1
conover/dog
Copyright 2001 by Daniel Conover
794 Rutledge Ave.
Charleston, SC29403
About 6,300 words
Dog Run Afternoon
Philip liked the James Dog Run best in the spring, because the nice weather brought everyone out and that made afternoons feel like family reunions. Some days after work there would be thirty people and at least as many dogs, all of them happy to see each other. Jake and Ooshi, the cockapoos, lived for their trips to the run, where they could chase, bark, sniff and be sniffed. Derrick would stop by on his way home from the agency with a pack of Snausages, and the four of them would spend an hour together. Family moments like that in Madison Park were as close as Philip ever felt to the spirit of Norman Rockwell (whose originals had been earning large commissions at Philip’s gallery since 1998).
The run was a triangle-shaped, pea-gravel lot that formed the western boundary of Madison Park, a public space best known as the vantage point for most of the photos ever taken of Manhattan’s distinctive FlatironBuilding. An iron fence defined the run, which was 35 feet at its widest and narrowed to a long point. As parks went, it was minimalistic: the run contained seven benches and four trees – each girded by two-level wooden dog platforms – and that was it. Yet for the past five years, Philip and Derrick had built their afternoons around nothing more than the pleasure of standing there.
Philip was particular. He ate one bagel every morning, watched the Today Show from 7 to 8, walked Jake and Ooshi, kissed Derrick goodbye and caught the crosstown to his office at the gallery. At noon he ate a deli salad, and he wrapped up his business at 4:30 so he could hit the door by 5. If it was chilly, he’d put on a sweater before leashing up the dogs, and he’d walk the two blocks to the run at whatever pace was necessary to make it there by 5:30. Philip considered it important to arrive before Julia and Queen Victoria, the English Sheepdog. Queen Victoria was a jumper.
The James Dog Run was not the extent of their world, but the run was certainly one of its most familiar corners, filled with familiar smells and faces: Tony and Hector, the schnauser; Mrs. Schoenenberg and Fritzie, the beagle; Ed and the triplets – Chekhov, Fedor and Woody, all golden retrievers; Little Mrs. Chow and her Alsatian, Tzu-Tzu. Pets and owners came and went, but Philip could always count on a pleasant conversation and the simple joy of watching dogs be dogs.
Ron Pickett and Brutus the mastiff changed all that.
It was a Monday in April and Philip and Derrick were chatting with Max about the increase in estate consignments at the gallery when the run fell silent. Derrick was the first human to notice that the dogs had stopped barking, and had in fact stopped running. He looked where the dogs were looking.
“What is it?” Philip asked. Derrick squinted.
“I think it’s a dog.”
The neighborhood pets sniffed the air, muscles rippling under fur. Their silence stretched across empty seconds until Jake broke it with a howl that lifted his front legs off the ground, and, as if heralded, Pickett and Brutus pushed into view through the crowd at Madison and 24th.
“That’s not a dog,” Philip said. “That’s a subdivision.”
Brutus stood well over three feet, with plowhorse shoulders and a head that must have weighed 20 pounds. In that, he matched his owner: Pickett’s most remarkable feature was his enormous head, which appeared to have been cast from wet cement.
At the sound of Jake’s alarm, Brutus perked up, lifting his ears and raising his neck. The run now lost all composure. Dogs raced to the fence, barking and howling, big ones spilling over little ones, little ones nipping bigger ones, excited ones humping indiscriminately. Embarrassed owners rushed into the melee. James Run lived by a code of etiquette, and while barking and snapping were tolerated, real biting and any form of humping were right out.
Derrick, the intuitive one, leaned down to Philip’s ear.
“I’ve never seen this one before. Is he new?”
“Never seen him before in my life. He seems intent on coming here, though.”
Pickett fumbled with the outer gate while the dogs formed a fluffy, yapping amoeba that flowed against the inner gate.
“Does this cost money? Is there an attendant?” Pickett asked the group.
“No money at all. Just police up after your dog,” Philip answered, giving his best Welcome Wagon smile.
“Yeah? Well, the way this one craps, I’d need a shovel. How does this gate work, anyway?”
Philip stepped gingerly through the dogs.
“Okay, can you see this? Good. Just lift the latch here where…”
“Jesus, can’t you back those dogs up until we get through the freaking gate? They look like they all want a piece of my Brutus.”
Philip strained to keep his neighborly tone.
“These babies are a bit rambunctious, but don’t you worry. They’re all socially well adjusted.
“Not Queen Victoria,” the ever-mitigating Julia confided. “She’s a jumper.”
Pickett grunted and hitched his belt up his hip. “I’m just warning you people. Brutus will defend himself.”
Pickett slipped the latch and Brutus muscled through the wrought iron gate into the center of the crowd that surged around him. The nervous détente lasted less than three seconds. Franklin the terrier couldn’t handle the excitement and bounded up the back of Fluffy the collie to launch himself at the new dog. To Philip, the image would be lasting: a little dog in full extension, acting out its earliest programming. When in doubt, bite something.
The terrier’s attack did no damage, but the growling and the snapping and the motion transformed Brutus from a maligned-looking nobleman into a canine Death Star. Chica the Chihuahua became a bite-sized doggie toy – Brutus seized her in his jaws, shook twice, and tossed her back into the crowd, too dazed to yip. Sunny the golden retriever came in leading with her front feet, as if they were wrestling. Brutus went for the back of her neck and sent the dignified old dog howling away in horror.
All told, the 15-second scuffle produced four minor cases for the emergency vet clinic. Jake escaped with nothing worse than tender ribs and a bruised ego, but Ooshi emerged from the dogfight covered in mastiff drool and bleeding slightly from a scratch on his belly.
Derrick was distraught, and the four of them hustled off to the vet before the last of the other owners had finished untangling the dog knot. Philip tried to calm him, but Derrick was convinced Ooshi needed stitches. The vet prevailed, and the men returned home thirty minutes later with a Band-Aid on Ooshi’s belly and a hefty bill for emergency care. As they passed the run, Philip noted that the occupants had dwindled down to one man and one dog. Pickett stood alone, smoking, while Brutus looked across 23rd at them, stoically sniffing the air.
“Well, I certainly hope that’s the last we’ll be seeing of that mastiff,” Philip sighed as he lowered himself into bed next to Derrick. “I can’t believe that person didn’t leave the run after the fight.”
“That man is a pig,” Derrick said. “A boar. With nasty yellow tusks.” He shivered.
“I doubt he’ll be back,” Philip said, trying to put an end to it. “His dog is a bully, and how could he not understand how much the entire run disliked him, personally? He might as well have been Anita Bryant at a Stonewall memorial concert.”
“Well, there ought to be a law or something,” Derrick said.
But there was no law, and the next day Pickett and Brutus returned to the run. Julia saw them coming and quickly gathered up Queen Victoria and her things and headed for the gate.
“Maybe they’ll get along better today,” Philip called after her. Julia waved without looking back and hurried off.
Ed pushed off his usual leaning spot on the fence and grimaced.
“I hope he’s got that monster under control,” he said. “I come here to relax. I don’t need this stress.”
Clearly, Philip thought, the situation called for diplomacy. He left Jake and Ooshi with Derrick and let himself out of the two gates so he could meet the newcomer on neutral turf.
“Hello,” he said, extending his hand. Pickett was a big, slope-shouldered man who moved with a rolling gait that disguised a limp. “I’m Philip.”
“Ron Pickett,” he said, crushing Philip’s knuckles. “From Virginia. I’m new to the neighborhood.”
“Well, welcome to the neighborhood, then! Where is it, exactly, that you’re living?”
Philip had meant it as a friendly question, but Pickett received it with suspicion.
“Does it matter exactly where I live?”
“No. Not at all. I was just wondering if we might be neighbors.”
“I said I was new to the neighborhood. That implies we’re neighbors, doesn’t it?”
“But you don’t know where we live. How could you know we were neighbors if you don’t know where we live in relation to you?” Philip asked. He phrased the question brightly, but that didn’t work either.
Pickett put his fists on his hips and cocked his head. “Look, I’m not going to stand here and play clever New York word games with you, Phil. If you’ve got a problem with me, and obviously you do, then just be a man about it and spit it out.”
Philip hated situations like this, and wished for a moment that he were a dog. A sniff here, a sniff there, and the introductions would have been finished.
“You’re certainly jumping to conclusions, Mr. Pickett. I just came out here to introduce myself.”
Pickett eyed him.
“So, you’re telling me you just came out here to shake my hand and welcome me to town. Is that it?”
“Exactly.”
“And that’s it?”
“Sure!”
Pickett gave him a smile that looked more like a gas pain and clapped Philip on the shoulder.
“All right then. Thanks, Phil.”
Pickett stepped past him toward the gate, and Philip realized the situation was slipping out of his grasp.
“Ron! There is just the one little thing about your dog.”
Pickett stopped in mid step, and turned around slowly.
“I thought you said you came out here just to be friendly.”
“I did!”
“That’s bull, Phil. You came out here to push some ‘Control your dog! Control your dog!’ crap on me. You’re still upset about yesterday, and you blame Brutus.”
“It’s not about blaming.”
Pickett rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth. “I… just… can’t… stand your New York hypocrisy. I thought you people were supposed to be direct and obnoxious, which I could at least respect, but instead you’re nothing but a pack of snippy little chihuahuas. So now I’m going to tell you something, Phil. The problem isn’t Brutus. The problem is all your untrained little mutts.”
Pickett turned his back on Philip as he fiddled with the latch, thereby missing the sight of the urbane art buyer turning red. Philip stamped his foot in frustration.
“Jake and Ooshi are not mutts! And they’re very well trained!”
Pickett ignored him, pushed the inside gate open and let Brutus change into the run. Smaller dogs jostled for the chance to harass him, and within seconds the James Run became a yelping bedlam. The lesser dogs scattered like Czechs to the border in 1968 and their owners scurried after them.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, fellah!” Mrs. Chow scolded as she held Tzu-Tzu back. “You got a bad dog!”
“Yeah? Well you’ve got a big mouth!”
“Oh yeah?” said Derrick, stepping indignantly to her defense. “Well you’ve got a big head. And it’s an extremely ugly head. With a bad haircut.” Jake and Ooshi squirmed under his arms like two vibrating dust mops.
Philip struggled through the gate to interpose himself between Pickett and Derrick, but his sudden movement brought Brutus charging up to him. Philip froze and the beast stared, but it came no closer.
“You’re lucky he didn’t take your throat out, buddy,” Pickett said as he took Brutus by the collar. “He’s a good dog, but to him, you look like lunch. Remember that.”
“That dog is a dangerous animal,” said Derrick. “He has no business being here.”
“Well, he’s here and I’m here. And every dog has a right to be a dog. If you and your little fuzzballs can’t handle that, that’s your problem. I’m not going to let you make it my problem. Got it? You are not my problem.”
Philip and Derrick didn’t speak on the walk home. Philip read humiliation and anger in his partner’s face, but his own thoughts were fixated on Brutus’ eyes. They were implacable and blank, processing simple calculations of distance and movement, threat and response. They were amoral equations: One outcome produced a cautious sniff, another produced murder. To the dog, there was no greater depth to one outcome than the other. Just imagining such a mind chilled Philip’s scrotum.
The eyes stayed with him until bedtime.
They were with him in the morning, too. And after work, as Philip leashed the dogs, he saw those eyes again. Instead of heading west toward the James Dog Run, Philip walked Jake and Ooshi two blocks down the opposite direction, stopping twice to scoop up behind them. He passed Julia and Queen Victoria, but they only nodded to each other and kept moving. Queen Victoria didn’t even jump up.
Derrick arrived home soon after to find the dogs sulking and Philip watching sit-com reruns.
“I went to the run. Where were you?”
“Were they there?”
“They who?”
“You know exactly which ‘they’ I’m talking about.”
“Well, yes, I do. And ‘they’ were the only ones there. I am so disappointed.”
“Oh, would you just please, please drop it? I really don’t want to talk about this.”
Derrick slammed down the unopened bag of Snausages.
“Well, aren’t we snippy today? We’ve barely talked about anything, and you’re already defensive.”
“I just thought I’d save us both the trouble of a long build-up,” Philip said. “We both know where this one is headed.”
“No, we don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”
Philip sighed, gave up and clicked off the TV with the remote.
“You just get this… Audie Murphy expression, like ‘Oh, look, all our Army buddies have been killed by the hetero Nazis, but we can’t run away! Not us heroes! Once more into the breach, girls! Like this is your … fantasy about the charge of the Light-Loafered Brigade or something.” When Philip got this way he knew his hands fluttered like pigeons around a crumbled Saltine, but they were now well beyond his control. “Well, that’s all very, very romantic, Derrick, very butch. But this is real life, sugar. People get hurt. Innocent little dogs who’ve never thought an evil thought in their sweet little lives get hurt. And for what? It’s like you just won’t be happy until we’re all in the hospital or something.”
“Oh, that is just so unfair,” Derrick said. “That’s not what I want at all. I just don’t see why we should change a routine we like just because of one rude person.”
Their argument lasted two hours and only ended when the two men noticed that Jake was whining. They cuddled the nervous animal on the couch together, and though they didn’t resolve the problem, they went to bed on peaceful terms, both of them feeling a little bit guilty for arguing in front of the children.
Philip woke up with an idea, and hustled Derrick and the dogs through a quick breakfast.
“You know what our problem is? We’ve become old and boring. We’re creatures of habit. Who says we have to go to the run in the afternoon?”
They tried to make a morning schedule work for two days before giving up. Not only did they all hate it, but the pre-work crowd was different. Conversations were short and shallow, and the run was less a gathering of old friends than a poop-scoop-and-go operation.
Making matters worse, Derrick stopped buying the daily Snausages. Ooshi demonstrated his displeasure by leaving squishy presents for the men in three different places around the apartment.
On Saturday, Philip unloaded the situation to Mrs. Han as she gave him a manicure. He was surprised to learn that Mrs. Chow had already briefed her.