A Dog's Day

Good idea.  Sunday.  — Let’s take the dogs to their old park! David said. — A good 30 minutes from our old house.  A good 45 from the new.

David, never one for a direct route, took a northerly path to go south.      — Now a good 60 minute walk.  The northerly path took us through one of Cambridge’s big parks.  Max got excited – as he always does in the presence of his flying squirrel toy — the second his leading front paw hit the lawn.  Demanded his toy.  Too many people to also let him off his lead.  So as he tossed and swung squirrel — threw himself into the motions — from one end of the park to the other, I was the rag doll that he was pulling behind.

Crossed the path of another strong-willed dog on the way, just outside the great wall of Fenners’ Cricket Grounds.  The two of them were all Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon.  I was a member of supporting cast – hidden by the blue screen – clipped from the final cut.  The fellow at the other end of the lift strings.  The dogs looked as though they were flying in slow motion. Here, as seen by the man having the out-of-body experience, they’re all teeth.  Fur is just a color.

Now, back in old territory, suddenly new with Spring flowers, Max was a yacht, catching every cresting wave of other dogs’ scents. I was the dingy, the life-boat behind. Like a man slowly quartered, I had a mind for direction. Max peed so much, marking this new land, that he would strain to drain himself on the alternate path home.  By now, the muscles in my upper right arm and side ache as though they’ve been elasticized, pulled and sprung.  I have been his sling-shot.  He is my stone.

In the old park finally.  Three football fields in length, and each of them occupied with a game.  Polish speakers versus the Gujarati.  Urdu speakers versus the Turkish.  The Scots versus the English.  Near the tennis courts, a father and son are taking football lessons.  The kid’s especially good with his head.  But, Max loves balls; controlling him becomes a measure of using my body as his counter-weight.  My left knee joint pops.  This is my trick leg.  I should take it to birthday parties and bar mitzvahs.  It could make us money.  For the moment, however,  I’m baying like a wild dog in the light of moon.  It’s a choke collar, I don’t need.  Then, Squirrel saves me: a moment of distraction.

The path home carries us over the railroad tracks in a tube of translucent glass; its red and blue accents, gone neon in the light.  We are the metal balls of this pinball machine.  I pray that Max will not be sprung at the sight of an approaching dog.  A long arching ramp forms the glide path, but there’s also an escape fashioned of steps leading down to the street on the other side.  David makes a sensible decision.  It’s the steps; most dog owners will be on the path.  My knee feels like the boulder learning to round itself as it descends a mountain in free fall.  The pain is a passion that will not go unrequited.  Each step is a stolen kiss.

The alternate path home is eventually flat.  Urban, but uneventful.  Home-bound dogs here come to their windows to watch us pass.  We are guilty as sin – Max especially – in our desire for water.  But, no dogs bark, just as no paths are marked.  This is an unwritten law of the dog world: thou shalt not challenge those who pass without claiming your own.

The good minutes home stretch out.  Dead to the anticipation of a destination.  The alternate path brings us to the rear gates of the cemetery.  The repose of those who’ve come before us is a short-cut not unlike hypothesized worm-holes through space-time.  It lays parallel to but distant from the walled cricket field we passed earlier.  There goes foresight: wary, the dogs who come here to play simply because it is gated and walled, . . . and, because there are several great places to hide, from which to tear out barking, Surprise!  So, we take instead the route that bubbles around the homes and streets backing onto the cemetery walls.

House is a destination.  Home is a state of mind.  The dogs, freed of their leads, lay prone on the dining room floor.  Max, a priest, taking orders.  Finally, I climb the steps toward my desktop computer.  It too is a destination that goes before the remains of the day.  Were it a tree-top nest, I would be its wounded bird.