Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  He was washing up in his compartment when he heard the Director enter. She looked out the window at Berry and two crew members dancing around the fire.

  “I’m going to make that girl into a fancy dancer. She’s real good.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” B.D. said patting the Director’s ass and hoping to redeem the idea that he had no staying power.

  “Back away, dickhead,” she chortled at him and made for the door. “You remind me too much of my husband. He was drunk and the police clocked him at over a hundred miles per hour outside of Chadron before his pickup flipped about twenty times.”

  She had left in a virtuous huff and B.D. remembered a conversation when he and Berry and Delmore were eating Sunday dinner at Gretchen’s. Delmore had taken Berry for a ride down to the harbor and B.D. had whimsically asked Gretchen why no woman had ever asked him to marry her.

  “You’re a biological question mark,” she had said. “Women in general want some romance but when they look for a mate they most often estimate the man, at least subconsciously, as a provider. You present yourself as a fuckup but the reason you can get laid is that you intensely like women without irony.”

  B.D. had reminded himself to look up “subconscious” and “irony” in Delmore’s dictionary. Gretchen had been wearing pale blue fairly tight shorts and when she vigorously mashed potatoes at the stove her butt cheeks jiggled so attractively that B.D. felt tears arising. He had stopped well short of persisting on the marriage issue because Gretchen could be a little cruel. Years before, she had used her authority to thoroughly review his school records and discovered that his intelligence was well above average which made her question him sharply.

  “Why live like you do? You’re smart enough to do otherwise.”

  “I just slid into it,” he had answered nervously.

  “Well, you flunked English literature but you aced geometry.”

  “Geometry was real pretty.”

  It occurred to him then that she would never understand the deep pleasure of spending a whole day in the company of a creek. If he could make a subsistence living repairing deer-hunting cabins, cutting firewood or pulp why should he do more? He spent the rest of his time wandering in the woods and following creeks to their source. When Gretchen had said that he was frozen in place at age twelve he had reflected that that had been a good year. He had caught his first brook trout over three pounds on a beaver pond north of Rapid River, he owned a little terrier that rode in his bicycle basket and could occasionally catch a flushing grouse, and he had gotten to screw a beered-up sixteen-year-old tourist girl down on the town beach. The accusation of being frozen at age twelve did not seem to be a serious charge. Once when he got winter work at about age twenty as a janitor at a bowling alley he didn’t think these fully employed men at their weekly bowling league were having all that much fun trying to break 200. They mostly had fat asses and when they jumped up and down they didn’t jump high.

  Now out the tour bus window it was pleasant to watch Berry and Turnip dancing at top speed. Turnip always looked ungainly but turned out to be a fine dancer. B.D. left the bus and moved hot coals off to the side and arranged the grill face so that it was well balanced on rocks, electing himself as the steak cook. Not so far off in the moonlight he could see Charles Eats Horses sitting in the cemetery with his hands pointed up toward the sky. The Director sat on a lawn chair guarding the beer and B.D. decided to drink his share of two real fast to acquire a modestly good feeling. The meat was real fatty rib steaks, his favorite cut, and the bone made it possible to eat with your hands rather than struggling with plastic knives and forks. Everyone was so tired that they ate fast and went to bed. When he went into the dark to pee B.D. was thrilled to have Turnip pass him a pint of schnapps for a couple of deep swigs. Berry continued to dance in the firelight without drums, banging on her tambourine, until the Director led her off to bed. Up home Berry tended to avoid all strangers but B.D. admitted to himself that she was having a good time with these people. She seemed to love music just like she was enchanted with birds. The Director had said that there were a lot worse things than being mute.

  They got an early start in the morning and B.D. was upset when saying goodbye to Charles Eats Horses who was still sitting out in the cemetery but seemed to be in some sort of trance though he hugged Berry. The tour bus stopped in Pine Ridge and dropped off three crew members including a very strong young man named Pork. B.D. had learned that Pork had gotten his name when he had run away to Pierre when he was twelve. He was very hungry and went in to the supermarket to steal a pound of hamburger to eat raw but had grabbed a package of pork sausage by mistake. Ever since then Pork had had an affection for raw pork. He seemed fairly smart and said at one time raw pork could be dangerous but trichinosis was a thing of the past. Out the window in Pine Ridge, which was a dreamy place surrounded by beautiful country, B.D. saw Pork embrace his wife and son and get into a fairly new Chevy pickup.

  On the way up toward Rapid City, B.D. sat up front with Turnip who invited him to stay at the condo he had inherited from an aunt who had been a school principal and a successful horse trader. Turnip said the group of condos shared a heated pool and when the weather was warm he would sit by the pool in Vuarnet sunglasses with a hand-tooled leather briefcase a rich white woman had given him down in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when the band toured there. Pretty girls and women would come up to him at the pool and chat because he looked like a big shot. He would tease his neighbors because the briefcase was full of R. Crumb comic books. He showed one to B.D. who thought it was the best comic book he had ever read.

  They stopped at a country gas station for fuel and coffee and in an adjoining field two girls were practicing barrel racing with their quarter horses. B.D. was appalled at the speed at which the horses were running and turned to the Director beside him.

  “They could die if they fell off.”

  “They don’t,” she said but then she yelled at Berry who vaulted the fence and ran toward the girls who now were taking a break. Berry went past them doing a top-speed figure eight around the barrels and then she stopped by the girls and petted the horses while she cooed like a dove. B.D. told the Director that he didn’t think that Berry had ever been near a horse. They crawled through the fence and made their way to the girls. Berry was rubbing her nose against the nose of one of the horses who seemed to like it.

  “She ain’t right in the head,” the girl said to the approaching B.D. and Director.

  “That’s true but she’s a sweetheart. How about giving her a ride? She’s never been in the saddle before,” the Director said.

  The girl gestured to Berry who leapt on with one flowing move.

  “That’s quite a trick,” the girl said leading the horse by the reins then handing the reins to Berry. “I bet she can handle it.”

  The horse took off for the far barrel and B.D. covered his face with his hands and peeked through his fingers. Berry was pasted to the saddle and neck of the horse like a decal but when the girl whistled and the horse ran back toward them abruptly stopping Berry slid forward and hung there with her arms around the horse’s neck. She was all aglow and crooning. B.D. reached for her and she dropped into his arms.

  “Now she’s both a dancer and a cowgirl. All is not lost,” the Director said.

  B.D. paused halfway crawling under the fence watching Berry grab a post and vault over the top wire the same way he used to do when he was young. Way too much had been happening in this life and there under the bottom wire he was suddenly trying to focus.

  “How am I supposed to get back home?” he asked almost plaintively.

  “Well you can’t fly because the computer at the airport might pick up the Michigan warrant. They might not still be looking for you but we can’t take a chance. The jail in Rapid City is full of drunk Indians. Your uncle Delmore is sending someone out to pick you up. He says you’ll owe him big.”

  “He always says that,” B.D. said thinking he’d have to
find a good hiding place back home. Delmore had plenty of money but like many old people he was fretful about it. “During the Great Depression I couldn’t afford the hole in a doughnut,” he would say.

  B.D. pretty much sat for two full days on a cement park bench on the grounds of the Rapid City hospital. He packed along sardines, cheese, crackers, and Bull Durham. He was rolling his own cigarettes from Bull Durham and though there was a mysterious sign saying “Smoke-Free Zone” he couldn’t imagine anyone would object on these warm windy days of early spring. He was wrong. A security man approached and said he could be arrested which caused a quiver of fear. B.D. played dumb when the security man pointed at the sign ten feet away.

  “Can’t you read?”

  “Not too good,” B.D. said as if trying to parse the sign.

  The Director was running Berry through a battery of tests. B.D. had tried to give the Director the five-hundred-dollar gift from Dr. Krider but the Director had refused saying, “You can’t give me all your money. Are you stupid?”

  This seemed possible. He hadn’t been able to reach Uncle Delmore or Gretchen on the phone and her answering machine said she would be away for a week. Turnip had dialed the numbers for him on his cell phone and when B.D. worried about the expense Turnip said that he got a deal for three thousand minutes. B.D. wondered how they could possibly keep track of such things at the same time thinking that Delmore rarely answered the phone because bad news always came over the phone. He didn’t watch television news because he said he didn’t need to know all of the bad news in the world in ten minutes. Delmore listened now and then to Canadian news on his big powerful radio because things didn’t seem to be going so bad up that way.

  B.D. hung out on the bench in front of the hospital because the medical tests made Berry so unhappy that she cried which she never did normally. She was so sad that when she and the Director came out for a break from the tests she didn’t even make gull cries when she shared sardines with B.D.

  “Sardines have gone up from nineteen cents to a dollar in my lifetime,” B.D. reflected. He was remembering his youth when toward the end of the month Grandpa’s pension money ran low and they would eat five tins of sardines and boiled garden potatoes from the root cellar. It was their “dollar meal,” better in the summer with added onions, radishes, and tomatoes from the garden.

  “Christianity might be bullshit but I heard a priest say that greed was the Antichrist.” The Director hugged Berry who was trembling.

  “Berry’s mom used to throw her naked out in the snow when she peed the bed. Back then Berry was always trembling but she lucked out when her mom got sent to prison.”

  “I’d like to slit that cunt’s throat,” the Director said matter-of-factly.

  Berry began to cry again when the Director led her back toward the hospital. B.D. wasn’t feeling well having had one too many with Turnip and his anger over Berry’s trials exacerbated his discomfort. He had stayed two nights in a sleazy motel because he hadn’t wanted to stay at the Director’s because she wouldn’t allow alcohol in her home and Turnip’s condo made him too nervous. Turnip had had some young lady neighbors in for drinks in the late afternoon when they got home from work. They were dressed slick and neat and were professional women working in real estate and one was a teacher “looking for something better.” The problem was that B.D. couldn’t get a fix on what they were talking about and Turnip had put on loud rock-and-roll music. They fawned over Turnip but let their eyes pass quickly over B.D. They were technically real pretty but he didn’t feel a true-to-life nut itch over a single one of them. When they entered a tall one name Deedee had approached him.

  “What do you do?”

  “Cut logs. A little carpentry when I can find it.”

  “You Indians are so devil-may-care,” she giggled chugging her Budweiser.

  “I’m not a real Indian like Turnip. I’m just a mixed breed like most dogs.” He was tempted to tell he was a wanted man on the run but she had quickly turned away.

  Turnip had made them a batch of margaritas and winked at B.D. when he poured most of a bottle of tequila into the shaker. “I’m sending these bitches to the moon pronto. We’re in for some C-minus fun,” he whispered.

  B.D. took a couple of gulps of tequila and then when the rest of them went out to see someone’s new leased car he slipped out the back door and headed for the scrungiest side of town where he had a fry bread taco covered with hot sauce. After dinner he bought a pint of McGillicuddy’s schnapps to settle his stomach, then headed back to his motel room where there was a big photo of Mount Rushmore. He tried to imagine Charles Eats Horses pouring a gallon of blood-red paint down along George Washington’s nose. Every movie on cable TV seemed to involve people shooting each other and he wasn’t up to being a witness to malice of any sort. Finally on the National Geo channel he found a documentary on Siberia which seemed a totally wonderful place, the kind of country he’d learn to love in three minutes flat. He sipped out of the 100 proof bottle disliking plastic glasses because years ago one had sprung a leak and left a last drink on his wet lap. There was an improbable surge of homesickness and he made do by reliving a long trek west of Germfask in search of a rumored beaver pond which was actually in a federal wildlife area where it was illegal to fish, the smallest of considerations because on the sparse two-tracks you could hear the rare federal vehicle a half mile away and merely step into the brush. At the beaver pond he hooked what he thought would be the largest brook trout of his life but after a prolonged struggle the fish turned out to be a pike of a half dozen pounds. He would have preferred it to be a brook trout but gracefully accepted its pikedom. It was June and pike are quite tasty from the cool waters of the early season. By the time he got back to the car it was nearly dark, after ten this far north in June. He drove over to near Au Train where an old Indian lady he knew lived far back in the woods in a tar-paper cabin. His grandpa and this woman were sweet on each other and when he was a boy he’d fish a nearby creek while the two had their monthly assignation. When he arrived just before midnight with the pike her cabin was dark and it scared the shit out of him when he heard a growl from a nearby thicket. She was playing a joke on him after she had been out night walking. She cooked up the pike and they ate it with bread, salt, and some elderberry wine she had made the autumn before. She sang along with the country station from Ishpeming and was particularly good at duets with George Jones and Merle Haggard.

  The reverie put him in a fine mood though the Siberian program segued to heart surgery on a zoo elephant and he turned off the television not wanting to know if this elephant failed to make it through the operation. The heart was red and huge and its beating was tentative. B.D. recalled that once when Grandpa was telling his World War II stories there was one about a whale seen in the North Pacific that had a heart big enough for a man to sleep in.

  He managed his second long day of vigil fairly well. The Weather Channel predicted a storm by evening but the day had a warm breeze from the south. The hardest part was when the Director and Berry came out and Berry closed down and became stonelike. Due to some blood test she wasn’t even allowed to eat the Big Mac with extra onions he had bought her. Berry’s only sign of life was to point straight up at the tiny specks of hawks making their spring migration.

  “She’s not looking too good for a normal life,” the Director said.

  “I already knew that,” B.D. said, his gorge rising.

  “So did I but they have to figure out what’s possible. She won’t ever be able to talk but she’s physically coordinated, strong, and agile.”

  “I already knew that.” The anger was a knot in B.D.’s throat so that he couldn’t swallow.

  “These are specialists in this infirmity, B.D., so you’ll have to be patient. We’ll be finished by three and then I’m going to take Berry out north of Sturgis toward Bear Butte to see some baby buffalo. You got a big surprise coming about that time.”

  A doctor walked by and Berry shoved her head int
o B.D.’s jacket. He patted her back and her muscles were tight as a drum.

  “I don’t want no surprise. I want to head home with my daughter.”

  “You can’t. We’re already processing with the state of Michigan for the change of guardianship. Her mother has consented. Eventually the state of Michigan will withdraw the charges against you. Her mother got another five years for biting off a guard’s ear. You know this is best. What would you do when she got pregnant at age twelve by whomever?”

  “Likely kill whomever.”

  “Then she would have no one. She’s going to live with my cousin’s family north of here. They got cows, horses, and dogs and she’ll go to this special school part-time.”

  B.D. began to cry for the first time he could remember. The Director hugged him and dabbed his tears with a good-smelling handkerchief and Berry came alive enough to hold his hand. They left and he quickly finished the bottle of schnapps, reached into his pocket, and rolled a cigarette and lit it. Suddenly the security guard was in front of him.

  “I’m going to have to call the police, I warned you.”

  “It would be the last number you ever dialed,” B.D. said levelly.

  “How come you’re crying?” The security man shrugged, not wanting to get his ass kicked.

  “They’re taking my daughter away from me,” B.D. said.

  “That’s an awful thing to have happen,” the guard said and walked away.

  B.D. saw a black dog out in the parking lot. He whistled and the dog trotted over with its long rabbit ears and ungainly body what with its front rather slender compared to its big back end. B.D. unwrapped Berry’s Big Mac and was amazed when the dog ate the burger in polite bites rather than gulps. The brass collar said that her name was Ethyl, a fine match he thought between name and this peculiar beast. Here Ethyl was out on a stroll and lucked into a burger. The basis of a friendship having been made Ethyl hopped up onto the bench, circled a few times, and nestled in for a snooze. From her somewhat distended teats it was apparent that Ethyl was a mother and B.D. mentally bet that she was good at it as he stroked her long floppy ears. Turnip had said that the Director had raised five kids, the last being a member of the Thunderskins. How could I know how to be a mother when I didn’t even have one myself, he thought. He knew he was better than Berry’s criminal mother Rose but that might be like comparing cat and dog turds. He leaned forward trying to prop his elbows on his knees for a little snooze. There was a chance of falling on his face if he fell asleep but that might be fun compared to the rest of what had been happening. He was not under the illusion that most of us are that he was in control, that he was in the driver’s seat, as they say. And a wide streak of the dour Lutheran ethos of the Great North said that it is always darkest before it gets even darker. His last hope was to get home and have a life that the ancient Confucians thought was the best life, one in which nothing much happened.