by Sean Little
I froze, an unbearable mixture of panic and fear bubbling in my chest. I reached over and put my hand on the dog’s ribcage. I could feel a nearly imperceptible movement. He wasn’t dead; he was only passed out. I relaxed. I could understand passing out, given what he’d just done and given the years on his calendar. Being unconscious might have actually been the best thing for him at that moment.
I put my ham-handed stitching skills to work and tried to sew up the gash on his face as best I could. I was able to do a much neater job than I’d done on my own hand, although it was still a horrible job by any sort of professional standards, I’m sure. I used gauze and peroxide to clean up the punctures in his shoulders and legs. I found another gash on his rump that needed several stitches. I had to cut away his fur from that area, first with scissors and then with my battery-powered clippers. I had to wash the cut as best I could given the situation. The hot water I used seemed to sting enough to rouse the old dog a little, but he quickly reclined again and bore out the pain of cleaning his wounds.
When I had him stitched up as best I could, I set about cleaning the drying blood from his fur. I could only do so much, given the circumstances. I needed to bathe him, but that wouldn’t happen until Spring, at least. Hell, I needed a proper bath, but the cold was just too extreme to risk it. I suppose I could have used a child’s swimming pool or something like that. I had never thought to secure one before snow flew, though.
I brought over a fleece throw blanket from the bed and draped it over the dog. The fire was warm enough where his bed was, but I didn’t know what else to do. When I was sick, my mother always draped me with a blanket while I lay on the couch watching cartoons. That was love to me, little gestures like that. I got my own blankets from the bed and dragged them over to the fire. I made a bed next to the dog and curled up in the radiant heat, lightly stroking the Lab’s head as he slept. I was exhausted from stress and worry, but I stayed awake, fighting sleep. I didn’t want to wake up the next morning and find that Rowdy had passed away in the night lying next to me.
JOURNAL ENTRY TWELVE
-The Darkest Hour is Just Before the Dawn-
In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s fictionalized memoir about her childhood in western Minnesota, one of the chapters is called “The Darkest Hour is Just Before the Dawn.” In this chapter, Laura’s Pa has gone away to make money for the family because a grasshopper plague has decimated their crops, Laura’s bratty young neighbor took her beloved rag doll, Charlotte, and then abandoned her in a frozen puddle, and the Ingalls family is fearing their bleak future. It’s cold. It’s harsh. And it’s dark. It’s hard chapter to read if you’ve ever loved a toy. It’s even harder to read if you’ve ever lost a beloved toy.
When I was a kid, a really little kid--like three years old, I think--I had this little farmer toy that I liked to play with a lot. He had a little red tractor to ride around on and a little plastic cow and pig for him to care for. I loved that little farmer and I loved the little pig. One day, I decided that the pig was dirty and needed a bath. I didn’t know how to run the bathtub, and the sink was too high to reach, so I dropped him in the toilet. I started to wash him with my hands, but realized that the rushing water would do a much better job, so I flushed it, and Mr. Pig disappeared forever. I bawled. That stupid pig, at the time, was my best friend’s best friend. Without his pig, the farmer would only have the cow to care for, and who would the cow play with? For my little three year old brain, it was much too much to deal with at the time, and I was inconsolable for hours. I don’t remember how I moved past that loss, because even now, as a nearly grown man, I still remember vividly that jabbing pain in my heart when I realized that the pig had gone to the Land of Turds and Goldfish. I feared that pain. I thought that with the passing of everyone I knew, that I would be immune to that level of pain, or at the very least desensitized to it.
I wasn’t, though.
I lay there in the dark listening to Rowdy’s shallow breaths with my heart hammering a military tattoo in my ears. The fire had descended to a low, red glow. I could barely make out shapes in the annex, and all was painfully dark. It was the sort of dark that pressed against your eyes and made your head hurt. If the dog shifted in the slightest, I was aware of it. If he made a noise, I heard it. He seemed to be exhausted beyond dreaming. I’d grown used to hearing him having dreams of chasing something, of watching his legs kick slightly while he made noises in deep slumber, but he did none of that now. In my head, I played out every horrible scenario of what might happen over the next few days: Rowdy might died before morning. He might die over the next few days. Even if he lived, how long would it take him to heal? What if he never healed? What if he was badly hurt? How would I care for him? Would I have to make the decision to euthanize him?
I had cried for my parents. I had cried for Emily. I had cried for my friends and friends’ families, and for my teachers and coworkers and everyone in Wisconsin and the rest of the world. I had grieved for all them, and somehow I had moved on, I had moved past that grief to some degree and I was trying to make a go of the rest of my life. I didn’t know if I could move past the damn dog, though.
Rowdy wasn’t even my dog. That’s the real kicker. He was just a neighborhood dog who occasionally wandered over to my backyard if I was hanging out and begged for some head pats before going back to his family’s house next door. I had known Rowdy for a large part of my life, and his, but he hadn’t been mine as I traditionally imagined human/dog relationships. Somehow, over the last year, he had become mine, though. And I had become his. We were all we had. If he died...hell, when he died--because I would outlive him no matter what--I would truly be alone. Alone, alone. Without anyone. Emotion bubbled up in my throat, and I fought to swallow it. Everyone else dying, despite the horror of it, in a way had remained surreal, as if I had been tossed into an alternate dimension as a joke. Rowdy’s eventual death would be real. It seemed silly to think that, but it was true. At some point, maybe that night, maybe five years from that night, Rowdy would die and I was going to have to process it.
With tears streaming down my cheeks, I buried my face in back of the dog’s neck, smelling the wood smoke smell that coated his fur from countless nights reveling in the warmth of the fire. I wept silently and hoped that I wouldn’t have to deal with his death for quite some time. In my heart, I hoped that he would just be immortal, that I’d never have to deal with his passing, and then I got mad at myself for being so foolish. Death was part of life. I should be used to it, but I couldn’t be used to it.
I awoke with a start in the morning. I was freezing cold. I panicked. I thought the dog was dead. I thought the fire was out. I thought I might be dead for a moment. I was sleep-groggy and there was a pain in my shoulder and hip from sleeping on the thinly-carpeted concrete floor of the annex. When I jolted, Rowdy moved his head to see what was wrong. He hadn’t died. I was suddenly elated, and I moved to hug him, but he yelped in pain when I touched some sore spot on his body. Hugs later, I promised him.
I stoked the fire and got the flames up to warm the annex. I slipped into my cold weather gear and then lifted the dog as gently as I could. He protested, whining and whimpering, but stayed limp in my arms. I carried him outside and set him in the snow. He stood on unsteady legs, but managed to relieve himself and take a few tottering steps before his hips sort of listed to the side and he sat down. He laid on his side and and snuffled at the snow. I saw him heave a large breath, inflating his chest, and then sighing heavily. The snow must have felt good, I thought. Then I realized that it was probably like a giant ice-pack for him. His muscles had probably swollen and stiffened overnight, and he was probably fighting a low-grade fever too. The cold was comforting to his pain.
I ran over to the shed to pick up the shovel I’d left thrust into the snowbank I’d built. There were dog tracks around the snow, but none had ventured toward the building’s roof. The aluminum doors bore the marks of having been scratching, but it app
eared that the dog pack had given up after a short while and moved on in their search for an easier meal. I felt good about that, at least. One less thing to worry about for the moment.
Rowdy lay still while I shoveled more snow onto his other side. He seemed to enjoy it. He pushed his muzzle into a drift and let snow melt through the bandages I’d taped to his face. I sat in the snow next to him for a while and stroked his head with gloved fingers.
After an hour, he tried to get up, but his body didn’t seem to want to let him. I helped him, gently brushing the snow from his fur and getting him upright. He tried to walk again, but it was clear he was hurting. I carried him back to the fire, dried the melting snow from him with a towel, and fed him leftover beef by hand before cleaning his wounds with hot water. The worst of the lot, the gash on his face, was seeping badly, but no longer bleeding. I patted myself on the back for my passable sutures and claimed a minor victory there. After he had eaten and been cared for, Rowdy drifted back into heavy sleep.
I had to make a run to a veterinarian's office, I decided. I needed supplies. I needed some way to make that old dog’s life better. Pain pills, anti-inflammatories, whatever I could find that might help him. I geared up, slung the Remington across my back, and set out on the snowmobile.
There was a vet’s office just past the Walmart in town. Having no pets, I’d never been there, but I’d driven past it enough times in my life to know it was there. Like most of the businesses in Sun Prairie, it had been shuttered early in the outbreak of the Flu. When I drilled the lock and let myself inside, I braced myself for the chance that I might find the desiccated corpses of cats and dogs in cages in the back, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the office was barren of corpses of any sort. Whomever had locked the office last must have either taken the animals with him or her, or had simply released them to the wild. Whoever they were, they must have known that no one was coming back to this place. Frankly, I’m surprised they even bothered to lock the door.
With a small LED flashlight, I searched the office, quickly finding a storeroom of supplies and medications. I had no idea what a dog could take, though. I looted cupboards and drawers until I found a thick catalog of medications and their effects. I read through the list until I found painkillers and NSAIDs. I looked through the drugs in the storeroom until I found carprofen and tramadol. The former was an NSAID, like Advil, and would to reduce swelling. The latter was a mild opioid and would numb constant discomfort. The book said it was usually given to older dogs who were suffering joint and muscle issues. If that wasn’t Rowdy, I didn’t know who else it could be.
I pocketed the pills and started to head back to the library, but I stopped at the door. I agonized over the decision to go back for one other drug for a long moment. The ‘glass is half full’ part of me didn’t want to do it, but the realist in me told me that I must. I went back and got a small vial of pentobarbital and a hypodermic needle. If I had to euthanize Rowdy, I knew I would never be able to bring myself to use a gun. If he had to die by my hand, I would do it with the respect and dignity he deserved, and I would let him sleep. It was the least I could do for what he’d given me in the last year.
Most of the next week was spent doing round-the-clock care of Rowdy. I dragged my mattress off the bedstead in the corner and moved it to the fire so I could bed next to Rowdy. I would sleep with my hand on his shoulders so I would know if I he woke during the night or if he needed me for anything. I carried him outside four or five times a day to let him answer nature’s call. I fed him beef and dry food by hand because it was too taxing for him to stand and eat. I made sure he swallowed the carprofen tablets by wedging them inside little chunks of beef. They seemed to help. When he was whimpering a lot, I would give him a tramadol, though I was cautious with those because they were pretty heavy-duty. A tramadol would relax him and make him sleep. Granted, he didn’t need a lot of assistance in that department, but I tried to only give those to him at night so he didn’t spend his days doped out of his gourd. I spent my days changing his bandages regularly, and then reading to him and stroking his head. He lounged at my side, big stupid head on my thigh, and ate up every ounce of the attention.
Caring for Rowdy helped me forget about the cold. It helped me forget about a lot of things, really. I still had my little missions and routines--tooth brushing, watering the pipes in the lavatories, and sleeping, but every other free moment was devoted to the dog. I didn’t hear the voices of my friends and family during that time. I didn’t see Emily out of the corner of my eye. The focus on the problem at hand might have kept me from cracking entirely and turning into a gibbering lunatic. My worry for Rowdy’s condition seemed to overpower every other worry I had in my head. Even wounded as he was, he was still helping me.
Rowdy’s recuperation lasted days, more than a week. I wasn’t exactly keeping track, but in a strange way the beef in the shed became like a calendar. I knew about how much I was carving away each day to feed myself and the dog, and after about ten days’ worth of carvings, I saw the first sign that Rowdy was going to get better.
I was asleep on the mattress, and I was awoken by a flat, wet tongue licking my nose. My eyes fluttered open and I saw the dog in front of me. On his own, Rowdy had stood. He was limping badly, but he was voluntarily on his feet, and he’d managed to get there without me lifting him there. That was progress.
I walked him outside, and the moment I opened the doors to the library, I realized that things were different all over. Some of the more barren spaces on the sidewalk had melted and there was a strong breeze out of the west. Some might have called it the Chinook.
When the Chinook blew in The Long Winter, it signaled the end of the Snow Winter. Laura Ingalls woke her entire family in the middle of the night when the drip-drip sound of water woke her from her sleep. I always thought the scene in the book was silly, but at that moment, to be free of the relentless cold, I actually felt giddy. It was relatively warm outside. The snow was melting to a slushy packing consistency. I took a walk around the outside of the library and took a gander at the thermometer. Thirty-one degrees. When I stood and looked at the sun, it was actually warm on my face. Spring, for what it was worth, had arrived.
I moved my mattress back to my bedstead. I used the snowmobile to run back to Walmart to loot the dog a new, unbloodied dog bed. I carried out the bags of garbage I’d been saving in the foyer of the library and carted them a half-mile to a dumpster that was only half-full. It was a paltry version of Spring Cleaning, but it felt good. I went outside with only jeans and my winter coat and I was plenty warm. It felt good.
There was a profound sense of victory that day. My dog was getting better. Winter was nearly over. I was still alive. I felt strong. I felt like I had earned something amazing, something rare. I had done something that not a lot of suburban kids had ever done: I had survived a brutal Wisconsin winter alone. I was thinner than I’d been last May, true. I probably smelled like seven miles of ass. I was unkempt. The annex smelled like wood smoke and general teenage boy and old dog stank, but it had been my bunker against the winter. In another couple months, I would move south and establish myself a new base, one where extreme cold would never be a possibility. I would survive.
Part Three
Spring
JOURNAL ENTRY THIRTEEN
-Spring Dawning-
Winter gave way to Spring in give-and-take fashion, as if often does in Wisco. One day the thermometer would climb above freezing and the sun would melt large swathes of snow, and the next day clouds out of the north would bring another blast of chilly air and a good seven inches of annoying white flake would get dumped in a heavy, wet mess. As all things must end though, eventually Winter was forced to relinquish its grip on the weather and Spring plowed its way fully into the mix.
My drinking water supply was low, but still doing well. As soon as the snows were cleared from the roads, I began doing the thing that I had resisted for a long time: looting homes. I had avoided it last s
ummer for two reasons: the smell and the feeling that I was desecrating tombs. Now I had enough fear of the future and a need to stock water for my trip south, so I broke my own rule about looting private homes and started doing it.
After the first three homes, I realized that I was probably going after a hopeless cause. Most of the homes had frozen through and through. I found bottles of water cracked and broken from the swelling ice. I found caps forced off the bottles as they froze and forced water upward. I found homes in serious disrepair as the pipes had frozen and cracked over the winter, and now as the thaws came, water was starting to seep into homes around the plumbing and around the foundation. I hated to admit it, but I was going to have to rely on what I’d found and make it last longer. I think most of the bottles of water in Wisconsin were cashed.
In the fourth home, I went straight to the basement hoping that the basement had maintained more of a common temperature and I might find water in a pantry that had survived the cold. The house was a pretty standard suburban house from the 80’s on the outside, but on the inside it was clear that an older gentleman had owned the home. Judging from the pictures on the walls, he enjoyed camping and fishing, and was a deer hunter in the fall. The house distinctly lacked a woman’s touch, but I could see in some of the pictures that there had been a wife to the homeowner maybe twenty years ago. In one picture, I saw the woman with a scarf wrapped around her head, clearly trying to hide the effects of chemotherapy. In another picture on the wall, she was lying in a hospital bed and, though she was smiling an angelic smile at the camera, it was clear she wasn’t long for the world in that photo. She looked to be maybe forty in that picture, and the man looked to be eighty in some of his fishing pictures. I instantly felt badly for being in his home.
