Church of the Dog (5 page)

Manuel is the only Hispanic student in the whole school, but he’s confident and proud and the leader of the dancing. During “Flight of the Bumblebee,” he scoots around the room in urgent and frantic shuffles. A few join while others watch, scribble, and giggle. During the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Manuel makes his arms curve, spiral, and undulate. I smile widely in delight at how well he interprets music. During Bob Marley, he bounces in exaggerated up-and-down movements, and, finally, during Miles Davis, he makes every movement as big and excited as he can. He’s joyous. I think about the inhibited and sulky sixth graders and wonder what happens to us and why. When do we lose that joy or at least learn to temper it?

At lunch I drive to the high school. My fifth-period class, the one that immediately follows lunch, has a wide assortment of kids in it, from the cowboy and the good girls to the two severe-looking, almost punk rock girls and the group of boys who appear to be stoned out of their gourds. I introduce myself, hand out my syllabus, go over safety rules, and ask them what in particular they’d like to learn about or experience in my class. No one raises their hand and no one talks. It’s creepy. I noticed it when they first came in. They didn’t talk even to each other. I don’t know if it’s because they’re uncomfortable with me or with each other—if it’s a Wild Kingdom thing, like a bunch of wild animals thrown into a cage together who won’t be comfortable until they sort out what the pecking order is, whose territory is whose, and perhaps even who will be getting devoured. In the end I ask them to put on paper what they’re interested in learning. Most of them don’t even look at me.

My sixth-period class is the opposite, but not necessarily in a positive way. They’re loud. Two students boisterously exchange tips on hiding drugs from the drug dog. (In the light fixture was their favorite.) Their language is inappropriate when they talk with one another about their summer. Finally, the bell rings. When I ask this group what they want to learn, I’m met with blank stares.

After a long, awkward silence, Tara raises her hand. “Most people are in this class because there was nowhere else for us to go.”

This is my at-risk group that no one warned me about. One wrong move in one direction, and they’ll disengage. One wrong move in the other direction, and they’ll devour me. As I introduce myself and go over my positive expectations, I make eye contact with each one of them, and each one of them looks me in the eye. That’s what I like about naughty kids. They’ve got gumption like that. And because I’m new and they haven’t been rude to me yet, I know I have the opportunity to be the first teacher to ever tell them that even though they might be here because they had nowhere else to go, I’m really glad they’re here because I can look in their eyes and tell they have all kinds of things to say, opinions to express, and stories to tell. And I look forward to seeing how they’ll tell those things through their art. They exchange sideways looks at each other like they want to laugh at me, and that’s okay with me today. I know they don’t want the others to see that maybe they might actually be excited about something.

One girl doesn’t exchange glances with the others, and she doesn’t smile. When I look at her, she looks angrily back. She looks like a smaller, younger me, but with hair a much brighter shade of red and brown eyes instead of green. She’s much shorter than I am, too. When I call out roll, I learn her name is Kelli.

Finally, my seventh-period class is gregarious and fun. They smile. They joke. They ask questions about how to get an A. They get along. It’s a huge class, but there’s no tension in it. I look around and wonder why. Several of my students are girl athletes. There are more underclassmen in this class, but the seniors who are in it are the student government types who care about winning scholarships. I can see in their eyes that while they have the normal level of small-town angst, they’re hungry for a bigger world and determined to work for the opportunity to get there. Because of these seniors, the younger kids don’t have to act out to win the older kids’ respect. I can tell this class is going to be a part of my day I look forward to. “Kevin, Nate, Emily, Brent, Cara, Kate, Elle,” I call out. Yeah, I’m going to like this class. There’s something special about this class.

When Earl told me I could fix up this place any way I saw fit, I knew he expected me to fix the stairs and the roof, but I don’t think he expected all this. I painted a mural of a giant dog on the side of the small outbuilding. It’s a dog that has been traveling with me in my lucid dreams lately; he’s a Samoyed mix of some kind with little white spots over his eyes like eyebrows and a bottom tooth missing that shows when he smiles. My stained glass is up in the windows, of course. I am in the process of adding a greenhouse onto the other side of the little house, but since I’m accumulating windows from thrift stores, it’s going to take me a while to finish. But I did build a brick oven outside from the pile of bricks where another ranch house used to sit. I must tell you, there is nothing like bread baked in a brick oven. The biggest change is undoubtedly what I did to the entryway. I busted out the old entry and rebuilt it in a way that sort of looks like an old church tower except smaller. Instead of having a bell in the tower, I hung several wind chimes so that my new house sounds like an Indonesian gamelan concert.

The McRaes call my house the Church of the Dog, which I find very funny.

I’ve created flower boxes and garden spaces, although all that is in them right now are bulbs in cages (so the rodents don’t get them). Bulbs and compost. I’m in heaven with all this abundant compost material.

Using rotted fence posts, I’ve started some dog sculptures in the yard around the house. I don’t know how long they’ll last. Maybe I’ll try to build a little foundry at some point and cast them in iron.

Lately I’ve just been drawn to the dogs as a symbol of the divine protective spirit. I guess it’s the dog in my dream that has gotten me thinking about it.

Earl and I spend our Saturdays fixing fences. Well, first he goes to the local café to meet with his friends for coffee, and I go make waffles for Edith and me. I figure after sixty years of cooking for other people, it might be nice to have someone cook for you, and, well, I like to eat with other people once in a while. Then Earl comes home, and we go fix fences.

Earl teaches me about ranch life and tells me where summer and winter ranges are for the deer, where animals can find water when, what the presence of different birds acting in different ways means, and how to predict the weather.

Harvey, the hog, follows us all over the ranch on Saturdays. Earl gives me all kinds of grief about the practicality of feeding a hog I’m never going to eat, but I tell him it’s really no different than a dog and is perhaps more practical because hogs eat more of my vegetarian table scraps. Of course this opens up yet another can of worms.

No topic is a safe one with Earl. Ever since he saw the big metal Craftsman toolbox that Dad gave me for Christmas when I turned fourteen, the year he died, Earl and I spend much of our time having lengthy debates over tools: Stanley versus Craftsman; whether cordless screwdrivers are a blessing or a curse; when a socket is better than a wrench; and the problem that metrics have caused: “Now you got to have two different wrench and socket sets!” This last topic usually leads to the sore topic of my pickup and the importance of buying American.

Every Saturday morning he has a big bump on the side of his neck, and while he talks at me about the evils of my pickup and I try in vain to convince him that some Toyotas are made in the United States and that parts for Ford are made overseas now, I send in a narrow beam of red laser energy—sort of liquid light if you can imagine that—to blow up that bump cell by cell. By Sunday morning it’s smaller, but by the following Saturday, it’s back up to its previous size.

All I’m doing is buying him a little more time to put his life in order, I guess, although since none of us get off this planet alive, buying more time on this planet is really all “saving” is, anyway. Healing is another matter. Healing is something you have to do for yourself. Healing is what happens to your soul, to your life, to your relationships with others. Healing does not always extend the length of your time on this planet, but healing is all that truly matters.

Today we got back just before a lightning storm began to rip. I do not like lightning. I acknowledge it as part of the balance of our living planet. If you think about it, the atmosphere is like the planet’s aura, and in that light what goes on in the planet’s energy field is intriguing to me. But in another light it just scares the hell out of me. I guess because I know I have a bigger energy field than most people, and it stands to reason that lightning would be more attracted to me than even metallic objects. But Gram taught me “what you give your attention to grows,” so I try not to give my attention to getting fried by a bolt of lightning.

Outside my window, I hear a whimper.

I open the door to find the dog from my dreams that I painted on my house standing in the rain. The rain rolls off his white and gray fur. I don’t really know how this all works—you know, like where he came from exactly . . . what dimension. And I don’t really know why he travels in my dreams with me. It could be that in my dreams I traveled to the future. Or it could also be that I was out in some dimensions where God thought it might be better if I had a protective spirit with me, and then figured I could use his services here on Earth, too. I don’t know. Maybe dogs are teachers. Maybe they are sent to us from Heaven to teach us how to be protective Guardian Angels for each other here on Earth.

Whatever the case may be, I figure what else can you name your soul dog who appears to you on a night with lightning besides Zeus?

I open the door and let Zeus in. He lies next to my short futon bed, and I am thankful to have a protective spirit to put my arm around on this terrifying night as I fall asleep.

autumn

From my darkroom I can hear Minda call a bear alert to Rob. We were thinking we might have to break down and do something about all the Hefty bags of garbage on our back porch that attract all kinds of wildlife, and then we discovered that Rob could scare away darn near anything by singing almost any Bee Gees song at them. In the moments that follow I hear the back door open, Rob wail out the first two lines of “Stayin’ Alive,” and then a victorious cheer from Minda and Paul.

I finish developing a roll of film that I took of Minda, Rob, and Paul in our daily life here at the house. I just stick the negatives in an envelope and tuck it away. It’s nice to know I can always pull the negatives out and print pictures if I ever need to remember something.

When I come out, Minda, Rob, and Paul are decorating the Christmas tree from last year that’s been sitting on the back porch since they took it out sometime around Valentine’s Day. They brought it in, and instead of putting it in a stand, they just leaned it up against the wall in the corner of the room. They pass Paul’s brownies and decorate the tree with Minda’s extensive Pez dispenser collection. Tonight’s musical selection is “Feed the World” or whatever that song from the eighties is where the proceeds were supposed to help starving people in Ethiopia. Their task at hand is momentarily interrupted when Rob makes the Wonder Woman Pez tell the Darth Vader Pez that she could kick his ass and that he really needs a make-over. This launches them into a debate as to whose ass Wonder Woman really could kick and ultimately who is a greater force to be reckoned with: Wonder Woman or the Bionic Woman.

I miss their conclusion as I slip out the door to the backyard where I keep an ice chest hanging from a tree. The cold night smacks my face. Feels like snow. I double-check for bears before I lower the ice chest, remove some smoked salmon, hang it up again, and slip back into the warmth of the foul-smelling house.

“Hey, wanna put towels around our necks like superhero capes and run around the house?” Rob tries to get the others excited about his idea.

“Daniel,” Minda says, noticing me. She walks over and puts her arms around my neck. “My little hermit friend. Tomorrow I leave for the heli-ski lodge.” Then she begins to sing “I’m so glad we had this time together” from the Carol Burnett show but gets mixed up and ends up singing the song that Mr. Rogers sings at the end of his show. “My little hermit friend, would you like some Jell-O I made with your blackberry brew?”

"Yum. There’s always room for Jell-O,” Paul says, nodding with a smile, trying to persuade me to go for it. “You guys,” he says as he takes another handful of Jell-O, “this is the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”

It’s only September, but I let it slide and enjoy a little Jell-O with my smoked salmon.

As I walk into the high school during lunch, I reflect on what a bizarre and illogical career choice I’ve made since I hated high school so much the first time around. When I walk down the hall, I have to remind myself that I’m no longer a powerless misfit teenager and that no one is going to hurt or threaten me.

I remember being fifteen, dressed in mostly black with a short spiked hairdo and wearing boots that looked like wrestling shoes. A group of fifteen guys surrounded me on the edge of campus. They were loggers’ kids and meaner than anything found west of coal country.

“Nice boots,” one said sarcastically.

“Thanks,” I said back, like I didn’t get the sarcasm.

“Where’d you get ’em? Goodwill?” another said.

“Yup,” I replied even though I didn’t. I kept my cool, knowing the minute they saw fear, their games would really begin. I kept walking toward campus, with their challenging inbred faces in my face. Inside my pocket I gripped my knife, which I hoped I wouldn’t have to use.

Just then a teacher walked out of his room, and the pack of bullies walked off in another direction. But before they disappeared one yelled something back at me that I’d rather not repeat. Even though their words had the power to make me feel sexually violated, physically I wasn’t. I was safe again for the moment. I went to the music room and took my bass into a tiny practice room where I started to shake and cry, releasing the fear and stress of just another daily incident.