10
NONFICTION
Brian Blanchfield
A few things became clear in the moments and months after I was attacked by a dog at age nine. Within months, it was clear that my consequent fear of dogs had engaged a far greater fear. Within moments, it was clear that the dog, our dog, Sam, was my father’s dog, loyal to him foremost. Sam, a mature blue-black purebred Chow, rushed to the door one evening just as I did, to meet my father who had been away awhile. My mother was in the kitchen. We had just moved back to Charlotte, from Paris, Tennessee, undoing the relocation we all had made when he left Roadway to work for Transcon nine months earlier. He was sort of at large, still, out on days-long interstate truck runs and still stationed in Tennessee, without us, orchestrating the sale of the life that never quite took. The tractor trailer he parked outside shook the Charlotte house a bit. At the back door, his dog and his son had both come to welcome him; and when he appeared there, Sam turned to his rival in the tight space of the mud room and in a single motion, prefaced by a low growl, seized and ripped the flesh off the right side my face, cheek to jawbone—so that in the stunned minutes thereafter, both of my parents would later say they could see my clenched back teeth when my mouth was closed. Sam was banished instantly to the back lot, or retreated there ashamed, confused; and swiftly we made preparations to ride to the emergency room. Despite spilling blood and saliva where my face had been, I was numb to the pain, doing as I was instructed, completely mobile, cooperative with the towels, functioning in shock. On my father’s lap—so rarely availed to me—in the passenger seat, as my mother drove, I was prevented from flipping the visor down to see the damage in the mirror but repeated often that one desire, to see for
