Fear Nothing

a shotgun and blow my brains out? That would be in ore merciful than the excruciatingly slow death you're dealing out now, bludgeoning me with your tedious little stories and your moronic philosophies. There are limits to human endurance, Saint Francis - even to mine.”
        I know what I know, however, and I know Orson hated me that July night, hated me and loved me. And I know that something in the sky tormented him and filled him with despair: the stars, the blackness, or perhaps something he imagined.
        Can dogs imagine? Why not?
        I know they dream. I've watched them sleep, seen their legs kick as they chase dream rabbits, heard them sigh and whimper, heard them growl at dream adversaries.
        Orson's hatred that night did not make me fear him, but I feared for him. I knew his problem was not distemper or any physical ailment that might have made him dangerous to me, but was instead a malady of the soul.
        Bobby raves brilliantly at the mention of souls in animals and splutters ultimately into a tremendously entertaining incoherence. I could sell tickets. I prefer to open a bottle of beer, lean back, and have the whole show to myself.
        Anyway, throughout that long night, I sat in the yard, keeping Orson company even though he might not have wanted it. He glowered at me, remarked upon the vaulted sky with razor-thin cries, shuddered uncontrollably, circled the yard, circled and circled until near dawn, when at last he came to me, exhausted, and put his head in my lap and did not hate me anymore.
        Just before sunrise, I went upstairs to my room, ready for bed hours earlier than usual, and Orson came with me. Most of the time, when he chooses to sleep to my schedule, he curls near my feet, but on this occasion he lay on his side with his back to me, and until he slept, I stroked his burly head and smoothed his fine black coat.
        I myself slept not at all that day. I lay thinking about the hot summer morning beyond the blinded windows. The sky like an inverted blue porcelain bowl with birds in flight around its rim. Birds of the day, which I had seen only in pictures. And bees and butterflies. And shadows ink-pure and knife-sharp at the edges as they never can be in the night. Sweet sleep couldn't pour into me because I was filled to the brim with bitter yearning.
        

    * * *
        
        Now, nearly three years later, as I opened the kitchen door and stepped onto the back porch, I hoped that Orson wasn't in a despondent mood. This night, we had no time for therapy either for him or for me.
        My bicycle was on the porch. I walked it down the steps and rolled it toward the busy dog.
        In the southwest corner of the yard, he had dug half a dozen holes of various diameters and depths, and I had to be careful not to twist an ankle in one of them. Across that quadrant of the lawn were scattered ragged clumps of uprooted grass and clods of earth torn loose by his claws.
        “Orson?”
        He did not respond. He didn't even pause in his frenzied digging.
        Giving him a wide berth to avoid the spray of dirt that fanned out behind his excavating forepaws, I went around the current hole to face him.
        “Hey, pal,” I said.
        The dog kept his head down, his snout in the ground, sniffing inquisitively as he dug.
        The breeze had died, and the full moon hung like a child's lost balloon in the highest branches of the melaleucas.
        Overhead, nighthawks dived and soared and barrel-looped, crying peent-peent-peent as they harvested flying ants and early-spring moths from the air.
        Watching Orson at work, I said, “Found any good bones lately?”
        He stopped digging but still didn't acknowledge me. Urgently he sniffed the raw earth, the scent of which rose even to me.
        “Who let you out here?”
        Sasha might have brought him outside to toilet, but I was sure that she would have returned him to the house afterward.
        “Sasha?” I asked nevertheless.
        If Sasha were the one who had left him loose to wreak havoc on the landscaping, Orson was not going to rat on her. He wouldn't meet my eyes lest I read the truth in them.
        Abandoning the hole he had just dug, he returned to a previous pit, sniffed it, and set to work again, seeking communion with dogs in China.
        Maybe he knew that Dad was dead. Animals know things, as Sasha had noted earlier. Maybe this