“I’ll have sardines and crackers. Go on, now.” Then he said it again: “I need to think.”
I went home, but I didn’t eat much. I wasn’t hungry.
5
After that, Radar stopped finishing her morning and evening meals, and although I carried her up the back steps—she could still go down them by herself—there started to be the occasional mess in the house. I knew Mr. Bowditch was right about no vet being able to help her… except maybe at the very end, because it was clear that she was in pain. She slept a lot, and sometimes yelped and snapped at her hindquarters, as if trying to get rid of whatever was biting her and hurting her. Now I had two patients, one getting better and one getting worse.
On the fifth of August, a Monday, I got an email from Coach Montgomery, setting out the schedule for football practice. Before replying to it, I did my father the courtesy of telling him I’d decided not to play my final year. Although Dad was clearly disappointed （I was disappointed myself）， he said he understood. He had been at Mr. Bowditch’s the day before, playing gin, and had seen the condition Radar was in.
“There’s still a lot of work waiting up there,” I said. “I want to do something about the mess on the third floor, and once I feel safe about letting Howard go down to the basement, there’s a jigsaw puzzle that needs finishing. I think he’s forgotten all about it. Oh, and I need to teach him how to use my laptop so he can surf the Net as well as watch movies, plus—”
“Quit it, Chip. It’s about the dog. Right?”
I thought about carrying her up those back steps, and how ashamed she looked when she messed in the house, and I just couldn’t answer.
“I had a Cocker when I was a kid,” Dad said. “Penny, her name was. It’s hard when a good dog gets old. And when they get to the end of it…” He shook his head. “It tears your heart out.”
That was it. That was it exactly.
It wasn’t my dad who was pissed at the idea of me quitting football my senior year, it was Mr. Bowditch. And he was pissed like a bear.
“Are you crazy?” he almost shouted. Color was flaring in his seamed cheeks. “I mean are you flat-out, balls-to-the-wall crazy? You’ll be a star on that team! You can play college ball, maybe with a scholarship!”
“You’ve never seen me play in your life.”
“I read the sports pages in the Sun, as crappy as they are. You won the goddam Turkey Bowl game last year!”
“We scored four touchdowns in that game. I only punched in the last one.”
He lowered his voice. “I’d come to see your games.”
That stunned me to silence. Coming from someone who’d been a voluntary shut-in even before his accident, it was an amazing offer.
“You can still go,” I said finally. “I’ll go with you. You buy the hotdogs and I’ll buy the Cokes.”
“No. No. I’m your boss, goddammit, I pay your salary, and I forbid it. You’re not going to lose your last high school football season on my account.”
I do have a temper, although I’d never shown it with him. That day I did. I think it would be fair to say I snapped.
“It’s not about you, it’s not all about you! What about her?” I pointed to Radar, who raised her head and whined uneasily. “Are you going to carry her up and down the back porch steps so she can piss and shit? You can barely goddam walk yourself!”
He looked shocked. “I’ll… she can do it in the house… I’ll put down papers…”
“She’d hate that, you know she would. Maybe she’s just a dog, but she has her dignity. And if this is her last summer, her last fall…” I could feel tears rising, and you’ll only think that’s absurd if you never had a dog you loved. “… I don’t want to be on the practice field hitting a fucking tackling dummy when she passes! I’ll go to school, gotta do that, but the rest of the time I want to be here. And if that isn’t good enough for you, fire me.”
He was quiet, hands folded. When he looked back at me his lips were pressed together so tightly they almost weren’t there, and for a moment I thought he was going to do just that. Then he said, “Do you think a vet would make a house call, and perhaps ignore the fact that my dog hasn’t been registered? If I paid him enough?”
I let out a breath. “Why don’t I try to find out?”
6
It wasn’t a vet I found but a veterinarian’s assistant, a single mom with three kids. It was Andy Chen who knew her and made the introduction. She came, examined Radar, and gave Mr. Bowditch some pills she said were experimental, but much better than Carprofen. Stronger.