Storm Dog

by L. M. Elliott

  Frankly, my parents are so different, they never have much to talk about. But it didn’t seem to worry them any. Mostly Daddy talked to my brother George and once in a while to me when he noticed I was reading a book he had liked as a child or listening to some of his rock ‘n’ roll vinyl albums. That satisfied me fine. But Daddy hasn’t done a whole lot of looking at anything except those newspapers since George went off to fight in Afghanistan.

  Mama snapped her fingers at Daddy’s fancy virtual voice assistant and commanded, “Play Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria.’”

  As the sounds of a 1960s electric guitar, keyboard organ, and backbeat drums blasted through the kitchen, Mama pulled Daddy to his feet and knocked his newspaper to the floor. Following Van Morrison’s gravelly voice, Mama shouted what seemed to be her personal anthem, lyrics I’d heard way too many times about her baby, the daughter who made her feel “all right:”

  “. . . her name is G . . . L . . . O . . . R . . . I-i-i-i-i . . .

  G-L-O-R-I-A,

  Gloooooooo—ria . . .”

  When Mama pulled Gloria into a triangle with Daddy to dance, I got up and headed for the hills. I don’t think the three of them even heard the back-porch door slam behind me—even though I whammed it hard three times to give them the chance.

  Two

  THAT SPECTACLE WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED if George were home. He would’ve winked at me with a yeah-I-know-they-are-ridiculous expression and guided me into the dance, elbowing me into the family circle. But without George I have no wingman.

  I pulled my bike out from the old hay barn that serves as our garage. Throwing myself on it, I pedaled hard down the gravel backcountry lanes that run along our pastures. Puddles left over from the previous night’s thunder-gusher splashed and soaked me with mud. But I didn’t stop. I felt possessed with the kind of fury that comes from being left out in the cold.

  I veered onto the open paved curves. These roads are hazardous enough for cars and near suicidal for bikers. But that danger never stops the Sunday cyclists from whipping through here in their tight, neon outfits. It wasn’t going to stop me either.

  I was heading for Sky Meadows State Park. George and I used to go there to lose our troubles and touch the clouds and climb to the mystical Appalachian trails that American Indians forged with moccasin-clad feet once upon a long time ago. The ancient track is sheltered by a forest of maples, pin oaks, hickories, and dogwood trees. You should see the colors in the fall—fiery reds, oranges, and golds mixed together helter-skelter, wherever birds dropped their seeds or an acorn rolled.

  People come from all over to drive in gawking traffic jams along the Skyline Drive to experience nature’s extraordinary color wheel. The real delight, though, is to get out and walk the Blue Ridge’s shaded pathways. Every so often they take the hiker to the edge of a crag for a mind-blowing view of the emerald valleys below. It must be amazing to be a hawk and get that kind of cloud-down perspective on the world all the time.

  Winded, I eeeked slowly up the ascending park road, swaying my bike back and forth with each pedal to give myself momentum. I ditched it by Mount Bleak House, the fieldstone home that holds the hilltop. My legs were already wobbly tired from the three-mile ride. But I marched stubbornly up the hillside for twenty minutes to keep from breaking down in baby-tears.

  I can’t stand crying—it makes my head hurt.

  Of course, there seems to be an art to crying that I just don’t get. Gloria pouts and sighs, and tears diamond up around her eyes. When a tiny pendant dribbles down her dimpled face, ever so feminine, everyone around her just melts. “Don’t cry, sugar.” “Oh my, what in the world is wrong?” “Let me fix it for you, sweet cakes.”

  Me? I cry loud. My eyes turn red. My nose runs. Everyone tells me to stop having a tantrum. They say, “Gracious, what a thunderclap.”

  So, you can imagine who wins parental sympathy when Gloria and I squabble. Daddy is good about holding court and giving us both our say. That’s the lawyer in him, sure. But I swear Gloria just flat out lies or finds a way to pin her actions on others in self-righteous martyrdom. Daddy doesn’t see it. He’s got the same blind spot for her that he does for Mama. I sure hope Daddy can read his clients and witnesses better than he does those two. Or the justice system is in deep trouble.

  Reaching the meadow plateaus of hip-high grass, I lay down to rest in a patch warmed by sunshine. I made myself breathe in, breathe out, in-out, to push away my anger enough to pull in the mystical power of the hillsides. It was the last week of March. The grass from last year was stiff and yellowed, but pushing up through it were ribbons of new life, slender fresh-green blades. It’s like that poem by Robert Frost—do you know him? “Nature’s first green is gold.”

  I keep a notebook of quotes that explain better what I am feeling than I can say myself. Bits of songs. Passages from books. Lines of poetry. I also make lists of books I hear of that sound interesting and want to read. Right now I’m knee deep in To Kill a Mockingbird. I see a lot of Atticus Finch in my daddy, actually. And a lot of Scout’s hometown, Maycomb, in my world—in terms of attitudes and characters and the big division between those who’ve had opportunities handed them and those who haven’t. Of course, Virginia isn’t Alabama or Alabama, Virginia. That’s a big mistake outsiders always make—Hollywood, for instance—that all the states below Pennsylvania are exactly the same. That would be like saying New Jersey and Maine are identical.

  George gave me that notebook right before he deployed. So it is very precious to me. He’d found me in our house’s library the week before he left for Afghanistan, the summer after I finished sixth grade, sitting in a pile of books I’d pulled off the shelf because I liked the sounds of their titles. William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, for instance. Doesn’t that sound like perfect reading for a storm child?

  To me, our family library is as exciting as a pyramid and all its treasures must be to the archeologists who unearth them. When it’s rainy or cold and I can’t escape to the hills from Mama’s tirades, I spend whole days curled up in its old deep-cushy armchairs. Its floor-to-ceiling bookcases are stuffed with leather-bound volumes with crisp, thick pages inscribed with worlds begging to be explored. The room smells like what I imagine the club cars in an old-timey transcontinental train did. As transporting to magic as the Polar Express. The perfect place for me to hide from my life and escape to others’.

  “Hey, A!” George was leaning against the door. (“A”—that’s the cool nickname he gave me. You probably think, sure, Ariel starts with A, but George said he started calling me that because I was always getting As at school. Isn’t he the best?) “You’ve got enough books there to build a fort.” He’d done that with me plenty when we were younger, using leftover telephone books we found in the attic to stack up in battlements. “Dad’s pretty protective of those really old ones, you know. First editions. Don’t hurt them.”

  “I’m not building a fort, George. I’m reading!” I held up The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I have to admit I was struggling a bit to understand it.

  George whistled and then made a face when he saw what I’d pulled out. “Kinda adult stuff, A,” he said gently.

  “So? I can read them!”

  “I know you can. You are such a smarty-pants. But maybe . . .” He reached over to one of the shelves and pulled out The Horse and His Boy from the Narnia series. “I really loved that one. Try it instead. Or maybe this one.” He handed me Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. He glanced around and seemed to get more and more uncomfortable, murmuring, “She needs some stuff from this century if she’s ever going to fit in.”

  I know he didn’t mean for me to hear, but I did. It hit me kinda hard that George thought I was a freak, too. But I didn’t say anything because he turned around and announced, “I’m going to make a list of some books you might like, A. We can talk about them when we email. Would you like that?”

  My head almost popped off, I was nodding so hard.

 
The very next day George gave me that notebook. This is what he had scribbled in it:

  I know these books might seem a little young to you at first, A, given your grown-up tastes, but start with them. I bet some other kids at school will have read them and would like to talk with you about them: Maniac Magee; My Side of the Mountain; Bud, Not Buddy; Shiloh; and The Giver. Then move on to The Perks of Being a Wallflower, A Separate Peace, and Catcher in the Rye.

  Emma (that’s George’s girlfriend) says you’ll love Ella Enchanted, Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small series, Stargirl, most anything by Judy Blume, the Divergent trilogy, and Wicked. She also thinks you’ll like a poet named Emily Dickinson.

  Here’s my favorite quote. My mantra to life, really. It’s from an American writer named Thoreau. You’ll read about him in high school. He said: “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable.”

  Find out what does that for you, A. Okay?

  Don’t ever forget I love you, kiddo.

  Printed on the cover of that notebook is a saying from a guy named Emerson, a friend of George’s Thoreau. Drink the Wild Air.

  Yup. Sucking into my lungs and soul the afterward air of a rock-the-world-deluge, all rain-washed and redeemed and slap-yourself-in-the-face fresh—that’s one of the few things that can make me feel “invulnerable.” For a few minutes anyway.

  Everyone should be able to find hope in the world waking up and preening after a storm. Like those teeny peepers that come to life around here as soon as winter’s had its last blast—frogs only as big as my little toe, bursting out of thick, snow-melt mud and partying in a song that’s a hundred times their size. Their symphony resounds in the air and through the woods and can’t help but make a person smile. If you’re paying attention.

  Just saying.

  That’s the kind of peace I was searching for that morning. I rolled over onto my belly and rested my face on crossed arms so I could gaze through the grasses. Up on these low mountains the wind never completely dies down, so the world’s always shifting a bit. The grasses hum as the breeze ripples them. I closed my eyes and listened.

  Three

  AS I LAY THERE, SCENES OF George sang to me.

  Scene One: I was on our rope swing, hanging long from our front-lawn oak tree. I was six years old, George fifteen.

  “Push me higher, George.”

  “You sure, honey?”

  “Higher! Higher!”

  George pushed. I soared, my gut lurching. My toes nearly brushed leaves.

  “Higher!”

  “No way, kiddo. You’ll fall off.”

  “Higher! Higher!” I shouted, kicking my legs.

  “No! That’s enough.” George stepped back, his arms by his sides.

  “I’ll tell Mama that you were smooching in the barn with Emma.”

  “What? Okay, I warned you.” Annoyed, George shoved. “Hang on!”

  But I didn’t hang on. As the swing catapulted higher and then dove back to earth, I lost my grip. I felt myself swimming in air.

  “Ariel!”

  Somehow George got his body between the ground and me. We hit hard. I was fine. George broke his wrist.

  He never told Daddy and Mama what a brat I was being or that he had saved me. He claimed he’d been swinging too high and had fallen.

  Scene Two: “Ariel, you are such a pain!” Gloria screeched at me. “Take that off.”

  She and Mama collect American Girl dolls. I wonder if Gloria ever actually played with them. They were lined up in rows, on display, and she had a bazillion outfits for them. I knew better than to pull them off the shelves. But I’d snitched a frilly baby bonnet and stuffed it onto a disreputable stray cat I’d found in the barn. I was trying to beautify it a bit with the hopes of turning it into a house pet.

  Gloria was yelling and trying to grab the cat from me when George showed up. “Hold on, girls, hold on.” He pulled us apart. We blibber-blabbered our explanations of how the other was being a total jerk. George got this funny look on his face. He undid that baby bonnet from the cat and plopped it on his own head. Shocked, we stopped arguing. When he stuck his thumb in his mouth and “goo-goo-blah-blah-ed,” even Gloria laughed. He took off running, and the two of us darted after, giggling and romping.

  Scene Three: “Whatcha doing, Georgie?” I was standing in his door, watching him be-bop his head, a blissful smile on his handsome face. He wore big headphones so his room was silent, but he obviously was wreathed in music.

  Around his neck hung his saxophone. George was a high school senior and had become a kick-butt musician, making it into All-State Band every year. That’s a big deal. He was the drum major of the marching band, too. Somehow he made that goofy uniform with all its buttons and spats and ridiculous tall furry hat look cool. But what he loved most was jazz band. When George stood up to play his improv solos, everyone within earshot froze, mesmerized by the sound of his soul crooning through that golden instrument.

  He didn’t hear me so I tapped his arm. His eyes popped open.

  “What are you listening to?” I shouted.

  “Heaven on earth.” He pulled off his heavy earphones and fit them on me. The sound of fast-paced, swing saxophones swirled around me. Two of them dueled in show-off riffs. I felt my feet starting to slide back and forth as if they had a mind of their own.

  George grinned. “Pretty great, huh?”

  I nodded. “What is it?”

  “‘In the Mood’ by Glenn Miller—the best of swing. I’m working on arranging this for marching band. Emma’s choreographing a routine for the flag corps to go with it, where the girls will flip their flags under and over each other like a gauntlet.”

  I listened a little longer. It was impossible not to sashay in time with that music. “But George, isn’t this music kind of old-fogey stuff?”

  “Whaaaaaat?” He grimaced and cocked his head with that I’m-giving-you-a-chance-to-redeem-yourself look. “You need some music education, little sister!”

  He pulled the earphones off me and started flipping through a pile of CDs that he’d burned for himself over the years. George is totally retro. I think he likes having little discs of song like Daddy’s enormous vinyl collection. As George searched, he preached. “‘In the Mood’ is the best of the best—those musicians have true skill, real courage. There’s no remixing, no machine-made effects, no melodramatic dance videos.” George was getting pretty worked up. “Back then it was just you and your instrument, man, standing there bare, slicing yourself open and letting the world watch your heart ache with each beat. Music should be an outcry, Ariel, not some sterile, sound-engineered mediocrity.”

  “An out-what?”

  He sighed big and stuck a new CD into the player. “Here, try this.” He plopped the headphones back on me, none too gently. I heard men singing in tight harmony, a bouncy baritone voice imitating the sound of a musician plucking the strings of a big ole bass: Dom-dom-dom-dom-dommmmm . . .

  George shouted over the music. “It’s doo-wop, early rock ‘n’ roll.”

  I listened and couldn’t help smiling at the easy-bounce beat and the lead singer’s sweet plea for his darlin’ to “come go” with him. Suddenly the voices stopped, the singers started clapping rhythm, and a bluesy sax took the lead, dazzling up the melody with twisty runs of notes. “Yeah, yeah! Go, go!” the recorded voices encouraged him.

  I put my hand to my ear and leaned into the sound, it was that good.

  George seemed to know right where I was in the song. He nodded, eyebrows shooting up in what-did-I-tell-ya mode. “Nothing like a good saxophone.”

  At the time, I was struggling to learn cello because the school orchestra director said I had the brains for it. Classical music is ennobling, head-in-the-clouds beauty. (Theoretically anyway—once you get good!) This stuff was plain old delight.

  “Hear that guy singing like an instrument rather than using words?” George asked.

  I nodded.

  “Okay, Ariel, this is what’s so
dope about music. That guy’s white. The other guys are African American. The Del-Vikings was one of the first racially integrated music groups—before the Civil Rights Movement. They didn’t care about the color of your skin as long as you could play. Music can overcome everything, change everything—that’s what I love about it. Understand?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

  “Okay, here’s a last one for you. Try some Springsteen. Talk about outcry. And listen to the saxophonist when he comes in—he brings the wail to Springsteen’s poetry.”

  As the saxophonist started playing—raspy, raw—George handed me his precious alto sax.

  “Go ahead—play!” I wrapped my lips around the mouthpiece and honked.

  “Yeah, yeah!” He laughed.

  I honked some more. I’ll be honest. I can’t really play music that well. But George showed me I sure could feel it. And that opened a huge door for me.

  George pulled the headphones off me and cranked the volume so we could listen together. He pretended to play harmonica along with Springsteen. I closed my eyes and danced as a song about keeping the faith in a promised land—no matter what—washed over me: “The dogs on Main Street howl, ’cause they understand. . . .”

  Scene Four: “Come on, boy, give me twenty more.”

  George was doing push-ups at the Army Adventure Trailer, tucked in between the Apple Blossom Festival carnival games. “Bust three balloons and win.” “Toss a ball into any bowl and win a fish.” Framed by stuffed bears, George was on the ground, at the feet of an army recruiter.

  George had just finished leading his high school marching band in the parade, conducting while strutting backward and twirling a big mace baton so the musicians all the way in the back could see and keep the beat. While they waited for the judges to announce their choice for the Festival’s best band, he and Emma strolled through the game booths lining Loudoun Street. They didn’t seem nervous at all about the judge’s decision. If I were them, I’d be as itchy as a squirrel. But they walked slow, holding hands, stopping here and there, smiling and nodding at people. A dozen band kids dogged them, tripping up over one another to get close, telling jokes that always started with, “Hey George, listen to this . . .”