Brutus Turner was lying on the living room floor in his favourite spot beside the couch when a knock came at the door. His initial thought was Dana’s home! Dana’s home! Brutus knew that it was a weekday and that Dana would be home soon to rub his belly and serve him a bowl of his favorite chicken-flavoured mush atop a small mountain of crunchy brown kibble. He had just stood up with a grunt (like most Basset Hounds will do) when a thought crossed his mind and ruined his moment of excitement.
Dana never knocks when she comes home. Why would she? Only visitors do that. Brutus’ memory has been starting to fade as he grew older but he always held the memory of Dana’s aunt Gladis. Gladis use to visit Dana quite frequently, almost every day in fact. They would sit at the kitchen table drinking steaming liquid from ceramic cups while Brutus lay faithfully at Dana’s feet. The old hound was much like an old human in that he loved visitors and in turn he loved Gladis.
Times had changed and now Brutus was a lonely dog. Dana now left the house almost every day to work and Gladis stopped visiting ever since she started to carry that unusual scent. You see, dogs have a very sensitive nose. A nose that can sniff out a plethora of things that human could not. Brutus was no exception. Whether it was pizza crusts in the kitchen garbage can or the lingering reek of disease and sadness that Gladis carried, you could bet on Brutus’ nose to pick up on it. Such an odour from an elderly person usually meant one thing to a dog. Death was not far behind.
Brutus stared at the door guarding, waiting for a figure to emerge. Brutus was a short dog, not in the least bit vicious looking (especially with his floppy ears nearly touching the ground) but he would pride himself on his ability to guard Dana’s house. A dog sometimes will have poor spatial awareness, a quality which Brutus possessed. When Dana rubbed his belly he was a cute little black lab puppy, when she took him on runs he was a track star Greyhound and when he was guarding Dana’s house he felt like a 180 pound English Mastiff with four inch razor sharp teeth.
Brutus stood facing the door (because it is very difficult for a dog to sit with such stubby legs.) On the other side of the door stood Frank, the mailman. Frank was seen by Dana as the human version of Brutus and if you could see the two side-by-side, reader… I’m almost positive you would laugh at the resemblance.
Frank was an Italian man in his fifties who as a result of long-term smoking stood no taller than five feet. Frank stood on Dana’s front porch sweltering in the mid-July heat and waiting for an answer to his knuckle taps on the old cedar board that Dana called a door. “Still at work Dana?” Brutus heard the round man ask aloud, speaking mostly to himself. Immediately Brutus changed his defensive stance and no longer felt he had to be on guard. Frank was somewhat of a family friend. He has visited their porch to deliver mail for as long as Brutus could remember. Dana liked the old guy and that was enough for Brutus to drop the tough guy act and pace mildly back to his spot beside the couch.
Resting his muzzle on his paw, he observed the brass slit in the door open slightly. A manila envelope pushed its way through the tiny slot. Brutus had watched this happen hundreds of times usually when Frank was at the door. He had watched countless times as mail went through the slot and landed on the tile floor of the entranceway, sliding slightly towards the carpeted living room floor and stopping in the same place each time.
Today was different. The envelope flew across the floor as if some unseen force was guiding it. The envelope slid greater than ten feet and stopped at his wet black nose. Brutus was intrigued. To his limited knowledge mail didn’t behave this way, especially packages as heavy as this. If he could read Brutus would have noticed that the package was addressed to Dana (not that he had every gotten mail) and the information was written in Gladis’ hand writing.
Dogs sometimes have a tendency to think irrationally by human standards. An irrational thought crossed his mind now. What if Dana thinks I mover her mail and gets upset with me? A certain feeling of doggy panic set in. The kind of panic a human may experience when they are ten minutes late for work and they haven’t showered yet. Brutus had visions of Dana coming home and scolding him. “You bad, bad dog!” She would yell. “You know your shouldn’t be touching my mail, Brutus!”
This thing was, Brutus loved Dana (if only such a relationship would be described with nothing but one word) and Dana loved him. They were best friends, life partners really. The thought of losing this feeling even for the thirty seconds the Dana would be scolding him terrified Brutus. That’s when his irrational fear-driven thought turned into an irrational fear-driven action.
Fear is a strange emotion. Some argue that it is purely a tool for survival; some argue that it is much deeper than that. Some don’t even know that they are feeling fear until it’s too late (in this case, Brutus). If Brutus thought like a human he would realize what a falsehood the saying, “Ignorance is bliss,” is. In this moment Brutus felt anything but bliss, he felt fear and it’s that essence of fear that caused his irrational action. Ill burry it in the backyard! He thought triumphantly. Dana won’t even know she got mail in the first place! Yeah, that’s what I’ll do! If he had half a brain he would have just put the envelope by the door where it belonged, but the old dog’s brain was elsewhere. Just like Aunt Gladis’.
For the second time in a short period, he grunted, pulling himself to his tiny feet. It was the most exercise old Brutus had had all day. Now ti was time for him to switch from lazy old Basset Hound mode to slender, speedy Greyhound mode. Brutus ran as fast as his stubby little legs would carry him. He ran past the couch and the television and into the kitchen where Dana had left the sliding glass door open. She always did this so that her dog could relieve himself during the day. His little feet skittered across the kitchen tile towards the open door. Brutus nearly lost his feet out from under him as he dismounted the two concrete steps leading to the fenced in backyard.
Brutus continued running until he reached the place where the two fence walls met (to people it’s known as a corner). He dropped the paper at his feet and began to dig, unaware of how hard he was panting. Both because of the record time he had made in the hundred meter dash just then and because of the anxiety he was experiencing. After all, Dana would be back any moment and in Brutus’ mind he could not afford to be caught with her mail.
Just as he pushed the last layer of dirt onto the letter he heard the front door click open. “Brutus?!” Dana bellowed as she closed the door behind her. If Brutus was human he would have wiped his sweaty brow and said, “Whew! That was a close one!”
In his ten years of life, Brutus had never seen Dana dig in the backyard. For what reason? How else do you find treasure like bones and decaying fabric? He wondered. That’s how Brutus knew that the letter was safe. She wouldn’t look for it and she would never know about it.
The plump old dog skittered across the floor almost twice as fast as before. If his body would allow him to jump more than five inches, he would have jumped straight into Dana’s arms so he could lick her face repeatedly. A gesture which means I love you in dog. Today he settled for licking the top of her black leather boot and nuzzling her leg with his head.
“Hey Brutie” she said, Brutus was a little embarrassed when Dana called him that. She bent down and began scratching his head while she kicked her boots off. “I’ll be back to feed you in a bit,” she told him. Brutus’ eyes widened at this, he could almost smell it already. Next to Dana, food was his favorite thing in the small world that he knew.
Dana climbed the stairs and Brutus instantly knew where she was going. The room where humans went to mark their territory, but that’s not why she was going there. Dana was going there to wash the day’s filth from her body in the little white pond that Dana knew how to turn on and off. She went there every day after work. One becomes quite filthy working at a dog shelter. Brutus was lying in his spot by the couch listening to the water running upstairs when a voice came to him gentle and sweet.
While dogs have powerful ears and noses, what most don’t know is that they have powerful souls as well. Only creatures with powerful souls such as dogs, cats, and birds can hear voices from another world and that’s the type of voice Brutus was hearing now. “Brutus’, be a good boy and give Dana my letter. It’s very important.” It was Gladis! This made Brutus upset. Gladis must have succumbed to the disease he had smelled on her over two years ago.
A thing that we know about dogs is that they don’t mourn the same way humans do. This isn’t because they don’t understand death by because they find no use dwelling on the subject. One thing they do have in common with humans is that they respect the dead. Possibly even more than the living. In the end, the respect he had for Gladis outweighed the fact that Dana may yell at him.
Brutus ran straight to the burial site of Gladis’ letter almost three times as fast as the first time. This time he did lose his footing going down the two concrete steps into the back yard. Brutus tumbled headfirst to the ground but recovered quickly. Dogs are great at ignoring pain. Once he reached his hole he dug franticly but didn’t need to dig for long because soon enough he felt paper on his paws. He reached into the shallow hole with his muzzle and removed the dirty tooth marked envelope.
To Brutus dirt actually tasted pretty good and he was so hungry he half considered dropping the envelope and eating some but realized that he would be dining on chicken mush once Dana was done “showering”, or whatever she called it. Provided she wasn’t too angry at him for burying the mail.
Brutus walked through the kitchen and into the living room where Dana would be shortly. There by the television stood Dana’s aunt Gladis. Rather, the spirit that remained. She took a step towards him and bent down pausing to grab her right hip. “Good boy Brutus,” she said smiling while she pat his head. He tilted his head and licked her hand. A gesture than can mean both “I appreciate you” and “You’re welcome.” Brutus meant both. Gladis seemed satisfied and with that she faded away. Just in time too, as Dana was descending from upstairs. To Brutus she stank of flowers and other perfumes that overwhelmed his nose even before she was in his sight. She stinks! He thought.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs the sight of her dog worried her. His eyes were on the floor, his ears considerably droopier and he wore a frown. This was a look she characterized as shame. “What’s wrong Brutus?” she asked with growing concern as she grabbed the envelope from his considerable jaws. “Gladis?” she asked showing extreme surprise. “I haven’t talked to her in four months!” Dana nearly gasped. “Where did you get this, Brutie?” Brutus was thankful he couldn’t talk because if he could, Dana would be expecting an explanation. She tore open the envelope excitedly only to have her heart crushed by the contents. Brutus stared at Dana wide-eyed, now he was the one showing concern.
Dana knew that Gladis had been battling lung cancer for about two years but never realized how bad it was. It was hard to her to visit Gladis at the hospital five hours away because of how often she worked. At this moment she regretted every day she didn’t visit. Gladis had been euthanized less than twelve hours ago by her own request. This was her final letter to Dana.
Brutus watched as her tears hit the floor and wondered if she was sad because he had taken her mail. Dana clutched the letter in her hands and sat down on the couch sobbing all the while. Gladis’ voice rang in Brutus’ head, “Tell her I love her.” Of course I will, Brutus thought. He hopped up onto the couch and placed his head on Dana’s tear dampened lap. The last words in the story came simultaneously from both Dana who was stroking Brutus’ head and from Gladis whose apparition was hugging Dana tightly (even though Brutus was the only one who knew she was there”. Both women whispered through a veil of tears, “Good boy, Brutus”.
