The day my father called to ask if I could help him bury Casey, his golden retriever, I said no, and maybe if I had answered differently this story would be over, but instead he still steps out of his garage with a shovel to dig the hole alone. He trudges across the front lawn, and there at the window stands Donna, his newest wife, still in her sixties, not so old yet but older than he is and too small, too weak to turn over firm earth. He stops under the shade of a maple, near one of the boulders that first attracted him to this property he can\u2019t really afford. This\u2019ll be the spot, then.<\/p>\n
Mark rolls his right shoulder forward, then back, and it doesn\u2019t hurt so bad. But the moment the shovel\u2019s pointed blade strikes earth\u2014a current of pain sizzles all the way to his fingers, which unclench as if on command. He closes his eyes, squeezes the hurt gone. And he doesn\u2019t even know how or when he injured himself. Carrying Casey from the car, where his body would have baked, to the shade at the side of the house, where he lies, stiffening, within a bedsheet\u2014that definitely didn\u2019t help, but his shoulder had already been barking for weeks.<\/p>\n
He glances across the yard to the wrapped mound of Casey and worries that some opportunistic animal might creep from the surrounding woods to nose its way through the sheet and nibble on his best friend\u2019s carcass, exact a revenge for all of those days Casey chased gophers and crows and squirrels. Better work fast. Help isn\u2019t coming, and critters might.<\/p>\n
Blade, ground, heel, push, scoop. Turns out the toss hurts most.<\/p>\n
The dirt piles, his shoulder pulses.<\/p>\n
Sweat beads on his brow and the bridge of his nose. Early June, hot even in the shade, and Brad hadn\u2019t so much as made an excuse either, not really. Just said he couldn\u2019t come. But he\u2019s home from college\u2014Mark knows that much\u2014living with his mom. Maybe his youngest has a summer job keeping him from making the hour\u2019s drive from Connecticut? But then call out. Tell your boss you\u2019re sick. Food poisoning. Whatever. This is Casey we\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n
All the boys loved him. Mark could count on that much when they visited. He once had his three sons spend an afternoon walking the neat rows of parked cars at a shopping plaza in Milford\u2014or was it Port Jefferson? He was definitely still married to Liz\u2014slipping flyers for some new restaurant under windshield wipers to help him bring in a little extra cash on the weekend, but at the end of that long day\u2014hotter even than this one, the sun reflecting off the pavement, glaring off of hoods and fenders\u2014they had at least returned to Casey, buried their faces in his golden fur, arms groping, grabbing, and the old fella never so much as flinched.<\/p>\n
He was always there, always ready to\u2014to offer\u2014oh, Jesus.<\/p>\n
Blade, ground, heel, tears, push, scoop, toss.<\/p>\n
The high-pitched electric hum of the vacuum reaches him from inside the house. He was the one who asked Donna to clean\u2014he had imagined finding Casey\u2019s shed fur in the coming days, and each time it breaking him again\u2014but now he wishes she would stop. It\u2019s too much to lose him all at once. Better to leave a trace, some reminder. Nothing sadder than being forgotten.<\/p>\n
Again he presses his weight\u2014his doctor keeps telling him he needs to exercise more, but not like this\u2014onto the shovel\u2019s step and the blade sinks into the small pit of exposed dirt. He bends, scoops, tosses, and even he doesn\u2019t know if it\u2019s the lightning quick pain that drops him, or if it\u2019s the thought\u2014Who will remember him?\u2014but he\u2019s on the ground all the same.<\/p>\n
And goddamn. Can this day, can all of this please just be over?<\/p>\n
The vacuum goes silent\u2014and Donna will die first, won\u2019t she? She will, she will\u2014just as a squirrel begins to investigate Casey\u2019s sheeted lump. A burst of tiny steps in one direction, stop, a burst in another direction. Tail high in the air. But Mark doesn\u2019t get up to chase the thing away.<\/p>\n
How much bigger would this hole have to be to fit his own body instead?<\/p>\n
Just climb in while Donna, at least, is here to remember him. One brother, two ex-wives, three kids of his own, three ex-step-children\u2014and all of them too good for him now. That\u2019s why he has always loved his dogs so much. He can count on them. He could count on Casey.<\/p>\n
“Hey,\u201d he yells across the yard, as he gets back on his feet. \u201cGet out of here. Scram.\u201d But the squirrel only looks at him, as if deciding, no, Mark is not someone it needs to take seriously.<\/p>\n
He grabs a small stone from the pile of upturned dirt, and maybe he\u2019s too sad, too lonely, too angry\u2014all of it, probably\u2014but he forgets that his shoulder is killing him, and he brings his arm back, hurls the rock toward the squirrel, which cocks its dumb head; a shiver runs up its bushy tail as the rock skitters by in the grass to its left. Mark is the one who looks like he\u2019s been struck. His torso folds in, he grabs his shoulder in pain, cringing pain, cursing, his eyes pinched shut, and he\u2019s sorry, Casey, he\u2019s so sorry, but this hole is just not getting dug today.<\/p>\n
That night, with Casey\u2019s body dragged on the sheet into the garage, he will lie awake, smelling his own Scotch breath, and think of his father\u2019s funeral. As a kid he\u2019d read of his father in the newspapers, the great Connecticut airman, a renowned pilot, but the truth was he\u2019d hardly known the man himself. He\u2019ll remember how, decades after his father moved to California, all those people, all those strangers still turned up to cry over his dad\u2019s death. And Mark won\u2019t want to be thinking about his father or the past, all those choices, those moments, his life\u2014none of it\u2014but the absence of Casey\u2019s soft snore at the foot of their bed will keep him up, his mind looping, racing in a way it hardly ever does, and will it occur to him in those small hours, I still wonder, that I said no when he needed me so that he would know how it feels?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The day my father called to ask if I could help him bury Casey, his golden retriever, I said no, and maybe if I had answered differently this story would be over, but instead he still steps out of his garage with a shovel to dig the hole alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[1391,851,3080,3079,3078,852],"class_list":["post-18360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","tag-dog","tag-father","tag-injury","tag-mortality","tag-pets","tag-son","writer-brad-wetherell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19134,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360\/revisions\/19134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}