“As the images of his own history twisted and ripped their way through the flames in front of him, Wesley Williams somehow knew that he had taken the right path after all. Maybe the trail had been laid out for him all along from the day he was born, and it was simply up to him whether to keep marching forward in the right direction. Wesley was here now. In spite of all his shortcomings, all his bad choices, and all the times he had missed the mark and felt ashamed, he knew in his heart he was still where he was meant to be. Gazing across the distance at his wife’s eyes – those tender, loving eyes that he had fallen in love with when he was just a boy – he knew he had never left the trail on which he belonged, even though it was impossible from day to day to know for sure where the markers would be. Somehow, he had managed to stay on the path where he knew he needed to be, even if his own foolhardiness had put his fate at risk. For reasons he could not comprehend, he had been spared his own oblivion by the pathway’s power.” – Solid State, chapter 73
“Motherfucker!”
I stood in the middle of Channing Avenue, just a few blocks from my house, screaming at the car as loud as I could. I didn’t care what people thought. Why would I? There was a dog involved. I’d trade a hundred strangers’ lives for a dog any day of the week. This wasn’t any different.
Only moments before, my beloved son and I were walking our dogs past St. Albert the Great Church (which I can’t help calling “Fat Albert”, since I’m a child of the 70s and easily self-amused). In the middle of our conversation, we heard a terrible thump and then the sudden wail of a dog.
I immediately turned my head to see what happened, and I saw a medium-sized canine crumpled in the road and a blue 5-series BMW driving away, untroubled by what had just happened. My son had turned his head away from the scene in horror, not daring to look at what he heard, and I slapped the end of my leash into his hand so he could mind both of our dogs, dashing into the road to rage at the retreating vehicle.
Since the dingbat of a woman driving the car wasn’t bothering to stop, I frantically waved down the next vehicle and motioned for him to drop his window. I pointed up the road and said, “That car just hit a dog. Catch up to her, get her license plate, and come back to me!” It might seem odd for me to be barking orders to strangers who are driving, but it’s my nature to take hold of a situation, and when it comes to dogs, I don’t fuck around. Some people are born to take action. I’m one of them.
The driver nodded at me and went zipping off after the car. Looking at the road, I saw that the dog was gone, so I went bounding up the steps to find the dog’s owner. He was cradling the animal, utterly bereft. There was blood splattered on the man’s face, and the dog was whimpering in terror and in pain. It was a terrible sight, and it was instantly clear to me this man was a person who cherished his dog just as much as I did. This could well have been me.
I spoke firmly to him to make clear what was going to happen next. “You stay here. I live close by, and I’m going to get my car. We’re going to get you both to the vet. I’ll be right back.” I raced to the other side of the street, noticing that the man I had dispatched to fetch the woman’s license plate was nowhere to be found, so my son and I ran, our own dogs galloping behind us, to make the journey back home.
Even as a young man, I was too out of shape to run, and as a non-svelte middle-aged guy, it’s even harder. Suffice it to say I didn’t win any medals for how fast I made it back home, but I did the best I could, and I got my boy to the door with our two dogs. “You go inside and take care of them. I’m going to take that dog to the vet.”
Now, in the Knight household, our children were raised with a deep love of animals, and although my son is a grown man, he was visibly shaken not by what he had seen – – he saw nothing, remember – – but by what he had heard. He felt was surely by now being present to the killing of a dog. Knowing how troubled he was, I gave him a quick hug and then called the emergency hospital while I got into my car. Reaching the emergency hospital, I explained to them that I would be there in a few minutes, and that they should expect us.
After I drove the few blocks to the man’s home, a gaggle of house painters were on the sidewalk outside milling about. I asked them where he was, and they said he had taken the dog to the vet. I was a little disappointed, because I was concerned about his ability to drive in his emotional state, but I knew time was of the essence, so I don’t blame his departure. After all, how did he know I was even going to come back?
Around then, my deputized recon man pulled up and said he caught up with the lady and took a picture of her license plate. He said she was an older woman and wouldn’t stop even though he was waving and honking at her. He figured she must have been scared of him.
Based on my experience in my fair city of Palo Alto, I would say that the female drivers of this town are complete dipshits. Every incident in which there’s been careless or reckless driving has been a middle-aged or older woman (like when I got violently t-boned), and, once again, we had some vacuous female zipping around in her BMW, causing all kinds of mayhem. If I had caught up with her, they’d never have found her body. But at least we had the license plate.
Armed with this information, I called the police to explain the situation. Had the victim been, say, a child, I’m sure they would have swarmed this lady’s house. Indeed, a few weeks ago, some drunk dude did in fact kill someone crossing the street, and since bystanders managed to get his license plate, he was incarcerated that very night. In this case, though, well, it’s a dog, so they said all they could do is send an officer over to take a report.
Let me pause here and state that there’s a reason I’m telling you this story beyond the fact that it’s an intriguing anecdote. Over the past month, there have been a series of events that have presented tremendous peril and tremendous opportunity. Even more intensely, the past week has been one I will never forget. I feel like I have been running naked up and down Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 as bullets have been whistling past my ears. It has, at times, felt totally overwhelming.
In fact, as a data dork, I can offer you evidence of the strain, as my sleep quality data hasn’t been stellar.
Yet it was unrelenting. Drama. Tension. Brinksmanship. Rumors and innuendo. It was all there. What we experienced would all make for a riveting two-hour movie, but I can’t tell you about it. Not now. Probably not ever.
Yet if there’s something I’ve learned in life, it’s that signs make themselves known. There are signals all around us, and if we just pay attention and, more importantly, have enough humility to believe them, we can steel ourselves. As I wrote above in Solid State, it is “impossible from day to day to know for sure where the markers would be”, but they are there.
“Awww, those are just coincidences,” you might say. Wrong. There are higher powers than you, and if you’re so arrogant to be surrounded by one-in-a-million situations, and you still have the temerity to dismiss them, you have a God-shaped hole in your heart or, at best, a complete lack of wonder.
Not that I’m one to talk. My faith is imperfect. Just now, the perfect lawyer came into my life, and it turns out he lives on the street where I grew up as a child. Big deal, right? Yeah, it is. There are tens of thousands of streets around here. He lives more than an hour away. He lives exactly I grew up. His partner teachers at the middle school where I met my wife.
A coincidence? You already know my rejoinder.
Back to the story. I pull into my driveway. I’ve talked to the police. I called the vet to say I wouldn’t be coming. I’m not sure what else to do. It occurs to me that I should write the man a note. I should at least tell him I’m available if he needs a witness. Besides all this, I’m worried about his dog, who I figured is a goner or at least crippled.
I walk toward my door, and my son opens it, stepping onto the porch, backpack dangling from his shoulder with a face marred by sadness.
Without looking at me, he says, “That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
I give him a hug. “I know. The man took his dog to the vet. I’ll keep you posted.”
He sadly walked to his car and drove away. My kids shouldn’t have to carry this kind of weight. I go inside to fire up Microsoft Word.
My letter was just a quick one-pager. I told him my name, my phone, my email, and I pasted a photo of the woman’s license plate. I told him about talking to the police, and I asked him to contact me if I could be of any aid. Printed it. Folded it. Into an envelope. Scotch tape. And back to his house, adhering the message to his front door.
A few hours later, the phone rings with a number I don’t know. It’s the dog’s owner.
He called to thank me for the letter, and it seemed from the sound of his voice that he was in good spirits. His tone matched what he said next, because he told me the dog – – whose name, I then learned, was Logan – – was absolutely fine.
He had been hit by the car, yes, but he had no injuries. No broken bones. No internal bleeding. A full body scan revealed a completely healthy dog. He had a cut here and there, but besides giving him some anti-inflammatory pills, the vet sent Logan and his owner on their way.
To my mind, it was a near-miracle. This dog could have easily been killed or seriously injured. A split-second difference, and his skull would have been hit instead of his butt. A slightly different body position on Logan’s part meant the difference between life and death. My son and I heard the impact, and we feared the worst, but Logan was unhurt. I felt a tremendous sense of relief, and I told the owner to please call me if he needed me to help in any way, including serving as a witness in case he wanted to pursue the driver for the vet bill. He had just made my day.
To me, it was just another sign in the midst of everything that was going on. And what was going on was incredibly stressful. We were in the midst of staggering uncertainty, opportunity, and peril, and I kept seeing things happening around me – – some big, some small – – that reassured me everything was going to be all right. By utter chance, I had been witness to salvation, and it made me breathe easier.
I’ve been through an awful lot over the years, and the most extreme events in my life are untold stories, because they are simply too personal to share with you. This most recent panoply of events is definitely one of them, and certainly the one that can never be told.
What I did want to share, however, is that as a person who tends to notice things, I kept experiencing instances of grace even while I was sailing a proverbial dinghy through a raging hurricane. My faith falls far short of where it should be, though. In fact, I’m pretty much a cowardly brat, since it seems that in spite of all empirical data through my life, I get afraid every time, and in the end find, once again, the fear was unjustified.
Be that person who notices things. Be that person with enough humility to recognize the signs around you. But be better than me and be that person with a rock-solid faith in them every single time. Miracles and signs are happening around you constantly.
Just take a look and permit yourself to believe in them.
