Dog Walking
the Equinox

A short story
by Mike Damascus

“Nothing could ruin our day quicker than a car running a stop sign and taking out twenty or thirty dogs,” Maribel said with a gesture at the growing pack, which had spilled out into the street. “Of course if we end up late, that would be hopeless too,” she added.

We seemed to be making good time, but there were so many dogs now, wall to wall for almost three blocks, that any hitch was a potential disaster. “At least cats aren’t a factor this year. That’s certainly a relief,” she said. We had seen two early on, but Scupper, an Australian shepherd, dispatched them with panache.

“What really worries me,” Maribel said, “are all these so-called ’professional dog-walkers’.”

The vans had been shadowing us all morning. Maribel worked extra hard to throw them off, but they were becoming a nuisance. “These are not the dogs you’re looking for,” Maribel told the two young women wearing the red “Pooch Party” tees. They had lost a bichon frise, a cocker spaniel, a border collie, and three mutts round about 26th and Sanchez. They didn’t argue right away, but they weren’t falling for the old Jedi Mind Trick either. “These are not the dogs you’re looking for,” repeated Maribel. As if to add emphasis, she brought her hands slowly out from under her faded brown serape and waved them in front of their faces.

“Isn’t that Bucky?” exclaimed the first.

“Bucky!” the second shouted.

But Bucky, a cocker spaniel, didn’t respond. Instead, he moved forward with the throng, maybe fifty other dogs at this point, sticking mostly to the sidewalk. The women tried to follow, but as more dogs joined in from behind, they were quickly separated from their charges. They tagged alongside Maribel for almost a block, pleading their case. They started off with reason: “We have activities scheduled,” and, “We’re responsible for those dogs.” And they ended with threats: “We’re calling the cops, you crazy old coot.”

But Maribel kept her cool. “Help me out, Richards,” she whispered. “Let’s do the old hippie dead-fish-trick to throw them off.”

To do the dead-fish-trick, you visualize the image of a dead fish with all the power of your mind. The visualization brings this placebo thought into the realm of the conscious with such intensity that whatever other thoughts people may attempt to think will be jammed. The dead-fish-mind-trick appears in a book called The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Jedi Mind Trick comes to us from Obi Wan. Between her mind tricks and the speed with which we were gathering up dogs, we eventually lost the “Pooch Party” girls.

The “VIP Doggie Escorts” weren’t as easily dispatched. The “VIP Doggie Escorts” appeared at first to be a single individual, one Ronald Dennis. As the apparent sole proprietor of “VIP Doggie Escorts,” Ronald had perhaps a deeper bond to the Japanese akita, the labradoodle, the collie, the terrier, and the three mutts that he lost along Church Street, between Jersey and 24th. But he got on his cell phone and coordinated a counter attack immediately. A van met him on the next corner, driven by a teenage apprentice, whose white-knuckled driving had Maribel believing that Ronald must have convinced her that the spectacle of two hundred or so dogs running up the street was her fault.

By the time we were parallel with Dolores Park, three vans were circling us in adversarial patterns: the red “Pooch Party” van, Ronald’s white “VIP Doggie Escorts” van, and a blue “Canine Care-A-Van,” piloted by a woman in a crew cut whose all out enmity and bad driving was unparalleled. She paced us for a few blocks, pulled ahead, and then drove full tilt back at us along Dolores Street. With a screech of rubber, she skidded the van sideways in an attempt to stop us, or at least give her a chance to extract her dogs from the fray.

But her plan backfired. The dogs just ran around the van and kept going. The terriers, mutts, and shepherds she was trying to retrieve escaped off to the side, flanked by a protective barrier of Alaskan malamutes and pit bulls. Out of frustration she seized a collie and started screaming.

“I’m taking this collie hostage,” she shouted. “Maybe I’ll take a few more, too, for good measure,” she said to nobody in particular. She hustled the poor collie around to the side of the van, slid the door open, and muscled her up and inside. She bent over to catch a Jack Russell, but as she seized him the collie leaped out, and bounded off her back into the throng heading up the street. The woman stood there stupidly, and then, apparently resigned, began picking off smaller dogs. Within moments, she had the Jack Russell, a daschund, two mutts, and what must have been a schnauzer gathered up in a great armful. But before she could toss them in the van, Scupper bit her in the ass.

As we eased past her on the sidewalk, Maribel offered an olive branch. “You can join us if you want,” she said gently. “But we’ve only got about thirty-five minutes to make it, so we really can’t dilly-dally.”

The woman didn’t answer.

“We’ll only have a moment to enjoy it, and then we’ll go our separate ways,” she explained. “You can meet us at Buena Vista Park if you want to pick them up.” I admired Maribel’s diplomacy. She was really under no obligation, but she always went out of her way to make someone feel better. That’s the kind of woman Maribel was.

The dog-walker flipped her off.

“Eve may very well be a two-fold mystery,” Maribel snorted, quoting Elizabeth Browning, “but in this case, Persephone makes for a better scapegoat. Today’s the equinox after all. If ever there were a demonstrable event that would indicate some manner of nature’s vicissitudes it would be the sun crossing the equator, don’t you think, Richards? I mean after all, the earth’s axis is not perpendicular to its orbital plane.”

I just stared back at her. All that talk about the seasons, the hemispheres, and the tilt of the earth—it went right over my head.

At Market Street, Maribel broke into a slow jog. There were easily two thousand dogs now, trotting through the street and filling up all the lanes. But Market Street was a main thoroughfare. As we crossed the intersection, the waiting cars loomed alongside us, like cats arching their backs, and the eyes inside seemed to grow as large as water dishes. If there was to be a problem, it would happen here, where there was so much pavement, so much room for the cars.

But we made it all right. We regrouped on the other side of the supermarket parking lot and took a left at Duboce Street. As we rounded the corner, the hill that is Buena Vista Park rose up ahead.

Like a verdant diamond wedged into the gray of the city, the park energized the dogs, who broke into an all-out run for the last six or seven blocks. It was that close. Whereas the pack had run largely in silence, barks could now be heard echoing up and down the group. Maribel clutched her handbag in one fist, held her floppy hat with the other, and trotted along, keeping up for the most part. The dogs in front had reached the base of the hill and the street ahead sloped up smartly to the park. I was about to let loose myself when I saw all three vans pull out ahead. They swooped across the street as one, and blocked our passage.

Maribel came to a halt and put her hand to her mouth. With a terrific whistle she issued orders. “Scupper,” she shouted with a wave of her right hand, “away to me.” Next she waved her left hand. “Boscoe, come bye, come bye, boy.” The two dogs ran straight through the pack of dogs, barking as they went.

Up ahead I could see the dog-walkers, out of their vans and in their fancy shirts, wading into the front of the pack. Ronald Dennis held a phone to his ear as he directed his helper. The “Pooch Party” girls stood off to the side together, calling out with hands cupped over their mouths, but the “Canine Care-A-Van” woman pushed herself deep into the thick mass of dogs. It looked like she was tossing smaller dogs over her shoulder, as if the dogs she was searching for were hiding underneath the others.

But Scupper and Boscoe ran quickly, and as they shot up the middle, barking, the mass of dogs parted. When they reached the vans, they circled back. Scupper peeled around to the right, Boscoe to the left, and the pack split and ran with them, dispersing into the cross street.

“It pays to have good shepherding dogs who can speak the lingo,” Maribel said with a wink. Then, in a huffier tone, she added, “I just knew these dog-walkers would be trouble, but honestly I wouldn’t have expected this sort of thing.”

As the dogs proceeded along parallel streets to the park, the “Canine Care-A-Van” woman stood alone in the middle of the street, clutching what appeared to be a chihuahua.

“I’ve got one,” she shouted gleefully. “Try and get him if you want, but I’m not going to give him up until I get my dogs back.”

Maribel tut-tutted, but we hurried on, taking the side street to the right without looking back. “I hate to leave him, but honestly we’re running out of time with all these shenanigans.” We ran to catch up. Ahead, the first of the dogs disappeared into the park without harassment. A few moments later we also plunged into the park.

Under the canopy of the trees, everything changed. With cypress and pine looming overhead, the trek became a joy. With eucalyptus and beech for shelter, and mulberry and elm to watch our flank, we launched along the trail with a carefree spirit, safe now from the vans.

Trail spiraled up a wooded ridge, and dogs vaulted every which way, barking and plunging back and forth along the shrubs, diving through the heather. Leaping over dogwood.

Maribel also moved with a bouncing gait. But after a glance at her timepiece, she abandoned the gentle slope of the paved trail for a more direct route to the top of the park. “Five minutes, Richards,” she called to me with a jerk of her head to urge me on. “Five minutes, we don’t want to miss it.”

She hiked up the dirt trail with ease, and in no time we reached the summit. The great open space was thick with dogs. Thousands upon thousands of dogs. Maribel waded into the center and turned around slowly, admiring the view of the ocean, the headlands, and the city below. From up here, the space around us seemed so immense. She took it all in with a look of relish. Then she slowly turned about and addressed the group.

“This is Persephone’s day,” she cried out. “In another few minutes, the sun will cross over the earth’s equator. Can you feel it coming?” She looked about with a gentle smile.

The dogs were still, rooted to the ground; they watched her intently as she spoke.

“The earth will tilt and cross over. Spring will be here and then summer. The northern hemisphere will get more sun. Another cycle.” She dug a leather pouch out from under the folds of her serape.

“I told a few of you my plans with these chrysanthemum seeds.  Have any of you decided to help out?”

Several barks rang out.

Maribel walked to where a barking German shepherd was frantically digging a small hole in the dirt. She spoke to him in a quiet voice, too quiet for me to hear, and then sprinkled some of the seeds into the hole. She walked towards another barking dog while the shepherd covered the hole with dirt.

“You hear about blooming chrysanthemums in the fall. When they bloom with brilliant gold and bronze hues. You think about the harvest. The other side of the cycle. But if we plant this spring, maybe they will bloom when we come back in the fall. Wouldn’t that be nice?” She continued her circuit around the summit of the hill. Dogs pawed at the earth and barked when they were ready; Maribel sprinkled seeds into their holes.

Maribel regarded my puzzled look and said, “In ancient Japan, they would place a chrysanthemum petal in the bottom of a glass of wine for a long and healthy life. In China, they say that if you drink from a river flanked by chrysanthemum blooms you’ll live for a hundred years.” Maribel paused, sensing my dismay at her erudition, then made it simpler. “Sometimes within nature, you can see not merely how we are captured by time and the seasons, but how to escape as well. There are hints all around us. If we would only pay attention.”

When the seeds were all planted, Maribel put her leather pouch away, moved back to the center of the summit, and addressed the dogs again. “One more minute, my friends,” she cried. “Let’s do what we can do; let’s see what we can feel.” With those words she threw her arms up into the air.

The dogs barked in response and began to run again, to run in circles both clockwise and counter, with Maribel at the center.

I did my best to join in. The barking grew to a crescendo that hung thickly without dissipating. The sound was another element through which we ran. Like air but thicker. I ran a circle of my own, a tight circuit atop the hill, along and through the bounding dogs. I ran clockwise, turning right, turning right, turning right, bounding over dirt and pushing through air, through sound, and the circle I ran became an orbit, not just of the moment, but forever, like the earth and the sun. Then I spun free and the axis flipped over.

With a lurch we all tumbled forward. We all somersaulted within ourselves, springing inside-out and all the way through; then those who were turning left turned right, and those who were running clockwise, ran counter. We tumbled and we landed and we skidded along, but slower. Trying to get our bearings.

The orbits were indelible but we had escaped them. We looked about ourselves in wonder. All the dogs were silent.

Maribel stood unmoved at the center. She had not run, but I think she, too, must have tumbled within herself. She had a broad smile, not one of jest, but of knowledge. She looked at all of us with longing. There was a moment when I felt that all my life was simply a dream and that in some manner I had only now awoken. But in the next moment, this feeling passed. Ordinary perception took hold and something like seriousness worked its way back into my thoughts. And then the dogs began to disperse, wandering back down the hill in separate directions.

Maribel waved farewells. She called out to a few of the dogs by name and reminded us that we would meet again in the fall. We could hear the dog-walkers’ voices at the park’s edge, but they couldn’t have been more insignificant now.

“Well Richards,” she asked, beaming at me, “what did you think of your first equinox?”

I looked back at her and I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, it was all so wonderful. The more I considered the question, the more embarrassed I became, because Maribel was so wise and there were so many things she could discuss that I didn’t understand. But then I realized that we had just shared something that neither of us could fully grasp. And that the sharing was probably more important than the knowing. And that the knowing wasn’t really so important in the end.

So I just said, “Woof.”

“Woof, woof,” I said. “Woof, woof, woof.”

Copyright © 2009 by Mike Damascus