by Ursula Hegi
When we pass a torn, matted blanket, I wonder if anyone slept on it last night. Basil maybe? “Basil?” I call his name, determined to make him safe once again.
Across the river, the hillside is still undeveloped. Scrawny bushes and trees straggle up the incline, where a structure of tarps and lumber hangs at a precarious tilt, half hidden by sumacs and weeds. Just a week ago this shack wasn’t here. I’m terrified for the people who live in it. They feel endangered. Like Basil. How devastating it would be to look from a place like that across the water, to see the lamps in the houses of Lower Crossing, and to realize that the smoke rising from the chimneys means warmth for others—not you.
“You think I should drive around some more?” Ev asks. In her round face, her chin is skinny, so skinny. “You could check around here.”
I stop. Touch her chin with one finger.
“Libby? What is it?”
“I want to know what happens when people … when they no longer have whatever it was that once used to … sustain them.”
“Libby-”
“What happens then? When they no longer have that?”
“Maybe I should stay with you and look for Basil.”
“No. It’s better to search as many areas as possible. I’ll double back close to the water.”
She hesitates. With one shoe, she works free a pebble, nudges it toward a log.
“Go.” I set my hands on her shoulders, gently, steer her in the opposite direction, and head toward the broken stone pillars that used to support a bridge. On the pebbled bank lies a rusted stovepipe, and I step across it and onto a flat rock that, until recently, was covered by water. Where the pillars jut from the riverbed, they obstruct the last trickle of current as it pursues its way around them.
It’s getting lighter when I reach our neighborhood. Before starting up the hill to our house, I glance around once more. To the east, Monroe Street Bridge and the taller buildings of downtown. To the west—
Whimpering.
“Basil?” I ask softly. “Basil?”
And hear.
Whimpering. Again.
Hear him whimpering.
And start shouting: “Basil—oh my God—” I crash through tangled branches, crash toward the whimpering, and still I don’t see him—not till I stop altogether and listen, listen hard—and there he lies, near the bottom of our path, where he must have been snagged all night, in one of those ditches carved by debris that the river dumped when it retreated
Basil tries to crawl toward me, whimpering, but his hindquarters are wedged beneath branches and briars.
“Don’t…” I’m crying. “I’ll get you out.”
Still, he tries to hoist himself up again, launch himself in my direction as if he were forever the pup we took home from Spokanimal. But his legs tremble. Buckle.
Branches snap around me as I burrow toward his den, his prison. “I’ll get you out.”
He howls, barks, his throat raw, worn out overnight. While I didn’t hear him. While I searched in the wrong places. While all along he was nearby.
“Sshhh,” I murmur to him. “I’m almost there, Basil. Lie still. Ev and I looked for you all night. We did. We didn’t sleep. Sshhh, Basil.” What did he think all alone here? That this was the end? That he would never see us again? Twigs scratch my face, my arms, and I’m sweating hard. I want to have my hands on his long, sweet face, want to feel the life-warmth of his fur so much that I, too, tremble. Tremble with a love for him more fierce than anything I’ve felt for my sister or my parents. Because he is out of my reach now. So terribly close. And then—“And then …,” Jesse would say— I’m crouching next to Basil, our feet in the shallow lick of river.
“Let’s get you out of here, Basil.”
I don’t trust it, that river, suspect it of still plotting to claim my dog. But maybe being claimed by the river would be better for him than being deserted by his body. Carefully, I try to lift him across the barrier of twigs and trash and stones.
“And then?”
“And then, Jesse, your grandmother will drum us a path right up this hill, and I’ll carry Basil up to our house, and—”
But it’s not that easy. He’s too heavy for me, and I have to set him back down. My belly feels tight. Queasy. “Stay,” I tell Basil. And laugh. “What else is there for you to do, huh?” With both hands and feet I thrash about, open a gap for us, all along continuing eye contact with Basil. “I promise I won’t leave you behind. Ev gave me speed. I could shlep fifteen dogs like you up that hill. Fifteen hundred zillion dogs. You hear that?” I use my back to break us a wedge out of the thicket. “So don’t you worry, Basil. I’ll get you out of here. I will.”
“And then, Libby?”
I raise Basil to his feet. But he is too shaky, too weak to stand alone. I straddle him without adding my burden to his, take off my blouse, and loop it beneath his belly. I hold on to the fabric, letting it support him so he doesn’t have to carry his own weight. “We should get you some of Ev’s speed. That’s why I got tons of energy. Because of Ev’s speed. I can do this for hours, Basil. For days. That’s how strong I am. And with some of that speed, you’d be able to leap right out of here and up that hill.”
But it takes us more than an hour to reach the top of the path that Basil used to race up in seconds—bullet, my bullet— coming at me grinning, tongue and tail flopping. “You were the fastest dog ever,” I tell him. “Faster than Ev’s divebomber geese on speed. How do you think they’re feeling now, huh? Now, if Jesse were telling you about those geese, they’d be doing cartwheels in the sky. They’d swoop down for you, their wings one big parachute, and carry you up to the house.”
Once I get him inside the house, Basil won’t eat, won’t even drink water. I drag his blanket from the kitchen into the living room, settle him in front of the fireplace, build him a summer fire to stop us both from shaking.
For five months Ev and I keep him going: with medicine; with food; with visits to Dr. Sylvia; with Basil stories that we’ve both heard before but need to hear again. Now and then we get silly with him, remind him how we chose him over his brother, even demonstrate how he liked to crouch low before doing his crazy dance around us. He blinks at my rendition of his crazy dance. Frowns, if it’s possible for a dog to frown.
I remind him that we still have to hold our vigil outside the gay bar, take Ev along, and sit on the curb across from the bar. “You can sleep while we wait for the rednecks, but once they get there, you’ll have to look ferocious.”
When Gloria boils the hearts of five chickens for Basil, he refuses; but when she mashes them with fudge and potato chips—“Some bloody valentine,” Ev sings—Basil scarfs the whole mess down the way he hasn’t scarfed anything in months. So vigorously does he lick his bowl that it skids across the kitchen floor while he chases it with his tongue, lapping, jostling.
“Such a strong dog,” Ev praises him.
“Protein plus the three major food groups,” Gloria says. “Sugar, salt, and grease.”
From then on we concoct Gloria’s bloody valentine every day and grind Basil’s medicine into it. We leave the house only for work or classes or groceries. No movies. No dinners out. We want to be home with Basil. For hours we sit with him by the fireplace, stroke his thick pelt, watch the river through the French doors, the trees as they cast off golden and red leaves in their own flowing motion. One morning we spot a bald eagle. The following day a moose swimming parallel to shore. We bring our father’s binoculars from the attic, and whenever we notice movement on the water, we report to Basil what’s out there.
And it does slow our season of parting from him. Makes us easier with each other. One afternoon we count five deer in the clearing. From then on we count everything for him: geese, quails, song birds, squirrels. Friends bring food. Toys for Basil. A bird feeder. Our first bird at the feeder is plump and red-breasted. It arrives when Moss is visiting.
“A cardinal,” Ev tells Basil. “Look at the cardinal. In the fee
der out there. Basil? Look.”
“I think cardinals have peaked heads,” Moss says. “You really should learn the names before you confuse Basil.”
Two days later she is back with a guide to Northwestern birds that she’s bought at Auntie’s Bookstore. We study the pictures, notice details we haven’t seen that clearly before. As children we were always in motion, as adults too busy. Now we have made a choice to be here. To see. To take shifts with Basil.
He never recovers. That night by the river has hurled him forward into old age, has rendered him helpless. Once he is no longer able to raise himself to his legs, we rig up a canvas sling—our log carrier—to hold him up and help him outside. If he soils himself, he shifts his head aside as if to protect us from the shame in his eyes. Tenderly, we clean him up, tell him we don’t mind. But away from him in the bathroom we gag, muffle the sounds so he won’t hear us.
One Saturday afternoon Jesse tries to get Basil to raise his head by unwrapping the rawhide strips he’s brought. Not too long ago, just the sound of cellophane would get Basil excited, but now he won’t even sniff Jesse’s hand when he extends the rawhide.
“He’s hollow inside from hurting,” Jesse explains. “And loopy.”
“Loopy …” Ev says. “How do you mean loopy?”
“All loopy like with the moon at night and it being sunshine somewhere else but you can climb up behind the loopiness and climb up like a bear climbing a telephone pole like my dad when he went to the airport and then climbed up a telephone pole so he could get on the airplane and then I had to climb up the telephone pole when his airplane came back so I could get him back down.”
“Now I understand exactly what it means,” Ev says gently. “Thank you.”
Early the following morning, before the Street Café opens, Moss comes over to give Basil one of her massages. She lies next to him on the rug, and while she kneads the toes on his front legs, she hums. It’s become a ritual between them: she’ll hum; he’ll lean his snout against her high, curved forehead and close his eyes as if he were meditating with her. “There …” she’ll say as she scoops her fingertips into the crevices between his black pads. “You like that, oh yes.” And she’ll progress to his hind legs, his flanks.
“Moss?” Ev asks. “Do you ever wish you had finished divinity school?”
“Not really.” She keeps rubbing Basil’s belly.
“You would have made a good minister.”
“Yes. But I like this here better.” She flattens her hands across Basil’s ears. “It may be time … soon, to let Basilboy have his last nap?”
I nod. “It’s what Dr. Sylvia says too.”
But my sister is shaking her head.
“One more week?” I ask her.
“I can’t—I can’t do it, Libby.”
“I’ll go,” Moss offers. “I’ll go in your place, Ev.”
“I hate to be like this. So selfish and—”
“It would freak Basilboy out to see you so upset,” Moss says firmly. “Whoever goes with him has to stay calm.”
“One more week,” I tell Moss.
It’s beginning to snow the morning Ev helps me to lift Basil onto the back seat of Moss’s car. Ev has been saying goodbye to him for the last hour, and she’s still stroking his head.
“Okay now?” I kiss her cheek, nudge her toward the house.
Then I slide in next to Basil, position him across my knees. For a large dog, he has become impossibly light. Jesse was right: all the hurting has indeed hollowed Basil out. Moss is backing up, jerking the stick shift as if she were Catherine the Great auditioning a horse. I feel awful: here I am with my dog on his way to die, and once again I’m thinking smut.
“I’m sorry, Moss,” I say.
She glances at me in the mirror, doesn’t ask what I’m sorry for, “It’s okay.”
As she drives north on Division, she hits a pothole, and Basil’s head bounces against my breasts. He peers at me as if apologizing. Considerate even now. But most of all so very tired. There is no more puppy left in him.
I cradle him against me, whisper a lie. “It’ll be all right… all right.”
On both sides of Division, the stores and strip malls are still closed, making it seem that today hasn’t begun yet, that we’re on river time—and why not?— stuck in that time zone an hour or two behind everyone else, making us immune to whatever is to come. But as soon as I think that, it all changes, and we’re driving fast, so fast—on fast-forward, that’s how fast—until Moss brakes hard, swerves to the edge of the road.
I hold on to Basil. “Is it icy out there?”
Her tires crush tumbleweeds that are dusted with white, and as her car rocks to an abrupt halt, she’s laughing. Laughing?
“Moss?”
“Talk about location.” She motions to a billboard with an arrow: Taxidermist Turn Here.
I stare at the billboard, at Moss, and then both of us are off laughing, a grim laughter that rides on tears.
“We could—” Moss hiccups. “We could bring Basilboy here.”
He hears his name, raises his head weakly.
“Afterward,” she adds. “Instead of letting them cremate him.”
“And then what? Prop him up at the Street Café?”
“He’d look real handsome next to the cake display.”
I’m howling with laughter. “You know how much that dog loves chocolate.”
But when Moss turns to glance at Basil and me, it’s plain that she isn’t kidding.
“You’re not kidding,” I say.
“We can take him to the vet and then come back here with him.”
“No, Moss.” I slide one hand down my chin, wipe tears into my neck.
“I have two reasons. Okay?”
“Just two?”
“One: his fur is still full.”
I run my hand up his back, make his thick yellow hair stand up, smooth it down again. At home, Ev will already have thrown out his fudge jar. Stored his toys and blanket in the attic. To shield me from anything that could possibly remind me of him. As if he didn’t live inside my heart. From that, I don’t need protection.
“And, two,” Moss is saying, “he would look better stuffed than he did these last few months —not so skinny.”
“No, Moss.”
“The taxidermist can fix Basilboy up so he can stand by himself. And I’ll pay half. You and Ev can split the other half.”
“No, Moss.”
“Or I can stuff him myself.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I did taxidermy when I was fifteen. Because I loved the pizza man across from my high school.”
“What does that have to do with —”
“He did taxidermy for a hobby.”
“God, I hope he washed his hands.”
“He had all those stuffed animals on pedestals along the walls of his pizza parlor. I asked if I could take lessons from him.”
“Don’t listen to her, Basil.”
“I wanted to be around the pizza man more. Without gaining twenty pounds.”
“Of course. How much pizza can anyone eat? The next logical step had to be taxidermy.”
“His pizza wasn’t that good.… But he taught me how to do a couple of birds. Small ones. A dove. Two parakeets. Then my brother’s hamster died.”
“Let me guess. You eternalized your brother’s hamster.”
“By then I was no longer interested in things that didn’t breathe. I liked the expressions of the animals, their poses, but I wanted them in motion, and it was only natural that I stopped loving the pizza man. He never noticed—the love or the not-love. But I sent my brother to him. He still has the hamster. Except it’s fatter now than it used to be.”
“Sounds like your pizza man put too much stuffing inside.”
“He was always putting too much cheese on pizzas.”
For an instant there I think I hear the jiggling of Basil’s collar, even though he’s not moving, and I know I’ll cont
inue to hear that sound for months after he’s dead. But now the jiggling is coming from Moss, from her knee against the key chain against the steering column as she starts the car and already we’re in the vet’s parking lot and I’m carrying Basil into Dr. Sylvia’s office by myself—that’s how light he is, how impossibly light—and Moss is steadying my arm while I stand next to a metal table, breathing animal fear and disinfectants, cradling Basil’s head in my palms as I did once before when Dr. Sylvia was sticking a needle into him.
Except that day he did wake up again.
He was just a year old, and we’d been reluctant to get him neutered, because we didn’t want to mess with his personality. Besides, we figured he’d outgrow his restlessness and stop barking by the door at dawn, ready to chase squirrels and skunks and pheasants and whatever else he might scare up in the undergrowth along the river.
Three evenings in a row he came home skunked so thoroughly that tomato juice wouldn’t get the stink out of his fur. When Gloria said to rinse him with douche and water—a solution of one to four—I didn’t want to, because I was embarrassed the cashier at Rosauer’s might think I poured that kind of junk into myself when every self-respecting woman knows how bad it is for your insides. But Ev—simply to prove to me she didn’t care what others thought of her—drove to Rosauer’s and returned with a dozen bottles of douche in four flavors, just douche, not bothering to buy at least a few other items for camouflage. Then she bragged, of course, how she’d looked straight at the man who rang them up, daring him to make one single comment.
Turned out we needed just three bottles. That’s how well the douche killed even the worst odors. Made me shudder to think what it’s really sold for. Still, from then on we kept stocked up on douche, Ev’s assignment.
One afternoon Basil ran home wailing, head fringed with porcupine quills that stuck out like Tammy Faye Bakker’s eyelashes. Most of them we extricated, careful not to leave any ends in Basil’s skin even though he thrashed about, his tongue swollen. We were afraid he was having convulsions, because he kept curling his tongue outward as if he were trying to push something from his throat. When Ev and I finally managed to pry his jaw apart, we could see that his gums and the roof of his mouth were pierced by dozens of quills, and we drove him to Dr. Sylvia’s clinic.
