Something In The Air

We awoke to one of those days that couldn’t be more perfect for the Orr temperament if we’d sat down with a Weather & Scenery Catalogue and ticked off all the boxes for the Saturday we were ordering. A muted, witchy glow of cloud-shrouded afterthought of a sun, leaves layered like the scales of Jonah’s fish across the slippery skin of the mountain earth, the rain as fine as the mist at the produce section in the grocery store, the stillness and sacredness that churches and even libraries once had but will never have again. When I swung my legs over the bed and touched the floor, the Spotted Southern American Bacon Hound was more than ready to head out the door. I dressed in rain gear and hat and laughed at the demented-eager grin on Jinx’s face. He seemed the picture of joy.

And yet.

Something odd is in the air; his behavior at the cemetery we pass on our walks is unchanged. More pronounced, even.

When we passed from indoors to outdoors, he bounded ahead of me, down the football field-length of the driveway and stopped, hiked his leg, and relieved himself. As is typical first thing in the morning, his bladder capacity took center stage as he stood their watering the dead irises until I drew up even with him. This little stroll takes a good 30-45 seconds at least. That should give some idea of his retention talents. I look at him and see, cartoon-like, an x-ray image of his abdomen, with most of his viscera crammed into his ribcage, and his bladder the size of a watermelon and taking up the remainder of his torso. There is always a wedge of cheese and a half-chewed wiener in his stomach, along with a perfect bone with knobby ends.

Then we reached the gravel road and started our slow ascent of the ridge, past the field where Bonnie and I encountered a mountain lion on a still, snowy night so many years ago. On past another field where the neighbor’s cows like to bring their calves into this world, and the lone sheep prowls among them, sometimes resting against the back of a reclining one. Then to the first silage pit, and the dog’s pace slowed, his legs becoming stiff, the way they do when he is approaching a strange dog or something moving in the grass. He stopped in the road and looked around, lifting his snout into the mist, then looked at me. I kept walking, and he followed.

Then to the next silage pit. Jinx’s pause this time was longer, perhaps a full minute, while he nosed the air and looked up at the sky, then at me. I motioned with my hand and we walked on, much more slowly.

We came around the bend in the road and there was the little cemetery with its 215 graves marked with 215 rain-wet stones, the red cedar gate slick in the rain and closed against wandering cattle. And that’s when Jinx stopped in the center of the road, as still as one of the granite gravestones, and he stared. I watched his face carefully. His look was an unsettling blend of intense concentration and faraway preoccupation. It was a dreamy gaze that burned, the sort of stare that people with high fevers sometimes exhibit.

I remained as motionless as I could, looking, listening, watching Jinx, trying to read him. We stayed that way for perhaps three or four long minutes, and then I cleared my throat. Jinx took no notice.

“Is there someone there? Is there something you want to say to me, to us?”

Silence and mist, a man and a dog and the glistening stones pointing to heaven. There was no answer.

I looked down at my dog and whispered, “C’mon, old man.”

I took a few steps, but Jinx was made of granite. He glanced at me, then resumed staring into the air above the markers on the grassy slope just up there. I decided to be more practical and think this through. While watching the dog, I thought, Did something more mundane happen here? Did a car almost hit you? Did you meet with another dog, or some vicious animal that scared you? Was this where you encountered the skunk? Did someone stop and try to coax you into their truck? Did someone throw rocks at you, torment you, frighten you with human meanness?

Perhaps. But the look on his face, the unearthly, detached intensity of his stare told my inner parts that the answer was no, that something unseen has been going on here in the little patch of Appalachia. The locals call ghosts “haints,” a musical bastardization of “haunts,” and I asked Jinx just then if he’d seen a haint. His eyes never moved from their vigil, though he was blinking them against the gathering fine rain.

When he saw me start back towards home instead of continuing down the road, he fell in beside me, watching our flank as we moved back towards the hidden sun. As soon as we passed the silage pits, Jinx’s tail came up over his back in its signature sickle curve, his ears pricked up, his mouth fell open, and he came back to himself. Leaping and running and plowing into piles of drifted leaves, hiking his leg here and there, and stopping to do his other bidness, he was regular ol’ Jinx. Before we reached the beaten double path of our driveway, I turned and looked back over my shoulder to see if some spectre might be waving from the side of the road, but the road was empty of all but the curling mist and the fluttering-down leaves. Jinx saw my look and he looked, too. Then we turned back and walked to the driveway.

Who can say? Perhaps, as a friend speculated, the nearness of All Saints Day has increased the level of spiritual activity, or has worn holes in the veil separating this life from the next. Perhaps Jinx sees or senses some omen, some harbinger that I cannot detect. Perhaps someone or something is communicating to this mute animal some information that I am not intended to receive. Or perhaps some drunken hillbilly threw a beer bottle at my dog and hurt him enough to make him skittish at that exact locale.

I do not know and probably cannot know. But it is a perfect day, and the spotted menace and I will walk again today, several times. We may, however, take a different route. Perhaps up through the woods behind our house. But I think those woods may be haunted in their own way. It is no accident that this time of year is freighted with the raised hair on the nape, the careful look, the cautious step, the wariness around certain dark shapes or certain drapes of vines on trees. And it is a fact that sometimes I can be as narvish as my dog can be.

~ S.K. Orr