"Best Friends"
(Contemporary fantasy)

This is one of those stories that I wrote and thought everyone would love it and want to publish it, yet it was rejected by countless publications. At least most of those rejections came as "I loved it! Just not right for me" type of rejections. I was very pleased when it was picked up to be in the final issue of Candlelight.

I don't usually shoot for emotional pieces, or deep stories with philosophical meaning, or anything like that. This one sort of wrote itself; I was just along for the ride, channeling the energies and providing the typing.
 

"Best Friends"
by David M. Fitzpatrick

Bannon was my best friend from the day I met him in 1951. Rock and roll was just beginning to make waves, although the waves of any national trend always seemed to ripple into Maine last. I was eleven that year at Christmas, and more than anything I wanted a dog, but Dad always said dogs were too expensive to own. He remembered the Depression all too clearly, and was more interested in keeping his family secure after he’d returned from the War with his skin intact.

But Dad had just gotten a promotion, so things were looking good. He worked at the Bangor Auditorium, and the voters had just approved building a new structure that was to be a major boon to Bangor and even the region. He’d gone out for a pack of Lucky Strikes on Christmas Eve and when he returned, he said, “Jimmy, I forgot something in the car. Would you get it for me?”

I wasn’t dumb; I knew there’d be a present there, and as I rushed outside, visions of the new baseball bat and glove I’d wanted danced through my head like the Boston Red Sox chasing a postseason chance. But nothing could have prepared me for swinging the door open and coming face to face with the frightened, innocent face of Bannon staring back at me from over the edge of a wooden crate.

And the moment I saw him, I knew he was “Bannon”—for Jim Bannon, star of the Red Ryder flicks I’d enjoyed at the Park Theater downtown. He was the cutest mutt ever; big, worried, brown eyes stared at me as his little white-black-brown furry body quivered nervously. He was just a puppy, cowering on a wool Army blanket, and I cried out in excitement and scooped him up, and within minutes he wasn’t afraid anymore. For the next twelve years, he and I were inseparable.

He was full-sized by his first year, and by then nobody could imagine us apart. Every day he’d whine when I headed to school, and he’d always be there with wagging tail and happy barks when I returned that afternoon. He’d always help me when I raked leaves or shoveled snow, and when I picked up a paper route delivering the Bangor Daily News, he went with me at five in the morning, regardless of the weather, and never complained.

On lazy summer days, he’d cool off with me in the Kenduskeag Stream, and later we’d lounge together in the shade of a giant pine. At Bangor High School I took up cross country running, and I’d jog all over town with Bannon always at my side. He’d even keep up when I bicycled, and when I got my driver’s license he rode shotgun in my dad’s 1942 Buick Roadmaster. Driving that beautiful old tank was heaven, but having Bannon riding with me made it all the better.

A group of bullies thought they’d kick my ass one spring day as I was heading to the new auditorium to meet Dad, but there was Bannon to protect me. He drew blood from all three before they backed off. You can imagine how miserable my friend and protector was when the school wouldn’t allow him in for my graduation; he had to wait out in the old Buick. He was always miserable when I had to go anywhere he wasn’t allowed, and doubly ecstatic when I came out and we were together again.

I took a job out of school driving a delivery truck for a hardware company on the waterfront, which meant Bannon had to stay at our apartment alone all day. My guilt wasn’t completely alleviated even when I came through the door to his happy barking, as he jumped on me like Dino in the Flintstone cartoons. I mentioned it to my boss and he didn’t see why Bannon couldn’t ride with me. From then on, Bannon was there in that ’48 Ford F-1, proud as ever, my faithful co-pilot. He still got left home alone sometimes, like when I attended classes downtown at Beal College in slow pursuit of a business degree, but otherwise we were inseparable.

The years rolled by as I got older. They put up a big Fiberglas statue of Paul Bunyan in Bass Park, but I didn’t care much about local developments; I’d discovered women. Girlfriends came and went; if I was lucky, they visited my apartment. Bannon always understood my needs, and he grudgingly accepted them. But once the women left the apartment, I was always forgiven.

My grandfather, who had worked deep in the North Maine Woods at the turn of the century, died in 1961. It was my first death experience; Grandpa John was my only living relative besides my parents, and I’d never had to handle such a trauma. But people die, my father said as he comforted me, and things change. And there’s nothing we can do but accept it and change with them.

Big changes were coming to Bangor in 1963, with urban renewal on the verge of destroying most of the city’s character. But a bigger change happened to me: Bannon got sick. He’d been so healthy despite the increase of gray in his fur, but one day he couldn’t stand and wouldn’t eat. I immediately took him to his vet—Dr. Mallory, who practiced for years over the river in Brewer—and discovered the shocking truth: Bannon was old. He was arthritic. His heart was weak. His liver was failing. I was crushed, and my own heart almost gave out when Dr. Mallory recommended putting Bannon down.

There was no way I could do that to my best friend. When Bannon decided to leave this world, he’d go, and I wouldn’t hurry him along. I took him home with bottles of medicine and prepared for my best friend in the whole world to die.

He got worse every day. I think he knew it was coming, but he kept struggling with his pained body to come to me, to sit with me on the couch, to follow me around… to just be with me, no matter what.

The final night of his life arrived. I knew he’d go in his sleep, and I knew I had to sit with him. I lay with him on my bed, listening to his short, labored breaths, and I held him. And I started crying.

He looked up at me through hazy eyes, sad and confused, as I bawled like a baby and told him how much I loved him, how he was my best friend, and how I couldn’t live without him. I held him tightly, and I know he could sense what I was thinking.

“I don’t want you to go,” I said amidst my tears. “You’ve made me who I am, Bannon… I can’t be me without you.”

I fell asleep that night with my arms wrapped around him like that eleven-year-old little boy back in 1951.

#

I woke the next morning to Bannon excitedly lapping my face. It took me a moment to figure out what was happening, and when my head cleared, I realized he was standing over me, ears perked up and tongue lolling. He yapped at me as if to say “Get up, silly, I’m better now.” And he was, too—he looked like a new dog. In fact, his shiny coat seemed ten years younger, with no gray at all. His face no longer sagged. His bright eyes sparkled like stars, and he had all the energy of a puppy.

Dr. Mallory ran all the tests he’d run the week before. No sign of heart disease, no liver problem, and no arthritis.

“If I didn’t know better,” Mallory said, “I’d say this was a different dog.”

Who was I to argue? My best friend had a new lease on life. He was twelve years old now, and I understood he probably still didn’t have much time left anyway; but any time bought was better than nothing.

#

After years of haphazard classes, I finished school and opened an accounting practice. I should have worked for someone else until I’d built up a repertoire of clients, but no accounting firm in town would have let me bring Bannon to work. The first three years were tough, and I worked a few side jobs to keep afloat, but I made it. And every day, Bannon was with me. He took his job as office sentinel as seriously as he had co-piloting the hardware delivery truck.

I met Linda at an all-night moonshot party on July 20, 1969. The daughter of a client who owned a major fish market in Bucksport, just downriver, she was an astounding woman who accepted everything about me, including Bannon being my best friend—and eventually my best man. Bannon was a little nervous at first, especially when Linda moved in, but he adapted. We honeymooned on Lake Champlain in Vermont in June of 1971, and Bannon went with us.

I remember the specific date the second time it happened: October 21, 1975. I’d just watched Carlton Fisk hit a home run at Fenway in the bottom of the twelfth to win Game Six of the World Series against the Reds—what many considered the greatest World Series game ever played. I was flying high with Red Sox fans all over New England.

But the game had no sooner ended than Bannon started hacking, and he coughed up some blood. It was almost like he’d politely waited for the Sox to win the game. I took him back to the vet early the next morning, to the same Dr. Mallory who had cared for him since his first checkup in early 1952. Mallory pronounced Bannon the victim of some horrible gastrointestinal malady. Further tests indicated a host of other age-related problems developing.

“It’s to be expected, Jim,” Mallory said. “Twenty-four years old… that’s pretty rare for a dog. Especially considering his remarkable recovery twelve years ago.”

Euthanasia was mentioned, but once again I took Bannon home. It wasn’t tax season, so I could afford to take a lot of time off. That night I held him and cried, telling him what he meant to me and how I didn’t want him to go. He looked at me through his glazed, dying eyes, and I knew he understood how I felt, and what I meant.

I held him all night long, and I never even knew the Red Sox lost Game Seven and the World Series. And I didn’t care. All that mattered was Bannon.
The next morning, he was better. Like before, he seemed a decade younger. Healthier, more color in his coat, more strength and energy… almost like he’d been born again. Linda couldn’t believe it, but somehow I could.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

But Bannon's strange ability to cheat death is only just beginning...

To read the whole story, order Candlelight #3.
 

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