GOING TO THE DOGS - by Rod Carley

GOING TO THE DOGS

My younger sister wanted to give birth to a dog, but had two children instead -- Jenny and Jerome.

My sister, JoJo, has a thing for the letter J. As a kid, she put Jam on everything, from toast to watermelon to potatoes. Jello and Jiffy Pop were big hits too. Our mother took creole cooking classes so she could learn how to make Jambalaya. When my sister was eight she spent twelve hours in Emergency after a Jawbreaker got stuck in her throat. As a result, my parents missed their flight for a winter getaway they had booked and paid for. The big J word in our house that night was my father taking the Lord’s name in vain.

After Jenny and Jerome graduated college, JoJo and her husband Jimmy bought an RV and parked it at a community trailer park a half-hour south of town. My partner Neil and I go

there on weekends before we start our summer holidays. We bring our Jack Russell Terrier, Salinger, with us. We bought him from a breeder in Cornish, New Hampshire. I kid you not.

Everyone at the Juniper Berry Trailer Park owns a dog. My sister currently has two jet-black cocker spaniels named Tortilla and Salsa. She wanted to name them Jack and Jill but Jimmy put his foot down.

One Saturday night I realized, after my fifth beer, that there were no dogs taller than eighteen-inches in the trailer park. I know this to be fact because I borrowed Jimmy’s tape measure and measured the heights of the dogs. There is a German shepherd puppy, three sites down, but he smokes cigarettes to stunt his growth.

Jimmy is one of those guys who can build anything - as long as there is something pleasurable waiting on the other side. For instance, his fire pit is a thing of beauty. The rest of the park improvises with old tire rims. Not Jimmy. His fire pit is the industrial equivalent of those little cream-cheese pinwheel sandwiches served at funerals. A ring of stones spirals into another ring and then another.

         Tortilla and Salsa have LED night collars that glow a vibrant red. They look like incandescent miniature hoola-hoops running about the site. Tortilla and Salsa actually have four collars.

The first is their chain collar from which hang their cactus-shaped ID tags.

The second is a remote-control unit that reacts to the invisible electric fencing that surrounds their trailer site.

The third is an electronic anti-barking device that emits citronella spray should either bark at a squirrel, another dog, or each other.

The fourth is their red-light night collar.

Salinger has one collar.

After the evening barbecue we sit around the fire pit, drinking, telling stories, and listening to the music scramble on Jimmy’s new tablet. Jimmy and I smoke cigarillos. Trailer

park neighbors pass by, walking their eighteen-inch tall dogs.

Tortilla forgets about his second and third collars. Barking and running to greet a friendly cockapoo, he is both sprayed with mist and zapped by the fence. It happens hourly on a Saturday

night. Salsa is more resourceful than her brother is. She deliberately barks at the grass to release the citronella to keep the mosquitoes out of her ears.

When I press Salinger’s ears together, he resembles Christopher Plummer. At home, he is less sophisticated, equating our cat’s litter box to a carton of donut holes. Our cat views Salinger as an inferior life form.

Jimmy does not care for cats. They are too independent. Jimmy aka Jimmy Thunder was the morning man on our local radio station for years:

“GET READY FOR (followed by a cheesy thunderclap sound effect) THUNDER IN THE MORNING!”

I thought Thunder was his radio name until Jimmy showed me his birth certificate over a cigarillo one Saturday night. There it was, Jimmy Rumble Thunder.

“You could be a character in Cats,” I told him.

“I was made with a bang and came out with one too,” he laughed.

Two winters ago, while lying on the couch with Salsa binge watching a Netflix series, Jimmy suddenly felt light-headed. Salsa jumped into action. She wiggled her way under his head the moment before he had an epileptic seizure. The doctors said Salsa had probably prevented brain damage. Who knew dogs could detect seizures before they start. My brother-in-law is fine now. He’s on anti-seizure medication, retired early and lives like Jimmy Buffet in Mexico for most of the year.

I like to think that Salinger would curl up under my head if I was about to have a seizure. Our cat definitely would not. The cat recognizes the sound of my voice and can differentiate Neil

and me from a stranger, but she chooses to ignore us. I read the other day that all animals will eventually choose to eat you if you’re dead long enough and they have no food. Cats are quicker at choosing this option. A forensic study found that cats would generally wait one to two days. Scientists call it post-mortem predation. Our cat would wait an hour, I swear. When I fall asleep

on the couch, I wake up to her wearing a bib and pouring ketchup on my wrist.

Dogs really do have it over cats. My Uncle Irving had a border collie that re-wired his kitchen and did my mother’s taxes. My sister-in-law, Sophie, has a poodle that understands French. Salinger is responsible for digging a series of tunnels under the neighbours’ lawns, and helping fellow canines escape from their feline housemates. He has been operating his secret

“Underground Railway” since puppyhood, when he first dug up Neil’s garden. Our cat, on the other paw, demands a written contract and payment-in-advance before she’ll even consider

raising a claw to hunt a mouse.

Tortilla resembles a Rastafarian lion, Salsa (who has ridiculously cute white eyebrows), a silent movie actress, and Salinger, what you would expect a short-haired Jack Russell resembling Christopher Plummer to look like. Salinger speaks with a slightly effeminate mid-Atlantic accent. His wit picks up after my seventh beer. Tortilla has the deep bass voice of a retired morning-radio host. Salsa does it all with her eyes. The dogs get going around eleven, once Leonard Cohen kicks in.

“It’s getting so a dog can’t even be a dog anymore,” Tortilla argues.

“I honestly don’t know what to chase anymore,” Salinger complains.

“You’re both being ridiculous,” Salsa says, imitating my sister who scratches her ears.

“I’m serious,” barks Tortilla. “If cats can be dogs and dogs can be cats, what happens to dogs being dogs and cats being cats?”

“Does that mean I get nine lives if I identify as a cat?” says Salinger, his tongue wagging.

“If you start using a litter box, Salsa, I’m outta there,” states Tortilla. He begins to dig a hole.

“No, Tortilla,” my sister scolds. Tortilla stops, embarrassed.

“So what if I do identify as a cat? It’s my right to choose.” Salsa’s stern white eyebrows glow red in the firelight.

“Can I come over and eat out of your litter box?” asks Salinger, perking up. He sniffs my cigarillo smoke.

“You’re not serious,” growls Tortilla, ignoring Salinger, who is now having a sneezing fit. “Cats already put on the dog. What’s next? Cat shows? Tell me you’re pulling my collar.”

“What if I am? It is a new world we are living in. We must have respect for an animal’s right to choose,” Salsa explains with the conviction of Bob Barker.

“That dachshund two trailers down says it’s even worse in France,” adds Salinger. He pauses to lick his penis. “They only have feminine or masculine endings. No in-between. I would hate to be a confused poodle.”  

I think of Sophie’s poodle. Charles is definitely non-binary.

“Dogs and cats have to learn to live together,” says Salsa, raising a paw in solidarity with her imaginary feline friends. She attempts a meow but sounds like she is coughing up a hairball.

“I know how to make a cat sound like a dog,” jumps in Salinger.

No takers.

Salinger remains impervious. “Soak it in gasoline and light a match. Woof! Get it?” He laughs himself into a barking spasm, vomiting up grass and cat litter.

“You see what happens when you eat from the litter box,” I say to him, bending down to clean up his mess. “We probably won’t get invited back now.”

Salinger starts to whine and avoids my eyes.

“That’s right, buddy. The park owners won’t put up with a dog that pukes up cat litter.”

Salinger hides under my lawn chair, trying to become invisible. Surprisingly, that is the one thing Tortilla’s and Salsa’s collars can’t do.                                          

           Tortilla will not let the cat debate go. He is a dog with an identity bone.

“Didn’t you see the first Ghostbusters?” he growls back at Salsa. “Bill Murray warns that dogs and cats living together is a bad omen, a sign that the world is coming to an end. Can you imagine what will happen if cats identify as dogs and vice versa? Total Armageddon!” He chases his tail around the fire pit for emphasis.

“You don’t have issues with your cousin Crockett being a bird dog?” says Salsa, wrinkling up her nose, beyond frustrated with her brother’s close-mindedness.

“A bird dog scares up ducks. It isn’t a cross between a duck and a dog, you twit,” he fires back without missing a beat.

Salinger interrupts. “Do you think there will be a Trans-Canada dog-cat park? Trans-Canada! Get it?” he howls.

“WHAT?” snap Tortilla and Salsa in unison, turning their attention to Salinger who retreats under my lawn chair again.

“You’re on your own, buddy,” I say.

“It’s the beginning of the end,” declares Tortilla. “Soon, we’ll have vegan dog food.”

“We already do,” says Salsa. “What back yard are you digging in?”

“My point,” sputters Tortilla defensively. He shakes his four collars defiantly and renews his attack. “It’s going to be illegal to mount a brother to show who’s dominant. I’d be worried if I was the Littlest Hobo. We’ll all become catnip addicts. Our whole relationship with our humans will change. Think of the awkwardness of everyone trying to relate to you as a cat-dog.”

“What about leashes?” Salinger’s ADHD is trying at times.

“What about leashes what?” growls back Tortilla.

“We won’t know who to leash or not leash,” replies Salinger. He is no match for Tortilla and crawls back under my lawn chair for a third time.

“Enough with the felinophobia,” my sister interrupts, gently shooing Salsa off her lap. “We are all free to be whoever we want to be. Case closed.”

I look up at the Big Dipper. Dusk’s pale tint of orange is long past. The sky is darker than my mood during our last teachers strike.

 Who wants another drink?” JoJo asks, inviting Tortilla up on her lap.

 “How about the good stuff,” Jimmy grins. “Fifteen-year-old Ron Los Valientes.”

“Twist my rumber arm,” I say.

Jimmy gets up and weaves his way to the shed to find the “good stuff.”

My sister stares up at the stars and sighs.

“Why are dogs like a clock?” she asks, stroking Tortilla’s ears.

“Why?” Neil enjoys humouring my sister’s silly jokes.

“They both have ticks.”

Even the dogs groan.

Neil works as a butler. I know it is an antiquated trade but he likes it. He used to be an English teacher like me.

 “That reminds me. Is it the fifteenth of the month tomorrow?” he asks.

“I think so,” JoJo replies. “Why?”

“Time for Salinger’s tick medication.”

“Good boy,” my sister says. Neil and I forget to apply Salinger’s anti-tick ointment. I have a colleague who has Lyme disease. She was an amazing dance teacher and now she can’t

leave her couch. Too bad getting rid of a tick wasn’t as easy as swatting a mosquito.

The dogs fall asleep around the fire, Salinger nestling down on top of the outer circle of stones. It doesn’t look comfortable but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“How many stones does it take to make a mattress?” I ask no one in particular, watching him snore.

“How goes the new book?” Neil asks.

My sister is a successful published author, writing a series of young adult fiction novels about a vet tech who moonlights as a spy.

“It goes,” she says. “I’ve got Josephine stuck in a Middle East prison. She got nabbed by the military while trying to rescue a pack of street dogs being abused by a black market gambling

ring. I’m trying to find a way to break her out.”

Josephine is the vet tech hero in all of my sister’s books.

“I’ve drafted an outline for a young adult novel,” Neil says.

“When do you get time to write?” JoJo says. “Aren’t you busy folding napkins and polishing silverware for Sir Big Butt?”

Neil works for the retired president of a mining company, a genial fellow despite being wider than his three-car garage.

“When Mr. Haileybury takes his afternoon nap,” he explains, “I take out my pen and paper and scrawl away.

“I’m impressed,” says JoJo. “Tell me about this ‘bestseller for sure’ of yours?”

 “Well, it features a transgendered school drop-out named Ziggy,” Neil begins, leaning forward, a natural storyteller, using the fire for effect. “He’s an insomniac. He meets a self- harming vampire named Count Cutter who has a heart of gold and is hell bent on saving the world. Together, Ziggy and Count Cutter embark on a magical quest to find an ancient crystal with the power to reverse climate change and render all weapons useless. And Ziggy’s mother makes a living selling legal highs to illegal immigrants.”

“Very funny,” my sister replies drily, realizing Neil is having her on. He does that a lot. She’s an easy target.

Her face turns serious in the glow of the fire pit. “But I am frustrated with the young adult label. Josephine turned twenty-one in my last book. My publisher insists that’s where the

market is. I have this horrible feeling Josephine will turn forty desperately trying to stay a young adult.”

“Like the rest of us,” I muse, while examining my hands. Thank god, my liver spots vanish under firelight.

“I don’t think I ever was a young adult,” Neil observes.

“That’s because you were already fifty at birth, Holmes,” I say, managing a stock British accent.

“True, Watson,” says Neil. He sips his chilled chardonnay.

“You were ironing your own diapers a month before your christening,” I add.

“I was not,” Neil responds. He waits a well-rehearsed beat and then, “It was a week before,” he laughs. We all join in. Saturday nights are the best.

L’ange pass.

Only the crickets and a loon call.

“A solitary loon on a quiet lake is Buddhism,” Neil whispers, breaking the silence.

“A grunge singer killing himself is Nirvana,” I say.

“Here you are, Jeeves,” says Jimmy, making his rounds.

“Jeeves was not a butler,” Neil says. He politely declines the rum. He always declines. Neil is a wise man. “Technically, he was a valet to Bertie Wooster.”

Jimmy drunkenly fumbles with his tablet, and Thriller fills the trailer park. JoJo, Neil and I awkwardly begin to imitate Michael Jackson’s zombie dance. We stand still and glare at Jimmy for the first few beats. Then we raise and lower our right shoulders while jerking our heads to the right and back. We shimmy away from the fire pit making a swimming motion with our arms - more of a drowning motion in our case - pelvic thrusts, foot stamping, hip swings, hands becoming claws, arms flinging, shuffling, hunching, pivoting clockwise, dogs zapping, and…falling on the grass in a jumble of undead laughter.

“And Jumble starts with J,” JoJo squeals in drunken delight.

Jimmy has an iron liver. He and the dogs are the first to greet the dawn at five a.m. They are up with the chorus of mourning doves, sparrows and woodpeckers. Up with the sound of

fishermen’s boats, their tiny outboard motors a comforting buzz if you aren’t comatose with a Mexican rum hangover. Up with more energy than any being should be allowed to have at that ungodly hour.

I make my way down the tiny trailer steps three hours later.

“Coffee’s on,” Jimmy chirps good-humouredly.

 “My radio days,” he says, reading my swollen brain.

I pour myself a cup of java, spill it on my shorts, and join him in the shed.

“I have a surprise for you,” he announces. He lifts an object off his worktable. It is a small wooden gate with side hinges and a cat door just small enough so that Salinger can’t fit through. The litter box dilemma solved.

Neil emerges in his bright orange swimming trunks, the ones I hate, and goes for a dip. JoJo appears in the screen doorway, eyes half-closed, and her blue denim halter-top inside out.

“That’s the last time I drink,” she mumbles.

She says that every Sunday morning and then sets about preparing her “scramble,” a mash-up of cheese, bacon, eggs and potatoes. It is our traditional morning after feed.

We sit about devouring the grease while Neil applies Salinger’s tick medicine.

An hour later, we are back in town.

Three weeks later, my sister texts me to say she’s just read the young-adult fiction fall-advance list. The hot new ticket is the story of an insomniac, transgendered high school dropout

who meets a self-harming vampire with a heart of gold hell bent on saving the world.

Four weeks later, the cat rips the stuffing out of the couch.