"Hi Coral."
Coral didn't say anything. Then again, a body that had all the language of block ice needn't say anything.
Pinching my last bit of litter, I climbed out from under the picnic table. A good way for a guy to break the ice is to remain on a knee, show the girl what the guy had found. I opened my gloved hand, showed Coral the cigarette butts and dirty fork I'd found.
"Damned Metals students," I said, getting on my feet. "Got to throw their butts right down where they sit. Can't take the four steps over here to throw 'em away right."
I took the four steps--excessive steps, turned out, threw the butts into the concrete trash barrel that doubled as my rain gauge. I'd have thrown the fork away as well, but given the block ice I was about to have the talk-of-my-life with, I thought an ice pick might come in handy.
OK, then, time to talk dogs.
I turned to do as much. Finding my block more on the order of glacier now, I got back over my barrel, dipped my fork in the garbage water. No, as Coral could clearly see, I had dish to do.
A good way to get ones nerve up, is to bark back to the fears of ones youth. Oh, how I feared the classroom. Where my first love was hard candy, my second love was anything that got me out of the classroom--sickness, snow days, field trips.
Boy, that Minnesota sure made for some good field trips. Take the one we took to farmer Hartvigsen's back forty. Climbing the ridge, there, our teacher took us to school on Terminal Moraines. Turned out, this ridge, here, was where a continental ice sheet had quit its crawl south. No, I couldn't speak for the school girls, how their bright brains were wired, but us boys hadn't developed wiring enough to grasp an ice sheet bigger than Minnesota--we were still in the dark about what it meant to be part of the Gopher State.
I turned to talk dogs with Ms. Glacier. Check that; Ms. Continental Ice Sheet.
I'd always envisioned the ice age as blindingly bright. Why? Because in Minnesota the coldest winter days were always the brightest. What I'd failed to fathom was this: A continental ice sheet had a face--a nine story high face. Well, here I stood now under that face scraper, and believe me, the shadow it cast had me backing up like a puppy.
Coral showed me her back, headed for the far corner of the patio. I hurried up and heeled. Coral took a seat under the Library's stained-glass window. I sat next to her. I'd been outside working, so I was comfortable, but I was concerned about Coral in her thin sweatshirt and stocking cap.
Getting comfortable, Coral pulled her feet up on the bench, hugged her knees. Getting uncomfortable, I looked out over the roof of the Glass Studio. On the horizon, a brush-stroke of rain was erasing the horn of Saddle Mountain.
Omen.
Thank god I was a history buff. Where non-buffs--wringing the meaning out of an ill omen like this--were bound to end up with some order of erectile dysfunction, I, standing firm on the foundations of history, was free to develop a complex of a higher order.
Fact: Before any white man had put Saddle Mountain on a map, that mountain had been called Canoe Mountain. Why? Because the first people in these parts--the Native Americans--had no saddles, let alone horses. Of course, at night, sitting around fires, they'd probably called the mountain, The Canoe A Human Had Better Climb Into When It's Time To Go To The Happy Hunting Grounds In The Sky.
Anyhow, that was the kind of complex I wanted to climb into now. Of course, if that erasing rain kept moving in, there'd be no canoe to climb into.
I checked in on Ms. Ice-scraper. No, I wouldn't call it a thaw exactly, but at least the glare Coral was giving me now--the glare a bad dog gets--was something I was used to.
OK then, time to talk dogs.
It was then that I spied something on the patio--something peeking out of a pile of leaves. I got up, bent over. How about this now; an entire cigarette.
Having shown Coral my rare find--she wasn't impressed, I stomped off in a huff. Pulling up to my rain gage I saw something inside--a play of light. No, I couldn't throw the tobacco in, for all the dalliance coming out.
Omen.
Mmm, perhaps my old trash barrel wasn't a rain gage so much as it was a wishing well.
Heading for my seat, I observed Coral pivoting around, placing her feet on my seat. I stopped, checked on the rain I'd wished away with my tobacco. Yes, things were looking up. Though still raining on my canoe, I saw no signs of sinking. OK then, time to compose some words to die by. I put my hands in my pockets that I might pull out my pad and pen. Then again, I had bigger things to pull out just now. Like the balls it was going to take to talk dogs with Coral.
I took a seat at Coral's feet. Odd, I wasn't cold, yet I felt a shiver coming on. "It's kind of cold," I said, stirring the air with my fork. "We can go inside if you'd like."
"It's not cold," Coral said. "This time of year, in Anchorage, I'd be out in the snow and ice, walking my dog, Soot."
That's what I liked about Coral--no beating around the bush.
"That's right," I said, aiming my tines at my gloved hand, "I keep forgetting; you're one of those tough Alaskans." I mock-stabbed my hand. "Soot, eh?"
"Yes. And he's really old. Might die before I get home for Christmas."
Nor were we groundskeepers the kind to beat around a bush. No, if the bush's time was up, we'd pretty much kill it on the spot.
"Coral," I said, poking the hand that had killed so much, "I'm going to be honest with you. That's the kind of relationship I want to have with you--with anyone. See, I am my own person. I'm comfortable with who I am and with the philosophies I have shaped and continue to shape. It's like this: Here I am, Anton Celadon, the good, the bad, the true package. So it's up to you to decide if you want this package in your life."
Coral didn't say anything.
"See, Coral, I don't have anything against dogs. It is, in fact, the great respect I have for dogs--and my fellow living beings in general--that I believe the way I do. See, Coral, I see all life forms as my equal. As such, I see all animals as my equal. With such a view, I cannot condone the keeping of animals. To pull an animal out of its wild free world, plug it into the insane asylums humans have made for themselves, well, to me that's clearly spirit abuse."
Coral didn't say anything.
"It's like this: Say aliens from another planet came to earth, put leashes around humans' necks, forced humans to jump through all kinds of alien hoops, forced humans to breed into all kinds of novel shapes and sizes. Every human would clearly see that as abuse. Yet humans do that to their fellow beings and think nothing of it. I'm sorry if you disagree, but humans who break the spirits of fellow beings are . . . are unenlightened beings."
I checked in on Coral. Her doe eyes were fixed on the tree growing behind me. The little tree I had no little hand in shaping. No, I don't suppose this was the time to touch on what it takes to force-shape a Japanese Maple into looking as natural as all that.
A good way to stop shivering is to gaze off at a distant mountain like an Indian brave. Of course that's hard to do when the artist, The Great Spirit, had decided a canoe on the horizon wasn't such a good idea after all.
I sensed Coral was about to speak. Yes, I'd best prepare my ear to hear what I'd heard from every one of my dog-loving ex-girlfriends: 'I didn't domesticate dogs. But they have been domesticated. And now it is our human responsibility to take care of them.'
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