We raised two dogs from pup­pies, an Amer­i­can Bull­dog and a Keeshond. Just past their four­teenth birth­days, they each got can­cer. We tried every­thing, even chemother­a­py. In the end they were weak and in con­stant pain, so I held them in my arms while the vet euth­a­nized them. My wife and I cried for weeks. I dream about them still. In a recur­ring dream, Goose and Copey are run­ning up a gen­tle slop­ing wheat field. I’m at its base. When they reach the crest, they turn and look back. I call to them to wait for me. They wag their tails, their mouths open in pant­i­ng dog-grins, and they turn and trot over the hill out of sight. I wake up cry­ing every time, and I cried again writ­ing about it here.

When they died, I vowed I would nev­er own anoth­er dog. It hurt too much. I held out for two years. Then I fell in love with Zoey, an Amer­i­can Bull­dog, who had been aban­doned, and we took her in. Cou­ple years after that, we adopt­ed a five month old aban­doned Pit Bull with severe­ly cropped ears. The vet told us his own­ers cut them off with a pair of scis­sors so they could fight him. Those peo­ple are lucky we don’t know who they are.

P.D. is the Pit Bull’s name. The let­ters stand for noth­ing. They just seemed to fit. Zoey and P.D. think I’m the leader of their pack, sort of a Big Dog, but P.D. is par­tial to pret­ty girls and great­ly favors my wife. I think it’s because she’s for­ev­er slip­ping him slices of grilled chick­en. She thinks it’s because he’s a good judge of char­ac­ter. Zoey is my dog. She loves me above all oth­er liv­ing beings because she’s much the bet­ter judge of char­ac­ter. Our trips to Star­bucks every morn­ing, where I split a piece of lemon pound cake with her, have noth­ing to do with it.

I write in my office at a desk that sits between two dog beds. Zoey takes the one on the right (it’s the one clos­est to me) and P.D. deigns to loll around on the one on the left when he can’t find Big Dog’s Wife.

If it wasn’t for the dogs, I’d weigh 300 pounds. I’d sit here writ­ing all day with ever expand­ing lay­ers of fat metas­ta­siz­ing to fill the broad well of my desk chair. But the dogs won’t have it. Every hour or two Zoey lays her head on my thigh; her ador­ing brown eyes look up at me; and she whines. What­ev­er bril­liant art­ful pas­sage I’m work­ing on melts out of my head, and we go out for a walk or play­time. Both dogs are eighty pounds of mus­cle. Their idea of a walk is to run like the wind, while I hang on to their leash­es like one of those guys in an old west­ern movie, who gets tied to a horse and dragged on his bel­ly through a field of cac­tus. Play­time is eas­i­er. I throw a ball or a chew toy. They fetch it, streak back to me, knock me down, and do a wild vic­to­ry dance on my prone car­cass. These work­outs are good for my health, I sup­pose, because I don’t have much of a weight prob­lem, although the occa­sion­al life-threat­en­ing injury can be inconvenient.

If it’s not already obvi­ous, let me be clear that I sol­id-down love the dogs. Which is why an arti­cle enti­tled Dogs, Strangers and God by Den­nis Prager, the radio talk show host, caught my eye. Since the 1970’s, he has asked col­lege stu­dents who they would try to save first if a stranger and their dog are  drown­ing togeth­er. He’s got­ten the same result for forty years: one third would save the stranger, one third the dog, and one third don’t know what the hell to do.

So I took the test. Zoey and some stranger are drown­ing. What would I do? I thought this through ratio­nal­ly. I don’t know any­thing about this drown­ing stranger. He could be a real­ly bad per­son, a pedophile, a ser­i­al killer, or some­one who post­ed a bad review about one of my books on Ama­zon. Not a close call. I choose Zoey over such despi­ca­ble scum.

But sup­pose the drown­ing per­son is some­one I know, an acquain­tance or a close friend? I am still unmoved. If it’s just an acquain­tance, I’m fish­ing out Zoey. I don’t know the per­son that well; where­as I love Zoey. It’s also crys­tal clear that sav­ing a close friend could end up being a mis­take. I mean do we real­ly know any­one deep down, no mat­ter how good a friend he may claim to be? How do I know my good friend isn’t secret­ly a bad per­son? How do I know this so-called friend real­ly even likes me? He could be fak­ing it to gain advan­tages from me, like being hauled out of a lake when he’s drown­ing. But I know beyond all doubt that Zoey is a Great Dog, who loves me. I’m pick­ing Zoey over this pho­ny pre­tender every time.

How about a rel­a­tive? …  Long pause … Which relative?

A rel­a­tive I love? My own child? My wife? .… Much longer pause.… You see, peo­ple, this is why you have got to teach your dog to swim. Put them in the pool and show them where the steps are. And don’t for­get rat­tlesnake avoid­ance train­ing and teach­ing them not to walk out into the road and make sure to get them all the shots on time and run them through a com­plete phys­i­cal every six months.… Sigh.…Okay, pressed to the wall, if my child or wife was the per­son drown­ing, I’d try to save them and Zoey togeth­er first, but if that failed, I wouldn’t let my kids or wife go down. Sor­ry, Zoey. Sob!

Den­nis Prager is astound­ed and trou­bled by the col­lege stu­dents who choose to save their dog and he would be even more appalled by my atti­tude. The moral choice is clear to him. You save the human being in all cas­es because man is cre­at­ed in God’s image and ani­mals are not. Feel­ings of love for the dog should give way to moral val­ues “divine­ly revealed” by God. I admire Den­nis and agree with him about many things, but on this one, I don’t see why he ignores God’s piv­otal role in caus­ing all the trou­ble. Who does he think dumped Zoey and all these peo­ple in the drink in the first place? I mean God’s in charge, after all. If He tries to drown my dog, He oughtn’t blame me for bail­ing her out.

But this, I know, is not the moral high ground. Den­nis lays that out here: http://www.dennisprager.com/dogs-strangers-and-god/

In essence, Den­nis’ posi­tion boils down to this: humans have a soul; dogs do not. I hope this is not true. When my brother’s dog, Oscar, died, he was dev­as­tat­ed. “If they don’t have dogs in heav­en,” he said, “I don’t want to go there.” If you com­bine my brother’s IQ with mine, and even if you throw in my oth­er brother’s IQ, my guess is we’d total out at about half Den­nis’ score, but I agree with my broth­er. I’ll con­fess I’m a lit­tle trou­bled about the con­se­quences of turn­ing down heav­en, con­sid­er­ing the alter­na­tive, but a dog­less one does not sound like a hap­py place to me. I hope Nicky, Pam, Brigid, Joey, Copey, Goose, and even­tu­al­ly Zoey and P.D., not to men­tion the eigh­teen cats we owned over the years, all make the cut and get into heav­en. It’s only fair. To para­phrase Mark Twain, if heav­en went by mer­it, you would stay out and your dog would go in. In the mean­time, I’m not tak­ing my dogs near any body of water more than a foot deep.

When your imag­i­na­tion first gives birth to a sto­ry, the char­ac­ters are name­less, and choos­ing names is an impor­tant step in flesh­ing out their iden­ti­ties. The names must fit the per­son­al­i­ties. Huck Finn stiff­ens up if you call him Jack­son Rem­ing­ton Pol­lack, III, and D’Artagnan of The Three Mus­ke­teers los­es all his steam if you name him Humphrey Clinker.

Nam­ing my death row inmate Ken­neth Deather­age (pro­nounced “death a ridge”) in The Clos­ing took me on a mean­der­ing jour­ney. The sur­name was easy. I found it research­ing the ances­try of the Oder fam­i­ly. My ances­tors were farm­ers liv­ing near Lit­tle Wash­ing­ton and Flint Hill, Vir­ginia, in the 1800’s. Deather­ages lived all around them, and I found grave­stones near those towns bear­ing that name dat­ing back to 1830. I was so famil­iar with the name when I select­ed it for my char­ac­ter that I didn’t real­ize until lat­er how well it matched the accu­sa­tions against him – Death rage.

His giv­en name was what caused me trou­ble. Orig­i­nal­ly, I called him Carl Deather­age, but that didn’t feel right after I’d writ­ten a few chap­ters. This often hap­pens. As a char­ac­ter devel­ops and matures, the name I first chose slides off the mark, and I’ll cast around for a bet­ter fit. Deather­age became Robert, then Logan, then Lon­ni­gan. None of them worked, and in the end I gave him my first name, Ken­neth, and I had his moth­er call him Ken­ny, which my mom called me till the day she passed on. At least one friend was trou­bled by this. “Why would you give an accused mur­der­er-rapist your own name?” she asked, look­ing some­what anx­ious. (I’ve also noticed she’s care­ful nev­er to be left alone with me since she read the book.) The rea­son is I had a hard time get­ting into this character’s head. I thought maybe giv­ing him my name would help me under­stand him bet­ter. My trick helped some. I even devel­oped some empa­thy for him, but it didn’t serve to over­come the dis­tance between us. It was an inter­est­ing exer­cise, though.

I take spe­cial care in my nov­els with sur­names. My sto­ries are set in Vir­ginia in the 60’s, so for authen­tic­i­ty, I search for long-time Vir­ginia fam­i­ly names. Ros­aline Part­low was my great great grand aunt. She lived near Lit­tle Wash­ing­ton in the 1860’s. The mur­der vic­tim, Dar­lene Updike, takes her name from anoth­er ances­tor from that same place and time. The name Feed­low (the Buck Coun­ty sher­iff in The Clos­ing) comes from a 1760 mar­riage record, but the name is prob­a­bly an error. In those days most peo­ple were illit­er­ate and couldn’t spell their names. The coun­ty clerks would do their best to spell them pho­net­i­cal­ly and they often got it wrong. To make mat­ters worse, the records are hand­writ­ten, fad­ed with age, and some­times inde­ci­pher­able.  Feed­low became Fid­dler and some­times Field­er in lat­er records, but I liked the sound of Feed­low, so I stayed with it.

Nate Abbitt’s fam­i­ly name came from attor­neys in Appo­mat­tox, who rep­re­sent­ed my father in his par­ents’ divorce pro­ceed­ings when he was a boy. There was no legal prece­dent in the ear­ly 30’s for a child hav­ing sep­a­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion in those cas­es, but two young lawyers, the Abbitt broth­ers, took him on pro bono and blazed a new trail in the chancery court, resolv­ing cus­tody more in line with his wish­es. One of the broth­ers lat­er became the coun­ty commonwealth’s attor­ney, and although Nate’s char­ac­ter was in no way based on these lawyers, I bor­rowed their sur­name for Nate.

I named my myopic pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, Clarence Shif­flett. The name Clarence was per­fect for this eccen­tric old gumshoe, but I caught some flack from a read­er who thought I stole the name Shif­flett from a John Grisham char­ac­ter in The Rain­mak­er. I didn’t steal it. Grisham lives in Nel­son Coun­ty, Vir­ginia, near my old stomp­ing grounds. Shif­flett is a more com­mon name there than Smith or Jones. About half my child­hood friends were Shif­fletts and 450 of them swell the pages of the Char­lottesville phone book today. If I want­ed to make my books more real­is­tic with­out regard to the con­fu­sion it would cause, I’d name almost all my char­ac­ters Shif­flett. But let me tell you, it’s a tough name to spell cor­rect­ly when you address a Christ­mas card to a friend. There are so many vari­a­tions on the num­ber of t’s and f’s with a silent p occa­sion­al­ly dropped in the mid­dle or an e tacked on to the end. I can’t keep the dif­fer­ent ver­sions straight. Even with Clarence, a guy I made up, I unin­ten­tion­al­ly spelled the name four dif­fer­ent ways in the draft man­u­script. Near­ly drove my copy edi­tor crazy. A web­site about this inter­est­ing and sto­ried fam­i­ly can be found at http://www.klein-shiflett.com/shifletfamily/HHI/surname.html.

I gave one of my char­ac­ters in The Clos­ing a vari­a­tion of my own sur­name. The clerks in colo­nial Vir­ginia messed up my fam­i­ly name to the point where I don’t know what it real­ly was or where it came from. Peo­ple I can prove were of my blood­line are list­ed in old records as Oder, Odar, Odir, Ody­er, O’Dyer, Odo, Odoe, Oden, Odor, Odle, O’Der, Odom, Odoms, and on and on. So I named the African Amer­i­can man, who cap­tured Deather­age and held him down until the law arrived, Willis Odoms. He was the most admirable char­ac­ter in the book, so maybe I was try­ing to make it up to my moth­er and my anx­ious friend for hav­ing named my accused mur­der­er-rapist Kenny.

Any­way, my sur­name is a sore point with me, giv­en all the teas­ing it gen­er­at­ed when I was in ele­men­tary school (not to men­tion the con­tin­u­ing jabs from adults who nev­er pro­gressed beyond grade school matu­ri­ty lev­els). I often wish that some­one in my direct line had steered the spelling of the name toward a less odi­ous (get it?) out­come. So maybe I should change it, the way I change a fic­tion­al character’s name when I don’t like it. Costs about $150 to change a name legal­ly, I hear, well worth it in my case. With all the demo­graph­ic shifts in the coun­try, I fig­ure I’ll go with the flow and choose some­thing with a Latin flair to it. I’m think­ing Ken­i­to Aroma.

I always want­ed to be a writer. Fresh out of col­lege, I took a job as a high school Eng­lish teacher in Vir­ginia, hop­ing to write dur­ing my off-time. It didn’t work out. I couldn’t make a liv­ing on teacher’s pay and I didn’t have much to say as a writer at the age of 22. So I went to law school and joined a law firm in Los Ange­les. I still secret­ly want­ed to be a writer, but the law is a jeal­ous mis­tress, who left me no time to do any­thing else.

In 1989, a lawyer in my firm asked me to han­dle a case for one of his clients, H.N. Swan­son, Inc. The company’s offices on Sun­set Boule­vard in Hol­ly­wood looked like a library in dire need of a big clean-up. Wall-to-wall shelves and rows of big tables were stacked with musty books, velo-bound doc­u­ments, and loose papers, some caked with decades-old lay­ers of dust. Upstairs, behind a mas­sive desk, also piled high with papers and books, sat a short, frail, ancient man with bright eyes, the hint of a smile, and a full head of snow-white hair combed straight back.

I sat down across the desk from Harold “Swanie” Swan­son and we began to talk. I asked a few get-acquaint­ed ques­tions and his sto­ry came tum­bling out like a water­fall. He was just shy of 90 years old. Born in Iowa, he worked as a writer in Chica­go and moved to Hol­ly­wood in the 30’s to pro­duce movies, but he real­ized his tal­ent was in sales and he became a lit­er­ary agent, rep­re­sent­ing screen writ­ers and nov­el­ists in nego­ti­a­tions with stu­dios about movie rights. “Give me a good sto­ry and a tele­phone and I’ll sell it every time,” he said.

“So, Harold,” I said. “You rep­re­sent any writ­ers I might have heard of? Any­one famous?”

I now rank this as one of the dumb­est ques­tions I ever posed to any­one (and believe me, this is a com­pet­i­tive field). Swanie’s answer went on for about an hour, a parade of hall of fame writ­ers with col­or­ful vignettes about each one.  F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Ray­mond Chan­dler, James Cain, Pearl Buck, Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er.

“You read any of Dutch Leonard’s books?” he asked.

By then I was star­ing at him blankly. My jaw went slack back there at the men­tion of F. Scott Fitzger­ald, and I was inca­pable of form­ing words. He mis­took my paral­y­sis for con­fu­sion and added by way of expla­na­tion, “You prob­a­bly know him as Elmore Leonard. His friends call him Dutch.”

I emit­ted a gut­tur­al utter­ance meant to con­vey that I’d heard of Elmore Leonard, like every­one who wasn’t in a coma from 1975 on.

Swanie shook his head and smiled. “Man, he can spin a sto­ry, can’t he?”

I mirac­u­lous­ly found the pres­ence of mind to vocal­ize anoth­er dumb ques­tion, which launched Swanie on a sto­ry spree. Fitzger­ald asked Swanie to read a nov­el he’d writ­ten. The title was Tri­mal­chio in West Egg. Swanie liked the book but told him he’d nev­er sell it with that title. He sug­gest­ed he call it “Gats­by.” Fitzger­ald set­tled on “The Great Gats­by.” Swanie fol­lowed this up with hilar­i­ous tales of drunk­en antics at the Fit­ger­alds’ parties.

I nudged the con­ver­sa­tion toward Hem­ing­way. He didn’t have any friends, Swanie said, and he couldn’t write until he’d downed a few.

Ray­mond Chan­dler? He didn’t like lit­er­ary agents, except for Swanie, and didn’t have much respect for their judg­ment. His prac­tice was to thank them polite­ly for their advice and to do the exact oppo­site of what they said.

About two hours into our con­ver­sa­tion, Swanie looked at his watch and said, “We’ve been talk­ing for quite a while, but we haven’t dis­cussed my case at all. Are you billing me for this time?”

Need­less to say, I ate the time. In fact, if I’d had good sense I would have paid him to keep talk­ing, but hey, I was a lawyer back then and that sort of thing is against our reli­gion, so we moved on and talked about the law, which was, of course, mind-numb­ing­ly bor­ing to both of us.

As the case plod­ded along over the fol­low­ing weeks, more of Swanie’s sto­ries came out. He was very fond of Elmore Leonard and it appears the feel­ing was mutu­al. Ear­ly in Leonard’s career, Swanie sold sev­er­al of his west­ern nov­els to stu­dios for movie pro­duc­tion, includ­ing Hom­bre, which starred Paul New­man. When Leonard switched to crime nov­els, his reg­u­lar pub­lish­ing agent passed away, and he brought The Big Bounce to Swanie. When Swanie read it, he told Leonard, “Kid­do, I’m going to make you rich.” A long line of best sell­ers fol­lowed. The ded­i­ca­tion to Leonard’s La Bra­va reads, “This one’s for Swanie, bless his heart.”

Swanie was bud­dies with Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Walt Dis­ney, and Clark Gable and friends with Glo­ria Swan­son. He nego­ti­at­ed the con­tracts for the movies The Big Sleep, Old Yeller, The Post­man Always Rings Twice, But­ter­field Eight, and many oth­ers. Mem­o­ries of his deal­ings with oth­er authors rolled out – Thorn­ton Wilder, Sher­wood Ander­son, Paul Ther­oux, Joyce Car­ol Oates, Joseph Wambaugh, Ross Mac­Don­ald, and on and on.

My short time with Swanie was pre­cious and price­less. He was a great guy, unfail­ing­ly gen­er­ous in shar­ing his mem­o­ries with me, and he was always warm, friend­ly, and patient. I nev­er heard him say a rude word to any­one. His charm even­tu­al­ly tamed the attor­neys who had sued him, and we set­tled the case. In our last meet­ing as we said good-bye, I screwed up my courage to con­fess my secret dream. “Long run, I want to be a writer,” I blurt­ed out with a tremor in my voice.

He shook my hand and gave me a wiz­ened smile. “Keep your day job, kid­do.” It was good advice. I fol­lowed it. For a while.

Swanie died in May, 1991. Elmore Leonard wrote an affec­tion­ate trib­ute to him for the L.A.Times. You can read it here. As I was writ­ing this, I dis­cov­ered that Swanie left behind a mem­oir, Sprin­kled With Ruby Dust. It’s only avail­able in hard­cov­er and its sales rank on Ama­zon is about 3,000,000 with no read­er reviews or rat­ings. It was panned in the only pub­lished review I could find, but I ordered it and I’m going to post a pos­i­tive review. I owe him way more than that for the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries. Swanie’s for­got­ten now by most, I guess, but I’ll nev­er for­get him or the day I stepped into that musty old trea­sure trove of lit­er­ary history.