His Dogness

Unlike Doobins, who is routinely called upon to don armor and face such tangible enemies as camel crickets in the basement, most of my battles of good vs. evil take place inside my head.

The other day I was driving up a hill when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the face of a driver so close behind me that I saw nothing of the hood of his car. He was perhaps 18. The bill of his baseball cap was pointed in the right direction but it was askew.

As we climbed the hill, he kept turning the wheel of his car first to the left then to the right and back as if he were thinking about passing me on one side or the other. That was not a possibility. He would drop back marginally and then pull right back up again.

This was not someone thoughtlessly driving too closely without regard for the need to keep a safe distance. This was someone pretending that he was in a NASCAR race.

After someone hit my car on the right side a while back, it was declared a total loss. So that gave me the liberty to consider stepping on the brakes and letting his car hit the back of mine.

No good could come of this, of course. With someone foolish enough to do what he was doing, no telling what he would do if he smashed his precious car. When I turned left at the top of the hill and saw that he turned behind me, I pulled to the side of the street.

He raced past and immediately turned down a residential street. It’s one of those streets that don’t lead anywhere else. So, it’s quite possible that he parked his car seconds after passing me.

I was so angry that, as I drove on home, I imagined coming back later and keying his car. By the time I got home, I had remembered that life would take care of justice without me. Sooner or later, he was going to wreck his car or pull that stunt on someone considerably meaner than I am.

That helped. But the incident stayed with me enough that I got wound up again when I brought it up with a friend that night.

The next morning, His Dogness and I were out at 5:30, which is about the time that my newspaperman delivers the paper.

Back in the days when I had parties at my house and stayed up until the wee hours, several of us were sitting in the grass in the front yard once when the newspaper landed next to us. That’s when we decided it was probably time to call it a night.

After I gave up giving parties, I didn’t see the paper delivered for some years. Now that His Dogness can no longer make it though the night without going out at least once – when we go out three times, I call it a three-dog night – we are sometimes out when the newspaperman turns the corner and heads up the street. When that happens, I wave. I presume that he waves back but I cannot say for sure because it is dark and I cannot see through his windows.

The morning after the encounter with Skewed-Cap Man, we were in front of Mr. Whitfield’s house when the newspaperman turned the corner. I decided to wait until he threw Mr. Whitfield’s paper into his yard so that I could stick it behind his door before His Dogness and I headed on around back.

I waved and watched Mr. Whitfield’s paper sail over the car and land at my feet. The car pulled over to the curb and stopped. What’s this? Something new. The newspaperman got out of his car and asked me if I was the man who lived next door.

Yes, I said, Kim Underwood.

Ervin Transou, he said.

It was a name I knew from sending a holiday check the past few years. I thanked him for the excellent service. We shook hands. A couple more words were exchanged. Mostly, though, that was it.

He handed me my paper and drove off. His Dogness and I walked toward the back of the house.

The exchange made me really happy. I don’t know all of why. But I know part of it.

Taking His Dogness out is not something that I mind. He’s not doing it to vex me. It’s just something that needs to be done. That said, it can be a struggle to get up and out in the night, and, once I’m out, I often spend most of my time there telling myself how great it’s going to feel to climb back under the covers.

And here was a bonus experience that couldn’t have happened if I had been asleep in my bed.

Here’s another thing. When I was a kid, I had a paper route. It gave me an appreciation for how hard it can be to get up every single day. And my newspaperman has been doing just that for quite some time. So it was nice to shake hands with the man who makes it possible for me to start my day the way I like to start it – reading the paper with a cup of coffee.

As His Dogness and I walked through the back yard, the incident with the man following too closely came to mind. I thought about how angry that had made me and how much I enjoyed meeting Mr. Transou and that, in my own internal battle of good vs. evil, doing a better job of shrugging off pointless anger and focusing on the unexpected treats that life brings is definitely the way to go.