A Conversation with Sparky the Dog

Pixels coalesced into images as we watched a nameless cartoon show on the bedroom TV. A cat was chasing a dog and stacks of kitchenware hung suspended midair before dropping like cluster bombs. I suppose I had a touch of sympathy for underdogs, because I found myself rooting for the mongrel.

A slight rustle. Keeva was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back turned.

“You know I hate running in the dark,” she said.

I didn't. It was the first time she'd said that.

"Kee, yesterday we---"

“Kee, Kee. When you say my name you always make it sound like the beginning of a lawyer's spiel.”

I calculated a sigh for maximum effect, which was pathetic, when you thought about it. If you're scripting your exasperation you don’t need a shrink to tell you your marriage is in trouble. I couldn't even remember how it had started and frankly, I didn't altogether care to remember, but today had been one long squabble from sunrise till sundown. I felt numb.

In the cartoon world the cat clamped on the dog's tail like a bear trap. Hard enough for the dog to spring through a solid door as though it were made of paper. What I'd give to tunnel through problems like that.

"We'll make it a short one," I said.

I looked at Keeva again. She was stock-still, on the brink of a major argument. Not a good sign. I snapped off the television and for a moment considered hugging her, then thought better of it. Instead, I stared at the two pale faces that haunted the reflected bedroom and then picked up my old runners---a weary maroon that had once been the hue of young love---and slipped them on like gloves.

For a long time Keeva did not move. Then, when she finally did, I suppressed an urge to breathe out. In this matter I followed my father's advice: betray your thirst, he used to say, and the river dries up.

Outside was moonless and turbulent, the type of uncertain weather that lasts only a few minutes before it gets blown away or turns into a downpour. Bird cries undulated beneath the cloud and the occasional cricket chirped in the hope of a final tumble before summer's end. Seagulls. There was something nostalgic about seagulls returning to land, something that called up the sound of waves breaking on the shore and salty palm fronds swaying in the breeze. I saw myself on a beach that joined horizons, walking God knows where, simply tracing a path between sand and sea.

Keeva jogged in step by my side, her breasts surging. I felt secretly aroused, the way you feel aroused in places you oughtn't be, like churches or funeral gatherings. We were on a tree-lined country road that was dotted by run-down stone huts and convenience stores on the verge of close down. A flickering store sign illuminated a badly scrawled board that offered free dog food with every magazine subscription. Who would think up such an odd combination?

That was when I heard a stifled cry from behind. I pretended I hadn't heard and jogged on. Keeva couldn't have noticed with her music. Good.

I concentrated on my footfalls, making them even. Keeva would probably be worrying about where to step, given her newborn hate of the dark, but I didn't much care for that sort of thing. I felt alone.

Another cry, louder, and panting. I tapped Keeva's elbow and she pulled out an earphone, giving me a flat look.

"What?"

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"There's someone behind us."

We swung around on a pavement partly lit by pools of sickly sodium light. A passing car disturbed the gloom, stirring up whirls of dead leaves, but there was no one else.

"So? Some people just have a taste for running in the blind. Like you."

Like me. It was my fault that the sky had turned grey. My fault that the government couldn't care less about a dark capillary of road that led to nowhere.

"No, whoever it was... wasn't jogging. I think they were... er, having sex."

She gave me an annoyed look and shut me out with her Black Eyed Peas. Myself, I don't listen to music when I'm running. You put on earphones and you become as responsive as a rolling boulder. Anything could happen.

The cry came again. Unmistakable now. I turned mid-jog and there, half stumbling and half running towards us in the dark, was a small girl. I pulled Keeva to a stop.

"Look. She's following us," I said hoarsely.

Keeva made as to grab my hand, then decided against it. Instead, she turned to me and we stood there, two baffled chickens on culling day.

"Mommy...?" the girl said.

Pinky-finger honest, I was afraid. Don't ask me why, but I was. There's something about ordinary things that can be overwhelming when they happen the right way. But when the girl caught up with us, she was just a girl, about seven or eight years old. She was crying crying and cradling a shivering puppy. I breathed out and rubbed my face. Keeva and I were adults, we would know what to do.

"What's wrong, honey?" Keeva asked the girl.

"Mommy---Sparky---"

The puppy was watching me, his fat tummy rising in short breaths while his doggy penis aired like a wee flagstaff. All things considered, he didn't look too uncomfortable.

"Sparky wouldn't budge," the girl said. "Sparky wouldn't budge and I was so scared! We were walking and then he stopped there and refused to go, just like that. I was so scared."

As she spoke, the girl's eyes kept slipping away from my face and Keeva's. It was unsettling, but it wasn't the time to think about that. I glanced sideways at Keeva, who was saying something on her mobile phone. Talking to the girl's mother, probably.

"The cars must have frightened him," I ventured at last.

Sparky's shivers had gone away and his head was cocked at a curious angle. Every now and then his tongue lolled out and treated me to a view of his pink mouth and white canines. Unusual. All dogs have stained gums and yellow teeth, but not this one. I fought an urge to ask the girl what brand of toothpaste he used and had to stop myself from giggling.

Then Sparky spoke.

"Hello, kid."

The laughter died in my mouth. I looked around but aside from our happy huddle the road was vacant.

"Yeah, two-legs, it was me." He had a loud Fred Flintstone voice and a thick New Jersey accent. Like a pint-sized Tony Soprano, bless his soul. "You squeal like a sow in rut. Care to share?"

"Yes--no. I mean, a talking dog..." Goddamn, it was an articulate puppy, a fully articulate puppy with a TV gangster accent.

"Cut the small talk, kid!" growled Sparky. Dog-growled, not conversation-qualifier growled. "I ain't got time to waste on empty fools. I got her to look after, and being a puppy is no mean feat."

"I thought puppies had it easy."

"You did, eh, genius? What do you know about being a dog?"

"Not much, aside from the fact that you pee standing on three legs and always smell like damp rugs. So tell me. Why did you put on that show, if you can talk and all?"

"What show? I was afraid of the cars, for Chrissakes. I couldn't move. It was like---like a deer caught in headlamps. You said so yourself!" Sparky had worked himself into a snout-licking frenzy.

"And you expect me to believe that?"

For a moment I was certain he'd go, should I say, dogshit. But he didn't. He threw up his shaggy paws in the air and deflated.

In the background, Keeva was saying something about the best way to train a dog. The girl seemed to be coping. "Alright, you win," the dog said. "I'm not afraid of cars, but I'm supposed to act that way. You know, it's my role."

"Right. Your role as a puppy."

"Yeah, my role as a puppy. Everything has a role, you dig? You, me, everything."

"So it's all phony. You're a phony puppy, I'm a phony runner, we're all phony this and that. Nothing new."

"No kid, no no no. You got it all wrong. I'm not saying that. Look at it this way: you enjoy movies? Betcha do. But you don't go to the pictures and complain cause it's all just a script, do you? You know it's scripted so you don't give a damn. At least, not in the theatre you don't."

"Sure, but I go to the movies for entertainment. You, on the other hand, just scared the hell out of that girl. All for the sake of a mongrel's role. Is that your idea of fun?"

"You don't get it, do you. What do you expect me to do, deliberate on Gödel's incompleteness theorem or what?" Gödel, as in Guuudel. "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it ain't nice to make kids cry. Think again, boy. It's nicer than you think. Human, too. Maybe you don't shed a single tear but you also miss out on a lot of smiles. You know what that makes you?"

"No."

"Walled in. You got strong battlements kid, I give you that. But---say, ever heard the one about the hen and the eggs?"

"No," I said.

"It's short, kid. Won't tax your attention too much. Okay, so it goes like this. Mother Hen has been laying eggs all her life, right? That's just what she does and she does it well. Except that most of her eggs get broken. You know, children fooling around and traipsing where they shouldn't be and all that. Outta every five eggs, maybe one or two make it to the finish line. Not to mention the chicks that hatch and die. But that's another story. So where was I? Yeah, Mother Hen. She says one day, 'I'm gonna make sure those friggin blockheads don't break another egg.' So she drinks a lot of milk---don't ask me if chickens drink milk, kid, they do in this story---she drinks a lot of milk to build up her calcium resources, you know? And she lays thick, strong eggs. The children could kick them and they won't break. Mother Hen's as happy as Larry. But when three weeks later the sitting period's over, none of the eggs hatch. Every one of the chicks just done and suffocated, cause the little peckers weren't strong enough to break out! That's what happens if you build your shell too thick, kid. True story."

Sparky licked his nose and grinned a mouthful. He looked satisfied, a jolly round king sprawled back on this throne at the end of the day's business. "And kid?"

"Yeah?"

"Your shoelaces are undone."

Sure enough, they were. I crouched down and pulled a quick, tight butterfly, then did the other foot. In another world, the girl's mother was talking to Keeva. I'd been having a conversation with a dog while the spindle of the universe turned slowly around. Leaves brushed my face, flung by a sudden gust of cold wind. It was going to rain. Let it. Back home the alley behind our house was straddled by tool sheds that in the rain sung a hundred tunes. I loved that sound. So did Keeva. It was a quiet sort of music that drowned everything out but you. When it rained, you looked out into the grey slate that replaced the orgy of urban life and your fingers twitched with the conviction that they could shape that greyness and colour it as they wished. In those moments, you could create. Rain had that power.

"I can't thank you enough," the girl's mother said.

Keeva nodded and smiled, but before they turned to leave I got down on my knees, level with the girl.

"When I was your age," I said, "I had a little furball of a kitten, and one day he got lost in the well water drain. Vanished for a whole afternoon. I thought, why would he do something like that? It was so unfair! But he wasn't gone, he came back. Do you know why cats and dogs misbehave like that? It's because they don't speak, so it's their only way of telling how much you really love them. And you know, when that happens, it's okay to cry. I cried."

The girl's eyes were unblinking. "What was his name?"

"Kimba, like the lion."

"Kimba, like the lion," she said. She thought about it. "And where is he now?"

"Dreaming." I looked up at the girl's mother, a woman with a wistful smile from the outskirts of childhood. "Take care of Sparky, okay? He's the most important dog in the world."

They walked away, leaving Keeva and I to our path through crunching leaves, swaying branches and splashes of darkness and light. Neither of us felt like jogging any longer, so we walked. We turned down a road that we had hurried past earlier. At this pace, memory could catch up with us. We didn't have to speak, not for a while. There is harmony in silence that cannot be found in the most charming handiwork of Mozart.

Keeva slipped her shy fingers into mine.

"What did the puppy tell you?" she said out of nowhere.

I tilted my head and gave her a questioning glance. She laughed. It was good to hear her laugh.

"You two looked like you were having a tête-à-tête. Almost."

"We were." I let it hang at that. "Isn't this pleasant?"

Her fingers tightened around mine. "It is."

"Everyone must be in," I said, "shuttered against the rain. As if getting soaked in a summer storm is any different than getting soaked in the bathroom."

A teasing smile dimpled the corners of her mouth. "When's the last time you were out in the rain?"

"Can't even remember." Must have been before I met her.

Slowly, she shook her head. "Neither can I."

We walked on. The trees sighed in the wind and dark forms flitted overhead. And I remembered.

"I think I was six or seven," I said. "I was out playing with a couple of friends from our street. You know how it is with children; the wetter it got, the funner it became, and it got very, very wet that day. The kind of rain that washes away everything. But there we were, running and laughing and not a care in the world. And I remember Mum was so upset when I got back. I could get a cold or pneumonia or bronchitis she said, made me take a bath. That was the last time I really was in the rain." Then you get older and the joy of simple things seeps out of the canvas of life.

Keeva held my hand and remained silent. When she spoke, her voice had changed, become uneven.

"That girl was blind."

I breathed in. "Yes, she was."

Keeva looked at me. There was a hollowness in her eyes, the hollowness of dreams passed by. "The girl was blind but she believed in us." Her voice snagged. "She thought we were grownups."

A teardrop curved down her cheek, heavy. But she was here, with me, her fingers in mine.

"We're twenty years older and we know less than she does," she said. "I've forgotten what it means to love so much."

"Maybe we are grownups, then. Maybe we've grown up too quickly."

"Is this going anywhere? Are we going anywhere?"

I wanted to see her smile. Instead, I said the truth. "I don't know."

"Can we at least be children for a while?"

As we walked, the clouds turned a muddy brown and the air tingled with expectation. We were upon the clearing at the end of our walk. Here the road veered off and the pavement became a cobble path that wound between clumps of trees, garden lamps, and wooden benches. Not a soul was in sight. I took Keeva's hand and we walked to the middle of the clearing, beyond eyeshot of anyone insensible enough to still be out in this threatening weather. We were alone.

I could see the hurt in her eyes. Her face, turned up to mine, was a white oval framed by dark strands of hair that flowed with the breathing wind. She didn't speak, nor did she need to. A light patter of rain began to fall, picking up gradually and surely, washing off our wounds and mixing with the tears. Not that they were the kind of wounds that healed and went away with the rain. But now we were looking into each other, our wounds open for both to see. The worst of this world happens because we are embarrassed by wounds. Because wounds are symptoms of weakness, to be hidden, forgotten.

In the clearing, in the rain, we touched lips and kissed, once. A kiss to start over, to repair what was wrong, to at least understand. And even though it was not alright, it was better.

"Let's stay here a while," she said.