Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

2

A few months had passed. The winter rain had given way to a mercifully bright spring. Dan and Buddy — the name he realized he’d been calling the dog in his mind for the last few weeks but had yet to say out loud — had reached a series of necessary compromises.

Having wrung the novelty from every square inch of the condo, Buddy had taken to slumping lethargically in his spot of choice near the entertainment centre, behind the DVD rack. He no longer showed much interest in Dan, or anything, for that matter, which thankfully included the ceiling fan and television.

They’d spent New Year’s alone, and when Dan got a touch too rowdy on his third cosmopolitan while play-fighting Buddy with his old leather motorcycle gloves on, the dog had nipped him on the forearm, drawing blood — two glossy blobs like ladybugs. Dan forgave him, and the next day picked up some bison pepperoni from the organic dog deli. “Don’t get used to it,” he said, as Buddy jawed the spicy tubes. But at least his digging and chewing had ceased, and Dan was back up to full productivity while Buddy lived only for the creak of the hall closet door and the Pavlovian jingle of his leash.

There were all kinds of people in the off-leash park that day. And all kinds of dogs: a few whippets, bred nearly into two dimensions; a jovial German shepherd with an endearingly bent ear and a long, pendulous tongue; two snobby-looking Scottish terriers, one black, one white. Dan passed by seven or eight squeegee kids sitting in a half-circle on the grass near the public washrooms and recognized the kid with the green mohawk who was scrubbing an approximation of a Nirvana song on an acoustic guitar. Their sign read: Spare change for World Domonation? Merci. Three of their unruly mutts wrestled and loped in the grass before them. When Buddy scented their dogs, he surged against his leash, breath rasping.

Dan tallied all the money he’d spent on Buddy so far, all those unanticipated expenses, vaccinations and special food. Why a street kid would go out and get a dog evaded Dan’s understanding. If you had trouble feeding yourself, why incur an added burden? It seemed so impossibly selfish.

“Easy, boy,” he said, tugging the dog over to a bench, where he sat and watched the wind bend the trees that stood around the park like chaperones.

Ihor and Sandy had replied to an email he’d sent over a month ago saying that ‘Lucians were often more excitable in winter through early spring and that Buddy should calm as the months progressed. Dan took a deep slug of fresh air. Even though Buddy had turned out to be a handful, and Dan wasn’t experiencing what you would call love for him quite yet, the dog sure was a great reason to venture outside.

Dan strained forward to grasp an adequate-sized stick. Since he hadn’t yet allowed Buddy off his leash, a game of fetch would be a good way to keep him focused during his first taste of real freedom. Still holding the leash, Dan did a mock throw of the stick and the dog flinched but didn’t run, somehow alerted instantly to the trick. Buddy sank low in jack-in-the-box readiness. He seemed to have entirely forgotten the homeless dogs, so Dan figured he’d give it a shot, unclipping the leash and hurling the stick as far as he could, which admittedly wasn’t nearly as far as he expected.

Buddy exploded into motion. At first he flailed a little, careening on amateur legs, then settled into it, thrusting over the turf like a furry torpedo. He was already there to greet the stick as it hit the ground, but to Dan’s surprise he sailed right past, leaving it to tumble in the leaves. Buddy picked up even more speed, then banked left and commenced pursuit of a large and lumbering black dog — a breed Dan couldn’t identify — a good twenty metres ahead, itself chasing a pink tennis ball rolling in the grass toward the park’s treed boundary. With great uncoiling strides, Buddy was gaining.

Dan traced the ball’s trajectory back to a woman who gripped one of those ball-thrower wands, visoring her eyes with her hand. A brindle ponytail spouted through the hole in her cap, and her pants were the mint colour of hospital scrubs. She cupped her mouth and called something to her dog.

Buddy was now abreast with the black dog, and they bodied each other, like cars in a chase scene on a mountain highway. Buddy gave one final burst, lunging to snatch the ball from a tuft of weeds where it had come to rest, and took off. The black dog slowed to a defeated canter.

The woman hadn’t yet identified Dan as the owner of the dog who was now doing victory laps around the park, a pink blur in his mouth. Dan considered walking away and just leaving him. He wasn’t tagged, or even registered. This is what he wants, Dan thought, to go down running free.

Buddy came blazing past with a taunting grin and Dan took a half-hearted swipe at his collar, blurting, “Here boy!” Seeing this, the woman began a sporty trot in his direction. Dan’s embarrassment was like an egg of heat cracked over his face. What kind of person has this little control of his dog?

As she approached, he saw her face sharpen, briefly appearing quite pretty, then it changed, as if someone had focused it too far and blurred her face into a kind of wrongness. Dan looked away. He felt like if he looked at the wrongness, he would be in some way complicit in it.

“Quite an energetic little bugger, isn’t he?” the woman said, spectral in his peripheral vision.

“Yeah, sorry, he can be a bit of an asshole.”

The wrongness split with laughter. “An asshole?”

At first Dan hadn’t seen the humour in calling a dog a name normally reserved for people, but it felt good to make someone laugh, even if he could feel her gaze on his scalp. It was no doubt gleaming. Dan wished he’d worn a toque — it was cold enough today to get away with it.

“Do those thrower things work?” he said.

“Yeah, it gives you a little more time. You know, to think. They aren’t nipping at your heels every second.”

Dan felt less tense when she turned her attention toward the other dogs playing in the grass, watching them in the wistful way one does a campfire. Her own dog approached cheerily. Buddy was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m Ginnie,” she said, placing a treat on her palm, offering it to her dog. “But more importantly, this is Josephine. Say hi, Jo.” The black dog tipped herself to the ground and Ginnie rubbed her tummy vigorously.

“Hi Josephine,” Dan said.

Ginnie had an easy way with Josephine, who Dan recognized now as a Kerry blue terrier. She asked her lots of questions, like “Who’s that?” and “Where’s your ball?” in a low, slack voice that used up lots of air. Dan watched her ruffle the fur around Jo’s ears, explore the crevices of her neck, places the dog couldn’t reach. She even let Jo lick her face, something Buddy had attempted but Dan had rebuffed. It was when Ginnie looked up, dog spittle shiny on her cheek, that he beheld the wrongness he’d momentarily forgotten: a thin line connecting the base of her nose to a slightly sneering upper lip, as if her nose had gone fishing for her mouth and was battling to reel it in. He was surprised it didn’t affect her speech.

“Well, he looks like he’s having a better time here than anyone,” she said, referring to Buddy, who Dan spotted near the washrooms, still with the ball, playing cat and mouse with a frizzy Lhasa Apso. “What is he? Not a border collie …?”

Dan cleared his throat and gave a description of Buddy’s breed and history, careful not to make too much eye contact, lest she think he was looking at it. After his speech, he realized he possibly had overstated his own role in the heroic resurrection of the noble breed. But she seemed impressed.