by Nick Bone
When I was a kid growing up in the North Missouri hill country we lived outside of town a couple of miles. It was me, my mother, a psycho-abusive stepfather, and my little boxer dog, Kokomo. There weren’t any other kids around and during the long summer days I’d get a respite from the constant abuse of the tyrant while he was gone to work all day. Kokomo and I would go on long hikes through the nearby woods, exploring down by the old Grand River.
During dry spells the Grand would trickle down to a muddy creek, but when the rains came it overflowed for miles. The woods ran north and south along the twisting river. Each time out we would travel a little farther, having to gauge time and distances so we’d get back in time to finish chores and be there when the monster returned. Control is a key element of that type of personality.
I’d read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in school and it was always my hope that we would find some secret passage in the woods that would go on and on; a never-ending expanse of wild wilderness where boundless adventure lay in wait for a wide-eyed dreamer. With a home 
life like mine I truly hoped there was something better and greater out there … there
had to be.
Summer after summer we searched, on the weekends and during fall and winter months we went looking for that vast wilderness where the woods wouldn’t end.
Each time, no matter how fast and far we traveled, the forest always came to an end, abutting a farmer’s plowed field, divided into fenced pastures for crops or livestock, or dissected by a road for civilization to tread with wheel and iron. One time I even tried to build a raft in order to float down the Grand like Huck Finn, but it broke apart and Kokomo abandoned ship in disgust.
Another time we rounded a bend on a deer path and Kokomo came face to face with a wild boar! The creature stood at least four feet tall and outweighed my little dog five times over. Kokomo stood his ground between the beast and me, though. He was snarling and growling with a ferocity I never knew he possessed. The monster growled back, tusks gleaming and foamy goop dripping from his elongated snout. The hair on Kokomo’s back was raised in a stripe down his spine and any second I could see this was going to escalate into a fight to the death.
I was screaming at the top of my lungs, “Kokomo! Come here! Get over here! Kokomo!” Tears were streaming down my face, my throat hoarse from the yelling. But Kokomo wasn’t having it; he wasn’t going to back down and he didn’t have a chance. It didn’t matter though, he was protecting me, and the die was cast.
I didn’t know what to do so I just kept yelling. Finally, Kokomo turned his head to see what the heck I was yelling about, and in that instant the beast took the opportunity to turn on his heels and skedaddle off into the woods. Kokomo made sure his opponent was gone and then sheepishly came trudging back to me, snorting, wagging his tail so hard I thought he’d knock a hip out of place.
If I didn’t know it before, I knew it then; for certain I knew who my best friend in the world was for life.
When they shipped me off years later at age 13, that was my one regret—having to leave Kokomo behind was a painful event. I always wondered how many days he waited expectantly as the school bus drove by on the country road, not stopping. How long until he gave up hope?
About 30 years later I was in Ad-Seg on the Highpower rows of L.A. County Jail when something so remarkable happened that it’s difficult to fathom and hard to explain. There was a guy down from death row going to court trying to get the noose off his neck. He didn’t look too good. He had a distinct yellow cast to his complexion and a really bad cough. It wasn’t long until the whole tier was infected and coughing, and the bad news arrived … it was TB.
Tuberculosis is a super nasty lung infection that is difficult to deal with and hard to recover from. In those single-man cells with little oversight, they gave us some pills and we just had to deal with it. My lungs were so full of phlegm that they felt like they weighed an extra 20 pounds each. All you could do was try and cough that stuff up and hope the pills worked.
One night I had fallen into a fitful slumber and was dreaming I was back in Missouri down by the Grand River. I’d treaded out into deep water and it was over my head. Kokomo was back on shore, watching. I’d gone out too far and couldn’t get back to shore, couldn’t get my head above water … I was drowning. Back on shore Kokomo was barking at me; he wouldn’t stop. But under water it was so peaceful. It was warm and comforting. I felt at peace there. Everything was quiet and safe, except for Kokomo’s incessant barking. All I wanted to do was drift off in a deep sleep, let go, drift away. But Kokomo wouldn’t let me. He just kept up that barking!
Finally, I got so fed up with his loud yapping that I woke up to find out what the heck his problem was. “What?!” I tried to yell, but I couldn’t. Awoken from that nightmare dream, I couldn’t speak because I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating from the phlegm in my lungs. It had clogged the air passage in my throat and there wasn’t enough oxygen left in there to even cough up a little air hole. I was choking to death.
Coming out of that deep sleep, discovering I was suffocating, no air to breathe—it was horrific. Finally, I rolled off the bunk and slammed myself onto the floor, chest first. The impact forced what little air I had left out of my lungs and punched enough of a hole to allow air through. I began coughing and gasping for life-saving air. It was close.
I was left lying there on that cell floor, wondering what had just happened. But I knew what had occurred. My old buddy had come to me through space and time to save my life. Kokomo had saved my life, answering the age-old question, Do dogs have souls? Maybe for some that’s still an unanswered question, but not for me.
All these years later, I still think about Kokomo, still regret leaving him waiting for my return. Maybe he got tired of waiting and came looking for me, romping through those endless forests, trying to find his old friend. He finally found me on that Highpower row, saving my life and continuing on looking for that ultimate place of adventure where we could go exploring once again like the old days, searching for that secret passage where the woods won’t end.
Maybe he found it, maybe we both did in a friendship that knows no limits, that doesn’t allow walls and fences or time and space to intercede.
Republished from “Perspectives from the Cell Block: An Anthology of Prisoner Writings” – edited by Joan Parkin in collaboration with incarcerated people from Mule Creek State Prison.
