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  Miranda said, “Probate’s got all his shots. Our regular vet’s Dr. Gagliardi. We couldn’t get Probate into the car, so we called you.”

  “I know Dr. Stefanie,” Dr. Nancy said. “I think I used to work there, maybe about ten or twelve years ago.” She pushed up her boobs with both hands. She pulled back some kind of near floor-length cape that accented the costume. Who doesn’t remember where he or she worked at some point? Me, before I signed on with Piedmont Consumer Pulse because the previous vice president lost it altogether and quit—which hadn’t gotten voted Best Marketing Firm in the County—I had a number of both full- and part-time jobs throughout high school and college, then afterwards. I worked at a pharmacy (mistake on their part), drove a water truck, washed dishes as part of work-study, spent six days as a roofer, worked at a Budweiser warehouse (another mistake on my employer’s part), waited tables during that one semester of law school, delivered newspapers in the middle of the night, cut and delivered firewood from my daddy’s tree farm, sold Christmas trees from my daddy’s tree farm, married Miranda, worked for her father’s Consumer Pulse of the Carolinas, then went out and took the VP job with the competition. Who doesn’t remember jobs?

  Probate let out a noise that almost sounded like “Help,” I swear to God.

  Miranda said, “You can just call up your therapist like that? Does she charge you by the hour even over the phone?”

  I kind of wanted to know the answer, too. Dr. Nancy said, “It’s okay. It’s okay, buddy. It’s just your soul trying to leave your body.”

  It took me a second to realize that she talked to Probate, not me. Miranda said, “Probate’s real name is Max. Charlie renamed him Probate.”

  Dr. Nancy had been stooped down in her damsel-in-distress costume until this point. I’m not proud, but I could look down and see her boobs easily from where I stood. I’m not proud, but I kind of wanted Probate to stop whining and breathing erratically for an hour, just so Dr. Nancy could remain crouched, considering her options.

  “Oh,” Dr. Nancy said. She stood up. “How old did you say Max is?”

  “Fifteen,” Miranda said. Maybe I should mention that Miranda wore those Spandex things I see more and more running women wear, plus a T-shirt that didn’t go much past her navel. She said, “Well, we don’t know. Probate came from the Humane Society, and then my mother had him for about eight years, and we’ve had him for six or seven. I’d say he’s between fifteen and seventeen, really.”

  “There’s no telling,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to offer. “We never fed him onions or chocolate! I pride myself on knowing what dogs can and cannot consume. We made sure he never ate pork, or any of those other things that make dogs sick or poisoned!”

  Dr. Nancy said, “Renaming animals can be very confusing for them, and make them feel worthless. Some scientists speculate that that’s what happened to the dinosaurs.”

  SO THE VET shot my dog up with a sedative, Probate went to sleep, the vet shaved a spot on Probate’s left foreleg, then she swabbed it with alcohol. I didn’t say, “Why did you sterilize the spot on my dog’s leg? It’s not like an infection’s going to bother him later.”

  Miranda shook her head sideways as if she underwent a petit mal seizure, held her mouth wide in a stifled cry, and excused herself to the bedroom.

  The vet injected pentobarbital, I stroked down Probate’s spine, and his pains—the cancer, the failed hips, the probable long-term mourning for my mother-in-law—vanished within a minute. Dr. Nancy got up and, without asking if I possessed any allergies, pulled a stick of incense from her bag, lit the end, and waved the smoldering thing over my dog. She held a stethoscope to Probate’s chest, then pulled back and said, “Okay. His spirit has lifted. This is just your dog’s body. His spirit has risen.” She spoke calmer than a golf announcer on CBS, or someone trying to coax fish toward the shoreline.

  I feel bad, but I started laughing. I mean, I bent over and slapped my knee. I said, “Is that sage? What’s that scent?” But I tell you, I couldn’t stop laughing. I said, “Oh my God. Oh, Jesus, you’re something. Hey, do you go to Burning Man every year? Oh man oh man oh man. Hey, what’s with the getup? Spirit has risen. Goddamn.”

  Dr. Nancy saw no reason for my humor. She said, “Do you have any other animals living in the house who need to say farewell to their friend?”

  That made me laugh even more. I yelled out, “Miranda! Miranda, get in here!” I looked down at Probate, whose eyes were open, staring at that little vent at the bottom of our refrigerator. I said, “Myrrh? Sandalwood? Frankincense?”

  Miranda yelled back, “I can’t!”

  I said, “No, we don’t have any pets who need to offer their bon voyages.” Then that made me laugh. I said, “‘Bon voyages!’ Like we have a cadre of French pets upstairs. Miranda!” I screamed out too loudly. I said to the vet, “No, no pets. Probate had a special relationship with some squirrels and chipmunks out in the yard, but I don’t think that they held the same feeling of camaraderie.”

  “Will you be wanting me to take the body to get cremated? Do you want a paw print cast? Now would be a good time for me—or you, if you feel strong enough—to cut some of Probate’s fur off, for a keepsake. You can put it in a jar. I’ve had clients frame their dog’s fur.”

  The vet’s eyes went all cockeyed at this point. She looked all over the house. I thought maybe she’d made up stories about an ex-husband, and she would come back later with her spouse and rob us. “You could put Probate’s hair in a little amulet and wear it around your neck.”

  Like I said, Probate was part Chow and part pit bull. He kind of shed. I looked over at the corner and saw a swirl of his hair gathered. I said, “No, that’s okay.”

  “That’s okay to not get cremated?”

  I said, “How much do I owe you?” and pulled a checkbook out of my back pocket. “I already dug a grave, right beneath a tulip poplar. It was Probate’s favorite place to sit and listen to the songbirds on crisp spring mornings.”

  And then I bent over and started slapping my knee again. I leaned down and pet my dog over and over. I got out, “Songbirds!” I got out, “Your spirit has lifted!”

  I got out, “Goddamn it, Miranda, grow up and get out here.”

  “Some of my clients have been fiber artists. They’ve incorporated their pets’ fur into works of art,” the vet said. She stared up at the ceiling, and at the floor simultaneously.

  I glanced down at her boobs, one of which had kind of fallen out of the weird, encumbering costume. I caught myself thinking of moats, and flaming arrows, of Trojan horses, and then Trojans. I said, “It’s weird that your ex-husband is a podiatrist, and his name is Walker. Did he always know that he was going to be a podiatrist?” Maybe it was the marketing side of me, but I thought it necessary to say, “Did your ex-husband ever think he might want to go into physical therapy?”

  “I’ll help you carry Probate to the grave,” the veterinarian said. “Let me help you. Probate’s going to be heavy and cumbersome.”

  “No. I need to do this myself,” I said.

  Miranda opened the bedroom door a crack and said, “Is it over?”

  I looked back toward my wife. For some reason Dr. Nancy thought it necessary, at this moment, still holding the incense, to hug me hard and stuff her face sideways into the nape of my neck. She kind of wailed a little, too. She made a noise that didn’t sound unlike a dry heave. I didn’t think Miranda could hear it, but I’m pretty sure the traveling euthanasia vet said, “I wanted to meet a knight at some point tonight.”

  I waited about two seconds before saying, “That rhymed.”

  She said, “It has come to this.”

  Miranda opened the door and strode toward us. I held my arms out in that way that people do to prove they’re not hugging back. I held my arms out sideways in the international sign for Hey, This Isn’t Me Doing This. My dog Probate lay dead—or at least his body was there, seeing as his spirit had scrammed the entire
scene. Dr. Nancy said, “It is all for the best,” and, “He is in a better place now,” and, “We are not supposed to understand the meaning of Death, or of Life, for that matter.”

  My wife—now ex-wife—said, “Do you have any more of that drug by any chance?”

  THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK news came on. Dr. Nancy stubbed out her incense in the sink, then put what was left over into a special pocket of her suitcase. She took out a bottle of spray Clorox, got down on her hands and knees, and encircled Probate’s body with disinfectant. I got a roll of paper towels off the counter and handed them to her. She said, “Probate might’ve emitted invisible microbes, and I don’t want y’all breathing them in.”

  I shrugged. Miranda started crying again, covered her face, and went out on the back porch. I said, “Do you have a regular clinic, Dr. Nancy? I mean, in case we get another dog, can we bring it to you for rabies shots?”

  She shook her head. She said, “I couldn’t take it anymore. Too sad.”

  Too sad? I thought. Sadder than traveling to strangers’ houses and putting their pets down daily? Or nightly? I said, “Huh.” I said, “Look. I’m not going to let you leave here without telling me why you’re dressed up in such Renaissance festival attire.”

  “Corpse-dew. I believe that I have eradicated any possible corpse-dew.”

  I said, “Good. Maybe I’m wrong. Do you dress like this every day?” From outside, I could hear my wife sobbing uncontrollably. I heard her call for her mother. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve gone out to comfort her.

  Dr. Nancy said, “It’s my therapist’s idea, really. She says one of my problems is that I wish, too often, to conform. She says my ex-husband drilled it into me I should conform, and before that time my own parents wanted me to be a debutante, and before that time I needed to be a cheerleader, and before that time I had to win the spelling bee. Spelling bee, cheerleader, debutante, wife who acted stupid in front of her husband’s friends.” She kind of let out a heh-heh-heh. “Do you know how much harder it is to graduate from vet school than med school, or at least med school to end up a foot doctor?”

  Again, we stood there right beside my dead dog. I didn’t think it was right. I said, “I have to work in the morning. I better get Probate in the ground, then cover the grave with a big piece of roofing tin I got out earlier. And some cement blocks.”

  Miranda sounded like she had dry heaves. She couldn’t hear the veterinarian, I didn’t think, but I thought about how she’d shown me photos of her own self winning a spelling bee, being a cheerleader, being presented to society the summer after her first year of college. Did she think that I made her act stupid in front of my friends? Did I, unintentionally?

  The vet placed both her hands on Probate’s chest, held them there ten seconds, stood up, and said, “The spirit has definitely lifted.” She said, “On my way out I’ll talk Miranda into coming back inside while we bury your friend.”

  I said, “No. I mean, yes, talk her into coming back inside. But like I said, I want to bury him by myself.”

  “He’s heavy,” the vet said. “You’re going to need my help.”

  I said, “I can handle it.” I still held the checkbook.

  She said, “It’s five hundred dollars, made out to Dr. Nancy, DVM.”

  Finally, I stood above my dead mother-in-law’s dead dog for five minutes before Miranda came back inside. She walked straight to the bedroom and, without turning her head, told me to get the sheet she’d set aside earlier to wrap Probate’s body. In another five minutes I heard Dr. Nancy’s big Suburban crank up, and she backed out of the driveway at about forty miles an hour.

  I don’t want to admit that the traveling euthanasia vet held some knowledge in the situation, but Probate’s corpse didn’t feel like any fifty-pound bag of dog food I’d ever hefted over my shoulder. It felt like what some of those He Man competitors endured. I don’t know what the spirit weighs, but it couldn’t have been much.

  I could’ve plain dragged my dog out the door, down the couple steps to the pea gravel, then continued toward the tree where I’d fashioned his deep red clay-walled grave. Or I could’ve gotten a flashlight, roamed around the backyard, found the wheelbarrow that I never kept in the same place two days in a row, returned, and so on. But in the end I bent down, remembered to use my thighs instead of my lower back, and cradled my now-ex-wife’s still-dead mother’s mixed breed after I wrapped him tighter than a specialized burrito in a bedsheet Miranda used only when my friends from college showed up needing to spend the night.

  Anyway, I got the dog out there and set Probate down on the edge of his final resting place. Hours earlier I’d had the foresight to leave my spade against the tulip poplar—I’ll go ahead and say that the tree died within a year, maybe from my having to cut half its roots. I picked up Probate’s body in two clenched fists of percale, leaned over slowly, and eased him into the ground. I’m not one to be religious or spiritual, seeing as I’ll go to hell for misleading people in the ways of marketing and advertising, but I thought it necessary to say aloud, “You were a good dog, Probate. You were good as Max, and you were good as Probate. I hope we meet in the afterlife, buddy.”

  I shoveled hard clay on top of his body, then shuffle-stepped a few times to tamp it down, then placed that piece of roofing tin over the bruised and tender earth-breach, plus six cement blocks I’d sequestered over the years for such a moment.

  At this time I cried.

  Maybe I stood out there and looked through the branches toward the sky for thirty minutes. Maybe I wondered if it was too early to consider driving down to the Humane Society at some point within the month, picking out a young stray, and naming it for the first time. I can’t remember. I sat down on a compromised wood-slatted bench nearby and tried to imagine a traveling euthanasia veterinarian’s nighttime dreams. I thought of Miranda inside, and envisioned her opening and closing drawers, in search of pain medication. Somehow this would all be my fault: Probate’s demise, the vet’s tardiness, the inappropriate cleavage. The long-buried reminder of Miranda’s own life-filmstrip: spelling bee, cheerleader, debutante, unhappy spouse. I envisioned my wife pulling open our filing cabinet upstairs, finding our wills, making a note how she needed to change hers. Or did she ricochet around our house, gathering useless mementos, readying them for one of the local thrift stores so that, later, we wouldn’t encumber each other with needless keep-or-trash decisions?

  I returned the shovel. On the back porch, after standing too long trying to compose myself, I turned the knob and tried to remember if I had locked the door behind me, out of habit.

  SHOW-AND-TELL

  IWASN’T OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT MY FATHER COULDN’T have obtained a long-lost letter from famed lovers Heloise and Peter Abelard, and since European history wasn’t part of my third-grade curriculum, I really felt no remorse in bringing the handwritten document—on lined and holepunched Blue Horse filler paper—announcing its value, and reading it to the class on Friday show-and-tell. My classmates—who would all later grow up to be idiots, in my opinion, since they feared anything outside of South Carolina in general and my hometown of Forty-Five in particular, thus making them settle down exactly where they got trained, thus shrinking the gene pool even more—brought the usual: starfishes and conch shells bought in Myrtle Beach gift shops, though claimed to have been found personally during summer vacation; Indian Head pennies given as birthday gifts by grandfathers; the occasional pet gerbil, corn snake, or tropical fish. My father instructed me how to read the letter, what words to stress, when to pause. I, of course, protested directly after the dry run. Some of the words and phrases reached beyond my vocabulary. The general tone of the letter, I knew, would only get me playground-taunted by boys and girls alike. My father told me to pipe down and read louder. He told me to use my hands better and got out a metronome.

  I didn’t know that my father—a “widower” is what he instructed me to call him, although everyone knew how Mom ran off to Nashville and hadn’t died�
�had once dated Ms. Suber, my teacher. My parents’ pasts never came up in conversation, even after my mother ended up tending bar at a place called the Merchant’s Lunch on Lower Broad more often than she sang on various honky-tonk stages, waiting for representation by a man who would call her the next Patsy Cline. No, the prom night and homecoming of my father’s senior year in high school with Ms. Suber never leaked out in our talks, whether we ate supper in front of the television screaming at Walter Cronkite or played pinball down at the Sunken Gardens Lounge.

  I got up in front of the class. I knew that a personal, caring, loving, benevolent God didn’t exist, seeing as I had prayed that my classmates would spill over their allotted time, et cetera, et cetera, and then we’d go to recess, lunch, and then sit through one of the mandatory filmstrips each South Carolina elementary school student underwent weekly on topics as tragic and diverse as Friendship, Fire Safety, Personal Hygiene, and Bee Stings. “I have a famous letter written from one famous person to another famous person,” I said.

  Ms. Suber held her mouth in a tiny O. Nowadays I realize that she held beauty, but at the time she was just another very old woman in front of an elementary school class, her corkboard filled with exclamation marks. She wasn’t but thirty-five, really. Ms. Suber motioned for me to edge closer to the music stand she normally used on Recorder Day. “And what are these famous people’s names, Mendal?”

  Ricky Hutton, who’d already shown off a ship in a bottle that he didn’t make but said he did, yelled out, “My father has a letter from President Johnson’s wife thanking him for picking up litter.”