Unease. Tommy turns. His stomach has wrenched up in knots, he looks into the fibrous wall before him, he lays still. As still as he can. And yet the images return. For two weeks now he has struggled with the image of his dog crossing the road, the oncoming 4×4 truck, far too big to be necessary on a scenic highway. The screeching of brakes, the thud, the roll. He had seen it all. Cradled his dog in his arms as it passed away. He didn’t cry once.
Dogs to him were the go-to when the human race failed him. Perhaps it was the control he felt he had over the creature, maybe too it was the unconditional love. Whatever it was, he saw himself moving closer and closer to these animals and further and further away from those close to him. The doctors had called it parasthesia. He had called it a vacation.
Rolly had been the small puppy in his litter. German Shepard, tall, thin but graced with long hair and a needy personality that caused him to whimper at the slightest movement away from him. He was lovable and Tommy had fallen for him almost immediately. The adoption assistant, an aged, gray-haired old woman bent slightly at the lower back and with a wobble in her left leg, had looked up at Tommy cockeyed.
“That one? You want that one out of all the others? Look at this one. Don’t you like this one better?” she had reached over, lifted up another puppy from the litter, turned it around as if she were Bob Barker and the puppy was a new toaster oven.
Tommy had grimaced at the theatrics of the situation, stared at her, and coldly stated, “Yes, this one.” It was just yet another instance of the banality of the human race, more than enough reason to further push him away from what he took to be a failed species.
He had taken Rolly home wrapped in a blanket his mother had given him when he was six years old. For Tommy the blanket signified the last time that he remembered the warmth of an embrace, the last moment that he could recall where someone had felt it necessary to acknowledge his existence, care for him as a parent should. His mother was gone but seven months later, his father a non-entity that traveled via Amtrak train across the Western states of the US. He had never known his grandparents.
When he was transferred to the adoption home, his father seen as unfit to handle the needs of a six year-old boy, Tommy had befriended an old man by the name of Edward that swept and mopped the floors of juices, crumbs and other child-induced stains at the adoption home. The closeness of their relationship sparked the interest of the caretakers in the home, some spread rumors of foul-play, and Tommy’s meetings with Edward in the playroom were more and more the center of the attention of the adoption home’s staff. A few months later, Edward was “let go” and Tommy was once again as alone as he was upon entering the home.
Rolly had taken quickly to his new home and Tommy, for the first time in a very long while, felt at home, a part of a family, centered in what he took to be a tumultuous and hostile world. The nuzzle from Rolly in the middle of the night had signified a need now met, a longing for closeness satisfied. The dog’s deep sigh was of comfort, calm, safety. Tommy felt provider to a new entity other than himself, relied upon, as if he now was given the chance to prove against all evidence that not all human beings were selfish and short-sighted, vindictive and cruel. He had wrapped his arm around the sleeping dog, pulled him in tighter and let his mind wander into sleep as his life unfolded before him in waves.
