Episode 12: He Who Stays Put

Losing Jerry Garcia. Finding Peace

Recap and Reminders

Jenny was a wanderer until she came to Looser Island, discovered she was pregnant, and realized she was done wandering. So she had her child and named him Seth, which means “he who stays put.” She later discovered he was developmentally delayed, which sometimes resulted in being bullied by others at school. One day, when Seth was about fourteen, she chased away bigger boys who were harassing Seth, and when she and Seth turned to go home, they found an emaciated Pitbull approaching them. Seth insisted, “He’s my dog. He came to me!” So they took the dog home.

You can find the Cast of Characters on this Substack and on The Dogs of Looser Island website here.

Thanks again to Gini Chin for another great photo!

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Episode 12: He Who Stays Put

Jenny and Seth were vegetarians, and she worried they’d have nothing for a carnivore, but the dog seemed quite willing to join them in their lentil stew. He ate and ate, and and allowed them to rub away some of the mud and the stench with warm wet towels soaked in castile soap. Then he fell asleep. Seth sat near him, resting one hand on the dog’s head or his hind quarters the whole time.

That night, the dog slept in Seth’s bed.

They did the responsible thing, and put up posters, copied on the post office copier without payment (though that thought hardly made a dent on Jenny’s conscience, under the circumstances). Jenny also notified Genevieve Macy of the online Looser Island Bulletin, who included a note in the next bi-weekly newsletter.

No one claimed him.

Fourteen years after becoming a parent, Jenny decided it was time to act like an adult. She brought Jerry Garcia to the vet for shots and to get the gash on his leg looked at, treated him for fleas, and even registered him with the county. In fact, Jerry Garcia was probably the only dog on Looser Island who was registered, and Jenny felt inordinately proud of herself.

When it was time to choose a name, Seth wanted to call him Fred, or maybe Leon, but this time it was Jenny who put her foot down. Her father loved the Grateful Dead, raising his daughter on “Ripple” and “US Blues.” She declared the dog would be called Jerry Garcia, and she brooked no argument on the matter.

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Seth kept growing up without becoming any more of an adult. Jenny tried to feel worried or sad about that, but really, it seemed to suit him and Jerry Garcia just fine.

He did get bored, which was a problem for Seth just as it is for everyone.

On teacher in-service days and holidays and other breaks when the school was closed but the post office wasn’t, she would sometimes bring him to work with her, as she’d done when he was very young. He could be useful, and nobody seemed to mind, but the reality was that the post office couldn’t afford to pay two part-time, minimally-useful people—and Jenny was minimally useful, there was no getting around that—to do a job that took less than one person, and the Federal Government couldn’t really look the other way on unpaid child labor, even on Looser Island.

Sometimes Sam Jensen took Seth with him as a sort of apprentice when he delivered the mail. He recited his poetry to Seth as they drove, but of course driving on the island had its hazards, so the poetry recitations were a little muddled:

The Salish Sea she is a gentle mistress
(damn rabbits they’re going to be the death of me)
whispering me to sleep after making love so that I wonder am I the man or the woman or are we both genderless
(potholes! I always forget those two potholes, gave me a flat tire last fall you’d think I’d have learned my lesson)
maybe as with the ocean it doesn’t matter.

”So what do you think, Seth? Did you like the poem?”

Seth, understanding that a question had been asked though the rest was a little fuzzy, would smile and nod because that’s what he did in the presence of an adult male, around whom he always felt a little shy.

And sometimes Seth just wandered around the tiny village on the tiny island, trying very hard not to get in trouble. Trouble came to him, somehow, but the nice thing was that he didn’t always recognize it as trouble.

There was the time he saw Cherry Duluth kissing the minister behind the Presbyterian church, which he thought was kind of funny because Cherry Duluth wasn’t the minister’s wife, he was sure about that, and when Cherry saw him watching the two of them kissing she yelled Get lost and he tried but didn’t know how to forget his way home, and he felt bad about that.

And there was the time he noticed that the rotisserie in the Apple Cart was on fire, and Lauren found him gazing into the cheery flames, and holding his hands up to warm them. Jim Perkins was there in another aisle getting toilet paper or something and he helped Lauren put out the fire, though she didn’t ask for any help, and Seth was escorted gently but firmly out of the store.

Eventually somebody—probably Sheriff Tom—decided something must be done, and in his sophomore year of high school Seth was offered and accepted a job directing traffic onto and off the ferry. Admittedly, there wasn’t much to the job, mostly because someone else started the process, discretely, a dozen or so yards further up the ramp, and all Seth had to do was wave the cars through and, when so instructed on his headset, hold his hands up for them to stop.

Sometimes, if traffic was stopped for a while, he would come up to one of the drivers waiting patiently or impatiently for the line to start moving again, knock on the window of the car and make that funny motion that means Roll your window down, and tell him or her a story about Jerry Garcia or a seagull on the dock or one of the rabbits on the Village Commons. At least, he thought it was a funny story. Sometimes the people laughed, sometimes they didn’t.

Even there, Trouble sought him out.

Once, Seth was holding up his hands to stop traffic, and he got distracted by the sound of the water splot-splotting against the sides of the ferry and the rhythmic roar of the ferry engine. It happened every so often. But the Winnebago at the front of the line had to wait a little longer than usual for Seth to remember where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, and finally a big man with a big hat got out and stood right in front of Seth and yelled at him. That wouldn’t have bothered Seth so much, as he had no real concept of personal space, but the man’s breath smelled like onions, and he said goddammit, and someone had told Seth that was a bad thing to say. He told his mom about it that evening, and Jenny mentioned it to Sheriff Tom, but Sheriff Tom grinned and said he’d already taken care of it, and if that particular yay-hoo ever came back he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be yelling at Seth again.

Mostly, Seth did okay, in spite of the little hassles and woes that dogged him.

But nothing could have prepared him for losing Jerry Garcia.