Junk Shop: A Dog Memoir
By Jennifer Erickson
Copyright 2014 Jennifer Erickson
Table of Contents
The Good Life
The Future Baby
The Car Crash
The Flying Mattress
On the Road
The Cannibal
Nelson's Sister
Going Home
My Mistake
Truffle
Virgil Rosenberger
The Power of Stories
The Snorkel to Puppyhood
The Necklace
A Calling
The Trail of Pain
Garage Sale-ing
Virgil's Hair Wears Off
My Puppet
Where's Your Owner?
Corey Posts Bail
Dumpster Guy
The Kid
Rent
Mice
Judith Flies
Virgil Goes to the Hospital
The Evil in the Basement
Virgil Runs Away
Ghosts
The Research Project
The Squeaky-toy Voice
The Hour of Stillness
Virgil's Funeral
Stuart the Apartment Manager
I Know About Your Tiny Truffle Heart
Ashley Finds the Diary
We Whimpered With Full Hearts
The Good Life
I was too young to remember my mother well, but I remember her licking me, my whole body rocking with the motion of her tongue. And I remember lying in a heap with my brothers and sisters, and climbing over each other to suckle, all of our tails knocking together, and the smell of my mother's fear.
And then my siblings vanished one-by-one until it was just me and Mother. She trembled and licked and licked me, and sometimes we whimpered.
And then it was just me and the concrete floor and the sound of barking and the smell of nervous diarrhea. I curled up as small as I could and tried to wrap myself in my tail. It just reached the tip of my nose, but it was something.
People came and went. They talked to me in high voices and sometimes they held me, which I liked, and I did the only thing I knew: I licked them, as my mother had licked me.
But none of them stayed, and mostly I was alone.
Then one day I heard a voice from nearby. I couldn't see who was talking because of all the concrete, but it was a kind voice. Gruff, but kind. It said, "You're awfully young to be here all alone."
And that was when I learned about the outside world, and about people and about how fickle they could be.
"It's my second time in," said the gruff old dog, "and I don't have a chance. I'm old and incontinent. Don't be incontinent. That's the number one thing people can't stand."
That's when I learned about The Room You Never Leave. That gruff dog had reliable sources, he said. He'd been talking to the cats.
The next day, they came and got him, and he was gone.
And I was alone again.
I didn't know it, but I had been sick. As I got well, I started to pay attention.
The other dogs gossiped. Rumors went up and down the line. They talked, and I listened, trying to glean what I could about the Facts of Life. Nobody talked about the Room You Never Leave, but we all knew it was there.
Instead, we talked about the families we would have one day. Yards with fluffy green grass. Days spent hunting squirrels and chasing balls. Legendary holiday meals. Walks and children and lazy evenings cuddling by the fire. The Good Life.
I was young and ambitious, and I wanted it all.
But the number one thing, the foundation for the Good Life, was a person with Heart.
We can all sense Heart, but sometimes we get distracted by other things, surface things, like a nice belly rub. Just because someone gives you a belly rub doesn't mean they're committed. Just because they say kind words, it doesn't mean they feel them. Just because they want you really badly because you're so cute, doesn't mean they will remember you when it's cold outside, when you're old and farty, when they get married.
A person with Heart will love you forever.
I had no experience of the Outside World, but I listened and I learned, and I knew that I must choose carefully.
I had seen the other dogs lose their heads over a person, and I had seen how it ruined things. People didn't like barking and slobbering and whining and jumping up. They wanted a dog with dignity.
I imagined myself making a careful choice. Weighing my options. Offering a dignified paw, perhaps, to seal the deal. But it didn't happen like that for me.
Instead, it was like falling in love. Like falling down a flight of stairs. Like a car wreck.
The metal door swung open at the end of the line, and before I even saw his ball cap or his gentle smile, I felt his Heart, beating in my chest.
And everything I had learned went out the window.
A yelp escaped my throat as I joined the growing chorus: "Pick me! Pick me!"
Slowly, slowly, his feet came into sight. My gate swung open and I leapt into his arms. My bladder emptied down the front of his shirt.
I licked his face and his teeth, and even got a swipe at his tongue before he spluttered and pushed me away. "I'm not incontinent!" I yowled. And my tail, my tail was out of control! It knocked off his eyeglasses, and when I ran to get them for him I accidentally trampled them and they skittered into a puddle (guilty evidence from earlier). Now, he would notice for sure! No, no, don't leave me!
He picked up his eyeglasses with two fingers. I tried to lick them clean. As he walked away, I remembered my dignity, and I sat at the wire gate, vibrating with yearning, and willed him to bring me home.
He was the one for me. He just didn't know it yet. The next day after kibble-time I sat at my gate, staring down the concrete aisle toward the door. My heart and my will sent hooks out into the world, and I reeled him back to me. I could feel his Heart, out there somewhere.
And I drifted into a trance.
A rumor came down the line: he was back. All of us were on high alert. The door swung open and the other dogs erupted: "Pick me!" they chorused.
My body vibrated with the effort to stay still.
He squatted down and stuck his fingers through the wire. "You want to go home with me?" he asked.
"Yes!" I yodeled, and toppled over backward.
As I followed him into the Outside World, I staggered to stay ahead of my thrashing tail. It banged rhythmically on the check-out desk. Its arc was so wide, it whipped me in the ribs and knocked pamphlets from a table.
My tail and I dragged him through the glass doors to open sky and an explosion of scents. People and movement everywhere! So this was the fabled Outside World! I decided immediately that I loved it.
"Hold your horses!" He said, hauling me out of the path of a moving car. "Sorry!" he waved as it roared away.
He introduced me to his wife, who was a blur of pleasure and warmth. Their name was Metcalfe, but to me they would always be He and She.
The world was huge even before we got into his car and drove. More of it unfolded, sniff by sniff out the open window.
In the car, I noticed that She had the most glorious tail coming right out of her head. It was too wonderful to ignore, so I grabbed hold and pulled as hard as I could. She told me no, but I knew She meant yes! Because She had Heart, too.
Shortly after that, I found out about cars and throwing up. We stopped at a gas station and He mopped up the yuck with an old sweatshirt.
From then on, I had the Good Life. Every day was a new adventure. There were walks and cuddles and good food. Often, we went places in the car. And I learned to watch the road through the windshield so that I wouldn't throw up. Because people don't like
incontinence, but they really don't like when you throw up on their lap, or on their glorious head-tail. But that only happened once.
"Good Girl," they would say, and my heart was full.
"Ya wanna gofura ride?" they would say. Oh, how those words electrified me!
We drove to The Ocean, where He lured me through attacking waves to master the intricacies of swimming. Where I rolled on a dead fish that smelled of sun and smiles and the wonders of the ocean depths. Where I got fleas for the first time. Where the car's floor mats trapped sand that stayed forever.
We drove to Mom's House, where I drank water from a Tiffany fruit bowl and Dad slipped me chunks of ham from the fridge when no one was looking.
We drove to The Mountains on weekends. Often there was an Outhouse, and I would run my head through the weeds by the door and revel in the fecal residue. Some of my favorite bouquets were: The Morning After Indian Curry, Breast Fed Baby, and Too Much Sausage Pizza.
On our hikes, I would gallop through alpine meadows and stick my nose in rodent burrows. I sat on a high ridge, wind ruffling my fur, and drew the scent of infinity through my nostrils, and I thought to myself, life cannot get any better.
I was right.
The Future Baby
It was early spring. Through the window I watched as the car swung into the driveway and jerked to a stop with one tire in the flower bed.
It was early. The postal lady hadn't even come yet, and I still felt pleasantly full from breakfast (She had plopped her bagel with cream cheese into my bowl. She wasn't hungry, she had said).
Confused, I greeted her at the door. The back of her skirt was drenched in blood, and rather than piping "Hi Sophie! Good Girl!" like usual, She seemed not to notice me at all. She leaned on the wall, then slid down to her knees and put her forehead to the hall rug.
I nuzzled her tear-stained face and curled up at her side while her body heaved with sobs.
She twined her fingers in my neck fur and said, "Oh, Sophie, we lost the baby."
I licked her tears and nuzzled her face, and absorbed the surprising news. A baby? That explained why they had been shopping for small furniture. It also explained the tiny Nikes on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. Sometimes, while She was in the shower or on the phone with her mother, He would take them down and walk them across the bedspread or just cup them in his palm.
How had I not known?
Perhaps because I was young and naive, it had never occurred to me that He and She made secret plans behind their closed bedroom door on Saturday mornings.
As She and I lay on the hall floor, He burst into the house and scooped She into his arms. I scrambled out of the way so that I would not be crushed. They cried together and rocked and rocked.
That night, we shared a pillow. She cried herself to sleep with her arm draped over me, and His arm draped over both of us.
After that, every night she sat in front of her computer through the silent hours while I lay at her feet, dozing. During the day we burrowed under the poly fill comforter that muffled the sounds of life outside. For a week, He tiptoed around, a guest in his own home. He cooked for her. She slipped the meals to me. Then, gradually, she returned to herself and let the laughter and noise back into the house.
By the Fourth of July, She was laughing again, and He had stopped slinking around with his tail between his legs. We had Everybody over for a barbeque.
The neighbors brought a small child. I sniffed it over. It was an intriguing combination of sweet and poopy, and it dropped a lot of food. I decided that parenthood would be acceptable.
Later, things got noisy. The police came with flashing lights to put a stop to the fireworks. I was able to climb out of the bathtub, where I had been hiding.
I cleaned all the dirty plates on the patio table and under folding chairs, then threw up behind the changing table in the bedroom for the Future Baby.
He drank too much Jose Cuervo and threw up in the toilet, which, I learned, is the proper technique. And then he was a guest in his own home again.
The Car Crash
As the summer heat dissipated, we started a road trip to Tucson to decide whether He should accept a Career Opportunity there, but things were still strange between He and She. Instead of joking and teasing each other as we drove, He and She were Very Polite.
We stopped at a roadside pullout where icy wind cut right through my fur. She ran to the toilet, hugging herself for warmth. He walked me across the asphalt to a square of pea gravel with a plastic fire hydrant.
After I did my business, I galloped toward an open field. He called my name, but I ignored him. I needed to clear my head, and running in circles barking joyfully was always the best way to do that. When I trotted back, panting, feeling more myself, he took me by the collar and dragged me to the car.
She had been driving up until then, but they switched places, and before he turned the car on, he said, "Why are you so against this?"
"Because I want to try for another baby," she said.
"Now?"
"No. I mean, well, maybe."
"Honey, we can try again whenever you're ready."
"But I want my kids to grow up surrounded by family. I don't want to be off in the middle of..." she trailed off.
"Can't we just take a look?" he said. "We don't have to move if you hate it."
She reached into the glove compartment for a Kleenex, then balled it up in her fist.
"It's not just that," She said at last. "I have a…bad feeling. I don't know how to explain it."
I leaned in from the back seat to give her a supportive nuzzle.
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. I knew he felt it, too. Not just the tension, but the bogeyman hiding somewhere around the corner.
She stared out the windshield, even though all you could see was a brick wall and a cactus.
He scratched me absently behind my ears.
"Okay," he sighed. "We'll go home. That's what you want?"
She nodded. She wiped a tear from her cheek. "Thank you," she whispered, as we swung onto the highway.
I thought it was all over. I smiled out the windshield.
He reached out and twined his fingers in hers. The car ran through its gears and settled into a low hum. Signs and ranch houses and juniper bushes whipped past.
And then, like a cruel joke, around a curve, a truck reared up in front of us. We closed in on its flashing blinkers. She yelped and flung her arm out in front of me. The tires screamed. He wrestled with the steering wheel.
I could smell His fear. The world was upside-down and right-side-up and blurry, blurry.
The engine went tick, tick, tick.
My people weren't moving and they smelled of blood. He groaned. I nuzzled him and whimpered and licked and licked.
An ambulance howled and barked in the distance. People ran toward us, shouting. They were angry. Or scared. Or both. A man grabbed me and wrestled me away. He did not have Heart.
I ducked out of my collar and ran under a bush. Then I lay down. It hurt. It hurt so much. I licked and licked myself in all the places it hurt and then I fell asleep.
When I awoke, it hurt to move and I was all alone.
Cars whooshed in the distance. The sky was infinite through crisscrossing twigs. Far, far in the distance, a lonely tree pierced the flat horizon. The Outside World had never seemed so large, so threatening.
The easy thing would have been to stay under that bush, to lie peacefully and dream of better things until the sun and the wind dried my flesh and I sank into the rocky ground.
But I couldn't do that, because my people loved me and they needed me. It never occurred to me that they could be dead. That was not the natural progression of things. People with Heart were Forever. And He and She had Heart.
So thirsty. I peeled my swollen tongue off the roof of my mouth and let it dangle. Sand blew into my eyes. I squinted into the breeze and raised my head to sniff. So dizzy. Scents whirled through my brain, but only one ma
ttered: water.
The sun sank as I dragged myself from the shade and staggered upright. My rear end did not seem to be operating the way it should.
I reeled toward the smell of water as shadows yawned across the land and the air swirled around me: warm, then cold, then warm, then cold, cold, cold.
Many times, I fell over on my side and the air squeaked out of my lungs: Not a yelp, exactly. I was too weak for that.
Then my paws touched mud and my knees crumpled beneath me. My tongue flopped out and unfurled in a foamy puddle. Sip by tiny sip, I licked up every bit. I threw it up, then I lapped up my vomit. I nuzzled my face into the mud, sniffing for more water, then, exhausted, I fell asleep.
I awoke to the rumble of thunder. Raindrops strafed across my fur and pelted my tongue. The smell of water flooded the air, and I knew then that I would be okay.
The storm passed like a big rig on the highway, leaving the desert steaming in its wake. I didn't know how long I had lain there, but it was daytime again, and the sky looked more friendly with clouds floating in it. My puddle was full, and I slurped up its foamy goodness. A dead mouse bobbed past. I snatched it up and bolted it before I even realized how hungry I had been.
I grazed on tender shoots of grass and drowned flies. I stayed there until the puddle seeped away, building my strength and hoping He would come to get me.
He never came.
So I decided to go Home.
I followed the scent of exhaust and the roar of cars to a road. I gazed one way at the stripe narrowing into the desert horizon, then the other, and I flinched with the scream and the whirlwind of cars hurtling toward who-knows-what.
I had never wondered about the other cars before: whether they were driving toward Adventures or Career Opportunities. Were the people in those cars joking and teasing? Or were they Very Polite?
What did they think about? Did they see me, sitting there on the side of the highway, slumped to one side, so as not to put weight on the leg that pulsed with pain?
When I had ridden in the car with He and She, and stared though the windshield and drunk in the wind through the open window, it had been a wonderful game.
Those views, those sniffs, hadn't really mattered because I was safe in my back seat. I went wherever my people went. Nothing else had mattered. Hopelessly naive, I knew almost nothing of the world.
Here is what I knew:
1. He and She always returned Home, no matter where they went or how long they were gone.