Another Husky
Elmer and I turned a corner and stepped off the sidewalk down to the bark chip trail. We'd walked for almost an hour through the park and seen the darkness give way to light and the quiet give way to singing songbirds and honking geese.
Thirty yards away sat a man in the middle of the trail. He was slumped over, contorted, either asleep or fried on fentanyl. He might even have been dead.
What struck me was his hat—a kind of bowler. I couldn't see his face.
I wasn't going to avoid him. He might need aid although I had no phone, no Narcan, no money, no water.
We headed his way. We walked ten yards and then I saw a white Alaskan husky tethered to the man. A tree had initially obscured the dog, but there he was, lying on the ground, alert.
Elmer didn't see the husky. If he had, he would have been looking at a nearly identical dog. Their similar appearance jolted me.
The man's husky saw us but didn't bark or move. His was a face of concern.
I made the decision to detour across the street and avoid a possible confrontation. If we spooked the husky he might have dragged his owner into injury, assuming the man was still alive.
I watched that husky the whole time. He watched me. Elmer never noticed.
As we walked away, I wondered about the man and his husky. I verged on getting swept away by an undertow of depression.
Five minutes earlier, I had felt fantastic.
It can change so fast on these morning walks through the park with Elmer. A blue heron one moment, then a half naked homeless woman twisted on a bench. A coyote one moment, then a homeless man riding a kid's bike pulling an improvised baby stroller full of cans and bottles. A beaver one moment, a bindlestiff carrying a load bigger than Grinch's bag of loot ripped off from Whoville.
As I wrote that last sentence, it occurred to me that I am probably the only person this American century (or the last one, or the entire history of America for that matter) who has seen a beaver and a bindlestiff almost simultaneously at dawn. I really don't know what to make of that.
There was nothing I could do for the man. Yet another flake of my humanity chiseled out.
Two hours later, driving to the grocery store, I saw the husky tethered to a fence outside a convenience store. Thirty minutes later, I drove by the convenience store and the husky was gone. I took some comfort in that.