by Jon Katz
THOUGH MAYBE NOT. I SUPPOSE I ALWAYS SUSPECTED THAT I might use my rifle, I just didnt know how soon. Three weeks after I got it, we went out walking just after dusk and Rose darted off. In seconds, I heard a bloodcurdling shriek. I ran to the front of the house, Orson and Homer rocketing ahead of me; there was a dreadful racket from under the porch. Suddenly it subsided, and Rose dashed out toward me, a nasty gash under one eye. Orson, too, was bleeding from the nose. Up ahead, in the flashlight beam, I saw a huge black cat with a stubby tail loitering in front of the barnyard gate. Orson spotted him the same time I did and charged, and the cat hopped the gate-slowly-and stood unperturbed on the other side while all three dogs barked and lunged in a frenzy. There were two feral cats in my barns, maybe more, and they were quite welcome to stay. They stayed away from the dogs and me and kept busy controlling the population of mice and rats. But I hadnt seen this black one before. Hed inflicted some serious damage on Orson and Rose, missing her eye by a fraction of an inch, and then hadnt skittered off; he was behaving oddly. Next morning, local vets and the county animal welfare officer I called said cats that stand their ground are often sick. That left few options. Trapping them and dropping them off elsewhere is cruel to them and unfair to the animals and people living where theyre dumped. But I didnt want them around my place, either. Their droppings could make the sheep ill, and they could, everybody said, inflict serious damage on dogs. Meanwhile, every time we went outside, the dogs were now on the lookout for the cat, charging the porch, rushing the barn, sometimes racing right across the road. Rose was especially at risk; she wouldnt back down, but she was too small to win the fight-the cat was her size, if not larger. And Orson, when challenged, went nuts. There is no feral cat rescue up here, the county agent said, choking back a laugh. They cant be domesticated. Id suggest the five-cent solution. A bullet, he meant. I didnt like the idea. But the cat kept reappearing. Once or twice, he was waiting by the back door, then backed off slowly as the dogs lunged. His eyes, I could see, were rheumy. Maybe he was sick. But I held off taking any action, hoping hed move on. Then came the afternoon when, talking on the phone, I heard a strange high-pitched yowl coming from the first-floor bathroom. I couldnt imagine what could make such a sound. When I investigated, I found the cat staring at me. The door that led to the cellar was open, and the bathroom floor was a mess. I grabbed a broom and charged, and he retreated into the cellar. There, I discovered a window pushed open, and an unspeakable, smelly mess on the dirt floor. Deliberately, he hopped up onto the sill beneath the open window and made his exit. You better get the hell out of here, I yelled, swatting at him with the broom. He had clawed Rose. Who knew what he might do to gentle Homer? He was driving all the dogs berserk; even if he didnt maim or infect them, they could get hit by a car or truck while in pursuit. I was feeling an unfamiliar but visceral response: this creature had invaded my house and threatened my animals. Once he was gone, I released the dogs from their backyard pen to bring them inside. But they blasted off toward the side of the house, where I heard barking and more yowling. I ran to look and saw Orson and the cat rolling around on the ground, the cat biting and clawing him, Orson alternately yelping and lunging but refusing to back away. Rose and Homer were circling them, Homer barking, Rose nipping. This was insane. I sprinted into the house, grabbed the rifle, rammed in the ten-shot clip, made sure the safety was on, and ran outside. Orson had cornered the cat behind a trash can. I screamed to the dogs to get back. Rose and Homer did, but Orson was too enraged; I had to grab him by the collar and drag him into the house, and the others followed. Outside, the cat hadnt moved. In fact, he stepped away from the trash can, inching toward me. Get the hell away from here! I yelled. This is your last chance. If he ran off, away from the house and barn, Id give him a chance to go elsewhere. But he didnt. He made for the front of the house and his usual cellar-window entrance. He broke into a run, and I shouldered the .22. There was nothing but open meadow behind him, so I pushed the safety off and peered into the scope. Just as he was about to round the corner of the house, I squeezed off a shot and he flipped over. I rushed over to where he lay and shot twice more, to be sure he was dead and wouldnt suffer longer than necessary. Inside, the dogs were throwing themselves against the window. Then I got a trash bag and gloves, gathered up the cats dead body, and drove to the vet for rabies testing. My hands were a bit shaky. I never imagined I would shoot a living thing, I told the vet. You had no choice, she said, unperturbed. Shed seen this before. You had to protect your dogs and your farm. I had no regrets, either. The other barn cats are still there, seldom-seen but welcome citizens of Bedlam. But if I had it to do again, I would pull the trigger in a second. Maybe the farm had changed me. Nothing that I could stop was going to hurt my little kingdom, and nothing was going to hurt my dogs. Anthony and Adam-and pretty soon the whole village-heard of my five-cent solution. They empathized, even congratulated me. For a Flatlander, they said, I was a decent shot. That, and membership on the Agway list, might spare me the testosterone patch yet. HAPPILY, NOT EVERY RECRUIT TO TEAM BEDLAM WAS FOCUSED on guns, trucks, and hunting season. I met Jacob Worthington at Bedlams Corner one weekday morning. He was twelve, the son of Barb, who co-owns the store. Jacob didnt say much, but I noticed him staring out the storefront window at my dogs, who were sticking their heads out the truck window, taking in the scene. I gave him a handful of biscuits and over the next ten minutes watched the dogs fall in love with him. Homer loves everyone, but Orson is picky about who he associates with, while Rose loves sheep more than most people. I liked Jacobs way with animals, his quiet, easygoing manner. I asked if he might like some part-time work visiting Carol-she ought to be brushed and petted if she were going to continue to be fond of people-and doing some barn work, like mucking out the sheep poop and donkey dumps, of which there were already a prodigious number. You might have thought Id offered him a flight to Disney World. Life gets continually stranger. My daughter had left home four years earlier for college; now that shed graduated, she was living with roommates in Brooklyn. Although we were close, I only saw her every month or two; she was going about the business of building her own life. This was the way life was supposed to work: if we did our jobs, they moved on and didnt look back much. But I missed her, of course. The dogs filled some of that void, but while dogs are wonderful, they arent kids. So I had reconciled myself to a now childless life. Back home in New Jersey, I knew some great neighborhood kids I would have happily taken to the movies or a baseball game once in a while, but urban and suburban communities like Montclair have become phobic about kids spending time with older men. Its just not done. A year earlier, in one painful reminder, I found myself with an extra ticket to a Yankees game. It was a great seat, and I immediately thought of inviting my eleven-year-old neighbor, a baseball fan I had seen nearly every day for years. He played with my dogs. His school-bus stop was right outside my house. Of course I asked his mother first, expecting her to be delighted, but she looked uncomfortable, and apologetic. Im sorry, she finally blurted out, but our school suggests that we never let our children go anywhere except with family members. Its a safety precaution. Id read the same headlines she had, so I understood her concern, but it was a wounding reminder of why so many people turn to dogs for companionship. We find it harder to connect with humans sometimes. So I was cheered that Jacob, a natural farm kid, began coming by after school to brush Carol, feed her cookies, and help me move hay and manure around. I sensed that life wasnt simple for this kid. His parents had separated earlier in the year. His favorite sport, he told me, was chess. Out in the barn, though, his shyness seemed to melt away and we yakked happily about my dogs and his, and the odd treasures-old tools, a rusty cowbell, ancient feed sacks-he found in the loft. Because of our age difference, and all the dreadful stories about older men and kids, I kept our initial contacts outside. Friends in New Jersey reacted with horror or concern when I told them about this new friendship. Are you crazy? demanded one-a lawyer. You should never be alone with this ki
d. Youve got to protect yourself. It was probably the same advice I might have given if the shoe were on the other foot, but I wasnt about to send Jacob away. Being around the farm and having this two-dollar-an-hour job seemed important to him. It was to me, as well: I liked having him around. Besides, I needed the help. There arent many people who love brushing donkeys and mucking out barns. So Barb dropped him off in the late afternoon, then picked him up an hour or so later. But as it got colder and sunset came earlier, it was hard to maintain this arrangement, difficult to relegate Jacob to the barn and the pasture. By November, the temperature dropped sharply by four-thirty. Jacob, who didnt believe in jackets, insisted on wearing an Old Navy sweatshirt out in the barn. I couldnt go inside and work, thinking of him out there in the dark and cold. So I decided not to yield to the tenor of my time, and I yelled for him to come inside. My own personal referendum: I was voting for the kind of world Id prefer to live in, the kind of community I wanted to become part of. Oblivious to all of these complications, Jacob sauntered inside and was shortly munching on microwave popcorn and watching the first Lord of the Rings movie on DVD. The relationship took on a life of its own after that. Jacob arrived, called out that he was there, grabbed a fistful of donkey cookies, greeted my dogs, and headed for the barns. He stayed outside, working or exploring, then came into the house when he was finished with his chores and forays. He could hardly have been more at home. He named the sheep, rearranged the cans of donkey and sheep feed, and presented me with an ancient pot and bits of crockery. We played chess, too. I could usually beat him, but he was good. I bought him a chess book and, unfortunately for me, he read it, and each game got a little tougher. Orson particularly loved Jacob, felt intuitively at ease with him, and would plop his head in Jacobs lap while we played. The ever-busy Rose would pause from her indoor duties-monitoring the sheep through the living room window, chewing rawhide, moving her toys from one end of the house to the other-and leap up to lick Jacobs face. Homer soon recognized the sound of Jacobs mothers car in the driveway and would wriggle delightedly as he walked up. I told Barb about the DVDs and chess games and asked her if she felt in any way uncomfortable about them. She and Mary, Jacobs aunt, had come by several times to check out me and the farm before Jacob started working here and they seemed easy about our arrangement, but this was a new wrinkle. But Barb had no objection; in fact, she was grateful. The last year had been tough on Jacob, and he loved having this job. A neighbor later explained that such issues were treated differently in Hebron. Things like that are never, ever discussed up here, he said, meaning child abuse. Besides, if anything happened to a kid, somebody would just shoot the guy on the spot. As the fall turned to winter, I was always happy to see Jacob pop in through the back door, yell Hey, Jon, its Jacob, and head into the barn. Sometimes we didnt speak at all during his visits, especially if I was working. He seemed able to tell when I was not in the mood to talk, and I could usually see when he was blue and just wanted to watch TV and relax. Other days we yakked over the chessboard like old geezers at the park. Id ordered more DVDs online, and as the days shortened, they were considerably brightened by the sight of this kid absorbed in an Indiana Jones movie while I clacked away on my computer at the other end of the house. Once, after a period of prolonged quiet, I came out to see what was going on, and found that Jacob had turned off the TV and gone into the adjacent room that would one day be Paulas office. It looked out over the barnyard, and Jacob was sitting at the little wooden desk, silently sketching one of the barns with a pencil and pad Id gotten him. The next week, he presented me with a watercolor version: the red barn, an evergreen, a contented-looking donkey. I kept it propped by my computer, right near Anthonys Three Steps.
Chapter Five
THE DONKEY LADY OF BELCHER INFORMATION, LIKE COUNTRY BULLSHIT, FLOWS IN AN END LESS loop upstate. At the Agway or at Stewarts or at the Volunteer Fire Departments prodigious roast beef dinners, the weather updates get passed around continuously, especially in winter. You hear about traffic accidents, farm failures, marriage failures. Postal workers, the plugged-in staff at Bedlams Corner, traveling farriers and vets-everyone has news, stories, and advice. If you have a horse, you hear about horses. If you have sheep, you hear about sheep. (You need to talk to old Bill Watkins over on Chamberlain Mills Road. He had sheep for years.) And if you have a donkey, which rather few of us do, then sooner or later youll hear about the Donkey Lady. Cows are common, and there are several local sheep farms; lots of people keep a few goats or chickens. But you rarely hear about donkeys. Although theyve been domestic animals for thousands of years and were once a mainstay of agricultural life, theyre perceived to have lost their utility. Nobody rides a donkey anymore, outside of a petting zoo. Pickups and four-wheelers and ATVs have taken over their farm jobs. You cant sell donkeys meat or their hides. Theyre what farmers call money holes-they eat a lot, so cash flows down the drain, but nothing comes the other way. Mostly, they stare balefully at the world, perhaps reflecting on their diminished place in life. They do take eating seriously and attach themselves to people who carry cookies and carrots. Carol had X-ray eyes that could spot a carrot inside a coat pocket from a hundred yards. She studied hay like an art student touring the Louvre, sniffing deliberately over each blade, munching happily for hours. Personally, though, I found the contemporary view of the donkeys uselessness both unfair and untrue. Carol not only kept watch over the sheep, rushing in the direction of any strange animal that approached, she comforted me as well. All the more reason to look up the Donkey Lady of Belcher-she sounded like a character out of Chaucer-a somewhat mysterious figure. People had been telling me about her for weeks, yet few had actually ever met her, a rare thing in a town where everybody knew everybody. She was said to be a political activist-another rarity hereabouts-who bred and loved donkeys. Beyond that, nobody in Hebron knew much about her, or even her name. She was just the Donkey Lady of Belcher. (Belcher, one of seven hamlets within greater Hebron, makes West Hebron look like midtown Manhattan.) It was our vet who told me the Donkey Ladys name: Pat Freund. I looked her up in the phone book and left a message, asking her to call me. I was eager for some donkey talk. Id never expected to care much about donkeys in my life, but I was finding them fascinating. Much like dogs, they form real connections with humans; theyre very loving. But they also possess an almost supernatural calm. Theyve been perfecting this aura-their donkeyness, as Pat Freund calls it-for thousands of years, a combination of affection and gravitas they have down pat. Carol sometimes reminded me, in fact, of a Labrador: deep, sad eyes; the patient ability to ponder nothing with extraordinary purpose; a love for people. I joked to Paula that Carol was the reincarnated spirit of my departed yellow Lab Julius, his peer in soulfulness. I never walked into the barn or the pasture without Carol making an appearance, nuzzling me, checking my pockets, and then observing the activities at hand. I heard her now-familiar hee-haw greeting me in the morning when I got up, at night when I climbed upstairs to bed. Wed bonded as if by Krazy Glue. Yet I didnt know much about her. She was about sixteen and had come to Raspberry Ridge from a nearby farm. Id first seen her there while grazing Carolyns sheep. At first shed shared a pen with a few goats, but when they learned how to hop over the fence and escape, Carolyn tethered them elsewhere, leaving Carol alone. If it was cold or raining or snowing, shed huddle under a stand of trees. In the way of many dog lovers, I quickly began to anthropomorphize her: she was needy and sad, Carol the Lonely Donkey. Maybe it was so. She always came trotting over to the fence to say hello, and after a while I brought apples and carrots with me whenever I went herding. She loved my treats; crunching away, swishing her tail as I scratched her ears and neck-she was clearly a social creature. I rarely had much time to spend with her, as I went roaring by with dogs and sheep, but I was always sorry to leave her. Nobody likes to speak poorly of their own dogs, and I dearly love mine, but theres a streak in the border collie breed-bred to work alone or with a solitary herder-that is neither generous nor sociable. Their
prickly independence may be one of the reasons Im so drawn to them, but it also makes them less than empathetic. The plight of a lonely donkey stuck out in a pasture with no company, seeking a chunk of apple or a scratch behind the ear, meant nothing to them. They charged at Carols fence and barked ferociously when she reached her head over to say hello. My Labs Julius and Stanley, may they rest in peace, would have behaved better. Carol accepted such slights philosophically, simply lifting her head when the dogs charged, approaching me again when they moved on. She persevered, accepting these affronts as a part of life. Carolyn sent her to me in Hebron because she thought shed benefit from companionship. And Carol did settle into Bedlam Farm almost immediately, attaching herself to the sheep as if she were one of them, grazing and even sleeping with them. I supplemented her diet with oats from Agway, not something a donkey needs, but something a sort-of-farmer feels good about providing. Watching Carol happily munch her oats was one of the days sweet spots. At first the dogs continued to harry her, but if they arent always sweet, border collies arent stupid. Homer, who was conflict-averse, kept his distance, while Orson, who never backed away from any cheeky creature, got fresh and nipped her. Carol just flicked her left leg and booted him a good ten feet, bouncing him off of the barn wall. He got up, shook himself off, and never seemed to notice her again. Rose also considered taking her on, but when she got too close, Carol lowered her head and swept it back and forth. Rose got whacked this way once or twice, took the point, and the two have maintained a friendly and respectable association since. I was impressed that Carol had tamed two dominant, strong-willed creatures with a minimum of fuss. But I wanted to know more about these creatures, and to make sure I was taking good care of her. I needed some expert advice, and the Donkey Lady seemed the most promising source. Pat, it turned out, was indeed a political activist, but also a self-described Jewish donkey spiritualist whod studied and written about the symbolic significance of donkeys, their place in the ancient world, and their profoundly spiritual natures. Both Jewish and Christian religious history is filled with biblical and other references to donkeys, she pointed out. Carol-like Pats donkeys-wore a cross on her back, a pattern of dark hair behind the shoulders. Pat could cite numerous references from the Old Testament. In ancient times, donkeys were the trucks and tractors, performing myriad agricultural and mercantile tasks, essential to commerce and daily life. The donkey, Pat wrote in one of her essays, remains throughout [history] a symbol of mobility and wealth, an appropriate emblem for wandering peoples. In the Old Testament, Samson was reported to have killed a thousand Philistines by wielding the jawbone of an ass. In the New, Mary rode a donkey to Bethlehem. Pats belief about donkeys struck me as powerful and true. Id never seen more affectionate eyes, or encountered a sweeter, more patient soul. During daily herding lessons, Carol sometimes came up alongside me and put her head on my shoulder. And she was crafty, too, with her uncanny ability to distinguish a farriers or vets pickup truck from anyone elses-and to take off up the hill the minute the former pulled up the drive. It happens all the time, the farrier said with a shrug. They just know.
