Cobbler

I have had just one dog in my long life: Tippy, a red cocker spaniel. Long is long, but I think the relevant point is that my dog entered my life when I was five and left it when I was twenty-six. By then I thought she was immortal. I won’t get into how things ended, but a truck on a snowy day in January was to blame, as were Tippy’s cataracts.

Everybody has dog stories, so I won’t go into any detail, except to say that Tippy and I grew up together and really was a member of the family. She was well-behaved and spoke Human. I can still hear her bark, which is hers alone. I can hear her lapping from her water bowl. I can see her wagging her stubby tale that nobody should have cut off even if it was the usual practice. I can see her lactose-intolerant appetite get her into trouble if she got into milk or ice cream. 

I can see her collar with the metal tag attached - not hanging, but rather kind of screwed flat to the leather. The collar was the only one she ever wore and my mother clumsily but lovingly scratched the five letters of her name on it. I really can see this because the collar and its tag are here with me in another state hundreds of miles away. I see the angular letters created by a nail point perhaps, and the leather is barely hanging together. If I run across it, When searching for something, I always stop, unable to move, and start to tremble, in anticipation of the tears.

That is the problem: the tears. They have stopped me for years from getting another dog. It would have to be a clone of Tippy, and while I know exactly where she is at this very moment, I am unable to return to that back yard corner where pink hollyhocks grow in order to get some DNA to do the cloning. The effort would kill me like that truck on a snowy day in January. 

Despite the many vivid memories, I don’t know if the other cocker spaniel in my life arrived prior to Tippy or after, I really don’t. This one was stuffed and wasn’t quite red, but was close enough. This dog came from New York City, from a trip my mother made to one of her conventions. He ended up being called Cobbler - not that I knew what a cobbler was at such a young age, but because I couldn’t pronounce the name of the breed.

Cobbler was always the version of Tippy I could put my arms around and sleep with, his head next to mine on the pillow or clutched to my chest with my skinny little arms. He slowly became something else, which is the reason I’m even telling this story nearly eighty years later. It doesn’t matter that he never had a collar and never tried to drink milk or stick his head out the car window to catch the breeze. He knows how to do other things.

Yes, knows, in present tense. Cobbler has never left me and the red satin inside his ears hasn’t even faded, at least not very much. His fur isn’t as soft as it probably once was, but that isn’t important. My arms still encircle him and he has a place on my pillow any time he wants. Any time I want. 

“Do you have time to talk?”

“Yes, Cobbler, of course. I always have time for you.”

“Why do you think that’s so?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why do you think I’m still around and why do you still think I have something to say that’s worthwhile?”

“Why wouldn’t you be here? Why wouldn’t we have something to talk about after all these years?”

“That’s just it. After so many years, people often run out of things to talk about. Everything has been said, in a way.”

“That’s not always true.”

“All right, then, explain what you still see in me, please.”

“Cobbler, you should know by now, but it’s easy enough.”

While I am talking, I can see he’s listening. Over the years neither of us has lost any of our hearing, so I am keeping my voice low, like when I was a little girl and told my friend all my secrets. Or said nothing at all, just hugged him. 

“But those days and conversations happened so long ago.”

I can tell Cobbler hasn’t realized that what happened long ago is still happening. Apparently he doesn’t know that when I hold him now I can feel every touch of my fingers in his stiffened, spiky fur. That’s more than eight decades of petting him, learning his now-flat little shape, the way the now-bristles swirl in silly shapes that a real spaniel never has.

“I’m kind of battered from following you from one state to another. You threw me into more than one box or suitcase and I followed you gladly, but it kind of shows. I don’t think you ever gave me a bath or clipped my nails.”

“That’s true, but you don’t need sprucing up. You’re perfect just the way you are.”

I say that to Cobbler and I mean it. If I were to wash him, I might wash off all the hours of holding him, leaving my fingerprints on his fur. Maybe the words I put in his ears night after night would fall out. Or I might dilute the nights we laid in the big bed watching the bubble lights wiggling with the backdrop of falling snowflakes. That would break my heart.

“How many places have we lived? Do you remember?”

“Oh, that’s impossible to say. I do know you never traveled out of the country and of course that’s my fault.”

Cobbler doesn’t look at all upset. He’s very patient, I know. Patient and a good listener. It’s just more reason we’ve gotten along so well and he’s still in my life. My only live cocker spaniel has been gone for so long…

“You don’t think I’m alive?”

I realize immediately that I’ve hurt his feelings, sold him short. I need to make it up to him, so I go into my bedroom that I now share with another woman my age. I lie across the bed and reach a hand under my pillow, trying not to wake my roommate. Cobbler is there, as he always is. I think he’s trying to sleep after our conversation. I nudge his shoulder, although he doesn’t really have shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a whisper. He knows I mean it. After so many years, of course he knows. He doesn’t look angry. I tell him yet again what he holds inside. He’s not like the tin woodsman who has no heart or the scarecrow who’s lacking a brain. He has everything he needs, everything I need. I will continue to add to the things he carries, I’ll…

“Ella Lafferty! it’s late! Lights out!”

I hear her say as she turns to another nurse in my ward:

“It’s sad, isn’t it, when they start talking to themselves when they get up in years?”

The other nurse says:

“Yes, they lose track of things and thinking becomes a challenge. She’s such a nice old lady, though. Hard to believe she’s nearly a hundred.”

I close my eyes, hugging Cobbler tightly. We both know what’s real and what’s not. We have good memories. Very good ones. And I don’t think I’m a hundred. Am I?

“You’re not. I should know.” A tiny voice whispers in my ear.