The Porcupine of Truth

by Bill Konigsberg

  We walk together in silence, our steps in a comfortable rhythm. When we get back to his street, Aisha says, “And you really believe in heaven?”

  “Oh, most definitely,” Turk says. “You want to see what heaven is like? To my way of thinking?”

  We nod.

  He hands me Gomer’s leash and then waves us off. “Take Gomer to the dog park. I’ll tell you where it is. That, my young friends, is heaven on earth.”

  There are two gates to the dog park. We open up a huge wrought-iron doorway and enter what I guess is a vestibule before we reach the second gate. As we do so, a bunch of dogs run up to the second gate to see who is coming in. Gomer eagerly looks out at the expectant pack of dogs, his black tail wagging back and forth like a metronome.

  We remove his leash as Turk told us to do and open the second gate, and Gomer rockets into a world unlike any I’ve seen before.

  It’s a beautiful morning and the sun is coming up over the bright green, grassy field. Dozens of dogs of all types congregate in small groups or jump and run and play in pairs and packs. There are huge dogs with pointy snouts, low-to-the-ground dogs waddling around with big bellies, miniature dogs yipping and chasing the tails of larger dogs that look like they could eat the mini ones for breakfast. A diverse cluster of dogs tromps around the perimeter of the park in pack formation. Two dogs, one black and small, the other reddish and slightly bigger, wrestle, the smaller one standing on his hind legs trying to gain an advantage.

  Dozens of people of all types stand around, some talking and laughing. Others lounge on benches, watching the scene in solitude. Fat white men in sweat suits chat with skinny black ladies in skirts who look like they must be on their way to the office after this. Hipster chicks wearing librarian glasses cavort with dudes in skullcaps.

  I watch Gomer saunter up to a big German shepherd. They sniff each other’s snouts for a moment, and then the German shepherd walks around to the back of Gomer and sniffs his butt.

  “Oh my,” I say.

  “That’s how they check each other out,” Aisha says. “We used to have a mini schnauzer.”

  “I did not know that,” I say. “Either of those pieces of information, actually.”

  Gomer allows the bigger dog to sniff him. And then, just as quickly, the German shepherd gallops off, and Gomer, his tail waving like a fan, takes off after him. The bigger dog runs in a wide circle, and Gomer, lower and more compact, has to move his legs twice as fast to keep up. Then the bigger dog turns and starts chasing Gomer, and a medium-sized white dog with a funny-looking snout joins in.

  A bulldog, wheezing like he’s out of shape, scampers by my feet. A tiny, fluffy white dog follows him. I look around. No dogs are left out. They’re all playing with each other.

  Gomer runs past a poodle sitting expectantly, looking at its owner. He’s a wiry-looking guy in a trucker hat. Gomer barks at the poodle, and both dogs’ tails start wagging. The poodle takes off, chasing Gomer. “Hazel! Girl, get back here,” he yells, and the dogs stop running. Hazel the poodle trots back over to her owner, who turns his attention to Gomer. “Get away from her, you stupid mutt,” he says.

  I run over. “Sorry,” I say.

  He ignores me, and I feel my shoulders droop. This trip has allowed me to forget how it feels to be invisible. Now I remember: I don’t like it.

  “C’mon, Gomer,” I say, monotone, and he trots away from the poodles. He doesn’t seem to care that he was just yelled at; he has the same smile on his adorable face that he almost always has. He races off to join a group of smaller dogs who are running in circles. He puts his nose right up against a large, furry white dog’s behind. He goes up to all the dogs and does it. Doesn’t matter if they’re bigger or smaller. Gomer sniffs the boys, the girls, the white-furred ones, the red-furred ones, the black-furred ones. The nearly shaved, the puffy.

  “What do you think the sniffing is all about?” I ask.

  “They’re curious. Like why they come running to the door when another dog comes in. They want to know about him or her.”

  “Wouldn’t that be cool if we could be like that?”

  “Sniffing butts?” she asks, sniffing my shoulder.

  “Not afraid of what other people think. Not embarrassed to be interested in someone else. That kind of thing. Do you think that’s why Turk thinks it’s heaven? Why can’t humans be like that? What are we afraid of?”

  She doesn’t have time to answer my litany of questions, because suddenly there is a commotion. Hazel the poodle is on her back and a large gray dog stands over her, growling.

  “Hey!” the nasty guy says, kicking at the gray dog.

  The dog eludes his kick and saunters away. The owner of the gray dog, a large, nondescript man whose belly spills over his brown jeans, hurries over.

  “You control your dog or next time I’ll punt it,” the wiry guy spits at him.

  The man in the brown jeans says, “He was just playing. I’m sorry.”

  “You bet you’re sorry,” the wiry guy says. “Control him, or next time I’ll punt you.”

  Aisha and I look at each other. Everyone in the park is watching the altercation. Meanwhile, a pack of German shepherds has cordoned off the gray dog from the rest. After a little bit of roughhousing, they let the gray dog go. He trots off in search of other playmates.

  “That’s how the dogs take care of each other,” Aisha says to me. “They set him straight.”

  The guy in the trucker hat stands rigid, his arms crossed tight across his chest. Turk said this was heaven, and for a while I could totally see that. Then trucker hat guy yelled at Gomer, and then at the other guy. Suddenly we’re not in heaven anymore.

  Trucker hat guy is motioning with his arms in front of Hazel, who is just sitting there, not playing with the other dogs. I feel bad for her. All these dogs are out having a good time, and poor Hazel is like a prisoner to that jerk.

  “The problem with this place is the entrance,” I tell Aisha. “Replace that double gate with a velvet rope, get the Porcupine out there to choose who gets in, and then this place really would be Des Moines.”

  Aisha laughs. “Get rid of these gates and add a velvet rope, and what you really have is chaos.”

  I get that she’s kidding, that she means that a velvet rope would not be an ideal way to fence in dogs. But I’m being serious. The thing that keeps this place from truly being heaven, in my opinion, is who is let in.

  The dogs run and fetch and play, and the people do their thing too. On the other side of the park, the brown jeans guy is standing by himself with his head down. It’s like I can feel his shame.

  I tug on Aisha’s shirt and walk toward the guy. She follows, keeping an eye on Gomer, who is being petted by a muscular black dude with a blond buzz cut.

  “Hey,” I say as we approach. “What’s your name?”

  The brown jeans guy looks surprised that someone is talking to him. “Larry.”

  “Hey, Larry. I’m Carson and this is Aisha.”

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Which dog is yours?” I ask, pretending not to have seen the altercation.

  He points tentatively at his gray dog, which is currently sniffing a woman’s feet.

  “So cute. What kind is he?” Aisha asks.

  “He’s an Australian shepherd.”

  I scan the park for Gomer. “Ours is the Labradoodle currently on his back with his legs in the air. Can’t take him anywhere.”

  Larry laughs. “Yep. He looks like a nice dog.”

  “He is.”

  “Shit,” he mutters under his breath. His Australian shepherd is now peeing on a tennis ball a guy had been using to play fetch with his dog. The guy goes off in search of another ball. “Matty!” Larry yells, but the dog ignores him and begins to growl at a skinny, hairless dog about a quarter of his size. He shakes his head. “My dog is a fucking asshole.”

  I laugh, but Aisha doesn’t. “You have him since he was a pup?” she asks.

  The guy nods. “Go
t him at a pet store. He lives in our garage ’cause he kept peeing all over the place and chewing up the furniture.”

  I don’t know a lot about dogs, but I can tell there’s something not great about this story. I mean, don’t dogs need training? Maybe not as much as poor Hazel, but.

  I’m about to say something else when a woman who is walking past us with her German shepherd points across the way. “Oh! I think Brent’s about to have Hazel do Russian Bear,” she says. “Have you seen this?”

  I turn and watch. She’s pointing at trucker hat guy. He is kneeling in front of Hazel like they’re having an intense conversation. Then he pats her on the head, stands, and puts his arms out wide. “Russian bear,” he says.

  Hazel stands on her hind legs and slowly lifts her paws high above her head. She does look kind of like a bear, I realize, and begrudgingly I grin.

  Aisha gasps. “I’ve never seen a dog do that!”

  “Isn’t that great?” the woman says. She and her German shepherd have stopped walking.

  When Hazel gets down from her pose, the trucker guy holds up a treat, which Hazel gobbles down while he affectionately rubs her head.

  The woman who told us to watch smiles. “Brent is so good with her. Ever since his wife left him last year, training Hazel has become his one passion.”

  “That was pretty amazing,” Aisha says.

  Larry isn’t listening. “Fuck. Matty!” he yells, running over to him. Matty has taken down another dog, this one small and apricot with floppy ears. He is growling over it.

  Larry grabs Matty by the collar and drags him a good fifteen feet. He then smacks Matty in the snout and says, “Stupid, fucking, useless mutt.”

  “And some people, less amazing,” the woman says, matter-of-fact, and she continues her perimeter walk.

  Larry puts Matty on his leash and heads toward the exit.

  “You ever have an initial reaction to something and it turns out totally wrong?” I ask Aisha.

  She tosses a ball high in the air, and Gomer leaps for it and catches it in his mouth. Then he drops it at Aisha’s feet and looks up at her. “All the time,” she says.

  I’m about to tell her all the thoughts I had about Brent after he yelled at Gomer, and then I realize maybe there’s a better way to deal with this.

  “Follow me,” I say to Aisha, and she slaps her leg and somehow Gomer knows to walk with us. I slowly approach Brent and Hazel, and as Aisha figures out where we’re going, she puts Gomer on a leash.

  I stop a few feet away from Brent, keeping my distance in case he’s gonna get nasty again. “That was so cool,” I say.

  “Yeah?” he asks, barely glancing up at me.

  “We put our dog on a leash this time,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

  “Thanks,” he says, and this time he does look at me and gives me a smile.

  “How’d you teach her to do that?”

  Brent studies us like he’s not sure what our angle is. Like we’re messing with him. But we aren’t.

  “One day Hazel was trying to steal herself a treat that was on the kitchen counter. There was a stool in the way, so when I walked into the kitchen, there she was, looking like a big old white Russian bear.” He laughs. “I figured maybe I could figure out how to turn her bad habit into a good one.”

  “That’s awesome. She’s an amazing dog,” Aisha says.

  “Thanks,” Brent says, and that stern, nasty demeanor is gone. “Hey, listen. Sorry ’bout that before. I sometimes bark before I think. I know you didn’t mean any trouble.”

  “I appreciate it,” I say, genuinely surprised that he even knew I was the owner of the dog he yelled at. “I get that you’re protective of Hazel.”

  He nods.

  “What about that other guy?”

  He shakes his head. “That guy needs to stop bringing his dog here. Seen him a hundred times, and he never gets the message.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, and I stick out my hand for him to shake. He does. “Catch you another time.”

  When Gomer starts to pant and his tongue begins to hang from his mouth, we decide it’s time to leave. Aisha wrangles him back onto his leash, and we head for the exit.

  “So is this heaven?” I ask as we get to the exit.

  We turn and look back at the park one last time.

  “For me it is,” Aisha says.

  I take in the whole scene. Turk’s heaven on earth is filled with laughter and play and barking and roughhousing and dog pee, and as many different breeds of people as there are of dogs. And there are humans who get along, and others who don’t, and some who do the wrong thing, or at least the wrong thing according to me.

  I smile. If you had told me two weeks ago in New York that I’d find heaven on earth in a grassy field soaked with dog urine, watching a fat guy smack his misbehaving dog on the snout, I would have laughed at you.

  But it’s not two weeks ago. I’m not in New York, and everything’s different now. At least I am, because now I can stop judging everything for long enough to realize where I am.

  A perfectly imperfect place.

  “For me too,” I say, resting my head on Aisha’s shoulder. “Totally heaven.”

  IT’S LATE EVENING when Turk pulls his rental car into the driveway of my dad’s place. A sense of dread seizes my chest. The party is over. Now it’s time for the reckoning. As much as I can’t wait even another second to introduce my dad and Turk, the uncertainty of how my dad will react to learning what happened to his dad makes me want to lock us in the car and never, ever get out.

  We carefully navigate the steep driveway in the dark and walk around to the front door. Something about this reunion feels inappropriate for the back door and the kitchen.

  My mother answers when we knock. Her face is tense, and her lips are tighter. Part of me wants to grab her and hug her so hard that it’ll wring all the anger out of her and me. Another part wants to run.

  “Hi Mom,” I say. “Not sure how to do this, so. Um. This is Turk Braverman. Dad’s dad’s … significant other. Turk, this is my mom, Renee Warren.”

  She sticks her hand out tentatively, like she’s not sure if this is an appropriate response to what I’ve said. Thank God for Turk, who gently takes her hand and then steps forward and hugs her tense body.

  Then the three of us walk in, and I squeeze her shoulder as I walk by. It’s like a squeeze question: Are we okay? I’m pretty sure we’re not. She doesn’t respond in any way I notice.

  “He’s resting,” she says, as I point to my dad’s bedroom door.

  Turk turns to her as if to ask permission. She nods ever so slightly.

  Turk and I walk to the door. He knocks, and it takes Dad a long, long time to answer.

  He looks at least a year older than when I left. His unshaven face sags, sallow. I think, No. This is not the person I’ve been talking to on the phone.

  I hug him as tightly as I feel I can without hurting him. He smells stale, unshowered.

  “You came back,” he says, his words labored as he squeezes me. “Yay.”

  “Dad,” I say, pulling back from the hug. “This is Turk Braverman. He knew your dad.”

  My dad just stands there, like he doesn’t know how to react. Turk sticks out his hand. My dad barely shakes it.

  “Would you mind if I came in and talked with you for a bit?” Turk asks.

  My dad looks scared. He looks at me. I nod. He looks at my mom, who nods too.

  Even with his frailties, I am used to Turk being decisive in every action, every movement. So watching the way he reacts to my father is stunning to me. I can feel his uncertainty. I see it in his tentative glances, and the way he avoids looking at my dad. How weird this must be for him, I think.

  My dad steps aside and allows Turk into his room. Turk closes the door.

  I look at my mom, whose eyes plead for more information.

  “I’m gonna hang out downstairs,” Aisha says, and she slips into the kitchen, heading toward the basement stairs.
>
  When my mother and I are alone in the living room, neither of us speaks for a long time. I sit down on the couch, and she sits down in the love seat. I simply don’t know what to say. I don’t know what her excuse is.

  Finally, she takes a deep breath, crosses her legs, and says, “I recognize that what you’ve done here is significant, Carson. I thank you for that. But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like we need to have a real conversation about boundaries. I feel as though I allow you a lot of leeway, but I am your parent. It’s important for me to locate it when I feel as though my boundaries as a parent have been crossed.”

  My face heats up. It gets hot, and then hotter. I feel like a teakettle with the heat turned way up, like if I don’t let something out right now, my head’s gonna start to whistle.

  “MORE, PLEASE! ANYTHING, PLEASE! JUST … MORE!”

  My mother reacts as if I’ve just socked her in the gut.

  “I need more than that kind of talk. I mean it. You can’t do this to me anymore. I’m your kid. Who says that to their kid?”

  “Who says what?”

  “All this ‘locate,’ ‘own,’ ‘allow’ … You’re so clinical, so cold, Mom. You freeze me out.”

  “You think I’m cold?” She sucks in her lips.

  I don’t say anything. Her eyes redden and moisten. She swallows. A first tear falls.

  This. This is what I’ve been afraid of all my life. This is why I count. So I don’t say something that melts my mom. I have melted my mother. I have made my mother cry.

  “I don’t think —” I say, and then I stop. We’re here already. No going back. “I just think you sometimes play psychologist with me instead of, you know. Being my mom. You don’t show emotion. You don’t seem to care enough to get angry most of the time. You never hug me.”

  This just makes the tears fall more, and she doesn’t wipe them away. It’s like she’s thawing. Liquid streams down her face as she speaks.

  “Do you think I don’t know I’m not cut out for this? Do you think I haven’t told myself, every day since I had you, that I can’t do this? Every day, Carson. I hear the voice every day. Renee, you’re doing it wrong. You’re a terrible mother. I try to keep it together, and that only makes it worse.”