by Jon Katz
After two weeks of calling around, I heard from Dr. Mary Menard, a great vet—smart, warm, direct—at the Borador Animal Hospital. A breeder in nearby Shushan, she reported, had a beautiful, mellow, black Lab puppy; if Anthony didn’t want him, she just might take him herself.
The dog, a male, was ten weeks old. When I drove over to see him, the dog waddled over and crawled into my lap. He was striking-looking, perfectly proportioned, with as sweet a disposition as I’d ever encountered. He was so trainable that I got him to sit on command after only three or four attempts. I even tried driving him around Shushan in my truck, where he contentedly gazed out the window. I could picture this dog spending happy years toodling around upstate New York and southern Vermont with his handyman owner, visiting hardware stores and homes, then setting out on weekend hikes and swims and hunting expeditions.
It wouldn’t be an easy match, though. Anthony and his friends and family see Labs as elitist, obnoxious, Baby Boomer dogs, symbols of the Flatlands.
Some people argue that it’s wrong to ever purchase a purebred when so many dogs languish in shelters, but while I sympathize, I can’t agree. There are plenty of abandoned children in the world, too, and adopting one is a wonderful thing, but we still like to have our own kids. The dogs I know tend to fare best when their owners do some homework and find the right dog for them, wherever it comes from.
The other problem was that a purebred Labrador is expensive. Anthony didn’t have that kind of money, and would resist spending it on a dog if he did. Yet this seemed as fine a dog-human fit as I’d ever seen.
I thought about it, called Anthony, and announced that I’d located the perfect dog. But it would cost some money, I warned—as much as two hundred dollars.
“It’s a runt,” I lied. “Ugly. You probably won’t want it.” I could hear he was intrigued. We agreed to go to Shushan the next day.
Then I told the breeder I had the perfect owner, but would she tell Anthony the dog only cost two hundred dollars? Of course Anthony was too savvy not to figure out that this wasn’t a two-hundred-dollar dog, and way too proud to let me pay the difference, but we could sort that out later. My strategy was to put him and the puppy together and see what evolved.
Driving over the next day, he was excited and curious, peppering me with questions about the dog. He had a roll of twenties in his jeans pocket. This was just a dry run, I reminded him. This dog had already been in several homes, I said, and might be beyond redemption. Only a serious dog nut would be interested.
As we pulled up to the small red farmhouse, even before we got out of the car, the Lab mother and this pup, last of the litter, came bounding out.
It was almost as if this dog had read the script. Anthony, confused, perhaps thinking that his ugly runt had yet to appear, kneeled down to see the puppy, who bounced into his arms. You could almost see the bond between these two, it was so instant and palpable. What sight could make any dog lover happier? In five minutes, the two of them were rolling around on the ground. I started writing a check to the breeder, who beamed.
Anthony and the breeder exchanged papers and information, he handed me his roll of twenties, and the three of us—the dog was named Arthur on the spot—climbed into Anthony’s Toyota. On the way back, Anthony berated me for tricking him, though he allowed as how he’d suspected there might be a Lab involved. “This dog didn’t cost any two hundred dollars,” he said. “You’ll tell me how much, and we’ll work it out through labor.” Done.
Now, when I hear Anthony’s Toyota pull up the driveway and see Anthony climb out with his tools and radio, Arthur follows right behind. He sniffs around a bit, then stakes out a spot near Anthony as he works. Nothing fazes Arthur—not the passing traffic or my dogs chasing after sheep. He has found his place, and his place is right by Anthony’s skinny side. I wish as happy a life for every dog.
ALTHOUGH SIX YEARS OF SPENDING TIME IN WASHINGTON County has taught me more than I used to know, I still can’t easily grasp how a lot of things work. I can operate a Phillips screwdriver now and hammer a nail into a wall; I can deal with mice and minor plumbing issues. But the mechanics of how things work, how they’re taken apart and put together—I still haven’t come much closer to understanding that.
Paula’s prohibitions all made sense for me, even though I’d already violated rule number one (and hadn’t told her about it yet). I could shoot my foot off if I had a gun. Power tools were dangerous and finicky, heavy farm equipment way beyond my abilities, and that truck was already proving balky. I’d pledged that I’d do all the animal care myself—tasks relating to dogs, sheep, the donkey and their well-being. But on other scores, I was grateful for Team Bedlam, even though their help also made me feel I needed a testosterone patch.
Like many people with animals upstate, I spent a lot of time at an Agway farm-supply store. After my fourth or fifth visit to the Salem store, an employee asked me if I wanted to join the weekly Agway Farmers Call List.
Each week Agway called farmers around Salem and Hebron to ask if they needed feed or other supplies. A truck came by a few days later to deliver them. Apart from the fact that I was delighted not to have to haul around heavy sacks of corn and feed, I have to say my chest puffed up at the idea of being on the list. It was one of the few clubs I’d ever been invited into that I was actually eager to join.
Still, I know I’m considered testosterone-deficient, and I can’t really argue otherwise. I spoil my animals, for instance, lavishing what many of my neighbors consider a ridiculous amount of attention on dogs, sheep, and donkey.
Take that sheep surgery, for example. Afterward, I took a lot of guff from neighboring farmers who heard about the operation and pointed out that I was nuts to spend $150 dollars patching up a sheep worth $60 at market in a really good year. Several volunteered to shoot her if it happened again. They weren’t being cruel; these men lived on the economic margins, struggling mightily to keep their farms afloat. It was illogical, even indulgent, to spend two or three times as much to heal an animal as it could bring in revenue.
I explained that the animals were different for me. I wasn’t sure it was in me to shoot my livestock. This kind of moral ambiguity was the blessing and curse of our generation, but no sheep or dog or donkey was going to suffer or die pointlessly if I could manage to prevent it.
“I’d love to be one of your sheep,” one farmer guffawed. I’d been called a sissy before, by classmates and, most frequently, by my father. But this ribbing didn’t carry that sting. These guys liked me, got a kick out of me, were always there to help. They accepted the differences between us, even found them interesting.
I found the situation pretty interesting myself, although it often made me squirm. I was getting a small taste of just how hard their lives were, why they couldn’t afford my sentimentality. I’d hardly have blamed them for resenting me; instead, I was touched by their generous spirits.
Still, Nancy Fortier and I laughed about the testosterone gap many mornings when I went to get a cup of coffee and a newspaper at the Bedlam’s Corner Variety Store. She worked there weekdays, after moving up from Westchester, and had become a keen observer of local culture. “Wait till hunting season,” she cautioned.
I was already hearing plenty about it. Weeks ahead of time, every man I talked to seemed to be riding around in his pickup, scouting for deer tracks, feverishly readying his hunting blind or camp. Guys were cleaning their guns, readying scopes and ammunition, taking nightly practice shots.
Hunting season was a big thing in Hebron. It was a father-son ritual of the kind lost to many American dads and kids; it was also an expression of friendship. Much of the planning and preparation and intensifying Country Hunting Bullshit was not about deer at all but about the chance to get together, away from family and work, and have a few beers with your buddies. It was also, for better or worse, an immersion in nature, a reinsertion of men into the woods.
On opening day, starting at three A.M., pickups began creeping up the
road in front of my house, heading into the hills. I waited until daylight to walk the dogs and kept a close eye on Rose, who is wont to bound off after anything that moves and can cover a lot of ground before I can open my mouth. Some people only walked their dogs on leashes during the season, or put orange collars and vests on them. I just walked mine in the open meadow across the road, avoiding the tree line.
The gunshots started just before dawn. Unlike the sharp ping of my .22, they made loud booms, a strange and discordant sound.
The second morning, Adam’s green pickup pulled into my driveway. He’d been up in his stand for an hour or so when an unruly buck wandered in front of him. Did I want to come up and see? We bounded up the hill in Adam’s truck, over spaces I wouldn’t have considered trails, let alone roads. We found the buck in the woods behind Adam’s house, hopped out, picked up the body and maneuvered it into the back of the truck.
Adam was pumped, to say the least, recounting the shot and the kill. Back at his house, he whipped out a knife and went to work, positioning two buckets below the truck bed. He gutted the buck, carving out its internal organs; one bucket filled with blood, the other with body parts. I held the deer while he worked, and he tossed me the fatal bullet, which he found near the heart.
Then he cut the heart out, dropped it into a plastic bag and asked if he could store it in my refrigerator (no electricity at his new place yet). Good for eating, he said.
He was exhilarated and I was mesmerized by how exciting and important the hunt was to people. I called Paula and said I had a deer heart in the fridge. I also told her I lacked the grit to kill a deer and hoped I could still live up here. It was a joke, sort of.
THOUGH MAYBE NOT. I SUPPOSE I ALWAYS SUSPECTED THAT I might use my rifle, I just didn’t know how soon. Three weeks after I got it, we went out walking just after dusk and Rose darted off. In seconds, I heard a bloodcurdling shriek. I ran to the front of the house, Orson and Homer rocketing ahead of me; there was a dreadful racket from under the porch. Suddenly it subsided, and Rose dashed out toward me, a nasty gash under one eye. Orson, too, was bleeding from the nose. Up ahead, in the flashlight beam, I saw a huge black cat with a stubby tail loitering in front of the barnyard gate. Orson spotted him the same time I did and charged, and the cat hopped the gate—slowly—and stood unperturbed on the other side while all three dogs barked and lunged in a frenzy.
There were two feral cats in my barns, maybe more, and they were quite welcome to stay. They stayed away from the dogs and me and kept busy controlling the population of mice and rats. But I hadn’t seen this black one before. He’d inflicted some serious damage on Orson and Rose, missing her eye by a fraction of an inch, and then hadn’t skittered off; he was behaving oddly.
Next morning, local vets and the county animal welfare officer I called said cats that stand their ground are often sick. That left few options. Trapping them and dropping them off elsewhere is cruel to them and unfair to the animals and people living where they’re dumped. But I didn’t want them around my place, either. Their droppings could make the sheep ill, and they could, everybody said, inflict serious damage on dogs. Meanwhile, every time we went outside, the dogs were now on the lookout for the cat, charging the porch, rushing the barn, sometimes racing right across the road. Rose was especially at risk; she wouldn’t back down, but she was too small to win the fight—the cat was her size, if not larger. And Orson, when challenged, went nuts.
“There is no feral cat rescue up here,” the county agent said, choking back a laugh. “They can’t be domesticated. I’d suggest the five-cent solution.” A bullet, he meant.
I didn’t like the idea. But the cat kept reappearing. Once or twice, he was waiting by the back door, then backed off slowly as the dogs lunged. His eyes, I could see, were rheumy. Maybe he was sick. But I held off taking any action, hoping he’d move on.
Then came the afternoon when, talking on the phone, I heard a strange high-pitched yowl coming from the first-floor bathroom. I couldn’t imagine what could make such a sound. When I investigated, I found the cat staring at me. The door that led to the cellar was open, and the bathroom floor was a mess. I grabbed a broom and charged, and he retreated into the cellar. There, I discovered a window pushed open, and an unspeakable, smelly mess on the dirt floor.
Deliberately, he hopped up onto the sill beneath the open window and made his exit. “You better get the hell out of here,” I yelled, swatting at him with the broom. He had clawed Rose. Who knew what he might do to gentle Homer? He was driving all the dogs berserk; even if he didn’t maim or infect them, they could get hit by a car or truck while in pursuit. I was feeling an unfamiliar but visceral response: this creature had invaded my house and threatened my animals.
Once he was gone, I released the dogs from their backyard pen to bring them inside. But they blasted off toward the side of the house, where I heard barking and more yowling. I ran to look and saw Orson and the cat rolling around on the ground, the cat biting and clawing him, Orson alternately yelping and lunging but refusing to back away. Rose and Homer were circling them, Homer barking, Rose nipping. This was insane.
I sprinted into the house, grabbed the rifle, rammed in the ten-shot clip, made sure the safety was on, and ran outside. Orson had cornered the cat behind a trash can. I screamed to the dogs to get back. Rose and Homer did, but Orson was too enraged; I had to grab him by the collar and drag him into the house, and the others followed.
Outside, the cat hadn’t moved. In fact, he stepped away from the trash can, inching toward me. “Get the hell away from here!” I yelled. “This is your last chance.” If he ran off, away from the house and barn, I’d give him a chance to go elsewhere.
But he didn’t. He made for the front of the house and his usual cellar-window entrance. He broke into a run, and I shouldered the .22. There was nothing but open meadow behind him, so I pushed the safety off and peered into the scope. Just as he was about to round the corner of the house, I squeezed off a shot and he flipped over. I rushed over to where he lay and shot twice more, to be sure he was dead and wouldn’t suffer longer than necessary. Inside, the dogs were throwing themselves against the window.
Then I got a trash bag and gloves, gathered up the cat’s dead body, and drove to the vet for rabies testing. My hands were a bit shaky. I never imagined I would shoot a living thing, I told the vet.
“You had no choice,” she said, unperturbed. She’d seen this before. “You had to protect your dogs and your farm.”
I had no regrets, either. The other barn cats are still there, seldom-seen but welcome citizens of Bedlam. But if I had it to do again, I would pull the trigger in a second. Maybe the farm had changed me. Nothing that I could stop was going to hurt my little kingdom, and nothing was going to hurt my dogs.
Anthony and Adam—and pretty soon the whole village—heard of my five-cent solution. They empathized, even congratulated me. For a Flatlander, they said, I was a decent shot. That, and membership on the Agway list, might spare me the testosterone patch yet.
HAPPILY, NOT EVERY RECRUIT TO TEAM BEDLAM WAS FOCUSED on guns, trucks, and hunting season. I met Jacob Worthington at Bedlam’s Corner one weekday morning. He was twelve, the son of Barb, who co-owns the store. Jacob didn’t say much, but I noticed him staring out the storefront window at my dogs, who were sticking their heads out the truck window, taking in the scene. I gave him a handful of biscuits and over the next ten minutes watched the dogs fall in love with him. Homer loves everyone, but Orson is picky about who he associates with, while Rose loves sheep more than most people. I liked Jacob’s way with animals, his quiet, easygoing manner.
I asked if he might like some part-time work visiting Carol—she ought to be brushed and petted if she were going to continue to be fond of people—and doing some barn work, like mucking out the sheep poop and donkey dumps, of which there were already a prodigious number. You might have thought I’d offered him a flight to Disney World.
Life gets continually stranger. My
daughter had left home four years earlier for college; now that she’d graduated, she was living with roommates in Brooklyn. Although we were close, I only saw her every month or two; she was going about the business of building her own life. This was the way life was supposed to work: if we did our jobs, they moved on and didn’t look back much. But I missed her, of course. The dogs filled some of that void, but while dogs are wonderful, they aren’t kids.
So I had reconciled myself to a now childless life. Back home in New Jersey, I knew some great neighborhood kids I would have happily taken to the movies or a baseball game once in a while, but urban and suburban communities like Montclair have become phobic about kids spending time with older men. It’s just not done.
A year earlier, in one painful reminder, I found myself with an extra ticket to a Yankees game. It was a great seat, and I immediately thought of inviting my eleven-year-old neighbor, a baseball fan I had seen nearly every day for years. He played with my dogs. His school-bus stop was right outside my house. Of course I asked his mother first, expecting her to be delighted, but she looked uncomfortable, and apologetic. “I’m sorry,” she finally blurted out, “but our school suggests that we never let our children go anywhere except with family members. It’s a safety precaution.” I’d read the same headlines she had, so I understood her concern, but it was a wounding reminder of why so many people turn to dogs for companionship. We find it harder to connect with humans sometimes.
So I was cheered that Jacob, a natural farm kid, began coming by after school to brush Carol, feed her cookies, and help me move hay and manure around. I sensed that life wasn’t simple for this kid. His parents had separated earlier in the year. His favorite sport, he told me, was chess.