September
 
1
"Marley was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever about that."
   Eddy's uncle got to the immortal words first. It was a quotation begging to be said that day. One of them had to say it, Eddy supposed. Brain grabbed the moment.
   Funny, really, since Brain was a slow thinker and mover most of the time. But he spoke the second they settled into the car. Then he shut the passenger door softly -- ​a full stop. Brain did most things carefully, even delicately. This sometimes made Eddy itch.
   Maybe he'd been waiting years to say it. Maybe, all that time ago, he'd named Marley just so he could say the line when Marley died. Only now he said it wrong.
  "No doubt whatever," said Eddy. Really, for a research librarian, Brain could be surprisingly imprecise. He often fluffed song lyrics and quotes. "No 'so.'"
   "Are you sure?"
   "Positive."
   Brain looked at Eddy: his baffled--animal look, the raccoon eyebrows bending inward. He seemed to be staring at Eddy's forehead as if trying to make out the words etched there or something, proof.
 "Marley was dead:" Eddy paused.
   "Colon," said Brain, with a wan smile.
 "Marley was dead colon: to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that."
   There really wasn't any doubt. Marley was in the back seat, head resting on her old pillow with its stains and holes and sprouting kapok.
   She was wrapped in the Kaiapoi Pure Wool blanket. The blanket was Eddy's sole inheritance from his unknown maternal grandmother. He'd donated it to Marley when she was a pup, and it had been her bed rug for as long as anyone could remember. It was all felted from years of washing, spattered with ragged holes from Marley's unclipped claws. She liked to rough up the rug before she slept; she pawed at it, bunched it into little hillocks, then thumped down onto it, exhaling noisily, her long nose between front paws.
   "Memories of snow," Brain told Eddy all those years ago. "The reptilian brain remembering Labrador -- ​you know, all the snow, how they paw into the snow for warmth.
   "Labrador. Where Labs come from," said Brain unnecessarily. Every moment a teaching moment. Labrador habits. Dreamtime lore. The Jesuits' misdeeds in China. Lines of poetry -- ​misquoted probably, now that Eddy thought about it. The arguments for and against veganism. The meaning of thanatology . . . It had been all right when he was young, Eddy supposed. He couldn't stand it these days.
   Marley's old rug would go with her now, into the ground beneath the wattle tree in the backyard, where she had lain in the shade all the hot afternoons of Eddy's life.
   He'd already prepared the hole, spent half the morning marking out the plot and digging, manufacturing a decent sweat. It was sweltering by 11 a.m., a breathless, pressing heat, though it was only September. Eddy had derived a grim enjoyment from the liquid gathering under his cap, leaking unpleasantly down his neck and back. He imagined it glistening in the sun, a moist and manly rebuke to Brain. One of them was practical, the sweat said. One of them had borrowed the spade from next door and prepared the grave.
   Not that Brain had been watching. He was inside with Marley, contemplating the animal soul. Saying a prayer, no doubt.
   In the car now, Brain still stared, dwelling on the quotation, listening to it in his head. Everything in Brain's head happened at adagio.
 "Marley was dead: to begin with," he said again. "There was no doubt whatever about that."
   Eddy had been there at the death. Brain, too, but only Eddy watched. Brain laid a big white hand on Marley's flank but stared fixedly at the poster on the otherwise bare clinic wall: an image of a gadfly petrel, aslant against a blue sky.
   Eddy held Marley's shabby left forepaw. It had troubled her for years; she couldn't manage a run longer than 3 km without developing a limp -- ​a Marley limp, graceful and apologetic. He massaged the furless patch on the side of the paw with his thumb. He watched Marley's face, the grizzled muzzle all slack now, her lovely eyes gummy with sickness.
   At the same time, from the corner of his eye, he watched the vet expertly filling the syringe.
   "It's very quick," the vet said. "And completely painless." Eddy doubted the vet knew this for sure, not being a dog. It was Fat Vet. He was in practice with his brother Thin Vet: Fat Bob and Thin Tim.
   Yeah, but shut up, Fat Vet, Eddy thought. Don't talk.
   He liked Fat Vet well enough. He liked him much better than Thin Vet, who was terse and kind of bitter. But Eddy didn't want Fat Vet talking, not while Marley was getting the needle. He wanted it just to be Marley's sounds, her little snuffles and wheezy exhalations, the occasional tail thwomp, pathetically tired. He wanted to hear her breathing right to the end.
   Fat Vet obliged. He said nothing more. He felt around with his competent sausage fingers for the soft gap in Marley's neck and slid the needle neatly into the cavity, and Marley was as dead as a doornail. In less than a minute. No doubt whatever.
   "Except," said Eddy now, "it isn't 'to begin with.' It's the end. The end of an era. The Marley Era. Marley was dead. Full stop. The End."
   He started the car and pulled out into the road, pitted and hummocky like so many of the roads in the area; even at normal speed, the going was bumpy. Today the traffic ambled, befuddled by the heat. The air was hazy, filled with spores. This city is comatose, thought Eddy. He imagined flooring it, frightening all the dozy motorists, driving somewhere at great speed. He pictured the long straight roads north of town, the magical vanishing point. But really, you couldn't floor a Suzuki Alto with any conviction.
   "Marley was dead to end with," said Brain, trying it out.
   Eddy felt the familiar spike of irritation with his duffer uncle, with Brain's over--deliberate enunciation, his ponderous -- ​as he called them -- ​cerebrations. He felt the evil little urge that visited him sometimes to pinch Brain someplace painful.
   "To begin with is better," said Brain, oblivious. "God closes a door, opens a window."
   If he closed his eyes, thought Eddy, they might end up in the river, sink into the silted--up bottom, let the water close over the Suzuki Alto, their banana--colored coffin, Amen, Amen.
 "Lift up your heads, oh ye gates!" sang Brain through the windscreen, into the suburban middle distance.

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Excerpted from Eddy, Eddy by Kate De Goldi
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.