Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  He had probably chased the coyotes down the hill toward the river, they sprinting ahead of him and leading him away from the security of the house. But someplace along the way, chaser and chasee must have reversed roles, the coyotes turning on him in numbers. He had fled to the safety of the trailer.

  I lay down on the rug with him, nose to nose. "So tell me"—up went one brow, down went the other—"what happened with those coyotés?"

  At the sound of their name, he blew out an anxious breath, his eyes becoming deeply worried.

  I petted his head, and he sighed, a sigh that seemed to imply that things hadn't turned out quite the way he had expected.

  Holding his head and stroking his shoulders, I tried to feel what he was feeling, imagining him as a pup on the Navajo Nation. Given his love of chasing cattle, he'd probably been shot at by a herder, or beaten soundly, and had fled into the desert. Starving, he'd caught rodents and finally taken down a calf. But while eating his first good meal in days, he'd been startled to see a coyote slink into view, size him up in an instant, and charge at him with fangs bared. Young Merle had backed off and watched from a distance as the coyote had eaten his prize.

  And in Merle's mind, as in the mind of every creature who lives in the wild, had begun the exquisitely fine calibration of size. Elk watch the arc that other elks' antlers make against the sky, noting the angle subtended. Elephants study other elephants as they demonstrate their strength by pushing over trees. Tigers measure how high another tiger has sprayed on a bush, and surely Merle had noticed that the coyote was bigger than he.

  But as he grew, Merle must have realized that he'd gotten larger than every coyote he saw. So when they howled outside our windows, he had decided to settle a score. However, he hadn't reckoned on their numbers. I wondered if his sad, shaken state was not merely a result of his having been roughed up. Perhaps he was also ruminating on his error in judgment.

  It became apparent, though, that he hadn't been completely intimidated by his experience. The next time he saw a coyote, we happened to be driving to town. The coyote was sitting alongside the road, head cocked quizzically at the ground where a rodent had hidden. Merle leapt to his feet, his eyes lit with a terrible rage. Shaking with fury, he began to growl. I feared he might try to jump through the windows, though they were rolled up. As we went by the coyote, Merle whipped around and stared out the back window, continuing to tell the coyote, with sharp whines and growls, what he'd do if he ever caught him.

  "You be careful, Sir," I said. "There's strength in numbers."

  He turned to me and snorted powerfully.

  He wasn't just boasting. It took awhile, but he picked his moment and had his revenge.

  The summer ripened, and so did Merle's education. As we drove up to the cabin from town one balmy July evening, he jumped out of the car, sniffed the air, and disappeared into the willows. A few seconds later I heard a thrashing, followed by his howls. Bursting from the trees, he rushed to me, screaming in pain. He was wearing a beard of porcupine quills.

  He pawed at his cheeks miserably, crying out without stopping, which only made it worse since his tongue was also bristling with the sharp needles. Getting pliers, I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and began to pull out the quills. He jumped out of my arms, crying in agony and foaming at the mouth. I couldn't put him, or me, through such an ordeal. Rushing into the house, I called Jack Konitz, who said he'd meet me at the vet clinic in forty-five minutes. Hustling Merle into the car, I drove the sixteen miles back to Jackson. There, Jack anesthetized him and took out the quills.

  At home, I carried Merle, still unconscious, into the cabin and lay him on his new, green L. L. Bean dog bed. I was finishing dinner when I heard three hard thwacks. Lying on his side, he was looking at me and banging his tail on the floor. I knelt by his head and petted him.

  "You look like you're feeling better," I said.

  He put a paw on my hand and continued to thump his tail.

  "You're not going to do that again, are you?" I asked him.

  Jack Konitz had warned me, "I've got dogs that are so dumb they've done this six or seven times." Judging from the bill, chasing porcupines could become an expensive habit.

  Not a week later, however, while on a bike ride, we came upon a porcupine. It was standing in the middle of the trail, regarding us with that resolute and somewhat put-upon air that porcupines have—knowing that they're almost invulnerable yet annoyed that they have to interrupt their business, turn their backs, and waddle away. Which is exactly what this one did.

  I was about to call out, "Merle, no!" when I saw him glance at the porcupine and then at me.

  "That's a porcupine," said his eyes. "You don't want to mess with them." And without waiting for me, he trotted down the trail, passing within five feet of the porcupine and giving it a respectful glance as he went by.

  We had gotten through coyotes and porcupines, bison and cattle, and I figured that since these were the most common dangers facing a dog in Kelly, the worst was behind us. I didn't have a clue that Merle's greatest challenge might be his attachment to me.

  We had driven into Jackson to run some errands, and I had parked one block from the town square with its famous elk-antler arches. It was a hot day, and I rolled down the windows, telling Merle I'd be back shortly. But I kept remembering things I needed to buy. I was gone for over an hour, and when I finally returned to the car I did a double-take. There was no dog in it. Astonished, I looked up and down the street, making sure I had the right car. Of course, I was in denial.

  Frantic, I started canvassing the blocks around the car, calling out his name as tourists stared at me. No Merle. After an hour, I was ready to go to the police. Coming onto the busy thoroughfare of Broadway from a side street, I passed a jewelry store. Merle lunged from the door. He was tethered to a rope and greeted me wildly, twirling in the air, moaning in happiness, and panting, "We've found each other. We've found each other."

  I knelt and hugged him. He put his chin on my shoulder and let out two great sighs, shuddering at the end of the second one.

  A blond woman in jeans came around the counter and said, "I saw him trot by the store. He looked in, then went on, and I stepped out to look after him since he's such a pretty dog, but he didn't have a collar. He was looking into every single store all the way to the square. Looking for you, I guess. A little while later he came back, and I grabbed him, figuring he might get hit by a car."

  I thanked her profusely and asked if I could borrow the rope. Merle had navigated Broadway safely once, but I wasn't going to take another chance. I led him to the car, and he bounded in as if getting into a lifeboat. Looking exhausted, he lay down and pounded his tail in relief. Then, as if suddenly remembering his ordeal, he began to express himself in his half-baying, half-talking way, wagging his head from side to side and crying out, "Yarowh, youroh, roowah." ("I was alone once in my life. I don't want that to happen again. Never. It's too horrible.")

  Consoling him with many pets, I replied, "I don't want that to happen either." Thinking that this would be a good learning opportunity, I added, "And so that it doesn't happen, I want you to stay here. Right here. Stay." I pointed my finger at him and then at the floor of the car. "I'll be back. Promise. I will always, always come back. I will never leave you." Suddenly, I remembered my dream of swimming with him in the icy water, and how safe and calm he had made me feel despite our plight. "I will never leave you," I said again. "But you need to stay here." I roughed up his fur, and he watched me as I backed out of the car. "Stay. I'll be back."

  Leaving the windows open, I returned the shopkeeper's rope, then positioned myself across Broadway, watching the car for the next hour. When I walked to it, Merle was lying on his side, sleeping peacefully.

  The rivers ran clear and low, the long, green brome cured and yellowed, the nights turned sharp, frost whitening the sage in the early morning. When I opened the front door for Merle, the first thing he did was roll onto his back and wiggle his spi
ne across the frozen grass, front paws hanging limply at their wrists, his head thrown back in an ecstatic grin. Leaping to his feet, he shook himself from nose to tail, took a deep breath of the September air, and looked at me with an expression that said, "Cold at last!" Which is hardly a surprising reaction from a creature who has to wear a fur coat through August.

  The elk began to bugle, their thin, haunting calls hanging like veils in the forest. The freezing nights gave a hallucinatory brilliance to the gold aspen and amber cottonwoods. And the lowering sun bathed the trees and mountains in a lucent glow that made it impossible to stay indoors.

  One afternoon during the first week in September, I took my shotgun from the shed and fastened Merle's red collar around his neck, adding two orange streamers of surveyor tape so that he'd be visible to other hunters. We drove up Ditch Creek to the boundary of Grand Teton National Park and the Bridger Teton National Forest. There, a trail wound up through a small valley of tall, old-growth aspen, their leaves filtering the sun like the stained glass of a cathedral.

  Merle loped in front of me, his amber coat flashing among the dry leaves. Occasionally, he stopped to investigate interesting scents, prodding with his paw. A few moments later he rushed by me, brushing my calf with his flanks and making his "ha-ha-ha" pant: "Got you." He seemed to have put the loathsome collar out of his mind. He was no bird dog yet, but I suspected that once he had flushed a grouse or two, he'd get the drill.

  I took a great breath of the sharp heady air. What could be better than this: walking through the September woods with my side-by-side shotgun, which had provided so many grouse dinners; wearing my old bird vest, its pocket holding the scent of feathers; and now accompanied by this wonderful dog.

  We reached the head of the valley, made a pass through some alder, and came out on the crest of a ridge that faced the grand sweep of the Tetons. Merle grew still, raised his right paw, and pointed. Ahead, I could see two ruffed grouse, necks hunched over, as they began to scurry off. He charged; they flushed; I shot and downed one.

  "Good dog!" I shouted, bursting with pride for him.

  I looked around. He was nowhere to be seen.

  "Merle?" I called.

  I walked over and picked up the grouse, admiring its soft, gray-and-black feathers and sending my thanks its way.

  "Merle!" I called, putting the bird in the pouch of my vest."Here, Merle! Come."

  Thinking that he might have chased the other bird, I followed the path of its flight. The crest of the ridge was open, covered with knee-high grass. I could see down its far side to the Gros Ventre River, two miles away; but I could see no golden dog.

  I began to walk in bigger and bigger circles, as I might have done had I lost some small object in the woods. I knew this was ridiculous—a sixty-five-pound dog isn't a dropped flashlight. Slowly, I allowed the unwelcome thought to enter my mind: The shot had spooked him and he'd run away. Still, I persevered, walking this way and that, shouting his name. Finally, I retraced my steps to the car and drove the five miles to home.

  There he was, sitting on the trailer's porch and looking forlorn. Unlike when he had been chased by coyotes, he didn't rush to greet me. Head hung, eyes shifting, he waited uneasily.

  I knelt in front of him. He trembled. "You don't like guns, do you?" More trembling.

  Oh well, I thought, not a bird dog.

  Brightening my tone, I asked him, "How about some dinner?"

  I fed him and his mood improved. Noticing that the light on my answering machine was blinking, I listened to the message, and Merle's speedy arrival was explained. A rancher who lived up the Gros Ventre River had found Merle sitting on the asphalt, howling mournfully. She had read his name tag and dropped him off on her way into Jackson.

  "So," I said, "that's how you got here so fast." Sitting in front of him, I rubbed the inside of his ear flaps, circling the tips of my index fingers gently on the openings of his ear canals. He pushed his head into my chest and wagged his tail softly. He loved this particular massage.

  His behavior on our grouse walk reinforced my belief that he had been shot at when he was younger. As is often the case with young dogs, that one incident could have been enough to make him permanently afraid of gunfire, though not necessarily of other loud noises. This I knew firsthand, since I had seen him napping in the cabin when a thunderclap had burst directly overhead, making me jump out of my skin. Merle had raised his head, and his benign look had said, "Hmm, quite the storm."

  On the Fourth of July, however, as soon as the kids in Kelly had begun to set off fireworks, Merle had stood up and nervously looked out the screen door of the trailer. When the sound of another firecracker came from down the lane, he had winced, turned, and gone into the back room of the trailer, where he had curled up with his nose under his tail, trembling. Either children had thrown firecrackers at him in Utah or the sound of a firecracker reminded him of gunfire.

  Some animal behaviorists suggest that, in the case of gunfire, some dogs can be cured of their fear through gradual exposure to what they call "an increasing range of potentially traumatic experiences from an early age." Merle might already be too old for such acclimatization, but I was willing to try.

  On the day after he had been spooked by the blast of the shotgun, I took him to a secluded meadow. Getting out of the car, I slammed the door hard. He gave me a quizzical look, as if to say, "Why did you do that?" Clearly, most loud noise had no effect on him. Putting on his leash, so he wouldn't run away, I loaded a .22 target pistol. He watched me with apprehension. I was certain that he hadn't been able to place the pistol into the same category of objects as the shotgun simply from looking at it. Rather, he was listening to the metallic sound of its opening and closing, a sound similar to that of the shotgun being loaded.

  He cocked his head. I fired the pistol in the air. He tried to flee. I held him. Panting terribly, he looked at me with distress.

  "Easy," I said, "easy," stroking him affectionately and offering him a biscuit. He wouldn't take it.

  I fired once again. Compared to the shotgun's report, the noise of the pistol was hardly noticeable—at least to me. But Merle began to yelp wildly.

  Accustoming him to gunfire seemed utterly stupid. I unloaded the pistol, cased it, hugged him, and took him off the leash. He immediately jumped at my face in relief.

  "No more bird dog training," I exclaimed, roughing up his fur. He bucked up and down with exuberance, turning round and round, and dancing his paws in a mad patter.

  "You don't have to be a bird dog," I told him, crouching before him. "Honest. You are the best dog just the way you are." I scratched him from his shoulders to his hips, and he pushed his head so hard into my chest that he knocked me on the ground. I laughed as he stood over me, rubbing his forehead into my neck.

  The next few weeks proved hard. I'd go to the shed and he'd follow me. After all, that's where I kept my mountain bike and backpacks, the gear he associated with fun. Out would come the shotgun, and his face would fall. He'd turn around, walk back to the porch, sit down, and, as I loaded the car, he'd look off into space as if counting the clouds.

  When elk season opened in the last week of September, I figured I might be able to cajole him into coming along—not because I thought he could help me to hunt elk, but because I valued his company. Finding an elk usually took several mornings and afternoons, often a week or more of hunting, and during all this time no shooting was involved. In fact, unlike in grouse hunting, during which a hunter may shoot half a dozen times in the space of a few hours, an elk hunter tries to shoot only once each year, just enough to get one elk and fill the freezer.

  Waiting until Merle was off on his rounds, I put the cased rifle in the car, then, later in the afternoon, called him. When he appeared after a few minutes, I snapped on his collar with its orange streamers. I had taken off the jangling tags—they made too much noise for elk hunting—and with indelible black marker had written his name, address, and phone number on the flat red webbing. H
e took a few steps toward the door, then stopped in his tracks. Twisting his head, he tried to look at the collar. He gave his head a shake, listened—no noise—and gave his tail a hearty wag, indicating: "Hmm, a quiet collar, nice."

  Why hadn't I thought of this before? How many of us would want to walk around with a bunch of tags jangling around our necks? His reaction reaffirmed my determination to make him wear his collar only when necessary.

  We drove to the same trailhead where we had started our grouse walk, and he jumped out of the car excitedly. But when I took the rifle from its case, he gave me a grievous expression. No sound was involved—the rifle had the same shape as the shotgun. I held it out to him and let him smell it. Without moving his feet, he stretched his neck forward, his nostrils dilating and his eyes filled with a mixture of caution and interest. One brow went up, the other down. After years of hunting elk with the rifle and carrying it after I had field dressed them, it smelled like elk—the same elk he smelled on me, in our house, and whose meat he had now eaten plenty of. Holding his tail low, he gave it a rapid, conflicted wag.

  "Okay," I said softly. "We probably won't see any elk, and if we do, we can decide what we'll do then."

  I motioned to him with my hand and I started off. He didn't move. "Come on," I said, kneeling, and patted my palms encouragingly against my chest. He came to me and put his head against me. Rubbing his flanks, I began to sing, "I know a dog and his name is Merle, I know a dog and his name is Merle" to the tune of "Blue," the song about the hound dog. I had sung it to him many times, changing the original words—"I had a dog and his name was Blue, betcha five dollars he's a goodun too"—to "I know a dog and his name is Merle, he's the best dog in the world."

  At the sound of his name, Merle wagged his tail hard. At the words "He's the best dog in the world," my voice rising enthusiastically, he shivered with delight and sighed, pushing his head harder into my chest.