Argos

Twenty years ago, a young king raised him as a pup and trained him to track hare and deer and wild goat through the hills. He was fast. Then the ships sailed and the household forgot him. The men who should have kept him are inside pouring drink for the men who stole his master’s home. Argos has been dumped on a heap of mule and cattle dung by the gate. The ribs show through a coat so matted and tick-eaten it no longer has a colour. He is past use. He is past food. He is waiting. Odysseus comes up the path in rags with the swineherd beside him and he cannot kneel, cannot put his hands in the ruined coat, cannot say the dog’s name. The disguise has to hold. Eumaeus is right there and the suitors are fifty yards away and twenty years of suffering and ocean and war come down to this: he has to keep walking. The dog knows him. The ears go flat. The tail drags through the dung. He does not have the strength to stand. Odysseus turns his face so Eumaeus will not see and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. When they reach the courtyard the dog puts his head down and his breath stops. He had held on long enough. He had seen what he needed to see.