The Dog Says How (9 page)

australia

I’m in Perth, Australia.
I’m as far away from Minnesota as you can get and still be on dry land. I’m there watching the America’s Cup, a boat race where Dennis Connor, the American, is trying to win back the trophy he lost to the Australians four years ago. I love this sport because it happens so far out in the ocean you can’t see it, so you stay in the bar and drink until someone comes in and tells you who won.

This event, like all good hosts, doesn’t interfere with the party. And Perth is wild—“Waltzing Matilda” twenty-four hours a day, pubs packed with tourists. There is this woman standing on top of a cigarette machine, waving a large American flag, and as she passes the flag over the Australians’ heads, they try to light it with their Bic lighters. But it won’t burn. They can’t get it to burn.

After this race I ask the Australians, “What’s fun to do here? What’s fun in Australia?”

“You’ve got to see the rock, mate. You’ve got to climb the rock. You haven’t been to Australia until you’ve climbed Ayers Rock.”

So the next morning I get on a jet and fly to the middle of the great arid continent of Australia, and I get off at Alice Springs. Then I get on a smaller plane, a little one-prop job like my dad’s, and we fly to this landing strip in the middle of the outback and get on a bus. We drive with our windows open and the heat and the dirt are blowing in from the outside. When we stop the Americans smoke and the Japanese take pictures. We load back up. Sitting next to me is this guy from Holland. His name is Arnie Tang and he’s singing in this heavy accent, “Der wus a hoose in Neoorlins, dey call de risin’ sun.” He’s got this beat-up guitar that he says, “I am being carrying all over de wurld.” Arnie talks just like a neon sign I read in Amsterdam once. It said, “Real f***ing live show!!!” I still don’t know what that meant, and Arnie had the same quality. “It wus de ruin of many a man und Gott I hope I’m one.”

Finally, I see Ayers Rock on the horizon. This guy, a tourist guide, gets on the loudspeaker:

“G’day mates (
static
), and welcome to Ayers Rock, the world’s largest monolith. I know you’ve all come to climb the rock but before you do, I’d like to remind you that two hundred and fifteen people have died from heart attacks and another fifty have dropped to their impending death. Enjoy your stay and enjoy the rock (
click
).”

Arnie says, “But I have been coming to climb the rock.”

And I say, “I am coming to climb the rock.”

He says, “Well, I am climbing the rock.”

I say, “I am climbing the rock.”

People get off the bus and are cutting the rock a wide berth. Arnie and I walk right up to the base of the rock, grab this chain that’s hanging down the side, and start pulling ourselves up to the top. I wanted to quit three times, and about halfway up I say, “Arnie, I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

Arnie says, “I am keeping going.”

So I say, “I am keeping going, too!”

We get to the top, then we grab that chain and let ourselves back down, trying not to become statistics.

That night we’re at the campground. I could see Ayers Rock in the distance and I’m standing there doing the Australian salute, which is a hand wave in front of your face to keep the flies away, and behind me the sun is setting. As the red from the sun hit that rock, it starts to glow this brilliant red. Then as the sun sets further, that rock turns into this deep, blood red. As the coolness of the night hit the heat of that rock, it starts to move and to beat. The sun set, but I know out there in the darkness the heart of Australia is still beating. I go back to my tent and I write in my journal, “
No atheist leaves the rock
.”

DAVID IS A BARRISTER
—a lawyer—for the Aboriginal land rights in Alice Springs. I met him shortly after my visit to the rock. David explains that recently the United States, more accurately the CIA, was buying land in the outback. David has been helping native people here acquire their land through the court system, but records are sparse and inconsistent.

David goes inside and comes back wearing his powder wig and his black robe that his grandfather had used back in England. He’s standing there in the 110 degree heat, sweat running from under the wig, and he said, “The first people here didn’t understand this. And we certainly didn’t understand them. There are hundreds of native languages in Australia but not one word for ‘possession’ or ‘time’. My job is all the more difficult because there is also a different sense of family.”

I say, “Wait a second there, David. Family . . . that seems kind of cut-and-dried to me.”

He says, “No, our system, the Western system, runs vertically, like a family tree. That means your great-grandparents, your grandparents, your parents going up the trunk and your uncles and cousins going out on the branches . . . your vertical tree. But their family tree is like vines running horizontally around the earth.” Although a matriarchal system, a “brother,” for instance, may be the son of your mother’s sister; you’re also associated with a living creature, a totem, or dreaming.

Part of one’s heritage is also a stewardship of the land. For this reason Australia has many sacred sites. One is Uluru, or what white fellas call Ayers Rock. I told David I’d climbed the rock. His look said, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

All of a sudden I wished I hadn’t either.

When David told me that Uluru was a sacred site, it bothered me that I had climbed it. It still bothers me to this day. The sacred isn’t something to be conquered. By accepting and knowing that it is sacred, we show respect. By showing respect we are rewarded at times by glimpses into those worlds that lay beyond our grasp. I feel extremely fortunate that the rock chose to show me a bit of its power that night at the campsite. Even though I had crossed a boundary, there remained an invitation, a bit of unfinished business. As Dante learned, to reach his Beatrice in Paradise he would first need to experience the Inferno. I would as well—this time and again—enter the sacred through the profane.

my brother’s bachelor party

My brother is getting married,
so his pals and I decided to throw a bachelor party. We convene at the bowling alley for an intensive planning session. At first the thoughts are simple and heartfelt, a few close friends, some cigars, a fine peppermint schnapps perhaps, but in a relatively short period of time we are huddled around a ballpoint pen and a map of Minneapolis, charting a downtown tour of Mephistophelian proportions. Over the din of shattering pins, one of the more lucid voices cries, “We should make a day of it. I know where we can get a school bus.”

On the morning of the big day we reconvene. There is an enthusiasm in the air—something is going to happen today, something certainly to retell and embellish time and again during cold evenings at the pub. These are the moments one feels the tingle that he is about to do something he ought to know better than, perhaps requiring stitches.

As we await the guest of honor, one of our members, who answers to the title “Lumper,” dashes from his automobile, pale and breathless. He relates that my brother is presently recovering at the hospital, after receiving a horrific dog bite. A dog bite. I recall with horror, my own brush with a cur that went by the breed Weimaraner. A hoary beast, without provocation or warning, lunged at me from behind a shrub. I felt the tinge of brutish teeth lodge in my calf. I have since learned this specific breed of dog, Weimaraner, was developed in nineteenth-century Germany, as a hunting companion, more specifically to bring down male deer by their genitalia. I now regard my brush as rather fortunate, accounts all taken, and have avoided the breed with the respect due its purpose. But my brother, good God, a dog bite.

“Where? How? What dog?”

“His own dog,” replied Lumper.

His dog. My brother’s dog is a happy, slobbering Springer Spaniel. Wouldn’t hurt a fly if it were wearing a bacon jacket and slacks.

“No, his dog was in a scrap with another dog. When Steven tried to separate the combatants, his dog, thinking it was the throat of the other dog, bit his ankle, leaving a healthy gash requiring eight to twelve stitches at last count.”

A feasible explanation. While his dog was friend to all men, the creature held a great contempt for his own species, a fault I fear of premature weaning and a neglect of early socialization. We can learn much from the animal kingdom.

“Quick man, what hospital?”

We loaded into our
charabanc
and proceeded toward the hospital. We find my brother patched and paid for and pleased that his chums were all frothed in the matter of his immediate release.

We head to Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome baseball arena. The boys amuse themselves in the back of the bus with a rousing game of “Does this hurt more, or less?” We take our assigned seats and discover we have been placed quite a distance from the center of the action. Some of the lads have brought their baseball-catching gloves, in hopes of snagging an errant home run. The banner marking “The furthest ball ever hit in the dome” is some fifteen rows in front of us. The likelihood of a free souvenir appears rather nil. This does nothing to douse our enthusiasm. Quite the contrary, we shout and cheer. We have come to have fun, by heavens, and brought plenty of our own friends so as not to be under any obligation to make new ones. Our enthusiasm is quickly met with a brace of barrel-chested ushers. We all put on our best behavior, and settle into a meal of tubular cuisine
mitt kraut
.

The Twins baseball match has hit a dull stretch. Also, our morning imbibing has worn off and we have “turned the corner,” transforming us into a rather surly collection of revelers. We’re bored, and when my brother is bored, no amount of beefed-up security is going to prevent something from happening.

Suddenly he says, “You see that kid?” He points several rows down where perches a twosome of adolescent boys, greedily helping themselves to a variety of unhealthy, complexion-ravaging foodstuffs.

“Five bucks says when that kid is done with his nachos, he licks his cheese compartment.”

A wager! Money immediately makes its way out of pockets.

“Yeah, I’m in for five.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Lumper intercedes, “Now, does he have to lick the compartments or can he clean it out with his finger and lick that?”

“No,” my brother announces. “He will put his tongue in the actual compartment itself.”

Lumper is in for five. Jay McBroom wants to know if the kid has to finish all the cheese that remains.

“No,” says my brother, “one lick.”

Jay McBroom adds his five to the growing pile. A gentleman behind us explains he couldn’t help overhearing our wager and wonders if he can get a piece of the action.

“Of course,” says my brother.

His companion considers himself an expert on human nature.

“That young man was raised too well. Simply look at his attire. You have it all wrong to believe he would stoop to such crassness.”

His theory is heartily met with, “Put your money where your mouth is, pal.”

“Okay, but can he use his finger to . . .”

“No.”

“Alright, I’m in.”

And so is the gentleman next to him. Then, like a fire at the gauze works, one can see the bet spread through the stands. It travels up and over the portals, around pillars, over to the next section, and to the next. The ushers sense something is amiss. They alertly employ a walkie-talkie and request back-up. More ushers arrive and take their stations. Too late, the betting continues to spread. High above us and to the right I can see a man take out his money, point to the kid, then mime the licking of the compartment to his neighbor. The neighbor reaches into his pocket. Somewhere across the field a section cheers. We all lean in fast and look at the kid. Was it a premature lick? No, it was only the Twins scoring the go-ahead run. We are led to understand it was a terrific play. Someone starts to explain it.

“Shut up.”

For we have arrived at the moment of truth. The unsuspecting child has finished his last nacho. There is not a peep. I can hear a cricket in the bleachers as everyone leans in, all eyes focused on the nacho container and the child of destiny.

“Come on,” a man blurts.

“Shhhhh, you’ll spook him.”

I hear whispering. “Lick it.”

“Don’t lick it.”

“Lick it.”

“Don’t lick it.”

“For God’s sake, lick it.”

“Come on, lick it you little . . .”

“Come on, come on, please, oh please.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

The kid looks left, and then he looks right. And as the child of fortune tongues that cheese compartment, a cheer erupts the likes of which I’ve never heard before or since at the Dome. The entire outfield section began yelling as one: loud, raucous, and insane. The members of both baseball squads turn and face our party, our party that is now in a destructive frenzy and under assault by a goon squad of strong-armed ushers. We will pay heavily for this outburst, but for that brief moment in time the Minnesota Twins are watching us. It is the ecstasy. Then, as God is my witness, Kirby Puckett, center fielder and future member of America’s Baseball Hall of Fame, smiles at our merry band and doffs his cap. I love Minnesota.

if it’s morphine it must be august

I’m sitting in the coffee shop
slowing digging out bus change and laying it carefully on the table. It’s a strange-looking ritual, but ever since my motorcycle accident, my right arm is paralyzed and my other has always had a congenital condition. It is much shorter, a bit crooked, with no thumb, so now my arms work like Lenny and George from
Of Mice and Men
. One can’t catch the rabbits; the other can’t seem to remember the rabbits. It takes all of my concentration to manipulate both a dollar and a quarter so when the bus comes I can spring into action.

As careful as I am, a quarter falls on the floor. If I could take off my shoe and sock I could get it. My feet have become downright prehensile over the past few months, not that I can deal a round of blackjack, and I understand if you don’t want me to open your can of Sprite, but I could get this quarter. What is proper etiquette here? I feel my head getting hot. The people around me are beautiful and healthy, smoking and flirting, and this fuels my frustration.

“I, that am rudely stamp’d,” like Shakespeare’s King Richard the Third says. “Unfinish’d, sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up; . . . since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to [be] a villain.” In other words, sometimes I just lose it. But not today; I let the quarter go.

A lot of the folks around me are tattooed and pierced. I think about getting a tattoo to hide some of my recent scars, maybe a flowered vine that uses the scar as a trellis, or a snake. Finally, I decide I want to get one that says in Gothic letters, “My other body is a weightlifter.”

The scars are there because I’ve had a couple of surgeries to fix my brachial plexus. Brachial plexus is the confluence of nerves that connect the spine to the arm. Mine have been pulled out of the spine like a plug out of a socket. Unfortunately, doctors don’t know how to plug them back in, but what can be done is nerves that are already plugged in can be rerouted to the troubled area. In my case, it’s taking nerves from the rib area and redirecting them to the bicep and shoulder; or like my mechanic would say, “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Peter is sensory nerves and Paul is motor nerves, and I pray Peter doesn’t deny me, and Paul establishes a strong foundation. But you never know what will happen. When my dad used speaker cords to rewire the garage door opener I remember we ended up parking the car on the street a lot.

I read about one guy for months after his surgery who, every time he sneezed, raised his hand. I’ve got some time to find out what happens. Nerves grow at about an inch a month, so it will be a year or two before I know if the surgery worked. And I have at least one more surgery to go.

Each surgery lasts from eighteen to twenty-four hours. These are extremely focused hours, so these surgeons are like the Navy Seals of their profession. After being under the anesthesia so long, I come out talking like an old Walter Brennan for about three weeks. I then graduate to a young Walter Brennan, then to a Walter Brennan-type, to finally sounding like myself. I watch a lot of nature shows and cooking shows on television. I swear there’s not a white shark in the ocean I don’t know by sight. In fact, when I was watching
Iron Chef
the other day, a cooking show from Japan, I thought I recognized some of the ingredients.

During this time people stop by, friends who have cooked a meal. Sometimes people bring their kids by for a visit, but I know they’re in the car afterward saying, “See what’ll happen if you get a motorcycle.”

Before the accident everyone had a story about a friend killed or maimed on a motorcycle. After the accident those stories disappear and are replaced with “Yeah, I knew a guy who hit a semi at eighty-five, flew three hundred feet, not a scratch, walked away and became a millionaire.” I figure people need to tell these tales. It fights off the dread. If you know somebody it happened to, it lessons the chance it’ll happen to you.

One time a kid came up to me and said, “I hit my head on a fence post and had to get eight stitches here.” He points to the back of his head.

I said, “I have stitches,” I start at one side of my head, “from here,” I go around my head, down my side to below my stomach, “to here.”

The kid pauses, “Yeah,” he says, “but mine really hurt.” He’s got me there. There’s no way to judge another man’s pain.

These days I’ve got voice-activated software, which is a godsend. My computer reacts entirely on voice commands. It did take a while to get to know me. The first time I said, “Hello, my name is Kevin,” it wrote, “The dog went to the store.” Now we’re getting along much better and often it writes better sentences than I command.

I use a lot of Velcro now. With Velcro everything sticks to everything. Velcro is as indiscriminate as the world’s oldest profession, but is a lifesaver for closing up the gaps.

The worst part of this experience is the pain. Just because my arm doesn’t work, doesn’t mean there isn’t any pain. In the description of my injury I read, “Pain is both ever-present and intermittent.” At first this didn’t make sense but now it does: it hurts unless it really hurts.

When nerves are damaged they continually register “something is wrong”; the brain interprets this as pain. I’ve tried lots of homeopathic remedies for the pain: qigong, acupuncture, Reiki, and most of it works. One healer used golden pens, like ballpoint pens. They worked great. I asked him what they were. He told me they were some kind of hexagons with powder inside. Whatever, it works.

Some healers say that my accident is karma, atonement for past life actions. One woman said she would love to do a past life regression on me. “Man,” she said, “you must’ve been bad.” I turned her down. I don’t want to know; if I am atoning for fun I had centuries ago it is probably best that I don’t remember, kind of like college.

Before I had surgery I asked one healer if she thought I could fix the problem myself, through meditation. She said she believed one could grow back a severed arm. She said, “But it takes a master. I’m not a master, are you?” I decided to have surgery.

Whatever happens I do believe everything has its reason even though I’m not sure on which side of calamity the reason sits. It’s true I’m learning a lot. This is a gift, but it’s not one of those gifts I would have chosen for myself. Nothing is boring anymore. I get angry at heartless actions. It takes very little to make me cry. It feels good, although the anesthesia burns a bit as it cries out in my tears. Most of all, I don’t want to become Richard the Third, but I can see how it happens.

Back in the coffee shop I dig out another quarter and head to the bus stop.