Where Are You? Here I Am, Here
/Rebecca Meacham
My German Shepherd waits in my front yard. This is unexpected. We killed our German
Shepherd a month ago.
Scarlet? I call. She’s doing that German Shepherd smiling thing you see in dog food ads.
Our German Shepherd wags. Her coat is black and tan and shining—it’s all grown back
—and she runs the way she did when she was alive: a creature too big for the human world, a
horse let loose in pasture.
Now my German Shepherd bounds to the backyard, to the woods full of the turkeys and
deer. When our dog was alive, turkeys were fun: my husband and I would stand at the patio door,
watching them mince their globed, slow way across the grass, and she’d stand beside us, tensed.
Ready? we’d ask. We’d open the door.
And our German Shepherd would bolt.
Turkeys can fly, even the young ones. They rise in an indignant, gobbling flurry, like
airless balloons, until they wobble to a branch. There, they cluck a quiet rollcall: Where-are-
you?-here-I-am-here.
In the month since we had our dog killed, the turkeys stroll the yard like, well, cocks of
the walk. The deer spindle towards our hostas, but we know it isn’t right.
Now my German Shepherd wants to play. She’s found her orange ball, the one we can’t
yet throw away. She trots past the memorial stone our kids made, working through their stunned
grief, embracing our lies (She got really sick while you were at school, we couldn’t make her
better), gluing on each glass letter: SCARLET.
When she was alive, we had to coax the ball from her jaws. She never dropped on
command, even at the end. Her obedience was selective—you could call it considered. She
chased the ball and kept it, awaiting your negotiation.
Scarlet, I call. She lies in the grass with the orange ball. Just like always, she waits for us
to go to her.
Such a dick move, my husband would say, going to her.
We would always go to her.
With our daughters, the exchange was play: they’d tug the ball together and she’d drag
along with it, a larky, choo-choo, tug-of-war. My husband, whom we called Pack Leader,
simply yanked. I did whatever worked. Usually, I placed my fingers inside her calf-soft lip and
pressed the ball away from her fangs: a modest, almost tender, extraction.
Not long before this, as a giant puppy, her teeth bruised the entire length of my arms in a
battle for dominance. She weighed as much as I did. We were equally committed. I raged,
consulted trainers, nearly returned her to the breeder—until I figured out a way to love her, and
she agreed to love me back.
It helped that we could tame her willfulness just by scratching her back.
Soon my hands knew her skin better than my children’s. It became exhausting, checking
for sores, shaving fur, rubbing salves on her raw-meat paws. Nothing quelled. I knelt and washed
her feet like a penitent. I am sorry for for your hungers for your wounds your sores your
miserable skin your endless, maddening itch, I whispered into her ears—ears the size of other
animals’ heads—before dosing them, shoving pills down her throat, stabbing her with syringes,
leashing her for another another another another vet trip, across town, across the state, until she
stopped following simple commands, this once-brilliant, still-giant German Shepherd of ours.
Forgive us.
We do not feel forgivable. Because last month, my husband, a man so loyal he keeps
receipts from 1999, said, It’s time. It was a school day. We’d tell the kids after. In the waiting
room, un-coned for the first time in months, she was gorgeous—a movie-star dog, drawing fans.
She’s beautiful! a woman said, because of course a four-year-old German Shepherd is vibrant,
alive. How could it be otherwise? The woman was the kind of person who rehabilitated blighted
orphaned dogs. We waited to murder our young allergic pet. We wept behind our sunglasses.
It wasn’t like when we took our 19-year-old cat, already half-gone. It wasn’t like taking
our pound-dog legend, named for a Grateful Dead song, grown stiff with tumors. Those pets
were put to rest, and you could say “put to rest” because they were doomed. No, a young, strong
dog will fight her death. We held her close and I couldn’t help but root for her. Hell yes, you
should live! I thought, killing her. Afterward, we couldn’t stop trying to make her comfortable. I
called through the door, Could someone keep her company, just keep her company, please? Two
vet techs carried a man-sized stretcher like medics from a war movie. We consigned her ashes to
a community garden.
A month later, my husband wonders if he’s a monster. Our friends say we’re “brave.”
Our kids are ready for a new dog, maybe a border collie, a breed you can dress up—it’s hard to
find Christmas sweaters in dog-size XXXL, although we did and she wore them all. Our kids are
ready for any dog that’s not allergic to grass, or leaves, or mice, or wool, or human skin, or every
kind of food.
But I don’t feel brave, and I don’t feel like a monster. I like dreaming of a dog we can
take on trips and give an easy life, of pleasure.
I’m dreaming now, in fact.
In this dream, I can finally walk out the patio door, into the yard, alone—even though it’s
the kind of yard a giant dog is supposed to bound through, giving chase.
All the snowballs of our winters hang in mid-air, waiting to be caught.
Now, my German Shepherd, my beautiful girl, lifts her head.
I open the door and ask...myself, I guess, Ready?
Neither of us moves.
My German Shepherd doesn’t come to me. I don’t go to her.
We stay like this, listening to turkeys in the trees.
Where are you?
Here I am.
Here.
Author’s Note: The thing about a family dog is they're everywhere: underfoot, on the landing, stretched across your beds, sneaking onto your couches, blocking the doorways from your cats, chasing deer and turkeys through your yard, hoovering poptart crumbs under your tables, barking at snowmen, rolling like a horse on new-mown grass, watching crows as you play guitar or ride bikes or read in the driveway. So it's not just your heart; it's your world that breaks when your family dog is gone. After we put our dog to sleep, I couldn't imagine these spaces without her— especially our backyard. I’d open the door and freeze. One night, I dreamt Scarlet was outside waiting for me, so I wrote this story. Eventually, in real life, I made it through that door as well.
Rebecca Meacham is the author of two award-winning fiction collections. Her hybrid chapbook, Feather Rousing, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press, and recent work has appeared in Best Microfiction 2021, Hobart, and Wigleaf. Her prose has been set to music, translated into Polish, and carved into woodblocks and letter-pressed by steamroller. She is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where she is the founder of The Teaching Press and Director of the BFA in Writing and Applied Arts. Read more at http://rebeccameachamwriter.com.
