Emma’s brown eyes watched intently. They never left the gnarled stick the man waved aloft. A feathery tail waved in the warm breeze and restless feet shuffled, poised for movement. The man’s arm came over and the stick flashed through the air, spinning end over end, to land in the long grass at the edge of the field. Emma tore after it swiftly and silently, her tawny coat gleaming in the summer sun. With only the merest pause in her run, she grabbed at the stick and ran on, circling the man in a wide arc, then dropping to the ground with the gnawed branch between her feathered paws. Her long pink tongue lolled from the corner of her gaping jaws as she grinned at the man, daring him to approach and rob her of her prize. The hair on her pale golden ears was delicately crimped and fluttered in the breeze as one ear cocked at the stealthy approach of the hunter. He was quick but she was quicker. His hand grasped only grass as Emma whipped the stick away and ran a few yards before turning to face him, dropping the stick, and standing to look at him with an expression that said, you’ll have to be quicker than that.
The man walked slowly towards her, reaching out a hand.
‘Come on Emma, give us a chance.’ Emma only dropped into a crouch, her mouth inches away from the stick. As the man grabbed she stepped away with the stick firmly in her mouth. Smiling to himself, the man brought another stick from behind his back. Emma in-mediately dropped the stick that she had been carrying and looked eagerly at the one in the man’s hand. The man drew back his arm and made to throw. The dog bounded to where the stick would have gone then turned and looked at the man. She returned to sit before him wagging her tail, her eyes shining, her mouth in a grin that surely said, O, you fooled me there. When he again made to throw the stick she still ran to where it would have landed. She never seemed to learn. The third time the man threw and she raced after, lightly picking up the stick, turning and again running in that same wide arc round the outside of the man. And so, it continued, the man retrieving one stick by throwing the other. This game of tag went on for some minutes.
At the edge of the park on an old wrought iron bench, two figures watched this scene. They say that by the age of forty you have the face that you deserve. These two men had had their faces for far more than forty years. On one face, the lines around the twinkling bright eyes and the wrinkles around the mouth showed a man who had smiled for more than forty years. On the other man’s face the lines and wrinkles drew down beside his eyes and his mouth and his nose and his lips pouted as if he had spent his time sucking lemons.
Smiling man looked across the playing fields and said, almost to himself, ‘Doesn’t that looked lovely?’
‘Well, at least they are cutting the grass regularly,’ Pouting man said.
‘I often wish I’d had a dog,’ Smiling man mused.
‘Dogs, you can keep them, what do they do? They make a mess in the street and on your shoes; they cover your clothes and your house with dog hairs.
They bite the postman, chase cats and howl at night. I think the Chinese have the right idea. Do you know what they do with dogs? They eat them. That’s the best thing to do with dogs, eat them. ‘
‘A dog is a loving creature. It will take the love you give and return it to you a thousand-fold. The world may turn its back on you but your dog never will. Its needs are simple; food, water, exercise and love. It will even do without the exercise if it must. What could be more pleasant at the end of a long working day than to curl up before a fire with a dog at your feet or in your lap? Do you know I heard they sometimes use dogs in hospitals to help with people who are depressed? They find that stroking a dog is very therapeutic.’
‘Very tasty too, I should think, if cooked right,’ observed Pouting man, clearly not listening. He rose painfully and, with a grunt of farewell, left the park without a backward glance.
Smiling man continued to smile. For a few more minutes he watched man and dog at play then quietly, he rose and walked towards the man.
‘Hello Bob’ he called and the man turned and smiled.
‘Hello Gary, how are you doing?’
‘Not too bad Bob, the old joints ache and I can’t walk as far as I used to,’ Smiling man said.
‘We’ re none of us getting any younger.’ They talked for a little while of this and that, of memories and things past. After a while, smiling man waved farewell and wandered home.
While the men had talked the dog sat patiently with the stick at her feet, her tail softly waving and a long pink tongue dangling from her panting lips. Now that Smiling man had left, the dog picked up the stick and looked hopefully at her playmate.
‘Well Emma I think it’s time to go.’ The man turned and walked away. The dog gazed after him, and then dropped the stick and as she, too, walked away she seemed to fade, her shape becoming indistinct, the colour seeping out until there was nothing left to see.
When the man arrived home, he put the kettle on and made a cup of tea. He drank pensively at the kitchen table. His eye caught sight of an old lead hanging on a hook behind the door. She had been a good friend for so many years. He was now too old to start with a new puppy. No, Emma had been his last dog. When she had died five years ago he knew there would be no more such companions. Emma too must have known, for otherwise she would not be there each day on the playing field waiting eagerly for him to arrive and throw ghostly sticks for her to chase. It eased the pain of parting for man and dog.
