Voice Over
by Roderick ClarkAlready this cool spring morning, deadlines are smoldering up behind the eastern woods. I am awakened at an unconscionably early hour by the chittering of starlings in the trees and the knowledge of tasks to be done. Unable to return to sleep, I rise and brew a pot of fair trade Guatemalan coffee, and as the machine perks slowly like some Victorian engine struggling to gather steam I try to gather my thoughts. As soon as possible, I extract a cup of hot black nectar, climb the steep farm house staircase to the study, and sit down—determined to work. Work!
But insomnia is not wakefulness—and the half-awakened mind is a devious creature with needs of its own. Just when you are trying to get it moving in a given direction, it jumps the fence and wanders off—sometimes to totally unexpected places. So even though I have clipboard and pencil in hand, and even though tasks sprout up in front of me like acres of uncut lawn, I suddenly find myself staring out my study window—and thinking of a dog named Holly.
I remember Holly best from my visits to Plum Hill Farm on fall and winter evenings when the stars were bright, and my friend Michael was making beer. When I pulled up the drive and got out of the car, Holly would come bounding down across the snowy yard to cower suddenly at my feet, her nose in the snow, her breath ghosting the air, her eyes looking up at me imploringly as if begging forgiveness for unimagined sins. Then, once I had stroked her head and reassured her, she would bound ahead of me to the shed and back, sometimes several times, as if she was afraid I might forget the way (Little chance of that!). And then I would be there, pulling open the shed door to spill a rectangle of light into the yard, and Michael’s tall bearded form would become visible, bending over his brew pot like a wizard over his cauldron. He would beckon me in to sit by the stove and talk to him as he made malty magic and poured me samples of fine beer made in months and years gone by. And over the years, Holly’s greeting became an ineluctable part of the ritual of visiting Michael and Linda on evenings when beer was coming into being.
Holly was no spoiled suburban pooch. Although much loved by her owners, Holly was a farm dog in the traditional sense, spending days guarding the yard and barns, racing through fields and woods in summer, hunting to supplement the food set out for her, sleeping through cold winter nights in a dog house out of doors. Some said she was eccentric, that she would nip strangers, and display odd fits of temper and pique, but my wife and I never saw any of that. To us, Holly was always affectionate and attentive, rushing to greet us, and eager to get a pet or two before dashing off to announce our arrival.
Age did not slow her down. Although her eccentricities increased as the years passed and she became deaf as a post, Holly still moved like a greyhound, the blue heeler in her shepherd/heeler mix coming to the fore as she raced about the place with the with the grace of a much younger animal, greeting me with the same enthusiasm as always. Her vitality, Michael believed, came from her unusual diet. In addition to her dry food and occasional table scraps, Holly had a taste for raw meat, which sometimes horrified visitors unaccustomed to farm life. Deer heads and lamb heads were a favorite delicacy. She was particularly fond of sheep tails, and enjoyed an occasional snack of wriggling rabbit, possum or raccoon. Holly fed off the land, and the land kept her limber and treated her well. Over the years she became as much a part of the farm as a bank of daylilies, the smell of plum blossoms or the glow of winter bonfires under a December moon.
A week or two ago, I received a grief-stricken phone call from Linda telling me Holly had died. In the morning Holly had been fine, moving about the property with her usual spryness, but that afternoon Linda found her lying on her side on the lawn, not breathing. She was fourteen years old.
They say that people and dogs have evolved together in ways that are unique. In the ages when men and women hunted woolly beasts on open plains, people and dogs that got along well together were more likely to survive than packs of dogs or groups of people who hunted separately. Perhaps this ancient history of shared difficulty and desperation between our two species explains why it is that dogs and people get woven so close together. How it happens that simply by living close to you, they work their way into your life and heart before you are even aware of what they are up to, and why—when they die—it feels like you have lost a member of the family.
Reflecting on Holly’s passing makes me realize that my own remarkable dog, Morley, is more than half way through with his life. Since I work at home, Morley is always nearby, inside or out—sound asleep or vigorously awake. Equally at home in study or woods, and always underfoot. In the last eight years, he has become an integral part of my life. What will life be like without him?
On a beautiful morning in May, Michael and I buried Holly on the hillside above the house in the shade of the pear tree. The yellow spice bush was fully in bloom by the shed, and the air was filled with the winey smell of the wild plum blossoms that made a white cloud in the trees of the slope above us. We wrapped Holly in an old sheepskin and put her gently into the land she had loved so well. Michael went to the shed and came back with a shovel full of ashes from the stove in the shed. He sprinkled them in the grave, talking softly to Holly, telling her that these were the ashes of the fires that had kept him and his friends warm on the nights when he had made beer in the shed, and Holly had greeted each guest. He told her he hoped that these ashes would keep her warm in the heart of winter. On top of the grave he left a jar with some daffodils and a sprig of lilac.
Most of the morning has vanished now, and I have not accomplished much at the computer. Melanie is off work today and she and the dog are out in the yard, checking out what spring is up to. Outside, I note, a thin grey rain is falling on the lawn, turning it a healthy, venomous green. But just as I am beginning to feel depressed about death and everything that needs to be done—I look out the window and catch a glimpse of my neighbors’ two-day-old colt, Cheyenne, scampering about on the green hillside across the road. All legs, this kid, and he has been up and running since an hour or so of his birth. He is a rich, reddish chestnut color with a bright white blaze that runs from his forehead down to the tip of his nose. Already he moves faster across than a man can run, I see a white sock on his left rear hoof that is exactly like that of his mustang mom.
And while I am watching Cheyenne, Melanie (radiant in dripping yellow raincoat) enters the office to let me know that daffodils, violets, scilla, pulmonaria and vinca are blooming outside. Buds on the lilac too. So I start my fingers running over the keys again. Reminding myself, once again, that death is just part of things anyway. That language and life run forward, like wind in the grass—like Cheyenne, shaking his new mane into the morning on the green hill.