THE BEAUTY OF LOSS

Text by Audwin McGee

As a child I was blessed with an idyllic world to ponder, woods, a creek a small shop to make things, a wonderful family, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, all living close by. A mother and father that allowed me to roam, but the thing that shaped and haunted my life the most were the dogs,

My first dog was a Chichaua, a little black and white mongrel of a thing. He lived with us down on the creek we’d say, and I must admit I barely remember him due to my age being very young. I do remember he would ease down the gravel street in the afternoons to my mother’s grandparents about two blocks away, where Ma and Pap made their home, a small four-room house all whitewashed and neat. He eventually took up permanent residence there. I believe he knew he needed more to companion the elderly than to guard our yard from squirrels and chipmunks. I remember my great aunt coming to me one afternoon to explain that Mino had gone to be with Jesus due to crossing the road in front of an oncoming car. Her explanation was short but sweet. Because of this I only realized later what an impact this made on my little soul. It was the first heartache I can remember that stepped into my world, only leaving me with empty explanations. It’s not lost on me that my first real loss was a dog, and much to my dismay that first follows me to this day, I can’t bring myself to not remember.

There were many more to come, Old Butch the collie that would keep me at bay as a toddler, nosing me away from the creek in our back yard as my mother would hang wet clothes on the line. There was my dad’s brace of bird dogs, I can still see them, feel them, their terrible muscles all bulging and slick with sweat, all business and dedicated to their task. Many more similar situations as I pressed on brought a life lesson that was notched in my belt due to dogs. I learned about heartaches, as each failed me in their promise to live forever. I saw and experienced their raw sex acts, grotesque, moving, and unexplainable for a mere child. I whimpered at my dad’s disciplining of the pointers when they hunted for themselves instead of for him, the hurt in their sad orange eyes as they felt his disappointment. Looking back I can almost touch them again, still holding steadfast to my father’s promise that all animals go to heaven. And so it began, this long road of learning to befriend, love, and mourn over this thing called an animal that many times brought heart-wrenching beauty to my life in ways I can’t make myself forget.

Much later, after living in Africa for several years, I came home. Almost immediately I fell into a state of withdrawal, almost to the point of depression, for I dearly missed the freedom I experienced, but more than that, I missed the animals. I could hear the vervet monkeys running and clawing their way over the roof of my tent just before dawn on their way to the river for their first drink after a long night of evading the many things that would do them harm. My first encounter with an elephant bull nosing around my tent in the predawn light, seemingly fascinated at this new apparition pitched on his African sand before wading into a small stream for his morning bath. Beautiful then, but now those old docile beings run at the sight of humans, many caring the rounds from ak47s in their thick skin. Trust replaced by hate in souls as big as their massive bodies, that old familiar heartache would well up in me again and again as I came face-to-face with the ruthless bloodletting of the professional poacher. Often after coming across the rotting mutating carcasses of these giants, I would pause knowing these were part of a family unit the survivors feeling the same loss as myself.

One evening driving and returning to our main camp, I encountered a dead wild dog on the two-track we called a road. On close inspection,I found he had been mutilated. His lips and ears were cut away and were on their way to be dried and sold as a medicinal concoction, the same as the tusks from the elephant, the skulls of lions and leopards, and the scales of pangolins all smuggled away in sea containers to the lucrative black market of China. I thought of one pack of our African wild dogs that lived on the Lombize River where the water recedes in the dry months to a sand bottom. One spot however always held a small pool under a high bank in the river where it stretched out in either direction, this vantage point gave the pack a long look in either direction for possible prey. Here this gnarly bunch would lay up during the heat of the day and I could regularly find them there rolling in the mud, cooling down after the morning hunt. I would pause the Landcruiser and let out a little bark which would bring several hesitant answers and after so long this routine became accepted. They become very comfortable with the sound of the Diesel engine and this long-haired bearded human seemingly trying his best to communicate.

One early morning on my way out of the bush, I encountered this pack on the two-track and slowly rolled to a stop. In front of me at 30, 40 ft lay 7 or 8 dogs, while off to either side stood several more. I left the engine running and gave my little bark which was answered by several. With the dogs showing no sign of leaving I sat there for many minutes just soaking up the scene when I noticed far in the back two females standing rather sheepishly to one side of the sand road. As I watched, one female kept going and coming in and out of the bush, and after several trips she slowly, while looking back, brought out from behind her a gaggle of month-old pups. She lay on her back while several nursed and the rest played or smelled after other family members. After she was finished showing them off, she led them away. Slowly one by one, the rest, some often turning to give me a last glance, merged into the mimbo scrub that makes up the majority of the bush forest of Mozambique. I wondered if the wild dog on the road that night could have been a part of this pack, regardless I knew I would miss him. In Africa, especially in and around the remote Nissan region, life and death are soul mates. Elephants raid the crops of the indigenous people, often killing a villager trying to save his livelihood. Lions, and hyenas devouring more than just their natural prey. Today lions on the Rovuma River along the northern border of Mozambique and Tanzania are known, as man-eaters. Legend and science seem to point to the fact that the Rouvma having been the major slave route to the interior at the time of Livingston offered easy prey as many of the enslaved that traveled this route, having become incapacitated by sickness or losing the will to continue, would be abandoned and were often eaten by lions. Over the years the lions became familiar with human flesh and this fetish has been passed down over time to the present day, even through genetics, some say. Animals mostly have their way in Africa. We look upon them as beautiful creatures to admire and experience, but we chip away at this beauty by simply intruding a bit just to take a photo. Still at this point, if it weren’t for the intrusion and efforts of some, there would be none to see. And so we progress and continue in ignorance, taking up their space and ruining their beauty.

Man can teach animals many things, good and bad. Animals can teach us as well, we just need to listen. Upon returning from Africa I became aware of the documented problem with feral pigs here in our area and how they reproduce in such numbers so rapidly that they have become a major nuisance to our local farmers, especially in an area bordering the Tennessee River as it cuts through our county. Friends of mine had organized packs of hounds to hunt this animal. The desire for excitement and to be back in the woods set me on a course to do the same. My pack consisted of Pit Bulls, Mastiffs, Staghounds, Airedales, Jagdterriers, (German Hunt Terriers), Plott Hounds, and Crosses. In the early years of this endeavor, it was a release for me, the tracking, baying, and catching of these beasts, highly intelligent but dangerous. Later, what seemed a beautiful thing that eased the depression turned on me. I had lost dogs to the hogs and with each one, I took a step back into that melancholic realm of sad bewilderment. I knew I had lost the desire when my old pit bull brought me, one by one, two, week-old piglets whose mom had fled in lieu of facing my dogs. I tucked them in my hunting coat pockets, took them to the farm, raised them as pets, and at a point returned them to the woods they came from. I was done, I sold and gave away to other dog men all but a few of my hounds. The rest will live with me till we all pass. As I look into their eyes I’m reminded of the struggles deep in some dark bottom, massive trees blocking the moonlight there amongst the briars and privet, the loud chaos surrounding us. Men, dogs, pigs, all together locked in that crazy dance that was so irreverently beautiful. Of the utter selfless drive and devotion to me that my dogs proved, I can only say I was undeserving, thus another layer to my conundrum. The blood in their veins, that I had bred and crossed to create still yearned for a good chase, for a mouth full of flesh, to smell those earthy scents, and I knew that they would rather die hunting for me than live a peaceful life as a pet. But here we are, my pets and I, dreaming of life in the woods, but too saddened with our losses to enter that beautiful chaotic world again. An old Airedale man, Henry Johnson, a long-gone good friend and breeder of the Airedales my dogs came from once told me, “A dog will surely break your heart, one way or another.” First hand I know it to be true.

So I found myself in the Emirates, Dubai, and then Abu Dabi. Leaving the airport with a good friend, along with two falcons perched on the back seat of the land Cruser we drove into the desert and after several monumental dinners sitting on the floor eating baby camel and other delicacies, the house was interrupted by one of the trainers my friend employed from Argentina. We were summoned to the stables, a great vast building full of paddocks and rooms for anything that would involve a horse’s well-being. The news was that an expensive mare had colic and was down. The vets were in favor of euthanizing her, but my friend would not permit it. I’m not sure of the reasoning, possibly an Islamic belief that everything living should be afforded its death within its terms. I will never know, for my Muslim friend seemed very staunch in his conviction, and I have never breached the subject since, but on this beautiful moon-covered night we all helped her stand and walk as we made our way into the dunes surrounding the complex. There on a bit of a rise, we stopped as a shallow grave had been prepared, the sand still warm from the sunlight of the day. Again and again, the vet asked to put her down, but my friend wouldn’t have it. She laid herself down on her side in that shallow pit, her labored breathing the only thing audible in the late night. We waited, on into the night we waited. Little was said and the moon passed away and the stars showed in the sub-Saharan heavens. The southern Cross cut its way forth between other stars and a soft wind began. We waited and speaking Arabic the others began to cover over the horse with the warm sand and soon there was nothing to see except her lovely nostrils, her breath only slightly disturbing the sand around them. On it went till there was no more breath to breathe, then we covered her and she was as if she had never been. My heart hung at a low, knowing this beautifully sad memory would haunt me along with so many others.

So now a bit past mid-life this bag of burdens goes with me. I still wake from dreams searching for a lost hound that I never find, his voice carrying through the swamps. I open drawers in cabinets and find leftover bottles of dog medication, their names neatly typed on the prescription. I look longingly at the board that houses the nails and the collars hanging from them, the collars I gently removed from a friend long gone, their brass nameplates crusted and tarnished. Deep somewhere in my soul, memories linger of each, their traits good and bad listed somewhere there for me to contemplate. And contemplate I do, much too much the more time passes. Beauty and sadness, what a pair, holding hands on their walks through the glomming of the hereafter and following close behind, the souls of those animals long gone, lingering there always, reminding us of our beautiful losses.