A Bath of Warm Salt

Dog 32 at the Muskingum County Dog Shelter is an unusual creature. Her name is “Emily” and she doesn’t bark, according to record. The index card cabled to the front of her cage states only basic facts that they know of her. She is a female, medium sized, lab-huskie mix, blue eyes, great with kids, other animals, unknown with cats, age approximately two years, followed by an ambiguous question mark after the typed word: Origin. The rest is up to the imagination and what has already been stated is not guaranteed to be accurate. Regardless, Emily pressed her chocolate fur face against the tyranny of the chain-link fence in her inadequate portion of a hot concrete slab. I was immediately and profoundly taken in such a way that I have heard that people fall in love with other people on subways or planes, or across crowded bars, or coffee shops.

My girlfriend left me two weeks ago, officially, for an amateur golfer named Roy who did everything well but putt. He was an abhorrent putter but that is neither here nor there. Two years ago, in this same dreadful month of May, my wife left me for a professional bowler who we met at a bowling alley where we played in an adult league. Our team name was The Cornballs and he, Dirk Bennett, was drinking beer and signing autographs at a table near the entrance. He wrote a book about bowling. An autobiography of sorts. My wife went back for a second autograph “for her mother,” she said, and I never saw her or Dirk Bennett again. What’s more, for the rest of the match our team had to forfeit her turns and thus we lost by the slimmest of margins in the semi-final tournament match to our arch rivals, the hated Birddogs. I didn’t bowl particularly well after she left, but at least I had the decency to stick around. I refuse to call golfing or bowling sports anymore. And every time I see a bowling pin or a golf ball or club I get physically ill.

I am a corrections officer at a prison in Southeastern Ohio for geriatric men. Most of them are sex offenders and the ones that aren’t look like they are and did something nearly as egregious like arson, murder, or sex with an animal of some kind. There is an inmate who raped over forty farm animals, and according to his own omission, has a strong preference for sheep. The other inmates call him “Wooly.” Another can’t keep his hands off poodles. I read an actual study that said that of all dogs, adult men find poodles to be the most attractive. Adult women prefer German shepherds. There were no poodles in the dog shelter, or German shepherds.

Dog 32, Emily, gave me a look that cannot be described in the simplicity of words. She had pale blue eyes and dark-chocolate colored fur twirled in tufts. “Thirty two,” I said to the lady at the front counter through a glass window. I wonder why there is a glass window at the dog shelter. She was about to burst out of her tan uniform that was immorally too tight. There was a black badge on her right arm in the shape of a shield with the head of a German shepherd and in yellow words “Muskingum County” above his head and “Dog Shelter” below it. I wondered if she was aroused by that dog. Her name was Lorraine and it was written on a gold name badge which was pinned to one of her mountainous boobs. I couldn’t imagine her having sex with anyone but she had a wedding band around her finger.

“Thirty two?” she repeated. “Oh, good dog that one. Emily, her name. Came with a tag that said her name right on it. Wandered right up here one afternoon, in March, I think. Right around my birthday. Smart dog, her.” I spaced out as she shuffled through the necessary paperwork. She made a few copies and stamped a few things and signed this and that robotically. Her arms seemed to be moving from rhythm rather than in service to her brain which was soaked in White Rain hairspray which supported her bushel of bangs and yellow frizzed-back hair. Following losing my girlfriend to Roy, the amateur golfer, I gave up and called the employee assistance program number on the bulletin board in the break room at the prison. In the picture, on an 8x10 piece of blood red paper, there was a computer-generated stick man who looked like the most miserable stick man in the Universe. If there was a way for him to slit his wrists or hang himself he probably would have already. “Down in the Dumps like Dave? Do what Dave did and dial the EAP hotline...” Dave was that stick figure. Presumably, alliteration motivates people. They offer an EAP so in case someone comes in with an AK-47 and blows everyone to smithereens they are less likely to be held liable civilly by the victims’ families.

My first appointment with Dr. Helen Mueller of the Muskingum County Wellness Center went so-so. Dr. Mueller, who asked me to please call her Helen, was a pretty woman not much older than me which depressed me from the start. Anytime I meet someone my age that holds a professional occupation I am jealous and depressed by their success and by the fact that I watch locked up old men jerk-off to memories of children on the night shift for thirteen an hour. She makes thirteen in three minutes.

Dr. Mueller, or Helen, advised me over the course of six weeks to read poetry. She gave me a book of poetry and advised me to get others on my own. She wrote me a fake prescription for poetry books which amused me and I went to the library but did not amuse the old librarian when I handed it to her expecting her to get the joke. I chose my own books and promised I would read them though I had never read a poem in my life, besides Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven in fifth grade on Halloween. It was perhaps the worst telling because I had a terrible stuttering problem until I was sixteen. Helen also told me that I should adopt a dog to establish a relationship with another creature. I had never owned a dog before, or any pet for that matter. “Part of the problem,” she said, “is that you’ve never established a dependable relationship. Start with a dog, Jim. Go from there."

“What if I don’t like dogs?”

“Do you not like dogs?”

“No. I do.”

“You shouldn’t deal in hypotheticals.”

“Well, I am rather fond of dogs. But what if I don’t like the dog I choose? What’s more, what if it doesn’t like me?”

“Jim, you have a defeatist’s mentality,” Helen smiled empathetically. “And you mustn’t think of the dog as an ‘it.’ It is a ‘he’ or a ‘she.’”

“On four legs...”

“Yes,” she smiled. “I expect you to make some progress in searching for a dog and report back to me next week.” In her office on the desk behind her was a picture of Helen and a dog at some state park. On a shelf there was a gold St. Bernard book-end and on the wall was a painting of two border collies in a bright green field herding sheep. In a cylindrical brass bin by the door was an engorged pink umbrella with a black poodle print. She mentioned the painting once before saying that it replaced “Dogs Playing Poker,” which she thought was too bachelor for her office.

So at the request of Helen, here I am on a Friday afternoon. The scurvy-looking workers wash the excrement out of the kennels with power-hoses that make terribly frightening sounds with the echo of the large metal building. I can’t imagine how they must sound to the dogs. They look like people on early release. One bleach blonde wears tight cut-off jeans exposing two scabby stick legs with skull, snake and heart tattoos scattered about them with no symmetry, inked down her dreadful bruised legs. She scowled at me for a moment as I stood in the aisle between two rows of miserable cages with a mix of either anxious or fearful dogs. Some shied away as I approached; others pressed their faces to the chain-link fence. Then she told me with a course call that would make any witch jealous, “might wanna git out of da way before da shit wershes up on those purdy pants, buster.” Her mouth looked like a haunted house where things went to die.

Another girl in no better condition, a heavy brunette with the back of her head shaved, was in one of the kennels smoking a cigarette cursing at an old dirty white scurvy-looking dog that was doing his best to avoid the beast. I believe he was some mutated cocker spaniel. The poor thing was elderly and it was this woman’s assignment to escort dogs to the euthanasia room where ones that have been in custody for more than ninety days are taken and “put to sleep.” There are no phone calls to save them, no organizations filing last-minute appeals, and they are guilty of no heinous crimes against humanity, bar the audacity of being born. What a sad way to go, to be escorted by a fat, ugly parolee or community service wretch who was anything but kind and who was indifferent to all but her cigarette and a cell phone which she curses periodically as her fat undeserving thumbs pound the keypad. She puts the hoop of a large stick around the poor dog’s neck and cinches it tight with a ham-fist and they disappear down the hall through a door that says: Staff Only.

I paid a fifty dollar licensing fee and signed a form and Emily became mine, or I became hers, whichever. Lorraine wished us well and gave me a receipt and a free pink collar which was cheap so I threw it away in the trash can outside of the door. Lorraine said that Emily had been there for eighty-two days so in eight more she would have been “put down.” “Put down” or “put to sleep” they say. Such delicate phrases. My Emily would suffer no such fate. I took her to the pet store and bought her expensive food, shampoo and a brand-new collar. One with imitation diamonds and elastic underlay for added comfort. Then we went to the engravers and had a metal tag specially done for her.

Helen was pleased I had taken a dog. I brought pictures. But there was more to Emily than what appeared. I tried to explain it rationally to Dr. Mueller but it didn’t come out right and she looked at me like I was delusional. While I waited in the lobby of the veterinarian’s office for Emily to have her shots (to have a chance to talk to a pretty receptionist named Ashley), I casually read a Time magazine about reincarnation. I must admit that I had never before given reincarnation any serious consideration. A woman in the article was insisting that her parrot was George Washington because for no apparent reason he would say “Valley Forge, Valley Forge” clear as a bell. I brought the magazine in to show Dr. Mueller but she didn’t seem interested much. But I knew I was supposed to read that magazine for a reason because it was that night when Emily first became something out of the ordinary. As she slept by my bed I could hear her muttering iambic pentameter as she toiled in dreams on the floor beside me. I rolled over and listened and it sounded poetic, like verses being muttered under her breath. The next day as I sat on a park bench with a pile of poetry books I had selected, while any other dog would have been preoccupied with the two ducks or the pompous swan that waded behind her in the pond, Emily knocked over the pile and pulled out one of the books with her mouth. It wasn’t Frost, Keats, Whitman, Browning, or Byron. It was a small illustrated collection of Emily Dickinson.

Emily put that red book in my lap like another dog might offer a dead animal it had retrieved from the backyard. She stared up at me after laying it there and the only time I have heard her bark was when I attempted to put the book aside in favor of a modern collection of poems about menstrual cycles and chaffed elbows with endless symbolism about the poet’s body refusing to be taken alive as a metaphor. Or the opposite, throwing itself to the metaphor like Ophelia from the cliff.

My body is a concentration camp...

Only when I opened the Dickinson book and began to read did Emily stop barking. She nudged my leg with her head which I took as a request for me to read the poems aloud, so looking around and seeing no one within earshot besides the two ducks, the swan (who could be the Kennedy’s) and a squirrel on a branch in the Elm above me (who might be Julius Caesar), I read the poems aloud, one by one. And as I read, Emily seemed very pleased and I realized they sounded similar to her night utterings. So I kept that book by my bed and red along as she whimpered on the floor. I identified three poems on the second night, flipping through the pages as she growled and whined—“I Cannot Live with You;” “I Heard a Fly Buzz;” and “I’m Nobody! Who are You?”

Helen said that reading poetry would put me in touch with my soul and a cohabitation relationship with a dog would help me trust another living being. My trust was shattered, she said, by two dreadful women. She didn’t say dreadful. I added that part but I think I am safe in so doing. Emily continued to have a love for that book. She would find it wherever I put it and retrieve it for me to read and when I held it without reading it she barked until I did. I tried my best to excuse the behavior to some other variable. Perhaps the color of the book appealed to her. Or the book smelled or tasted like bacon grease. But after a few days I was unable to explain her fascination away to anything but the fact that she was Emily Dickinson, reincarnated. Sure, she had probably been other things before, since her death in 1886. Perhaps a fly for some time, a snail, a spider, a rabbit, maybe. But now she was a dog who understood exactly who she was and who was trying to communicate to me that realization. Perhaps when she dies in this life, she will again be a woman. And perhaps, she will find me. Maybe, as silly as a proposition it may seem, she is my soul mate. Scientists say love is a matter of chemicals and neurotransmitters but they have no idea of the authority of the soul in all of their rationalizations. They cannot construct a human being from parts and bring life to it because life lies in the soul and is in all living things, from snails to humans. Of course at first the idea seemed fantastic. But it wasn’t long before I was completely convinced.

Helen drank coffee as we chatted on a Thursday morning, our usual time. I was once in love with her being that she was the most reliable woman in my life, which then seemed like enough. I was pretty sure she wasn’t in love with me but that is the game of love. I didn’t love her then, though I was still quite fond of her. My mother left me when I was three after realizing that my father was never coming back and I was placed in a foster home and raised in a ranch house in Maysville by parents who were too old to be parents naturally, who never had children of their own, who drug me to Bingo every Friday night, fish fries on Saturdays, and who dressed me in uncomfortable clothing, the worst of which were the wool sweaters of torture with no undershirt. I sometimes think they adopted me for Bingo money. They both died of cancer when I was twenty-one, only months apart from each other. I came back from the Army to attend both funerals, possibly only to see a beautiful foster cousin who was a few years younger than me and a high school senior. I had always loved her. We hugged in the lobby until we raised eyebrows, I remember fondly. Her boobs felt like home. Instead of marrying her I married some bowler-groupie waitress.

Helen asks me directly about Emily and I tell her that I am certain of the fact that she is Emily Dickinson, whether she is willing to accept it or not. She gives me the same look my foster mother used to give me when I would say something fantastic like the time I told her about aliens dragging me to the laundry room late one summer night for observation purposes. (I still have a small, silvery crescent-shaped ring on the tip of my right index finger as proof.) Dr. Mueller suggested that I should come to counseling twice a week and consider taking some anti-psychotic medication that has a much prettier name, like a flower or something that sounds reassuring and effective.

I declined both.

My body is not a garbage dump.

I have been accused of such before, needing medication. Like the time I saw Elvis working at a True Value hardware store in Florence, Arizona. Or the time I saw a mermaid while snorkeling of the coast of Key West when I was on leave in the Army. Or the numerous ghosts and witches I have seen that have made themselves known to me over the years beginning when I was six and saw my first witch. I cannot go to a funeral or a cemetery without meeting spirits (and they are usually very disappointed by their funeral, how they were dressed in the casket, the flower arrangements, the music, or the preacher). It is not my fault that fantastic things happen to me. I’ve never told anyone about the time I visited Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. on a school field trip and met Abe Lincoln, the real Abe Lincoln, while the other dopey kids were being gypped by an actor. I was in a bathroom stall when I saw his shoes below the door and his stovepipe hat above it. There were no holes in his divine spirit head and he was rather chipper for being dead, so wrongfully murdered by some cowardly turd. “Young man,” he said solemnly, “do not believe in other people’s reality. Believe in your own.”

Who am I not to take his advice?

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” I said dramatically to Helen and her room full of dogs when it was certain that she wouldn’t believe me. I thanked her for turning me on to the idea of getting Emily and I assured her that I would be okay. She looked genuinely worried. “Besides,” I said, “my EAP free sessions expire after this one so I would have to pay a very unreasonable co-pay to see you which is just short of prostitution in my book.”

“You associate mental health services with prostitution?”

“No!” I replied emphatically. “Only your prices. $230 an hour, is it?”

I would never see Helen again on this rollercoaster called life. My nights were spent with Emily Dickinson, walking her, bathing her, petting her on the front porch swing as she watched fireflies and I read. She had a fascination with the rain and the spider webs in the flower beds. She often let herself down and poked her nose in the lilies or the azaleas. By night I worked at the geriatric prison until I could no longer take being away from Emily eight hours a day. I quit abruptly to the surprise of my supervisor, Lt. Barber, who looked so similar to Chuck Norris he was interviewed twice by a local news channel and asked to be grandmaster of seven different Fourth of July parades in Maysville. Everyone called him Chuck though his name was Randy. I hadn’t missed a day of work in seven years, had never been late, and had used my personal leave and vacation so sparingly that I had to be reminded by memos from HR that I needed to take a day off.

Emily got fleas, probably from the park mixing amongst those other unclean dogs, so I had her treated by the vet and bought an expensive flea collar. It was pink and I placed it around her neck delicately. I saw it on a late-night infomercial when Emily and I were watching TV in bed. The dogs wearing it seemed very happy, even the one they put in a clear plastic bubble full of fleas. It came with a free collar and Emily suggested that I wear the other so I lovingly acquiesced and we sported them in the same fashion that honeymooners sport bands of Holy Matrimony. Emily’s collar warded off fleas and ticks and mine worked against terrible women, whores, the like, those that I seem to attract when I was convinced of the idea that a man should be with a woman and love was a matter of timing, patience, and compatibility with someone of similar age, prospects, and with someone who expresses interest—physical attraction a must. Neurotransmitters and chemicals. The flea collar worked. I had never felt a more clear sense of inner-peace and no one bothered me whatsoever.

Emily loved camping so I cashed out my retirement and we took a trip to Old Man’s Cave. She was in heat and bled on the sleeping bag but I didn’t mind. I wrote a poem about her menstrual blood. I didn’t have any desire to get her spayed because it seemed so unnatural and I did not want to inflict harm on her. I was worried that such a surgery might ruin her for I had heard of dogs changing afterwards. Reading a biography of Emily Dickinson I knew she was very drawn to nature and natural things so I felt she might oppose. She never expressed a desire to be with another dog, but during the trip she wandered off while I was engrossed in writing of my encounter with Bigfoot as a child on a Boy Scout trip. Emily was nearly sexually assaulted by a wolf. Realizing she had gone I was fortunately able to find her and break it up skillfully using a pine branch. I escaped that tussle with only minor injuries, bitten only once on the forearm and successfully inflicting upon that wolf a much deserved proper thrashing, while preserving my darling Emily’s chastity.

It was shortly after that when I decided that Emily and I needed to take a pilgrimage, so we packed up the car and drove twelve hours to Amherst, Massachusetts, stopping only for Burger King burgers, her favorite, and to stretch our legs. Respecting her dignity, I always turned the other way when Emily did her business and she respectfully did the same for me. It is a human condition that begs not to sully the romance of such lovely parts with the spectating of their day jobs, thus tainting even slightly the prospects of romance. It is sometimes best to be the ostrich.

The law frowns upon man-dog companionships but I had most cleverly skirted much of the issue when I bought a cane and a pair of BluBlocker sunglasses from a thrift and began slapping that cane around and holding Emily’s leash as though I were blind. Thus, Emily was legally allowed to accompany me in to any restaurant or public place. I took her to all the finest restaurants and museums in Massachusetts. The look on peoples’ faces when I approached is enough to give serious sociological scrutiny—looks of horror and trepidation as though I were the creature from the black lagoon. But that is another matter entirely which I haven’t the will or time to explore to the depths that it rightly deserves. The best part however, was the look on their faces when Emily and I drove away.

Near Amherst we found lodging at a nice bed and breakfast called The Black Walnut Inn. There was a print of a woman standing on a cliff that hung above our bed. She was Ophelia from Hamlet and she was pondering the questions one ponders when they are suicidal. I wondered if she committed suicide because Hamlet was seemingly sent to England to his death, or because she had betrayed his trust. In the watercolor print she stood there in between life and death. Emily spent much of that night staring at Ophelia as I watched a Red Sox game then an old movie. She didn’t whimper any of her poems in her sleep that night. I could tell she was depressed because she hadn’t the ability to express herself, to write—being that she had no thumbs. I wondered about all the unexpressed ideas that may have been welling up inside her brain. No one turned off the spigot.

The next morning we headed to her home—The Emily Dickinson Museum—The Homestead, where she was born and lived a long life, mostly secluded. Being one who loves to keep surprises I didn’t tell her where we were going, but judging by the look on her face as we drove closer and past things she may recall, she looked as though she had an idea. There were no Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonald’s, but some of the buildings and homes were of the time period and they reflected in her bright blue eyes, their elegant Victorian brick, wooden shutters that actually latched, boxwood shrubs and manicured lawns. Perhaps, she recognized the courthouse. Her head stuck out the window so thrilled with life, her tongue flapped in exhilaration. She looked back at me now and then and I smiled and rubbed her back, or gave her a scratch.

I always knew she was Emily Dickinson but I was never as sure as when we pulled up in front of her house. When we approached the door I was practically drug by my companion. The lady who answered was wearing a blue dress and smiled empathetically looking into my BluBlockers. I tapped her feet with my cane for effect. She was at first charming and invited us in like we were old friends, though she looked down upon Emily with a clear look of indignation. I could tell she preferred cats. She, of course, didn’t know that I could see her. She was only slightly delighted to hear that Emily’s name was Emily and I held back the surprise that she was in fact the real EmilyDickinson, waiting for a climactic moment when it would it would be more appropriate. She stated obvious concerns to us as we entered. Mainly, she was worried that Emily might chew on the furniture or “do her business” inside and tarnish the refurbished hardwood floors. But I assured her that Emily was housebroken and would not soil her house any more than she had on two legs. The lady took me for a kook and said “I beg your pardon, sir?” though she in fact heard me quite clearly. I declined to repeat myself and scooted inside the sitting room carefully. She watched me nervously. During the tour I did my best not to make it obvious that I could see, though my hidden eyeballs were scanning every inch of the old house, every relic, every armchair, every window, and desk. All the papers that yellowed, the glass cases full of personal items, the books, the wallpaper, hairpins and brushes. I enjoyed the sound of my feet depressing the wood floorboards, making them moan as though in delight. The lady hadn’t noticed at first but while she was entertaining two other couples in the kitchen I let go of Emily’s leash and Emily trailed off to another part of the house. I wasn’t worried being that she clearly knew where she was going. A few times I remarked about something’s splendor but I quickly recovered by saying, “Well, I can feel the beauty of it” while tapping my cane randomly.

“Wait,” she said in near panic. “Where’s that dog?”

“What dog?”

“Your dog!” she barked.

“I wouldn’t know. I can’t see.”

She completely suspended the tour at this point. “Well, call for her or something! Call for her!”

“She doesn’t listen,” I said woefully. “Not to worry!” I assured her. “She is the real Emily Dickinson. She has been reincarnated. She will not damage anything. It all belongs to her anyway.”

“Emily Dickinson! A dog? That’s preposterous. This home belongs to Amherst College!”

“Well, you wouldn’t know Emily Dickinson if she bit you on the ass! You’ve had your fat face in a book too long.”

She didn’t reply but instead began scurrying about frantically looking for my Emily. The other tourists took it upon themselves and began to scour the house for her as well. The tour guide muttered angry things under her breath about damages and liability on and on. I sat down helplessly in an armchair. “She only comes if you call her by her real name...Emily Dickinson.” So the seven of them were making kissing sounds, whistling, and calling, “Emily! Emily Dickinson!” but all to no avail. After a few minutes I heard a scream. I ran up the stairs and the tour guide was standing in Emily’s bedroom with the rest of the group. Her hands were over her mouth. They were looking at Emily’s bed where my Emily lay sleeping. Sleeping...as in the eternal rest. I dropped the cane, the BluBlockers, and the act. I didn’t cry; I just stared. I knew she was going to a better place, somewhere where she would have thumbs. Everyone stood around just looking. After a few minutes, I smiled and jumped off a cliff. I later became a werewolf.

My body is a bath of warm salt.