FRANKLY SPEAKING
by Frank Crocitto

Ah, there was a dog once. I try not to remember him. He was mine, but never became mine.
He was mine in the sense that there was a cord of destiny that bound our hearts together. I never owned him. But he was mine, and I suppose you could say I was his. We were one.
I met him long ago when I was starting my adventure as a teacher. At the time there were many people interested in what I had to teach, and because they were spread far and wide I had to travel. We met in libraries and public schools and private houses. Classes were held at night, through all seasons and through all fluctuations of weather.

On one particular night, a very dark night, I found myself on an unfamiliar back road, weaving toward the home of an elderly woman—a new student. She greeted me with an affected spiritualistic air, a short, flamboyantly-scarved woman reputed to have an uncanny rapport with cats.

She ushered me into her house, a house of lace and throws and swags and dim lights with fringed shades and carpets and claw-footed furniture. She had yellow teeth. In her arms she held a small silver puffball. When we sat down the silver ball unwound and with ears perked and eyes glittering he scrutinized the roomful of attentive students, and at that instant leapt out of the dowager’s arms and planted himself before me looking up with unflinching intensity.

He was half husky, she tittered, half dingo. His coat was a gleaming grayish-white. His eyes were blue and soft with the deep vigilance of one who still remembers the wild. Though he was just a pup, six weeks old, and cuddly, anyone with eyes to see could see he had the makings of an extraordinary dog. He had been given the name Silverado, she said, though she was not sure if he had accepted it.
Before the evening came to a close, Silverado had come to a decision. He had followed my every word and gesture. He had walked beside me. He had climbed onto my lap. When I held him, he snuggled profoundly into my arms. He had chosen me. Within those few hours he had become my dog, and everyone there knew it.

He was a wild beauty of a dog, too. The certainty of his movements, the unwavering directness of his gaze, his quiet self-possession was that of a natural, wild being, which derived, I surmise, from his dingo side and the windswept outback where those wild dogs have the world to themselves.
Apparently Silverado did not belong to the bedizened dowager but to her nephew, a rapscallion according to her, who wanted to rid himself of the thing. But he had not as yet come to a definite decision. When would she know?

Do you really want the dog?

Yes, I want him.

I’ll speak to my nephew.

When, but when?

He went skiing.

But when, when?

As soon as he gets back I’ll call, but I’m practically 99 percent sure he doesn’t want the dog. He can’t take care of a dog. He’s very busy. He’s a lawyer.
And so it went.

I had an uneasy feeling about the lady. She was slippery as eel skin. Not deliberately, but as the simple outcome of more than three-quarters of a century of cultivating the flowers of vagary.
Before I left I repeated my unconditional hope for Silverado, how he was the dog I had been yearning for all my life.

“Oh yes,” she nodded emphatically, “of course, of course.” Still, doubt hung in the air like a swaying cobweb.

I let a week go by before calling her. She said her nephew was still skiing. Then another week. He had broken his leg. And then two weeks more. She seemed irritated with me and told me, a trifle too stridently, that she would definitely call. I waited a month. Then I tried again, and again and again but no one ever answered. Then I called a friend of hers who I suspected might be able to pry the real story out of her. Nothing at all. Then it was two months. I could picture Silverado getting bigger by the day, growing out of puppyhood without me, becoming his full self, all dog, without me. Perhaps it was just a passing fancy, not meant to be. Unconsoled by the usual platitudes, I kept hoping. Like an old tree, hope takes a long time to die. I waited for the call. I waited for a call that never came. I resolved to descend upon the old lady. Abduct him. No, never, my life was so busy churning within and around me I could neither summon time nor enterprise to kidnap a dog. I spun hopeful fancies, though.
Eventually, Silverado slipped out of my thoughts and went to another dimensionless room, re-appearing now and then as a lost hope, a shadowy picture, an ache. I knew it was too late, that it was all over, and yet I did ask someone who had a passion for animals and was Australia-bound to bring me back a dingo pup. That didn’t happen, either. She forgot, or didn’t take me seriously.

Occasionally I sigh when I think of Silverado, that wild-eyed promise of a dog. The sigh I sigh is always a deep sigh, for it is connected to all the great, heart-stirring hopes I have cherished that have come to dust. Silverado, Silverado. I will always carry with me the loss of you, though I doubt that you ever give a passing thought to me.