Sometimes we hate to say goodnight after French Table. We stand around chatting in front of Schwartz on Oakland at closing time. That’s what we were doing a few nights ago. Then brakes screeched, everyone gasped, I spun around in time to see the back of a car speeding down Jarvis, bouncing at every bump. It looked like a police chase, without the police.
“What happened?” I asked. It was dark across the street. All I could see were shadowy figures under the dim streetlight, and I could hear a yelping dog. “That car hit a dog,” Anne, who had younger eyes, said, “And it’s dying.” How could she see it was dying when I couldn’t see it at all?
A few minutes later I crossed over, checking traffic carefully. Jean-M was on his cell, talking with the police. Two women, each cuddling a small dog in her arms, stood crying. “Which dog was hit?” I asked Keith, who had run across immediately. He pointed to a third dog lying dead at one woman’s feet. “I checked, couldn’t feel any pulse,” he told me, “They’re taking him to the animal hospital anyway.”
About 27 years ago our son Joshua brought Happy to the animal hospital, put him on the table, and the vet exclaimed, “I can’t do anything for that dog, he’s dead,” with a tone that said, why are you bothering me with this? Perhaps he didn’t realize that pets are family members, and we don’t want to let go. Perhaps the speeding driver didn’t realize that either. Or perhaps he sped up when he heard the thud, to make sure he’d never know whether he’d hit man or beast. Or perhaps he didn’t know he’d hit anything, just another bump in the road.
