OKLAHOMA!

“Damn! He saw me!”

I caught a glimpse of the Oklahoma State Trooper turning off the highway median, in our direction.
“Damn!” David repeated, slapping the steering wheel and eyeing the rearview mirror.
A flash of lights.
“Uh-ohhh.” That would be me.
We pulled over.
“Well, at least we don’t have any drugs in the car.” I said brightly.
When David glared at me I nearly shat my pants.
“What do you mean?!” I yelped through jaw lock.
He jerked his head toward the back of our pickup just as a man in khaki F-Troop wear approached the driver’s side window.
I crossed my legs.
***
“What’s the matter, Son? Road getting’ away from ya?”
F-Troop asked. A challenge, not a question.
My bowels were pond scum. I smiled weakly.
“Licenseandregistration,” he barked.
David shrugged and, hanging his head, handed him his license and said, “Well, Officer, there never really is an excuse to speed, is there?”
“I’ll need your registration, too,” F-Troop said, eyeing him curiously.
With poorly disguised, shaky hands, I turned the knob to the glove box and immediately shoved both hands in. Dear God I promise to do volunteer work every weekend for the rest of my life and do pro bono work for MADD and Partnership for a Drug-Free America if only You please-oh-please don’t let there be weed in this glove box, I prayed.
My prayers were answered.
I found the registration and threw it at David as I slammed the glove box shut.
F-Troop went back to his vee-hickle and, as if he had X-ray hearing, I savagely whispered, “How fast were you going?”
“Eighty five,” said David with a shrug.
“In a what, a sixty five?”
“Yep.”
“Oooo. We’re going’ DOWNTOWN,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said, and shrugged again.
****

When he returned, F-Troop looked David in the eye, gave him a quick nod, and handed him his “documents.”
And let us go.
“Slow it down, Son. And drive careful, now.”
David checked his rearview mirror, waved to F-Troop who, I kid you not, saluted him back.
“You lucky shit,” I sneered, waving and smiling stupidly. David let him pass us and then pulled our vee-hickle out, trailer in tow. He grinned at me and said, “I know.”
I smacked him on the arm, which made him grin even wider. So I smacked him again. He started to chuckle. I ignored him and so he said, “You know what’s really great, though?”
“What?”
“That the Trooper dude didn’t ask to see your license.”
I have a clean record, so I asked, “Why is that?”
“Because it’s in your purse and -”
Just then Woody began to scratch on it. The dawn.
“ –I put that bag of weed that Woody found in there.”
“What if he looked in there?!”
“He didn’t, though. So what are you worried about?”

LAST NIGHT: PRESENT DAY

*****
Death smells like mushrooms.
I lean over and kiss Woody’s furry little face for the umpteenth time. This thought is like a cloud in front of sharp, shooting, all-at-once pain that I have never known before. My Baby is dying and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, so … I will never eat shitake mushrooms again.
I look him right in the eyes and ask, “Are you ready to go now? Because I’ll – gulp – help you.” He gives me a panicky look that, to me, screams, “Hell, no!”
I vowed years ago never to keep Woody alive because I am the one with separation issues. My job, it seems suddenly so clear to me, is to help him make the journey to Dog Heaven, or wherever it is that’s next. But I also know this is the hardest walk I will ever take with m’boy.
He looks up at me with the same searching brown eyes I fell in love with nearly fourteen years ago. We lived in San Diego then – clear across the country and a lifetime ago, literally. As I sit here in our South Florida living room I suddenly hate it and all it represents: the last house we lived in together, my best buddy and me.

SECOND NIGHT: SAN DIEGO

14 Years Ago – San Diego CA
SECOND NIGHT
We are in the living room watching an old re-run of Cheers when David yells out, “Woody!”
The puppy is racing around the couch at lightning speed. He has a subscription card from a magazine in his teeth, but he’s so small that he keeps stepping on the card. He is doing this all so fast that it sounds like a playing card stuck in a fan.
“Woody. Yes! What a perfect name! Like the original surfboards! Like Woody Harrelson! Like-“
“Wood!” David says.
“Yeah.”
“ ‘Woody!’ Hello, Woody. Do you like your new name?”

*

SAN DIEGO: FIRST NIGHT

San Diego, 14 years ago

FIRST NIGHT
“He’s a dog. Therefore he will sleep in his dog bed.”
I point to a folded towel on the floor.
David laughs as he dives onto the futon. “You call that a ‘bed’?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. It did look a little sad. I picked up the little pooch and just as I began to lower him onto his terry cloth mattress he nuzzled his nose into my chest.
David chuckled into his pillow. “Yeah, this is gonna last.”
“Now, now, little puppy,” I say. “Here’s your bed. Sweet dreams.” I set him down and crawled into bed.
“Eeeemeee-mew-eemeeee-“
I peer down and, in the moonlight, is the little guy, peering up at me.
“Meeemeeee, eeee, neeeee.”
To hell with it.
I scoop him up and he scampers all over us, mountains o’ blanket fun.
“Gee, that lasted long,” David says. “C’mere, buddy.”
“No, let him sleep near me!”
*

PRESENT DAY

*
The thing about Love is, it starts out easy, and then the hard part begins.
Today’s the hard part.
I was chopping up the chicken from the Wendy’s sandwich I just brought home for Woody. He has not eaten in two days, and I am frantic. He hobbles into the kitchen, on a mission for the door. “Okay, Buddy, you’re ready to go out already? Okay.”
I open up the door for him and he steps out and pees all over himself and then like a wilted daisy his head dips down to the ground, and I choke, “Nooooooooo,” as I scoop him up and hold him to my heart.
“Can you come home?” I am on the phone with David, holding Woody who is floppy as a rag doll but still alert, in my arms. “I- think- Woody’s… dying.”
“I’ll be right there,” David croaks.
***

MEDICINAL PURPOSES

We very quickly found out why Woody toppled over so much: his front left leg was considerably shorter than the rest, the toes of his paw fused together. "Looks like Michigan," David noted when I showed him Woody's "mitten."
Not that his "handicap" stopped him from making virtually anything - toes, subscription cards from magazines, fallen wrappers, pantyhose - a toy.
A toy to be shaken like shark chum and transported at lightning speeds around the apartment.

So, packing was fun.

Except for, uh... certain things one might want to remain, er...unshaken.

"Man, I know I had a little baggie of weed around here somewhere," David said, searching the living room on that last day.
"Well, " I called from the bedroom,"you'd better find it before Lady Aubrey's piggie little porker does. Then again, maybe it will find it and get the munchies so bad it'll eat itself to-"
Just then I heard it, a sound much like a salt shaker being shaken, its "shimmy-shimmy" sound echoing through the empty apartment.

"Uh-ohhhh," I muttered and ran into the living room.
A tiny white blur raced past me, the "Shimmy" sound louder and louder.

"Nnnnooooooooo!" David dashed past in a bent-at-the-waist position, his hands in a permanent scoop.
"Yyyowwww! Don't let him eat that! He could die! He could die!" I screamed, running after them.
"C'mere, buddy boy, let Daddy have it, c'mon...." David coaxed.
So the three of us were there racing around the apartment, Woody and the weed in the lead.
In a flash of insight I grabbed the feather duster and continued the mad dash as I called, "Oh, Woooody! Whatever you do, don't get this feather duster!"
I zoomed in the opposite direction and he leaped for the hot pink feathers just as the baggie left his tiny jaws.
David dove for it.
I shook the duster crazily.
"Pick it up! Pick it up!" I whispered savagely as I shook the feathers wildly at Woody who, thank God, was now going after the duster.
"Damn," David said, holding the baggie. "It's still in tact. Good Boy!" Woody left me and the duster and trotted over to David. "Good boy! Good boy! Man, I could use this on this road trip...."

San Diego: EVICTED

We left San Diego for 3 reasons:

(1) David wanted to buy a house so he could put his carpentry skills to profitable use and buy, fix up and sell it - an impossible dream in Southern California on a carpenter's and sometime temp/baker/artist's salaries....

(2) I had just seen Doc Hollywood, in which Michael J. Fox plays a Hollywood doctor who moves to and finds true love and a darling home in a quaint Midwestern town that looked sooooo cute! (Hey, I was, like, 23 and like many 23 year olds, not exactly dealing with a full 6-pack when it came to smart Life decisions, if you know what I mean)....

Oh, yes, and...

(3) We were evicted.



Somehow our landlady, a wealthy Manhattan widow with a Madonna-style British accent I'll call Lady Aubrey, found out that we had a dog. So, for a one and one-half pound puppy we named Woody (after the long surfboards and Woody Harrelson's character on "Cheers" - not what you're thinking, oh nasty one) we were homeless.



We decided to head to Michigan, David's home state, since his brother was a realtor there with some dirt cheap properties we could buy. Yay.

Two days before we were ready to leave, Lady Aubrey showed up on our deck step with her morbidly obese Shitzu, Mish Mash.

"I've come to rent the flat out myself," she said cheerily. It was hard not to slap her, standing there all happy and phony with her dog. "The agency simply cannot be trusted," she chirped, referring to the rental agent we signed our lease with.

I stood in the doorway, holding Woody, barely a palm full of pooch, and stared at the blubber-fur she apparently didn't call "a dog." It sneezed at me.

"But...you have... a dog," was all I could say.

"Oh, no, this is Mish Mash! And who's that little thing?"

Thing?

"Woody."

"WOODY!!" she shrieked. "My ex-husband's name was Woody!"

"Good thing we're leaving," I muttered.

"Mish Mash and I will move into your flat straight away," she said. Cut the phony accent, even Woody knows you're probably from New Jersey, I am thinking.

"After we leave, you mean," I said.

"Naturally! Mish Mash doesn't care for other dogs."

I looked down at Mish-Mashed-In-Face just as he lifted his leg and peed, right there on the porch. Urine drizzled down with split-splotch sounds onto the first floor residents' patio.

"Good boy, Mish Mash!" She applauded.

I still can't believe this.

"But you're evicting us for having a dog," I said.

"Well, I don't allow them," she said simply.

I look down at Mish Mash, noisily cleaning his privates with a freakishly long tongue.

"Well, then," was all I could say.

"Tally ho!" she waved and hefted up Blubber Boy.



We were gone by nightfall.

********