Scott Pratt Fiction

Kids leave. They go off to college and stuff. They get married and buy houses and move to other cities.

Dog’s don’t do that. Dogs stay. Even if they find a girlfriend or a boyfriend down the street, they come back home every day. Home is home to dogs. They’re loyal, you know what I mean? Unlike kids.

So I was talking to my son on the phone the other day. He’s off at college trying to become a big shot (so is my daughter) and he said, “I’m telling you, Dad, what you and Mom do every day is weird. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying it’s weird.”

“It isn’t weird. It’s just sort of a routine,” I said.  

“Nah, it isn’t a routine. It’s a ritual. It’s evolved far beyond the realm of normal routine and moved into pseudo-insanity.”

“No, it hasn’t.” I was beginning to feel a bit defensive. I  mean, he doesn’t live here anymore. He doesn’t need to be judging what his mother and I do.

“Let me make a suggestion,” he said. “You’re a writer, so write it down. Write down what you call a ‘routine.’ When you’re finished, if you can honestly tell me — and I mean honestly — that what you do isn’t weird, I’ll spring for lunch next time I see you. But if after you write it down you think it’s weird, you owe me a steak dinner.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll write it down.”

“Don’t try to explain it. Don’t slant it or anything. Just write down what you and Mom do.”

“Fine,” I said again, and I hung up. After I hung up I said to myself, “Sheesh, his chances of telling me what to write are about as good as his chances of telling me what to do. Freakin’ kid. Who the heck does he think he is?”

So the next morning, Kristy (my wife) and I woke up at the same time we always wake up. We’ve been doing it for four years, ever since the kids went off to college. Kristy owns and operates a dance school and doesn’t start work until the afternoon. I write novels and the occasional blog and I start work after lunch. So when we wake up, Kristy turns on her bedside lamp. She turns on the television to the Weather Channel so we know what to wear. I go to the bathroom and brush my teeth while she gets dressed. I go back to the bedroom and get dressed while she brushes her teeth. While we’re doing these things, our dogs move about restlessly. As soon as Kristy comes out of the bathroom, the dogs bolt for the front door, yapping and barking and raising all kinds of hell. They’re excited, and because they’re excited, so are we. It’s similar to when the kids were around. When they were excited about something, we were, too.

We have four dogs, by the way, all males. We have a huge German shepherd named Rio. He was our first dog and remains my favorite. I know you’re not supposed to have favorites (but after that little conversation with my son, I’d started thinking that maybe my daughter had become my favorite child) but Rio is my favorite of the four dogs. I’ve written about him in four of my novels. The other three dogs are a little offended about that, I think, but they don’t say much. I love the other three dogs, too. We have a Yorkie named Pedro, a Bichon friese named Nacho, and a teacup poodle named Chico. But Rio is my man.

What we do is, after we’re ready to go, we load these dogs up in our truck and drive ten minutes toward my mother-in-law’s house. About two blocks from her house we go over a speed bump. All four of our dogs start whining as soon as we cross the speed bump. I pull into my mother-in-law’s driveway. Kristy gets out of the truck, walks up on the porch, and opens the front door. Two black, standard poodles named Andy and Opie streak through the door and head straight for the truck. They jump in, exchange greetings and insults with the other dogs, and take their places. Andy gets into the back with Rio. Opie and our three little guys stay in front with the rest of us.

We leave my mother-in-law’s house and drive to a two-hundred acre park on the outskirts of town. As we approach the park, the dogs go nuts. They bark, whine, howl, and moan. Six dogs within the confines of the cab; it’s like standing in front of a bank of speakers at a head banger concert. I park the truck in the parking lot and we open the doors. The dogs explode into the parking lot and raise Cain with each other for a couple of minutes. I pull my walking stick out of the back. If it’s raining or snowing, we grab umbrellas. 

We don’t use leashes because they’re so restrictive. The dogs don’t like them and neither do we. I realize we’re violating the law. We commit six violations roughly three hundred and forty days each year. Since we’ve been doing it for four years, I guess we’ve committed over eight thousand misdemeanors. Sorry. As soon as we enter the park, the dogs break off to sniff stuff and pee on stuff. We walk for an hour, the same route every day. We’ve had many adventures. There are geese in the park occasionally that the dogs love to chase. They love it. The park borders a lake and the dogs like to wade into it and I like to skip rocks. We run across the occasional squirrel and the occasional groundhog and, of course, the occasional human who is following the rules and has her dog on a leash and gets really, really pissed at us and threatens to call the police because our dogs have surrounded her dog and are sniffing every cavity on the dog’s body.

Kristy and I walk for an hour; the dogs run for an hour. They stay close to us, but they explore, just like the kids did when they were young and energetic and we’d take them out on a hike. The dogs sniff and they snort and they pee and then they pee again — except Opie, the female standard poodle. She only pees once and she tries to hide when she does it. She’s such a lady. But between the five males, I’d estimate each one of them lifts a leg and pees at least twenty times a day. No tree trunk, no post, no bush, no lump in the ground is safe. They also poop, but they don’t like to poop in front of each other. They’re private poopers, kind of like humans, and if you get too close to them or look at them while they’re doing their business, their ears droop and their eyes take on this “How could you?” look, and you can tell they’re embarrassed. They each have their own style, too. The Yorkie spins hard in a circle to his left when he poops. The teacup poodle does a sumo wrestler stomp. The German shepherd’s tail looks like the handle on an old-fashioned water pump when he’s doing his business, and the standards each run at least fifty yards away before they’ll rid themselves of the previous night’s dinner waste.

When we’ve finished walking, they all get back in the truck… well, we all get back in the truck. They immediately go to sleep, just like the kids did when they were young and we’d take them to a park and let them wear themselves out. And we feel like we’ve been good parents. We drop the poodles off at the mother-in -law’s and then we go about our day.

What’s weird about that?  

Nothing.

I say he owes me lunch.

There’s a lot of talk about Pat Summitt right now: talk of dementia, talk of Alzheimer’s disease, talk of the frailty of the human condition, talk of the ills that will befall the women’s basketball program at the University of Tennessee if she is unable to continue coaching. All of those things are important, no doubt, but when I think of Pat Summitt, I don’t necessarily think about basketball. I think about a brief moment in time twenty years ago.

It was November 25, 1991, to be exact, and in the grand scheme of things, it was certainly unremarkable. But I remember it like it was yesterday…

Please understand that I’ve never been one to be easily star struck. I’m not a groupie by any stretch of the imagination, I don’t follow celebrities, and I don’t worship athletes. But Pat Summitt is one of those people you just don’t forget. I’m not sure if it was the subtle force of her personality, the brilliance of her blue eyes, the graceful way in which she carried herself, or the simple fact that I found her to be a genuinely decent human being that left such a strong impression on me. Whatever it was, after our encounter I regarded her as much more than a successful basketball coach.

The occasion, ironically, was a men’s basketball game. The University of Tennessee was hosting East Tennessee State University. At the time, ETSU was loaded with talent. Alan LeForce was coaching players like Greg Dennis, Rodney English, Jerry Pelphrey and Marty Story. Tennessee’s best player, and the only one I remember, was Allan Houston. My wife owned and operated a dancing school, (she still does) and they had been invited to travel to Knoxville and perform for the crowd at halftime. It was great. I got in free, I got a pass, and I got to watch the game from the floor.

My son, Dylan, was two years old at the time, and I was carrying him around in a backpack, as I often did. It had a metal frame and a canvas “sling,” for lack of a better term, that he fit into perfectly. He faced the same direction I was facing, and his head was right at the same level as mine, which meant that his mouth was about six inches from my ear. He babbled a lot back then… still does.

Anyway, I was walking through one of the hallways at Thompson-Boling before the game started when I saw Coach Summitt coming toward me. She was alone, and as we approached each other, she smiled and said, “That is one fine looking young ‘un on your back.”

I said, “Thanks,” fully expecting her to walk past me. But she didn’t. She stopped.

“What’s his name?”

“Dylan.”

“Where’d he get that beautiful red hair?”

“From his mother.”

I was struck initially by how pretty she was, up close and in person. She had this healthy, balanced, confident look about her, the look of someone who is comfortable in her own skin. She introduced herself, we shook hands, and we chatted for a while, not about basketball or the weather, but about what it was like to be a parent. At the time, she was a new mother –she’d given birth to her son Tyler only fourteen months earlier. After we’d talked, she looked me in the eye, put her hand on my left shoulder, and said, “I can tell you’re a good daddy. That boy’s gonna do you proud.”

She made me feel… what’s the word… special, I guess. In that brief encounter, Pat Summitt made me – someone she’d never before laid eyes on – feel special. I’m sure she’s done the same for thousands of others during her life. I walked away thinking not what a great basketball coach she was, but what a wonderful person. People like her – people who can make others feel good about themselves – are a rare and wonderful thing. I wish there were more of them. I wish I was one of them.

Pat Summitt went on to become one of the greatest coaches in the history of college basketball, male or female. I went on to become… well, I like to think I became a good daddy.

And she was right; the little boy in the backpack has done me proud, just as Tyler has done her proud. Dylan is a Division I college baseball player. Tyler is a Division I college basketball player. I watched Dylan compete in the NCAA College Home Run Derby on CBS back in July. I watched Tyler hit a three-pointer on EPSN back in the winter. How cool is that?

I hope she beats the disease. I hope she’s on the sideline at UT for another twenty years, doing what she loves. And I hope she continues to make people she doesn’t even know — people like me — feel special… even if it’s only for a moment.

(This is a reprint of a guest post I was invited to write for Breastcancersisterhood.com. Check it out if  you’d like. It’s a great site.)

I recently learned that twenty-five percent of men whose wives are diagnosed with breast cancer pack up and leave. My first reaction was disgust, then anger. I asked myself, “How could a man do that?”

 I’ve since thought about it a lot, and to be honest, I still can’t answer the question. Maybe fear drives some men away, maybe selfishness. Maybe they were just looking for an excuse to leave. I don’t know. What I do know is that if twenty-five percent of men leave, that means that seventy-five percent stay. I’m proud to be one of those guys.

My wife was only forty-four years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in May of 2007. Her name is Kristy. We’d been married for twenty years and had two children in high school, one about to graduate and the other a year younger. She owned and operated a dance studio and was beautiful and fit and energetic.

 The news, initially, left all of us in a state of utter disbelief. There was no history of breast cancer in her family, and she seemed so… healthy.  Within a week of the diagnosis, however, things got worse. We learned that the tumor was large, Stage III, and had already attached itself to the skin beneath her breast. The cancer cells had spread to her lymph nodes. She was in danger. The doctors told us that under the best of circumstances, Kristy was looking at a battle that would last for more than a year, that she would have to undergo chemotherapy and radiation therapy and that she would lose her breast.   

 I’ve never been one to cry, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried the night I found out how sick my wife really was. I walked down to the edge of the lake that bordered our back yard after everyone had gone to bed, and I cried alone in the darkness. I have no idea how long I was there, but when the tears finally played themselves out, I asked myself a question… Can you be strong enough? Can you be strong enough to help her through this? Can you be strong enough to help the children through this? I told myself that I was the husband and the father, that all of them would look to me for strength, and that I could not let them down. Right then and there, I made up my mind. There would be no more crying. There would be no more feeling sorry for myself. I would deal with the situation head on, and I would do whatever I had to do to help Kristy get through it.

 The next morning, I took my son and daughter to breakfast, and we talked a good, long while. My son had just turned eighteen and my daughter was about to turn seventeen. They may have been young, but I was proud to discover that both of them had already come the same conclusion I had come to – Kristy was the one who was sick. There would be no outward displays of self-pity. We would remain strong and positive in her presence, and if any of us felt ourselves weakening, we would look to each other for help.

 And that’s what we’ve done for the past four-and-a-half years. The road has been long and incredibly difficult for all of us, especially for Kristy. She has endured everything the doctors predicted and more. She has been poisoned by chemotherapy, burned by radiation, and cut with sharp instruments. Her hair has fallen out and grown back twice. She has had nineteen surgeries, one of which resulted in the use of leeches (yes, those slimy, wormlike creatures) to deal with excess bleeding. She has spent weeks in the hospital and months recovering. She has scars on her chest, beneath her arm, running down both sides of her back, and across her abdomen. Her body became a battlefield, and by necessity, I became the combat medic. I held cool compresses to her forehead while she vomited after chemotherapy. I changed hundreds, if not thousands, of dressings. (During one particularly rough period, I packed a large wound with gauze twice a day, every day, for six months.) I gave injections, treated infections, offered comfort, and spent many, many sleepless nights.

 As I write this, one more reconstructive surgery is all that remains. Kristy is still teaching jazz, tap and acrobatics to the students she loves so much. Her thick, auburn hair once again falls to the middle of her back. She is beautiful, vital, and as sexy as ever. (In case you’re wondering, the answer is no – breast cancer will not end intimacy. You just have to be a little more careful.) I love her more than ever.

As for the rest of us, our son and daughter are both away at college and doing very well. Kristy and I have “replaced” them with four dogs.

I remain proud to count myself among the seventy-five percent of guys who stick it through. It wasn’t a conscious decision. In fact, I never even thought about it, because leaving never entered my mind.

Phil Mickelson and I have some important things in common. We also have some differences, none of which are all that important, as far as I’m concerned.

The differences between Phil Mickelson and Scott Pratt?

First of all, Phil Mickelson is famous. I’m not. I labor in obscurity writing books, and am happy to do so. He’s a great golfer. I’m not. I haven’t played golf in years. When I played, I was pretty good at it sometimes, but Phil has won the Masters three times. I’d shoot a hundred at Augusta. He’s a multi-millionaire. I get by okay.

The things I have in common with Phil Mickelson, however, are far more important than the differences.  Despite the fact that we’ve never met, we share a bond so strong that it defies description. It’s a bond we share with millions of people all over the world, and sadly, there are more and more of us every year.

Back in 2009, Phil Mickelson found out that his lovely wife, Amy, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Like me, Phil is a devoted husband and father. He immediately shut down his schedule on the PGA tour and went home to help Amy and his children get through a terrifying and difficult time. I know exactly what they went through.

I’ll never forget the moment in April of 2007 when a doctor told my beautiful wife, Kristy, and me that the lump in her breast was malignant. “Invasive ductal carcinoma” was what he called it. We hugged each other, she wept. We told our teenage children that evening. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

Over the next couple of weeks, things got worse. The lump in Kristy’s breast had been there for some time. She was stubborn, however, (and more than a little frightened) and had refused to go to the doctor. There was no history of breast cancer in her family. She convinced herself that it was a benign cyst. But when the thing started to spread out like a spider web, she finally went. And by the time she went and allowed the doctors to do what they needed to do, the tumor was Stage Three and that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. The tumor had also attached itself to the skin on Kristy’s breast. It didn’t look good.

There are really only three ways to kill cancer cells: you can poison them with chemicals, you can burn them with radiation, and you can cut them out of the body with sharp instruments. All three of those treatment plans involve painful side effects and dangerous risks, and Kristy dealt with it all: two rounds of chemotherapy that lasted a total of six months, thirty radiation treatments, and more than a dozen surgeries, a few of which have required extended stays in the hospital. Our family has been there with her every step of the way, but Kristy is the one who has had to deal with the loss of her hair, the sickness that accompanied chemotherapy, the pain that accompanied radiation treatments, and the infections and pain that have accompanied all of the surgeries. Her courage has been nothing short of monumental.

So why am I writing this blog? Why, after so many good people like Phil and Amy Mickelson have done so much to raise awareness of breast cancer, do I feel the need to talk about it in a public forum?

The answer is simple.

Women all over the world are still being diagnosed at record numbers. Women, and their families, are still suffering from this horrific disease. And women are still dying. Two hundred thousand women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States this year – fifty thousand of them will die. Worldwide, over 1.3 million women will get breast cancer in 2011; nearly half a million will die. There is still no “cure” for breast cancer. The causes remain a mystery. And when you think about it, the treatments – poison, burning, and cutting – are almost barbaric. But for now, they’re all we have.

As I said earlier, Phil Mickelson is a famous golfer. He and Amy chose to go public with her fight against cancer more than two years ago, and very little has changed. I am a writer of novels. I write fiction, legal thriller/mysteries that are mostly about a lawyer named Joe Dillard and his family. When I wrote my first novel, Kristy had not yet been diagnosed. But in the next three, I, too, chose to “go public.” I examined very closely the relationship between a husband and wife during a long and agonizing battle with cancer. By doing so, my hope is that people will gain more insight into the suffering and misery caused by this terrible disease, and at the same time recognize that with a powerful mixture of love and courage, even cancer can be overcome.

Phil Mickelson is a hero to millions of golf fans around the world. No offense to Phil, but as far as I’m concerned, his wife is just as heroic. And so is mine. I love and admire Kristy even more now than I did before, and believe me, that’s saying something. Even now, after four years, she still faces at least one more surgery. But she’s cancer free and she’s very, very much alive. If you, or anyone you care about, have been affected by breast cancer, my thoughts and prayers are with you. My best advice is to keep loving, keep hoping, and keep living.

And if you might be so inclined, the next time you hear or read about an opportunity to help in the fight against breast cancer, please take that opportunity, and please drop a nickel or two in the collection plate. We still need all the help we can get.