Wild Beasts | FiftyFourandAHalf

Normally, I don’t spend much time thinking about my own funeral. But a few years ago, I attended the perfect funeral. I decided that I want one just like it. Because people told stories!

And of course, this funeral was held at a bar. Which made it more of a party.

Not just any bar, though. It was held in a slightly down-in-the-mouth watering hole, pool hall and barbeque pit. But its name was what truly made it memorable:

Yelp Image

Still, it wasn’t perfect. Because on that very day, I missed a golden opportunity. A chance to shine. A chance to tell a story. A chance to be remembered by a room full of people who would smile at just the thought of the, ummm, guest of honor, and of my story.

Damn.

Truthfully, I don’t know what happened. It’s been decades since I had stage fright. If I’d made a fool of myself the only people who would know it were strangers and family members. My family has seen me fall/fail before; they love me anyway. They have no choice.

It was Jeff’s funeral, my late sister Judy’s first husband. Father to my wonderful niece and nephew.

In addition to my niece and nephew and their spouses and kids, of course, Jeff’s wife was there, along with Jeff’s two sons by his second marriage. I’d gotten to know and like them at various family gatherings throughout the years. Judy’s second husband was also there, along with his mother and sister. Family gatherings in my family tend to be complicated. They often involve more non-blood relations than blood relations. Which is really pretty neat, if you ask me.

So Jeff’s funeral was well attended. And since the bar was still open, in addition to family and friends, a few patrons stumbled in, surprised to find themselves at a funeral. But the beer flowed, and nobody seemed to mind. Or notice.

At one point, Jeff’s wife suggested that anyone with a story to tell about Jeff should speak up, and tell their Jeff story.

Now, it’s important to note that Jeff and I weren’t close. Jeff and Judy had divorced nearly 40 years previously, and I had only seen him at big family events. I was mostly at the funeral to support my niece and nephew, and to spiritually thank Jeff and my lucky stars that the two of them have been in my life.

Still, I did have the perfect Jeff story.

Only I didn’t tell it.

There was a room full of people, waiting to hear good stories. Some who knew me, some who didn’t. The perfect captive audience.

Only I choked.

I listened to other people talk about Jeff, how they’d met, how they’d interacted. What a good guy he had been. They were all perfectly acceptable stories. Nice even. But nothing memorable.

I knew that my story was better. I would have been the star of the funeral. Well, one of the stars, anyway.

Of course, that’s why I didn’t tell it. Right? I didn’t want to show anybody up. Right? I didn’t want to take the spotlight off the guest of honor. Right?

Today is the anniversary of Jeff’s passing. It’s time to correct my mistake. Right my wrong.

Time to tell my Jeff story.

* * *

Wednesday afternoon study hall in ninth grade, held in the cafeteria, had assigned seats. I sat at the table with three popular girls. I didn’t qualify as a fourth popular girl. They tolerated my presence. More or less.

In the middle of the hour, Leah, the most popular and giggliest of the three, got a pass and went to the girls room. She came back flustered, smiling. Practically swooning. She whispered to Karen, who immediately needed to go to the bathroom.

Karen came back just as excited. Miss Williams, the study hall monitor and nasty old math teacher had to shush her and Leah up.

And then, of course, since there were three of them, Debbie had to take her turn going to the girls room.

Now I’ll admit, I was curious as to what was going on. What was so exciting in the girls room?

I didn’t rate highly enough with them that they’d include me, tell me what was going on. I sat there at the table while they exchanged notes, feeling left out. Unpopular. Friendless.

Study Hall ended, and the four of us at the table were held back for a moment by Miss Williams to be reprimanded for making so much noise. But realizing that I hadn’t been included in the mayhem, I was let out ahead of Leah, Karen and Debbie.

I walked down out the door and was surprised to see my new brother-in-law, Jeff, standing in the hall, pushing a broom. Jeff was young, handsome, and newly married. In those days, and for the first few years of his marriage to my sister Judy, he took whatever job was available. So Jeff had started working as a janitor at my junior high that very day.

And just as Leah, Karen and Debbie walked into the hall, Jeff put his arm around me, gave me an affectionate kiss on the cheek and flashed his amazing smile at me.

The three girls stopped and stood with their mouths agape, looking between me and Adonis.

You see, Jeff was drop-dead gorgeous.

This is why the girls were all flustered. Jeff was a ringer for actor Jan-Michael Vincent. Bot seriously good looking men.

This is why the girls were all flustered. Jeff was a ringer for actor Jan-Michael Vincent. The resemblance is uncanny, actually. Both seriously good looking men.

“Are these your friends, Lease,” Jeff asked, smiling at me and at them.

“This is Leah, Karen and Debbie,” I responded, not explaining that I wasn’t cool enough to be considered their friend.

“Nice to meet you,” Jeff said, smiling briefly at the girls, and then flashing me another big grin before giving me another peck on the cheek.

“Lease, you’d better get to class before we both get in trouble.”

The four of us walked on down the hall. But instead of walking ahead of me as they would normally do, the three girls included me in their conversation. They wanted to know all about the gorgeous guy who had just kissed me — twice — right there in the hall.

But I just let them wonder. The four of us walked into Miss Williams’ math class, and I sat down with my friends. My real friends, who liked me even before they met Jeff.

Sadly, Jeff didn’t last too long as a janitor at my Junior High. All the girls spent way too much time in the hall, staring at Jeff. Jeff was always polite and gentlemanly, worked hard, and always had a peck on the cheek for me, especially when the popular girls were looking.

On this anniversary, I raise my glass to my handsome brother-in-law.

Rest in Peace, Jeff.

And thanks for that one time in school when I was considered cool.

It promised to be a glorious day, and magically, I woke up early. I snuck out of bed without waking John, grabbed some clothes and went quietly to the living room. I opened the shutters and looked out to see the slightest bits of pink light starting to color the sky outside. Dawn was just breaking, and it looked to be a beautiful start.

“Wanna take a walk?” I asked Cooper, my year-and-a-half old Springer Spaniel.

Cooper wagged his tail, and headed towards the door. We grabbed his leash, my red jacket, and headed out into the morning.

And the morning was glorious. A November morning. Indian Summer, if there can be Indian Summer in Switzerland where there never were too many Indians.

We lived in the midst of dog and dog-lovers’ heaven. Our tiny house was located on the outskirts of a small village 20 minutes outside of Geneva, Switzerland in farm country. Our chalet looked just like a cuckoo-clock, and it stood as the last clock on a rural lane in what looked like a display of seven cuckoo-clock houses. Across the dirt road from the clocks were farm fields. The fields crossed the road to the left of our house and went on and on. Wheat, corn, hay, sunflowers, rape seed. The fields sloped gently down and gave way to vineyards and apple orchards until the hills gently ended at the town of Nyon and Lake Geneva. The Alps, with Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, rose above the Lake and the other mountains, as if placing its arms around the gang of mountains it hung out with.

Not a bad view*
(I’m pretty sure this is one of my pictures.)

Magestic. Magical. Make-your-heart-sing-like-Julie-Andrews-beautiful.

It was about 5:30 when Cooper and I headed out. We crossed the busy road that ran to the left of our house, and I let him off the leash. It was getting lighter, and I walked and watched my dog run, both of us smiling. He’d run a bit, then come back to check on me and run off once again.

Springer Spaniels are expressive dogs – their sad looks can melt your heart. But when they run, they embody joy. Pure and simple joy. And on that morning, Cooper ran with abandon through harvested corn fields that we passed first. His ears flapped and happiness spread across his face as he ran and jumped over cornstalks and literally ran circles around me in his delight.

We continued on the straight farm road that paralleled the Lake, passed fallow fields to where the road turned at a right angle and led us downhill towards the lake. By now, it was lighter — I could just start to make out Nyon Castle in the distance, although it was so far away that if you didn’t know it was there, you really couldn’t see it. The road crossed another farm road, and so we turned to the right again to continue on our normal loop that would lead us home, after a walk of about 2-1/2 miles. It was full morning, now; the sun glistened on Lake Geneva, the snow topped peaks and me and Cooper.

Up ahead on the left and right were fields of grass that would soon be harvested for hay. Cooper ran ahead and disappeared into the tall grass. I watched as the grass parted, showing me just where he was and how far he’d run.

But then I noticed a second line where the grass was parting for somebody else. Or something else. Whatever it was, it was heading straight towards Cooper.

Possibly the best way to describe Cooper would be as a fur-covered marshmallow. Everything inside — good and sugary. As a soft, squishy, completely sweet thing, Cooper didn’t understand aggression. Somehow it all worked out though – aggressive dogs never attacked or bothered him. Cooper wanted to play, and his playfulness was infectious. Even the most aggressive dogs found him endearingly stupid; and they always played with the sweet dope.

Still, when frightened, Cooper became a complete coward. If something frightened him, well, Cooper would run to me and hide behind my legs. Or behind John’s legs or later, behind Jacob’s. An all-inclusive coward, he’d hide behind us one and all.

So when the two paths in the grass converged, I wasn’t surprised at all to see Cooper come springing out, his face the picture of delight. He had a new friend, and was running towards me to share the good news.

There are some friends you just shouldn’t introduce to your mother. This was one.

Cooper had met a wild boar. An enormous, wild f’ing boar.

Google Image

She came out of the grass, and stopped in the middle of the road and stood there, all 250 pounds of her. She strutted her impressive bulk and looked from side to side.

I stood there, frozen, my mouth agape. I watched her breathe, knowing that I was unlikely to remember this meeting fondly.

I could see the sun touch the edges of her coarse, bristled fur where it was lighter than the part that came out of her back or side or anywhere else on her 250 pounds or so of solid flesh.

I could hear her breathing from about 75 feet away, as I backed up slowly. She breathed in and out, sometimes through her snout, and sometimes in wet breaths through her lips, which flapped occasionally. She breathed loudly.

I could smell her. She needed a bath. Or a run through a field of lavender, preferably in France.

SHIT!

We had been warned about wild boar, but in spite of long twice daily walks through the fields, we had never seen hide nor hair nor bristle; we didn’t worry. Cooper was delighted with his new friend. And he rushed over towards me to tell me so. I wasn’t so easily smitten.

Wild boars do not like dogs, they are known to attack and kill them. They aren’t fond of people, either. And rumor has it they aren’t terribly playful. And I wasn’t anxious to turn my lovely morning walk into a learning experience, either.

I looked over in the direction of the house and suddenly realized something extremely important:

It’s a long crawl home.

“Cooper, Come!” I shouted, stupidly, automatically.

In fact, I was not sure I really wanted him to come to me. Would I take on a wild boar to save my dog? Not if I thought about it logically. But then logic really has very little room in the brain of a dog-lover. Of course I would have taken on a wild boar to save my younger, dumb son. And of course, I would have lost. Especially since, in looking about, I realized that we were in the middle of a farm field and there wasn’t so much as a protective twig in sight. Damn the compulsively tidy Swiss.

I did not want to be wild boared.

Cooper, oblivious to the danger he was dancing around, he kept going up to the boar, prancing in front of her, running in circles around her, begging her to chase him, just like his doggy pals did.

“Come on, play!” he was obviously saying.

“Go away,” she was clearly thinking as she aimed a cold, bored glare at him.

I was pretty sure that if she chased him, it wouldn’t be to play. And then naturally, Cooper would panic, not know what to do. Oh who am I kidding – Cooper’s first and only though would be “MOM!” and he would run and hide behind me. And the boar would kill me, an innocent bystander.

I looked at my red jacket, glad I had worn that one so that they could find my crumpled, maimed, boar-ed body more easily.

“Dammit, Cooper, Come! Now!” I said more softly, trying to get him to leave her alone.

Nobody ever listens to me.

Cooper ran away from the boar towards me at last, but then he turned and ran back to her, again, circled around wagging his tail furiously, still trying to get her to play.

But suddenly, the situation changed. “Cooper, Come. Now!” I screamed it this time.

Because the boar had turned her head. She was now looking at me.

Naturally, Cooper ran around her again and fortunately she forgot about me in her irritation at the stupid dog. The boar, who seemed to have finally caught her breath, looked at Cooper like he was her pesky little brother. She shook her head once more, dismissive of the pest, and continued on her way uphill through the grass field. The grass separated as she pushed her way through.

Cooper came back to me, defeated, deflated, rejected. He looked sad in that tearful, long-eared way only a Springer spaniel can have. My boy’s feelings had been hurt. I was glad it had only been his feelings.

* * *

Cooper loved those fields, where he could cavort in relative safety, where he could run free, with his ears flapping. Doggy Heaven. Of course, it really didn’t matter where he was, Cooper was happy wherever he was, as long as John, Jacob and I were there with him.

Today, that’s where Cooper is — in doggy heaven. I am sure that he is back in the fields near Gingins, Switzerland. Running with unrestrained joy, looking out over Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc and the Alps. He’ll have his young dog body back, with no aches, pains or problems.

I hope he doesn’t run into any wild boars, though. Because it’ll be a while before John, Jacob or I will join him. For a while, there’ll be nobody for Coops to hide behind.