Jake
by Murray Dunlap
As much as I hate to admit it, Dad had a dog. A fine dog. A good dog.
All right, an amazing dog.One of those once in a lifetime dogs who will look you in the eye and understand not just what you say, not just the command, but what you mean. A dog who takes in the more complicated, human tonalities, and converts them into action.
Dad named Jake, like all good southern dogs, for an aspect of hunting life. In this case, a young male turkey. A seasoned hunter will let the Jake pass. It is considered preferable to kill an old gobbler, one with a beard long enough to spot at more than fifty yards. The signal flag for a proper kill. Dad's Jake was an American Labrador. Tar black coat with tar black eyes. By breeding standards, he was too big. One hundred and ten pounds. By southern hunting standards, Jake was the best thing on four legs in all of Alabama. Dad told stories about Jake. Jake and ducks, Jake and turkeys, Jake and whitetail deer. From the sound of it, Jake could recite hunting laws to the game warden by case number while gumming a mallard and tracking a ten-point buck.
Jake was a dog who would walk with you, not ahead of you. Who would wait for you at the bottom of a flight of stairs, or the top, depending on which direction you were headed. Jake was a dog who could smell the verve in your voice and know in advance if he would be going along in the car or staying behind to guard the house.
Jake did not whine.
If Jake needed to go out in the middle of the night, which was only if Dad forgot his evening walk, he sidled up to bedside and stared, willing you awake to open the door. If that didn't work, he looked for an exposed hand and gave a gentle lick. This would be enough, he knew, to animate Dad into action without anger.
Following the afternoon hunt, Jake would lie at Dad's feet. His ears perked at all the right moments, listening to the story of the day build, link by link, forming a chain of events so unlikely that no one would believe a word had it not been for Dad's hypnotic charm. His unbearable, seducing charm. Jake panted over muddy paws, and, as was demanded of all southern hunting dogs, held a perfect poker face. Even when the story went too far.
The hard part, the part I don't like to admit, reveals itself here: one summer day with nothing in season, Dad stepped out into the front yard with a tennis ball in his right hand, and, as I imagine it, with a fresh bourbon in his left. Jake sat, waiting patiently for Dad to lift the glass, take a long swallow, and then toss the ball as high and as far as he could. Jake set out running, lean and fast and entirely focused. He tracked the ball by shadow, anticipating the trajectory of its fall, and prepared for the moment of climax that surely would follow.
It's just bad luck. How could anyone have prevented that ball from landing on a chipped corner of red brick, taking a funny bounce into the sloping yard north of the drive. Who could have told Jake not to follow through, not to jump for the ball off that unpredicted bounce. How could Dad have known that when Jake returned to earth, the fuzzy yellow ball gripped tightly in his mouth, that his rear legs would land first, sliding on layers of oak leaves and pine straw, and that the reality of a heavy dog and a fragile spine would end everything right then and there.
This is how I imagine what happened next: Dad returned from the Vet empty handed, informed two young boys that Jake would not be coming home, and walked into the kitchen for a drink. There would have been two or three cases of beer on hand, but somehow the bottle of bourbon on the top shelf seemed more appropriate. So down it came, off with the cap and into the glass. One deep swallow. Then another.
All I know is this: If I threw a tennis ball for my dog Blue, and if Blue never came back, I'd take that drink too. I'd pull down the bottle from the top shelf and pour the tallest glass I could find. There's nothing that could ease that kind of hurt, but I think I'd try. Then again, I don't have two boys to tell, and I know my wife would need that drink worse than me.
The truth is, it might not have happened that way. I've been in the car with Dad enough times to know that a late night, a bottle of bourbon, and a dark driveway could easily end with a very dead dog. Or, perhaps, a bottle of bourbon and a little target practice with his hunting rifle. Maybe just cleaning his guns with a bottle of bourbon. Anything and a bottle of bourbon. Beer days are not dangerous. I have stepped out the backdoor at noon on a sunny day to find Dad baiting steel traps with peanut butter and repeating this sentence: fucking squirrels think they can dirty my pool. I didn't see a bottle, and I sure didn't stay outside long enough to look, but it was certainly there.
So maybe he lied. Eventually, everyone reaches a state of constant disbelief. Because when an Alabama hunter starts talking, when he gets long winded and pink in the cheeks and gestures wildly with his hands, you never know how much to believe.
I'd say that even if Jake had been there for the telling himself, he never would have given Dad up. He would have perked his ears at all the right moments. He would have panted a perfect poker face over muddy paws. And, finally, when my charming father arrived at the moment of climax -that tragic, inevitable, and yet, undefined climax- Jake would simply have laid his chin to the floor, closed his tar black eyes, and pretended that it could all be true.
Murray Dunlap's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, New Delta Review, Red Mountain Review and others. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as Best New American Voices, and his first book, Alabama, was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. He is currently working on a novel.