Let me tell you bout' my best friend

“People Let Me Tell You about My Best Friend”

By Joshua Hider



         Rachel Weems was having a bad day.  Not just one of those “I locked the keys in the car with the motor running” days, but a real bad day.  It had started as just your run of the mill morning with Rachel performing her daily grooming ritual. Her usual scalding hot shower was interrupted by a sudden flush of cold water caused by the failure of the water heater.  The curling iron setting was way too high and she burned herself on the metal part.  The automatic coffee maker had not started because of a power outage the night before; It just stared back at her with repeating red twelves.  All of these little inconveniences were a prelude to the deluge that would come later.

         Her trip to work in her late model Toyota was as hectic as usual.  It seemed that all of creation was bound for the same destination, but none of them were reaching it.  Blaring car horns echoed the stressed out voices screaming inside, as tempers flared like sun spots.  Six lane super highways became parking lots. Normally serene people became savages. After an eternity, and more than a couple of obscene gestures, Rachel finally reached her place of employment: Ron Cooby’s Used Car Emporium and Truck and Trailer Rodeo. If you were to look up “dead end job” in the dictionary it would have a picture of Rachel grimacing back at you from the front desk.  She answered phones and set up appointments for Randy Carr, the general manager and, supposedly, her boyfriend.  She had gone as far up the corporate ladder in this slip shod operation as she ever would.

           When she got to work almost a half hour late, she should have just kept right on driving; she would have been spared a great deal of pain if she had.  Instead she stumbled through the doubled paned glass door, hooked her heel on the metal threshold and tore the sole of her shoe off.  That tear caused her fall, which in turn, caused the once hot coffee that she had outsourced to tumble down all over her new canary yellow blouse.  She was a spring, but right now it felt like the depths of winter.  At least she had been spared any further embarrassment by amused onlookers because, at the moment, there were none.  The sparse, tacky little office, housed a collection of steel railed desks sporting fake wood insets. The ensemble was completed with gruesomely uncomfortable metal folding chairs that were parked haphazardly in front of each of the three desks. The only watcher was a overly buxom member of the  Dodge Charger team,  arms akimbo, smiling down at her from an outdated calendar that hung cock eyed on the dark, trailer trash paneling that dominated the depressing walls.  What she wouldn’t give to be straddling that cherry red Mopar instead of lying on the floor soaked with coffee.

         She easily could have just stayed prostrate on the floor, but there were muffled voices emanating from the only other door in the room.  Behind a plain, badly painted faux panel door that hung directly in front of her was the office of the general manager.  As she turned her head toward the lilting conversation within, she could see shadows of that at least two persons occupying the space beyond.  Curious as to who the occupants were, she gingerly picked herself from the floor, reached hesitantly for the fake brass door handle, turned it, and pushed the door open. 

         Sometimes in life there are things that happen in slow motion. For good or bad, time slows to a crawl. Rachel could see it all so clearly: the slow, languid footsteps to the door.  The out stretched hand reaching for the knob. The barely audible sound of the tendons in the fingers tightening around the cool metal.  The sound of the spring in the mechanism crunching back as the handle is turned. The faint whoosh of air as the pressure inside the room subsides as the door is opened. The creaking groan of metal hinges swinging the door wide.  All of these things happened to Rachel in slow motion, but, as I’m sure you know, relativity demands that time goes into overdrive and concurrent happenings move at an incredible rate.

         That’s why she barely could remember how she had come to be in her little Toyota peeling her way away from the car lot into the crowded intersection adjacent. That is why she barely understood the tears of rage and hurt that now clouding her vision.  She had to deliberate for a moment to recall  the particulars of the past minute that had flashed in front of her in  what seemed a blinding second.

         As her recollection returned, she wished it hadn’t. Her widening eyes had spied her boyfriend, the General Manager Randall P. Carr Esquire, in the throes of passion with none other than Juanita Lopez, the part time accountant, and all around girl Friday to the afore mentioned Mr. Carr.  Her torso was uncovered, showing her smooth, brown skin underneath.  Other areas of her body were in various stages of undress and there was no mistaking the scene that unfolded in front of Rachel.

         “Uh, baby, you were late so I didn’t think you were coming in today, “stammered our mustachioed villain, throwing the hapless Juanita from his lap onto the fake cherry desk. “I know it looks bad, but it isn’t what it seems at all,” he added, now pulling up and zippering his trousers.

         She had heard nothing of the words that had stammered at her.  It was time for her to leave. On auto pilot, her coffee stained front about faced, stumbled slightly on her broken heel, and quickly strode out the cracked glass door into the shabby parking lot beyond. Her keys were out, the car in D, and she was rallying away from the scene at a breakneck pace.

  The scenes she had just witnessed  now sped through her mind like one of those old- timey movie reels; the ones shown before the matinee with the cheesy, fast talking narrator giving the blow by blow on the action.

         “The normally sure footed Miss Weems stumbles head long into her place of employment.  Coffee stained and physically battered she hears voices from the office ahead.  She hastens to the door of the private sanctum within, opens the door and WHAM! She is hit head long by the sights and smells of her once true sweetheart in the clutches of a mad seductress. OH THE HUMANITY!” The scenes are in grainy black and white, no doubt shot on a shaky 16 millimeter with a short focus lens.

         The endorphins were now kicking in and Rachel was beginning to calm.  She stopped off at a convenience store to get a little something to steady her nerves.  As she parked her car next to the boxes of anti freeze, a fresh wave of pain overcame her and she broke down.  Tears rained down on the smooth, black vinyl of the steering wheel, leaving their marks as they slid off the freshly cleaned surface to the floorboard.  A fat man with an equally fat face in the car next to hers glanced her way, lightly registered her grief, and then returned to the want ads in the paper he was reading.  All around her the world kept turning just as it had ten minutes before the hinges on the door had swung it in.  At the moment though, her world was at a standstill.

         She continued her downpour for a good three minutes more, but all good things must come to an end. She must turn this grief to blame, and like sliced cabbage turns to sauerkraut, that blame must ferment into anger.  The woman scorned now stomped out of hiding and Rachel became furious. How dare he treat me like this?  How could he even look twice at the tramp, that gold digging hussy?  I have a good mind to turn around and charge in there and give the two of them the beating they deserve.

         In the minds of lesser women though, the ferment of anger becomes the rot of self doubt and pity.  Why would he treat me this way?  Am I not prettier and smarter than Juanita Lopez?  Was it something I did to drive him into her arms?  I guess I’m getting too old to keep a man like Randy attracted anymore. Really, who could blame him for wanting to be with someone more exciting than me?

         All of those questions, those nasty biting queries, paraded through her mind as she entered the store and selected a decent bottle of dark rum.  It was joined in her small plastic basket by a two liter of Coke, and at least half a dozen varieties of sweets.  These priestly representatives of self indulgence would help exorcise the demons of the afternoon. Thusly armed with her comfort foods, Rachel pulled into the drive of her modest one bedroom.

         Her crushed spirit longed to strip off her battered raiment, draw a hot bath, and ease her way into half a dozen tumblers of rum and Coke.  That certainly sounded to her like a grand idea, but there was a part of her that would never let that happen until she ran. All of her life Rachel had been a runner; in good times and grief, in fair weather and inclement, she had ran. If ever in her life Rachel felt like running, this moment would be tops.  That constant beat of her feet on the warm, inviting asphalt would clear her skull.  She needed the heady rush that came from pushing herself just past exhaustion into another world. A nice, long run would be just what the doctor ordered.

         Swapping her work clothes for sweat pants and a matching T-shirt, she donned two pairs of athletic socks and slipped on her favorite pair of Adidas.  It had begun to sprinkle a bit in the late morning, giving the outside world a gentle soaking to knock down the dust and raise the humidity.

         “Perfect running weather,” thought Rachel as the thick, grey clouds overhead marched her mood concisely.

         She would need to make her usual five mile circuit around the adjoining neighborhoods at least twice today.  She would require that much time to think.  She stretched thoroughly before starting out at a trot, her muscle warming ritual complete from her neck to her well toned legs.  In order to find her inner rhythm she inhaled long, nourishing breaths that filled her lungs completely before her slow exhalations. The timing of her breathing and the steady pattering of her feet on the asphalt soon put her in a trance.

         The trance was so strong that it never registered to her that there were numerous trashcans that lined the streets like toy soldiers.  They had been left on the curb for pick up that morning, and would not be returned to their normal places until the occupants of the neat little houses returned from work that evening.

Rachel in turn failed to see that a large, dark trash can was overturned, its contents spilling haphazardly onto the curb just yards in front of her.  As she ran past the mess of waste that spilled into the street, her pace was suddenly interrupted. A rather violent shock ran through her lower leg, causing an onslaught of severe pain in the calf muscle.  For a second she thought it was a rather violent cramp that had incapacitated her below the knee. It was then that she heard the low snarl of an animal of some type directly behind her. She slowly registered the violent ripping of the canines of a rather large, black dog that had clamped hold of her leg and was not letting go.  Her brain screamed at her for flight as she came fully out of her runner’s trance, but the beast had such a firm hold on her that it was impossible. Everything in her now was screaming for her to fight; the beast must not get her to the ground or she may have just taken her last run.

The next instant the terrified woman was upended and she crashed heavily to the ground, her making serious contact with the poured concrete curb. Rachel was now consumed by panic, her head was reeling badly, and every fiber of her body was willing her not to pass out.  All that she could do now was cover her dazed head with her hands and arms hope that her assailant would take pity and release her.  No such forgiving spirit arose in the animal.

The crazed brute’s mouth was now frothing violently and it was too deep in the throes of its basest animal instincts to stop.  This thing lying curled up and crying before him was an invader into his territory; worse it was a thief that was surely trying to make off with the delicious hambone that he was enjoying in the over turned trash can.  Such boldness must be punished.  With vicious precision it tore at Rachel’s arms, ripping flesh from bone with its powerful jaws.  She heard the sickening crunch as the powerful teeth ripped her skull open, its furious jaws snapping like an angry crocodile.  She closed her eyes tight, hoping that it would soon stop, her body almost to the limits of endurance, but the rampage continued.

Richie Santoro had not gone to school that day.  He wasn’t really sick, just sick of school and felt that he needed a day off.  It was fortunate for Rachel Weems that Richie had skipped, because it was he that saved her life.  He heard the commotion on the street just after the attack started, but didn’t fully understand what was going on until he heard the horrific screams of the helpless woman now being mauled in the gutter just in front of his house. 

Thinking quickly he ran to his room, seized his favorite Louisville Slugger, and bee lined it out of the front door.  Rachel’s blood was pouring out of the wounds on her face and arms as Richie reached the scene. The snarling mutt took quite a beating before it let go of its unfortunate victim and limped wildly down the street.

Richie just stood and stared for a moment, his knuckles white from strangling the baseball bat. The reality of the bloodied lump that lay on the ground before him began to take hold.  If she was going to live she must get help quickly. Her blood was now pouring from various gashes on various parts of her body, and she would surely bleed to death soon.  It was fortunate for Rachel that Richie’s father was a dialysis patient and Richie spent a portion of each day helping him pull out the giant needles that he used in his treatment.  He knew from this experience that steady pressure must be held on a wound to stop the bleeding.

Richie raced inside, called 911, explained the situation as concisely as possible to the dispatcher, and returned to Rachel quickly with large gauze pads and rolls of surgical tape.  He folded the loose skin and muscle that had been torn away by the dog’s teeth back in place, pasting the oversized bandages to her with wide pieces of tape. He then held pressure on each of the nastier cuts until they had clotted somewhat. He continued this procedure until the screaming siren of the ambulance stopped abruptly in front of them.

Soon after Richie had turned his charge over to the swarming paramedics, Rachel lapsed into unconsciousness from massive loss of blood.  She would never get to thank Richie Santoro for saving her life. Two days after the story of his life saving deed came out in the local paper, Richie died in a car accident on route 41.  He had just turned 17 and was on his way to his birthday party.  A deer, startled into panic by the oncoming headlights, ran in front of the car in which he was a passenger.  The inexperienced driver whipped the stirring wheel too hard to the right and rolled the car several times, tossing the birthday boy clear and smashing his body to pieces. Unfortunately for Richie, none of the people that happened upon the twisted wreckage that night knew any of the techniques that he had used to save Rachel Weems’ life.  A kindly onlooker held his hand as he lapsed into unconsciousness and died.

The large fluorescent lights of the operating room awoke her briefly, as she was stitched and stapled repeatedly.  She could hear voices all around and the rushing of the army of surgeons and their various team members as they took their turns repairing the torn flesh. An unseen syringe of a cocktail of drugs was injected into her and she fell swiftly into blackness.  She was stabilized, given several different I.V. lines and sent to the intensive care unit.  For three days the snap and hiss of her ventilator was her only company, apart from frequent visits from the nursing staff.

Her head ached intensely as she began to come to her senses. Panic flushed through her when she tried to open her eyes; they would not open. A calm voice came from the right side of her bed.

“Rachel, can you hear me?” said a soothing woman’s voice.”Please don’t try and open your eyes, they have been bandaged heavily to prevent any further injury.  The doctor will be in to talk about your options soon.  Right now just try to lie back and relax.  It’s good to see you awake finally.  I have to leave you for just a minute to check another patient, but if you need anything in the mean time just press this buzzer here in your hand“, she said giving Rachel’s hand a squeeze to let her know where the button was.  She involuntary tilted her head to look, but saw nothing through the bandages.

Rachel was uneasy.  She needed to see the extent of the injuries that ached so badly all over her body.  She could feel the places where the stitches and staples kept her healing skin together, but she needed to see how badly she would be scarred.  The phrase “discuss your options” left her agitated and she knew that she had not been told the real extent of her injuries on purpose.  Dread crawled up into her hospital bed with her.

She lapsed into a light sleep; flashes of wicked bared teeth ripping at her defenseless body soon interrupted her slumber. In another hour or so her attending physician arrived, his stethoscope tinkling lightly with each footstep.  He approached Rachel delicately so as not to startle her, not sure if she knew of his presence. He positioned himself in the approximate location that the nurse had occupied earlier.

“How are you feeling Miss Weems?”, he said, trying to keep his tone light. Not really waiting for a response from her.

“The good news is we were able to get all of your wounds stitched up rather well.  There will be some scaring, but our team here is excellent at lacerations and we will do our best to keep the permanent damage to a bare minimum”, he said, his voice now pitching a bit lower.  Dread now rolled over and gave Rachel a wicked shot to the ribs.

“Our main concern, though”, he continued, his voice now increasingly grave, “is that your skull was pretty badly damaged, especially around your eyes.  We have taken some precautions to protect that area as best we can, but we can’t be sure how bad the damage is until the healing process gets further along.  We hope that there is no permanent injury, and chances are good that there won’t be, but it would be unfair of me not to inform you that your eyesight may never fully return.”

“Never fully return” echoed a dozen times in Rachel’s head.  The doctor’s further reassurances fell on deaf ears. Her skin moaned in pain as she involuntarily moved her hands to feel her eyes. They both hurt rather badly beneath the thick gauze that covered them in a bulky cocoon.  The doctor’s voice reassured her again of the small chance of blindness, but she could not shake the sinking feeling in her stomach.  Perhaps her brain was trying to tell her to prepare for the worst, because it was coming.

         After two long, agonizing weeks the final verdict was handed down to her: she had lost her eyesight almost entirely and she would more than likely never recover it.  With this terrible  news, her spirits plunged to the depths of despair.  Her life had taken a severe U turn because of a simple overturned trash can, and now things would never be the same.  She would never again see all of the beautiful things that life had to offer.  She would never again wholly appreciate the world that she was a dwindling part of. 

Although the loss of her vision was bad, the night terrors that awoke her were downright ugly.  The scenes of the day of the attack, twisted by imagination, became all consuming and worsened her mental state greatly.  Her body was slowly healing, but her psyche was running head long out of control.  Anger muddled her waking hours the same way that terror muddled her sleeping. Life to her had become combat, an all consuming battle on one emotional field or another. She was truly losing the will to keep fighting.

Sometimes people or things enter our lives from stage right and we never dream that they would have the impact on us that they later turn out to have.  Dr. Pat Lawrence, whether she intended to or not, now became a major player in the life of Rachel.  From the beginning Dr. Pat knew that, in order for Rachel to want to try to adjust to her new way of looking at the world, she would have to conquer the driving fear inside of her.  She nudged Rachel gently at first, asking her personal questions of varying degrees and patiently waited for her response. At first, Rachel had nothing to say, so she spent most of their session lost in the emptiness inside her. 

Through days, then weeks of attention, Rachel finally began to open up to her therapist. They soon began to discuss the issue of her rebuilding her trust.  She no longer could believe in what she could see with her own eyes, so she had to learn to trust on a much higher level. Humans are visual animals and we tend to take what we see as gospel, even though what we think that we see isn’t real at all. 

Dr. Pat also understood that in order to conquer fears they must be  faced directly.  You must peer into the eyes of the beast in order to truly understand it. Understanding turns to acceptance, and fear has no place anymore.  At least that was the hypothesis; it was much harder to put into actual practice.  Rachel’s fright of the animal that had done so much harm to her would be very hard to breach.  Fear had become her insulator from the world, and sometimes, people aren’t willing to give that warmth up so easily. 

The day would soon come when Rachel would be released into a world so different than the one she once knew.  Her almost daily talks with Dr. Pat were helping her immensely.  She had grown very fond of her therapist, even feeling her face for the first time to try to get an idea of what she looked like.  Not that she cared; Quasimodo’s uglier sister could be discussing her mental wellness and she wouldn’t have minded. She found the doctor’s voice soothing and reassuring and her advice was helping drive away the demons.  She wondered, however, how life would be without her, and the thought sometimes made her retreat into herself.

That day of separation finally came.  Rachel was almost totally physically healed.  The staff had done a wonderful job of repairing her face.  They had done numerous facial reconstruction; borrowing various pieces of flesh from other less seen parts of her anatomy in order to repair her once beautiful features.  Only tiny scar lines could be seen by a casual glance.  She was however, missing a finger from each hand that could not be found the day of her attack.  She got queasy every time she thought of that black beast digesting her expensive French tips.

Even her emotional outlook had improved somewhat.  She was still afraid of not knowing what was right in front of her, but she was not terrified.  Her will to keep going was improving steadily with the help of Dr. Pat. She would have to undergo many months of physical therapy and there would be many hours spent in learning how to cope with her blindness, but Rachel had never been a quitter and she was not about to start now.    The nursing staff was all there to say goodbye and give her hugs and kisses. Dr. Pat personally wheeled her out to the waiting taxi.  Her tears let go as she gave a last hug and kiss to her therapist and friend.

Suffice to say that life was very difficult for her on her own.  She had no family or friends to rely on.  A very nice young woman volunteered a couple of times per week to clean for her and do some cooking. All in all though, Rachel was leading a very lonely life.  Her weekly visits to Dr. Pat were enough to reenergize her for one day, but the other six were spent forlorn and miserable.  She never went out, she just sat by herself listening to television programs that she would never be able to see.  The light of her spirits was as dim as her eyesight.

It was on one of her weekly visits with her therapist that a terrifying suggestion was made.  Perhaps Rachel would like to adopt a companion animal to help her.  The thought of having a representative of the species that had taken her sight was too much for her to take. The very mention of a dog to help her get around sent alarms blaring in her head.  It was decided that it was too soon for her to take this huge step, but two more months of Dr. Pat’s cajoling changed her mind, and on Wednesday, she would be taken to meet her new canine helper.

The two nights before her meetings were spent in fitful intervals of sleep and waking, even culminating in a full fledged night terror the morning of the introduction.  She wasn’t entirely sure that she could go through with it. With great trepidation that she was led through the doorway of what she was told was the waiting room where she would meet her companion animal.  She could hear muffled barks and whimpers coming from unseen rooms, which cut heavily into her nerve.

Soon she heard footfalls down a hallway had sounded to be directly across from her.  As the door creaked open, Rachel could make out soft soled shoes coming toward her followed closely by the rythmic clicks of four sets of trimmed nails on the hard tile floor. 

“This is Buster, Rachel.  If you would like you can hold your hand out and the two of you can get better acquainted,” a ladies voice said, now leading the animal nearer to her.

As she slowly reached forward with her trembling fingers she touched the cool, leathery end of the dog’s nose.  At once she drew hand back, wincing a little bit at the sudden contact.  She tried again, this time going a bit slower, hesitating at the idea of touch.  She this time touched the smooth, fine fur on the top of the creature’s head. She could feel the gentle breathing and smell the sour breath of the dog as he sat down in front of her.  She then grew a bit bolder, and reached out with her other hand to caress the dog’s powerful, boxy muzzle.  It felt so nice to be this intimate with any creature, let alone one that had done her so much damage.

“Just take your time and get used to each other,” the lady now said, “Buster has been trained to help you in any way that he possibly can, and believe it or not, he will learn to lead you around, even taking you outside, if you feel like it.”

Rachel was skeptical of that statement. She may someday trust this animal enough to lead her to the door or to the bathroom, but she would never trust it to lead her out on the street where traffic and other dangers lurked.  She could not protect herself in this world so there was no way a dumb animal could defend her from it either.  She had decided after the first couple of minutes though, that she would be willing to take Buster with her after they had concluded their training together.  If she didn’t feel like he was helping her she could just return him like the Aberdeen socks Aunt Martha sent every year.

Humans are strange and wondrous creatures.  Scientists tell us that adaptation and improvisation are the reason for the rise of man as a dominant species on this planet.  I don’t believe that.  It is love that makes us what we are.  Within two weeks of meeting her four pawed partner, Rachel loved him. This love moved her to trust the eyes of an animal as a substitute for her own.  Love moved her to be led around the room by him, to be led down the hall by him, and finally out onto the street by her furry companion. Within a month, their symbiosis was complete. Rachel longed for the day when she didn’t have to leave him at the trainer and return home by herself.  The very next day, Marjory, the voice that had introduced the happy pair, would bring Buster to her to stay.

Rachel could hardly contain her excitement.  There would be another personage to share her space with, a friend that was sensitive to her every need and lived to help her.  Things in her life had changed so much that, when she took emotional stock of herself, she hardly recognized the person that she had become.  It was amazing that one of God’s lower creatures had impacted her spirits like Buster had, and had given her the will to enjoy living again.

A small house warming party was in order when Marjory brought Rachel’s new roommate, leading him proudly up the sidewalk to his new home.  The humans enjoyed cake and ice cream and Buster partied down on a medley of butcher’s trimmings purchased just for the occasion.  Soon the festivities ended, and Marjory, after accepting many thanks from Rachel, as well as a few tears, pulled the door shut behind her.

Buster adapted quickly to his surroundings, and became a superior helper to his bipedal buddy.  They took long walks together every day around the neighborhood, soon becoming a fixture at the various shops just down the street from home. Although she was pleased with her new found freedom, Rachel longed to do just one thing: she wanted to run again.  She knew that it would be dangerous, and she may even wipe out, but her desire was so strong and her faith so great in Buster that tomorrow they would try it.

She reckoned that they would have to use one of the side streets where there was less  distraction so that the both of them could concentrate better.  She figured they could head one block east and then one north and that would be a good place to try their maiden voyage.  The next day she donned a brand new jogging suit that the lady at Mike’s Sporting Goods had picked out for her.  She was even wearing her favorite pair of Adidas; the ones with the air soles, complete with faint blood stains.  She gave Buster a nice long pet, caressed his large jowls, and gave his tummy a good rubbing.  Both of them were raring to go, as the duo stepped out into the street.

Rachel’s excitement was palpable and infectious.  Buster was a spry as could be.  They paced their way over one block then up a small side street.  The pair stopped to listen. All was quiet; it was time for them to run.  Rachel started slowly at first, barely a trot by her old standards.  Her muscles soon started growling loudly, but she pushed on.  Now a little more pace, the feeling inside her rising, her spirits soaring as the two runners set the same tempo.  It was nowhere near what the old Rachel would have considered a brisk jog, but the new Rachel was on cloud nine. After all of this time, after all of the pain and bitter tears, after all that she had been through, she was finally running again.

She was so caught up in her emotion that she barely felt the leash tighten in her hand.  She had no idea that her companion had stopped abruptly and she was leaving him behind, until the slack went out of the line that she was holding.  Rachel held tight as her body was whipped down to her knees by the taut leash that she was now tangled in.  The force had pulled her backward, causing her to skid hard on the sidewalk, finally slamming her against the obvious obstruction of the curb.

She could not see that Buster was now frozen in his tracks.  His head was low and he was furiously sniffing a large, plastic trash can.  Memories of hurt and hunger flashed back to him.  The sickly sweet odor of a rotting ham bone materialized before him. His large brown eyes widened, his haunches bristled in fear.

“Buster help me, help me boy”, Rachel begged feebly from her position on the grimy street.  Buster didn’t move.

“Here Buster, that’s a good boy”, she implored once more, her voice rising as her comfort level fell.

Unlike humans, dogs have no recollections of what they once were.  They have no shame or regret for things that they might have done.  It was only a memory that had driven the husky black dog to stop. The memory of several severe blows that rained down on him from behind; the memory of a kindly soul that had taken him in and nursed him back to health; the faint recollection of Marjory and her weeks of training.  The distressed voice of his human was now calling his name, though, imploring him for help. He was willing to obey, and all that he had just remembered could now be forgotten.

He ambled to his mistress, gently licked her face, then the slight wounds on her hands and arms.  Rachel hugged him hard, tears of thanks running freely as she buried her head into his thick shoulder.

“I love you Buster”, she said, accepting his help to return to her feet, “Maybe we won’t run quite so far next time,” she purred at him as the two best friends turned for home.





         











         

         

         

         

         

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