Early this morning my dog died and so all day long I've been trying to figure out what to do with the body.
I don't want to call the super because I know he'll just dump the poor thing in the garbage, and I don't want to call some vet because I heard vets give dead dogs to soap factories.
Also I 'm reluctant to call the cops because most of the cops I know are bastards and wouldn't think twice about shoving some dead dog into a body-bag, and when nobody was watching, tossing him into the city's incinerator.
I mean, maybe I'm being silly and all, but as far as I'm concerned, my dog deserves better than that.
If I had the dough I'd probably call up some fancy kennel and ask them to recommend a good pet cemetery, but right at the moment, considering what I got in the bank, I couldn't even afford the price of a cardboard box.
I suppose if he wasn't so big, I'd try putting him in the refrigerator for a while. At least that would give me time to try and figure out what to do with him, but since Sam is so broad, I'd doubt if he'd fit through the door. Besides, I wouldn't know what to do with all the food and stuff. Rotten eggs and sour milk can smell pretty bad, I've heard.
The freezer would probably be better if I had a nice big one, but since my freezer just about holds my two small ice-trays and a package or two of frozen string beans, even thinking of putting Sam in there is out of the question.
Naturally, if I had my own house with a nice big backyard I'd bury Sam out there, and think nothing of it. I'd put him under an old tree or something, or alongside one of the flower gardens. That way he'd always be around, so to speak.
I know lots of people with houses who do that. Why, I would even bet that in backyards all across America there are more dogs and cats under the ground than over it. They may not all have headstones and stuff, but what difference does that make? At least they're on familiar territory. At least they're not sitting in some trash can somewhere.
I guess it would be tough if you sell your house and all, but who knows, maybe someday they'll even have a law that says you have the right to come back and visit. Probably that will happen in some place like California someday. They're pretty sophisticated out there, I think.
Right now, though, poor Sam's just lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, stiff as a board.
If he were only a little smaller, I'd pick him up and carry him into my bedroom or off into some place where I wouldn't have to keep stepping over him, but being part Collie and part Shepherd, he's much too big for me to lift.
I suppose I could drag him by the paws or get down on my knees and push him across the floor, but somehow that doesn't strike me as the nice thing to do.
I mean, who'd think of dragging a person out of the way just because he happened to die in the middle of somebody's floor? Why should a dog be any different?
Still, it upsets me to have to keep stepping over him like
that. In a sense it's like walking across somebody's grave fifty times a day.
Which is, come to think about it, what my goddamn uncle did to my father's grave on the day we were burying my mother.
I felt like punching him, the son of a bitch. I mean, the guy doesn't come once to see his own sister in the nursing home where she's cooped up for three years, but as soon as she dies, he's rushing off to the funeral parlor in his black suit and tie to shake hands with everyone and take his little peek at the corpse. For spite,: insisted we put her in a closed coffin, so nobody could see a thing.
But anyway, all the while he's at the cemetery, my uncle's stepping all over my father's grave. I'm the only one who notices because everybody else is looking off at my mother's casket being lowered into the ground while some priest is saying the "Our Father."
"Hey, have a little respect, will ya?" I whisper. "That's my pop under there."
The bastard looked at me like I had three heads. "What?" he says to me.
" That's my old man you're walking across," I tell him again.
"Don't worry," he says to me. "He don't feel nothing."
"You won't either if you don't get the f... off his grave," I said without blinking an eye.
Even though I'm his niece, I still refuse to put up with that kind of crop from anybody.
I mean, people just don't have any regard for the dead anymore. You see it all the time. Even among people who should know better. For example, going back to my mother again her doctor, the one who pronounced her dead, was chewing bubble gum at the time. Can you imagine?
Oh, I guess for some people that's no big deal I mean, hey, he didn't actually blow any bubbles or anything -- but Christ, come on, be honest. How would you feel if you just died and some clown started snapping gum a few inches away from your nose?
Anyway, that's why I'm not taking any chances with Sam. I mean, after all, if they treat people like that what the hell are they going to do with dogs?
So that's why I got to think of something to do with Sam's body. Something decent and respectable. Something that would let him know that I really liked having him for my dog and that I'm not just going to forget him all of a sudden just because he's dead and all.
If only I had more of an imagination. Or even somebody to talk to, some smart friend or something, but everyone I know is just about as boring as I am.
Take Rickie, for instance. I could call him and ask him to come over and give me a hand, but since he never liked Sam when Sam was alive, it just doesn't seem right. Besides, he'd probably just start cracking a bunch of dumb jokes about dead dogs and dead cats and then I'd get all mad and tell him to shove it. Rickie's pretty hard to take sometimes.
Or I suppose I could call Tony, but Tony would be so damn worried about messing up his brand new car that he'd probably give me some song and dance about disease and germs or something and then hang up the phone as fast as he could.
It's funny how you find out who your real friends are in situations like these. It's really interesting, as they say.
I' m sure if my mother and father weren't dead they'd think of something. They always did. My father especially was a really smart guy. Once when he was trying to stall off some loan sharks until he could get hold of a few bucks, he dressed up like a woman for a couple of days and went all over town in stockings and a pair of high heels. Even my mother didn't recognize him. Especially since he had shaved his legs and all.
I remember everybody at his funeral laughing and saying he was a really funny guy and that it was a shame he had to die so suddenly. But in the long run I suppose he was a lot better off than my mother who wound up in that nursing home with nobody coming to see her for months on end. At least he died fast without knowing what hit him. Which is the best way you can go, I guess, if you gotta go in the first place. Right?
I mean, look at poor Sam. It took him almost three days to die. He couldn't eat. He couldn't drink. He couldn't even move. He just lay there in his own mess, staring up at me. In a way he sort of reminded me of my mother. The way they both looked at me, I mean, just before they died. Like they were seeing something nobody else could see.
It was pretty scary, if you know what I mean, but as my father used to say, I guess it's no good dwelling on things like that for too long. Kind of makes you nuts. But anyway getting back to the issue at hand, I still have to think of something to do with Sam's body. Pretty soon it's gonna start to stink and then I'll really be in a fix. So I either got to get him out of here, or get him embalmed in some way.
It's a shame I don't know any honest undertakers.
I guess I could bring him down to the park when it gets dark and bury him there, but it would probably be just my luck to get arrested or mugged or something as I' m digging his grave.
If I had the guts I suppose I could call the local newspapers and invent some wild cock and bull story about him being a hero dog who got killed rescuing some blind kid from the path of an oncoming bus, but since I can't lie to save my life, I'd probably screw the whole thing up as soon as I opened my mouth. And besides, who's to say they'd even give Sam a decent burial after all? They could write him up in all the headlines, make him a hero, and still throw his body in a trash can when nobody was looking. In fact, sometimes at night when I can't sleep so well and I'm wandering around the apartment looking through old photographs and stuff of my parents when they were young way back in the thirties and forties, I get to thinking that maybe, just maybe, the funeral home might have done the same thing to my mother. You know, not put her body in the coffin and all. I mean, in the long run how would we know? How would anyone know? Who goes around checking closed coffins? They could put a Barbie Doll or a jar of roaches inside a closed coffin and nobody would be the wiser. Right?
Now I know some people may ask why would anyone do anything like that, but think about it for a minute. Maybe there's money involved. Maybe a crooked funeral director can make himself a big profit selling the corpse to some place that recycles it or something. An eye goes here, an ear goes there, maybe a couple of fingers and toes wind up in this or that place. Christ, after awhile, you're talking big bucks. And when it comes to big bucks, I don't trust anyone. Do you? Which is why I often have these horrible, horrible feelings that maybe, just maybe, my mother wasn't really in that coffin after all. And that the funeral home pulled an awful trick on us and somehow managed to ... to recycle her or something behind our backs. In my worse moments I have these nightmares, these terrible nightmares that bits and pieces of her are floating around all over the country with little `For Sale' signs attached, and that sooner or later I'm going to run smack into someone who's already bought and wearing my mother's ears, or eyes, or lips, or what-have-you.
Sometimes it gets so bad I lie awake all night thinking that it's all my fault and that if I didn't insist on putting her into a closed coffin to spite all my nosy relatives, my mother would have had a really decent and proper burial.
Then just when I'm about to go stark raving nuts with guilt I start thinking that maybe I'm all wrong and that maybe she is really buried after all and resting quite comfortable, as they say.
So what it really all comes down to in the long run is this: I don't know what the hell to think.
I suppose if there were some way of looking into the coffin -- that is, after having her dug up again I'd know for sure, but unless I did the digging and looking myself seeing everything with my own eyes this time I still would have a hard time accepting anybody else's word that she's really there.
I mean, as weird as it sounds, she is my mother and I have more right than anyone to dig her up again if I feel like it. I mean, it's not that I would be doing it for a lark or anything. I'd be doing it for her own good.
And I'd make absolutely certain that I'd put her back in again exactly as I found her, if I found her. I wouldn't disturb a thing, if I didn't have to.
And best of all, she'd know I was still thinking about her and caring enough about her to see to it that she was O.K. and all.
I'd even let her know about Sam.
She and my father both loved Sam.
In fact, if there were a way I could get Sam there in a little box or something, I could even... well ... maybe I could even consider burying him there.
With them, I mean.
Maybe not right in the same coffin, but you know, somewhere in the same hole and all.
There'd be plenty of dirt. And it' s a nice clean place. Well-kept, that's for sure.
It's really not a bad idea when you think about it.
As I said, they all really liked each other.
And I'd know once and for all that they'd all be together again.
Safe and sound.
I really can't see anything wrong with it.
Can you?
Patricia Flinn lives in Warren, New Jersey with her husband, Eugene, who is also a writer. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines including STUDIA MYSTICA, GREEN FEATHER MAGAZINE, RIPPLE'S POETRY MAGAZINE, THE CRAB CREEK REVIEW and THE RAMPANT GUINEA PIG. She has also written plays, poems, theater reviews, travel stories and literary essays, and she is one of the co-authors of THE LITERARY GUIDE TO THE UNITED STATES, published by Facts On File.
For more stories by Patricia Flinn, click here.
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