Mountain Dog (5 page)

Some stomp and gobble.

Others nibble delicately.

There's one—Gracie's favorite—

that lifts the ice and lets it melt

on top of his head, so he can reach

up, up, up

with his trunk

to pluck huge chunks

of mangos and melons

at leisure.

My quiet poem is about waiting.

I write it from Gabe's

energetic dog point of view,

imagining how he feels

when he's eager to work

and anxious to play

even though he's been

commanded to stay.

The teacher says it's good,

and when I ask her to please

never make me read it out loud,

she's nice enough to agree.

After that, school isn't too bad,

but by the time spring break

comes around, I'm ready for time off.

Gabe time. Dog time. Dirty, dusty,

rolling around in grass time.

Laughing, adventurous forest time.

Tío time. Family time.

Each time I think of my uncle

and his dog as a real family,

I have to correct myself.

Remind myself.

Foster family.

Temporary.

Fragile.

Spring break means riding

around in the truck

from one campground to another,

listening to Tío as he leads nature hikes

on trails so remote and beautiful

that I hardly even notice

the bear tracks.

We sleep in a tent, Gabe's snorts

and my uncle's snores blending

like a chorus of weird, funny music.

Life in a tent feels so different

that it's easy for me to pretend

I'm on an expedition

in a magical land

where nightmares don't exist

and all the dreams

are peaceful.

During Tío's nature hikes, I learn

how to recognize rattlesnakes,

poison oak, and wild foods.

If you're lost in the forest,

wilderness lore says you can eat miner's lettuce

and certain lily roots,

but not camas lilies.

You can make fishing line

from stinging-nettle fibers,

ink from pigeon berries,

chewing gum from sugar pine sap.

By the second day of spring break,

I know more about wilderness

than I ever knew about my own

scary home

in the city.

Mountain lion tracks

have a letter
m
at the base

of each paw print.

A snake moving fast

usually makes a zigzag print,

while a slow, relaxed snake

tends to leave a straight line.

A bear's short front feet

leave tracks that look a lot

like a big dog's paw prints,

but the long back feet of a bear

leave eerie shapes that almost

look human.

By the third day of spring break,

I've learned that yellow-bellied marmots

resemble giant squirrels, but they chew wires

under the hoods of cars, leaving campers

stranded and furious.

If a painted lady butterfly lands

on your nose, it's tasting your skin,

drinking salt.

When lightning is about to strike,

wilderness lore says your hair stands up, just like

in old cartoons, so you have to

plant your feet wide apart

and curl your body downward,

and tuck your head so you're not

tall and skinny like a lightning rod.

It's the opposite with mountain lions.

If you see one, reach up and stretch—

try to look big and brave.

Don't turn your back or run.

Never look like prey.

Each night, in the tent, I review

newly memorized wildflowers.

Fireweed, paintbrush, sky pilot.

Names designed

for dreaming.

By the time spring break ends,

I feel so close to Tío that I'm afraid

to return to the cabin and break

the wild spell.

But Easter morning at Cowboy Church

feels dreamlike too. The sunrise service

begins with a horseback drill-team dance.

Gracie is in the lead, galloping at full speed

around and around,

performing pirouettes

and figure eights.

I sit on the corral fence,

wondering how long it takes

to learn full-gallop courage.

Gabe is busy with other dogs,

but Tío and B.B. are nearby,

talking and smiling like they might

turn out to be a lot more

than friends.

The thought makes me cringe.

If Tío married B.B., would Gracie

be my stepniece?

Luckily, I have better things

to think about, because later that same day,

all of us pack a picnic and drive to a grove

of giant sequoia trees. I stand at the base

of one of the oldest, most enormous

living things in the world,

a tree so huge that one branch

looks as big

as a whole

peaceful

forest.

The calmness I absorb in that grove

stays with me for days, until Mom

suddenly starts calling to apologize

for avoiding my visit.

She claims it's the fault of lifers

who keep trying to lure her

into fights so she'll get in real trouble

and end up with a life sentence

like theirs.

I don't know why she bothers

to dump her prison troubles on me.

She can't be dumb enough to fall

into another fighting trap.

She'll probably get out on time,

and then she'll want me back,

and I'll have to go

but I can't imagine

giving up Gabe.

Maybe I could sneak him away

with me …

but then he'd have to

learn how to fight

against pit bulls,

and that would

make me

even more greedy

and selfish

than Mom.

 

I'd be

a monster

a nightmare

impossible

no.

 

10

GABE THE DOG

TOGETHERNESS

I don't understand sadness,

but I can smell the way it makes

the boy feel unnaturally heavy,

so that his breath doesn't seem

to be made

of air.

It's an odor that rhymes

with the weight of aloneness,

so I press my head against the palm

of his hand, hoping to help him feel

the floating lightness

of never-lonely.

 

11

TONY THE BOY

THE RESCUE BEAST

Tío notices my mood.

He invites me to talk, but I don't feel

ready, so he takes me with him

out to the woods, where I help him

by hiding for his search-and-rescue team

of volunteer handlers and their dogs.

Hiding offers me a strange escape

from feeling cheated by life,

even though the dog handlers call me

a volunteer victim.

The way they say it, victim sounds so useful,

because it means that when I hide

in the forest, all the dogs have a chance

to practice finding a real victim.

There are all sorts of complicated

training exercises, but the simplest

is the first one every SAR dog learns:

a runaway.

All I have to do is race away

from a dog as it watches me.

The handler holds on to its collar

so it can't follow until I've vanished

behind a tree or a boulder.

Once I'm out of sight, the dog

is turned loose, and the handler

shouts, Find!

The eager dog rushes

to do his playful

hide-and-seek work,

running to my hiding place

so that he can receive

two rewards—his handler's praise

and a treat, or a toy.

Even the most experienced dogs

love to do runaways

just for fun,

but they also need

more difficult problems.

It's like they're doing math,

and they already know fractions,

percentages, and word problems,

so now they have to move on

and try to master

prealgebra.

Dogs don't separate reality

from fantasy. It's all the same,

all work, all play. Imagine a world

where homework is fun. That's

a dog's world. Just thinking about it

encourages me. Maybe there's hope

for a kid who hates numbers.

Research for an online article

about SAR dogs

calms me too.

It helps me feel safe to know

that search-and-rescue volunteers

practice all year, just in case

someone gets lost.

Even a stranger.

Especially a stranger.

Tío risks his life each time he goes out

in wild weather, at night, in rough terrain,

to search for a child or a thru-hiker.

My uncle claims

he's not brave.

He says there's a fierceness

that takes over his mind, giving him

endurance and strength. He insists

that anyone who has ever

searched for the lost

knows how it feels

to be transformed

into a Rescue Beast

thinking of others

instead of himself.

Rescue Beasts are the opposite

of werewolves. They're people

who turn into wilderness heroes

instead of villains.

There's so much to know.

Where do I start? Tío advises me

to study the dogs, not the Beast.

He shows me how there are two kinds

of searches, area and trailing.

Gabe is one of the few dogs trained

to do both. When he zigzagged

all over the apple grove, his nose

was up in the air, searching for any

human scent, any human at all.

That's called area work.

Trailing work is different.

It can only be done when there's

a PLS—a place last seen—a spot

where someone saw the lost person

right before she vanished.

A trailing dog sniffs any object

that carries the victim's scent—a pillow,

a jacket, a hat. Whenever there's a PLS,

Gabe searches on a long leash,

like a bloodhound in a manhunt movie,

nose to the ground, following only one

set of footprints as he sniffs to match

the smell of those tracks

to the scent of the pillow.

It's eerie, thinking how easily we

can get lost and how little of ourselves

we leave behind. Sunglasses. A backpack.

Winter gloves. After a week or two,

even the unique smell of a person

is gone. The place last seen is only

fragrant and useful for a few days,

or at most, a few weeks.…

Thinking of lost people

reminds me of Mom, but instead

of letting me focus on loss,

Tío goes into Rescue Beast mode,

showing me how to concentrate

on helping others. On SAR training days,

a bunch of us gather in the forest, and I

have my chance to help the dogs

by hiding.

First, I'm escorted to a hiding place

by Tío, who gives me a two-way radio

so I can call him for help

if I get scared.

He marks the spot on his GPS—

a Global Positioning System gadget

that uses beams from satellites

out in space—to show him exactly

where I am at all times, so that even

if the most experienced dogs

and their handlers

happen to have a bad day,

I'll be found.

So I'm safe, and the forest sounds

are soothing, and there are squirrels

and birds to keep me from feeling

completely alone

and I know that no matter how long

I have to wait to be found, Gabe

and the other dogs will take turns

and while they're searching,

they'll learn how to find

real victims.

Even though I enjoy all that oddly

comforting quiet time, alone

and relaxed in the wild,

wondrous woods,

I'm always relieved to hear

the eager pop-pop-pop

of a panting dog's breath

as it races toward me,

helping me feel

like such an important

part of the heroic

Rescue Beast

team.

 

12

GABE THE DOG

TEAMWORK

All I need are my energetic nostrils

so I can follow

the hiding boy's

scent trail.

As soon as I find Tony, I run back to alert my Leo,