Under A Pink Moon

Have you ever noticed it? The way an approaching change in weather can be detected by all creatures beneath the gaze of heaven? Birds will skim the sweet grass, seeking insects before a drenching rain, and cows will lie down in the fields, resting the joints that the coming showers foretell in them, just as the stooped farmer feels the same ground-glass ache in his knotted knuckles. The very trees seem to face the wind and cross their arms, wondering if this will be the toppling day, or if tomorrow will see them still stretching above the quilt of still things, the soil and dirt that listen, that are aware, that take notice.

We have continued, my wife and I, to move through our days as though the world at the end of our small triangle of living acres isn’t really sliding into the sink of insanity. We have watched the fearful eyes above the masks in public places, and the angry eyes directed at us, the unmasked. We have listened to the stories of lost jobs, lost wages, lost hope, lost direction. But we have resisted joining hands with those who want us on the path of dry mouths and furrowed brows. We eat our meals, say our prayers, read our books, tend to our plants, listen to our music, write our letters, pay our bills, wash our clothes, feed our animals.

Ah, our animals.

Just a few days ago, we headed down the mountain to the stores in the next town so we could restock perishable food items. As we do, we talked and laughed and speculated as the car moved over the road. When we came up over a rise and onto a straight stretch of road, I saw a large, black dog on the side about a hundred yards in front of us.

“Is that a dog?” I said, trying to focus my eyes.

My wife looked up, started to answer, but I interrupted her. “It’sabearIt’sabearIt’sabearIt’sabearIt’sabear!” I rattled off like an amphetamined auctioneer.

I slowed down as we neared the bear. He was a large, fine-looking fellow, larger than the last one we saw up close some years ago. His rolling gait carried him towards us, still on the shoulder of the road. But a car came up from the opposite direction just then, and the bear spooked. He climbed the berm next to him and hurried across the overgrown field towards the woods above him. I noticed the oncoming car had slowed down, meaning that the driver had seen the bear as well. Checking the rear view mirror, I saw no one coming up behind me, so I stopped. My wife handed me her phone and I managed to snap one blurry photo and take one jerky ten-second video of the great beast as he disappeared. Once we got moving again, we talked about how lean his springtime pickings are right now, the berries still a future concern. Perhaps he will find an unwise hive and help himself to the honey manufactured by the beleaguered bees of the region. Perhaps he will make his way to our little section of woods and fields. Perhaps we will have a story to tell a grandchild. Perhaps he feels the allure and the warning of the weather, and the speeding of his own life down through the narrow neck of his own hourglass, unknowable to us but familiar as a canticle to his implacable spirit. Perhaps he is aware that he is awaiting redemption even as he awaits the ripening of the blueberries on the hillside.

Ah, our animals, moving through the same air, enjoying many of the same things we enjoy, sometimes even smiling to themselves, if we can bring ourselves to believe in the smile of an animal, and I can. I can believe it and I am moved to smile even at this moment of recollection, my inner eye looking back at the recent night when the weather dropped down on us in the dark of night, when the wind came out of the northwest and scooped up pine cones and threw them at the house, and the rain was moving like a curtain unseen by us across the valley in our direction, and just as the rain struck us we heard a bright, insistent bark on our front steps.

My wife looked at me, her eyes wide. “That sounded just like Jinx.”

We opened the front door, and there he was in all his Jinxness, soaked but wiggling with joy at the two faces staring down at him through the screen door. I stepped outside and stroked him and tried to calm him, and he laid down under the eaves just as he had done during his brief stay with us last month, and when the rain had passed, I made my way out to the barn and got the container of his food that I hadn’t gotten around to throwing out. We fed and watered him, and we smoothed his head and felt a knot that hadn’t been there before, and we admonished him to rest and told him that we’d see him in the morning.

When the gray light sifted through the curtains several hours later, Jinx was waiting, electric with delight, a package of sinew and coarse fur and taut muscles and a whipping, circling sword of a tail. We spent the day getting reacquainted, and I roamed over the hills and fields with the young dog, watching that atavistic power that ripples inside him, driving him to point, and to alert on the grazing cattle, and to follow the flight paths of birds over his head with an argent wonder I have not known since I wasn’t much larger than he is now. We enjoyed the day as fully as we could, and at the end of it, my wife and I talked.

We talked about Jinx’s sweet disposition, and his wildness, and his curiosity, and his range of facial expressions. But mostly, we talked about how he must have to come be at our place on the night of a storm. It was very curious, we both agreed.

And so we waited. While we waited, we enjoyed Jinx and his, well, hijinx. We watched him rove and run and ramble, laughed as he inhaled tidbits of cheese, exclaimed over the cow skulls and mysterious long bones he toted into the yard, and looked at each other with questioning eyes as we rubbed his head where something had injured him since we last saw him, scraping two quarter-sized patches of hide away and leaving knots there, almost in the center of his brow with its diamond-shaped blaze and its perpetually perplexed expression.

His owner will show up soon, we told each other.

And the days came, and the nights came, and Jinx ate from the dishes we placed for him, and he slept on the porch, or dozed in the cool grass at the side of the house, and he went for walks with me in the cemetery, and he chased a stray calf back into its pasture, causing the poor thing to somersault through a wire fence in its desperate haste to escape the barking spotted thing on its heels. I taught him with much effort to sit, and to fetch a ball.  And threading these moments together, our mantra.

His owner will show up soon.

Our neighbor paid us a visit one evening, and we expressed our concern about Jinx, about where his owner was and why he hadn’t yet appeared. I was in a bit of a foul mood, and I spoke perhaps a bit too freely, observing that I was hard pressed to understand the kind of man who would not come seeking his missing dog when he knew full well where his dog probably was.

She must have tracked the owner down and called him, because less than a half hour later, while I was sitting in the grass with Jinx and rubbing his chest, the pickup truck came rolling down our driveway. There he was, the owner of the dog sitting with me. About my age, with a Duck Dynasty beard, ball cap, and sunglasses hiding his eyes.

He waved an arm dangling from a sleeveless shirt. “Hey, bro,” he called. Then he looked at Jinx. “Hey, puh-peh.”

And Jinx never moved. He sat in the grass with me, watching his owner and listening to him, but never twitching a canine muscle to move towards him.

I walked to the truck and stood there, just watching the man. He opened his mouth, and in a voice so slurred and muddled I wondered if he was missing part of his tongue, he jumped into a rambling discourse about how he tried tying the dog (whom he never called by any name…he was just “the dog” or “the puppy”) but couldn’t keep him at home. How he never mistreats dogs. How the dog is a five hunnert dollar dog. How he fed the dog way-ners and chayze and b’lohnee to spoil him, but the dog kept trying to run away. How the dog — who is worth five hunnert dollars — finally slipped away the night of the storm, leaving him, the owner, to grieve and mourn and lament.

What he never described, in his beer-and-Percocett soliloquy, was his own searching for the dog. His arrival at our home must have been pure coincidence, and was not in any way related to any phone calls from concerned neighbors.

By the time he ran out of fuel, I had learned that he couldn’t keep the dog at home, that he never mistreats dogs, how the dog constantly ran away, that he never hurt a dog, that the dog is a wanderer, that he never mistreats animals, that the dog is a five hunnert dollar dog, and that no dog was ever hurt by his hand.

When he was finished, I said, “Do you want him?”

He remained in the truck, arm still a-working as he gestured his way through another speech, and stammered and slurred his way through another collection of grandiose statements about his Herculean efforts to pamper and maintain the dog at his place, and about the wily and uber-creative canine who constantly and callously rejected his tender care and instead chose to maliciously roam the countryside in search of fresh stimuli, all the while snickering through his pointed teeth at the noble, suffering soul who was now sitting before me.

When he was finished, I said, “Do you want him?”

He shrugged. “I cain’t keep him. He won’t stay in my yard.”

“He seems to like it here,” I said.

The man laughed and lit a cigarette. The unsteadiness of his hands made me think of someone trying to thread a needle while wearing boxing gloves. He chuffed out a cloud of smoke and shook his head. “Well, he seems to like you. Might be best if you keep him.”

“Alight,” I said. “I’m keeping him. He’s my dog.”

If relief can be said to wash over the features of a face when only about five square inches of actual face are visible, then relief washed over his face. He immediately started the engine and pulled the shift lever back and down into R, and said a few warbledy things I couldn’t understand. What I did manage to decipher was “five hunnert dollar dog.”

And then he looked at Jinx and said, “You’re a good ‘un. Bye, puh-peh.”

Jinx never moved. He sat and watched.

The man backed down the driveway, waved, turned around when he reached the gravel road, and put the truck in drive. When he started moving around the curve in the road, Jinx stood and trotted down to the end of the drive. He cocked his head as if working out a problem.

What will I do if he runs after that guy? I thought.

Then Jinx turned back and ran towards me like hell’s imps were chasing him. He plowed into me and almost knocked me over. Then he turned and trotted towards the house, where my wife was waiting.

The next day, we went and bought a better brand of dog food, and some treats, and a new red collar, and a blue dog Frisbee. We’ve walked and played every day, and Jinx sleeps deeply and soundly, and he’s making progress in the discipline department, and he seems to know the name we’ve given him.

When he dreams, with his black-nailed paws twitching in the grass, does he dream of the man coming back to get him? Does he miss the place where he spent the first six months of his life? Does he see us as his people now, and does gratitude make up a part of his mysterious and affectionate little heart? He seems to move in rhythm with the forces that have buffeted him up to this point, the forces that have driven him down a gravel road eight miles away and to the home where he strikes the sparks of laughter and delight within us every single day.

The approaching change in weather can be detected by the Creator’s creatures. It is wondrous to observe their reactions to the things that move around us unseen. Perhaps they see more than we do. Perhaps they are oblivious to the effects they have with their short little lives upon those who watch them and care for them.

Perhaps.

~ S.K. Orr