Year of the Dog by Shelby Hearon Page A

nurse, that I always talked to about the doctor’s prescriptions, so I did that, I phoned her. She sounded pretty torn up, having lost her job as well as her life’s work.
    It did me good to get my mind on real events, and tonight, when we were hanging out downtown, I told James I thoughtI’d stop by the pharmacy before going home, as a way to pay my respects. We kissed goodnight in front of Banana Republic. We’d begun doing that, kissing hello and goodbye when we were with Pete and the students, not your wide-open mouth, prolonged kiss, but just a hesitation with our lips holding together. Still, Wolf, Cubby and Lobo had to hoot, woo-woo-woo, and nudge and shove and make comments like they’d never seen such a sight, because James was their teacher and belonged to them. He gave me a wave, understanding that sometimes when we met downtown, I needed to head home by myself, that I didn’t always expect him to walk me back or drop me out front if he was driving.
    Turning off Church Street, I headed along the quiet sidewalk toward the Pharmacy. Beulah, confident because we often came this way, trotted by my side. The air had a fall feel though it was still September, still pleasant, but with a crispness, and across the street in the Methodist Church yard I saw in the dusk yellow leaves already on the maple. I thought I might find something to mention to Mr. Sturgis when I wrote him, something to let him know I appreciated his call, and really was just on a sabbatical and definitely planning to come back, that I was following all the new drugs mentioned in the paper that were in early trials and how they looked as possibilities. Though I guess what I really wanted to do was just hang out inside a pharmacy tonight, just be there, the way some people hung out in discount stores or book chains, places where you could spend hours and you didn’t have to buy anything, or really even speak to anyone.
    Inside, where Beulah was welcome in her Companion Dog vest, I studied the Herbal Wellness shelves, a much larger section than we had at home, with their familiar products—kava-kava for calmness, L-arginine for male dysfunction, St. John’s wort for depression. I picked up something I hadn’t seen before, called Senior Moment, and read, in the tiny-printlisting, the primary ingredient: porcine phospholipids. Hog lard for brain food? How could a company do that, letting anybody buy it without a warning, someone who might be a vegetarian or Jewish or Muslim, that they were eating pig fat?
    Then, with Beulah attentive at my side, I wandered the aisles. I did the wall-hung cosmetic displays and the shelves of body lotions and soaps that promised moisture without additives. I checked men’s shaving supplies and the legions of dental products. I looked at the raft of cold remedies, on which you could spend a whole evening and people did.
    Alone, I might have stood in the back by the chairs reserved for people waiting and watched to see what prescriptions ailing people got filled. Listening to how, just the same as at home, the old people complained about the cost, the handicapped in wheelchairs complained about access, and young girls filling two or more prescriptions blew their noses a lot. Such drama I was missing. Such lives exposed down to the lining of the nasal passages and the gut, such discomfort, such disappointment, such hope.

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    THE PUPPY EVALUATION had me in a state of anxiety. This time it wasn’t the local Companions looking over our puppies to see how they were progressing: this time the real evaluators from the Companion Dog Kennels in Massachusetts were coming to assess each of our dog’s potential to be trained in earnest to work with the blind. This was a hurdle we raisers would have to go through three times before our dogs went for the final tests at the Kennels at the end of the training year.
    Driving by PACIFIC VIEW, I pulled the car in for a minute, just to stop and