Cherished Read Free

talking in front of rattlesnakes, “let go of the dog and come over here.” Of course, Dylan tightened her grip. Isha began making a noise. “Dylan, the dog is dangerous. Take your hands off her, and come over here!” That little girl wouldn’t do shit. It took four or five attempts, and to this day Dylan doesn’t know how close she was to an unpleasant death.
    The question comes up: Why did we keep her? We were crazy in love with her is the answer. But I don’t think it was for all those “unconditional love” reasons you hear when people talk about their beloved pets. I think it was more the part of her that would happily tear the balls off a Chinese mover, or eat up a few of her pups because she was hungry or she felt like it. The part of her that left Dylan Diehl alive only by whim, the reach into a world we don’t talk about but know is there — the part that’s acknowledged by a howl, and not by any means a heartbroken howl — in the depths of the night.
    Remember that when we moved in together, good manners had to be the order of the day, and they were. Maybe Isha made all that good behavior bearable.
    About thirteen years after all this started, Isha died. The household had changed. Lisa had married a deeply respectable husband and was living a life of extreme rectitude. She had children and a fine career. Sweet little Clara was old enough tobe in college and have a darling boyfriend, Chris. John had changed from a man strong and sure of himself into a tentative person in the last four years of his life. He fainted frequently, walked slowly, seemed far away. I remember myself as brash and pathetically ignorant of the fact that the best times in my life were about to be ending — the years with John, the whole freewheeling existence that was Topanga, all of it.
    John and I went to Australia for a couple of weeks. John said later he’d said good-bye to Isha, but I left without a thought. Things were the way they were, just swell. Nothing else crossed my mind. Several days passed before we even got in touch with Clara, who was taking care of the house with Chris. They had woken up one morning to find Isha really ill. Had gone down to the general store to get some ground meat for nourishment. It was one of those monumental August-in-Topanga days — about 120 degrees. Out by the side of the house, in the dirt, Isha died in Clara’s arms.
    Clara and Chris dug a hole in the brick-hard ground out on the crescent, wrapped Isha in an afghan that had belonged to Lisa’s old boyfriend, a Vietnam vet, and covered the grave with large flat stones to keep the coyotes away. Then they called Lisa, who was heartbroken. In a few minutes, Lisa called back. “Are you sure that dog’s dead?” she asked. And then, in a few more minutes, the phone rang again: Chris picked up this time, and Lisa impersonated me. “This is Carolyn See. I’m calling about my dog, Isha. Are you sure she’s OK?” And finally, one last call to Clara: “FYI, Clara, you know mom and John have only been gone a few days. And then the neighbors see you and your boyfriend digging a shallow grave out on the point. Don’t you think they’d be justified in calling the cops?”
    Just Lisa, bopping Isha’s head in the last way she knew, the sound of a champagne cork opening at a party that’s already stopped.

2.
A STORY ABOUT THE GENERAL

Michael Chitwood
    I ’m preparing for the first meeting of my creative writing class this semester. What I’ve been doing so far this morning is selecting a group of quotes I want to hand out. The quotes, from famous writers, are about why we write and what the real subjects of writing should be. They offer tips about the best way to get emotion into your fiction and poetry, mostly, it seems, by not looking directly at it.
    Every hour or so, I take a break from quote harvesting and go out to the garage. Our