That Nice Girl with the Dogs
When the doorbell rang, I looked out through the front window and saw a truck—Clearfield Animal Control. “Mom,” I called, expecting her to be back from her errands, then realized I was all alone. The sudden knowledge of what I was supposed to do walloped me. I had to give Duchess to the man. Like a blow to my head, like when I went over my bike’s handlebars onto the sidewalk, I understood I would never see her again.
Duchess stood at the door, the good watchdog. I put her on a leash and we went outside. The world was flat and very bright, colors slick and saturated, like a thick coat of paint: green grass, blue sky, yellow truck. I walked Duchess to the truck. She hobbled at my side, panting.
The man stood waiting by the open back doors of the panel truck. Inside along the wall were a row of metal hooks the height of a dog’s neck. He looked at me, then looked at Duchess. He didn’t say anything. Duchess waited, head hanging, a brown flat shape of a dog, simple and cut-edged like the paper dolls I still played with. I couldn’t look away from her. She blurred. I blinked, again and again. The man pulled out a metal ramp at the back of the truck. He took the leash from my limp hand. Then, in the kindest of voices, he said “Come on, old girl,” gently led her up into the shadows of the truck, and stowed the ramp.
Just before the doors closed, Duchess turned her head and looked at me. I saw the fear and confusion in her face, an image that had the power to pierce my heart for years to come. Then the doors slammed shut and the world rushed back in a roar of sound—the truck engine’s rough idling, crows calling, kids down the street shrieking, the man’s grunt as he swung into the cab of the truck. I stood in the empty street for a long time.
* * *
Now, to my mother forty years later, I can say what I’ve worked out to be true. “I always felt bad that Duchess had to be all alone when she was put down. It wasn’t right.”
