SHADOWS

"Shadow died. I came home from work and she was lying there in the doghouse...she, she went into the doghouse to die." I heard the edge, and then the break, in her voice, before I fully understood the words.

"She went into the doghouse to die."

The dam burst and the tears flowed.

I reached forward intending to give the usual full frontal hug, to assuage the pain and loss of not only the Shadow who lay in the doghouse in a haze of flies and bees, but also of the shadows we, ourselves, were yet to become. But, instead of accepting the hug, she approached, embraced briefly, emitted a tear soaked bawl and stepped, almost leaped, back.

We were standing in the sloping area in front of the hillside log cabin where a salmon steak softly sizzled on its pyre surrounded not by garlands of marigolds but by heaps of broccoli and cauliflower florets, onions, Brussels sprouts, and green peppers. A potato baked in the oven. As we stood there next to her car, I could smell the aroma emanating from the kitchen that I had hurriedly left when I heard the unusual sound of a car driving up the hill at this time of evening.

It was the preparation of this much anticipated meal that led me to hesitate a moment before I offered: "What can I do to help?" and received the request that I bury the dog.

I considered, and quickly rejected, continuing cooking while I went the three quarters of a mile or so to her place, and decided just to turn everything off. The salmon would dry but would remain edible and the potato would take up just where it left off when I turned the oven on again upon my return.

"I've been working all day and now I'm tired," she moaned. "And I've got to clean leaves out of my Pelton wheel intake.  I don't have any power at the house."

"It's all right, I'll bury it. Where do you think would be a good place---the garden?" This I delivered with the thought that the garden soil was already prepared and could be dug sufficiently deep quickly and easily enough not to tax my 63 year old system beyond its abilities. And, I might confess, with not a little thought to my dinner.

"No, if you bury it in the garden and if the bear smells a dead animal, it'll break down the garden fence...and dig it up."

"I think the garden will work." I protested gently. "I think I can dig a hole deep enough to hide the smell."

"But..." I uttered with that lengthened inflection that indicates (1) I had interpreted the expression on her face; (2) I am about to change my mind and (3) it is a sacrifice to do so whether or not it is recognized as such, (with a silent sigh) "I'll come on down and we'll figure out a spot. Perhaps under a tree."

"The ground is hard," she now conceded.

"I know only too well."

You see, I had dug a large (in fact, the original) section of that very garden by hand, with shovel, pick, mattock, and six foot long digging bar, the latter for breaking up and prying out of the ground the rocks and boulders that lay just above the clay.

As the attendant recollections emerged from the shadows and drifted through my mind, all I could say --all I needed to say-- was: "Yes, I've buried dogs, before." Though, to be sure, unspoken, "...and cats...and skunks...and birds...and...that calf that died of scours the day after we brought it home...and, yes," drifting even further away, "just the other day, didn't I bury some of Elmer's ashes amongst the wildflowers in the hidden, little meadow he and I had enjoyed...?" wafted through my mind like leaves falling in the shadow of the oak tree.

Piercing the fog of recollection, she evoked a specific event that I had all but forgotten and, in fact, still do not remember with ease--something I had done 25 years before.

"You buried that dog of Jim Gates'," she reminded me.

Now, and only now, as I write this, do I recall the event: how it was that Jim had feared that the dog had a disease the name of which I do not now recall. It was not rabies, I do not think, although this dog had run about, foaming at the mouth, threatening Jim and Glenn and his other dogs. And, though he had shot it, he did not have the heart to bury it. Shooting his own hunting dog was too much for Jim, bear hunting guide and aging mountain man. I did not understand his sentimentality as much then as I recognize it in myself now. It has something to do with getting older and having encountered death so many times in so many ways. Something to do with all of those goodbyes.

An irony is that I am now probably the age Jim had been then. I was 37, 38, 40 (somewhere in there) at that time---Jim, in his early 60's.

I also recall, now, as I sit in the shadows in this darkened cabin, listening to Bach, that I buried the dog near the base of a redwood tree Glenn had planted as a seedling. This very redwood tree now sheltered Jim's grave. And, just a few days before, I had seen for the first time the little headstone in that very tree's shadow.

Jim's life and friendship had been an inspiration to me during the early years of my trying to find a modus vivendi in the wilderness and his tutelage was subtle and enduring. No, it was not the cinematic Karate master-student relationship, but one of friends helping each other; and I learned how to remove skins from, and butcher, both domestic and wild animals (since Jim no longer cared to do this himself); identify and remove the best fat from a bear; track various animals; walk up and down the mountains with a minimum of effort; garden; and husband and hunt animals of all kinds. I guess I had also learned how to bury a dog.

Somewhere, in the calmness that now dwells comfortably in the back of my mind, I reflected to myself how I had had very little resistance to the idea of helping my ex-wife bury her dead dog on the property we had so bitterly contested and that I had lost. There was merely a subdued sense of irony evoked and heightened, perhaps, by those notes of Feltsman slowly and calmly playing Bach that I hear as I write this.

Tears recognizing and experiencing the loss of the dog, who had become somewhat of a friend, had come to my mind, throat, and to the surface of my eyes from time to time. Just yesterday, I had petted her and fretted about her lack of vigor which I had expected to somehow self-correct sooner or later.

Death is always sudden and so very final. It deserves recognition.

"I don't want the bear to tear down the garden fence. I don't mind if she feeds the bear but I want her to have a decent burial first," was part of Marilyn's statement of acceptance of the idea of burying the dog by the fruit trees, which had not borne fruit this year, but which grew next to an area which had been the site of a summer kitchen I had built over a few days one Spring many years ago.

I had built the summer kitchen as a series of platforms of varying heights and areas, under and among some oak, cedar, and fir trees. There in the shade of the forest was a low, Japanese style table surrounded by cushions, hammocks hung between trees, and a roomy area with sink, woodstove, counter and cabinet space in which to cook, lounge, and dine on those long, hot, summer days when the indoor kitchen was difficult to bear. I cannot help, despite the passage of years and the maturation of feelings, but feel a twinge of loss and, yes, resentment, at its disappearance. It had been as close to a work of utilitarian art as I had accomplished. I had been proud of it and had often shown it off with pride of accomplishment.

I wondered why it had been removed, but did note that it had erased yet another indication of my tenure there. Perhaps that is reason enough. And here I was, near the place it had been, its absence evoking ghosts of the past, digging a hole in which to place Shadow who was now, herself, joining these shadows.

Marilyn found a pick and shovel which she brought to me, and left to climb the mountain to the head of her Pelton Wheel intake pipe while I found a spot which seemed to be somewhat looser, at first, than any other spot near the trees.

True enough, the first few inches were easy. There were no rocks and the soil was damp, but not wet, and the shovel lifted it easily and quickly. Before long, however, I encountered rocks that had to be moved or removed,; and as I approached eighteen to twenty-four inches of depth, I struck the layer of hard yellow clay that underlay the whole region. It was on this very same clay that the mountainside constantly slipped as it made its slow but inexorable way to the sea. Since I wanted the hole to be deep enough to be able to pack sufficient earth over the dog, I had, just as when I dug the garden, to resort to the pick and break up the clay before digging it out. It came out in thick, yellow, chunks not without some effort.

Alright! I'm 63 now and here I am, alone, as the sun touches the mountains to the west, digging a grave, say, three feet by two feet by two feet. There is much to think about. It is unavoidable.

But, in the frame of mind that I now know as my own, I did not have images of struggle which would have flooded me when I was a young man trying to keep just ahead of nature's entropic backlash. Rather, I enjoyed the fact that I was engaging in physical activity, sweating and lifting, and that my heart was beating more strongly but without discomfort and that my breath was vigorous but clear.

And so it was, that, as I prepared to bury the dog, adrift in a sea of reminiscence, my spirit, buoyed by my body, sang a paean to life.

I went to the doghouse and measured the length, width, and height of the dog using a broken shovel handle and determined that the hole needed to be twice the size that I had first assessed as being adequate.

In this mountain wilderness there are only degrees of slope. "Level" as a descriptive term is only relative here. Walking uphill to the doghouse I noted that I was tiring but decided to push on and actually exert myself beyond what was usual for me.

The juxtaposition of textures and colors of the soil began to lose its primacy, now, in my observational and thought process, and my mind began to range. I tried to recall burying Jim Gates' dog but, instead, recalled that it was events surrounding Jim's death and dying that had been the trigger for the end of the 20 years that Marilyn and I spent together.

And Jim lay in the shadowed ground under a redwood tree near the big red tick hound that I, myself, had buried there.

It was twilight in Trinity County and mosquitoes rose in every shadow.

Suddenly as death, the peace of my mind shattered!

"Oh man, these mosquitoes are eating me alive." With my free hand, I waved them away.

I no longer found any interest in recalling the details of any other time. They had receded into the shadows. I had this Shadow to bury and I had better get it done as soon as possible. There was nothing like discomfort to remind you how tired you might be.

As I began to tire to the point where my arms, shoulders, and legs begged for respite, I was able to enjoy a fantasy (call it a private joke) that I was listening to the buzz of gossip in town where someone was saying: "An' her ex-husbin was diggin' a grave for her dawg, when he keeled over raht there an' she found'm haid first in the hole, his feet stickin' out....daider'n' a doornail."

That's it. It's time for a rest. But I could find no place the mosquitoes would not follow me. I tried sitting in the car, windows rolled up, air conditioner and radio on, but it was too small to stretch out and my legs would not recuperate. Eventually, by moving from this place to that when I could locate places to lift my legs, I regained enough strength to return to widen and, perhaps, deepen the hole a little more.

But first, I located a wheelbarrow and brought it over to the doghouse where Shadow lay, teeth bared in the grimace of death. I had never seen her teeth bared before. She had nipped puppy-like at me; but, even when I had caused her pain by removing porcupine quills from her mouth and nose, she had not threatened me. She had only looked at me, unhappily, with a sense of hurt in her eyes, and with a sad stance that went beyond the physical.

"Dogs have special needs (beyond feeding)," someone had remarked the night before as some of the downriver community, as much as it was a community, of a few isolated single persons who lived over a four or five mile stretch of the wild watershed, enjoyed a well-prepared and well-received dinner. This had been a part of a general discussion of the care of one's pets during one's absences from home.

"Cats," it had been noted, "will do just fine if you leave them food where they can get it."

"Of course, you have to make some effort to protect it from the skunks, bears, squirrels and jays who would gladly steal it from them but...once they knew where it was and could get to it...they'd take care of themselves. Hell, you could never come back for all they cared."

But a dog, the other half of that thought was, missed you and moped about. They pretty much stuck around in the expectation that you would return though they might possibly make a trip to a neighbor to see if, perhaps, you just might be there.

It was what helped bond dogs and people I realized from this conversation--this ability to express a variety of feelings. Few could argue, when you came home, that a dog did not feel and express happiness, even joy. Even I, when I went over to feed and pet the dog (try to deal with its "special" needs, I suppose) while Marilyn was away and I was staying at the cabin on the property next door (three quarters of a mile away)--I, though a skeptic before, could but accept that Shadow was sad and lonely.

Dogs have needs that their human companion provides. It is a quid pro quo for, in the bargain, someone living alone, one hundred miles down a dead end road, has a friend, more loyal and definitely more obedient than any husband, wife, or lover ever was.

Though we did not know it, as we had visited, laughed, made talk, small and large, Shadow was dying. We, the little group of neighbors, friends and guests, totaling six in all that consituted the clear majority of the downriver population--as large a gathering as one could usually contemplate without organized campaigns of planning and orgies or agonies of anticipation.

We talked of the problems of keeping the hydroelectric power mini-system running; listened to Kevin's story of trying to find his true parents in Korea; argued playfully about the use of the term spatula; and of the differences between the care of dogs and cats.

When we discussed the fact that the dog, which yesterday had run alongside Marilyn as she hiked in the woods, was, this day, seeming to ail again, one of the neighbors, who would, I am sure, complain the next day of Marilyn's irresponsibility, this day opined on how it was probably a lack of self-esteem that caused the dog to mope.

Actually, it was the next day that someone had suggested that perhaps more antibiotics were called for; but it was already, though we did not know it, too late, and there was no way of knowing whether they would have worked.

And now it is later the next day... A little scoop here and a shovelful there; a few swings of the pick to break up the yellow clay and the hole is deep enough. Just as my muscles verified that there was not much more digging to be done, Marilyn reappeared, having cleared whatever leaves she could from her water intake, and gotten her homemade electricity system running again. I showed her the hole and apprised her of my status. I was done in. If she wanted more of a hole, she could invite some other guest, friend, or neighbor to dig it for her.

No, it was deep enough. "Let's bury Shadow."

She gave me gloves, a nicety we would not have indulged in the old days. But these were not old days. This was as here and now as you could get: two old folks trying to lift a stiffening, dead dog, former friend, pet, acquaintance, past buzzing flies, bees, and mosquitos into the rusted wheelbarrow that would be the Cadillac for its last earthly ride.

We did it. There were tears in my voice and in my eyes as I wheeled her to the hole and as we laid her in it on her side in a modified fetal position so that we could put as much earth on her as possible. More than one bear lurked in the woods.

Neither Marilyn nor I could refrain from speaking to Shadow in those tones you reserve for a suffering, still breathing, loved one--tones of sweet sadness. I even referred to her as I dropped her, heavy as she was, into the wheel barrow as "poor dear."

Marilyn took a handful of earth and threw it on Shadow's remains as I began to shovel the dirt into the hole. "What do you say?" she wondered aloud.

"Dust to dust; ashes to ashes" we said at once but not simultaneously.

"Now you will sleep forever." I said as I covered her head.

My mind swirled in thought as I shoveled the earth onto the body in the hole. The spirit of Shadow, Shadow's shadow, if you will, lingered, though the physical being was disappearing. Like Yours Truly and Donald Walnut, Kingsbury or Zero, some of the dogs that lived with me at one time or another and who had met different ends, she would not be forgotten.

But it was something beyond that that I mulled over as I brushed mosquitoes off me, deposited shovelfuls of earth over her, and packed it all down with my feet. As long as we could see her, her spirit had been as alive and as real as her body and I had no difficulty in recognizing and speaking to it. And, in fact, I had spoken to it, as though it were alive, in terms of kindness and compassion, and I had wished it Godspeed. And at that moment I had a slight insight into Tibetan funerals where elaborate rituals spoke to the spirit of the dead and eased its way into the afterlife.

I felt good about it all, now. I had felt a sense of grief and some sympathy for Marilyn; and I had come to closure so easily.

Shadow had joined the shadows to which I, too, would soon proceed. Death had visited me once more in this place that had seen the death of so many and so much that had held, and even created meaning, in my life.

I thought of speaking to Marilyn about something, communicating, like, you know...uh...communicating.

I could not know exactly what I could or would communicate. So much had receded into the shadows that was still unexpressed. I needed to speak to those spirits, those shadows, not yet buried. I felt old and tired--in body and mind.

Death is sudden and final. Time is not endless. But this must await another time.

I sat in Marilyn's one room cabin for a few minutes, content to be in a mosquito free zone, while the sweat dried on my body, my breathing returned to its normal pace, and my legs regained the strength necessary to go out to the car. Marilyn followed me with a flashlight and thanked me for my help.

In a moment I was back in my cabin and resumed the preparation of a wonderful meal of salmon, potato, and vegetables which I ate to the music of Bach--alone, at peace, and in thought.

After dinner, I sat on the rocking chair on the porch for a bit. I heard a dog barking in the distance, then a coyote wail...then silence.

THE END