This was in the first place I lived with my now wife, in her apartment on Granville Avenue in Chicago, in 2017. Ruth and I would go for runs, back when I had two good knees and she had four good legs. We had a regular 4.5-mile loop. Sometimes we'd go in the morning, before work, and other times we'd go in the waning light of the afternoon. In my memory, it's forever overcast, cool—probably from some random outing on a fall day.
I'd put on shoes while she wagged her crooked tail, and then I'd leash her up and we'd go, heading east toward Clark Street, Ruth out in front immediately. She had a "gentle leader" harness at the time that was supposed to temper her pulling, but in reality all it did was leave her with a worn spot across the bridge of her nose where the harness strap (which she continued to pull against) sat. Later we found a different harness that could attach at the chest, and her nose hair grew back, which we were grateful for because her coat was so silky, so coppery. It seemed a shame that any of it should be blemished.
She'd always get her business done before we reached Clark, and then we'd turn left, past the Raven Theater, past Fritzy's Tavern. Sometimes it'd take a moment, between her wanting to stop and smell things and me trying to maintain momentum, for us to find a rhythm, but eventually we would, and then we'd just go. Both of us sucking in big whoops of oxygen, her tongue sticking out just a bit, her crooked tail still wagging. The prevailing theory was that she'd gotten it, the crook, from a littermate who'd chomped it too hard while it was still all cartilage. An imperfection that left her with just a hint of extra character.
Running was not time for a lot of thought for me. I'd go running to stop thinking for a while, to just move, and I'd done it for years before Ruth came along, but in having her there the activity took on new emotional textures. There was an exuberance in her, in leaving the house and seeing the world and meeting its people (she loved people, so much so that we'd joke about how easy she'd be to kidnap), and her joy brought me joy and made me want to run farther, faster.
Down Clark we'd go, hearts pumping, muscles twitching, past the fire department and the car wash, across the big multilane four-way intersection at Ridge Avenue, before making the slight right to maintain a straight shot south on Ashland Avenue. Can you see us? You can pop open Google Maps and follow us. We'd go down Ashland for a while. We'd pass houses, apartment buildings. Lots of brick.
Ruth had this habit on our runs of taking the lead but then zigging and zagging, like she needed to experience everything at once, every smell, on both sides of the sidewalk. One minute her nose would be trailing along a cement wall, the next it'd be hunting through the grass. My wife had picked her out when she was a puppy, just months before we ourselves met, and she was still young by the time we were running together, perhaps one going on two, or two going on three. Young lungs, strong legs, svelte but muscular in the way many vizslas are. She could really pull when she wanted to, putting her back legs into it, as if to say, Let's. Fucking. GO.
We'd make it all the way down to Lawrence Avenue before hanging the next left, going along past my favorite part of the loop, a long sweep of cemetery that I never bothered to learn the name of, in all the times we passed it. I looked it up just now. It's St. Boniface Catholic Cemetery. We'd pass all those headstones, but death would feel far away. We'd be too busy taking in more gulps of air and the smell of mown grass and the shoosh of cars going by. Little animals, too. Rabbits and squirrels and birds, each one catching Ruth's eye. It was a great big world, and she was delighted to be out in it, and she would have kept being out in it if she could.
Anyway, I can see us clearly in my head now. See the route. See us on it. We're nearing the turn back north, at Broadway, under the loom of the Uptown Theater, long closed but still a sight to see. And there are more restaurants on Broadway, and the sidewalk is wider, and there are generally more people to see Ruth and gasp and point and coo. Some actually do point. Who gives a shit about the thirtysomething jogger, but look at that dog! She got compliments all the time. People love a sleek, shiny, happy dog.
But we're running past them, not stopping, and Ruth has finally tired just enough to slow down to my pace, but she's still checking every tree laced by iron grills, and she's careful to skirt around every grate. She never saw a sidewalk grate she trusted enough to put a paw upon. We're going past the giant eagle of the post office, past the strip malls, past the church at Catalpa Avenue.
At home I'll pour her fresh water, which she'll drink in big, splashy laps, and then she'll make a curl on the couch and find her way to sleep. And maybe we'll watch TV together. And then way later, years later, when I can't run as well anymore, I'll worry she misses it, worry she wonders why we stopped, even though we’ll still go on long walks at that point and maybe she can't tell the difference. But at the same time we'll make other memories, like of chasing her around the house to get a shoe out of her mouth because her favorite game was to grab a loose shoe when we got home and run away with it, or of her trapping herself in my wife's office every time she went sneaking for tissues to eat, because the door had a tendency to slowly close itself behind her, and then she'd be stuck in there until we'd hear her low whinge and go see what was the matter.
But we're not there. We're not even home yet. We're still running, still chugging up Broadway, waiting for that last turn at Granville. It really is a nice day. The clouds have gone and the sun's going down and making her coat gleam, and she's squinting in the golden light and has that pant going that a lot of dogs get that makes it look like they're smiling. And she's ready to keep going. And so am I. Maybe we won't even turn when we hit Granville. Maybe we'll stretch it out a little further. There's nowhere we've gotta be.
