I had a dog when I was a kid in Tulsa, and he moved back to Kansas City with us in the '50s. He was a special needs fellow, but quite smart and fairly independent. After he’d been hit by a car on Peoria, a busy street in Tulsa, he’d lost a front leg but adapted and could get around quite well. Some trauma remained, however. He took an insatiable interest in golf balls, tennis balls, and rocks after the accident.

The golf balls he would chew down to the miles of rubber band inside and he would then manage to wrap that around the family automobiles at tire level. Tennis balls he would just bring home and deposit in the back yard, rocks too. Sometimes I’d hear him whining querulously down the block and I’d know he’d picked out a rock too big for him to manage. At first, I’d just bring him home, but he would return to that rock and fret and complain until I’d come and carry the rock home for him. Then his habit would be satisfied for a few days.

So, when I’d hear his special rock complaints, I’d locate him and bring his latest find home. Once it was placed in the growing rock garden in the back yard, he was fine. It was there. It was his. It might be days before he’d find another perfect specimen; usually he’d bring it back by himself. If it was middling heavy, he’d rest on the way home, drop it for a while, pick it back up, and continue until it was in our back yard. I was used to this. Some larger ones he would manage to roll with his chest; he was a smallish spaniel, low to the ground, and inventive in his rock hound ways. A week or two might pass before he’d holler for my help with a must-have larger acquisition.

In between his geological forays, he would spend time at a quadrangle of tennis courts about four blocks north of us near the Brookside area. The courts were surrounded by a high fence, and he would sit or lie outside the fence and watch as if, perhaps, he was a fan. Then someone would hit one over the high fence and he was on it; he’d grab the ball and head home at high speed. Once home, he’d deposit the ball in the back yard and never touch it again.

In Tulsa we’d lived near a driving range and golf balls were plentiful. He’d open them like Tootsie Pops for the rubber band-wrapped middle. Once in a great while, in KC, he’d bring one home, but it was a rare occasion. Probably stolen from a gent who would practice putting, down the block. He never complained so the dog must have nabbed the ball when the man went inside.

You may have noticed I say “the dog” instead of Rex or Butch, that’s because he had an embarrassingly dopey name. My mother named him. She drank. Okay, it was Scoodles. She named my Easter ducks Fubar and Snafu, military acronyms not hard to figure out. I wanted the word Scoodles to be a harsh military saying, but the letters never worked out. He answered to it, and I had to call the half-assed name out loudly to bring him in for the night.

Scoodles liked us all, but love? That may be a stretch. Loyalty, also a stretch. He was well-treated, well fed, dry and warm in winter, cool and well-watered in summer. I was his dutiful rock sherpa on his geological surveys. But he wanted more. For a short while he found it.

The dog, oh okay, Scoodles, disappeared for a couple of days. I seemed to be the one most worried in the family; “Oh he’ll show up,” I was told by my stepdad. “Who the hell would take him?”

And we did get a phone call. From a mansion on Ward Parkway. Quite near the Russell Stover home. A sort of Mr. and Mrs. Bridge’s aspirational area. The family there had gotten our name and phone number from his dog tags and a call to the vet.

I was of driving age by then, so I went to this home in my 1949 Ford hot rod, not a usual sight in these elegant driveways. The place was a large Tudor brick and stucco house with cut glass windows and a front door that looked like it belonged on a castle. I rang, activating the melodic chimes inside, and a maid opened the door.

“I’m here for…the dog,” I said. She smiled and called for the residents, invited me into a spacious living room with a fireplace. It was late fall and the fire crackled merrily. The area would be described by a realtor nowadays as a “great-room.” Scoodles was lying on a folded Pendleton blanket near the hearth; when he saw me, he yawned, stretched, wagged his tail, and trotted over to me. I stroked his head. Then he returned to the blanket.

The attractive lady of the house said, “We weren’t sure what to feed him, so we gave him steak bits and raw hamburger. It seemed to agree with him. He followed us home from the tennis courts. Such a nice doggie.” He looked at her and wagged his tail.

I patted my leg, “C’mon boy.” He remained on the blanket. He wagged his tail. It was fairly obvious what he was telling me; I could stay or go, up to me. I’m good, his eyes conveyed.

I picked him up and the lady’s husband seemed relieved. “What did you say his name was?”

“Bingo,” I said.

“Well, goodbye, Bingo. It was a pleasure.”

He lay on the seat beside me and slept on the way home. I was to continue roadie functions for his sporadic rock tours for about another year. His jaunty gait slowed, his rocks got smaller and fewer. Then, on a spring evening at dusk, Scoodles sought a place in the rock/tennis ball/golf ball garden and quietly passed away. One fine, somewhat neurotic dog deserving of a cooler name. But he seemed to mostly enjoy life. He is remembered.

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Guinotte Wise writes and welds steel sculpture on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and enough money to fix the soffits. Six more books since. A Best of the Net and 5-time Pushcart nominee, his fiction, essays and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals including Atticus, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review,  Rattle and The American Journal of Poetry. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. (Covid changed some of the circumstances) Some work is at wisesculpture.com

Art:
Yuko Kyutoku
My Blue Afternoon
Papers, Acrylic paint, screen printing, fabric, 46×62
2018