With

by Donald Harington

  Circling back northward toward the house, Hreapha found that they were in a ravine that seemed very familiar to her, and trying to place it without any olfactory clue she finally realized from some obscure crevices of her memory that this was the place where she had rounded up those chickens that had got loose when the man was trying to transport them from the truck to the house. Yes, if she went that way she’d find the route she’d driven the chickens to make them arrive at their new home. But she did not go that way. Something gave her a hunch to go the other way, which involved some difficult climbing along the side of the bluff, with Hrolf having just as much trouble as she did, until they reached another ravine or gorge which contained the burnt steel remains of the man’s truck. Hreapha’s heart leapt up: if she could somehow climb the bluff from this point, she’d locate perhaps the end of the road that led northward down the mountain.

  As they tried to climb, Hrolf exclaimed, Shoot far, Ma, we’ll never make it up there.

  Son, she answered, if we do make it up there, we’ll be on a road that could take us eventually to meet your father at last.

  Why didn’t you say so? he said, and with a burst of energy clawed his way to the top of the bluff, with her right at his heels.

  And sure enough, there was the trail that the man had driven his truck over so many times to bring all the food and drink and stuff up to the mountaintop, the trail that Hreapha had taken when she had run away from him and had found her way back to Stay More. As she loped happily down the trail, she realized she ought to have told the in-habit not to expect them back before nightfall.

  Much of the trail had been obliterated over the years by hard rains, but she and Hrolf managed to follow the traces of it and in time reach the foot of the mountain where the trail met up with a road. They had headed only a short distance along that road when they heard many sounds of the names of their kindred being announced, and Hreapha clearly recognized one of them: “Arphrowf!”

  She had scarcely returned her own name, “Hreapha!” when she caught sight of her former brief friend, the good old country lady that she had chatted with on her first and only trip past this place. Now Arphrowf was practically surrounded by other dogs, all of whom resembled her.

  Don’t I know you from somewheres long ago? Arphrowf asked.

  Yes, I stopped by here and we chatted one day about five or six years ago, Hreapha said.

  All of them took turns sniffing one another’s afterplaces. Hrolf was delighted to discover that two of the dogs were comely young bitches. While he was shamelessly flirting around with them, Hreapha brought Arphrowf up to date on what had been happening since last they’d chatted.

  Well fan my brow! Arphrowf said. You don’t mean to tell me that such things has been a-going on right up yonder on the mountain top! Why, I’d of come to visit!

  You’ll recall you told me you’d never been up there because it was too far and snaky for you? Well, let me tell you about Sheba…

  And Hreapha told her all about the friendly harmless queen snake, and the friendly bobcat who was in love with one of Hreapha’s daughters, and the friendly raccoon and the fawn grown into a friendly deer.

  Can you beat that? Arphrowf exclaimed. In all my born days I never heared tell of such marvels.

  And then Hreapha told her about the bear cub and the fact that the girl-now-woman, name of Robin, had been missing for two days with the cub and Hreapha was searching for them with the help of her handsome son there, Hrolf.

  Them there’s my lovely young’uns, Arphrowf said, indicating the several other dogs. ’Pears like your boy is taking a shine to ’em.

  Indeed it was difficult persuading Hrolf to leave when it was time to go. Arphrowf said, I declare, don’t you’uns be a-rushin off. Stay more and spend the night with us.

  In fact, it was getting on to dark, and Hreapha decided it might be better to tarry here among friends until daybreak before resuming their journey to Stay More. Her sense of fidelity to Robin was only mildly disturbed by the thought that Robin and Paddington would have to wait another couple of days before Hreapha resumed looking for them. It was more important, now that a way had been found, to get to Stay More and see Yowrfrowr again.

  So they spent the night. Sometime after dark settled in, the door of the house opened and a man stepped out, or staggered out, clumsily carrying a large bag, which he upended, spilling dog chow nuggets all over the place. He yelled, “Supper’s ready!” and went back into the house.

  Blame if he aint drunk again, Arphrowf observed, as they congregated with the other dogs to chomp up the nuggets. Oftentimes it’s all I can do to keep from biting him. She explained to Hreapha that the mistress of the house had died a couple of years previously (Pore thang prolly worked herself to death) and the man had taken to drink and was allowing his small farm to go to the dogs.

  Yessiree, me and my young’uns has to run the place for him. The cattle is allus getting loose and it’s all we can do to herd ’em back home. We’d even milk ’em if we could.

  You wouldn’t happen to have a spare cow or two, would you? Hreapha asked.

  Laws a mercy, we got spare everything, Arphrowf complained. We got more cows than we’ll ever know what to do with.

  The next morning, Hrolf seemed to be more than willing to leave, although one of the bitches, a cutey named Alfalfa, didn’t want him to leave and whined piteously as they departed.

  As they loped down the long road that led toward Stay More, Hrolf remarked, Ma, I sure am all tuckered out.

  ‘Tuckered?’ she said. Did you pronounce that correctly? And she laughed.

  When they finally approached Stay More, Hreapha was apprehensive that perhaps Yowrfrowr might have died of old age or his mistress might have moved away. But even before they reached the dogtrot cabin at which he lived with the old woman (and countless cats), Hreapha had picked up not only his scent, but another scent that was disturbingly familiar to her, and which took her just a little while to identify.

  Hrolf picked up the other scent too, and said, Ma? Is that who I think it is?

  I think it is too, she said, and soon her suspicion was confirmed, as she beheld not only her long lost daughter Hruschka, but her brood of grandchildren too. The yard of the dogtrot cabin was positively overrun with dogs and cats living in a kind of peaceful coexistence that made the menagerie of Madewell Mountain seem mild by comparison.

  Hruschka was as shy as ever. Ma, is that you? she asked timidly.

  Yowrfrowr was embarrassed, which Hreapha had never known him to be. He pretended ignorance. Hreapha, old girl, he said. What a surprise! Are you and my wife perchance related?

  Yes, and you and your wife are also related. She’s your daughter.

  No! he said, pawing at the air. Then he turned to his wife. Hruschka, were you aware of that fact?

  Sometimes I’ve had a hunch, she said.

  Hreapha nudged Hrolf to come and sniff his father. And this is your handsome son, she said to Yowrfrowr.

  The two males circled and sniffed each other, and Yowrfrowr declared, What an unmitigated pleasure! My boy! And such a rugged specimen! Well, come and meet your new brothers and sisters.

  Or are they my nephews and nieces? Hrolf wanted to know.

  It was all very complicated, Hreapha realized, but she was surprised to discover she felt no jealousy toward Hruschka, in fact she felt very happy for the girl, and was eager to sniff and examine each of her grandchildren.

  The family reunion continued happily until the old woman, Yowrfrowr’s mistress, came out of the house and said, “Xenophon, I declare if you don’t attract strays the way shit attracts flies! You tell your new friends to get out of my yard. There’s too damn many of you already!”

  I’ll walk a ways with you, Yowrfrowr declared, as he led Hreapha and Hrolf away from the cabin.

  Goodbye, darling, Hreapha called to Hruschka, I hope to see you again sometime.

  She’s been spayed, Yowrfrowr related to Hreapha. For that matter, I’ve been
emasculated myself. Drat, we’ve all been unsexed. Mistress’ grandson took us all in his truck to a Harrison veterinarian, where the operations were performed. Isn’t that hideous? The lucky felines escaped such a fate and will go on propagating all over creation. But I suppose they’re not as conspicuous, nor as ravenous, as all of us dogs.

  If there are so many of you, Hreapha said, your mistress won’t even notice if I borrow you for a few days.

  Borrow me? But don’t you understand, I’m no good for coitus any more…although I must admit, ever since the operation I’ve felt much calmer and more contented.

  I’m beyond coitus myself, she said, and then she explained what she really wanted Yowrfrowr for: to help her find Robin and the bear. It took her a while to explain the whole situation, and to bring him up to date on what had been happening on the mountaintop since last she had seen him. He was considerably impressed at her recital of the expansion and variety of the menagerie, and confessed that he had always been eager to see the Madewell place, especially since his wife spoke so fondly of her memories of it. Truth be told, since their brood had been born and grown now into their second year, he had urged Hruschka to take him on a sentimental journey back to her birthplace, but Hruschka had had such a terrible experience finding her way down off the mountain, including a plunge over a waterfall, that she was reluctant to attempt the journey.

  Hrolf and I have found a new way to get up there, from the north, Hreapha declared. Come go home with us.

  Hhmm, hummed Yowrfrowr. It’s a magnificent temptation. But it would just be a visit, you understand. I can’t join your menagerie.

  You couldn’t anyway, not unless Robin asked for another dog for her next birthday, Hreapha said. And she wants an elephant.

  Elephant? said Yowrfrowr. Did I hear you correctly? My ears are going bad in my old age.

  Yes, that’s what she says…although I warn you, she has a weird sense of humor.

  An elephant, eh? Of course they don’t grow in these parts. But I’ve heard of them. Mistress’ son-in-law, Hank Ingledew, has told the story of his experience as a boy, many years ago, visiting something called a ‘circus’ that came to Jasper, and encountering there an enormous elephant. As the story goes, the elephant used its long snout to fling Hank through the air, and Hank said to the elephant, “If Godalmighty made you, He orter make one more and quit.”

  Most of the way back up to Madewell Mountain, Yowrfrowr romped on ahead of her with Hrolf, the two of them talking and laughing up a storm, and while she was happy to see father and son becoming so chummy she hoped they weren’t having any laughs at her expense.

  When they finally attained the upper reaches of the mountain, near the spot where the man’s burnt car had crashed, Yowrfrowr remarked, It has been a long time since I caught the scent of bear, so correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this a bona fide bear scent?

  She sniffed at the place he indicated but could scarcely detect any scent at all. Of course, Yowrfrowr’s nose was much longer than hers, which was one among many reasons she wanted his help in searching for Robin. Hrolf also sniffed at it but shook his head.

  Not only is it distinct, Yowrfrowr declared, but it’s heading that way. And he indicated a westward route up through the forest, in the same area where Hreapha had been diverted by the sight of a deer with two fawns when she was supposed to be guarding the man’s truck, and had been punished for wandering away from it. The distant memory gave her a peculiar sense of freedom to be now following Yowrfrowr up through the same woods where she had followed the deer and fawns.

  Yowrfrowr’s unerring nose led them a long way, until Hreapha herself could detect the scent, and was sure that it was Paddington’s, not, as she’d feared, some other bear’s. They went on, and emerged from the forest at almost the crest of the mountain, where the old orchard of the homestead met the woodland, and there, under an apple tree, both of them sound asleep, were Robin and Paddington!

  “Hreapha!” she shouted exultantly, and woke them. The bear leapt up, snarling, and rose in front of Yowrfrowr to his full length, with his claws bared and raised, and his voice cursing to high heaven in a grinding roar that sounded much worse than any of the man’s snores had ever been.

  “Hreapha!” said Robin and embraced her. “And Hrolf!” She embraced him too. “But who is this?” she pointed to Yowrfrowr, who was trying to defend himself against the menacing bear.

  “YOWRFROWR!” Yowrfrowr barked at the bear, who in return said some obscene curses in his own language.

  “Y’all hush!” Robin said to them. “They’ll hear us down there. Look, there’s a house down there and it looks like people live in it. But I’m afraid to go meet them. Looking like this, without any clothes. And what if they try to take me away, back to Harrison?”

  Hreapha was slow in understanding what must have happened: Robin and Paddington, lost and like anyone lost, moving in circles, had made a huge circle that had brought them finally to the rear of the Madewell place, the northwestern side at the orchard, from where the house could be only distantly seen, and Robin with her poor eyesight, not even recognizing her own orchard from that angle, had not yet recognized that the house was her own.

  Hrolf told Paddington to shut his yap. The bear cub, who was hardly a cub any more, understood that Hrolf was the boss.

  “Hreapha Hreapha,” Hreapha said quietly to Robin, meaning, You silly thing, that’s your own house down there. Why don’t you go see?

  But of course Robin couldn’t understand her, and looked fearfully toward the house. Fortunately, they were within the haunt, and thus it was not long before Adam In-habit made his presence known, saying, Boy howdy and jumping grasshoppers, I had done give you’unses up for lost.

  Yowrfrowr was spooked at the voice and the presence of the in-habit, although he had encountered a number of in-habits in Stay More, left behind by the many citizens who had abandoned the town. Hreapha introduced them to each other, explaining to Adam that this was the selfsame Yowrfrowr she had told him so much about, the father of her children.

  Right pleased to meet ye, Yowrfrowr. I’ve heared so much about ye.

  Hreapha said to the in-habit, Could you please explain to Robin that that’s her own house down there? She’s confused.

  I think she’s a-figuring it out on her own, the in-habit said. On account of I’m here, and so it must be in my haunt.

  So they all walked joyfully down out of the orchard and to the house, where the others were waiting for them. And there they all lived happily ever after.

  And these are the birthday presents that Hreapha arranged for Robin to receive in the years to come:

  For her thirteenth: not an elephant, of course, but something pretty big and far more useful—a cow.

  For her fourteenth: a pet rock, a chunk of crystal quartz which she named Sparkle.

  For her fifteenth: a pair of mourning doves.

  For her sixteenth: an opossum.

  For her seventeenth: an armadillo.

  For her eighteenth:…but let us, Hreapha will urge, be patient. As she will be.

  Chapter forty

  Dear Hreapha’s characteristically optimistic notion of that standard catch phrase, “happily ever after,” was not meant to imply any finality or even perpetuity in the ongoing saga of Robin’s adventures. The whole concept of “ever after” for a dog is limited mostly from one meal to the next, and the concept of “happily” can apply to anything which induces the wagging of one’s tail. Hreapha’s tail wasn’t very long but she wagged it often, and in those years to come she would have countless occasions to keep on wagging it, although of course there would be, in the great balance of things, a number of sadnesses, hardships, deprivations, disappointments and general malaises.

  Earlier I proffered the caveat that we should not be lulled by the excitement of Robin’s life into feeling that her experience was totally idyllic. Her larder was empty and she had run out of such basic amenities as salt and kerosene and was essentially living
directly from nature and from whatever her garden could provide. On the positive side, she was spared some of the grief that most girls suffer during adolescence, particularly in social relationships. For example, never would she feel slighted and lonely because her boyfriend ignored her whenever he was with his pals. Never would she be hurt because her boyfriend took out on her his anger or rage from fighting with his parents or peers. Never would her desire to belong and be popular compel her to have her body tattooed and to pierce various parts of it, including her tongue, for adornment. Her social calendar, her dance card, as it were, was filled with lovely interactions with her zoological garden, which, as Hreapha’s birthday list has already indicated, constantly grew from year to year.

  Alas, Robin mostly lost interest in me, perhaps feeling she had outgrown me, which in fact she had, not just physically but intellectually. If she thought of me at all, it was as a kid brother. The only time she ever called upon me or solicited my help was once in her fourteenth year when she finally decided to finish that firkin she’d abandoned years before and she needed from me a brief refresher course on the use of the cooper’s tools. I was more than happy to oblige. She not only completed the firkin successfully, but, since the fractured churn of mine she’d been using to make butter was malfunctioning, she decided to start from scratch and see if she couldn’t make a churn entire, and I was pleased to guide her. Indeed, by the time of her seventeenth birthday she had made an active hobby of cooperage and was even riving her staves from the oak forest with axe and saw, and actually completed a not substandard barrel before she was eighteen.

  During those years of her adolescence, she missed out on all the things that were happening to her generation’s delight in movies, music, literature and culture in general. In music alone, she never had the experience of hearing all the fabulous new songs and rhythms, just as she was also denied exposure to the great classical composers. But it may be observed that what she missed, she invented. Art, after all, is the expression of that which the ordinary mortal cannot express. Her solitude forced Robin into extraordinariness, and she filled the air with her own music, her own attempt to translate into pure sounds those universal emotions—exultation and despondency, the yearning and seeking and the glory in finding—out of which all music, classical and popular, springs.