My name is Moxy. I am a dog. I live in NYC, where I just learned that life expectancy numbers have climbed above the national average. It pays to live in New York, perhaps, says me. I am a mutt, a mix between a ditzy golden lab and a German Shepherd. I don’t speak German. I’m a relatively big guy, you might think me a shepherd upon first sighting, but for the coloring. I press my snout toward you in order to extend my elements of convincing. I woke up on April 16th in a good mood. The apartment was empty. I had to piss real bad. It was a nice spring day out there, I could tell. I was waiting for my “dog-sitter,” some schmo friend of my “master’s.” I prefer human comrade.
My human comrade’s name is Delmar. He is 32 years-old. His wife is 27. They aren’t home because Delmar visited Washington D.C. and the Vietnam Memorial, holding up a placard of honor, with his mother, for his father. His dad wasn’t allowed on The Wall because he committed suicide - post-traumatic-stress disorder - in Europe on his way home. The Army doesn’t claim responsibility for his suicide. No flag draped on his coffin. He is not on the wall in Washington. In my human comrade’s eyes, his dad was killed in Vietnam. I can understand everything my friends say. They think I speak in the Bark language for dogs. Humans misrepresent everything. In fact, I speak an Eastern canine dialect that is quite advanced. I can hear like a bastard. Delmar’s wife, Cassandra, isn’t home either. I have to piss real bad and I’m waiting for this schmoey friend to take me out. Only he doesn’t take me out, he “lets” me out and ignores me.
I have to walk myself. Which isn’t so bad, generally. But it was bad for this day, April 16th. Cassandra wasn’t home either because she went with Amnesty International to a protest at the prison on the big river upstate. When they say “send you up river” you know what that means. The Hudson. They took the train up there. She has been encouraged these past few months by the curious white people of Amnesty International. Holding up signs. Her dad actually received a stay of execution and is going to have his case reviewed by the supremest court in all the land. Her dad is innocent, she proclaims, and the DNA tests will prove it. But the Supreme Court didn’t take the case because of potential DNA breakthroughs. They took it because of how a lower court had treated the case to begin with, the bastards. Many a time I lay through meetings in our apartment with very eager and young and important lawyers. I used to think, “If I were a human being I would want to be a lawyer. A defense lawyer, because you start out at a disadvantage, like a dog. And if you’re halfway good you’ll make some big bucks.” Bucks are good, in the human world. Good for dogs, too, I suppose, if you consider the trickle down effect. For example, when Delmar was unemployed I wasn’t eating too well. Half a can. And I’m thinking all the while, big dog and all, “How am I suppose to deal with half a can, bro?” Cassandra would apologize. She’d sneak me scraps occasionally. I even started to enjoy my insignificant samples of Wonder Bread, mushy white stuff.
Anyway, they weren’t home that damn day and I had to piss smarting bad. Holding and holding, like a Buddha. If the human comrades only knew how well we can train ourselves to hold. And all the time we’re looking at the corner of the living room going, “I could do it, right now, let it all out and know relief, thank the canine gods.” But we don’t, because we like you, is all. Delmar was never particularly strict in the early days with his beatings. Rubbed my snout in some shit occasionally, like gee that’s a pain in the ass: You know how many times as a puppy I rubbed my own snout in layers of dump? Lots of times. It’s no big deal; good organic stuff to excite the senses. But God I can hold it, squeezing everything in and trying to smile when they finally wake up in the morning. Christ, from four a.m. to about eleven I’m holding it. And sometimes they want me to play right away. Or when they’ve stayed out late I know it will be noon until I see the light of day.
I walked over to the window and placed my paws on the windowsill. The window stained from my repeated vigilance, my cold, wet black nose rubbing as I peer outside. I move the white curtains aside when I step up to the windowsill. I can’t help it, my tongue hangs out. Dogs cool themselves off with their tongues, most of you know. Delmar used to want to be a writer. Now he’s in janitorial services at NYU, which is a good gig. He has full benefits and is, according to him, “Working on the masterplan.” We live down there as close to the school as we could get, in the east village, a good walk away. We live near Tompkins Square. I think I’m so cool when they let me romp in the dog run. You should see that madhouse. After playing hard I try to chill for three minutes and some little whippersnapper comes running up to me and jumps all in my face. I’m like lapdog poodle, dude, step off.
It never works; they sniff all up in my shit, too, smell my balls. I just have to represent. So I stand again, face-off, and play another round of games with inferior homies of mine. The city is full of crazy types. Don’t much care for the dog run after fifteen minutes, honestly. I like it best when Delmar, or Cassandra if she has to, takes me on a hike across town, or up the avenues. After a good walk I don’t mind being tied to some parking meter while they run inside. Fine, and strangers can pet me, whatever. I try to give them some love, yeah yeah, I’m a pretty dog, pet my shit, yeah yeah. I want to say, though, “Move along, everybody. Move right along. Just a shepherd-looking bro hanging out, waiting for a friend. Move along, folks.” That works and it doesn’t work. I try to put the vibe out there: “Decent dog, but don’t mess overly.” Some people are afraid of big dogs and they walk clear into the street. I smile at them. Humans should know that they could take a dog if they had to, you know, in a street fight and all. But you’ve got to get mean. See, I’m eighty pounds and you’re at least one-fifty. People don’t know this, though, and they walk clear into the street, around cars, eyeballing warily. Silly people, I think. And then I flash them my mean smile.
So I was standing with my feet on the windowsill waiting for this bastard to come let me out; I was hurting bad, too; it was past noon and I was going to have to leave a mess for Delmar’s return, say sorry bro, you left me hanging. You give a sheepish look and sometimes they understand. Especially with the emotional trips they are both taking right now. I have a friend who said to me once – we were in front of NYU just chilling, waiting for comrades to emerge from the buildings – “Look, I just take the shit on the carpet and then eat it real quick. They never know.” I was like, No way, stop with that stuff, man. It gave me the shivers to think about it. I mean, I can snoop poop any day with the best of them. But I’m not going to ingest the stuff.
Finally I heard the proper footsteps a block off. Yes! I was thinking. My tail began to do its thing involuntarily. This cannot be helped, no matter. Even if you want to show the guy that you’re pissed off for his being late and all. The tail just goes. I heard the key in the front door downstairs, heard him check the mail, then ascend the stairs. He approached the door and said hello, we jump-wrestled a bit, and then he took me downstairs without a leash. He likes to think he can command me at curbs and stuff, show the world how well-trained I am. I do it for awhile, but then he gets bored and I get bored.
He walked me down to Tompkins Square and was about to open the gate to the dog run. I wasn’t too keen on attending the slobbering throng. Down the way, past a few homeless blokes pushing carts and one haggard old lady singing at the top of her lungs, I saw a fine babe hanging loose next to her comrade and a bench. Her friend was reading the newspaper. I bolted. Straight for her. I heard the voice of Delmar’s boy call out but chose to ignore it. I didn’t even flinch. Sometimes the flinch is unintentional.
I played with this girl, rolled around in the dirt, thought about jumping her but then decided against it: she didn’t have the right thing going on. Delmar’s friend walked over. I don’t know what it was; perhaps I required some freedom on this beautiful spring day; the smells were overt and succulent, a redolence that made my nose spin; I was in to this day.
Rather than cavort with this young tied-up pretty (her comrade was an obnoxious prick anyhow, trying to shoo me away), and certainly forgetting Delmar’s boy, I bolted to the west, along the routine paths of scent and knowledge to NYU and to Washington Square. I’d already released my liquid needs, and then felt a calling upon the green in Washington Square. Guy was skateboarding with his friends, another lighting a spliff, and I assumed the position. Boom! I dropped a load on New York City, and there was no human being to plastic sack. I’ve always thought this a humorous urban arrangement: the human being picking up warm canine shit on the daily. When it first caught on, I would look at Delmar and go, shaking my head, “Well, okay, if you want to do that, fine with me.” Delmar’s about half-and-half: sometimes he picks up my warm, sometimes he doesn’t; I suppose it depends on the situation, the location. Believe me, plenty of my stuff is decomposing all over this great city.
Anyhow, please, not to engage scatological digressions all over you, I unloaded in Washington Square and then felt free as a free dog. I ran here and there, looked up a girl’s skirt and sniffed, jaunted with a few other homies who were leashed, ate a piece of bread and the bag that contained it, drank from a new pool of water near the New School, and then paused, stood for a moment with my head held high, looking about. I felt like a king. A twelve-year-old lord of the land. A woman patted my head. I suppose my blissed-out look (thanks to mediocre golden Labrador genes) and my collar and extensive taggery supported her confidence. My whole vibe was presented as, I am a happy dog and I do not bite. The world was my oyster.
I could have used some oysters. I ran further west, toward the meat district. I was cruising around W. 14th when the truck hit me.
Damn. And I like to think that I know what I’m doing. A beast in full control, the lord of the land, a mighty canine king and the world my royal court, all the ladies mine and no male dog in the world could take me. Besides, I’m alert, ambidextrous, well-rounded, and swift. I can move this body fast. Boom! A bolt or a sprint, no problem. And I can sustain running, miles upon miles, in good shape, good bones good teeth, a man in his prime. But I was looking to my left, chasing these oysters, and a head full of intoxicating freedom, on the search for loot, for chow, and for dames. I knew that if I kept this up, I’d have a complete day: good food and a great lay. Therefore, I didn’t see that stupid meat wagon tag me. Looking left toward the Hudson and the truck took my blind side. No squeal of the tires; didn’t even pause for the moment; a hit and run. I’m certain that up in the cab one fella said to the other, “Oh, man, you just hit a dog.” And the driver chose not to stop, no owner around, nobody cares about a loose-running dog. “Did the city some good,” he said.
I lay there in the middle of the street out of breath. On my side. My whole life flashed before my eyes. I was, like, “Here? On this wet street in the meat district?” Ignominious. My friends will mourn me. I thought of an acquaintance who got hit by a FedEx truck. The driver cried, sobbing right there on the street, a dead dog in his hands. The young girl comrade of my friend the dog cried, too. It was a whole Brooklyn scene, down there in Williamsburg. My killers didn’t cry, they bolted.
But wait a minute, I wasn’t dead. I lay there, panting. It’s not like I felt fine. Indeed, I was in a fair amount of pain. Internal bleeding perhaps. But I didn’t feel any obvious broken bones. Maybe I’m in shock, I thought. The body’s natural morphine having taken over, there’s no way I’d feel a broken bone if there was a broken bone. I was bleeding from my nose. I attempted to lift my head but could not. Felt like a ton of air-conditioners, like a convenience store ATM. Damn, where’d that guy come from? I pondered Delmar. I wondered whether he’d cry. I’m sure he was crying right now at the Vietnam Memorial wall that rejected his father. A bullet to the head because of the mess inside. One wonders.
I attempted to move a leg. I moved it, not without some pain. But it moved. I remember a vet one time, telling a much younger Delmar and his dog, Moxy, “If we can move it like this, it’s not broken.” He was a nice veterinarian. Delmar was relieved. Now, heck, Delmar might never know what happened to me. They clean up the mess off the street. Wait, I’ve got tags. I may have been knocked right out of my tags. Often – and people should know this right now – when pets disappear and never a word is heard, the worst has happened. A cat named General kaput. A dog named Bliss finished. And now Moxy and his time to die.
I don’t believe in heaven. That’s human bullshit. To me it’s all about how well do you biodegrade. But in New York City they don’t have time for that: hey burn you whole and in chunks. I lay there thinking of the fire, not quite believing my dirty-street fate. A crowd began to gather. The pale curious faces above me. One butcher smattered in blood, his apron in dangle, leaned over me. He rubbed my head. “Nice doggy,” he said. “It’s going to be all right, doggy,” again. I blinked my eyes and looked at him. I heard everything and tried to give him some of his love back. I licked my chops.
An officer of the law arrived. His name was Jonathan McMickey. He was young. He had survived the mayor’s budget cuts. Two years ago they wanted – and boasted about it – 5,000 more cops on the streets. And now they are axing 5,000. The supposed heroes of 9/11, the firemen, are on the chopping block, too. Some blame the president, some the economy. Some blame the economy on the president. Some the president on the economy. The ups and downs of mankind. But they are losing 47 fire stations. And I’m looking up at this cop. He rubs my head, too. The crowd has grown. Traffic temporarily stopped. My breathing light, but steady. I feel no pain. A girl with pink hair under a cowboy hat who works as a waitress at a corner honky tonk actually wept on my behalf. She was comforted by a friend. What a sorry sight, I thought. And I was such a handsome beast.
The officer stood and pulled his gun from its holster. “Jesus, guy,” I wanted to say. Nothing came out; I licked my chops again; I tried to move away. He pulled out his gun and said, “I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to put this guy out of his misery.” As if I were in a state of misery. I mean, I know that I appeared miserable – and I was – but I want to assure you as I tried to assure the cop, I felt no pain. No need, I said, no need. I couldn’t even bark. My tongue licked his friend the chops. Gnashed my bleeding teeth. The officer of the law, thinking either he was in a movie or that he was doing his good deed for the day, held the gun to my face. Dammit, I thought, and then, Fine, if this is how it’s going to be, then get on with it, a bullet train flashing down a darkened tunnel, bringing fire and temporary light, a blinding flash. The policeman shot me in the head.
Felt it before I heard it. The cop was playing a hero in a Hollywood picture: shooting the downed horse, taking out Old Yeller, doing the right thing on prairie and in home. Damn the movies. But equally important, there seemed a subconscious twitch in him that slid the muzzle of the gun a bit away from the vitals, down toward my snout, and the man nearly shot my jaw clean off.
I seemed to have passed out. I didn’t know what was happening. This may be what doggy heaven is all about, a cold, wet street in New York City. The police officer began to clear the crowd. A woman cried, though I did not hear her. The man in uniform was on his radio, calling the Animal Control Officers. They arrived in their own version of a paddy wagon combined with ambulance. The crowd thinned, and a few faces wore stunned expressions with blank eyes as if watching television. Did they truly see a cop pull the heroic put it out of its misery stunt? Could this be so? I lay a dead dog lump, all limbs limp. Two men in uniform (and in this city, even animal control officers wear firearms, as do tow-truck drivers) scraped me off the pavement and slipped me into the truck.
The doors slammed, though I did not hear them. And my canine hearing is acute. I was gone to a deep and faraway land. This was fantasy to my sensibilities. I was dreaming: I was a puppy again, running jauntily sideways, aiming to gain control of myself, overawed at the complexities hitting my snout and feeling the pure joy of living. As a sleeping dog dreaming, my leg twitched. Nobody saw it; it may as well not have happened. As the boundary between the real doggy world and puppy heaven was obscured, it might not have been a twitch at all. And perhaps in heaven we are forever puppies. I was in love once as a puppy. Let sleeping dogs lie. Can’t teach old . . . shut up! This was simply not my day. And I could handle it: aversion to mortality a human hangup.
The two officers carried me on a gurney into the basement of the veterinarian ward. The basement, as it is in human institutions, is the morgue. The slid me into a freezer. There, underneath a white sheet and upon cold stainless steel, I dreamed the proverbial dream. What a fun time it is in that obscure land of finality. I’ve gone and come back, some might say. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. I’d joke, “They say cats have nine lives.” Who knows whether I would walk again. What time is it. Damn it was cold in there. Damn it was . . . wait a minute: I could feel the cold! It’s fucking freezing in freezers. A walk-in, as in the back of the restaurant’s kitchen. I was merely a turkey ready for thawing. Employees sometimes have sex or smoke pot in walk-ins.
This was one frigid place. “Think Husky,” I said to myself, deep in there, down there in the subconscious. I was a curled furry sled dog on an arctic night, sleeping outside an igloo. A character in a Jack London story, I knew it. A pack dog on an expedition. The dog attending that dude who couldn’t light a fire in the 70-below. Right? Not no springtime in a soon hot and humid summertime New York.
It was dark in that room. I opened an eye. Couldn’t see a thing. Tried to move and could not. Am I tied down? A natural thought. Hello, anybody out there? But no sound offered forth. Inside the scents were faint, molecules of smell hardly holding on in their ice cube state. There were a couple of other dead dogs, an ostrich that was owned by a rich eccentric, a flamingo from the zoo (it remained frozen in its one-legged stance), two cats, and a famous publisher’s dead horse. I conjured morbid thoughts: Okay, if its not the truck or the bullet, then I’ll gladly freeze to death, like a pack dog gone down with explorers on a famous expedition. A heroic hound, an unmuzzled mutt. This simply wasn’t my day.
The door opened following the sound of a fumbled latch. I thought that I perked up. I may have cocked an ear. My ribs hurt. I began to feel pain. Damn hit and run bastards. I had an article read to me about how 1 in 5 pedestrian fatalities are hit and runs. May all hit-and-runners die slow, horrible deaths. A human male in a lab coat turned on the lights. He was with his female partner. They both carried clipboards. I opened an eye. The female was reading the tag on the horse’s hoof. “Hmm, one of Michael Korda’s,” she said. “Yeah, damn shame. He tried to bring a Connecticut horse to New York,” the man said. “Get you every time,” her reply. They inspected more tags and added to their reports. They cracked a few jokes about the flamingo. Something about a Slurpee from 7-11; ice cubes in an apartment freezer; lab coats with a slow job and time to kill.
“Yeah, this dog’s eye is open,” I heard.
“What?”
“And look . . . shit, he’s breathing!” I was happy that she called me he and not it.
“I’ll be damned!” the man’s an exclamation. Let’s get him out of here, quick. Shit.”
“His name is Moxy,” the woman said, fingering my tags.
“Moxy, you in there?” the man asked as he shined a light in my eye. My pupil dilated. “He’s still here,” he said.
They wheeled me to the main room. The man said something into a phone in an excited voice. Brought the sound of running footsteps. Soon, under warm lamps and underneath a blanket, there were peering pale faces over me. They were happy. Somebody mentioned calling the number on the tags. Someone did call and got the answering machine. “You should adopt him, Pete,” a woman’s voice to Pete. “We’ll get in touch with the owner first,” an answer. More noises, murmurs. I could move a leg and both of my eyes were open. Without wanting to really I responded to my name called out, “Moxy!” and I flinched.
Hypothermia and a fractured jaw the result of extensive examinations and X-rays. I made the newspapers. When Delmar returned he listened to the answering machine and was here in a quick for a slow human being. I barked “How was the wall?” and he said, “Oh, man, I missed you, too.” Humans. During the few days I had in the clinic – treated like a king and offered a warm blanket-lined basket – waiting to be retrieved and accepting gratefully the many attentions of my new admirers, I had a long meditation on all the dogs who are put to sleep. It could have been me. What if they couldn’t reach Delmar? What if he died down there in Washington? And Cassandra at the federal prison on the famous river? Maybe they would have contacted the offending yet heroic cop and asked whether he desired to adopt me. But suppose the cop’s girlfriend wouldn’t hear of it? I would have received the injection, for sure. And wouldn’t that have been something, after the day I had, to finally go because nobody came for the claim? Jesus, what thoughts in my convalescent basket, patient and waiting. An assistant named Fred walked me every morning and every evening before he left. I slept through the night on this warm blanket, kicking in my dreams, holding my potential relief inside of me, patient as always, contemplating the insane human beings and the circus of their invention.