I have a mean streak.

I do. It’s an ugly little buzzard sitting down somewhere near the gizzard of my soul.

It makes things up.

Mean things.

And then it convinces me they’re funny.

And then I say them, intending them as a joke–hahaha, imagine if I really meant this–and people’s feelings get hurt.

I don’t know what that’s about, probably because I don’t want to know what it’s about. Are the mean things I say really secretly true and the kinds of things I would say seriously if I had more guts? I don’t think so. I have examined these malaprops carefully after they have danced naked off the end of my tongue and poisonously barbed the exposed flesh of people I love. Did I really mean that? Why would I say it at all if I didn’t? Am I harboring hidden angers and aggressions that fester like boils until they erupt? 

I could point out that fundamentally humor is laughing at that which makes us uncomfortable. It is our way of saying, ‘doesn’t bother me. I’m okay with that. Strike!’

Humor is also how we say to each other, ‘I know you well enough to know to hurt you. I choose not to at this precise moment because you’re my friend–but I do know how. Look! I didn’t do it.’ 

I don’t know why I’m mean. It’s certainly not a trait I admire in anyone else.

Riley and I are home alone today. Well, Ilah is here, but she stays in her room. (Because Nancy and I are succulents who thrive around 68 degrees and Ilah is a hothouse tomato who needs to be 110.) I called Riley inside earlier this morning because he was barking (every dog in the neighborhood was barking, but he was the dog barking in my back yard.) He came to me a minute ago. Cheryl. I have to go outside again. Don’t hate me because I’m half-husky.  And then I heard the discreet rattle of the dog door. He would never just go outside, even if he was taking his nap in the living room and I was in the Conservatory. As often as not he’s happiest when I walk him to the back door. 

Annie went to work with Nancy because I said something insincere and mean this morning. There was a tiny exposed nerve just lying there on the floor and–being me–I stomped on it. So she took Annie to work with her because yesterday I said that Annie was ‘very busy’ all day and actually ended up briefly in her crate because I was tired of her barking at the neighbors. Nancy took her to work so I could have ‘some peace’ today.

I am the hardcore dog-trainer who every ninth offense remembers to snap, “leave it!” and then stands there with my jaw dropped when she leaves it.

Wow! It works! 

Duh.

Anyway. Ilah’s head is healing nicely. She beat me at Phase 10 the day after her trip to the ER, so it does not appear she’s suffered any brain damage.

Oh yes: another Riley story. Because Ilah’s head has a hole in it (stapled shut, but a hole nonetheless) Monday I went to writers group and Nancy stayed home with her mother and the dogs. I spent 3 hours at group and then I drove to Richland to drop off my taxes, so it was a little after one when I came home. I opened the garage door before I drove in. And then I went out to the street and brought the trash can back in. So I came home, but I did not immediately come into the house.

Annie sang, “She’s home! She’s home!” and dashed through the kitchen to dance at the garage door in anticipation of my arrival.

Riley got off the couch, stretched, walked over to Nancy and nose-bumped her. She didn’t take me, this morning, he said. I’m not that excited to see her come home, are you? He cuddled right up against her. It’s you and me, Nancy, because you stayed home with us and she just went gallivanting off without a care in the world…

But his eyes kept going to the back door.

Me and you, Nance–just me and you…

I got the garbage can situated, closed the garage door, dug my stuff out of the car… By the time I opened the garage door Annie was standing there, checking her watch What have you been doing all this time–didn’t you know I was waiting for you? 

And Riley was dancing sideways through the kitchen (he runs like a puppy when he’s excited) You’re home, you’re home! Did you have  a good time, did you see any dogs, can I go with you next time, Oh, thank God, you’re HOME!

No, really. I’m punishing you.

 

Ilah (Nancy’s mom) fell last night. Watching TV in the living room, I heard an odd little cry of distress and I bolted out of my chair (‘bolting out of my chair’ now takes me about five minutes), dashed into her room and found her lying on the floor. Annie dashed in to lick her head because it’s not all that often that Ilah is at floor level to be licked and because she hit her head on a drawer pull on the way down and laid open a gash that bled fairly prefusely.

Cheryl, she has blood on her head–here, I’ll lick it. 

Riley said, Oh, God, the humans are hysterical and he moved his nap to the Conservatory and out of our line of action.

Not Annie. She was in the middle of everything, wriggling.

Panic! Panic! Annie yelled as she ran through the house just in front of me. I was going to get the steam cleaner to steam the blood out of the carpet, but I had to move the wheel chair in the laundry room to get to it and as I hauled it out of the way I happened to think, That might come in handy… So I wheeled the wheel chair back to Ilah’s bedroom while Annie ran along ahead of me I think you should call a helicopter, Cheryl, it could land on the roof and the helicopter guys could rapel down the walls and crawl in the window… We have to get this woman to a doctor, she’s way too old to start sprouting holes in her head…

Nancy took her to the haspital where the doctors examined her, took a CAT scan (or something like that) and eventually tunked four staples in her head. They were gone about two hours. All this time Annie was running around the house, they’re gone, Cheryl, they left without us, it’s almost time to go to bed and two-thirds of our household is missing–I think The Thing in the Back Yard got them, hey, Cheryl–do you have a gun?

While Nancy and I were trying to transfer Ilah from the wheel chair into the car Annie ran around the car twice and finally jumped into the back seat. I’m fairly sure I’m supposed to go with you…

We are going to have to practice emergency proceedures with our dog.

Ilah is fine. She’s wearing a stocking cap today because her wound broke open and bloodied her pillow in the night. She feels fine. I need to go feed her lunch now.

Annie is exhausted.

It is a gray and moody day. At some point I need to gather together my tax papers so I can deliver them to my people tomorrow. I am worried I will owe money. I accidentally looked at the sheet my pension sends me every now and then to let me know what I get, when I get it, and how much everyone else gets to keep and I had to mutter bad words and stomp my feet. I was prepared to live on a ‘fixed’ income: between my health insurance and state and federal taxes, my income appears ‘fixed’ to steadily decrease. I am sure I am the only woman on the planet who has this problem.

Yesterday Riley and I went to the dog park. He knows the route: he knows when he’s within three miles of the dog park. The dog normally snoozing in the back seat is poised like a masthead on my console, his lab/beagle/golden/mutt nose pointed at 3 acres of dog heaven. Two miles from the dog park his tail begins to swing back and forth and he’s panting.

Omigod, omigod, Cheryl, he said excitedly, the place is full of mud!   

He ran through the front gate and greeted the dogs already at the park with a warning growl, Don’t mess with me, I came for the mud, and off he went, running, sniffing, peeing, sniffing butts all over the park.

He is the official park greeter for as long as he’s there: whoever comes through the front gate meets Riley. A man and his son and his dog came through the gate and Riley was there to greet them. Hi. Stay away from me, I just came to sniff your butt. What did you have for supper last night, anyway?  The man reached down for a pat and Riley danced away. Forget you, unknown human, he laughed, I already have enough people in my life and I have running to do. 

I am sure I have said this before. Riley is a pretty dog. I spend a lot of time taking pictures of him, or admiring his head and trying to pinpoint the exact dog he reminds me of. (And I know what dog he reminds me of. Unfortunately I never knew what breed she was, either.) To me he looks like about two-thirds of a golden retriever. Smaller body, slightly shorter hair, beautiful face. Most people at the dog park ignore him because there is nothing about him that particularly stands out and because he is self-entertaining. Even when he runs with other dogs he is always a little behind and a step outside the loop (sadly my Riley has never been a speedhound.) He may occasionally see people at the park that interest him and when he does he runs toward them and when they put out their hand to touch him, he sweeps off to the side, just inches out of reach. If he is known for anything at all at the park, he is known for growling for no particular reason. Or he is known for having an old fat woman who follows him around commenting that he is ‘just an old Boopsie Growler.’

In this Year of the Encroaching Cold–which may say more about the age of Riley’s people than it does about the weather–we haven’t gone to the dog park as much. There may be a little husky buried in Riley’s genes–he loves the dog park and he is morely likely to hang back in the heat than in cold. Tiny crystals in the air do not concern him when he has three acres of fence line to sniff. Trees to mark. The back gate to investigate. We have fallen completely out of the loop of knowing when who goes when, so if he had dog friends at the park, we never show up at the right time. (Not that he cares. Riley is a nose-driven dog, not a social butterfly.)

I sat on the bench and talked to Elmer and his Mom for a while.

I marvelled privately that while I know enough to skirt mud, my  yellow dog came back with a mud-colored undercarriage, as if he ran right through it. He never gets quite as dirty as Izzy can, but the, Izzy has special skills.

On the way home Riley sat in the back seat, looking out the window, and panted. This was good, Cheryl, he assured me. We need to step up this going-to-the-dog-park thing. Whew! Did you see me run?

I am editing today.

Editing is not for the faint of heart.

I belong to a writers group (two, actually) and my writers group hates my writing. (okay: they don’t hate my writing. They hate my fondness for creatively describing a character’s act of articulating thoughts and emotions through tone, expression and eye contact. This boils down to constant arguments about ‘he said’.)

For instance, in the middle of a complex interaction of characters, deaths, kidnappings and stolen dogs, one of my fellow authors has one of her characters worry that she might be responsible for the kidnapping of her close friend, ‘she stated’. I wrote, ‘I know you’re not going to like this but ‘she stated’ is so flat here.’ And she laughed and she said, “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.” (In fact–although she did laugh–she would probably object to my saying that because her comment is not overtly ‘funny’.)

If I say, ‘he agreed’, or ‘she intimated’, or they…really did anything but asked/said, it is ‘distracting’.

I accuse them of being trendy.

Last week I read six books in six days and I honestly don’t remember how any of those writer dealt with ‘he said’.  Interesting. You might think after the number of discussions I’ve had about that subject alone lately, thought delivery systems would stand out for me as I read. They don’t.

So what I have done for the past 5 chapters is run through and cut out the following, soon to be included in the same list where I store ‘a little’, ‘some’, ‘once in a while’ and ‘pretty much’:

he said

she said

he agreed, concurred, admitted, acknowledged, checked, confirmed, guessed, hoped, implied.

she asked, queried, inquired, questioned, wondered

But I’m on a roll now.

If you write a long sentence they want a shorter one; if you write short sentences they want longer ones.

I hope like a crow on roadkill every time the balding head of the passive voice pops up: they gush, ‘I just loved that sentence you used, what was it…something about a crow on roadkill…I’m just not sure what you mean…. 

Ah, well–it’s lunch time. The announcement has been made.

I must to find something for this woman to eat.

And now, the dog wants out. He could just go through his dog door, but….    

    

My hat, my Kindle, my phone, my highlighter, the book I was reading (Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell,) Jenell’s North Carolina basket, the Alabama sun filtered through blinds. You can always tell where I am by tracking my little piles.

Yesterday Nancy’s granddaughter, Nancy’s son and his friend/partner/I’m-not-sure-what-her-official-title-is came over and made dinner for us. Grilled Salmon, sweet potatoes, this w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l cheesy bread, and spinach and portobello mushrooms. And pineapple upside down cake. Wonderful.

Today I wrote a little, spoke firmly to Riley about barking, shared the last of the Cheetos with Annie, ground up some stray papers… We’re not doing anything terribly significant today. It must be moderate weather because Riley is outside and Annie is inside. The sun shines most of the time, but there are some dramatic clouds scattered here and there across the sky.

I have a love-hate relationship with Patricia Cornwell. (She is unaware of our relationship, however contentious it may be.) I read the entire book, much like the last time I was in Bama I read the last Cornwell book, kicking and muttering all the way through it. I am as strong an advocate of strong female leads as anyone around, but there is a certain arrogance to Cornwell’s writing and to her characters that aggravates me. However, would I stand up in front of a room of people and present this as a solemn literary criticism? Probably not. I can be a petty individual when I put my mind to it, and she is small, blond and enormously successful as a writer while I am old, gray, fat and unknown. I can be competitive. There is no doubt in my mind that if I put my competitive spirit up against Cornwell’s, she would mop the floor with me. And, ultimately: I read both books. She is a compelling writer, even if you’re gritting your teeth just as little as you go. Some people might call that ‘edgy’.

Annie is wadded up in a puddle of sunlight on the rug. She’s not even sleeping: she seems to be waiting for something exciting to happen.

Today that might be a long wait.       

Annie is leaning up against Nancy (her front feet are on Nancy) and her tail is wagging 100 miles an hour. Annie is a morning dog. Nancy, Riley and I wake up, fumble our way to the kitchen and wallow through our first cup of coffee, often while lounging, semi-comatose, in the Conservatory.

When Annie’s feet hit the bedroom floor she is AWAKE.

High trot.

Where’s my food?

Is the dog door open yet?

Who are those people walking on our lawn?

She has found her snake, a lovely, lovely gift given to her by a friend, the only toy she has ever owned that has more than one squeaker that has survived her investigations for more than an hour. She has had her snake almost since the day she came home, and it STILL squeaks.

I was a lot happier with squeaky toys before Caesar noted that the sound they make is like a small animal dying in the wild. On the other hand, now that she is the smallest animal in the house, it doesn’t bother me as much as it did.

Which brings me to the subject of children.

(“How?” you might well ask. Just go with it.)

Our lives would be infinitely improved if we able to rent a ten year-old by the hour. Riley would love a ten year-old. I am assuming the squeakers installed in ten year-olds are at least as hardly as those in Annie’s snake. Otherwise I suppose it could end badly…

Rent-A-Kid sounds like a wonderful idea to me. Reverse-babysitting. The last thing I want in my life full-time is a ten year-old, but I could use one running loose to entertain my dogs for about an hour a day. Riley can go to the dog park and ignore other dogs for a while, but Annie is still determined to remove other dog’s squeakers, and their owners take uncommon offense at her efforts, so that’s not an option.

I did run into Kazoo to chat briefly with Annie’s trainer. We let ourselves get busy and distracted, running off to Alabama and getting sick and all, and we accidentally dropped out of Annie’s intermediate obedience class. I took Annie with me and we were talking to the trainer when Annie spied something big and hairy that will someday weigh in excess of a hundred pounds so she decided to kill it, right there in the store in broad daylight. (Well. Surrounded by me, her trainer in the middle of a pet store on a leash, she decided to ‘kill it’.) Omigod, Omigod–I panicked, stepped between the victim and the attacker (correct, actually) and proceeded to act out the entire handbook of Things You Should Not Do When Your Dog Misbehaves.

I am not blind to the fact that the most difficult challenge to Annie’s training is me. Annie comes when called. She sits and lies down when ordered (most of the time.) She’s actually fairly good at ‘leave it’. Even when she doesn’t want to. She is learning manners at the door. She rarely if ever goes quite as ballistic as she used to and she calms down with less effort on our parts. She is still unpredictable around other dogs, and it is because I come unglued every time she does it. I over-react, I mis-react, I emphasize the negative, ignore the positive, miss the cues..

I have watched probably 100 episodes of The Dog Whisperer where Caesar points out bad behavior on the owners’ part, the owners say, “Oh, okay,” and it’s all fixed. I do not seem to possess that kind of self-discipline when my dog spazzes out.

The other day Nancy and I happened to trip over a Petfinder’s ad (we were not–NOT–searching Petfinders: we were undermined) for a dog that looked just like Annie, described as, “Sweet, affectionate, loves other dogs, is potty-trained, comes when called…”

I said, “Jot down the dog’s address and we’ll go at night, toss Annie over the fence and sneak that dog into the car with us…”

But it wouldn’t work because, once we got her home…she’d be living with me.   

In my next life, I’m going to be the one who strikes terror into the hearts of ordinary mortals. I have fumbled through the world just about long enough.

Today is Nancy’s birthday. I am retired. This means I often have a lot of time in which to do those few mandatory things I have left to do. I was doing just fine around the beginning of March. I had a few thoughts collected. I had a list somewhere. Everything was on schedule. And then Jenell’s family started dropping into hospital beds like flies and I had to pack and drive to Alabama and stay with my Dad and read novels and host killer bronchial bugs for a week and then I had to drive back and I had to worry about the rental car all that time and get it back to its rightful owners, I took a day to breathe and then had to teach art to fourth graders, took another day to rest and find my cast-off clothes and: it was Nancy’s birthday. Boom. Just like that.

I planned to drive into Kazoo to Boonzaaiers and appropriate a chocolate mocha cake with “Happy Birthday Nancy” written in frosting on the top.

Last night Nancy said, “Would you be horribly offended if I made my own cake?”

I admitted I would not. I did say, “Does this mean you don’t want a cake from Boonzaaiers?”

Well, no. It didn’t mean that.

So I was fine right up to that point, right? I had it covered. I had had all of the right thoughts in all of the right places, I answered the question appropriately, and somehow I managed to cancel her birthday cake.

And then I thought, “What if there aren’t any cakes at Boonzaaiers? What if they’re closed or have gone out of business or there’s been a death in the family and all of the bakers have retired?”

I went to Boonzaaiers once last fall and there was a note in the door: LUCKY YOU, YOU GOT HERE–WE WON’T BE HERE TOMORROW AND WE PLAN TO BE GONE FOR THE NEXT MONTH. TRY NOT TO GET ANY OLDER WHILE WE’RE GONE. I’ve forgotten where they went for that month or why but the point is…they do that.  Close down the store and disappear without warning.

So I was a wreck, driving from Three Rivers to Kalamazoo because I couldn’t remember exactly when it was they closed for a month and I don’t know very much about the Dutch or their holiday schedules and my success, as a partner and a grown adult, is only as good as my last birthday cake.

Luckily, Boonzaaiers was open. There were not a lot of people crowded into the lobby. I was able to locate one small and one large cake in the display case of exactly the kind I wanted. I released a breath.

And a woman behind the counter turned to me and said, “How can I help you?”

I said, “I need a chocolate mocha birthday cake.”

And she said, “Today?”

How many days in advance do you have to order a Boonzaaiers cake? Should I have called last week? The beginning of the month? How was I supposed to know there’s a back-order system for birthday cakes?

At MOST it was 1:15 pm: What the hell? Is there a cut-off, and if so, when was it? How God-damned complicated  can this be???

I pointed timidly at the small chocolate mocha cake in the display counter. I was afraid to speak. I swear to God she had singled me out with a long-handled mixing spoon that was probably loaded.

“What do you want on it?” she asked.

“Happy Birthday, Nancy.”

“Spell ‘Nancy’.”

I did.

She disappeared with my cake. A few minutes later she came back and ordered me to pay her, which I did.

She fielded some unreasonable demand from another patron in the lobby.

I stood there. Trying to look small.

I am not small.

I don’t look small.

A few minutes later she came back, handed me a box and she said, “Best cake in the world.”

I like them well enough: Nancy would probably agree with her. I chose not to make that distinction just then for that exact woman.

So apparently you can buy one the same day your order it and walk out of the store with it in hand, although it apparently doesn’t hurt if you look like you’re really, really sorry you didn’t plan better.

For all I know, the woman has a dry sense of humor and failed to notice me squirming under the point of her rapier wit. What I do know is that if I have to come back, I’m coming back as the woman who can terrifying people for trying to buy a birthday cake. Like the dog trainer in Riley’s class who snapped, “Sit” and immediately had fourteen dogs and eleven people sitting on the floor mat. I’m going to try it out and see if it works. 

If it does, the next thing I’m going to do is go find Annie.

For the past three years I have participated in a program called “ArtWorks” which is put on by the local schools. For a day fourth graders are bussed to Glen Oaks Community College where they break into groups and go to a series of three classes to meet artists who work in some field of art. There are beaders, stained glass makers, painters, one gourder… So three times during the day slightly less that 20 students with two chaperones file into my classroom and I have 40 minutes to entertain them, educate them about gourds and try to keep them from painting the ceiling.

I have no teaching skills whatsoever. I was going to go into education, forty years ago, but when I graduated I realized I had forgotten to take the actual education classes. Which meant I didn’t have to student teach, which came as such a profound relief to me that I sensed, in my deep and intuitive way, that I was never meant to be a teacher.

I have lived with this decision quite happily my entire adult life. The only life decision I have celebrated any more happily is my accidental failure to pursue my nursing degree. Every now and again someone bleeds in front of me or exposes some deep, gaping hole where smooth flesh should be, and I begin dancing again: Thank GOD I’m not a nurse…

With any luck there is an entire generation of women who have no idea why I chose those two fields not to go into. One, because it would be wonderful to have teachers and nurses–life would be miserable for the rest of us without them. But as a historical footnote, when I approached a guidance counselor (as required, I would never have ventured near one on my own) in high school, she helped me choose my path through life. She said, “Well, you can always get work as a teacher or a nurse.”

Say that to any woman in their sixties and watch them nod in recognition.

We were the last of the rush of the Baby Boomers, the world’s single largest generation. This means that as we came of age and began looking for careers, there were fewer children younger than we were instead of more (apparently for the first time in known history.) Teaching jobs vanished *poof*. Nursing jobs dried up and blew away. *Poof*. Within a decade those two professions became The Most Useless Degrees Available.

Anyway. I’m not a teacher. Apparently I will correct your grammar in a heartbeat (and not even hear myself do it) but I have no particularly well-honed skills when it comes to dealing with kids. (Another career I forgot: I never actually had any children of my own.) I think they’re cute. I like to hold babies for five or six minutes. For some strange reason I have a real hard time hearing children when they speak, and the one thing I have learned is that if you ask a child to repeat something, the next time they say it will be softer than the first, until they have their heads tucked down against their chests and they’re muttering into their shoelaces.

So the kids come into my class, take their seats, I give them a short history of gourds, what they are, where they came from, why they are important to the history of civilization (which, interestingly enough, appears to be something most school children learn just before fourth grade and then forget by the time they are adults.) And then I give them each a gourd and let them paint it.

In my mind, this might take hours.

We (I am assigned assistants to help me with this) give each child a paper plate with a dollop of three different colors of acrylic paint.

As an adult, I look at the paint given and think to myself, This should last through all three classes. 

The children pick up their brushes and spend at least 5 minutes painting the stem of their gourd.

I think, Oh, Lord, they’re never going to get this done…

And a little voice rings out: “Can we mix the paints?”

Why would anyone say ‘no’ to that? The whole point of an art class is to bring out creativity and a sense of adventure: trying to inflict rules and order on an art class is just insane. So I say, “Sure.”

And 18 children re-create the color brown. They paint the plates, they create swirls and color blobs and ridges and sooner or later some child has both hands in there and acrylic paint smeared up to both elbows and someone splatters her ArtWorks t-shirt and someone else drops paint on the floor and the gourds, which began as modest one-color, painstakingly stained works of art become three dimensional layered, re-surfaced highways and byways of acrylic paint, and then in rapid order the children need:

–to wash their hands

–paper towels to wrap their gourds

–more gourds

–different colors of paint

–clean water for their brushes

–to take the paint plates home

–to show me, the chaperones, each other and the kids down the hall their gourds 

They come alive with enthusiasm and joy. They paint each other. They compare gourds and what each student’s gourd looks like. Inevitably, one of them needs a second gourd. In the last class, I hand out gourds like candy because I have enough and I will do anything humanly possible to avoid having 18 bored fourth-graders and a half a gallon of acrylic paint turned loose in my class room.

I think being a teacher must be a frustrating, challenging, sometimes over-whelming, sometimes heart-breakingly triumphant occupation. From what I have been able to observe, fourth graders are an eclectic bunch with a fairly broad range of maturity, abilities and social skills. They are completely alien to anything I have experienced or remember, and while I get a certain kick out of the class, I would never presume it’s anything I did. I turned them loose with three colors of paint, a surface to paint on, a dish of water, a brush and said, “Go for it.” They’re on a field trip, out of class: it would be hard to blow a gig with a set-up like that.

And every year I think, “My class has to be the least creative, most boring class they attend all day.” I worry that because they come to my class, where they encounter an adult who is insanely kid-dumb, they waste a third of their day. And I fuss and fuss, trying to come up with a more creative, challenging program. Or paint that will at least BEGIN to dry before they have to bag their project. And every year I sigh, “I’m not doing this again.”

Did you really LOOK at the gourd above? She did that by mixing her paint in swirls and then rolling the gourd in the paint, so instead of making brown, she made these lovely swirls of color. She’s eleven. She did three gourds in slightly under 30 minutes. I keep thinking, I’m an adult: I could make some really cool swirls if I had some paint and a plate and a little patience

I’m not sure what it all means. I’m not sure if I’ll do it again next year.

I hope they had fun.

 

 

This is my father’s old friend, Ella.  I run down to Haleyville on average about two to three times a year, often short visits that involve a lot of driving to get there and back, and I tend to have other things to think about besides the neigbhbor’s dog. And change happens slowly in Alabama. Those of you who have read my musings for a long time  probably know Ella’s story.

In the beginning she belonged in the house known as “Joys”, which is a cross between a.) Yankee listening to a Northwestern Alabama drawl and cutting out (this time) a few too many vowels, and b.) the habit of referring to entire families, their possessions, probable geographic locations and even their worldview all under the umbrella of the name of one individual. “Joys,” drawled over an Alabamian tongue has more vowels than I can properly represent (that same tongue can load three vowels at least into the word ’here’ AND turn it into a question at the end) but it sounds to my deadened ear like ‘Joyce’. I lost a whole string of conversation with Waylon and Betty about dogs in the neighborhood because I was wondering who the hell ‘Joyce’ was. What she was actually saying was “Joey’s.” Joey lives on one side of the drug dealer’s house, Betty and Waylon live in the other side. And in the beginning, Ella lived at Joey’s.

Okay, I skipped a step. “Joey’s” includes Joey, Tina, Matthew, Matthew’s younger brother and Matthew’s younger sister. There may be a fourth child. Ella was Matthew’s younger sister’s dog. I sadly don’t remember the child’s name. And the whole progression made perfect sense. They are an active family and Ella came without proper dog manners and they adapted around her. Ella informed them she was a member of Neighborhood Watch and needed to be outside at night, so they chained her in the back yard. This did not suit, so she barked. All night. Night after night. “Joey’s” began to enjoy a little negative evening press. So they just opened the door and out she ran.

And ran. And ran. And ran. And–this will surprise you–when she came home again, she sported a suspicious belly bulge, which turned into six puppies, some of which found new homes and at least one of which moved down the street and continued to roam the neighborhood for another two years.

Dogs in the neighborhood began ‘clumping up’. I know this because Jenell fussed about it. Everywhere we turned, there were dogs clumping up (meaning there were three and four dogs wandering the neighborhood where once there was only one.) Dogs began volunteering to live on or near Maple Street in Haleyville, Alabama. This was attributed to some unnamed woman down the street who was notorious for just randomly feeding dogs whether they were hers or not, but I never met the woman and her name was one of those uniquely Southern names which, wrapped in a Northwestern Alabama drawl and drenched in vowels, I never was able to translate into any Yankee equivalent.

Betty and Jenell ‘clumped up’ and whisked Ella to a vet, successfully ending her puppy-making career. And then because she was supposed to stay ‘quiet’ for a few days, Ella went inside Betty’s fence to be tended to. This happened at least five years ago. Now when I got to Maple street and look around for Ella, as often as not I find her inside Betty and Waylon’s fence. She no  longer barks at night, keeping the neighborhood awake, because she has a chair in Betty’s guest bedroom where she nests instead. They do let her out during the day, and when they let her out, Ella patrols her neighborhood, one stop always being to check to see if my dad happens to be outside. If he is, she sits on  him. 

The last time I was in Alabama was sometime last spring. There were five or six dogs clumped on the edges of people’s lawns. When I asked whose dogs they were, the white one belongs down the street, and the others were unknowns. One of those unknowns had been around for two years. This time I didn’t see him. In fact, I didn’t see very many strays at all, at least on Maple street. I saw Ella. The white dog. And I heard a great deal about a new dog in the neighborhood who lives over at ‘Joy’s.’

Yes. Joey and his busy family were coming home from Florence when they found three puppies beside the road. Two were dead: the third one they brought right on home with them because ‘the kids’ wouldn’t leave him. And then, apparently, they tied him in the back yard.

It gets complicated from there because: there is the drug dealer’s house (which used to be Melissa’s, and is now empty because the drug dealers–who may or may not actually deal drugs–had their electricity cut off a month ago and so they disappeared, reappearing at odd times during the day and night to apparently just sit in their old driveway and remember the good times) and then there is Waylon and Betty’s house. Waylon and Betty have very firm ideas on how you should treat a dog. You should feed it, in their estimation. You should give it water. You should never put it on a chain. Ever.

It also gets complicated because while Betty was describing the discussions that went on between near-neighbors about the treatment of their dog, she referred to the person she complained to as “Joys”, but her specific conversation appeared to take place with Tina. I knew where Tina lived: I did not know where Joyce lived. I expect some of the flavor of her story was lost on me. It appears that Joey’s have a new dog (that’s exactly how they say it “Joey’s have a new dog” just like, “I need to carry her on down to Birmingham”) and every day Waylon and/or Betty walk over the hill and feed and water Joey’s dog. I don’t know for a fact that Joey’s don’t feed or water their dog: I know that Waylon and or Betty do. And I know that as it gets warmer outside, that chain is going to become a bigger issue.

So the next time I go to Alabama, I expect to find Chloe, who started out as BettyandWaylon’s dog, Taco, who Waylon found for Betty recently to remind her of a dog she lost a long time ago, Ella, who is Joey’s dog, and a long-haired, “pretty” maybe-border-collie-mix all living happily behind Betty and Waylon’s fence.

Rescue done slightly differently in the South, but a rescue, nonetheless.    

I’m home.

I’m safe.

And my father is still alive. Meaning, he survived my care.

To skate lightly over the sense of premonition: once the trauma over insurance was over, my drive down and back and relatively uneventful. For me. I happened to be headed south in I-65 just a few miles south of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, when the traffic stopped. Dead. And moved ahead 17 inches. And stopped. I spent 4 hours and 17 minutes on the same mile of highway. I played games on my Kindle, head-danced to the radio, muttered about the inconsideration of whoever and whatever was holding me up, fussed, fidgeted… Both lanes of the highway were closed from 11:15 am to whenever anyone could move again (I got there 2 hours later, moved again at 4:17–other people were still sitting in the opposite lane when I took off). Six people died, three more were injured, and there were accidents in both lanes. The reality was ugly, but as often happens, it was gone by the time I got there. I don’t know that my fussing and fretting had anything to do with the reality of that accident, which, other than stopping me in my tracks for four hours, had no direct effect on my life.

Well. I suffered minor distress over the number of people stampeding the various pit stops. 

As for my father: he is getting older. Life–simple getting up, eating, walking from here to there, staying awake for any length of time–is getting harder. He is 87. He appears to be having issues with his legs. They don’t work, they’re not reliable, they give out…I’m not sure exactly what happens. He was not a fountain of information when he was 50: when the information is mostly about ways he is failing, he remains a proud and stubborn man and I am not going to hear it. No amount of prodding gets much farther than his condition, which remains steadfastly, “Fair to middling.”

I kept him company. I kept him fed. I kept his laundry  up.

And because I went to Alabama, I got sick. I have no idea how those people down there survive: I cross the Winston County line and I have bronchitis.

Anyway. I am home again. At my own computer, with my dogs (who are leaving as I speak to go to work with Nancy.) I need to take the rental car back. Tomorrow I teach 5th graders about gourds. And then my normal life resumes. Or, perhaps, this IS my normal life.

In the next room, the dogs are sitting for the door to open. This is Nancy’s training she had undertaken since she gets tired of being trampled every time she opens the door.

I need to contact Annie’s trainer: we have fallen out of sequence and need to get that going again.

first things first: the car.