And so they did (his spirits lifted) when he entered the garage with the dog to go to the store. At the sight of his in-backed, green Swedish car, the man was reminded that, in general, his intentions were good, and he began to feel a lot less terrible. He wasn’t a lazy or careless person. Quite the contrary. He was a two-point-turning nightly flosser, someone who was willing to do the harder thing to better ensure the safety and well-being of those he loved. And he remembered — or imagined he remembered (the distinction between memory and imagination being as thin a distinction as any, really) — that his reasons for feeding the dog the gel-smeared bacon weren’t nefarious reasons at all. It is true he’d been aware that the gel might be a poison, but he was no more aware of its potential toxicity than he was of its potential capacity to enhance the dog’s life. Was it so unlikely the gel was good for the dog? Might it not have been something healthy, like a vitamin supplement? Or maybe something that, healthy or not, could provide the dog some pleasure, such as that which, say, catnip did for cats? After all, he loved the dog, so even if, in the spirit of adventure and scientific discovery, he’d gotten a little bit carried away and fed it some gel that might be—might be—poisonous, he surely must have done so in the hopes that the dog would profit.
“You might still, yet,” the man said to the dog.
They were driving around now, the dog riding shotgun, facing the man, and happy-sounding chuffing sounds were chuffing from its nose.
“Profit, I mean,” the man said to the dog. “You might profit yet. I remember the first time I drank a beer. It tasted just awful, didn’t it, boy? Like a cross between an ashtray and an uncooked potato, but wet — still, I finished it off. I drank the whole can, didn’t I? Yep! I drank the whole can down in Billy Toomer’s basement, and by the last couple sips, I didn’t even mind the taste. I was really very happy, and so were all my friends. We were happy to have beer and happy to have drunk it. Moreover, we were happy to be happy, because all of us, at first, we all hated the taste, and we didn’t understand why men enjoyed beer, so all of us were worried we’d make shoddy men, or maybe even that we’d fail to ever become men, except then we understood — or at least thought we understood — why men enjoyed beer. It wasn’t the taste. Who cared about the taste? Beer made you happy, boy! Beer made you laugh! That’s right! Like that! Chuff chuff chuff! And we giggled like little girls did at church in the movies, and we drank second beers and talked about girls, mostly their chests, and how some of us had put our hands on their chests — not me, of course, this was only seventh grade, and I wouldn’t even kiss a girl till junior year of high school — and we talked about how girls — by ‘we’ I mean my friends — they talked about how girls seemed to really enjoy it, being groped on the chest. There were sounds the girls made. My friends reported gasping sounds, moaning sounds, quiet little chuffing sounds — yeah, just like that — and I remember thinking, even though I didn’t say it, that maybe those weren’t sounds of enjoyment, but pain. I’d seen people gasp, moan, and chuff from pain. I had, myself, made those sounds when in pain. And I wondered if, maybe, getting groped on the chest was, for girls, like drinking beer was for us. I wondered if maybe the sounds the girls made
were pained sounds, like maybe they really didn’t enjoy being groped on the chest, or, more likely — more likely, I recall thinking, because the girls, at least according to what my friends said, kept putting up with the groping — more likely the girls learned to enjoy it and just forgot to change the sounds. And then — and this is the important part of what I’m trying to say, I think — then I wondered if I was full of shit. Just completely full of shit, you know, boy? Shit. I wondered if even though I seemed smart to myself and my parents, I was actually pretty dumb, plus completely full of shit. Do you see what I’m saying? I might have been making something out of nothing. That was the first really deep thought I ever had — or, at least, it’s the first one I can remember right now — and, just as I had it, I started feeling dizzy. All of us did. Our faces got long and our mouths were dry. Billy Toomer suggested we try drinking more — that the problem we were having, contrary to how it seemed, was that we hadn’t drunk enough. That we needed more beer to counteract our sick feelings. So we drank more beer, and man oh man did we get sick then! What I’m trying to tell you, though, is I’m sorry I’ve been acting so crazy lately — I’m sure you’ve noticed I haven’t been myself. What I’m hoping is that bacon I fed you will make you a happier dog, like the way the beer in Toomer’s basement, at least for a little while, made me a happier boy. I can’t, if I’m honest with myself, say that that’s what I was hoping all along — if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know what I was hoping — but I’d like to think, I mean I’d really like to think that that’s what I was hoping, and, more to the point, I am absolutely certain that’s what I’m hoping now. You’re someone I care about — you’re someone who, frankly, I love. And I trust you. I trust you to guard me while I sleep, and to guard my wife, and I trust that when he or she is born, knock wood knock wood, you’ll guard our child, too. I hope you won’t be jealous. We won’t love you any less. And you have my word that if you don’t show some signs of being a happier dog in the next little while, I will never feed you that gel again, and I can only hope, if that’s the case, that you’ll be able to forgive me. And I want you to know that I’m learning from this, it hasn’t been a waste, that what all of this has taught me, this whole experience with the crack and the gel — what I’ve learned from all of it is something I guess I’ve known, at least in part, ever since that day in Billy Toomer’s basement, something I’ve known all along but forgotten: that there are lots of things that can’t be known. Important things. And I’m saying I guess that’s the point of the journey. By the journey, I mean life. Life might actually have a point, I’m saying, and that point is that you just can’t know. Or maybe it’s less that there’s a point to the journey than that accepting that you just can’t know some things, especially the important ones — accepting that is the key to enjoying, or surviving, the journey. And what a liberating thought that is, boy, isn’t it? Do you see what I’m saying? As long as I’m accepting that I just can’t know, I might as well enjoy believing whatever I believe. This moment we’re having right now, for example. I’m talking to you, boy, I’m baring my soul to you, and even though you’re incapable of speaking any of the words I’m saying, let alone defining them, I nonetheless believe you understand what I’m saying. I believe you understand what underlies all these words. You understand that I’m here for you, boy, that I’m here to protect and take care of you, boy, and you understand I’m sorry I fed you that gel. I don’t have any evidence that you understand me — that’s true. But I don’t have any evidence that you don’t understand me, either. So why shouldn’t I believe it? That you understand me, I mean? I should believe it. That’s what I’m getting at. And what’s more, I do. I do believe it. And furthermore, boy, I enjoy believing it, and I should enjoy it! I do enjoy it, boy. And for that I am grateful. Thank you for understanding me, boy. Thank you for being such a — ooh! Shit. Oh no. No.”