Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  "How's our big hungry puss?" I'd reply, scratching his cheeks and making him purr.

  Raising his head from his bed, Merle would give me the most disgusted of looks: "You're letting that cat get away with murder."

  Despite his feelings about the feline world, Merle always acted politely toward cats, as he did to all people: no pushy greetings, no jumping, licking, or barking. If some people were uncomfortable with having even this well-behaved dog close to them, I would only have to give a small flick of my index finger, indicating that he should leave, and he'd pad off and lie down. His refined social skills led more than one person to comment, "He doesn't act like a dog. He ... he's almost like a person." What they really wanted to say was that he was like a diplomat from a strange land, one who displayed some odd foreign manners but who nonetheless spoke the lingua franca well. Groping for words, one individual said, "I mean, when I'm around you two, I sometimes wonder who's the person and who's the dog." Then she backpedaled, adding, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

  "Not at all," I told her. "In fact, that's one of the nicest compliments I've ever been paid."

  I was totally sincere. Her observation meant that, in the space of only four years together, Merle and I had worked our way back to the time when people and animals "spoke the same language," as one old Inuit song recounts.

  By the fall, it became obvious that Allison had had a change of heart. Being groomed for the CEO position in her family's business had been a heady prospect, but a life of pantyhose and power suits hadn't translated into her calling. She missed the mountains, she missed skiing, and we missed each other. She and Brower moved to Kelly, into a log house across the field from Merle and me.

  In Omaha, as a way of dampening her guilt over leaving Brower home all day, she had bought him every sort of toy: rawhide chews, pig ears, balls, stuffed animals. But no gift seemed to lift his spirits more than the one she gave him when they moved to Wyoming—a door of his own.

  He would leave their home, making his way under the cottonwoods, and come into my view as he galloped through the sage. Although he and Merle now weighed the same, about seventy pounds, Brower had turned into a taller and rangier dog, as well as one who was paler gold in color. He had a great feathery tail, and it would stream behind him as he'd execute a sideways drift around our south deck, tear across the north porch, claws clattering, and slap-slap, explode through the dog doors and burst across the great room as if we hadn't seen each other in months. As was more often the case, I had just left his and Allison's house early that morning, or he had left ours with her. He'd leap up to greet me, paws on my shoulders, smooching my face while panting ecstatically, "Ted, man, old buddy! It is fabulous to see you! This is the best!" And it was. His time was his own; his life was his own; Omaha, the fenced yard, the leash, and the crate were gone.

  Merle would look up from the couch, one brow raised to indicate, "Ah, youth is here."

  Before I could say, "Down, Brower," he'd spy Merle on the couch and rush to him. "Merle, Merle, Merle!" he'd pant in wild happiness. "How's it going? Let's do something!"

  Keeping his hind end on the couch, Merle would put his front paws on the floor and do a dignified stretch, wagging his elevated tail in a reserved greeting.

  Brower, kissing him all over the face, would be unable to stand another moment's delay: "Oh, come on! Let's go, let's go, let's go!"

  And without waiting, he'd rush out the dog door, followed by Merle. I could see them go down the road, side by side, tails waving like the plumes of two courtiers. The first time they set off like this, I couldn't help but follow at a distance.

  No more than two hundred yards down the road, Merle stopped at the creek and waded through it, as he did most mornings. "Here's the creek," he seemed to say. "This spot has excellent wading. You can find frogs here." A little farther on, he turned right and went across the main road into the field where the cutting horse instructor kept his training sheep. Merle paused fifty feet from the pen. The cutting horse instructor hated dogs bothering his livestock. "Those are the sheep pens," Merle seemed to say by his direct glance at them. "Great smells. Don't even think of trying to get in there." He turned and recrossed the road. "Over here, I have visiting rights to these rabbits. Very interesting viewing." Merle and Brower stood in front of one of our neighbor's hutches. "Again," Merle seemed to say by his immovable stance a few feet from the hutch, "leave them alone." From there, he led Brower to the one-lane bridge over the Gros Ventre, where they paused and looked upriver. "On your left, you'll see waterfowl and trout in the pools, but if you cross the bridge, we'll be in big game country. Keep an eye out; we might see some elk on those hillsides." Merle gave the hillside, where we'd often seen elk, a long surveying look. He wagged his tail: "Now that's something a dog can get excited about."

  Of course, Merle spoke not a word to Brower—not a bark, not a woof, not a whine—but his face was a labile study in conversation, just as the faces of wolves are when they hunt in a pack and "speak" to each other with a leading motion of their eyes, snouts, and ears. One has only to have attempted communicating with a fellow human being while observing shy wildlife to note how effective this sort of nonverbal communication is. "They went that way; they're standing right there; let's crawl ahead for a better view" can all be said by moving the eyes, brows, and head. And one doesn't have to go to the outdoors to know this. "I love you beyond measure, you light up the world, I will stand by you to the end" have been said with nothing but the eyes—both between people, and between dogs and people—for a long, long time.

  I left them to their ramblings, and several hours later they burst back through the dog doors, huge grins on their faces, their Kelly tour complete.

  Now there were four of us to ski or walk in the afternoons, and Brower, the exuberant youngster, would tear off dry branches from fallen logs and bear them along proudly. He was enormously strong and occasionally would manage to rip off a branch some ten feet long. We then had to step smartly, or he'd wipe us out at the knees as he pranced by our sides.

  Merle would look at me and roll his eyes: "Oh, my god, are we really friends with that dog?"

  We often walked to the river, where I would throw sticks into the Gros Ventre for Brower and he'd swim out to retrieve them. Merle watched these games with studied aloofness, his entire body language implying, "This is beneath me."

  It was on perhaps our fourth or fifth walk, after I had thrown a stick for Brower and praised him lavishly upon his retrieving it, that Merle sat down in front of me, his eyes riveted on mine and brightly lit with some obvious scheme.

  "What's up?" I asked him.

  He shivered slightly, as he always did when excited. I suddenly understood. His eyes were telling me, "I can do that."

  "Why don't you hold Brower a second," I asked Allison.

  Presenting the stick in front of Merle's nose, I said, "Are you really going to retrieve?"

  He shook in readiness.

  "All right, let's see what you can do."

  I flung the stick into the river, and Merle, defying four years of nonretrieving history, leapt into the water, swam downstream, grasped the stick in his jaws, paddled to shore, ran to me, and dropped it at my feet with a nonchalant toss.

  "I am stunned," I told him. "What gives?"

  "Ha-ha-ha," he panted. "No big deal."

  I threw the stick again and he retrieved it, throwing it at my feet in the same careless way.

  One more time I launched the stick into the river, but this time Merle sat there without moving.

  "Go ahead," I said, "get it."

  He looked at the stick, he looked at me, and he actually sighed. Not hiding his reluctance, he walked into the water, swam downriver, and retrieved the stick. Walking up to me, he flung it at my feet with an "enough of this nonsense" toss of his head.

  When I threw the stick a fourth time, he simply watched it float away.

  "Fetch," I told him. "Go get it."

  He turned to me wit
h one of the most expressive looks I've ever seen on a dog or, for that matter, a human. His head was cocked to the side with wry indulgence, and his eyes hung on mine with tender reproach: "I showed you I can do this, but it's really not my game."

  "Let Brower go," I said, and Allison released him.

  He hit the water, swam downstream, and fetched the stick. Merle watched him without moving.

  Allison then held Brower and I tossed the stick for Merle, wanting to see if what we were witnessing was some form of dominance expressing itself—if Merle had decided not to let his one-time pupil steal the show. His reaction now demonstrated otherwise. He looked at the stick, floating away; he looked at me; and his eyes said, as they always had, "Sorry, I don't fetch." Evidently, he had wanted to show me that his stand on retrieving was not a lack of proficiency but a lack of desire. This wasn't the last time he'd make such a statement.

  In his intriguing book Dogs Never Lie About Love, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson remarks that dogs are never paralyzed by the need to judge and to compare. They don't dwell on the fact that today's walk isn't as nice as yesterday's, or this forest isn't as interesting as the one they were in last week. Dogs have no favorite walks, only people do, writes Masson, adding that dogs love all walks. "They love being wherever they are. The reason, and it is a great lesson, is no doubt that they are perfectly content to be who they are, without torturing themselves with alternatives: They love being dogs."

  Not so with Merle. He preferred our walks on the hills above Kelly to the one along the river. He preferred downhill skiing on Teton Pass to touring up the Gros Ventre. And if we were in cities he preferred walking on grass, in parks, to pavement. That he genuinely preferred some places over others was not hard to decipher: His exuberant body language expressed his enthusiasm over those places he enjoyed; his less-than-exuberant body language showed that other places were just ordinary. At times, he could show that he was truly displeased with a place, sulking with his head between his paws in some suburban home while his eyes said, "Can't we get out of here?"

  I'd then take him for a walk, and, instead of being in love with where he was, he'd express the very opposite. Walking the streets of Boulder, Helena, Bozeman, or Missoula, for instance, he'd sniff along the curbs, lawns, and trees, and his body posture would say, "Nope." He'd go a bit farther, sniff, and indicate, "Nope." A little farther on, his lackadaisical body language would imply, "Nope, still not what I want." But when we got to a park where many other dogs had walked, he'd immediately perk up: "Ah, at last, something interesting to smell."

  Still, when all was said and done, he loved his home best. Returning from one of these suburban strolls, he'd go directly to our car, stand by its rear door, and wag his tail at me hopefully: "Please, can't we go home?"

  "We're here," I'd say, "try to enjoy it."

  The immediate drooping of his head gave new meaning to the word "hangdog."

  Was he reading my energy? I don't think so, for in some of these places I was having a high old time, visiting with friends I saw intermittently, eating great food, drinking good wine, and talking late into the night about politics and books. In the midst of such uplifting conversations, Merle would pad to my side and put his chin on my thigh. His body would move steadily with his imploring tail, his eyes saying, "Isn't it time to go home yet?" I'd let him out, and he'd walk directly to our car, stand at the door, and once again give me that longing look: "When can we go home?"

  This was not a dog who lived in the delightfulness of the present or who had no ability to compare. What he had accumulated was a large data set, one that had allowed him to define "home" not only as Kelly, but as all those places where he could be a dog in the way that he had come to understand dogdom: his time at his disposal and lots of room to roam.

  As often as possible, we joined him in these places. In the summer we hiked, in the winter we skied, disappearing into the backcountry and following routes others didn't travel. On some remote knob, overlooking an empty valley, we'd stop for lunch—Brower and Allison, Merle and me—she and I sitting on our packs, the dogs eating their biscuits while we ate our sandwiches. At such moments we could have been the first people to have ventured into North America, moving down the spine of the Rockies with our packs and our dogs. The sky was quiet, the forest private. We were alone and peaceful in a way that it is ever harder to be alone and peaceful: the outside world not gone, but out of sight and out of mind.

  The dogs, I thought, helped us appreciate these moments. Lying in the grass and staring down at some distant valley, they would gaze without moving, not mesmerized by the distance but brought to rest by it. Even if we put a hand between their shoulders and gave them a scratch, they wouldn't budge from their tranquil reflection. Leaving our hands upon them, we'd soon feel the quiet of the place coming up through their bodies, as if they had become conduits for stillness.

  Some of these places we returned to over and over again because of their long views, or their ancient trees, or because the incline of a particular slope was perfect for skiing. Like all those people who have believed themselves the first to happen upon a scene, we named these special places, especially our favorite ski runs: The White Goddess; Winter Magic; Hidden Peak; and Puppies' Powder, the latter for how our dogs bounded after us, their ears flapping like the wings of birds. There was also Merle's Delight, named for the time we skied a steep and narrow gully, the snow so light it resembled air-driven spume as it sprayed over our shoulders. Reaching the creek bottom, we looked back and saw Merle, up to his neck in powder, his head gold, his pink tongue laughing, as he surfed a moving wave of snow down into the cold gray dusk.

  The town of Jackson seemed especially distant in these winter months, and if we didn't turn on the radio our sense of isolation was complete. There was nothing beyond our windows except the snow and the mountains and the Milky Way. This was hardly a lonely feeling. Instead, the country seemed big and protective, the way our parents once felt when there was nothing beyond the comfort of their arms.

  It was during this time that Allison got a job. Financially, she didn't need one, but she didn't like being unemployed while listening for her calling—it went against her work ethic. So she worked at the Teton Valley Hospital, on the other side of Teton Pass, in Driggs, Idaho, developing outreach programs for seniors. The fifty-mile commute meant an early-morning departure from Kelly, and she rose to an alarm, something I hadn't done for years, relying instead on my subconscious to let me know when it was time to get up and write. This could be 3:30 in the morning; it could be 7:30. Thus, at least when Merle and I slept alone at our house, he had no set human routine upon which to pattern his. Sometimes he was around when I opened my eyes; sometimes he wasn't; and sometimes we awoke together.

  "Bonjour, Monsieur," I'd say, looking over to the corner of the bedroom where he slept on his pile of folded blankets, "la journée de travail commence." The workday begins.

  If he had been out most of the night, tending to his affairs, and it was still dark, as it often was in the winter when I got up early, he'd give me a pained expression as I lit my bedside lamp. He'd put his paws over his eyes and bury his head in the folds of his blankets. "Your workday begins," he'd groan, making an "awwwrrr" sound deep in his throat, "mine is just getting over."

  "You are such a boulevardier, Sir," I would tease him. "Did you close down Kelly's night spots?"

  He'd yawn and go back to sleep as I washed up and fixed breakfast.

  But by first light, I'd hear his claws on the wooden stairs, and he'd pad softly into my office, greeting me at my desk by laying his chin on my thigh, his tail moving his body in a slow undulation: "Hmm, so good to see you now that I'm awake." Then he'd be gone, pushing powerfully through the driveway's deep snow or, if it was summer, his paws moving in that tireless, sun-dappled trot, his reddish coat aglow. Watching him—five years old, perhaps like many dogs his size, halfway through his allotted years—I sometimes recalled A. E. Housman's lines, in which he laments the too-quick p
assing of youth:

  With rue my heart is laden

  For golden friends I had,

  For many a rose-lipt maiden

  And many a lightfoot lad.

  Numerous people who saw Merle at such moments, his gold fur rippling in the sun, his eyes bright and clear, his paws trotting lightly, would exclaim, "Oh, what a beautiful dog!" If they were hunters, they might remark, "That is one good-looking bird dog. You ought to come—" And they'd extend an invitation to come hunting on their ranch or farm.

  "Thank you," I'd reply, "but Merle hates bird hunting. He's an elk dog."

  "Oh, you just haven't trained him right," the more persistent would tell me. "He's got bird genes for sure." And they'd mention some trainer they knew down in Texas or in the Dakotas who had taken charge of their dog and "turned him into a near field champion." They'd give me his phone number and once again invite me to come hunting with them.

  I never followed up on these invitations—I didn't want to embarrass Merle in front of dogs who were near field champions, nor could I imagine shipping him off to some faraway trainer who would rejigger his brain with a shock collar. Besides, even though it would have been nice to have had pheasants and partridges to eat, we were wealthy in elk and antelope meat, the freezer shelves stacked with white packages. The root cellar was full of potatoes and carrots from the garden; the pantry gleamed with glass jars of tomatoes and peaches. Under the porch were six cords of firewood. We felt rich from the land and rich with each other: Our two dogs and we were a family.

  Sometimes, though, Merle would get a little sulky because of how much time I was spending with Allison—not that he wasn't always nearby. Obviously, though, she now had command of the bed, and when he came into our bedroom he'd give us a dispirited look before padding glumly to his pile of blankets.