Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  “Got you.” He suddenly reached out and grabbed her ankles.

  She pitched over sideways twisting her legs to get loose. He had a quick fine view of her butt before he let go of her ankles. She ran laughing toward the car and he scrambled after her on his hands and knees like a dog barking and howling. She was thinking that her old shameless prick-tease moves had at least changed the mood and he was thinking that playing difficult had paid off.

  They reached Ironwood by nightfall still happy though Gretchen was so tired she asked him to pick her up some takeout. Many copper and iron miners had arrived from northern Italy in the mid-nineteenth century and maintained their interest in their own food so the U.P. abounded in Italian restaurants. B.D. walked down the road a scant half mile and ate a large order of lasagna with a whole bottle of acrid red wine and waited for a pizza to take back to Gretchen. She wanted double anchovies and onions and he thought, Strong flavors for a strong woman. He’d drunk the bottle of red at warp speed and treated himself to a double whiskey thinking unpleasantly of the time he came home drunk from an evening with David Four Feet. His grandpa was angry and told him that his mother was a drunk and he didn’t want B.D. to die from the same “curse.” Grandpa said that his daughter still made his heart ache so that was the most that was ever said about B.D.’s mother. Grandpa had emerged from World War II with a number of bullet holes in his legs and ass but they made out okay on half disability from the government and Grandpa’s ability as a part-time cabinetmaker. He couldn’t stand up for long but tended a fine vegetable garden on his hands and knees.

  When B.D. got back to the motel with the pizza he knocked at Gretchen’s door.

  “A peek at your beautiful ass for a pizza,” he hollered.

  “Of course, darling.” She opened the door, flipped the back of her nightie up, took the pizza, and slammed the door, leaving him with burning skin.

  “I wish to dine alone. Good night, love.”

  B.D. recalled that there was a smart-ass guy from near Traverse City who used to hang out in the Dunes Saloon in Grand Marais in the summer who had said, “How does a woman’s butt crack capture our imaginations? It’s only negative space, in essence, a vacuum.” This was puzzling and really made you think it over.

  They reached Delmore’s at noon and were promptly attacked by the pup Teddy whom B.D. hadn’t seen since leaving for Toronto. Teddy had grown much larger. B.D. asked about Teddy’s mother and Delmore looked into the air while responding as if the mother had ascended.

  “She got shot while eating sheep down the road. We saved the hindquarters of the sheep. You owe me a hundred bucks.” Delmore was busy giving Gretchen an overfond hug so that she finally pushed him away.

  They sat on the porch swing talking and drinking Delmore’s poor man’s lemonade—too little lemons and too much sugar. It was Sunday and even the landscape was snoozing in premature warmth. The peepers, tiny frogs, were trilling from the swamp down the road in an evident state of spring fever. B.D. had a lump in his throat about life itself and the sight of Delmore sitting in the ragged old easy chair at the end of the porch with the dog in his lap. Gretchen began to fall asleep on the porch swing, then got up and reminded B.D. that he was due at the doctor’s at nine in the morning for his checkup.

  “Who’s paying?” Delmore barked.

  “I am, sweetheart. I’m sending him to a vet.” She kissed Delmore on the forehead and escaped his attempt to give her a pat.

  “She’s going to be your stepmother when I pass on,” Delmore said as Gretchen drove off down the gravel road with stones tinkling under the fenders. “I’m hoping that you’ll fix me some fried chicken and noodles for Sunday dinner?”

  B.D. nodded staring at his favorite hill about three miles off to the north. Gretchen wanted him to teach her how to catch a fish and he was busy concocting a fantasy about a riverside seduction. Meanwhile he was going to head for the hill to breathe air where others weren’t breathing it. About three-quarters of the way up the hill there was a fine thicket in the middle of which there was a white pine stump to sit on. So much of his life had been solitary that the crowded nature of the past six months had been confusing. He could be confused enough when alone and the addition of the company of others raised the ante exponentially. For instance he didn’t really want to teach Gretchen how to catch a fish. Love was love and fishing was fishing, an almost religious obsession that had added grace to his life for more than forty of his nearly fifty years. Sitting in the car with Gretchen from Ironwood to Delmore’s a dozen miles from Escanaba had been difficult. By count the highway had crossed eleven streams that he had fished and each stream held a reverie of the experiences on the stream: “Small bear crying at twilight meant get out of there ASAP as the mother would be irritated. Left two trout behind as peace offering.” But with Gretchen in the car he would turn away from the bridges, look down at her when she uttered the word “baby.” The hugeness of the idea of a baby filled the speeding car and the world around it and the clarity of trout fishing disappeared despite her strange assurances that the baby had “nothing” to do with him. He had long since accepted that she was by far the most hopeless love of his life, for practical purposes as remote as the princess of Spain or a creature from outer space. He was one of those very rare men who, for better or worse, knew exactly who he was.

  He reached his thicket in a fast-paced hour wiping the sweat from his face with his shirt and was pleased to find that a female Cooper’s hawk still returned to the area, probably recently, and was not disturbed by his familiar presence. Before he could fully relax he checked the contents of his wallet for what was left of Dr. Krider’s gift and discovered three hundred and seven dollars, a virtual fortune. If he was careful and avoided too much time in bars he could possibly fish for a month. He would do a little of it locally because Delmore was bitter about his lack of home-cooked meals. He was too far out in the country to be reached by Meals on Wheels and his fridge’s freezer compartment was full of Swanson chicken pot pies which were sometimes on sale three for a dollar, and in the pantry there was a long neat line of cans of Dinty Moore beef stew. When B.D. went to the doctor in the morning he would pick up a few things to cook and freeze before he took off on his fishing trip.

  Sitting uncomfortably on his stump B.D. lapsed into a state much envied by the ancients. He thought of nothing for an hour and merely absorbed the landscape, the billions of green buds in thousands of acres of trees surrounding him. Here and there were dark patches of conifers amid the pale green hardwoods and far off to the south a thin blue strip of Lake Michigan. He had never thought a second of the word “meditation” and this made it all easier because he was additionally blessed with no sense of self-importance or personality which are preoccupations of upscale people. Within a minute he was an extension of the stump he sat upon. After about an hour he was aroused by the Cooper’s hawk flying by a scant ten feet away after which B.D. reached into a hole at the base of the stump for a pint of schnapps he stored there and was delighted by the wintergreen berry taste.

  He was the doctor’s first patient on Monday morning and the doctor was in a pissy mood because he was a friend of Gretchen’s and her choice of a sperm donor was inscrutable to him. He carelessly drew blood from B.D.’s large forearm as if wanting to punish the nitwit.

  “Sperm donorship is a serious thing,” the doctor said. “It’s better if it’s anonymous.”

  “Why?” B.D. knew that he was normally invisible to the doctor and had decided to play dumb in hopes of getting out of the office as soon as possible.

  “Obviously there are emotional issues. Have you been sexually active?”

  “Now and then whenever it’s possible. You can’t always get what you want. It’s better not to aim too high.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The doctor was clearly irritated.

  “If you go to the bar at the alley on women’s bowling night you’re not likely to score one of the top ten ladies out of thirty so you aim lo
w.”

  “Have you ever had a sexually transmitted disease?”

  “None other than crabs in Chicago thirty years ago.”

  “Stand up and drop your trousers. I need to check you for herpes and warts.”

  “No.”

  “I insist.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if you insist. I’m familiar with my dick and I don’t have any warts.” B.D. had never been to a doctor in his life except the time when a tree he was cutting down bucked back and shattered his kneecap and then the orthopedic doctor hadn’t been curious about his dick.

  “I’m afraid I can’t recommend you to Gretchen as a sperm donor.”

  “Fuck you and the train you rode in on.”

  B.D. left the office whistling a merry tune and headed for the supermarket. Delmore had given him fifty bucks and he figured he could cook up a half dozen dishes from Dad’s Own Cookbook, put them in the freezer, and still get over to Grand Marais before dark assuming the old Studebaker pickup didn’t break down. Delmore had kindly had the windshield replaced the evening before and B.D. had packed his meager camping equipment including a seventy-year-old heavy canvas pup tent from World War II. He had slept outside because the things of Berry’s left behind gave him a severe lump in the throat.

  Leaving the supermarket he sorted out his own cans of beans and Spam putting them in a wooden potato crate in the pickup bed. Delmore didn’t like him driving the old Studebaker except when B.D. used to visit Belinda, the big dentist, the thought of whom agitated his loins. They both got some serious knee burns on her fluffy white carpet. He was supposed to stop by Gretchen’s office and tell her how things had gone with the doctor but he was willing to bet top dollar that the doctor had already called Gretchen. The obvious solution was to leave a message on her home phone saying that he could be contacted at eleven-thirty any evening this week at the Dunes Saloon in Grand Marais. Gretchen’s office made him dry-mouthed and nervous. It was the rows of file cabinets that put him off along with the many computers. Why keep records on everyone? How could the contents of so many lives be kept in the cabinets and computers? Way back when, a teacher would show them the contents of his “frozen zoo,” all the marvelous dead songbirds he had found which he kept in the freezer. His own records began with when he and David Four Feet were caught at age thirteen throwing cherry bombs under squad cars in Escanaba, and went on to include every pissant scrape with the law since then.

  He was soothed cooking Delmore’s dinners for the week with Delmore sitting there at the kitchen table making uninformed suggestions while flipping through the satellite channels. Delmore talked back to the television. If a character, say in a spy movie, were imperiled Delmore might holler, “Watch out behind your back you fucking nitwit!”

  After a couple of hours B.D. was finished making six stews, two each of pork, chicken, and beef, mindful to keep the bites small as Delmore’s teeth were sparse among his gums. B.D. slid the Tupperware containers into the freezer, then called Mike in Grand Marais and was pleased to hear the area was currently shy of a constable or deputy though one might be hired in June for the summer when tourists arrived. Tourists were appalled when there were fights at the taverns and someone was needed to unsuccessfully keep the lid on tempers and extreme public drunkenness. B.D. was still legally enjoined from the area due to a past mud bath and the unfairness of the law.

  Delmore was asleep in his chair so B.D. tiptoed off for his first actual freedom in six months. At the last minute he remembered to pack a couple of very large construction trash bags in case the weather turned bad so he could crawl into one when the tent began to leak. On the four-hour drive northeast he stopped at two creeks and caught a half dozen brook trout for supper. When he reached Seney with only twenty-five miles left to go to Grand Marais he relented and stopped to buy a fishing license on the off chance of getting stopped. It wouldn’t do to have a game warden calling headquarters for information. He also bought a cold six-pack reminding himself to keep the beer he was drinking out of sight when driving up a hill because there might be a cop coming the other way, an old survival trick of the North.

  Feeling rather soothed by the beer B.D. still resisted stopping at either tavern while driving through Grand Marais. It certainly would be stupid to tie one on while it was still daylight. He greeted the lovely harbor and Lake Superior beyond and headed east for a few miles before turning south on a log road for seven miles to a place he loved not because it was the best fishing which it wasn’t but because of the gentle, unobtrusive beauty of the place. He was a little surprised about two-thirds of the way in when he felt an unexpected tremor of fear in his stomach. A mile off to the west was the location where years ago he had found a large wild cherry tree blasted by lightning, an object largely held to be magical by all Indians and a few whites. And not fifty yards away in a thicket of sugar plum and dogwood he had discovered a small ancient graveyard of seven graves. When he had told a very old Indian friend about the graveyard the man said, “Don’t even tell me where it is. If it’s found out college people will come with their evil shovels.” Sad to say B.D. had met a graduate student in anthropology from the University of Michigan who had come north to the Upper Peninsula to study possible battle sites of the Chippewa, known to themselves as the Anishinabe, and the Iroquois in the early nineteenth century. It was all in the way Shelley’s ample but well-formed butt handled the barstool beneath it. He was smitten, not a rare thing, but this was a powerful smiting indeed. He almost prayed, “Please God, let it be me.” Suffused in the mixture of lust and alcohol he had spilled the beans and showed her the graveyard. How could he do such a pathetic and obvious thing? It was easy, though he tried to convince himself later that he had been caught up in a “whirl” whatever that was. He and Shelley became temporary lovers and in the following summer, sure enough, the University of Michigan began their anthropological “dig.” By then B.D. was involved with Lone Marten’s ill-fated and short-lived project of a “Wild Wild Midwest” tourist attraction. Lone Marten was David Four Feet’s brother but also a rotten-to-the-core scam artist and fake Indian activist. Their little Wild, Wild Midwest group attacked the dig one dawn with an improbably large amount of fireworks. Unfortunately the Michigan State Police got wind of the plot and in the ensuing melee Berry’s mother Rose had bitten off a cop’s thumb. Lone Marten and B.D. escaped and went on the lam with Delmore eventually bailing B.D. out. Rose was the only one to do hard time. B.D. was enjoined from entering Alger County west of Munising, his favorite spot on earth.

  But here he was encamped several years later convinced that no one remembered that long ago because he rarely had reason to do so himself. These rehearsals of the past were brutal so he quickly gathered wood and started a fire. The concentration required to cook his trout properly would help abolish the past but then while he was setting up the pup tent and waiting for the fire to get right another behavioral glitch struck him hard. About ten years before in a bar in Sault Ste. Marie he had said something nice to a woman of about thirty who was drinking with her friends and she had responded by saying, “Beat it, creep,” and he had poured a big mug of beer down her neck and fled. Unfortunately at the time he was well known around the Soo and the cops quickly found him. Two nights in jail were unpleasant. He and a buddy who ran the job were notorious for illegally diving on old Lake Superior shipwrecks and pillaging what could be removed. An antique brass binnacle could bring a thousand dollars assuming that you didn’t get caught but they did get caught with the body of an Indian in full regalia B.D. had found on the lake floor.

  B.D. had set up camp and cooked his supper fish hundreds of times and now this simple act soothed him at least temporarily. The beans were in a saucepan off to the side and he scooped some bacon fat into his iron skillet and put it on the coals. He took a handful of watercress and put it on his tin plate which kept the trout from congealing against the metal. He looked up to see the last of the sun’s top dropping over the ridge to the west. He saw an evening grosbeak
land in a chokecherry and a group of cedar waxwings were doing their twilight limb dance.

  He ate quickly and was still hungry wishing he had kept a portion of the pork chops and potato casserole he had cooked for Delmore. Or the chicken and Italian sausage stew. He took a swallow of the peppermint schnapps and made his way down a gulley perhaps fifty yards to the river hidden by alder and sweet-smelling cedar. He flopped down on a grassy patch of bank, a slight groan on his lips, thinking, You may as well fully accept how awful you’ve been and entertain good thoughts like the glimpse of Gretchen’s bare butt just before you handed her the fine-smelling pizza. Finally he was released into the beauty of the river for the last hour before dark. Through the trees on the other side of the river there was still a patch of snow on a north-facing hillside though it was May 5. The river was still high and strong from the snowmelt runoff and he was amazed as ever by how wonderful it sounded, perhaps the best sound in the world this water noise. He heard the drawn-out sound of a whip-poor-will which always made his skin prickle. He hoped to hear a wolf in the five days he intended to camp there as a den was less than a mile away.

  The Dunes Saloon was far less idyllic. Taking care of Berry had made him lose his touch at nighttime bars. You had to pace yourself and too many acquaintances from years ago bought him drinks. Three doubles in thirty minutes was too fast and when Gretchen called at eleven-thirty he was less than lucid.

  “How could you do this to me?”

  “What did I do to you?”

  “You were rude to the doctor.”

  “The dickhead treated me like mixed-blood trash. I’ve been through this before.”

  “You were supposed to let him examine your penis for possible herpes warts.”

  “My penis doesn’t own any herpes warts. It’s pure as the driven snow.”

  She hung up on him and he was sorrowful for a full minute but then Big Marcia snuck up behind him and grabbed his wanger. He turned with a smile to see that Big Marcia had gotten even bigger. B.D. thought she had maybe reached two fifty and lost some of her attractiveness. At two hundred she hadn’t looked that bad. She wore the T-shirt of the girls’ softball team, the Bayside Bitches, and now was perilously drunk and smelling of a cocktail called the Tootsie Roll which was a mixture of orange pop, Kahlúa liqueur, and whatever Dave the bartender might mischievously dump in. Dave was a fan of mayhem. Marcia wanted to go outside and “smooch” and since B.D.’s true love had hung up on him he felt justified in tagging along. However, outside in the yard in the shadow of the tavern she started to waver in his arms and gradually lost consciousness. Her back was sweaty and his hands were losing their grip. She had no belt to hold on to and his hands couldn’t get a big enough piece of her capacious ass. He quickly thrust an arm under her crotch and as gently as possible lowered her to the ground. Now he was sweating and there was a twinge in his back. He looked out toward the harbor to the moon above the streetlight and decided to go back to his camp.