The Troops Have Landed

 

Pop put the dog cage together. He insisted on cleaning it of all hair and spraying the plastic bottom pan with his homemade disinfectant and wiping it down. The last of the summer heat started the sweat dripping off his lip and neck but he kept it up until the thing was clean. He disposed of a couple of fistfuls of collie hair in the trash and hauled the cage up the sloping lawn to the porch. It unfolded with a clatter but seemed to have a life of its own because it assumed an instant wire box shape so that the mystery that Pop was prepared to tackle pretty much settled itself. He had only to figure out how to engage the corners so that the shape was permanent, and get the door swinging properly. The sweat kept dripping.

He went to look for someone to help him lift and transport the cage through the tight kitchen door. He called out “Rose!” a couple of times until, finally, up on the second floor, Oma called out “Rose, where are you?” and Rose called back and soon enough came down the stairs to help Pop. They lifted it up past the protruding hardware on the screen door and then past the wood and glass kitchen door, then through the archway into the “dining room”. “Dining Room” being a glorious name for a rectangle of space just large enough to fit a table and chairs and maybe eight people. Maybe. Into a snug corner they tucked the cage all the while Dalia watching, perplexed, but (and this is just what Pop told me he felt looking at the displaced collie) coming closer by millimeters to an understanding that she would be sleeping here at least for a while.

Pop went down to the basement and out to his shop. He retrieved a monster, white terrycloth robe that Oma had just about thrown away a week earlier. He’d scooped it up for rags but didn’t have the heart to cut it up. Instead, he moved it from spot to spot until today. Today he folded it lovingly into quarters while he ascended the basement stair. He kneeled down in front of the doggy cage door and slid it in on the newly cleaned plastic pan. Dalia watched. Pop called Dalia and she came a pad or two closer, sniffing the air around the cage and the basement smell of the terrycloth. Pop was sure she would get in when it was time for sleep. He didn’t need to push her to get inside now.

Pop's knees and wrists ached something terrible down there on the floor. He un-coiled painfully as he began to get up. Looking up he saw Rose standing, postulating at the terrycloth robe. In her arms were other blankets and doggy toys which were, Pop assumed, Dalia’s own bed things. He stopped mid motion trying to rise up, and reached in to retrieve the terry cloth but Rose said “No! leave it. She’ll like that”.  Pop left it in the cage and finished unwinding his body as he stood up. He said, “Y’know, that robe was Mohamad Ali’s robe from when he won the heavyweight championship.” Rose looked at him with a smirk. She knew him well enough to know that nothing he said was 100% serious. Not that he lied, just kidded around a lot. Like her dad did. Like she did too. It must run in the family.