Chapter Thirty-Two

Smiling Acres Animal Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin had the most exclusive rehabilitation program in the world for dogs that drank antifreeze; only the wealthiest could afford to send their dogs there. There were no Dalmatians. Firemen couldn’t afford to send their dogs to places like this. (Howard was lucky his owners were only volunteer firemen.) There were no sheepdogs. Shepherds couldn’t afford to send their dogs here. Howard was the only mutt. The other dogs were all purebreds, the pets of the wealthy.
Several dozen dogs in plastic bubbles rolled around the large grass yard, practicing their bubble navigation, and trying in vain to sniff each other’s backsides. Toby couldn’t play catch with Howard anymore. The stick would bounce off the bubble before Howard could grab it in his mouth. So they were forced to play a different game. Toby set up bowling pins and Howard rolled at them and tried to knock them down. At first, he didn’t have very good control over his bubble navigation, and this earned him the unfortunate nickname, “Gutter Ball.”
The rehabilitation staff said bowling was an excellent way to improve bubble navigation skills, but the dog-owners would have none of it. They didn’t want their dogs taking part in this blue-collar sport or associating with Gutter Ball. Their unhappy dogs looked on longingly as Howard sped at the bowling pins.
David sat to the side of the yard, his notebook open, trying to compose a poem about how even the dogs of the rich were treated better than the workingman.
One of the other owners wasn’t just wealthy; he was royalty. The Earl of Sandwich had a half dozen hound dogs. One afternoon, while foxhunting on his estate, a clever fox knocked over a container of antifreeze and the pursuing hounds lapped it up. They soon found themselves under Dr. McGee’s knife. Now they were encased in plastic bubbles.
“I’ll get that fox,” the Earl of Sandwich muttered into his steaming tea. This made it hard for David to concentrate on his poem.
“Hey Earl, can you keep it down?” David said. “I can’t hear my inspiration.”
“I told you, don’t call me Earl.”
“Sorry. Could you keep it down, Mr. Sandwich?”
Earl snarled and ground his teeth.
“So, what kind of dog is Gutter Ball anyway?” Earl Sandwich asked.
David didn’t want to admit that Howard was a mutt, so he said, “He’s a blend.”
“A blend?”
“Yeah.”
Earl gave a look of concern. “He’s been neutered, right?”
David’s ears pulsed and his jaw tensed. He hated royalty.
“Don’t worry,” David said. “He can’t impregnate your bitches through their bubbles.”
Earl’s fist cracked into David’s jaw. The next thing David knew, he was lying on the grass, being kicked in the ribs.
“Not so clever now? Are you, Mr. Fox?”
He kept kicking David in the ribs.
David grabbed Earl’s leg and held it tightly to his chest. He twisted the leg sideways and Earl fell on his stomach, face down in the grass. David sat on Earl’s back and held his arms behind him, restraining him.
“Let me go!” Earl demanded.
He tried to wiggle free, but David’s grip was strong.
“Are you gonna be good?” David asked.
“Turn me loose!”
The hounds noticed their master’s situation and ran to his rescue. (Actually, they rolled to his rescue.) The dog-laden balls charged at David. The hounds’ rabid barking was muffled by the plastic bubbles.
David released the Earl of Sandwich’s arms and got off of him, but the hounds continued to charge.
“Call them off!” David shouted, helping Earl to his feet and dusting him off.
Earl slapped David’s hands away, and bared his crooked teeth. “The hunt…is on.”
David turned and bolted across the yard, headed for the administrative building. They wouldn’t be able to follow him in there.
David was out of shape (reading poetry to flowers was his only exercise) and the dogs were quickly gaining on him. His side hurt from running and perhaps from the Earl of Sandwich’s steel-toed boots. He stumbled and fell hard, scraping his palms and elbows. Looking up, he saw one hound with saliva foaming from his jaws about to steamroll him.
David pulled himself out of the path of the bubble just in time. The dog tried to stop, but the inertia of the bubble kept him going until he crashed into the steps of the administration building, bouncing up the first couple and then rolling away.
David pulled himself to his knees and dove out of the way of another bubble. He ran up the steep two-story marble staircase that led to the administrative building’s entrance. He stopped halfway up the stairs and gasped. The dogs banged against the bottom of the stairs and tried in vain to climb up. Earl Sandwich was now blowing his hunting bugle.
David crawled up the remaining stairs and pushed open the heavy oak door. A wave of air-conditioning washed over him, instantly congealing the sweat on his face. He staggered into the cool shade of the long stark corridor and collapsed to the floor. The marble tiles felt cold against his cheek. The door slammed shut behind him and he couldn’t hear the dogs barking anymore.
“You look dehydrated,” a familiar man’s voice said. “Come with me.”
David raised his eyes up and saw Dr. McGee standing above him, wearing a clean pair of lavender medical scrubs.
“I’m fine,” David said, not moving from the ground. “I don’t need an I.V.”
“How about a cup of juice,” Dr. McGee suggested.
“Sounds good.”
David sat up and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Dr. McGee pulled David to his feet and they walked to a small kitchenette. Dr. McGee opened the mini-fridge, took out a large metal jug, and filled two Styrofoam cups with a red liquid. He handed one to David.
“To hydration,” the doctor said and clinked the Styrofoam glasses together.
“Hydration,” David croaked and took a sip. As soon as the liquid touched his lips, he spit it out and began to gag. It tasted like aspirin dissolved in his mouth. The cup fell to the ground, splashing their legs and David stuck his head in the garbage can, afraid he would vomit.
“What was that?” he moaned.
Dr. McGee set his own cup down on the counter. He hadn’t taken a sip from it. He dropped some paper towels on the floor to soak up the spill, picked up David’s Styrofoam cup, and pushed the sodden paper towels around with his foot.
“Mixed fruit juice,” the doctor said. “With a secret ingredient.” He leaned in close, lowered his voice, and whispered conspiratorially. “The bitterest substance know to man.”
David staggered to the sink, stuck his head under the faucet, and poured water straight down his throat.
The doctor continued. “It’s used as a nail polish by compulsive nail-biters. To stop them from biting their nails. See?” He held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. The nails were perfectly manicured. Then he kicked off his tennis shoes and pulled off his socks. He wiggled his toes, displaying a magnificent pedicure.
“Only a single drop in the entire jug. Can you believe it?”
“Why?” David asked.
“Why?” The doctor’s eyes bugged incredulously and he shook his head. “I’m not a member of the clergy. I don’t deal with questions of WHY. I’m a man of Science. I deal with the HOW. The question is: how is it so bitter?”
“I mean why’d you put it in my drink?”
Dr. McGee looked down at his bare feet. “Such a nice day out,” he said. “While I have my shoes off, I think I’ll take a walk on the grass.”
The doctor left his shoes and socks there and walked out of the kitchenette, across the marble tiles towards the front door.
“Come on,” he called to David. “Take off your shoes and join me!”
“What about the dogs?” David asked.
“Don’t worry. They’re in bubbles,” Dr. McGee said. “You won’t step in anything.”
The doctor pushed open the door and stepped out into the sunlight. David followed him out. As soon as the dogs saw David, they started to bark again and try to climb up the stairs, their bubbles banging into the bottom step.
Dr. McGee looked down at his bare feet, at the grass, sighed, and started to walk determinedly down the stairs.
“Dr. McGee!” David grabbed the doctor’s shoulder. “What are you doing? Be careful!”
“I didn’t take my shoes off just to put them back on.” The doctor broke into a run down the stairs, straight at the angry dogs in their bubbles. When he was almost at the bottom, he leapt high into the air, did a double-somersault, and stomped on a hound’s bubble with his bare feet. The bubble gave a little and seemed about to pop, but then it sprung the doctor high into the air like a trampoline. Dr. McGee spun around in the air, executing a double corkscrew turn, spread his legs wide in the splits and landed in a sitting position on another bubble. He bounced high into the air once again.
Everyone looked on in awe. He flew through the air like a circus performer.
The hounds barked frantically and tried to get out of the way, but Dr. McGee seemed to be able to anticipate the hounds’ movements before the dogs even knew what they were thinking. (He was the best canine renal surgeon in the world, after all.)
The dogs scurried off in separate directions. They probably figured if they split up, he couldn’t bounce on them all.
Dr. McGee landed on one hound’s bubble and bounced on it, flipping in the air and landing on the bubble over and over again as it rolled through the yard.
The hound tried to turn sharply to the side, but the bubble kept rolling, tossing the hound around inside, while Dr. McGee continued bouncing and flipping above him. Finally, in the middle of the yard, the bubble slowed to a stop. Dr. McGee flew high up in the air with a quadruple backwards somersault and landed a perfect two-point landing with his hands raised up to the sky like a championship gymnast.
There was applause from everyone and they ran up to him, clapping their hands and whistling. The dogs didn’t bother David. They knew they were beaten. They went running to their master for comfort, whimpering. But they couldn’t slow down and he couldn’t rub their ears or pet them through the bubbles. They ran right over the Earl of Sandwich.
“Wow,” David said to Dr. McGee. “How’d you do that?”
The doctor grinned and breathed heavily. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve.
“Lots of practice,” Dr. McGee gasped. “You don’t spend years around dogs in bubbles without learning a few tricks.”
***
ט''ו בשבט תשס''ח
ירושלים
Tu B’Shvat
January 22, 2008
Jerusalem

Chapter Thirty-One

David wanted to show off his first published poem, so he went to his parents’ house under the guise of saying goodbye before his long road trip. He walked across the yard carrying a newspaper under his arm, pushed open the sliding glass door, and walked into the kitchen. Max was sitting at the breakfast table, eating burnt toast and sipping green tea. He looked up at David and frowned.
“You just sneak into people’s houses?”
“It’s not sneaking. I wanted to surprise you.”
“You wanted to give me a heart attack? It won’t do you any good. I already wrote you out of the will.”
“I didn’t want to give you a chance to call Pat Henderson.”
David’s mother Barbara walked into the room and smiled. She gave her son a big hug and kiss.
“How does your garden grow?” she asked. It was how she always greeted him since he started working at Roseman Gardens.
It was a rhetorical question, of course. She didn’t really want to know how it was growing: that agents of the Department of Agriculture trashed the tropical greenhouse and that the storm completely demolished the garden.
“It grows well,” David said.
He helped himself to a mug of freeze -dried coffee (workingman coffee) and sat down at the breakfast table with his parents.
Max frowned and stirred his green tea.
“Have you come to your senses and left the cult?” he asked.
It was a trick question. Either way, if he answered yes or no, he was admitting he was in a cult.
Max didn’t wait for a response; his question was also rhetorical. “If you have some hole inside you, there’s pills you can take,” he said. “Or you can join Islam. It’s the world’s fastest growing religion.”
David shook his head. “Just ‘cause they’ve got a billion people doesn’t mean they’re not a cult.”
“Islam is not a cult,” Max said. “Most of them are decent people who just want the same things as me; just to live in peace and raise children without any of them joining a flower cult. Look what you’ve done to your poor mother. You’re giving her gray hairs.”
“She doesn’t have any gray hairs.”
“She plucks.” Max looked at his wife. “Go on. Show him.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a gray ball of hairs about the size of a tennis ball. She offered it to David. He shook his head. He didn’t want to take it.
“That’s a normal part of the aging process,” David said.
Max shook his head, picked up the hairball, and passed it from hand to hand. “I’ve known your mother for twenty-five years. I know her aging process, and this isn’t part of it.”
Barbara handed Max a manila envelope. He opened it up and pulled out some papers.
“I was speaking with Judge White the other day,” Max said, uncapping a black pen. “He says we can’t have you committed. That it’s only if we can prove you’re a danger to yourself or others. Apparently throwing away your future isn’t sufficient grounds to have someone committed nowadays. You’re an adult now and we can’t make your decisions for you. So you’ll have to sign this.”
Max slid a document across the table and marked an X where David should sign. He held out the pen out and waited for David to take it.
“I’m not having myself committed.”
“It’s only for a couple months,” Barbara said. “There’s a nice place out in the woods. You need to be deprogrammed. Pat Henderson has a deprogramming program. It’ll help you leave the cult.”
David pushed the papers back at Max.
“I won’t sign it.”
“Then you can’t stay,” Max said, putting the pen cap back on. “When you’re in my house, you live by my rules.”
“That’s only if I live here. I’m just visiting.”
“And it was mighty nice of you to stop by. You can take your beverage to go. I’ll get you a paper cup. You’re not taking the mug.”
Max dropped the pen in his shirt pocket, stood up, and strutted to the cabinet above the sink.
“Max no,” Barbara said.
“Oh yes.” He dug through the cabinet, pushing cups and dishes to the side. “Where are the paper cups?”
“We don’t have paper cups,” Barbara said.
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t give coffee to go. Only crazy people and Dunkin’ Donuts do that.”
“Well can you pick some up next time you go to the store?”
“Put it on the list.”
Max took out his pen and scribbled “paper cups” on the notepad on the refrigerator.
“All right, you can take the mug,” Max conceded. “But you have to bring it back next time.”
“I’m not going to be back for a while. We’re taking the flowers on the road.”
“You can keep the mug,” Barbara said.
“But it counts as Christmas and Hanukkah,” Max said. “What do you mean you’re taking the flowers on the road?”
By way of explanation, David stood up, unfolded the newspaper, and read his new poem.
“That’s not a poem,” Max said when David had finished. “It’s a help-wanted ad.”
“It’s functional poetry.”
“What?”
David explained the premise of functional poetry, how it wasn’t separated onto a pedestal of “art,” but existed in the real world.
“It’s a cry for help,” Max said.
“No it isn’t.”
“Then why’s it called, ‘Help Wanted?’”
“We’re looking for truck drivers.”
“They made you into an evangelist? The cult has you recruiting new members now?”
“It’s my job. I don’t say your job’s a cult. I don’t tell you to leave the dental cult.”
“Dentistry is not a cult. I don’t go around the country giving people free dental exams.”
“Maybe you should. A lot of people need dental care. There’s a lot of bad teeth out there.”
“You’re not going to convert me.”
“I’m not trying to convert you.”
“Sign the paper.” Max held out the pen.
“No.”
“All right. I can see we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
Max ran around the table, forced the pen into David’s hand, and tried to press David’s hand with the pen onto the document. Max had the advantage of surprise and got the pen to make a couple scratches on the paper. But David was stronger; he gained control and began to pull the pen up from the paper. Suddenly, Barbara came to her husband’s aid and together both of them pushed their son’s hand down on the paper.
Sweat poured down David’s forehead and his arm muscles burned as he tried to keep the pen tip off the signature line.
“It’s not legal!” he protested, but his parents paid no attention.
David was out of shape; reading poetry to flowers was his only exercise. Still, he was able to summon one burst of adrenaline. He charged upwards with all his might, knocking his parents back. Something pulled the pen out of his hand. His head smacked into the linoleum floor and he felt suddenly nauseous.
Barbara screamed. David sat up and saw Max staggering against the kitchen table, a dazed look on his face. The pen was protruding out of his neck and a trickle of blood dribbled down from it.
“Now I don’t need your signature!” Max laughed victoriously. “You stabbed me in the throat! You’re a danger to yourself and others, particularly me!”
Max could still speak; David hadn’t hit the voice box. Maybe it had gone into the trachea this time. A successful tracheotomy.
Max grasped onto the pen, gritted his teeth, and pulled.
“Don’t pull it out!” David shouted. “It could be in an artery!”
“He’s right,” Barbara said. “It’s like a bullet. Sometimes it’s better to leave it in.”
“So I have to go through the rest of my life with a pen sticking out of my neck? Wearing turtlenecks?! Even in the summer?!!”
“We’ll get a doctor to do it,” Barbara said.
“Nonsense. I’ll do it myself. I’m a doctor.”
“You’re a dentist,” David pointed out.
“A dentist is a type of doctor. Same thing. I know what I’m doing. It’s like removing a tooth. I just need some Novocain.”
***
כ''ט בטבת תשס''ח
ירושלים
January 7, 2008
Jerusalem