Free Comet's Tale by Steven Wolf Page B

myself upright. After one such mishap, I grunted, “You’re probably just scared, aren’t you, girl? That’s why you don’t take off, isn’t it?” Comet answered with a reluctant lift of her nose from an animal hole near a decayed cottonwood stump. Scared, indeed.
    Then there were the days I was unable to rise at all—sometimes as many as fourteen hours of bedpans and banality before somebody got home to help me up. Despite my regular cursing at fate and the unceasing boredom, interspersed with my screams of pain from spasms, Comet would gently nestle next to me, place her head on my chest, and act as contented as a farm dog on a sunny porch. This was not normal canine behavior. Even more mysteriously, in our unspoken communication I detected wisdom that seemed to say, It’s all right. I understand.
    Then I’d chide myself. Am I losing my mind? This dog was kept in a cage most of her life. She hasn’t had a chance to understand her new surroundings, let alone my stupid situation. She’s a dog. Don’t try to humanize her, because that’s just cruel. Let her be the greyhound she was meant to be! Yet over those long summer days I couldn’t help but feel that by any standard, Comet was far from ordinary.
    These jumbled thoughts were emblematic of all the issues swimming around in my head. I didn’t have a job and didn’t know if I ever would. How long could we afford two houses? How long would I have to live away from Freddie for part of the year? Would that even work? How could I keep current with the girls? Now that I had spent the summer with them, I was officially up-to-date on their lives—Kylie was looking forward to her third year at the University of Nebraska, Lindsey would be applying to colleges, and Jackie was starting her sophomore year in high school. I asked them questions about their plans, but even as they answered me, I often lost focus, lulled by medications or distracted by an endless mental loop of worry. Once I returned to Arizona, I knew I might once again fall out of touch with them.
    Consumed by these fears, I grew more introverted and cranky with each passing week. I was alert enough to notice that my conversations with the girls seemed to peter out after a few sentences but not to ponder the possible reasons. The specter of Lindsey’s hero, He, haunted me, yet I never reflected on the words in that childhood ode. Lindsay had spelled out why she revered that man—he made her smile, encouraged her, brightened her day. There was nothing in the poem about being as strong as Tarzan or able to win a triathlon. But I didn’t think about that. Instead I obsessed about my failure to live up to my personal code of valor: if I wasn’t the mightiest, kindest, smartest, most driven man in all of Nebraska, I was shirking my duties as a husband and father.
    The issue wasn’t only my health, or the lack of it. My spinal problems had been a splinter in the family body for some time. But in years past, fueled by massive quantities of denial and stubbornness, I had somehow convinced Freddie and the girls that the light in the distance was not an oncoming train. It was this assurance, buttressed by my continued professional successes, that had encouraged them to believe in me. Now nobody knew what to think or say. The whole situation reminded me of an ancient Japanese poem, a copy of which I used to keep in my office:
    I have always known
    That at last I would
    Take this road, but yesterday
    I did not know that it would be today.
    My daughters were confused. Freddie was scared and frustrated. Every day I was fighting to pull myself out of a sadness that threatened to drown me.
    Fortunately, I had my own personal lifeguard. Whenever Comet rested her head on my chest, I felt as if I were lying on a blanket of soft grass in a forest of Ponderosa pines. Every day was a good day for Comet. In her contented presence, I found enough peace to