Cyclops

The sore near his eye was beginning to ooze. It was practically detached from his skin; red and swollen and bloody. Who knows how long it had been like that? Weeks at least. Definitely more than a few days.

“That’ll get ‘em for sure,” said Andy as he finally took the picture after a series of snapping, kissing noises, claps, and trying out of various words -- “treat,” “ball,” “play” -- that might get the dog’s attention or hold it long enough to get a good shot of not only his sweet face but the puss-filled wound protruding from it. “That’ll make ‘em cry.”

The dog had been on the street for a year, at least. Maybe longer. We could never be sure. He was friendly enough, not flinching away from our hands. He seemed docile even, the way his tail wagged slow and low to the ground. He almost looked as if he was smiling in the photo Andy took as if he was aware of the way the sore made him look and was trying to counter it in whatever way he could.

“That’ll be the top of the newsletter this week,” Andy went on. “The other ones look pathetic, you know. Sad and gross. But I think the prominence of the injury is what’s really gonna grab ‘em.”

“What about the one with the leg that was falling off?” I asked.

“Back leg. You can’t see it in the photo.”

“True.”

We put the dog in the van, and Stephanie decided she’d ride in the back so she could sit with him. He fell asleep in her lap almost instantly, as if he knew that he was finally in a place of safety and softness, even if only temporarily. I touched his leg one final time and smiled at Stephanie. She brushed a strand of her long pink hair out of her face. Stephanie dyed her hair at home, by herself. She had been pretty good at it in my opinion. It had always looked professionally done.

I was still putting on my seatbelt when the truck hit the back part of the van first. He was running a red light -- the truck, not Andy. Andy had never been the best driver, but he had always been extra careful when he knew we had a dog in the back.

I don’t think Stephanie felt anything. If anything, she’d only been thinking in the last few minutes, somehow curving her body, sacrificing it, to save the dog.

The first time I’d seen the barn owl was last fall when I’d been visiting Andy and his husband for the holidays. After Stephanie, Andy had moved far away, to the middle of America, where he’d met a farmer with an unknown heritage who spoke very little English. Andy hadn’t been very talkative himself at the time, so they got along.

I’d been out in the barn that night, slightly drunk from drinking too much and not eating enough. I had decided to take a look around the barn they had recently built together. They seemed to always be doing projects in those days. Carpentry and construction were a part of the mutual, unspoken language they shared.

I think I must’ve been staring at the owl for quite some time because I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I’d forgotten where I was. I’d forgotten, momentarily, that I still existed in a world with other people. “We named him Cyclops,” said Andy, his eyes following my gaze to the owl up above.

“Fitting.” The bird had a rather eerie gaze. All eyes and no…anything else. I didn’t say it then because I didn’t think I needed to, but we’d also named the dog with the sore Cyclops -- the last dog we’d ever rescued, the day we lost Stephanie. He’d lost an eye from the sore. When he had been adopted, the woman had said to me, “Doesn’t that name seem a little mean?” If Andy had been with me then, I’m sure he would’ve known what to say. Something about them being dogs and we were making light of the situation by giving them silly, ironic, sometimes cruel-seeming names. It was a way of acknowledging their past without making it their future. Something like that. But since it was just me and I wasn’t as good with words -- nor did I completely follow Andy’s logic at times -- I had said, “A little.” I think she had renamed him Arnold or something. It was a pretentious name for a dog.

“Jorge is setting up the projector so we can watch a movie,” Andy told me. “I think.”

“I might go soon,” I said, and I hiccupped accidentally as I said it, so I knew there was no way he’d let me leave now.

He rubbed my back then and began to walk slowly towards the owl as if trying not to frighten it. I doubted he could though. The owl seemed pretty used to people. That, or pretty fearless. “I kind of want him to go,” he said. “But Jorge likes him. I think.” This was how Andy seemed to finish most of his thoughts since he’d met Jorge. I think it was a side-effect of the language barrier. He could never be quite sure if he completely understood what Jorge wanted or what he was doing, and the same went for Jorge regarding Andy. It didn’t seem to bother them all that much. Andy’s “I think’s” would eventually evolve into a sort of verbal tick. Years later, even after Jorge had learned a little English and Andy a little more of Jorge’s language, Andy still ended a lot of his sentences with, “I think,” or “Right?” and then usually look to Jorge to confirm his thoughts. He did this with most of his thoughts it seemed, even if they had little or nothing to do with Jorge. For the most part, Jorge would nod. On rare occasions, he’d shake his head or even laugh, as if Andy had gotten something so wrong it was comedic. Andy liked the reassurance about everything he said, and I think this was the main way Andy had changed after Stephanie.

There were times at the shelter that I could remember Andy just making stuff up on the spot, so certain in his uncertainty. Statistics about how many dogs were on the street, the way a person’s quality of life improves when they adopt. He’d even once said something about suicide rates decreasing after pet ownership became more commonplace. I usually didn’t involve myself in these tall tales; usually, that was Stephanie’s job to gently correct or say something along the lines of, “Or something like that,” so that if whoever we were talking to were to fact-check us later, we’d be slightly off the hook.

“I think it’s the eyes,” Andy said, still looking at the owl. “I don’t like the way he watches us.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “You know we’ve had sex in this barn?”

I shook my head, laughing slightly. “I can see why you want the owl to go.”

“It was fun,” he said. “I think.”

Jorge had been setting up the projector, but it was not to watch a movie. Instead, he had started a slideshow of photos of dogs. It took three or four pictures before I realized these were Andy’s photos from when we’d run the shelter. Andy asked if I wanted another drink, and I nodded. Jorge and I watched the pictures play in silence, listening to Andy talk loudly to no one in particular all the way in the kitchen. He remembered some detail or had a special memory about almost every dog.

As he finally joined us, he handed both Jorge and me another drink. I saw Jorge’s hand rub the back of Andy’s leg as Andy continued to stand and narrate a history of each photo as they appeared and disappeared. “You can’t see it in this one,” he said. “But that was only half a dog. Lost its entire back half. I still have no clue how it was still alive.” He spoke with his hands, another tick he’d picked up from living with Jorge. He tried to talk as vividly as possible, using his whole body as necessary.

“I remember,” I said.

The next slide played, and Jorge paused it. He stood up and began to speak in a different language, looking at Andy closely, intimately, similarly using his hands to speak. His tick was saying, “No?” after every sentence. I watched Andy listen carefully, closely, as if every syllable were vital. He was nodding and gesturing back slightly, but Jorge’s voice was the only sound in the room. Finally, he said, “Yes, yeah. With no tail.” I looked between them and realized they were talking about the dog in the picture.

Andy looked at me. “Jorge had a dog with no tail when he was a kid,” he said. “He said it looks just like this one,” he told me, pointing to the picture. Jorge was looking at it closely, sipping on his drink.

“I remember this one,” I said. Jorge looked at me. “He got adopted pretty quick. Very friendly.”

Jorge nodded and smiled at me.

“Very sweet,” said Andy.

Jorge came back over and sat down beside me again. He pressed play on the slideshow, and we continued through the last couple of photos. When we hit the dog with no back leg, I knew we were getting toward the end. Andy’s commentary shortened, becoming briefer and briefer. When Cyclops appeared, he didn’t say anything at all.

I tried falling asleep on the couch, but I found myself listening to Andy and Jorge upstairs. They were speaking softly, though I didn’t know what they were saying. At one point, Andy’s voice got louder and then it stopped. I heard crying. Andy crying. He had a distinct way of crying that I knew from working with him for so many years. Andy had never been one to pretend. He wore his heart on his sleeve. Sometimes, looking at these broken dogs would become too much. I think photographing them was especially difficult.

The room was quiet for a while and then I heard noise again, this time not speaking but something much more intimate. I got up and went outside, knowing I wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon. It had gotten harder and harder since the accident. The pain in my back kept me up most nights. Some nights though, it didn’t, but I’d still be awake like a guard dog on duty.

I returned to the barn, and the owl was still there. I laid down in the hay with my blanket and watched it watch me from the rafters high in the ceiling. It blinked slowly, almost as if in slow motion. When I closed my eyes that night, they felt wet and they stung. I was thinking of Stephanie’s pink hair.

I think the worst part of it all was that there were definitely still dogs out there. I don’t know why it was so hard to fathom continuing without Stephanie, but it was. In some ways, she was everything.

Stephanie had grown up in foster care, and although she’d never told us much about it, we knew it was bad. It was definitely not Annie. Stephanie had been on the quieter side. I always felt that she changed her hair as a way of saying what she couldn’t with words. It was the loudest part about her. And she loved the dogs, perhaps most of all. There were nights she’d sleep at the shelter just to keep an eye on them, especially after a particularly rough day. She probably would’ve slept there overnight with Cyclops if she’d made it back.

“Jorge wants a dog,” Andy told me the next morning over breakfast. “But I’m not ready. I don’t think.”

“I get it,” I said. “Would you adopt?”

“Of course,” he said. “And that’s why I don’t think I can do it.” He looked out the window at Jorge, who was already outside, feeding the chickens or whatnot. I don’t know; I’m not a farmer. I worked with dogs. “But I also feel like that’s not fair of me.”

“You guys have got plenty of animals, it seems to me,” I said.

“That’s not the point,” he said. He shrugged. “How’s your back?”

“It’s been worse,” I lied. Truthfully, I had been too scared to take the pain medication they’d given me at the hospital. That had been years ago, and I had decided to just live with the pain. My family had a history of addiction. I didn’t want to be next. “The weather out here seems to be helping actually,” I said. “Dryer.”

He nodded. “Jorge gets migraines when it rains,” he said. “I think. That or he just doesn’t want to talk to me very much when it rains.”

“It’s probably the migraines,” I said.

“I hope so.” He waved at Jorge through the window who smiled smally and waved back. Jorge seemed very serious almost all the time, except in small moments I got to witness between him and Andy. I remember watching them dance quietly at a Christmas party one time, after an almost painfully confusing conversation involving Jorge trying to ask Andy to dance and Andy not understanding. He’d eventually done a silly dance in front of him, something that looked close to a salsa, and Andy had laughed and let Jorge pull him closer, his hand falling gently on his lower back.

To me, it almost seemed better to be able to communicate so thoroughly with your body over your words. Words seem to always screw it up. That’s part of what I loved about working with the dogs so much. The understood words, sure, simple commands, single syllables. But there were times when all you could do was make yourself look smaller, friendlier, softer, and that would be the only way to get through to them.

When I think of Andy after Stephanie, I think he was much the same way as those dogs we found in the street. He needed someone who was willing to not talk, who was willing to speak with their hands, their eyes. Who was willing to speak to him nonverbally as if he was an injured dog himself, cowering in an alleyway. I’d seen his temper, only in flashes, after Stephanie. Times he’d yell at me so loud and for so long his face would turn red. Always over little things, always, stupid things. The store was out of eggs. He got cut off in traffic. The cashier hadn’t smiled at him. I was always trying to talk him down, and maybe that’s where I went wrong.

I watched Andy try to sign something to Jorge, eventually spilling coffee on himself causing both of them to laugh. As Andy sat back down at the table with me, I couldn’t help but ask him what I’d been wanting to do since they’d met. “This is probably a stupid question,” I said, “but do you guys ever just give up and use Google translate?”

He thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No, not really.” He looked at me. “Kind of takes the fun out of it, don’t you think?”

Andy went to town to run errands that day, so it was just Jorge and me in the house. They lived a decent way from town and liked to do all their errands in one day. I guess I was no longer supposed to be visiting with them by the time this day rolled around, but they hadn’t asked me to leave, and truthfully, I felt too full of anxiety to go. I didn’t really have anywhere to go or anyone to go back to. My family and I had fallen out around the time I’d met Stephanie. I still occasionally talked to my brother, but there was really nothing left there. He wasn’t who I wanted to see right now.

Andy had invited me to come with him to town, but I didn’t mind being with just Jorge. I tried to help him with the farming, and he took the time to explain to me what we were doing as best he could. It was intimate work. It was easy to see how they could’ve fallen in love doing it.

We shared a beer at the end of the day, still waiting for Andy to come back from the store. There had been only one left in the fridge and Jorge had tried to give it to me, but I’d opened it and taken a sip and then handed it back to him as if to say we could share.

We were watching the sunset and my back ached from the work I’d done that day. I doubted I’d be able to move very much come tomorrow, but I didn’t really care. I was happy to have helped Jorge. I was happy to have spent the day with him. Looking at him in the light of the setting sun, I could see why Andy had fallen so deeply in love with him. I felt I almost was myself.

Jorge heard Andy in the driveway and got up to help him unload the car. I tried to get up to go with him, but he pushed me back down and shook his head. I finished the beer we’d shared and looked to the barn in the distance. I saw something inside it, something that looked to be jumping or hopping in the center of the structure. I pushed myself to my feet and made my way towards it, going as quickly as my back would let me.

When I got close enough, I realized it was Cyclops. Its wing had been ripped up; it looked as it if had been attacked by some sort of animal. It was desperately trying to fly back up the rafters, where it would be safe, but there was no way it would get up there. When it heard me coming, it tried to run, but it appeared its foot was rather damaged as well -- it looked as if it might even be missing.

I tried to think of what to do, and before I could really think it through, I found myself approaching the bird with a blanket in my hands. I wrapped it as tightly as I could and held onto it, despite the way it bit my hand and clawed at me with its one good foot. Eventually, it settled, and I brought the cut on my hand to my lips.

I didn’t hear Jorge come up behind me, he was just suddenly beside me, crouching and looking over the bird with concern.

“I think its wing is broken,” I said. “It looks like it was attacked.”

He looked over the bird, carefully pulled down the blanket to get a better look. He saw my hand and looked over the cut. “Dog,” he said finally. He pointed behind me. Jorge and Andy had very few neighbors, but you could still see the house of one of them a fair distance away. “Dog. Loose dog,” he said.

We brought the bird inside and Andy and Jorge spoke and mimed to each other, trying to figure out what to do. Calling animal control this far out of town was almost pointless. They wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow.

We tried to make the bird as comfortable as possible, leaving it by a warm lamp, wrapped in some blankets. It was too injured to walk around much so there was no point in putting it in a cage. At some point in the night, I was sitting with it, and I heard Andy and Jorge speaking quietly in the kitchen. I looked over my shoulder and saw Andy was quite distressed, pulling at his ears frantically as he often did when he was upset. It took a while before I realized he was crying. Jorge pulled him into a hug, and they just stood in silence. I looked back at the bird.

Eventually, they joined me, Jorge sitting across from me in order to look over the wounds again to see if the bandages needed replacing. I looked at Andy standing beside me, his face red and puffy, his eyes glassy. He wiped his face roughly and for a moment, he looked like a little kid coming down from a tantrum. I reached out for his hand and squeezed it. He quickly folded his arms, but he nodded at me as if in thanks.

“What do you think, Jorge?” he asked, his voice rasp.

Jorge looked up at Andy. He shook his head.

“What? Is it gonna die?” I asked, feeling slightly surprised. It was odd, but up until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that the bird might not even make it through the night. It might not even make it in time for animal control to arrive.

Jorge pointed to the wounds and shook his head. “What does he mean, Andy?” I said, suddenly feeling irritated at not being able to understand, suddenly irritated by their secret language and inability to just say what they meant. “Is the bird gonna die?”

“I think so. Jorge thinks the wounds are pretty bad. I think.”

“Do you think or do you know?” I snapped.

Andy looked at me, his face suddenly filled with hurt again. He cleared his throat roughly and then left, walking back to the kitchen. Jorge watched him walk away, before looking back at the bird. He ran his hand over its quivering body, its feathers matted with blood. “Sorry,” said Jorge. He looked at me and then gestured to Andy in the kitchen. I don’t know what he had been trying to say then. If he was apologizing for Andy or implying that I need to apologize to him. I took it as the latter and went to Andy in the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just worried about the bird.”

He continued unpacking the bags from town, an odd assortment of items purchased. Eventually, he stopped and said, “I have never known.”

The bird lived on for a few more hours and eventually began to scream with pain. I don’t know why I volunteered to do it, but I did. Jorge came outside with me and showed me the quickest way to do it, the way that would end the pain the fastest, but he didn’t stay with me when I did it. He went back inside, and then it was just me and the bird.

It was either the screams or the gunshot that must’ve attracted the dog. I saw it, standing in the dark, its tail wagging low to the ground. It was staring at me, its face soft and emotionless. I got down on my knees and stared at it, waiting for it to decide to come to me, just as I had a hundred times before.