Dewey's Nine Lives

Not every night, of course, was peace and quiet. Like many Vietnam vets, Bill lived a hard-partying life, and as often as not, his house was filled with loud music and people smoking and drinking beer. Call it self-medication, or youth, or what inevitably happens when you feel doomed to an early death, but ultimately it wasn’t anything more than a lifestyle. If the party got too rowdy, Spooky would wander into a back room and curl up on Bill’s hiking pack or inside his sleeping bag, but most of the time, Spooky didn’t mind the noise. He’d sit right on the back of the couch while the party whirled around him. Or he’d sniff the smoke. Or he’d slink along the floor and put his cold nose on someone’s exposed calf. That was Spooky’s trick. He’d sneak up on people and put his nose on the square of skin between the bottom of their pants and the top of their socks. That nose was like a sudden splash of water. It got their attention. They’d reach down and pet him, and if he sensed they were friendly, he’d hop on their lap. Spooky loved sitting on laps.

The cold nose of Spooky. It was his thing, his announcement of intention, his calling card. No matter what happened the night before, Bill Bezanson could rest assured he would feel his friend Spooky’s cold nose the next morning. At exactly 5:30 A.M. Like many cats, Spooky had an internal clock. He knew exactly when his food was supposed to be served, and he wasn’t going to wait a minute longer. No matter how badly he felt, Bill would pad out to the dark kitchen at 5:30 A.M. and give Spooky his bowl. “He was attached to me,” Bill would say, by way of explanation. He was attached to me.

And Bill Bezanson was attached to him, too. He wouldn’t go anywhere without Spooky. When Bill was home, Spooky was beside him. If Bill went for a walk, Spooky followed behind him, never more than a few feet away. There was no more hitchhiking alone. When Bill went out on the road, which he still did whenever the anxiety set in, Spooky went with him. A bowl, a bag of food, and they were free. While Bill thumbed, Spooky played in the grass, chasing grasshoppers or shadows or the tops of daffodils waving in the breeze. When a car slowed down, Bill shouted, “Spooky!” just once and Spooky came running, jumped in the car, and off they went.

Whenever Bill rode his Harley—the one he’d bought in Alaska—he tied Spooky’s carrier to the rack on the back. One day, he saw a man with a Chihuahua sitting on the gas tank of his bike, just behind the handlebars. Spooky would love that, he thought. Bill knew Spooky’s paws would slip off the metal tank, so he scrounged a piece of carpet for Spooky to sit on. He attached it with two-way aircraft tape, but when that didn’t work, he glued it down. As long as Bill went slower than twenty-five miles an hour, Spooky would squint, lay his ears back, and let the breeze glide through his hair. Once Bill hit twenty-five, Spooky would jump off. He wasn’t angry; he just didn’t like that much speed. He could ride in the carrier at any speed, but he could only take so much breeze sitting in the open on the tank. One year, Bill took the bike up to the Sturgis Rally in South Dakota—more than a thousand miles—and Spooky rode up front as Bill eased to a crawl down the main drag. People were whooping and hollering, drinking and making crude jokes, but Spooky didn’t care. He laid his ears back and cruised Sturgis like the world’s coolest pussycat.

Bill and Spooky went other places, too. They camped together in the forests of the west, hunting insects for Bill’s collection. They tromped through the Sierra Nevada mountains. They hitchhiked to Quartzsite, Arizona, for the big rock and mineral show. When Bill went to music festivals, Spooky sat beside him on the blanket. When he moved to a new house, which he now did every September, Spooky went along without complaint. Except for the bar and the job, they went everywhere together. Bill and Spooky. Spooky and Bill. They were a pair.

Then, in 1981, another addition joined the family: a woman. The house she had been living in was covered by ash in the explosion of Mount St. Helens, the big volcano in western Washington, and she ended up renting a room from Bill in Southern California. Bill was managing a beer bar; his female boarder was a bartender at a place down the road; they talked often but always through the bottom of a beer glass. Bill and Spooky were still moving every September, living an itinerant life, so when the woman went back to Washington after a fight, they followed her north. Before Bill knew what was happening, they were married. Bill took a job fabricating metal, settled into married life, and started drinking.

“It was all surface,” he would say later of his human relationships. Nothing deep. Nothing lasting. “Anything that had any depth of soul had to do with an animal.”