by Jon Katz
But the rats—at least the live ones—disappeared.
Once in a while, when I took out the garbage or left the dogs behind to stroll under a full moon, Mother appeared at my side and strolled along with me. “Hey, Mother,” I said. She rarely met my gaze, but she walked along with her tail up, her eyes sweeping the darkness. I was happy to have her company.
There was life after death, it seemed. Pearl was a different kind of dog from Orson, and Mother a different kind of animal altogether.
They bolstered me, Pearl with her inexhaustible affection, Mother with her novelty, a new kind of connection to the animal world.
In retrospect, their animal natures marked the end of that darker time; they brought their own brands of comfort. If they could not replace Orson, they did show me that Orson was not the only animal that could take me outside myself.
Around that time, a message turned up on my answering machine from Lesley, the shaman. She wanted to come talk to me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Home to the Dog Star
Conventional wisdom holds that the older people get, the more sagacious they become. This has not been my experience. The older I get, the less I think I know, the less certainty I have, the more I realize how much we don’t know and will never understand.
My friend Anthony, young and filled with energy, is drawn to detailed plans; if they’re good plans—his often are—they will work, he thinks.
I’m convinced most plans are doomed, hubristic notions just waiting to unravel. Orson is the classic example, the product of my plans that failed and failed and failed.
Yet his good works on my behalf transcend death. It took me some time to see it, but I know that he’ll always be taking care of me, in one sense or another, whether he’s with me or not.
Orson reenergized my work. He reconnected me to nature, brought me to the farm, introduced me to the pleasure of other animals, led me to true friends, cracked open my consciousness, deepened my spirituality and sense of possibility. Three years ago I would have no more been yakking on the phone with a shaman than I would be playing in the NFL.
Nor would I have grasped the concept of an animal’s spirit guiding and helping me, something I now see and feel almost daily.
Orson helped me, deep into my sixth decade, to stay open, to not shut down. In many ways, that may turn out to be his greatest gift.
I’m not a shaman and I don’t wish to be; I don’t have those special qualities. But I love the stories people like Lesley bring back from some other world. I can’t say if these stories are true. I don’t measure Lesley’s every word against the literal facts; to do that is to miss the point, to blind oneself to the possibility of a greater truth. Reality is not about how Lesley learns something and when she learned it, it’s about her ability to sense what an animal might feel or know, and to translate that for people like me.
I no longer doubt that there are people with gifts I don’t have, who know things I don’t know. Lesley is one of those. After Orson’s death, Lesley took a number of “journeys” with Orson; some I requested, some occurred spontaneously.
What she learned and experienced was mesmerizing. More than anything else, I found her reports profoundly healing.
I learned early in life that it’s dangerous to show emotion, so I generally don’t; maybe I never will. Lesley understood that that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel. She saw the broken parts of me, just as she saw the broken parts of Orson. She saw what we meant to each other, how those broken parts fit together like pieces of a puzzle. She helped me to come to terms with what had happened when I couldn’t do it by myself.
Lesley had visited the farm; she’d met Orson. She knew he had problems; she knew he’d attacked and bitten several people. When we met, she hadn’t read any of my books; we hadn’t talked much about my life or my past. Yet in a short time, she had come to know me well, to understand my concerns and choices. I trusted her, something that doesn’t come easily to me.
She called herself a shaman but I thought of Lesley as an intuitive. She grasped the spirit and sense of animals—and people—better than almost anyone I’d met.
In the days before Orson’s death, I had talked to almost no one but Paula and Anthony about what I was thinking, what I had decided to do. Yet Lesley had picked up on it.
I’ll pass along what she told me. I relate the story faithfully, but I can’t say whether or not it’s true. You’ll have to decide that for yourself, and make of it what you will.
She had successfully encountered Orson in a journey, Lesley said when I called. When she received messages from animals, she explained, she usually saw them sitting at the edge of a lake; if they wished to communicate with her, they would show her images they wanted her to see. Sometimes they chose not to.
“I had a strange visit with Orson,” she said. “The message I got was that he was released, that he was happy and free.”
Released from what? I asked, taken aback.
“From being Orson,” she said. “But he is worried about you. It was strange, I don’t really know what to make of it. He wanted to tell me that he was still taking care of you, watching over you. I don’t know what this means.”
I told her that Orson was dead and why. And I asked her to journey to see him again.
Lesley came to the farm a few weeks later, and we sat in the living room, warming ourselves with a blaze in the woodstove and mugs of hot tea.
My old barns loomed in their reddish, aging glory through the tall windows. The sun was fading, vanishing behind the hill. Rose never stuck around when company came, but this time she lay at Lesley’s feet, not budging. Usually so restless and busy, she behaved as if she wanted to hear every word. Clem was dozing nearby, Pearl leaning against Lesley’s leg, getting her neck scratched.
She had met Orson again, Lesley said. He was sitting by the lake at first, but he was waiting for her, eager to show her another place: some dark woods up in the hills way above the farmhouse. There was darkness, then light; dense groves of trees, then brightness. I recognized this description as the woods through which Orson and I often rode on the ATV to meet Sirius, the Dog Star.
This, Lesley explained, was Orson’s new home, where his spirit lived. He remained powerfully connected to me, she said, but he’d known it was time to go, and he’d been ready to go. He was remaining behind, she said, to fulfill the terms of our contract, to meet his obligations, as he believed I had tried to meet mine.
This was startling. Lesley didn’t know of our trips to see the Dog Star, and I’d certainly not used the word “contract” to describe the understanding I thought Orson and I had.
Why was Orson staying behind? I asked.
To help me finish my project, my new book.
Even more unsettling. Lesley didn’t know I was trying to write about my life with Orson. I told her about it, about what I’d learned about the Dog Star and the dog days.
Orson, she said, did not stay near his grave site, and now she understood why. His home was up in the woods, under the Dog Star.
It made me unreasonably happy to think his spirit might still hover nearby.
Would he stay here always? I asked.
No, she said. Only until I was finished with the book; then he would move on. I could always connect with him there in the woods, but he would leave the farm, leave me.
Did he ever come closer?
Yes, Lesley said. Whenever I was writing, he was there with me, resting his head on my right foot.
My heartbeat quickened. In recent weeks, I’d often felt pressure on my right foot when I was working; in fact, I kept telling Pearl and Clem to get off, until I looked down and saw they weren’t there. I figured it might be a neurological symptom. It wasn’t painful, particularly, just the sense of a weight. Paula thought I should mention it to the spinal surgeon when I next saw him in New York.
We talked for a while about Orson, about this revelation that made no sense and, simultaneously, plenty of sense. Lesley s
aid Orson was “stressed, exhausted, spent” by the pressure and stimulation of his troubled life in the human world. Sometimes, his brain felt overloaded; his head almost burned, it was so filled with sights and sounds and failures and responsibilities.
But when she’d seen him, she said, he was at peace.
I was struck by the feeling in the room. A few friends had come by—Anthony and two of Orson’s girlfriends, Nicole and Annie—and I’d invited them to join us. Normally I cherish my privacy, but these people had shared my life and Orson’s, and it seemed natural for them to be there and hear what Lesley had learned.
Much more than me, they instinctively embraced the idea of a shaman, had no doubts or distance from it. There was no tension in the room, no hostility, anger, or regret. It was a serene gathering. Anthony, who left to go to work, said he felt it, too. In both our lives, gatherings of people were not always tranquil. But there was great trust in this room, complete safety.
Still, sorrow engulfed me. I felt at that moment that humans—our demands and expectations, certainly including my own—had failed this creature at every point. And had eventually killed him, even though he’d been of as great service to a human as any dog has.
As Lesley told about Orson, still present up in the woods, lying on my right foot while I worked, fulfilling his contract to me, then ready to move on, I saw that Nicole and Annie were crying. I felt selfish. I had forgotten how many other people loved this dog.
I wasn’t crying, though. Orson’s death seemed terribly sad to me, but Lesley’s story didn’t. Orson was released, free, at peace. Yet he was still watching over me, for a little while longer at least.
What had happened to make him behave so uncharacteristically? I asked her. Why would he attack those people?
Lesley wasn’t sure. She believed that perhaps his recent troubles had given me a reason to relinquish him, a way for him to leave. This wasn’t a conscious or deliberate plan, she said, or an idea he could put into words. Our connection was powerful, she said, timeless. But animals often find a way of getting humans to let go when it’s time. He had simply had enough.
Word of this gathering spread through my hamlet, and I expected raised eyebrows and ridicule, of the kind I would probably have offered myself, a few months earlier. The news didn’t generate scoffing, however, but great interest. Every other day, it seemed, women—and some men—were dropping off pictures of dogs, cats, goats, and horses they hoped Lesley could journey to and communicate with. I put a bowl near the front door to store the growing pile of envelopes.
It began to feel perfectly normal—like driving over to get the paper or pick up groceries—to collect these pictures, write names and questions on the back, and send them to a friendly vet in Vermont, where Lesley would pick them up, read them, and then, when she was able, encounter this array of creatures.
We had a regular shamanic communications network going, all sorts of animals getting visits and relaying messages. We all followed one another’s questions, waited for the shaman’s answers, discussed the implications. Actually, it was great.
It was enthralling to think that Orson was resting on my foot, was feeling free and happy. To picture his presence up beneath the Dog Star gave me quiet joy.
Even my grumpy old neighbor Carr, a farmer who has mocked me at every turn for the money I spend on vet care, the price I pay for my purebred dogs, and for even letting a shaman set foot on my property, heard of our shamanic communiqués and came by with a picture of his ancient German shepherd Betsy, a veteran, battle-scarred farm dog he adored.
Usually full of opinions and well-meaning suggestions about how to run my farm, Carr was quiet that morning. “She’s got some tumor or something, the vet says,” he told me, looking toward the ground. Betsy had always gone with him everywhere. “I hate to ask, and I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to go to hell, but maybe you could send this picture along to that friend of yours. Maybe she could let me know how Betsy’s really feeling, so I can make whatever decisions I gotta make.”
I nodded and patted Carr on the back. Nobody has a more difficult, or more loving, view of animals than a farmer. I told him I was sure Lesley would do her best and would call him. He never mentioned the encounter to me again, but a few weeks later, he took Betsy to the vet and put her down.
It occurred to me as I wrote this concluding chapter that if Lesley’s understanding of Orson’s spirit was correct, then he intended to leave me, and Bedlam Farm, once I finished. That gave me pause. Probably I should have thought of it sooner, but I hadn’t. The last word of the last chapter would be our final farewell.
I dreaded it.
I had tucked the ATV into one of the barns for the winter—a thick layer of snow and ice coated the ground—but when I pulled off the plastic cover and turned the key, it started right up.
I swathed myself in scarves and hoods and thick gloves and rode up the hill. The ATV chugged through the snow easily, and I cut through the pasture, across the top of the hill, and into the woods.
This was tougher going, but the ATV plowed through. There was too much snow to risk pulling off the trail, so I turned the machine off and went on through the trees on foot. I wished I had brought Rose or Clem. I hadn’t thought to bring a cell phone. But I did not feel alone.
I walked the hundred or so yards into the woods and found, poking up through the snow, the rock where Orson and I sat on those misty dog day mornings. Up here I had no trouble showing emotions.
It was bitter and the sun was sinking quickly. I couldn’t stay long.
So this was it, then, the end of our journey together, our tale of friendship and faithfulness.
You gave me so much, I thought, and I gave you so little back. In one sense, isn’t that the story of humans and dogs?
Still, this should by rights be a happy story, not a sad one. His was a life to celebrate. Orson was a good dog; he’d served me well. I had done the best I could for him, too. That it was not enough is the stuff of life itself. We can only try. We can feel certain of little.
I closed my eyes and tried to journey to Orson, as Lesley had. I tried to picture him resting by a lake, to feel his spirit. Nothing. I don’t have that gift.
But I have others. I am a writer; I can tell stories. If I couldn’t see Orson, receive messages from him, then I could imagine him. If I couldn’t summon him, then I could make him up; that was my power, my own gift. I had been doing that all my life.
So, since it would not come to me magically, I invented a final encounter with my dog, a way of staying with him a bit longer.
My story, the one I made up:
The woods are beautiful, bright and sunlit. I hear a flurry, light footsteps approaching in the snow.
Orson comes out of the shadows to me, right over to the rock. He’s even more beautiful than I remember, so regal and proud, ears up, eyes wide.
He doesn’t throw himself at me, shower me with licks, jump into my lap. He simply comes close, comfortable with himself, finally able, I imagine, to be free of commands and demands, to do as he wants, not what people keep yelling at him to do. He is free to be the powerful, loving, intelligent, and instinctive creature he was born to be.
Though I can see he’s very pleased to see me, he doesn’t spin around or paw at me for pats. That frantic, aroused quality is gone; he is quiet, different.
I stroke his glossy coat and after a bit, he does nuzzle me, leans his head against my chest. “Nice place, your new home,” I say.
We sit quietly together for a few minutes. He is available if I want to find him, he will come if I need him. He’s going away, but not leaving me in the sense I fear. None of this is spoken, just understood, and once I grasp that, we seem to be done.
I don’t know if there’s a spirit world or if Orson inhabits it. I hope so, because that sounds like a better world for him than ours. But even in my own story, I can’t know.
But because this is my own story, I hug him one last time. Lesley is right: our clo
seness is beyond words, beyond consciousness, unbreakable.
I walked back through the woods to the ATV and rode slowly back down the trail, across the pasture, past his grave, back down to the house.
The Love Sisters were the first to come bounding out the door, tails wagging, thrilled to see me. Rose followed, in a bouncy mood, licking my hand.
It’s okay, she seemed to be saying. We are not him, but we are here and we love you too. Or perhaps that’s just what I hoped she felt.
It seemed as if I had been gone a long time. I dropped to the ground, hugged all my dogs, and then got up, brushed myself off, took off my boots. I made myself a cup of tea and headed back into my office.
It was nearly dark now. The sheep were beginning their long nightly trek to the top of the hill, where they would cluster and spend the night. The donkeys were in the pole barn; to my dismay, they’d developed a habit of gnawing on the wooden ladder to the hayloft. Winston was leading the hens into the barn, to their perches. I glimpsed Mother peeking out the barn door, about to begin her murderous night patrols.
I poked the fire in the woodstove and turned on the computer. Clem had settled on the sofa with her favorite plush pheasant, which would soon be shredded to bits. Pearl lay down next to me, and Rose darted into the crate next to my desk.
I don’t know if I imagined it, if I was still half inside my story, but I felt a twinge, pressure on my right foot. It could have been any of the dogs. It could have been my disintegrating spine. It could have been nothing. I didn’t look.
So this was it, the last turn in the life of a good dog.
Good-bye, friend, and safe travels home.
From top: Rose, Clem, and Pearl
POSTSCRIPT
Owning and loving a dog is a very individual experience. Orson’s story was complex, his behavioral problems probably stemming from multiple sources.
