Sat like a human on the couch, upright, with his little hands and legs out in front of him, watching TV with one wandering eye and looking, with the other, to participate in our chat by means of his protovocalizations. Had the music of it right, toward the end, but he only ever made imperfect sense. Disappeared for good sometime in the early eighties, in search of what fumes we can never know.
Unclear whether he raced all those soon-to-be crumpled cars and trucks into the perfectly negotiable curve in front of our Virginia home.
BROWN DOG (1979–1988). The prettiest animal I have ever laid eyes on and also, by a wide margin, the stupidest. Given various names by my sister (I remember “Maggie” and, in a more desperate attempt, “Lolla-Lee-Loo”), all of which our father disallowed, arguing that a dog so stupid ought to be known only by some physical characteristic that distinguished it from the others. Became known, then, as Brown, or Brown Dog, when in fact she was spectacularly golden. I do not know why we never thought of “Goldie” for this sweet, furry shepherd-retriever collision.
Sat, out of fear, or ignorance, on the roof of a car in the driveway, like Snoopy on his doghouse, which may have spooked passing motorists, or at least distracted them, as they headed into the otherwise perfectly negotiable curve in front of our house. Caught heatstroke up there and gave us much joy in watching her shake and vomit in the yard. Survived, barely, an apparent suicide attempt by wonder Bread truck, though later we wondered whether this had been, in fact, an attempt simply to race the vehicle, following after Blackie’s faster example.
Was a big one for hugs and pets, and often, even after she was spayed, showed menses down the back of her pretty yellow haunches.
Sat and watched, mesmerized, as the deer roamed the corn rows and chewed, happily and unbothered by her, on the ears.
Died, suddenly and mysteriously, shortly after we had all left home. As our father explained over the telephone, “The bitch just up and died.” Might have been snakebit. Was buried, unceremoniously, in what was left of the hole that had formerly been the old outhouse.
GINGER SNAP (1981–?). The product of a black-and-tan hound who had got loose from a hunting pen and impregnated a small, reddish housepet across the road from some friends in the eastern part of the county. Was unusually worried by, and about, herself. Fancied play, and the wedge-shaped boxes of d-Con rat poison my parents put around the place, but would go deathly still whenever I went out behind the house, of a quiet evening, and gazed out over the fields, and into the woods beyond, and gave a sharp yell to awaken, from every angle, the hunting dogs in the kennels all around. Then she would bark and howl back at them, and would look at me as if she did not know what was happening to her, and would not quiet down until I had taken her into my arms, and got inside a car, and shut the door against the world outside.
Asked always, by her eyes, about her true nature, but received no straight answer. Sat and listened, more than any other dog of ours, to the trees, and would jump if the wind shifted suddenly, and would snarl and snap at the air, but was perfectly happy again if you dangled a toy, or else a box of rat poison, in front of her. Was well liked, this dog, but misunderstood. We were never quite sure whether her agonized barks and squeals on the side porch, as her kin chased deer through the trees and into the northern clearing to be slaughtered, perchance to be slaughtered themselves, constituted an alarm so much as it did a cheer.
Disappeared sometime in the middle 1980s. We assumed she had been found in the woods, ours or someone else’s, and taken off by a hunter to live and run and die with those kennel-bound cousins of hers. She had a good enough nose for danger, after all, and a loud enough bark, and she always chased the deer away from the corn.
JACKIE (1977–?). Not properly a dog at all but rather a gray tabby, come with us from Southern Illinois to teach us something about misery. Had free run of the place until she dared lash out at a puppy we had recently agreed, at our father’s urging, to call Cooper, sweet and round, who climbed the concrete step to the side porch, looking to make friends, and had his left eye scratched by the cat. Was forced thereafter to watch said pup grow into an enormous and unforgiving beast, who more than once stood with a feline corpse in his jaws and glared up at where she now lived, on top of an old wardrobe on the side porch. Spent the rest of her life, that I know of, without once risking the ground again. When not on the wardrobe, or clinging to the mesh of a window screen, or in the leapt-to branches of the magnolia tree in the side yard, she sometimes vanished for weeks. It was rumored that she had managed somehow to access the walls of the house. On one occasion I was sure I heard her in the attic, as no assembly of rats could possibly have made such a racket up there. Whether she hunted these rats, and, if so, what their tainted blood might have done to a creature already mad with fear, I cannot say.
The time and manner of her death are unknown to me.
BUTTFUCKER (1981–1984). Was allowed, after the massacre, to roam the yard as if he were one of the dogs, which, henless, he basically was. The door to the coop yard remained open, in case he wanted access to his former manse and grounds, but I never once saw him go in there. When it rained he came up onto the side porch with the others and huddled in amongst them. Stuck to the side yard and moped when the pack went out exploring in the woods and the fields; had tried to keep up but was incapable.
Showed now only bursts of his former violence, though these were impressive wings-out/claws-forward affairs directed mostly at human visitors to the yard. Allowed me sometimes to sit beside him on the concrete-block step and pet his head, as he had seen me do with the dogs. Made little chicken noises all the while.
Never wanted for feed, with the hens dead, but was curious about what his peers were given for breakfast and dinner. Wandered over, one Sunday morning, to the communal dog bowl, where Cooper ate first, and then Brown Dog, and then Blackie (when he came around), and then Ginger Snap, and took exactly one (1) piece of kibble out of the bowl with his tiny beak, whereupon Cooper promptly killed him in a cloud of flesh and feathers.
B. F., he was generally called, in company.
WEE COOPER O’FIFE (1979–1992). Placed into my arms on the occasion of my thirteenth birthday, this mutt got from the union of a showdog housed briefly at the juvenile-delinquent facility where my parents both worked (said to have been designed by Mr. Jefferson himself as a waystation between slave-kept Monticello and his work in slave-kept Richmond, at which waystation once bivouacked Cornwallis’s boys, on their way to Yorktown, and where later may have nightmared Sheridan’s) and a giant of unknown origin. Popped, that is, too large, out of a tiny springer spaniel, which I suspect caused her later, dazed and damaged, to wander off into oncoming traffic in Henrico County and be flattened, which incident my father often made direct reference to when speaking with the sad little pup.
Caught and developed mange while in our care, and so we built a pen in the side yard to keep him isolated from the other dogs, and had him up regularly on the newspaper-draped dining-room table, to slather him with medicine, while everyone gathered around and worried, after which we placed him back in the pen, which he did not understand, any more than he understood why a tiny, massive dog of approximately his same coloring (black, mostly, with touches of white) leapt the pen’s high walls on a daily basis to snarl at and ram him, who wanted nothing more than to make friends, just as he tried to when, let out of the pen one afternoon, he climbed, as we all watched, up the concrete-block step to the side porch and was met, in the cornea, by a tabby’s hateful claw.