Doing the Good Deed, for Smokehouse

I suppose we all know a few people who are just plain good. Whatever the right thing is in any given situation, they just do it automatically, like it’s the only thing to do. You find out they’ve been doing charity work for years without saying a word about it; supporting their parents; feeding strays; learning CPR; helping kids with their graffiti spelling.

Most folks other than my girlfriend--who knows me too well--think I’m a pretty nice guy. But these genuinely nice people really get my goat, because it’s never so easy for me. If I do something kind, it’s only after I’ve weighed all the wretched things I could do instead. Sometimes I think I never became an ax murderer or extortionist simply because it’s too much work. And when I do the right thing, it’s rarely without considering the credit I might get to bask in as a result. Basking in credit is fun, nearly as satisfying as eating a Snickers in the shower.

If I wind up being honest more often than not, it’s only because lying is so easy and common that it just isn’t interesting. Look at all the successful numb skulls driving $46,000 cars.

My own considerably more humble vehicle presented me with a bit of a quandary recently.

A couple of weeks ago my sweetheart and I were vacationing in Big Sur and at dusk were only just pulling into the campgrounds when a kid came tearing down the road on a bike. I took my spiffy Saturn from a crawl to a stop, and he whizzed by on my left. Then a second kid followed him, heading straight at us. He possibly could have swerved to either direction. He could have tried braking. Instead, he got this surprised look on his face, like, “Wow! A Saturn!” and plowed right into us.

The bumper stopped his bike, but he kept on sailing, my field of vision filling with his pudgy, bucktoothed 10-year-old’s face hurtling directly toward mine. Then he hit the windshield.

He rolled off the hood to my side of the car. My girlfriend was already out comforting him on the ground while I was still taking it in. My first thought was of those commercials where you see colored air slipping around the aerodynamic design of an auto. That design evidently applies to kids as well: He’d slid over the hood and right on up the windshield, so he never had a solid impact. He was winded, scared, had a sore knee and chin, and mostly needed some hugs and a new front wheel.

The other kid fetched the father, who was much relieved, thanked us and offered to pay for any damage to the car. I declined, being too delighted that the kid was OK to care about some metal and paint.

Later at our campsite, though, I kept going back to survey my hood’s two new scratches and small circular dent. The dent, on first inspection, had seemed a mere dimple, but on subsequent viewings it started taking on the dimensions of a lunar crater.

That night and the next day I let my minor good deed be sullied by thoughts of finding the other party’s camp: “Oh, just checking to see how your son is doing. It’s amazing how little damage he did to my car . No, really, you don’t have to pay me for it. Oh, all right, if you’re going to insist .”

I almost did something selfless this past week, though I’m going to blow that by telling you about it.

Last month I wrote here about my cat of 11 years, Smokehouse, who disappeared into a noisy cat fight on March 15. Several of you have called or written asking for an update on him, or have passed on encouraging cat stories--how they’ll wander and return--and a couple of you called with sightings of a potential Smokehouse helping himself to your pets’ dishes. That would have been just like him, to go larking on the cat version of a wine tour of France while we worried.

Heartfelt thanks to all for your concern and input, but until last week we still had no clue what had become of him. My roommate, who was always closer to Smokehouse than I was, had done a lot of detective work, following leads and even mapping out the routes the neighborhood cats take on their nightly forays. A few weeks ago a neighbor kid told her about a dead cat that he and others had looked at in another neighbor’s yard--you might recall the attraction gross things have to the young--but at the time, the kid’s description of the cat didn’t match ours. Maybe he was trying to be kind then, but when she talked to him again recently, he described our gray, hefty pugilist.

An elderly widow who lives right behind us confirmed that her granddaughter had found the cat, gray and undoubtedly ours, in a little-traveled part of their yard. She’d already thrown out our notices, and not knowing how to contact us, paid her gardener to bury him. So for the past month he’d been there, 30 feet from our back yard while we’d been searching shelters and everywhere else for him.

When someone, be it person or pet, departs, I think the valuable part that lingers is what they’ve left in our hearts. I have no great feeling for cemeteries or vacant remains.

My roommate, though, said she’d feel better if Smokehouse was resting at home. I couldn’t imagine the relocation process making anyone feel better, so I took it on myself to do it when she was at work.

Whatever this neighbor had paid her gardener to inter our cat, she got her money’s worth. He was buried so deep that I had nearly concluded the gardener had pulled a fast one. Then I hit gray fur and the smell. As far gone as he was, he looked featureless, like a Pompeii dog, but I knew it was him.

Pulling him out was the most horrible thing I’ve attempted, but I felt detached somehow. To be honest, I was thinking what I might write about it, how to turn my grief into a buck.

I’ve been able to rationalize several of life’s more painful moments that way: that when you fancy yourself some kind of artist, all experience becomes good. That wall held for about five minutes until, while driving Smokehouse home, I saw our flyer still on a phone pole, with the photo of him looking noble, idiotic and alive. His dead weight hit me, and I broke down.

I dug our own hole deeper, figuring I should do at least as good a job as this stranger had done. Also, as long as I kept digging, I didn’t have to face looking at him again. Finally I rolled him into his last home from the black plastic lawn bag I’d had him in, chucked in a can of Trader Joe’s salmon, and shoveled on the dirt. Not quite up to the mythic pomp of the JFK funeral, but what can you do? I’m planting catnip on top. And now I’m getting paid for it.