by Wesley Banks
"You are talking about the horse called Seabiscuit, are you not?" Doc said.
"I am. But, my question to you is: in which town did the story of Seabiscuit begin?"
Doc's eyes lit with excitement as his grin stretched across his face. "I see your point very clearly, young lady.”
“Small towns often have big stories,” she said.
"That was a lovely answer, but not to my question. I meant, how exactly did you end up here?"
Katie thought about it a moment and said, "I more or less just pointed to a place on the map and drove."
"Now that is an even better answer," he said.
As Doc rocked back in his chair, Katie noticed a small butterfly that floated softly around the faded porch rail until it found a spot to rest next to a deep knot in the wood. Katie looked back towards Doc. His eyes were also fixed on the yellow and black striped wings.
"Would it be intruding if I was to take a look around the place?" Katie asked. "I'd really love to just find a place to sit and maybe jot down a few notes before it gets dark. Maybe even see the rest of the dogs?"
Doc didn't respond. He was looking at Katie, but he didn’t seem to see her. After a brief moment, he nodded. “Well now, let me see. Today is Saturday, yesterday was Friday, and tomorrow is Sunday. Yep, looks like I’m free, Miss Hannah.”
Katie brushed a tendril of brown hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She blushed a little, thinking he'd forgotten her name already.
"You mean Katie?"
"Of course I meant Katie!" he laughed.
He stood up and extended his arm like a father about to walk his daughter down the aisle. "I would like to think I could give you a proper tour of the place. That is, if you have the time."
"I have all the time in the world," she said.
But the truth was, she now had less than three weeks.
Chapter 5
“Well let me just check one thing inside and we’ll be on our way.”
“Actually, do you have some place I could change real quick?” Katie said. She held the fabric of her dress away from her skin and shrugged.
“I do, and that would probably be a good decision.”
Katie walked back to her car and pushed the suitcase in the backseat onto its side. She unzipped the main compartment and pulled out a pair of jeans that were sitting on top, and dug around until she found a dark green pullover.
Doc was still holding the screen door open when she walked back up the stairs. “Just to the left there, through the kitchen. I’ll be out here when you’re ready.”
“Thanks,” Katie said.
The bathroom felt tiny as Katie closed the door behind her. It was just a half bath with a small mirror over the sink. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but to her surprise it was clean. Actually, it was spotless.
She looked into the mirror. Her hair was all frizzy, her eyes had small bags under them, and her lips looked as dry as the deserts she’d driven through in Arizona.
Katie crossed both of her arms and lifted her dress over her head. Why did I pack a dress? She folded it up and set it on her purse. She turned the faucet on and lightly splashed some water over her face. Immediately she felt better.
She ran her hands through her hair and pulled it up into a ponytail, and ran some chap stick over her lips. After her jeans and sweater were on she looked back in the mirror.
For a moment she paused. Her smile faded and she just looked back at the girl in the mirror. This is crazy, she thought. She suddenly felt out of her element. How did her father ever do adventurous things like this?
Sam’s words came back to her. You’re in the big leagues now.
Katie let out a deep breath, grabbed her dress, and shoved a few things back in her purse.
When she walked outside Doc was sitting back in his rocking chair. She walked over and tossed the dress in the front seat of the car, which slid off the shiny leather and onto the floor next to her sandals. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said with a smile.
It was midafternoon when Katie and Doc left. They had walked for what felt like hours, but the sun still hung high against the clouds. All that time spent sitting at her beach house in San Diego for the last six months was starting to show. Her feet hurt, her calves hurt…even her shoulders hurt from just carrying around her purse for so long.
Katie had tried to jot down notes as she followed behind Doc, but it proved to be too much. She was overwhelmed by the enormity of his property, and the nonstop information he had to offer. Instead, she just tried to take it all in.
Whenever you can’t write the story, become the story. Or so her father used to say.
Doc’s property was just over one thousand acres. To put that into perspective, the whole town of Bishopville itself was only five square miles, or three thousand acres. Doc owned one-third of that.
He had divided the property into four sections, and he introduced each one as such: the barn, the junkyard, the farm, and the land.
First up was the barn, which was just a short stroll across the dirt path in front of the house.
“This is it,” he said with a smile, his cheeks rolling into little balls that forced his eyes to squint.
The stalls looked empty except for bits of hay scattered about. Several harnesses, leashes, and other miscellaneous ropes and cords hung from the wall. Just inside the doors was a wooden bench with several tool boxes arranged in a neat row. It was probably the cleanest barn Katie had ever seen. Okay, it was the only barn she had ever seen.
“Is this where you keep the dogs?” Katie asked.
“It is, when they aren’t training.”
Katie continued to look around.
“Come,” Doc said. “There are a lot more exciting things than this.”
It was just around the left side of the house and a few hundred yards past a copse of pine trees before they reached what Doc referred to as the junkyard. Katie expected to see, well, a junkyard. They obviously didn’t have garbage men out here, so she figured maybe that’s what they did in these small towns. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
As they approached, Katie was absorbed with the different trees and colors that still lingered in late fall. She almost didn’t even see the sixty or so trailer homes in the middle of a small field, situated in three neatly stacked rows. Some were propped up on huge cinder blocks, while others looked as if they had sunk into the ground after sitting there for so long.
“I used to rent ’em, back in the day,” Doc proclaimed. “Problem was about twenty years ago people didn’t want trailer homes no more. They wanted the real thing, and it just didn’t feel right not to buy them back. So, here they are.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“Well, actually, I don’t really have any plans. They’ve trickled back in over the years and I imagine they’ll sit there until they eventually rust away.”
Katie wanted to object. She wanted to tell him he could scrap them, or disassemble them for parts. But when she saw the way he looked at them, it was almost as if he had some weird sense of pride. Like this was his hobby. His collection. Most people don’t collect trailer homes, but who was she to judge?
As Katie followed Doc to their next stop she noticed the grass was unkept, and debris from the trailer homes was littered about for what seemed like several hundred feet. She stepped over the occasional tire or hitch, and even a few windows and doors.
When they approached the farm Doc shouted out a warning, pointing to several flattened areas of grass. “Watch your step. Lots of hogs been rootin’ around through here.”
Doc’s advice, as prudent as it was, came a little too late.
Not more than a few steps in, Katie stepped on a somewhat crunchy, somewhat creamy substance.
“That’d be hog scat, Miss Price,” Doc said, turning to face her. “Pig poop,” he clarified. He squatted down next to several tracks and pointed into the distance. “And by the looks of it, they went that way.�
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“How can you tell?”
“Hogs’ hooves are rounded in the back and pointed towards the front, making it easy to tell which way a hog is travelling. And, well, I can see them over there.”
Katie couldn’t help but laugh when she looked to her left. Sure enough, there were five hogs just standing there staring right back at her. As Katie stood up, one of them took several steps forward and snorted.
“They’re not dangerous. Right?”
Doc chuckled as he continued on. “I s’pose that depends on the day.”
They continued on their way through a narrow path cut in the woods and about ten minutes later, arrived at the farm.
When people talked about farms or farming, Katie always found it hard not to imagine old men in overalls sifting through fields of corn, stopping every now and then to grab hold of an ear of corn and proclaim in the most hillbilly accent possible, “Now dat dere is a fine lookin’ vegetable.” What lay in front of her, though, was nothing of the sort.
Tobacco, cotton, soybeans, corn, hay, wheat, peaches, apples, and peanuts—those were the types of crops she expected to see. Doc did not grow any of those.
Instead, for as far as Katie could see, there were row upon row of giant sunflowers.
“Do you know how sunflowers got their name?” Doc said as he walked towards them. He was over six feet tall, but when he went to touch the soft yellow petal, he still had to reach up over his head.
“Their scientific name is Helianthus, but that’s actually a combination of two words. Helios, the Greek word for sun, and Anthos, the Greek word for flower.”
Katie continued walking. Just a few steps past Doc, a trail opened up amongst the flowers. As she stepped in between the thousands of flowers, her thoughts rushed through her parted lips like a soft breeze. “They’re beautiful.”
She looked closer, from one flower to another. They looked identical, but it wasn’t their similar color, height, or size that caught her attention. It was their orientation. Every single flower was pointed in the same direction.
Doc continued walking through the manmade trail, giant sunflowers flanking both sides, as Katie followed slowly behind.
“Did you ever notice that they all face the same direction?” she asked from several feet behind him.
Doc stopped momentarily and pulled the bandana from around his neck to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Then he folded it back into a triangle and tied it around his neck once more.
Katie took out her phone as Doc stood in the middle of the worn path, hands stacked atop one another, leaning against his walking stick, thousands of giant sunflowers looking over his shoulder. She quickly took several pictures of him as he began to speak.
“’From sunrise to sunset, she follows her love
Making sure not to take her eyes off him
Not even for a second time,
Perennially in love with her love’”
Katie had spent countless nights with her father, listening to writers recite their poems in bookstores, libraries, cafes, or bars. As she looked at Doc, she recalled her father’s words.
The good poets, they’ll look out towards their audience to make eye contact and entwine them into the story. The great poets…they’ll look back to the memory where these words began and forget the audience altogether.
Doc’s voice was deep like the still waters of an empty ocean, and he gazed into the distance like he was searching for someone or something.
Katie broke the momentary silence. “Who wrote that?”
“To be honest, I’m not quite sure. My wife used to recite those words when we walked through here. There was more from the myth, but alas, I’m old and have forgotten most of them. We best be goin’ though, gonna be late.”
“Late for what?”
Doc didn’t answer, he just turned back around and started walking down the trail, and Katie followed.
When the rows of sunflowers finally ended another trail began, lined with smooth cordgrass on either side.
Along the way, Doc continued to point out each and every plant and flower, first in their Latin name, and then in their more informal common name. Pinus palustris, the longleaf pine. Asclepias tuberosa, better known as the butterfly weed. Enemion, the false rue anomena. Aesculus parviflora, bottlebrush buckeye. The list was never ending.
The more Doc spoke, the more Katie’s mind wandered back to Earl’s last words: There's somethin’ magical ’bout them dogs.
It wasn't the words themselves that had captured her attention, nor the way Earl had said them. Rather it was the look in his eyes—as if he had seen something. Something secret and wonderful. But what?
Her mind raced with possibilities. She loved the idea of something magical for her story. Katie was so caught up in her thoughts that she almost ran right into Doc as he stopped next to an enormous oak tree.
He stretched his legs out as he leaned against the tree, his body fitting just barely between two roots protruding from the ground. He had spent the last two hours dragging Katie here and there, sharing all the tidbits of information about the property. It seemed as though he had a story for everything. And while Katie had enjoyed most of it, she wanted the main course of the story, and all she’d gotten so far were a few sides, if that. She wanted to see the dogs.
It had been over six months since she’d put pen to paper. Now that she finally had a story to write, she was getting impatient. Katie didn't want to be rude, but she really needed some time to watch the dogs, to find their magic. But as she walked up next to Doc about to say something, he raised his fingers against his lips.
Did he just shush me?
Before she could protest, he pointed towards the open field with his other hand. It was the land.
From where Katie stood, they looked down on what appeared to be an empty pasture. A myriad of different trees surrounded it. The land was flat, and quiet. Yet, it almost felt as if all of nature were crowded in around it just waiting for something to happen.
That's when Katie saw him. He was several hundred feet away, so it was too far to be certain, but it looked like the outline of the same man she’d seen earlier.
At first, he was alone as he walked out of a small clearing and into the open field, but seconds later the first dog appeared. He was slightly bigger than the rest, who followed in pairs. By her count there were fifteen dogs, and not once did they break formation, stopping a few paces in front of the man.
After pausing for a few seconds, his back still to the dogs, the man began walking again. He was close enough that Katie could see his left arm at his side, but his right arm was bent up towards the sky, his palm open. Every few seconds he closed his palm into a fist and the dogs stopped. Then he opened his hand again and walked on. He did this for several minutes, until he was about halfway across the field.
Once he reached the middle of the field he closed his hand once more, but kept on walking until he was about ten to twenty feet from the dogs. Then, he turned to face them.
Again, he held his hand out in front of him, this time raising his index finger. He paused for a moment, and pointed to the ground next to him. The lead dog moved almost instantly, jogging over beside him where he then sat down. Katie was almost certain that was also the same dog that had approached her while she’d been playing with the puppies.
The man stood with the single dog by his side, the other fourteen directly in front of him. Several minutes passed before any of them moved. Katie’s eyes shot from dog to dog. While they were still too far away to see any details, she could make out that around half of the dogs were slightly smaller than the others. Perhaps younger, she thought. But still none of them moved.
Then the man tapped the dog sitting next to him on the back of the neck, just as she had seen Doc do earlier to Biscuit. The dog followed him over to the others as the man turned his back to them once again. He released his hand, now clenched in a fist in the air, and spoke one single word as he began to walk forward.
“Hike.”
The dogs walked in a straight line. Some of the smaller ones seemed hard pressed to keep such a slow pace, as if all they wanted was to break into a run. Occasionally they would break formation, but it was almost as if the man knew when this was happening, despite having his back turned. Whenever a dog would break a few feet away, the man would issue another command and the other dogs would turn right or left, reforming.
Katie sat in silence with Doc, watching the young man repeat this pattern for almost an hour across the entire field. If someone would have traced their steps it would probably look as if they had walked in circles for days.
When it was all over, the man dismissed the dogs one by one the same way they had come, through a slender opening in the tree line. Each of them sprinted away at a feverish pace, the next one following shortly after.
Katie looked down at the pad in her lap. It was as empty as it had been when she’d bought it. It seemed even emptier, somehow. There was something about the dogs, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She had never seen animals move with such unity, but she was at a loss for words. Which, for her, hadn’t been unusual lately.
Doc straightened from where he’d leaned against the tree and Katie heard a quiet groan. She didn’t know if it was Doc stretching or the tree responding in relief from the shift in weight.
Still not ready to leave and desperately wanting to get at least some words on the page, Katie turned to him. “Do you mind if I just sit here a while and write?”
Since it was mostly a rhetorical question, she didn’t expect Doc to object. But he did.
“Actually, Miss Price, I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”
Katie’s heart sank. Is he kicking me out? Did I do something wrong?
She was about to start apologizing for whatever it was she might have done. She hadn’t driven for nearly a week straight just to turn around and head back home.
“Unfortunately, it’s almost dark, and I just don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to be out here all alone, with the coyotes and all,” Doc explained.
