I hadn’t walked a dog since Buck died the Christmas I was sixteen, and. I should have taken his passing as a portent of more bad to come. But in the four years since Momma threatened Andrew with her scissors, things had gotten a little better. Momma knew she needed help. Our family doctor prescribed medicines to reign in her moods. But the pills left Momma numb and tired, and she was always asking to switch to something new. Andrew knew to stay out of Momma’s way. Our household had reached a tenuous accord. But now it was readying to fracture again.
I was washing Christmas dishes, scrubbing dinner plates in water so hot my steam-covered glasses kept sliding down my nose. In my ears was the snap and tear of plastic wrap as Grandma Rose covered leftovers, as well as the sound of Momma’s voice as she cooingly coaxed sickly Buck into eating scraps of turkey.
Buck should have been dead already; the veterinarian had offered to put him to sleep three days before when Momma and I had hoisted the poor dog onto the examination table, his body slumping against us like a sack of fertilizer. Even through winter gloves I could feel Buck’s hard ribs pressing through his patchy fur. “Maybe the vet’s right,” I had said to Momma, but she wouldn’t hear it. It was almost
Christmas Eve and she was not going to murder the dog that had lived with us all these years. By God, she would wait until Andrew got home so he could pay his last respects. I wondered if it was the pills Dr. Whetsel prescribed for her that were making her behave that way.
As for Andrew, we hardly saw him anymore. A senior in high school now, he attended only half the day, taking advantage of a work-credit option for students with good grades who had already met graduation requirements. At lunchtime, I’d watch out the cafeteria window as he headed off to Harman where he now worked as a supervisor at a county after-school youth program. Since September, Andrew had also been taking Freshman Composition at the college over in Elkins, which offered cheap tuition to state residents. He wanted a few credits under his belt in case that made a difference in getting a
scholarship at wherever he decided to eventually go. Back and forth he drove from one end of Seneca County to the other, crashing in the equipment utility room the nights when games ran late. He poked his head in our door only to change clothes or grab a bite of whatever I happened to be cooking. When it came time to decide what to do with Buck, Momma insisted we wait for Andrew to show--so what if that meant we wouldn’t be able to get another vet appointment till almost New Year’s? So what if when Andrew walked in the door Christmas Eve all he had done was shake Buck’s limp paw and ask why he was he leashed to the kitchen table?
kitchen because it was the only room in the house devoid of carpeting. She cataloged the poor mongrel’s infirmities, how Buck barely moved, how he seldom ate or drank. How he squirted tiny pools of diarrhea every time he coughed--until Andrew flinched at her details. I could tell he was less concerned with the dog than with being around his family so much for the next few days with no break in sight.
And so it was Momma who had taken as her holy mission to force by God or rod the life back into Buck’s bones. While Andrew taught the fine art of Etch-A-Sketching to Elizabeth in the living room and Grandma Rose and I cleaned up supper, Momma sat on the floor with her back against the stove cradling Buck’s mournful head in her lap. As her nostrils forgave Buck’s stink, her fingers pulled strips of turkey from greasy bones, carefully dropping piece after piece into Buck’s hopeful but exhausted mouth, pampering him.
Out the corner of my eye, I watched the dog chew in that funny way he had, favoring the left side of his mouth over the right ever since the family picnic when Momma had thrown a rock at him for stealing chicken and broken off one of his lower teeth.
Consistency of affection had never been her hallmark. So I didn’t find it strange that in Buck’s twilight hours she sat with him cross-legged on the linoleum, scooting turkey bits back into his maw when they slipped out the trough made by his missing tooth. With each mouthful the dog managed to swallow, Momma made a saccharine fuss as if she could stave off the inevitable through sheer force of will. I shook my head, caught Grandma shaking hers too.
“I think it’s disgusting to allow that animal in here in his condition,” she said, fastening a Tupperware lid on some leftover cornbread stuffing before setting it in the fridge.
Momma shot her a sharp look. “The vet said he had to stay warm, Mother. I was not about to let poor Buck stay out in the garage when they’re calling for snow tonight. If it weren’t for me, this dog’d be long gone by now.”
“But feeding him like that. In the kitchen. We’re all going to get whatever he’s got.” “He’s not contagious, Mother.”
“I don’t know about that,” muttered Grandma Rose, squeezing by me at the sink. She grabbed a soapy sponge then turned back to Momma. “Next thing we know, Katie, you’ll be chewing it for him.”
I nearly dropped a cake plate as I stifled a chuckle. Momma threw a Medusa glance my way, then reached for a tinfoil boat filled with more boney scraps of turkey.
“I am the only thing keeping Buck’s old carcass together,” she said. “Just like with everything. You and Allison don’t have to help me, but I could really do without the smart remarks.” Momma dropped another piece of meat for Buck to languidly chew. It was true; the dog did look better despite his shabby coat and sightless eyes. “I should be praised, not condemned,” Momma snorted.
Encouraged by Buck’s appetite, Momma began to coax him with larger scraps. “See what a mother’s love can do?” She rubbed her greasy fingers over Buck’s fur, patted his head.
“Oh, Katie, don’t sound so hurt,” Grandma Rose said as she scrubbed the dining table.
“Your problem is that you never liked dogs,” said Momma. “Not even old Inky, who you let run away from me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Grandma. “And his name was Blackie, not Inky.” “It was not!” argued Momma. “He was called Inky and I know because I named him.” She stuffed another wad of turkey down Buck’s snout. The dog chewed frantically, trying hard to keep up. “I found him in the field by the swinging bridge and brought him home and--”
“--and you and your brother Neil got him so excited he peed on the rug,” finished Grandma Rose. “Yes, I recall the incident. I never did get that stain out.”
“You never loved him,” Momma said. “I practically had to beat you over the head to let me keep him.”
“That’s not true,” Grandma countered. She took a can of Maxwell House out of the cupboard and began to make coffee. “I remember setting my basket of laundry down after Blackie’s accident...”
“Inky!”
“Whatever. After that hyperactive little dog peed on the floor, I distinctly remember setting down my laundry and saying, ‘Well, I guess we’ll have to keep him. Looks like he’s done marked his territory.’ And I was as good as my word--”
“Until you left the back gate open and he ran off.” Momma was so angry now she wasn’t even bothering to tear off chunks of meat with her fingers; she simply held a boney piece of turkey carcass against Buck’s muzzle, hoping he’d what--chew his way through?
“He never run off,” Grandma said as she flipped on the percolator then returned to her chair. “That dog was the one thing I could call my own and you never liked him,” maintained Momma. She grabbed another wad of turkey from the tinfoil boat and crammed it past Buck’s teeth. “Neil was the only other one who ever gave a hoot about him, and now they’re both gone.” And that’s when I heard the first gurgle escape Buck’s throat. Past the haze of dishwater steam it rose.
“Shit!” Momma yelled as Buck began to frantically hack, trying to free himself of the piece of carcass he was choking on. “Get him some water!”
I scrambled to fill a glass from the faucet. “He okay?”
Buck pushed against her Momma’s chest with his paws. “He can’t breath!” Momma screamed. “Try the Heidnick maneuver,” offered Grandma, not moving from her chair.
“He’s a goddamn dog!” Momma said as she wedged Buck in a headlock and tried to yank the carcass free. Her fingers fought past his teeth, trying to grip a trail of turkey that disappeared down his throat. I held the glass of water dumbly in the air.
Just then, Elizabeth and Andrew skidded into the kitchen, alerted by the noise. Elizabeth’s eyes grew wide, and Andrew’s jaw dropped to the floor. “Get that child out of here!” screamed Momma. In one quick swoop, Andrew heaved the five-year-old into the air and raced her back to the living room.
“Help me lift Buck!” Momma ordered.
I sat the glass on the table, crouched down, and hoisted the dog against Momma’s chest. With a knotted double fist, Momma pounded the dog’s heaving stomach. Buck shook violently in her arms, knocking her back against the stove. His splayed legs drummed the floor like a victim of a grand mal while bits of chewed turkey slid past his broken tooth, pooling in Momma’s lap and piddling on the floor. Finally Buck’s eyes rolled back, fixing on a spot above our heads, past the kitchen cabinets and the stark glow of the fluorescent light fixture and straight into his spot in doggy heaven.
Buck stopped. My heart froze. Momma leaned over the dog’s motionless body and tried one last time to pull the piece of the turkey carcass from his mouth. “He dead yet?” asked Grandma, rising to get a cup of coffee. “Check his pulse,” she suggested.
Momma gave her the old hairy eyeball. “He’s a dog. How the hell do I check his pulse?”
She worked her fingers deeper into Buck’s throat, unable to give up hope. But both Grandma and I knew in our hearts that nothing could lie on the floor like that, eyes unfocused and glazed over, and still be alive.
Momma gave a final tug, and Buck’s head lolled towards her, then snapped back as the choking bone pulled free. In silence I watched her extract from Buck’s mouth a long, gristly piece of meat. Buck lay motionless on the floor. Pink liquid oozed from his nose and mouth; an odor of old leaves and pent-up sickness poured out of him.
“He’s dead all right,” said Grandma Rose, covering her nose and mouth with a paper napkin. “The smell. It’s enough to make you toss your oats.” She blew on her cup of coffee and sat down at the table, scooting her chair back towards the counter as if she was afraid she might stain her shoes. “I guess it’s the hand of Fate,” she said, all matter-of-fact.
Beside me, Momma was crying. A mixture of sorrow and contempt buoyed inside me, a hard-to- understand feeling soon overwhelmed by the rising rankness of Buck’s digestive tract. Slowly I took off my apron, wadded it into a ball and began wiping off Momma’s clothes.
“Stop it,” she said. “Just stop it. Both of you.” She leaned back against the stove and sobbed.
Should I have comforted her? Took her in my arms, offered a hug? Instead I said, “Get up, Momma. I’ll take care of it.”
“Why did this have to happen?” she asked. “Get up,” I repeated.
I rolled Buck off her and continued sopping. Momma leaned forward, untying her apron and gathering the corners in a sodden pouch that she carried to the sink. Tears streamed down her face and dripped off her chin. “What the hell am I supposed to do with him now?” she asked of no one in particular.
“You got any garbage bags?” queried Grandma Rose. Even I wanted to slug her at the callousness of the remark. Momma pretended not to hear. When she caught the disapproval in my eyes, Grandma looked away and took a long sip of her coffee.
“I was just trying to help,” Momma told us both. “Not a one of you would lift a finger to save that poor dog’s life. I try and look what it gets me. God dammit!” She grabbed a plate from the dish drain and slammed it to the floor. Earthen shards flew across the linoleum, glinting off my hands and lodging in Buck’s fur.
“Katherine Marie, you stop it now!” hollered Grandma Rose. “You ain’t making things any easier.” Grandma took her pack of Salems from the Lazy Susan on the table and tapped out a cigarette. “Crying can’t help now. It was God’s will. Him and that turkey carcass. We’ll clean up this mess and that’ll be the end of it. Just be glad that ole dog’s out of his misery. Sometimes I wish to high heaven somebody’d put me out of mine.”
“Shut up!” sobbed Momma. “Just shut up.”
Grandma stood and crossed to the counter. She took a mug from the dish drain, poured another cup of coffee and placed it in Momma’s hands.
I carried my wet apron to the sink, then returned on hands and knees with an old sponge to scrub the floor, rinsing in the mop bucket Momma sat down beside me. I tried to keep the contents of my stomach from rising; I told myself this was simply Thousand Island dressing I was wiping up, nothing more.
Andrew reappeared in the doorway--alone this time--his arrival punctuated with a loud “Jesus Christ” and a wrinkled nose. “What happened?”
“Buck’s dead,” I explained, staring up at him as he leaned against the doorjamb. “He choked.” Andrew folded his arms, didn’t offer to help. “It smells like you turned him inside out.” He twisted a loose thread on the black cardigan I gave him and sighed. “This is definitely not a Kodak moment.”
I glanced back at Momma. For a long time she’d been staring down at Buck, as if replaying his last moments in her head, and I was glad to see she had ignored Andrew’s smart remark.
But Grandma wouldn’t have it. “Andrew, why don’t you make yourself useful and find something to put him in?”
“Oh, man...”
Momma reeled back inside herself, straightened up, fixed her eyes on my brother. “Go get that box my new vacuum cleaner came in,” she told him. When Andrew made the mistake of hesitating, Momma
shot him a look and told him to hop to it. Once he’d shuffled off to get his coat, Momma shook her head and said, “He sure doesn’t seem very broken up.”
“I think he saw it coming,” I told her.
“I don’t need your lip, too,” Momma warned, and I figured if Grandma hadn’t been there her outburst would have been even worse. Maybe she would have thrown that plate at me instead of the floor. She had a cabinet full of pills Dr. Whetsel had given her. Sometimes they worked; sometimes they didn’t. And I wasn’t sure whether it was a blessing or a curse that her behavior hardly shocked us anymore.
I nudged Buck to one side and began mopping under him as Momma crossed to the pantry, opened the basement door, and took an old flowered bedsheet from a basket of dirty laundry sitting on the steps. I watched her drape the cloth over Buck so that he simply became a mound of daisy-covered hills, a make- believe landscape Elizabeth might use as a backdrop for her dolls.
“Buck deserves a decent burial,” Momma observed. She slumped into a chair. I washed my hands at the sink, turning up the water as hot as it would go.
Andrew returned with the Electrolux box and dropped it on the floor. Momma began directing him through the delicate disposal of Buck’s corpse, while Grandma blew trails of smoke into the kitchen’s overheated air. I watched Andrew avert his face as he rolled Buck into a tight bundle inside the bedsheet, peering at his handiwork through scrunched up eyes. He asked me to help, and soon the two of us were gripping the sheet from opposite ends, heaving Buck’s body into the cardboard sarcophagus. “Now what?” Andrew groaned.
“Take him out back,” Momma instructed.
But when we lifted the box, the bottom fell apart and poor Buck crashed against the kitchen floor. “Shit.” Andrew lifted the carton to relock its bottom panels.
“Watch your mouth, Mister College.” Momma plucked a cigarette from Grandma’s pack and placed the palomino filter between her lips.