there we’d tackled a couple of issue that Mr. Rogers continually skirted.
Another time, when Eric was around seven, we stood talking by the bleachers in the soccer field up at the park. He peered around me as we yakked and said, “Hold on, Dad. Hank just took a shit.”
Never one to fully control my own potty talk, I was nevertheless shocked. I pulled a used grocery store bag from my jacket pocket and walked towards him with Eric in tow.
“You’re not supposed to say that word,” I said.
He looked up at me. “Why not? You say it plenty.”
“That’s different,” I said. “I’m an adult … and adults, for the most part, own great big dirty mouths. But kids have to wait for the right time, whenever that is.”
Somehow, though, my statement didn’t seem quite right. Then it came to me. “Until then, you can only think words like that.”
We walked in silence (obviously, Eric was thinking), reaching Hank just as he finished his task. Straightening from his kangaroo stance, he kicked back a small spray of grass and loped toward the center of the field, leaving the object of our discussion at our feet.
“Not only that,” I said, “it’s not even the right word.”
“Is too,” Eric said.
“Uhh-uhhh,” I said in rebuttal. “There’s lots of words for it.” And as I bent to scoop, the uncanny physical resemblance struck me. “In fact, what we call these guys here are Oh Henry bars.” And for a while we both bent over, studying our dog’s fresh, aromatic excrement.
With it safely cradled in the bag we walked toward the garbage bin, until Eric, with more than a hint of wonder in his voice, finally asked, “Did they name the chocolate bar after Henry’s poo?”
“You betcha,” I said, fully expecting to be questioned about Baby Ruths, Mr. Bigs, and Turkish Delights on the way home.
But all misinformation and goofiness aside, they learned the hard lessons with Hank, too, because as young as we’d got him, he’d been a true street dog. Roaming back alleys until six months of age, he’d dined on rats and restaurant refuse until first Save-a-Dog, then our family, had lucked into him, and that early life had left its toll.
Arthritic by the age of eight, riddled with skin disorders shortly thereafter, he spent his last years switching between useless homeopathic cures and poisonous steroid medication. A patchy-furred, bloated sausage of a dog by his tenth birthday, he survived his last couple of years on sheer willpower, finding consolation only in his food bowl, nap mat, and his family’s love.
We all hung on — way too long — with his last day on earth being ignoble, as many are, I suppose. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen on a warm Sunday afternoon, not mooching, just staring at nothing through his thick, milky cataracts as we ate our lunch, when his bladder suddenly cut loose, releasing a stream of blood onto the linoleum beneath him.
Maddy and I knew what this meant; I gathered him into a blanket, carried him to the car, and cradled him as Maddy drove to the clinic up on St. Clair. The kids sat in the back seat, not saying much the whole way, their brows knit, mostly reflecting. Occasionally, one would say, “Hey, remember the day he…?” Or, “He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”
Of course, he wasn’t going to be all right. Almost comatose in my arms, his head lolling to the side, I’m sure he knew where we were going and was grateful for it. After I’d delivered him to a back room in the clinic and laid him out on a gurney, Maddy and I made brief eye contact. She stayed to talk with the vet and hold Hank’s paw, and I took the kids back to reception to wait for her.
The wailing on the drive home was something to behold (and here I could insert some humor and say that Maddy and the kids weren’t so composed, either), but mostly I blubbered and leaked because of the others, having to pull over twice when their carrying on and my curtain of tears made driving impossible.
Dealing with loss is always difficult, and at that point in their lives Eric and Rachel had yet to experience its challenges. My parents, both heavy smokers, had bowed out early, with my father dying before they were born and my mother before they could get to know her; and Maddy’s parents, in their early seventies, both agile of mind and limb, cheerful almost to a fault, fully misrepresented the truth about aging.
And so, after packing away the bowls and mats and leash and toys, we endured a somber couple of hours that afternoon. Later, in no mood to cook, Maddy and I ordered pizza, but the kids didn’t wolf it down with their usual gusto. The house seemed empty and the table was quiet, with what little talk there was devoted to our missing friend/crust-disposal unit.
“So a good dog like Hank, he’d be sure to go to heaven, right?” Rachel asked, shortly after we’d sat down. This was one of her first utterances since the vet’s, and undoubtedly something she’d dwelled upon for hours.
“Absolutely, honey,” Maddy said. “He’s up there right now, looking down on us and smiling.”
“What do you think, Dad?” she asked, turning to me.
“What do I think?” I repeated.
In hindsight, I should have thought and then said; instead, I said what I thought: “I think Hank’s far happier now than he was six hours ago.”
“Yeah, but is he in heaven?” Eric chipped in, anxious for confirmation.
“Well, I can’t say for sure, because I’m not quite the same religion as your mom.”
“What religion are you?” Eric asked, scrutinizing me closely now.
“I’m agnostic.”
“What does that mean?” Rachel asked.
“It’s a synonym for schmoe,” Maddy said, horning in before I could answer, drilling me with her gaze. “It’s someone who can’t come down off his high horse, even for one minute, to offer a response that he knows to be for the far greater good.”
“What it means to me,” I said, now fully on the defensive, “is I’m not exactly sure where Hank went — maybe he went to heaven, or maybe somewhere else. But I’ll revise what I said before. I’m positive he’s far happier now than he was six hours ago.”
“Agnostic,” Rachel repeated. And at that moment, the word sounded harsh, foreign, as if it didn’t belong on her tongue.
We fell pensive again, with the pizza night sounds of gurgling soda tins and open-mouthed chewing not nearly matching their normal intensity, until, consumed with guilt, I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“Hey, y’know what, guys? After giving it a lot more thought, your mom’s right. There’s no way a dog like Hank’s not in heaven. And not only is he looking down on us, but I’ll bet he’s got a bowl of cheese-stuffed crusts in front of him right this second, ’cause he doesn’t have to worry about his weight or allergies anymore.”
“Do you think, Dad?” Rachel said, perking up substantially.
“Yes, sometimes he does,” Maddy said, smiling at me. “It just takes him more effort these days for some reason or other.”
And for a moment the eating picked up, but finally, heaven or no heaven, the children drifted off, leaving the “get-one-free” pizza untouched. It just wasn’t the same without Henry sitting between them, panting, drooling, exuding his charm and musty smell.
“Thanks,” Maddy said after they’d left and we stood side by side, wrapping leftovers.
“No need to thank me,” I said. “I was wrong and I admit it.”
“That’s why I’m thanking you,” she said. “I know how tough it can be….”
She didn’t finish the for you part of her sentence, because before I could become indignant, she started misting, trying to blink back her tears. Leaving well enough alone, I turned and held her close to me.
The atmosphere remained status quo for the following week, with emotions teetering and the children re-inquiring about Hank’s whereabouts now and again. Neither Maddy nor I had actively pitched religion in the past, doling out basic information about God and Jesus and the Bible as it arose, allowing the children to think what they wanted while trying to preach, within our own limited capabilities, fairness and integrity. So for the most part I deferred to Maddy, the less ham-fisted, more knowledgeable theologian of the two of us.
Also, with midsummer being my hectic time of the year, I’d worked late every day, including the following Saturday, and hadn’t seen the kids that much all week. So come Sunday, we’d scheduled a no-holds-barred barbeque for midafternoon, to party it up, laugh, talk, and sear whatever Eric and Rachel wanted to eat — including, in our household, the oft-maligned but rarely refused hot dog.
Come chow time, though, I couldn’t find them around the house. I poked my head out the front door, expecting to see them on the porch, stretched out on the hammock and chaise lounge, sipping drinks, reading, or bickering, but I found no one. For a second, I panicked. They hadn’t said they were going anywhere, so they should have been visible.
And that’s when, from the corner of my eye, I saw them standing on Rose McIntyre’s front porch.
Rose was a Linden Avenue original, living across the street from us and four houses to the south. In 1946, she and her husband had bid farewell to Glasgow, carted their luggage from ocean liner to train station to their new bungalow (bought sight unseen, and at that time, part of a freshly minted postwar suburb), and put down roots. A widow for years, she was matriarch to two sons, a daughter, and a host of grandchildren scattered across the continent; according to Maddy, at one time or another she’d been invited to pick up and live with almost all of them but had refused to budge.
Everything I knew about her history, I knew through Maddy; and as I crossed the street to call the kids, I contemplated the obvious: tiny, with four-feet-eight-inches stretching the tale of the tape, she weighed ninety pounds at most. Of course, when you’re in your mid-eighties, you’re subject to shrinkage, but she’d appeared that way to me since the day we’d moved into the neighborhood. She carried a small dowager’s hump beneath her ever-present cardigan, a callous built under the weight of a long life, but she bore it well. And, shuffling up and down the sidewalk on her side of the street on any day it didn’t hold snow, ice, or sub-zero temperatures, she’d always seemed to clutch a Bible in one gnarled hand — as she did that day, too.
Even at their ages, Eric and Rachel loomed over her, so she had to look around them when she sensed me coming up her walkway. But let me state beforehand, my rendering of Rose McIntyre’s accent is criminal. One can only imagine the phrasings, the machine-gun r’s, all sounding as if, five-plus decades later, they rolled off the gangplank fresh from the bonny shores of Scotland. I’m not even capable of a reasonable facsimile.
Nevertheless…
“Aye, Mrrr. Kearrrns,” she said over Eric’s shoulder. “I rrreckon yeh’ll be needin’ yehrrr two young beauties back.”
“No rush, really,” I said, stopping at her porch stairs. “I was just wondering where they were. Maddy’s got some dogs and burgers waiting for them, but they can wait on the grill for a while if you’re busy.”
“Oh yeah, the barbeque,” Eric said, excited, sounding as if the event had totally left his mind.
“Uggh. No dogs for me, thanks,” Rachel said, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeh two rrrun along then,” Rose said. She reached out, first tussling Rachel’s hair then Eric’s. “I’ll be talkin’ teh yeh laterrr.”
They said goodbye to Rose in unison, sounding much happier than I’d heard them all week, then swirled and bounded down the stairs and past me.
As I turned to follow them, Rose spoke.
“I’m sorrry aboot yerrr dog.”
I froze, my getaway nipped in the bud. It’s not that I disliked Rose McIntyre; as I said, I just didn’t know her. With my long summer hours and her low-profile winters, we never seemed to … mesh, I’d guess you’d call it.
“Yeah,” I said. “The kids took it hard. But he’d suffered enough and I think they’ve finally come to realize that what happened was for the best.”
“Aye, I think they have now. And they’ll continue to so long as yeh keep one thing in mind: yeh don’t have teh be from Missourrri to believe, yeh just have to have the need … and they had theh need.”
As I stood there, trying to make sense of her words, she smiled at me. “Off with yeh then,” she said, “orrr yeh’ll be missin’ all the good stuff.” With that, she shooshed me away with a wave of her Bible.
Of course, all the good stuff wasn’t gone, and we partied and laughed and talked, not once mentioning Hank. But we hadn’t forgotten him; I could sense his presence everywhere (including the bottom of my shoe, where the residue of one final, overlooked Oh Henry bar — his last laugh on me — graced its tread).
But as we celebrated in our backyard, truly enjoying ourselves for the first time in a week, I couldn’t help but think about Eric and Rachel’s transformation — their cure. Never having been a believer had always been part of my makeup. And I guess that’s what Rose had meant: I am from Missouri. Where’s the evidence? Show me. These are my demands. My take on it is this: in the future, the various religious leaders and biblical scholars of this world won’t prove the existence of God; nerds decked out in lab coats will swing the debate, showing our genetic capability to believe in the existence of God, pointing out the exact letters in the exact strand of DNA that allow us to soften the answers to those hard questions that grieving children ask, and to give hope to the old, the infirm, and the frightened.
Still, every once in a while I’d wondered what Rose had said to the kids to affect them in such a positive manner. Just not enough (under my own volition and at that early juncture in my quest, anyway) to make my way across the street and talk to her now.
Thank you for reading and for sharing.