Narrator/Character Voice (28:40)
Clementine Carmelita Dog, a middle aged dachshund with a short haired, caramel colored coat, scurried along a path, nervously veering from one side to the other, stopping to lower her nose to the ground to catch the traces of human footwear, a whiff of rubber, an even fainter residue of shoe leather, smells that formed a vague pattern of hikers in the past. Some had probably walked through that part of the woods long ago. She lifted her nose and let it flare to catch the wind from the north, and in it she detected the familiar scent of river water after it had passed through trees and over rock, a delightful and under other circumstances, soothing smell that in the past had arrived to her in the house when her person, Norman, opened the windows. The wind was stirring the trees, modeling the sunlight, and she tweezed it apart to find his scent, or even her own scent, which she lost track of in her burst of freedom. But all she caught was a raccoon she knew and a whiff of bacon frying in some faraway kitchen. So she put her nose down and continued north again, following an even narrower path. Then she paused for a moment and lifted her head and twitched her ears to listen for a whistle or the sound of her own name, Clementine. In Norman's distinctive pitch, all she heard was the rustle of leaves, the call of birds. How had she gotten into this predicament, her belly low to the ground, lost in a forest? That morning Norman had jiggled the leash over her head, a delightful sound, and asked her if she wanted to go for a walk, as if she needed to be asked and looked down as she danced and wagged and rushed to the back door to scratch and bark at the door. She had sniffed at the crack where the outside air slipped in and as she had many times before, caught the smell that would never leave the house, the mix of patchouli and ginger that was Claire. She was still Claire's dog. In the scent was a memory of being lifted into arms and nuzzled and kissed the waxy lipstick, and then other memories of being on the floor, rolling around, and then the stark, earthy smell that she'd noticed one day near Claire's armpit, a scent she knew from an old friend, a lumbering, gray furred beast who was often tied up outside the coffee shop in town. It was the smell of death. Claire got that smell seeping up through her skin. It became stronger and appeared in other places until she began sleeping downstairs in the living room in a bed that moaned loudly when it moved, and there were days on that bed, sleeping in the sun, at her feet or in her arms, and then, in the strange way of humans, she disappeared completely. When Claire was gone, Norman began to give off his own sad odor of metal and salt, and Clementine did everything she could to make him happy, grabbing his bald socks out of the laundry pile and tossing them in the air, rolling to expose her belly when he approached, leaning against him as he read on the couch until she began to carry her own grief. This morning he dangled the leash, and while she was waiting at the back door he'd gone to the kitchen and got a tool from a drawer, an oil and saltpeter thing that made a frightening sound. Clementine knew, because once he had taken her along to shoot it upstate. Don't get me wrong, she knew it was a gun, but she didn't have a name for it. It was an object that had frightened her. The thing was zipped into his bag when he came to the door. He stood with his hand on the handle, and she waited while he looked at the kitchen for a few seconds, minutes in dog time, and then she was pulling at the leash, feeling the fresh air and the sun and the morning dew as she guided him along the road, deep in rock routine, barely bothering with the roadside odors, to the entrance of the park. On that main path that morning, with the water to the right and the woods to the left, there had been the usual familiar dogs, some passing with their noses to the ground snobbishly, others barking a greeting. There had been an old Irish setter, Franklin, who had passed her with a nod and then a fellow dachshund named Bunny, who had also passed without much of a greeting. And then finally Piper, an elderly retired greyhound who had stopped to say hello while his person and Norman spoke in subdued voices. She got the tone of sadness, picked up on it, and then when the talk was over, Norman had pulled her away from Piper and they continued up the path until they came upon a small, nameless mixed breed mutt who launched unprovoked into a crazy tail chasing routine in the middle of the path, a dervish stirring up the dust in a way that made Clementine step away and pull on the leash. Because it is a fact that there is just as much nonsense in the dog world as there is in the human world. Sitting now on the rocky ground, resting, she lifted her nose to the wind and caught the smell of a bear in a cloak of limestone dust from the quarry, and inside that same cloak was the raccoon she knew, the one that had rummaged around Norman's garbage cans. And then, of course, deer. They were everywhere. Lacking anything better to do, she put her nose down and began to follow deer traces along the rocks and into the grass, a single file line of hooves that led to a grove of pines where they had scattered, broken in all directions, and at this spot she cried softly and hunched down, feeling for the first time what might in human terms be called fear, but was manifested instinctually as a riffle along her spine that ran through the same fibers that raised her hackles, and then for a second smelling pine SAP, she closed her eyes and saw the basement workshop where she sometimes stood and watched Norman until one of his machines made a sound that hurt her ears and sent her scurrying up the stairs. Since Claire had disappeared, Norman left the house in the morning only to return at night in the dark to pour dry, kibble that senseless food into her dish and splash water into her drinking bowl. Behind his door the television droned, and maybe on the way out of the house the next morning, he might reach down and ruffle her head and say, I'm sorry, girl, I'm not such great company these days, as she opened her eyes, stood up, and began walking. These memories were like wind against her fur, telling her where she should be instead of where she was at that moment, moving north through the trees. The sun had disappeared behind the cliffs and dark shadows spread across the river and the wind began to gust, bringing geese and scrub grass, tundra and stone wrapped in a shroud from beyond the Arctic Circle, an icy underscent that foretold the brutality of missing vegetation. It was a smell that got animals foraging and eating, and it made her belly tense. Here I should stress that dog memory is not at all like human memory, and that human memory, from a dog's point of view, would seem strange, clunky, unnatural, and deceptive. Dog memory isn't constructed along temporal lines gridded out along a distorted timeline, but rather in an overlapping and of course deeply olfactory manner, like a fanned out deck of cards, perhaps, except that the overlapping areas aren't hidden but are instead more intense, so that the quick flash of a squirrel in the corner of the yard or the crisp sound of a bag of kibble being shaken can overlap with the single recognizable bark of a schnauzer from a few blocks away on a moonlit night. In this account, as much as possible, dog has been translated into human, and like any such translation, the human version is a thin, feeble approximation of what transpired in Clementine's mind as she stood in the woods, crying and hungry, old sensations overlapping with new ones, the different sounds that Norman's steps had made that morning, the odd sway of his gait and the beautiful smell of a clump of onion grass, her favorite thing in the world, as she deliriously sniffed and sneezed, storing the smell in the chambers of her nose for later examination while Norman waited with unusual patience. That smell of onion grass was the last thing she could remember again in that overlapping way, along with a small herd of deer who that morning had been a few yards away in the woods, giving off a funk and the sudden freedom around her neck when Norman unharnessed her and took the leash and she darted up into the woods, running past the place where the deer had been and on the way catching sight of the rabbit for the first time, chasing it while feeling herself inside a familiar dynamic that worked like this. He would let her go and she'd feel the freedom around her neck, running, and then at some point he would call her name, or, if that didn't work, whistle to bring her back each time she'd bound and leap and tear up the hillside, and then when he called she'd find herself between two states, the desire to keep going and the desire to return to Norman, and each time she'd keep running until he called her name again or whistled, then she'd retrace her own scent to find her way back to him. It was true that since Claire had disappeared the sound of his whistle had grown slack, lower in tone, but he always whistled, and when she returned There was always a flash of joy at the reunion. Not long ago he'd swept her into his arms and smothered her with his blessing, saying, good girl, good girl. What did you find up there? Then, with great ceremony, he rolled her up into his arms, kissed her, and plucked a bur from her coat. Yes. In the morning light, she'd caught sight of a cottontail, flash of white in the trees, and then giving chase, barking as she ran, followed it into the brush until she came to it in a clearing, brown, with a white tail, ears straight up, frozen in place, offering a pure but confusing temptation. There they stood, the two of them. His big eyes stared into her big eyes. The rabbit darted sharply and Clementine was running with the grass thrashing her belly, and then faster with all four paws leaving the ground, each stretched out, bound. There was nothing like those bounds slowed down in dog time. It was sublime joy, the haunches tightening, spreading out and then coiling. She could feel the sensation as the rabbit zigzagged at sharp angles and at some point dashed over a creek while she followed, leaping over the water to the other side, where, just as fast as it had appeared, the rabbit vanished, finding a cove or a warren hole in the rocks at the bottom of the palisade, leaving her with a wagging tail and a wet nose and lost for the first time in her life. Now she was alone in the dark, making a bed in the pine needles, circling a few times, and then lowering her nose on her paws, doing her best to stay awake while the cool air fell onto her back. Out of habit, she got up and circled again in place and then lay down, keeping her eyes open, twitching her eyebrows, closing them and then opening them until she was in the room with Norman, who was at his desk working. Claire was there, reaching down and digging her thumb into a sweet spot where the fur gave around her neck. The tapping arrived in morning light. It came from a stick against the forest floor. The man holding the stick was tall and lean, with a small blue cap on his head. Hey, good dog. Good doggy. What are you doing out here? You lost? The flat of his palm offered something like coconut, wheat flour, hemp, and an underscent, the appealing smell of spicy meat. The man picked her up gently and carried her. How long you been up here? What's your name, girl? Across the ridge of stones, through the woods to a wider path under big trees, and then down over several large stones to the beach where he smoked and poured some water into a cup and laughed as she lapped it up, twirling her tongue into her mouth. In his hand was a piece of meat, spicy and sweet as she gulped it down and then another, tossed lightly so that she could take it out of the air, not chewing it all, swallowing it whole. That was all it took. One bit of spicy meat, and she reconfigured her relationship with the human. She felt this in her body, in her haunches, her tail, and the taste of the meat in the back of her throat. But again, it wasn't so simple. Again, this is only a translation, as close as one can get in human terms to her thinking at this moment, after the feeling of the cold water on her tongue and the taste of meat. One or two bits of meat aren't enough to establish a relationship. Yes, the moment the meat hit her mouth, a new dynamic was established between this unknown person and herself. But to put it in human terms, there was simply the potential in the taste of meat for future tastes of meat. The human concept of trust had in no way entered the dynamic yet, and she remained ready to snap at this strange man's hand, to growl, or even if necessary, to growl and snap and raise her hackles and make a run for it. Human trust was careless and quick, often based on silly in canine terms, externals, full of the folly of human emotion. This is as good a place as any to note that through all of her adventures, from the early morning walk to the path to the long trek through the woods and the night and the pine needles, Clementine did not once hear the loud report of a gun. Of course, she wasn't anticipating the sound. Once the gun was in Norman's bag, it was gone from her mind completely. Naturally, it wasn't some kind of Jacovian device that would have to at some point go off. The man picked her up from the sand, brushed her paws clean. It's gonna be okay. Where do you live? And carried her to the main trail. The sway of his arms made her eyes close. When she opened them, they were on a road and the limestone dust was strong and there was a near at hand bacon smell coming from a house. He put her down, let her clamber down a small cinder block stairway and through a door and into his house. In a charged emotional state, Clementine poked around the strange rooms, sniffing the corners eagerly, reconnoitering a dusty stuffed seal under a crib in a room upstairs, eatable crumbs under a bed, a cinnamon candle near a side table, a long row of records, all the while missing the freedom she had experienced in the woods. Bounding through the trees, the harness gone, and beneath that, a feeling that Norman, somewhere outside, was still calling her name or whistling. That day, Clementine came to understand that the man's name was Steve. Later in the afternoon, a woman named Louisa arrived and spoke a different language. No words like Sid or walk or good dog or hungry, to which she paid close attention, partly because Louisa had smelled similar to Claire's, gingery and floral, with a faint, verdant, bready odor that Clementine felt. This, in her dog way, united them in a special way. There was also the way Louisa rubbed her neck gently and then more firmly, using her thumb as she leaned down and said, what should we call you? And then went through many beautiful words until she settled on Carmelita. Carmelita, she said. Carmelita. Even in her excitement over her new home, Carmelita was experiencing a form of grief particular to her species. There are 57 varieties of dog grief, just as there are, from a dog's point of view, 110 distinctive varieties of human grief, ranging from a vague gloom of Sunday afternoon sadness, for example, to the intense, peppery lost father grief to the grief she was smelling in this new house, which was a lost child or lost pup type of grief, patches of which could be found in the kitchen, around the cabinets, near the sink, and all over the person named Luisa. It was on the toys upstairs, too, and as she sniffed around, she gathered pieces together and incorporated them into. Into her own mood. Days passed, weeks passed. Carmelita settled into her new life. Some days Luisa was in the house, moving around, sitting at the table with the smell of green stuff, dangling a bag of it in front of Carmelita's nose so she could sniff and open her mouth and gently clasp. She had learned not to bite the bags. In the evenings they ate at the table in candlelight and talked about someone named Carmen. Each time the word appeared, the smell of grief would fill the room. The scent was all over the house in different variations. She even found it on the thing that Steve carried when he left the house in the morning, a leather satchel with a bouquet of iron and steel, clinking when he hefted it up. So long, Carmelita. See you after work. Gotta go build something. An object always worth examining when he came back to the house because it carried an interesting array of distant places and other humans. Sometimes they took her for a walk to the woods or down the road, past the stone quarry to a park where children played and the other dogs hung out. She became friendly with the dogs there, and they exchanged scents and greetings. Winter came, snow fell. The ice smell from the north became the smell outside. When Carmelita went out in the evening, her belly brushing the snow, she kept to the path and did her business quickly, stopping only for a moment to taste the air. Then she dashed back to Steve in the doorway, the warmth of the house pouring around him into the cold blue. One morning there was another presence in the house. A small thump in Luisa's belly, a movement. Carmelita put her head down and listened, hearing a white liquid fury along with a thump, while her tongue, licking and licking Luisa's skin, tasted the tangy salt of new life. That night she woke in darkness, the moon gone, no moon at all, to the sound of a raccoon crying.
