A Natural Grace

by Dee Wade

A mid-level expletive escapes from my lips. I did not swing my hind leg high enough to avoid the strand of barbed wire, which means I’ve just ripped my new Christmas pants. They are feltlined khaki’s, now with a 90° corner tear through both layers, just above the left knee at the inseam. I’d like to have that moment back.

With one more fence to go, I reach the metal gate and climb over. Behind a screen of clouds, a half moon provides the light needed to avoid most of the cow piles between me and the mound of fresh earth I seek. In the center of the mound I place a cannon ball sized rock, a brown and dimpled geode, brought from the creek far below the ridgeline upon which I stand. It will mark her grave.

She has been gone three weeks. We still hear her toenails clicking against the hardwood floor as she moves from room to room. Our first thought each morning is to let her outside. When we return home in the evening, we expect to see her head rise from her sleeping position on the side porch.

New Years Eve came warmly to these Adair County Kentucky parts. A jacket kept one comfortable while digging. Working in concert, my son and I opened up a generously deep hole in the moist and yielding earth. We chose a good spot, a foot beyond the drip line of a white oak tree that dominates this pasture. Facing north, the land ahead falls quickly into a rounded ravine before rising again. A wet weather branch flows off to the left, where the woods thicken westward into an undulating and tall stretch of timber. She loved to run over this land. Her body will feel at home here.

We so wanted that she should make it through her sixteenth Christmas. But she was too feeble, and blind, and deaf, and, finally, sick. My brave wife, without my presence, agreed with the vet that she should be put down. Then she held Ms Elzy and kissed her face until the end. The vet put her in cold storage until I could do the burying. I zippered her inside the cover of her doggie pillow, upon which she had spent so many dreamy, foot twitching hours. My son saw to it that she was buried with a double handful of dried dog food. It’s a Chinese custom, he said, or maybe Japanese. Whatever: it made us both feel better.

As it turned out, we buried two dogs on the last day of the year past. Our friends Max and Kathy brought out the black plasticwrappped body of Oscar, also lying in frozen state, though for months rather than days. Oscar, a Shitz Zhu, died in a farm-related accident that makes for a story in itself, but one we won’t tell here. So a pair of holes were cut into the hillside, filled with their treasures, and then closed again. The CD player of my pick-up truck gave us a comforting version of “Auld Lang Syne.” Max and Kathy’s lovely daughters, Hanna and Hilary, started the recessional with “Scotland the Brave” filling the air.

The liturgy had been simple. “In the sincere hope that all dogs go to heaven, we commend to their Creator and ours the lives of Ms Elzy and Oscar, as we commit their bodies to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

“O Lord,” we prayed, “bless them and keep them forever.”

The day resolved into gloaming time. The color of the sky evaporated, save for a narrow band of pink attached to a horizon laced with dark trees. Max’s odd assortment of cattle gathered near by, forming an almost motionless semi-circle around us. An Angus cow and her calf provided clarity, while most were various mixtures of Brahmin and Charlais, some gray, some reddish, a couple wooly white. With their Brahmin shoulder humps and Brahmin low set ears, they all appear vaguely prehistoric. Their big cow eyes absorb everything we say and do, and though they do not communicate anything resembling sympathy, neither did they turn away.

Tonight, as I return with the rock, the cattle maintain their vigil. They stand as square silhouettes in the filtered moonlight, breathing through big rounded nostrils, re-chewing their winter hay, and staring with their black sea eyes. Without complaint, they guard the graves that were suddenly dropped into their living room. They judge not mourners and the monuments they raise. I’m happy for Elzy. A good dog has settled in among good company in a good place.