THE NINETIETH DAY . . .
(Wednesday, September 9, after dinner
shift)
CÉCE:
“Howya doin’?” Vic
says.
“School started this
week,” I say. In addition to weekends, I’m working Wednesday nights
during the school year to save money for the college I won’t get
into.
“I know. So howya
doin’?”
“I just said,
school started. Must I
translate?”
“Good news is, I’ve
been looking into the dog thing,” Vic says.
“Oh
god.”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“I hit the salad bar
with a few of my buddies from the VFW a couple of nights back.
They’re co-sponsoring an application for a dog for
Anthony.”
“VFW,” I say. “Foreign
wars. Anthony never made it overseas.”
“Kid, they all know
your brother. They know what he gave up for that old man in the
truck. They love him. Everybody does. We’ll probably have a dog
within the month.”
“Vic—”
“Hey. Stop. I’m sorry you had a bit of a rough
summer. I am. And it’s okay to be in a bad mood. But it’s not okay
to be in a bad mood around other people.”
“What are you
talking about? A bit of a rough summer?
You have no idea what I’ve endured these past weeks.”
“Céce, look, I’m
sixty-eight years old. I know what you’ve endured. The time for
enduring is over. Now it’s time to be happy. This dog thing: You
need to do it. For your mother, kid. For your brother. And you have
nothing to worry about here. They come one hundred percent trained,
the dogs.”
“You’re sure?”
“Specifically for
injured soldiers too,” Vic says. “They train them in the
jails.”
“The
jails.”
“The prisoners are
the trainers.”
“Prisoners.”
“Good for the
prisoner, the dog, the vet. Everybody wins.”
“Backtrack. Prisoners
like Mack?”
“They want the older
guys doing it. Here.” He taps the website onto his
iPad.
Old Dogs, New Tricks:
We look to rehabilitate dogs while giving veterans companionship
and prisoners hope. Trainers generally are at least thirty years of
age with significant offenses on their records, with the average
age being fifty-one. By taking part in the program, older
participants often are able to reduce their sentences, achieve
early parole, and, upon release, segue to
community-service-oriented positions that will sustain them both
financially and spiritually in their senior years. Many trainers
find post-prison employment at Old Dogs, New Tricks. Dogs are
trained individually and to accommodate each veteran’s needs.
Trainers visit the prospective adopters’ homes with the dogs to
incorporate special needs into training.
“So the prisoner is
coming to my house?”
“Absolutely,” Vic
says. “Probably sometime in the next few days, the vet who filed
the application tells me.”
“Okay wait. Again, I know it’s a ridiculous long shot,
but Mack is ridiculously gifted—”
“Check the list of
training sites there,” Vic says, shaking his head no. “You’ll see
that, unfortunately, the island hasn’t been approved as an official
site yet.”
“It says ‘application
pending.’ ”
“Exactly,” Vic says,
“which is why I’m having all my buddies from the VFW write letters
of support to get it there. A few years from now, Mack comes of
age, they’ll hire him. Won’t be long after that when he’ll be
running the show, just you watch.”
“Why do you keep
investing in him?”
“Investing?”
“Your hope. You
taught him to cook. You were willing to send him to school. You
trusted him, and then he goes and—”
“Nah, now look, none
of that. Horrible things happen. They do. But you move on stronger.
This Old Dogs thing is a great program. In the future, Mack can be
a big part of it. He needs to be a part
of it. Look at the testimonials link there.”
I’m studying the
site. All these older inmates say Old Dogs, New Tricks saved their
lives. I’m starting to soften. And I’m too drained to fight Vic
anymore. “You’re unrelenting.”
“Indefatigable even,”
he says.
“How’d you find out
about this thing anyway?”
“Remember that kid
Cameron who used to work over at the original Vic’s a few years
back, used to do delivery at the Too once in a while? Maybe you
were too young, but your mother will remember him. Good kid.
Anyway, he’s in this alternative to prison program, and for his
parole, he asked me to be one of his sponsors. He’s trying to be a
journalist. I turned him onto this site looking for animal rescue
stories. He tapped a few of his contacts from the old days, went
out and dug up the Old Dogs story, and they published it. Here,
click that link, the one that says A Spin With
Cosmos. It’s a potent little piece.” He heads off with his
crossword.
The link redirects me
to this animal rescue website that Vic was pushing on Ma a few
weeks back. A side banner asks readers to send in interesting
animal rescue stories. A Spin With
Cosmos is featured on the front page of the group’s
newsletter:
Zeke made a mistake. Cosmos was a throwaway. They live in a small but clean room, and they are each other’s everything. Bars and razor wire surround them, but when they are together, they are free. “This dog has taken me places I didn’t dare dream,” Zeke says, throwing a knotted stick into a mound of chopped branches. We are in the prison’s grounds maintenance yard. Recent storms felled many trees. We watch as Cosmos digs through the branches for the one his trainer threw. “I used to lock into the past,” Zeke says. “I used to fear the future. But Cosmos has taken me into living in this minute. I never thought I’d get here. He just wants to be happy, and you can’t stop him from doing that. That’s his job, having a gas with himself. He doesn’t care where he is or who he’s with—he even loves the guards. You can’t be sad around him. He won’t let you. I know what peace looks like now.”Cosmos retrieves the very stick Zeke threw and sits on his trainer’s feet. “Pit bulls like to do that,” Zeke says. I wonder if the dog is guarding Zeke. “No,” Zeke says. “He just has to be touching something alive all the time. I’ve trained him not to jump up, so anything above the knees is off limits, unless I squat and call him to me. Then he’s allowed to curl into me. It can be a hundred degrees out, and he will still try to climb inside my shirt.” Zeke and Cosmos demonstrate. “If you take the time to train a dog, he’ll teach you what you are and where you can go. How you can be calm and strong at the same time. This Cosmos is special, though. He catches houseflies with his mouth and brings them outside and spits them to set them free.” Zeke buries his head in the dog’s neck. He turns away and runs with the dog.
Then there’s this bit
about Cosmos being in love with a mouse, and my ESP is making a
comeback. It’s tickling hard: I think we’re going to get a really
good dog. Yeah, I feel it.