Year of the Dog (24 page)

After a pause, Daddy asked, “You aiming to take Janey back up there, son?”

“I'm trying,” James told him. “It's up to her.”

I looked at the two of them, touched at the way they'd bonded. Moved that they wanted me happy and mated, that they thought the choice was mine to make. But was it? Could you ever leave if the matter of leaving rested with you? Here James had got himself a new family and a new self that he'd never imagined before. And my Good Big Dog had done the same, done her best and done it right, and moved on to her new life and new person. Could I make that happen, too? Or was I stuck here till my hair turned white as my lab coat, still making my buttermilk pie and never seeing a face I didn't already know?

“Opportunities go by,” Daddy said, looking at James but maybe talking to himself or me.

“I know it, sir. They do.”

I smiled at them both. “I guess I will be heading north again one of these days. I can't ask Edgar to spend another
summer in this heat. And since I'll be coming up anyway at the end of August to see my Good Dog graduate with her new person, that seems as good a time as any to check out available jobs.”

“You mean it?” James asked, beaming at me, giving my. dad a thumbs-up.

“Would I miss your very first family reunion?”

Companion Dog

41

I HADN'T CRIED all the way from Carolina to Vermont. I didn't even cry all the way to Massachusetts from Burlington where I was staying with James. But once I drove into the parking field where I'd last been for the puppy trials, I had to blot my eyes, my face, my shirt, with half a box of Kleenex. Had to mop my eyes until even my hair felt damp.

Once I'd got myself together, I started for the section where the former persons of Companion Dogs could wait, and then, spotting Vijay's guy, himself red-faced in a stiff white dress shirt which looked right out of the box, began to weep again. He waved me over, seeming glad to see me, and blew his nose when I sat down.

“She graduating this morning?”

“I'm so proud,” I sniffed.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. You take that dog that had the lung trouble?”

“I did. Edgar. He's glad to be back up here. How about you?

“It takes about two years.” He blew his nose again, and pounded a fist on his thigh. “To get over them. Then, I guess, I'll start to give a thought to getting another. Vijay, he was special. But he's my third. After while you get over it and you want to try another.”

“Oh, Vic. However could you go through this again?”

Then we saw the trainers turn and give a signal, and ten Companions and their persons came single file out onto the field. The graduates, the blind people, each had a chair for the ceremony, with room for their dog beside them. And there was a loudspeaker and an official photographer and a number of people I didn't recognize but who seemed, from the excitement and the way they were dressed up and waving, to be the kin of those officially getting their dogs today.

Betty had told me about Good Dog's new person. I guess all of the raisers seated, as Vic and I were, far back in sort of makeshift bleachers, close enough that we could see, but far enough away that we would not distract the dogs, had been given information. The blind woman gaining my former puppy was a sixty-five year old widow who had never wanted a dog. She didn't consider that she got on well with dogs. She'd explained that as a girl in Needham when she'd visit her uncle and his spaniel with her mother, her skirt would be covered with dog hair when she left. She didn't like the idea of moving an animal in her home; she thought of them as doing better out-of-doors. But her stepson and his wife coaxed her and cajoled her to consider the idea, telling her that she would be able to go to church again, to see her friends, to attend concerts, since they knew she quite loved chamber music. And because she, her name was Edith, was a kindly woman who realized that they'd otherwise be saddled with her care, she gave in. Allowing herself to be taken for the lengthy and intensive training sessions at the kennels. And had quite fallen in love with her gentle puppy. “They were a match from the start,” Betty had said.

Trying not to break down, I watched the graduates coming along single file, and then I saw—
Beulah.
Such a big, grownup dog, so attentive to her person, so carefully and confidently directing her to a chair. And her person: a lovely, composed
older woman whose face wore a look of almost unbearable happiness:
She had done it; she had finished the course. She and her dog had many sociable and affectionate years ahead.

“You okay?” Vic asked, standing to take a zoom photo of Vijay and the straight-backed graying man at his side.

“I'm fine,” I said. “I'm really fine.” And because I couldn't see too well, I handed him my camera to take a picture of the kindly lady from Needham and her Companion. In case I might want to look at it some day.