Deadbolts

“You're not sugar,” I tell the work dogs impatiently, “You won't melt. Get your butts out there or there'll be no supper!”

All four look at me with more pitiful-ness than I'd have believed possible. They tuck their tails between their legs and back away from the open door as if the lightly falling rain was laced with some toxic substance.

“It's just plain, old, ordinary rain,” I tell them and give each a gentle but firm swat on their hindquarters, “Don't be such wusses!”

“OUTSIDE!” I finally yell in frustration. I ignore the Dead Man Walking look I get from the old pit and shove him down the stairs then snatch up the little chihuahua and carry her out. The cur dog and the little pit mix follow albeit reluctantly. I am resolute, ignoring their identical expressions of pained resentment and refusing to be drawn into this miserable pity party.

“Useless damn dogs,” I mutter under my breath, “I never saw the like of such useless animals.”

Amazingly enough, all four manage to pee before nearly running me down in their haste to get back inside. They wolf down their dogfood like their throats have been cut and then we go through the whole routine one more time. Cursing the rain, the dog sitter who never showed or called and life in general, I clean up after them, turn on the lights and leave them to their own devices.

The midnight run is a little easier since there's no food involved. They're glad to see me and they trot outside obediently enough. I sit on the back steps and smoke, grateful for the break in the rain and the still warm-ish weather.

The next trip is high adventure.

I pull into the driveway only to see the far front door wide open and the cur dog lying across the threshold, casually watching the world go by. When he sees it's me, he stretches lazily and strolls slowly onto the porch, so unconcerned that he doesn't even bark. I slam the car into park and race for the door, terrified of finding the other three missing but as soon as I'm inside, they all appear, greeting me calmly and I suspect, not understanding my panic. There's no sign of any kind of forced entry and nothing is out of place or damaged so all I can think, unlikley as it sounds, is that the afternoon's rain or wind was strong enough to push open a locked door.

Note to self:  Deadbolts.

Dogfight

The fight started over a chihuahua being walked on the other side of the fence and in a matter of seconds had devolved to a full scale blitzkrieg. The work dogs couldn't get to the chihuahua so they turned on each other and the cur dog went down in a bloody heap with the old pit fastened onto his muzzle like a vise and the small pit mix snarling at his hindquarters and keeping him pinned. Blood and tissue were flying, the cur dog was screaming and everything I knew about breaking up a dogfight went clean out of my head. I turned the hose on them and when that didn't work, grabbed the nearest thing to a weapon I could find - a shovel - and began hammering them with it until I could catch hold of the old pit's collar and separate them. The smaller pit mix snarled and lunged at me and I swung the shovel, connected with his face and sent him sprawling into the dirt. When Michael finally got there, I was standing over him with the shovel ready to swing a second time. I was so angry I was hoping I'd broken his jaw.

We patched up the cur dog, washing off the blood, cleaning his wounds and checking for broken bones. A week later he had surgery for a build up of blood in one ear and we sent the small pit mix to Michael's family for a few days to give the cur dog a chance to heal. The house was immediately quieter and considerably less chaotic and I was of the opinion that we should make it a permanent move but Michael missed the wretched little sob and made plans to bring him home after Thanksgiving. It was to be a short lived peace.

It was the second time in my entire life I raised my hand in anger to an animal.

I'm considering investing in a taser.

A Good Run

The words are a gut punch, sucking the air out of my lungs and slamming against my carefully constructed wall of denial until it crumbles. Once again, I feel the now familiar weight of rage and impotence as yet another friend is dying right before my eyes and there's nothing to be done about it. The cancer has taken everything save the faint sparkle in his eyes.

“It's been a good run,” he tells me, his voice weak and wasted, “A little short, but good.”

I force some imitation of a smile and try not to give in to the tears that I feel welling up. What do you say to someone facing their own death? And, I wonder, who comforts who. I find myself desperately wishing I could talk to my daddy one more time. I have an unreasonable idea that he might know the words I'm looking for.

My friend, Charli, brings a tray of homemade soup and tacos and sets it down on the tv tray in front of him, tucks a napkin under his chin and puts a spoon his hand. The oxygen machine purrs quietly and the hospice nurse putters about, checking the morphine solution and counting out pills.

“Eat,” she says firmly, “It'll grow hair on your chest.”

This earns her a small but shaky smile.

Charli and I make useless, chattery small talk, hoping to draw him in to the conversation but I suspect we're both remembering this same kind of day when our dear friend, Blue, was in the same place and we did much the same thing. Even the hospice nurse is the same. Blue was on borrowed time as Bill is now and the reality of it is emotionally and physically numbing. I can't make sense of it, can't begin to conceive of living in this kind of dark place for whatever time remains. Somehow, in some way I don't understand, the dying find a kind of bravery and grace that I've only read about in books. It's up to us to witness and remember.

Pigboy

“Boy's dumber'n salt fish on a dryin' rack,” Sparrow observed dryly as he watched my brother high wire walk along the top rails of the pig sty, “And twice as hard headed. Ain't nobody goin' in after him when he falls.”

And on his second go round, fall he did, tumbling wildly into the filth and muck and wailing as the startled pigs quickly recovered and began advancing toward him. Sparrow watched stone faced, calmly sucking on his pipe. There were six of us on the rickety old front porch and not one of us moved to help.

“You'd best climb, boy,” the old man finally called, “Them pigs ain't been fed yet.”

Cursing and shrieking, my brother clawed his way out, scrambling desperately over the rails and landing on his rump in a heap of mud, leavings and pigshit. I don't remember who started to laugh first but in an instant we were all bent double and near hysterical. My unfortunate brother, dripping, vile smelling and humiliated, staggered to his feet and shook his fist at us before turning tail and shambling off across the back pasture like some awkward, hulking creature. This caused a second wave of laughter and Sparrow had to holler to make himself heard.

“Enough!” he thundered, “Boy got what was comin' to him. Now's time to let him be.”

There were repercussions, none of them pleasant.

My mother arrived in a fury, demanding to know how dare we throw her precious child into the pig pen and then laugh at him. Sparrow listened patiently while she ranted and raved and then quite calmly and sternly told her the truth - that no one had thrown his sorry ass anywhere, that it had been his own idea, that he'd been warned not to do it - and that her precious child was a bully and a liar who'd paid the price for his own foolish and stupid behavior.

“He was pushed!” she insisted defiantly, “And you laughed at him!”

“I don't take kindly to bein' called a liar, Jan,” Sparrow said sharply, “ So I'll thank you to git off my property and keep your boy away from here from now on. He ain't welcome and right now, you ain't either.”

I paid for my part in the adventure with a week's grounding but my brother lived with the nickname “Pigboy” the entire summer. Kids made squealing noises behind his back and once someone left a rusty bucket of fish guts and potatoe skins at the back door with a note that read Leavings for a Liar.

My grandmother, who had never doubted Sparrow's word or mine for a second, smiled bitterly and left the foul smelling thing for my mother to find. I just smiled.

Bird of Prey

I watched in awe and disbelief as the owl descended vertically and noiselessly toward the unsuspecting little chihuahua. Then, as he sunk his talons into her fur and made his move, all hell broke loose. The little dog, ridiculously overweight and on her best day, temperamentally more like a piranha than a dog, erupted like a snapping turtle. She twisted like a pretzel, wriggling, snarling and fighting off the predator with everything she had. In a matter of seconds, the owl realized he'd misjudged the situation and was driven off. The chihuahua shook herself mightily and trotted off with an expression of undisguised contempt on her heart shaped face and a few feathers clinging to the corners of her mouth.

What broke my paralysis was the head on collision of two thoughts - first, the realization that her long haired-ness had probably saved her and how lucky that her groomer had been down with the flu this past week and second, the clearly mistaken notion that owls hunt only at night.

I ran for the yard like a madwoman. It was an uncommonly warm morning for January, the trees were littered with sparrows and cardinals and screeching blue jays. A trio of squirrels was doing their high wire act, chattering and chasing each furiously against a very blue sky but there was no sign of the owl.

The little chihuahua, intact and unharmed, played her game of pretending not to hear me calling and continued casually milling about the yard without a care in the world. I found myself envying her confidence and feeling vaguely sorry for the owl.

The Other Side of the Street

It's coming on dark by the time the weekend wraps up and I'm tired and cold and hungry as I make the final turns through my neighborhood and head for the driveway. Lights are burning in most the windows and on front porches and I almost missed seeing the cat - she came out of nowhere, streaking like a shot directly in front of me - I hit the brakes so sharply everything on the passenger seat went flying and for an intense second, I could barely breathe. When I found my voice, it was to curse enthusiastically and at length but also a little gratefully. Another few seconds either way could have been tragic.

It started me thinking about timing and how a seemingly insignificant second here or there can make a difference even if you don't know it at the time. And that led me to the choices we make and how we often don't see where they'll lead. Life, as Stephen King writes in his novel about time travel, turns on a dime. Every step is a crossroad - some clear and well marked, some as treacherous at that miracle of traffic engineering, the New England rotary - where a single misstep can lead to oblivion.

Assuming all goes well, I will enter my 7^th decade this year and I'm still trying to comprehend how it's possible. I'm not even sure I completely imagined living this long.

Some days all I seem to see are empty spaces - friends who should still be here and aren't, children who have grown to have children of their own, husbands and lovers I barely recognize anymore, distant and left over family whose names I can't recall. I feel like a stranger in a world being steadily unmade into an image of greed and hate, wealth and white-ness. I feel like I don't have a place anymore. I feel alone. I'm accustomed to intersections with signs and traffic lights and speed limits and I'm trapped in a New England rotary circle with no safe exit. The cat who streaks mindlessly across in front of me doesn't look both ways. She risks her life with every step and isn't aware of it and I'm beginning to understand how she feels. I can't imagine what could be on the other side of the street that matters so much.

As for me, I feel done. Not depressed or suicidal or ready to give up but ready to stop what my friend Michael calls “striving”. I don't want a new house or a better, fancier car. I wore out my interest in expensive jewelry and designer clothes years ago. Material things make me tired. I'm beginning to suspect that I've told all the stories I wanted to tell and taken all the pictures I have in me. I can't see there's anything left to do. There's something faintly sad about the feeling but there's also something remarkably liberating about it, as if I've made peace with something unknown, something uncertain, unfocused and bound to be bad. It feels like mourning but with an expiration date and not to be morbid, but I can't say I'm sorry that I'll miss the finale.