A Walk in the Park

I see him before the dogs do, and I almost succeed at getting their leashes hooked to their collars before they do see him. He's walking across the park I often visit with my dogs when I need a lunchtime bite of fresh air, and he's carrying the day's newspaper. He doesn't flinch as the dogs and I reach him at the same time. "I could tell they were friendly by their body language," he says. I don't tell him that the older dog once bit a neighbor and, perhaps, killed another neighbor's dog that happened to get into our backyard. He doesn't need to hear these things.

"That dog [the old one] reminds me of a dog I used to have. It died when it was 18 years old. I've always felt bad because I made my mom put it down."

Then he introduces himself and asks my name. I tell him the truth. He then asks what I do for a living, and I tell him only half the truth, that I teach part-time at a local community college. We've never met, and he doesn't need to know the other details just as he doesn't need to hear the sordid details about the dog. He tells me he went to the same school, got his A.A. degree in criminal administration. Some day, he says, he wants to continue to get his B.A.

I ask him what he does, and he says he's on disability because of his depression. There was a time, he says without my asking, that he didn't take his medication and things weren't so good. Now, though, he's hopeful that his new medication will work better, and he assures me that he takes it as he should. He tells me about his drinking, too, how he paid the price for a DUI about 7 years ago. Now, he says, he limits himself to one beer a night, which, he learned from a class he had to take when he got the DUI, "most people can do." I ask him if that beer goes well with his medication, but he answers that he's just fine.

He then tells me other stories about his neighbor's pitbull that used to wander up and down the sidewalk and once chased his cat into his garage. He loves his cats, he says. The neighbor is better about the pit bull now, letting the dog out only as far as the driveway. He worries about his mom, though, because she's elderly. I tell him I once had a Rottweiler attack my knee as I was running around the track at the local high school.

I ask him if he comes to the park often, and he says he does, it's like a sanctuary for him, a place where he can sit and read the paper. "It is nice," I say. The young dog has been whining to get moving; she knows that being on a leash is no good if she's not walking. Our 10-minute conversation ends easily enough. He starts toward a picnic table so he can sit and read, and I start the dogs toward home. "Good luck with teaching," he says. "Some day you'll make full professor. You're certainly smart enough."

"Sure," I say, thinking that I should tell him that he's wrong, that the semester ended yesterday and I have no idea if I'll ever teach at that school again.

The sun is trying to come out after a couple days of not trying at all, and the dogs start to pull me back to computers and deadlines that never seem to go away. The young dog isn't whining now, and I wonder if in some dog-sense she's looking forward to sticking her nose through a hole in a fence we'll pass, a fence that keeps one small pit bull confined where it's supposed to be. If the pit bull's there, the young dog will bark and snarl and pretend she's a match for everything bigger.

And, sadly, I think I'll have to find a different place to walk the dogs at lunchtime.