That I’ve got that taken care of, who wants to

bodysurf ?I glanced nervously around, but no one

Marley & Me

had seemed to notice. The other dog owners were

occupied with their own dogs farther down the

beach, a mother not far away was focused on help-

ing her toddler make a sandcastle, and the few

sunbathers scattered about were lying flat on their

backs, eyes closed. Thank God!I thought, as I

waded into Marley’s puke zone, roiling the water

with my feet as nonchalantly as I could to disperse

the evidence. How embarrassing would that

have been?At any rate, I told myself, despite the

technical violation of the No. 1 Dog Beach Rule,

we had caused no real harm. After all, it was just

undigested food; the fish would be thankful for the

meal, wouldn’t they? I even picked out the milk-

jug cap and soldier’s head and put them in my

pocket so as not to litter.

“Listen, you,” I said sternly, grabbing Marley

around the snout and forcing him to look me in

the eye. “Stop drinking salt water. What kind of a

dog doesn’t know enough to not drink salt wa-

ter?” I considered yanking him off the beach and

cutting our adventure short, but he seemed fine

now. There couldn’t possibly be anything left in

his stomach. The damage was done, and we had

gotten away with it undetected. I released him and

he streaked down the beach to rejoin Killer.

What I had failed to consider was that, while

Marley’s stomach may have been completely emp-

John Grogan

tied, his bowels were not. The sun was reflecting

blindingly off the water, and I squinted to see

Marley frolicking among the other dogs. As I

watched, he abruptly disengaged from the play

and began turning in tight circles in the shallow

water. I knew the circling maneuver well. It was

what he did every morning in the backyard as he

prepared to defecate. It was a ritual for him, as

though not just any spot would do for the gift he

was about to bestow on the world. Sometimes

the circling could go on for a minute or more as

he sought just the perfect patch of earth. And

now he was circling in the shallows of Dog Beach,

on that brave frontier where no dog had dared to

poop before. He was entering his squatting posi-

tion. And this time, he had an audience. Killer’s

dad and several other dog owners were standing

within a few yards of him. The mother and her

daughter had turned from their sandcastle to gaze

out to sea. A couple approached, walking hand

in hand along the water’s edge. “No,” I whis-

pered. “Please, God, no.”

“Hey!” someone yelled out. “Get your dog!”

“Stop him!” someone else shouted.

As alarmed voices cried out, the sunbathers

propped themselves up to see what all the commo-

tion was about.

I burst into a full sprint, racing to get to him be-

Marley & Me

fore it was too late. If I could just reach him and

yank him out of his squat before his bowels began

to move, I might be able to interrupt the whole

awful humiliation, at least long enough to get him

safely up on the dune. As I raced toward him, I

had what can only be described as an out-of-body

experience. Even as I ran, I was looking down

from above, the scene unfolding one frozen frame

at a time. Each step seemed to last an eternity.

Each foot hit the sand with a dull thud. My arms

swung through the air; my face contorted in a sort

of agonized grimace. As I ran, I absorbed the

slow-mo frames around me: a young woman sun-

bather, holding her top in place over her breasts

with one hand, her other hand plastered over her

mouth; the mother scooping up her child and re-

treating from the water’s edge; the dog owners,

their faces twisted with disgust, pointing; Killer’s

dad, his leathery neck bulging, yelling. Marley

was done circling now and in full squat position,

looking up to the heavens as if saying a little

prayer. And I heard my own voice rising above the

din and uncoiling in an oddly guttural, distorted,

drawn-out scream: “Noooooooooooooooo!”

I was almost there, just feet from him. “Marley,

no!” I screamed. “No, Marley, no! No! No! No!”

It was no use. Just as I reached him, he exploded

in a burst of watery diarrhea. Everyone was

John Grogan

jumping back now, recoiling, fleeing to higher

ground. Owners were grabbing their dogs. Sun-

bathers scooped up their towels. Then it was over.

Marley trotted out of the water onto the beach,

shook off with gusto, and turned to look at me,

panting happily. I pulled a plastic bag out of my

pocket and held it helplessly in the air. I could see

immediately it would do no good. The waves

crashed in, spreading Marley’s mess across the

water and up onto the beach.

“Dude,” Killer’s dad said in a voice that made

me appreciate how the wild hogs must feel at the

instant of Killer’s final, fatal lunge. “That was not

cool.”

No, it wasn’t cool at all. Marley and I had vio-

lated the sacred rule of Dog Beach. We had fouled

the water, not once but twice, and ruined the

morning for everyone. It was time to beat a quick

retreat.

“Sorry,” I mumbled to Killer’s owner as I

snapped the leash on Marley. “He swallowed a

bunch of seawater.”

Back at the car, I threw a towel over Marley and

vigorously rubbed him down. The more I rubbed,

the more he shook, and soon I was covered in sand

and spray and fur. I wanted to be mad at him. I

wanted to strangle him. But it was too late now.

Besides, who wouldn’t get sick drinking a half

Marley & Me

gallon of salt water? As with so many of his mis-

deeds, this one was not malicious or premeditated.

It wasn’t as though he had disobeyed a command

or set out to intentionally humiliate me. He simply

had to go and he went. True, at the wrong place

and the wrong time and in front of all the wrong

people. I knew he was a victim of his own dimin-

ished mental capacity. He was the only beast on

the whole beach dumb enough to guzzle seawater.

The dog was defective. How could I hold that

against him?

“You don’t have to look so pleased with your-

self,” I said as I loaded him into the backseat. But

pleased he was. He could not have looked happier

had I bought him his own Caribbean island. What

he did not know was that this would be his last

time setting a paw in any body of salt water. His

days—or rather, hours—as a beach bum were be-

hind him. “Well, Salty Dog,” I said on the drive

home, “you’ve done it this time. If dogs are

banned from Dog Beach, we’ll know why.” It

would take several more years, but in the end

that’s exactly what happened.

C H A P T E R 2 1

A Northbound Plane

❉

Shortly after Colleen turned two, I inadver-

tently set off a fateful series of events that

would lead us to leave Florida. And I did it with

the click of a mouse. I had wrapped up my col-

umn early for the day and found myself with a half

hour to kill as I waited for my editor. On a whim I

decided to check out the website of a magazine I

had been subscribing to since not long after we

bought our West Palm Beach house. The maga-

zine was Organic Gardening,which was launched

in 1942 by the eccentric J. I. Rodale and went on

to become the bible of the back-to-the-earth

movement that blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Rodale had been a New York City businessman

specializing in electrical switches when his health

began to fail. Instead of turning to modern medi-

cine to solve his problems, he moved from the city

John Grogan

to a small farm outside the tiny borough of Em-

maus, Pennsylvania, and began playing in the dirt.

He had a deep distrust of technology and believed

the modern farming and gardening methods

sweeping the country, nearly all of them relying

on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, were not the

saviors of American agriculture they purported to

be. Rodale’s theory was that the chemicals were

gradually poisoning the earth and all of its inhabi-

tants. He began experimenting with farming tech-

niques that mimicked nature. On his farm, he

built huge compost piles of decaying plant matter,

which, once the material had turned to rich black

humus, he used as fertilizer and a natural soil

builder. He covered the dirt in his garden rows

with a thick carpet of straw to suppress weeds and

retain moisture. He planted cover crops of clover

and alfalfa and then plowed them under to return

nutrients to the soil. Instead of spraying for in-

sects, he unleashed thousands of ladybugs and

other beneficial insects that devoured the destruc-

tive ones. He was a bit of a kook, but his theories

proved themselves. His garden flourished and so

did his health, and he trumpeted his successes in

the pages of his magazine.

By the time I started reading Organic Garden-

ing,J. I. Rodale was long dead and so was his son,

Robert, who had built his father’s business, Rodale

Marley & Me

Press, into a multimillion-dollar publishing com-

pany. The magazine was not very well written or

edited; reading it, you got the impression it was

put out by a group of dedicated but amateurish

devotees of J.I.’s philosophy, serious gardeners

with no professional training as journalists; later I

would learn this was exactly the case. Regardless,

the organic philosophy increasingly made sense to

me, especially after Jenny’s miscarriage and our

suspicion that it might have had something to do

with the pesticides we had used. By the time

Colleen was born, our yard was a little organic oa-

sis in a suburban sea of chemical weed-and-feed

applications and pesticides. Passersby often

stopped to admire our thriving front garden, which

I tended with increasing passion, and they almost

always asked the same question: “What do you put

on it to make it look so good?” When I answered,

“I don’t,” they looked at me uncomfortably, as

though they had just stumbled upon something

unspeakably subversive going on in well-ordered,

homogeneous, conformist Boca Raton.

That afternoon in my office, I clicked through

the screens at organicgardening.comand eventu-

ally found my way to a button that said “Career

Opportunities.” I clicked on it, why I’m still not

sure. I loved my job as a columnist; loved the daily

interaction I had with readers; loved the freedom

John Grogan

to pick my own topics and be as serious or as flip-

pant as I wanted to be. I loved the newsroom and

the quirky, brainy, neurotic, idealistic people it at-

tracted. I loved being in the middle of the biggest

story of the day. I had no desire to leave newspa-

pers for a sleepy publishing company in the mid-

dle of nowhere. Still, I began scrolling through the

Rodale job postings, more idly curious than any-

thing, but midway down the list I stopped cold.

Organic Gardening,the company’s flagship mag-

azine, was seeking a new managing editor. My

heart skipped a beat. I had often daydreamed

about the huge difference a decent journalist could

make at the magazine, and now here was my

chance. It was crazy; it was ridiculous. A career

editing stories about cauliflower and compost?

Why would I want to do that?

That night I told Jenny about the opening, fully

expecting her to tell me I was insane for even con-

sidering it. Instead she surprised me by encourag-

ing me to send a résumé. The idea of leaving the

heat and humidity and congestion and crime of

South Florida for a simpler life in the country ap-

pealed to her. She missed four seasons and hills.

She missed falling leaves and spring daffodils. She

missed icicles and apple cider. She wanted our kids

and, as ridiculous as it sounds, our dog to experi-

ence the wonders of a winter blizzard. “Marley’s

Marley & Me

never even chased a snowball,” she said, stroking

his fur with her bare foot.

“Now, there’s a good reason for changing ca-

reers,” I said.

“You should do it just to satisfy your curiosity,”

she said. “See what happens. If they offer it to

you, you can always turn them down.”

I had to admit I shared her dream about moving

north again. As much as I enjoyed our dozen years

in South Florida, I was a northern native who had

never learned to stop missing three things: rolling

hills, changing seasons, and open land. Even as I

grew to love Florida with its mild winters, spicy

food, and comically irascible mix of people, I did

not stop dreaming of someday escaping to my

own private paradise—not a postage-stamp-sized

lot in the heart of hyperprecious Boca Raton but a

real piece of land where I could dig in the dirt,

chop my own firewood, and tromp through the

forest, my dog at my side.

I applied, fully convincing myself it was just a

lark. Two weeks later the phone rang and it was J.

I. Rodale’s granddaughter, Maria Rodale. I had

sent my letter to “Dear Human Resources” and

was so surprised to be hearing from the owner of

the company that I asked her to repeat her last

name. Maria had taken a personal interest in the

magazine her grandfather had founded, and she

John Grogan

was intent on returning it to its former glory. She

was convinced she needed a professional journal-

ist, not another earnest organic gardener, to do

that, and she wanted to take on more challenging

and important stories about the environment, ge-

netic engineering, factory farming, and the bur-

geoning organic movement.

I arrived for the job interview fully intending to

play hard to get, but I was hooked the moment I

drove out of the airport and onto the first curving,

two-lane country road. At every turn was another

postcard: a stone farmhouse here, a covered

bridge there. Icy brooks gurgled down hillsides,

and furrowed farmland stretched to the horizon

like God’s own golden robes. It didn’t help that it

was spring and every last tree in the Lehigh Valley

was in full, glorious bloom. At a lonely country

stop sign, I stepped out of my rental car and stood

in the middle of the pavement. For as far as I

could see in any direction, there was nothing but

woods and meadows. Not a car, not a person, not a

building. At the first pay phone I could find, I

called Jenny. “You’re not going to believe this

place,” I said.

Two months later the movers had the entire con-

tents of our Boca house loaded into a gigantic

Marley & Me

truck. An auto carrier arrived to haul off our car

and minivan. We turned the house keys over to the

new owners and spent our last night in Florida

sleeping on the floor of a neighbor’s home, Marley

sprawled out in the middle of us. “Indoor camp-

ing!” Patrick shrieked.

The next morning I arose early and took Marley

for what would be his last walk on Florida soil. He

sniffed and tugged and pranced as we circled the

block, stopping to lift his leg on every shrub and

mailbox we came to, happily oblivious to the

abrupt change I was about to foist on him. I had

bought a sturdy plastic travel crate to carry him on

the airplane, and following Dr. Jay’s advice, I

clamped open Marley’s jaws after our walk and

slipped a double dose of tranquilizers down his

throat. By the time our neighbor dropped us off at

Palm Beach International Airport, Marley was

red-eyed and exceptionally mellow. We could have

strapped him to a rocket and he wouldn’t have

minded.

In the terminal, the Grogan clan cut a fine form:

two wildly excited little boys racing around in cir-

cles, a hungry baby in a stroller, two stressed-out

parents, and one very stoned dog. Rounding out

the lineup was the rest of our menagerie: two

frogs, three goldfish, a hermit crab, a snail named

Sluggy, and a box of live crickets for feeding the

John Grogan

frogs. As we waited in line at check-in, I assem-

bled the plastic pet carrier. It was the biggest one I

could find, but when we reached the counter, a

woman in uniform looked at Marley, looked at the

crate, looked back at Marley, and said, “We can’t

allow that dog aboard in that container. He’s too

big for it.”

“The pet store said this was the ‘large dog’

size,” I pleaded.

“FAA regulations require that the dog can

freely stand up inside and turn fully around,” she

explained, adding skeptically, “Go ahead, give it

a try.”

I opened the gate and called Marley, but he was

not about to voluntarily walk into this mobile jail

cell. I pushed and prodded, coaxed and cajoled; he

wasn’t budging. Where were the dog biscuits

when I needed them? I searched my pockets for

something to bribe him with, finally fishing out a

tin of breath mints. This was as good as it was go-

ing to get. I took one out and held it in front of his

nose. “Want a mint, Marley? Go get the mint!”

and I tossed it into the crate. Sure enough, he took

the bait and blithely entered the box.

The lady was right; he didn’t quite fit. He had

to scrunch down so his head wouldn’t hit the ceil-

ing; even with his nose touching the back wall, his

butt stuck out the open door. I scrunched his tail

Marley & Me

down and closed the gate, nudging his rear inside.

“What did I tell you?” I said, hoping she would

consider it a comfortable fit.

“He’s got to be able to turn around,” she said.

“Turn around, boy,” I beckoned to him, giving

a little whistle. “Come on, turn around.” He shot

a glance over his shoulder at me with those doper

eyes, his head scraping the ceiling, as if awaiting

instructions on just how to accomplish such a feat.

If he could not turn around, the airline was not

letting him aboard the flight. I checked my watch.

We had twelve minutes left to get through secu-

rity, down the concourse, and onto the plane.

“Come here, Marley!” I said more desperately.

“Come on!” I snapped my fingers, rattled the

metal gate, made kissy-kissy sounds. “Come on,”

I pleaded. “Turn around.” I was about to drop to

my knees and beg when I heard a crash, followed

almost immediately by Patrick’s voice.

“Oops,” he said.

“The frogs are loose!” Jenny screamed, jumping

into action.

“Froggy! Croaky! Come back!” the boys yelled

in unison.

My wife was on all fours now, racing around the

terminal as the frogs cannily stayed one hop ahead

of her. Passersby began to stop and stare. From a

distance you could not see the frogs at all, just the

John Grogan

crazy lady with the diaper bag hanging from her

neck, crawling around like she had started the

morning off with a little too much moonshine.

From their expressions, I could tell they fully ex-

pected her to start howling at any moment.

“Excuse me a second,” I said as calmly as I

could to the airline worker, then joined Jenny on

my hands and knees.

After doing our part to entertain the early-

morning travel crowd, we finally captured Froggy

and Croaky just as they were ready to make their

final leap for freedom out the automatic doors. As

we turned back, I heard a mighty ruckus coming

from the dog crate. The entire box shivered and

lurched across the floor, and when I peered in I

saw that Marley had somehow gotten himself

turned around. “See?” I said to the baggage su-

pervisor. “He can turn around, no problem.”

“Okay,” she said with a frown. “But you’re re-

ally pushing it.”

Two workers lifted Marley and his crate onto a

dolly and wheeled him away. The rest of us raced

for our plane, arriving at the gate just as the flight

attendants were closing the hatch. It occurred to

me that if we missed the flight, Marley would be

arriving alone in Pennsylvania, a scene of poten-

tial pandemonium I did not even want to contem-

plate. “Wait! We’re here!” I shouted, pushing

Marley & Me

Colleen ahead of me, the boys and Jenny trailing

by fifty feet.

As we settled into our seats, I finally allowed

myself to exhale. We had gotten Marley squared

away. We had captured the frogs. We had made the

flight. Next stop, Allentown, Pennsylvania. I

could relax now. Through the window I watched

as a tram pulled up with the dog crate sitting on it.

“Look,” I said to the kids. “There’s Marley.”

They waved out the window and called, “Hi,

Waddy!”

As the engines revved and the flight attendant

went over the safety precautions, I pulled out a

magazine. That’s when I noticed Jenny freeze in the

row in front of me. Then I heard it, too. From be-

low our feet, deep in the bowels of the plane, came

a sound, muffled but undeniable. It was pitifully

mournful sound, a sort of primal call that started

low and rose as it went. Oh, dear Jesus, he’s down

there howling.For the record, Labrador retrievers

do not howl. Beagles howl. Wolves howl. Labs do

not howl, at least not well. Marley had attempted to

howl twice before, both times in answer to a passing

police siren, tossing back his head, forming his

mouth into an Oshape, and letting loose the most

pathetic sound I have ever heard, more like he was

gargling than answering the call of the wild. But

now, no question about it, he was howling.

John Grogan

The passengers began to look up from their

newspapers and novels. A flight attendant handing

out pillows paused and cocked her head quizzi-

cally. A woman across the aisle from us looked at

her husband and asked: “Listen. Do you hear

that? I think it’s a dog.” Jenny stared straight

ahead. I stared into my magazine. If anyone

asked, we were denying ownership.

“Waddy’s sad,” Patrick said.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 674