Brown Dog: Novellas

by Jim Harrison

  “I’ll live with it,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  As he drove down the log road to his place in the gathering dark he slowed down thinking that he was a trapper who had trapped himself. He infrequently thought about the idea of emotions because he was aware that he had no control of his own impulses. For instance trout season had opened but all the creeks and rivers were too high to fish. When young it pissed him off and still did. Once he was so angry he cut seven cords of wood in one day, collected his money, went on a twenty-four-hour drunk. A woman threw a cup of hot coffee on him in the shower and he yelled but in truth the coffee wasn’t much hotter than the shower water. She apologized with one of the best hundred fucks of his life. She was a schoolteacher and later admitted she had thought she was slumming and regretted it adding, “We’re all human beings.”

  Gretchen reminded him of a song he loathed, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” She always made him feel high-minded and he’d come up empty. He couldn’t figure out this quality of yearning and thought he never would. He suspected it was what everyone called love, something he couldn’t get his head around he supposed because he didn’t have a mother he could remember. You start out loving your mother and then you move on. He dimly remembered a human shape in a hot cabin where he was suffocating. The shape poured cool water on him and he could breathe.

  Turning a corner between two big pines on the rutted road he was startled to see the lights on. He was sure Big Fatty, who sometimes looked after the cabin and dogs, had driven over on his four-wheeler because there were tracks but then he saw a van parked at the end of the kennel. The three outside dogs were barking and he pitched them a roadkill muskrat he picked up then noticed they already had the forequarters of a deer. It must be Fatty who had had a hard time losing a leg to a falling oak. B.D. had put together a little house a mile down the road for him out of four abandoned fish shanties. There was only room for a bed, stove, and table. Fatty was massively strong and weighed about three hundred. He could easily jerk himself out of bed with one arm using a sling attached to the wall over him. He liked the idea of a four-door shack because he could shoot a deer out of each door though one was nearly blocked by a giant pile of beer cans.

  B.D. looked in the door and there was a woman dressed in black sitting at the table eating a sandwich with a pistol beside her plate. He saw a dagger in her purse as well. Bruno was on her lap snarling at him but mostly protecting the sandwich.

  “This is my house,” he said.

  “Then why’s the dog threatening you?” She had the pistol aimed at his head.

  “He beat up his mother and sent her to the hospital. Big Fred here knows me.” Fred was all over him with toothy smiles.

  “Are you Brown Dog?”

  “Sure enough. You look like Rollo.”

  “I’m his half-sister. You and I have to drive Rollo to Montana. Momma thinks he’ll die here. I’m Long Rita but I go by Rita. You’re not too impressive but I can’t say I know a man that is.”

  When she stood Bruno clutched her and wouldn’t be put down. She was slender and at least six feet. B.D. figured she had the unfriendliest face on earth.

  “This is the first dog that ever liked me.” She kissed Bruno, who became a puddle.

  “He’s Bruno and doesn’t like anyone. Consider him a gift. Am I supposed to quit my job?”

  “You’ll be paid. Mom’s got a used-car lot down in Great Falls. She’ll get you something to drive home. Be at the hospital at 8:00 AM.”

  She stood holding Bruno and jumped straight up in the air higher than he had ever seen a girl jump even on the championship Escanaba girls’ basketball team. He was in shock as she grabbed her pistol and walked out.

  Chapter 4

  He sat at the table settling his nerves. He remembered he had misplaced his two-dollar Air Force suitcase but he could pack some clothes in a paper bag. You can always get another paper bag. He kept sniffing the air quizzically because of an alien odor. A horse. Rita smelled like horse. A horse had got him talking again after he quit when his dog died. How it happened is that his favorite brook trout place at the time was a full three miles back in the woods, accessible by multiple turns on overgrown log roads. He was fishing well and looked up and there was a gray horse about thirty feet away and he wondered if he should be frightened. The horse stared at him for ten minutes then walked away. He went back a half dozen times in the next few weeks remembering that a mean-minded local 4-H girl had lost a horse the year before. Maybe someone beat on it with a ball bat? The first person he talked to was Grandpa who was very happy. He asked if a horse could winter over in that area. Grandpa said yes if he had shelter and not up near Marquette where there was too much snow. It would be hard and the horse might not live long but the area had some open fields for forage. Now B.D. wondered if he should report the horse. One day in a big thunderstorm he followed it down the creek a half mile into an old deer shanty with one side collapsed. The open side was to the south so the horse would have protection from the north and west where the worst winds come from. The thunderstorm was violent so B.D. sat down off to the side of a pile of horse turds and ate his pickled bologna sandwich. He offered half to the horse who sniffed but rejected it. There was nothing quite like the softness of a horse’s nose which it would sometimes press against his bare neck He talked a lot to the horse which seemed to like it. Grandpa had pointed out that horses always knew where they were so if the horse wanted to go home he would. Inside of B.D.’s very young head there was turmoil over turning in the horse and lengthening its life or leaving it alone. He left it alone because of his own relentless combative relationship with authority. He still hated and would leave a bar if there was a loud political argument when nitwits thought they were in chains and weren’t safe without fully automatic weapons and it might help if you shot the Indians, Blacks, and Mexicans. This was a certain kind of fearful man. A small minority to be sure. One little guy in Rapid River with a big Adam’s apple kept yelling, “Live free or die!” It was amazing to him how often he had thought about the horse that lived in the woods.

  Fatty came over at seven in the morning with a deer neck soup for breakfast. Fatty was going to take care of the dogs. Lucky for him Bruno was gone so it would be peaceful. Bruno hated Fatty because he had bitten Fatty’s artificial leg and hurt his teeth.

  The night before he recalled he had a pint of schnapps in the car but after Rita left he was too tired and unnerved to go out and get it. This had never happened before. His memories of Montana were bad. He thought he was in Billings and had been drinking beer for days and had even visited the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn when he got in a tussle in a bar. He was sort of harassing two cowgirls not realizing their cowboy boyfriends were playing pool. After the usual brief argument he got a good punch in on one but the other bushwhacked him with a chair over the head. He wasn’t quite that dumb anymore.

  On the way to the hospital with his sack of rather ratty clothes his mind naturally drifted to the sexual possibilities of Rita. To be sure she was a bit tall and slender and had not shown herself to be very friendly. His long slump plus the utterly shitty job had put him off the chase plus it was easier to catch someone when the female summer tourists started coming in June. Until then you had to make do with lesser talent. There’s nothing like a schoolteacher on vacation to turn loose. There could be hair on the walls in the morning.

  He crossed a small river, slammed on the brakes, backed up, and just as the cell phone rang he pitched it out the window into the swiftly moving water with a warm, tingling, happy feeling in his body. He should have called the sheriff first and told him to go fuck himself but that might have caused future problems. He had been crossed with the law enough in his life to know what you wanted was to avoid notice. Wearing a green janitor’s suit helped. Then no one noticed you. You had to have a couple of outfits, though, to get laid in. You couldn’t check out Women’s Bowling Night in a janitor’s suit. After a night on the lanes
and a few drinks those girls, some a tad large, could get frisky. His favorite was a school classmate who was a stuck-up snot because her family had a little more money. His friend David Four Feet once put both a stink bomb and a whoopee cushion under her seat. It was a big day though he got beat with a leather strap. She married a guy that became the manager of an auto dealership but was a major lardass and B.D. felt that must be where he came in. No way did the guy have ready access to his pecker. She was a kinky Episcopalian and even paid for the motel.

  When he reached the hospital they were just finishing loading Rollo. Rita looked taller in the daylight. She stared at him without smiling with a special glance at his paper bag.

  “An Indian woman stole my suitcase,” B.D. said.

  “That’s not funny, asshole,” she said.

  B.D. had noted that more and more women were calling him names especially tall ones. He wondered who between Cheryl and Rita would win a fair fight.

  “Did you bring any shooters?” Rollo asked.

  “No alcohol on this trip,” Rita interrupted.

  “You’ll make a stop or your life will be miserable, sister.”

  B.D. noticed she winced slightly. He looked in the big van. There was a hydraulic hoist for a collapsible wheelchair, an electric heater, a mini fridge, a hospital bed where Rollo lay, a bed pan, a big expensive sleeping bed, and fluffy pillows on the floor.

  “I suppose I sleep on the floor?” B.D. asked.

  “No, in the front seat. I brought you a blanket. The seat goes back a ways.”

  Off they went with B.D. at the wheel and Rita in the passenger seat with a big notebook with pictures of horses. They were heading south before turning west because Rita said she had a couple of brief horse stops. She said she trained cutting horses but B.D. had no idea what that meant. She also said for him to follow the GPS and he said he didn’t know how. She said, “You must be a dumb fucker.” More names from tall women. She played Merle Haggard, Captain Beefheart, and Leonard Cohen, the latter always making B.D. teary. He asked her what cutting horses were and she said she’d tell him when they got out of Michigan which spooked her for all the damage it had done to her brother.

  It had occurred to B.D. that he had forgotten to say goodbye to Gretchen and asked Rita to dial because Rita’s cell phone was a BlackBerry and far too difficult for him to manage.

  “Hello darling. I’m headed west.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m heading west to go into ranching. My love for you will never die. It’s farewell for us.”

  “Be careful.”

  “That’s sad,” Rita said.

  “She loves another though we had a baby. The other is a woman.”

  “Oh my God, now it’s really sad. You poor man.”

  B.D. was a bit overcome and his throat clutched.

  “B.D. is a pro pussy chaser,” Rollo called out, “I need a shooter for my morning Oxycontin.”

  “In an hour. I’m not stopping until Wisconsin. It’s close near Iron Mountain.”

  Meanwhile, B.D. was feeling good about Rita’s sympathy which can be a critical factor in seduction.

  “I want my shooter,” Rollo yelled. “When Rita was fourteen she was selling her ass in Great Falls.”

  “That’s smarter than pissing off a snowmobile seat.”

  “Please. I won’t tell what you did with the Choteau basketball team.”

  She pointed out a combination gas station liquor store of which there are hundreds in Wisconsin. They were having a sale and he managed to get twenty for the twenty bucks she gave him slipping three in his coat pocket. Back in the van he gave two and an Oxycontin to Rollo who could now drink on his own with a quivery hand. Rita was still deep in her horse folio. He handed her the paper bag which she put at her feet. He was a little confused about what he was doing in Wisconsin never having agreed to the trip in the first place. He was on a command performance for his friend Rollo, exact destination unknown. On further thought this didn’t seem to matter as he had been slowly sinking in small increments. You had to “get out of Dodge” as everyone says. The predominant problem was the need for affection and the mere presence of a female in the front of the van was causing a specific heat beneath his belt. A wobble in his driving caused her to announce it was time for her to take a six-hour shift. He pulled over and walked into the woods for a pee and a shooter followed by a stick of gum to mask the shooter. Rita ran past at an alarming pace evidently to loosen up. B.D. questioned the expanding tribe of rude-mouthed amazons. Cheryl threw dozens of punches and Rita pointed a gun!

  Rita made some fine roast beef sandwiches saying that they had raised the beef. Rollo had lost the best ranch but “momma’” had earned another smaller one with a modest amount of cattle and her horse operation. She added that when they reached home Rollo wouldn’t be allowed anything but a ’53 Ford pickup and he would be locked in at night. Because of the Oxycontin Rollo responded with dog and meadowlark noises.

  B.D. napped for an hour and had a marvelous liberating dream. He had been Gretchen’s love slave and now she let him go after screwing him again in the pup tent in the snow. He was riding the horse in the woods with his fly rod and stopping to fish here and there. The forest and creeks were radiant. He had the clear vision of when he and his friend David Four Feet snuck up on a little lake where 4-H girls were skinny-dipping. There was a great big one and David said, “I want that one.”

  Rita nudged him awake to see the Mississippi near La Crosse and he wondered how the hell he’d fish this vast water. He had a hard-on which was pushing against the limits of his lightweight trousers. She gestured at it and said, “Don’t point that at me or I’ll cut your throat.”

  “That’s not a kind way to say good morning.”

  They were going up the steep hill into Minnesota on the other side of the river when B.D. pointed out a gray horse. “That looks like the horse I used to hang out with.”

  “I didn’t know you rode.”

  “I don’t. I just hung out walking and talking with her during five months of trout season. We were a couple miles back in the woods. She led me to her shack which was a partly collapsed three-sided deer shack. I thought of living there with her but I was only ten and Grandpa wouldn’t allow it. I heard that fall that this girl who owned the horse had a mean brother that beat it with a ball bat so it ran away.”

  “If you shoot the guy I’ll give you five grand,” she howled.

  “That was forty years ago and I’m not into killing. One day we came around a sharp bend and there was a medium-sized black bear and she chased it across a field about a mile wide hauling ass. I liked it when she put her soft nose against my neck. A horse’s nose is a wonderful thing and they smell best of any animal.”

  Of course B.D. was trying to find common ground, her good side if there was one. He had never made love to a full-blood, just mixed-bloods like himself or whatever he was. His Uncle Delmore wouldn’t tell him and might not before he died. Likely Gretchen would cook Delmore Sunday dinner.

  “You’re not a bad sort but I gave up men twenty-five years ago when I was fourteen. It’s no secret since Rollo blabbed. I ran off from Browning to Great Falls. I fucked for a living because no one would hire a tall, skinny Indian girl my age. I was into volume for food, booze, and drugs. Most were quickies in alleys with teenagers or college-age boys. Some were older men in motels, and there was a low-rent doctor whose office I’d sneak into through the back door after hours. He made the best money offer, twenty bucks, but he was too kinky. Finally I spent the night with a mixed-breed rodeo rider and liked him. He knew a neighbor rancher in a valley to the south who needed someone to look after thirty expensive quarter horses. I was good with horses very young and got the job and lived in a pretty nice bunkhouse. I could never deal with men. I believe I would kill if I was around one more than a day.

  “How?” B.D. was appalled and didn’t know what to say. Sex diminished with the idea of death. He also remembered the violent st
ories of women and how he asked Gretchen. She said that our mythologies have a soft stranglehold on us but manage to change slightly every day. The same for both women and men.

  “My pistol or my knife. Or this perfect crime I’ve devised. I own a real rank stallion that hates men and would likely kill them if he got a chance. I call him Bowie after the knife. I get the guy drunk and drag him and tip him over the fence into Bowie’s pen. Presto!”

  They stopped wearily at a rest stop near Council Bluffs. Rita had changed to a more southern route because of bad weather in the Dakotas. Many have felt the brunt of a late April, early May snowstorm. South of the Dakotas she buried her nose in her driving but her head bobbed after a dozen hours on the road. B.D. yearned for a six-pack. It also occurred to him that it was only twenty-four hours after Rita had shown up at his shack and now here he was on a high hill off the freeway looking at a real big-ass river, the Missouri, in the distance. It felt a whole lot better to get out of town no matter that his life was out of control. The simple fact was he needed to be out of control and it had never occurred to him not to go.

  “Rollo, you miserable cocksucker!” Rita was lowering Rollo out of the van on a hydraulic lift and a little bag of pills had fallen off his lap. He had somehow mooched extras at the hospital. She had worried about him talking so little when he was normally voluble.

  “You stupid fuck. You’re killing yourself.” She slapped him but pulled her punch and the slap was light. She was washing him with bottled water and then drained his pee bag onto the ground. Now Rollo was crying and she leaned over to hug him.

  Meanwhile B.D. stood there and noted that tall, slender Rita had a bit more flesh on her butt than he had perceived before. His weenie tickled itself even though he was convinced that the odds of his ever mounting this heifer were poor indeed. He kept thinking of her ominous dagger and a knife fight he had seen in Chicago thirty years before that made him nauseous.