The Angry Old Coot - A Short Story

I thought a bit, then asked, “God, how long does a million years take for You?”

God answered, “the passing of a million years is to Me but a second.”

I thought a bit, then asked, “How much is a million dollars to You?”

God answered, “the worth of a million dollars is to Me but a penny.”

i thought a bit, then asked, God? Would You please give me a penny?”

God answered, “In a second.”

Last night, I was pondering this old joke and I can imagine many of you had heard it growing up. In this context, my Yeti is worth a penny and it’s taking me a few seconds to finish my book!

Today, I want to share with you a simple short story I read many years ago. I do not have the original in front of me, so I have to paraphrase it. But it is an awesome tale based on a true story.

Here goes:

Around the time my father turned sixty-five, he suffered a terrible stroke. It wasn’t the kind that left him paralyzed, but he was never the same after that.

Nothing pleased him. Nothing made him happy. He turned inward and became bitter and sour. And he would yell and scream and carry on whenever anything displeased him.

This was in the seventies. In my generation, people rarely placed their loved ones into homes. In those days, families took care of their parents when they were no longer able to take care of themselves. That was the norm. We would clear out a guest room and move in a special bed, chair, and add knickknacks that were special to them. And we would see to their every need.

Being an only child, my husband and I decided to move my father into our home. And that was the beginning of a very difficult time or all of us.

After his stroke, my father was disabled in more ways than one. He carried a limp. He could no longer lift his left arm. His days of playing classical guitar were finished. And his personality was impossible to deal with.

Whenever I brought in his dinner on a tray, my father was quick to point out anything I did not do well. The toast was not toasted enough. The soup needed salt. The coffee was too sweet. And on and on he would go.

His complaints so often carried foul language and his venomous words were accompanied by an accusatory finger pointed into my face. My husband couldn’t deal with Dad, so he left it all up to me.

Three months went by and I had no answers. From the guest bedroom, four-letter words would penetrate the walls of our house just over a TV episode Dad didn’t like.

In the seventies, special homes were where the elderly went whenever their kin possessed no love for them and chose to get rid of them. My husband and I were reaching that point in a very short time! And we could not afford the outlandish cost of housing him there.

Even so, I loved my father all the same. He was one of the best parents I had known growing up. But now, I had no answers for a man who loved nothing and hated everything.

I recalled that when I was a girl, my father often talked of an old dog he was fond of when he and Ma were first married. He was a hound dog named Ol’ Blue. The dog went with him everywhere, on walks through our farm fields in Indiana to the farm store for supplies in his old beat-up Ford.

I was too young to remember Ol’ Blue. But if I were to guess, apart from my mother and me, Ol’ Blue was the most precious treasure my father had in his early marriage.

One afternoon, at the end of my shift, I decided to skip riding the light train home and decided it was a beautiful sunny day for walking. It was only a few miles from the pharmacy where I worked to the neighborhood where my husband and I lived. The route took me through the heart of a downtown section you might have compared to The Andy Griffith’s Show town of  Mayberry.

During my walk, I passed by a pet store. In those days, at least in our town, there was no Humane Society to take in stray animals. But the pet stores might have a dog or cat, still worthy of being re-homed, up for sale.

As I passed by the shop window, there he was, an old blue-tick hound, just like my father described of his beloved dog. Like my father, this dog was old, easily ten year old, though the pet store owner didn’t know for sure. For just seven dollars, he could be mine.

The dog, whose name was Sammy, looked at me with a deep sadness. He too, had had a wonderful life. He too had a wonderful life taken away from him. What happened to his family, no one knew. A death perhaps. Bankruptcy. Or perhaps a divorce, much more uncommon in those days.

Yet Sammy knew me the moment we engaged each other. We looked into each other’s eyes as if we shared the same weight of our own existence. Sammy knew me and understood.

I handed the shopkeeper a five and two ones, leashed up Sammy, and continued on home. As an old hound, Sammy did not prance ahead as he would have in his younger years, no, he ambled alongside me, unsure of where we were going and what may lie ahead at the end of the journey.

I was unsure what lie and the end of the short journey home. I knew my father would not approve. I knew it was just another thing I was doing wrong. There was a battle to be had as soon as I arrived home.

And this is how it played itself out.

During the spring and summer days, Dad often sat in a rocking chair on our front porch. On most days, he was quiet, content enough to read the paper or watch the neighborhood’s activities.

Dad saw me coming up the sidewalk with a dog by my side. Holding the paper still, he stared at us, not saying a word.

Sammy and I stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and for a moment we all regarded each other in the thick summer air.

“I bought him for you, Dad, “ I finally said. “Thought you could use a companion.”

Dad scowled at the unsuspecting dog standing on my left side.

Sammy only pricked up his ears at the frowning stranger.

Then Dad smushed the pages of his newspaper together and sent them asunder along the wooden decking.

He stood up.

He charged down the steps of the porch, pointing a finger at me.

“G— d—- it! Get that piece of sh— out of my sight!

And as for you!

You better g— d—- stop interfering in my…!!”

At that moment, the  most incredible thing happened. Sammy did not cower. He did not whimper. Sammy, too, had lived a long and difficult life. In the midst of the shouting, the old boy left my side and trotted up to Dad.

And before Dad could get another word out of his mouth,

Sammy sat down.

He sat down right in front of Dad.

His sad eyes looked up at Dad with that same knowing look.

And Sammy held up a paw.

Dad’s reprimand was cut short. Finger still pointing at me, he looked down through the lenses of his eye glasses, meeting Sammy’s gaze for the first time.

His pointing finger lowered. His right arm lowered. Dad kept his eyes on the dog. “Ohhh,” he said. “You want something, do you?”

And Dad did something I never expected in that moment. He bent down and took Sammy’s paw into his own. And Sammy held out a pink tongue and gave Dad a wag of his tail.

With a gentleness I had not seen in months, Dad took the leash and he led Sammy up the steps to the porch.

Dad sat.

Sammy sat.

And they began a conversation with each other that never ended until the end of their days.

After that, Dad had changed… again…

He never let Sammy out of his sight. His demeanor softened. The accusations ceased. The language stopped.

Dad was no longer angry at the world.

He was no longer angry at me.

In the months ahead, he would look at Sammy and then would look at me. Eyes once glaring with hate now held gratitude. Without saying a word, he would look at me, a gentle smile now painted on his face, and he would nod.

For the first time since his stroke, his eyes held that love I had known him for in my years growing up.

Dad had become himself again.

In the few years that passed until their death, neither he nor his dog were ever apart from each other.

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Jennifer Stoeckl is the co-founder of the Dire Wolf Project, founder of the DireWolf Guardians American Dirus Dog Training Program, and owner/operator of DireWolf Dogs of Vallecito. She lives in the beautiful inland northwest among the Ponderosa pine forests with her pack of American Dirus dogs.