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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Psmith.
He
died yesterday.
THE ANCIENT ONES. Pardon me. I don't care about any of you today. This is a Scots day. He was better than everybody, including me. I won't tell you anything about the history of deerhounds, or Sir Walter Scott, or any of that guff. I know I made fun of him here, because he had no IQ, but he was the best soul I've ever met. Some ghost of ancient lords, maybe, but sanctified and purified somehow. Never saw him curl a lip or snarl at anyone, man or beast. He was, from first to last, a prince walking among us. Now he's dead.
He particularly loved the smaller and less potent among us. Our granddaughter Anna immediately saw that he was submissive to her. His huge size scared her not at all. In fact, he loved all the lovely, sweet, most open ones: our tiny Bengal cat, my stepdaughter, and most recently Anna. He wanted to condense his great size to something they could accept without fear. He would touch noses in the morning with Izzie -- her seven pounds against his hundred-plus -- because he was Psmith and she was Isis.
He grew up surrounded by greyhounds, who might have been (slightly) faster, but he had their blood in his blood too. He was the one who had been bred to bring down stags with his tree-trunk legs, but he was also the one who was Scottish through and through, with that coat which was proof against weather even greyhounds couldn't survive.
And he had that Scottish reserve. He didn't like the nastiness at dinnertime, though he was the best buddy of the pug who started all the nastiness at mealtime. It reached a point where he couldn't eat, knowing what was coming -- female pug against female greyhound. That's when we had to begin feeding him separately. Which is the thing I'm clinging to now. Because for most of a year, I had to dish his food apart from the others and let him eat alone. It gave me my only intimate moments with the man of ultimate reserve. He learned to let me pat him on the head and steer his huge hind-end out the door of the dog room after he was done.
Which leads me to a second soundtrack for him. The one that characterized his last day and, come to think of it, a lot of days before. Listen to this while I tell you of the brave. mischievous, wonderful, Scottish Psmith I will miss for the rest of my life.
He liked the ladies, and they all loved him. My stepdaughter house-sat for us for a week during our honeymoon and she announced afterwards that he insisted on accompanying her into the bathroom for showers and such (which he never did with us), and while he was never so forward with anyone else, he always seemed to like the young ladies best; he responded more to women of all ages. Because he may have been dumb, but he was never stupid.
When new children came to visit, he was always there with a wagging tail and that big friendly nose. What few people saw were those ancient eyes, buried in the Scottish way, under brows that had seen absolutely everything ever. It looks like kindness when you're a child. When you're an adult, you know it's the wisdom of the ages: I've seen every kind of slaughter, murder, and torture a human can commit, and I've come back this time only because I don't have to participate. That's how I fell in love with the breed. From a picture of a deerhound. It was my wife who made the dream come true. You get to borrow such souls for a time, and when they are withdrawn you feel as if you have been tossed farther from the seat of God.
He convinced Mrs. CP that he should spend his mornings on the sofa in the tack room, while the greys and the pug remained gated inside the breezeway. Then he convinced me that he had to rejoin them in the early afternoon, because they were always a pack and always missed one another after too many hours of absence.
But he was always, gentle as he was, a lord. When the moment came, he was so brave that it's all I can remember of the entire nightmare. He was succumbing to the bloat -- an ailment of giant dogs and horses -- which usually means a fatally twisted gut. He passed up his breakfast, then lay down panting slightly. Mrs. CP knew the symptoms, though, and placed an emergency Sunday call to our veterinary hospital. They said they'd be waiting when we arrived. He allowed me to hoist him into the car, then sat quietly while we drove the half hour up the Turnpike. He was suffering when we arrived, but without a whimper, he allowed us to half-carry him, Mrs. CP at his head and me steering his once mighty, now stumbling hindquarters up the long, jointed ramp (stairs were out of the question) to the foyer. Where he collapsed. His heart stopped beating when he thought he had made it.
We told him it would be okay. All the way up the Turnpike. The vet and her assistants swarmed in with a stretcher. They hustled him away and restarted his heart. They operated, severed and reconnected his twisted gut, removed his spleen, and brought him out of anesthesthia. He sat up briefly. Then collapsed. They gave him valium. He fell asleep. Then arrested again and was gone.
We told him it would be okay. He was a couple weeks away from his sixth birthday. And now I'm assailing myself with the idea that the dumbass actually believed us. That if he could make it from the car to the foyer, our promises would be fulfilled.
But that's not true. Psmith did that last journey from the car to the vet foyer on sheer courage. I know it because the thought of it brings me to tears every time I think of it. He did it because we asked him to. Because we asked him to. And he made it the whole way.
O Lord. Give me the courage of Psmith to do one impossible thing and I will be content.
Give me one moment of the beauty of Psmith and I will lay down my pen.
