Kincaid - A Dog Named Christmas

CONTENTS

This book was always for my wife.
She has taught me so much,
not the least of which
is the value of a good dog.

J ake seemed content with the Conner family, but even so, his departure was predictable. Mr. and Mrs. Conner lived on the edge of a growing city where subdivisions turned into ten-acre lots and where all too often people discarded beer cans, fast-food debris, and unwanted pets. Jake walked on, scruffy and half starved, with no tags. Mr. Conner found him resting on the back porch as an early February wind piled snow high on the driveway of their modest ranch home. They fed him, cleaned and vaccinated him, and then just waited. They put up Lost Dog flyers, but no one called.

A walk-on like Jake has a different status than a pet you purchase. A walk-on can just as easily walk off, the Conners told each other.

The weeks passed and Jake stayed. Mr. and Mrs. Conner did not understand why anyone would dump him. Though the vet had confirmed he was a little bit older, he was one of the more engaging dogs they had known. With an alert personality, he was eager to please, house-trained, well behaved, and could sit, stay, and roll over on command. He was a good companion, keeping close without intruding, and was also curious and a quick learner.

Jake lingered through the summer, gaining weight and confidence in his surroundings, but by early fall, when his strength had fully returned, he seemed restless, like a pioneer yearning for his own territory, and would wander off at night and stay out for days and once for an entire week. He began roaming farther and farther away. The Conners tried fences and ties and even locking him up at night, but there were few bonds strong enough to keep him put for long. When the first frost collected on the still green grass and the moon was full, Jake left the Conner family to fulfill his own calling.

Speculation naturally followed. At the top of Mr. Conners list was the assumption that Jake went home, back to wherever he came from. Mrs. Conner suggested that a wily female lured him away. The Conners grown children wondered if Jake found a family with children to play with him, as their own children had when they visited their grandparents on weekends.

After the first few days, the Conners were concerned, but not alarmed. He was an important part of the family, but the Conners suspected that Jake operated by his own rules. As the days turned to weeks, and the weeks to months, his disappearance somehow seemed natural and the Conners just accepted his absence. A walk-on can walk off, they reminded themselves.

When they thought of him, they said things like, He has Jake business to attend to. Hell come back if and when he is ready.

By the time winter came, Jake was like a faded old picture in a box of family memories. Occasionally at dinner, they would laugh and tell Jake stories, like the time a neighbor chased him down the middle of their driveway, trying to recover a twenty-pound black trash sack that dangled proudly from his jaws, or the time he chased a rabbit onto the frozen pond and spun around like an Olympic skater. The rabbit stopped and watched, seemingly laughing at Jake. Jake apparently thought it was fun too, for he backed up and did it again, with the same result.

Mrs. Conner would grow quiet as she felt his absence in her heart and then Mr. Conner would say, Pass the potatoesIm sure hes fine.

When he left, Jake journeyed west away from the city and the Conners home. It felt good to be a full-time roamer. He answered to no one. He had a freedom that few are brave enough to own. He slept beneath the stars, under bridges, in caves, in open fields tucked behind a log, or on the back porch of some generous soul who could tolerate a hobo on the road. He ate food that some might describe as unfit for a dog. He did what he needed to do to stay nourished. To do so, he honed the instincts lost to more modern times. He learned to listen, his sense of smell became more acute, and he noticed slight movements that would have gone undetected during his domestic life.

He hunted like an animal. He waited. He journeyed. He did not know how long it would take or how far he would go. It would be right when he got there. He had given himself over to instinct.

Like geese, salmon, and monarch butterflies, Jake was being pulled to a very particular place.

It was often dangerous. As he moved through less friendly neighborhoods, the residents had a way of making it clear that his kind was not wanted. They barely paid him a glance and were likely to pretend that he did not exist. They thought that showing him a little kindness would encourage him to stay and then they would never be rid of him.

If they were not ignoring him, they sent their hints in more obvious ways. One man threw a rock in his direction as he passed by. A carload of boys saw him walking on the side of the road one evening and they swerved in his direction as if it were funny to see him jump out of the way. Though Jake was unharmed, the message was clear. He needed to move on, keep heading west.

The animal kingdom was not generous toward him either. Dogs barked at him, skunks sprayed him, ticks bit him, and thorny bushes scraped at his sides. Still he kept going, aware that his journey was not yet complete.

These discomforts were minor inconveniences to Jake. He was content and at peace with himself. In the morning when he woke and stretched, his tired muscles felt good, never better. Hardship was the patina of his good life. There is no better state of mind for man or animal than being what you are and doing what you are meant to do. This harmony of existence and purpose is so rare that we forget it exists. Not Jake. Particularly, not today.

After the sun ascended to its midday vantage, Jake rested on a wooded knoll and watched as a young man in bright red tennis shoes wandered along a stream bank, aimlessly skipping rocks across the barely frozen surface of Kill Creek, bluntly named by the local Indians to suggest the abundance of wildlife that lived and died so near its banks.

As he watched the young man, the first thing he felt was a vague feeling of comfort and familiarity. Still, he cautiously waited, sensing that something was not quite right. After the man passed, he ambled down to the creek and drank deeply from the cool water that was yesterdays rainfall. There were smells that danced along the banks, like wildflowers, sweet hay, ancient oak, wet moss on limestone, and a strange, unfamiliar musky scent he could not place. He tried to separate the scent when he heard the slightest of sounds and spun around to see something, really only a blur, move away from him and into the deeper forest of hickory, walnut, red bud, and oak that flanked the creek.