A Basement of the Masculine Type

My friend has a masculine basement. Not the wimpy kind that you enter on a wide oak staircase. Not one with textured walls upon which hang Kenneth Wyatt and Thomas Kinkade paintings; nor are there tile floors softened with Turkish rugs. There is no media room, nor poolroom. No bathrooms or bedrooms with feminine froufrou; nor elaborate decoration.

No. His is a muscular basement. The kind you enter through a narrow doorway; squeeze, contort and bend down making careful not to miss the 8x2 steps resting unsteadily on cement blocks. The floor is damp, uneven limestone hewn out of the land. There is a small wood fireplace providing the only heat in the house and a naked 60-watt bulb unlit hanging from a ceiling not more than 6 ½ feet high.

At the bottom of the stairs lies a beautiful Labrador with glistening raven hair, unmoved breathing shallowly. It’s a big lab. Weighs over one hundred pounds. Actually it’s not a full lab. It is a part-something-or-other…that explains the size. My friend picks her up and carries her outside for toilet needs.

Three days and three long nights ago our Appalachia corner had an 8-inch snowfall that crushed power lines. The snow began melting saturating the land so that excess water began finding a home in my friend’s basement. With no electricity for the sump pump, he had been getting up every two hours to empty the basement water buckets.

That is how I met his dog. Hearing about his 72-hour Herculean task I had gone over to commiserate and perhaps lift a bucket or two.

He had taken her to the veterinarian a couple of weeks before where he found she had cancer of the terminal type. The vet offered to put her down, but he wanted time to savor the last few days and allow the children, now grown and moved far away, to say their last goodbyes. So now he picks her up and carries her outside when needed, and sits with her and occasionally reaches down to pet her and waits for the electricity to come back on.