THE DOG WHO NEVER BELIEVED

Deathbed confessions. Who needs them? It has been proven that the dying benefit and can let go with greater peace. Elizabeth Kubler Ross said it was most important that hospice nurses and caretakers encourage the dying to speak their hearts and minds as long as they have the ability.

Last night, at our neighborhood Bible study, Joyce that clever one, evangelical without a doubt, said she used to pray wholeheartedly for her ex-husband, that he would find salvation. She said, “My prayers worked, because he did, in his last moments.”

We thought that was wonderful, him finally squeezing into Heaven after all those years of no prayers, no gospel singing, no trips to see Moses or Joseph or Christmas in Branson, and certainly no church.

But then Joyce told us that his deathbed salvation made his second wife really mad. The deal that sealed their marital union, years after Joyce and he had divorced, was the fact that they both were confirmed atheists. And there he went, betraying his second wife, at the very last minute, trotting off with the southern Christians and their eternal angels, to the other side.

Protestant pastors, and even a handful of Catholic priests, usually carry around a big, zippered Bible full of conversion stories, some happening at death’s door, just as it starts to creak and slowly close. I don’t know about the Church of Satan. Those ominous, black-robed priests would be crazy not to try, for bragging rights, if anything. Pulling a soul down to Hell and the Underworld forever? The Devil is nothing if not proud and relentless.

I have seen mortal demons in their various transparent disguises. Many lives ago, strolling through the Westport district in Kansas City’s cool hippy flea market, I dropped into a dark little business named Bob’s Bizarre Bazaar. The hulkish man behind the counter shocked me with a long stare of contempt. What in the world had I done? This guy hated me instantly for some reason. His eyebrows were strangely drawn on, black and pointy, like he was headed for a Halloween party, but it was not Halloween.

It was not the ghost of Aleister Crowley. It was, indeed, the psychopath named Bob Burdello, and I didn’t know it. I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what old witchy warlock Bob had been up to.

Four years later, I was watching the evening news, and there he was, walking in handcuffs. One of Bob Burdello’s young male victims had managed to break out of bondage, leap from a would-be death bed of torture, run across the upstairs bedroom to a window and jump out. The kid somehow landed without breaking any bones and went running, stark naked down the street, screaming, with a dog collar on, and some other leather spikes.

When police carried Bob off to meet the judge and jury, they first discovered the remains of his previous torture victims in large dogfood bags in the murderer’s back yard. And Bob was cooperative and advised the legal experts as the court auctioned off his rare and valuable collection of ancient soul-catchers, talismans, and other Dark Arts accoutrement, to help pay for trial expenses.

I don’t think that Burdello experienced a deathbed conversion when he died in prison, which may be the only thing that puts him with the majority of others dying.

Last-day conversions are probably not the usual thing. Most atheists hang in there until they finally become an inanimate object only. Like Freud.

He had no shred of Judaic or Christian faith. No supernatural woo-hah or witchy voodoo. No Ancient Alien Astronaut Theory. He was pleased, that to his last breath, he remained an atheist. But I have reason to believe it didn’t really work, and that the magnificent doctor missed the No-Strings Exit and ended up still alive somehow with an unexpected afterlife.

What gives me this extra-special knowledge? Well, Freud would have to appreciate the reason. I keep having this dream in my deepest night sleep. I am riding in the shotgun seat. Something invisible drives with fantastic steering ability, so I get to sight-see. Something is panting in the backseat. Just a few breathy huffs, and then it is quiet back there. I turn to see a stately, silver Airedale, just sitting there with such austerity, so handsome, with a perfectly curved doggy beard and serious eyes. I always say, not remembering, “Who are you?”

You know who it is already. Not with a bark, but softly, he says, “Sigmund.” That is all he says. Going for a ride with me. Reserved in the backseat, no seatbelt for Sigmund. Never a need for any fairytale sense of security, being the purest of the atheist dogs.

I must confess now that not all dogs are atheist. The Great White Pyrenees across the street is an 18th Century Methodist. He preaches all night. Has a range like Rev. George Whitefield, whom Benjamin Franklin said could be heard from three Philadelphia blocks away. Whitefield’s average sound pressure level at a distance of one meter would have been about 90 dBA, equivalent to the loudest average sound pressure ever measured for the human voice in laboratory conditions. So, the neighbor dog is a long-winded evangelist, but who’s bitter?

Sigmund never preaches, never howls. He doesn’t even lecture like he used to. Never tries to get behind the wheel. It’s still my car. I could kick him out. Truly, I like his companionship, as long as he’s mum. But if he ever starts trying to psychoanalyze me, he’s going into the trunk.

Holly Hunt writes from her hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. She writes essays, novels, and poems. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Kansas City Star, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Poetry, and other places. She holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize for work published by the Academy. She has five poems forthcoming in Lost Lake Folk Opera, Winter 2025. She also creates original, crazy, singing and dancing cat puppets for her own political lampoon puppet plays--which most MAGA Red southerners absolutely hate.