It isn’t there, David. It never was.
David finally tries to stand, leaning heavily against the table. He takes several deep breaths and then straightens. “Maybe if I hadn’t waited…”
“That’s nonsense,” Max says. “They just would’ve done it sooner.”
“But we’ll never know that now.”
“No,” Max agrees. “We never will.”
“So much we’ll never know,” David says to no one.
Chris and Dan try to console Jaycee. It is all too much for her. Jaycee shakes them off and rushes out of the courtroom. The grief she will suffer for Cindy will be in private. David watches her go and doesn’t try to stop her. Their reconciliation, if it ever takes place, will need to be another day; David, like me, no longer has the capacity to offer comfort.
One reporter calls to David. “Mr. Colden, the animal rights groups are already calling Cindy a martyr. They say that she’ll do more for the cause dead than any decision in the case could’ve done. Can you comment?”
“Yeah, I’ll comment,” David says. “That’s a very stupid thing to say. I came here to try to save a life, not lead a cause. I failed. We all did.”
“Easy now,” Max whispers to David.
Another reporter muscles his way through. “Are you going to pursue any claim for damages against NIS?”
Max steps in front of David to answer. “You bet your ass. Defamation, false arrest, deprivation of civil rights. I assure you that this is just the beginning. We are today creating a foundation to continue Dr. Cassidy’s research, and I promise you that whoever is responsible for Cindy’s death will be writing the first donation check—one way or another.”
“Will you ask for an autopsy?” a reporter asks.
“I need some air,” David tells Max and heads for the exit.
There is nothing left for me in the courtroom. I follow David outside and onto the courthouse steps. He uses his cell phone to call Sally.
“David?” Sally’s voice carries the weight of tears.
As soon as he hears her, what is left of David’s resolve begins to crumble. “We couldn’t save her,” David says, his lips trembling and his voice starting to crack.
“I know. I saw it on television. I’m sorry. I know you did the best you could. But you need to come home now.”
“Home?”
“Yes. Skippy’s waiting for you. It’s his time.”
It takes him a moment, but then David grasps what I already
know. “It’s not supposed to be like this, Sally. What else am I supposed to learn? Hasn’t it been enough?”
“You did all you could today. But you’re needed here now. We need you. And as soon as possible. You understand?”
David gets home impossibly fast.
I see him as the front door bangs open—eyes red, tie pulled open, hair windblown, and clothes as wrinkled as if he had slept in them. For one last time, David looks to me like a little boy coming home after prep school, his uniform dirtied from a fight or a game of football.
The first thing David sees when he runs into the house is Skippy’s little pointed black face as Clifford holds him over his shoulder. Skippy’s eyes are narrowed in pain. A catheter runs from his foreleg. Clifford paces, his eyes open but distant. Sally matches her son stride for stride, trying to be in his world. Joshua sits nearby, his head down and his hands folded in his lap. I wonder if this, finally, is what Joshua looks like in prayer.
“He just went down fast today,” Sally tells David. “We were watching coverage of the trial on Court TV and then he just started struggling to breathe.”
“I gave him something to ease his breathing for now,” Joshua adds, “but…” He just shakes his head. “He’s finally giving up. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” David says. “Can I hold him, Cliff?”
Clifford finally acknowledges David. Their eyes meet, and Clifford holds David’s pleading gaze for a few moments. Tears slowly roll down the boy’s face as he nods. “He wanted to wait for you, for you to say good-bye this time.”
David gently takes Skippy from Clifford and buries his face in the deep black fur at Skippy’s neck, the place where he smells like autumn. “We won’t let him suffer,” he says and then lifts Skippy so they are now eye-to-eye. “You’re almost home.” Turning to Joshua, David says, “Okay, what do I do?”
“It’s just an injection into the IV catheter,” Joshua replies as he gets the materials ready. “Then it’ll only be a few seconds. No pain.”
“Can I hold him while you do it?” David asks Joshua.
“Of course.”
David takes Clifford’s hand in his and turns to Sally. “I want you both to sit with me.” Sally nods because she doesn’t trust herself to speak.
David slowly lowers himself on the couch with Skippy on his lap. Sally and Clifford join him. When I look into Clifford’s eyes again, I’m startled to see love and peace and hope and trust and a thousand other emotions that I thought had abandoned me forever in the courtroom.
Bernie and Chip quietly approach the couch with their tails lowered. Chip nuzzles Skippy, who strains to lift his head. Bernie lies down on the floor next to David’s legs and whines.
“After you left,” Sally says about the two big dogs, “they spent the whole day near him. They know.”
“So they won’t just wonder where he went, like with…?” David can’t finish.
Clifford gently puts his head on Skippy’s chest and closes his eyes. “They’ll know,” Clifford says. “They always did.” Words come out of Clifford’s mouth, but I’m no longer certain they’re his. “I’m ready now,” he says.
David gently rubs Skippy’s ears and then leans over to one of
them and whispers, “And on cool summer evenings we will sit among the trees and flowers and look for fairies in the moonlight.” I know he is speaking to me. I know he is speaking to Skippy.
“I loved every moment,” Clifford says for both of us.
Joshua, holding two syringes, gets on his knees next to Clifford. Joshua inserts a sedative into the catheter and presses the plunger. Skippy almost instantly relaxes in David’s arms. “Are you ready? It’ll only take a few seconds.” Joshua is crying, too, and his hand shakes.
David kisses Skippy on the head. “When you see Helena, you tell her I said good-bye. And you tell her… tell her that she was right; I can hear them.”
“It all mattered, you know? Each one,” Clifford says finally and then becomes still.
Joshua inserts the second needle in the catheter and takes a deep breath. Just before Joshua depresses the plunger, David gently moves his hand away from the syringe. “This is for me to do,” David tells him and pushes the plunger until nothing is left. By the time the syringe is emptied, Skippy is limp in David’s lap.
Thank you, my love. Thank you.
Joshua feels Skippy’s chest. His heart is still. “He’s gone.”
Sally throws her arms around David and her son. David at last gives in—to me, to Skippy, to Cindy, to the trial, to love, and to memory—and the sobs rack him and make his teeth chatter. “Oh, damn,” he weeps.
Clifford rises and leaves the room. When he returns a moment later, he is carrying my Remembrance Album and a photograph. The photo is that one of me carrying Skippy through the New Hampshire woods.
Clifford takes a seat on the floor next to David and his mother.
He finds an empty page at the back of the album and inserts the photo. As he does this, he repeats my words: “On the pages within are those who came before; those who shared their lives with us all too briefly. These are the lives we honor. These are our beloved angels who have returned to God.”
When the boy finishes, I no longer see David, Clifford, Sally, and Joshua as distinct entities. Instead, they appear to be one integrated whole. They’ve connected to form something entirely new—better than what they were before—in some ways that are measurable and in some ways that are not.
The death of one little black dog has brought them all together. And before that, a chimpanzee named Cindy brought David and Jaycee together; and before that a horse named Arthur brought David and Sally together; and before that a kitten named Tiny Pete brought Sally and Joshua together; and before that a cat named Smokey brought me and Martha, and then Martha and David together; and before that a chimpanzee named Charlie brought Jaycee and me together.
And a lifetime ago, in the middle of a dark and nearly deserted road, a deer pleading for a quick and painless death brought David and me together.
Jaycee had said that communication is merely the transfer of information in a way that has meaning to the recipient. It doesn’t need to be spoken in words or even said out loud; it just needs to mean something. That deer in its last moments spoke to me and David just as clearly and just as deeply as Cindy spoke to me. The language was different, but not the strength of the voice.
They all spoke to me. And they all spoke in a way that mattered—a way that actually moved and changed me.
Watching Sally, David, Clifford, and Joshua so willingly share
their grief and love, the pieces finally do make sense. I’ve been so foolish, running through the forest searching for some profound and eclipsing life meaning when it is the trees themselves that were bejeweled the whole time: Skippy, Brutus, Arthur, Alice, Chip, Bernie, Smokey, Prince, Collette, Charlie, Cindy, hundreds of cats, dogs, and other creatures whom I treated, made better, eased into death, or simply had the privilege to know. Each was worthy in his or her own right of being valued, each was instrumental in connecting us and then moving us onward in our own lives, and each gave much more than he or she got in return.
Clifford was right: Each one mattered. I was better for knowing any of them and blessed to have known all of them. I think I helped, but I know with absolute certainty that I cared.
I’m not empty-handed. I cared.
That is meaning enough.
I
t’s been seven years since I last saw David. I want to look upon his face again one final time.
When I find him, he is walking down a wooded path next to a large black dog. The dog is unfamiliar to me. Seven years is a long time in the life of a family.
I immediately see that the dog suffers from a bad case of hip dysplasia, meaning that its hips do not sit properly within their sockets. The dog walks with its hips pressed against David’s legs for support. As a result, David and the dog must walk at exactly the same pace, one leaning against the other, which they do with great familiarity.
The two reach the end of the path and soon come to a small house. They climb the few steps to the front door. Next to the front door, a simple wooden sign reads:
DR. JOSHUA MARKS, DVM
DR. SALLY HANSON, DVM
David smiles at the sign, and his entire face lights up. I smile, too.
David and the dog enter what appears to be a veterinarian’s office. Posters on the walls describe the benefits of heartworm prevention and canine oral hygiene. Four cats—one of whom appears to be an adult version of Tiny Pete—are nestled lazily together in a bay window.
A cheerful young woman, the office receptionist, says, “You’re back early. How’d the conference go?”
“Good. We found a chimpanzee who tested at the level of a five-year-old. It looks like we finally may be ready to bring an action on a civil rights theory.”
“Finally, a chimpanzee as a plaintiff. I really never thought it would happen.”
“You need a little less head and a little more heart,” David tells her with a smile.
Their conversation is interrupted by a stern voice coming from a room behind the reception desk. The voice unmistakably is Sally’s. “Follow me on this one, okay?” Sally tells some unknown subject. “How would you feel if you were vomiting continuously for three days and nobody seemed to notice? I mean, that’s just stupid! And you are not a stupid man, are you?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Hanson,” the unidentified man answers. “You’re right. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” Sally says. “I’m not the one who’s been sick.”
“I’m sorry, Bandit,” the client says.
“Okay then. You sit right there. I’m going to take some blood.”
The receptionist shakes her head in disbelief. “I continue to be amazed that her clients come back.”
“People put up with a lot when you truly care about their animals.”
Sally steps out of her exam room with a pug in tow. She sees David and runs over to hug him. “Damn, you’ve been gone a while.”
“Miss me?”
“Yeah, but Joshua’s really been pouting for the last two weeks without you. Take him with you next time, will you?”
“I would, but he can’t bear to leave you.”
“I know he paid you to say that. I’ve got to get back to work, but come by for dinner tonight? Clifford wants you to look over his college application essay.”
“I’ll be there,” David says.
David walks to the rear of the office and stops so his dog can catch up. When the two are side by side again, they continue forward.
David and his dog come to a huge wall mural.
The mural has been painted in exquisite detail: Cindy, holding her doll, and with a book open in her lap, sits in the middle of a circle composed of humans and animals, including Skippy, Bernie, Chip, Collette, Arthur, Alice, a large stag deer, me, David, Joshua, and Sally. Cindy appears to be reading to us and we are all listening intently. The book she is reading from is
Ethical and Religious Implications of Primate Vivisection
by Stuart Ross. I know just from looking at it that this is Clifford’s work and his vision. I can guess the passage Cindy is reading.
David smiles at the mural in a sad and knowing way as he passes it. I’m betting that he has the same smile every time he walks past.
Finally, David and his dog come to the back door of the clinic. Behind that door I can hear children laughing and a dog’s playful barking.
David swings the door open to reveal a large grassy field enclosed by a picket fence. In the field, a dozen dogs of different
breeds and sizes play with each other and humans of various ages. Several of the people seem to know David; they wave to him, and he answers in kind.
A small rubber ball crosses David’s path, and a border collie chases it. A young girl of no more than eight runs after the dog. She stops in front of David so he can pick her up and swing her in the air. The girl throws her head back in laughter. David gently places her on the ground and she continues running after the dog almost without missing a step. Through all of this, David’s dog stands proudly by his side.