(In memory of my friend Curtis B. The only man who would have ever helped me do this, without question or judgment.)
–
October 2006:
I went to Loki’s grave one night, swaying back and forth over his homemade headstone, weeping and wanting to pound my fist into the dirt. To punch deep into the black soil and feel his fur for one last time. To have his smell on my hands. To bend his ears and rub them as he sighed.
I wanted him back.
So the next morning I called my friend with the tattooed neck and science degree.
“We’re going to get Odin,” I told him.
He didn’t question me. Just showed up at my house with his bucket and hacksaw. I grabbed my shovel and we went to the ravine.
“We might need to cut around the vertebrae,” he said, holding up the hacksaw. “Depending on how much he’s decomposed.”
We made our way down the hill, making guesses on what Odin might look like now.
My friend figured he’d look like a ninety-year-old smoker. Sunken eyes, parched lips, and skin barely hanging off the bone.
I said that all his flesh would be gone, except maybe for stray bits fur.
We’d learn that neither of us were right.
First we moved the logs off his grave, placed there to keep the animals from digging him up.
“Two animals are digging him up now,” he joked.
It was the only time I laughed all day.
He shoveled the first spade of dirt and pulled up a healthy worm.
It was good dirt. Full of life.
“Odin reincarnate,” I said, taking the fat worm. I set him gently on the ground.
The second and third spade brought up even more rich dirt and worms.
It was the fourth spade of dirt that made my heart sink. It held a string of blue ribbon. The ribbon I had tied around a bunch of tiger lilies and put atop Odin’s dead body. The lilies had long decomposed, but the tight, knotted ribbon remained.
One, two more spades. My friend shoveled horizontally so as not to crush the bones.
As he got closer, he pulled out his pocket knife and started scraping away the dirt like an archaeologist.
I turned my back.
“I see teeth,” he whispered. “Look at this.”
I didn’t at first. I wanted to keep the memory of my dog’s smiling face. That puppy-dog-look that Odin never outgrew. That noble and majestic beast. A dog that everyone liked. A dog that knew more than he should. A dog that had a little something extra. Something you can’t breed or clone. Odin had that. Boy did he have it.
I slowly turned to see. In the dirt was a fang, along with a snout and eye socket. All attached to a skull that was brown and black, like a museum fossil.
My friend jiggled Odin’s head a bit and then pulled it straight up, shaking off the clods of dirt. He peeled one small patch of fur from the cheekbone.
The skull was smaller than I expected. And it was missing the bottom jaw.
I thought about how many times I had stroked his head, felt his chin on my lap, and endured those teeth as we wrestled in the basement.
My friend pulled Odin’s bottom jaw from the dirt, and tossed the bone into the bucket.
We filled in the hole.
“I’ll clean this and get it back to you tomorrow,” my friend said.
I nodded. Not saying a word.
We split a beer from his coat pocket and went home.
Walking up my front steps, my new dog greeted me. Beyla, the Norwegian Elkhound. I knelt down, and petted her, feeling the skull beneath my fingers…our bones separated by thin layers of tissue and hair. So thin. So vulnerable…Flesh is no match for dirt.
I told her I love her and wondered when I’d be digging her up to put her skull atop my bookcase.