“Well, he kind of likes everyone,” she admitted.
Buddy gazed right into the deep-set chestnut brown eyes of this frazzled mutt, who looked back into his eyes as well. He wondered if it were true…if dogs really were the philosophers of the soul. He heard that somewhere once, and every time he looked at a dog, he thought about that…how dogs seemed to be beyond this world and at an understanding of the human condition more than humans themselves understood it.
Isn’t it strange how dogs seem to be the only animals who look at you right into your eyes? How they seem to see past your fears and insecurities and shame and secrets, and instead see you – the real you that stays hidden from the world? Finding that level of intimacy with another human being is damn near impossible. But finding it with a dog? Easy peasy.
The dog looked down briefly, panted for a second and then looked back up at Buddy. He appeared to be pleading with him.
“Is the dog for sale or something?” Buddy asked the girl, who remained still as she held the leash. She wore jeans with a hole in the left knee, a flannel shirt draped over her waist and a pair of scuffed up combat boots, as if she just got out of a Nirvana concert. If Buddy had more game, he would have asked her name, but he was distracted by this pleasant and unspoken interaction with this large dog.
“He’s up for adoption,” the girl said, a small twinge of hope in her voice. “I’m from Polly’s Pet Rescue over in Haddleboro. I got Bo, here, out of an animal shelter over near New Bern two days before they were going to put him down for overcrowding. He’s been staying with me and my daughter for now, but he needs a good permanent home.”
Buddy stood up and looked down again at the brim of her hat. She was sweet. He could tell that she was probably the kind of girl who once enjoyed climbing trees and swimming in lakes.
“Really? They were going to kill him just because they’re overcrowded?” Buddy never heard of such a thing before.
“Well, they try to find the owners of any strays, and when they can’t, they put the animals up for adoption. But it’s hard for the older ones like Bo. People want a pure-bred dog or a puppy or one who has a lot of years left in ‘im. Bo is an older dog, but not too old, and he’s still got lots of life to live. He is so friendly and would be a great family dog. Do you have kids?”
Buddy thought about how funny that sounded. He couldn’t even get a girlfriend, let alone get someone to have kids with him.
“No. It’s just me, but I always thought a dog would make a good companion. I have a lot of room for one.”
“Have you ever owned a dog before?”
Buddy was thoughtful. He hadn’t. When he was small, Kenny wouldn’t allow it, and when he and his mother became new people altogether, there just seemed to be too many other things to be concerned with than to bother with the likes of a dog.
“No, actually, I haven’t. But I’d like to, I think.”
The girl continued to eye Buddy, who either looked at the hat’s curve or down at Bo the lonely golden mutt.
“Do you know why he was in the shelter?” Buddy asked.
“His previous owner died and none of his kin would take Bo in. He wasn’t abused or anything.”
“That’s awful,” he uttered. “The owner dies and no one steps forward to help an old loyal boy like this? They’d rather he be put into a shelter to die?” People perplexed Buddy. “How does one adopt this dog from you?” he asked, deciding that it was time he make a spontaneous decision for himself and get this dog.
The girl smiled and seemed very pleased that this was working out. She gave the leash to Buddy and asked him to come over with her to the table. Handing him a form on a clipboard, she asked him to fill it out. “There’s just a small fee to cover the dog license,” she said. “He has all of his shots up to date and he’s been neutered.”
Buddy read through the forms quickly, knowing that it didn’t matter what they said. He was getting the dog.
“If you want to donate additional money to help us continue to care for these pets in our fostering system, you can do that too. But believe me, just adopting Bo and taking him into your home for good is enough.”
“Is this your job or something? Trying to get dogs adopted in front of pet stores?”
She grinned. “No, not really. I’m just a student right now, trying to finish college, and I have a part time job. But dogs who need homes…they are my passion. I do this for the Pet Rescue once a month.”
As Buddy filled out the form, the girl bent down and started to rub Bo’s ears. “I’m gonna miss this one,” she started. “He’s my favorite guest dog. He’s my little girl’s favorite too. But I can tell that you two will be fast and best friends.”
Then the girl started to do that thing that girls do – yammer. The more she talked, the more Buddy tuned her out, the more Buddy wanted to take Bo and get the hell back home. She was real cute – actually too cute – and so she started to make him both very nervous and slightly annoyed. But then he stopped himself for a moment to consider that this was most likely a good and kind person with a big heart and maybe he shouldn’t be so uptight over the fact she liked to talk too much about nothing in particular. Maybe nothing in particular wasn’t such a bad conversation piece after all, since that’s what most people seemed to talk about. Maybe he was missing the boat on how great talking about nothing in particular could be – with just the right girl.
Within an hour, Buddy loaded up this large, loving animal into his car. He had a set of bowls, a large dog bed pillow, a new leather leash, and a huge bag of some generic brand dog chow. As they drove back to his house, Bo stuck his head out the window and felt the wind in his face. At stop lights, women would look over at Bo and wave at Buddy. Some would smile his way as they walked down the street.
When Buddy pulled into his driveway, two little girls followed his car while on their bikes. As soon as he got out of the car and let Bo out the passenger side, the girls dropped their bikes on the driveway and ran up to the big golden boy who was now a part of this family-oriented neighborhood.
“Mister Buddy, is this your dog?” Lilly from a few houses down shouted, hugging him tightly as if Bo were hers. Janie, the other girl, was a bit timid but put her hand out to Bo and he licked it.
“He is. His name is Bo,” Buddy answered, watching this scene in front of him, a scene that he hoped to have in his own life some day: a couple of happy little girls embracing their new dog…a real family of his own…a pipe dream.
After that day at the Fall Festival, Buddy seemed to miss Julie when she would normally go on her jogs. His timing was all off. He would grab Bo and go for a short walk down the street at the usual time, but Julie would never run by. A whole week went past, and Buddy started to feel bummed out about it. Had he scared her off or something during their brief conversation at the school? It seemed to him that she was friendly and nothing was strange or fake between them. She wasn’t like the law student, who Buddy decided was just another young woman out there whose mind and desires seemed to change from sunset to sunset.
Julie had a daughter, a bouncing and happy little ball of freckles, and she had a peace to her that burned deeper than most, way beyond her youthful age. He figured Julie was around the same age as he was, give or take. He wondered where she lived and if he could be so bold as to find out. Maybe he could show up with a casserole – that’s what neighborly people do, right? Maybe he could find out her phone number and give her a call – and then not be able to say anything to her when she answered the phone. Maybe he could sit outside of the elementary school and wait for her and Molly to come out. No, that’s creepy. Maybe he could go to the school office and pretend that he needed to give her something, a gift from Jasper perhaps, a bird house with bright colors. Maybe he could become a volunteer in the school, read to the little kids once a week, until they were able to at last bump into each other in the hallway. Maybe – just mayb
e – he could stop being a pathetic loser and obsessing about a woman he could never even hope to have.
A week after the Fall Festival, which was also a week since he last saw Julie, Buddy woke up and decided to go with Bo over to the state park nearby. It was the time of year when the high school kids were enjoying their Friday night football games in coats and hats, the ice cream shops weren’t so busy anymore, and the pumpkin patches were offering hay rides and corn mazes and haunted houses and warm apple cider until late at night each weekend.
With his ego no longer stinging from the passive rejection by the law student, he threw on a pair of jeans and his fading Carolina Law School sweatshirt and headed out into the sunny Fall Saturday morning with his best friend. It was a nice day, feeling a lot cooler out; a slight breeze brushed his face with a touch of cold air, a welcomed feeling. He brought a tennis ball for Bo to chase…or more like…wobble toward quickly. While Bo didn’t complain, Buddy figured he had some kind of arthritis or deterioration in his leg joints.
He parked his car in a parking lot, which included only one small white Dodge Neon, threw the tennis ball along the grass of the deserted park, and waited for Bo to go get it and bring it back to him. Several minutes went by, and Buddy took the ball and threw it farther into the woods along a bike path. Bo wobbled quickly over to the path, picked up the ball, and brought it back. Buddy felt the slobber on the green padding of the ball, threw it long, and watched it bounce onto the path, disappearing off to the side somewhere. And as Bo wobbled over, he, too, eventually dissolved into the brush area, his golden fur consumed by the Fall foliage.
“Bo!” Buddy yelled toward him. Bo did not come out.
“Bo! Here, boy!” he hollered again. Still nothing.
After about a minute or two, Buddy started to get concerned. Where would Bo have gone? The ball couldn’t have bounced very far off the path and, while he was old, he hadn’t lost his ability to smell.
As Buddy started to walk toward the path, he saw a woman come out in a slow jog with his big loveable mutt in lock step with her. The ball was in his mouth and he ran right next to her on the bike path – like the woman was his owner and they did this together every day and he wasn’t in his senior dog years.
“Bo!” Buddy yelled at him, trying to get him to leave the woman alone.
He watched her in a familiar rhythm, wearing a ball cap and an electric blue athletic running outfit and jacket. She peered over and began to lead Bo toward him. As she came closer, Buddy realized who it was. Julie. Julie had been running the bike path at the park.
As she jogged toward him, she slowed down to a walking pace; and while a touch out of breath, she pulled the headphones off her ears and pressed a button on her CD player – sitting buckled to her side – to turn off her music.
“Hey, I know this dog,” she said through harsh breaths. She bent over and pet Bo on the head. Bo allowed her to do so and then licked her hands.
“I’m really sorry; he doesn’t usually do anything like that. He’s…really kind of old and never runs anymore.”
“It’s okay. I’m done anyway,” she said and looked up at Buddy. Her smile was bright and alive and there was nothing awkward about how she was talking with him. She treated him as a familiar face, someone she knew, not a stranger at all.
“Where have you been?” Buddy asked her, and then felt like a complete idiot. He didn’t mean to say that out loud. That was supposed to be a thought that remained trapped in his head. And as it came from his mouth, he imagined his hands going out in front of the words marching out into the air and scooping them back into his throat and locking them inside of his heart.
“What do you mean?” Julie asked.
“Uh, sorry. I didn’t mean that how it must’ve sounded,” Buddy stammered. He was back to not being able to look at her eyes, looking instead at the left earphone which hung just below her neck.
“Oh, you mean my usual running route?” she stood up and took a deep breath. “I needed a measured path to practice on with no distractions, like cars and such. I want to run a half marathon and so I decided to try this trail for a while to train.”
She stopped and gazed at Buddy, who could not bring himself to look back into her eyes. She moved her head to where his eyes were, putting hers in direct contact with his, widening them on purpose, forcing him to look at her.
“You’re a shy one, aren’t you?” she asked him.
Buddy didn’t know how to respond to that.
“But you have a good wing man, here, in this big sweet dog.” She petted Bo’s head. Bo dropped the ball in front of her feet. Julie picked it up and threw it toward the path. Bo scurried off to get it, just like his old self and not that bionic canine he was just a few minutes ago, distance-running like a puppy.
“That’ll keep him busy for a minute,” Julie said. She turned toward Buddy. Buddy finally looked at her. She paused and smirked at him just a bit. Eyeing him, trying to read his signals and figuring that she understood completely, she asked him, with all the confidence of a recently elected politician, “You think you’d like to meet me for lunch later?”
All Buddy could do was stand there with a grin on the inside realizing that all along…his mother was right…Bo would help him pick up a woman. The woman. The only one he had ever truly wanted in his life. Or was Bo picking up the woman all for himself and Buddy was quietly taking over?
He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t care either.
Sad Stories
Julie brushed her damp hair and started the hair dryer. Molly was at her first slumber party. She spent the night at Zoe Wade’s house, and there were four other girls also invited, probably keeping Linda Wade up all night with their giggling. Molly was small for her age, and some people felt like she was a little odd – who bounces like that? - but Julie was so happy that she seemed to have finally made some friends in her Second Grade class.
The brush went through the thick blond waves, drying one hunk after another. She tried to straighten it with the tip of the dryer facing down and the hair frying along on the curve of the brush. Hot air slowly went down the strands. She wanted to be cute for her lunch date because this shy man who can’t look at her in her eyes has her uniquely intrigued. And she hasn’t been intrigued by any man – certainly not like this – since Gabe Saint waltzed into her life years ago.
Buddy was so cute. He was tall, but not too tall, with a lean build, blondish-brown hair in a neatly cropped high and tight cut. He wasn’t in the military, but he looked like he could’ve been or had been at one point. His face was boyish, and his eyelashes were the longest eyelashes she had ever seen. Men were not supposed to have eyelashes like that, and she was certain that women who noticed them were jealous of them. Females paid good money for the kinds of eyelashes he was lucky enough to be born with.
His eyes were a cobalt blue – not bright and shiny – but instead serene and calming, like a water color painting. She wasn’t quite sure what in the world she was doing, but Julie believed that everything happens for a reason…even the bad things that aren’t fair.
Molly was at her first slumber party, and she didn’t need to pick her up until three o’clock. Julie wasn’t sure what got into her to conjure up the gumption to ask this shy man on a…date?...but she did it, and she actually felt good about the whole thing. She put on a pair of black slacks and an off-white sweater. It was just lunch. It was just lunch with a man that she couldn’t get to look directly into her eyes.
The first time she noticed him was one Tuesday afternoon while she was on her afternoon jog with Gabe’s ghost. Buddy was walking on the sidewalk with his big golden dog. She was still well behind him and saw that he had a peculiar but familiar walk. Not sure what it reminded her of exactly, she found herself slowing her jog so she could try to figure it out. John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever? Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing? Was that a strut? She wasn’t sure – but
it caught her eye. It was not a stride she saw often and it did stand out.
She would notice him most days after that and watched his strut from afar, until she got up near him, and then quickly ran by. She was usually on the side of the street while he was on the sidewalk. One day, she decided she would try to see his face. So, when she saw him in the distance, instead of remaining on the side of the street, she popped up onto the sidewalk instead. It was a clear, hot afternoon…probably too hot to be jogging per the weatherman. But if Julie didn’t jog, she didn’t have Gabe. Gabe didn’t mind the heat so much in death.
Forgetting Gabe for a brief spell, she paced herself so she would be able to get a look at this now familiar stranger, her Groundhog Day moment of late. As she came up behind him, she yelled, “On your left!” as to give him the proper running etiquette announcement when going by a pedestrian. He was startled, they locked eyes, and she saw that he was very attractive – cute, really – and probably around her age. She was sure to smile at him, and it felt nice for the first time to smile at another man…the first man after Gabe…who she saw as a real man and not just another annoying intrusion trying to finagle himself into her dead husband’s shoes.
After that, Julie wondered if she would ever see him in a normal setting. He had to live nearby. She lived only about two miles from his neighborhood, so certainly they would bump into each other somewhere ordinary, like the Post Office or the Food Lion or even the mall. So, she was really surprised when she happened to bump into him at school. For some reason, she hadn’t imagined that scenario.
She met Buddy later that day at Flora’s Bistro, a small café in downtown Fayetteville. It was a nice sandwich place with happy décor that always made her heart feel much lighter when she walked inside. Molly was always with her when they went after church, which was just down the street. On Sundays, Flora’s also had breakfast served until two o’clock in the afternoon, so it was especially popular then.
Good Buddy Page 10
