Freeman's: Love. John Freeman
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just—” the Doctor says, “most people have pets that bring them joy, but you keep adopting grief time bombs that smell like piss and make your life more difficult than it has to be.”
I think about what he says and on some level I know he’s right—that between Seymour and my last few dogs, and my last few relationships, and my father, and my fear of being swallowed up by the bubbling and gurgling wellspring of sadness I feel just underneath the surface of pretty much everything—that maybe I am kind of having a hard time here, and maybe my choices could be better. But the entire reason my choices could be better is because my thinking is bad. I prefer to feel my way through. And what I feel when I look at Seymour, who is looking at me with his lonesome eyeball (it’s like a marine mammal’s eye: oversized and sincere and vulnerable), is a tremendous tenderness for a mini-jerk doing his bad, terrible, no-good best to be OK but who remains a constant danger to himself and carpeting everywhere.
I admit nothing, especially not that my father smells like piss and has survived on a steady diet of microwaved dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and ruining holidays ever since my mom died. Instead I point my pointer finger at the Doctor’s nose, then rotate my thumb up and yell, “The boy lives!”
“Does he even want to?” he says. “Seriously.”
“I don’t know, man.” Did Hamlet? Does my dad? Do I? Occasionally. But here we are in the meantime and the best I can think to do is be there for some doggos that need me. “Nurturers gotta nurch, bro.”
He furrows his eyebrows and tilts his head and nods, and the effect is that he looks confused and demeans me at the same time. In response I tell him that according to the DSM-5 he has every symptom of mind-your-own-fucking-biz-itis. “And besides,” I say, “Seymour can do the best trick I’ve ever even seen.”
I jump up and grab one of his medicated biscuits from the kitchen cabinet, then jog back into the room and yell, “Hey Seymour!” and he immediately perks up and stares at the wall. “He’s deaf in one ear and mostly deaf in the other so he can’t echolocate,” I say. Then I make kissy noises until Seymour turns and stares at my bookshelf, and then I wave my arms over my head and shout his name until he figures it out and plops off the couch and waddles over.
“How long is this gonna take?” the Doctor says.
“Shut the fuck up and be amazed,” I say, “because Seymour’s about to dial up a little razzle-dazzle. Ready, buddy? Here we go: Uno . . . dos . . . three—”
The biscuit is pumpkin-colored and shaped like a cartoon bone and I watch it freefall flat-side down while—in the blurry background—Seymour’s eye widens with anticipation. What I don’t see is him shift slightly back before he launches himself upwards to expedite the biscuit’s delivery by an inch or two. The reason I don’t see that is because, unlike other, fancier, healthier dogs, Seymour doesn’t do that. What Seymour does do is patiently wait for the biscuit to plonk off his bowling ball head because, while depth perception is possible in monocular individuals, it’s very limited inside of certain distances, which explains why Seymour falls off the couch and down stairs so often and—if we don’t walk the block counterclockwise—why he stumbles off curbs and donks his head on street signs and trash cans. In short, the little guy can’t catch. But what he can do, and what impresses me so much, is he can show the fuck up anyway and let the things he loves hit him in the face before he scrambles around looking for where they bounced to. I think it’s a great trick, maybe even thee trick, to everything, and I laugh and tell him what a good boy he is. “The best boy,” I say. “The number onest guy!”
The Doctor is not entertained. He is already scrolling his phone in search of a horned-up stranger with Magnum P.I. tits. I, on the other hand, announce that I am taking Seymour around the block before he shits on my floor again.
“I’ll walk out with you,” the Doctor says and stops scrolling, and I know that instead of sexing a guy he’s going to his parents’ house, to check on them, which he does on the nights we play cards, because his mom is sick and his dad is depressed and they live around the corner.
We make our way to the front door, on the back of which hangs Seymour’s leash and collar and the collars of all the hard-luck cases I’ve lost over the last few years, each of them sweet and doomed, each of them dealt terrible and unfair hands by whichever lazy, fat-fingered amateur you choose to believe in. Or, if you’re like me, none. Just bad luck. What I do believe in is standing between them and worse luck, and every time I reach for a collar I’m reminded of just how worse it can be.
Bacon’s was purple, Chancho’s blue, Sparkles’s orange, Tink’s red. Seymour’s collar is green, and sometimes I even let him wear it, but most days I mix up which one he gets. I think I do it because I like the idea of taking them with us on our walks somehow, of bringing them back out into a world I liked a whole lot better with them in it.
At the bottom of the stairs the Doctor puts his hand on my shoulder, tells me he’s worried about me. “If I got you some samples,” he says, “would you take them?”
“Probably not,” I say. Because—while often excruciating—I’ve been trying to listen to my feelings instead of bury them. I’m tired of burying things. I do appreciate his offer, though. He’s a good friend to me.
We hug it out and say our goodbyes, and after he exits the downstairs door I give Seymour’s leash a tiny tug, to coax him out onto the sidewalk, but the little guy refuses. Because of course he refuses. Instead he sits down and growls at me or the wall or the night or some other grievance. I almost get mad, but I let him have this one, and instead of dragging him out by a rope around his neck, I sit on a stair and shush him. Tell him it’s fine. Tell him he’s a good boy. Tell him I love him. I just try to comfort him, because if my father’s taught me anything it’s that grievances can keep you going for years.
—Matt Sumell
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