Mountain Dog
Page 5
in a quiet room
with an easy chair
beside a red rose
in a blue vase.
She says that little room
is the only peaceful place
in the entire prison.
She describes the way her calm,
soothing voice
is recorded to make
listening books
for blind children.
She tells me that generous
volunteer projects
will help her get early parole,
and a new career helping people
instead of hurting dogs.
At first, I just feel amazed,
then hopeful, and finally,
so excited that I’m able to relax
and share a happy picnic with Mom
on the same sunny lawn
where women with incense
are singing.
That one good visit
feels like a joyful dream
until the next time, when
she doesn’t even
show up and the social worker
warns me that Mom is fighting again,
insulting other prisoners,
hitting, hurting,
and getting
hurt.
I’m ferociously disappointed,
but I struggle fiercely
to concentrate on now instead of
the future. I try to pay attention.
Even in math. Tío helps me
with the numbers. It’s the first time
anyone has ever looked
at my homework.
When you put Tío and math
together, you end up
way out in the wild forest.
I learn how to estimate
the temperature of soil
at a 6-inch depth
by counting beats
per minute
in the song
of a cricket.
Fast insect music
means the earth is warm.
Slow bug songs come only
on long, cold cricket nights.
Tío also shows me how to count
the age of a giant sequoia tree’s
charred stump. Rings of growth
from ancient times. Wide rings
for spring, narrow ones
for summer
or drought years.
We punch mapping coordinates
into a GPS gadget, but it only works
if you’re out in the open, with a clear path
to a satellite orbiting in space. The GPS
won’t work if you hold it in a dark,
shadowy forest
where modern science
can’t find you.
All the outdoor math lessons
are helping, and I’m really hoping
to get good grades. The semester’s
almost over, and I can hardly wait
for summer, even though
it’s going to be weird.
I’ll have to spend weekdays
with B.B. while Tío is away at work
in distant campgrounds.
Luckily, loud Gracie won’t be around
to make me feel
small.
She’ll be far away, in India, visiting
her parents and the elephants.
I imagine she’ll spend half her time
making elephant Popsicles
and the rest just trying to figure out
ways to come back bragging
about traveling so much farther
than prison.
B.B. is excited. She tells me
she’s planning activities for me.
Sports, crafts, swimming lessons,
and bear whispering.…
Bear whispering? Bear whispering!
If only summer wasn’t still two whole
seven-day weeks away! Math tests
are making me 50 percent crazy.
No cricket music or tree rings,
just the speed of airplanes
and other really hard word problems
that send 99 percent of my mind
flying away
flying into daydreams
about reaching
summertime
and the end
of tests.
My final-exam grade is a C.
Average! For the first time
in my entire life,
I haven’t
completely
confusingly
failed.
The teacher smiles and tells me
she’ll give extra credit
for a cricket-song essay
or a poem
about tree rings.
Tío must have talked to her.
He probably told her about the fights
and the bets
and the sad way I was always
the one who had to count dollars
and report the numbers
to Mom.
Dogs that didn’t bring
a profit
lost a lot more
than money.
18
GABE THE DOG
DOG TRUTHS
At night, Tony lies awake,
stroking my head
and whispering
our
summer plans.
All I care about is the our word.
As long as we’re together
time will feel round
and safe.
19
TONY THE BOY
UNO
Mountain chores are easy.
No decisions. No numbers.
No grown-up
responsibilities.
All I have to do is help my uncle
plant his garden,
pick fruit and vegetables,
chop firewood,
and cook berries
so that we can surprise
hungry thru-hikers
with fresh-baked pies,
a gift that leaves us chuckling,
because each adventurer
from Sweden, Canada, or Chile
can devour a whole pie
and still look hungry.
Cowboys on horseback
aren’t starving, but they are
full of gratitude each time we drop off
a pie while they’re herding cattle
up to high, peaceful meadows
that look like smooth green lakes.
Old cowboys help Tío teach me
wilderness lore. I learn that beaver houses
are built of sticks,
while muskrat lodges
are mostly mud.
I learn that fence lizards have smooth
blue bellies but newts on this mountain are warty red,
and I memorize natural patterns,
like the upside-down V
in the paw print
of a red fox—scientific name:
Vulpes vulpes.
I love it when life makes some sort
of orderly, organized sense, so:
I
learn
that
rabbits
bite
twigs
at a clean forty-five-degree angle
while deer leave
shaggy
frayed tips
and porcupines shred the bark
but bears reach way up high
to rip claw marks
in tree trunks
maybe to show off
their
height
so that other bears
will respect them.
Summer arrives. I’ve passed math
and I know a lot about wilderness
and I feel
almost
as tall
and tough
as a bear,
but I don’t have to be strong
around B.B., who lets me act young,
silly, f
unny, clumsy, and small
during my swimming lessons
with Gabe in a quiet pond
beneath a waterfall—
so cool
on hot days!
B.B.’s idea of a summer sport
is romping across a green meadow
with Gabe, and the crafts she shows me
are just animal and bird statues
that we make from all sorts of stuff
we find—pinecones, acorns, pebbles,
fossils, arrowheads, and feathers.
When I admit that I miss
writing online articles, B.B. helps me
start a blog, using a goofy, grinning photo
of Gabe as my canine coauthor.
At first, I want to call the blog
something complicated and scientific,
but then I decide that a simple name
like Dog Nose Notes
will make readers curious.
So I start writing SAR dog thoughts
as I imagine Gabe would write them
if he could: When you get lost
in the wondrous woods,
stay in one place. Don’t wander.
Keep your scent trail simple,
because each roaming step you take
makes it harder for a dog’s nose
to find you.
I even write about the sad part
of searching. Hardly any modern people
know how to stay alive in the wild
for more than a few desperate days.
If a lost hiker isn’t found quickly,
Gabe has to use his cadaver dog training.
Finding bodies instead of survivors.
Tío calls it the monstrous side
of the Rescue Beast. Searchers
have to keep searching
even when they know
that too much time
has passed.
If I ever get lost, I’ll want to survive,
so I beg Tío to let me tag along
when he teaches apprentice handlers
how to prepare for their big, scary
UNO.
In Spanish, uno just means one,
but in the daring language
of search-and-rescue volunteers,
it means “unexpected night out.”
SAR dog handlers learn to survive
without a sleeping bag or a fire.
No easy warmth. No cooked meals.
Just a little imagination
and a lot of courage.
So I pretend I’m a real searcher,
trapped by wild weather.
I make a shelter of leafy branches,
and I reinvent the sleeping bag
by stuffing pine needles into a trash bag.
I eat miner’s lettuce, berries,
and cattail shoots sweetened
with sugar-pine sap.
It’s eerie spending a cold night
outdoors, close to Gabe but so far
from people. Well, not too far—Tío
is camped really close by,
and even though it’s hard to find
a cell phone signal out here,
he has a satellite phone
for emergencies,
and we have two-way radios
so he can call to ask if I’m okay,
and I can answer, first saying copy,
to let him know that I hear him,
then, over when I’m through,
promising that I’m fine.
I feel like I’m in an adventure movie,
talking like a bush pilot
or an explorer!
While Gabe and I are out
in the darkness, I start to wonder
if he wants to leave and run back
to Tío, but he’s a generous dog.
He takes care of me.
He stays close, snuggling
to keep both of us safe
and warm.
It’s easy to sense
how divided
a dog
feels
when he loves
two people
and longs to be loyal
to both
but he knows
he has to choose
only one.
20
GABE THE DOG
SMELLY RHYMES
The scent of a whole night with Tony, far away from my Leo,
almost rhymes with an aroma of fear, but it’s also a fragrance
of excitement, so I stay awake
until I sleep
and then I dream
the scent
of running
a wild smell that rhymes
with home.
21
TONY THE BOY
WALKING WITH BEARS
On summer mornings
out in the fragrant woods,
I learn to identify
the musky stench
of a black-bear den
in a hollow tree
but the wildest drifts
of clear mountain air
carry sounds
not just scent
an eerie cry, a screech, a moan—
soaring eagle
or slinking ghost?
It could be the protective cry
of a mountain lion mother
calling to her cubs.…
or La Gritona, La Llorona,
screaming woman, weeping woman,
a spirit from Tío’s campfire tales
about a mother who shrieks
because her children are lost.
Mountain lions and spooky myths
are noisy, but studying bears
is mostly a matter
of silence.
When B.B. takes me out to help
with her research, poor Gabe
can’t go with us, because even
the biggest bears love peace
and quiet. They run away
from barking dogs.
On my first day of wildlife biology,
we find ourselves face-to-face
with an adult male black bear
whose shaggy brown hair
makes me wonder why he’s called
a black bear. B.B. explains
that they can be reddish
or light or dark. They can be
the same brown as grizzlies,
only smaller and a lot less
aggressive.
The bear points his long nose
and gives a soft woof, a warning
that sounds like a funny cross
between a sneeze and a bark.
We follow at a distance as he shuffles
from tree to tree, scratching roots
and gobbling
squirmy ant larvae.
B.B. speaks to the bear calmly,
advising him not to worry yet,
because hunting season won’t start
until September.
Hunting? I can’t believe that any
modern person would kill a bear.
Why? Are they hungry enough to need
bear meat, or is it a so-called sport
like a dogfight? Why do some people
keep trying to prove their strength?
If Mom was a hunter,
would she kill the world’s
last bear?
Remembering my life before forests—
before wildlife and a gentle dog,
and gentle people—
I start to feel
so lonely
that I have to shove memories
of my old life
away
replacing them with B.B.’s scientific
attention to detail as she shows me
the colors of bear scat—that’s a biologist’s
way of saying poop. Blue scat means a bear
might have munched elderberries. Purple
could be from wild blackberries, and red
migh
t be manzanita.
That evening, I post a Dog Nose blog entry
about bear behavior, along with a list
of wild foods. Blue and purple berries
are often safe, but white and yellow
are usually risky. There aren’t any rules
for red. Wild strawberries are fine,
but some red berries are deadly.
Some things in life just can’t be
predicted.
The subject of safety catches my interest,
so I do some research, then post a list
of foods that can poison dogs:
grapes, raisins, onions, garlic,
macadamia nuts, chocolate.
Gabe is called a chocolate Lab
only because his rich brown color
is warm and happy, not because
it would be fine if you gave him
a candy bar. He’d get convulsions.
He could die. Writing about danger
makes me worry—what would I do
if anything ever
happened to Gabe?
He sniffs my hand, as if he can smell
the invisible fingerprint
of my thoughts.
I wish we could both smell
the future.
22
GABE THE DOG
CHASING THE MOON
Tony talks about a future,
but I don’t know what he means,
so we go outdoors, where he throws
a yellow glow-in-the-dark ball.
When a foolish squirrel runs
right in front of me, I don’t chase it
very far, because my teeth are already
biting
the brightness
of my light-catching
moon wish.
I can’t imagine ever needing
to do anything but play, right here,
right now, together.
23
TONY THE BOY
DANCING ELEPHANTS
Gracie sends a note of approval
all the way from India, shouting
an all-caps BRAVO! for my bear-
and-berry entry in the Dog Nose blog.
She adds an animal note of her own,
a poem called “Elephant Step Dance,”
about the way the soles of huge feet
can hear the drummed vibrations
of elephant messages
made by stomping
boom boom
on dry
hard
earth.
The poem is funny, but is it true?
I rush to find out, and my research
tells me that yes, elephant feet
really do act like extra ears,
absorbing sounds.
I picture loud Gracie
on the other side of the world,
making sure that her own
booming voice
is heard
in verse.
A few days later, there’s another
useless phone call from Mom.
Gracie’s poetic drum rhythm
helps me think about my own
pounding fury
each time I have to hear
the lies.
The last time I went to the prison,