Elpis and the box

I had been asleep in the hall when I was wakened by a car arriving in the driveway. The thud

of the loose flagstone and squeal as it stopped, identified it as Vet’s van. I heard him get out,

the gravel crunched lightly under his weight; he wasn’t carrying anything. He’d left The Box

in the car. I allowed myself to relax slightly. His visits usually involved some prodding and

probing and concluded in a sharp jab in the back of the neck. He’d taken recently to removing

me against my will to spend a night in one of his cramped, brightly lit cages. I heard him

make his way around to the back door and let himself in.  I’d have to let Dev know he’d

arrived. I shouted twice, friendly shouts, so as not to unnerve Vet. No point in inviting

tension. Vet announced his arrival too,

‘…mis…ter… rin… tool,” was as much as I could make out.

Upstairs, the bedroom door opened, and Dev started to make his way down the stairs,

carefully, both hands on the rails. A weak voice acknowledged that he was on his way.

Emerging out of the darkness he saw me and smiled a Big Dev smile. I got up, arching my

back to stretch and swished my tail uncontrollably. I greeted him with my morning yelp.

‘Good girl… good girl,’ came the reply.

We met at the bottom of the stairs; he ruffled my ears as I checked his groin for

leakage. Only stale ingrained sweat. A good sign. Dev headed down the hall towards Vet who

was standing in the kitchen, nervously juggling treats in his pockets and smiling cautiously.

Vet was at least half as old as Dev and he radiated an uncomfortable energy, his trousers and

fleece a pungent mix of schnauzer and German shepherd. I nuzzled his underparts for more

intimate information.

Someone’s been a lucky boy this morning, I thought.

Then a whiff of dog biscuit. He pulled two from his pocket. I ate them gently from his

sanitised hand as they talked above me.

The usual pleasantries. I watched their faces for clues as they spoke, a reason for the

visit. His second in as many days. But was it as routine as the last one? Routine, in so much

as The Box was left in the van and my visit to his cramped cell wasn’t required. I still had the

shaved patch on my leg where they jabbed and bled me, a new twist to Vet’s visits. I sat

down between them and swept the floor eagerly with my tail in anticipation of more biscuits.

They looked down at me smiling, then resumed their face-to-face. Dev was doing most of the

talking, Vet shook his head slowly while shifting from one foot to the other, a false fixed

smile absorbed and deflected Dev’s words.

‘For the best… good life…,’ I recognised but made little sense of.

This continued for a bit. They’d talk, stop, look down at me, talk, look down again.

Each time Dev’s face melted even more. He seemed to be deflating right in front of me to the

point where I thought he might collapse. Less and less of the talk I recognised, but I could see

it wasn’t going Dev’s way. Vet jabbed my neck again, gave me another couple of biscuits and

left quietly. Dev stood for a while, staring, but not looking, out the kitchen window.

He had been slumped in his armchair since Vet left, his face shaking quietly into the

palms of his hands. I tried sitting to attention at his feet, nosing his thigh. This didn’t have its

 usual effect and only seemed to make things worse. I forced a reaction with my best friendly

yelp. He leaned towards me, took my head in both his hands and squeezed gently, his thumbs

caressing my brows.

“Oh Elpis… my girl… my girl,” he echoed.

I sat with him hoping it might improve his mood but when he slid back in his chair

and closed his eyes I made for my cushion by the hearth of the fire where I could keep an eye

on him. My cushion reeked; it hadn’t been cleaned for some days now. These accidents had

been happening more and more recently, I would wake after a sleep to find myself in a warm

stinging puddle. Dev, didn’t complain, but I’d cower apologetically anyway. He’d just pat me

on the head, pick up the bedding and stick it in the machine in the kitchen.

            From his chair, every now and again he’d reach across for the photograph

above the fire and roll a finger slowly down Lin’s smiling face.  It hadn’t moved from his

side in the three winters since she left.

Two hunched men had taken her away in a black van; they zipped her into a bag and

wheeled her out in a hidden box one day when Dev and I had found her lying at the

bottom of the stairs. We’d been out for a morning walk, we’d played the stick game, he

threw, I returned; he loved this game. Then Dev picked up some milk on the way back to the

house. Nothing unusual as days go. But as soon as he opened the door, I knew that she had

left, there was a stillness, a missing in her. He called out from somewhere so deep and dark

inside that I shrunk to avoid it. I watched for a short time as he cradled her in his arms. He

cried so hard I thought that the part of his heart which was Lin, would give out. Wary that I

was intruding, I retreated to my bed and wept for them both.

The first time I met Dev and Lin I was locked up in a small cell when the old man who I had

previously shared a home with left one day too.  Three strangers had burst his door down and

found me just in time before I was going to seriously consider what I was eating next. They

put me in The Box and took me away. Next thing I knew I was in a small cell, in a huge

place, full of us. I had been there for about a week when Dev and Lin walked in. I don’t know

how, but I just knew they were for me. There was searching to them, a wanting. I was their

balm. In the car home, I sat with Dev, his hands firmly but safely holding my collar.

Between the excitement and the motion of the car, I began to feel ill, I threw the contents of

my dried cell meal all over Dev while Lin drove in the front. He never flinched. He just kept

ruffling my ears.

“Lin,” I remember him saying, “…got good girl here… a good girl.”

They named me Elpis in the car home; both reciting it many times until it sounded

natural and belonging, and that I recognise the metre and sound of it. When we got to the

house, they had a bed and toys there for me, the back garden had been fenced around the trees

and out to the driveway.  I was fed twice daily from tins they stored behind the door in the

hall, with an occasional treat when Dev shared a bit of sausage with me.  We walked so much

in those days, days of work and play. I fell into my bed at nights exhausted, the woods and

hills just outside our house were our playground, and on warm days we’d get in the car and

drive to the big water, and I would swim, sometimes Dev would join me on those long days.

His stroke was weak, and Lin would watch nervously from the shore, but I kept close to him

in case he got into difficulties.

And then there was Jon. Jon had left before I arrived on the scene, but he was

everywhere. The weight of him at times slumped their shoulders. Whenever Lin left the door

open to that room, I would sneak in for a sniff around.  She was showing me where their pain

lived. Nobody slept here, but it was prepared, as if awaiting a return. The room sighed with

the tears spilled on his pillow from Lin’s melancholy moments, and Dev’s evening visits

where he would caress and talk to the bedside photograph of them both seated in a small boat

smiling. Jon, just a young boy, Dev’s long hair, darker and fuller; and bright, wondering,

unspectacled eyes. Jon was mentioned every day back then, then gradually as the time

passed, like pillow tears and wondering eyes, all sense of him receded.

Dev’s movement had woken me, I watched with one eye as he shuffled and pushed himself

upright from the arms of the chair. His neck curved in sympathy with his back, creased at the

knees he made his way slowly towards the kitchen door. He stopped and looked down at

me, I lifted my head and smiled my best one at him, I was strangely tired, but I tried my best,

he looked like he needed it.

‘Elpis… Dinner.’

I sat up as best I could but the pain in my stomach was slowly returning.

‘Good girl… the best,’ his voice cracking.  ‘Treat tonight… goooood girl.’

I followed him through to the kitchen, staying well behind in case we collided. I was

still a bit woozy since Vet left; his scent still sanitised the kitchen. Through the back window,

I saw the afternoon light flickering rain drop reflections from the leaves on the bush under

which I took my daily leak. I asked, and Dev opened the door to let me out. I stood under the

bush and emptied warm waste all over the grass in a slow stream, the steam clinging to my

stale damp coat. Each evacuation was taking longer and dispensing less these days it seemed.

I sniffed at the air above me for fresh scent of others and listened for calls. All quiet, nothing

to attend to, I wandered back into the kitchen. He should have emptied the contents of my tin

into my bowl by now. My appetite wasn’t great these days, but I’d eat a bit for his sake, he

needed the encouragement too.

Dev was cooking sausages. I sniffed at the luxurious aroma.

‘His appetite has returned,’ I thought.

I anticipated my usual portion with some renewed relish and sat down and watched

him take three sausages from the pan. He laid them on a large plate on top of the table, then

easing himself gently into the chair, he cut them into pieces. He then did the strangest thing,

he sat for what seemed like an eternity and blew on them, again and again. He would pick a

bit up and put it to his mouth, tongue it, blow it a bit and put it back on the plate. Then,

picking the plate up with the shaky, thin fingers of one hand and laying the other gently on

my head, he lowered the plate with all three chopped sausages onto the floor in front of me. I

looked down in amazement then immediately back up at him. He spoke, and as he did a salty

tear dropped from his eye and splashed on my nose.

‘Love you Elpis,’ he said. ‘Dinner… best girl in the world.’

They were delicious. I tried hard to finish them but couldn’t. He put some

water down for me and I lapped gently at it as he tilted his head back and washed down his

daily meds. He then took a small plate from the cupboard, a fork from the drawer, and lifted

the one last sausage from the pan onto the small plate and carried it back through to his

armchair. I followed him and circled myself down onto my cushion. He sat down and laid the

plate at his side, next to Lin’s photograph.  Setting the fork down next to it, he turned and

gazed slowly at me over the top of his glasses.  I returned his look. Then he nodded slowly to

himself and fell asleep. The food in my belly had me on his coattails and I drifted slowly to

sleep.

It was fading daylight when I woke and Dev was still in his armchair, his food untouched.

I got up to go over to waken him, but I knew immediately he had left. His stillness was that of

Lin’s on the day we found her, but it was the lightness in me that announced it, a missing in

my heart where his place once was but had now gone. I heard a car arriving in the driveway.

The flagstone, the squeal as it stopped. I heard doors open and some movement, then they

closed again. I listened for the footfall on the gravel. It was lopsided, irregular, and

weighted on the right foot. As if something was being carried.