by Greg Kincaid
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Book
When Todd, a developmentally challenged young man still living on his parents’ Kansas farm, hears that a local shelter is seeking temporary homes for their dogs during the holiday week, he knows exactly what he wants for Christmas.
Animals are Todd’s first love, and his persistence quickly overwhelms his father’s objections to befriending a canine, a reluctance that proves to have a painful origin.
The family takes in a very special animal, and the shelter’s Christmas adoption program soon grows larger than anyone had hoped. By the story’s end, Todd, with the help of a dog named Christmas, has taught an entire community the transformative power of goodwill and shared love – a lesson for all seasons.
About the Author
Greg Kincaid, when not writing, is a practising lawyer specializing in divorce and family law mediation. He lives on a farm in eastern Kansas with his wife, five children, three horses, two cats, and two dogs.
This book was always for my wife.
She has taught me so much,
not the least of which
is the value of a good dog.
JAKE SEEMED CONTENT with the Conner family, but even so, his departure was predictable. Mr. and Mrs. Conner lived on the edge of a growing city where subdivisions turned into ten-acre lots and where all too often people discarded beer cans, fast-food debris, and unwanted pets. Jake walked on, scruffy and half starved, with no tags. Mr. Conner found him resting on the back porch as an early February wind piled snow high on the driveway of their modest ranch home. They fed him, cleaned and vaccinated him, and then just waited. They put up “Lost Dog” flyers, but no one called.
A walk-on like Jake has a different status than a pet you purchase. A walk-on can just as easily walk off, the Conners told each other.
The weeks passed and Jake stayed. Mr. and Mrs. Conner did not understand why anyone would dump him. Though the vet had confirmed he was a little bit older, he was one of the more engaging dogs they had known. With an alert personality, he was eager to please, house-trained, well behaved, and could sit, stay, and roll over on command. He was a good companion, keeping close without intruding, and was also curious and a quick learner.
Jake lingered through the summer, gaining weight and confidence in his surroundings, but by early fall, when his strength had fully returned, he seemed restless, like a pioneer yearning for his own territory, and would wander off at night and stay out for days and once for an entire week. He began roaming farther and farther away. The Conners tried fences and ties and even locking him up at night, but there were few bonds strong enough to keep him put for long. When the first frost collected on the still green grass and the moon was full, Jake left the Conner family to fulfill his own calling.
Speculation naturally followed. At the top of Mr. Conner’s list was the assumption that Jake went home, back to wherever he came from. Mrs. Conner suggested that a wily female lured him away. The Conners’ grown children wondered if Jake found a family with children to play with him, as their own children had when they visited their grandparents on weekends.
After the first few days, the Conners were concerned, but not alarmed. He was an important part of the family, but the Conners suspected that Jake operated by his own rules. As the days turned to weeks, and the weeks to months, his disappearance somehow seemed natural and the Conners just accepted his absence. A walk-on can walk off, they reminded themselves.
When they thought of him, they said things like, “He has Jake business to attend to. He’ll come back if and when he is ready.”
By the time winter came, Jake was like a faded old picture in a box of family memories. Occasionally at dinner, they would laugh and tell Jake stories, like the time a neighbor chased him down the middle of their driveway, trying to recover a twenty-pound black trash sack that dangled proudly from his jaws, or the time he chased a rabbit onto the frozen pond and spun around like an Olympic skater. The rabbit stopped and watched, seemingly laughing at Jake. Jake apparently thought it was fun too, for he backed up and did it again, with the same result.
Mrs. Conner would grow quiet as she felt his absence in her heart and then Mr. Conner would say, “Pass the potatoes … I’m sure he’s fine.”
When he left, Jake headed west away from the city and the Conners’ home. It felt good to be a full-time roamer. He answered to no one. He had a freedom that few are brave enough to own. He slept beneath the stars, under bridges, in caves, in open fields tucked behind a log, or on the back porch of some generous soul who could tolerate a hobo on the road. He ate food that some might describe as unfit for a dog. He did what he needed to do to stay nourished. He honed the instincts lost to more modern times. He learned to listen, his sense of smell became more acute, and he noticed slight movements that would have gone undetected during his domestic life.
He hunted like an animal. He waited. He journeyed. He did not know how long it would take or how far he would go. It would be right when he got there. He had given himself over to instinct.
Like geese, salmon, and monarch butterflies, Jake was being pulled to a very particular place.
It was often dangerous. As he moved through less friendly neighborhoods, the residents had a way of making it clear that his kind was not wanted. They barely paid him a glance and were likely to pretend that he did not exist. They thought that showing him a little kindness would encourage him to stay and then they would never be rid of him.
If they were not ignoring him, they sent their hints in more obvious ways. One man threw a rock in his direction as he passed by. A carload of boys saw him walking on the side of the road one evening and they swerved in his direction as if it were funny to see him jump out of the way. Though Jake was unharmed, the message was clear. He needed to move on, keep heading west.
The animal kingdom was not generous toward him either. Dogs barked at him, skunks sprayed him, ticks bit him, and thorny bushes scraped at his sides. Still he kept going, aware that his journey was not yet complete.
These discomforts were minor inconveniences to Jake. He was content and at peace with himself. In the morning when he woke and stretched, his tired muscles felt good, never better. Hardship was the patina of his good life. There is no better state of mind for man or animal than being what you are and doing what you are meant to do. This harmony of existence and purpose is so rare that we forget it exists. Not Jake. Particularly, not today.
After the sun ascended to its midday vantage, Jake rested on a wooded knoll and watched as a young man in bright red tennis shoes wandered along a stream bank, aimlessly skipping rocks across the barely frozen surface of Kill Creek, bluntly named by the local Indians to suggest the abundance of wildlife that lived and died so near its banks.
As he watched the young man, the first thing he felt was a vague feeling of comfort and familiarity. Still, he cautiously waited, sensing that something was not quite right. After the man passed, he ambled down to the creek and drank deeply from the cool water that was yesterday’s rainfall. There were smells that danced along the banks, like wildflowers, sweet hay, ancient oak, wet moss on limestone, and a str
ange, unfamiliar musky scent he could not place. He tried to separate the scent when he heard the slightest of sounds and spun around to see something, really only a blur, move away from him and into the deeper forest of hickory, walnut, red bud, and oak that flanked the creek.
He moved toward the woods and the scent grew stronger. Within a few moments, he found the tracks and made the connection. They were cat tracks. Enormous cat tracks. This was an engagement he did not want. He would not wait for the man to return. In the distance he could hear car engines, train whistles, dog barks, church bells, and the playful screams of children out for recess.
Jake stopped again and looked for the man in the bright red shoes and then moved toward the town sounds, hoping to find the thing for which he vaguely searched. Whatever it was that pulled him was growing stronger, persistent, and very near.
I SPEND MORE time now looking back than looking ahead, sifting through the years and pausing over the important events of my life. Maybe it’s rare, but aside from the occasional sadness that accompanies us all, there is no litany of disappointments for me. Instead, there is a storehouse of good memories and special times. We all have some defining moments in our lives. Mine was a holiday that seemed perfect.
Of my five children, three boys and one daughter are grown and employed, but none is far away from this old farm we’ve called home for four generations. They come back for the holidays and sometimes for dinners, unsolicited advice, to borrow tools, or to just sit quietly on the porch with their feet propped up on the rail, listening to farm sounds, which lift our spirits even in the worst of times. They grew up here on land my great-great-grandfather purchased from the Blackfoot Indians. Just south of our house, a large stand of irises has spread over an acre of forest ground and hidden the remnants of his settler’s cabin. Our memories on this farm are good.
Mary Ann, my wife, teaches English and debate at the Crossing Trails High School, from which each of the last four generations of the McCray family have graduated. The more recent generations were spoiled by a school bus. The older two rode horses nearly eight miles each way and were not shy about recounting the details of their burdensome journey.
Then, there is Todd, my youngest child. By that Christmas he was old enough in years to be on his own, to have a real job like his siblings, but the immaturity that naturally accompanied his disability kept him home with his mother and me.
Todd looked like any other healthy twenty-year-old, but he had his own way of thinking about things. You’d know from watching or even talking with him briefly that something was unusual. Over the years, we tolerated some stares and whispers, but learned to think nothing of it. We loved and accepted everything about our youngest child, born to us later in life, a good ten years after we thought we were finished with diapers. Mary Ann, my wife of nearly forty years, frets over Todd and connects his problems with her late-life pregnancy.
I’ve learned that for every deficit one might see in Todd, there is an ability you don’t see.
Todd always had his hands in his pockets and never seemed certain which direction he was going when he went out the door. His clothes seldom added up to an outfit and his hair, the color of sun-bleached rope, was punctuated with cowlicks and curls. Sometimes he would sit near a herd of sheep for an entire day, just watching. Other days, he would find a river and follow it upstream, searching for the place where the water began. He never found this place, but that did not deter him from trying.
Todd also loved to paint. If I stood him in front of a building, he would paint it. However, there was one problem. His mother was convinced that our son would forget he was on a ladder and fall straight off and hurt himself. He was under strict orders to climb no higher than the third rung, which left many painting projects half finished.
To add to this peculiar feature, our neighbors seemed to enjoy giving Todd their leftover paint. However kind this may have been, it did not result in a harmonious color scheme. Our farm was painted with colors rejected by others, often for good reasons. Once again, we grew accustomed to the staring, and no one laughed harder at it than we did. We always thought of it as primer over which we would someday paint, but, like most eyesores, in time we stopped noticing. We took great pride in telling passers-by that we were the Midwest testing site for the Todd Paint Company.
Unless it was something he felt passionate about, Todd usually wasn’t much of a talker, but he whistled from memory, and off-key, every tune that he ever heard from his friend and constant companion, the radio. I continually pleaded with him to take off the earphones so I could talk to him. He gladly complied, but rarely would he take them off unless he was asked first.
The one thing that defined Todd’s life more than any other was his relationship with animals. He held them, raised them, loved them, and laughed with them. I am outdoors caring for animals all day. When finished, I want to leave the work behind, so I try to keep animals out of my house, but if one could be carted, crated, boxed, or stalled, Todd tried to bring it into the barn or garage and, more times than not, sneak it up to his room. This worked well enough for squirrels, rabbits, and baby birds, but not so well for skunks, snakes, and toads. To make matters worse, Todd’s room was always a mess, which served as an excellent camouflage for a variety of uninvited guests.
As he got older, Todd finally accepted that he would have to set wild animals free. Not to do so was cruel. The only exception was for creatures that were injured or otherwise unable to care for themselves. As a result, every hurt, maimed, and lost animal within five counties somehow made its way directly to our back porch.
There was no money for veterinarians, so Todd became a bit of an animal medicine man. He was not at all shy about using the phone to ask for help. In fact, I often had to work hard to keep him off it.
He was very patient and determined in his rescue missions. And it was rare for anyone to turn Todd down because they were too busy. It wasn’t that they felt sorry for him. He was one of those people who could capture you with his enthusiasm, and before you knew it his urgent need became your urgent need.
He would set out calling Jim Morton, our vet, who in turn would give Todd the number of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the National Park Service, depending on whether Todd’s latest patient walked, climbed, flew, or slithered. One could amble into the room and find Todd talking to a professor of ornithology at the local university about a broken bird wing. Before long, it seemed like the entire American university system had abandoned world hunger and quantum physics. After all, there was the problem of Todd’s bird that needed immediate attention.
Todd had a way of setting things in motion, and when he did, we dropped everything. I must admit, however, that I did not see this one coming.
One early December afternoon, Todd came running into the barn carrying his radio and frantically trying to scribble down a phone number. He handed me the wrinkled note.
“It’s for a Christmas dog,” he said.
“Slow down, Todd. What are you talking about?”
“The animal shelter wants you to adopt a dog for the Christmas holiday.”
“Todd, they always want you to adopt a dog. That’s what they do. Besides, we don’t need another animal around here, and most definitely not a dog.” We had been a dogless farm for many years, and I was not ready to change that arrangement. I had my own reasons for not wanting a dog—long-standing ones. It ended poorly with the last several dogs I let into my life and I was dead set against trying it again. I’d spent twenty years saying no to Todd’s brothers and his sister and I saw no reason to change my mind now.
“It’s just for Christmas,” he said in what came as close to an argumentative tone as Todd could muster. “After that, you can take the dog back if you want. They have lots of dogs that don’t have homes.”
I pushed the scrap of paper into the front pocket of my jeans and hoped he would forget about it. But Todd continued with his innocent persistence that wore on you, yet was endearing. “Can I call
them?” he pleaded as I tried to walk away.
“Todd, there is no use in calling. We’ve had this discussion before. We are not having a dog on this farm. We already have plenty of animals to care for. We don’t need more. We’ve got work to do now.” He was still looking disappointed. I wanted to give him a chance to adjust to a situation that he might have a hard time accepting. “Let’s get some chores done and maybe we can talk about it later.”
“It’ll be too late by then. It will be closed and all the dogs will be gone.” His voice quivered. He kicked at the earth with his large feet and hung his head. I knew he was only moments away from tears. Saying no to Todd was never easy.
I took the red handkerchief that I kept in my front overalls pocket and wiped the sweat from my brow. Just like the rest of us, it was sometimes difficult for Todd to accept that he could not always have what he wanted. It would take time to walk him through this one. I playfully grabbed him in a headlock and rubbed my knuckles across the crown of his head until he started to laugh, then I released my hold and held him by the lapels of his jacket and said, “Come on, Todd, let’s go finish the chores and then we’ll talk about it more tonight. Those dogs aren’t going anywhere, and if they did, that would be a good thing for them.”
We had a ritual of chores that started with the chickens, passed a hog or two, and ended up at a corral where I kept cows and their calves. We, of course, fed and watered the stock, but beyond that, without ever thinking about it, we made sure each animal was healthy. You can’t take a chicken’s temperature and cattle don’t sneeze when they’re sick. You have to sense something is wrong, usually by the way they move or don’t move.
Todd slipped between the rails of the corral and walked freely among the cows, touching and assessing each animal that he passed. Cattle and sheep are less domesticated than horses and don’t generally like to be handled or touched, which made Todd’s ability unusual. I watched him as he made his rounds and called out updates.
