What Can’t Be Changed 4 comments

By Brian Volck

Friday was unseasonably warm and blustery, with a cold front moving in. The week had been trying and my wife Jill and I were eager to drive an hour east of town after work for a friend’s birthday get-together, which we knew would be overflowing with good food, good conversation and, if the rain held off, a bonfire.

Our friends live with their dogs in a farmhouse, in a county of Ohio where suburbia has yet to metastasize. Much of the drive is on US 50, a two-lane with small towns, houses, cornfields and woods strung on its path like charms on a bracelet. The celebration was joyful, relaxed, full of what Jane Austen called “not good company, (but)...the best.” We caught up with old friends and made new ones. Jill and I sipped wine, roasted marshmallows and sang by the fire before raindrops drove us indoors.

By the time we were ready to head home for the night, light rain had been falling awhile, the leading edge of a predicted torrent. The roads were already wet and the homeward drive dark. The moon hid behind thick, wet clouds. Even so, Jill and I were content, grateful for our evening together. When conversation faltered during the long ride west, we sang to pass the time.

Farther along US 50, as we topped a rise on the edge of a wood, I saw cars approaching in the opposite lane and dimmed my high beams. Straining my eyes against the brightness of approaching headlights, I suddenly glimpsed, standing in our lane, a medium-sized white dog. It just stood there, not moving, not turning, not looking our way. In the lane to my left were two fast-approaching cars; to the right, a roadside ditch backed by a fence and bushes. I had no time to brake, which slick pavement would have made treacherous at best.

To describe now the sound, the flash, the feel as dog and car collided, would be even more disturbing than my memory of them. It happened, as they say, “all so quickly.” I don’t know if the other cars even saw it. In any case, they didn’t stop. I slowed to a halt while Jill said over and over, “Oh my God, there was nothing you could do.” I don’t remember speaking, but I know I was trembling. I started to drive on again—afraid, I think, of cars speeding over the ridge—sure of nothing save that no creature could survive what I had just done to the dog.

Jill, thinking more clearly than I, asked if we should go back and see if the dog had identification, so we could at least find its owner. I drove a mile, perhaps, before realizing that’s what we had to do. I turned around and drove back slowly, the two of us scanning the road, hoping we were mistaken, that we’d hit nothing at all. But there, on the shallow slope down from the rise, near the ditch and fence, lay a still, white shape.

I pulled over and we got out. The night was noticeably colder than when we’d started, but the rain had stopped for a moment. We walked in darkness toward the dog, still and dead on the faintly glistening pavement. The dog was smaller than I imagined, its fur wet. It looked old, though hard to tell in the darkness. We found no collar, no tag. Jill said we should move it out of the road, and I picked the lifeless body up by the legs and moved it to the grass. “At least no one else will hit it now,” Jill said, and she leaned against me and stifled a sob.

The rain picked up, and we returned to the car. We drove home in near silence, the scent of wet dog on my hands, the sensory assault of a moment I could neither have expected nor avoided hammering in my skull. Some miles later, we spied a lone deer standing by the roadside, but there were no more collisions, no more shocks, though the rain fell with increasing fury.

Much later, in bed, I stared at the ceiling, listening to the deluge. I wondered if we should have sought out houses set away from the road, asking anyone if they knew about a white dog without a tag, though the thought of knocking on strangers’ doors late at night in a worsening storm hadn’t crossed my mind at the time. Should I have done more? I don’t know.

Near morning, I awoke with a start, having dreamt it had been a person, not a dog, that I’d hit. It wasn’t easy to fall asleep again. (Jill later confided that her dreams were of us being run down in the road as we moved the dog.) I had to round at the hospital early Saturday and was grateful for the opportunity to turn my full attention to things I could possibly change.

I don’t know what more there is to this story. It’s too tender and raw, a fresh wound reminding me of other, older hurts. The best dog I ever knew, one who lived with us thirteen years, is buried out back beneath a St. John’s Wort. He died the way good dogs do: trying to find some place away from us to go quietly and alone, giving up, it seemed, only when he sensed we were ready. I mourned him like a family member, which he was.

I’ll never know if anyone mourns the white dog without a collar. I won’t know if anyone went looking next morning or who noticed the white body along the road. I may long regret not driving about in the rain to knock on doors. If only such moments came with instructions. Life’s a mystery and we’re not in control—truths my attempts to turn experience into story can’t change, no matter how hard I wish otherwise.