Bear

Bear ached with old age—stiffness, pain in his hips, fatigue. He didn’t like being outside so much of the time; he felt homesick for California, for the inside life he had known there. Here, in this big, strange place called Texas, he had aged. A chocolate lab with deep brown eyes, Bear had come from California with his people three years before. He complained bitterly about both the heat and the cold in Texas, about his arthritis, about how no one even gave him glucosamine to keep his joints flexible.

No telling how much longer he would live. His days consisted of lying around the yard, moving occasionally so that stiffness would not set in, and incessant barking—the only way his complaints could be announced. His eyes still glowed, but his fur was dirty and stiff, and his elbows calloused.

Bear felt that no one paid him the attention he deserved. He was, after all, the wise one, the elder, while Max, the German Shepherd with whom he shared the yard, focused on his own escape tactics and unruly antics. Bear knew things that no one else knew. He knew, for example, what had happened to the finger and a half that his owner Jose had lost when the electric saw went crazy that warm day, when his people parents rushed to the hospital, leaving the door unlocked and blood all over the kitchen floor, when Daniella and Jaime and their cousins and aunt and the neighbors were looking for the fingers—even on the roof. What drama! But no one asked him or even looked into his eyes. Oh, there was a phone call to a vet, from the lady next door. “If I brought the two dogs in and you x-rayed them and found the fingers, and then extracted them, would they still be useful to the person who lost them?” Negative. Bear could have told them that. No way to take some parts belonging to a human and stick them back on, once they had been in the mouth and stomach of someone who had salivated over them, swallowed them—whether or not chewing had taken place.

This was a strange place, Texas. He missed the weather of California, his indoor, younger life. His good health and active body. And lately the kids, Jaime and Daniella, were always hanging on his neck, looking at him with the saddest eyes he had ever seen. What could be their problem? They were at school now, but he knew he’d get the same treatment when they came home.

The garage door opened. Karina, his mom, had the keys in her hand. “Come on, Bear.” She opened the car door. What? She never took him for a ride. She didn’t look at him but kept gesturing to the back seat. How would he get up into the seat? He ached, thinking about it. He took a few stiff steps, then stood still. Mocha, the poor Pitbull tied up in the yard next door, was yapping in the background, and now here came Cinnamon, her progeny—that tiny, naïve, wiggling pup unaware of life’s hardships except for having a mother in chains.

“No, go away,” Karina yelled at them. “Come on, Bear.” Bear took a few more steps. Where would they be going? Oh. He suddenly remembered a possibility. The vet. That office with the long line of canines and cats and other creatures. Shots and pokings, pills and proddings. Obnoxious, really. Was it really necessary to go there, ever?

Karina patted the seat then got behind him and pushed so that he was forced to jump up onto the seat. Owww. His poor joints! The door slammed. But there was another sound he heard simultaneously—Minerva, the barn owl who lived in the cedar trees, let out an unmistakable harsh screech—he had never heard such a thing in the daytime. What could it mean? Audibly, Karina muttered, "Cuando el tecolote canta, el indio muere," but he didn't understand that, either.

Karina got in the front and turned on the ignition. Mexican music muffled the noise of the engine. The garage door came down, and Bear had a sense that he would not be coming back. Was it time to go to California? Why weren’t the others with them?

He took no pleasure in the scenery. Karina stared intently at the road. Within a few minutes she stopped the car and parked, slipped on his leash, and insisted he get out. Ouch again. They walked toward a building—yes, the vet. Bear could remember the smells, the sounds of barking, the people wearing the same green outfits, the myriad complex emotions that people and animals had there.

“I’m sorry, Bear,” Karina said, just as they entered the door. Sorry for what? She had never said that before, to him anyway. He sensed a great weight in her heart and a dread in his own. Were the whispered allusions to his extinction coming true? But he had always trusted in the goodness of his people, had forgiven every unkind word or action. Surely now was not the time for—but his mind could not even imagine it.

They waited, and Karina stroked him—the first strokes he had gotten from her in some months. Then it was their turn to go into a little room. “Hello, Bear,” said the assistant in the green outfit. “Just lie down here.” He tried to wag his tail, but it felt too heavy. Then the vet came in with a long needle. Double ouch. “This shouldn’t hurt at all,” said the doctor. But it did—the long needle, the anxious look in the six eyes of the three humans around him. He wondered what might be wrong with him.

Karina turned her face away, and he could see tears running down it. He tried to comfort her with his own eyes but felt them closing, closing until there was no more light at all. Even sounds, including the memory of Minerva’s warning, faded away, like the wind dying down as it passed through the cedars.