Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  “He’s us, Delmore,” Clarence had said and Delmore had felt his old body shudder.

  The pig meat, however, looked lovely to B.D. after his freeze-dried camping trip. Delmore sat on the porch and watched the barbecuing critically. He didn’t like the idea that he’d have to go back to his own cooking when B.D. flew the coop. Like nearly everyone else Delmore was from the school of why do something if you can get someone else to do it. Sitting on the porch steps with Bitch leaning affectionately against him he wondered what could possibly become of his nephew. That morning a mailman had hit a raccoon down the road which Delmore had skinned, boiled, and fed to Bitch and Teddy who now looked at Delmore like a boy does a sexy aunt.

  “Whatever do you do with that left-wing lesbo?” Delmore asked teasingly as B.D. sauced the pork.

  “A gentleman never tells.” B.D. recalled the line from a Cary Grant movie Delmore favored.

  “I suppose your horse doesn’t exactly jump out the barn door anymore,” Delmore continued to tease.

  B.D. suspected that Delmore had had a drink from his secret stash of whiskey and demanded one for himself. Despite exhaustive searches he had never found this whiskey which was hidden inside a piece of ham radio equipment. While Delmore fetched him a drink B.D. sipped his discount beer and wondered if there was a better smell on earth than sizzling pork fat. Gretchen’s neck. He turned and Gretchen was coming down the road and stopped out near the mailbox where Berry was bathing her pet snake in ditch water. Gretchen was wearing her heartlessly seductive blue shorts the soft material of which outlined her sacred muffin. The shorts combined with the pork made B.D. feel faint but the largish glass of whiskey restored him. While he finished the barbecue Gretchen and Berry were on their hands and knees playing with the pup Teddy and Gretchen’s arched butt seemed to be aimed at his heart. His lonely penis moved in his trousers as if awakening on a lovely May morning. She turned and flashed him a bright smile over her shoulder. He would never know that when she had reached home from their camping trip that afternoon she had clocked her menstrual cycle on a calendar to check for the prime dates for conception. She was of more than two minds about the matter but sensed that evening that this mortal decision shouldn’t be precipitous. While eating her pork barbecue she looked across the table and met B.D.’s eyes wondering if she could make love to this absurdly endearing man. Maybe if she got real drunk, she thought. She seemed to be recovering from her crack-up over lost love and the timing for actually losing her virginity seemed all wrong.

  Delmore ended the evening by ceremonially handing B.D. and Berry the passports he had secured, then taking them back. You didn’t need a passport for Canada but Delmore proudly defined how far ahead he was thinking. If the authorities were in hot pursuit to retrieve Berry for their “Nazi”-inspired school B.D. would simply fly with her to Mexico where Delmore’s ham-radio friend would look after them.

  “My people have been harassed by the white devils since they got off their crummy boats. I am making my stand,” Delmore said toasting the air and B.D. “You must act with the courage of your forefathers.”

  B.D. was startled. He had always considered himself as primarily white. Gretchen raised her can of beer with enthusiasm so B.D. joined in with a tremor because her lips were smeared attractively with barbecue sauce. Love by definition need not be requited to be endlessly fueled and the patch of barbecue sauce concentrated in the corner of her mouth exceeded in beauty the fabled Gesmina biting a rose in ecstasy.

  Red, meanwhile, was pondering why his no-nonsense uncle Delmore was talking more and more like a movie Indian. It was as if Jeff Chandler was in the wings feeding Delmore his lines. Sensing a softness Red had pointed out to Delmore that his budget computer might not be adequate. As a practical joke he had accessed the Penthouse Web site and Delmore had sat there fidgeting in disbelief. Red’s campaign for an Apple might have to be delayed until Christmas which would be lonely without Brown Dog and Berry.

  Early the next morning B.D. and Berry went off to catch brook trout for lunch. B.D.’s sleep had been haunted by a set of emotions known as “cold feet” that had wrestled him ceaselessly until dawn when it occurred to him that he could at least ask Gretchen for a few of those nude photos of her and her lover Karen he had found in her dresser drawer a few years before when he had painted the interior of her house. How could she say no when he so badly needed a memory of her to carry to a foreign country? His cold feet warmed a bit but there was still a remnant in his gut of unrest over fleeing his native land. One of the photos had shown Gretchen splayed on her back on a blue blanket reading a book called The Well of Loneliness which is exactly how B.D. felt at dawn when Berry had appeared at his bedroom door with a fresh can of worms for fishing.

  Bitch and Teddy tagged along on the hike back to the creek and when Teddy got tired on her short legs Berry would carry her over her shoulder. B.D. could remember clearly when his life had been as splendid as this joyous pup’s. Even her three-legged mother flounced in the underbrush with the glory of the woods though she was indeed looking for the scent of a creature to chase, kill, and eat.

  They pushed on farther than usual to a beaver pond upstream, on the creek. Berry climbed a fir tree on the edge of the deep pond and pointed out locations of trout she could see from her aerial position. B.D. waded in his trousers because both his waders and hip boots had leaks that exceeded the abilities of duct tape. It was a warmish morning and there was the additional great pleasure of late-August fishing without the hordes of airborne biting insects. He tried a fly called a Bitch Creek Nymph but it didn’t work so he tied on a cone-nosed rubber bugger a resorter had given him and soon had eight fine trout for lunch. While Berry plaited and wove a grass basket for the fish B.D. sat on a stump where he kept hidden a pint of schnapps for his fishing expeditions in the area. Strange to say he didn’t feel like a morning drink. His thoughts drifted to the old days when at the first signs of trouble he would simply run away as far as a tank of gas would take him, maybe only to Bruce Crossing where he’d fish the Middle Branch of the Ontonagon and sleep in his battered old van. What happiness! Sitting there on the stump he was visited by a wave of incomprehension. The sun in the sky wasn’t problematical but who could have imagined water? Berry rolled her eyes when Bitch ate a fat black snake with Teddy pulling on the snake’s tail for a portion. Berry was reason enough not to run away. She could talk with her eyes. Far in the distance they could hear the horn of the Chevelle beeping and headed for home.

  Delmore, Gretchen, and another woman were standing beside a black Ford sedan with a state insignia on the door panel when B.D. and Berry emerged from the woods tattered, wet, and dirty. Gretchen was more than a little nervous and said that the woman, Edna by name, was here to make sure that they were prepared to take Berry to Lansing this coming Tuesday after Labor Day. Gretchen stooped to look at the trout Berry was displaying. Edna wore a billowy peasant-mother print dress. Delmore was smiling but his eyes said he’d like to gut her like a hog.

  “Of course we’re ready. I was never late for anything in my life.”

  “America has given your people a hard road.” Edna spoke in a soft lilting voice that still somehow grated. “And now we want to help you by lifting the burden of caring for the poor child so that you can go forward with your lives. We can’t heal Berry. Medical science can’t heal Berry but there will be a sense of healing for her at school where she’ll be with other learning-impaired children who will love her as much as you do. She’ll be in an environment of learning, loving, and laughter. She’ll be able to come home for a week at Christmas and you’ll be amazed at the miracle of change in her. She lives in a dark country now and we’re going to turn on the lights for her.”

  Delmore gave Gretchen a side glance that said, “Get this nut-case bitch out of my yard.” B.D. was boggled trying to understand just what the woman was saying while Berry honked like a goose and went over to the porch, took out her jackknife, and began cleaning the fish. Gretchen gave B.D. a
kiss on the cheek and she and the woman drove off.

  “That should remove any tiny little doubt we might still have. They ought to air-drop her into Russia where she belongs.” Delmore turned to B.D., his face askew with rage. B.D. patted him on his bony shoulder.

  The last weekend raced, dipped, and flew by them like an evasive nighthawk. On Saturday afternoon Brown Dog stopped by Gretchen’s house and discovered her in her yoga outfit. She served him a glass of red wine which was a bit sour for his taste and when she left the kitchen for a moment he added a teaspoon of sugar. The label said the wine was from France and he recalled when he was young how World War II veterans would brag that in France and Japan right after the war you could make love to a girl for a candy bar. They never said what kind of a candy bar was a sure thing.

  “I knew you liked these shorts.” Gretchen came back into the kitchen. She had changed out of her yoga clothes into the blue shorts and danced a brief hootchy-cootchy. “Part of me wishes I was going along with you and Berry.”

  “Which part?” B.D. asked and then immediately put his face in his hands realizing his stupidity. He peeked through his fingers and was relieved to see that she was shaking her head and grinning. Better to strike while the iron was hot.

  “Years ago when I was painting your bedroom I happened to peek into a drawer and notice some beautiful photos of you. I was thinking I could use one to take along to Canada for a good memory.”

  Gretchen paused only a moment. The photos were buried under her seventy-seven pairs of panties and she had forgotten them. What better way to help break the thrall of her ex-lover Karen than to give this big goof their skin photos?

  “Take your pick,” she said returning with the photos and tossing them on the kitchen table where he sat.

  “Can I have two? You have a front and back.” B.D. pushed aside the photos of the saucy Karen whom he considered the spawn of Satan. He picked three. “You also have sides.” There was a noble full-length profile of Gretchen looking at a seagull.

  Gretchen was going off to a rock concert in Marquette with Belinda but would come over the next day for the last evening’s supper. At the door she hugged him tightly. “If I ever decide to have a baby I’m picking you to do the deed.”

  He couldn’t quite feel his legs when he walked down Gretchen’s front porch steps and sidewalk. It was like a hundred songbirds had been let loose in his hollow body. Hope was not a regular part of his emotional vocabulary but now it ricocheted through his human shell on the wings of birds.

  Sunday was full of the morose and disconnected act of packing, wandering around in a light rain, cooking Delmore and the family a large pot roast in Doris’s ancient Dutch oven. Berry sensed something was up with the packing of her little red suitcase into which she had snuck her snake. Her mind wasn’t too dim to remember her mother who had thrown her out in the snowbank. B.D. noted her tension and showed Berry his duffel bag which he placed next to her suitcase near the front door. He kept her busy peeling garlic and onions and scraping carrots and then they went out and played a long game of tag in the rain with Bitch and Teddy.

  Even Red was distraught until he spied Delmore out a side window dancing in circles around the grove of cedars. Delmore was caped in his bearskin and shook a stone-headed war club Red himself had made in Cub Scouts at the heavens as if threatening the gods. Red called to B.D. and Berry who were drying off in the kitchen and the three of them stood at the window watching Delmore’s dance. B.D. put an arm around each of his stepchildren. None of them had a specific idea of what Delmore was up to in his dance but they sensed it was a good thing. Berry raced out and joined the old man. She did a dance which was an imitation of a raven, hopping and flapping in a circle next to Delmore. B.D. found himself sniffling with the grace of what he was watching. Red stared at the ceiling as if it were an admirable direction, then back at the dancers. “Cool,” he said.

  It was at this point that Brown Dog’s cold feet totally disappeared. At breakfast Delmore had claimed that Ontario was also Chippewa territory and now B.D. felt that even though that category might not include himself it was fatally necessary to get Berry to this safe place. Delmore insisted that everything was led by spirit and that her spirit would surely die in Lansing.

  By late afternoon there was a blustery northwest wind so that the sky cleared and the sun shone by the time Gretchen appeared with her car washed and carrying an overnight bag. According to Delmore they should leave before five AM in order to meet Mugwa’s fish tug on the money so that neither party would be loitering. The newest e-mail from Mugwa told them not to worry. He was sure that the Coast Guard would be resting up Labor Day morning in order to get ready for the last of the drunken holiday boaters that afternoon. Just to be sure he was having a friend radio in a Mayday from the southern part of Whitefish Bay which would distract any patrol boat. All B.D. and Berry had to do was walk out the dock behind the fish market and hop aboard at “800 hours,” a term B.D. didn’t understand.

  “Dad, that’s military for eight AM. Don’t you know anything?” Red said.

  “Not much,” he admitted, putting the peeled potatoes into the oven to brown with the pot roast.

  Dinner was fairly quiet except for discussing a plan to all meet in Thunder Bay for a week at Christmas. Playing against type, it was Red who was overcome and fled for the comfort of his computer.

  “That young man will go far,” Delmore said. “His mother is dumb as a post so his dad must be top-drawer.”

  B.D. and Gretchen took a walk down the gravel road in the glittery, clear twilight with the north wind turning the silvery undersides of the leaves of birch, poplar, and the alder in the rim of the swamp. Bitch and Teddy took off after two deer that crossed the road in the distance and Gretchen sprinted after them for pure fun. B.D. was amazed at her speed and the way her fanny and thighs pushed her along so quickly that her feet barely touched the ground. She returned breathless and smiling.

  “What’re the odds on you trying to have a baby?” he asked with a foiled attempt at diffidence.

  “I’m not sure but probably ten to one against.”

  “Does that mean if we were together ten days I’d strike it rich one of the days?”

  “That’s not the way it works, dipshit.” Gretchen punched his arm and ran back to the house.

  When B.D. got back to the house Gretchen had started doing the dishes and Red was fast-forwarding a videotape of The Misfits to the place where Clark Gable was struggling with the horse, a scene Delmore loved though to him the rest of the movie was incomprehensible. Red rewound and played the scene three times until B.D. wished that the horse would stomp Clark into the ground.

  “Fifty years ago a bunch of Detroit women thought I looked a bit like Clark Gable,” Delmore said. He was sunk in the easy chair so that he looked half-gnome, half-turtle. The possible resemblance was a far reach.

  Berry lay sleeping across Gretchen’s lap, the virgin pale white and the child brown. B.D. and Gretchen looked at each other listening to Delmore’s snores while Red quickly changed the television to a West Coast NFL game. B.D. was surprised that he had forgotten to have a drink and poured them a whiskey but Gretchen declined hers. It was time to go to bed but the lump of impossible love was growing ever larger beneath B.D.’s breastbone. It was very much like being lost in the woods with little chance of getting out before dark. Gretchen brushed back Berry’s hair and ignored his dog-pound puppy glance. Finally she said it was time to go to bed. He lifted the still-sleeping Berry and Gretchen kissed him on the cheek and went into Delmore’s spare bedroom. B.D. carried Berry down the gravel road to the trailer, a little startled when Berry woke up and responded to a whip-poor-will. Her call was so accurate it seemed like the bird was on his shoulder.

  Gretchen rapped on the trailer door a little after four AM. B.D. stumbled out of bed in his skivvies thinking it was the police. He had been dreaming about the stripper Antoinette in the Canadian Soo, really a nightmare because she was jumping so
high that when he jumped up toward her his outstretched hand only touched the sole of a foot. He turned on the light and Gretchen came up the steps looking at his penis half-escaped from the fly of his undies.

  “How silly,” she said, holding a bag of pot-roast sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. She had slept poorly with both Delmore and Red waking her to talk over the sadness of departure. Delmore felt poorly and wasn’t coming along. Red would stay behind to keep an eye on him. They ate their alfresco breakfast with relish though B.D. added a thick slice of raw onion to his sandwich.

  “I can’t believe you’re eating raw onion for breakfast.”

  “It wakes up my head. Sometimes I have trouble getting outside of dreams. Sometimes it’s not until noon.” B.D. was trying to imagine that they were a married couple while Gretchen woke up Berry.

  They were two hours into the drive over between Newberry and Hulbert when Gretchen screeched and drove off the road. She had forgotten to put B.D.’s duffel and Berry’s red suitcase in the car. It was a beautiful dawn with the tops of the trees tossing in the cool wind and rumpled marsh willows swaying back and forth. Gretchen started crying and B.D. had the acute pleasure of putting his arms around her and comforting her.