Cold Wonders, #2

The first devastating internet outage of life happened in 1998. It lasted for three or four hours. While our dad called our service provider, we got bored enough to go for a walk in park. We brought a frisbee to keep us busy, but it was just another ball that I couldn’t throw right. I decided to play park detective. I picked a stick up off the ground, below one of those prototypical suburban trees. The bushy ones that that looked like the heads of the aliens in Mars Attacks! There was nothing special about the stick, but I was so sure that it had been planted by aliens or something. Like a secret message.

My brother yelled over at me to put it down. I thought the “don’t touch anything” rule only applied to dirty needles and not to nature. What was his problem? He told me to look at how smooth the stick was. That means a dog’s been chewing off the bark. There’s dog spit all over it. Do you really want to get rabies?

Without thinking, I tossed the stick. Then I spent the rest of the day obsessing over this theoretical dog. Was it true, was that old stick a sign of life? Had someone’s, or maybe no one’s, scruffy dog been past that tree? And was he so into that stick that he chewed off all the bark and left it coated in his dried up, rabid saliva? I believed it. What a great gift, that we are never truly alone in this world.

Imagine being lost in the desert and finding a smooth stick lying in the sand. Forget the Morse code–you could just live it up with the dogs for the rest of your life. I understood it as an indicator, just like beaten paths and smooth tree boughs. Countrymen would sit on a branch, rubbing it smooth over time just like a stick in a mutt’s mouth. The same as the restless teenagers who carved their initials into picnic tables. I wondered what my mark would be, if I would ever make one. Would it say that I was here?

I wondered if what my brother said was true. Are sticks to dogs what dehydrated marshmallows are to cereal box mascots? Are we surrounded not by a concrete void, but by a secret stomping grounds? A secret magic.

I ran back to that bushy tree to look for the dog that might have chewed up that stick. I stood still and panned around. I needed proof. I thought, where is everybody? It was all quiet, like peace and secrets. Not like in Snow White where the rabbits and the squirrels all get together and help you do the dishes.

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