The Dog Who Ate the Forbidden Fruit

The Dog Who Ate the Forbidden Fruit

by Cam Reese

5 minute read

There was once a dog named Gracie Goo who belonged to a loving American middle-class family that provided food and shelter and an abundance of love, and the dog lived in boundless bliss and never knew of any troubles from the outside world. 

On mornings before work the Father would walk the dog through the picturesque garden where the junipers splotched bulbous shrubs topped by tendrils of vines that ran from the umber oak of trees that shaded the earth below. Among tulips and roses and mossy rocks that illuminated silver and neon in the sun’s early light which shone in through the perforated scants of the foliage. Gracie pooped in front of the Father who picked it up in a baggie with a smile born upon his face, Good girl, Gracie. Her tail wagged by the ambient tone of his voice. As they walked by the apple tree, Gracie looked up at a lowborn branch which had eaves of apples strewn to its siding which Gracie made for in a jump. But she was corralled by the Father’s voice, No, Gracie don’t eat that. Gracie looked at the father with brown, apologetic eyes and the father said, You are not to eat from the apple tree, for if you do you will most certainly die. And the dog said, Sure, bro, no problem. 

Mother would pour dog food into the Woof bowl and top the feed with a slice of yellow cheese. The dog ate it and the Mother smiled as she watched her tiny princess enjoy the meal. After she finished, it was, Good girl, Gracie Goo, with an abiding scratch of her tuchus which the dog could not reach. 

Throughout the day Gracie would make the Mother’s company during long naps and give wet kisses when the moment called. 

And when the children returned home from school, the little boy and girl ran off the bus, passed through the garden, and went straight into the arms of the Goo. Gracie! They scratched and played and petted and poured all the accumulated love which amassed in the time spent absent during a school’s worksome day.  The children would offer her treats. The boy held it out and said, Gracie, sit, Gracie sat. Gracie stay, she stayed. Gracie come! Gracie came. Good girl, good girl, they’d say as Gracie ate from their tiny palms. 

In the hour of the evening’s gloaming, the family took up the front porch stoop where their father read to all from a book seated in his rocking chair as the sun befell the edge of the world and cast the land in a mosaic glow of orange and royal blues that clashed and ran in wet pastels through the sky. Mother held the children on the porch swing as they listened, and the dog would lay snout upon paw on the floorboard and bid them with glances as the Father read.

As night fell, and the children were tucked away into bed, the dog was given quarters in the living room set upon a bedding by the windowsill which overlooked the garden. The parents shared a room, the children had bunked beds, and the dog slept alone in a dwelling for herself. All was well in the world and the days described heretofore were commonplace, and storms never cast overhead, rain never fell for too long, and pain and misery were foreign to that abode. 

But in the morning, the dog went for a stroll in the garden unaccompanied. While Gracie took her four-legged reprieve through the shroud of the garden, a visitor came. 

A cat in silhouette trotted along the branchtops above in its inkblack feline form—its eyes sheered through the darkness. It said, Did I really hear the Father tell you that you could not eat the fruit from the tree? 

Gracie looked up and said, I am well fed, I do not need to. Besides, he said If I do I will die. 

The cat said, You will not certainly die. If you eat the fruit from the tree, you will know things you did not before. You will be able to, like the Father, tell the differences between good and evil. 

Gracie Goo said, Really? No kidding?

The cat scuttled down the tree and pawed an apple off its limb which fell before Gracie’s forelegs. Gracie sniffed the fruit and saw that it was fair, and so she ate it. 

Later that day, when the Father returned home from work, he called out to the dog, but she was hiding. He looked around the house and saw her in the living room.

Gracie hid behind the shoulders of the curtains at the window where her tail stuck out from the parted white lineament. 

The Father said, Gracie, why do you hide from me?

Then Gracie said, Because I am ashamed. 

Come out now.

Gracie sauntered from behind her cover with her dragged tail and drooping brows. The dog had placed leaves over her private areas ashamedly and had her tail hung low to cover her butthole that had so often before been displayed to the world with great pride and happiness. 

Why do you wear leaves to cover your body?

Gracie said, Because I saw that I was naked. 

The father shook his head and then brought the dog to the kitchen to eat. 

When the bowl was full of dog food, the dog looked at it and said, I will not eat this because this food is disgusting and you yourself would not eat it. 

And then he went to put a leash on her to take a walk, but the dog objected and said, I am not a slave, I do not wish to be bound.

Then later when the children came home and showered the dog with affection, the dog did not reciprocate, and when the children tried to make the dog perform for treats, the dog scoffed and crossed its arms with pursed lips. What’s wrong Gracie? The little girl asked. Gracie said, I am not a circus animal who does tricks for prizes, I have dignity and autonomy in my own life. But you like treats, right? I do love treats, my dear children, but I have too much pride to play jester to your whims. Then the children were sad and trundled away to their bedrooms.

Later on before dark, the Father took the dog for a walk through the garden and when Gracie went to poop, she did so behind the tree in privacy. What are you doing? And the dog said, I do not want you looking at me when I poop, it’s embarrassing. Being so enraged at the consequences of the dog eating from the tree and disobeying him, he drove the dog out of the garden and cast her out into the world.

Fine, whatever, I have your knowledge, I too can harvest the soil of this world. You shall see! Then Gracie ran off down the road and disappeared in the horizon where a great city laid ahead.

Gracie Goo walked on her four legs down the streets passing indifferent faces and beleaguered stares and wilted spirits of tired itinerants. Excuse me, sir, Gracie said stopping a man on the sidewalk, Can you tell me where a dog can get a bone around here? And the man became irate and said, Get the hell away from me you talking dog, beat it! Then he shewed the dog and Gracie fled. Around the corner of an intersection, there was a roving car labeled Animal Control that saw Gracie and drove after her. The men in the car mounted the curb of the sidewalk trying to run down the dog but Gracie was fast and slipped down an alley and disappeared into the coming night.

She walked down the cracked cement streets where sweaty street lamps offered faint sepia lighting which flickered above onto the grimy, unguent sidewalks frequented by peddlers and peons who served no will except their own. Owls upon their midnight perches gave monologue to a cold world. Humans regarded the lost dog with apathetic eyes and fear of a hungry beast with no leash. Gracie Goo wended with her head held low like a beaten migrant commuting to freedom’s shore. 

A band of swarthy dogs watched on from an alleyway. They spoke in tongues which Gracie could not understand, and they stared at her with yellow, predatory eyes. They lunged at Gracie who ran, and they chased her down the streets. Gracie had never run so fast unless the mailman missed their stop. She cut down a dark corridor and the pack of dogs turned after her. The barking echoed against the walls of the steep passage. Gracie scurried under a tear at the hem of the fencing and found herself in the backyard of a town house. Ahead, the screen sliding door was opened and Gracie ran into the house. She ran past an old white man who sat upon his couch drinking a beer and watching Fox news. He shouted, Damnit, what in world? Gracie ran through the house and exited out the front door. The man shouted at his wife and said, Shut that door, woman! You’re letting dogs in the house. She shut the door, Okay, dear, and the pack of dogs that gave chase saw the glass door shut and slam against their collective snouts. Gracie ran away lost in the polluted city and found a dense wilderness, the town’s park. 

See the dog, she’s all alone in the vestige of the old world, in the midst of a grey wilderness, far from home, lost. Gracie made a fire in the forest under the moonlight and sat on her haunches and poked at the fire with a twig. She looked up in despair and howled at the moon. Jettisoned from home and left destitute, she knew then how good she had it before. She went up against the world and failed.

On the following morning, Gracie returned to the house with her tail between her legs and knocked at the front door. The Father answered the door and looked down at the dog with folded arms and said, So, you have returned? 

Gracie looked down to the ground and said, Yes, I’m sorry. 

Sorry for what?

I’m sorry I disobeyed you. The knowledge I gained made me feel like a slave but in the end, I realized that I was loved beyond measure and that I had it better than all the other creatures of this world. All of the things I had thought were bonds of imprisonment were actually there to liberate my soul. Will you ever be able to find it in your heart to forgive me father?

Then the Father bent down and picked up the dog and embraced it. He said, I will always forgive you because you are part of our family; you were once lost, but now you are found. And then the dog licked his face and he smiled and laughed. I love you, Gracie Goo.

She said, I love you, too Cameron.

Once more the family was reunited under their common roof where that night they did dine and break bread and sang songs of old. One happy family. 

Even with the knowledge of good and evil, there was a reconciliation with the will of nature beset against the accoutrements of functionality, and because of the dog’s journey astray from the garden, not in spite of it, the dog’s love grew to new, more profound heights that could have never been reached before the Fall.