The Love of Man and Dog
XX
He was a dog with very little to say. He had been born in a soggy box of cardboard on a rainy spring afternoon. His mother, what little he remembered of her, had left him for dead after her muzzle had first caressed his wet fur. He was the runt of the litter, and he called himself Jack.
He was a man with words of wisdom bottled inside him. His eyes were old and wrinkled; his face long and hollow from years of a miserable existence. The war had ended, and with it his life had ended. His wife had died of cancer, and without her he was aware of an impossible loneliness. There were a million words inside his head, but he was deaf; yet he had seen the world in his own way. His name was Mervin.
Their paths had only crossed once, but that was all it took.
In the lazy summer air, there was only one sound to be heard, and that was the gentle rushing of cars on the highway as they pierced the stagnant air with their artificial whoosh of a breeze. Jack sat on his haunches, happily feeling the winds of the cars as they rolled by. He had never been inside a car, but he longed to. He had been in awe of them his entire life; their speed, their lifelessness, and their brilliance and efficiency were all he dreamed about. Man drove the cars, but he was rarely in awe of man, with their soft skin and labored breathing. The only thing he had ever admired about man was their ability to love and their excellence in expressing it.
The weather had been unusually hot lately, but for that Jack was happy. When the weather was warm the humans rarely left their homes. They walked ten feet into the cool climate of their car, drove for miles in a protected environment, and then walked ten more feet into another cool place. Only when the weather was mild, not too hot or too cold, then the humans would walk. But they didn’t walk with purpose, like all animals did, but they walked giddily with no purpose besides the accomplished air of walking a mile or so. Jack barked in laughter whenever he saw this.
His dark fur was hot from the sun. His tongue was lolling out of his mouth, his breathing hot and labored, and it was becoming the time of day where Jack usually trotted down to the river bank for a dip in the cool water. But he had discovered with a sad whine yesterday that the river had dried up, and he knew there wouldn’t be rain for a while. So all he had left to do was sit by the highway, hoping to see something new and exciting, or maybe cool and refreshing.
So it was with Jack’s utter delight when a car pulled along the side of the road sputtering horrible sounds, not fifty yard from where he sat, and a man stiffly got out of the car and shuffled to the front. Jack got up and trotted over to the car, slinking past the man as he peered down into the car’s interior. Jack hopped into the crisp, cold air of the car’s backseat. Jack thought there could possibly be nothing better than going from the dog’s breath air of summer into what he could only call mechanical coldness. Yet he respected the car mechanisms, and knew nothing yet of his love of man.
Mervin had never spoken or heard a word. His life had been devoid of any intellectual conversation, as he had never learned sign language or been asked to communicate anything besides simple needs. But he was a smart man. Smart in ways most people don’t think of smart, a smart that no one ever knew except his wife, Melissa.
Melissa was the most beautiful woman Mervin had ever met, with angel’s golden hair and eyes bluer than the sky, and he had been smitten with her ever since he met her and her husband at a veteran’s anniversary. Melissa had soon after divorced the man, and Mervin had proposed to her with words he didn’t need to speak. And so was the way between them.
Melissa had battled cancer for almost five years, so Mervin knew that the relationship would end soon. The last think he remembered of her was the night she died. He had been familiar with each centimeter of her skin, the movement of her delicate lips and eyes, and nearly all of her reactions. He loved her laugh, even though he couldn’t ever hear it, more than anything. He loved her everything, even those tiny imperfections perhaps only known to him. But watching her sleeping that night, he had the impression of maybe not knowing her completely. There seemed to be an inner absence within her; eyes closed, body still, and that ineradicable innocence. Yet all he was able to do was carry her along with his tenderness, deeper still into the night where silence befell her permanently, which he could extend no further than his living heart of silence, of which she knew nothing. He had caressed her shoulder and said goodbye for the first and last time.
His life had been devoid of anything interesting after her death, besides the empty and pointless echo of silence that ran deeper than his bones. So to Mervin’s surprise and delight, he found a dog, small and skinny with rich chocolate fur, in his backseat on that hot summer’s day. He felt bad for the dog, having to sit out in the heat, so he took him home and fed him then sent the dog on his way. For a while he longed to keep the dog, but he knew the dog wouldn’t have it.
But only a few days later, sitting on his porch, Mervin saw the dog peering out from under a bush. The days had grown hotter still, and it was with quicker reflexes than Mervin had ever known that he permitted the dog to eat and drink in the coolness of his kitchen. The dog was so happy he drooled, all over Mervin’s best pants, but he fell in love all the same.
To the dog he gave the name Jack, and to their relationship he gave the name friendship. Jack sat on his porch with him, barked when someone came too close, stayed close to him through every hour of every day. Although Mervin had no idea of Jack’s disapproval of man, he was aware, if only in the subconscious of his mind, that Jack admired and respected him a great deal.
Now, one thing Mervin missed about Melissa were the gentle touches he would offer her. With these touches came no words, no nods or smiles, and not a single communication between them besides the touch of skin against skin. And one thing Jack missed most was being loved; what he remembered of his mother’s rough touches, soft licks, and hopeful whines.
So it was when Mervin began stroking Jack, with the softest of caresses, with the lightest of touches, just to feel the soft fur run under his fingers and along his skin. It is impossible to enclose a caress in a definition. A caress exists on the brink of its own vanishing. It’s mode of being is a lingering connection, an unrelenting constancy. It is endlessly on the edge of nonexistence, quivering over the void. It remains the lightest, the scarcest of touches, at the edge, where being and nothing come so close. Jack fell into the void, into his own existence in which he now saw purpose: in loving Mervin.
And so Mervin followed, on the edge of being and nothing, together, where their lives of continuity and deprived happiness met the best day of their lives. And that life changing day it had changed the way dog and man both saw the world: with each other.