Creek Running North

My brother arrived safely tonight to visit Zeke, who had another good day today. I got to the Oakland Airport a few minutes early, was poking around as the TSA agents were quizzing people as regarded their possession of lip gloss and toothpaste, and espied a display of common consumer items which are not allowed aboard commercial passenger flights.

Some of the stuff made sense. The bottle rockets, for instance. Hard to imagine a scenario where those would be necessary. The mildew killer might give some people a little feeling of security using the onboard bathroom, but it’s probably not worth the risk. WD-40? Those squeaky wheels on the drink carts are annoying as hell. I suppose you could turn a can of WD-40 into a flamethrower if you had a lighter, which was also on the unallowed list.

And then there was this. Finally a banned item that, as we have all recently learned, makes sense. I don’t want to see any of those motherfucking things on my motherfucking plane.

[Please note: this post brings this blog into compliance with the Snakes On A Plane Blog Mentioning Act of 2006. We now return you to your regular Zeke post, already in progress.]

Another good day, as I mentioned, with no recourse to the butt leash. We went for a second walk tonight, he and Becky and I. For the first time in many months he tackled the steep wooded hillside behind our house. The hillside is on Methodist Church property. Zeke is welcome there, but the pastor adopted a sweet but barky dog the same week Zeke got attacked by the neighbor’s dog last year, and the barking as we headed onto the church’s land unnerved him. We have not been that way in some months. Every morning for the first six months of this year he’d halt at the turn up into the church lot, wait as if considering whether this was the day he’d brave Bodie’s barking, and decide against it. He’d stare up at the hill for two minutes, or three, and if I walked that way he would follow for two steps and stop, and then he’d turn back gladly when I returned to him, chuckling and we’d walk the other way. But tonight he went up there, walked along the top of the hill, the one that always made him grin big. It was dark and his vision is shot, so I stuck close. In my light gray sweatpants I was the star he steered by.

The hill runs level for fifty feet or so and then descends steeply. He could not have climbed down in the dark even last year. He stood at the brink, unsure. I scooped him up, carried him to the bottom, then helped him through the fence hole our neighbor Naomi made sure her gardeners left for him. I had not thought we would walk that way again, especially after this last weekend. We met him in front of Naomi’s house, peering through the dark for a glimpse of us, a smile on his tired face.