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Larry
- University of Georgia Press
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134 Larry. A majestic golden retriever. “It must be a great comfort,” said Joel, “to have him lying at your feet.” If I ask what gift might have kept Joel alive, I think: a companion. On the Beara Peninsula in western Ireland an old sheepdog kept watch from the driveway and hill above our B&B. I tried to befriend him, but he’d have nothing of it. He didn’t even turn his head in my direction when I spoke. The proprietress said, “Oh, he only has eyes for his master. In all the many years we’ve had him, he’s only looked at me twice, really looked at me.” The master was her husband, who had rescued the dog from a sheep keeper. The young dog was overzealous and anxious to please and would herd the flock toward the edge of a cliff. In anger his owner had beaten the feckless animal. The master had intervened and taken him for his own, and the old sheepdog had never forgotten. In our days at the B&B, he waited for his master’s return with unbroken concentration. When the man returned from work at the end of the day and trudged the steep road, what did he see as his coming was eyed in the dusky air? He saw this world healed and whole, where love inhuman, boundless, moves and barks at petty cares. 135 I would give Joel this gift: See him standing on the hills above the brilliant waters east of the bay, ears pricked to catch a thrumming in the wind, eyes alert for a sudden —to me invisible—movement in the grass, nose moist like a bitten plum, nostrils flexing in and out. He sees me raise my eyes to him, turns his muscled shoulders toward the decline of the sloping hill, and runs without caution, with abandon, wildly, joyfully, past picnic table, house, and garage, past everything, to me.64 64 Adapted from Marcia Aldrich, “The Dead Dog Essay,” Florida Review 34, no. 1 (2009): 79–88. ...