Alone and Left Behind
By Michael Hogan
michael.hogan@asfg.mx

      I am in the back of a taxi headed for the Guadalajara airport. The early morning mist and smoke from burning fields hang heavy in the air. There is the choking smell of raw sewage which fills the car as we head toward the airport turnoff. As I turn in my seat to roll up the back window, I see a gold and white collie tied to a chain link fence barking frantically. I am too far away to see her eyes, but I imagine them: the irises rolled up, the whites panic-filled, searching desperately for the rescue that surely must come.
      It is a well-groomed dog; I can see that much as we slow for the turn-off. It is not the mixed-breed dog of the poor, and it is held by a steel chain not by a fraying rope. Probably the pet of a middle-class family who, when the father got his new job in another town, decided to leave the dog behind. Within seconds, I have lost sight of the abandoned collie, and then the cab turns into the airport’s departure lane.
      I get my boarding pass, go through security and then sit down and open up the laptop. But I cannot focus. I take out a paperback from my carry-on, a collection of short stories by T.C. Boyle. I read one about a family that has too many things: the house is overflowing with antique furniture, with books, with knickknacks, with double set of silverware. The husband hires an organizer who orders them to move out while she inventories the contents of the house.
      The couple returns to an empty house. Everything has been auctioned off except a few bare essentials such as a bed, a stove, a refrigerator. The story ends with the husband standing stunned in his empty living room and “when he shuts his eyes, he sees only the sterile deeps of space, the remotest regions beyond even the reach of light…it is cold out there, inhospitable, alien. There’s nothing there, nothing contained in nothing.”
      I think of the dog again back on the highway to the airport. I imagine the man making the decision to tie her up and leave her by the side of the road tied to a chain link fence. I imagine him thinking that maybe someone will come along and find her, adopt her. But did he wonder what would happen if no one came?
      First the dog barks in annoyance when she’s tied up, thinking: He’s going for a walk and not taking me. And then as the car went down the highway, the thought that he would surely come back. It must be some kind of game.
      Was there a wife? Were there children looking out the back window? It is hard to imagine, but possible. But these people, whoever they were, are no longer important here. What is important is the dog as she slowly realizes that she has been abandoned. She tugs at the chain that binds her to the fence. She scrabbles at the links that hold her as if riveted. It is getting warmer. It is May, the dry season when temperatures rise to 95 degrees and higher by noon. There is no water. Her mouth will start foaming soon and the foam will turn pink as she cuts her gums trying to bite off the links in the chain. She will become dehydrated. Her bark, now loud and vigorous, will turn hoarse and weak as in desperation she pulls her neck against the chain, rupturing the trachea, tearing the skin.
      Still, she will survive until nightfall. By then the air will be cooler. Her face will be mottled with foam and blood. Her coat will be covered with grime and highway dust and grease. Insects will be at her: the red army ants will be eating away at her underbody, flies will lay eggs in the soft tissue of her ears, gnats will be in her eyes. She will groan and roll, trying to escape them and the chain will wrap itself more tightly around her neck. Still, she will not die.
      Somewhere inside her she will keep hope alive. Her ears will twitch each time she hears the distinctive sound of a Toyota, thinking it is her family car, the one she remembers so well, the trips in the country, her head out the window feeling the cool breeze, her delicate snout lifted to all the smells of the fields. Her feelings are of love, of devotion, for those who left her on the side of this highway to die. When the interminable night passes she will be puzzled but not resigned.
      Because now the sun is coming up. Now the early morning traffic is moving along the road headed for the airport. Surely today they will be coming back. They will realize that they made a mistake, that she is part of the family.
      Hope will keep her alive well past noon on this second day. Then in the hot tropical sun, her brain will slowly boil. She will not know when the rodents come at sunset. She will not feel their needle-like teeth piece her soft undersides, or the cool evening wind ruffling the tuffs of her fur that drift across the road like delicate tumbleweeds.
      As the plane approaches Miami, we descend slowly through caverns of cumuli, sun-drenched and other worldly. Beyond them I know are the rain clouds, the darker storm formations. I put up my tray table and get out my passport and the form for customs.
      I check into my hotel room. I eat a good dinner and lie down to sleep. But my mind is by the side of a dusty highway in Mexico, my heart beating in staccato rhythm to that of the abandoned collie, as the slow night passes and I lie awake, unwilling to close my eyes, afraid to dream.
      (Ed. Note: Prof. Hogan has ten published books to his credit, including the celebrated The Irish Soldiers of Mexico.)