Teeth Marks

Hopper

I stand in the family two-car garage not knowing what to do. I can’t go inside. I’m afraid if I do they will know something is wrong and when they find out, it will be nothing but trouble. Don’t laugh, but Hopper, my pet rabbit, has bitten me. He’s about a year old now. He is huge, not the tiny little baby bunny I talked my father into buying for me at Easter. We got him from a rabbit farm that advertised pet Easter bunnies. I read books on rabbits and discover he is a Belgian hare. He has long ears the feel of velvet, he is as big as a beagle, and he is a deep rich reddish brown. He is beautiful, and he is mean.

My father built a rabbit hutch about two feet wide and four feet long with a box at one end I fill with straw for Hopper to sleep in. When I reach into his hutch to give him food and water he runs out of his box straight for me. I’m usually ready and put the bowls down before he gets to me. But this time I wasn’t fast enough. Hopper sinks his large front teeth into the soft white flesh on the inside of my arm just above my wrist. I jerk upwards to escape him but he refuses to let go and hangs firmly suspended from my arm.

This is a sensitive area, my wrist, but I am not making any sound of pain. I know if I yell, someone will come running. I hesitate for a moment, but since this is the only way I know to force him to let go of me, I whack him in the head with my left hand. He drops to the ground and I throw the lid of the hutch down.

There are two gaping holes where his teeth have been and I am bleeding profusely. I run water from the hose over my wound, find a towel to wrap around my arm, and wait for the bleeding to stop. I hide in the garage hoping no one comes out, and listen to the voices inside the house. The muffled preparations for dinner sound so ordinary compared to my panicked fear that I might get rabies. This thought doesn’t deter me from my conviction to keep the incident a secret, however, and consider how I’ll keep my mother from seeing the bite marks. I know if she finds out, Hopper must leave. The bleeding stops and I successfully sneak inside, put band-aids on my wound, and no one finds out.



Lund’s Cocker Spaniel

Our return to Erie when I am six reunites my mother with friends she grew up with and who lived in Erie all their lives, like Chuck Lund. Her best best friends, though, Chuck’s sister Elsie, and another girl, Ruth, moved away. Chuck stayed, married, had kids, owned a boat building business named Lund Boat Works. He is famous in our area for constructing beautiful sailboats and yachts, and holding his liquor. My mother likes to brag she kept up with Chuck in the old days. She does a pretty good job now, too. He drinks martinis, like my Dad; Mom drinks manhattans.
We often go to each other’s houses for dinner, or spend a day on Lake Erie on the Lund’s yacht. We have a small sailboat, pitiful by comparison, an 18’ Lightning named the Jolly Roger. This night we are at the Lunds and it is after dinner. The adults are immersed in talk about the people they know, golf, or sailing at the Erie Yacht Club. I am 8 years old and bored. In the darkness of the backyard I spot their Cocker Spaniel lying on damp grass just covered in evening dew. I squat beside her, eager to touch the silky gold fur. I reach my hand towards her but instead of slipping those inviting ears between my fingers, I feel the scrape of sharp teeth. I cry. She had a bone and was guarding it, they explain, as if I should know not to touch her.



Greta

My very first job training someone else’s dog does not end well. My best friend Ginny lives about a mile away from me, and we often walk back and forth between each other’s houses. Ginny’s neighbor has a German Shepherd named Greta. Greta lives in the backyard, tied to a chain. She is young, energetic, and unschooled. My job is to train her and I will make some extra money.
I work with her all that summer and look forward to going to see Greta, as she must have felt towards me. I know she should have a better life, and I also know there is nothing I can do about it but spend one short hour a week with her.
My own dog is nothing like Greta. He is calm and malleable. But I apply everything I learn in obedience class with him to Greta. I teach her to sit, and walk on my left side, and stay in place. With Arf, I have to be upbeat and exuberant, and sometimes I forget that Greta doesn’t need revving up, she needs toning down. It is the only way she could perhaps be more a part of her family. Now I know how impossible that would be given she was tied to a chain all day. But I was young, naïve and optimistic.
One afternoon, during the week when everyone was at work, including my mother, I walk over to Greta’s to practice with her. She sits and stays beautifully and when I raise my arms in a release motion, Greta leaps into the air happy to have succeeded. She could jump very high, and when she came down, her front canine tooth caught my upper lip, ripping a hole in it. I calmly tie her back to her tether, walk home, and look in the mirror to see what damage has been done. There is a large gash in my lip, but surprisingly no blood.
The normally 30 minute commute to work took less than 15 minutes after my mother heard my brother say on the phone “Marianne’s been bitten in the face.” We race to the emergency room, where we wait. With time on my hands, I begin imagining what they will do to me. I have a terrible phobia for needles and can pass out at the sight of them, or even the hint of blood. As I think about how they will sew my lip up, the room begins to swirl, until I slip unconscious from the plastic chair to the floor.
I have 18 stitches, 7 inside and 11 outside, a swollen purple lip, and a scar, still faintly visible. I beg them not to punish Greta, or get rid of her, that it was an accident. They agree, but I am not allowed to train her again.


Gem

Since Greta I have trained my own dogs, trained hundreds of dogs of all ages, breeds, types in a club obedience program and in private business. There were close calls and scary moments, but I was never bitten. When it comes to aggressive dogs, it’s always when your guard is down.
There are two ways to get a dog to give up something it wants to own. Physically take it from them, or trade it for something else the dog desires, like a really good treat.
My friend’s dog Gem stole things and refused to give them up.
“How to fix it?” she asks.
“That’s easy,” I say.
I chose the wrong way. When I reach towards him, he clamps his jaws tighter. I put my hand on top of his muzzle with my thumb on one side of his jaw, and my index finger on the other side against his teeth. A little pressure, I explain, will cause him to drop it.
He did, and lunges toward my hand and bites me. Before either of us can react, Gem bites me again, only much harder the second time, as if to emphasize his point, and breaks the skin. I realize I’ve made an error in judgment--too late to teach the trade. Compulsion works on submissive dogs, but not on dogs like Gem. He’s never bitten us, my friend says, implying the mistake was mine. They understand Gem’s rules, now I know them too. Gem can keep what he steals.

The Recipe

The recipe arrived the first year of my mother’s marriage and the first Thanksgiving she cooked for her family. Their baby daughter was two months old. She was determined to do things perfectly, to not make a mistake.

Wednesday Morn
Dear Jeanie,
Well, here goes for directions for the turkey. If you can order one from an independent meat or poultry man, you’ll get a nicer bird. I like the firm, yellow looking skin (without pin feathers) instead of the shrivally blue kind. You may pay a few cents more per pound but it’s worth it. Ask for a hen, not a tom. If you’re buying for four, get at least a twelve pound (dressed) bird. It’s more economical. The smaller ones are all bone.

Photos on the album page reveal it’s a holiday and aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandchildren gather together at our house.
A mink stole wraps the shoulders of a sturdy looking older woman. Her eyeglasses are in the 50’s style--thick frames with little plastic wings off to the sides. She’s vain about her glasses and spends hours deciding on frames. Her clothes are stylish, the cut and fashion of the day. The dress flatters her broad hips and substantial frame, with the hint of good German stock. My grandmother’s arms wrap tightly around herself as ineffective insulation against the cold; Lake Erie winds carry a chill. An oversized handbag hangs from one arm, and a small pillbox hat nestles in her hair. From it a thin, barely detectable veil covers her forehead and stops just above the eyeglasses. It’s a curious juxtaposition of large and small accessories, formal dress, and family gathering.

Despite her half smile into the camera lens, there are no clues who this woman really is. I decide my grandmother is a plain looking woman fashionably dressed. Charlie, her second husband, stands beside her. His dark suit bulges tightly against his stomach, drawing an uncomfortable looking line around his middle. His snow-white hair dissolves into the overexposed sky above him. It’s impossible to guess what is in his hand, unless you know my grandfather. He tenderly cradles his pipe like a mother would her infant. In his den of oversized leather chairs and old books is a fine collection of pipes. The sweet smell of tobacco lingers in the bowl and stem long after being tamped and smoked.

What’s missing in this picture is the man this woman originally chose to be her husband. That man, my mother’s father, died in a car accident many years ago. Charlie had a good job as a manager of a W.T. Grant store, so my grandmother, with two small children, married him. His eyes look downturn in the photo, 30 years later, and he isn’t smiling. He treats my grandmother’s nagging as though she is a television on in the background; leave the picture but turn the volume off.

I scrub the turkey with a brush, clean the inside good, drain and wipe the inside with a cloth or paper toweling before stuffing. If you drain and wipe the inside well, you can stuff fit the day before. I have been doing it this way for the last couple of years. For the stuffing: Buy a large loaf of stuffing bread, and if you haven’t seen stuffing bread in the store there, buy two loaves of regular white (not sliced) at least a week before you use it and if it’s not in waxed paper, remove the wrapping. Crumble the bread into small pieces with your fingers. You can scoop it from the crust with a fork. Can’t tell you exactly how much sage or salt and pepper I use. Try about 3 Tbl. powdered sage and 1 Tbl salt. Mix with the bread.

Outside the white serrated edge of this image is a tree-lined neighborhood of well-established houses. Only a small swirl of branches hints at the maple tree in our backyard. Its
distinguishing feature is the multiple trunks growing from one gigantic base and the fact that I get a bird’s eye view from my bedroom window. On November nights when wet flakes cling to bare branches, my mother wakes me to witness the first snowfall of the season.

Mix with the bread. Then simmer about six med. size onions in a little water. (You shouldn’t have any water left on the onions) Before removing from heat, but don’t’ cook, add butter, about 4 good tablespoons. Pour the melted butter-onion mixture over bread and mix well. You can then taste it to see if you have enough seasoning. Go easy on the salt at first-maybe a small tbl cause I don’t know the amount of the bread. When you put the stuffing into turkey, don’t push it in with your fingers-this will make a soggy dressing. Pack it in place with a knife or spoon lightly and any left over dressing can be put in that pocket around the neck. Have the butcher cut out the neck, but don’t let him cut the skin off.

My grandmother always cooked two of everything. Thanksgiving dinners included a turkey and a ham, two kinds of stuffing, mashed potatoes and squash, green beans and peas, cranberries and salad, pumpkin pie and steamed pudding swimming in a sweet whiskey sauce. She never sat down at the table because she constantly carried food, searched for a place to put it down, asked how everything was. When she finally did settle, she’d say “the turkey is too dry this year” or “the potatoes didn’t whip up as smooth,” or “the gravy is too lumpy.” Everyone said, “No, Mom, it’s great.” She never believed them, was never satisfied. Their assurances weren’t convincing enough, their compliments a little too dry and lumpy for her, like the potatoes, they needed to be smoother, creamier.

Then lap the skin over and hold in place with skewers or you can use a needle and thread. Tie the legs together and put a string around the bird to keep the wings tight to the body. Rub the whole bird with salt. The last two turkeys I’ve roasted I used a cloth and uncovered roaster. I wet the cloth, ring it dry and then dip it in melted butter. Wrap it around turkey, sewing it tightly, and roast it in uncovered roaster 30 minutes (at least) for every pound. This 30 minutes is for a room temp. turkey. When it is taken from a cold refrigerator or you could leave yours out in your car overnight.

I once read that habits create physical pathways in the brain. Like a dirt road with tire ruts of a thousand cars traveling through, our brains literally make byways. Families are like the soft tissue under the skull, carving ruts into generations. Routes so old and familiar no one questions them anymore. My mother tried to make new paths, but the grooves in the road were too deep. Like the recipe, instructions must be followed exactly, or else it wouldn’t be perfect.
It wouldn’t be like “Mom’s.”

My turkey comes from the grocery store, and instead of un-sliced white bread, I fill it with my favorite prepackaged stuffing. I don’t scrub the outside of the bird, or know if it is a tom or a hen, or have a butcher to ask, or leave it in the car overnight. Nevertheless, I take the bird out of the refrigerator, unravel a river of paper towel, stuff it into the cavity of the bird, and diligently dry it out, just as my grandmother instructed.

Sammy

July Montana days are filled with a hard, bright light. The heat hits you broadside. Unlike our humid Virginia summer, which wraps softly around you like a clingy overbearing friend and then seeps into your pores, this is assaultive, combative summer. The wind strikes you with its hot dry breath, and slaps at you. In the 100° heat the dogs, held for nine months as evidence in an animal abuse case, only get short walks. In the sun, black coats burn to the touch.

After two trials and a conviction, adoptions finally begin. I’m here to help the ones with behavior problems and assist with matchmaking if called upon.

“Where’s Sammy?” I ask, having been informed that out of the nearly 180 dogs, he is one of the worst off.
Sally takes me to the outdoor pen where a bony, dull coated, wide-eyed dog darts frantically corner to corner. It takes three of us to catch him. We bend forward, arms outstretched, and try to interrupt the panicked running. Needing a few moments to figure out how the heck I’m going to move him, I sit on the ground and hold his leash. He pulls wildly and chokes himself trying to get away from me. Too hot to continue letting Sammy stress out, I decide we should go around the outside of the building, rather than inside past all the barking dogs, and go in the back door-against the rules. The only leash volunteers use for him is a short nylon braided choke lead meant for kennel or veterinary use.

“We can’t walk him,” they explain, “he gets out of all the collars.”

This one tightens around Sammy’s neck so that it is nearly impossible for him to get air into his lungs. He lunges to the end of it and chokes himself. It’s the best we can do for now, I intend to find a better solution.

We go into the “cat room,” where all the kitties lived during their stay in Great Falls until their adoption. Gray panel walls and dark gray carpeting give it a cool, quiet feel. A table shoved against one wall is full of discarded kitty bowls, cat food and unused bags of cat litter. It’s a nice size room, empty except for Liberty, a recuperating Collie in the small portable pen in the corner. I pull out a folding chair and sit down. Sammy throttles himself at the end of the lead trying to get as far from me as possible.

We sit for a long time. I try some of Turid Rugas’ calming signals for dogs: lick my lips, yawn, look away, turn sideways. Nothing works. He not only doesn’t approach me, he leans as far from me against the lead as he can without strangling himself. His tongue hangs out the side of his mouth, long and dripping saliva. His tail is plastered underneath his body, hard against his belly. His eyes are wide and wild. He looks every bit the terrified, tortured, about to die dog he thinks he is. The demons are stirring madly in his head, screaming at him to escape before he dies.

He listens to his demons. He does not listen to me. I watch him from the corner of my eye, and try not to stare at him directly. Staring is threatening and brings the monsters to the surface, as does moving towards him in any way. If I see him take the slightest pressure off the lead, or show the slightest fragment of relaxation, I tell him “good boy, Sammy.” Eventually he sits, a coping mechanism when it’s finally too much for him, and I praise him for that. After 30 minutes, I stand up and walk around the room. We have to be able to move from place to place without the lunge—choke routine. “It makes us look bad, Sammy,” I joke to him. We begin to walk from one end of the room to the other on a fairly loose leash. Whenever he starts to pull, I stop, he looks at me, and I praise him. It must be a strange development because instead of terrified he looks puzzled. After awhile, he looks bored, exactly the look I want.

Slowly Sammy’s face begins to relax and soften. After an hour of this, it’s time to put him back, but I’m reluctant to return him to his pen after the progress we made. Before we go out to the main room with all the dogs, I pause to chat with some of the workers, and Sammy sits beside me. Whenever he forgets and tries to bolt, I work to calm him, and he stands quietly.

“This is Sammy,” I say. There is a tinge of pride in my voice.
“Sammy?” they ask incredulously.
“Yes,” I tell them, “there’s hope.”

It’s hopeless though once we leave that room; he drags me back to his pen past all the barking and lunging dogs. I have spent nearly two hours with him in calm and quiet, and already see progress, but it is depressing to have to return him to his pen. As soon as I release him, he spins, barks and lunges.

Sammy has a habit of darting past the volunteers whenever they try to catch him. He’s lightening fast and slippery, ping ponging from one end of the pen to the other. I sit on the floor and toss treats to him, hoping I can interrupt this habit. He stops and stares at me, but won’t come near me. Finally, I sniff a treat and pretend to eat it. Sammy looks down at all the treats I have tossed on the floor and eats every crumb. When he’s finished he looks up as if to say, “I didn’t know it was food you were throwing at me!”

A young worker rummages up blankets to cover his pen top to bottom. “This will help lower the stimulation and calm him,” I tell her. When Sammy hears me say his name he peeks out between the hanging sheets and stands quietly. Another bit of progress.

For our walks outside I’ve found a new collar he can’t pull out of and fit it so he can’t choke. At the mere hint of pulling, I stop and he looks back, remembers what we are working on, and we start walking again. The one thing he cannot tolerate, though, is human touch. Catching him is easier now, but the panic still sets in. Patience is my only ally. When I reach for his collar he cringes to the ground, shaking. His eyes bulge until the whites show. I have spent a lot of time with him, but I wonder if it is well spent. He gets better in such small increments, and we still don’t know who will adopt him.

The chores are done by 4:00 p.m. and exhausted volunteer workers go home. I’ve grown to love the evenings here and I linger well past the time to leave. I have no commitments but this, and I find a strange and comforting peace with the dogs. As the volunteers leave, they turn many of the lights off, and the darkened building puts the dogs
in a quiet mood. They have been fed, walked, hugged, petted, cleaned and watered. Most are sleeping, stretched out on the cool concrete floor. A hot wind blows under the half closed garage door at the front of the building, but this place is relatively comfortable considering the temperature outside.

Sammy and I have our setbacks while he learns to walk without our lunge-bolt-lunge-bolt routine. He still looks at me wildly and fearfully, like I’m a monster, when I stop and try to get control of him. Our trips outside gradually improve; we can now walk the entire length of the building without him lunging once. But as soon as we near the back door, he panics and leaps uncontrollably. Poor Sammy, there is nothing I can do about his torment of going inside. In the cat room he settles down quickly, and to my amazement he actually lays down in front of the fan blowing warm air around the room. He still won’t let me get near him; if I try and reach my hand towards him, he leans away as though I’m poison. If I hold a treat he will take it, so I count my blessings. Not so long ago this would have been impossible. “Sammy,” I say, and he looks at me and breaks my heart. As much as I wish I could, I can’t take him home with me.

My days are filled with tiny moments of seemingly insignificant events, yet I savor the time I spend with these Collies. Dogs known mainly by their number, relatively few have garnered names in the course of this long arduous trial. Sammy is one of them. When I return to Virginia I learn that Sammy’s new home will be in California. Godspeed Sammy, I pray.


From an unpublished manuscript: The Significance of Naming.
Read at Sunnybank, August 2007 at the Gathering’s The Heart of a Collie

Shadow World

In the moments between wakefulness and sleep the lines separating dream and reality are blurred. In the hour before sunrise, it is neither darkness nor daylight. Half light, ethereal light wraps around solid objects and obscures what defines them. Ordinary vision is no use at all. In pre-dawn darkness there is only what you hear, what you touch, what you feel.

In Miami what you smell is humidity—the ocean’s influence on your nostrils, skin, and brain. Aqueous air saturated with leafy palms, bits of sand, and sweat. Add to that fresh-layered sawdust, new hay, and Thoroughbred horseflesh. It’s like smelling a pot of stew and trying to discern all the spices used by the cook.

I’m surrounded by gypsies. There are gypsies of the rising sun and gypsies of the ensuing darkness. Two distinct clans, they rarely meet though they share those same early morning hours. Like ghosts drifting between the lines of day and night, the racetrack gypsies walk the alleyways among row after row of barns. People move in and out of light diffused by minuscule fragments of moisture and sand, otherworldly. I walk into the brighter space and pause as another tightens the girth. He cups his hands together and leans into the hard shoulder of my horse, counts “one, two, three,” and boosts me upwards into the saddle.

In the shadow world I only feel. Thin strips of leather mold into my hands, knees grip sides, ankles ache from the downward pressure of my heels, calves strain under twitching muscles. Beyond the rules of gravity I am weightless, my hands are feather light, nestled into the coarse mane and slick neck. Held low, my rooted fingers whisper “relax, go slow, easy.” We travel in darkness down the long alleyway onto the oval track. This is the shadow world of speed. Before a pastern is bent or a hoof is placed onto the surface, nostrils expand, heart pounds, and the rhythmic deep breathing of an engine at work moves muscle, sinew, and bone.

We can only hear the sound as hooves approach, a fine cupping beat in four or two time. Two beats, inhale, two beats, exhale. The breath fills in the spaces left by the galloping speed; closer and closer, first behind, then beside, and finally past us. My hands grip tighter, “not now,” I say, “not yet.” I cannot clearly see the ears but I know they are flicking furiously back and forth at my voice, as the beat of hooves closes in on him, as the sound takes shape around us.

Slowly my hands move up the neck, eating away at the leather. Imperceptibly I lean forward. This is a signal as clear as any flag; ears twist back for an instant and then straight forward. We are like aliens communicating with only our appendages. We travel faster and faster. I am motionless as I feel everything moving beneath me.

We are in the blue light, rider and horse. There are only three things to count. The silence. The breathing. The tight, thin legs pounding faster and faster into the sand. In the blue light I have wings. I begin as an earthling as my horse runs, but soon the ground gives way, and I am lifted up, higher and higher. My horse has wings and I am on the back of Pegasus reaching for some nether world. We can do anything, go anywhere, in the blue light above earth. We are untouchable.


(From an as yet untitled new work in progress)

January 1, 2007

It’s the first day of the year, the first evening—4:30 comes quickly and darkness soon after. I think this is winter’s worst feature. The weight of hay in my arms causes me to shift the burden. My discomfort is erased momentarily while a hungry group of 12 waits anxiously for their dinner. It isn’t a chore. Except that it must be done every day: every Sunday, every Christmas, every birthday, every freezing cold or rainy day.

My boots suck and squish in the sloppy wet compost of dirt and manure and the damp group of sheep gather around me to steal a mouthful of food. I inhale the lanolin rich air, the moldy sweet aroma of cut and dried grass, wool, and mud all blended together.

There is finally so much moisture it no longer falls from the sky, but searches for some new form, and rises up from the ground in serpentine patterns. Fog creeps along the vertical boundary of wood’s edge nearly to the tree line. Wispy bands of velvet gray and pink clouds illuminate the western view, their brightly drawn edges clearly visible against the half-light.

On the eastern side, against a flat gray blue canvas above the sinuous fog, spider veins of branches bend, reach, rise, arc, trace into the etch-a-sketch sky. A few steps to the right and I have the round white moon, nearly full but smaller than the smallest coin, in the center of my landscape. Directly below, wooly bodies stand facing me. I sense their concern over the distant roll of deer chasing hounds, and curiosity as to why I am still with them.

We are all diffused in the thing that touches us but is ungraspable. It’s as though some spirit, alive, is searching for a place to grip the land, or me, or my sheep, and settle once and for all, yearning to be solid and real. But for now can only wrap around us and touch our cheeks in ghostly desire to be flesh. This diaphanous creature drifts through the slats of cedar fence, around and between red-green-white prayer flags, and wraps itself into the frothy dancing hemlocks beyond.

Litany of Saints

"St. Catherine, St. Thomas, St. Michael, St. Theresa, St. Anne, pray for us. My mother presses my little hands together and tells me if I pray they will hear me. Blessed Saints please bring me a puppy."

“Look at the camera, honey,” my Daddy commands me. I’m standing beside our Collie Cindy, an arm thrown casually over her shoulder. Cindy’s head is turned towards me, her long nose nearly level with my face. I am only a few weeks past my second birthday. Cindy has the look of a tall, leggy adolescent. In such close contact we are like two friends sharing a look of recognition. Her black fur is shiny and short, not show dog beautiful, but 2-year-old little girls don’t judge beauty or ugliness. They judge loyalty, dependability, and the fortitude to withstand hours of dress up play. I pull shirts, hats, cast off items of clothing over her nose and head, four legs stuffed into the arms of daddy’s shirts, mommy’s hats tied clumsily between her ears. At two, I’m tall for my age, brown curly hair already enveloping my head. The photograph is yellow with age, but has not faded. My bright red sweater contrasts still with the coal black dog. We are unaware of the camera, alone and together. My mother wrote on the back of the snapshot, underneath the month and the date, in perfect parochial script “First Collie-Cindy.” Years later it is the “first” that makes me wonder.

I’m confused about what is my memory, what is family retelling and what is true. There are only a few more pictures of my family with Cindy and I study them for clues. In one, my Dad is on one side of me, Cindy on the other. Cindy and I are leaning against each other like old buddies who sling an arm around their pals to pose for a quick snapshot. I don’t know how long she lived with us. A year or two? Those who would know are all gone now. We moved from the big brick house with fruit trees and berry bushes in the backyard to a duplex. My parents bought it as an investment and planned to rent the other side for income. I think times were difficult then, but my Dad never talked about it. My mother said we had to give up Cindy because we didn’t have room for her. Maybe we didn’t, I don’t know.

"Saints of God, all holy virgins and widows, all holy men and women, make intercession for us. Holy Mary mother of God, St. Lucy, St. Agnes, please hear me. Have mercy on me, forgive me, I promise not to sin again, if I could only have a puppy."

No pictures of Scamp in the family album. He probably never sat still long enough for a picture anyway. Santa brought him. I remember going into my parents bedroom in the middle of Christmas Eve night and waking them up.
“I hear a puppy crying.”
“No you don’t, go back to bed,” my Dad told me. I went back to my room, but I was sure I heard a puppy. Christmas morning, a Cocker Spaniel, all loose skin, oversized ears, wet tongue, soaked my face in puppy kisses. He was never housebroken. He ran all over the neighborhood. He claimed our street, both sides of it, sidewalks, front lawns and doorways as his own: his mission in life to warn away all unwelcome strangers. He growled and bit. He escaped most confinement. My mother hated him. He knew how to squeeze behind furniture, refrigerator, stove, so my mother couldn’t reach him. Broom in hand she would try to whack him out of his hiding spot, but he knew better. He knew my mother’s temper, if not the exact reason for it. He could hide where we could not. He was a savage gone native to the streets and neighborhoods of Springfield, Ohio. He was an untrusting soul; humans were the enemy trying to control him.

I’ve often asked friends if they can remember things from when they were five years old. I’m always surprised when they tell me yes. I’m envious, too. I remember so little. My brother’s birth, the two miscarriages my mother had before my brother was born, the house we lived in after the duplex. I don’t remember birthday parties, or the day my brother came home from the hospital, or family outings. I remember the dogs. I remember my Dad’s sympathy towards Scamp, my mother’s frustration, and my devotion. Strangely, I remember the man who came to visit us, and I knew why. I remember all of us walking out to the sun porch: me, my Dad, Scamp and the stranger. I remember my mother was not with us.
When the man sat down, Scamp went up to him, and allowed himself to be stroked behind the ear.
“He’s a biter,” my Dad warned, but the man was unconcerned. It was the only person I’d ever seen Scamp decide he liked. They left together. We never saw Scamp again.

Excerpt from non-fiction story "Litany of Saints" published in Streetlight (a journal of art & literature) Issue #5 fall 06
Nominated for the Pushcart Prize

My Happiest Year

It’s a long drive from the dense swirl of traffic and humanity in Philadelphia to the quieter road west towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. Norm and I are visiting friends for the weekend in a town called Little Washington. Everyone here seems to be a carpenter, a writer, or a dreamer. Each kitchen we find ourselves in is filled with rustic oak tables, herbs drying in the windows, and glass jars of bright yellow and red vegetables sitting on open shelves. I can turn in any direction and straw-stubbled hills roll to mountains. My Collie Shanda runs wildly free in a black and white blur. He creates wide arcs around the unblinking moist eyed cows. I think perhaps returning to the city is no longer an option.

Someone mentions an absentee landowner who owns thousands of acres in Rappahanock County. If we are interested, Robert, the farm manager, might have something available to rent. Abandoned farmhouses tucked in hollows become escape hatches for city dwellers like me. It’s a wild idea. After several rejections that are more primitive than quaint, Robert drives us to Slate Mills. I like the sound of it.

I see the house on top of the hill as soon as we turn on the drive. Long narrow porches fill the length of the house, front and back. I push the wrought iron gate open into a yard filled with 100-year-old walnut trees, their dark branches dramatic against the December sky.

Robert points out a hand pump above the well and pushes icy clear water out onto the wooden platform, spilling over the frozen ground. The only heat indoors provided by an ugly Stiegler oil furnace sitting in the middle of the living room. I don’t care, though, because beyond this one great long room in the middle of the house are two smaller rooms with huge stone fireplaces and floor to ceiling windows. At the opposite end is the kitchen, facing east, and warmed by the morning sun.

On this same side of the house are a cluster of outbuildings: a summer cook house, a smoke house rotting from the bottom up, and a dark, windowless log cabin I fear was the slave quarters. Faded yellow clapboard siding covers the main house, lined in gingerbread white trim. Outside the flimsy wire fence, 40 fat chickens scratch the dirt beneath their toes. Two hundred acres of pastureland behind the house slope gently to the Hughes River; the farm’s southern boundary.

“We’ll take it,” we tell Robert, even though he warns us the rent is $150 a month.

January and February in our ante-bellum house is freezing cold. When spring arrives winter is forgotten. Honeysuckle blooms on all the fence rows, the smell of fresh cut hay intoxicates me, Nubian goats decorate the pasture next to the house, their black and white bodies contrasting prettily against the green. Our garden has the sweetest peas, the most succulent spinach, and the reddest tomatoes.

In a place with no commerce, I find work breaking yearling thoroughbreds for a drunken horse trainer named Newton Brown. For the privilege he pays me $65 a week.

Our evening ritual is to sit on our porch with Shanda stretched out at our feet, and watch sunsets over Rag Mountain. White and red oak trees lay a viridian haze over the ridges. Norm strums his Martin guitar. This is the happiest year of my life.