This Quick Post, So I Can Sleep
- Aug 28, 2017
- 4 min read
by Anne Lazarus
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Anne Lazarus’ Facebook page in the aftermath of the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va.
Today, I sat on the road with a disemboweled dog. The petite body, like a penalty flag, tossed to the bike lane by a white sedan that never paused.
I braked quick. Parked. Slightly blocked the slow lane — hazard lights blinking; someone shouting expletives at my crappy parking job — with a plan to scoop up the dog and dash to a vet five miles off.
By training, I’m not flustered by death — helping the final hours of other people’s horses; once putting down a cat myself — so I did okay today. And then, home, I bawled (like snot coming out of my nose, lost it). How could it hit me so hard?
Convulsing on its side, this dog made no effort to get up as I called 911 and was told a professional was on the way. I moved easy, aimed to help the dog trust. Still, its head lurched to snap my hand. An indoor dog of immaculate coat — well fed, tender feet; abundantly pampered. She shuddered. I resisted reaching out, that being my need, not hers.
A crowd gathered and I said, “Please be still or move back two steps.” From the adjacent trailer park rushed a twenty-something woman cradling a six-month-old baby. Her face showed relief. “I’ve been looking everywhere!” Then a scream seeing the unfurled intestines like odd noodles. Her dog’s front legs — trying to reach her — scraped the ground.
I got up and touched the woman’s shoulder. Offered options: “Would you like to be with your dog? Or go where she can’t see you? I promise to stay with her.” She nodded. We kneeled. I put her hand upon the dog’s pure white shoulder. Her dog, in faith and love, stopped struggling.
Even on asphalt, fresh blood is bright. “Do you want to know what happened?” I asked. She nodded. Then I narrated what happened, what was going to happen. Cars whooshed by. She had a wedding ring. I wished her husband was home from work. She was in as much shock as the dog. “You can pet your dog,” I said. She did. In one arm she held a baby all peaceful and with the other she soothed her dog. “You can talk to her like you always do,” I said.
Maybe it was the almost-end, or maybe the sound of a favored voice — the dog was calm, happy.
She said, many times, “I’m sorry.” I inventoried what could be done. With a cow or a horse I knew where goes the “X” on the forehead. But in an urban setting I had no clue.
The baby, curious and calm, gazed into my face. Another car crawled around my car to shout, “Fucking idiots!” The woman stroked her dog’s shoulder, till the end. The husband arrived. Animal control arrived. I headed out. At home, where no one saw, I bawled. Selfishly?
I wasn’t crying for the dog, or the woman. Simply, I was tired. Tired of anger and rancor, tweeting and bigger bombs. Tired of gawking pedestrians above the bloody dog who jockeyed to take pictures. Tired of mosques bombed. Tired of cocksure answers (from all sides). Tired of how “Christian charity” runs through my head like dripping water, of repeal don’t replace; of how deep “nationalist” is PC for racist; of how the Civil War has lain dormant. Deeply tired in this I-understand-people-but-don’t-understand-people fatigue.
Selfishly, I cried today.
Tomorrow, I will wake to make coffee by rote and watch another sweet dawn slip into this small Nevada valley. I have no clue how this all works out. We are all doing the best we can; if we knew how to do better, we would. Will the pendulum swing back to democracy? Or will we implode, the American experiment done?
Now, before I go to cobble together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I pause to watch the alpenglow reflect upon the eastern range beyond the lake, and I see, right in the flowerbed running along the split-rail fence — where in spring (perhaps due to late snow) not one iris bloomed — a troop of tiny quail on a pilgrimage back to the thicket where they will bed down for the night. Like toddlers on a field trip — relentless energy so cute I smile.
There is so much good. But will we ever grow up? I forgot to ask the woman her name.
Anne Lazarus did not die in 2015 — thanks to a tenacious mother and the serendipity of the Affordable Care Act — and thus lives in a petite cabin on the leeward side of the Sierra where she is plotting again to hike Mt. Whitney as she cobbles together a memoir, FIVE CRAZY HORSES. Her first book, WILD PROVENCE, co-authored with Lorraine d’Enremont Rawls, details ranching culture in France, while her poetry has appeared in a smattering of print journals, including High Desert Journal. An autodidact, she reads over eighty nonfiction books each year; as balance she maintains a fondness for classic honkytonks.
