Rick Bragg - The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People

T he driveway is a winding quarter mile, a dim, green tunnel through tangled pines and mountain pasture, fractured by dappled sunlight on the clear, hot days. Flashes of color, of blue jays, yellowhammers, and an emerald blur of hummingbirds, crisscross the rusted barbed wire, and mockingbirds touch down on cedar posts that were cut from this mountain one hundred years before. Whitetail deer and wild turkeys, like periscopes, spy over tall, sharp blades of Johnsongrass, and white egrets, rare here in the red dirt, up so high, pose on one leg in the flat, brown water of the pond. And it all seems painted on, somehow, as if someone dreamed it up on a slow day with an easy mind and hung it on the air. Then he rumbles in, and goes to raising all kinds of hell.

The dog, running half blind, tongue out, and wide open, intercepts my truck halfway up the drive, as the wild things scatter to the corners of the earth. He yowls, twists, and bounces to a hard stop right on some mark only he can find, usually smack-dab in a red-ant bed or mudhole but always safely away from the main road, as if he can remember all the meanness and suffering there and knows this mountain is his sanctuary, and his last stand. Run too far, and you fall off the world. I know this is reading a lot into a dog who falls asleep in his food bowl, suffers a shivering apoplexy when you rub his belly, and acts as if every wayward possum is a sign of the end of times. But I dont think any dog knows home better than one thrown away once already.

This is, though, pretty much the sum of his comprehension. He seems to forget every waking day that a one-ton truck is not to be messed with, and, biting at the spinning tires, tries to herd it up the drive like a big, sparkly cow. Hell move, people say, because everyone is an expert when its not their dog in the road. But I can never recall which side his bad eye is on, so I stomp the brake and twist the wheel and finally, lurching, cursing, arrive at the cabin at the top of the hill. I swing open the door, and the dog, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions, lunges in, eternally surprised, and overjoyed, that it is me. I yell Get DOWN! but too late. The trucks cab is tattooed in dirt, mud, or biting ants, because he needs to squirm to within an inch of my face to be sure. I might have been UPS, or the man from Cherokee Electric, who has learned to bring a stick.

Then, with a growl, he is off to molest the livestock, and stir a general panic. He is a herding dog by blood, an illegitimate Australian shepherd, and he bolts into the pasture to create a small stampede. He evades the thumping hooves by inches, but always gets caught up in a never-ending circle and cannot find his way out, like a drunk teenager doing doughnuts in a parking lot. I stumble after him, yelling, threatening, and he hunkers down and covers his eyes with his paws. I used to think he did it out of shame, but now I think he believes this makes him invisible.

Recently, I came home from a week-long trip to find the driveway peaceful and empty, the terrible dog nowhere around. It always made me a little nervous when he didnt rush down to meet me; as much as any creature I have ever known, he has lived a blink away from destruction. My brother Sam was in the barn beating on an old Yanmar tractor with a hammer. It had run hot again and scalded him, so he was ill tempered and short, which is his most natural state. I dont know if he was working on it, or just getting even.

You seen my dog? I asked.

Hes in jail, he said.

BAM!

again.

In the dogs first month here, he was incarcerated twenty-nine times. Telling him to behave, even after almost two years now, is like telling him it is Tuesday.

What, I asked, did he do now?

Run the mule, he said.

I told him that was not so bad, a dog running one solitary mule.

Run the mule. Run the donkeys. Run em half to death. Run em round n round the pasture, bitin at their legsrun em till they went to blowin n buckin n screamin n tried to kick him to death. Dont know where he wanted em to go. Dont think he did.

BAM!

What else? I asked, because there was always something else.

Dragged part of an old, dead deer up to the housestunk worse than anything I ever smeltLaid there chewing on a leg bone by the kitchen windowYou can still smell it.

He paused to let his contempt gather, like an old, creaky train cresting a hill.

Picked a fight with Mommas puppy. Stole the puppys ball n took it off and buried itWhen I fed em he wouldnt let the puppy eat. Went n laid in the puppys bowl, n growled.

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

He pointed to a puddle in the middle of the garage floor. Peed on the tractor. Peed on my truck. Peed on Mommas flowers The zinnias looked like they had been poisoned.

so Momma told me to lock him up.

He set down the hammer and picked up a wrench. He twisted it, grimly, on a rusted bolt, like he was tightening a noose, and realized he had left something out.

Eat all the cat food Momma put outcats flyin everwhere.

I laughed and he shot me a dirty look. He does not even like the cats, which are too well fed to catch mice and have no practical use; how he must loathe my dog, to take the side of a cat.

He went back to abusing the tractor, mumbling around a big dip of snuff. I could only make out about every third word, but the gist, I believe, was that I never should have let the dog take root here in the first place, should have run him off immediately and permanently with a handful of rocks. A pitiful stray is one thing; you can save a gentle stray. But a dog like this, wild for so long, would bring only woe. He didnt say woe, but that was what he meant. Sometimes, when my dog walked too close to him, he spit on his head.