Can Trespass be Called
Trespass When It Comes to a Dog?

---

Saturday, October 20–
6:25 p.m.-

      Entering the liquor store parking lot, I noticed a man at the back fiddling with a quirkish wood contraption--similar in demeanor to a catapult, aiming out the rear of his pickup truck. He glanced up as I pulled in, then resumed his assault preparations, or whatever he was plotting.

      I told EZ I'd be right back and went inside the store. The young man behind the counter, dressed in a festive yellow bowling shirt, cheerfully handed over the twelve-pack of Busch and said "$7.50." Back outside, my attention was drawn to a semi-circle crowd forming around the man and his mechanism. A back door to the barroom walloped open and a gang of male revelry tumbled out, followed by a heavy-set woman in black high heels strenuously working herself inside a short black skirt. She chased a tinkling highball in her left hand, amber liquid tossing over the top. Yellow bowling shirt scooted out just before the door slammed. I joined the crowd.

      The man at the truck was demonstrating an invention. He had loaded a full twelve pack of Hamm's beer into a net bag--of the sort five pounds of onions are bought home in from better grocery stores everywhere. Only, this bag could have held a hundred pounds of onions, if they were premature and mashed in. He hung the bag from the far end of a gleaming metallic bar, turned around and sat down on a 2 x 6 pine board spanned between loops of vinyl-covered chain hung down from the short end of the top bar. A woman wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt and red gingham apron, tore open a case of Miller High Life cans and began loading them one by one into the sack, as all of us awaited signs of life from the device. Cans went in, the man squirmed a tight circle on his seat to better address us. He was forthright about a few details still to be worked out, but he and partner Tim were "confident everything is basically purty much ready when hunting season opens in two weeks."

      The working end of the machinery was heavily constructed of bar steel and thick aluminum hardware. Holes were drilled along the main balance beam every two inches and the end hole was where the woven bag, bloating quickly with beer, was dangling by a small length of baling wire bent into an S.

      The man on the swing assured us he was a Sandstone resident named Jeff, but currently residing in Almelund. He explained to his audience--all were male except the tightly bound blonde woman in the black skirt, and beer lady (and of course EZ who watched from the back of the truck)--about taps and dies and exact working synergies of steel alloy versus breaking strengths of aluminum, and how galvanized steel is inferior because it releases murderous cyanide fumes during welding. Tensile strengths of hemp rope--although preferred during lightning storms--was less desirable overall being "subject to consumption by red squirrels and mice during most months of the year."

      Bartendress continued filling.

      At beer can number sixteen the balance bar dipped nearly straight, just above level. Jeff says "okay ... now watch this!"

      He holds out a hand, bartender-lady gives him a can. Pulling a rubber band from a shirt pocket and doubling it tight around the top of the can, then hooking a straightened paper clip with loops on both ends to the top of the can, Jeff reaches up and hooks it two holes back from the end of the bar.

      Too far. The balance dips. Jeff reaches up and re-sets the can through the third hole, removes it and hooks it through the fourth.

      Balance is achieved. Spectators cheer.

      Jeff grins.

      "There ya' go. Two hundred and thirty-five exactly. An accurate weight with only ... (counting the cans jumbled in the netting, the crowd leans close)-- twenty eight total, plus the equilibrium can."

      A man in the crowd asks a question. Jeff stands out of his swing, thoughtfully swiping his hands together.

      "In its present configuration it'll go about 360, enough for most deer and a few small bears. And even some large coyotes. Hah-Hah."

      A man in the back swigs up a beer, swallows, then quips "what happens if you use light beer?" The crowd snickers.

      "How much is it?"

      "Only sixty-five dollars."

      Black Skirt woman mutters an odious phrase. She drains her glass and angles back across the parking lot, fighting her sack of cellulite puppies.

      "Does that include the scaffold in the back of your truck?"

      Jeff beams and reaches into the back and pulls out another scale, holds it high and says, "sixty-five is just for the scale, but for the easy price of twenty-three dollars I'll sell you the plans for the tripod."

      The men glance into each other and step back.

      "Here! Take our card." Jeff pulls a small box of business cards off the dashboard of his truck, breaks the seal and hurries them around to each person.

      "You gave me six."

      "Give 'em to your friends."

      The boys head for the barroom door, closely discussing things.

      Jeff extricates cans from the sack collapsed in the parking lot dirt, explaining that "the bag system has minor kinks to work out.

      "We're coming up with a sort of lightweight starched net box rather than this shitty bag. It'll make counting the cans much easier."

      I thank him and walk back to my truck, glancing at the card in my hand. The name of the business is TNT Innovations L.L.C. The "T's" and "N" are computer clipart sticks of red dynamite, crosswise and vertical and diagonal with tiny fuses at the ends. Two rows of jaggy digital beer cans--each with a letter spells "BEVERAGE SCALE." A Website address is shown, and along one side the slogan: "Weigh Your Deer With Your Beer."

Sunday--

9:45 a.m.-

      Firearms are discharging with increasing frequency as the morning warms under a meager blue sky. Hunters. Far distant booms and startlingly close blasts cause me pause about going back into the woods to resume yesterday's wood splitting. Grouse season is open, so is deer bow hunting. But not gun/deer season. A shotgun blast has a unique sound--a single "boom." A high-powered deer rifle, goes "ca-rump." Both bursts are substantially louder in volume, and more keenly unsettling, when muzzles are aimed in my direction. The "ca-rump's" I am hearing are probably pre-season sight-ins and not deer poaching.

10:15-

      A visitor to the Store is displaying his new deer rifle.

      "Picked it up last night." An AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle is lifted from a duct-taped cardboard box. The muzzle is pointed at my face--repeatedly, as the owner describes proudly how it came with 10 and 30-round clips. It has a pistol grip underneath for quick action against deer.

      "Very rare, but not something the DNR would approve of."

      The firearm is passed from table to table. Hairy hunters gawk, and sight it in at a deer head on the wall. Then aim it at each other just for fun, "Hah-Hah."

      "How much you pay for it?"

      "Three hundred and sixty-five, including the extra clip. Picked it up last night in Minneapolis."

      Hung from a magnetic clip on the cash register is a composite internet photograph of Osama Bin Laden, poised under a hovering American Eagle with an opened-wide beak.

11:00-

      A pumpkin-orange building shows a black shadow of a round-bellied man standing on a stepladder swabbing boards with pumpkin orange paint. I rounded a corner in downtown Sandstone and there he was in the sun's spotlight, showing his likeness--in perfect synchronization, precisely how to paint. I wandered over and stood at a distance that indicated I was interested, but not too.

      "Nice morning," he said.

      "Yes, it is."
      "I bought this building and I want it to look nice."

      It's a corner storefront on main street which rented out videos until two months earlier. This morning there are corn shucks out front tied with festive harvest bows, and pumpkins aligned on the sidewalk under the front windows.
      "Did you rent it out?"

      "No," he says in a tone that dips, then rises to indicate such a silly question needn't have been asked. "I just want it to look nice!"
      The man in his early thirties grunts down, pulls the ladder a few feet closer to the sun, climbs up and resumes slathering paint between trim boards and outer wall, much of it splashing to the sidewalk and alarmingly close to my shoes.

      I walk around the corner. A storefront across the street is closed and vacant. Sign above the door: "Panasonic. Slightly ahead of our time." True Value hardware is open. Brand new bicycles and lawn mowers and snowblowers line the sidewalk. An American flag twists a lethargic routine from its bracket near the door. In the park across the street a black and white historical sign is headlined "Sandstone Fire - More than 400 men, women, and children lost their lives in the area swept by the fire." I've never heard of the Sandstone Fire, only the Hinckley Fire, which occurred on the same day: September 1, 1894 and burned much of Hinkley, then roared up through Sandstone and miles beyond.

      A lion head water fountain is there. Thirst quenchers stick their head into the lion's wide-open jaws for a drink.

      A train horn blasts toward the northeast, approaching from Askov. Two engines painted in bright Halloween black and orange with tall yellow letters "BNSF" streak through the freight corridor between Main Street and state highway 23 two blocks west, pulling one hundred and five apparently empty "clickity-plicking" coal cars.

      Seven minutes later another freight hurtles through heading the opposite way.

      Magic-Markered, "Win A Million $ $," signs are taped to pillars under the Amoco gas pump canopy. Coca Cola is straight out with assurance that, if I, "POP THE TOP," on a 20-oz bottle of Coke, I, "could go home a millionaire."

      Just like that.

      On the lawn near the highway is a portable advertising sign, the kind that comes with wheels and too few letters to correctly spell whatever needs announcing:

"PREY FOR OUR LEADERS FAMLIES OF VICTIMS MILITARY & NATION."

      Regular gas is $124.⁹; premium $140.⁹.

      Worship service has reached some conclusion at the Community Worship Center, kids are pell-melling out a side door. A large marquee near the street announces: "Sorrow Looks Back, Worry Looks Around, Faith Looks Up!"

12:35 p.m.

      I stopped at Ben Franklin in search of diaper pins, or large safety pins, to hold our slippery sleeping bags in position during the night.

      Diaper pins have gone out of style. And young persons don't know what they are.

      I walked in, scanned the department signs dangling from the ceiling, then decided it would be less bother to ask someone where they were. The only other person in the store was a young lady about sixteen-years old, cleaning bird cages near the front windows with a blue parakeet--and a load of fresh shit under it--on her shoulder. I watched this scene for a moment or two and began to doubt that the young lady knew either was there.

      "Could you please direct me to the diaper pins?"

      About four-feet eleven-inches tall with green braces on her teeth, her eyes dulled at my query. But the bird perked up.

      "Maybe you have large safety pins?"

      A spark of apperception twitched through her eyes and she turned. I followed to the safety pin aisle. She entered, stopped and gesticulated Vanna White-ish along panels of peg hooks.

      My escort sounded as if she had been inhaling helium: "I know they must be here right here along here where safety pins should be up here because this is where they should be."

      I chuckled, then shut up as I realized she wasn't playing parody.

      Empty. Every hook in the vertical Safety Pin column was bare, surrounded on either side by full displays of darning needles and crochet hooks and thimbles and other parenthetical feminine devices.

      "Was there a recent run on safety pins?"

      Helium-girl shrugged, a response she discharged with well-practiced vacuity.

      "Do you have diaper pins?"

      She blinked. Eyes numbed, then narrowed shrewdly.

      "Diapers don't have pins or need pins because they can prick in a baby. Diapers have built-in tape-tabs you just pull up in front and wrap 'n stick to the backside of the diaper above the baby's bottom. The self-sticking tape-tabs tighten and effectively stop stuff from leaking out below when it comes out up high. That's how diapers work. You never had babies? You might know if you did. You really should. Babies are cool."

      I thanked her anyway and searched pointlessly for a baby department, then wished her a good day, passing by her cage-cleaning station on my way out.

      Two large oaks, graciously still clinging to their rust-colored leaves across the street, "clack" raucously in the thin autumn air. An elderly woman exits Kitty's Korner Kafe gripping a white Styrofoam pod and walks to a bicycle leaning against a Ben Franklin pillar. She places her leftover lunch in a side-saddle basket, puts on a nylon jacket embroidered, "Bass Lake Grill," and enters Ben Franklin.

      While I'm relishing the clattering leaves and the quietness of a Sunday afternoon, a nice-looking dog approaches the bicycle, sniffs through the basket wire, raises a paw and claws lightly against it, then moves to the other side and nudges the works. The bicycle crashes onto the sidewalk. The lady and girl shriek out the front door, blue parakeet wings flash up and away (which nobody else sees). Dog slouches away, elderly lady rights the bicycle, retrieves her leftover lunch and takes it inside.

1:45-

      Splitting wood. A woodpile I started around a splitting stump yesterday has drawn EZ's keen attention ... as did an older pile of wood, which I dismantled and hauled out in the truck. She supervised the removal of each piece, which released all manner of mousy smells and exposed hastily abandoned nests. At one point I saw a mouse scurry out of sight, but she was monitoring the opposite side and didn't see it. I feel like a lout for rousting mice out of good solid homes so close to winter, but the firewood I am gathering is this season's fuel and they didn't help cut it.

      Today EZ is even more agitated around this new pile. There was no woodpile here yesterday, so how could a mouse family have so quickly discovered my new construction at least two hundred feet away through the woods? I was startled to discover they had.

      EZ kept up her infatuated circling, poking her snout into cracks, then rushing to the other side to stand, head cocked, listening for rustlings within. I carried sectioned chunks and dropped them nearby for splitting on the stump and watched her usurping my work spot while responding to mouse seductions.

      The chunks of oak I was preparing to split had been sectioned into firewood lengths two months ago and left on the ground. Fetching one up I discovered a tidy cache of acorns--easily fifty, arranged in a neat oval heap no wider than six inches across, three layers high. They were inventively placed in circular rows, begun at the base, each higher acorn was nestled in the space between the two lower ones, and set back closer to the center to steady the balance, similar in appearance to an oval pyramid. Each acorn's nib, or nipple, pointed out. Not just two or a few, but every tip uniformly aimed out like tiny nozzles. The whole construction was a marvel of intelligence, and would've taken a stone mason years to get that good. Some say there is no God.

2:45-

      I consider going back into town and take up a tavern stool--where men speaking Truth belly up to the bar--and derisively torment the locals as, live from the Metrodome, my gallant Green Bay Packers whip-up on their stumble-bumbling Minnesota Vikings. It's a good thing I didn't. Packers lost 13 - 35 in a shameful display of unfortunate football, and did so from the opening whistle.

4:15-

      Why is it considered trespassing for a man to set his foot onto a grassy pasture posted, "No Trespassing," but it is not considered trespassing for a dog to unwittingly do the same? Private property is overstepped in either case. When EZ and I are out walking, is she allowed by some universally accepted, but unwritten precept to stroll onto "No Trespassing" real estate while I am expected to stand obediently along side--like a preschooler in a tavern waiting for parents to have their fill? Few landowners would consider threatening a dog with shooting, especially a ten-year old Golden Retriever who's grown--as has her man--disarmingly white in the face (unless she was chasing chickens), in the same way most landowners would feel compelled to threaten a human, especially a male man. Most male property owners, if confronted with a trespassing lady, might let her off easy with only a phone number.

      What about a blind man, hampered by a worn-out cane and thrown innocently off course? With a deficient sense of smell and weak hearing aid batteries that produce screeches in his ear?

      Can trespass be called, "trespassing," when it comes to a dog? If a dog were to slip on a T-shirt with an image of a raised middle finger, then recklessly dash through someone's private front pasture, would a property owner feel differently about trespassing dogs? (Assuming he knew all along it had been the dog's idea, and not mine, to brandish the shirt.)

      A sign stating "No Hunting or Trespassing" is a different message. Wild game might deprive a landholder's dinner table if an un-sanctioned man or a white-faced old dog were to hunt there. But, "trespassing," only means traversing where you're not wanted, and I don't hunt.

      What if a child of six child unwittingly wandered there during an Easter egg hunt? Or while hunting agates or arrowheads, or four-leaf clovers? Wouldn't a landowner consider that "hunting and trespassing and have her doubly arrested?"

      What if I was invited by a dog, EZ for instance, to follow her through posted land? Would it be her who'd be prosecuted for trespass, since I would've been merely following orders?

      Does a doe a deer a female deer, which is bigger than most dogs and equal in density as most men, qualify for the restriction, "No Trespassing?"

      Deer--and a lot of other varmints and rodents and rabidly disgraceful animals which require extra shooting, like foxes and coyotes and bobcats and bear--trespass regularly and deliberately, often in large masses. Although fairly, coyotes (or brush wolves to some) deserve elimination because of how it's always been that way when it comes to coyotes, as everybody knows.

      Come to think of it, a deer actually renders more damage than a man because its feet are narrower and pointier, and more hurtfully ravage the ground. A man's foot is broader and spreads its weight over larger square footage and does no stunt to the earth. Many deer are even encouraged to trespass, invited to enjoy hundred of pounds of store-bought cracked corn and fermenting apples spread around smorgasbord style in hunting acreage and floodlit urban back yards. Then they are abruptly surprised one night when rifle bores blast bright and point-blank bullets penalize their trespass.

      This whole discussion arose as EZ and I headed back to the cabin after a walk to the river. The neighbors at the end of the road--newcomers to the area and still encumbered with big city intolerance, have erected four-foot high posts at the edge of their meadow--where none never were--and duct-taped highly disheartening fluorescent, "No Trespassing," signs to their tops. Before I knew it EZ was halfway across, nosing around, hunting out alluring fun smells and relieving herself blatantly, in plain sight, upon fresh-cut pasture.

      Nobody was home. I stood by the sign and watched her. She can't read. Neither can most deer. But I can. I knew it was all right for her to be cavorting in someone else's meadow and it wasn't all right if I wanted to also.

      Why or why not? Please explain your answer.

Monday--

9:10 a.m.-

      Moth side-stepping wearily along the window sill, wings shredded from a night of flapping fright.

4:30 p.m.-

      Sitting at the Store with a can of Squirt I asked Herb if he ever got back the cordwood stolen from him in August.

      "No. He came and picked up the rest of it. I guess it was his wood. Meg never paid him."

      Then he says, "I guess the work isn't going to do itself," arises with a sigh and walks out the door.

      A minute later I absently noticed his pickup drifting soundlessly past the front of the Store. I paid it no mind. A few moments later, out another window to the southwest, the truck bucked violently and "chirped" its tires, as the motor surged to life. Bad battery?

      Meg sits across the table. Opening a scrapbook she begins pointing out black and white photographs of a retirement party held at the township hall in 1977 for Peter and Dorothy, who owned the Store for many years prior to Herb and Meg taking over. Sober faces and off-balance couples. Bleached Instamatic flashbulb scenes. Her father Oscar, who died three years ago, is still alive, grinning robustly in the pictures. Meg points to a picture of, "the Russian lady," politely dismissing my forgetfulness for failing to remember her, but insisting I knew her because everybody around here knew her, and as proof enough  exclaimed, "because she lived just down the road from your road."

      She leans back in Herb's chair, facial hair velvety soft, illuminated by a fallow beam of October sun filtering through a threadbare curtain. I ask if they'd had any bites on selling the Store. She sets the album down and exhales. She and Herb are into their 70's and yearning to break free of the demands of a seven-day-a-week, twelve hour-a-day operation. During last year's deer opening Meg sat at a table and, "didn't even get to have breakfast until 3:30 in the afternoon! The line of hunters wound out of the Store and down the road a block long! We registered a total of fifteen-hundred and thirty deer during the two week season!"

      They are grandfathered in. New owners would be required by county health ordinance to make significant and costly improvements to the kitchen, especially (Meg gestures) the fryer, which is badly situated to an underpowered exhaust vent. It discharges in a bad spot. A wall would have to be knocked out to the north and an addition put on. The electrical service requires complete updating, and a sprinkler system needs to be installed above all cooking spaces. The building itself is a decaying log structure, built in the 30's and of dubious utility to prospective new owners.

      The prospect is dim. Seasonally it is the only place within 20 miles where snowmobilers and ATV'ers get gas and food. Locals frequent the Store, but not to purchase its rain bonnets and faded cans of Brussels sprouts or fill automobile fuel tanks. In fact nobody goes there to buy those items except in a pinch. Ointments and spaghetti noodles and car battery terminals and postcards are all there, languishing dustily as months become decades, plastic packaging yellowing and clouding with age. Plastic caricature statuettes of Governor Jessie Ventura, in a variety of military poses and wrestling costumes, priced at $7.95, dangle from nails, and have, since the democratic quirk of his becoming governor propelled entrepreneurs into action two years ago. Large sawmill blades painted with wintry scenes, each depicting myriad native animals and coated with thick shiny varnish, have been displayed on the sideroom wall for years. Prices range from $75 to $175.

      "Yesterday two batches of families with screaming babies came in and I just can't stand that, damnit! (Rare cursing by Meg.) I gave them a good bad stare as they were leaving."

6:30-

      EZ and I hiked to the North Pool. We started off about 4:30 aiming north from the back door, paying little attention to the blaze--red spray-painted splotches on every-so-often tree. No need to, other than surveying its condition and making sure it was still visible ... which it wasn't a few minutes later when I thought to look for it. The blaze has little function to not getting lost. Keeping it visible and meandering along with it is more of a friendly tradition to Dad, than vigilance against losing one's way. It's what is done because it's what has always been done here. It was last re-painted in the drenching cold April rain two-and-a-half years ago with ten-year old daughter Chelsea who wore white socks and sandals. Although a, "blaze," it has always been spray painted red, since it was begun in olden days before blaze orange was invented. What more appropriate to mark a blaze with these days than blaze orange? Some day I'll remember to pick up a can or two.

      But no ... reconsidering, I think I'll continue Dad's simple red. Improvements often defile.

      I scanned for the blaze in vain, certain that not every mark could have weathered away so quickly. We moved upward to the knoll where Dad used to coax his lengthy Plymouth and Mercury station wagons (1970's era livingroom-sized highway cruisers outfitted with plush leather seats, half-again longer than most passenger cars in 2001) around tree stumps and through stands of blackberry brambles and over rotting birch logs, dragging a utility trailer to transport birch firewood back out. This pathway curves deeper into the woods off a loop he'd cleared years earlier. He never owned a pickup truck--much less anything with four-wheel drive; he did it all with low-slung two-ton behemoths which served as handy countertops and drybars. Nor did he ever get the tractor he always wanted, a bug-eyed Ford from the fifties and small enough to push woodsy stuff around with.

      "Don't need it," I was told one rainy afternoon when I suggested a truck might just be his ticket. He was on his knees inspecting for oil leaks after "clanging" the oil pan while trying to straddle a rock.

      And, I guess he didn't need one. He had learned not to bring the car out into the woods during ill-tempered April and May when the ground was thawing and oozing ankle deep mud, poised to become knee deep should anything heavier than a wheelbarrow, buoyantly loaded with kindling, be driven out there.

      Although habitually flirting with getting stuck, he never did. Dad took his ease passing over hummocky ground. The car would abruptly stop in a small depression, or against a small rotting log across the trail. He'd give it the gas, then more, as the huge V-8 motor labored to push power through its automatic transmission and out to the rear wheels. More gas. The tailpipe, two inches above the ground, blasted dead leaves into the air as he weighed down on the accelerator. The Plymouth would groan as the power-to-height ratio equalized, then rise sedately over the obstruction. Dad eased off the gas and the car swayed onward. Sometimes the forces of gravity and moist ground cover required more finesse. A rear tire would spin free, flipping grass and leaves and spatters of mud onto anybody who happened to be standing dumbly in its line of fire.

      He would back up a few feet, open the door and stare down at the foe, reckoning distance and impediment height, calculating power requirements. He'd slam the door, slip it into "drive" and press the gas just enough to get the whole entourage moving with adequate momentum, so when the tires again bumped the obstruction, the car would bound up and over with showmanship ease.

      In another few minutes I again looked for the blaze. And my woodsman ego was highly perturbed to be so thoroughly missing it, especially with visibility clear for hundreds of feet since the leaves were down. I headed perpendicular then saw a familiar dull red splotch peeking between two distant birch. I reconnected and continued north; EZ criss-crossed my path with delirious cheer.

      When walking through unconfined woods, as opposed to a clearly delineated road or trail, she and I roam randomly, without discernible destination. We are usually within a hundred yards of each other but engaged in our own worlds of supposition and discovery, though subconsciously keeping account of one another's location. It's a strange and rare phenomenon shared infrequently, since most of our sojourns are along and within clearly defined pathways. Stepping over tree cadavers, they suddenly become dead people who unexpectedly toppled, with no one to tote them away. Deceased neighbors, allowed to lie where they lived, so naturally fitting and un-mysterious. A popple newly fallen, bark still soft and sensuously light olive with brown leaves still clinging to the topmost branches. Why it has fallen after only forty years is a non-relevant question. It just has.

      Continuing north we came upon the Tamarack Swamp, blithely named by Dad on one of our walks during the early days here. It is a low spot where tamarack trees congregate and the ground is swampy. The slough is thickly dense with undergrowth and foot travel is difficult, especially when wet. It is a place Duncan, a friend Dad occasionally brought along (the man who's truck required sidewalk blocks to launch it out of the slick deep mud in the early years), let me shoot his .22 rifle into the bleak trees. Today the sun is painting the tamarack tip-tops amber-gold, which in another week will have emptied and turned silent gray for winter's span.

      Near the north side of the 40 acres the land rises, flattens and opens with tall mature trees. The shade from their spacious summer canopies prevents undergrowth from thriving at ground level. EZ and I meander through the broad grassy campus, free from annoyances of blackberry prickers and adolescent saplings which, in other parts of the woods, grow thickly and impede our movement because they haven't yet figured out what to do or which way to grow. Someday I'd like to have a cabin or year-around house on this northside site.

      EZ's already emerged onto Herb's perimeter trail, galloping back and forth as I step out of the woods. She stops, looks at me, then tears past toward the west, a fifty-fifty guess as to which direction we'll be going. She selected correctly, so I follow. Down the hill, through a meadow, along a narrow rutted trail Herb bulldozed through popple saplings several years ago, and onto the overgrown north-south path that hurries me under the diagonal tree, down the leafy-slick bank, and out to the North Pool.

      EZ arrived first, her ripples widening across the still water. She is standing atop a flat rock in the middle of the river, water dripping from her belly, creating small puddles. Chickadees are calling their names, a sound quickening with winter. The salmon sky reflects down-river of where I sit. A swept-wing jet gleams silver in the sun high overhead, out-racing its roar in another milieu.

      Near my feet the river flows sluggishly over and between shallow rocks. Although, the closer I watch, it becomes a vivacious flow; small rocks, sky-blue watercolors splashing, giggling and teasing in giddy childish voices. Deeper currents make no sound, the surface appears placid, stirred from beneath in secret turmoil.

      Church is here too. A backwater brothel swirling with debris and chaotic activity. The only exit is the inlet. Very little escapes. It's streaming fast, no time to think. Scraps of refuse floating too close are lured out of the mainstream and sucked into the bedlam. Circling, pushed endlessly, no repose. The current enters the vestibule and pours straight down the middle, escorting small pieces of dross. Deep inside, the stream splits into opposing whirlpools, one peels off right, another spins left. Near the portal is a whirling bit of chaff. Briar is thrust around in a tight circle, spun faster by incoming surges and agitated flotsam. Furiously flung, Briar is pursued by smaller clumps, rammed sideways and accelerated by enigmatic tides, jostled without relief. He appears to have a mind, now approaches the opening, a remnant of self determination still glowing deep down inside.

      Newcomers rush in, hurriedly networking with compatible crowds. These new compilations, though minor at first, swirl through the place, careening--deflecting whatever is in the way. Other bits of offal, including flakes of fresh white birch bark, surge in through the sluice and join briefly in the fray, but of feeble substance and confused they break up and sink from sight in the rush of the trash.

      Briar still spins from the current at his back, circling and surging toward the entrance, resolved to make it an exit. The flow changes slightly and the majority of members become occupied on the far side. An errant current lunges him toward the opening, still spiraling on his axis, yet showing a calm pretense of self-preservation ... A new surge flows in from outside, flinging him back inside and deep into the mix.

      A transient piece of midget white birchbark, less affected by the turbulence of trivial smaller specks, is meandering, halting, soothing the margins of his arena and throughout the whole confluence. This scrap moves easier than the rest, is more suitably centered, calming fidgety shreds, nudging all of them back into quiet compliance.

      High against the far boundary a marriage is disintegrating. Two solid bits of bark, there from the beginning, are detaching. Both bits struggling, their margins no longer fit each other, ties are dissolving. Briar is continuing to create hellish disorder. A large Bark floats over and shoulders him to the side, but he ricochets off a rock and careens back where the mad flow nearly breaks him apart. Large Bark joins with a blotch of violent pale debris and they wedge Briar tight against the wall.

      A bit of dark angry bark storms out of obscurity and heads for the door raging "I'm outta' here!"

      A choir near the door rises up, "no you're not," and flings it back into the dark where other impious particles float motionless and blemish the walls.

      It's a backwater sideshow surviving on despair. A ghetto of gloom. Moths who forsook the mainstream and wandered into strange places, heard the noise and gaudy allure and flew into flame while the rest of the river flowed freely on by.

      I tire of cold-water religion as cool air presses in. EZ has been silently watching the pool for five minutes, caught up in another world. I arise and begin walking up the bank. She doesn't notice or seem to hear, although I'm rustling leaves, then more intentionally, not striving for stealth. I step another ten feet and look back. Her mind is occupied elsewhere. Normally she'd be tearing ahead at my first stir. Crunching more leaves, I walk backward, watching her. Fifty feet into the woods I pester the ground wildly with my feet and make a hell of a ruckus in dry leaves before she turns and looks to me. Then turns back to her speculations of the scene.

      I stop at the top of the hill.

      What is on her mind? That's a grandly curious unanswerable. What is she thinking? How do dog's thoughts work? Do they think in words as we do: "Water," "rock," "tree?" Does she think in sentences? She must have thought patterns, or consciousness ... something going on in there or out, wherever it is a mind thinks from. Sitting there, so absorbed in her present, she's got to be wondering, questioning--do dogs have questions?, enjoying, analyzing. Do dogs have endorphins? Something is going on in her mind. But there is no possible way to know what and how. Hooking her up to brain-scan machinery would only confirm electrical activity here and there in certain regions of the cortex, not how she's actually thinking, or what it is a dog ponders. Maybe she knows a language as foreign to me as Greek; a language no human has ever heard, but as natural to her and other dogs as English is to most normal Americans.

      I turn away and head down the trail. Fifty feet farther I again turn around. She's looking over her shoulder after me now, but out of character for her not to be streaking to catch up--"Oh-oh, he's getting away!"

      Does she think I told her to "stay?"

      The reverie breaks. Here she comes! Ears blown back in the wind, launching up the hill, full speed between two saplings, zipping past my leg, hurtling out ahead and out of sight down our path.

      Walking back along the North Pool trail (where I shot the porcupine in September) I feel creepy. As though porcupine ghosts will suddenly appear and scare me "boo!"

      I walk, shuffling dead leaves as though to alert any lurking dead-or-alive porcupines that I'm coming through.

      Then, there it is. Off to the side where I deposited it a month ago, before the leaves went dead  and fell down too. Quills are laid low in a muddle of dark dingy fur. A skull and the pelt is all that's left.

      I'm sorry.

8:13-

      EZ, aroused from snoozing on the hard plywood floor, has come to sit near my left knee. She is gazing at me. Without even peeking I know the feeling. She is staring directly into my averted, but fully distracted eyes, sending me silent loud plead-needs of one thing or another. I relent. I mean, someone staring at me is a bother, but pretending not to notice when they know I know is boorish.
      So I depart from the work and turn my eyes straight into hers. She lowers her eyelids halfway, dipping her head a bit lower, then blinks daintily back. It's a look I know well. She wants something. I murmur her closer to hand and stroke ears and chin and the crown of her head--OOPS, a woodtick is ballooning itself down under her fur. I grip her head and peel back the hair best as I can and grip the tick between thumb and forefinger nails and, with more fur than I'd like, snap the tick away (EZ doesn't ever seem to notice hair being plucked out along with a tick). I scratch her cheeks and tell her how brave she's just been, then dismiss her with "that'll do." She backs away and I return to work. But she's quickly back and sitting in the same spot near my left knee, again expertly blinking her half-lidded face straight up at mine. Idon't know what she wants. I've just given her my love and that's usually enough nurture to last her for fifteen minutes or half an hour.

      I try an experiment.
      "Okay."

      She lowers her lids more sultrily, continuing to gaze into my eyes.
      I say it again with more merriment in my voice, "Okay!"

      Her eyes flick to the bed beside us. Oh!, it's the bed she wants. A place she has gotten accustomed to lingering atop on cold mornings here, while I get up to build a fire to stop her from shivering in the cold. It has become her habit to languish there long after I've gotten up and made the coffee and brushed my teeth, toasted a bagel over the blue flame of the camp stove and sat down at the table to work. She would even stay stretched out on the bed until well after noon if I would permit it, and I do.

      So now, tonight, she is suggesting in her simple coquettish way that maybe the bed is in order for her.

      I again say, "Okay!," giving the nylon sleeping bag a reassuring pat. It's where she has now been dozing for the past ten minutes.

 

I Whisper For Whiskey and a Bullet to Bite | Contents