Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  Back at the creek Brown Dog sipped some whiskey from a half-pint, then stuffed three fresh wet camphor patches against his teeth, a patent-medicine nostrum for toothaches, the relief offered of short duration. He was tempted to take the ten bucks in his pocket straight to the tavern and drink it up but he needed it for dinner groceries for the kids and himself. Gretchen at Social Services had given him Dad’s Own Cookbook by Robert Sloan as a present and he was slow to admit that he had come to enjoy this duty more than going to the tavern after a day cutting pulpwood. There weren’t any tourist women to look at in late fall, winter, and early spring, just the same old rummies, both male and female, talking about the same old things from bad weather to frozen pipes to late checks to thankless children to faithless wives and husbands. Since the arrival of the cookbook Delmore had taken to strolling down to the trailer around dinnertime sniffing the air like an old bear ready to gum chickens. He would carry a Tupperware container for a handout because he had a short fuse for Berry’s errant behavior, especially when Red was late coming home from school, Brown Dog was cooking, and Delmore felt defenseless in the onslaught of Berry’s affection. Brown Dog thought of Berry’s mind as being faultily wired so that if she peed out of a tree, took a walk in the night, or sang incoherent songs it was simply part of her nature while Delmore always wanted the lid of reality screwed on real tight. He loved Berry but craved a safe distance from her behavior. Delmore had overexposed himself to the Planet of the Apes movies on television and liked to say, “We’re all monkeys only with less hair” and Berry was a further throwback to ancient times. Brown Dog had noted a specific decline in Delmore beginning at the time of the death of Doris nearly four months before. On her sickbed he had sung to Doris, “I’d like to get you on a slow boat to China” nearly every day which Brown Dog had thought an odd song to sing to a dying woman though Doris had enjoyed it and joined in. The evening before when Delmore had showed up for a serving of spaghetti and meatballs he had intoned, “As a reward Prince Igor received as a gift his choice of dancing girls. More sauce, please.” Delmore listened to Canadian radio with his elaborate equipment and Brown Dog guessed that certain things Delmore said came straight from a program of high culture. Delmore liked the idea that Canadian radio gave a lot of Indian news and referred to them as “our first citizens.” When Doris was on her deathbed and Brown Dog tried to get information on his own parentage Delmore had turned the radio way up so no one could think straight. It was a gardening program about the care and planting of perennials, but then Doris was unlikely to give him information anyway. Genealogy was the last of her concerns. Delmore had been somewhat miffed when Doris had given her medicine bag to Brown Dog to keep for Berry until she was old enough but to hide it away so Rose couldn’t sell its contents for booze when she got out of prison. Doris had shown him her loon’s head soapstone pipe that was made about the time of Jesus, or so she said.

  On his way back to the car Brown Dog detoured up a long hill, a place he favored when his heart and mind required a broader view of life than that offered by the pettier problems that were mud puddles not the free-flowing creeks and rivers he cared so deeply for. You could sit on a rocky outcropping and see the conjunction of the West Branch and Middle Branch of the Escanaba River miles away and in a thicket on the south slope there was a Cooper’s hawks’ nest and a few hundred yards away a bear den, both of which were used every year he could remember. It was a hill that lifted and dispersed sadness and when he had nearly reached the top it occurred to him that while his teeth still ached the pain had become more distant as if he were a train and the discomfort had receded to the caboose. When he reached the top he did a little twirl on the ball of one foot which he always did to give himself the illusion of seeing 360 degrees at once. There had been a brief spate of late April warm weather but enough to cause the first faint burgeoning of pastel green in the tree buds. He sucked in air to balance the arduous climb and felt he was sucking in spring herself, the fresh earth smells that were the remotest idea during winter. Rare tears formed when he saw the back of the Cooper’s hawk passing below him. If you hung out long enough in the area the local hawks and ravens grew used to your presence and resumed their normal activity though it was fun to irritate red-tailed hawks by imitating their raspy whistle. He dug under the roots of a stump and drew out a metal box that contained marbles, arrowheads, and a seminude photo of Lana Turner he had owned since age twelve. He didn’t take a look but dug deeper for a leather pouch that contained a half-full pint of peppermint schnapps from which he took a healthy gulp then lay back for a session of cloud study. Delmore had told him that way out west in northern Arizona there was a tribe that lived in cliffs and thought the souls of their dead ancestors had taken up residence in clouds. It was pleasant to think that his mother who he couldn’t remember lived in that stratocumulus approaching from the west, and maybe the father he had never laid eyes on had joined her in the cloud. His grandfather who raised him had loved lightning and storm clouds and would sit on the old porch swing and watch summer storms passing over the northern section of Lake Michigan. Brown Dog didn’t give a thought to his own afterlife, the knowledge of which would arrive in its own time. At the moment as the Cooper’s hawk passed overhead for a quick study of the prone figure Brown Dog thought heaven would be to live as a Cooper’s hawk whose avian head was without the burden of teeth.

  Coming down the hill after a brief snooze and another ample sip of the schnapps he paused for a moment of dread, mere seconds of understandable hesitation at the idea of returning to a domestic world for which he had had no real training. The option of at least a full year in jail reminded him of his grandpa saying, “Caught between a rock and a hard place.” When he had visited arrested friends jails were smelly, and full of the clang of gates and doors closing. The food was bad, there was no place to walk, no birds. His old girlfriend, the anthropology graduate student Shelley, had told him that way back whenever in the Middle Ages hell was thought to be a place totally without birds. Jail was also a place without women, an equally dire prospect, and more immediately punishing. Brown Dog was greatly drawn to women with none of the hesitancy of his more modern counterparts who tiptoed in and out of women’s lives wearing blindfolds, nose plugs, ear plugs, and fluttering ironic hearts. One warm summer morning when a damp sheet was wrapped around the knees of Shelley’s nude body Brown Dog had gazed a long time at her genitals and then began clapping in hearty applause. She was a little irritated to be awakened thusly, then warmed to the idea that this backwoods goofy thought a portion of her body about which she had some doubt was beautiful.

  When Brown Dog reached his car, a ’72 Chevelle, the force of his aching teeth made him quiver. He took four ibuprofen with a swig of water from his canteen. Delmore had gotten the car in payment for a bad debt from a cousin over in Iron River, not remembering that the old brown sedan was powerful with a 396 engine, what Red from the backseat called “kickass,” so that when Brown Dog stomped the gas pedal to see what would happen it was a neck snapper. Delmore was amused saying the Detroit cops used Chevelles for chasing miscreants. Brown Dog was appalled. Rose had wrecked his beloved old Dodge van in a stupor, and after that had come the Studebaker pickup with no side windows. On his grandpa’s advice he habitually held his speed at forty-nine which, by coincidence, was also his favorite temperature.

  On the drive home he found his irritation at Delmore rising. That day after making his way through Social Services past the frothy Stuhl and reaching his ally Gretchen’s office he had poured forth his tooth pain but found her less responsive than usual. Rather than her usual abrasive self Gretchen was morose. Since they were long acquaintances, almost friends, Gretchen confessed she had lost her lover of eight years’ standing, a “marriage” of sorts that had begun her senior year at Michigan State University. Despite her grief she arranged for Brown Dog to have a free consultation with a dentist friend of hers. There was no public money available for actual treatment. Gretchen was sure, howe
ver, that she could find a way to get the money out of Delmore by bringing up his failure to adequately cover Brown Dog’s accident when a tree bucked back and shattered his knee. She could also legally force Delmore to install full plumbing in the shabby mobile home. Delmore loathed Gretchen, huffing and referring to her as a “daughter of Sappho,” an old-fashioned term of opprobrium for lesbians. Rather than listening to Gretchen’s invective Brown Dog had drifted off remembering the diner waitress he had made love to on Gretchen’s living room floor when he was supposed to be painting the walls yellow. The waitress had one short leg but he had decided many mornings at breakfast in the diner that this short leg had become attractive in its own right. He hadn’t realized that Gretchen’s lover was upstairs, presuming her to be at work. From snooping in Gretchen’s undies drawer and finding photos, Brown Dog knew that lady was a real looker. Sad to say that on hearing the love racket downstairs she had called Gretchen’s office and Brown Dog had been caught in the saddle, though in fact he was underneath. This event had cooled the friendship which gradually warmed up, mostly because Gretchen liked this preposterous fool, so unlike her father and his cronies. She’d grown up in a modestly posh suburb of Grand Rapids where all the men were middle or higher management in Steelcase (purportedly the world’s largest producer of office desks, file cabinets, and folding chairs) or Amway, a super version of the old Fuller Brush Company. She actually loathed her bully father, not to speak of his friends and their veiled but implicit condescension to all things female from the Virgin Mary to cats and dogs. If they were to fish with female worms the worms would be chuckled at with the curious sense of superiority many males in this culture feel their weenies entitle them to.

  Brown Dog cooled his heels for a full hour in the office of Gretchen’s high-end dentist chum. The waiting room reminded him of fancy hotels in Chicago though he had only looked through the windows of such places. There were three women and two male patients also waiting who were clearly members of what Delmore called Escanaba’s “upper crust,” though that designation might also include successful car dealers and their wives. None of the others returned B.D.’s friendly nod but he thought perhaps they were also in pain and therefore uncivil. He did note that the pine sap on his trousers had stickily attracted dirt and that the Mexican chicken stew he had made from Dad’s Own Cookbook the evening before had splattered a goodly amount of grease on his camouflage T-shirt, a discontinued item from the back corner of a discount supermarket, twelve of them in fact for a dollar apiece. He did recall that in his earlier days rich people greeted poor folks on the street and were now less likely to do so.

  The dentist was chunky indeed with a mottled beige complexion but B.D. couldn’t help but feel thrilled during the cursory examination when her green-smocked pelvis brushed against his knees. She was genuinely appalled when she learned he had never in his life been to a dentist. He was embarrassed enough to try to change the subject by asking her why she wore the thin latex rubber gloves. “AIDS prevention, you goof.” She was not so much angry as dumbfounded by his dental neglect. Besides, Gretchen had used the term “goofy” when referring to B.D., saying also that she had heard around town that he was quite the lover. The dentist, Belinda Schwartz, had found slim pickings among the men of her own social set, the “upper crust” as it were, including Stuhl, Gretchen’s boss, who was an implement freak, two car salesmen, and an alcoholic who worked for the newspaper who had shit his pants after collapsing in her bathtub. Belinda who had a decided nonresemblance to fashion models had taken to driving north to Ontonagon on weekends where her randy spirit had easily won the affection of a number of young Native men, two Finnish miners, and a mulatto logger who had sent her to body heaven. On questioning, Brown Dog had admitted his career as a bare-knuckle fighter early in life and she advised that this was the reason his teeth were permanently loosening from their deadened roots outward. Before leaving she gave him a few dozen Percodans and Percocets recognizing his pain, and then, as advised, called Gretchen to say she would need a deposit of three thousand for starters. Gretchen called Delmore with the news and the threat that she could force him to install proper plumbing. Delmore called her a “vile rug muncher” and she, unfazed, merely said, “I’m going to win this one, kiddo.”

  Two weeks later, the pain drugs long gone, Brown Dog’s sore teeth were still being held hostage to the war between Delmore and Gretchen. When he had returned from the dentist late that afternoon he expected a shit monsoon but instead Delmore wept quietly on his porch swing, then was kind enough to offer B.D. a drink of his rationed Four Roses whiskey. When B.D. patted Delmore on the shoulder Delmore said he was weeping for the youth of America. This surprising announcement was allowed to stand alone in the coolish April air for at least five minutes. B.D. had heard most of the “youth of America” material many times before but was attentive to new additions. On the way home he had taken a Percodan with a warm can of beer found under the car seat which had made him as impervious as a stone Olmec head to Delmore’s caterwauling about the toughness of the cinema hero John Wayne in Red River, the manliness of the football coaches Woody Hayes and Vince Lombardi to which B.D. always replied, “It’s easy on the sidelines,” at which point Delmore added Bobby Layne, the old Detroit Lions quarterback, and the brave young men at Iwo Jima and on Pork Chop Hill, not to speak of the Ojibway warriors, Delmore’s own ancestors, who had repelled the Mohawk invasion in the eighteenth century in a battle in the eastern Upper Peninsula.

  The upshot of Delmore’s mournful speech was that in the old days when “men were men” they pulled their own teeth rather than spend someone else’s hard-earned money. B.D. knew this was true having watched out a back window as his grandfather pulled his own molar. He also knew that Delmore had full dental insurance in his retirement from the auto factory negotiated by the AFL-CIO. The next day Delmore had brought home new GripLock pliers and a fresh quart of whiskey as a further challenge, a bargain compared to the cost of dentistry, or plumbing for the house trailer.

  The stalemate had continued with one long evening spent in the woods with the pliers and whiskey, but when the coolish metal of the pliers touched a sore tooth he recoiled. There was a profound sense of body attrition so that when he took out his weenie to pee he addressed it: “Someday you’ll wear out, old friend.” But not yet, of course.

  When Brown Dog confessed Delmore’s pliers and whiskey ploy to Gretchen she delaminated, irrationally calling the county prosecutor to see if there were any criminal ramifications which there weren’t. She got a casual Republican chuckle and the information that self-dentistry was a holdover from the “good old days” when “men were men.” She fairly howled over the phone, “You fucking moron,” at which the prosecutor hung up with a “Tut, tut, cutie.”

  Gretchen looked out her office window at B.D. who was evidently talking to a crow at the top of a young maple and the crow seemed to be listening attentively. She called Belinda and struck a deal for the worst of the three teeth. Gretchen would front the money though her ex-girlfriend had cleaned out their joint account. Despite love people like to set aside secret money and Gretchen had a stash that would cover the first tooth. Gretchen was abrasive indeed but was a woman of wide social conscience and had read everyone from Simone Weil to yesterday’s freshest social alarm. Her five-year-old Subaru had a longish bumper sticker that read 5,000,000 AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE HUNGRY. She took a hidden cigarette from a desk drawer having put it there for such an occasion. This would be her first cigarette in three full weeks plus two days but she was needy.

  Brown Dog was a little startled when Gretchen came out the back door of the Social Services building. He was swimming in a murky sea of seven Motrins but his senses were alive to the forsythia blooming in the reflected heat of the sunlight on the east side of the building, also the crow that had fled when Gretchen had come out the door. He was sure he recognized the crow from the woods behind Delmore’s house and both he and the crow were wondering what the other was doing i
n downtown Escanaba. It was nearly lunchtime but it was hard to take his stomach anyplace interesting that his teeth were capable of following save chicken soup. Gretchen in her habitual gray skirt and black turtleneck suggested an unattainable alternative. He took her hand and kissed it in the manner of the old movies Delmore favored. Delmore would crow that Charles Boyer got more ass than a toilet seat.

  “We’re going to the dentist,” she said.

  “I’d go anywhere with you.” He bowed.

  “Stop it. I mean now.”

  He followed Gretchen to her car thinking he caught ever so slightly the sound of her compact butt cheeks squeaking. There also was the scent of hair spray and Dial soap. His organ fluttered like a nesting grouse though he knew making love to Gretchen was less likely than his becoming the pope or president. He was disappointed when she merely dropped him off at Belinda’s office rather than coming in and holding his hand.

  Belinda was a clear-cut trencherwoman and was irked that she was giving up most of her lunch hour to yank a tooth. She’d have to settle for a couple of hurried Big Macs or Whopper Juniors rather than the hoped-for Chinese Buffet, all of which would defile the diet she had begun the evening before after a mayonnaise frenzy, an addiction she blamed on her parents who had taken her to France when she was twelve and where near Arles at a restaurant called Paradour she had discovered aioli and had never slowed down. She made her own and after devouring it with any other foodstuff handy she was invariably in tears.