Loyalty

Loyalty

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

The dog’s love for the man is exceeded only by the man’s love for the dog.  The affection shared between this pair of decidedly different animals is really that great, that transcendent.  Nothing could ever come between them.  Nothing could ever seriously test the sacred bond which holds them together—which has held them together for the past fifteen years.  Nothing could ever separate these two lifelong friends.

Nothing worldly, at least.

Well, maybe one thing could…..

And today…..today…..it must…..

Today one of them must die in order that the other might survive, and the only question is which it will be.  Or, alternatively, they BOTH can and will reluctantly perish today if that turns out to be their joint wish.

 

You see, both man and dog are starving to death, have been starving to death for the past three weeks in the aftermath of an ill-timed, tragic accident in the frozen deep woods.  They haven’t been blessed with so much as a morsel of food since twenty two days back on the trail.  They have been slowly wasting away—day by day by agonizing day–but now the severity of that condition has escalated dramatically.  If man and dog are not able to find and ingest some sustenance within the next twenty four hours, they will both die.  Absolutely.  No doubt about it.  The twosome will decease together in the Alaskan wilderness—unbeknownst to every other living creature on Earth–but that only seems right, doesn’t it?  After all, these two uber-loyal friends probably should expire together, just as they have lived and survived and thrived together for the past decade and a half.

That Hollywood style of ending would be perfect for the man and beast, wouldn’t you agree?

Well…..maybe…..

There is something wrong with this simple analogy, though—something that begs further explanation.  BOTH suffering creatures don’t have to die, in the sense that both are carnivorous animals, and each represents food and therefore temporary salvation for the other.  Keeping this point in mind, the dog would NEVER EVER consider ending the man’s life in order that he could eat him and thus live on until civilization was encountered and socially appropriate food became available—which will probably be three days hence if the man’s time estimate is close to being accurate.  No, the dog would never consider doing such a thing.  Domestic dogs are simply not hardwired that way.  They do not kill their “masters” under any circumstances, even the most daunting and life-threatening.

Survival?

Yes, it is true that the dog is starving to death, he full well knows that he is starving to death, and he would do virtually anything to survive to fight another day…..except THAT.  The dog would never entertain the thought of prolonging his own life and perhaps win a temporary respite from the Grim Reaper’s morbid scythe by ending his best friend’s life.  NEVER!!!   That manner of thinking is impossible for him to contemplate; that idea does not even register in the dog’s brain.  He would never do such a thing; he would never knowingly hurt the man; his friendship with the man—fashioned over fifteen years of daily camaraderie and silent admiration for each other–is inviolable.  The dog would greatly prefer dying himself than doing anything to physically injure the man, let alone kill his trusted companion just to provide a source of food for his emaciated body.

Case settled then.

The man?

The man???

Who really knows what the man is thinking at this moment…..

Obviously the man’s love for the dog runs equally deep and equally strong and the dog is undisputedly the best friend he has in this world—and it should be duly noted here that in Alaska friends run few and far between—but then there is the issue of pure survival.  Yes, survival…..the most basic instinct indigenous to every living organism.  The desire and need to survive.  The will to live.  The NEED to live for as long as you possibly can.  The man dearly wants to preserve the life of the dog, obviously, but above and beyond that the issue of his own raw survival looms exceptionally large too.  The man badly wants to survive—he would do almost anything to survive–but as things stand right now there is only a single act which he can perform that might—and remember, this is an AWFULLY big “might”—allow for that outcome.

So there you have it in a nutshell, Reader:  Pure, unadulterated love versus the primal desire to survive.  Easily the strongest human(?)emotion of all pitted against the most basic organic instinct of all.  But only one can win here in the pristine backwoods of the Alaskan interior; there is room for only one outcome.  And the man has but a handful of hours now at most to make his fateful decision on how to proceed…..

Thus, while the exhausted dog is curled up in the snow catching up on some much-needed rest, the man goes off by himself to think.  To REALLY think—to think deeper and harder and more seriously than he has ever thought about anything before in his life.  Fundamental thinking.  Anguished thinking.  Tortured thinking.  And all of that anguished thinking ultimately distills down to one horribly simple paradigm:  To live or to die.  To kill his best friend in order that he might live, or to die together with that best friend all alone out here in the vast Alaskan wilderness.  And in the midst of all that thinking the man’s brain (conscience) invariably returns to the same haunting series of questions:  Would life even be worth living in the aftermath of doing such an unthinkable thing?  Would that kind of compromised existence be worth the cost of ending his best friend’s life?  Could he live with himself after killing and eating his dearest friend?  Could he live on afterwards bearing such a humongous burden of guilt?  Should he permit love to win out when all is said and done like in one of those corny, vintage cinematic movies and pursuantly choose to die sitting next to his best friend ever?  Might that be preferable to the guaranteed atrocious memories he would be forced to carry around with him for all eternity in the wake of committing a heinous, selfish act such as theriocide, or at least until he too came face-to-face with the Grim Reaper years from now himself?

The man doesn’t know what to do.

He plainly and simply does not know what to do next.

He knows what his heart is telling him to do, but then there is this primeval instinct screaming at him and haranguing him and cajoling him and coaxing him and badgering him to do whatever it takes to maintain his unique presence on Earth’s surface for as long as he possibly can.  The voice deep inside him simply won’t go away either.  Every time his heart tries speaking up and advocating compassion, this deep-seated voice inside his body interrupts those sincere entreaties and implores him to fight like the devil for survival, to struggle like a crazed lunatic for survival, to scratch and claw and bite indiscriminately for survival, to…..to…..to…..do whatever it takes in order to prolong his life, at least for another day and then maybe the day after that too and the day after that and for however long it takes.

This voice is loud, it is incessant, and it refuses to take “No!” for an answer.  The man shakes his head dejectedly from side to side.

He has no idea what to do.

He has absolutely no idea what to do…..

 

The man sits off by himself away from the dying campfire for an additional thirty minutes as the dog continues to sleep.

The man’s eyes are closed and he is clearly deep in thought.

Clearly deep in thought…..

                Still more time creeps by—tick tock, tick tock, tick, tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock–time that is now becoming precariously scarce if the man is to entertain any reasonable thought of extending his life into the next day and beyond…..

But, wait…..…..yes, wait……….now the man abruptly stands up and sighs the biggest sigh any person has ever sighed before in their life.

Meaning?

His mind is clearly made up now.

Yes, the man’s mind is clearly made up after all that solitary contemplation…..

He sets his jaw and a steely glare of resolve ventures into the colored regions of his eyes.

The man pulls a gleaming knife from its leather sheath attached to his belt and slowly approaches the dog.  The dog is curled up into a tight circle akin to a snake in cold weather, and he is resting comfortably in the powdery, foot-deep snow.

The dog’s eyes light up and he raises his tired head to greet the man when he sees him approaching, just like he has done a million times in the past and expects to do a million times in the future as well.  The dog knows he and his “master” are stuck in a dire predicament fraught with life-threatening consequences, yet he has complete confidence the man will find some ingenious way to lead the two of them through these perilous straits and back into a sanctuary of bright sunlight and congenial warmth, just like he has done every time in the past when they faced grave danger as a pair–as a TEAM, as complementary teammates, as best friends.  The dog has complete confidence in the man to do the right thing, the best thing—complete confidence based on years of instinctive cooperation and willful subservience to his two-legged keeper.  In fact, he would willingly stake his own life based on this unwavering belief in the man’s Solomonesque judgment.  The dog’s sunken eyes continue to shine brightly like radiant light bulbs as the man draws near, and his tongue falls out of his mouth in a canine smile.