Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  “At long last, Laura.” She collapsed against him kissing him with an open mouth and grinding her body against him straddling a leg with a convincing sob, both breasts free of her nightie and tears falling profusely in her amazing insincerity.

  He was poleaxed having fallen into a ladylike swoon, his limbs paralyzed, the Lord Byron of trashy ladies had helplessly risen to a new place of romance and was ill suited for it.

  “Make chicken, Bozo,” she said jumping up. Susi’s eyes were now open and Gretchen picked her up. “Time for your Cheerios, carrots, and peas.”

  B.D. was waiting to be able to move. Nothing seemed possible except his heart that still fluttered. He would make a double batch of chicken and drop some off to Delmore on his way to Grand Marais for the chokecherries and brook trout. He was in retirement.

  Luckily she had bought two chickens so he began cooking at 6 AM in his gathering fatigue. The chili sauce was an ass kicker which he knew Delmore would complain about. He was nodding as he ate this unorthodox breakfast which immediately soothed Gretchen and made her happy.

  “I’m thinking of buying a house on forty acres outside of town about ten miles. There’s a creek. I’ll build you a cabin on the creek in the far corner of the property. You can take your bulbous girlfriends there.”

  “What’s bulbous?” He was sweating from the hot sauce and wished he had a beer.

  “A woman shaped like an enormous tulip bulb.”

  He fell asleep telling her about his retirement fund. She guided him to the sofa and when he awoke before noon she had cleaned the house. She brought him a cup of coffee and he sat up regretting that she had changed out of her nightie into jeans and a T-shirt. Susi sat in the high chair pounding the tray with her tiny fists. He was pleased she was grinning at him.

  “Maybe I’ll adopt in September.” She had returned to her melancholy. “Which means I don’t need you.”

  He realized at that moment that he could have taken advantage of her weakened condition when he had arrived but above all else Grandpa said one had to be a gentleman with the female of the species and eventually a suitable one would fall into his arms. He was aware that most of his conquests were tawdry and alcohol related, and alcohol was merely a fluid that allowed sexual impulse to surface in reality. The summer before a small glass of wine had turned an off-duty camp counselor into a banshee in the darkened Marina Park in Marquette. She had pulled him to the ground evidently not all that far from a dog turd which could be overlooked. Gretchen was far too wary for him to try slipping vodka into the fruit juice that she drank frequently. Back in high school it was a surefire aid to seduction as long as the girl didn’t puke from too much alcohol. Vomiting tends to squelch the sexual urge for both partners. Nevertheless it was grand to have her sitting on his lap and the challenge of kissing him as though he was a pretty girl was one of his smarter moves in years.

  “Why can’t you treat me like Laura more often?” Susi was on his lap and dragging a finger through the hot sauce on his plate, then licking it off. She didn’t seem to mind the spiciness but bounced on his lap grinning and shrieking.

  “Sorry but you don’t look like Laura. We seduced each other as freshmen at Michigan State.”

  “Where,” he asked irrelevantly.

  “What do you mean where.”

  “I need to locate events to picture them.”

  “On the banks of the Red Cedar River on a warm September evening. We took off our miniskirts to avoid grass stains. I admit it was like an explosion. She went straight but then so many of us could have gone both ways usually with disastrous results.”

  “You could try it. It’s old-fashioned but it’s historical.”

  “I could also jump off a cliff but I know better. We had a taste didn’t we? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but nothing like my kind of love. I mean I cherish you as maybe my best friend ever but our sexuality is in another category. You can’t talk yourself into pleasure.”

  “I can.”

  He was thinking of the surprise that Long Rita kept in store. She could also be a little rough, a wild creature, in fact. B.D. felt melancholy descending from wherever it came from, clearly a bad place. From the distance of Montana things had looked so good what with a comparatively sizable grubstake for lots of time fishing. Now he was sitting, a dead-ass, while Gretchen bathed Susi in the bathroom off the kitchen. Susi was cooing and madly splashing her mother. B.D. glanced snoopily at the papers on the desk which included the mysterious bill of sale for a Toyota pickup of recent vintage and also a Swede newspaper ad for something called a country estate, fifty acres bisected by a creek, and a fine house at the edge of a clearing, all for three hundred thousand, to him an unimaginable number, merely a social phenomena wherein money from a prosperous family is passed on to a daughter, the only heir, who had proved her worthiness by producing an heir with a man who looked to them like a handyman, someone always slightly dirty who fixed the furnace or the garage door. The parents were aware of Gretchen’s sexual inclinations early on and when they had met B.D. in Escanaba a few months back, they felt that someone is better than nothing.

  B.D. in contrast thought the senior couple looked peculiar in their Lincoln Town Car, useless on logging roads, in their well-tailored clothes you wouldn’t want to pick blackberries or blueberries in and were doubtless changed everyday for no good reason. The father was a pronounced stiff who plainly disliked the idea that B.D. had screwed his daughter despite the wonderful result, an ebullient granddaughter. As a peace offering the father had purchased B.D. a beautiful Orvis fly rod with B.D.’s name engraved on the helve.

  The parents were radiant at a nice restaurant when B.D. gave Susi a bottle while Gretchen had dessert. When he burped Susi and she spit on his shirt the mother-in-law dabbed it off with a wet napkin. It was certainly an illusory family dinner à la Norman Rockwell. On the way out a very fat man stumbled and B.D. caught him. The man yelled, “I can’t believe you caught me! No one can catch me!” and his wife shrieked, “You should hire him, Roscoe!” B.D. bowed, taking one more glance at a pert waitress standing in the door. He recalled that she was last year’s local homecoming queen and her dad was the obnoxious logger, an unlikely father for a lovely daughter B.D. would like to see spread on a table with good sauces.

  When they drove out in the country that afternoon B.D. was as dumbfounded by the sprawling size of the house as he had been at the three-hundred-thousand-dollar figure he had seen on Gretchen’s desk. Why would Gretchen want such a big house for her and little Susi? He didn’t know that people nowadays buy big houses merely because they can. Her grandma had been rich through no fault of her own and when Gretchen and Susi had flown south for a visit the ailing grandma had been thrilled, holding the baby in the way one only sees in families, with a kind of glow.

  Gretchen showed him the remote location of his cabin but he was curiously repelled by the split-rail fence surrounding the clearing that kept nothing out or in. He recalled a drawing in a high school history book of Abe Lincoln splitting rails. He himself had split rails for rich summer people but it was unpleasant work. He finally didn’t want this lovely woman to build him a cabin. He told her he could build the cabin for half the estimate she had received and she said okay with a melancholy tinge. It’s a mixed blessing to give a present and not very far in the back of his mind he knew that people who were kind to you often wished to control you or change your life in unpleasant ways. A loose male is not a good thing in the culture. Everyone knows that. He was still smarting from his work as a dogcatcher. Oddly, Long Rita was the perfect owner for the obnoxious Bruno. His friend Fatty the dog sitter wanted the other two dogs but not big Fred, the wolf dog, who scared him. Fatty had shot two deer in his absence to feed the dogs his patented venison stew. The deer wouldn’t be good for human consumption until July when the cedar swamp flavor from their winter yarding grounds would be out of their flesh. Cedar swamps with their close-knit trees offered creatures the most protection from the w
inter’s unremitting blizzards. In high cold winds a cedar can be relatively quiet with the gaunt deer chewing on the bitter branches. Once B.D. had entered a swamp with a chain saw and cut ten acres of aspen, their favorite food, for a starving herd. The deer closely approached him among the fallen trees and began feeding, their hunger outweighing their fear of man. A game warden visited one day but thoroughly approved of his struggle against deer starvation and besides it was Delmore’s back forty.

  Delmore was nearly hysterical when they arrived. He had just heard on the radio that there was to be a new Planet of the Apes sequel and the idea was nearly unbearable. Delmore took these movies as God’s truth, considering the apes to be spirit animals though siding with humans. B.D. could tolerate almost any movie once, but loathed these from overexposure. One of Delmore’s heroes was Charlton Heston and Delmore had yelled warnings when the apes stole Charlton’s clothing when the great man was swimming beneath the waterfall. Charlton was from West Branch, really St. Helen, Michigan, and there were Chippewa in the area and Delmore believed it was likely that some of his own fine blood was in the veins of the great leader. Delmore thought Charlton had been a little excitable about gun possession. Delmore’s own old hunting weapons were in hiding and he doubted if any government nitwit could ever find them.

  B.D. heated up the Mexican chicken while Delmore dandled little Susi on his knee. He considered Susi to be B.D.’s finest hour and said so repeatedly including that comment that Susi looked like her grandma which gave a chill to B.D.’s tummy. He only knew enough of his parents to understand that their behavior was questionable and that they had been involved in the rise of Red Power in the sixties. B.D. had never had the heart to rummage though Grandpa’s trunks after he died in hopes of finding old photos of his mother. And here he was at Uncle Delmore’s with no truly positive proof that Delmore was an uncle or truly a relative. Delmore referred to all relatives as gold diggers which didn’t help much as his cousins were skins at Lac du Flambeau down in Wisconsin. This was all of minimal interest to B.D. who was mostly interested in “getting by” and if you never had parents they are mostly an abstraction. When he heard the rumor that his father had victored over three state cops at a Munising dance hall it fell short of heroic as he had done well in that area himself.

  Meanwhile Gretchen was disappointed over B.D.’s lack of enthusiasm over the gift cabin. She recalled that in college no one actually believed in any reality surrounding the notion of the noble savage but people largely envied people who lived a simple life, not that they couldn’t do so themselves. It is actually easy when people aren’t fond of clutter. You strip the life down to the bare boards underneath, the barest elements of shelter and food. Once a month Grandpa would scrub the wood floors of their small house on the edge of the forest. B.D. figured if he actually built the cabin it would be all wood and not drywall to paint. But right now holding Susi on Delmore’s porch swing he meditated on Gretchen’s stranglehold on his being. She was on her hands and knees weeding Delmore’s small garden which consisted mostly of cabbage, cucumber, and rutabaga. Delmore insisted that supermarket rutabaga were always “spoilt” compared to one pulled fresh from the ground in September. B.D. put up with Delmore because so far as he knew Delmore was his only relative and B.D. was doomed to take him to The Planet of the Apes sequel. It would be a struggle to keep Delmore quiet during the movie. Delmore felt obligated to shout all sorts of warnings and instructions. “Cornelius, goddammit, listen to me!” he would howl.

  After supper B.D. packed up his shabby camping equipment wanting to set up before dark and maybe do a little fishing. Everything, mostly his love for Gretchen, had been interrupting his official retirement plans. When Gretchen questioned his plans and the minimal amount, he said, “It’s the most I’ve ever had.” It was safely in the sock he wore. Now she was going to trap him in the cabin, the only advantage being that he could peek in her bedroom windows. Even that lacked the old fire now that he was convinced that their love was doomed. She had hit him over the head dozens of times with her predilections though he could never quite believe they were fatal. It had been a decade of heartsickness but then his life before Gretchen had scarcely been ideal. When Berry had run amok in McDonald’s, Gretchen had been able to calm her down. Now she was helping him pack the car and when she bent over in her short flowery summer dress the usual strong tremor was there and he recalled a song he disliked that the girls in high school used to sing, “I’ll take romance.” He kissed Susi goodbye and she jerked painfully on his lower lip. He laughed so she laughed too. This was obviously the greatest thing he had ever had a part in. All in all, he thought, nearly everything was impossible but then along came things as marvelous as creeks and Susi. He had to include the puppy Grandpa once got him from the dog pound that he named Warren after a third-grade teacher who got the kids packets of Audubon cards so that they could tell one bird from another. He loved them dearly but promptly got them wet and ruined and then sobbed when he told the teacher after school. He got a new packet mostly because the teacher was also a brook trout fisherman. B.D. directed him to some good places, not the sacred best which are always saved for oneself, but good ones and Mr. Warren was thankful. The best was actually a deep spring in a marsh that B.D. used sparingly. If anything it was his church.

  Back to Gretchen’s fanny emerging from the back of the Subaru trying to neaten up the mess of B.D.’s gear.

  “I’m camping at the site of Susi’s conception,” he said.

  “That’s sweet,” she responded, receiving his gratuitously tight hug with grace.

  “You and Susi could jump in the car.”

  “No, thanks. I got work tomorrow.”

  She let her lips touch his, doubting that anyone would love her like this goofy man. He was clearly the virtual opposite of anything the culture thought was acceptable.

  He made the Dunes Saloon in Grand Marais by 8 AM after picking up Fred at the cabin. Fatty had the other two dogs but B.D. didn’t want Fred to be lonely just because he was huge and ugly and half wolf. Delighted with his freedom B.D. had a couple of double whiskeys and beer chasers and flirted with the barmaid with whom he had had a beach wrestling match a few years back. She was cool and didn’t seem to remember him, saying she had been recently married to the love of her life, a big young man who glowered at him from the end of the bar. B.D. tipped her a twenty as a wedding present, feeling lonely, and headed out for Barfield Lakes. He quickly set up camp in the location where he had fathered Susi. Big Fred quickly ran off and about a mile away he began howling like his wolf relatives. B.D. was undisturbed and inhaled deeply the odor of chokecherry tree flowers that surrounded him. The brightly flowered surroundings lightened up the gathering dark and he had a quick half an hour of fishing, then gathered enough firewood for the night. Fred returned with a fawn in his jowls, upsetting but there was nothing to be done about it except to swallow the cruelty with the beauty. He boned and fried two small brook trout and had a trout sandwich with beer. He put Fred in the car so he wouldn’t get his ass killed by the wolves who had begun howling in the west with Fred growling from the car. He poured a cup of coffee from his thermos wanting to stay awake for a while and think things over which was generally not what he was best at. There was an unpleasant memory spark of Gretchen’s desk and a sketched architect’s rendering of the cabin to be built. He had pushed it from memory because it reminded him of a children’s story that Grandpa used to read that included a silly little house made of gingerbread. He couldn’t live in such a cabin. Grandpa felt obligated to read these stories with gusto while B.D. preferred tales from outdoor magazines of heroic men catching giant fish throughout the world or getting attacked by giant animals. He didn’t want to hear about little girls getting lost which oddly frightened him what with having been lost himself. If only the cabin did not smack of a huge dollhouse. He would have to talk to Gretchen and put on the brakes. He preferred it to be built of logs and have a simple front porch, one large room and a sleepin
g loft, a small kitchen, a toilet inside or out, plank flooring, and sizable windows for keeping an eye on nature.

  After a couple of health giving glugs of schnapps he slept well though occasionally Fred howled from the car perhaps to warn visiting curious wolves or coyotes. In general B.D. didn’t care for huge dogs as often they were bullies which he also loathed in humans. Grandpa taught him to box so he didn’t have to put up with bullies. In both dogs and men it was ugly.

  The dawn walk among the chokecherries and sugarplums was all that he had hoped for. He had been upset in the saloon that a front was coming through but only the smallest signs were visible in the northwest. Meanwhile he was walking in waist-high ferns wet from dew and basking in a world of profusely flowering trees thinking it must be natural to be overwhelmed by flowers as he had been since childhood. Late in the afternoon when he drove to town for a drink he would check the forest bordering the sand dunes where there were valleys matted with white trillium. Fred happily walked with him and B.D. was able to call him back when a gamey scent was picked up. Fred growled wildly at a pile of bear shit. B.D. sat down on a white pine stump shaped like an easy chair that he had used for years. On waking he split his ham and cheese sandwich with Fred telling him to chew thirty-two times as B.D. had learned in school. He noted that the front was mounting with a rolling black rim of clouds to the far west. He headed for the car and tent not wanting to be caught out without a jacket. He could see the car in the distance when he heard the roar of the storm and by the time he got to the car he was in a blizzard of flowers with lightning ripping the sky like canvas tearing. Fred was frightened but then what did he know about thunder? B.D. had never had the right time to be in a virtual blizzard of chokecherry flowers and it was an astounding version of January. The high winds and moist air made the odor even more poignant. In the car with the shuddering Fred he saw the wind collapse his pup tent and figured that he might squander a little of his retirement money on a motel rather than have an uncomfortable wet night in a tent.