by Jill Cline
REMEMBERING CHARLEY
"JILL!" Rick's voice bellowed my name. I knew it was bad. I didn't want to open the door. And it was bad. My husband sat on the big rock, bent over a small red dog cradled in his arms. Tears were in his eyes and he cried, "Charley is dead".
That couldn't be Charley, I thought- lying there so still. Charley was always on the move. Charley could run faster than any dog I ever saw. He had a habit of flying toward you, launching himself into the air, and rebounding off your chest with all four of his white paws. Charley smiled when he ran, tearing down leaf-lined paths in the woods, white-tipped tail held high. He would bound through soy bean fields, leaping like a jack-rabbit every once in a while, so he could see above the beans. In snow-filled corn stubble fields, Charley would charge down the rows, running so fast his legs were a blur against the white.
My daughter Kara rescued Charley from an abusive owner in Marshall. The first thing Rick said when he saw him was "not ANOTHER dog" but Charley was never just another dog. He quickly wormed his way into all our hearts. A boxer, pit-bull mix, Charley approached life in his own unique way.
Charley was a world class beggar. He would sit by our kitchen table when food was being served with his liquid brown eyes trained on Rick (the softest touch). Silently, he would edge closer and closer to Rick until his head was resting on Rick's knee. "People food" was more often than not his reward. He especially loved jerky.
Charley was a hunter extraordinaire. He spent whole afternoons wearing a track around our tiny farm pond, hoping to catch a frog. Most of them plopped into the water just in front of him like tiny explosions but he never gave up hope. Once he ran fourteen feet up a slanting dead elm, grabbed a woodchuck, then leaped from the tree with his prey in his mouth. I witnessed him chase a terrified barn cat once. He leaped onto the doghouse roof after it. When the cat went higher, on our garage roof, Charley followed halfway to the peak. Realizing his predicament after the cat went up and over the top, Charley leaped from the side into my flower beds, a drop of twelve feet. He kept an eye on the two chipmunks who live in our old maple trees in the front yard. Charley lived for the chase.
Charley loved to chew. He particularly liked gloves but he could make short work of a rawhide bone, too.
He sometimes would nip Rick's hat right off his head or a glove out of his pocket and play a game of "catch me if you can" with it. If he had something really good to chomp, he would go into one of his "holes"in the living room, either under the telephone table-or half-hidden between the love seat and the wall.
Charley adored riding in the car, any car. He would cock his head at you as if to say "Come on-what are we waiting for?" Then he would sit expectantly, hoping he would get a chance to poke his head out the side window and savor the scents that came his way in the breeze that blew his brown-tipped ears in the wind.
Charley was eventually allowed to sleep in our bed, although we hadn't intended it. He was the only dog I ever knew who would burrow completely under the covers. He liked to lay somewhere down by your feet, resting his head, and pressing close. Around nine p.m., he would figure it was time to retire and would quietly scratch a few times on the door which leads upstairs, just reminding you that it was bedtime. Tonight I couldn't sleep without his companionable warmth and so, here it is two a.m., and I am remembering Charley.
Charley would share the recliner, too, once you had settled in to watch a movie or catch a TV show. He would sit there a moment, waiting for a chance to make eye contact, and then he would spring up, over the padded arm, and settle lengthwise, sighing, with his head toward the TV. On nights that Rick played bridge, I never felt lonely because Charley kept me company.
Charley could jump higher than any dog I ever saw. He would launch himself into the air, leaping so fiercely after a Frisbee or a ball, that he would have to flip over, righting himself in descent, like a cat, and landing hard back on the ground. Charley would chase whatever you threw. Over fences, into the pond, or into the deep weeds of the barnyard that once held pigs but this summer was overgrown with lack of use.
Charley and Lexie, his daughter, would play the wildest game of tag I have ever witnessed. Running with disregard for obstacles, they would chase each other at breakneck speed. Growling and somersaulting over and over in the thick grass of the back yard, or stopping and starting in the sand of our abandoned volleyball court, they never failed to make me smile. They were my companions on my evening walks-charging through brier-choked trails, leaping into muddy black swamps, running down the old railroad tracks that border our farm, only to turn and circle back to me with their eyes full of life and their pink tongues panting. They ran twelve miles while I walked three.
We dug a grave for Charley by the rock garden where the alyssum and the dahlberg daisies will bloom next summer. We laid a rug in the bottom as Charley never liked to lie down on the hard floor. We wrapped him up in a blanket and carefully tucked in all the edges. Then we said goodbye and breathed a prayer. We figured God must have had a woodchuck problem in Heaven and He needed Charley to help out.
Goodbye, Charley boy. Life won't be the same without you.
Jill Cline