by John Grogan
I was still moping about my solitary birthday a few days later when Jim Tolpin, my old colleague who had broken Marley of his jumping habit, called unexpectedly and asked if I wanted to grab a beer the next night, a Saturday. Jim had left the newspaper business to pursue a law degree at about the same time we moved to Boca Raton, and we hadn’t spoken in months. “Sure,” I said, not stopping to wonder why. Jim picked me up at six and took me to an English pub, where we quaffed Bass ale and caught up on each other’s lives. We were having a grand old time until the bartender called out, “Is there a John Grogan here? Phone for John Grogan.”
It was Jenny, and she sounded very upset and stressed-out. “The baby’s crying, the boys are out of control, and I just ripped my contact lens!” she wailed into the phone. “Can you come home right away?”
“Try to calm down,” I said. “Sit tight. I’ll be right home.” I hung up, and the bartender gave me a you-poor-sorry-henpecked-bastard kind of a nod and simply said, “My sympathies, mate.”
“Come on,” Jim said. “I’ll drive you home.”
When we turned onto my block, both sides of the street were lined with cars. “Somebody’s having a party,” I said.
“Looks like it,” Jim answered.
“For God’s sakes,” I said when we reached the house. “Look at that! Someone even parked in my driveway. If that isn’t nerve.”
We blocked the offender in, and I invited Jim inside. I was still griping about the inconsiderate jerk who parked in my driveway when the front door swung open. It was Jenny with Colleen in her arms. She didn’t look upset at all. In fact, she had a big grin on her face. Behind her stood a bagpipe player in kilts. Good God! What have I walked in on? Then I looked beyond the bagpipe player and saw that someone had taken down the kiddy fence around the pool and launched floating candles on the water. The deck was crammed with several dozen of my friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Just as I was making the connection that all those cars on the street belonged to all these people in my house, they shouted in unison, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLD MAN!”
My wife had not forgotten after all.
When I was finally able to snap my jaw shut, I took Jenny in my arms, kissed her on the cheek, and whispered in her ear, “I’ll get you later for this.”
Someone opened the laundry-room door looking for the trash can, and out bounded Marley in prime party mode. He swept through the crowd, stole a mozzarella-and-basil appetizer off a tray, lifted a couple of women’s miniskirts with his snout, and made a break for the unfenced swimming pool. I tackled him just as he was launching into his signature running belly flop and dragged him back to solitary confinement. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll save you the leftovers.”
It wasn’t long after the surprise party—a party whose success was marked by the arrival of the police at midnight to tell us to pipe down—that Marley finally was able to find validation for his intense fear of thunder. I was in the backyard on a Sunday afternoon under brooding, darkening skies, digging up a rectangle of grass to plant yet another vegetable garden. Gardening was becoming a serious hobby for me, and the better I got at it, the more I wanted to grow. Slowly I was taking over the entire backyard. As I worked, Marley paced nervously around me, his internal barometer sensing an impending storm. I sensed it, too, but I wanted to get the project done and figured I would work until I felt the first drops of rain. As I dug, I kept glancing at the sky, watching an ominous black thunderhead forming several miles to the east, out over the ocean. Marley was whining softly, beckoning me to put down the shovel and head inside. “Relax,” I told him. “It’s still miles away.”
The words had barely left my lips when I felt a previously unknown sensation, a kind of quivering tingle on the back of my neck. The sky had turned an odd shade of olive gray, and the air seemed to go suddenly dead as though some heavenly force had grabbed the winds and frozen them in its grip. Weird, I thought as I paused, leaning on my shovel to study the sky. That’s when I heard it: a buzzing, popping, crackling surge of energy, similar to what you sometimes can hear standing beneath high-tension power lines. A sort of pffffffffffft sound filled the air around me, followed by a brief instant of utter silence. In that instant, I knew trouble was coming, but I had no time to react. In the next fraction of a second, the sky went pure, blindingly white, and an explosion, the likes of which I had never heard before, not in any storm, at any fireworks display, at any demolition site, boomed in my ears. A wall of energy hit me in the chest like an invisible linebacker. When I opened my eyes who knows how many seconds later, I was lying facedown on the ground, sand in my mouth, my shovel ten feet away, rain pelting me. Marley was down, too, in his hit-the-deck stance, and when he saw me raise my head he wiggled desperately toward me on his belly like a soldier trying to slide beneath barbed wire. When he reached me he climbed right on my back and buried his snout in my neck, frantically licking me. I looked around for just a second, trying to get my bearings, and I could see where the lightning had struck the power-line pole in the corner of the yard and followed the wire down to the house about twenty feet from where I had been standing. The electrical meter on the wall was in charred ruins.
“Come on!” I yelled, and then Marley and I were on our feet, sprinting through the downpour toward the back door as new bolts of lightning flashed around us. We did not stop until we were safely inside. I knelt on the floor, soaking wet, catching my breath, and Marley clambered on me, licking my face, nibbling my ears, flinging spit and loose fur all over everything. He was beside himself with fear, shaking uncontrollably, drool hanging off his chin. I hugged him, tried to calm him down. “Jesus, that was close!” I said, and realized that I was shaking, too. He looked up at me with those big empathetic eyes that I swore could almost talk. I was sure I knew what he was trying to tell me. I’ve been trying to warn you for years that this stuff can kill you. But would anyone listen? Now will you take me seriously?
The dog had a point. Maybe his fear of thunder had not been so irrational after all. Maybe his panic attacks at the first distant rumblings had been his way of telling us that Florida’s violent thunderstorms, the deadliest in the country, were not to be dismissed with a shrug. Maybe all those destroyed walls and gouged doors and shredded carpets had been his way of trying to build a lightning-proof den we could all fit into snugly. And how had we rewarded him? With scoldings and tranquilizers.
Our house was dark, the air-conditioning, ceiling fans, televisions, and several appliances all blown out. The circuit breaker was fused into a melted mess. We were about to make some electrician a very happy man. But I was alive and so was my trusty sidekick. Jenny and the kids, tucked safely away in the family room, didn’t even know the house had been hit. We were all present and accounted for. What else mattered? I pulled Marley into my lap, all ninety-seven nervous pounds of him, and made him a promise right then and there: Never again would I dismiss his fear of this deadly force of nature.
CHAPTER 20
Dog Beach
A s a newspaper columnist, I was always looking for interesting and quirky stories I could grab on to. I wrote three columns each week, which meant that one of the biggest challenges of the job was coming up with a constant stream of fresh topics. Each morning I began my day by scouring the four South Florida daily newspapers, circling and clipping anything that might be worth weighing in on. Then it was a matter of finding an approach or angle that would be mine. My very first column had come directly from the headlines. A speeding car crammed with eight teenagers had flipped into a canal along the edge of the Everglades. Only the sixteen-year-old driver, her twin sister, and a third girl had escaped the submerged car. It was a huge story that I knew I wanted to come in on, but what was the fresh angle I could call my own? I drove out to the lonely crash sight hoping for inspiration, and before I even stopped the car I had found it. The classmates of the five dead children had transformed the pavement into a tapestry of spray-painted eulogies. The blacktop was covered shoulder-to-shoulder for
more than a half mile, and the raw emotion of the outpouring was palpable. Notebook in hand, I began copying the words down. “Wasted youth,” said one message, accompanied by a painted arrow pointing off the road and into the water. Then, there in the middle of the communal catharsis, I found it: a public apology from the young driver, Jamie Bardol. She wrote in big, loopy letters, a child’s scrawl: “I wish it would have been me. I’m sorry.” I had found my column.
Not all topics were so dark. When a retiree received an eviction notice from her condo because her pudgy pooch exceeded the weight limit for pets, I swooped in to meet the offending heavyweight. When a confused senior citizen crashed her car into a store while trying to park, fortunately hurting no one, I was close behind, speaking to witnesses. The job would take me to a migrant camp one day, a millionaire’s mansion the next, and an inner-city street corner the day after that. I loved the variety; I loved the people I met; and more than anything I loved the near-total freedom I was afforded to go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted in pursuit of whatever topic tickled my curiosity.
What my bosses did not know was that behind my journalistic wanderings was a secret agenda: to use my position as a columnist to engineer as many shamelessly transparent “working holidays” as I possibly could. My motto was “When the columnist has fun, the reader has fun.” Why attend a deadening tax-adjustment hearing in pursuit of column fodder when you could be sitting, say, at an outdoor bar in Key West, large alcoholic beverage in hand? Someone had to do the dirty work of telling the story of the lost shakers of salt in Margaritaville; it might as well be me. I lived for any excuse to spend a day goofing around, preferably in shorts and T-shirt, sampling various leisurely and recreational pursuits that I convinced myself the public needed someone to fully investigate. Every profession has its tools of the trade, and mine included a reporter’s notebook, a bundle of pens, and a beach towel. I began carrying sunscreen and a bathing suit in my car as a matter of routine.
I spent one day blasting through the Everglades on an airboat and another hiking along the rim of Lake Okeechobee. I spent a day bicycling scenic State Road A1A along the Atlantic Ocean so I could report firsthand on the harrowing proposition of sharing the pavement with confused blue-heads and distracted tourists. I spent a day snorkeling above the endangered reefs off Key Largo and another firing off clips of ammunition at a shooting range with a two-time robbery victim who swore he would never be victimized again. I spent a day lolling about on a commercial fishing boat and a day jamming with a band of aging rock musicians. One day I simply climbed a tree and sat for hours enjoying the solitude; a developer planned to bulldoze the grove in which I sat to make way for a high-end housing development, and I figured the least I could do was give this last remnant of nature amid the concrete jungle a proper funeral. My biggest coup of all was when I talked my editors into sending me to the Bahamas so I could be on the forward edge of a brewing hurricane that was making its way toward South Florida. The hurricane veered harmlessly out to sea, and I spent three days beachside at a luxury hotel, sipping piña coladas beneath blue skies.
It was in this vein of journalistic inquiry that I got the idea to take Marley for a day at the beach. Up and down South Florida’s heavily used shoreline, various municipalities had banned pets, and for good reason. The last thing beachgoers wanted was a wet, sandy dog pooping and peeing and shaking all over them as they worked on their tans. NO PETS signs bristled along nearly every stretch of sand.
There was one place, though, one small, little-known sliver of beach, where there were no signs, no restrictions, no bans on four-legged water lovers. The beach was tucked away in an unincorporated pocket of Palm Beach County about halfway between West Palm Beach and Boca Raton, stretching for a few hundred yards and hidden behind a grassy dune at the end of a dead-end street. There was no parking, no restroom, no lifeguard, just an unspoiled stretch of unregulated white sand meeting endless water. Over the years, its reputation spread by word of mouth among pet owners as one of South Florida’s last safe havens for dogs to come and frolic in the surf without risking a fine. The place had no official name; unofficially, everyone knew it as Dog Beach.
Dog Beach operated on its own set of unwritten rules that had evolved over time, put in place by consensus of the dog owners who frequented it, and enforced by peer pressure and a sort of silent moral code. The dog owners policed themselves so others would not be tempted to, punishing violators with withering stares and, if needed, a few choice words. The rules were simple and few: Aggressive dogs had to stay leashed; all others could run free. Owners were to bring plastic bags with them to pick up any droppings their animal might deposit. All trash, including bagged dog waste, was to be carted out. Each dog should arrive with a supply of fresh drinking water. Above all else, there would be absolutely no fouling of the water. The etiquette called for owners, upon arriving, to walk their dogs along the dune line, far from the ocean’s edge, until their pets relieved themselves. Then they could bag the waste and safely proceed to the water.
I had heard about Dog Beach but had never visited. Now I had my excuse. This forgotten vestige of the rapidly disappearing Old Florida, the one that existed before the arrival of waterfront condo towers, metered beach parking, and soaring real estate values, was in the news. A pro-development county commissioner had begun squawking about this unregulated stretch of beach and asking why the same rules that applied to other county beaches should not apply here. She made her intent clear: outlaw the furry critters, improve public access, and open this valuable resource to the masses.
I immediately locked in on the story for what it was: a perfect excuse to spend a day at the beach on company time. On a drop-dead-perfect June morning, I traded my tie and briefcase for swimsuit and flip-flops and headed with Marley across the Intracoastal Waterway. I filled the car with as many beach towels as I could find—and that was just for the drive over. As always, Marley’s tongue was hanging out, spit flying everywhere. I felt like I was on a road trip with Old Faithful. My only regret was that the windshield wipers weren’t on the inside.
Following Dog Beach protocol, I parked several blocks away, where I wouldn’t get a ticket, and began the long hike in through a sleepy neighborhood of sixties-vintage bungalows, Marley leading the charge. About halfway there, a gruff voice called out, “Hey, Dog Guy!” I froze, convinced I was about to be busted by an angry neighbor who wanted me to keep my damn dog the hell off his beach. But the voice belonged to another pet owner, who approached me with his own large dog on a leash and handed me a petition to sign urging county commissioners to let Dog Beach stand. Speaking of standing, we would have stood and chatted, but the way Marley and the other dog were circling each other, I knew it was just a matter of seconds before they either (a) lunged at each other in mortal combat or (b) began a family. I yanked Marley away and continued on. Just as we reached the path to the beach, Marley squatted in the weeds and emptied his bowels. Perfect. At least that little social nicety was out of the way. I bagged up the evidence and said, “To the beach!”
When we crested the dune, I was surprised to see several people wading in the shallows with their dogs securely tethered to leashes. What was this all about? I expected the dogs to be running free in unbridled, communal harmony. “A sheriff’s deputy was just here,” one glum dog owner explained to me. “He said from now on they’re enforcing the county leash ordinance and we’ll be fined if our dogs are loose.” It appeared I had arrived too late to fully enjoy the simple pleasures of Dog Beach. The police, no doubt at the urging of the politically connected anti–Dog Beach forces, were tightening the noose. I obediently walked Marley along the water’s edge with the other dog owners, feeling more like I was in a prison exercise yard than on South Florida’s last unregulated spit of sand.
I returned with him to my towel and was just pouring Marley a bowl of water from the canteen I had lugged along when over the dune came a shirtless tattooed man in cutoff blue jeans and work boots, a muscular and fie
rce-looking pit bull terrier on a heavy chain at his side. Pit bulls are known for their aggression, and they were especially notorious during this time in South Florida. They were the dog breed of choice for gang members, thugs, and toughs, and often trained to be vicious. The newspapers were filled with accounts of unprovoked pit bull attacks, sometimes fatal, against both animals and humans. The owner must have noticed me recoiling because he called out, “Don’t you worry. Killer’s friendly. He don’t never fight other dogs.” I was just beginning to exhale with relief when he added with obvious pride, “But you should see him rip open a wild hog! I’ll tell you, he can get it down and gutted in about fifteen seconds.”
Marley and Killer the Pig-Slaying Pit Bull strained at their leashes, circling, sniffing furiously at each other. Marley had never been in a fight in his life and was so much bigger than most other dogs that he had never been intimidated by a challenge, either. Even when a dog attempted to pick a fight, he didn’t take the hint. He would merely pounce into a playful stance, butt up, tail wagging, a dumb, happy grin on his face. But he had never before been confronted by a trained killer, a gutter of wild game. I pictured Killer lunging without warning for Marley’s throat and not letting go. Killer’s owner was unconcerned. “Unless you’re a wild hog, he’ll just lick you to death,” he said.
I told him the cops had just been here and were going to ticket people who didn’t obey the leash ordinance. “I guess they’re cracking down,” I said.
“That’s bullshit!” he yelled, and spit into the sand. “I’ve been bringing my dogs to this beach for years. You don’t need no leash at Dog Beach. Bullshit!” With that he unclipped the heavy chain, and Killer galloped across the sand and into the water. Marley reared back on his hind legs, bouncing up and down. He looked at Killer and then up at me. He looked back at Killer and back at me. His paws padded nervously on the sand, and he let out a soft, sustained whimper. If he could talk, I knew what he would have asked. I scanned the dune line; no cops anywhere in sight. I looked at Marley. Please! Please! Pretty please! I’ll be good. I promise.
