The side of the road.
Warning: this has sadness.
We were driving out to Candler today to retrieve a sewing machine for me to borrow. The sewing machine had hidden its pedal so I was unable to use it to push my sewing and practice my quilting while on sabbatical to the east coast.
We had turned off the main highway; taken a exit from between the large freight trucks marking a line across the country with their wheels, a burnish line to fold the country in half. On this tributary of asphalt the terrain was changing. The trees lining the large thoroughfare of highway 40 had spread out to form hills, had melted from the wall of visual blockage and noise attenuation to the trees left between stores and shopping-plexes and used car lots, had dissolved into street trees and planter boxes, then grew into the foliage on the mountains beyond, barren of leaves cutting the light into geometrical fingernails between the shadow of the trees resolved to bear the weight of the winter and sit till the days became long again to bud the flowers and canopy to again feed them to fuel them for the warm months. The man made interventions were changing from fuel driven signage to business and industry. The traffic was channeled into a smaller more focused lanes with destination on the mind and the notions of rural life and a thinning density merely 15 miles further down this road.
In the hermetic bubble of the minivan we were postulating over the school systems and I was asking about hows and whats. The road was curving away in front and behind us speaking more of the mountains that were once under the houses and stores and nurseries and churches, slowly meeting the ground on its terms.
In a turn of the road off to the right was a dog pacing through traffic, A bronze boxer pit-bull mix. She was not attentive to the flow of cars hugging the turn from around the hill that proceeded her. She was there, dazed. As we passed I noticed the other dog laying across the white line that meant the edge of the road, perforating the paint with his body. I could see blood even from within the moving vehicle. Desa slowed at the next inlet after the scene had made its gravity known, she was the force of compassion that stopped the car. Two stores down we turned around to go gather the devoted sentinel. Being the passenger I had noticed the other dog, she had not. We parked and walked up the road towards the grass on the hill behind the pair of dogs. The golden dog was pacing around, not knowing what to respond to. I could tell that she was friendly from her eye contact and demeanor, but she was not going to come to calls. It was her charge to watch over her friend till he got back up, till the strange cleave in her reality had reknit. I called her, she looked back and led me to her friend. I came up to her to try and grab her to get her to stop running in traffic but she was not to be cowed, not to be tamed, not to be stopped in her vigil of running to support her dog friend.
There were other people stopping at this time. A lady was coming up with a rope, and I went to get it from her to slow down the one dog still standing. I sat on my haunches and she came over to me to pass by as if to say: “thanks for your kind words, but I cannot stop moving or else I will have failed.” I got the rope around her neck and she struggled to get free, pulling and bucking and backing away till I gathered the rope and came up to her. As soon as I put my hand on her she stopped and stayed still. She put her trust in me. She sat by me while the rest of the scene played on. I then was able to look around, to assess what was happening and what to do.
The other dog was breathing. The graphite colored pit bull was heaving breath.
More people were there. Some directing others, some with hands on one of the dogs to reassure. A man with a motorcycle came to stand over, informing the few of us that he knew the owner. Had called and gotten no answer.
Desa knelt by me and this mother dog. She knew of a clinic just up the road a few blocks. I called it. A girl in a red work shirt with her name tag still on either going or coming from work had called animal control. Her name tag was crooked. Tristan.
The animal hospital blocks away asked me if I knew the name of the owner, and I relayed that information to them. They had no record of that person or that dog name. They had no vehicle to help us. They were unwilling to give aid if the owner was not present. Money.
The man in the motorcycle jacket had blood on his hands.
A car pulled to a stop in the road. Blinking lights. He was an EMT.
The lady with the rope had a large freezer bag and was coming down the hill. She asked someone to rip it open as a makeshift gurney to take the dog from the road. The EMT pulled out his bag of medical supplies and gave the dog an IV drip to keep him hydrated till we either moved him or someone came to save the day.
The dog that I was petting was looking around. I was talking to her, telling her that she was being brave and a good dog. She looked up at me and licked my face.
A person was reached. The owner had been informed.
Nothing happened. We called around to other clinics to see if they had a record of that owner and name, but no one knew of them.
The mother dog was there laying under a bit of pressure by the few of us keeping her company. She wanted to get up and pace to see what was going on, to see what was happening to her friend.
I could hear the breath was beginning to rattle, there was a labor that only meant one thing. The gray dog that was paralyzed from the front legs back was fighting against the blood in his lungs. There was nothing to be done. The dog that I was petting knew, she fought against us to go see her friend. We let her up. She walked over to watch and look and sniff. She knew the moment he died. Her demeanor shifted. She was no longer moving and pacing and walking and vigilant. She was still and somber.
The red truck of the owner came down the hill on the road to the church. He stopped and came out not fast, but with a directed movement. Surveying what was going on, seeing his dog laid out on the freezer bag and the other standing next to him watching. The EMT told him that the dog had passed.
The information hit him like a wave as if he were standing in the ocean and the calm sea just sent a wave over his head. He was knocked back. He grounded his feet and then looked at the dog. Tears.
He was a big man wearing a black button shirt.
The male dog was loaded into the back of his truck, while he told everyone around that he was having a really hard time, because these two dogs had just met a few weeks ago and were inseparable. The gray male dog was alone for most of his life and now, just now, made a friend.
I picked up the bronze she-dog and put her in the cab. Looking back over the small work truck to the broken tailgate and the dog on the ripped bag amongst the gear and wood bits and detritus that are the artifacts of using the truck. The owner was explaining, was apologizing, was looking for us to tell him that he couldn't have made any difference had he gotten their any earlier.
I watched as his truck bobbled away up the road with the bronze pit bull boxer mix in the front seat with him.
Turns out I didn't drive out there to get a sewing machine, I went to learn lessons on love from a dying dog.
