You can’t make passionate love to a book, after all.
And dogs can’t trade words with you, no matter how much you pretend.
In the truck, with the engine still running and the heat on full blast, I contemplate the first question and briefly consider driving my vehicle into a tree at 120 miles an hour, which is the highest number on my speedometer.
But Albert Camus is still dutifully licking the salty tears from my chin; he deserves better, or at least a different ending, in this incarnation.
I get the sense that he truly enjoys our life together, and that’s not me projecting either. I love this dog; he gives me purpose and reason, but my longings for more are quite strong, I must admit.
Teaching used to fill the void that has opened up inside me.
This must be what “weariness tinged with amazement” feels like, I think, and then I utter the most dangerous question of all: “Why?”
Albert Camus stops licking me, and with our faces only inches apart, we look into each other. I still see humanity in his shiny black eye, even though he is a dog now.
“I don’t know if I can keep going, Albert Camus,” I say.
He cocks his head to one side as if to say, Vous ne m’aimez plus?
“I do love you, Albert Camus. It’s true. I really do. With all my heart. But I’m afraid I can no longer answer the first question.”
Albert Camus licks my face again.
“Have you escaped the absurd, now that you are a dog? Is that why you can lick me and love me after some monster burned out your eye, and yet I have no longer been able to interact with my own species successfully since some monster gave me this limp?”
He yawns, and his breath assaults me.
It smells like a bucket of sea snails rotting in the August sun.
I stroke Albert Camus’s back, feeling the bumps of his spine, and his tail thumps hard on my thigh.
“If you weren’t so goddamn happy now, I might ask if you wanted to enter into a suicide pact with me. But can I live my life for a one-eyed dog? Can I find meaning in this?”
As if he understands my words, he ducks his head under my hand, begging for a scratch behind the ears, making me feel useful. While I know this is just some sort of animalistic herd instinct—I am the alpha male in his mind, the provider of food and water and shelter—I find meaning, beat the absurd, answer the first question, via my one-eyed dog, if only for the moment.
He is enough.
We drive forty-five minutes to the chain grocery store.
Inside I order two thick prime dry-aged rib eye steaks and a bone from some pimply teenager in an oversize white butcher’s coat. He gags and makes retching noises while he weighs the meat, mumbles the words disgusting, sick, barbaric, throws in the bone at my request and extends the bag over the counter, holding it at arm’s length like a sack of dog shit.
“Are you okay?” I ask, because he’s starting to look green.
“I’m a vegan, and my asshole boss forced me to work in the meat department today. What do you think?”
“That’s the absurd, right there.”
“What are you even talking about?” he says as he turns his back on me, and I recognize his type. He’s practically begging for me to hug him. I imagine the parents at home who alternately ignore and criticize him, offering no promise of better—providing no philosophy, no religion, no belief system whatsoever, which is why he’s chosen veganism, most likely the antithesis of his parents’ diet, as a means of protest.
“Here’s your tip, young man,” I say. “Read Camus. Start with The Stranger. Read him. He agrees with you. A vegan forced to work as a butcher—absurdism at its finest. There’s a whole world out there beyond this small town. You’re not alone.”
“Whatever,” he says, and I fight to quell my old teacher instincts.
As I peruse the pet aisle, throwing into my basket several months’ worth of overpriced treats for Albert Camus and some dental chews for his awful breath, I think about how that kid in the meat department would have become my favorite student by the end of the year, back when I was teaching high school English. I always won over those types—the ones who were desperate for adult guidance, so terribly wounded and bruised. If you could stomach the apathy for a few weeks, give their minds something real to chew on, offer them the alternative they craved instinctively, what people like them have been finding in story for many thousands of years, they’d always come around. I look down at my cane. Well, almost always.
Before I leave, I swing by the meat section once more, wave to get the teen’s attention. “You probably think I’m just some silly old fool, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that you’re in existential crisis. Look it up. You’re not the first. I’ve been there often. And, metaphorically, vegans have been working the meat counter since the beginning of time.”
He squints at me. “I gave you your order. I did my job. Now just leave me alone, okay?”
“Albert Camus. Read him. You’ll see.”
“Listen, old man,” he mumbles, looking around to see if anyone is listening. When he’s sure no one is within earshot, he says, “What the fuck—are you gay for me or something?”
“No. No, I am not. I am heterosexual and heartbroken, if you really must know. And I was just trying to—”
“Then fuck off, okay? How ’bout you try that?”
Maybe I’ve lost my touch.
And what the hell do I know? I’m just a cripple who lives with a one-eyed dog.
The kid’s behavior is a classic cry for help, but I no longer help teenagers.