Church of the Dog (9 page)

Mara pulls the cork from a bottle of red wine, pours two glasses, and lifts one to toast. Grandma lifts the other.

“To bread!” Mara shouts.

“To bread!” Grandma echoes. Huh? Grandma doesn’t drink.

I’ve been working on creating the perfect sourdough starter. I’ve been moving it around to different places on the ranch to attract a wide spectrum of molds.

The fire is going quite nicely in the brick structure outside. When I’m sure it’s hot enough, I’ll put out the fire, then mop out the cinders and pop the dough in. I drool just thinking of the perfect crust.

Edith has joined me for the christening of the oven. Instead of breaking a bottle of wine over it, though, we are drinking it. She and I sip our Italian table wine while we push sun-dried tomato chunks and garlic cloves into the bread. Is there anything better than focaccia bread? Not unless it’s focaccia bread with baked elephant garlic and extra-virgin olive oil all over it.

“You know, Edith, I used to hate the word
lady
.”

“Whatever for?”

“Sit like a lady, act like a lady, talk like a lady. The word seemed like a club to beat women back into submission.”

She just laughs at me.

“But then my friend was teaching me to make bread dough and informed me that
lady
originally meant
she who kneads the bread
. She laughed and laughed at having turned me into a lady.”

Edith laughs even more.

I refill our wineglasses before we take our beautiful loaves over to the oven.

Harvey watches us from his pen, sniffing the air and greeting us with little grunting noises that warm my heart.

Edith sits on the picnic table, leaning back with her feet up, while I mop out the cinders. “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore,” she begins to sing, and I join her. Something about that song compels a person to hold up her wineglass while singing. At times we can’t remember the words and sing, “Da, da, da . . .”

The singing attracts Earl who comes over to see what he’s missing. I put the bread in and place a wooden door over the opening. He seems amused to find his wife tipsy. He leans over and whispers something in her ear, something I assume is sexy judging by Edith’s flirtatious smile.

“I’m going to go now, dear!” she says to me. “Thank you! I had fun!” She drapes her arm around Earl and begins to stroll back to the house. I hear her sing on, “When you walk through a dream but you know you’re not dreaming . . .”

I know what my favorite thing on Earth is now. It’s Zeus’s fur. I love it. I love to bury my face in that really thick fur around his neck. You know, most people think dogs stink, but I find the smell rather comforting. Furry dogs are definitely my favorite thing on Earth. Better than warm wind. Better than fresh-baked bread. Even just a little better than the smell of horses or how their shoulder feels under your hand when you give them firm pats and that sound it makes. I do love it when a horse and I take turns breathing up each other’s noses—I wonder what I must smell like to them—and their sweet peach-fuzzy nose is in my face. You gotta love those whiskery horse lips. And don’t get me wrong: I’m developing quite a soft spot for hogs, too, but that thick fur around Zeus’s neck and how safe I feel when I nuzzle my face in it, that takes the cake. I love Zeus.

I wonder how it all works, you know, with dogs and Heaven. Once, I overheard Tyler and the other fourth graders at his table discussing whether or not dogs went to regular people Heaven or if they have a special Dog Heaven.

I have a friend who suggested to me once that pets are souls you were really kind to in a past life who volunteer to come down in this form during this lifetime to be guardians. I don’t know if I believe that or not, but I entertain the idea. I look at Zeus and wonder who he really is. I wonder what I did to deserve such a good dog friend.

You know, if dogs really are guardian souls, doesn’t it make you sad to think of all those people keeping their dogs tied up in their backyards? Imagine treating a celestial being like a prisoner. Imagine not fully accepting your guardian. Do you suppose the guardian souls knew they’d end up chained in the same place for fifteen years when they volunteered to come down? Hard to imagine that. You know, there just aren’t a lot of humans out there accepting all God’s love in all its forms, if you ask me.

But maybe dogs are just dogs. And maybe they go to Dog Heaven. Or maybe they wait for us in one big Heaven. I hope so. I’d love to have this dog friend in Heaven, too. I’d bury my face in his neck for eternity.

Tonight, Zeus and I travel in our lucid dream to visit Gram so I can show him off. He and I fly over the Gorge, Mount Adams, and Rainier, and land in Gram’s front yard, in her angel garden among her numerous statues. Gram’s spirit comes outside to greet us.

“Well, who do you have here?” she exclaims, reaching down to rub Zeus’s belly.

“I wanted to show you my new dog!” I happily announce. “Hey, while you’re up here, would you like to travel ahead a couple months and look at the tulip fields?” This is one of Gram’s favorite things to do. Next thing I know, Gram, Zeus, and I are floating high in the sky above Mount Vernon’s tulip fields in April. We wave to some people in a hot-air balloon, but they don’t see us. Zeus smiles at birds passing us.

“I love this, don’t you?” she asks me, a big smile on her face.

I’m bringin’ in the yearlings for probably my last time. This is probably my last roundup, and not a very fast one, but that’s all right because I want to savor it. I find myself wantin’ to remember every detail about every past year’s roundup. Heck, I find myself wantin’ to remember every detail about my life. My brain won’t do it, though. All the years blur together to make just one picture of my life.

There’s somethin’ about knowin’ you’re probably gonna die that makes you cowboy up and honestly live your last days. I’m aware of everything today. The air smells like horse and cattle and that smell of fall. I can’t believe this is probably the last fall I’m gonna smell.

I now realize how many years I wasted feeling dead after the kids died. I just sorta functioned without much thinking for the last twenty-four years. I’m not sayin’ that I shouldn’t’ve grieved. I’m just sayin’ that at some point I should’ve woke up. I guess at some point grief became a habit, and then it became who I was. Guess there’s no use cryin’ over spilt milk.

But I do look at Daniel and see the same thing—just sorta functioning. And I wonder if he would be this way if I had been there for him. I thought I was there for him. I never missed a rodeo. Maybe he needed something else from me. I don’t know. All I know is I would hate for him, like me, to have to be facing his death before he learns to enjoy his life.

Mara, Whitey, and I pull up the rear, followed, of course, by Zeus and that damned hog, Harvey. Daniel and Hank ride the sides. When we get the herd into a draw that deepens as we continue gradually downhill, Daniel and Hank are able to kick back with us a little more.

Hank rides over to Mara. “You know, my daughter is in your class.”

“Oh, yeah? Who’s that?” Mara asks.

"Allison O’Callighan,” he answers.

“Neat kid. Good job,” she says.

“Did she tell you what I did to her at the fair?” Hank asks.

“No,” she says.

“Well, I’m the rodeo announcer there, and I look over and spot my daughter by the hog barn talkin’ to some boys, so I say over the intercom, ‘Hey, you boys by the hog barn talkin’ to my daughter! I’m the big guy up here in the red shirt, and I’m Allison’s dad! I just bought a new twenty-two, and I’m a good shot!’ " ”

“Oh, I bet she was horrified. Has she forgiven you yet?”

“Well, I think she almost did, but I speculate I may have made things worse when I passed by her at the football game last week and saw some kid holdin’ her hand. I went, ‘Hey! You holdin’ my daughter’s hand?’ Well the kid jerked his hand away like this and says, ‘No, sir!’ and so I said, ‘Good, ’cause if you were, I was gonna have to rip off your hand and beat you with it.’ ”

“Allison is one lucky girl,” Mara says.

Then, just for fun, I shout out, “Hey, Mara, mouse!”

“Very funny,” she says.

“Hank, Daniel. Okay now, this is better than the fact that she has a pet hog. I’m looking out my window yesterday and see Mara get in her foreign pickup,” I begin.

“Don’t start, Earl. You know Toyotas are manufactured in Detroit now,” she interrupts.

“She’s about to drive off,” I continue, “when she jumps out and does this wild dance.” I imitate her a little, but it spooks the horse. “She looks in her pickup from time to time, still runnin’, and she’s all shuddering like this. So eventually I go out to see what the fuss is about. She sees me and starts shrieking, ‘There was a mouse on my shoulder!’ ”

“I didn’t sound anything like that, Earl. You’re exaggerating.”

“God as my witness, I swear I am not. ‘Now, Earl, I’ve never had a problem with mice, but it was so close to my neck, Earl! My neck!’ and she starts with that eebie-jeebie dance again. Now, she wasn’t about to get back in that truck again even though I told her I was quite sure the little bugger had jumped out through the firewall about the time she slammed on the brakes. She was havin’ none of it.”

“So what did you do?” Whitey asks.

“What do you think I did? I reached in, turned off the damn engine, grabbed the nearest barn cat, threw it in, and shut the door!”

“Shoot,” says Whitey and starts laughing. Whitey is even older than me and likes to tell stories of ridin’ the pack trains up the Icicle Canyon above Leavenworth, Washington, as a kid. He was quite a bull rider in his day, too. “I remember once a mouse was livin’ in the heatin’ system of my truck. Then he died. Sure made an awful stink. Then a few months later when winter came, I turned on my heater, and all these dried mouse parts come shootin’ out of the vent!” He laughs sort of raspy like old men do.

Then Hank chimes in: “Once, I got into a pickup I had parked in a field for maybe two weeks. I put my foot down on the clutch and felt a squish and sorta heard a crunch. Well, I tell you what, I look down at the bottom of my boot, and there’s squished baby mice all over it!”

“Did you track ’em all over your wife’s carpet?” Whitey is really heehawing.

“Nope. Just took the nearest stick and scraped ’em out.” Hank’s laugh is so deep and low, I swear only elephants can hear it. “Hey, is anyone else’s butt getting sore, or is it just me?”

Everyone agrees.

Hank says, “I never did understand people who rode for pleasure. Ridin’ was somethin’ we had to do, and during most of the year we were hatin’ every minute of it.”

“Cold,” Whitey says.

I agree. “Yeah, miserable, cold rain.”

Hank says, “This is the year I’m gonna trade in my horses for four-wheelers. Hey, Mara, want to buy a horse, or are you going to eventually break that hog? I figure if you’re not going to eat it, you should at least figure out a way to ride it.”

“I’ll get right on that,” she says.

“You could ride it in parades,” Hank says with a laugh.

“Hey, Mara,” Daniel says. “If Hank starts giving you too bad of a time about your hog, you just ask him how Fifi is.”

Whitey and I begin to laugh hysterically.

“Fifi, huh?” Mara asks, delighted.

“Yeah, Hank, why isn’t Fifi riding with you today?” Whitey asks, tears streaming down his face with laughter.

“Let me tell you a little story about Hank,” I begin.

“Don’t believe a word they say, Mara,” Hank says.

“Now Hank had this pitbull that used to follow him when he rode his motorcycle into town—” I start.

“I loved that dog. Buddy,” Hank says.

I continue, “—but one time Mrs. Gallagher’s shih tzu ran out at them. The pitbull killed it and brought it to Hank, so there was no denying how the shih tzu died. Well, Mrs. Gallagher claimed it was a five-hundred-dollar dog, and Hank wasn’t about to fork that over, so he found her a three-hundred-dollar shih tzu and brought it to her.”

Hanks says, “She kept it for a few days but didn’t like it, so she called me and asked me to take it away. The breeder I got it from wouldn’t take it back, so I was stuck with this three-hundred -dollar yap-yap.”

“Though he publicly curses the dog, it should be noted you never see Hank driving around on his motorcycle without it,” I say. Mara laughs.

“It just sits right there on the gas tank and yaps at everything it passes,” Whitey says.

“He put those no-slip stickers for shower floors right on the gas tank for the dog, so it won’t slip off,” I say.

“Damn little rat dog,” Hank says.

I catch Daniel shooting pictures of all of us telling stories, and I’m glad. I want to be remembered like this.

It’s probably my last roundup and my last autumn. I hope Heaven is so wonderful that I won’t miss this life, but that’s hard for me to imagine. Just when I find myself gettin’ lost in these thoughts, Hank starts up with another story. I give my horse a couple firm pats on the shoulder and drink up this day like a fine shot of brandy.

“If you have to go on the crab boat for just three weeks, why don’t you just fly there and then fly back when it’s over? That way you can spend Christmas with us. Daniel, it’s been so long, and life is short,” Grandma says.

She played the card. I can’t believe Grandma played the card. Now what can you do when your grandma plays the “I’m not going to be here forever” card? You can’t dismiss it. You can’t blow her off. She would think she didn’t matter to you. I pause a moment and study her. Yep, she is not going to live forever. I see a fragility I never used to see in her eyes. I can’t say no. I can’t say no to her. “Okay,” I say.

I just signed myself up for November, December, and January on the ranch. Three months. Three long and quiet winter months. Shit.