Tamped Down

by Aldean B. Hendrickson

The sound was not the squeal of tires gripping pavement, nor the scream of
brakes, nor the yelp of shock and mortal pain. It was some horrible concatenation
of all those, adding up to more than a sum of distinct sounds. It struck me with a
physical force. I was up from my seat at the dinner table and out the door,
running frantically down the sloping lawn. I was halfway across the yard before I
heard the screen door slam back against the porch wall.

I knew she was dead. Hot claws of grief tore the inside of my throat as I
flew down into the ditch and up onto the highway. Dandy lay in the westbound
lane. She was still. The white fur on her legs and belly was bright with blood.
Even though her chest still moved, her eyes still searched about. I knew she was
dead. I fell to my knees and wept beside her.

My throat was on fire with rage and grief. Almost a mile down the road,
before it bent to the southwest, the dark sedan had pulled to the shoulder. The
driver stepped out, and I could see him inspect the front end for damage. Then he
got back in his car and drove on. I hated him for killing my dog, but even in the
moment I understood that such things happen, especially when your house is
forty feet from a busy state highway. I hated him more for not being humane
enough to turn around and look at my grief. Maybe he was afraid, or in a hurry.
Or did he just not care?

I don't think my scrawny eleven-year-old frame was strong enough to

easily lift and carry the German Shepherd-Border Collie cross; I am sure Dad
scooped Dandy up in his arms, powerful from years of physical labor I already
hoped never to know, and bore her off the highway, back into the yard. I cannot
remember at what point she actually expired. It might have been as we stood
around her on the highway, or on the grass after Dad moved her. I believe she did
not suffer much or long

Dandy had been my companion on nearly every adventure of my boyhood;

she would greet me each morning as I emerged from the house, and accompany
me on every long jaunt over the fields, every ramble through the woods. From
Jack London and Jim Kjelgaard I understood the casual but certain bond
between human and canine was essential to a rugged childhood lived in the open
air. When she was young I had walked her on a leash, taught her to sit and heel,

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but such niceties seemed out of place in our rural setting, so as we both grew
older I was content to have her roaming near at hand, ready to come at my call. I
had been deeply fond of my dog; it seems strong to me now to say that I loved
her, but I might have at the time; I did not know then that I would never love
another animal.

Dad quickly made the decision to bury her at the back of the large patch of
day lilies that grew at the edge of the yard, below the double row of Norway pines
that sheltered the house from the westerly winds. I had received Dandy from my
grandparents, a puppy of my own for my seventh birthday, and I had named her
after the bright carpet of dandelions where she had romped after I released her
from the white H.B. Fuller glue box in which she had been transported. It seems
fitting then that we laid her to rest near flowers of some sort, though knowing my
father I am such poetry was unintentional; it was probably just the handiest out-
of-the-way place available to dig a two-by-three foot hole.

I was sent to the shed to fetch the spade and shovel and Dad started
digging. I remained distraught and useless beside the bloodied body of my dog,
now lying limp and still in the heavy rust-colored wheelbarrow. The sun had set
now, the summer evening was settling into dusk. When Dad had finished digging
he stuck the shovel in the mound of loose dirt and picked Dandy up out of the
wheelbarrow. He laid her in the bottom of the hole, and we stood around silently
for a moment. I suppose I said goodbye; I think I was done crying at this point.
Then I took up the spade and began to help Dad scoop the piled dirt back into the
grave as gently as I could, hesitant to throw dirt directly onto her body; it seemed
an affront, an impious act.

Yet once I finally allowed myself to let a shovelful of dry sandy soil land
upon the clean gray fur of her back, it became a calming, cathartic duty to cover
her evenly for her final rest, sealing her away in respectful peace. I was only
eleven; sad as I was, perhaps I began to already think that someday soon I could
get a new puppy, could maybe do a better job of training this time around. It was
not long before the grave was half filled in.

And then my childhood died.

“Get in there and pack that down,” Dad said blandly, as, really, he said
everything. I stared at him, gaping, incredulous at the callousness of what he was
suggesting. Tears returned to my eyes, and I shook my head at him. He insisted.

“Get in there and pack down that loose dirt. We don't want it to settle
later.” It was not a suggestion after all. I had no will to refuse further, but the hot
tears that filled my eyes were no longer an outpouring of grief for my lost pet. As I
stepped into the half-filled grave and began taking slow, overlapping steps to

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tamp down the loose earth I forgot the hatred I had felt toward the anonymous
driver into whose path Dandy had charged. Treading as lightly as I could, I felt a
coldness tighten across my chest, pinching my soul. In that moment I hated my
father for what he was making me do: trampling on the body of my dead dog, not
out of any malice, but out of sheer unfeeling fixation on practicality.

And I knew I would continue to hate him. I would hate him as I tearfully
stepped back out of the hole, and would hate him as I sullenly finished helping
him refill the grave and repeated my anguished performance as an earth packer.
Long after I returned the tools to the shed, had showered and was lying in my
twin bed, still I would be hating him, not passionately as I had momentarily hated
the driver, but consciously and willfully. I resolved to hate him forever for this
moment of callousness. I would take out the memory of that moment beside the
grave and thrust it almost daily into my consciousness, rubbing my face in that
remembered pain to ensure that I never let my heart unharden. I would tamp
down my heart, and, justly or not, for the next twenty years I would define my
relationship with my father by what I felt as I stepped down onto the soft earth in
that grave.