The Rescue Dog

            On the day of The Incident, Jubilee was sitting in her usual spot beneath the awning of the bakery. The rain had soaked the edges of her blanket. The Prince was drenched, but Jubilee held him close, regardless, savoring the retriever’s warm body. It was a good spot. The owners of the bakery were kind. They never chased her off, so long as she didn’t bother the customers as they came and went.

I had taken to calling her Jubilee—in my head, at least—because she was always wearing this large button from the Diamond Jubilee. It was a vibrant purple and stood out against her layers of brown-on-green-on-brown-again coats. She was nicer than some of the other beggars I would pass by. She responded well to a simple shake of the head, and she wouldn’t shout after you if you just didn’t say anything. She actually looked happy.

Seeing Jubilee with The Prince reminded me of my sister, back in the states. She was always a dog lover in a way that I would never be. She had a chow-pit-bull mutt named Dennis. He was a big dog. Loyal. Old. Quite old, really. He had gone blind in his right eye, and he had a limp. He was still energetic, though, and would play around with Rachael whenever she came home from school. He was always waiting for us when we would get off the bus, and he would greet me with the same energy as Rachael, but, again, I didn’t much care for dogs.

Rachael found Dennis abandoned in a dumpster. Our parents let her keep him, calling him “the rescue dog.” He never really lost the dumpster smell, and for that reason, he had to stay outside. I was a bit of a germaphobe as a kid. Maybe that’s why I preferred the company of cats to dogs. My cat, Tiara, cleaned himself regularly. He didn’t smell, and he was an indoor cat. Rachael’s the one who named the poor beast. She had originally thought he was a girl, but when she and my mother went to get the kitten spayed, they were told otherwise. The name stuck, though. Tiara had light golden fur on his feet, a thin black line of fur that looked like a crown around his head, but he was white everywhere else. He was stand-offish. Whenever he actually wanted attention, which was rare, he would use claws and teeth to get it. I liked him a lot because I didn’t have to work for him. Dennis required a lot of special care and cleaning, but Tiara mostly just looked after himself.

That was all pretty long ago, though. Tiara is much older now and mostly just sits around. He’s gotten fat and, like Dennis, has gone a bit blind. Rachael agreed to take care of him while I was studying in England. It was a six-week program. Not even a full term, really—two courses and most of it spent in an underground library. It was still exciting, though. Although my dad came from New York, he and my mother had moved into rural Virginia before they even had my sister. I’d never even seen a big city until they took me to catch my flight. So many cars and people—languages I didn’t know. And then I was suddenly in a foreign county, where the only relief I had to my anxiety was the knowledge that I spoke the native tongue.

Dad handed me a fifty dollar bill before I boarded the plan and reminded me of how I should act in a city. “Watch your back,” he had said. “Keep your wallet in your front pocket. Don’t carry a lot of cash on you. Don’t exchange this fifty for Euros; American money is worth more to you in an emergency. If you see bums, don’t look them in the eye. Don’t give them money. Don’t talk to them.” I just dutifully nodded my head, and ignored the fact that England used the pound, not the Euro. He seemed genuinely worried, anyway, so I wasn’t going to ruin that rare sentiment.

I did see some homeless people, though, and I definitely wasn’t prepared, despite my father’s warning. I felt immediately lost when I landed, and it took me the better half of a day to find my way to the city, and then the rest to find my lodgings. I got oriented in a couple days, though, but my heart seized up every time I saw one of the Oxford vagrants. They looked filthy, cold. Sad. They reminded me of everything that I had never liked about Dennis, but these were people. We didn’t have any homeless people where I was from, or if we did, I never saw any. I never even saw a one in DC before I got on the plane.

But in Oxford, you walk everywhere. Or you take a bus. If you walk, then you take sidewalks. That’s where the Vagrants live. The sidewalks. It seemed as though they found prime real-estate—chunks of sidewalk that were large enough that they wouldn’t be stepped on, but in locations where plenty of people would be walking by. “Spare a pound? I’d like a warm bed tonight.” Seeing them all, so broken and disheartened, it humbled me. It made me feel spoiled. I didn’t even come from a rich family or anything—lower-middle class, at that. My trip was paid for with scholarships and church donations. But these people had even less than I did.

To cope with the pain of seeing them, I gave them names. I tried to be funny, thinking that if I could laugh, then I could just ignore them. The one on the corner, whose nose was perpetually red from his never-ceasing cold, was Rudolph. “Chuckles” was the name I gave the toothless one who took the benches beside the bookshop. And then there was Jubilee. . .

My classes required me to walk about a mile south of St. Anne’s to the Bodleian Library for research. Every day I would pass the bakery. Every day I would pass Jubilee and The Prince. She stood out to me because she was the first pet owner I had even seen in the country. Her accent was very thick British, almost stereotypically. She smiled when she talked and her teeth were fairly white and straight. Underneath the unkempt hair and ragged clothes, she reminded me of how my sister had looked before the accident. Unlike the others, she struck me as someone who hadn’t given up hope.

I had to remember what my father had said, though. Never look them in the eyes. Never give them money. And certainly don’t talk to them. With Jubilee, more than others like Rudolph or Chuckles, I had to force myself to ignore her. Sometimes I would cross the street before I got to her place, just to make it easier. The Vagrants were usually dismissible. They were like objects on the roadside: something you notice, but don’t pay too much attention to; then, as soon as they are out of sight, you forget them. I couldn’t forget Jubilee, though. I would find myself looking out for her. If I crossed the street, I looked across, just to see if she was there. If I passed her, I slowed down, just to take in the sight. I found myself thinking about her when I went out to the pubs with my classmates. I thought about her when I went home at night. While I wrote essays. While I studied. I even talked to my sister about her on Skype.

I was thankful that Rachael didn’t take offense when I told her that a hobo reminded me of her. She just gave a snide remark about how she probably looks that way, anyway. When she was in high school, she was one of the most popular girls in school. She did cheerleading and had high academic marks. She could afford to have a different boyfriend every week if she had wanted, but she never dated. She said it would interfere with her “plans,” and besides, Dennis was the only boy she’d ever need in her life. Her goal was to get enough scholarships to get into a good school and become a veterinarian. She never outgrew that passion for animals, but her plans were definitely changed.

It happened toward the end of her Junior year. We had just come home on the bus. Rachael had a cheerleading competition in the morning, so people wished her luck as she got off. I was, as usual, ignored, as I preferred. Dennis greeted us and the bus took off. Tiara was there too, skulking. He wanted attention, and rubbed against Rachael as she rubbed Dennis behind the ears. Our driveway was a long one, and I had begun to walk, as usual, without saying anything. Rachael asked me to hold up, though, so she could grab the mail. She looked both ways and crossed to the mailbox.

The next moments haunted me for the longest time. I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares. I sometimes thought that there should have been something I could do. There should have been something I could have changed. Maybe I should have gotten the mail that day. It was my chore, anyway. There wasn’t anything I could do, though. We both heard the car coming around the blind turn on our road, but Rachael had plenty of time to cross. Tiara wasn’t so lucky. The cat had decided at the last minute to follow after my sister. There was a blur of the car going too fast on the road, a high pitched screech, and then my cat, lying in the middle of the road. His fur was matted red. He was alive—still howling. The car had clipped his rear, broken his leg.

Tiara would be fine, but I didn’t know that. Neither did Rachael, though. Mail in hand, she immediately bolted into the road and scooped up my cat. There wasn’t a sound when the second car hit her, or if there was, I have since blocked it from my memory. It didn’t hit her very hard, but it was enough to throw her down the hill across from our drive. I took after her, slipping and scrambling down the hillside. When I got to her, she was unconscious and bleeding.

We got her to the hospital. The driver—she was the wife of a farmer from up the road—called an ambulance, and the paramedics got her back up the hill. My mother rode with her while my father and I followed. The farmer’s wife had offered to take Tiara to the vet for us. Dennis, who wouldn’t let us leave without him, howled in the back seat the entire way to the hospital. I can’t remember exactly how I felt that evening. Dad made me stay in the car to take care of Dennis. Mom must have bathed him that day, because he wasn’t as smelly as he usually was. He whimpered, as though he understood the whole situation.

I was left in the car for maybe an hour before I decided I had to go in. I slipped the rarely used collar around Dennis’s neck (he was real good about not wandering off), clipped the leash on, and walked into the hospital. People gave me some really strange looks when I came in with the dog. Eventually a doctor stopped me.

“Excuse me, young man, but you know that this is not a veterinarian’s office, right?” I nodded. “Where are your parents? Are you lost?” The doctor was kind. He could tell that something was wrong. Tearfully, I told him about the accident. He had me sit with Dennis in a waiting room. It smelled as bad as Dennis usually did, but in the opposite way—too clean. Too antiseptic. One of the lights in the room was buzzing. An older woman who was also waiting kept asking me about Dennis, but I could only manage a few intermittent nods.

The doctor came back eventually with Mom. She told me that Rachael was okay, but that she was resting. They let me and Dennis in to see her. Dennis immediately jumped up on his hind legs and laid his head beside her. Rachael’s face was badly bruised and scraped. Both of her legs were in casts, as was her right arm, which had apparently been dislocated in the fall. She woke up when Dennis licked her. She smiled through her pain, and asked “How’s Tiara?” Mom told her not to worry about it. To rest. Everything will be fine, but you need your rest.

Tiara survived. He’s still alive today, too. Grumpy. Lazy. He’s fat, half-blind. He lost his tail in the accident, and I’m still the only guy I know who can say he has a three-legged cat. For the longest time, after Rachael was able to come home, she hated the sight of Tiara. It reminded her of her own injury and the fact that, according to the doctors, she would never be able to walk without braces again. The accident ruined her cheerleading, which bothered her, but it also wrecked her senior year. Mom stayed home and homeschooled Rachael while she went through physical therapy.

Once Rachael got past her despair, she began to see Tiara as a symbol. If this cat could overcome its disability and walk again, (and he had; you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen a three-legged cat leap onto the top of a set of shelves!) then she could overcome her disaster. She was determined to prove the doctors wrong. She spent the whole year doing exercises with her legs. All along the way, Dennis never left her side. He was allowed inside now, as a comfort to my sister. During her first big check-up, they discovered that her legs had healed a lot faster than what was expected. They knew, then, that she would be able to walk again after all. Rachael took a couple online classes while she continued to heal, and by the end of the second year, she was ready to take her first steps without the braces.

We were all there to watch. Even Tiara. Dennis took every step with her, as he had throughout the entire process. It was four steps that first day, but that was enough to give my sister hope. By the end of the week she could manage stairs. Rachael later got accepted and started college. Dennis passed away while Rachael was sleeping one night. We had been expecting it, mostly. It was still sad. Rachael kept his dog tag, and made it into a bracelet that she still wore around, five years later.

She gave me the bracelet to wear while I was England. She told me that, since Dennis had always come back to her, then if I wore the tag, too, then I would have to return as well. I wore it every day while I was there, even though I got teased for it. Some of the other students took to calling me the Campus Dog. That was fine though. I’d never been very good at making friends, and like Tiara, I still preferred to be alone.

I spent a lot of my free time in Oxford taking walks. I’d walk in the University Parks or around the Meadow, but whenever it rained (which it did frequently in England) I walked south on Woodstock toward the shopping areas. I was on one of those rainy walks on the day of The Incident. The traffic was a little busier that day, either despite the rain, or because of it, so I wasn’t able to cross the street. I passed Jubilee on the way down, and she was there, of course. The smell of the fresh bread from the bakery hit me hard, making me hungry. Jubilee’s voice sounded a bit weaker than usual, as though she were suffering one of Rudolph’s colds.

“Spare some change?” she asked. My heart hurt, as usual, when I ignored her. As I kept walking, though, I kept thinking about her, and wondered what she had been through. What led her to the street of Oxford begging for coin?

I had dinner with a mate in town, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I kept thinking about her. It spoiled the meal for me. When I left the restaurant, though, there was a group of teenagers kicking around a football. The rain had subsided finally, so I guess they felt like celebrating. I saw Chuckles, walking away from Waterstone’s toward wherever it is The Vagrants call home at night. I walked my friend to the bus stop, but when I turned around to head back toward my lodgings, I heard some shouting.

Chuckles was on the ground, his sack spilled out beside him. Some clothes were tossed aside, and he was scrambling around picking up coins. The teens from earlier were around him, shouting insults at him. I gathered that they had hit him with their ball, and then decided to continue to abuse the poor man. They weren’t using English, as far as I could tell, but it seemed pretty apart. I shouted at them to leave him alone. For a second, I was scared. There were three of them, and one of me. If they wanted to fight me, they would certainly win. They turned away and left, though, laughing.

I walked over and tried to help Chuckles pick up his lost coin, but he shouted at me, “I’ve had enough of you damn brats! Just leave me! Leave a poor man his dignity at least!” I didn’t know how to reply, so I just walked away. Is that why people don’t help the homeless? I had always assumed that it was out of inhumanity or just carelessness, but maybe, at the end of the day, it’s better that we don’t? That’s awful, though. I know that sometimes people just need help, right? Like my sister. She needed Dennis around to keep her going.

I spotted Jubilee up ahead. It looked like she was about to start getting herself together, but I wanted to give her some money first. The Vagrants wouldn’t be asking for it if they didn’t need it or want it, right? Dignity aside, everyone needs a hand up now and again. I nodded to her as I passed, and walked into the bakery. As it turns out, they sell the bread cheaper right before they close up so they could get rid of that day’s stock, so I bought some extra rolls and got some change back, for Jubilee.

There was a sudden scream from outside that made the shop clerk cover her mouth. I looked behind me and saw Jubilee screaming at a car that was passing by. I ran out the door and saw The Prince, lying dead in a puddle on the street. Hit and run, just like Tiara. I was immobilized for a second. I couldn’t move or think. All I could see was my cat in the street, dead, and I knew what came next. I hear the car’s horn, and knew that Jubilee would not. Then, without thinking—without even knowing what was happening—I was on the ground. I had pulled Jubilee back and out of the way of a car. The driver shouted profanely from the window as he passed.

I didn’t know what to do. Jubilee managed to pull The Prince out of the street, and I helped her wrap him in her blanket. She mumbled a “thank you” as she walked away. I was still frozen. It had begun to rain again, but I hadn’t noticed. I just watched as blood washed down the street. The shop clerk came out and asked if I was okay, and offered me a seat inside. She woke me from my daze, and I just shook my head.

I didn’t give Jubilee any change. I still had the bread. I considered running after her, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate. I saw something glint in the headlights of another car, though. It was a dog collar that had been smashed by several cars at this point. I snatched it out of the road, and wiped the mud, rain, and blood off of it. It read “William." The Prince’s name was William.

Over the next two weeks, I did not see Jubilee. I went into the bakery more often and occasionally I would ask about her. I continued my work. I learned to love the city and the culture. On the day I was supposed to leave, I was walking toward the bus stop, and I saw her. She had moved onto a side-street I’d never needed until now. She was looking cleaner now. Her hair was a bit straighter, he clothes less wrinkled. It was a rare sunny day. She wasn’t smiling though. Her face, like many of the other Vagrants, was blank. Hopeless. That was how I knew what it took to get that way. Losing something. All of the Vagrants must have lost something dear to them. A friend, a family. A home. For Jubilee it was the Prince—William.

I had about ten pound left over from my bus fair, and it wouldn’t be worth much to me back home, so I went ahead and handed it to her as I passed. She looked up and said thank you. I don’t believe she recognized me. When she saw the note, though, she asked, “Are you sure?” I nodded. “God Bless!” A faint smile this time. “I like your bracelet.” I looked down at my bracelet, and it dawned on me. I reached into my back pack and pulled out William’s dog tag. I pulled Dennis’s tag off of the bracelet—Rachael would understand—and attached the new tag.

“Here. It’s not much, but I found this after you left.” I handed Jubilee the bracelet, and her eyes lit up. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and I could see that she recognized me.

“Oh, God Bless you!” She grabbed me into a hug, and I went ahead and hugged her back. As I walked away to catch my bus, I knew that she would be okay. Like my sister, Jubilee had a Rescue Dog to take care of her. I just never thought it would end up being me.