Benjamin Hale - The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

I heard from somewhere nearby an unnerving clicking noise. I looked in the direction from whence I perceived the noise: what I had heard was the sound of a dog’s toenails clicking on the wooden floors, a sound that heralded the approach of the dog that made it. It was a medium-sized and intensely furry black and gray dog, with sweet wet black marbles for eyes and a blue bandana knotted around its neck like a bandit’s.

“Hey, Sukie,” Mr. Lawrence affectionately intoned upon the entrance of the dog. He decanted the angle of his chair until each of its four legs was again in contact with the floor. The dog clicked its way across the floor and rested its furry head on Mr. Lawrence’s knee.

I was startled at the sight of this animal. I had never before been in such close contact with a dog — at least not in an interior space. I had seen them in parks in Chicago before, but always at a distance, for ordinarily creatures of the canine ilk were distrustful of me and tended to keep their distance. Not this dog, though. Apparently this dog was accustomed to cohabiting not only with humans but also with enculturated chimps, and thus was not put off by my unusual appearance. Noticing me sitting not far away from its master, this dog soon lifted its servile and loving head from the cushion of Mr. Lawrence’s leg, and came clicking and panting directly up to me. I recoiled, not from disgust as much as confusion and alarm. Lydia sensed my discomfort.

“Is he friendly?” asked Lydia.

“She’s perfectly friendly,” Mr. Lawrence said. “She loves to play with chimps.”

Lydia reached out to the dog and stroked the thick glossy fur on top of the beast’s head, and this Canis lupus familiaris answered her gesture with an unmistakable smile. Then the dog returned its attention to me. Following Lydia’s example, I reached my hand out, tentatively, to make physical contact with the animal. The hair on top of its head was warm, soft, downy. Suddenly, it licked my hand , and I jerked it back in shock. Lydia laughed.

“It’s okay, Bruno,” she said. “Relax. She won’t hurt you.”

Such a strange feeling, that ridiculous little tongue against my flesh, like a flat wet rough worm. The dog nudged my leg with its slimy nose. I felt my heartbeat quicken. The dog tried to lick me again. I tried to push it away, but it continued to lick me.

“She won’t hurt you, Bruno,” said Lydia. “Let her lick you.”

Let her lick you : does that sentence, in or out of context, I don’t care, not strike you as strange? And yet — Bruno bravely consented to offer this creature his palm, and she (I suppose I should begin applying a gendered pronoun to her, though Sukie was still an “it” to me) slurped at his skin, as if she derived the greatest of earthly pleasures from licking things. To her, life must simply have been a grand procession of things to lick, as if the whole corporeal world were divided into two camps: things licked and things left yet to lick — and the unlicked life was not worth living. She kept licking me, and I even grew, before long, to like it. Thus was my introduction to the concept of “pet.”

Isn’t it an odd concept, Gwen? Living with domesticated animals for pleasure? I’ve always thought so. I say “pleasure” because I’m not talking about the more utilitarian human valuations on animals: dogs to alert us of intruders, cats to mouse, horses to ride, sheep to shear, cows and pigs to eat. I’m talking about animals employed exclusively as “pets.” Animals that humans care for simply out of — what, love? Is that the right word? Love? We may weep when they die, do we not? Or entertainment? Think of chihuahuas, shih tzus, Yorkshire terriers: indeed, it seems we deliberately breed dogs for certain traits solely to make us laugh! What a strange thing it is for us to keep animals for primarily emotional reasons. The social contract we seem to have with our pets is that we continue to keep them alive and safe and fed in exchange for the amusement and emotional satisfaction they provide us. At first this idea will strike a first-generation immigrant to the human species — such as myself — as more than a little bizarre. I suppose, in a way, I myself have personal experience with being a pet, for what is a zoo animal but a public pet? But household pets — dogs, cats — these are the animals human beings have selected to take with them as passengers on their insane journey through, over, and against nature. We have such a tortured relationship with the other animals that live in our world, Gwen. Even as we ridicule them, we can let ourselves love them. I would come to know Sukie well.

Mr. Lawrence scooted back his chair, stretched his long denim-clad arms and sang out a playful noise that was half yawn and half yodel.

“What say we take a tour of the ranch?” he said.

“We would love to,” said Lydia, looking at me.

Rita cleared the table and began to wash the dishes. Clever Hands seemed to want to come with us, as did Sukie, the dog. Hilarious Larry and Lily expressed no especial interest in Mr. Lawrence’s proposed outing, and so Mrs. Lawrence announced that she would stay behind to keep them company.

Lydia and I returned to the room we had slept in the previous night to bundle ourselves up in our coats and hats and to put on our shoes. When we came back downstairs, Mr. Lawrence was already all duded out in a fresh cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a pair of bottle-green aviator sunglasses. Clever Hands also wore a cowboy hat, a very small one that fit him well. Sukie, sensing action was imminent, scurried around wildly and yapped at their feet. Seeing the rugged Western garb that Clever and Mr. Lawrence both wore, Lydia and I suffered flashes of acute embarrassment at our fancier, more urban clothes. Mr. Lawrence led us into a long, spacious garage, and of the cars that were parked in it, he selected a green Jeep, whose canvas top was down. We all piled into this automobile: Mr. Lawrence driving, Lydia in the passenger seat, me and Clever in the back, with Sukie yelping and slobbering between us. Clever was quite comfortable with the dog. After the initial hubbub of getting into the car, Sukie relaxed and lay down on the backseat of the Jeep, resting her furry head in Clever’s lap. Clever grinned at me with an almost conspiratorial mischievousness. He was glad to have my company.

As he sat next to me in the car, Clever was making all kinds of weird movements with his hands at me. His eyes were wide and imploring as he made all these enigmatic gestures with his hands and arms and fingers. I did not understand what he was getting at. Later I would realize that he was trying to communicate with me in sign language.

Mr. Lawrence, by the touch of a button, commanded the garage door to roll noisily open on greased metal tracks to reveal the sun, the pale blue sky, and the bright snowy mountains that corrugated the horizon, and the Jeep grumbled out of the garage and into the day. I had seen this place at night, but by the light of day — oh! — I had no idea that this earth might contain a place so beautiful, that all these rocks and plants, all this water and dirt, could have ever arranged themselves into such spectacular formations! The air was fresher, sharper, sweeter-smelling, and the light was crisper here, such that everything in sight seemed to be hypernaturally well-defined, in focus, more sharply drawn, as if the air and light of the city had a way of making things a little blurry, like a soft-focus lens. There was snow on the ground, but it was not particularly cold outside.

“We started the ranch as a sanctuary for endangered animals,” Mr. Lawrence said to Lydia, as I looked around at the landscape.

Clever had decided that I could not understand him. He sighed in resignation and quit trying to sign to me. Sukie sat between us and panted. Her flat pink tongue hung out of her mouth, slightly pulsating in and out of it with the rhythm of her panting. Occasionally her tongue would dry out and she quit panting to bring it back inside of her, swallow, and smile. Then she would let it fall back out of her mouth and continue the business of panting until her tongue dried out again. Clever gingerly stroked her fur.